"I don't raise kids like that. Kids that drink and do drugs."
It's conversations like this that inspire so much guilt within me that I have to make up appointments for which I'm late so I might leave the room. The sharp clicks of my dress shoes against the wooden floors of my parents house only serves to punctuate the thoughts racing through my mind with another dose of harsh reality. Images of cabinets, full of orange bottles, dressers with containers stuffed under socks, all run through my mind. Late at night after my mother and father were already asleep, pulling out Vodka, Gin, Rum, whatever I could get my hands on and drinking until I woke with a start the next morning; jumping out of bed without the slightest remembrance of how I ended up in it the night before. Sometimes it was worse, making trips up and down the stairs from four in the afternoon, until by the time dinner ended I would fall on the stairs trying to get up to the bathroom to brush my teeth. And after that, waking up in the morning and opening other people's prescriptions. Switching aspirin for opiates, spending the first four periods of the day so far gone that I had to scream just to make my voice heard.
But she didn't raise kids who would do this.
I remember when they would come home from work or play early, coming to see just exactly what I was up to, staring back at them through the eyes of an addict, smiling a pleasant lie, "I'm just tired, sorry." "I'm not on drugs, what the crap?" "Where would I get that?" Behind dying lies I cried, begging them to find out who I really was, what I really did when they weren't looking. Stories more transparent, bottles left in obvious places and sometimes out in the open; shouts that I worried were only ignored. I couldn't tell them the truth, couldn't come forward on my own. Is it my place to deconstruct their illusions? To take away from them what they have before them? Their wonderful life, their wonderful jobs, their perfect child who lived daily under the oppresion of constant failure, for what was ever truly good enough? Who's mind was so bent that the happiness of his absent parents overruled any thoughts of self-preservation.
But she didn't raise kids like that.
And I still can't tell her she did. She still doesn't know. And I don't think she ever will.
It's conversations like this that inspire so much guilt within me that I have to make up appointments for which I'm late so I might leave the room. The sharp clicks of my dress shoes against the wooden floors of my parents house only serves to punctuate the thoughts racing through my mind with another dose of harsh reality. Images of cabinets, full of orange bottles, dressers with containers stuffed under socks, all run through my mind. Late at night after my mother and father were already asleep, pulling out Vodka, Gin, Rum, whatever I could get my hands on and drinking until I woke with a start the next morning; jumping out of bed without the slightest remembrance of how I ended up in it the night before. Sometimes it was worse, making trips up and down the stairs from four in the afternoon, until by the time dinner ended I would fall on the stairs trying to get up to the bathroom to brush my teeth. And after that, waking up in the morning and opening other people's prescriptions. Switching aspirin for opiates, spending the first four periods of the day so far gone that I had to scream just to make my voice heard.
But she didn't raise kids who would do this.
I remember when they would come home from work or play early, coming to see just exactly what I was up to, staring back at them through the eyes of an addict, smiling a pleasant lie, "I'm just tired, sorry." "I'm not on drugs, what the crap?" "Where would I get that?" Behind dying lies I cried, begging them to find out who I really was, what I really did when they weren't looking. Stories more transparent, bottles left in obvious places and sometimes out in the open; shouts that I worried were only ignored. I couldn't tell them the truth, couldn't come forward on my own. Is it my place to deconstruct their illusions? To take away from them what they have before them? Their wonderful life, their wonderful jobs, their perfect child who lived daily under the oppresion of constant failure, for what was ever truly good enough? Who's mind was so bent that the happiness of his absent parents overruled any thoughts of self-preservation.
But she didn't raise kids like that.
And I still can't tell her she did. She still doesn't know. And I don't think she ever will.
belllla:
Have you found the Beta site yet?? If not, first download Mozilla Firefox... make sure you have the latest flash plug-in. Then go to beta.suicidegirls.com. You won't regret it. 