Mom
She told me that when she first saw me, she thought I was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She said she’d had an overwhelming feeling of love and told me that she would always love me in the first few moments she met me. She told me that she would die for me, that that’s the strong kind of love she had for me.
She made my Princess costume for Halloween, complete with glitter.
She drove me to gymnastics, and dance, and tap, and choir.
She brushed my hair, went shopping for cute clothes with me, and for shoes, too.
She made sure I got the number one item I wanted each Christmas.
I had a swing set before my family had a couch.
She taught me to sing Jesus Loves Me and to play Heart and Soul on the piano when I was three and four.
She made fried chicken better than anyone, and made it often because it was my favorite meal.
She had an awesome white jumpsuit that she wore with an orange scarf tied around her neck, big round sunglasses and a permanent in her brown hair.
We sang Neil Diamond and Lionel Ritchie songs in the car as they played on the radio.
Her nails were always neatly filed in a half moon shape and the cuticles pushed back and trimmed, as she taught me.
She wore a silver fox fur coat.
Her favorite perfume was Nina Ricci, L’Air du Temps.
She thought Magnum P.I. was hot. We watched Dallas religiously.
She sang Amazing Grace in church and other hymns at people’s weddings. Her singing voice was gorgeous.
Every Easter I had a new dress.
I always had all my school supplies, all my school clothes, and church clothes.
I got to have friends over to spend the night.
When I had my tonsils out she fed me ice cream, and made a place on the couch for me to lay so I could watch t.v.
She planted azaleas and purple ivy in our flower beds and on the side of our house, and had hanging baskets of airplane plants and ferns in front of our house.
All that time I never knew that she was popping Mommy’s little helpers. Never knew she was drinking at night.
There were moments. Signs. She would later confess to me after having about three drinks that she had done something horrible to me when I was two. I was in the tub. I defecated. She became enraged and smeared me with my own feces, telling me that I was shit.
I have no recollection of that moment. It haunted my Mom, though, and I know that I did receive the message that at my core I was bad, or that there was a huge chance that I was. The fear was always lurking underneath. Sometimes it made me panic. I know that Mom was terrified that she was evil. It’s one of the side effects of being abused. The victim, so to speak, absorbs the shame that the abuser ought to feel. Happens all the time. Hearts break every day.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Stand up for Women, even Homeless Women
Stand up for Women
Maya Angelou says that when one woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women a little. I firmly believe that.
In telling our stories, I want to stand up for my mom and myself, and all women. My mom was not evil or bad. Nor was she less than or someone to be looked down upon. Part of her was sick. And there were whole, huge parts of her that were wonderful, healing, and loving. Though she was homeless and needed help, her life was not without value. I think I have done so much in my life and yet I haven’t even lived as long as she did.
She had every excuse to be a serial killer as far as I’m concerned, given her past. At least to be a hateful, violent, mean person in every way. She became violent at moments and times but that is not who she was the majority of her life or who she taught me to be.
In standing up for myself, I think it’s so important to learn what we can and cannot do for others, even – or maybe ESPECIALLY – those we love. If I let her in too much, my mom would destroy me, unintentional as it may be. She was doing things that I did not want to be part of and had to separate myself from in some strong ways.
I’ve heard it said that alcoholics have only three possible outcomes if they do not get sober: jail, insanity, or death. In my experience this is true, and sometimes more than one of those outcomes happens.
I struggle to this day with whether or not my mom could have recovered had she wanted to
badly enough. I know for sure that she could not have stopped drinking without help. I know that because of my own personal experience with it. But then, why not get help? What is it that happens for some folks that they do choose to get help to stop drinking and some don’t? Is it something I don’t understand by the grace of God?
