Off I Go

To all the multitudes of curious and caring souls who take the time to read my blog, I am sorry (and so very thankful) to say GOODBYE. Just as I reinvigorated my lust for writing on this blog, I will be absent yet again. 3-6 months. Not prison, not a gallivant to Europe. But into rehab where I belong, where I will find myself, my strength, my internal core. I will feel pain...and it will be beautiful. Any and all prayers of any spiritual sect are graciously welcome. Love, kiss, and hope!
Yahnilei

How Much Do I Say?

My biological father sent me a lovely card just a few weeks ago, after I hadn't written in a year and had sent him a typed letter, matter-of-factly stating I was on my way to entering rehab. His response was heartfelt, unexpectedly sincere and concerned. he wrote, "as he was a non-recovering alcoholic himself, he was not one to set an example or even worthy of dishing out the advice he was about to give, but...because he loved me, he needed to share these thoughts and antidotes" (to paraphrase). I cried when I read his words. His words, also unexpectedly, stamped out the impeccably sly relapse I was planning that very day. I was grateful. I cried some more. He said he wanted to be closer, to know me, to understand how and why my life had pickled and soured and saddened so much that I was now in such destructive, vulnerable state.
He wants me to share with him. But how can I? Where do I even start? Do I bombard him with it all at once, or slip in a few despairing pieces at a time so as not to irritate his current heart condition? Do I say, okay, daddy, this how it started, this is the progression? You wanted to know me; please, don't despise me once you know, okay?
Sit down in a soft chair while you read this, light some candles, drink some chamomile tea, have an ashtray and at least two packs of cigarettes handy and here we go: You left when I was two. You know this. But I didn't know why. Mommy wouldn't tell me, just that is was best that you were gone. You moved an hour away, but I rarely saw you, heard from you. Who was going to bake my Winnie the Pooh birthday cakes; who was going to lull me to sleep with smooth whistlings of a flute; whose large arms were I going to run into when I woke groggy-eyed, and call me his sweet-pea?
Mom remarried when I was five. A younger man. Charming, attractive, large, warming arms. He molested my sister and I for five years. Mom claimed she didn't know. We didn't tell. She divorced him shortly after, due to secret affair with her best friend.
One year later, mom married again. We moved to Hawaii. I didn't hear from you for years. Step-father three was a decent man, kind but quiet. Closed arms and distant eyes. We called him by his first name, never dad, never father, unless we wanted money, a ride somewhere, permission to have a slumber party with shnappps, pot, and maybe a few boys. he made our mother happy and we kept our distance.
I started drinking at thirteen. Mom gave it to me. Said she'd rather have me drinking at home, under her watchful eye, than off somewhere doing god knows what. She didn't want to worry. Didn't want to be left in the dark. She had a strange aversion to secrets. So, I drank openly, smoked cigarettes, dabbled in a few other recreational drugs, and luckily found them distasteful. I became promiscuous, wore brighter lipstick and shorter skirts. My sister shaved her head into a dyed black mohawk and wore pentagrams. I became the town slut; she, the town witch.
As a teenager, I found out why you left. Overheard mom and a childhood girlfriend yaking away over bloody marys one morning. She said you beat her. For five years, you drank, became enraged, and beat her. Sober, you were sweet, creative, astoundingly intelligent. It took everything she had to leave you. I had never seen you angry, or even what I would consider "drunk." But I also didn't realize mom was a drunk, as well, so go figure. Call it naivete, or suppression if you will.
