This was seriously the hardest thing I've ever written. It's a work of fiction that keeps evolving; I originally shared about it in this blog post here:
@laurabell/mental-health-muenchausen-by-proxy-syndrome
Of course at the barebones of any fiction is truth, and my story does lie in here to some degree. I just cut it up and made it into something else. Actually, it keeps transforming on me. Soon this will be something else all together; however.
Before I begin to create anew; I wanted to show you what I came up with. It is the completed and finished work of everything I loved in the above. I played out the narrative a bit. I shaped it in another way, and tried to show where the story would play if we put her on fast-forwarded a bit. What is the message here? What is the message being sent in our culture and how is that unintentionally causing harm in the medical system? What is Munchausen and how can it show up? Can we see a bit in ourselves as we look all these diagnoses up on google -- asking ourselves, "What's wrong with [insert person here]."
It's a fictional story/ thought experiment on purity culture, religion, drug addiction, and what does medication even mean? The way we looked at cannabis is evolving -- it's not "a gateway drug". Addiction is about trauma and pain; it's comforting an emotional wound. I hope to have gotten the message across effectively.
Get some popcorn and enjoy! This one is DEEP. ((and written by a ten-year-old perspective))
Gypsy’s Blood was Ruby Red.
My mother told me
That I was evil for whatever in the hell
My eight-year-old self said or did.
My mother told me
That Jesus died to save my soul from sin.
She filled me in on all the things
Heavenly Father
God
Holy Spirit
The alpha, the omega --
forbids.
And my mother told me
That she told the doctors
All about that behavior of mine.
She gave me a bracelet that said,
“What Would Jesus Do?”
Ask yourself that, everytime.
My mother said;
She only wished the best for me
Along with peace and purity.
My mother told me
To take these pills
She handed them to me,
Big and white.
My mother said that
These sour ovals came from this “doctor”
And he knew everything about this body.
And he was going to prescribe me
Better health.
I asked my mother if health could be prescribed?
My mother did not answer;
She did not respond to back talking
Sons-of-bitches like me
anyways.
My mother told me
Medical control
Was the good kind
of rage
These days.
The good boys and girls do what the doctor says.
The bad boys and girls ask a lot of fucking questions.
“Why is that?” I said inquisitively to myself.
And when I asked what they meant by “good and bad”
The other kids laughed at me
As if they weren’t just aborping
((the contextual meaning))
without processing the rationale.
I thought it seemed a little subjective.
That’s why I asked.
They shouted at me, “Why are you so confused?”
I responded, “Why aren’t you dashing with an anticipation to learn?”
Sit down and shut up
Were foreign concepts to me,
A child -- brimming with energy.
It was like my mother always said;
“If you can’t spank it out of them; medicate ‘em”
the good old fashioned way --
gold gives a prescription pad a bit of class.
And
hope.
Will a pill cure, death too?
The search for the fountain of youth
Continues.
“Did I know that curiosity killed the cat?”
My parents would ask before I’d tell them
Yikes! That is;
A complete and utter
misnomer.
The original form of the proverb, was "Care killed the cat".
defined as "worry" or "sorrow for others."
But they just ignored that.
My mother told me
That the earlier the detection
The better.
And my mother told me
She should have taken me
To the doctors --
Sooner.
And now it’s later.
I whined to my mother that
I still felt so behind at nine.
My mother handed me
Pills early in the morning
Told me the doctors told her
I must not miss a single day.
My mother gave me
My bitter pills in a cool ceramic mug
Hand-pressed orange juice filled to the edge;
Sweet pulp poured off the ledge and onto my tongue before
Pulling back my lips; there I left my mother’s ruby lipstick
In the shape of a red half-moon.
I had just borrowed the shade.
Yesterday afternoon.
My mother told me I should be grateful
Looked me square in the eyes.
She told me, “I raised you right.”
My mother told me,
She groomed me to obey
And be polite.
My mother told me
It was all so normal.
She only implied,
I was so abnormal.
And my mother told me,
That there is
No guesswork
In the diagnosis
Of the childish mind
Through the vantage point
And verbage
Of two really stressed out
Parents.
My mother told me
Her marriage with my father
Was just fine.
