With Love, and Wafflenugget | 2. To Run, or to Stay

On the threshold of a major life change, finding bravery

Human warning: this piece discusses the hardship of parenting a child with serious mental illness and lived experiences of OCD.

When Atlas, my therapist, originally suggested moving into town, I had been very open to it… excited even.

The idea of moving, of being in a place where I could do things, be a part of things, meet people, see people, and engage with them was as alluring as any daydream could be. But my lived reality held a different truth entirely — one built on terror and consumed entirely with fear. 

The night before I officially moved in, I didn’t sleep. The idea of being in public, of being seen, and living in a place where I could no longer exit and enter my apartment in complete privacy, without being scrutinized, ate me alive.

What would people think of me? 

Would they know I heard voices and saw demons? 

Would they know I was chased by a psychopathic hallucination of myself or spent time in a psych ward and felt more myself there than anywhere else?

Yes, what would people think of me?

And how am I supposed to walk so they don’t?

What does it mean to walk right? And move right? And wear clothes right? And just be right?

How do I human — right? Or more importantly, how do I human so they don’t notice me at all?

Yes, how do I human so I don’t ever have to explain myself? My three-hour showers to clean off the world, my conversations with what everyone else thinks is "thin air," and my endless trips to the bathroom to change my black leggings yet again because of chronic incontinence?

The fear grew like the red, hot, thorn-adorned vine it was. It crept up my legs, my hips, my abdomen, its barbs digging in with venomous enthusiasm as it clung ever tighter to my puckering skin. From there, it crept up my chest and toward my neck, beginning to suffocate me whole, and as I struggled to break free — to roll over and over again away from this reckoning — its barbs dug in, and the truth took hold.  No amount of watching DVDs on my computer and replicating the human behavior I witnessed there was ever going to compensate for the disaster I was. Nothing could fix me.

And as the vines sliced their way across my chin, my lips, my nose, my eyes, my head, I disappeared into a fugue before the real-life terror buried me alive.

I came to a few short hours later. Alert. Rigid. I was in my truck, parked just down the road from my childhood best friend’s home.

I ended up there a lot after I lost time. It was the best possible outcome when I did so. I guess you could say it was my favorite re-entry from a fugue state: the kindest one. 

As the early morning light began to glow, and two does peered curiously through my windshield, I knew this was it. This was my final chance to flee before my time in safety was over. To run? Or to stay?

Yes.

To run?

Or to stay?

Every single part of me wanted to run, to disappear, to hide away and lose time forever. I wanted to be a nobody, a shadow of an existence that only went to work two hours, four days a week without talking to anyone, and then a human who slept, showered, tamed hallucinations and lost herself and time for the rest of her life.

Yes, every fiber of my petrified being wanted to run and join Maura, to be done once and for all.

But I had promised. I had promised Maura that I would fight for people like us.

And, when I had tried to leave — that one single time — my parents wept and cried hysterically. Yes, when I tried that, my parents hurt more than they already did.

So, with a deep breath, I turned the keys in the ignition, shifted into first gear, and drove back for the final time to my little cabin in the woods, where I showered off my excrement, put on clean clothes, and even brushed my teeth.

To spare my dad that moment that always came with any knock on my door — an endless second when the fear of my death by suicide took hold, where he was forced to pause to get enough oxygen in his lungs before knocking in case the worst had happened — I sat myself down on the steps of my little porch to greet him. And when he pulled in the drive, I leapt up with enthusiasm I didn’t have and mustered the biggest smile.

“Good Morning, Daddio! Thank you so much for helping me move today!”

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The move reminded me of college and of all the times he'd moved me before.  Into dorm rooms. Out of dorm rooms. Into my first apartment at Middlebury. Out of that apartment. And back home. Back for what we assumed was for good.

Every time we moved together, my dad would find a way to smile and laugh and, at the very least, pretend to have fun. It was how we did everything when I was a kid. My Dad was an outward-bound instructor and both he and my mom raised us to believe that hard work and hardship were guaranteed – always – but that joy was a choice we were privileged enough to make. And joy was everywhere if we were creative enough to find it. 

I was always good at crafting joy out of thin air. Whether it was turning a stick into a pony to ride down a slot canyon, collecting rocks as currency for my future imaginary kingdom, or making handmade valentines for the entire psych ward staff, my creativity always came to life with in pursuit of joy. Even so, it was hard to find joy that Saturday morning. Actually, it was damn near impossible. 

The stairs to my new apartment were narrow and the people that I thought were going to be my friends, my neighbors, didn't even make eye contact or say hello once. To either of us. My Dad was unfazed by this, but I couldn't let it go. It was like my neighbors just knew… I was insane. I was contaminated, and my very existence might contaminate them – yes, contaminate them with my filthy, filthy mind.

As we bumped our way up the stairs and struggled with the geometry of its tight corners, it wasn’t the finite Jenga that sucked the joy right out of the move, it was the striking realization that my dad had aged considerably since the last time we did this at Middlebury.

When did his hair turn gray? 

When did his eyes grow so many wrinkles? 

When had the man who always joked about my Interior design obsession and the endless piles of furniture, decor, and fort materials become him? 

Yes, when had so much time passed? 

Every time we made it into the apartment with another trip of stuff and surveyed the dark, thickly carpeted space of this new place I was supposed to call home, I witnessed how weathered he had grown, and how fragile. Most of all, I witnessed the toll my life had taken — in the faraway gaze, in the tears cresting on newly folded wrinkles, and in the opening and closing of his mouth upon the realization that there was no joy or joke to be found there today. 

Yes, every time we crossed the threshold, it was so abundantly clear — the decade of me being suicidal, intermittently psychotic, chronically incontinent, and in endlessly volatile free fall had worn on him. This was not what he had wished for for his child.  This was not the life he wanted for me. Whatsoever. It was actually everything he’d devoted his entire career to fighting against, and here I was, still sick, still alone, absolutely debilitated by disability at age 26.

But there was nothing we could do to change it at that moment.  There was nothing we could do to change it at all.

And even though I felt that sentiment deeply — that hopelessness, that powerlessness, that far away look, and that absolute sorrow, I didn't want him to linger there or be there with me in it any longer than he had to be. So, I did what he and my mom had taught me to do on every backpacking trip and tough day at tutoring. I made the choice to find the joy, and I attempted a joke.

“Well, now that I don't live in the boonies, I’m guaranteed to make friends!”

My dad (bless his heart) faked a smile, so I carried on and daydreamed up a dinner scene at the table we had just set up in the corner. I told him I’d be serving pesto pasta and chicken to my new friends in no time and that then, if he could be brave enough to believe it, we would go get drinks at my favorite childhood restaurant, Molly’s Balloon.

He faked another smile as I continued to spout details of this life “I was about to have,” but there was no belief in it. The hope was gone. 

But even if he didn't have hope (and I barely did either), I had promised Maura that I would try. Yes, I had promised Maura that I wouldn’t give up and I would keep fighting. So boldly, bravely, I went over to him, and put both my hands on his far thinner, far more fragile shoulders than I'd ever remember him having, and I said, 

“No, Dad, really.  I will have friends. I will have friends at that table. I will rebuild this life of mine because today, I begin again. Yes, today, this is just the beginning.”

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To keep reading the next chapter, join us here:

With Love, and Wafflenugget | 3. The Girl That Died

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As always, thank you for the honor of being read and seen. You — truly — are a gift. to me.

With love, and a hug, I wish you a day.

Kindly,

Kate