At sixteen, I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and a social phobia. I would stick my head in the freezer, refuse to leave the house, bite my nails to a fleshy, bloody pulp. My friends teased me, unmercifully. I drank more. It calmed me, stuck a smile to my face like duct tape, gave me permission to find warm arms wherever I wanted. To find love wherever I needed.
I dropped out of highschool, was barely ever home, slept in unfamiliar beds, woke with splitting headaches and dry heaves every other morning. Mother gave up. She didn't want to worry anymore, refused to cry anymore over her morning coffee laced with 100 percent proof kaluha. She let me do as I pleased, laughed at the hickeys I came home with, mended the slashes on knees from drunken falls on lava rocks, rocked me in her arms when yet another boy broke my heart. She told me "everything would be okay." And I believed her. I had to believe her.
I left home at eighteen, followed what I had deemed love from state to state, fell into an abusive relationship myself at nineteen. One hit and I was gone. For a month or two. Another hit, gone again. This went on for two years and then mother died. Healthy one day, seizure the next, died 3000 miles away from a brain tumor three months later. I didn't get to say goodbye.
I drank more, dropped out of the college I had just started. Found a lover in a man I hated and got pregnant just a few months after she died. I felt like an orphan. I was alone, uneducated, unemployed, and knocked up. My godmother took me in. You might remember her; she was there when I was baptized, when I asked if I was an angel now. My son was born, named after mom. I started college again. Anxiety and alcoholic throughout, but functioning. Graduated five years later with an A average and a stubborn streak of knowing I would write. If i would do anything in my life, I would write.
A year after graduation and I still couldn't find a job. I became diagnosed with acute depression, slept all day, gained a profound amount of weight. I almost married a man I didn't love, a habitual liar, just to escape the eight-year- run in my new "mommy's" house. I shaved my head right to the roots; beat you to it Britney...Ha!
met another fellow, ran off to Reno. Lived in a half a million dollar home I helped design. Got a puppy, learned to drive. Drank everyday with a man who didn't love me, thought my anxiety was a form of schizophrenia. All in all, he was a good, solid, stable man. All in all, I screamed that I wasn't his god-damned maid. He kicked us out; I found what a knife could be used for. An unsuccessful attempt at another way of numbing my consistent failures.
Moved back in with "mommy." Got a bit more plump. Became agoraphobic. Reluctantly agreed to try meds. Had a six-month run at age 31 at what I'd call a good life. Found a job, stopped drinking, squished into a tiny studio with my son and I that was all mine. Finally, something that was all mine. I made my own decisions. I even made some good ones. I worked hard, exercised, ate healthy, lost fifty pounds of flesh. My son missed my soft tummy to lay on night over sitcoms.
And then I was cute, tiny. Men noticed me. Women, too. They wanted me again. I fell into arms, young, old, muscled, thin. As long as they were warm. Yet they wouldn't love me. They kept leaving again and again. And I drank again. And again.
I met a man in the midst of this. My soul mate, I told myself. He loved me. Didn't "need" my body, but took it softly if offered. And I loved him, love him still. Even though I drank, cut myself, took an overdose of pills, slunk into other mens' beds after high-vocaled fights and then pleaded for forgiveness.
So, here I am, dad. Now you know me. Now you know why I am where I am in this life I have self-sabatoged for myself. Nice, little package, isn't it? Do you truly want to know all of this? Is it necessary to understand? Do I want your sympathy? Your forgiveness? Do I want to blame you? Do I want you to feel defeated? Feel remorse?
I still don't know what I need from you. In your eyes now, I may be seen a victim. But I do not want to be known as that. That is not "all" I am. And that is not "all" you are either.
So, dad, where do we go from here? How much are you truly willing to hear? Your heart is already weak; my intention is not to shatter.