Why?
Oh, I guess I was just wondering why --
There was screaming and banging
The doors were loud and slamming.
I couldn’t quite make out
what anyone was saying.
I guess I heard nothing
-- anyways.
I forget what I was saying.
My mother told me
A pill-poppin’ eleven-year-old
Was exactly what the pediatrician ordered
For slander and that diary of mine was pure liable.
My mother told me,
And the doctor apparently understood.
My mother told me
This earful of emotion she’s receiving
((now))
is not allowed, “sweetie”
Her nose wrinkled ever so slightly
So I knew she was seriously bedazzled by the 1950s.
Only experts process these excessive expressions
My mother said while she took me to my first therapist.
I did need to get some
Good sense talked into me -- ey.
My mother asked me
If I would rather live with her “or my dad”
She was just curious.
She told me to trust the doctors
That gave me these “medicines”
I called them drugs pedaling know-it-alls
nevertheless.
My mother told me to swallow the bitter truth
of what she told me was true.
When I asked her if I should always listen to my father;
She told me that “he was a dentist” not a doctor.
Besides, “your daddy isn’t not home enough”
To really know much of anything about you.
I guess I was too much,
For her.
And she wasn’t enough.
For me.
My mother ((basically)) told me;
There was no downside
In blindly trusting authority
I mean, at least she acted
in that way; so, I ass-umed.
How did I make an ass
-- out of myself?
Wait, I am confused;
What? why?
My mother told me to
The way I was talking back to her lately;
“Yes, Mother; -- that is called responding.”
She’d point a long index finger
Center at my mouth --
“Smart. Real Smart”
Blood ran thin
In our cold household.
My mother snooped in my diaries
Reading all about the bad things I did.
My mother told my father
To read my online history
With that expensive spyware
He just got installed.
“That’s what all the good parents use” he later said.
Protective, proactive parenting -- like two battleship helicopter pilots
My parents stood as united as the nixon administration
Before watergate.
Unaware of any leaking water.
While my mother was cleaning my room,
She found her lipstick in my bathroom drawer.
Next time she saw me, she wrinkled her nose.
“Boundary breaker” she held up the lipstick,
Ruby Red.
My mother told me,
“You have no personal boundaries,
You should have asked.”
My mother told me,
To use less tone
Actually!
Be a bit more monotoned
Less animated too;
you almost look “coo-coo”
She would draw a circle
around her temples in a clockwise rotation
Her pointer finger not touching the skin
just crafting --an imaginary cyclone
around her head.
It was as if she was pointing to her own tone density.
I asked my mother “why” --
And she told me that was too personal.
“You do not know me,” she’d sneer.
My mother told me,
I needed to take accountability.
I was apparently lacking personal
responsibility.
My mother told me to say sorry,
I said sorry.
I buried my inner rage,
Breaking pencils writing about
How I believed I was the new Gypse Rose
Blanchard.
Their blood was ruby red,
They didn’t need no test to prove that.
I wish someone had told that child
They were never sick.
Alas, I cried.
My mother told me,
I grew up in a good home
Unlike those other folks.
My father said,
Parents who don’t have rules
Are bad moms and dads.
My mother told me
Not to cry now that I was twelve.
Nobody really cared
As long as girls like me
Were as sweet as a peach.
She told me virgins were like roses,
And sex stained the spiritual purity robes
I was apparently given these at birth.
Each transgression; every time I disobeyed
Well -- not even mother mary; herself!
Could wash those spots out.
My parents agreed;
They had a zero-tolerance policy
For teenage sexuality.
The blood of christ
Was as thick as thieves.
My mother prayed to Jesus
To save me from my sins
Of future sex and weed.
My mother said
Those people who use drugs
Are self-medicating
And the pharmacy
Doesn’t get paid
For that.
I started screaming
And no one knew why.
The doctor told me
That this simple diagnosis
Will create a profit rippling
Throughout the entire industry.
My father told him
That he surely would afford that.
I said, “What diagnosis do I have exactly?”
“Some type of childhood Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder”;
The man replied as he seemingly palpated a bit medial of his sphenoid bone
Truthfully, he stroked along the lateral edge of his left orbital wall
as if to say, “the label I gave you could evolve at any moment.”
