Nearly Normal

by Cea Sunrise Person

  At long last, the door opened to admit our counsellor. “I’m Alice,” she said, all perky smiles and professional pantsuit.

  I instantly felt at ease.

  “Sorry about the wait—it’s nuts around here today. Now. What concern has brought you in?”

  Remy gave me an encouraging look, and I cleared my throat. “It’s . . . my family. My family of origin, I mean. This is hard for me to explain, but . . . mental illness runs deep. My mother had three siblings, and they were all affected. One was bipolar and schizophrenic. One was born mentally challenged. My uncle was the worst—he was a severely paranoid schizophrenic.”

  Alice nodded. “And your mother?”

  “Yes. Not those things, but . . . something. She was slow. Terrible memory. Couldn’t do basic math. I mean, she smoked a lot of pot, but it was more than that . . .” I let my voice trail off, frustrated as always by my inability to explain my family’s indefinable strangeness to others, and even to myself.

  “Hmm. All four children—that is certainly unusual. And your grandparents?”

  “I think my grandmother was okay—depression, but that’s about it. My grandfather, though—he was very narcissistic. Wasn’t really interested in talking about anything that didn’t involve himself. Maybe . . . I’ve sometimes thought he had a narcissistic personality disorder? He did some really crazy things in his life.”

  “And how about you? Any health concerns?”

  I glanced quickly at Remy. He knew about my history with depression, but it was still one of those things I found uncomfortable talking about around someone who’d never experienced it. I imagined that he pictured me lying in bed with the blinds drawn for days, wringing my hands and weeping. The reality was that one could pass a whole lifetime being depressed without another person ever knowing it.

  “Depression,” I said. “Years of Celexa.”

  “Okay. And your concern is that your baby could be affected by any number of these mental illnesses?”

  “Yes. My first son is fine, but—yes, I worry.” I’d actually felt like I was rolling the dice when I got pregnant with Avery, but my strong desire for a baby combined with my apprehension to discuss my fears with James had prevented me from doing anything about it. There wasn’t a day that passed that I wasn’t grateful my son was healthy.

  Alice and I got down to details. She wanted everything—physical descriptions, speech patterns, medical histories, body shapes, unusual habits, estimated intelligence. She nodded thoughtfully while I spoke, revealing details I hadn’t thought about in years. To my surprise, I began to feel emotional.

  “It’s just . . .” I leaned toward her. “I’ve had a long road with my family. And I just don’t think . . . I don’t know if I can handle any more mental health issues. I’ve spent my whole life wondering what the hell is wrong with my family. I want answers that I’ll probably never get.”

  Alice flipped open a massive medical book. “To me, it sounds possible that your family was suffering from this genetic condition—Fragile X. It results in intellectual disability and some of the physical features you described, like long faces. Now, is it possible to obtain a genetic sample from any of them?”

  “You mean like hair or spit or something? No. My mother and grandparents have passed away, and I don’t know where my aunts or uncle even are anymore.”

  “Ah. That’s unfortunate. The best I can do, then, is offer the tests to you. It’s possible that you are a carrier of the gene without being affected. If the tests come back positive, you will have your answer. But if they’re negative, it doesn’t mean we can rule it out—it means only that you aren’t a carrier. This doesn’t mean that your family doesn’t have it, necessarily, only that it wasn’t passed to you. In other words, without testing one of them directly, we’ll never know for certain.”

  “And if it’s positive . . . can I pass it to my own child?”

  “No. You or your husband would need to be a full premutation carrier, meaning you display the symptoms, and that’s not the case.”

  I exhaled with relief. No matter what, my unborn child was safe from the Person curse of craziness. That should have been enough for me, but I realized it was only half of the answer I was seeking.

  A few days later, I went to the clinic to have blood drawn.

  “How long until I get the results?” I asked the receptionist.

  She pulled out a folding chart that flopped open onto her desk and ran a finger down it. “Let’s see . . . Can’t say I’ve ever seen this particular test run before . . . Here it is. Looks like about eight weeks.”

  Eight weeks. As my belly grew, so did my impatience. Not a single day went by without me thinking about it, wondering if I was finally going to get my answer. I hoped upon hope for a positive result. One moment I’d think that a concrete answer would mean everything to me, and the next, I would think, Would it really? What would it change? But that question was too easy. I’d spent my entire life feeling like an outsider looking in, and having this confirmed would justify those feelings. The pain and the unfairness I felt over ending up with a completely insane family. Yes, I was nearly forty years old. Sure, I prided myself on how I had moved on and beyond. But in my darker moments, I still recognized the truth: that those negative emotions lingered, even if as a shadow of their former versions. I was still pissed off. Maybe if there was a genetic component that I could point to, I could really and truly forgive.

  I waited. And when the call finally came, I glanced down at my cell-phone screen and just held the phone for a moment while it rang, prolonging the inevitable. I took a deep breath and picked up.

  “Cea. It’s Alice from BC Genetics. I have your test results.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s good news. Your test came back negative.” Alice was a smart woman. My two beats of silence conveyed my feelings. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “You’re disappointed.”

  “It’s so stupid, but . . . yes. A little.”

