I’m home from college for a weekend and come in late after spending a Saturday night with old high school friends. I don’t want to wake anyone up, so I try to be as quiet as I can as I unlock the front door and let myself in. I’m startled by the sounds of someone moving around in the dark. For a few seconds, I panic. Are we being robbed? Then I realize that the sounds are being made by my mother. She’s walking around the downstairs of our house. She doesn’t have a single light on and is just wandering from room to room in the dark, mumbling to herself. I start to follow her:
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
She doesn’t acknowledge me. She just keeps walking and mumbling. She’s saying the most awful things about herself:
“I’m worthless.”
“My life has no meaning.”
“Mom, please don’t say that! You’re not worthless. You take care of everyone. We all love you. Your life means so much.”
I can’t bear to hear my mother tearing herself apart like this. But nothing I say in response seems able to penetrate the self-hatred and misery in which she’s mired. She’s been having terrible headaches since I was in high school. They seem to be getting worse and worse. Is that why she feels this way? My father comes downstairs and tells me to go on up to bed. He doesn’t offer any explanation. What is happening to my mother?
Nightmarish situation for your younger college-age self to grapple with. Fortunately I know you and all your siblings made it through, and so did your mom. But wow!
We did make it through, even my mom. But I’ve struggled to put the past behind me – I’m still thinking and writing about things that happened more than forty years ago.