My mother told me,
To thank my father;
The stability he provided seemed like
Cash set up like a house of cards.
“Be as sweet as a peach, darling” my mother would say,
“Remember that country club birthday party?”
The one that my father threw me and all my friends.
That was the year I turned thirteen.
When my jewish friends were turning into an adult.
My parents asked me to stay a kid, forever.
“Don’t grow up.” They’d say.
My mother told me
That even though
She loved me
She didn’t like my behavior.
It reminded her of a demon.
I told my mother,
Demons used to be angels
Perhaps they too deserve
Some respect.
My mother told me she remembered
The days when I was just but a
Cute little thing.
My mother told me to eat my food up
Because there are starving children
From Africa -- they are dying?
My mother told me
She had a good feeling
About this new pill.
My mother told me
Street drugs were bad.
And so was prostitution.
I began to question the doctor,
“Why is all this necessary”
I was seen and not heard.
It was very obvious my expertise
On myself -- didn’t matter.
The doctor told me
That buying these pills
Was the only solution
For the problem,
For that thing my parents saw in me.
My mother asked me
Who I thought I was?
“A child; right?” I said.
Before she accused me --
Of “getting lippy”.
So then the doctor said,
He would up my meds.
Good girls sit down and shush up.
I guess I was broken.
My mother accused me of self-medicating
She says a mother always knows the truth.
My mother accused me of smoking weed,
My mother told me to never use drugs.
I thought I had written about it as a plant.
My mother read my diaries
About a pot-smoking little slut
She said she only read about everything
She already knew.
My mother came up to me,
“Have you been taking your meds?”
My mother told me about the common symptom of
The mentally ill not wanting their real meds.
My mother never mentioned to me;
My diaries before scheduling a last minute appointment --
Without me, conveniently.
My father would later tell me,
They met with the psychiatrist in private;
To discuss amongst themselves me.
My mother said;
There was no such thing as coincidences
Only Godwinks when she found those who
Agreed.
I think my mother told me
She liked me better drugged up.
My mother told the doctors
I looked happier
When I was taking them.
My mother said that
I didn’t have a clue about myself.
My father said
He knew me best.
My mother said
She knew my fourteen-year-old
Ass better
Than any guy
She read me dreaming about.
My mother said,
She could smell my secrets.
It looked like the sadness
She saw in my eyes.
She told me that these pills would fix me,
I started to believe -- I was indeed,
Broken.
My father told the doctors,
He would personally strangle
The rebellion right out of me.
He told me he was
A good father.
My mother told the doctors,
I didn’t have the right to call her a “dip-shit”
And she’d focus on consistently waiting until
My father got home so he could beat
Those hellish words, right the heck out of me.
You see, my mother generously gave me
Till the count of three to obey
And if it went past four --
She wasn’t scared to stick
The hounds on me.
Jesus wanted me innocents,
My mother thought it had already sailed away.
Who was I to tell her I was still a virgin?
She didn’t believe a word out of my mouth.
Besides, I thought she knew;
She slept with me at night.
And during thunderstorms,
I curled up close.
My mother said
She cried thinking
About her fifteen-year-old
Going to hell.
She said time had eaten her baby
And she was left with just me.
My parents stood as united
As the Nixon Administration
Before watergate.
My father called my extra energy
A frontal lobe impairment;
There was no MRI proof
He was a dentist
My parents said
They saw red flags at stop signs.
That doctor recommended that
My parents to pay ten-thousand dollars a month
And they would take this problems off their hands.
The
Trained staff at these
facilities
Would apparently
teach me
All about the
‘real world
A p p l i c a t i o n s’.
See.
My parents said,
“What else could we do?”
“What else could we take away?”
My sister asked my mother why;
And my mother told my sister
She had found a glass vile in my bathroom.
Could it have been full of cocaine?
Who knows?
My mother said
She wasn’t sorry
This Sixteen-year-old daughter of hers
Didn’t have many rights it seemed
Anyways.
My mother asked,
“What about parental rights?”
“We couldn’t keep you in the house acting that way!”
“We did what any reasonable parent would do.”
I asked the transporters for one
Last goodbye call --
They said that was not allowed.
