The Side Quest That Nearly Killed Me
Imagine this:
It’s the early 2000s in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Life is still quite far removed from the rest of Brooklyn. Bensonhurst had its own ecosystem. It was no longer Italian, even though deeply held onto the roots with 18th Avenue being the beginning of more Italian owned businesses. The opposite side was a realm of whimsy. Many religious folk from many different backgrounds. Catholic people closely resembled mine. But not quite. And to compare them to catholic people is quite blasphemous to them.
However, from my impartial state of mind, the two are more or less the same. In Bensonhurst, at least. People with strong values brought them to Bensonhurst, planted roots, and stayed. I would say that the passing down of property in Bensonhurst is still quite insular, and was not officially messed with until the wave of Chinese immigrants in Bensonhurst boomed. Before that, the only thing that mattered was Judaism and the church bells down the street that never failed their confounded tolling.
Not because I dislike church bells. In fact, I find it the most comforting sound. But it was my mother’s paranoia. It was the parasitic religious ideology that enhanced all her paranoid responses. I was completely alone in this realm. Where religion was swallowing me up because it destroyed my image of mother. I could not, therefore, leave the religion right away. I wanted to. At 4. At 6. At 13. At 16. And I finally left at 19.
Why did I stay? I had no choice. I was a child, as you could clearly see. The responsibility was not mine. But I was surrounded by fear-driven folk. Strong in their idealism, weak in emotional maturity. Strong in their morals, weak in their actions. Strong in their sense of community, unless you are not like them. Then, they talk about what they are going to do with you, but not to you. To each other.
And then, you become but a cloud. You float by, but not through. Because you know that this was not the path for you. So you molded these relationships- relationships that will inevitably end- because you actually liked those people. And suddenly, it felt like they no longer liked you.
Was it my mother’s mental illness that affected them? Was it because she was divorced? Was it because her kids were too modern? Was it because we played with Barbies? Was it because we watched TV? Was it because we knew too much? Was it because they thought we knew too little? Why didn’t they treat us with dignity?
Not everyone. There were and still are a few. But I could smell fear on the rest. It was mildly masked by their Thursday challah and kugel bake. I remember entering the building on Thursday afternoon, and being met by the smell of the delicious challah hugging me like a mother’s embrace. I knew Shabbos was near. And then, a slap of reality from the dingy hallway up the stairs to the cramped and dusty home, slowly decaying from years of forgotten dreams and dopamine trips.
Dusting was and still is a phobia of mine. Just the idea of having all those little particles on me… it makes me itchy just thinking of it! And cramped spaces upset me. Clutter upsets me. Because, if you are not using it, get the fuck rid of it. Don’t leave that for your kids to manage. That’s a fucked up thing to do. But I can’t blame a mentally ill person. I can’t make it all one person’s fault. I also can’t hide anymore. Not because I don’t want to. I want nothing more than to disappear. It makes me happy to think that when I’m old enough, I will die with the earth below me.
My mother finds this mentality of mine terrifying. The thought that her daughter wants to die is frightening to her. And so, instead of seeing what was under the darkness, my mother had viscerally painful reactions to my darkness. So, naturally, did everyone else. Nobody knew there was an illness inside. Nobody really cared. Actually, they blamed an undisciplined mother. A lazy mother. By association, the children were deemed… what?
I never knew what they thought of me, of course. All I knew was their body language and behavior. I listened for cues. I used to ask them if everything was okay. And I was met with their darknesses. There were many of them. I never asked for the darkness, but it seemed people felt eager to unpack it. I absorbed it, I mulled it over, I saw their tikun, and told them. They very much did not like that. And that was it. They were gone.
I didn’t care much. I mean, I did obsess about it. But eventually, I came out of it. I knew I was on a side quest. Why dwell? Believe it or not, my childhood was a side quest. I didn’t come here to have a good childhood. I came here to outlive it. To outlive suicide. To torture myself over and over again through chronic illness, reduce myself to bits, and breathe into it. That’s when the thoughts begin to go wild. And instead of reacting to them, I just listen:
“Why are you doing this to us? Can’t you see us at all?”
“We can. We don’t know how to help you.”
“Or maybe you just don’t want to? Could that be okay?”
“NO. I cannot stand for neglect.”
“How could it be neglect if we didn’t agree to it?”
“Because! You all KNEW and STILL did NOTHING!”
The anger of neglect hits different. I don’t know whom to blame. I just become small. Locked in my own world. I remember Saturday evenings on long summer nights. I would wait for everyone to go upstairs to their homes. People used to collect at the front of the building to catch up and enjoy their Shabbos afternoons together. Once the sun began to go down, neighbor by neighbor returned to their homes to prep for the third Shabbos meal.
I remained. I watched the cars zipping down Bay Ridge Parkway, and imagined what all they were doing. Some must have been going to a family dinner. Some, maybe out to Manhattan for a night of fun and bad decisions. I would transport myself in those cars, with those people, if only to escape the pain. The pain of being so invisible, that I could just become part of everyone’s life without them knowing. I was so tired of feeling unseen. And weeks became time blocks. They became notches in a sentence I never agreed to.
I think parents with mental illnesses must not be ignored. They should not be reported at every whim, either. But also, they should have a community. Whether you are in a big city where people pretend not to know your life (even though you can literally hear everything…), or in a small town where everyone checks in once in a while, but keep it short, mental illness cannot be ignored. Because it is not that we don’t ask. It is that you cannot find it in your own terms and conditions either. Are you actually responsible for the well-being of children of single and mentally ill parents?
How the fuck is that even a question?