Anger has always been such a powerful emotion in my life.
My own anger but more so, the anger of people I love.
It's always meant devastation, fear and being out of control.
My father's anger terrified me. It was fury. It was rage. It was catastrophic. It was drunken spittle flying and massive, calloused square hands hurting a little girl. It meant pain and humiliation and violence and a feeling of complete worthlessness and terror. He frightened and enraged me so completely and the forever thing of all this is that now, as a grown woman, I see anger brewing and I am reduced: 5, 9, 14 years old again. I am unable to cope and am lost to the fear. It is cataclysmic in its power.
My own anger was medicated into a tight, black hole for years - squashed down by the strong, flat palm of alcohol and released in short crazy unbelievable bursts, leaving me weak with remorse. Now, I have a better grasp on it - can let it fly a little bit and not dread the repercussions. Those few words encompass years - decades - of therapy and effort and soul searching. It's too much for me to go into more detail. And anyway, this is about you, my little love.
Your anger is another thing altogether.
It is unknown to me. A brand-new thing, amongst all the bloody awful brand-new things this year of hell has brought us.
When you were a baby, you had plenty of anger. Crying almost solidly until you could speak. Trying days. Years ago. As a toddler, you had not one single tantrum. I would do anything to avoid you having to feel angry, frustrated, that vile churning inside. I would stop and attend to you if I saw it coming - divert you and distract you - take your feelings for myself - swallow them down and forbid you them. I shielded you from what existed inside you and forced you to suppress it or ignore it. But I never let you learn how to manage your own natural, real, normal anger. I thought I was doing it for you, protecting you and being a good mother when in fact I was neglecting your emotional development. In my desperation to save you from the horror of anger, I stole something too.
But was it just for you? Maybe I was protecting myself too. Bad enough having to witness my father. I couldn't bear to see that emotion on your face and in your body. It frightened me. But it means that now I have no frame of reference - can't reassure me/us with remembering past rages and recoveries.
When (in your recovery from anorexia) you felt safe enough with me (as the mother of an anorexic) - safe in the knowledge that I wasn't going to shout or cry or fall apart or die from it - you began to show some of your rage and fear. The first time, it drew me up so sharply I almost fell over, never to get up again. You shook and yelled and panicked - raspy, catchy breaths and bobbing shoulders, red face wild eyes garbled voice. I thought you were going to die of it. Literally fall over dead. I felt hysterical inside. I expect you did too. If it wasn't so tragic, I'd be smiling as I type that. Oh darling, what a pair.
I have variously responded to your anger with crossness, shouting, fear, wild eyes, pounding heart, walking-away legs, blank eyes - struggling to stay alive in the face of such a terrible thing. We have talked ourselves blue over this and I know you know me almost as well as I know myself and you are certain in the knowledge that my response is not about you. It is about me. It is my legacy. But it is lousy mothering. It is a part of the sickness he infected me with and that it has carried down the generations into you is something that incenses me.
I have always tried to fix you, to protect you.
I was raised to know the world as a terrifying place - filled with unpredictably awful things happening to the people I loved and being utterly powerless. How pointless all my effort has been. The bad thing happened anyway.
How ridiculous that I'd think I could alleviate your suffering. I can barely manage my own.
You will fix you. I am just along for the ride.
I see thin girls everywhere. It's like when you get a new car and suddenly, that sort of car is everywhere. I didn't realise how many people owned a blue Peugeot and I didn't realise how many terribly thin, sick girls there are out there.
I would have stared and mocked before - thought mean things about stupid girls and diets and willpower and how unattractive, weird, sheep-like, selfish, blind. Now I pass a thin girl and I want to hold her in my arms and rock her. (I want to find her mother and hold her.)
A part of me wants to get angry at her, though - yell how cruel she's being and just bloody well stop it. Maybe it'd work with a stranger. I know it would have been futile with you. It would have shamed you and there is already sufficient shame in your mind to last you forever.
Now, instead of seeing something unknown and alien and strange, I see something that lives my life alongside me every day and inhabits my every thought.
I know you, anorexic girls. I know you. I know your fear and your anger and your complete bewilderment. I see my daughter in you all and it's like a kick in the stomach.
My darling, you've taken up your legacy and been forced to succumb to antidepressants. You, your mother, your grandmother, aunt and uncle. A month down the road of sorting out your serotonin. Oh, for different genes.
In a way, I've wanted them for you since the beginning - I know their power and how they can return a life. The light went out and no matter how much I loved you and looked after you, there was no igniting it. It was tearing at my heart, seeing the depression in your bearing and your being and yet not being able to persuade anyone that you needed medicating out of it - that your own resources and mine were never going to be enough.
When you've lived alongside a thing all your life, you recognise it quickly. Eventually, the sleeplessness was showing in your serious, sad eyes and in your monotone voice and your exhausted little body. Such weariness. It made me ache to see. And to hear you tell me over and again, every morning as you peered round my door, that you'd woken twice, three times and stayed awake, staring up and alone and frightened and with your mind whirring and playing with you. There were only so many times I could say "My darling, my poor darling child - I feel for you" and then send you off to college, dragging your exhaustion behind you.
So you take 20mgs a day and it has returned you to me. I have my girl back. I told Monica that when we saw her last and it made you cry. I could see you crying invisibly, tearlessley, silently as we sat and made polite conversation with her about trivial things. I knew something had upset you but wasn't sure what. You were terse and perfunctory with her rambling, idiotic, forgetful questions and I wanted to hold my hand up to her face and say "Shut up a minute - I need to speak to Grace - there's something wrong with her - can't you see!". It wasn't until we got out of the door after the hour and you fell against me and wrapped your arms round my neck and sort of moaned "Oh Mum - I feel overwhelmed". It's been a struggle, getting you to realise quite how ill you've been, all these months. You seemed to come to an understanding right there and then. The difference in the Prozac-free you and the now-you is plain for you to see. You're desperate to never have that version of yourself back. It's only with hindsight that it all becomes clear. I think that clarity is a bit horrifying for you.
We have both endured such darkness. Losing such a huge part of you to this sickness and watching you disappear right in front of my eyes - bodily and mentally, thin and characterless and devoid of substance, your head self merging with your physical self (the one mimicing the other) - has felt like a slow death.
I know you see the changes in yourself. To me, they are a joyous miracle. I celebrate you with all my heart - my talkative, silly, light, friendly, sarcastic, arsey, funny, loving child is here again. She had been smothered and now she is breaking free.
I never thought these feelings, these times, these days of boredom and habit and everything being ok - never thought they'd be given back. I'd accustomed myself to a new reality and with all the effort I could muster, I'd made myself grateful and accepting of the sadness and the change and the worry and the fear. As long as I had you, I could cope. And now here I am - (those horrible miseries tucked away and murmuring quietly, just so I never forget or take anything for granted) - with my most beloved daughter sitting next to me and I am not wracked with terrifying, persisitent premonitions and stomach-clawing apprehension.
We're getting there.
