I'm Glad My Mom Died(71)

“Jennette…” Laura says, pausing to rub her lips together, which she does every time she feels like she’s about to say something important. “This is what recovery looks like.”

One of the more excruciating emotional disconnects for me is when someone says something they think is poignant and I receive it as complete bullshit. This is one of those disconnects. To make the disconnect even worse, Laura SHUTS HER EYES and repeats herself.

“This…”

NO Laura, please don’t give me that dramatic pause for emphasis. DO NOT give me that dramati—

“… is what recovery looks like.”





72.


I SIT DOWN IN THE tufted chair opposite Laura and let out a sigh. But not like a heavy sigh, more one of those sighs that come out when you’ve just accomplished a task that you’re both glad to be done with and also desperately want to brag about having done.

I finally made it happen. I’ve gone a full twenty-four hours without making myself throw up. Maybe it doesn’t sound that impressive, but it is for me. It’s been three years that I’ve been binging and purging every day, many times a day. I have felt controlled by this eating disorder. Even since beginning my work with Laura, I haven’t gone a full day without making myself throw up. I’ll struggle through our sessions, and then as soon as I’m back home, I’ll purge until I’ve fully relieved myself of the pent-up emotional turmoil that’s accumulated since my last one. I’ll visit Laura the next day and regretfully inform her of my failings. Then we start over and we try again. The pattern has proven grueling, and the disappointment in myself has proven overwhelming. But now, I finally made it happen.

Since our session yesterday morning, I have not purged once. My sigh is the sigh of a fucking winner, and Laura can tell. With the hint of a smile, she asks if I have something to share. I tell her the good news. She claps, then asks how I was able to do it, how I managed.

That’s when my pride starts to fade. It was really hard, and I’m not convinced I’ll be able to do it again. To not throw up for twenty-four hours, I’ve been journaling near constantly to get my feelings on paper, which is a challenging task since I struggle to identify my emotions. Is “all of the uncomfortable ones” an option? I’ve had a few bouts of sobbing and I called Laura three times last night, since she opened up that line of communication in an effort to help me make some tangible progress.

The task of FEELING this confusing, overwhelming blob of emotions instead of distracting myself with bulimia is daunting. Bulimia helps me to rid myself of these emotions even if it is a temporary, unsustainable fix. Facing these emotions feels impossible. If I can’t even clearly identify them, how will I possibly be able to tolerate them?

I express my fears to Laura, and she assures me it will be a step-by-step process. It will take time. But we will get there, together. I feel comforted. Then she explains to me that now that I’ve experienced what it’s like to not make myself throw up for a day, now that I know I can do it, we need to delve deeper. While this experience was meant to serve as motivation for me, we can’t just treat the problem and not the cause. In order to get to what’s underneath the bulimia, what’s driving it, we need to unpack my life in a more comprehensive way.

“Okay…” I’m hesitant. What will this entail? I hate the uncertainty.

“I want to understand more about Little Jennette,” Laura says tenderly. “I understand you felt a lot of pressure, that you had a lot of responsibility at an early age. But I want to get into some specifics.”

Always with the childhood, these therapists. I’ve seen enough movies and TV shows to know that this is the classic therapeutic scapegoat. Some shit happened in your childhood, it messed you up, that’s why you are the way you are.

But not me. I didn’t have an alcoholic dad, my brothers didn’t torture me when my parents weren’t home. We were poor, sure, and lived in a hoarder house, yes, and Mom had cancer when I was very little, which was very scary. But otherwise things were fine. I relay this to Laura, gently suggesting in my tone that I refuse to play the game of boohoo-my-childhood-was-wuff.

“Okay,” Laura says with a glint of a knowing smile that irritates me deeply for some reason. This irritation confuses me. I’m typically so fond of Laura.

“Tell me about your mom. Tell me about your relationship with her when you were a kid.”

Immediately I’m defensive. Why does she want me to talk about Mom? What’s wrong with Mom? Nothing’s wrong with Mom. Mom was perfect. I know in my gut that I don’t believe this, that it’s a lot more complicated than this, but why on earth would I tell Laura the specifics? I’ve never told anyone the specifics and I never will. I don’t even fully understand them. And I don’t want to. I don’t need to.

“Mom was wonderful. She was honestly, like, the perfect mom.”

“Oh yeah? What was so perfect?”

I throw on my best fake smile. Laura’s sharp. I’m sure she can see right through most of her clients. But not me. I didn’t star on shitty sitcoms for a decade and not learn how to sell a line I don’t believe in.

“Just everything, to be honest. She took care of me and my brothers, I’m sure that was really hard for her.”

“That was her job.”