The Aunties at their Cauldron: Mena, Flo, and Horai

My mother was 27 when she was diagnosed with rampant endometriosis.  In the early 80s, she was one of the first women to undergo both laser and micro-surgery for the insidious peppercorns that bubbled over, coating her lower abdomen, part of of a kidney, stifling her ability (and desparate desire) to have another baby.

The surgeries were successful and within months she was pregnant with my brother.  But the pregnancy wasn't an easy one and she was still recovering from a nasty run-in with post-natal depression from a late-term miscarriage: a small torn fetus that would have been named Elizabeth. 

That was an awkward morning, the morning of the miscarriage. I had just left the toddler pageant circuit; pancakes to celebrate. I was excited, jumping up and down, panting like a puppy the way 4 year olds do when ALL OF THEIR DREAMS were coming true.   I think I tugged on her sleeve. 

I remember the bowl of eggs dropping, my mother doubled over in pain. I remember drops of blood marking her path and I remember my dad yelling at me to 'Get out of the bathroom' as my mother howled in pain and terror. She was almost six months along when she miscarried and the postnatal depression was consuming.  She just...stopped getting out bed one day, for weeks. My dad was awaya great deal. I learned to make peanut butter and jelly (jam for you UK readers) or grilled cheese sandwiches and to heat up tomato soup.  I learned how to work the washing machine and dryer, and how to run the vacuum without running over the cord. I would crawl into bed with her, rubbing her back whilst she stared listlessly ahead.

When she emerged into daylight, she was distracted. I don't remember what kind of child I was, quiet, I suppose except when I wasn't. But she began to forget me places: the grocery store, the library. And her terror over forgetting me was quickly diverted to anger. It passed, this phase, but the misplaced knowledge that I am easy to forget, easy to leave behind, that still burns.

Of course, now, having gone two rounds with post-natal depression myself, I can see her side of the garden wall, where the vines of failure and loss are choking, the weeds of fertility and expectation encompassing. The sense of hopelessness that begins to keen like the wind rattling dried leaves.

At 29, she had a complete hystorectomy. The endometriosis was back and it was consuming her organs.  So, a few days in the hospital and they emptied her out.  She took hormone replacements and went through early menopause. 

What I remember about my mom during this time is that she pushed on through her life through sheer force of will. If Peggy got an idea in her head, had a problem to solve, there was little to stop her. An example?  She managed to bring 'Women, Infants, and Children' subsidies to US Service families stationed in Europe through sheer force of will.  

My grandmother's menopause, I don't really remember. It must have occurred when we were living in Europe and it isn't something she talked about. She died in 2016 so I can't ask her now.

After I came out of the post-natal depression, there was a shift. I finally stopped lactating after 10 years and 5 months in February of this year.  My body had already begun to shift, settling into my hips.

The crying jags started two years ago, usually twice a year. The last 6 months, they have become a monthly occurrence, usually 2-4 days. Usually, containable to sobbing in the bathroom or in the car. Tmand sometimes there isn't even emotion behind them, just tears. Realistically, it is probably 43 years of emotion welling out of me. That I stuffed down. Which is terrifying to consider because I have mostly been a crier. I think. A crier or numb. 

Am I ok? Majority of the time...I don't even know. I saw I'm okay. There are real days when I am better than okay. And the shit of it all is that at the very core of all of this, at the very core of it, I like my life. I am happy. I can feel the happy. 

I am pushing through the days. They are not terrible. There is beauty. I feel alive. There is colour. I can smell.  Then about two weeks before my cycle starts, everything starts to ache. My breasts this month? They were huge. On Saturday and Sunday, they were so big I felt that they might burst. 😂

And there is this very quiet and not constant but present passive suicidal ideation - just this quiet whisper. I heard it this month and realised it has been creeping in since July, at about the same time, that I spend my cycles white-knuckling through feeling an emotional trainwreck.

When the roar would get too loud from the chaos - family or work - the way that I used to quell and quiet that noise, that discord, that sense of a building storm, was alcohol.  But somewhere I lost the ability to have 'just one.' I don't have the same off-switch as others.  And I don't want that option.  So I am sitting in the storm, sometimes in the Eye, sometimes along the edges and I wonder if I am going to make out the other side. 

I feel like I am fluctuating through a vicious unpredictable emotional swings - lacerating paranoia and self pity > white hot anger > obsessive thinking (hello, necessary unpleasant attempts at internet dating. Oh, look at his one, could we ruminate more on your mediocre dick?) > devestasting sorrow.  

Then there is the nausea. I am nauseaus 75% of the day. Honestly? I don't think I was this nauseous, this continually even pregnant...except maybe with my first pregnancy and that was a termination 20 years ago. 

And maybe that was the trigger that opened the gateway to a succession of flashback thoughts? Sex: maybe the actual sex was the trigger, because I just remember that mod-morning and I was there at the beginning, but I wasn't there. I was disassociated.  Relieved and not present then VERY present, then confused. Then terrified, then present. Then confused but satiated. And then, adrift. Confused and adrift. 

Anyway. There is a dog in Suffolk,  a saluki female puppy. I am thinking of going to look at her.  Tell me this is a bad idea. Tell me I am crazy about thinking a dog.