Homelessness
I want people to understand that my mom is not some anomaly. She is the result of what we all do, and she is you and me. I think so many people walk by that person on the street. They walk by and they are wearing their Blahniks with their Chanel glasses and Wang slip dresses and they look at the person in the street. They feel only separation, not community. Not unity. Not oneness. Not love. Certainly, they think, they are nothing like this person. Certainly this person is not at all like anyone in my family. But how do they know? It’s a nice convenience to believe that nothing like this could ever happen to us, that certainly this person must have deserved what came to them. That if they only were to “get a job” or “get a life” as they themselves had, they would not be in that situation. Although that person in the street has made certain choices, I can promise that the person in the Blahniks is not wearing because they are a better person. We have all made choices. It’s ok to wear Blahniks. It’s ok to live on the street. It’s ok to recognize a certain degree of differences, consequences, and choices. But what takes more insight and recognition and courage and honesty than that is to realize that I got where I am partially because I’ve had certain advantages and gifts that not everyone had, and I have played a part in the perpetration of all of society’s ills, and I have a responsibility to my fellow human whether I own the block or live in its gutter.
Maya Angelou says that when one woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women a little. I firmly believe that.
In telling our stories, I want to stand up for my mom and myself, and all women. My mom was not evil or bad. Nor was she less than or someone to be looked down upon. Part of her was sick. And there were whole, huge parts of her that were wonderful, healing, and loving. Though she was homeless and needed help, her life was not without value. I think I have done so much in my life and yet I haven’t even lived as long as she did.
She had every excuse to be a serial killer as far as I’m concerned, given her past. At least to be a hateful, violent, mean person in every way. She became violent at moments and times but that is not who she was the majority of her life or who she taught me to be.
In standing up for myself, I think it’s so important to learn what we can and cannot do for others, even – or maybe ESPECIALLY – those we love. If I let her in too much, my mom would destroy me, unintentional as it may be. She was doing things that I did not want to be part of and had to separate myself from in some strong ways.
I’ve heard it said that alcoholics have only three possible outcomes if they do not get sober: jail, insanity, or death. In my experience this is true, and sometimes more than one of those outcomes happens.
I struggle to this day with whether or not my mom could have recovered had she wanted to
badly enough. I know for sure that she could not have stopped drinking without help. I know that because of my own personal experience with it. But then, why not get help? What is it that happens for some folks that they do choose to get help to stop drinking and some don’t? Is it something I don’t understand by the grace of God?
Homelessness
I want people to understand that my mom is not some anomaly. She is the result of what we all do, and she is you and me. I think so many people walk by that person on the street. They walk by and they are wearing their Blahniks with their Chanel glasses and Wang slip dresses and they look at the person in the street. They feel only separation, not community. Not unity. Not oneness. Not love. Certainly, they think, they are nothing like this person. Certainly this person is not at all like anyone in my family. But how do they know? It’s a nice convenience to believe that nothing like this could ever happen to us, that certainly this person must have deserved what came to them. That if they only were to “get a job” or “get a life” as they themselves had, they would not be in that situation. Although that person in the street has made certain choices, I can promise that the person in the Blahniks is not wearing because they are a better person. We have all made choices. It’s ok to wear Blahniks. It’s ok to live on the street. It’s ok to recognize a certain degree of differences, consequences, and choices. But what takes more insight and recognition and courage and honesty than that is to realize that I got where I am partially because I’ve had certain advantages and gifts that not everyone had, and I have played a part in the perpetration of all of society’s ills, and I have a responsibility to my fellow human whether I own the block or live in its gutter.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Where there's smoke...
When I was eight, some friends and I lay in wait for Granny to neglect her square, vanilla leather box of a purse. We lifted three Marlboro Red cigarettes from her matching cigarette case.
In the heat of the East Texas summer, in the scorched grass we crouched like barn cats behind the old, wooden shed.
My Granny and Papa smoked so much that the whole “living room” smelled like smoke, and I such good memories combined with the smell of all that smoke that for many years whenever I smelled smoke I felt sentimental about it.
We had stolen some matches, too. We choked and laughed. The friend with her stringy, blonde hair, tiny, sturdy body and hard, worn face that already looked middle aged even though she was only seven, showed us how the tar from the cigarrette stained a white Kleenex when she blew a smokey breath into it, making a nasty orangey brownish spot right in the center. Her lime green shorts were dirty, too short and too worn in the seat, her sleeveless yellow and white striped cotton top fit just barely, but it wasn’t cute. It wasn’t fresh or something a mom who wanted her daughter to have darling clothes would buy. She very well may have been barefoot.
So we smoke the cigarettes, and that’s exciting. But, as B.B. King says, soon enough “the thrill is gone.”
