Maria Mocerino

Notes from my Chapter Outline that I can put into these other buckets.

Drinks with Emma—Vico Equense. Snacks. She felt that my father had planned it…on some spiritual level. He brought me here as a child so I could come back here. It was always a feature in my story as well. “People” could get inspired by it in some direction, projecting their truths as “the truth.” Yes, well, I think. I really “feel that way,” yes I understand. But I don’t speak the language well enough for such a sophisticated conversation, also the energy around my father was bizarre. Just bizarre.

I was in Script Analysis with Fritz Etrl. We were just “making shit up here.”

No, no, you see, that’s not it. Fritz Ertl understood in my mind.

“She decided he wasn’t a child molester.”

“How did she know that? No, how did this woman decide that he wasn’t?”

It was, on that level, I thought, which I appreciated, interesting material, complex.

And, at least, I’m here.

I was writing about my story, beginning to unearth myself in all this after going back to Naples for about ten years…

I slept in the same bed as my father up until my departure at four years old. That’s all. My mother usurped my bed that I demanded for. I have one memory…my mother was dying in a spectacular fashion over there in my single bed…I was standing by the door at four. I didn’t understand this picture. I wasn’t moving, I was trying to assess. He gets into bed, not looking at me, his back towards me—on his edge. I couldn’t go back here…it was too close, too many unknowns…a mother who was quite the storyteller…and even that, the horrible reality of that. Telling people of her rapes, terminal illnesses, etc. It was offensive. So how could I place myself in this reality?

It was hard to digest in reality. I guess I cared about human decency. Yes, in this experience, I have the characters that were born in my mind that helped me through this. Great plans for my mother, that was for sure.

I just figured it was “the mess, the repulsive nature” of this situation—that’s why he couldn’t look at me, we were “stuck” in this together, and we were pretending nothing was happening. I didn’t, at that age, want any part of this. She’s dying, doing I don’t know what, no one is acting like anything is strange. No one is talking to me. I was four. I had nowhere to go. I was hugging this edge, basically, just—wishing I wasn’t here. I demanded for a sleeping bag. I slept in between the foot of my bed, that she took, and the dresser–I threw up that evening, I remember this, awake but not. I was taken from my sleeping bag that night. I remember that. It could mean many things. But given this weirdo situation I was in at four years old…

This was my homelife.

The idea that a man comes home from work and finds himself in this situation…and that some people would just never find themselves in this situation…didn’t occur to me. The things that can happen to people, it’s true, but he said in his divorce file which I found in my twenties: “I came home and Maria was living with a different family…”

She snapped in my face—I started living with her just like that.

How long was this man gone—5-7 weeks, probably.

“I came home the whole house was redecorated and Maria was gone.”

What’s the truth? There’s even value at looking at where we go to first…our interpretations…I can deal with all this now. I can find the advantage in it. It’s just so true, across the board: “people think they know.” And that’s “a character of my mother” coming through me now…”the grotesque picture-perfect beauty,” from a certain angle.

“People think they know.”

A character of my father is coming to mind…and that’s how I got through Mother’s Day 2021…characters waking up inside this story…and finding other ways, new ways, who had real questions for me…what about a good, special man who was simple and brilliant, to take my father who was an “aerospace engineer” who didn’t know he was a rocket scientist. Sure, I can picture that. A man who has problems, too…I can see that character who is affecting in his flaw, or weakness, though that’s not the word…who’s about to go through…something. Who goes through something that shatters him, too. Does he turn his life around? Does he battle as an innocent man…through stories that are too powerful…he’s a child molester! She’s a child! She doesn’t know!

“I saw the tears!” My Brazilian Mama-person said. “She cried REAL tears,” she wanted to rip my mother’s throat out. But no one pressed charges, no one did anything. She didn’t want to send me to foster care, she said, and at the time, I felt she…what she did “to an innocent man” was a harsh reflection on herself. I mean, she was manipulated, or, you would never think that someone would lie about something like that…

It was a lot to come to, though, for me: “so,” I assumed, she saw my mother was totally insane and that my father wasn’t… just due to “the broken man” routine at the door and the crazy lady who was never there except for these “two times.” Wait, as an adult, she asked me…did he? After it was said and done? No, I said, but then, I saw women come to the realization that they had been and I didn’t know what to do with the facts and the story that I went through.

