I had some dreams last night. I have days where my stomach can get a little sensational. I can’t totally track that but these dreams are barely a thing now. I don’t even remember them this morning. The dreams started about a year after Mother’s Day 2021, I went into the hospital for a day. It’s taken over a year to cycle those out. I had nights, rare, that required me to take a sick day or two. I had to reject, actually, these feelings outright; that was tough. I had to admit how I felt…
I don’t know what all of this refers to except it seems like I had a past that I got in touch with, that is, I didn’t know that it affected me, didn’t want it to, no offense to my parents, I didn’t want to deal with them, but it seemed like I had to. I don’t know if I was basically cared for properly all the time. I don’t know what to say about my house before I left for the Brazilian household…at four.
Dr. J she manipulated a stranger into keeping me for four years, is that a better topic sentence? Rather than she gave me away. She was, I guess, a successful businesswoman at the time and she spent money like water, confetti, wee, lied to her sister about me being at some school for gifted children so she could get an additional 15,000 dollars. Maybe her sister lied, God knows with these people. My mother didn’t pick me up. She bounced. She came over like twice to publicly ignore me, and I’m not exaggerating like who would? It infuriated me. Why would I make it up, exaggerate? On what planet?
Theatrical, operatic, it doesn’t begin to describe Dr. J, truly, a woman who bought Neiman Marcus, gets into her cherry red Mercedes with a license plate that reads IRSHELP — I mean — and cranks up OPERA to the MAX and begins taunting me, getting ridiculous and silly, singing this aria to me off key, cracking up, like what is she suggesting to me? Like what is going on? You see? I’m four. Wouldn’t someone push back? What are you doing?! I covered my ears. I didn’t hang out with her.
My father finally picked me up from these…ridiculous four years. But she accused him of child molestation on the light end and his reaction was comical, regardless. I was here for my own protection. These were my parents. They make me uncomfortable.
My father knocks on this woman’s door, doesn’t know her, and watches me play happier — since I was instructed to — and ignore him. Gets the door slammed in his face. Further convincing, I believe, this woman that he was a child molester. What is he doing? “You hated me and I didn’t know why…” With all due respect, all these years later, you get home, find your house changed from carpet to curtain and your child is living somewhere else. So you…don’t attempt to simply pick up the baby…you call this stranger’s house…? Oh hi! Yeah, I’m great, like what is this? Can I speak to Maria?
He gets diagnosed, all the same, after this, with Parkinson’s though it was Alzheimer’s in the end and doesn’t tell anyone. This became my problem, again. Him, my mother not there. She had no interest. I don’t know what to say about a woman who gets rid of you, God knows, and doesn’t…care. Bye. She has a business. Like lady? Were you a victim of child abuse or what was this?
Crossed so many lines for me. And I was destined to become Dr. J, no? Looking at these adults in my undercover investigation at like nine, ten, years old. It began at four. So, narratives are perpetuated in the name of truth. And that’s for kids.
Psychology was my way of coping, the field I seemed to be born into, and what can I say? On a human level Dr. J concerned me. When this mother who brought me home says she doesn’t know how she handled me, I mean, to all of these adults — what the fuck was this? Just please. She didn’t want to send me to foster care. Look, she just offered this unimaginably insane person “one play date” not four years. She had six children on top of it, I mean, of all people.
She was hilarious, fiery, there’s a whole story attached, in that, we were dancing, regardless, the lambada. Lots of laughs, claps, backing it up. Knock knock, I mean, who’s there? My family? No, just…the child molester. This is what this family went through with me though it was just a show, just a terrible show I didn’t want to be a part of, also, but you concentrate or focus on the positive.
My Aunt Jane, from what she said, Dr. J was weird to begin with. My father was, too. Loner. Not really involved with his family either. Not until I was born. No one knew who I was, where I was, because I was in this situation for four years. Then, dementia, denied dementia. I don’t know anything — if he was put on medication, even, because I couldn’t call the doctor back. I don’t know if my second surrogate mother did that. I suppose he wasn’t? Just please.
In any case, I processed these dreams, it seems, with these couple of people I thought might have sent this message that hit me in the gut — and that gut was a real experience — I don’t actually think they did but I had to deal with them in these dreams, in a particular way, regardless. For my parents, that was something else, I don’t have dreams about them. I had one with my father that was terrifying. I don’t want to see my parents. And I don’t.