We try phone pranking for a while, just calling random numbers from the yellow pages and dialing them from Granny’s rotary phone, asking questions like, “Is there a John in the house? No? When then how do you go to the toilet?” laughing, hanging up, and rolling with hysterics. but that gets old. Plus we get in trouble for it.
So we get a good idea. We will steal some of Granny’s chewing tobacco, dry it out for about 24 hours, and then smoke it. So we snake some of the tobacco and some paper towels, find a proper spot in the back bedroom, and spread it out the way little girls dry out flowers to save. We check on it every few hours to see that it is drying properly and how close we are to being able to smoke it.
About four in the next afternoon it is ready and so are we! But wait! What will we roll it in to smoke? We need some kind of paper. Well, for heaven’s sake, there is no paper in the entire dang house except for Granny’s Redbook magazine. It will have to do.
So we tear out a few pieces of magazine paper.
I am not the coolest one in the bunch so they have to show me how to roll. And by God, we smoke that dried chewing tobacco in chemically- and ink-treated magazine paper.
The friend can really blow some dark tar stains without a filter.
Something in me shifts. This time, it feels dirtier. Planned out. More dangerous.
I return home to Mom. I am sure someone will figure me out. I am wracked with guilt. I can’t believe we’ve gotten away with it this long. But I try to tell myself to keep it together.
One day passes. I hold it in, but I am sure that my guilt can actually be seen. It is somehow seeping out like black sludge from under my feet. I manage to fall asleep. Another day begins.
My smiling mom glides into my room, beautiful brown hair, cute shorts outfit, and asks me with her sweet face if I had fun at Granny’s with my step-sister, and I cannot keep holding the guilt in. It’s too much against her glory. I let the words sink into my mire.
I hope she won’t hate me or punish me but I am ready regardless.
What she does is to sit with me, listen fully, take me seriously, and look at me full in the face and say, “You did the right thing by telling the truth. And since you did, I will not punish you for this. Last, you must not do this again.”
Indelible. From that moment on I knew I would always tell my story, tell the truth – regardless of the consequences – and hope for the best.
In the heat of the East Texas summer, in the scorched grass we crouched like barn cats behind the old, wooden shed.
My Granny and Papa smoked so much that the whole “living room” smelled like smoke, and I such good memories combined with the smell of all that smoke that for many years whenever I smelled smoke I felt sentimental about it.
We had stolen some matches, too. We choked and laughed. The friend with her stringy, blonde hair, tiny, sturdy body and hard, worn face that already looked middle aged even though she was only seven, showed us how the tar from the cigarrette stained a white Kleenex when she blew a smokey breath into it, making a nasty orangey brownish spot right in the center. Her lime green shorts were dirty, too short and too worn in the seat, her sleeveless yellow and white striped cotton top fit just barely, but it wasn’t cute. It wasn’t fresh or something a mom who wanted her daughter to have darling clothes would buy. She very well may have been barefoot.
So we smoke the cigarettes, and that’s exciting. But, as B.B. King says, soon enough “the thrill is gone.”
We try phone pranking for a while, just calling random numbers from the yellow pages and dialing them from Granny’s rotary phone, asking questions like, “Is there a John in the house? No? When then how do you go to the toilet?” laughing, hanging up, and rolling with hysterics. but that gets old. Plus we get in trouble for it.
So we get a good idea. We will steal some of Granny’s chewing tobacco, dry it out for about 24 hours, and then smoke it. So we snake some of the tobacco and some paper towels, find a proper spot in the back bedroom, and spread it out the way little girls dry out flowers to save. We check on it every few hours to see that it is drying properly and how close we are to being able to smoke it.
About four in the next afternoon it is ready and so are we! But wait! What will we roll it in to smoke? We need some kind of paper. Well, for heaven’s sake, there is no paper in the entire dang house except for Granny’s Redbook magazine. It will have to do.
So we tear out a few pieces of magazine paper.
I am not the coolest one in the bunch so they have to show me how to roll. And by God, we smoke that dried chewing tobacco in chemically- and ink-treated magazine paper.
The friend can really blow some dark tar stains without a filter.
Something in me shifts. This time, it feels dirtier. Planned out. More dangerous.
