every car crash, every mishap, every word ...

[nathalia]

So, my mom was involved in a car accident tonight.

She was going to meet two friends to go to the cinema, left the house at 7.15pm. At about 7.30pm, we get a call. Actually, my sister answers the phone. It's my mom telling her that she needs one of us to call her friends and tell them she won't be meeting them at the cinema because she just had a car crash.

My sister who was with her boyfriend and I didn't really worry about it. After all, she hadn't been the one who had caused the accident. Or so we thought ...

She called a while later, asking me to find the phone number of the closest police station and it turns out that she was responsible for the accident. She crashed into another car's rear because she hadn't had enough space between the car in front of her and and herself and dunno what.

It pisses me off that she was involved in a car crash. It really does. Not because of the damage caused to the car or anything, but because it shows just how unattentive she is. This is the second auto accident she has had this year. Two for crying out loud. And it's not as if she was a bad driver, she is very good, has the car under control ... or at least that's how it used to be.

In mid-January we were going to Leonberg in the Mondeo and she ripped off one of the sideway mirrors. She kept it secret from my father or at least tried to and it was very strange.

And now, not even two months after this little car-destroying thing, she manages to do this. Is she aware of the fact that there's something wrong with her, that her medication is causing her to lose focus quickly, never concentrating on the task at hand? Does she think we don't notice it?

It just pisses me off for some reason I can't really understand. I know she has to try and find a medication that works for her, but this clearly isn't what she should be taking. Titia warned her about some medication because it made driving more difficult or something and here we go ...

People keep asking me if she is okay and stuff, but I can't really tell, because in the recent weeks since I got back from Brazil, I didn't really get to spend too much quality time with her, just the two of us. We were all stressed out thanks to my grandma. It's incredible how happy I am that she's gone although I already heard she's telling stories about how my dad's not treating my mom well ... once again. And yeah, it's my aunt who wants my parents to splitt up, not my grandma. 

Note: My grandma told my sister and me that my aunt wanted my parents to break up about a year ago, but who is it that keeps demonizing my dad, sayi´ng he treats my mom like a slave because she cooks dinner for him. But when she doesn't cook dinner for him, it's "poor Bernd, he works all day and then he comes home and there isn't even food for him."

No matter what you do, she will distort the facts and when you accuse her of doing so, she starts crying, claims we are sceaming against her, that all these things are lies and that she only wants the best, peace, dunno what.

I could rant about my grandma forever, but I won't. It's not worth it.

Just one thing I have kept to myself for about one and a half years now and that feels extremely strange and disturbing to me. Back when I first found out about my mom abusing alcohol, it was about a day after watching an episode of The OC where Kirsten is finally confronted because she has been abusing alcohol. It's an episode in the second season, she has a car crash. I don't remember it too well. I just remembered the car crash tidbit now when trying to picture the episode.

Then, I started watching Six Feet Under in August of 2006 and one character that really intrigued me was Billy Chenowith, a photographer who suffered from something I had never heard of before: the bipolar disorder. I did some basic research on that illness, found it interesting -- storytelling-wise, don't get me wrong on this one. I was working on creating and fleshing out my Wraiths and considered adding a bipolar character to the cast but never got around to developpong the character well enough.

In late January of this year, I was confronted with the fact that my mom had been diagnosed as bipolar and found out that it's a more recent name for what is commonly known as manic depression. I had suspicions about her actually being manic depressive, but I had not known that that is just another name for bipolar.

And then, thirdly, the car crash. I can't tell too much about this one because it is something about my writing, but I have been plotting a story that involves a terrible car crash for a few months now, did some fleshing out on it TODAY and here we go ...

I won't drop my idea for the car crash story the way I did drop the idea of ever writing a bipolar character, not only because a car crash is a more normal thing than this illness, but because it is something I have been working on for months now, something that has become extremely important to me. 

The title for this entry, "every car crash, every mishap, every word" is a line from Matt Nathanson's song Bent, one I thought about regularly in connection to the story and when writing this, it just felt right to use it as the title. It fits the situation so well ...