My mother said,
I should be grateful,
“There are worse places you could be.”
My mother said,
I was lucky to get this type of help.
I told my mother --
A judge would have never done this?
For oral sex? For smoking weed?
For all those pages you ripped from my diary?
My mother said
She followed the advice
Of the experts;
Right down to a T.
My mother always told me,
To dot every i.
When I cried out loud
That my parents might have
Munchausen-by-proxy
My therapist said no one
Would ever believe me.
My therapist said,
I was manipulative.
How would I ever earn their trust again?
Behavin’ like that.
My mother send me a package
To the place I was to stay
Two-thousand miles away.
It was a book about a girl on heroin.
A mother wrote it about her daughter.
My father called on christmas.
My mother wrote letters just to say hi,
Sometimes.
They forgot to call me on my
seventeenth birthday.
Something about how busy it had been;
How they just seemed to forget and lose track of the time.
“Hi, I am sorry about that -- how are you?”
My mother told me
I only had one year left;
I’d age out at eighteen.
My father said he would tell Pop-pop Meow I said, “hello.”
My parents told me they gave my sister all the letters I wrote.
They were both on the same line at the time.
My mother told me
She would not be manipulated like that --
She told me those were crocodile tears.
I simply said “I was happier at home.”
She laughed.
“Don’t think I forgot” My mother said, “She knew how I worked.”
My therapist told me
That there was nothing I could say
That would make my parents
Want to come and pick me up.
My therapist said,
I could not control their feelings
Or what they did with their money.
My therapist said,
This is what is best for you.
My father told me
To listen to my therapist.
He liked her -- she went to Harvard.
My parents told me
They loved me.
And missed me so much.
I told my therapist about
The cokehead rumors I heard
About myself in highschool.
Once on a homevisit.
My therapist said, “nevermind those, dear.”
And when I told her I used to be popular;
She smiled, “I think you might be delusional.”
All the experts told me,
I was born this way --
Jesus made a mistake.
My father mentioned to the therapist
The book that was sent home;
How badly I wanted to fit in at home.
Blindly just “trusting my friends”
And that he was filing for a divorce
In the morning.
“I am glad you didn’t go away after this all happened;
Or I would have really blamed it on myself.” he said.
“I am happy you are happy.” I said
as I fell to the ground on my knees.
Prayer felt good to me.
I wasn’t allowed to cry
Or allowed to die
I wasn’t allowed to paint
Without explicit permission
And designated times.
The staff told me
I must control my emotions
By keeping them inside.
Or letting it out at appropriate times.
My mother told me to
Just let go of the crazy making
And do what all the doctors say.
When they called me
A “Troubled Teen”
I took it on as an identity.
The staff said
To take my meds.
My therapist told me
I was not opening up
Enough.
My therapist told me
She was a good therapist
When my parents asked to switch.
My therapist asked
What is wrong with me?
The staff now read through my journals
And I sent pictures to my parents;
Drew them stars along the edges of the envelope
To represent emotional scars
I sent them a letter that read, “Times up.”
With a clock ticking.
I had my bags packed at the
Eleven o’clock hour ready for the second hand to
strike down the seconds till my birthday.
I gave myself the best
Eighteenth birthday present.
The staff told me
I could not take
My birth certificate
As if it didn’t belong
To me for being born.
Besides, to leave without an identity
-- I didn’t like this one, anyways.
Walking down the road,
I stuck my thumb out,
A backpack full of clothes
And a lifetime full of problems.
A trucker picked me up
At a gas station nearby
And asked me where I was going
And didn’t wonder why.
“Salt Lake City” I said.
He nodded Yes.
I hopped inside and went along.
The only thing I knew was
I had a great body
Ripe for stripping
And that could pay my way.
What's the difference between
Good old mom and me anyways?
She was a stay-at-home wife
Who split my father’s wealth
upwards of sixty percent I heard.
The joint was dingy, bare and dark
A waft of stale cigarette smoke lingered in the back
They told me to apply by assessing the way my body tied
Up along the seams and along the edges of my rack.
Getting on stage for the first time
Required some extra courage;
The fear of being naked in a crowd full of my peers --
Came true.
