Keep Mum

Some days are like a giant mouth and this is one of those days. I remember when it all kicked off in my teens. It coincided with when I started taking drugs. Only I don’t really take drugs anymore (occasionally I sneak some of my mum’s Tramadol. She seems to have an endless supply). Still some days face me like a giant mouth; more and more now. I don’t want to wake up. No, that’s not right, what I mean is that on these days when I wake up I don’t want to be alive. That sounds intense. I don’t want to walk out into it, the mouth. I just want to stay in bed, I suppose sounds better. Not in the nightmares, just in bed. But the advice is to get up.

 

The days are becoming more frequent. I walk between teeth. I got diagnosed years ago. It’s not important. I cut my legs. We’re Jewish but none of us practice. I think since my grandmother died my mum has become more religious, giving spiritual kudos to a picture of her mother that hangs above her seat in the sitting room. My dad can speak Hebrew. He read some verse at my grandmother’s funeral, and my grandfather’s funeral two years before. I wonder if he believes. He doesn’t speak much, not seriously anyway. My dad can’t communicate properly. He won’t take things seriously, can’t. Speaks a pile of nonsense, which is sometimes funny. All my friends think it’s funny or weird. It’s irritating, when you consider he’s my dad and should take some responsibility. I always looked after myself. He never communicates seriously, authentically, is what I’m saying, only when he’s speaking in Hebrew at funeral services. That’s the only time he looks like he means it. He jokes all the time but looks in pain. He’s not a believable person, if that makes any sense. I love him but he has trouble reciprocating in a meaningful way, a satisfying, you know, believable way. He has undiagnosed autism and sometimes makes high-pitched noises and bounces off things. He’s fifty-six years old and doesn’t cope with real life.

 

So I cut my legs. No one knows, and I used to score Tramadol off my mum. She has always been on tonnes of medication, is always back and forth to the doctors with some fresh neurosis. Typical Jewish mentality in that way, obsessed with ebbing health, hers, ours. It was my mum who convinced me to get diagnosed.

 

I’m 30 this year and still cutting my legs and look down at my too fat body, that no one else can see, which is typical. They call me ‘skinny’ and pretend to fret, tell me to eat, eat, eat.

‘You must eat more. Why don’t you eat more, I don’t understand, tell me, I’m confused?’

‘I don’t feel hungry.’

‘Look at you, there’s nothing to you, meshugener. Eat more, will you. It’s good for you. See your father, he’s fit to plotz!’

‘I’m okay.’

‘Oy gevalt!’

‘I’m full mum, really.’

‘I’ll go and get you some more. If you eat it you eat it, if you don’t oy-yoy-yoy!’

This is a typical conversation. I’m really not hungry. It’s like a joke she runs with but no one laughs. Everyone acts deadly serious. My mum tries to over-feed me. She used to bake incessantly, until recently. I think she baked mainly for what she considers to be my benefit. She must want me to be ultra fat like my sister. I wish they would give up and be honest for once. I go to the gym six times a week to work it all off. It’s not like I’m a secret eater. Nothing works. It stresses me out sometimes. It’s right though, in a way, no one else sees.

 

There are three siblings. I’m the eldest. My brother is the family favourite. No one in my family will admit this. I badger my mum, on and off. He’s an atheist like me, a proper one, and into the heaviest sort of music in a big way, wears black tops with skulls all over them. He’s got mad spots which look hideous, and only communicates via the internet using a picture of someone else entirely. He has no friends in the real world and my parents think he can’t go out because they say he gets lost easily, which is a disorder, and he is also diagnosed autistic. This was from a young age but I think it’s wearing off a bit. No one knows whether he is straight or gay. If I had to guess I would say asexual, at best. He draws and plays guitar badly. His voice has been breaking for as long as I can remember. My brother squeals and flaps his arms for no apparent reason. We used to laugh at it but have since stopped and usually ignore it, depending on what’s on television.

 

I’ve moved back home now. Some things you just can’t accurately work out about yourself. It’s too strange. I’m claustrophobic. That’s not an official diagnosis. I’m hemmed in. It’s basically a bungalow. There’s one attic room, my sister’s room, from which we have to endure the sounds of my sister shagging her boyfriend. It’s a room with a toilet attached, and is unclean. They are both very overweight. Everybody sees it. They’re growing. My sister is undiagnosed PD - personality disorder. She’s never been to see anyone about it because my parents just let her get away with everything. They give in, always have, give her money, give her more and more rope. Instead they obsess about her IBS and eczema, which are small fry next to her insanity. She’s completely self-absorbed. She’s 25. Her name is Lauren and her boyfriend is Carl. He isn’t Jewish, not that that matters in our family. She cuts her arms and I know for a fact she has bulimia, but no one knows or nothing is said, and it’s not working for her. She is very fat and dresses inappropriately. Last week she went out in a six inch skirt. She’s well insulated and says Carl likes it. He seems to, and they were both at the sitting room door smiling at her bare legs while my mum, dad and I were watching television, can’t remember what, and my brother was in his room playing terrible guitar.