I don’t know what to say; forgiveness was an early concept for me, compassion was maybe part of the problem, that was very confusing. My mother clearly had major problems that I suspected stemmed from her childhood and given the themes involved, it was hard to imagine what her family situation was. Did she have a particular psychological makeup? That too. Just because her sense of reality was so skewed, and I know she was an addict, but it continued to be the case though I only saw her a few times after Miracle Mile. She was still Dr. J.
I get this mystery man came in out of nowhere to save her from all this…since she was in terrible shape, left her child with some woman, bankrupt, my father totally out of it, checked out, “oh, didn’t do anything.” So, I get that her business got back on its feet…? Though they never had money so I question that and whether or not she actually got the care that might have helped her, you see. I don’t care that she believed that she didn’t need care. And, it’s true, what do you do? In terms of one’s right to take their own course, make their own decisions.
What’s the real root of these sorts of problems too?
Since mentally ill, yes, I could use this term and no one, but no one, is going to say…um. This was the definition of mentally ill. Not mental health issues. And is that the terminology? Is that going to help us understand what the root of the problem was?
Do people tell the truth?
No, not necessarily.
Arguably, I might have been the person, though four, that was really seriously actually taking her. What are you doing? What is this? This feels so wounded she shattered like stars, like she’s seeing stars, says I love you I love you I love you like a defense, only the world the whole wide world! For her baby! The gears — I was four — aren’t working properly. If she was indeed a prodigy, genius, of some kind — okay, of what? I don’t know — it didn’t excuse her behavior, no? I don’t know what to say.
It’s a bit of a no-go zone…my time with her.
I had to go through or process what really happened, how I really felt, about the whole thing. That meant rage too. Forgiveness, sure, but there was emotion to process, so one might need to go through understandable emotions and let the body go through its natural healing process.
But then, sometimes, as of late, I wonder how I could have helped someone in my shoes since the story itself — about to get back to my draft — was so complicated. People’s reactions to it, too, how I played. I’ve been processing what I learned around Mother’s Day 2021 — the year I opened my childhood back up. What helped, what didn’t, what had to change. I had to lay down some boundaries.
Forgiving myself was a journey. All my families. Whoosh. That required a total reframe. And now, I’m not in the same place. I feel much better even if I’m figuring out what my next steps are.
Those four years in particular affected me on a human level too. A child molester became more like a spectacle. This whole thing was a spectacle. It was repulsive. How else am I supposed to talk about this? In the past, sure, the lambada, they were so funny, which they were, it was a time with scope. I’m just speaking about me, personally, like if I was a parent…for myself. I can imagine many ways to treat all of that, turn my mother into a Joker, sure. It’s true though. One’s creativity is a tool, too. At least, I am a storyteller so I can do something with it, transform it which is a key word.
You can’t destroy energy. It becomes something else.
It took a long time to understand that they were sick, I mean, what else do I need to say?
The thing is, I was four, eight, you see, all the way through.
My father was diagnosed but his denial was…I was the problem. Slightly disturbing. He doesn’t say anything. This Brazilian woman stays in my life…um, why? I got “shit got weird” but it was weird to begin with. I get another mother. I was young. It didn’t work out; my father’s illness became undeniable. It’s not to say I didn’t appreciate my second surrogate mother but it didn’t have to go this far; she didn’t know or no one spoke to my father.
I would say now, who cares? This wasn’t my mother. But we got close. She became like my mother. Moved me into college. Blah blah blah. Paid for my dorm. “My like a kid.” This relationship, this like, got complicated. I don’t know what to say; coming out of my house — meaning the one, the one with my father in it, was a journey — I was not okay. I think I did well, all things considered, but I had to face the past square in the eye and resolve it. So, I am the parent to myself now. Not the same story.
Obviously, right, I can admit that I wish I dealt with this earlier in my life, it’s just there’s no point in going through that thought process though it might be more compassionate and useful even to allow someone a little room to…what are you going to say…? Breathe a sigh of relief, in fact, because I worked through that. Yes, exactly.
I’m going to get to my book earlier today and keep going with that and send out some pitches.
I’m just trying to take care of myself in a new way. Istanbul is a good place to start over.
Anyway, thanks for reading.