They believed in me—my characters, so that was inspiring. It was amazing—out of every door—from all genres…meeting my real feelings and helping me through it. One came slicing through “the fabric of reality” with daggers…whatever was happening—no. I think that this situation could have gone in a few different ways, so maybe I was standing—as I felt time bend when I was nine years old—at a point where the outcome was unclear. Regardless of what happened…I was able to steer towards my greatest benefit…

Finally, I was able to do this for myself. I got my pictures back from my childhood. Some are gone forever. I lost a lot, actually, but I have what I have. I didn’t want to look through them. Was everyone a liar? She didn’t want to send me to foster care, I asked her why she didn’t call the cops. I did this at thirty-five. I feel lots and lots of support in doing this, so whoever is out there, thank you. I felt that my story could do some good. That’s what I steering towards.

Was I not supposed to care? Were these just stories, no biggie? A fiction in real life—was it not real? I found pictures…always of me or them just outside my house. Okay. I have flashes of my mother in my head…images can come to mind…and I smooth those out…I do not listen to “my parents” coming into my head, if you would. In the words of my mother, “bye bye for now.” By the date, I was home a couple of time during these four years…and I remember that…Why was I here if she believed he was a child molester? Were did I sleep? I didn’t have a room in this house. Not until I came back.

I remember “coming to” a couple times in my house…there were a few times…okay…how did I get here?

For a while, any “questions” would throw me into the throes of despair, once I got there, because I wasn’t a liar…I wasn’t a liar.

So, yes, in Bellevue, I was there for a day—two nights, one full day of observation. I left without any diagnosis. None. They put “psychosis” on my exit papers, but that’s what they put. It was my most deep-seeded expectation, and I had to also face that. I had got a weird message that was—the final blow, for the moment, a couple months before.

I had asked for my money back, essentially, the night before this message came through.

According to my friend who is writing a TV show out of a sliver of this experience—completely 100% independent on me. Which is fine; in other words, she’s not asking me about my experience. She has been a good friend to me through it, it’s not that, but she was interested in “the spy narrative” in my story. So, I contend with the reality, now, of my spy identity and my mother’s…hiding my book for safety.

Yes, I wrote a monologue…about me, Maria Mocerino, contending with “the reality of my mother’s spy identity” in the moment that it happened, or came to a stunningly “reality.” One of these times I woke up at the bottom of the stairs…her escort, the man who saved her from all this because she was a genius, in his words, came down the steps. “Secret spy” flashed in my head—not that he was one, but that he “acted” like one. Years and years later, at the Continental Hotel in Paris, France, he was a secret spy, this is what she was telling me. Now, is she? Are they? It was the question amongst my friends. Spy narratives in particular are popular. That’s the TV show—I think I’m really a spy, or she is…put into Bellevue against her will. But the experience, I’ll continue figuring out what to do with it.

She saw a recent photo of my mother, she said it was scary. Her eyes, really, are particularly terrifying. Devouring…hunger. It was a scary person who was once in haute couture. She practically disfigured herself.

Death was there at the exclusive Tennis Club with me…

“My mother handled me inappropriately…” This woman said that.

Death was by the pool, we were—crystal clear and blue.

“Ghastly,” he said, remarking what I was writing as I was writing it: “pineapple ice cream, notable but too expensive…”

Like I was a rookie P.I.

She handled me inappropriately? Is that what you said? The stories I heard at eight, nine, ten years old, Death beside me, wherever this character wanted to be as this was a construction in my mind now. But I figured that the idea stood for truth, intregrity, and nonattachment.

Did I laugh, I couldn’t stop at times…

“Ghastly,” the word even. It was. It was ghastly.