I return home to Mom. I am sure someone will figure me out. I am wracked with guilt. I can’t believe we’ve gotten away with it this long. But I try to tell myself to keep it together.
One day passes. I hold it in, but I am sure that my guilt can actually be seen. It is somehow seeping out like black sludge from under my feet. I manage to fall asleep. Another day begins.
My smiling mom glides into my room, beautiful brown hair, cute shorts outfit, and asks me with her sweet face if I had fun at Granny’s with my step-sister, and I cannot keep holding the guilt in. It’s too much against her glory. I let the words sink into my mire.
I hope she won’t hate me or punish me but I am ready regardless.
What she does is to sit with me, listen fully, take me seriously, and look at me full in the face and say, “You did the right thing by telling the truth. And since you did, I will not punish you for this. Last, you must not do this again.”
Indelible. From that moment on I knew I would always tell my story, tell the truth – regardless of the consequences – and hope for the best.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Unwanted Guests Revised
Unwanted Guests
“I don’t get angry at the bills I have to pay. I don’t get angry when my mom smokes pot, hits the bottle and goes right to da rock… Let the loving, let the loving come back to me. Love is what I got.” - Sublime
2 years before Mom died. I’m 31.
March in Houston is one of it’s most beautiful times. It can be downright balmy and green in spots. The rose garden down by Herman Hospital is in full bloom.
I’ve about worn out my Allanis Morrissette, Jagged Little Pill CD.
The hospital smells so antiseptic, but like it’s covering something up. It’s a sickly odor that just hangs there, and you have to breathe it. I have to breathe it, walk in it, move through it.
I round the corner of the tan cinderblock and whitish tiled hallway to the hall that Mom is on.
The lights are off in her room but natural light from the window half illuminates her. I sit down beside her on her bed. A cheap, white standard issue blanket covers her legs.
The lice are gone from her hair and I see someone has braided it.
“Your hair looks nice, Momma.”
“Oh, thank you, sweetie. I was waitin’ for Paul to come bring me another robe.”
“Paul, mom?” I’m more than mad. Paul. Paul who was also homeless, shifty, constantly drunk and God knows what else, and who had also tried to strangle Mom with a wire coat hanger. That Paul. But I’m not much surprised. Mom wasn’t too much into making the greatest decisions for herself at that point. That helped me feel self-righteous and shielded me from too much disappointment.
Outside I ask the nurse for an update. Same old story, Mom has severe Cirrhosis of the liver, acute gastric hemorraging, and many other deadly complications. It’s a matter of time if she doesn’t get help, and maybe even if she does. This time, it looks like weeks. It’s a miracle she’s still alive now and that she came through the week she did.
“And, has she had a visitor?”
“Oh, yes, and we asked him to leave. We think he’s sleeping her ebecause he doesn’t have anyplace else to go more than he’s really caring for your mom.”
“Well, you would be right about that. Also, he has been very abusive to her and should not be allowed around her.”
“Oh, my! Well, we will be sure and call security if he comes back.”
Continued –
The doctor comes back in to Mom’s room. “Ma’am, you have acute cirrhosis of the liver, your stomach is basically eating itself, and you have jaundice.”
Mom wants to know what causes cirrhosis.
The doctor explains that almost always it is caused by alcohol abuse, and that very rarely it can be caused by coming in contact with a chemical like a cleaner one may be allergic to.
I think, this is it. This is the moment of truth. Someone else besides me, someone with a degree in this is officially putting it out there. She will get it.
She pipes up, “Well, I wonder what on earth I was cleaning with.”
And so it is the moment of truth. Not for Mom, but for me. I get it, finally. I get it that she will not. I will have to love her just like this, just as she is, or wish something in vain for the rest of what little time we have left.
I return home for some rest and to take care of my son. Once I get back to the hospital, I see and smell that Paul has been there. I am livid. I track down the hospital staff including an officer and complain. They say they can do nothing especially if the patient allows the guest.
I am stunned. Hightailing it back to Mom’s room, I figure she must not be capable of saying no to him. Maybe she’s afraid. I demand of her, “Mom, don’t let Paul in here!”
“Honey,” she drawls non-chalantly, “he keeps me company. He’s been helping me.”
Again, put in my place. “Fine, but I will not allow him to be here when I am.”
