“HI, MOM,” I ALMOST SAY out loud, but I stop myself because I don’t wanna look crazy to the other mourners around me.
Mourner, singular actually. There’s only one, and it’s the same guy I see here every time. He sits in a lawn chair with a sun umbrella over him, playing soft rock from a stereo and staring at the headstone of who I assume to be his former wife.
I look at Mom’s headstone. There are about twenty adjectives on it because everyone in the family had adjective pitches and nobody was willing to forsake theirs.
“We’ve gotta include ‘playful,’ ” Grandpa insisted.
“Why does nobody like ‘brave’?
‘Brave’ is a good word!” Grandma wailed. So we just crammed all the words on there. Even Mom’s place of death is cluttered.
This is my first time visiting Mom’s grave since her birthday, last July. My visits have become less frequent through the years, even though I promised Mom, per her request, that I would visit her grave every day. In the beginning, I visited once a week and felt guilty about it, like it wasn’t enough. But with time and with reality, the visits have become less and less, and so has the guilt.
I sit cross-legged in front of her grave. I take a longer look at the words on her headstone.
Brave, kind, loyal, sweet, loving, graceful, strong, thoughtful, funny, genuine, hopeful, playful, insightful, and on and on…
Was she, though? Was she any of those things? The words make me angry. I can’t look at them any longer.
Why do we romanticise The Dead? Why can’t we be honest about them? Especially moms. They’re the most romanticised of anyone.
Moms are saints. Angels by merely existing. NO ONE could possibly understand what it’s like to be a mom. Men will never understand. Women with no children will never understand. No one but moms know the hardship of motherhood, and we non-moms must heap nothing but praise upon moms because we lowly, pitiful non-moms are mere peasants compared to the goddesses we call mothers.
Maybe I feel this way now because I viewed my mom that way for so long. I had her up on a pedestal, and I know how detrimental that pedestal was to my well-being and life. That pedestal kept me stuck, emotionally stunted, living in fear, dependent, in a near constant state of emotional pain and without the tools to even identify that pain let alone deal with it.
My mom didn’t deserve her pedestal. She was a narcissist. She refused to admit she had any problems, despite how destructive those problems were to our entire family. My mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.
She gave me breast and vaginal exams until I was seventeen years old. These “exams” made my body stiff with discomfort. I felt violated, yet I had no voice, no ability to express that. I was conditioned to believe any boundary I wanted was a betrayal of her, so I stayed silent. Cooperative.
When I was six years old, she pushed me into a career I didn’t want. I’m grateful for the financial stability that career has provided me, but not much else. I was not equipped to handle the entertainment industry and all of its competitiveness, rejection, stakes, harsh realities, fame. I needed that time, those years, to develop as a child. To form my identity. To grow. I can never get those years back.
She taught me an eating disorder when I was eleven years old — an eating disorder that robbed me of my joy and any amount of free-spiritedness that I had.
She never told me my father was not my father.
Her death left me with more questions than answers, more pain than healing, and many layers of grief — the initial grief from her passing, then the grief of accepting her abuse and exploitation of me, and finally, the grief that surfaces now when I miss her and start to cry — because I do still miss her and start to cry.
I miss her pep talks. Mom had a knack for finding just the right thing in a person to get them to light up and believe in themselves. I miss her childlike spirit. Mom had an energy that could at times be so endearing. Even captivating.
And I miss when she was happy. It didn’t happen as often as I would’ve liked, it didn’t happen as often as I tried to force it to happen, but when she was happy it was infectious.
Sometimes when I miss her I start to fantasise about what life would be like if she were still alive and I imagine that maybe she’d have apologised, and we’d have wept in each other’s arms and promised each other we’d start fresh.
Maybe she’d support me having my own identity, my own hopes and dreams and pursuits.
But then I realise I’m just romanticising the dead in the same way I wish everyone else wouldn’t.
Mom made it very clear she had no interest in changing. If she were still alive, she’d still be trying her best to manipulate me into being who she wants me to be. I’d still be purging or restricting or binging or some combination of the three and she’d still be endorsing it. I’d still be forcing myself to act, miserably going through the motions of performing on shiny sitcoms. How many times can you pratfall over a carpet or sell a line you don’t believe in before your soul dies? There’s a good chance I would’ve had a complete and public mental breakdown by this point. I’d still be deeply unhappy and severely mentally unhealthy. I look at the words again. Brave, kind, loyal, sweet, loving, graceful…
I shake my head. I don’t cry. The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes” starts playing from the sad man’s stereo. I stand up, wipe the dirt off my jeans, and walk away. I know I’m not coming back.
Acknowledgments Thank you to my editor, Sean Manning, for your impact on this book. For understanding my voice and making it so much stronger.
To my manager, Norm Aladjem, your early support and encouragement means so much to me. Thank you for your wisdom, strategy, thoughtfulness, and unshakeable calm.
To Peter McGuigan, Mahdi Salehi, and Derek Van Pelt — thank you for your talent and humor, and to the wonderful Stephen Fertelmes for helping to make this happen. To Jill Fritzo and everyone at Jill Fritzo PR, thank you for your brilliance and expertise. To Erin Mason and Jamie C. Farquhar — for the transformative guidance and tools you have provided me. And finally, thank you, Ari, for your endless love, support, and encouragement. I love you so much. You’re my best friend. I’m so happy we’re a team. <harmonizing> We are here for uuuussss.