This woman flopping her legs open in front of me…in this scene of exclusive luxury? Tennis? Pingpong behind her. But that was the world of my mother, whatever that meant. It was performative, I mean, this Brazilian mother was one of the only people who ever interacted with my mother. Confusion, making decisions, whatever happened here aside, it was what I was studying…trying to penetrate…it was a horror show, all we could do was laugh, at times…just by the sheer “jack in the box” pop, you jumped! Ran for cover, we even could laugh in the symbolic language…”AH!” She was wildly crazy. This woman shivered, cringed, was physically disgusted. This was my mother. What a slut, she was, but for real. I told her not to hold back. I was studying this.

And of course, Death had to tell me to let it go. I put myself through a lot…but I didn’t really understand myself as a child…going through this. But at least, you know, on some level, there was “someone,” with the “scope,” having been apart of every story ever told, who could go through this with me…so it wasn’t the worst, or it wasn’t anything this character hadn’t seen, because he’d been apart of all of them. The human experience: why, it’s true, why do you do what you do? It was soothing to me…just this character’s responses to things.

He was the kindest character—a fictional one that I invented as an angle back through my childhood. Yes, I mean, my laughing was a purge. Death could understand that. Yes, as an adult, disconnected from this child, this body, it took time to reinhabit myself as the person who went through this and it was the plan. In some senses, I needed support as feelings came up, this character was a way of doing that, and it wasn’t attached to “who I thought I was,” who I was, whatever. I was attached, in a real way, to what “other people thought,” and that was a whole thing, persoanlly, for me to let go of and work through. Death was my real way of doing that, too. We were in many rooms with “many people.”

I couldn’t help the life I went through, the confusion I had over what the truth was, even the throes of “do I tell this story?”

I brought myself into awareness through accessing the real child, children, that went through it—and there turned out, as “scenes” came back to me…where Death would find me…I would have to laugh…doing what I was doing. Death was by the water cooler watching me at ten years old interviewing one of my mother’s lovers…rum cakes baking. What was up with “the themes?” It fascinated me on that level; her traumatic past, what happened to her?

He was at the table, this cocky guy, pushing his glasses up, looking at me at ten years old…

With this character in the room with me, I began to see myself for the age I was, though ten years old took a minute. I don’t know why. Now, I have access to these ages, they are integrated. I can feel myself, I can see myself, I feel connected. We began with three age lines, and I was amazed at my body, mind, heart, spirit’s intelligence in this regard. My question, staring at this man, was—how could anybody sleep with her? Looking at my father, later, in the car…who is this guy?

Sure, I could write many many stories about many people who find themselves in all sorts of situations.

Death sat beside me, he watched me, he took it in.

They, Death changes shape, genderless. Probably, on some level, I am just accessing energies within me, now Death is changing shape, perhaps because it’s still a figure coming into being, as I am also writing about it. It was harsh; “she was asking for it…” he said, that’s what he said to my question: why did you sleep with her? I didn’t really care about “my so-called innocence…” because whatever happened to my mother…that was a real problem.

I’ll reserve the full conversation because it only gets worse, for now.

Madness and, Madness in? Civilization? I was curious on that level too. I was ten, and I was destined to maybe become her? That was very scary…this woman cooking up—for fun?—”birthdays in the future” where this woman would come in a Prince Ali parade with money, treasures, a car…and pointing her finger at me…was I going to abandon my father? For a car? First of all, my mother was never coming, which was cruel to begin with. Second, what the hell happened here?

I was not innocent at four years old…I was “the biggest bitch that ever was…” Even her lover said it: surprisingly, I turned out, at ten, to be a good kid. What did that mean for others? It was a real question I had.

Death pointed out that no one thought of telling your father what you were doing…

I was ten, and no, I wasn’t that clever, not to “Death.” Yeah, it got a little ugly, and harrowing, if you would. I went through all of this, also contending with all these questions. And these were questions I felt were obvious to a reader, actually.

