Vertigo

Trigger Warning - Implied infanticide.

For as long as I can remember; my mother suffered from vertigo. It would make her dizzy, and sometimes she’d get sick from it, but nothing major. My father had left almost as soon as I could walk, or at least that’s what I was told. So it was just my mom and me, so when things took a turn for the worse, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have anyone to talk to, and my mom made it abundantly clear that this was not talked about.

It was my 8th birthday when things really started to go wrong. Mom had organized this big party with my friends from school and a few family friends. At the time, I was obsessed with becoming a paleontologist, so Mom had set up green and brown streamers all over the back porch, dinosaur egg hunts, and a huge T-Rex cake. I remember being so excited. About halfway through the party, Mom got quiet and excused herself. I saw her before she left, she was pale and shaking, I assumed it was just her having another bout of vertigo. It wasn’t the most uncommon thing. I mean, it happened every couple of months, but I’d never seen her this bad. The party went on for a few hours and then everyone left, mom never came back outside.

She was in her room for three days straight. I recall knocking at her door for hours and screaming for her to let me in, and when she didn’t, I just kind of did whatever I wanted. I got to skip school for a few days, so I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. I ate leftover dinosaur cake for dinner and whatever other food was left from the party, and I didn’t have to brush my teeth—every 8-year-old’s dream.

On the third day, she finally came out of her room, and I saw her eyes. They were bloodshot, and she had these huge black bags under them like she hadn’t slept the entire time she was in there. I had enough sense to assume she was probably hungry, so I grabbed a plate and loaded it with leftover party food. I went to hand it to her, but before I could, she snatched the plate from my hands without warning and started eating it with her bare hands, shovelling food into her mouth like a wild animal. I wouldn’t say she was prissy or anything like that, but this was nothing like my polite mother. Once she had finished she looked up at me, she had tears in her eyes. I had never seen her cry before this point so I remember it clearly, she opened her arms and I walked into her embrace. Once she had finished crying and wiped her eyes, she got up and asked me what I wanted for dinner, acting like nothing had happened.

This same pattern continued for years. She started to keep microwavable meals in the fridge and freezer so that if she had, what I began to call episodes, I could look after myself for a few days until she was back. You have to understand that I was very young, and she was my mom. I wasn’t going to go talk to another adult. Maybe if I had someone older who I had trusted, but Mom was it for me. I trusted her to make the best choice for us.

These episodes became more of a regular thing over the years to come, happening once every few months and then gradually to once a week. She would come out of each episode more defeated, exhausted and gaunt-looking. Her eyes were heavy and covered with dark circles that started to linger for longer and longer. She had stopped looking after herself and, at this point, barely looked after me. The only other side effect was that she had begun to go deaf. It became harder to communicate to the point I had to force her to go see a doctor about it, our insurance was terrible so she had been avoiding going. From what she told me, they just said it was chronic ear infections causing her left eardrum to burst. By the time I left home, she was permanently deaf in one ear.

I was 19 when I left. I had just started community college and wanted to be closer to campus without actually living on it. Probably some weird teenage independence thing. Anyway, three weeks after I moved out, I recall the exact date as it had been my mom’s 51st birthday. I had gone out to lunch with her earlier that day, but it was a rare day when she was feeling good. She had finally gained a bit of weight, and the bags under her eyes had begun to recede. I couldn’t remember a time since my 8th birthday when she looked so at peace. After I got home from seeing her, I sat down and watched television for a couple of hours. Once I got up to make my way to bed, the dizziness started, and it didn’t stop.

I guessed I had vertigo just like Mom had, so I googled what to do. It said ‘stand on the side of your bed, turn your head and throw yourself down.’ I thought it was a bit stupid but I did it, it was just dizziness at that point but when I threw down my head the world spun. It was as if I was watching one of those classical movie reel things, the ones that go through frame by frame. So there I was, lying on my side, watching each frame of the wall as it went by, trying not to throw up, and suddenly, there was a face. It was that of an oldish man with greying hair covering his head in thick chunks but no nose or ears. Only these huge void-like black eyes and a lipless mouth. I stared, unable to move. I’ve had sleep paralysis before, but never before I even went to sleep. I had a feeling I should have been scared, but I was certain I was hallucinating, so certain I just let it play out, it's not like there was anything I could do.

He blinked at me with those big, beady eyes and then brought his hand up. I can still picture it so clearly, each of his fingers were abnormally long and came to a sharp point, it didn’t feel human. He stared for a long time, he didn’t speak, he just moved his pointer finger to my ear and stuck it inside, deep inside. I can not begin to explain the pain; it was blinding; I had never felt such torture. I would tell you what happened, but I was in so much pain after what felt like years. I finally passed out, and when I woke up, I was in my bed under the covers, panting, like I had just woken from a nightmare.

