The Truth

Well, I've gone and got myself riled up enough to cause action of the reputable sort.

I am writing again, after at least a two year hiatus buried in self-loathing, my mother's attempted suicide, a failed relationship and finally getting my license back four years after the DUI. Around every corner just ahead of me seemed like the opportune time to start writing again. But I am not alone in feeling this way. It is the writing part that gets most writers.

I've been sucking the tit of what I always heard others chasing after. Computer chairs and office ergonomics, phone greetings and Aged Receivables reports. And I'm really fucking good at it. Humping that American Dream; dating an all-American psycho and living in a condo on the outskirts of a swank Seattle neighborhood.

Just a year ago I was dating George The Painter from The Horse Backstreet Choppers, and working for Steg von Heintz at Psycho Cycles as his lone apprentice. Now I'm taking guff from nerds and wankers, answering phones and stuffing envelopes. I'm not complaining--I'm giving justice to these very words and this very moment in time where I am sitting with my Mac and typing again.

I will one day be very grateful for this job I have now because I will say "if it hadn't been for that office job, I wouldn't have gotten angry enough to start writing again." This is the first bitch job I've ever had: meaning, a job that is classically meant for women. I am not respected, I am sexually harassed, insulted and treated like a general idiot. Big deal: it's the way the world works.

Every time someone treats me like I'm inferior, I start looking at grad school or more prestigious jobs. The driving force behind these very words is not money, but trying to finally reach full potential. My god, what a concept. I have never had the capacity in life to reach full potential in any arena. It's nothing short of a miracle that my drug and alcohol ridden college experience turned out a piece of paper...useless as it may be. In fact, it is no less a work of fate that I am alive at all.

I tried to kill myself intentionally, recklessly, recreationally, creatively, tragically and finally accidentally. It never worked. I am doomed to be here and you are doomed to keep reading. I was born to be either a writer or a psychologist. It has ping ponged back and forth for the last 4 years and left me working on motorcycles and faxing meaningless drivel without a passion that yanks me into every breath and every decision so that I never even notice if I'm doing the right thing anymore. Purpose.

A year ago today my phone kept ringing really early in the morning. I slept on a futon at the time and was working two jobs, at something like 60-70 hours a week. The night before, I couldn't sleep at all. I was all in a tizzy and crying and sad and depressed as shit without a real good reason. I called off to the motorcycle shop (not that I needed to call), and finally fell asleep about 5:45 am. I ignored the phone and turned it off. Finally around 9am I turned it on to a dozen missed calls from my dad and brother.

I called my dad back.

He answered the phone with this statement, "Your mom tried to kill herself. She is in intensive care in a coma."
I replied with the typical "What?" and more shock-related one word statements. Based on my reaction, he started to cry and handed the phone to a nurse. She explained to me that my mother had been found by a neighbor in the tub that I grew up using, after spending the whole night dying slowly on an overdose of my grandpa's medication.

Dad had been away on business trips frequently during that time, and my grandpa had a serious case of dementia that my mother felt supported him throughout. She obsessed over his care and drove over an hour to see him at the nursing home 6 to 7 days a week while working full time and suffering from sleep apnea. This was something like the 10th nursing home he had been in since all the others did not meet her satisfaction. I can't argue that there isn't a nursing home in existence that would meet my standards if I really cared about the person I was forcing to stay there. She was stressed to maximum capacity, my dad resented my grandfather for kidnapping his wife, and she worried like crazy about her only daughter across the country being a biker. I knew what was going on.

My roommate and good friend lent me $500 to get on a flight that night back to Michigan from Seattle. Everything was weird that day. I tried to go about my usual routing and went to Starbucks; but I froze at the counter like a sad deer in the bright lights of needing to make a decision. Bless that poor girl there, her human instinct knew I wasn't nuts, and she said so lovingly, "Want me to pick something out for you?" It was a delicious frozen mocha that did, in fact, make me feel better while it lasted.

At the airport everyone looked like aliens, completely unaware and unable to communicate with me or make sense of the look in my eyes while I wondered if I'd ever see my mother again...while I comprehended that she had actually committed suicide. As the plane picked up speed at take off, it shook the tears from my eyes and shuttered them down my cheeks. I just started to cry and I knew the lady next to me wanted every juicy detail, but I put my headphones in and tried not to imagine Mom's body getting colder as she laid there alone through the night dying with her regrets.

The night before, my mother's last words to me were in a text. "Chryssa, I love you very much. Find a man who really loves you. That has always been my only wish for you." I thought it was a weird text at the time, but I never responded.

I had a layover in Philadelphia--one of the shittiest and dirtiest airports in America. It was something like 4am when I landed there, feeling so out of my way and trying to get a signal to check in at the hospital and see if she was still alive. The nurse was sympathetic and kind, giving me every detail and telling me that she was still in a coma, but that her vitals were coming back. If the nurse had been an overworked intern just coming to grips with the fact that dying was a part of her job, and had been difficult or a bitch, I might have had a panic attack at the Philadelphia International Airport.

I got a shitty bagel from the shitty bagel stand and put the shitty amount of cream cheese on it with the shitty plastic knife as the workers continued opening for the day. The early morning airport seemed like the most foreign place to be while my body coursed through shock and into anger.

