I was miserable. I was stuck in this rut and I didn't think I was ever going to get out. My mom was dependent on my being there and since I was paying all of the bills, I couldn't save anything to get out anyway. Any doctor on the planet would have diagnosed me with depression, severe depression. The only thing that kept me sane were my girls. There was no way in hell I was going to fail them, no way I was going to screw everything up, and no fucking way in hell I was going to turn into my mother.
Ahhhh, my mother. She lost it right about then. I got off work one night and went to pick her up from the bar (my brother and sister had the girls). She asked me to go to another bar with her "just for a few minutes". I called the house, brother and sister both said it was fine. So, we get to this bar and there is a very good friend of mine. A man I will refer to as my computer guru. Guru was hardly ever in town and I was so happy to be running into him, so happy that I would have someone to talk to while my mother floated around the bar speaking to one friend and then another. Inevitably, I would be there for a few hours so seeing Guru made my night. He and I sit down on a couple of stools and, after the pleasantries, are talking shop. This man is a genius. He may deny it, but there is no denying it and I looked to him for help with my computer world so often back then.
Well, I don't know what it was. I don't know why or how it happened, but somehow my mother ended up sitting with us. Guru probably asked me how the girls were, how I was... And I probably gave him some highlights from my life. Probably bragged about the girls. Well, my mom, the queen of drunken negativity, didn't like this at all. In fact she decided that right then, while I was happy, while I was chatting with a friend, that right then, she would eviscerate me. And she did. She humiliated me. She drudged up every negative thing she could think of, everything that I had ever done wrong in my life, all the little things my kids did that made them less than perfect, everything she didn't like about me and the decisions I had made in my life. She took it all and hammered me with it. In front of Guru, in front of a packed bar. I was mortified. This is her, dear reader, this is my mother. This is the woman who gave me life and to who I will never be good enough. Guru sat quietly at first and then asked her to please stop berating me. After I started crying (no, I hadn't had anything but water all night, I didn't drink back then. I was just emotionally unstable) he offered to take me home. That drive home was one of the worst things I can remember. Sitting next to this man who I thought so highly of and watching him feel pity for me. Oh I hate being pitied. I loathe and despise it. He offered me many things during that short drive. He offered me a place to stay, a car, and a job. He offered me an out and I turned him down.
It's amazing to feel so lost. To feel as though you have no options or that the options you do have aren't real, to feel as though there is no escape and that you just have to stay put.
As I had become so accustomed to doing, I made an excuse for another alcoholic. "She is just drunk, Guru," I told him, "she'll apologize tomorrow." I couldn't leave. I couldn't take all that he was offering because in my mind, you don't get free rides. You don't get a house, car, and job handed to you on a silver platter. You earn it. I couldn't have been that girl who didn't acquire all of those things herself. He made it clear that the offer was there; just call him if I changed my mind.
third...
Labels: History Lesson
