Mommy Issues
I have a problem, it’s a real problem. I can’t stop falling in love with and being angry at mommies. They love me right back. I am scared of them and their earthy, resentful knowledge. Mommies at the grocery store, mommy boss, mommy clients, mommy sommelier. Some of them have tight bodies and wear false eyelashes, some of them eat dinner in their cars. All of them are devastatingly exhausted and capable, more than I could ever dream to be. We can’t stop finding each other, the mommies and I, mommy after mommy, I swear! What is it about my face? I’m not even a girl. The next mommy I meet I will ignore! I will say, forget about me, I am nobody’s daughter!
Akashic Records Reading
In December, I received an Akashic Records reading by a cheerful and pretty actress-turned-psychic who was almost too overwhelmed by my spirit guides to be able to communicate what they needed me to know. She kept rolling the dice and saying, “They have SO much to tell you.” Our reading was only twenty minutes; there was much left unsaid. She told me I needed to quit my job. She told me I had been tricked by my current mommy boss. Of all the mommy bosses in my life, this one was the prettiest. I thought I had cracked the mommy code, thought I had settled this. The records said it wasn’t over. I was horrified with her accuracy, until I remembered that most people feel exploited at work. She told me my mommy wound protrudes, bright and throbbing, like a bruise. I worried that I could quit my job, but I would find a mommy in every direction.
He Needs Helps Like Me
I hate the man who receives therapy after me. Not because I am an only child who was never taught to share, not because I think of my therapist as mommy and I also cannot share mommy, not even because he shows up early to each session, reliably buzzing the doorbell at 2:40 pm, 15 minutes early, each week. I hate him because, like me, he needs help. He, who allegedly cannot hear the ends of my sessions due to a mild noise-canceling machine that sounds like the ocean, why is he entangled in my therapy ritual? It is displeasing to see another needy fool, eager to present the experiences and imaginations and epiphanies of the week. I dislike reminders that I am utterly unspecial. My fabricated beef with this man I don’t know confirms the reasons I go to therapy. How embarrassing it is, to be witnessed and to witness.
She’s not Esther Perel or Orna
I’m not even sure I like my therapist. It feels silly to be competitive over someone I’m not sure I like. Her office is decorated well enough, there are plants and oil paintings of the French countryside, but her outfits are casual and Californian. My therapist is a little boring. Or, perhaps she is bored. She is too relaxed and sometimes brushes her own hair with her fingers as I discuss my mommy. I fantasize about having a stylish therapist. She doesn’t scare me or like me too much, like the mommies do. I stay with her because I don’t feel the need to impress her, she is not mommy, and this is good.
Who Is a Mommy?
A mommy wants to heal and scold. A mommy is tired of my shit .Not all bosses are mommies, but all my bosses are. I cannot yet discern. I try to please until I become vapor and then I quit, I leave. Why is the woman who tells me what to do, not also protecting me?
Hands on Hips
I met someone. I met her in a garden on the roof of a bar. It was a crisp May day. The garden itself was shy, like me. Buds were visible, but no plant was at their sultry late summer fullness. The girl was skinny and wore clogs and squinted at me with suspicion. Instantly, I was hers. I have a thing for mean girls, to go with my mommy problem. The girl in the garden and I talked about why we were each there. She alternated between crossing her arms over her chest and placing her hands on her hips. I wanted to tell her with words that I already knew we were going to love each other, but I said it in silence, by sitting next to her on the wooden bench in the garden, and by offering her a cigarette.
Mean Girls
I told my therapist about the mean girl I met. I said it through my teeth, “I met someone.” My therapist smiled and I pivoted to my mom. If I didn’t loosen my mommy grip soon, I feared I wouldn't be able to make it work with my new mean girl. A terrible dance, between my favorite archetypes. I traced my ricochet back and forth from mean girl back to mommy, unraveling my flimsy and quaking rationale. Sometimes the mommies are mean girls. The mean girls always need mommies.
Are You My mommy?
I tried to think about my own mother as a person, as if she was someone else’s mother. I tried to see her for who she is, I tried to picture her as a child and I tried to remember that I was her child. My therapist is not the kind to say phrases like radical empathy or radical acceptance, but this is what we are after.
Blue Spit
The mean girl liked me and I knew this because she texted me back quickly. She asked to go on a walk. We walked in her neighborhood on a humid early June afternoon and bought one firecracker popsicle to share. She told me about her old lover who sounded skittish and judgemental like me. I told her about my job and about my akashic reading. We sucked on the firecracker popsicle as if it were a third lover. I almost lost interest in her because of her ability to communicate, until she spit on my shoe in the middle of our walk. It was a lot of spit, a lot of blue spit from the popsicle we were sharing, which was already kind of gross, to be sharing a popsicle. I decided I already loved her that much, to share a popsicle with her and to let her spit on my shoe.
My shoes were mesh, for aeration, possibly even for aerodynamics, but the mesh did nothing to protect my toes from her blue popsicle spit. I felt her spit on my toe but I said nothing. I wanted to show her she could not irk me, she could not disgust me. I was trying out radical acceptance, which is something I didn’t exactly know the definition of, but I thought at this moment, this is radical acceptance, letting her spit on my mesh tennis shoe and not react. I never knew I wanted someone to spit on my foot. She must have known I needed a shock.
We both stared at her blue spit on my shoe and then stared at each other. She reached her sticky and sweaty hand to my neck and pulled me in for a sloppy kiss. I let her swallow me.
After our walk, I became paralyzed with lust and found myself unable to text her back. I almost texted my mean girl, want to spit on my foot again sometime? But I immediately censored myself, embarrassed by the thought of actually telling her what I wanted. It would never work between us and I already knew this. I was much too obsessed with her already and this obsession would never last. I could have expressed this knowing but I held it in my throat, in my glands, and resolved to talk about our relationship in my next therapy session.