Soldiers and Warriors

“This one is not for the folks at home, sorry to leave, Mom, I had to go,

Who the fuck wants to die alone all dried up in the desert sun?”                                                                                           

Some Nights/fun

            As a young adult going away to school and leaving the poison of my toxic childhood, I tried to reinvent myself. I pushed away everything that happened to me, but it was complete bullshit because I was still living in constant survival mode. I did not have the skills to cope yet. I was winging everything and oh, so angry.

No one knew me, and it was a relief. I was the first in my family to go to college. I attended Illinois State University. It was a fresh start, and I immediately began to self-implode. I drank until I passed out, skipped classes, and partied every night. I would stagger back to the Stevenson dorm, then try to find my room after day drinking and try to get past my RA, who would hurl herself at me to get me to “share my feelings.” I pushed past her and shut the door to my room in her face. I will ruin my own life if I want to. I will destroy myself from the inside out because I can. I did not care why I allowed myself to be sabotaged every step of the way. I would have short-term relationships, short-term jobs, short-term friendships, short-term success, and short-term happiness. But why?

The first therapist I reluctantly went to in college asked, “What are you afraid of?”

I said, “I don’t know, being happy finally and having it taken away from me?”

He nodded at me and opened his hands slowly, serving me an annoying “Ta-dah!” 

“What? Life is suffering…that is all I know.” I quipped.

Life is shit. Life is peppered with enormous amounts of shit, then there are moments of bliss, snuffed out by random shit. I expected nothing. It was safe. Fear of failure, I did not have. Fear of happiness, I did, and it was stifling. It was comfortable failing, and I knew how to be in it. I loathed the uncertainty of a good party, an exhilarating roller coaster ride, a beautiful sunset, a good man, and a sweet child sleeping in my arms. There were too many things that could go wrong. How can I trust the rest of the world when it changes so often? How do I let go of the cursed reality that change is constant and cruel?

When a soldier comes back from war, they have difficulty assimilating back into society. It is the same with coming out of a violent childhood. We cannot assimilate in a healthy way. We are stilted and awkward, full of inappropriate reactions, laughing at the wrong times. We scare away any normal interactions, and we are more comfortable being alone in our self-loathing.

I was so alone in my head and oblivious to others who tried to help me. Feeling safe was a miracle that I could not achieve, not without the risk of being honest with myself.

I missed my mother. I felt like I had abandoned her by leaving. My oldest brother, Danny, told me that she was drinking more than usual. I felt sick with guilt and grief. I grieved the death of my family and the guilt of not being there for my mother to pick up the pieces and help her get through it. She was drinking and not coming home from the bar that she tended.

“Mom is missing; I can’t find her,” Dan said over the phone one winter evening. “You gotta come back here and help, she only listens to you when she’s wasted.”

I went home. The roads were icy and slick with a quiet and soft snowfall. I found her at a bar that closed at 2 am in town. I walked her carefully to the car, looking at the confusion on her face about me being there, telling me that I looked like her daughter, Michelle.

“Mom, I am Michelle, it’s me, it’s me, Mom,” I said with constant reassurance. I eased her into the car and very methodically started driving home.

“Stop, I’m gonna throw up,” she mumbled. I pressed the button to roll down her window, the frigid air killing the smell of alcohol and bile. Rita projectile vomited out the window into the dark the moment I lurched and slid around a corner. Then she began to sob uncontrollably and scream in a drunken whirl. It was the same lullaby, the same sad, haunting song. I tried to keep her focused while I drove, along with her garbled incoherence and her regurgitation of Southern Comfort straight up with a twist and a side of water, times ten.

“I just wanted to marry someone like Saint Joseph.” Sounds of vomiting…

“Rita, get it outside the car. Get it outside the car!”I shouted.

“I’m just saying…I’m just saying…” Dry heaving in-between…

“Goddammit, Rita, you got to stop this shit!”I muttered.

“No, I just wanted a happy family.” Coughing and pulling herself up to puke some more…

“Jesus Christ, Mom! You have to stop this! Danny could not find you; did you know that? Did you know he thought you crashed?”I yelled.

“He was a bad man, just a bad man.” Waving her hands about…

“Are you even listening? What were you thinking?”I demanded.

“I just wanted to be happy!” Pulling away strands of her hair, caked in vomit on the right side of her face.

“Don’t get that in the car, use your scarf, don’t flick your hand in the car, awe Jeeesus! Outside the window! Outside the window!”I shouted, looking at the road, then her, the road, then her.

Wait. What did she say? That last one. What was that? The fireworks went off in my head with the icy sting from the winter air in my throat, snow whipping in the open window over Rita’s head, propped up over the side. That last one, that last one was me.

“I just wanted to be happy!”

Jesus, I was imitating Rita. I was just imitating her the whole time because that was all I ever heard.

What happened to Rita was not just; it was unjust. She was living in the past. She was afraid of happiness; she was afraid of life, and I was her best pupil. The only difference is that I not only drank like her, but I also tried to kill myself in unusual ways with other drugs, promiscuity, and prolific self-sabotage. I let fate take its course, I did not deserve to be happy. Happiness was for those who were good, those who were upstanding and did the right thing. It was for “good girls” who were polite and self-assured. I was none of these. I did not want to assume that I had the right to be happy; if I pretended, maybe I would get some residual happiness by mistake. Honestly, that was not a bad deal, I was very good at pretending. I was so good that I even convinced myself.