Outside the room, I ask the doctor about a liver transplant. He is impatient. He looks at me like I am completely gone. “Look,” he deigns, “we don’t even really try to find a liver with cases like hers.”
And there you have it. So many truths I have to accept and none of them wanted. I allow them to take up residence in my psyche.
“I don’t get angry at the bills I have to pay. I don’t get angry when my mom smokes pot, hits the bottle and goes right to da rock… Let the loving, let the loving come back to me. Love is what I got.” - Sublime
2 years before Mom died. I’m 31.
March in Houston is one of it’s most beautiful times. It can be downright balmy and green in spots. The rose garden down by Herman Hospital is in full bloom.
I’ve about worn out my Allanis Morrissette, Jagged Little Pill CD.
The hospital smells so antiseptic, but like it’s covering something up. It’s a sickly odor that just hangs there, and you have to breathe it. I have to breathe it, walk in it, move through it.
I round the corner of the tan cinderblock and whitish tiled hallway to the hall that Mom is on.
The lights are off in her room but natural light from the window half illuminates her. I sit down beside her on her bed. A cheap, white standard issue blanket covers her legs.
The lice are gone from her hair and I see someone has braided it.
“Your hair looks nice, Momma.”
“Oh, thank you, sweetie. I was waitin’ for Paul to come bring me another robe.”
“Paul, mom?” I’m more than mad. Paul. Paul who was also homeless, shifty, constantly drunk and God knows what else, and who had also tried to strangle Mom with a wire coat hanger. That Paul. But I’m not much surprised. Mom wasn’t too much into making the greatest decisions for herself at that point. That helped me feel self-righteous and shielded me from too much disappointment.
Outside I ask the nurse for an update. Same old story, Mom has severe Cirrhosis of the liver, acute gastric hemorraging, and many other deadly complications. It’s a matter of time if she doesn’t get help, and maybe even if she does. This time, it looks like weeks. It’s a miracle she’s still alive now and that she came through the week she did.
“And, has she had a visitor?”
“Oh, yes, and we asked him to leave. We think he’s sleeping her ebecause he doesn’t have anyplace else to go more than he’s really caring for your mom.”
“Well, you would be right about that. Also, he has been very abusive to her and should not be allowed around her.”
“Oh, my! Well, we will be sure and call security if he comes back.”
Continued –
The doctor comes back in to Mom’s room. “Ma’am, you have acute cirrhosis of the liver, your stomach is basically eating itself, and you have jaundice.”
Mom wants to know what causes cirrhosis.
The doctor explains that almost always it is caused by alcohol abuse, and that very rarely it can be caused by coming in contact with a chemical like a cleaner one may be allergic to.
I think, this is it. This is the moment of truth. Someone else besides me, someone with a degree in this is officially putting it out there. She will get it.
She pipes up, “Well, I wonder what on earth I was cleaning with.”
And so it is the moment of truth. Not for Mom, but for me. I get it, finally. I get it that she will not. I will have to love her just like this, just as she is, or wish something in vain for the rest of what little time we have left.
I return home for some rest and to take care of my son. Once I get back to the hospital, I see and smell that Paul has been there. I am livid. I track down the hospital staff including an officer and complain. They say they can do nothing especially if the patient allows the guest.
I am stunned. Hightailing it back to Mom’s room, I figure she must not be capable of saying no to him. Maybe she’s afraid. I demand of her, “Mom, don’t let Paul in here!”
“Honey,” she drawls non-chalantly, “he keeps me company. He’s been helping me.”
Again, put in my place. “Fine, but I will not allow him to be here when I am.”
Outside the room, I ask the doctor about a liver transplant. He is impatient. He looks at me like I am completely gone. “Look,” he deigns, “we don’t even really try to find a liver with cases like hers.”
And there you have it. So many truths I have to accept and none of them wanted. I allow them to take up residence in my psyche.
Wedding Present
Wedding Present
Reason number 452 to forget I was married a second time: the week I sang Amazing Grace to Mom was the week before my wedding. Only five days before I was supposed to be a bride again, she was supposed to die again.