Part of me didn't want her to live. I wanted to rush in to the ICU with the sound of buzzers and alarms and nurses and doctors rushing everywhere trying to revive her lifeless body in an unforgiving fight. I wanted to say Good Fucking Riddence to a woman who left me and did something we know in my family hurts like shit.

She would have been added to a list that includes my Grandfather on my dad's side, who killed himself with a shotgun before I was born; and my aunt on my dad's side who shot her husband in the thighs (I think she was aiming for his dick [I'm a better shot]) before shooting herself in the face when I was 9. Our family is well-versed in suicide and what it feels like for the survivors. It feels like utter shit.

You are left mourning a person, only you can't just miss them because you also kinda have to be mad at them, but also feel kinda responsible even though everyone jumps all over you to tell you that it's not your fault. And it's not your fault, cuz you didn't pull the trigger; BUT, it is kinda too. Yeah, I said it. It is. Cuz that person is dead and you were their daughter, their mother, their friend, their whatever that should be able to make them feel better. Oh no, you can't BLAME yourself because a human can't carry that kind of guilt, but you also can't dismiss it entirely. There are always signs, we are just lulled into thinking that we can't rock the boat.

So I landed in Detroit and rushed out to the pickup spot and had to wait for what felt like an hour, but might have been 30 minutes for my friends to pick me up. I was pretty pissed about them being late since I had just flown across the country and did want a fighting chance to get there before she stopped breathing for some kind of closure. Or something.

The car ride was weird. They tried to lift the atmosphere; and did well for their efforts. One of my friends there, Rachel, is a nurse at the UofM hospital where my mom was. The day it happened, I called her and she went right over to be with my dad and to check in on my mom. My dad kept telling me how grateful he was to have her there. Lateness doesn't matter shit when someone will do that for you when you are 2500 miles away.

When we got to the hospital 45 minutes later, Rachel took me right up to the ICU and rushed me to my mom's room. The door was closed, but the whole room is made of windows. I saw my mom's eyes were open, people all around her and she was talking slowly to a tall, young doctor at the foot of her bed. When I came around the corner in a bustle, everyone looked my way. She looked right at me.

For the rest of my life I will never forget every minute detail of that moment.

The look on her face was a mixture of disgust, anger, embarrassment and the deepest depths of sadness. I froze in that spot even after she had quickly looked away and back to the doctor like a good pupil. I suddenly became aware of my appearance, unshowered and greasy from a couple nights without sleep and from flying. I felt like I embarrassed her to the doctor when Rachel ushered me in. I heard my mom say in a labored and scratchy voice "This is my daughter."

The doctor put his hand out to shake mine, but I could barely see him in my tunneled vision. I hugged my mom gently and quickly. It was awkward and awful. I wouldn't wish it on a person that I hate dearly. She held my hand and gave me another look that said a thousand words as the doctor began to ask her questions again. My cousins, my father, the nurses, some other people were all gathered in this tiny room around her. He asked her if she got along with her husband...the guy sitting right beside her in complete apathy from major shock. He asked her if she had been sad for a long time. He asked her if she felt like there was no other way out. She stroked my thumb with hers over and over to keep me there.

Finally having enough of the circus, I went outside and shut her door to give her some semblance of privacy and feigned dignity. I was immediately angry that the doctor was asking her all of these questions in front of a crowd. I know they give suicide attempts to interns because they basically can't kill them...but I found this public questioning ludicrous. I stood outside her room until one of the ICU nurses told me I couldn't be there and chased me outside of the unit and into the waiting room.

Nothing could have prepared me for what had just happened.

After a wait there, my dad and the others came to tell me I could go in. I closed the door behind me so we were alone. I said to her, "Well, you had your chance. You don't get to do this again."

A month after returning from Michigan I met a guy out here in Seattle. On our first couple dates I had mild panic attacks, and even though I didn't tell him about my mom, he was sympathetic and told me he could protect me. I fell into my first truly committed love affair. After two months we moved in together. I stopped working at the motorcycle shop and sold my tool box. I got a full-time job and quit working at UPS after an 8 year career there as a part-time supervisor. Life became quiet.

I was truly in love with this guy, but he has wicked jealousy issues and started going through my phone, my computer, my notebooks, my Tmobile account. I put up with it for a long time when it comes to acceptable behavior standards, among other things that I thought were a part of "the hard part" of relationships. Plus, I couldn't believe life hadn't handed me my soulmate just in time to save me from all the bad feelings of my mom's suicide attempt. I mean, that would be fair right?

Well life doesn't do what you want it to do. It does its life thing and you say 'Yes Sir, may I have some more?'

As a result of my fervent need for stability, that boy is heartbroken and I am in an apartment paying double the rent. Working a job that I hate to buy things I don't need. Nah, just quoting Fight Club. It's not that bad.

My job could be worse. My life could be worse. There is always worse.

But I can't deny that nagging voice that tells me I am destined for more than faxing and answering phones. That maybe life isn't as tragic as having a skill that I earned a degree for but never use. Maybe there's more than being told my emails at work are too emotional--and please believe me that they most certainly are not; this is only because I am one of two girls, of 50 guys. I may not write the next American Novel, or get the Pulitzer to hang next to my Sobriety Court certificate. But if the words aren't in black and white, I can't really say I ever tried.