Quëerchäusen by Proxy
And the monsters of Monsters Inc.
Mental illness runs in my family.
I had a great aunt who was bi-polar and given shock treatment. She was born in the 1910s, so I can only imagine the type of advice she got over time from the medical community back then.
What I remember is that she had a loving husband who doted on her. I remember that she often slurred her speech when she spoke to me. And I remember a story of her buying 5 rowing machines from QVC shortly before she died.
I have nearer relatives, too, that have had formal and informal diagnoses of bi-polar, depression, somatic symptoms disorder, gender dysphoria and several other mental illnesses.
But there is one, in particular, that has generally concerned me. Let’s call her Allison.
The Road To Munchausen
Allison was always injured growing up. She had 9 arm fractures. She would break her arm from benign things, like the time she broke it falling off the bleachers at a recreational soccer game. The “bleachers” were three rows high and she was on the bottom row. She landed on grass.
I am fairly confident there was no abuse or foul play in her injuries—she was a very un-athletic, uncoordinated kid. I am also confident that Allison got a lot of mileage out of these brushes with medicine. Her casts and stories of multiple breaks were interesting to others.
In her teens she went to Africa and came back with Malaria. I was told at the time that she was the first case of that disease ever registered at our local hospital. She was becoming a medical unicorn.
When she was old enough to date I was told that her boyfriend had tried to sexually assault her. He was an odd duck so I was just glad they were no longer together.
Soon after that she announced she had considered suicide.
The reaction from the family was both unremarkable and remarkable at the same time. There was muted concern—that is the best way I can say it. As though they were skeptical while dealing with a potentially massive tragedy.
She ended up marrying a wonderful person and then she moved away so my data-points were batched into infrequent updates, which almost always centered around her medical care.
She was diagnosed with depression. Then bi-polar. Then bi-polar 2. Then POTS. Then a gluten allergy. At one point she had a jejunostomy feeding tube (J-tube), and a Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter (PICC Line).
I would also hear about the associated drama. The FaceBook groups she was kicked out of. The fights with people in her neighborhood. How she left the church they were going to. And, of course, the “new doctor” she was seeing…because the last ones told her something she didn’t want to hear.
After about 10-15 years of this, she had collected service dogs, a motorized wheelchair and a special van that could accommodate it. She was morbidly obese, had two kids, an enabling husband, no money, no friends, and a list of clinics she could not go to.
Monsters Inc.
The movie Monsters Inc. is a story about another world where monsters use portals into our world for the purpose of scaring kids. Kids’ screams are a form of fuel that the world of monsters runs on.
At the end of the movie, the monsters accidentally make a kid laugh and the energy meter goes through the roof. It turns out, that the laughter of kids provides way more power than their screams.
I remember the day I realized that Allison had metaphorically switched from screams to laughter—from energy found in her own ailments to the ailments of her kids.
Allison: “Hello, how are you. I heard your daughter hurt her back.”
I remember pausing and trying to think about what she was talking about. Was she referring to a recent hiking trip where I had to give my kid a piggy-back ride because her back was bothering her?
I played dumb but Allison played her hand quickly. “You should get that looked at. She could have Ewings Sarcoma. We had Darla (her daughter) biopsied the other day and it came back negative.”
Oh no.
I could see it clear as day. Her kids were now a proxy.
From Munchausen to Quëerchäusen
The poor kids. The son was diagnosed early with Autism or Aspergers or both. The other, Darla, was a perpetual lab experiment. Allison walked that poor kid around from clinic to clinic looking for doctors to confirm some rare syndrome or disease she had recently discovered online.
Darla was having biopsies, tests and other invasive procedures. She, like her mom, soon had a PICC and J-tube and a backpack to go with them. At one point I was told that she was allergic to the sun.
Not kidding.
I would hear limited info on what was happening, but I wasn’t shy with my diagnosis: Munchausen by Proxy. Oh, and child abuse. Yeah, those kids needed to be away from that monster.
And then the coup de gras—Allison had a big announcement: Darla was a lesbian—"but not a dyke lesbian, a girly ‘lipstick’ lesbian”. (Allison literally said just that about her daughter)
And oh the pictures on Instagram and Facebook. The family was all wearing rainbow gear and marching in Pride parades. I can only imagine the Facebook groups that opened up with this revelation.
Quëerchäusen 2.0
Darla, still gay, moved out and doesn’t have much to do with her mom at this point. She has shared some horrific stories of what life in a “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” household was like. I was glad Darla had escaped the present drama and that the noise had died down a bit for her.
But then Allison had another announcement: Ned, her son, was trans.
Not only that, but Allison announced that she was, and had always been, bi-sexual.
Now, I am not great at math, but something tells me that the odds of a bi-sexual having both a gay daughter and a trans son are astronomical. By the way, none of us who know Allison or Ned can think of a single validating memory of their new sexual or gender orientations.
Sure Ned is a bit weird, but he never gave off girl vibes. And Allison, very awkward growing up, was never pegged as interested in girls. Families talks. And that never came up.
What’s Happening?
A great quote, that is applicable to medicine, goes something like this:
Those hoofbeats you hear are probably a horse, rarely a zebra, and never a unicorn.
Allison, like all of us, needs affirmation. I suspect she figured out early in life that getting affirmation was going to be difficult for her. She wasn’t like other kids.
At some point she started to enjoy the attention from her broken arms and other diagnoses. These were akin to the screams in Monsters Inc. They were energy.
But after being kicked out of all Facebook groups and most doctor’s offices, she found the ultimate Monsters Inc source of extreme energy: her kids.
Allison’s daughter, Darla, may not be gay. Who knows. I know she isn’t sick anymore. All her ailments disappeared the day her mom came-her-out as a lipstick lesbian.
Ned, at age 20, is apparently not interested in talking about his transition. Allison takes him to get his nails done. That’s all I really know at this point.
Based on the history, I am very skeptical. I see a mentally ill person who has hijacked her kids. She is a control freak and, from my view, she has abused her kids. She has committed Quëerchäusen by Proxy. Twice.
Needless to say, when I see these suburban moms mouthing the words for their trans kids or man dressed as a woman claiming to have two “transgender and gender expansive children,” I am very skeptical. When the monsters of Monsters Inc. discovered that there was a better way to get what they wanted, they jumped at the opportunity.
And there are a LOT of monsters in Monsters Inc.
