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218 16 A Schizo-ly Situated Daughter A Mother’s Labor E l i z a b e t h M e t c a l f At one time I agreed with the theory on “schizophrenogenic mothers ,” insisting I had one to all who would listen to my expertise about the etiology of my creative brain. Prior to that, I thought “Munchausen by proxy” caused my psychiatric disability and that I was my mother’s proxy. (Munchausen by proxy runs in the gene pool I call family. I have a cousin who breeds new and imaginative ailments in her elderly mother each year: two years ago it was Alzheimer’s, which miraculously cleared up by the following Christmas . . . go figure.) Someone had to be blamed for the wiring in my brain, and my mother was an easy target, being my sole familial caregiver. I have seen more than my share of in-patient units, and discourses rich with mother-blame abound, as moms can never reach the pinnacle of selfless perfection that some of us desire, no matter how hard they may try. Like most, Mom and I had our share of difference in my upbringing , but she made up for all previous shortcomings when, at age twentyseven , after a harrowing graduate program, I could no longer care for myself in any responsible way. I moved back under her roof. She is a tough, stoic woman but her voice broke when she said, “You will always have a home here, Elizabeth.” I was not exactly thrilled with the arrangement , as my peers were entertaining ideas of new jobs and relationships and the highlight of my year was getting SSDI, which at the time signaled to me defeat, a notion I have since given up because the aid served its purpose when I needed it. A Schizo-ly Situated Daughter • 219 Mom only worked outside the house occasionally; caring for me was a full-time job. I think she would have liked actual paid labor, as she always talked about going back to work one day. But my fear was so out of control I could not go anywhere alone, so even grocery shopping was done in tandem. We had an agreement: I would buy her tuna fish if she would pay for my tampons as my food stamps would cover only what you could eat. We figured that those who constructed the program must have been men. Mom has no formal education past high school but quickly became an expert social worker. She wore many and diverse hats in varied vocations throughout my fifteen-year career as a psychiatric patient: Case manager. My mother’s training in bookkeeping made navigating the Medicaid spend-down process a cinch; the endless forms involving computations gave her a project to showcase her math wizardry. Motivational counselor. I took a three-year sabbatical on the couch in her living room, my depression so debilitating I would only get up to buy cigarettes every day as she refused to enable the addiction and knew it was the sole reason I ventured out of the house; she was always volunteering ideas for me, chanting, “You must do something with your time!” Physical therapist. The side effects of the medicines would cause my muscles to get rigid and stuck in excruciatingly painful positions in the middle of the night. It would take me an hour to get one arm free to ring the cowbell next to my bed. . . . The sound was her cue to get up and begin to soothe the muscles on the contorted body that lay screeching in agony. (The doctors told me this does not happen on the particular cocktail. . . . They lied.) Security guard. At times I could not close my eyes to go to sleep for fear that the reaper in my depressive hallucinations would hurt me. Mom read her books outside my door until I fell asleep and promised to slay the reaper if he came too close. Julie, my cruise director. Life in the hospital was a monotonous series of the following events: eat, sleep, smoke, and entertain the residents. When I was locked up locally, Mom brought the Scrabble game every night, at times breaking the rules of visiting hours until she got caught and ushered out by nurses who took their jobs a bit too seriously. Once she stressed out the nurses by bringing my chocolate Lab, who loped through the unit [18.116.13.113] Project MUSE...

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