There’s clutter everywhere. Just a walk-way to each side of her bed.
A giant cardboard box serves as a makeshift table for my mom’s computer. Behind it stacks of clothes she hates but will never throw away.
She never really moved in.
But the living room has a nicely made shrine. Pictures of people who don’t care she’s dying. Or who care but she avoids because reasons.
Some handmade ceramics from daughters she doesn’t talk to. Elephants from wood and clay and papier-mâché. A gong she likes to bang on, incense because she’s part hippie and says it will clear away evil spirits. Even a buddha statue she talks to.
She’s laying in bed groaning. Arms as thin as spaghetti. Food in a bowl she refuses to eat because it’s gone cold. Because it tastes wrong. Because she’ll have to brush her teeth. Because she has an eating disorder.
My little powderpuff Petrie lays in the hallway. I can see him from her bedside. He’s a heart dog, always concerned.
“Are you going to eat or no?” I ask. Biting my voice to sound relaxed instead of annoyed.
“The dogs like to pee on Buddha.”
El Camino is playing on the TV. Something is always on the TV.
Our back and forth over food is boring me. This all feels pointless, I should just leave.
Leave and never come back. Leave and come back to help my dad but be done with my mom.
Done watching her kill herself just to manipulate us.
“If you thought I was really bad you’d do something urgent, wouldn’t you?” She asks. She’s half-smiling.
I’m angry.
“I don’t even understand what you’re asking right now. You want to go to the hospital, let’s go.”
“Nevermind,” as she deflates and starts pouting.
She uses the hospital questions to avoid eating.
A single slice of Liverwurst and a half cup of whipping cream.
“Oh that’s too much!”
“I need to get some sleep.”
“My stomach hurts too much to eat [ever].”
“I already ate soup this morning [it’s now 9pm].”
“It’s cold! I’m already cold!”
It never ends.
But she eats finally.
“That was a whole meal for me!” she chirps proudly.
“No, no it wasn’t.”
I sit and watch El Camino next to her. She’s avoiding the next “meal” at 10pm.
Groaning and complaining.
The timer on the dryer buzzes. I need to flee. Her moans of pain sound just like her moans when they had sex with me in their bed as a child.
Folding clothes has never been so appealing. Not all the lint got washed out of new hand towels. It’s covering my clothes, little balls of hope clinging to wool socks.
The dogs want to help me. I put them outside to pee.
Did my sisters know she lies and manipulates all this time?
Are the stories she told me about them even true or were they made up?
All that distance between me and family because she was a victim of them. Because they “don’t have emotions”.
She thinks I’ve become like them, no emotions.
I’m just tired of being lied to.
I’m just tired.
“Do it anyways, your stomach always hurts but you need to eat.”
I pack up to leave for the night.
She’s barely touched her food. The bowl sits in her lap while she scrolls through internet message boards. Consulting the world’s armchair experts. Wasting time to avoid eating.
I imagine throwing her computer in the garbage. Treat her like a true child.
Maybe I don’t care enough anymore.
Maybe I no longer love my mother.
Washing my face I think, “I can’t forgive you for Sam.”
Even if I hate her, here I am trying to save her life while she fights me. Fights because I’m not acting the right way for her to eat. Fights to the end to control who I’m allowed to be.
Sometimes I think I’m only here for my dad.
He’ll work himself to death for her. She’ll complain he doesn’t really love her. Lists all the ways he can never do anything right while he dotes on her.
While he’s working full-time but should be retired. Working just to have medical insurance for her. Working just to pay for bullshit Chinese medicine appointments and accupuncture with a scam-artist and an endless supply of cannabis tinctures for her pain.
Dogs tucked into their kennels after some cuddles.
Pack up my laundry into the trunk of my car. Dishes are drying. Lights turned off.
“Where are you going for the night?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Why are you so secretive?”
“It’s not a secret, I don’t know.”
I calmly flee. I always did want to run away.