 

Carl is depressed. That’s why he goes out with Lauren. There’s no other possible reason, but it makes him more depressed, so he’s stuck, and he smokes and drinks a lot to deal with it. He gets sadder every time he comes round. We all do. He says he plays football every Saturday and that he does all sorts of other things, like climbing and canoeing, but he doesn’t, it’s obvious. He could never squeeze into a canoe. He thinks we believe him. No one does. No one says anything. He lives a lie and thinks everyone believes it, so continues to ignorantly spout it and make a greater oblivious fool of himself. We’re all really embarrassed, apart from him. Lauren knows the truth of it all and it torments her. When he’s not staying over I hear her crying at night, for so many reasons. Sometimes the truth flies at her briefly. I know that feeling. Occasionally I creep around the house after hours, listening in. Bobby stays up most of the night. Bobby is in his room all this time. Sometimes you will hear his guitar flare up out of nowhere at three-am in the morning and his excruciating high-pitched voice.

 

Bobby, that’s my brother’s name. My dad calls him ‘Ted’ for short. That’s the sort of thing I mean with my dad, he calls Bobby Ted. No one knows why. We used to ask for a while but could never get an answer worth keeping. Sometimes my dad just walks around the house saying ‘Nadal’ or ‘Fire engine’. He laughs every time. He laughs for a long time after, and then just stops and goes completely blank again. Sometimes mum laughs, too. Sometimes she rolls her eyes, but more oddly, sometimes she doesn’t roll them at all. Dad calls Lauren ‘Uncle’ and Carl ‘Carlos the jackal’. I’m known to my father as ‘Big Green Backside’.

 

Like I say I’ve been officially diagnosed. It’s not an issue. I’m not going to be broken by it, I’m proud of my illness. I’m prescribed antidepressants - Venlafaxine, 225mg and Mirtazapine, 30mg, daily. You can go up to 45mg of Mirtazapine and 375mg of Venlafaxine. I’m weighing it up. They take the pleasure out of everything but also to a lesser extent take away the pain. It’s worth it. I’ve stopped crying. I cut my legs with a sanitised blade late at night and never wear shorts.

 

There are no pets in the house. My mum likes to keep the place spotless, but I sometimes wish I had one, you know, a pet. Everyone has something wrong with them in my house. I lived away from home for so long and I can’t believe I’m back. It doesn’t feel right, but then in another way it does.

 

Gloria comes round now every week with cherries. She's addicted to them. I’ve only just met her. She’s my mum’s new best friend and she’s very Jewish. My mum pretends to be very Jewish when Gloria comes round but Gloria can tell she’s not. My mum slips up a lot because she’s so out of practice and Gloria is so on good Jewish form. She remonstrates with my mum, mostly in Yiddish. My mum is good at Yiddish, almost as good as Gloria. It’s the main thing I like about Judaism, Yiddish. I feel bad for my mum when Gloria, who is 10 years older, is telling her off. I don’t like Gloria. The only good thing about Gloria is that she doesn’t like Carl, but the only reason she doesn’t like Carl is because he’s not Jewish, which is the wrong reason to dislike him. There are so many other reasons to choose from, such as his incessant boasting - most of which has to be lies, his enormous arse bulk, and his non-stop burping, not to mention his loud shagging of my sister at unsociable hours, of which sadly Gloria is unaware. He has trouble breathing. You can imagine the din. I don’t know how they can do it with each other - uggh. Carl is not religious at all, which is the only good thing about Carl. Gloria doesn’t like anyone. It’s obvious.

 

Gloria’s husband is Walter. No one knows or cares how old he is. He comes with her and says nothing. I don’t think he’s Jewish. I could be wrong. He smokes a pipe and pretends to listen. He is her second husband, I think. I try not to listen. He looks lost. He looks lonely. He looks completely depressed but like he has to hide it, behind pipe smoke, behind a mask of muteness. I wouldn’t like to guess whether or not he has an official diagnosis. If I had to I would say not, but with the caveat that he is deeply depressed. In some ways he reminds me of my dad and my brother. In other ways he reminds me of nothing at all.

 

Gloria is not depressed, on the surface. It’s all going on deep down underneath. She wears her personality like a coat of arms. She has nothing to do with her son and daughter who live as far away from her as possible, and when she mentions them she comes over all dark and hooded, puts her hand to her mouth. Her nose dips witchily every time she speaks. I get the impression they have disowned her. I can see why.

