Why I’m Borderline Fucking Insane

Just another day in the place I’ve been forced to live for almost two decades since I had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t work full-time any more.

I’m in the kitchen, minding my own business, just preparing my pre-workout meal, and Mum comes in, starts checking how much liquid can fit into different sized mugs. Okay, fair enough. Then she volunteers – I didn’t ask – that her blood sugar level is up again and she wants to be extra careful managing her carb levels “while I can’t walk”. Now it is true that she broke her hip. Ten months ago. And it is also true that we’ve had lockdowns, and even though you’re allowed to go out for daily exercise, it’s an unnecessary risk for my elderly parents. But it’s also true that Dad, who is crippled with arthritis and shuffles around with the help of a stick, has been going out almost every day and walking back and forth in our garden, which is paved with stone tiling and ideal for walking about in. It isn’t pretty, it isn’t interesting, but it is functional. And Dad has been very disciplined in getting exercise pretty much daily, unless he’s really unwell or the weather is atrocious all day. But here is Mum, talking like… I don’t know, like she’s in a wheelchair or something. So I explained: you know, you can go for a walk.

“But I can’t, I can’t walk like I used to when I went to fetch Evie [my niece] from school.”

“Of course you can’t, because you haven’t been walking for ages. You can’t possibly expect to be able to walk as far as you used to be able to. But if you were to go for a walk every day for a month, you’d be able to go much further at the end of the month than you can now, because you’d build your fitness level back up.”

Now comes the defensiveness, the sulky tone, the teary eyes… is she going to throw a fit or shed a tear? Could go either way.

“I think you’re a bit unfair when you say I’m not making much of an effort.”

Now I could have cushioned it or backed off a little or tried to be less blunt, but I’m dealing with my own shit here, and Mum has randomly come along and put this on me, and I wasn’t expecting it or prepared for it, so I just carried on with the truth.

“When it comes to looking after yourself, you don’t make much effort.”

I can’t recall the whole rest of the conversation blow by blow, so I will summarise. She got very upset and defensive very fast, and told me to just stop, “just stop, just stop.” So I just stopped and I walked away. And after I’m out of the kitchen and going to have my meal, if my tongue is still attached from not being bitten off, she starts it off again by calling some comment after me.

So I continued, the invitation extended. Her reactionary tactics to being confronted by the truth included:

Threat of a personal attack: “I could say things about you that you probably wouldn’t like to hear very much.”

She’s just dying to say something about my weight, I know she is. I can’t help that I put on the weight. My depression has been terrible the last couple of months, and the comfort eating has been out of control. Chocolate is my weakness, I inherited that from you by the way Mother, thanks for that. It’s a miracle that I’ve managed to do at least some exercise even though I really haven’t felt like doing it, and kept my weight from getting worse than it’s gotten. Somehow she thinks I haven’t noticed that I’m turning into a blob again, or she thinks it’s because I’m being lazy or careless. She doesn’t have a fucking clue about the truth, of how much I suffer, how hard it is to function when I feel like this, what a goddamn miracle it is that I’m still alive with even a shred of sanity and not thirty fucking stone and bedridden. And when it comes to my training, I have trained through brutal workouts until I have had to take a break to weep, because all the energy that it was taking to try to keep my emotions under some semblance of control have been diverted to physical exertion, and those emotions just come pouring out. And when I’m done, I go back and finish the workout. So don’t fucking go crying to me that you can’t go for a fucking walk out in the back garden for 10 minutes each fucking day, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t say that. I didn’t swear. I’m just saying it to you.

Attempted guilt trip: “You don’t know how I feel.”

Well, Mother, you can’t have it both ways. You love to tell me how you’re doing pretty well, all things considered, thank you very much. “Just wait until you’re 82, see if you’re doing any better,” you love to say in your defence, to which I like to reply, “I hope I’m dead long before then.” You’re coping just fine, you say, but apparently not fine enough to just go for a brief walk in the back garden. So which is it? Are you fine, or not fine?

