I'm Glad My Mom Died

“Mom reminisces about cancer the way most people reminisce about vacations. She even goes so far as to MC a weekly rewatch of a home video she made shortly after learning of her diagnosis.”

Jennette’s mother has a strong sense of victimhood and enjoys watching others express concern for her. Her sense of martyrdom is strong enough that after church, the family must watch a video of themselves crying over her cancer as she provides commentary. Jennette uses a wry tone to describe her mother’s joy over these occasions, highlighting the morbid absurdity.

“This day was stressful and not fun, and if given the choice, I would choose to never do anything like it again. On the other hand, I do want what Mom wants, so she’s kind of right.”

As young Jennette reflects on her day auditioning for an agency, confused after her mother told the agent that this is Jennette’s dream. Ultimately, she comes to agree with her mother, because she wants whatever her mother wants. This line of thinking continues throughout Jennette’s life.

“Mom shakes her head in disbelief as she taps the steering wheel with excitement. She seems so carefree in this moment. I try to soak in her expression as deeply as I can. I wish she was like this more often.”

After Jennette relays the events of her day on set to her mother, she is relieved to see her mother’s reaction. Her desire to please her mother is not only a vague desire to be a good daughter but is also direct conflict avoidance. Her mother is emotionally volatile, and Jennette’s hypervigilance about monitoring the highs and lows is all in service of having moments like these.

“Dad starts taking off his shoes, thinking dumbly that maybe it’s over, maybe Mom’s mood has shifted and she’s back to normal. How can he not know? How can he never know?”

As Jennette watches her parent’s fight unfold, she feels helpless and frustrated. Her developed ability to monitor and read into her mother’s facial expressions and patterns is not shared by her father. Instead of asking why she needs this skill, she asks why her father doesn’t understand like she does.

“I’m embarrassed she still insists on wiping my butt. I tried to tell her recently that now that I’m eight, I think I can handle it, but she looked like she was gonna cry and said she needs to do it until I’m at least ten because she doesn’t want skid marks on my Pocahontas underwear. I know if I did it there wouldn’t be skid marks, but it’s Mom’s tears I’m more worried about.”

Despite trying to assert independence and bodily autonomy, Jennette has not been permitted to take care of her own intimate personal hygiene. Her mother’s possessiveness extends to Jennette’s body, and Jennette feels a combination of guilt and shame during this private moment that becomes shared in an act of abuse.

“I beam. I’m so happy to be her best friend. To be the closest person in the world to her. This is my purpose. I feel whole.”

From a young age, Jennette establishes that her self-worth is intimately tied to her relationship with her mother. The most important thing, beyond any wants or needs of her own, is her mother's approval and happiness. It is a priority so close to her own identity that she does not feel wholly complete or herself without it.

“I wish I felt connected to Dad the way I feel connected to Mom. Being around Mom can be tiring, sure, but at least I know what to do to make her happy. Around Dad, I never really know. It’s less work, but it’s also less rewarding.”

Jennette’s relationship with her father feels unsatisfying, and she always describes it in comparison to the relationship she has with her mother. Because she and her dad do not experience the same highs and lows that she does with her mom, Jennette feels that they do not truly connect, and she sees her father through the context of her mother.

“As I’m sitting here waiting to go in, I start fantasizing about how good it would be to not have to do the thing that cripples me with nervousness. To not have the constant nagging pressure of being chosen, and the sadness that comes with not being chosen. I’m in the middle of my fantasy when I hear Him, loud and clear in my mind.”

Panicking about having an audition, Jennette hears a “voice” for the first time that orders her to perform rituals. Though she perceives this voice through the lens of her religion, it is actually the beginning of a pattern of obsessive-compulsive behaviors that Jennette develops.

“Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don’t have to say somebody else’s words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging. Nobody’s weighing in. No casting directors or agents or managers or directors or Mom. Just me and the page. Writing is the opposite of performing to me.”

When describing writing, Jennette shows genuine interest in something other than her mother’s approval and an escape from it for the first time. She perceives writing as being the opposite of performing. Performing describes both her career, which she hates, and the way she acts in order to please her mother.

“Mom looks down, the way she does when she’s about to tell me a secret, like the time she told me Grandma has false teeth or the time she said she finds Dad boring. I know something juicy is coming. Something special, something just the two of us will know. Something that will cement and validate our wonderful best friendship, the way only secrets can.”

Always sharply aware of her mother’s thoughts and emotions, Jennette understands that her mother is feeling a special kind of joy. Jennette understands that she should anticipate the intimacy of a happy secret to connect them. The anticipation of that secret is built up in Jennette’s narration dramatically, and the reveal of calorie restriction is an uneasy conclusion.

“By the time the exams are done, a huge wave of relief washes over my whole body and I usually realize that’s the first time I’ve felt my body since the exam started. It’s weird…when the exams are happening, I feel like I’m outside of myself.”

Jennette describes the so-called exams that her mother does on her during her showers. Jennette’s mother does not let her shower alone, and while Jennette expresses discomfort with this and a desire to shower independently, she lacks the language to describe the dissociative state she enters as she experiences her mother’s abuse.

“Even though in person Miranda seemed shy and quiet, she had a distinct and hilarious personality through her written words. So many of the things she said made me laugh. Her way of observing things—people, habits, human nature. I loved her. And I was so excited we were becoming friends.”

