From a Long Line of Lunatics

By Chiacchierona

I never wanted or needed to be special, but my mother could not bear the thought of having an average child. No. I had to be special. I had to be some kind of genius or a prodigy or a virtuoso or SOMETHING, to please her. It started when I was about 4. The lessons. Piano lessons because, as she told me, she wanted piano lessons and her parents couldn't afford to give her lessons. It didn't matter that at 4 years old I didn't actually want to play the piano (and I kept right on not wanting to play the piano, but taking lessons, until I was 14). I also started ballet lessons, singing lessons, painting lessons, gymnastics lessons, all at the age of 4. I even auditioned for a play (well, my mother plopped me on a stage and I was told what to sing) at the age of 4. I was tested for our school district's "gifted and talented" program at age 4.

I failed early on at gymnastics, ballet, singing (I didn't get the part in the play), painting. The gifted and talented program told my mother that while I had a very high IQ, I was too talkative & they thought I'd distract the other baby geniuses, so they didn't accept me into their program. But my mother was determined her child would be talented, special in some way. If her child was special, well then that made her special by association. So like those crazy bitches on "Dance Moms", she was determined to turn me into a piano prodigy (partly because she'd always wanted to play herself, and partly because the piano teacher was the only one who didn't refuse to have me as a student after the first few lessons).

So I learned how to read music and how to sit up straight. The piano teacher (who wore the worst of wigs) would have these yearly recitals I had zero desire to participate in, but my mother would drag my father and my grandfather to see me perform like a trained monkey. And I had zero talent for the piano. What's more, I genuinely disliked having to go for lessons three times a week (for an hour each time) when the other kids got to go to the park. "Hanging out in the park won't get you anywhere in life," my mother would say, as though spending three hours a week in the home of a crazy old bat who put her wig on cockeyed was going to make me ruler of the universe. By the time I was in high school, I had lessons with the old bat three times a wek, and on Saturdays I had an all-day lesson (from 8 am to 4 pm) with the old bat's grown daughter, who played professionally for the New York Philharmonic.

And I hated it. I couldn't hang out with friends (and by "hang out with friends" I mean drink my face off and whore around) on Friday nights because I had to be up at 6 to be at my lesson for 8 (and not even god herself could help me if I showed up hungover). Perhaps the fact that my mother pushed me so vigourously into something I hated so much is why that was one of the rare occasions in my life when I told her "no". About halfway through my freshman year in high school I started saying I didn't wanna take lessons anymore, that I was never going to play professionally and so what was the point. Mommy wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I asked the old bat and her very dignified daughter who played for the New York Philharmonic if they could get me the sheet music to Nirvana's Come As You Are. They were both of the mindset that no good musio was written after the 17th century and were HORRIFIED that I wanted to play modern music. So they sat my mother down and explained I wasn't taking them seriously, didn't want to play serious music, and that it would be a waste of my grandfather's money to send me for any more lessons with them. But hey, after only ten short years of piano lessons, I learned how to manipulate three adults (the old bat, her daughter, and my own mother) into letting me stop taking the lessons. But unfortunately, a talent for manipulating people isn't the kind of talent my mother wanted me to develop.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chiacchierona
• Release date: Oct 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005298869

Chiacchierona

Snarky & sarcastic, Italian-American, living somewhere in NYC, a survivor and not a victim, using my voice to uplift others.

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From a Long Line of Lunatics

From a Long Line of Lunatics

By Chiacchierona

Copyright ©️ Chiacchierona, 2020

Cover design by Chiacchierona

All rights reserved.  Neither this book nor any portion thereof may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever except with the express consent of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

The events and conversations in this book all come from the author's recollections, though they are not written to represent word for word transcripts.  Rather, the author has retold them in a way that evokes the feeling and meaning of what was said, and in all instances, the essence of the dialogue is accurate.  Because this book discusses living persons, names have been changed, to protect their privacy.

This book talks about the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of a child, the cycle of secrecy and betrayal within a family, the over-sexualization of female children, alcoholism, the mental illness trifecta of depression, anxiety, and PTSD...those are hard things to talk about, they’re things we usually don’t talk about.  But this book also talks about getting and staying sober, going into therapy to deal with mental illness the right way, cleaning up the wreckage of the past, and breaking generational curses...those are hard things to do, and they’re things we don’t talk about.

I’m proud of the comeback I’ve been able to make, I’m immensely happy in the life I’ve made for myself.  I owe my comeback and my happy life to the twelve-step program I’ve been a member of for 8 years, to my therapist, & to Buddhist meditation.  If you read this and identify because your childhood was like mine, I hope you find your peace as I’ve found mine.  If you read this and wanna help someone like me, that’s great...and you can do that by donating to RAINN

(https://donate.rainn.org/donate)

From a Long Line of Lunatics

In April 2020 coronavirus had just started to grip the nation.  I was unemployed, AGAIN, I was having a panic attack & hadn't slept in two weeks.  That resulted in my seriously considering ending my life.  My regular shrink was MIA, having closed his office.  I spent an afternoon at Kings County's psychiatric emergency room, where I was given sleeping pills and sent home (because in the throes of a worldwide pandemic, sending a suicidal person home with a bottle full of pills is a good idea) and when the pills didn't help me (they made me agitated, not sleepy), I sought out a new therapist. 

