Reaching to turn on the faucet, I suddenly remembered. Six days. I haven’t slept more than two hours in six days. My hands trembled as I tried to begin the task I’d set for myself. All I could hear was my heart slamming inside my chest. What am I doing? Washing the dishes. Right. After what seems like an eternity, I finally got one plate done and placed it in the rack. Next I picked up a sudsy bowl, but I felt it slip through my fingers and clatter to the floor. I tried again: I got one done. I dropped one. Now I had to clean up the dish and water on the floor. The sounds of running water, clanging dishes, and people talking swirled together. I was frantically trying to clean up everything and get out of sight before my mother got home. I bent down to get the dish off the floor, and the light went dim and the sounds started trailing off. All the space around me narrowed, and I started to fall away. I blacked out for a split second but was able to recover before I completely collapsed.
I made it. The surges of anxiety were gone, but so was every drop of my energy and every ounce of my will. But hey, if I couldn’t go to sleep naturally, passing out would do just fine. With the help of Tots I stumbled up the stairs toward the guest room, picking up clumps of dog hair on the steps along the way (I was barely conscious, but my standards were still awake). I was an exhausted refugee, and I thought that refuge was exactly what I had found. I collapsed onto the cozy bed, surrendering to its softness. Everything quickly turned to a long-awaited dark, and I sank down into it. Finally, peace.
“Mariah! What are you doing? They’re looking for you!” A booming, dramatic voice violently pulled me out of the pool of quiet in which I had been floating. Lost and sputtering, I was wrenched into consciousness to find my mother hovering over me. My own mother had woken me up from the first sleep I’d had in nearly a week! To make matters worse, she was waking me up to tell me that the record label was looking for me to get me back to work—as if, rather than being my mother and caretaker, she was some kind of agent for the machine that had repeatedly placed my earning potential over my well-being.
That was the last straw. I really did leave my body. Something deep inside me rose quickly up and out of my throat; it was feral with seething rage.
“Well, I did the best I could! ‘I did the best I could!’ That’s all you ever say!” I roared at her, imitating her exaggerated tones. It was a justification I’d heard from her, over and over again, for my entire life. After six days of being hunted down—six days of hiding, anxiety, and near demise; six days of no rest; six days of trauma—I had finally gotten to sleep in the house I’d bought, only to be awoken by my own mother. My mother, who had found so much rest for herself in that house I worked so hard for!
I wasn’t expecting a hug or a kiss on the forehead, homemade chicken soup or baked cookies. I wasn’t expecting a warm bath. I wasn’t expecting a massage, hot tea, or a bedtime story. I wasn’t expecting any comforts a sick child might receive from a healthy mother. I knew my mother didn’t have the capacity for that kind of maternal response; after all, I was the one who took care of things. I took care of her, and everything else. I wasn’t expecting her to do anything to help me feel better, but I certainly wasn’t expecting her to wake me up! My rage took over. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t feel my body.
As a survival response, I dipped into the depth of my sarcasm and made fun of her, viciously. Cutting to humor when faced with extreme stress or trauma had been a defense mechanism I developed as a child.
“Well, I did the best I could! I did the best I could!” I imitated her mockingly, over and over. I was trying to wake her up, with her own words, to the cruel absurdity of the moment. I knew it was wrong, but every filter I might have had to stop me had been ripped away.
I screeched, “I JUST WANT TO GO TO SLEEEEEP!” All my fears, all my resentment, all the years of impressions I’d done of her behind her back—all my anger was thrashing out with each word I hurled at her.
“Well! I! Did! The! Best! I! Could!” I shouted.
No one, and especially not my mother, had ever seen me in such a rage. Throughout my childhood, it was always Morgan and Alison who would throw hysterical fits. They would scream and yell and throw condiment bottles at each other. They would fight. They would shriek and threaten my mother or knock her out cold. My brother and father had fistfights. But now it was my turn to let it rip. I wasn’t violent or throwing obscenities, but I was still going off, for me.
I was in an angry, hysterical frenzy, but I was still also thinking about my nephew Mike. I didn’t want to continue the sick cycle we’d all been through. I was standing in front of his door, putting my body between my mother, my tirade, and his innocence. Before we arrived, I had asked Tots to look after Mike; I trusted her because of the countless nieces and nephews she’d taken care of over the years. I never knew what could happen with my family, so she was behind the door comforting him. I