Death was a real ally. I could say no. At the place I was—I could say no. It wasn’t his…choice. I don’t know what to say about my friend who said, “oh I thought I would play Death,” and “oh and can’t a woman play him?” It was too revealing, when I had no idea…but I had felt a lot of energy “around me” that was truly speaking—so affecting. I am still working on that. Get out of my energy space, whatever this is. Death, the character I can focus on that, sometimes, and it can help me to establish boundaries. It makes sense, as an idea. Right now, there’s a space I am in while i write this, which is the apartment in which this “final blow” took place…

I was also a special person—not in a belittling way. I didn’t know what to feel about “the agenda” in my space.

Death had no power, in this regard. It was hard, at times, just the pain, coming to question these things…not knowing what to do with what I was experiencing. I also couldn’t communicate at the time because I didn’t know how to wrap my mind around these feelings…that I had. Now, I am a different person. I have zero attachment to that old iteration of myself, though obviously, I’m still me, and that’s gets more and more true every day. I don’t want to place so much emphasis on a particular event, though it was significant, on “the new me.”

But since I’m crafting my chapter outline: I am still, at times, working through “what I learned” ten years later, making sure, well, that I capture what that time was with my cousins…since I finished the first draft the weekend of Mother’s Day 2021. I went through a big change last year.

A message was delivered through my website at 5 AM the first week of March… I asked for an investment back the night before…it involved two people…forget the people, they are players in a larger game of mine. I received this message physically, never doubted it came from them, yet couldn’t wrap my mind around it because it felt crazy. I must be crazy. Or, what was it? I don’t know what to say about the punch in my gut. It was physical…two blocks of stones, that’s what I felt…one pushing up against another…hard, stone. That was the final blow, in the words of a wise screenwriter. Then, two months later, I was in the hospital for a day; Bellevue. Two nights, one day of observation. So, yes, technically, on the third day, I rose again. These two months leading up to “my deepest expectation, my deepest fear,” which was ending up here were two of the strangest, scariest, painful moments of my life.

Let me be blunt—because the physical sensations were extremely intense. I mean in my loins—different characters came into the play…to my aide, but they stimulated me…I didn’t know what to do with my loins, quite frankly. It was intense. I figured that lies were real? But then, who knew if she lied or not? I’m telling you. I just went through what I did. I was that terrified. I couldn’t really eat because I was 93 pounds by that time…and I didn’t know that until I got there, showing her, physically and energetically this nurse, on the scale, who told me to eat a cookie…that her comment hurt me, affected me…showing CARE. It was the point, no?

“This is not nutrition,” I said, and then, apologized, and reassured her she was only doing her job and I understood that.

“Do you have anything else?” A peanut butter and jelly sandwich? I’d take it in my grippy socks.

“Okay,” I said, because I had to face the reality that I was here. “I didn’t have parents.” I mean, I didn’t need to end up in here, but I also came from such a crazy confusing story, and I’m just happy I was able to let it go. “Let it be my big break.” that’s what I was concentrating on. My big break. I was getting out, through this, and leaving it behind.

It was also one of the most vivid, intense hallucinatory experiences I ever had, and I also wasn’t exactly in a sense, a novice…

It was a deep depth of field—first I sent a team of “silverback gorillas” seriously, without thought, as this animal was my spiritual protector to take the forms away from me—I needed to create space, at least, to accomodate for every character in my life coming into this battle of my soul. I had a spiritual awakening around the time I was thirty, it was a very active time…I did a shamanic voyage, with a drum, to help me relax: my friend, because I was a bit freaked out. I saw a silverback, and that filled me with a strong feeling, and I used this symbol at this time—it more than helped. This my silverback at my bedside. Now, I had a team.

My parents weren’t anywhere to be found, really, that was happening on another level of perception. And I was also writing stories, too, that I was, some I was wrapped up in—others maybe stories I would write in some future—the image was not my concern, what the story “really was” wasn’t either. All I knew, step one—I was outta here. It was amazing to me because characters flew from every door—the doors of perception—to help me through this. It was stunning to me. They were from stories from the genre of fantasy to the genre of memoir. They were characters who had touched me in one way or another…

And they kept coming at different legs of this experience.