A lady in red gave me some powered energy
And seemed to take as many pills as I used too.
She showed me how much I enjoyed my perceived
Penetrative virginity due to bias of the mind;
I was born to love oral sex.
Her house glistened with the stench
Of Mary Jane.
I told her;
I wanted to spend the rest of my
Childhood with her.
She told me her name was wendy;
And she only wore red lingerie.
I told her I was Peter Pan
And my favorite color was green.
She offered me her room;
As a place to stay before
Said told me about these bitter things
She liked that she got from a doctor too.
Boo.
I wasn’t scared;
And she liked to bite --
And that’s all I remember of our
One year spent sleeping most of the day
Trapped in a some beautiful tragedy
While we dancing most of the night
That eighteenth year
Alongside Wendy had ended.
One day I just turned nineteen.
And no one called.
No one really needed too.
I told my parents I was involved in “customer service” now.
I didn’t find it much of a lie.
I saw the truth in the fact that
This is who they alway said I was.
Anyways.
A sinner who couldn’t escape.
And it was true.
One day;
I slipped and fell and I asked that woman I loved
About those pills she seemed to know so well.
She handed them to me,
Big and white.
My mother always said
Doctors were good at prescribing health.
And as this stripper kissed my neck
Like the men only wish she would;
She confessed she may have told the doctor,
“She had a backache”
But what’s the difference when her mind
Hurt -- just as bad.
My mother always told me,
There was a pill
For every ill.
The more pills the doctor gave her,
The more pills I took.
Man, the tables have turned;
I really liked all these pills,
Afterall, I really was bad.
Maybe my mother was always right?
She liked me drugged up better.
Isn’t that what she always said?
I finally felt better.
These pills really worked.
I should have held out on hope.
And when I took too much
I thought about that place
I thought about that space
I once called home.
Didn’t you call me sweet once?
When I took took many pills,
I felt the way her hug smelled;
I thought it had faded,
And then I got high -- wow.
Did I get loaded to remember or to forget?
My father told me I couldn’t talk to my siblings
Any longer as I was a “Bad influence”.
He said he had full custody now;
“Crazy life, crazy wife -- right?”
I overheard him say once.
My mother told me
This had been my destiny.
She always knew too.
Call it “intuition” or something.
My mother said she’s really happy now
Opening presents one-by-one
She’s a new woman with a new man.
One who really loves her right.
Wendy told me the prescribers stopped
Prescribing and now the cost was out the wazoo.
“I think I found some cheaper stuff,” I said.
I don’t remember what christmas used to be like before,
Anymore.
The higher I got; I thought I could remember
-- better.
I was longing after the living
But they were no longer alive
I shot up wendy first,
I told her I used to want to be a doctor;
The darkness I saw made the needle look
Pretty and cute.
The jig was up
I now knew
What was in
The witches brew
The devil sang,
So sweely.
And I sung as
It swam as a fish
Through every vein
That had not collapsed.
All the heroin ever gave me
Was a type of peace beyond anyone's understanding.
My mother was right; It felt like a spiritual high.
Days like this made me want to remember
Everything that my mother had ever told me.
I died on a cold morning in November,
And no one was around to cry
For the lost-boy was dead.
Wendy called the ambulance
when she got home.
No one cries when they know.
It happens, it could happen.
It does. It did.
I came into this world alone,
So out I go.
It’s no wonder,
I felt so behind at nine.
I wouldn’t make it
Through my teenage years
Alive.
They said I was broken
I guess, “what they all say is true.”
At my funeral my father would say,
“She always spoke like a herion addict,
Her behavior was a little odd, even as a child.
Her mother and I always knew.
It’s the one thing we agreed on.
It’s what we knew to be true”
My mother read a bible verse
Over my casket --
tears, placed in her eyes;
“Dearly Beloved,
We gather here this day”
It was the wedding speech
She never had planned.
Funerals are so different
Afterall — it’s the only time
when all the family
gets together again.
Afterwards, she’d tell people
She had always seen it coming.
Her daughters untimely death was
Constantly at the forefront of her mind.
How agonising?
“It is such a shame
She threw she life away”
One would nod to another.
After-all — It’s all they really had to say;
Anyways.