I’ve tried, God knows, I’ve tried, and I managed to go three hours before having just one drink to make the shakes go away. That was after Sage went to school. At least I wait until she’s out of the house, but I know it’s just a matter of time until I can’t, and then what?
I hate myself. I hate my chemical dependence. I hate everything and everyone. My life is pain. I wish I was dead. Everyone would be better off. I’m a waste of oxygen. I should have the guts to stick my head in the oven or swallow a bottle of pills.
I slept for four hours after drinking half a bottle of gin. I can’t keep food down. I’m out of alcohol. Sage will be home soon. I need to get to the store for another bottle, but I don’t have any money.
I close the diary. I don’t want to allow this poison into my soul. Why would she chronicle her descent into self-inflicted hell? And why would my father send this to me?
I throw the book across the room. If I could light it on fire just by glaring at it, there’d be nothing left but ashes. I realize I’m shaking, and I close my eyes and take deep breaths while I talk myself down. This is not my reality. This was a very sick woman’s reality. Mine is about endless possibility, my whole life ahead of me, the man of my dreams in my arms.
Half an hour later I’m reading it again. I have to force myself away from the sofa as my interview draws near. My mind is whirling. My mom was sick, but she was self-aware enough to despise herself, hate what she was doing to our family, and was sickened by her weakness. She thought Ralph was a despicable piece of shit, but she believed that was all she deserved. That she was so badly damaged the only person she could be with was another casualty.
Page after page, worrying about the effect it was having on me. Declarations of how much she loved me scrawled in a drunken hand, her increasingly rare sober moments documented in neat cursive.
Ruby is downstairs, and I grab my jacket and put the diary out of my mind. I’m not my mother. If anything, the damage she did to me made me stronger. It sure as hell gave me an example of what I never will allow myself to become. Whoever said that parents have to serve as good examples never saw the power of a really bad one.
But in spite of all the positive self-talk, I’m distracted, and Ruby can tell. She doesn’t say anything, but I can see it in her eyes during the interview. I answer all the questions with the pat answers I know by heart, but the life’s not there, and when we leave the restaurant she leans into me as we wait for the valet to bring her car.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Oh, um, yeah. Sorry. I had a rough morning. Since the accident, you know, some days are better than others.” I feel low for using the accident as my excuse, but it’s not a bad one.
She nods understandingly. “I imagine you’ll take a while to fully recover.”
“Yeah, the doctors warned me about that. I’ll just take some aspirin and chill. No biggie.”
“Well, we don’t have anything else on the agenda for today other than rehearsal tonight, so maybe a nap…”
“Now you’re talking.”
But I don’t sleep. The damned diary has the pull of a powerful magnet, and I spend the entire afternoon reading it. When I come to the last entry, a week before she went into the hospital for her final time, I feel sick. She’s watched me on TV every episode and claims to be bursting with pride for me at escaping the hellhole she lived in and making something out of myself.
None of which matches up with the hateful drunk in the hospital bed.
I realize as I wander around the apartment in a daze that she was as bad at showing her feelings as I am. And that inability to express herself not only destroyed her relationships, but wound up with her numbing herself with booze instead of taking the more difficult steps of telling people how she really felt about them.
The most troubling part of all of it being that
I hate myself. I hate my chemical dependence. I hate everything and everyone. My life is pain. I wish I was dead. Everyone would be better off. I’m a waste of oxygen. I should have the guts to stick my head in the oven or swallow a bottle of pills.
I slept for four hours after drinking half a bottle of gin. I can’t keep food down. I’m out of alcohol. Sage will be home soon. I need to get to the store for another bottle, but I don’t have any money.
I close the diary. I don’t want to allow this poison into my soul. Why would she chronicle her descent into self-inflicted hell? And why would my father send this to me?
I throw the book across the room. If I could light it on fire just by glaring at it, there’d be nothing left but ashes. I realize I’m shaking, and I close my eyes and take deep breaths while I talk myself down. This is not my reality. This was a very sick woman’s reality. Mine is about endless possibility, my whole life ahead of me, the man of my dreams in my arms.
Half an hour later I’m reading it again. I have to force myself away from the sofa as my interview draws near. My mind is whirling. My mom was sick, but she was self-aware enough to despise herself, hate what she was doing to our family, and was sickened by her weakness. She thought Ralph was a despicable piece of shit, but she believed that was all she deserved. That she was so badly damaged the only person she could be with was another casualty.
Page after page, worrying about the effect it was having on me. Declarations of how much she loved me scrawled in a drunken hand, her increasingly rare sober moments documented in neat cursive.
Ruby is downstairs, and I grab my jacket and put the diary out of my mind. I’m not my mother. If anything, the damage she did to me made me stronger. It sure as hell gave me an example of what I never will allow myself to become. Whoever said that parents have to serve as good examples never saw the power of a really bad one.
But in spite of all the positive self-talk, I’m distracted, and Ruby can tell. She doesn’t say anything, but I can see it in her eyes during the interview. I answer all the questions with the pat answers I know by heart, but the life’s not there, and when we leave the restaurant she leans into me as we wait for the valet to bring her car.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Oh, um, yeah. Sorry. I had a rough morning. Since the accident, you know, some days are better than others.” I feel low for using the accident as my excuse, but it’s not a bad one.
She nods understandingly. “I imagine you’ll take a while to fully recover.”
“Yeah, the doctors warned me about that. I’ll just take some aspirin and chill. No biggie.”
“Well, we don’t have anything else on the agenda for today other than rehearsal tonight, so maybe a nap…”
“Now you’re talking.”
But I don’t sleep. The damned diary has the pull of a powerful magnet, and I spend the entire afternoon reading it. When I come to the last entry, a week before she went into the hospital for her final time, I feel sick. She’s watched me on TV every episode and claims to be bursting with pride for me at escaping the hellhole she lived in and making something out of myself.
None of which matches up with the hateful drunk in the hospital bed.
I realize as I wander around the apartment in a daze that she was as bad at showing her feelings as I am. And that inability to express herself not only destroyed her relationships, but wound up with her numbing herself with booze instead of taking the more difficult steps of telling people how she really felt about them.
The most troubling part of all of it being that
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