I couldn’t count on my mother at my wedding. I couldn’t even invite her to my wedding. I did – of course – knowing that there was no possible way she could make it. Thinking about it now, I guess I could have had it somewhere in Houston and not Austin where he and I lived. But that’s not what I did.
Probably part of me was trying to move on and not care. What’s interesting is that two weeks before the wedding I called my therapist to say that I surely was selfish for spending any money on a wedding when my mother was in the shape she was in, that probably I should take that money and put my mother in a rehab – one last chance. I called around and found a place that had a bed. My therapist told me that I was sabotaging my own prospects at a happy life, feeling survivor guilt, and was trying to parent my mother.
Next thing I know, my mom lands herself in a bed. Well, I don’t believe in coincidence. And she wasn’t hearing it from the doc that she even had a problem with alcohol at that fatal point. Plus, she was hanging out with old man mean-o mooch.
I think the good Lord was showing me that she wasn’t ready and that I didn’t have to feel guilty. Of course, I didn’t get that at the time.
At the time, I was full of grief for what I didn’t have: my mom. Shouldn’t every girl/woman be able to have her mom when she gets married? Why oh why can’t I? Too, and fair enough, I was terribly sad that she was dying for certain and that the dream that she may recover was really over. I missed her, or at least what there was of her.
Flashback: about a year before that, when I did live in Houston and Mom got released from her assault – after they’d taken her car. I talked to her about staying in a shelter. She let me know that sometimes she did go to Star of Texas, but that she didn’t like the rules plus she had a bed in a room with so many people that she had to sleep with her shoes on or they would get stolen.
I call Star of Texas to find out what the rules are. The young man on the phone tells me that, yes, it’s true that no alcohol is allowed and that often that is a reason that some folks refuse to stay. They would rather have their drink than a roof and a bed. He fills me in on some more harsh truth, which is that this mission area is a known haven for heroin addicts and prostitutes, that often this is what becomes of people who hang around there, that it’s a vicious cycle.
I call an institution to find out the legalities of having someone committed for their own good. Turns out, they have to be a lot more than homeless and refusing a bed so that they can drink. It seems that they have to prove that they are a danger to themselves or others. I am certain that if they just talk to Mom they will see that she is a danger to herself – she stays out on the street and gets assaulted, ending up in the hospital. The police who question her call me back and claim that she was very clear and lucid about what she wanted and wasn’t doing anything wrong. I call the young man again at STAR of Texas and he says, yep. There’s your trouble. And if you want you can work very hard to try to get someone to maybe commit her for a short time while she hates you for a long one.
This is when my panic starts to really set in. This is when I start to experience real symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is when I start staying up nights, not eating. I lose 16 pounds in two weeks – I wasn’t heavy in the first place. A counselor at the school where I teach stops me in the hall and asks me what’s going on with the dark circles under my eyes. I tell him, and he tells me I am not going to make it through the school year like this. And I don’t.
Reason number 452 to forget I was married a second time: the week I sang Amazing Grace to Mom was the week before my wedding. Only five days before I was supposed to be a bride again, she was supposed to die again.
I couldn’t count on my mother at my wedding. I couldn’t even invite her to my wedding. I did – of course – knowing that there was no possible way she could make it. Thinking about it now, I guess I could have had it somewhere in Houston and not Austin where he and I lived. But that’s not what I did.
Probably part of me was trying to move on and not care. What’s interesting is that two weeks before the wedding I called my therapist to say that I surely was selfish for spending any money on a wedding when my mother was in the shape she was in, that probably I should take that money and put my mother in a rehab – one last chance. I called around and found a place that had a bed. My therapist told me that I was sabotaging my own prospects at a happy life, feeling survivor guilt, and was trying to parent my mother.
Next thing I know, my mom lands herself in a bed. Well, I don’t believe in coincidence. And she wasn’t hearing it from the doc that she even had a problem with alcohol at that fatal point. Plus, she was hanging out with old man mean-o mooch.
I think the good Lord was showing me that she wasn’t ready and that I didn’t have to feel guilty. Of course, I didn’t get that at the time.
At the time, I was full of grief for what I didn’t have: my mom. Shouldn’t every girl/woman be able to have her mom when she gets married? Why oh why can’t I? Too, and fair enough, I was terribly sad that she was dying for certain and that the dream that she may recover was really over. I missed her, or at least what there was of her.
