Ophelia’s Cataracts
My mother, the most gorgeous woman in my world, but also the most dangerous, had a death wish. She also had cataracts.
To understand my experience of my mother, you have to understand something unusual about me. I’m very empathic. I pick up people’s moods and emotions around me. I see and feel their state of being, especially if its intense. I’m a sponge, a divining rod of feeling. It is not just being perceptive or situationally aware - its having the actual feelings flood me, knowing they are not mine. This was hard to understand, to learn, especially around a chronically depressed mother.
My mother was also cruel and i think the horror of understanding her worst intentions and feelings was the reason i was tortured more than my siblings. I saw and felt her, and she could not get away from the truth in my eyes. I can’t hide the truth, I can’t lie, I am only good at avoiding, secluding. My eyes, my face, my being is too expressive and open to allow any guile.
My mother would scream at me from an early age to stop looking at her a certain way, to stop being so defiant, and I could see her squirm. its very weird from a young age to know your mother is a pathological liar and to doubt her. Its even weirder to have this somewhat understood that my mother knew i understood this. A stand off, me as unwitting watchman to her mood swings and need to lash out. She hated i saw what she was doing and was unforgivingly aghast. My defiance was outrage and dismay. My defiance was knowing the truth and not playing along.
If i was a smarter person, with more cunning in me, i could have used this against my mother, as she often used our weaknesses agains us as kids. I could not, i could only stare wide eyed at her bizarre behavior and cruel outbursts and know deeply this was sincerely fucked up.
Driving with my mother along the Holland Canal, with no guide rail, and her thoughts and sadness too often drifting to thoughts of just letting go of the wheel and drowning us all were terrifying for me. I could feel her mad desire to be free of all pain, all worry, all thinking. I would drive with my feet on the right side, pressing down on imaginary breaks with all my might. We had to drive by that canal all too often, and her creeping thoughts were terrifying. Who could i tell this to? Who would believe me? i couldn’t even comfort or confront my mother, as a preteen, knowing these things, without her thinking i was insane. i just learned to hold my breath and hope her sadness and recklessness wouldn’t take over this one time.
My mother’s cataracts were terrible by the time i was in grade 5. She would have panic attacks when driving at night, pulling over to the side of the road, sweating and breathing heavy, unable to see. Night blindness became almost total lack of visibility, and these freak outs with me and my sister in the car, wondering what the hell was going on, would leave me cold and leery of going anywhere with her in a car.
My mother would often leave her car at some awkward angle on some road around our house in the Holland Marsh, when she would drive home drunk. Banging on the door in the wee hours to be let in, so she could pass out, and then wake up angry and make us help her find the car would happen for a summer. I would wonder if she would crash into the canal in her drunken state one night, and we’d have to find her car half submerged in dirty water. I’ve spent more nights and mornings worrying about my mother driving drunk than I can remember.
My mother had her cataracts lasered off and even that wonderful event could not make her happy. Nothing ever would, I think. No gratitude, really, no joy. Just, as far as I could feel, an ocean of sadness and rage. Did I inherit this ocean or grow one of my own, with each worry and hurt?
I read Hamlet in school, and always, the image of Ophelia drowning herself, surrounded by flowers, reminded me of my mother - a self addled beauty who offs herself in a watery death. Not really a romantic image but more of an epiphany - my mother is crazy, my mother is suicidal, my mother could die of her own recklessness by drunk driving by a canal. There was so much “don’t mom” in my throat at times, so many times i wanted to grab her arm and stop her thoughts and feelings, but i was not allowed.
i know what living with a parent who wants to die is like. Its like being on watch, holding your breath, sitting at the bottom of the stairs as a teen, when they sob and cry about dying drunkenly. i know the things my mother felt, to some degree, and i hated it. i hated her for blasting me with feelings i had no idea how to handle. i hated her for having no room for my feelings, my experience, my childhood.
and sometimes, i wish she would just die. just do it. so she and i both would not have to live with her misery. or i would die and be free. yes, i was having death thoughts at the age of 4 or 5, before i started school. how bizarre my early thoughts included how to be a creative child and death. how bizarre there was this cloud around us constantly, where other’s people’s happiness was a show or fake, according to my mother.
there are no signs of “life” in my childhood - no nurturing, no encouragement, very little love. love with a price, a cost, a catch. you got to be my mother’s child, but only if you played along. if you didn’t, you were the whipping post, the pressure valve, the release.
the things my mother did to me were terrible, but the worst was showing me how she could enjoy being cruel. but for that, i am to some degree grateful. it allowed me to shred the ties that bind. she let me go once she knew i saw her. my terrible, terrible eyes - they always gave me away.
Keep looking,
Melissa