I put my hand up to my ear on instinct and felt liquid, looking at my fingers I saw the red flash of blood and ran into the bathroom. Blood was running down my ear, neck and chest, it all came rushing back in a sickening kaleidoscope of images, trying not to hyperventilate, I turned on the shower to clean up, if I looked at the blood any longer I was going to faint. Going on my phone to call my doctor, I saw the date for the first time since I had woken up. Three days had passed, three days. I was sick to my stomach; I couldn’t believe what had happened; how had three days gone by? Had I been asleep the entire time? My thoughts went back to my mother, and when I studied myself in the mirror, it felt like I was looking into my mother’s eyes.

Later that day I got into my doctor, telling him it was an emergency but never diverging any details. I just told him I had woken up to blood leaking from my ear. He just said I had ruptured my eardrums and not to use cotton tips anymore and then sent me home. I wanted to ask Mom about it, but I didn’t want to bring it up if it wasn’t the same thing she had experienced. What if she thought I was crazy, or worse, that she had let this happen to me? I went through the same patterns as Mom: months of reprieve and then unspeakable pain. I began calling him the Vertigo Man, just to myself, just so I had something to explain what was happening, just to prove to myself that I wasn’t going insane.

Years later, when I was 24, I met my husband, Darryl. We were only together for six months before I found out I was pregnant. Luckily I had finished college at this point and he was in the military so housing wasn’t an issue. We had what some would call a shotgun wedding before he was deployed to Afghanistan, where he was for a large majority of my pregnancy. He came back just in time for our son to be born. He was perfect. I don’t think it’s something you can ever understand unless you have a child. It’s love like nothing I have ever known.

Three months after the birth of our son, my husband was deployed again. It was hard on me, being a new mother and all, but my mom was there every step of the way. The day he left my mom offered to look after him for me, I was exhausted at this point I needed the sleep. I went to bed as soon as Mom left and then was awoken in the middle of the night to that telltale feeling of dizziness. It hit me then that he hadn’t come since before my son’s birth; The Vertigo Man.

When he came, something was different, his lipless mouth opening for the first time, jagged teeth visible inside a dark mouth with no tongue, so I don’t even know how he spoke to me, but when he did, it was a whisper. I don’t know what he said; I just know I was screaming. I screamed, and I screamed for hours, until my throat was hoarse and until I was wheezing in pain. His voice was… it was, I don’t know. Imagine every person who has ever lived shrieking at the same time directly into your ear. I became delirious; I told him he could have anything if he just stopped, and then he left.

Five years of constant pain. I am not my mother, I am not strong like her, I couldn’t deal with it anymore, I just, It wasn’t my fault okay. I love my son, I never wanted him to get hurt, I just needed the pain to stop.

My mom came over the next day with him. When she came in, she looked me up and down and laughed, saying I looked like I still hadn’t gotten any sleep. I didn’t have it in me to laugh back, so I gave her a weak smile and hugged her tight. The look she gave me was assessing, but I think she chalked up my behaviour to being a new mom. She stayed for coffee but left for a yoga class soon after. I looked down at my sleeping boy, picked him up and brought him to my chest. Before, well, you know what happened.

They said it was postpartum psychosis. I'm not psychotic, what if he had to go through the same pain? Would I be a bad mother if I had let him suffer like Mom and I had? I know what happened, and I know exactly why it happened. I’m not crazy, okay? I just had to stop the pain. I was helping us. I loved my son, and I still do.

Statement from inmate 303328 Mara Watson at the UThealth Houston Harris County Psychiatric Center in Houston, Texas, regarding the murder of her infant on 09/21/2015. The statement was taken on 03/02/2021.

Further information: Mara Watson was taken to trial and placed in a psychiatric facility instead of getting jail time or the death penalty due to her diagnosis of postpartum psychosis and the consequent adamance of the above statement.

Her now ex-husband returned from his deployment after discovering the news and has not made any public comments then or since.

I reached out to her mother via phone for comment, she agreed, but as soon as I asked about vertigo, she stopped talking. It was five minutes before she spoke again, and all she said was, I quote, “He used to tell me about her, about my Mara. I said no when he asked; she was my daughter, not his. I wasn’t going to let him have her but I guess in the end he got her didn’t he” She hung up immediately after.

She was found in her apartment a week later, her friend had called the police for a wellness check. She was found on her bed, bleeding from her left ear, cause of death remains inconclusive.