  “You wanted concrete answers. I’m sorry it wasn’t to be.”

  I pressed my palm into my forehead. This, for me, was the end of the road. “I was just . . . hoping, that’s all. For an answer. I mean . . .” I shook my head, wishing I could sum up the craziness of my family in one perfectly significant event. “My mother gave me a birthday party in a garden centre, for god’s sake!”

  Alice laughed. “Well, that’s certainly original. But don’t forget, this doesn’t conclude anything. There still may be a genetic component. If you want my personal opinion, your mother and her siblings were predisposed to mental illness, and the heavy drug use in their teens pushed them over the edge.”

  “Yes, that makes sense. Just . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “My grandfather. What about him?”

  “Cea. From everything you’ve described, it’s clear to me that he had a disorder. For you to have come through it all as you have, and for your children to, is nothing short of incredible. Forget the genetic component for a minute. What you went through being raised by these people is miraculous. I think that’s all the answer you need.”

  “You’re right. Thank you so much.”

  I hung up the phone, reflecting for a moment. Alice was right. This was the answer I needed to settle for. It had to be enough. I must let go now, focus on building the next generation of the Person family. So why was I left feeling like I had been handed the fruit of healing, only to bite into it and find it rotten?

  2012

  Vancouver

  I sat on the sofa with my laptop across my legs, typing as fast as my fingers would allow. Any minute now the front door would open, letting the chilly spring air into the house along with my husband and three children, signalling an end to my writing time for the week.

  Finishing the chapter and closing my laptop, I felt the familiar mix of satisfaction and self-doubt settle in. I was almost done with what had to be the twentieth draft of my memoir. In a few weeks, I would query agents again, and
the fate of my life story would once more be in someone else’s hands. Am I a fool to continue like this? How many hours of work have I put in now? I have so much good in my life. Why can’t I just give this stupid idea up and move on?

  I made a frustrated sound and jumped up to start the laundry. Once more, my world had been radically transformed. Recreated, I reminded myself. You made this happen. Be proud of yourself. I sighed, annoyed at the constant dialogue that ran through my head. I did have so much—Remy, my amazing and supportive husband of three years; Avery, now a well-adjusted seven-year-old with two loving households; two-year-old Emerson, my adorable second son; Ayla, my beautiful newborn baby girl; a house in the suburbs; a fantastic relationship with my father; wonderful friends; and even a minivan, for god’s sake. What more could I possibly desire?

  Peace with your past. Forgiveness toward your family. The ability to make sense of all the pain.

  Despite having rewritten my manuscript countless times, a sense of closure still eluded me. When I read the words back to myself, all I felt was a strange detachment, as if the story had everything to do with a protagonist named Cea and nothing to do with me. The puzzle pieces of my life still didn’t fit.

  I thought about my mother’s memorial, almost five years ago now. My aunt Jan had waited until we had a private moment, and then she told me something I thought I’d never hear—that my mother had sent a message to me that she was sorry about what happened with Barry. As I sat listening to my aunt’s words, I realized it had been thirty years almost to the day that he had molested me by forcing me to touch him. Though I wished the words had come directly from my mother, that acknowledgment of her mistake had helped me move forward. But really, it was only a small piece in the maddeningly complex jigsaw of my life.

  I had come to think that having a publisher believe in my story would validate how insane my life had been and help to heal me in a way that nothing else had. But what if this never happened? How would I muddle through my existence without ever knowing where I stood on the scale of crazy, dysfunctional, distinctive childhoods?

  Ayla cried out, signalling the end of her afternoon nap. I walked to the bedroom and scooped her out of the crib, smiling at her warm red cheeks. She put her arms around my neck and laid her face against mine.

  “Should we get dinner started? Daddy will be home soon,” I said, placing her in her Bumbo seat. She waved her arms excitedly at her brothers, who were sitting at the kitchen island drawing.

  “Look, Mommy,” Avery said, holding up his picture. “It’s all of us!”

  “Honey, it’s beautiful,” I said, and it was. There weren’t many things more special than these moments when everyone was happy, and my children were creating things that proved their sense of contentment and belonging within our family. My kids’ lives were more stable than I could have dreamed of as a child. There, see? You’re a success. Nothing like your mother.

  I put water on to boil for the pasta and grabbed my phone to check my email. When I saw the message, I froze. Quickly, before I could read a single word, I clicked the phone off and put it down. I wasn’t ready for this, and I didn’t know exactly when I would be.

  Two months ago, I had sent my third round of query letters out to agents. I’d had a few bites, but only one agent had wanted to read beyond the first fifty pages. I’d sent her my entire manuscript several weeks ago, and now her answer was sitting in my inbox. If she said no, it would all be over—again.

  I couldn’t take it any longer. I picked up my phone, held my breath and opened the email, scanning it quickly.

  Dear Ms. Person . . . read the entire manuscript . . . you’re an excellent writer . . . but I’ll never find a home for this . . . not very interesting . . . sad and upsetting . . . good luck.

  The air whooshed out of my lungs. In the background, I could hear Remy opening the front door, shouting hello, the boys running to him, Ayla babbling happily. I felt faint. How many hours? Not just of my own life, but of Remy’s, of my children’s?