Flashback: about a year before that, when I did live in Houston and Mom got released from her assault – after they’d taken her car. I talked to her about staying in a shelter. She let me know that sometimes she did go to Star of Texas, but that she didn’t like the rules plus she had a bed in a room with so many people that she had to sleep with her shoes on or they would get stolen.
I call Star of Texas to find out what the rules are. The young man on the phone tells me that, yes, it’s true that no alcohol is allowed and that often that is a reason that some folks refuse to stay. They would rather have their drink than a roof and a bed. He fills me in on some more harsh truth, which is that this mission area is a known haven for heroin addicts and prostitutes, that often this is what becomes of people who hang around there, that it’s a vicious cycle.
I call an institution to find out the legalities of having someone committed for their own good. Turns out, they have to be a lot more than homeless and refusing a bed so that they can drink. It seems that they have to prove that they are a danger to themselves or others. I am certain that if they just talk to Mom they will see that she is a danger to herself – she stays out on the street and gets assaulted, ending up in the hospital. The police who question her call me back and claim that she was very clear and lucid about what she wanted and wasn’t doing anything wrong. I call the young man again at STAR of Texas and he says, yep. There’s your trouble. And if you want you can work very hard to try to get someone to maybe commit her for a short time while she hates you for a long one.
This is when my panic starts to really set in. This is when I start to experience real symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is when I start staying up nights, not eating. I lose 16 pounds in two weeks – I wasn’t heavy in the first place. A counselor at the school where I teach stops me in the hall and asks me what’s going on with the dark circles under my eyes. I tell him, and he tells me I am not going to make it through the school year like this. And I don’t.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Summer 89
In the summer of 89, Houston was as hot as ever. I had just completed my freshman year at U.T. Austin and thought I would try to live a semi-normal life like my peers did and return home until fall. Except I didn’t really have a home. The family and the house I had grown up with seemed to have both been sold in the divorce the year before, and since I was not really “at home” anymore neither parent had a true room for me to stay in.
Mom had hooked me up with a temporary job editing engineers’ documents for an oil company. My boss had been her boss in the past. It was a posh job with the exception of the huge signs and warnings as you walked in to work each day, and the clearance you had to have to be on the campus. You see, fueling the entire enterprise was a nuclear reactor. Contained, harnessed, but always a threat. It’s so weird how life can imitate art.
I left the cute, rented townhouse in the mornings in cute outfits. I made friends with my co-workers, went to lunch with them, and read interesting documents all day.
Then one day came when I thought to call my mom at work from my little desk. The person who answered let me know that she was no longer employed.
The day before she had been.
The confirmation that something was horribly wrong was extremely cold comfort. The fear and despair was rising up and I couldn’t keep it down. Maybe you’ve seen a drama where there’s a nuclear emergency and the lights go down and a huge drone sound warns and then an alarm, and a computerized voice calmly announces “this building will self destruct,” that’s was happening in my head.
I stood up in my cubicle with the phone receiver pressed to my ear. The tears came and I choked, “this is because of her drinking isn’t it?!” A pause of silence and a small “Ah-“
“This is her daughter. Answer me!” I demanded.
“I’m sorry, I can’t discuss that.” Click.
Me. Left with me to figure it out.
The tragic truth is that this was the first major step toward my mom not being able to support herself at all. She would not hold another job for any length of time. She would eventually only have temporary positions, and then none. She would move to a less expensive place, then begin hocking our family heirlooms including the piano she used to play on, and then have no place at all.
That fall, I took my last drink of alcohol to date.
I asked my mom about stopping, too. Once, after she had moved into the smaller apartment, she told me that she really needed to drink because of all the pain she was in. Who am I to judge?
Believe me, I used to and sometimes still can. I was so angry that I hated her at times. I desperately wanted her to be what I thought I needed. And then I would alternate at being angry with myself. I wanted to rescue her. But it turned out that most of my attempts either enabled her to keep hurting herself or sabotaged myself, as others had to teach me. The rest had little to no effect.
I know alcohol comforted me. I know I didn’t live through half what she did. I know that I was blessed with a way to stop drinking. For whatever reason, my mom did not find that. Maybe she could have.
