In an Aeroplane Over the Sea
by Pallavi Kidambi - September 27, 2007
by Pallavi Kidambi - September 27, 2007
In an Aeroplane over the Sea
My eyes had trouble adjusting to the sunlight. I had just opened the window beside me and it was quite a contrast to the darkness of the airplane’s interior. I gazed outside and daydreamed of sleeping on the fluffy cumulous clouds that were before me. I wondered if clouds felt like cotton candy, or were they freezing cold wisps of condensation? This is a question every child asks themselves among others such as “Where does the sun go when it disappears at night?” These questions have scientific answers, but children love to make up their own fantastic explanations.
So these questions I pondered while in an airplane headed for the land in which I so desperately yearned to escape. This land to my mother was called “home.” I am headed to her home. I wonder what it will feel like being in the place where my mother lived, the place where she cooked and cleaned and suffered in her last days on this earth. Would it be scary, seeing this place just as she had left it? This was a painful thought. I had not seen my mother in 3 years. I barely remembered what she looked like. But what I did remember about her was how she would scream and scream about how the world was out to get her. She would sob continuously about absolutely nothing at all.
When my mother first started throwing these fits, my father and I thought that she was just overly sensitive, but then her fits started to get worse. She started throwing things across the house and destroying anything she could get her hands on. We were worried so much. So my father and I decided to take her to the hospital and get her a mental evaluation. The doctor diagnosed her as “psychotic.” That is when it really hit me of how dreadful a situation we were in. My mother was psychotic.
We tried to give her medication, but she couldn’t admit that there was anything wrong with her. This was a huge predicament because she couldn’t calm down or get any better unless she took her medication. The odd thing was, she was fine in public and when she was at work and when she was talking on the phone, but when she came home or talked to us, she unleashed all the emotions she bottled up inside of her. There was once a time where she grabbed my arm and dug her fingernails so deep into it that I had blood dripping down my arm from the torn flesh.
The worst part of the situation was that the idiotic government required her consent for her to be taken to a mental institution. Of course, she wouldn’t admit she was insane, and seeing how she would only go crazy at home, we couldn’t have someone catch her in the act. I was the only one keeping our family together. I’m sure that without me, my father would have left my mother. I dealt with this problem for eleven years, with my only help the Riddilin I had to sneak into her food.
My father and I were a bit apprehensive about sending my mother to a mental hospital, because my mother was a bona fide genius. Really, she was a brilliant scientist and she came very close to winning a Nobel Prize for her cancer research, but that was when she started to go crazy and lost focus on her work. She moved down a rank, and was so outraged by this, she would work 14 hours a day to gain something of what was left of her work before.
After eleven years of putting up with my mother, I found myself a senior in high school. I then realized I had to go to college, but with the situation my mother was in, I was contemplating not going at all. I remember thinking to myself, how could my mother do this to me? How could she become like this? Because of her, I might not go to college and I might not get a good job or be able to support myself or even a family for that matter! But my father told me to go. I had helped this family enough. Even though my mother kept me up until four in the morning on school days, I still managed to become the top five percent in my class. I could get into any college I wanted to.
My father told me to leave and he would take care of my mother, so I left. I went to college in California, which was 3000 miles from my mother. I never wanted to go back there. I didn’t want to ever deal with my mother again, and now I won’t ever have to. I was a coward. I am ashamed of myself. I couldn’t do anything for my mother in the last years of her life. I couldn’t comfort her, or hold her hand. I couldn’t even tell her that I loved her one last time.
My mother took her own life and my father and I don’t know if it was because of her insanity, or because of the hurt she was feeling because her own daughter didn’t even want to see her. I will never know, and now, I have to get off of this plane and face my biggest fear: coming back to the place I so desperately yearned to escape. I was coming back to apologize on my mother’s grave. I was coming back home.
My eyes had trouble adjusting to the sunlight. I had just opened the window beside me and it was quite a contrast to the darkness of the airplane’s interior. I gazed outside and daydreamed of sleeping on the fluffy cumulous clouds that were before me. I wondered if clouds felt like cotton candy, or were they freezing cold wisps of condensation? This is a question every child asks themselves among others such as “Where does the sun go when it disappears at night?” These questions have scientific answers, but children love to make up their own fantastic explanations.
So these questions I pondered while in an airplane headed for the land in which I so desperately yearned to escape. This land to my mother was called “home.” I am headed to her home. I wonder what it will feel like being in the place where my mother lived, the place where she cooked and cleaned and suffered in her last days on this earth. Would it be scary, seeing this place just as she had left it? This was a painful thought. I had not seen my mother in 3 years. I barely remembered what she looked like. But what I did remember about her was how she would scream and scream about how the world was out to get her. She would sob continuously about absolutely nothing at all.
When my mother first started throwing these fits, my father and I thought that she was just overly sensitive, but then her fits started to get worse. She started throwing things across the house and destroying anything she could get her hands on. We were worried so much. So my father and I decided to take her to the hospital and get her a mental evaluation. The doctor diagnosed her as “psychotic.” That is when it really hit me of how dreadful a situation we were in. My mother was psychotic.
We tried to give her medication, but she couldn’t admit that there was anything wrong with her. This was a huge predicament because she couldn’t calm down or get any better unless she took her medication. The odd thing was, she was fine in public and when she was at work and when she was talking on the phone, but when she came home or talked to us, she unleashed all the emotions she bottled up inside of her. There was once a time where she grabbed my arm and dug her fingernails so deep into it that I had blood dripping down my arm from the torn flesh.
The worst part of the situation was that the idiotic government required her consent for her to be taken to a mental institution. Of course, she wouldn’t admit she was insane, and seeing how she would only go crazy at home, we couldn’t have someone catch her in the act. I was the only one keeping our family together. I’m sure that without me, my father would have left my mother. I dealt with this problem for eleven years, with my only help the Riddilin I had to sneak into her food.
My father and I were a bit apprehensive about sending my mother to a mental hospital, because my mother was a bona fide genius. Really, she was a brilliant scientist and she came very close to winning a Nobel Prize for her cancer research, but that was when she started to go crazy and lost focus on her work. She moved down a rank, and was so outraged by this, she would work 14 hours a day to gain something of what was left of her work before.
After eleven years of putting up with my mother, I found myself a senior in high school. I then realized I had to go to college, but with the situation my mother was in, I was contemplating not going at all. I remember thinking to myself, how could my mother do this to me? How could she become like this? Because of her, I might not go to college and I might not get a good job or be able to support myself or even a family for that matter! But my father told me to go. I had helped this family enough. Even though my mother kept me up until four in the morning on school days, I still managed to become the top five percent in my class. I could get into any college I wanted to.
My father told me to leave and he would take care of my mother, so I left. I went to college in California, which was 3000 miles from my mother. I never wanted to go back there. I didn’t want to ever deal with my mother again, and now I won’t ever have to. I was a coward. I am ashamed of myself. I couldn’t do anything for my mother in the last years of her life. I couldn’t comfort her, or hold her hand. I couldn’t even tell her that I loved her one last time.
My mother took her own life and my father and I don’t know if it was because of her insanity, or because of the hurt she was feeling because her own daughter didn’t even want to see her. I will never know, and now, I have to get off of this plane and face my biggest fear: coming back to the place I so desperately yearned to escape. I was coming back to apologize on my mother’s grave. I was coming back home.
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