Mommy Mushroomhead
by KJ Hannah Greenberg

 

 

Upon awakening and being released, Liat adjusted one of the berets that she used to cover her shaven head. Accordingly, her nieces nicknamed her “Mommy Mushroomhead.” Unfortunately, that camouflage was ineffective against her tendency to self-harm. Liat wound up in an eating disorder-focused residential program.

 

That woman didn’t suffer from body dysmorphic disorder. Rather, she was psychotic about food. Small piece made her think of bugs, liquids conjured images of poisons, and intact portions, like fruit, made her visualize thrown weapons. Surprisingly, she didn’t, alternatively, try to sustain herself on air as she was equally dubious about what she inhaled (aliens might be tainting Earth’s atmosphere.)

 

Besides, the setup’s other inhabitants hardly made her feel sheltered. Those women, either skeletal or obese, never worried about fouled foodstuff. Almost all of them were preoccupied with appearance. The scrawny ones regarded themselves as elephants and the elephants saw themselves as social prejudice victims.

 

Pulling her robe around her shoulders before filling her slippers, Liat exhaled noisily. It was difficult for her to integrate what her case worker insisted on; sometime ago, Liat hadn’t considered rations, let alone air, dangerous.

 

Regrettably, Liat had shared with that psychosocial support person that, on separate occasions, that she had enjoyed buying and eating food. Her university years’ delight had been smoked fish. Later, she had clandestinely savored quarts of ice cream.

 

Nonetheless, these days, victuals were neither treats nor necessary, nourishing substances. They were dangerous, unwholesome stuffs. Unlike her fellow “inmates,” Liat wasn’t tasked simply to reach a sound weight as well as to commit to regular participation in a self-help organization. She, additionally, had to become “mentally stable.”

 

Human services had placed her in that particular clinic so that she’d be attended to by staff familiar with eating disorders and other self-inflicted forms of violence. However, few among the personnel, there, were trained to deal with undifferentiated schizophrenia.

 

Consequently, her husband had hired supplemental therapists. Those others had wanted Liat to engage in cognitive remediation therapy and to follow a ketogenic food plan. The therapy was incorporated into her weekly schedule while the proposed change in fare was delayed—the residence believed that Liat’s intake of ample fats would trigger their other patients.

 

That postponement, initially, was immaterial since Liat, who continued to believe that provisions would kill her, was given jejunostomy sustenance. At least, she had deemed that the tube delivering her enteral nutrition was a benign presence. Whereas her husband prayed for her to graduate to nasogastric feeding, let alone the ketogenic strategy, Liat’s special providers indicated that Liat was least aggressive when using the jejunostomy. That is, she needed less intervention from orderlies and restraints. Her treatment would have to evolve slowly.

 

When one of Liat’s external practitioners announced that he would introduce antipsychotic drugs, Liat demurred; her being alive met her main carers’ minimum demands. Pushing herself to trace the trauma generating her self-abuse always agitated her enough for her to seek annihilation. She wanted no other “healings.”

 

Perhaps, when other women examined their damaging episodes, they became sufficiently empowered to deconstruct them, to identify, to process, and to release emotional responses to them, and to transform their self-loathing into self-appreciation. Yet, for Liat, losing control, especially via hypnotherapy, never illuminated the evil that had been inflicted upon her.

 

In spite of her team urging her to return to that malevolence so that she could change the script, so that her limbic system could “re-remember” her as victorious against her enemy, Liat wouldn’t engage that darkness. Accordingly, her well-being remained inaccessible.

 

Months ebbed. Liat felt no alliance with her helpers. She resented their replacement of her jejunostomy tube with a nasojejunal one and their ongoing talk about her resuming “normal” eating. It was a pity that, at night, she was wrapped in wrist and ankle mittens and a lap belt as she would’ve loved to have ended her suffering.

 

At some point, another occupant was watching a dark movie on a bootlegged cellphone (many patients’ families failed to grasp why the center had strict rules about outside stimuli.) Liat surreptitiously watched over that internee’s shoulder.

 

The next morning, the woman who possessed the contraband had to be put on suicide watch and  Liat had to be straight-jacketed. Lamentably, the facility owned no such garment, so Liat was held in a thick blanket until the arrival of the place’s chief psychiatrist.

 

That man escorted Liat to a consultation room, where her assembled team meant to take advantage of her weakened deflection. She was forced her to undergo hypnotherapy.

 

Her squad’s assessment proved correct; Liat came apart in an outpouring of screams and tears. So, that crew proceeded. Liat’s session, which lasted two hours, terminated only when she fell asleep in her seat.

 

The next day, Liat was receptive to talk therapy. A psychoanalyst aided her in sorting out the trauma caused by her neighbor raping her. It seemed that Liat’s spouse had left their front door unlocked in his rush to respond to an “All Call.” Feeling guilty for criticizing him, a selfless, first responder, Liat had said nothing. Instead, she sheltered in an abyss.

 

After many months, Liat relearned how to eat. She joined group therapy and even comforted some of the place’s newest admittees. Twice weekly, she engaged in individual counseling, too, and underwent monthly hypnosis.

 

Eventually, she was allowed brief home visits that were supervised by mental health professionals. Liat began following a ketogenic diet (in a private dining area) and ordered new berets. Those toppers were for fashion; Liat no longer shaved her head.

 

The rapist was prosecuted and then incarcerated. It wasn’t Liat’s bidding, though, that had tried and jailed him. That violator had also sullied neighborhood teens. Their parents had brought justice.

Be that as it may, one of his young victims was found in a ditch. Another developed an eating disorder so severe that she was sent to Liat’s facility, where she had to be saved from self-slaughter again and again.

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