As A Child, Being Away From My Mother Made Me Physically Ill
By: Emmy Favilla
Tags: Anxiety, Mothers, Self, Mothers Day, Family

As A Child, Being Away From My Mother Made Me Physically Ill

Photo by David Vig on Unsplash

I threw up at the same corner of the same tree every morning in kindergarten for an entire month. So distressed at the thought of being away from my mother for six hours and forced to socialize with other miniature humans that it literally made me sick to my stomach each day, I found not just the act of projectile-vomiting, but also the routine, rather therapeutic.

As a child, I was completely and debilitatingly terrified by the thought of being apart from my mother. When she would mop the floors, I’d sit on the couch watching TV or play in the kitchen with my My Little Ponies. I was wholly convinced that she would disappear once she reached her bedroom, just two or three rooms away from where I was stationed in our modest four-room railroad Brooklyn apartment.

The anxiety would begin to mount as soon as she left my line of sight — “Mommy, are you still there?” I’d implore — shortly before it blossomed into all-consuming panic, as the sound of her footsteps and swish of the mop grew softer. Whether she’d escape of her own volition through the bedroom door that led into the building’s hallway or be engulfed by a black hole that had recently materialized behind her dresser, I wasn’t certain. All I was sure of is that she’d be gone for good, and I’d be left in the hands of my kind, but significantly less competent father.

If my parents so much as left the house without me for a nice dinner together, leaving me in the care of my saintlike grandmother, who lived across the hallway, I’d assume the worst — instantly transforming into a child so sullen you’d have thought she just witnessed her own cat being murdered before her very eyes. I’d perch on my grandma’s bed and stare longingly at an 8x10 framed glamour shot of my mother from the early ’80s, looking like Cher, all long dark hair and hoop earrings, as though I were mourning a parent who had just died a slow and painful death.

I’m an only child. We were too close.

That first month of school, as my mother tells me, I’d wake up with a spring in my step, ready to take on the day with gusto. We’d watch cartoons together while I ate breakfast (usually scrambled eggs and chocolate milk, plus some fruit). I’d get dressed and, regardless of weather or day of the week, look forward to our commute, four stops on the elevated subway line from Brooklyn into Queens, smiling as I looked down on our neighborhood from way up high through the train windows.

Once we exited the station and walked the three blocks to school, however, things shifted quickly. As though blood were being drained from my entire body, my face would turn completely white and I’d become quieter than usual. Then, as we neared the tree just at the corner of the schoolyard, I’d nonchalantly puke my guts up, and no sooner be ready to saunter into the building. It was entirely a voluntary, addictive coping mechanism (especially interesting considering my general inability to make myself puke as an adult). I was overcome with terror, provoked by the realization that for the entire school day I’d have to make decisions for myself and talk to others without my mother as a security blanket, without her to confirm right from wrong. I quickly realized that other children were capable of this without issue; I was embarrassed to admit why I barfed my brains out every day.

After this occurred several times and it was clear that I wasn’t suffering from a stomach bug, my mother attempted to bargain with me in hopes of putting an end to it. “If you don’t want to go to school, just tell me! You don’t have to go to school!” she pleaded with me in the morning. As she put it, my mom was “sort of anti-school,” as she herself had missed nearly half of her junior high school years after poor attendance due to anxiety, and turned out A-OK. Having begun reading before I turned three, I was at a more advanced reading level than everyone in my class, and my idea of the perfect day was spending time inside my own brain doing schoolwork for hours. She was fully prepared to take on the challenge of homeschooling if it meant I’d be in a better headspace. “I want to go to school,” I’d say. “I like it.” Quizzing me on whether kids were bullying me (they weren’t) or whether I hated my teacher (I thought she was perfectly fine) got my mother nowhere. I kept puking.

Over a week later, she took me to my pediatrician, truly at a loss as to why her happy-go-lucky five-year-old who loved school was making herself sick to her stomach each morning. She wanted to ensure I wouldn’t give myself an ulcer. “It’ll pass,” the pediatrician said, after confirming I was in perfect health.

But after nearly three more weeks, it didn’t pass. On our walks toward the schoolyard she’d ask, “How do you feel?” desperate for a response. I’d simply shrug and make a face like there was nothing to be concerned about before emptying the contents of my stomach.

Surely my mother empathized with the way my anxiety paralleled hers, though the contexts were slightly different. A shy child, she went to an under-resourced school in a poor neighborhood where teachers didn’t seem to have adequate control over their classrooms, where learning was difficult and she was picked on. I was simply so crippled by our codependency that I couldn’t imagine surviving seven hours without seeing her. She started picking me up for lunch, which didn’t help matters; instead of addressing my fear of independence, she was moved by guilt.

My father, the eldest of seven children who immigrated to the US from Italy 15 years before I was born, didn’t seem to be as concerned about my new morning hobby. Not only did he not witness it firsthand each day, but he’d also experienced true hardships: living in poverty, an abusive father with mental health issues and a gambling problem, drug-addicted siblings, assimilating into a new culture. Anxiety-induced vomiting? Amateur hour. Like my pediatrician, he was certain I’d get over it soon enough too.

My mother loves to remind me of how little money we had during my childhood. When you look at the numbers, I suppose that’s true: My father’s $33,000 salary went further in 1990 than it does now, but it still didn’t stretch to covering much beyond the basic necessities for a family of three living in Brooklyn (even given subsidized rent in my grandmother’s building). My mom, however, chose to leave her job as a bank teller when I was born and instead spend each day with me, until she began her own daycare business when I was in junior high. She could have easily left me in the care of my grandparents, who all either lived in the building or a quick walk away, but didn’t want to. She wanted to be with her child, full-time.

Like a feral cat, I wasn’t socialized properly after exiting the womb and so I lived in perpetual fear when socializing was expected. Kids weren’t interesting to me. (Cats, though? Another story.) For the five years preceding the first day of kindergarten, it was always me and mom, or me and my aunt, me and my grandma. Me and the stuffed animals I assigned distinct personalities to and had scintillating conversations with. Even during a pre-K play group class where kids attended with their parents, I preferred to read or play on my own. Once, instead of participating in a group activity, I hid by the coat rack, trying to fix it. Earlier that day, my mother had told me to watch out when I hung my coat on it because it was loose, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

The vomiting ensued, until finally, she threatened me. After a month of my throwing up, my mother had reached a breaking point, without a clear solution on the horizon to prevent me from causing myself physical harm. She crouched down, shook me gently, and, making sure no one was in earshot, and told me in a voice more aggressive than stern, “If you keep doing this, I’m going to beat the crap out of you!” I was pretty certain my parents would never have physically harmed me, aside from the occasional slap across the face when I was being a brat (which admittedly I was, a lot). But it was a last resort, and it worked. I looked at her, wide-eyed and dumbfounded. I didn’t cry, and I never threw up at the tree again.

I suppose I knew it was an empty threat. I don’t believe it was fear that prompted me; rather the realization that my actions were provoking such an out-of-character response made it clear how much stress I was causing my mother. So I simply stopped.

Until the next year, in first grade, when my mother had the flu and my dad drove me to school on the morning of city-wide exams. I puked neatly in his glove compartment. This time it wasn’t separation anxiety, but the self-induced pressure to uphold my status as top student in my class. He laughed on the way home, and I scored within the 99 percentile.