Do you love your mother? I do. We’re like two peas in a pod, from the way we laugh together, to the shared way our hair shifted from platinum blonde to an almost golden brown in adolescence — like the leaves in fall. It was a day in fall, I think, when I decided I wanted a change. My mom always spoke for me at doctor’s appointments. Just like she’d always ordered for me at restaurants. What were we at the doctor’s for? I couldn’t remember. That day, I tried speaking more when the nurse asked questions. A lot of the time, when I’d gone to these checkups, I just zoned out from the back of the room. The two of them discussed me, their faces blurry and their conversations vague in my memory. I mean, my mom knew my health best. She tracked my cycle, and remembered the things I complained to her about. She listened to me when I talked about ordinary things, like a high heart rate, or a stomach ache. But was the turmoil in my head ordinary?
Mom kept butting in and speaking over me. It was annoying. You know, even talking to the doctor in front of her would get me anxious, for reasons I didn’t know. So when she left the room, quite begrudgingly, I felt so at ease. The room smelled nice — I never minded the clean, almost blank smell of doctor’s offices. I looked the doctor in the face. He sat across from me, not lengths above me. He met my eyes. And as I described what’s been eating away at me for what feels like forever, I didn’t feel like he was waiting for the chance to make me feel stupid.
When I spoke about the agonizing pain that plagued my head when I tried doing even the simplest of things, he looked genuine. Serious. Like he cared. He didn’t make that horrible face. A mix between disgust, amusement, and pity. When that look made its way onto Mom’s face, I felt the perspective shifting in my gut. Now, she’s looking down at me. And I’d swiftly detach myself from whatever I wanted her to hear. Because it wouldn’t reach her ears, just like my eyes wouldn’t meet her gaze.
I spilled, and I spilled, and I cranked the faucet before any pent-up tears could flow. I spilled things I wished she would at least try to understand. The static, the noise, the scribbles, the spikes, the whatever you want to call it inside my head. What went beyond simply being ‘unable to focus’. A pain that felt my very own — a desperate plea. And, in that room, I didn’t talk for long at all. How could there be enough time to say everything? And how could I even have the composure to hold it together if I did? But he listened to me. That meant something. I could finally get it off of my chest, without her presence making the words catch in my throat.
I felt so light after. Coincidentally, my heart rate was slower than when the nurse took my pulse prior. The doctor and my mom’s words became unclear again, only this time because of my inner monologue relishing in my head like fanfare. I sat there, loopy from the come-down of my medication and from the rush I’d imagine a sinner has after confessing at church. I went quiet once again, but happy.
Sitting in the car, Mom tells me she didn’t expect me to want to go back on Vyvanse.
Oh. Oops.
He did say Vyvanse, didn’t he? But why didn’t I hear it? At that moment, I couldn’t remember. I wanted to go back on Adderall. Right, the main reason we went was to refill it. It was the only thing that kind of, sort of worked. But if you’d seen my grades, you wouldn’t have thought so. It was better than I’d do without them. I know, imagine that. That was precisely why I wanted to try an even higher dose — to expand my potential, but —
I paused before I admitted I didn’t realize the mistake. Mom seemed amused. I guess it is sort of funny. After I feel an overwhelming relief from my doctor validating the problems my mom has almost never shown sympathy for, I get this stunning reminder of how out of it I am. All the time. I felt an imaginary target on me again.
And so, I was going on the new dose of Vyvanse for 2 weeks. With just a few weeks left to pull up the grades I’d spent the past few days crying over. Not really the time for experimenting. There in the backseat of my mom’s car, scattered sparingly with forgotten things, dawned a new depth that felt dimmer than ever. And it always felt dimmer, and lower, than ever. That joy was torn away from me by my own negligence. Maybe it was because of the medicine winding down, but I felt that all I could do was cry. Silently. Burying my face into the passenger seat in front of me as to not be seen.
Because if Mom sees, she’ll… I don’t know what she’ll do. Ridicule me? So subtly that it doesn’t even seem wrong. And so subtly that I couldn’t see it as wrong either for a long while, and yet the shame always reverberated in my chest. It was sort of like there were two of her, I guess. One was warm. One was so cold. But the both of them, I loved.
The cold one reminded me often that I was just a kid. That I thought I knew everything, but I didn’t. And so I became acutely aware of my lack of sense. That way, she wouldn’t be right. I became very humble. I didn’t think too much of myself. And, argument after argument, I had hardly stopped to consider that my mom could be wrong. I remember that afternoon — the sun was setting over the parking lot of my karate practice, and the air in the car was stuffy. When she scolded me for wanting to pursue art, permanently hurting my artistic motivation, I didn’t think that she could be wrong. Not confidently. Years later, in a conference composed of my counselor, my mom, and I, the counselor asked me what I wanted to do. My gut answered swiftly.
‘Probably not art,’ I said, because Mom mentioned it to her as one of my hobbies. ‘I know it’s hard to make a living doing that.’ Mom added on to my statement, saying she’s always reminded me to put other career priorities first — Though her real words were a bit harsher than that. And in that same sentence, she asks the counselor if it’s wrong, what she’s always told me.
Not a genuine question, I’m sure. It sounded more like an unconscious invite for approval. But it made me consider that she could truly be wrong about things. Maybe even wrong about me. Maybe wrong when I explained the reasons behind my struggle to be productive, and she’d make me out to be dramatic, or wrong when she’d tell me I didn’t care at all. Wrong when she’d say I was daydreaming in ‘la-la land’ — as if it’s fun. I grew to hate that phrase, from a young age.
Maybe wrong about things she didn’t say out loud, told through facial expressions and tone of voice, still ever demeaning. Statements made about my mind so matter-of-factly as if she, or anyone, had ever been in there. I wished somebody could. Because how else could I prove my suffering existed? Not explanations, nor countless conversations, nor just as many shameful tears and sunken eyes had ever been enough to prove it.
Tears dried. With the passage of time, the leaves all fell, and the once vibrant trees were left barren once again. I have another question. Do you like stepping on those big, crunchy leaves that litter the sidewalks once winter rolls around? I do. I love lots of things. Like pretty sunrises, and sunsets, and the wind on my skin. I love my mom. I love living. And I want to love myself, properly. I want to be happy, even with this dopamine deficiency withering away all of my opportunities like acid. All I can say after the passage of a violent storm, words breaking through the looming, gray misery like sunshine is, ‘Let’s do our best tomorrow.’