I used psychic fire, I didn’t even know I could, to hold the characters that were coming into my mind, why? At bay, still. It did, it worked, but I had no idea what I was confronting in myself. Was this person involved? Did that 5 AM message really…did those two people, one of them, really send it me? It was confusing, because it was a message about my actual bank being shut down, and who cares? I didn’t need to respond in the way that I did, but that was also part of the problem.

I had initiated a therapeutic event before this…just to say…that’s what I decided to do somewhere back there, on the page, just trying to get through it. I “went to the Oracle of Cuma,” because with something like this, I would have gone there…so I was going into the underworld to confront my parents…and this was part of that. My Neapolitan relatives, once again, said: “Dante, this is Dante.”

So I looked at all these characters in a line…further back…on my visual-scape…in flamingly vivid rings of fire with lines coming from me. My Neapolitan relatives weren’t in this battle, they were more support figures, though two were in particular. The rest weren’t really around. But then, this was such a major experience, and I was still writing through this, so there was a leg when the “characters” of this family came around me.

I grabbed Jurassic Park, Death, came through. “A hallucination is? A strictly sensational form of consciousness.” Now, what is this? I used all sorts of tools. I knew it wasn’t really happening, but then, what does that mean? The feelings were very intense, real. I’m interested now in this experience because I remember it, for one, and The Red Book was, to me, amazing on that level as well: the visual component. I had my own. I started writing a Batman concept through this as well…it was a whole thing.

.there wasn’t a chance, maybe if I felt safe, I could have taken a crumb of a xanax becuase that’s all I need to take, truly, I can feel medicine in my hand; the energy of the thing. Seriously. But I refused all drugs—stay away from me—you who do not ask what my medical history is. No, I will go through it, the sensations were a lot, the physical sensation of any energy coming near me firing me up in a specific location. More or less. I remember it. Which is what one of “my guides” said. My Neapolitan family said, once again, that I sounded like Dante.

What I went through was Dante. Up and down, through hell, sure. Dante’s Inferno. I had guides, internal resources, basically to help steer me through that with “the good, the bad” the right, wrong, the rouge and le noir.

Just to say–I came to many realizations in that two night, one full day experience…afterwards too. I made it through. To me, that was the real point.

I guess I could have done it over time…but I don’t know what to say, I was truly confused, repressed, and I guess I forced the moment to its crisis—T.S. Eliot, Death would use my reference, basically, because it was me. That’s how I feel now. But this character helped me to craft a way to a new perspective. Swirling energy patterns, back into moments in the past that are eternal…it felt like that sometimes, like I could rewrite the past…from a present moment, and Death was my coach, say it, say it. “My mother was a drug addict…” even that, I laughed, becaue it felt fake. I didn’t know I cared. It was really something.

Oh, was I overexaggerating? In the eyes of others? No. She was a major addict. Huge. Alcohol in my food that I didn’t feel my food was safe and maybe it was the only thing she ever made me. Why? What’s this lone burger patty? You see? This was my mother.

I didn’t understand the “agenda” I felt in my space; I didn’t understand what this aesthetic was that was “mine.”

I could very feasibly walk through a door—my mother was a prodigy, and so I am? Who cares? I wouldn’t play light and stupid, even if I was never stupid, it was just my entanglements. But now, I am not the same person walking into a room. I wouldn’t say I was adopted. I would say—my parents were hugely psychologically impaired, more or less, and I am still…dealing with the reality of that. Who gives a shit about the other families? I have a mother now—and my problems were still my problems, weren’t they? But then, who knows?

I didn’t know who I was anymore. I didn’t want to be where I was from. I was plugging into a real reality, actually, not disconnecting from one, but then, I also don’t understand what that means…I didn’t go through a psychosis. That I am 100% sure of. I feel relieved, deeply so. But then, in these contexts, what could you do for people…going through experiences that might be rather real, actually.