Five-year-old logic, in response to me asking why can’t she go for a walk: “I just can’t.”

Really? That’s the best you’ve got?

The problem is, the truth is very triggering for my mum on certain things, and rationality goes out the window and she gets very aggressive and angry very fast. And the truth in this situation, as I told her, is that she chooses not to go for a walk, she chooses not to get enough exercise. That’s the truth. She doesn’t like going for a walk – or at least she thinks she doesn’t like it, because when she actually goes, she says, “Oh what a lovely day, it’s so nice out in the trees [we have a very nice, big park with plenty of nature literally on our doorstep], I don’t know what I was worried about.” Me either, Mum, but I can only do the coaxing approach so many times to get you out of the house. It gets tiresome after a while that you just can’t take responsibility for your own health and understand that if you don’t have your health, that makes you less able to help everybody else, like you love to do.

So unless you’re willing to give me a valid reason, I am going to really struggle to feel too sorry for you complaining when it would be – barring any kind of actual explanation of a reason you’re withholding from me – so easy for you to just go for a fucking walk for a few minutes most days and start to build your fitness up again.

Anyway, I manage to take that on the chin and bounce back from it fairly quickly. I even went and apologised, while also making clear to Mum that I am concerned about her health as she’s pre-diabetic, and if getting a bit of exercise would make a difference – and even if not it would help in many other ways – then she really should just do it. And if she doesn’t, and her health gets worse, she will regret it. But I can’t force her, and I’m dealing with some very difficult shit of my own right now, and I can’t deal with her shit as well – at least, not as long as she’s going to make excuses and deny reality and refuse to admit that she’s perfectly well enough to go for a little walk each day and build it up.

So now I’m in the kitchen again, minding my own business, just preparing my post-workout meal, and in comes my dad. Now the issues I’ve been working through are all about my dad, and the way he’s been a real asshole to me for pretty much my whole life. Not all the time. Not in a terrible way constantly. But enough to really fuck me up and cause me severe mental health problems. He’s been cruel, arrogant, hypercritical, negative, and withheld affection, belief, approval. He’s belittled me, humiliated me, competed with me, made endless comparisons between us to make me feel inferior (especially when I was a child) and been psychologically, emotionally, and – on a few occasions – physically abusive. But I have just made a pledge to let go of all of my animosity, because that hatred and anger towards him that I’ve been holding onto for so long has only been hurting one person. The wrong person.

I’ve barely seen or spoken to him in days, as I have my own part of the house where I can stay away from him. The only communal room where I have to interact with my parents in any way, is… you guessed it… the kitchen. But I’m thinking, I have to try to make more of an effort, so we’ll start simply.

“Hello, Dad, how are you?”

“Well…” he begins. “I had the runs yesterday.”

For fuck’s sake. And I’m preparing a fucking meal as well. Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with him?

“I don’t want to hear about your bodily functions to be honest, could you please keep that to yourself.”

“Well you asked.”

“I asked how you were, not to hear about your toilet problems.”

“Well it was a big thing, I had to use three nappies.”

“See, you’re still doing it, you’re still telling me about it even when I’ve asked you not to.”

Indignantly and with a touch of anger, he replies, “Oh it’s only a bit of shit, Geoff.”

“Okay,” I said, “let’s try role reversal here and see how you would feel. You’re 45 years old, you’re stuck living with your parents, you ask your dad how he is, and he proceeds to tell you all about having the shits and how many nappies he filled. Are you honestly telling me you would’ve been happy to hear this from your dad and not tell him to stop talking about it?”

He pauses for a few seconds. “Well when I was 45, I was having to deal with three children’s shit.”

All kinds of roads I could go down there, like pointing out that having children is a privilege that I so far have not been gifted with, but I just went for the basic reply.

“Well that’s different, that’s your children, not your father. I don’t think you would’ve liked it, I think you would’ve told your dad to shut up about it, but you’re not going to acknowledge it, and that’s fine.”

And that was the end of that conversation.

And almost twenty years of this is why I’m borderline fucking insane.