 

Gloria has always lived local. Apart from my mother, and to a limited extent Walter and my father, she has no friends. She’s PD through and through - personality disorder like my sister, and it’s interesting to guess how it’s evolved to its current advanced state. She’s nothing like my sister but they’re both completely self-absorbed and can’t be gainsaid. Neither can accept a negative response. Both are histrionic in their own way. Gloria’s hysteria kind of bubbles under her skin; she uses over-assertiveness to keep dramatics to the bare minimum. There’s a menacing intensity in her eyes that stops other people talking. She’s serious PD. I don’t know how Walter copes. I watch him sometimes, depending on what’s on television, and he’s just blank.

 

Mum runs around polishing everything ten times before Gloria and Walter arrive, cooking, baking and dishing up all sorts of s**t: cakes, gefilte, chopped liver, tonnes of f*****g cherries. Then she’s doling out money to Lauren and checking on Bobby every five minutes to see that he hasn’t got lost in his room, telling him how good he is on guitar and to keep it up. I roll my eyes in agony. He doesn’t care either way. After that she’s pandering to my dad’s nonsense. She’s never given him chance to change, grow up. He goes on unchallenged chanting ‘Nadal, Nadal, Nadal’ and ‘Fire engine’ non-stop.

 

Round and round the neurotic woman runs, cooking and cleaning and laughing out loud until her smile becomes tears for a quiet moment in her bedroom I hear late at night when I’m creeping, finding out the real story, because underneath it all, under the skin of super efficiency, my mum has got bowel cancer, a typical Jewish diagnosis, which my dad can’t take seriously and my brother’s strumming his fingers everywhere in distraction in his room too fast to care or notice. Lauren’s in and out shagging Carl, hiding from it all under a bed sheet in her own head. Gloria has her own agenda, spouting cherries in Yiddish speechless gentile Walter can’t understand. And that’s why I moved back home. That’s what I mean when I say the giant mouth and walking between teeth.

 

My mum is 52. My dad will be speaking Hebrew again soon. I cut my legs.  

       

Reviews

[L0v3craft]

this was just nuts and i really enjoyed it. it reminded me of the catcher in the rye.

the only character i can honestly say i relate to is the brother bobby, lol

well...except for the autistic thing xD

The whole madness and effed-up family psychological problems creeped me the f#ck out, great job at describing everyone's mental/personality disorder. very believable...and i guess that's why the characters are so creepy :|

[Eve]

This is so sad in the families dysfunction, yet the way you have told it seems a narrative that begins at the start of one of those movies that have you bawling your eyes out at the end because despite the characters flaws you somehow feel compassion and love for them, it leaves you walking away happy with your small troubles as to what to cook for dinner or how to get to work with the flat tire you have, you know when out there, back in your mundane life, you know there are some real people with some REAL problems. Yours don't seem that large anymore, sad, but that human nature.

[Kaylor Mason]

Personality disorders are nothing to take lightly--I know from experience. If this piece is autobiographical, then I hope your mom's gonna be okay; I'm sorry for the news about the bowel cancer. Among other issues in my life, I used to be anorexic--or borderline anorexic. A by-product of getting bullied and hazed all my life; only recently have I outgrown it. Your words really spoke to me here . . . the kinds of stuff you're talking about is all too real. Thanks for sharing this

[HaleythePoet]

Spoken like a mad hatter. You have quite the talent.

[Craig2591]

A funny and depressing story at the same time. I agree with a couple of the other reviewers who were wondering if the character is so messed up that he thinks everyone else is. Good job!

[TheJordBaker]

completely mad but there's nothing wrong with that!! I enjoyed reading this, thanks!!

[Yheela]

How messed up are these people?
Well written!

[SHEEMA HUQ]

for some reason this reminded me of the book, 'prozac nation' which I must have read atleast 15 years ago, (also a harrowing, good account to the life of a disturbed young person from a jewish background), well done

[Tabitha t]

I agree with m of gilead on this one. The character seems way to crazy for me to believe in what he is saying. He could just be imagining most of this. I like the writing style but the first sentence seems to be lacking. When you say life is like a mouth what do you mean? is it as in " Life is like a mouth waiting for you to accidently trip and fall into it and eat you alive?" or what? Besides that it was pretty good. It was interesting and I got a few laughs out of it.

[axel]

witty but yet inspirationalwriting, good job keep it up

[Michael of Gilead]

haha! yes it is nuts, and to an extent reminiscent of catcher in the rye...but i wonder more if the main character is just so f'd up, can i trust his observations?
is it all in his head? reminds me more of rain man ;)