The feelings through my body, becoming the experience, dealing with my hunger—the thing is, everytime I went to eat…I had terrible feelings that my life was in danger. These were difficult to grasp and understand, rejecting feelings, to remove the “form” which is what the hallucination is, the container of the feeling-state, of saying no to “wanting someone” that I didn’t want and being told by another feeling that I did. It was the thing that brought me down to my knees, actually.

Now, since no one wants to accept the truth of these stories, yes, it was still a story in my life. I didn’t talk to anyone about this…but then, no one really talked to me as if what I went through was real: do you think that you really went through some of this? No one. But then, I don’t know what to say because these aren’t easy stories…and I had gotten to a point…reaching beyond my deep seeded feelings for myself, I guess, which was quite shocking to witness and also go through—my attachments to them.

What did this mean about my parents? I never had a history of mental health issues no according to any professional and I saw a few. I wasn’t exactly understanding how I appeared to people. I really didn’t. I wouldn’t have made half the decisions I did, but then, I’m sure people can relate to that more so than not.

I mean, I shared a psycholgost with one of the money people who I happened to be speaking to before this werid message came through my website…that felt directed at me, not some random person from “Nigeria,” as the money person said. I ended up calling her—and you can imagine the “psychological thriller,” probably, when this message came through.

“What about you being a self-promoter?”

Honestly, I had no idea what to do with this question—now, I could say, what? I can’t even post a photo of myself on instagram and if I don’t promote myself, then who will?

Yes, I ended up asking one of them because they came back around…and honestly, the way that people were talking to me, though they did their best, I wish I had the ability—physically speaking—to say, I’m dealing with all this content for real. I don’t want to feel things about being a “mental health case.” I can’t talk to you about any of it. The pain in my gut didn’t go away. Everytime I got hungry, or started to digest my food, I could have panic attacks. I called my writing mentor: “was I not fed…properly?” I didn’t even know what to say.

I think—um, neglect? Into the phone. “Yeah,” he said, “and I suspect you weren’t bathed either…”

“Neglect is…a serious form of abuse?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “Very serious.”

When I admitted that the “5 AM message” felt real… it helped. I was woken up “night after night” to pick her up at the police station…so…

Again, what was true or not was the great drama of my life.

I didn’t want to die. That was the decision. I really didn’t. That’s not what this was about. I wasn’t trying to harm myself. I would never do that, but I guess certain ideas I had were harmful. I was trying to “get through it,” and I didn’t trust Western medicine in this regard. I didn’t know who to call, actually, that’s not what I ever felt like I had, and I didn’t want to put it on anyone, lots of things.

At the apex of this experience, I realized, I came to so many in the course of this time, that I hadn’t said my mother’s full, real name outloud. Yeah, you know? I had some characters there to support me through this. “Her name, her real nickname is Dr. J,” a character reflected back at me. I had been calling her a character name…and there were many “characters” of her who came to my mind at this time, things I could do with her…I was lucky, as a writer, to have that ability…to transform this real content.

So I said her name outloud, coming to terms with all this. I went through “the story” about her in my mind, until I got to the other side, calling upon the lawyers to help me with the rights, etc. Yes, I prayed to the God of the lawyers. I needed lawyers. Maybe at four. I crafted a lot out of the feelings I went through…I just, my writing mentor was truly someone who was helpful in that—he said:

“I am concerned.”

And…

“You know to me, it reminded me very much of The Red Book,” now “did that taint the reputation of Carl Jung?”

“I didn’t have to put myself through that, but I was repressed for a long time,” and I was. No one else used that term. No, it wasn’t a psychosis, it was a therapeutic event. He used Carl Jung…I laugh…to help me to relate. Yes, he was upset, too. His friends didn’t really want to talk about it, his family, he didn’t have a psychosis.

It at least made me think about this event in terms of its possible significance, and if that means just for me—well, it doesn’t. Because a thread of it is…making its way into a TV show, and we’ll see about that in reality, but I can definitely talk about that.

In this book, Christmas in Naples is a Sport, “do they see through the show?” My writing mentor asked. Do they SEE through the show. What show? You know, the show? In terms of the story. yes and no. So I’m figuring that part out. Because it’s a memoir, and it really is one.