It's Not Something I'm Proud Of

I decided to try to prove myself wrong. It occurred to me that I had never told my dad how much he had hurt me. I had never asked him to change. I had never been open and vulnerable with him, so perhaps he just didn’t realize what he was doing. Maybe he didn’t mean it. Maybe he didn’t know I cared. I confirmed the address with my stepmom so I knew he would get it. This was the only card I had left to play. This was the daughter card. This was the ultimatum card. It hadn’t occurred to me that he wouldn’t change, or at least go to rehab. The very last thing I could have imagined was no response at all.

Ease On Down The Road

That felt too final. It was too hard to consider. But that’s exactly what I got. He had said nothing. They got a date, a dress, and invited 200 people. I tried to tell her I wouldn’t be at the wedding, I begged her not to go through with it. But alas, I stood there in a bridesmaid’s dress, sobbing, as my mom didn’t choose me. I hardly remember that night. I decided that if I couldn’t beat him, I should join him. He could hardly stand by dinner time, so I set out to race him into oblivion. There have been only a few times that I’ve had so much to drink that I didn’t remember what happened. That night was one of them.

Lives In The Balance

It’s not something I’m proud of. No wonder having an alcoholic parent leads to alcoholism. It suddenly made so much sense. I woke up the next morning at the tipping point of a very steep slide into depression. Returning to college and getting back into the swing of things was different now. I spent a lot of time drinking. I sat in my room a lot. I was mostly writing, or that’s what I wanted my roommates to think, but I was withdrawing. Within a month of my mom’s wedding, I found myself the victim of date rape. This guy was someone I knew, but barely. I had definitely not wanted it. But I had also never allowed myself to be vulnerable in that way before.

Determination Gives You The Resolve

This was totally on me. I had put myself in this situation. I had said no, of course, but if no one else respected what I wanted, why should he? Why should I hold this particular man to a higher standard than any other man who had stomped all over my life? It wasn’t his fault. I lay there, wanting to crawl out of my skin and yet barely able to keep from passing out. I wondered if this was where my worth was going to be found from now on. Maybe that was all I had to offer. Everything else felt like failing. This felt like something. In that moment, I accepted my fate as a victim. After all, it wasn’t my fault that everything got so screwed up. Life was clearly just going to happen. I didn’t have any control or influence over it. Being a victim was easy. If I had no control, surely I couldn’t be held responsible for any consequences of my actions. Nothing mattered anymore. Trivial moments strung themselves together into hours and days and weeks. I went to class in my pajamas without makeup, and came home and went back to bed. I struggled with terrible insomnia and felt like a zombie. When you’re numb on the inside, you can hide it on the outside. You know how you’re supposed to act, you know what you’re supposed to do and say. I became a professional faker. I knew that this wasn’t the type of thing that you unload on someone else. This is the crap you bury. My tolerance to that drug was getting higher. Looking back now, I can see very clearly that I was just desperate to be loved. It wasn’t enough to feel kind of chosen. He was a boy from back home, one I had known most of my life. He was bad news from the moment I knew I was going to love him. I knew he was going to break me into pieces, but I was just so desperate to be loved that when he told me he loved me, I just went all in. He was controlling, but hilarious. He was incredibly jealous, but flattering. He was demanding, but immeasurably charming. The relationship ended when he proposed to the girl he was sleeping with while I was in college. I found out when I went home for Christmas. I sat crying between two cars in the parking lot of a bar. I was single for about five minutes before I found myself madly in love with the man who would end up leaving bruises on my arms the night of my graduation party. I was afraid of what I knew about his alcohol and drug abuse, but afraid he would leave me. I was afraid of his anger issues and his manic outbursts. I had seen him beat up people at bars and in parking lots for no reason at all. He broke his hand on someone’s face and fell asleep, bleeding onto my feather bed. But I was afraid he would leave me. And of course he did. For the other girlfriend. And he hadn’t chosen me. If this is you, if you relate to this, to any part of my story, I want you to know that I see you, and I hear you, and my heart breaks for you. But I also want you to know that this is where my story takes a dramatic turn, and I pray that the same becomes true for you. And each and every day, I want you to know that you’re holding the pen. You get to write the ending. As Glenda the Witch says to Dorothy, You’ve always had the power.