I Desire That None Shall Sleep

Imagine being so turned off by marriage that you'd rather kill anyone who tries to propose to you then to marry him. Sounds like a good plot for a fairy tale?

From the beginning of my life, my mother saw me as a miracle. She had lived a hard life full of tragedy. She had a daughter before I was born but she gave that daughter up to the man who left her to return to his wife. They raised that daughter. Not my mom.

My mom met my dad when she was a dancer at a go-go bar. Not a stripper... but close. He was likely in the middle of a manic episode when he met her. He could be very charming in those painful moments. They married. They honeymooned in Puerto Rico. A few years later, I was born.

I don't think my mother ever knew a single minute of her adult life where she wasn't in some way affected by mental health problems. Alcohol. Pills. Suicide attempts. Depression. Who knows? She had been in and out of hospitals when I was very young. I spent a lot of time with my dad and my dad's family. 90% of my life my father was the most dependable man on earth. The other 10% he was dependably awful. My mother was a genius and a magician and an artist and an actress. But she was broken.

She lived broken on and off, finding stability here and there, but never did she ask for me. Never did she raise me. I saw her quite often. I remember visiting her in the very same mental hospital that I wound up staying in this very year. (I doubt it was the same bed. After all there are so few Freudians left.)

When I was seven, she seemed to get herself together. She got a job. She got a car. She found an apartment. A one bedroom. Of course. I slept on a couch. It was a cool sectional couch, and she would push the pieces together so that it was like a pen. And I would sleep there. It wasn't uncommon for her to leave me alone in that cushiony pen. I was only there to see her for less than 24 hours. Why would she want to spend all of them with me?

To her, I was brilliant. I was a masterpiece. I was funny and smart. I was adorable. I was clever. All I really knew, though, was not to cry. I knew not to bring her down. I knew that somehow if I showed her any of my own heartache or pain or suffering, she would find some way to turn it into hers. As pretty as she was (It's the first thing everyone says when they see her picture), if you looked carefully at her skin you could see the word guilt written all over it. She carried that with her. How could I dare to make it worse?

No. My pain was saved for my father. I would wake him up in the middle of the night, crying that I missed my mother. It was like a performance that you do in a musical. I would do it over and over again. I almost always performed it the same way but with genuine passion each time. I meant it. My tears were real. I did miss her.

But she was busy living her life. I was her good luck charm. I was the one good thing she'd done. How can I ever show her anything less? She remarried. She was deeply in love and she bought a house and she planted flowers and vegetables and grew a life that eventually came apart. And she came apart again. Again and again. When the stepmother died, the one who abused her and kicked her out after her real father had a heart attack and left the Earth, it definitely ripped her into pieces. Drinking and drinking and drinking. Trying her very best to end her life in the most natural ways. I always knew that I would never be allowed to be the one to fall apart. Not in front of her.

I waited.

She moved south so that she could be closer to the belly of the Earth. Florida. She always thought that she could move away from her problems. Of course they trailed behind her like those Mylar birthday balloons.

My story can't be too uncommon, but it doesn't fit the hateful back story that the enemies of narcissists would expect. You see, I had to build a false self because my mother demanded it. She couldn't love me if I was anything like her. It turns out I'm quite a bit like her. I might be shy a few suicide attempts, but I've got my own garden full of problems.

But my inner child is so far away. He didn't have a chance. I have pictures of my mother holding me up as a baby like I'm a trophy or a prize or a magic trick.

My mother loved the tenor Luciano Pavarotti. She even went to see him live in concert. I asked her to get me a concert shirt. She did. I wish I still had that shirt. Not too often you can wear a t-shirt with an Italian opera singer's name on it. In the 7th grade.

I mentioned a fairy tale at the beginning of this essay. I'm thinking of Puccini's Opera Turandot. The tenor who sings the Aria at the end, Nessun Dorma, challenges the princess who refuses to marry. He is certain that by the morning he will have won her hand. The last note of the song is sung with the word victory. I don't know what idiot first said that narcissists don't cry, or that narcissists don't feel grief, but they've never heard that Aria. I cry. I think of my mother of course. When Pavarotti's voice catches those notes and those breaths and builds towards that last crescendo, and then the orchestra comes in behind him... And if it's alive recording you can hear the crowd rising to its feet and cheering... It's hard not to cry.

I can't seem to undo what she did to me. I can't seem to stop seeing her as the prize. Because when I look at these pictures when she's holding me up, I don't see myself at all. All I see is her beautiful smile. All I see is her perfection. A perfection I did everything I could to support. To love. I ignored all of her flaws and I jumped to my feet whenever she sang that last note. Victory.

Puccini was right. I'm not sleeping tonight. I don't know if I'll ever sleep again.

Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle!

Tramontate, stelle! All’alba vincerò!

Vincerò! Vincerò!

I don't know what victory is supposed to look like. All I know is that I'm still alive and she's not. And I'm going to play that whole fucking opera over again from the beginning, until eventually I can't keep my eyes open one second longer. I will sleep tonight. Her sleep. The sleep of the dead and the victorious.