But Mommy, I’m Sorry
Of Postpartum Depression, Bipolar Disorder and
Other B.S.
August 21, 2001
Whoops…the lid of the cookie jar just smashed all over the kitchen floor! Never mind that you were sent to your room for spitting on Uncle Fud at a family dinner; never mind that you were forbidden to have dessert that night and never mind that you waited for your parents to retire to their bedroom before sneaking down and helping yourself to a feast of sweets. The jig is up…the resounding smash of the cookie jar lid hitting the tiled kitchen floor has your parents scramming down the stairs just about to bust you with a mouth full of chocolate chips and a floor paved with broken pottery.
Think quickly. It is now or never. What little twist of the truth can rescue you from the consequences of your betrayal that are about to scream forth?
Quick, quick turn on the tears. Tears always work because they have a wonderful way of replacing any reason with emotion. Try uncontrolled sobbing to elevate a few tears of remorse into a full-blown emotional collapse. Eureka…salvation is on its way. It wasn’t your fault that the cookie jar is broken. You did not do anything wrong. You were so emotionally distraught by being sent to your room that you drifted into a semi-catatonic state where your will was supplanted by that of the Cookie Monster.
As the swinging kitchen door whooshes open with Mommy one step behind the tornado of entering air you collapse on the floor amid a torrent of tears and pottery shards.
Suspended in a transition from the old reality to the new reality, Mommy screams, “What the hell is going on in here young lady!”
“Mommy, Mommy…I don’t know what happened.” “I was in bed crying because I spit on Uncle Fud and upset you so much. I was just feeling awful.” “And then I thought I was asleep and this horrible Cookie Monster took me by the hand and lead me to the kitchen.”
“The Monster told me that my Mommy hated me because she had made my favorite cookies and I broke her heart because I spit on Uncle Fud and was sent to my room before I could eat the cookies and tell Mommy how delicious they were.”
[Remember to keep crying…better yet, hysterical heaving sobs. And don’t forget to keep rolling in the shards of the broken cookie jar…even try to get a few scratches.]
“Mommy, I’m just so tired, I don’t know what happened. I’ve got too much homework, the girls at school make fun of my freckles, I hear you and Daddy making funny noises in the bedroom and Monsters visit me in my sleep.”
“Oh you poor little baby, you cut yourself on a piece of the broken cookie jar,” says Mommy as she bolts over to save her baby from the gremlins of the night.
“Oh Mommy, I don’t care that I’m cut. I hate myself for being a bad girl and God hates me because he makes me see monsters. I would do anything {{except being honest}} to make this go away. I deserve this…I wish I would die {{in 90 or 100 years after I’ve blown my inheritance}}.”
“Oh my poor baby, I just feel so awful,” says Mommy as she lifts the dear angel into her arms. “I had no idea I had been so cruel to you. Why didn’t you tell me how you felt,” groveled Mommy as she cleaned the slight traces of blood from the superficial scratches of the dear angel.
“Oh Mommy, I’m sorry,” harkens our angel.
“Oh baby, give Mommy a hug.” [Here we get a few mutual tears, tons of remorse and a common little dénouement.]
“Oh please baby, stop your crying, Mommy is so sorry. Let’s get you cleaned up and the two of us will have a girls night on the couch watching television while pigging-out on milk and cookies.”
“Are you really sorry, Mommy?”
“Yes, my little dear, your Mommy is {{will be}} really sorry.
The above is just an idea. It is believed to be fiction. But an insightful editor asked me if it was a true episode from the childhood of Andrea Yates, the woman from Texas who methodically drowned her five children.
It is not.
However, it might be a rerun from the childhood of Kristin Anderson, a Connecticut mother who woke her 15-month-old son stood on the deck of her home, clutched him in her arms and plunged toward the ground. However, when her son survived the first jump she gave him an encore presentation. Her son, having survived the second jump with just a broken back, dearest Kristin Anderson next decided to grab a kitchen knife and carry Zachary's (her son) broken body to a tree in the back yard, and there, in the dark, plunge the blade at least twice into the boy's tiny frame.
This is not yet over because…even after the stab wounds, Zachary was still breathing. So… Anderson went back into the house and returned with a load of garbage that she put on top of the boy and lit on fire. Finally Zachary was dead so Anderson wrapped Zachary's body in a blanket, carried him back into the house and drank three beers.
Anderson claims that she heard voices from the corner of her mind. They had been keeping her awake, and now they ordered her to kill her son. In her own words, “It was my body and my mind that did it. It was not my soul.”
Anderson is reported to have cried, “I’m sorry.”
Anderson is pleading insanity because she has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Coincidently, Anderson was a cum laude graduate of Westfield State College in Massachusetts in 1995 in psychology.
[For all you doubters, the Anderson murder occurred on June 23, 2001 in Somers Connecticut and it can easily be verified.]
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