When my parents didn’t have faith in “normal” healthcare anymore, they went looking for and were trying out alternative medicine. My mom tried out healing crystals, reiki, dowsing and went to psychics. I remember my parents taking me along in the evening to go to some weird places for some alternative healing. I was too young to stay home alone and my sister and brother both had their basketball and soccer training. I really didn’t like going to these places. They had weird vibes and I just didn’t feel comfortable there. I don’t think my mom really liked the alternative healing, but she just wanted to try everything out. She did stick with the dowsing a long time. She had a pendulum under her pillow and used it twice or three times a day, I think.
During her illness (whatever it was) my mom was always convinced there was something wrong inside her. Something physically/internally. She refused to believe it was a mental illness. Besides going to hospitals, doctors and alternative healers, my mom was always examining her own saliva or spit or throw-up or whatever it was she could get out of her mouth. In the very beginning it was just my mom spitting on her hand a few times a day, looking at it and then wiping it on something. It changed to my mom doing the same and asking people around her: ‘Do you think this is a weird colour?’ ‘Does this look healthy to you?’ . But at some point it escalated.
My mom spent her days in her bedroom. She was either sleeping or spitting/throwing up on a plastic binbag on the floor. She was sticking her fingers down her throat for hours. At some point she started to put sandwich bags on her hands. I think it’s because the acid was damaging her hands.
My parent’s bedroom was disgusting. There were binbags and sandwich bags everywhere. There were open binbags filled with used binbags and binbags on the floor. Besides my parent’s bedroom being filthy as fuck, the rest of the house was also pretty neglected. We had carpet tiles with fabric that was completely dissolved, everything was dirty or broken or both, we had two balconies that were packed with binbags and loose garbage and the entire house reeked of saliva and stomach acid.
On top of it all, my parents smoked a lot. Like A LOT A LOT. Almost all rooms had wallpaper and almost all wallpaper was supposed to be creamy white. I think I don’t have to explain to you that it definitely wasn’t white anymore. It was filthy brownish.
My brother, sister and I never really realized it till we were much older, but our entire youth we smelled like tobacco. Four years ago I talked to an old primary school teacher of mine and she told me the same. Everything I brought to school, smelled of tobacco. How extremely embarrassing.
Back to my mom. My mom kinda quit eating at some point. She thought everything that she consumed, was destroying her from the inside. Maybe she ate a little, I can’t remember. But it sure wasn’t a lot. She did drink coffee. She went to the snack bar in front of our house, had a couple of coffees and returned to her bedroom after.
At some point examining throw-up wasn’t enough anymore and she took a step further in examining other things. I am not ready to really type that out, but I’m sure your imagination and the continuing of this story will fill in the gap for you.
I was never really embarrassed of my mom, but that changed a lot when her bladder and bowel incontinence started. We would sometimes go to a lunchroom on a boulevard on Sundays. I went alone with my parents, my brother and sister never came along. My parents would drink coffee and I would have something to drink and something to eat.
When we would leave, my father had to walk behind my mother to hide the fact that she had an accident. That didn’t happen just once. It was every single time. And I was so embarrassed every single time.
I just really wished it would stop. I wanted everything to go away. I didn’t even know what normal was and how things were supposed to be. But I knew that I wanted that.