Jennette’s friendship with Miranda is significant. For one thing, Miranda is her only friend. She also feels a closeness to Miranda, and has an admiration for her, that thus far she has only expressed for her mother. Jennette and Miranda’s friendship, discouraged by her mother, is a step toward independence.

“I’m small. I know I’m small. But I worry that my body is fighting the smallness. That it’s trying to develop. To grow. I feel like I’m barely hanging on to my childlike body and the innocence that comes with it. I’m terrified of being looked at like a sexual being. It’s disgusting. I’m not that. I’m this. I’m a child.”

Jennette’s desire for extreme thinness has always been connected to her desire to remain a child. This is partly because her mother has expressed a longing for Jennette to remain a child forever, but Jennette’s resistance to developing, growing, and losing innocence connects to a lack of control she has over her life.

“I feel similarly around The Creator as I feel around Mom—on edge, desperate to please, terrified of stepping out of line. Put both of them together in the same room and I’m overwhelmed.”

Jennette draws parallels between Schneider and her mother; both of them have a charming side and an angry, violent side, and their nature manipulates others into behaving how they want. Jennette responds to the behaviors of The Creator and her mother similarly, by placating them and trying to prevent any chaos.

“Fame has put a wedge between Mom and me that I didn’t think was possible. She wanted this. And I wanted her to have it. I wanted her to be happy. But now that I have it, I realize that she’s happy and I’m not. Her happiness came at the cost of mine. I feel robbed and exploited. Sometimes I look at her and I just hate her. And then I hate myself for feeling that. I tell myself I’m ungrateful. I’m worthless without her.”

Now that Jennette has achieved the success that was so important to her mother’s happiness, she feels the full weight of what she has sacrificed. This feeling initiates a struggle between two things she cannot reconcile: her resentment of her mother and her belief that her purpose in life is to please her.

“The fullness I feel after my meals is nice. And new to me. But it’s immediately usurped by a deep sense of guilt. Guilt that this is not what Mom would want. That Mom would be disappointed in me. The guilt drives me to eat more…”

When Jennette gains some independence from her mother, she is able to eat in an unrestricted capacity for the first time in her life. The feeling of fullness triggers not only a sense of guilt about her body and a lack of discipline, but also a sense of guilt about defying the connection that she and her mother share.

“She’s gotten more desperate these past few months. She’s gotten more desperate, and I’ve gotten more angry. I don’t know if my anger is a direct result of her desperation, but it’s at least a partial result of it. I can’t fucking handle how desperate she is. The sicker she gets, the cuter she becomes in her intonation, the more innocent she becomes, the more she pleads with me.”

As Jennette gets older and seeks more independence, her newfound distance with her mother coincides with her mother’s declining health. As her mother’s attempts to control Jennette grow more desperate, her manipulative behavior is far more noticeable and unwelcome to Jennette than in her childhood.

“As I’m squeezing my dying mother’s hand and watching froth spill out of her mouth, we pass the poster again. I see my dead-eyed grin and my stupid fucking outdated hairstyle. My life is mocking me.”

Jennette paints a picture of a cruel juxtaposition as she passes by her own billboard while she rides to the hospital with her mother. As her mother dies, they drive beneath a symbol of her ultimate dream for Jennette: fame and success. Conversely, for Jennette, the billboard represents a false, absurd, caricature of herself, created and paraded out for her mother.

“When I’m drunk, I’m less anxious, less inhibited, less worried about what Mom would want or think of me—in fact, when I’m drunk, the voice of Mom judging me evaporates completely.”

From Jennette’s very first experiences under the influence of alcohol, she is captured by the sense of relief that it brings her. She has carried a heavy weight of anxiety and guilt for her entire life, all wrapped up in the voice of her mother. To have that taken away is a novel experience for her and informs the development of her binge drinking.

“And then I realize that, as much as I’m convinced that I need to quit these things—acting, bulimia, alcohol—I don’t think that I can. As much as I resent them, in a strange way they define me. They are my identity. Maybe that’s why I resent them.”

Jennette’s relationships with acting, eating disorders, and alcohol have all helped her cope in some way with her intense need to keep her mother happy, calm, and alive. They also all have served to make her profoundly unhappy and unhealthy. Like many longstanding unhealthy behavior and coping mechanisms, Jennette feels a helplessness against them.

“The task of FEELING this confusing, overwhelming blob of emotions instead of distracting myself with bulimia is daunting. Bulimia helps me to rid myself of these emotions even if it is a temporary, unsustainable fix. Facing these emotions feels impossible.”

After not purging any food for 24 hours, Jennette feels the full force of what bulimia was allowing her to block out. Her resentment of her mother, her grief over her mother’s death, the mixture of love and hate for their relationship, and her stressful career were easier to ignore when purging.

“If Mom really didn’t want what was best for me, or do what was best for me, or know what was best for me, that means my entire life, my entire point of view, and my entire identity have been built on a false foundation.”

When Jennette tries to process her relationship with her mother, she runs into an emotional barrier that feels impossible to overcome. She has always seen herself as an extension of her mother’s needs and desires. If her mother is imperfect and fallible, then her own sense of self collapses.

“I want my life to be in my hands. Not an eating disorder’s or a casting director’s or an agent’s or my mom’s. Mine.”

Now in recovery and processing her mother’s death, Jennette is able to aptly communicate how she has never felt any control over her own life and choices. From a career her mother chose and she hated, to the eating disorder and compulsive rituals she developed, Jennette has never had a true sense of agency.