  “Hey,” Remy said as he entered the kitchen. He gave me a kiss and then studied my face. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I replied with a nod. “I’m fine.” It was all I could get out. Remy and my children had seen me cry before, but with the shedding of these tears, they would also be witnessing the death of my dream.

  “Scat!” said my father triumphantly, laying his cards on the table. “That would be my seventy-five cents right here, thank you very much.” He scooped the change into his palm, and I rolled my eyes.

  “About time you won.” I reached for the bowl of chips and eyed the clock. “Remy should be home from work soon. I guess I should get the kids off the TV.”

  Dad smiled at me. Our visits were regular but too far between, and they were forever run by three children clamouring for their grandfather’s attention. When a rare silence fell, it was always an easy one. I gave a little laugh.

  “What’s funny?” Dad asked.

  “Nothing. I was just thinking of that time I went to visit you when I was eight. How scared I was to be alone with you. Terrified, really.”

  “Yes. That was pretty horrible for me.” He gave me a sideways look. “Have you ever thought about why you reacted that way?”

  “Thought about it? Of course, a ton. I always figured it was because of what was going on with Barry at the time, but now I think it was something different.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that out. I was hoping it would all come out when I started writing about my past, but . . .” I shrugged. “I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Are you really going to quit? Even that horrible agent said you were an excellent writer.”

  I grinned. It was true that in all my disappointment over her rejection letter, I had overlooked her one compliment. But she had indeed succeeded in killing my dream, because eight months had passed since I’d received that letter, and I hadn’t written a word since.

  “Okay, great. So first I had a good story and terrible writing, then I had good writing and a terrible story. I don’t know. What’s the point? I mean, I had two goals going into this—to get published and to work out my past. But neither of those things has happened.”

  “And why did you want to get published?”

  “For the money, mostly. To try to save myself from that awful financial hole I was in.”

  “And now you don’t need to be saved anymore. So don’t you think this is a wonderful opportunity? To be able to just write freely with no pressure to be published?”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that before. Even after I met Remy, I’d always written my book as if it were my lifeline, proof to myself that I could support myself financially if he left me. Some might call that a practical tactic, but I recognized that it meant I wasn’t quite ready to believe in us yet. In a way, though he’d never given me any reason not to trust him completely, I’d been preparing for him to leave me.

  “What I really wanted to write this book for was to help others. To reach out to people like myself who felt like outsiders. But I was in such a desperate financial situation that writing it for that reason seemed like a luxury I couldn’t afford.”

  “Maybe that’s why you weren’t able to get it right,” Dad said carefully. “Maybe purpose has everything to do with it. Finding your purpose, and making sense of it.”

  I nodded slowly. What my father said made so much sense that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it myself, but the thought of delving as deep as I needed to in order to make sense of things was terrifying. Dad reached across the table and took my hand. “You did not come through so much in your life for nothing. You have a message to deliver. Don’t miss this opportunity.”

  I smiled at his insight. Though my father had been absent from my childhood, when he did show up for me, he showed up big. He’d given me the money to start my modelling career when I was thirteen, and he’d been there for me when I hit rock-bottom after leaving James. In
the years I’d gotten to know him, I was continually shocked by our similarities—we had the same habits, temperament and values. It made me believe all the more strongly that we simply were who we were at birth, and that environment had little to do with the person we ultimately become. Maybe the reason I’d endured so much as a child had less to do with creating my personality than creating my life’s purpose.

  So, yes, I would write my story. Only this time, I would write it not as if my life depended on it, but as if someone else’s did.

  1998

  Munich

  —PTSD.

  —What’s that?

  —Post-traumatic stress disorder.

  —Oh. Right. What about it?

  —I believe you had it. Classic symptoms, from what you’ve described.

  —What? That’s impossible. My life was never that—

  —Traumatic? Cea. Do you even listen to yourself when you speak to me?

  —Of course.

  —So, then. Can you please just reflect a little here, and accept that your childhood was difficult? Too much, maybe, for a little girl to handle on her own?

  —I guess so, but—

  —But what?

  —But it wasn’t that bad. I was never, like, tortured or raped or anything.

  —And you think that people who experience that are the only ones who experience trauma?

  —I don’t know. I mean, at least I had a mother who loved me. That’s a lot more than a lot of other kids had.

  —A mother who loved you, yes. And so, you had no right to anything more than that? Not a real childhood, not stability? Not protection?

  —That’s right. It could have been a million times worse.

  —Yes, it could have been. But let me explain something to you. Your fear of war, when you first moved to the city. Your anxiety and panic—

  —What about them?

  —Let’s review a little bit. Age five and six, you endure a life on the run with your mom’s boyfriend. You’re constantly terrified of being discovered by the people he’s stealing from, of the cops coming after you and of losing your mother. You watch your beloved dog get shot in front of you. You survive a fire, getting lost in the forest and squatting in other people’s homes. Then you move in with Karl’s mother, who treats you like you’re so much dirt. Your mother repeatedly leaves you alone so she can meet up with her lover. You watch her have a miscarriage—