But it seems to me to be splitting hairs sometimes. I don’t think that people with or without cancer, for instance, are more or less blessed than each other because people are blessed in different ways. Maybe someone with cancer could have stopped smoking sooner, or eaten more vegetables, or gone to the doctor sooner. Maybe. Sometimes the chances are greater than others that things could have been different if only… Then, at some point, “if only” doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore.
I do know I wish she could have found the comfort I found in sobriety. I do know that, even though she caused plenty of hurt, many of her actions spared me the kind of pain she had to live through.
So, I will never know if I could have done things differently than she did. I only know I can do my life differently than I did before. For that, I am responsible.
Today, I’d rather not and don’t work at a nuclear facility. I also am committed to doing my part to stop the cycle that has been going on in my family for farther back and sideways than I can determine. Most of the time that involves just trying to be all I can be today, make sure I stay sober, show up for my kid and my husband, for work, and for my friends and other family – but not to the extent that it would hurt me. It takes almost all my energy just to make me the best I can be.
Mom had hooked me up with a temporary job editing engineers’ documents for an oil company. My boss had been her boss in the past. It was a posh job with the exception of the huge signs and warnings as you walked in to work each day, and the clearance you had to have to be on the campus. You see, fueling the entire enterprise was a nuclear reactor. Contained, harnessed, but always a threat. It’s so weird how life can imitate art.
I left the cute, rented townhouse in the mornings in cute outfits. I made friends with my co-workers, went to lunch with them, and read interesting documents all day.
Then one day came when I thought to call my mom at work from my little desk. The person who answered let me know that she was no longer employed.
The day before she had been.
The confirmation that something was horribly wrong was extremely cold comfort. The fear and despair was rising up and I couldn’t keep it down. Maybe you’ve seen a drama where there’s a nuclear emergency and the lights go down and a huge drone sound warns and then an alarm, and a computerized voice calmly announces “this building will self destruct,” that’s was happening in my head.
I stood up in my cubicle with the phone receiver pressed to my ear. The tears came and I choked, “this is because of her drinking isn’t it?!” A pause of silence and a small “Ah-“
“This is her daughter. Answer me!” I demanded.
“I’m sorry, I can’t discuss that.” Click.
Me. Left with me to figure it out.
The tragic truth is that this was the first major step toward my mom not being able to support herself at all. She would not hold another job for any length of time. She would eventually only have temporary positions, and then none. She would move to a less expensive place, then begin hocking our family heirlooms including the piano she used to play on, and then have no place at all.
That fall, I took my last drink of alcohol to date.
I asked my mom about stopping, too. Once, after she had moved into the smaller apartment, she told me that she really needed to drink because of all the pain she was in. Who am I to judge?
Believe me, I used to and sometimes still can. I was so angry that I hated her at times. I desperately wanted her to be what I thought I needed. And then I would alternate at being angry with myself. I wanted to rescue her. But it turned out that most of my attempts either enabled her to keep hurting herself or sabotaged myself, as others had to teach me. The rest had little to no effect.
I know alcohol comforted me. I know I didn’t live through half what she did. I know that I was blessed with a way to stop drinking. For whatever reason, my mom did not find that. Maybe she could have.
But it seems to me to be splitting hairs sometimes. I don’t think that people with or without cancer, for instance, are more or less blessed than each other because people are blessed in different ways. Maybe someone with cancer could have stopped smoking sooner, or eaten more vegetables, or gone to the doctor sooner. Maybe. Sometimes the chances are greater than others that things could have been different if only… Then, at some point, “if only” doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore.
I do know I wish she could have found the comfort I found in sobriety. I do know that, even though she caused plenty of hurt, many of her actions spared me the kind of pain she had to live through.
So, I will never know if I could have done things differently than she did. I only know I can do my life differently than I did before. For that, I am responsible.
Today, I’d rather not and don’t work at a nuclear facility. I also am committed to doing my part to stop the cycle that has been going on in my family for farther back and sideways than I can determine. Most of the time that involves just trying to be all I can be today, make sure I stay sober, show up for my kid and my husband, for work, and for my friends and other family – but not to the extent that it would hurt me. It takes almost all my energy just to make me the best I can be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)