What’s worse than having no parents, no job and crappy prospects for the future? Having all that and being thrown out of your house, of course.
It was one of the “relapses” that I experienced during that time. My Mum was dumping on me, my sister was panicking and in pain and started I screaming and shouting again. Although this time it was a little different…I think it was at night and I was terribly depressed, trying to keep calm and failing while sitting with a couple of pillows. My mother was in the opposite sofa and doing her best to make things worse.
I can’t remember what triggered it but I got angry enough to tell her to fuck off, after which she continued repeating it in a kind of broken, singsong voice.
I got mad. I got REALLY mad. I got so mad that I took a pillow and hit her with it. Kinda low-key, I know, no knives or tables or anything. Just a pillow.
She went nuts. Nuts enough to call the police and get them to try and evict me. When they didn’t (I can distinctly recall the junior officer looked slightly disappointed – his expression seemed to be saying – they call me out for this? No open wounds? No bleeding or broken bones?) she demanded I leave and locked the door behind me so I couldn’t get back in – the door had a top lock which only she had the key for. The reason she gave for this was that the pillow’s zipper could have caught her eye and potentially blinded her. She also called the domestic abuse hotline and poured out her woes about her violent and uncontrollable son who apparently was a roving menace with pillows. According to her “the mother is always the first one to be attacked” and that she had to “protect herself by any means necessary.”
So I made my way to my Dad’s house, which I’m sure as you’ll recall was not the most welcoming of places. I didn’t have any alternative at that time.
It was there in the first night, huddled on the of my Dad’s house in what was supposedly “my room” (like I ever had any roomsI) that I had the worst OCD of my life, one which would never really go away in the years that followed.
(Warning : the following could be a bit distressing. Stay away if you are afraid of bugs, insects or cockroaches, or if you have trigger issues.)
Since I was a kid I have been mortally afraid of cockroaches. It would take me two hours to go to sleep after seeing one sometimes. I’m not sure where I got this fear – I can remember when I was young a cockroach flying into my face (which would of course cause this) but some youthful memories are unreliable. It could also have been from living in my parental Grandma’s house when I was younger, because there were tons of them there.
I conjured image after image to help me go to sleep, to keep the nightmares at bay and it was no use. It was worse than no use. Because everything that I had imagined to help myself was covered with cockroaches instead. It was like cockroaches were running over everything I ever loved and I Couldn’t. Make. It. Stop.
Somehow I made it through the night. The next day wasn’t much better. I can remember being led around in a half-dead haze around half of Ikea, trying to buy a bed and chair. Once again my Dad’s inner child was as active as ever. “We’re gonna get you a chair, and a bed, and then maybe a desk, and it’s gonna be ok! You’ll see! You’ll love it!” I didn’t tell him about the OCD, about what I was feeling, about anything. How could I? It wouldn’t have helped.
I went back to Dr Tan for medication and Dewi…I think? It’s all a blur. In the months to come his house was not any more welcoming than it had been at any time. If anything, it was worse. Yes, I played some games (I always played games, they were fun and kept me sane, two great reasons to keep on doing it.) I surfed the Net. I masturbated furiously. Anything to keep the pain away.
I actually played World of Warcraft during that time, for lack of anything better to do. I can’t say I enjoyed it very much. It was “vanilla WoW” – which is to say something so far removed of the WoW of today that is bears no resemblance other than the name. I don’t remember much of it. I can only remember being so angry and upset that I bitched about my family situation in guild chat (despite the fact that everyone knows you’re not supposed to talk about your family!) and everything else be damned.
I remember having futile late-night conversations with my father and his wife about “sorting things out” and “clearing the air.” Futile because first off, you can’t have much of a conversation when only two of the three people involved speak the same language. Judy was not any more accommodating or – if anything, she was less. It was evident to everyone except my father than she didn’t want anyone except her and her husband in the same house.
So it was more of the endless dance of trying to please my Dad and his wife, while no one gave a rat’s ass about how I felt.
I don’t remember much of this time at all. It was similar in nature to the tail end of my suicidal period, after I had left the EVA ML and just before The End of an Era. I know I did some freelance work for my uncle, which was interesting and frustrating at the same time. I played games, I surfed the Net, I…wait I just wrote that above.
I began to see just how much my father cherished his illusions. He was still stuck in a fantasy world in which one day, his wife and son and daughter would all kiss and make up and Live Happily Ever After. He refused (or was unable) to see just how far gone his ex-wife was. Though about a year later (or two, I can’t quite recall) I do remember him making a very grave face and remarking that he simply could not understand her actions. I guess some truths were powerful enough to punch through even my father’s tried and true delusional habits.
I was also seriously getting fed up of Aunty Judy at this time. My patience was worn thin from nearly a decade of putting up with assorted nonsense from supposed “adults”. I think that for a while I refused to even see her or attend any family gathering where she was present.
Of course, deeper down I was very very hurt. Firstly, the flare-up of OCD was quite painful in the extreme. Anyone who has experienced it knows that it takes time and space to heal, and I was given neither. You throw me out of one house and practically do the same at another and expect me to feel good about it? More anger and hatred flared, though I was more adept at dealing with it this time.
What happened to the OCD? I handled it the same way as I did the other outbreaks…just ignore it and hope it will go away. I think it did eventually. Once again I was so relieved I didn’t ask questions and just tried to go on with life as normal.
I eventually returned home (such as it was) after a while, with firm instructions from my Mum to “not be violent.” Pillows, such weapons of mass destruction and overwhelming terror that the world has never seen the like ever since.