Emo-TMI

Like most guys, I try to avoid crying. I don’t know why. I cried all the time in high school, and man, it got results. Sure, I had to be the drama queen which took a lot of energy and a willingness to make people hate you, but the ability to channel strong emotions sure made it easier to bend people to your will.

Maybe it’s just the energy. I’m too tired and too old to go around crying all the time. I whine a lot, which is kind of like crying. I’m a very good complainer. But when something even starts to elicit true tears and sorrow from me, I pull up this inside wall that shuts it off and I sort of dully frown through the sadness, or scrunch my face up into cry-ready status without actually shedding tears or letting go, like someone holding their breath in anticipation of being thrown in the pool.

My mom still makes me cry. Not really, not with tears, but she still makes me find that inner dam and fight back the dark emotions that lead to crying, so that counts, I think. She’s been depressed lately, part of a long and surprisingly painful rehabilitation from back surgery. In most moms, one could write this off as the product of too much coddling in life, but she’s fought cancer twice and heart disease once, and in each case, she always found a way to bounce back emotionally before the work was finished bouncing back physically. This time, it appears, from the outside, like someone wallowing in death and finality. She’s dropped an alarming amount of weight. She sleeps more than a koala. She treats doctors and nurses and physical therapists with contempt that borders on rage. With little to no provocation, she cries, all the time.

I had a tearful phone conversation with her on Friday night, which was tough — in particular because it came after my first two beers in a month. We discussed things like how much she means to me and why I need her around, as well as more personal family dynamics, and basically I got her to break down and fully weep on the phone. Makes a man feel like shit, weeping. I vowed to write her a letter in my own handwriting on an actual piece of paper, something I have yet to do.

Last night, she called and left a voicemail. She was crying. She was telling me that she’s ready to get better now, which was very good to hear, but then, after her 30-second message, she neglected to hang up the phone, and I got two full minutes of candid distant aftermath, with her wailing and crying about “my boy, my baby” while my dad’s voice corralled my 18-month-old nephew in the background and life continued in its silence and chaos between the sobs. She’s become noisy and uncomfortable furniture in her own house. I can hardly blame my dad for letting it come to this; he has to be a saint to be handling this at all, especially since he likes crying way less than even I do. I just feel stuck — it’s like she wants me to return to the flooded, overdriven teenaged soul who would ride the emotional roller coaster with her. I’d like to, but I’ve felt some real pain in my life now and besides, who wants to turn back into the kind of person who fucks over friends and tries to commit suicide with decongestants? I’m flawed enough, thank you.

So I’m feeling this emotional distance from my sick mother who probably has to keep a bucket at her feet for all the tears. When I picture the dynamic in a restaurant or some other public place, I’m fully aware of how I’d be the asshole, no matter what conciliatory bullshit I managed to spin with my words. Is empathy for a mom really that much to ask? But how does one care for a mother? How does one return the gushing geyser of love that was given? It feels unfair, to have to hand back, even in small increments, all the unconditional support and tender sacrifice that was poured into my life throughout childhood. I need that stuff. If I give it back to her, well, she’ll have it again, but I’ll be this shell. I already feel like a shell, sometimes. I retreat into one, when people cry.

A churchy person would tell me about candle flames, and how they’re like love, and how sharing a candle flame doesn’t diminish your own in the slightest; it simply lights another’s. But I didn’t spend my life training with metaphors for nothing. Love might be a candle flame, but our bodies are made of candle wax. Mine’s already burning down too quickly to risk dripping any on the carpet for a dangerous tilt toward an extinguishing taper. (Jack Canfield’s Chicken Soup for the Selfish Asshole Soul, coming to bookstores near you.) I wasn’t kidding when I pleaded with her to live, to feel better, to fight. I do need her. But I need her to be her without needing me to be with her. I need the low maintenance. It’s the same frustration many a person feels upon becoming sick for an extended period of time, when they think, “Man, what I wouldn’t give to just breathe normally again. I’ll never again take breathing normally for granted.” Yes, you will. You are right now. That’s how I feel about having a self-sustaining mother.

Okay, back to the what-should-I-do question. Since we’re not talking terminal illness, I don’t think there’s an obligation to move home, particularly since my sister and father are already there. She’s hardly alone or without support. Should I call more? Okay, but crying shuts me down or drains me of the will to live, and I can’t cope with that on a nightly basis. I should probably just write that damn letter.

But I don’t want to.

I don’t know what to say.

I’m writing this, here, instead.

And not crying.