I Would Have

For the last few months, since I quit my job as a caregiver for a Senior home, I have not once neglected to scour the obituaries in the local paper. There has not been a name I have recogized. Until yesterday. My dear big ole' Jimmy died of pneumonia at age 83. My heart felt a sharp pang, a needle prick of sorrow for an unusually short time. I was surprised how fleeting the grief was. Had I still worked there, his illness would have been a sympathetic obession with every shift. I would have wiped his brow, played soothing music, held firmly onto his hand as the life it contained was slipping away. I would have neglected my other duties, the other residents, rationalizing that this is where I needed to be. That he could not be alone. That he had to know he was loved. I would have left work exhausted, bereft, fearing the next day. Imagining clocking in the next morning, turning to the bullitin board and seeing his name scrawled in chalk that he had passed away the night before. Maybe just a few hours after I had left, maybe a few minutes. My head would grow numb. I could have bashed it against a concrete wall and nothing, not an inkling of physical pain. I would be in a cloud the entire day. I would ignore any laughter, any attempt at merriment. I would ignore all the living around me. I would have left work, riding my bike in a torrent of rain. I would have been shivering, drenched, bangs plastered to my forehead, water dripping from my nose down my blouse to the rounding of my stomach. I would have felt nothing. I would have parked my bike at the Bi-Mart, rushed in with head down, rubber soles sqeaking on the aluminum. I knew the aisle by heart. With eyes closed, I could have found it. Peppertree Grove Cabernet Savignon in hand, I'd squeak back to the check out, swipe my card, ask it to double-bagged, wrapped like a twisted present in a paper sack first. I couldn't allow it to break while swinging in the wind on my handlebars. I would have made it home, my son still at after school care, plucked out the cork, and taken the first lingering swig straight from the bottle. It would fill in all contours of my mouth, slide along my tongue, teeth, pour down my throat like melted truffles. After two glasses , my head would clear, uncloud. My eyes would focus, colors magnified. I would have thought of Jim. I would have cried. I would have cried for everyone: my mother, my past lover, my grandparents, a great aunt, a cousin, a boy I knew in high school, the mother in the apartment fire, the addict under the tracks, the thousands across the sea from disease, typhoons, hunger, war. I would have cried for all of them. And then, ME. But I would not cry for me. I did not deserve the sypmathy, the care, the attention. The bottle would be gone now. And I would be angry. Enraged that I did not have more wine, that my son would be dropped off at any moment, that the numbing had ceased, that I felt alive. That I was alive. I was alive and all of them were not. They were at peace and I was abandoned. I would have called my babysitter then, begged for my son to spend the night, that I could not allow for him to see me in this condition. She would agree. She would protect him from my grief, my stumblings, my incoherencies, my fear. She would make me promise I would call, that I would not leave the house, that I would call my boyfriend to come over and take care of me. I would promise. I would lie. I would face the mirror in the kitchen, wipe the black mascara smudged under my eyes. I would put on fresh lipstick, call my boyfriend. I would be calm, voice soft and contained, telling him I needed him. He would panic, his voice an octave higher than normal. I would hear him wrestling with his coat as he stammered that he would be right over. I love you, I would tell him. I'm sorry, I would say. I would place the phone back on the reciever, stare at all the photographs of my mother on the wall, in frames on the bookcases. I would yell at her. I would yell at her for leaving me. For dying. For dying before I could hold her hand. I woud sit then, on the kitchen floor, curved back against the cabinets. I would lift my hand to the upper drawer, pull out something sharp. A steak knife. I would rub it roughly again my wrists, my shoulder blades, my upper thighs. I would push hard enough just for a plush welt to grow. Rarely blood. Rarely would I have the luxury of seeing blood. I couldn't even do that right. The front door would open. My boyfrind would run in, grab the knife, throw it in the sink, slink down next to me on the floor and cry. He could cry and I could not. Again, I'm sorry, is all I would be able to say.
Jim has died. But I was not there. I did not see the progression of his death. I did not hold his cold hand. The grief has already subsided. I do not drink, not for that reason, anyway. My son plays with a friend on his Wii. My godmother hangs christmas decorations. My boyfriend has not called me in two days. And I write this. I wait at my family's home, broke, unemployed, all my belongings in storage, waiting for the Alcohol treatment center to call me when an open bed is ready. I have waited two months already. But today, I do not drink. I do not think of knives. Today, I write this. And for now, that is enough.