We had therapy over Skype because this is the new normal, right.  And she was sitting there, in her office, at a desk, with a pen and pad in front of her.  Well let's start from the beginning, she said, tell me about your family.

Not much to tell, I said, we're Italian.

And what does it mean to be Italian?

Means we're always too close, even if we're not exactly fond of each other.

Too close?

No boundaries, I said, everything is a group activity.  When I was a kid, the whole extended family would go on vacation together in August, 50, sometimes 60 of us all in one hotel together.

And what was that like?

Well normal people go on vacation to get away from it all, we brought it all with us.  I noticed she'd started writing, and thought, it’s never a good sign when they write things down, but I continued, It was actually pretty great, having a bunch of first cousins and all growing up together.  It's a lot less great now we're all grown up and have all gone in different directions, it feels like we don't have anything in common anymore.

Writing faster, she said, Any history of mental illness in the family?

I come from a long line of lunatics, I said calmly.

Look, she leaned forward, this'll go faster if you don't waste my time with hyperbole, OK.

Of course, I said, my maternal grandfather was a sadist who raped me for an entire summer, and told me if I didn't let him do it to me, he'd do it to my sisters...I was ten, they still had their baby teeth.  As an adult, I found out that grandfather also raped my mother when she was a kid, because my maternal grandmother, his wife, couldn't give him any more children due to a miscarriage & subsequent hysterectomy, and he felt she was no longer a woman because of that.  Which brings me to my maternal grandmother...she suffered from depression most of her life, and at one point was treated with ECT.  My mother, their only offspring, is an untreated narcissistic borderline personality who continued her sexual relationship with her father up until his death despite being married to my father.  And that's just my mother's side of the family.

What about your father's side?

A cousin who had religious delusions, he once took a gun to a subway station in Harlem because he wanted to meet the devil.

And was he ever institutionalized?

No, I said, he hung himself instead.

All right, she scribbled furiously, you come from a long line of lunatics, got it.  Now tell me, is sarcasm your only unhealthy coping mechanism?

Binge eating, binge drinking, drunk me likes to smoke cigarettes...drunk me also likes to blow...sorry, I mean fellate, drunk me likes to fellate strange men in grotty bathrooms and/or backrooms, which is pretty funny, because sober me is really shy about all things sexual.

So, sarcasm, binge eating & binge drinking, smoking, and unsafe ORAL sex, I think it's safe to as-

Well yeah, I nodded, I had pica when I was a kid...loved to eat buttons, only stopped when my mother beat me for it.  She looked up from what she was writing.  So, I said, You were about to say I'm orally fixated, I was just agreeing with you.

Well, she said, you've told me about your relationship with your grandfather.  Tell me more about your relationship with your mother.

My mother wanted me to be special, I said, all my life she's been disappointed because I'm not.

Special?

Yeah, I said, not special like special ed, she wanted me to be prodigy or a virtuoso or a baby genius.  My mother wanted me to be special...

Special

I never wanted or needed to be special, but my mother could not bear the thought of having an average child.  No.  I had to be special.  I had to be genius or a prodigy or a virtuoso or SOMETHING, to please her.  It started when I was about 4.  The lessons.  Piano lessons because, as she told me, she wanted piano lessons and her parents couldn't afford to give her lessons.  It didn't matter that at 4 years old I didn't want to play the piano (and I kept right on not wanting to play the piano, but taking lessons, until I was 14).  I also started ballet lessons, singing lessons, painting lessons, gymnastics lessons, all at the age of 4.  I even auditioned for a play (well, my mother plopped me on a stage, and I was told what to sing) at the age of 4.  I was tested for our school district's gifted and talented program at age 4.

I failed early on at gymnastics, ballet, singing (I didn't get the part in the play), painting.  The gifted and talented program told my mother that while I had a very high IQ, I was too talkative & they thought I'd distract the other baby geniuses, so they didn't accept me into their program.  But my mother was determined her child would be talented, special in some way.  If her child was special, well then that made her special by association.  So like those crazy bitches on Dance Moms, she was determined to turn me into a piano prodigy (partly because she'd always wanted to play herself, and partly because the piano teacher was the only one who didn't refuse to have me as a student after the first few lessons).

So, I learned how to read music and how to sit up straight.  The piano teacher (who wore the worst of wigs) would have these yearly recitals I had zero desire to participate in, but my mother would drag my father and my grandfather to see me perform like a trained monkey.  And I had zero talent for the piano.  What's more, I genuinely disliked having to go for lessons three times a week (for an hour each time) when the other kids got to go to the park.  Hanging out in the park won't get you anywhere in life, my mother would say, as though spending three hours a week in the home of a crazy old bat who put her wig on cockeyed was going to make me ruler of the universe.  By the time I was in high school, I had lessons with the old bat three times a week, and on Saturdays I had an all-day lesson (from 8 am to 4 pm) with the old bat's grown daughter, who played professionally for the New York Philharmonic. 

And I hated it.  I couldn't hang out with friends (and by