The last few months of 2013 were a horrible, terrifying slide into Major Depression. I tried all the tricks, followed my treatment plan, and still nothing. I wasn't eating, I wasn't smiling, I wasn't even able to laugh. It was pretty darn bad. So imagine my surprise when my friend P from church invited me to a dinner party on New Year's Day. He said no one would pressure me and I could hide in a corner if I wanted to, but that we would play games, and I would have fun. So, for the first time in my life, I went to a New Year's party. I was really looking forward to it!
We played a super hilarious game called Braggart (I think that was it, anyway) with cards where we made up stories and then stole the good bits of other people's stories. Everyone was so entertaining, and I had fun. I felt like I hadn't had the chance to even pretend to be happy in so long.
It was a very cold day, thirty below freezing or so, but the condo was toasty from cooking and company. While I was doubtless the boringest, wort guest ever (hello crippling depression), I was happy to be there. It was especially nice to be out of the house and away from my parents on the first day of the new year. New starts and all that.
As a thirty-year-old paying rent, I knew I had every right to go and and do whatever I wanted to do, even if I was still living with my parents. But, in some sort of bizarre quest not to be a total bitch, I did try to be considerate of them. So I told my mother that if I didn't call by the 9:00 train I'd be taking the last one of the night. I'd also arranged with a friend that if something went horribly wrong I could stay at his place. I had this shit under control.
Because I think it's rude to have telephone conversations while you're at a dinner party, I turned my phone off and left it in my bag by the door. To be honest, I also didn't want to risk having everyone find out that my mother still checks up on me - that my own family doesn't think I'm capable of running my own life, that my mother still treats me like a child. Even though I was sick, it's not like I didn't have my shit together on this one.
But I hadn't counted on my mother waking up at 10:00 pm and deciding it was too cold for me to walk home, and single-handedly scrapping my entire plan. She texted me a couple of times, and of course when I didn't answer because my phone was off, she started calling and leaving messages. Not one to be put off by the fact that I was obviously still having fun with my friends, and was an adult fully capable of taking care of myself, my mother put her detective skills to good use and somehow located the phone number of the place I'd gone. She then proceeded to call them and ask for me. The second I heard their phone ringing, I had this cold feeling in the pit of my stomach, and started feeling lightheaded and disconnected, like a deer caught in the headlights. I knew - I just knew - what was happening. And I so wasn't prepared to deal with it.
Once our host figured out that the person on the phone wanted to talk to me, he handed over the phone. It was obvious that he was as taken aback and embarrassed as I was. Since there was nowhere for anyone to go, everyone got to listen to my half of the conversation.
Like talking to a two-year-old, I kept my voice calm and level, speaking clearly and simply. I told my mother that everything was fine, and reminded her that I'd already told her about my plans and there was no need to be calling. But it was no use. My mother was already in a full-throttle fit, yelling at me that I should have answered my phone, and insisting that I had to take the metro home immediately so my father could pick me up in Laval and drive me home - it was absolutely too cold out for me to walk home from the train the way I'd planned. Never mind that I've spent my whole life weathering cold winters, or that I was capable of making my own decisions, or even that being a renter in my parents' home didn't give them the right to control my life. She'd made a decision and wasn't about to be mollified or dissuaded or derailed.
So I gave in. I 'okayed' and 'fined' until I finally got her off the damn phone. Then, of course, I had to explain to my hosts that I was leaving because if I didn't give in to my mother's irrational demands she'd be having a fit for hours - maybe even days - before I'd finally be able to calm her down. That I'd spent my whole life hostage to her moods and didn't know how to stop giving her what she wanted, even though I knew that just made things worse in the long run.
Everyone was incredibly nice about the situation, telling me that it was alright, but for me it absolutely wasn't.
I felt completely humiliated. My mother had embarrassed my in front of everyone by treating me like a child in public. I felt ashamed that people knew that this is my family, this is my life, that I wasn't allowed to be a grown-up. I felt deeply ashamed at having allowed this to happen, at not having kept my phone on because I know how my mother is. As I bundled myself up and left I felt so small, and so hurt, knowing that my mother would do that to me just to make herself feel better, that she'd cost me a chance at friendship and that I'd probably never be invited over again (and, of course, I haven't been).
As I rode the metro, the shame started to fade and be replaced by anger. Rage, even. How could she do this to me? It was completely inappropriate! I felt so, so angry! By the time I got to Laval, this too had faded, and I just felt weary. Weary of the life I was living, of the way people treated me, of being depressed. When I got to the car, my brother was there, too, and it turned out that everyone in my family thought I was wrong and should have had my phone on, and needed to do what my mother said. I felt so betrayed: I felt like no one in my family ever protected me from anyone else in my family, and I was all alone. I wanted to cry.
The next day, I went to work and realized that someone had to make the first step in repairing this mess, since my mother had decided she was still pissed off and not speaking to me. On my way out of the office, I texted her to say that, while I understood her perspective, what she did was unacceptable and I wouldn't tolerate it, and that she was never to do that to me again. She totally flipped out, telling me that I was the wrong one, and everyone knew it, but that I'd find a way to save face with my friends, probably by lying to them and saying that she had a serious mental illness.
I couldn't take it. I just couldn't. It was such a hurtful and personal attack. I saw that she didn't understand how I was feeling at all, and didn't want to. She didn't see that there were boundaries, and I apparently wasn't able to enforce them. I was so unhappy, and so sad, and I didn't want to go on struggling so hard against my pain for nothing, just to be shot down. So I went straight to the store and bought my favorite cutting knife. I hadn't owned a serious knife like this in years, intended only for this, to hurt myself, to open my skin, to cut myself wide, to end my life with precise incisions. I felt like, even in this, I was giving my control over to someone else, and I didn't know how to get it back. I just knew that this was one straw too many - one weight too much - and I couldn't stand against the tide anymore.
When I told a shorter version of this story in my DBT therapy group as an example of an invalidating environment, there was an audible intake of breath and one 'eiiigh' when I got to the part about my mother phoning the party host to make me come home. In the back of my mind I'd always been thinking that I'd overreacted, that the situation wasn't that bad and that, really, I was the one in the wrong; since I'd made a mistake, I deserved to be punished by being humiliated. Sharing this story, I felt for the first time that maybe the way my family treats me, and has treated me, is not okay. It's really not okay. And maybe it's not my fault. And maybe that makes it okay to stand up for myself.
