I Was A Teenage Idiot

Oh, my. The memories this post brings back.

I think I might have mentioned somewhere before that I went through a phase for about a year when I was teenager where I was drunk or stoned pretty much any time I wasn't in school. I had a group of friends that I had started hanging out with that, while good friends, weren't exactly the best influence. Now I was never really one to cave into peer pressure, it's just that being around it all the time made me curious. So I fell into the same habits they did.

Getting stoned? Sure. BAD experiences. First time I did it, I stumbled around feeling nauseous and as though I was going to die for 2 hours before eating three toast sandwiches (just toast...nothing else. No butter, no nothing.) and a bowl of potato salad and falling asleep after shrieking at my then-boyfriend NOT TO TOUCH ME EVER AGAIN OR I'D DIE. Another time (having not learned from my first experience, evidently) my friend and I managed, WITHOUT EITHER OF US KNOWING, to get hold of weed that had been laced with CRYSTAL METH. I shit you not. I was totally out of it for 12 fuckin' hours, during which I nearly put my eye out when I broke a string on my guitar after trying to play Stairway To Heaven (because , you know, I was a guitar MASTER suddenly) squinted at the radio for half an hour trying to figure out why all the music was playing too fast, and annoyed the large group of friends who were babysitting us both by repeatedly asking when this shit would wear off. About nine million times a minute.

After that, I quit smoking. I was a bit reckless but not a complete idiot.

But drinking? Yea. Drinking was still fair game. I'm sure I don't remember most of the very dumbest things I did while drunk, as I got the black out experience more than once. There is nothing quite so embarrassing as waking up in your bed and hearing stories about how your friends had to carry you home and clean up vomit from various places. The first time I kissed Ex? Yea, I was blacked out. Can't remember it to save my life. As a matter of fact I woke up the next day wondering why I suddenly had a crush on him. I suppose I should have realized this boded ill for the rest of the relationship, but alas, I did not. Another time I decided I just HAD to walk home and sleep in my own bed (at 3 AM, when everyone else was asleep) so I set off. I do not remember anything about walking home, but when I woke up the next day I was in my bed, covered in mud and with a hole in my shirt. Turns out I somehow managed to cross a six lane highway, scale a six foot board fence, fall into a ditch and most amazingly of all, get home without being arrested.

Luckily for me I was always around a group of friends who took care of me if they had to and watched out for me. They interfered more than once on my behalf with scuzzy boyfriends trying to take advantage of my inebriated state. For that I am very thankful.

Whenever I look back at all this I cringe. Oh, how I cringe. The times I should have gotten arrested or hospitalized defy the imagination. I cannot believe how dumb I was. And considering my parents were dead and I lived with my grandmother, who was blissfully clueless to all this and let me come and go as I pleased...I'm honestly amazed I didn't come to more harm.

Thankfully I had a streak of common sense just big enough to prevent myself from going totally over the edge. And eventually I realized I was wasting my time and acting like an idiot, and I got a job and quit doing quite as many stupid things.

And now I have a daughter. And while her teenage days are still a comfortable distance away, I still get nervous. Because when it comes down to it, it is the kid that has to make their own decisions. Unless I keep her locked away in a closet, odds are she will run into some of the same situations I did. And while I can impart to her my suggestions and thoughts and advice and rules, in the end it's up to her. If she wants to do something, she'll find a way to do it. I'm not naive enough to think she won't. Teenagers are devious that way. I just hope she inherits less of my teen recklessness and a bit more of my common sense and self preservation.

And my luck, because lord knows I must have had quite a bit of it.

Digging Up The Past

Most people that I know do not know how my mother died.

A lot of people that I know do not even know that my parents are dead.

Whenever anyone asks, I usually just kind of skirt the question, or say something about how we don't get along.

I don't really know why this is. I guess it is because I don't want their pity, or to hear the ever present "I'm so sorry." I don't want to see the look they would give me if I told them that my father died of a heart attack when I was seven, and that my mother killed herself when I was sixteen.

She had left me and my little sister at home one day to go to work, and never came home that night. Or the next. Or the next. Apparently, she was done with us, and decided to stay at a boyfriend's house in the town that she worked at, rather than come home to her kids. Two months went by. I heard from her once, when she called to say she was coming by to pick something up. (I was living with my grandmother by now, and my little sister was living with my aunt in the same town where my mom was working) On the day she was supposed to come by, I made sure I was gone. I was angry with her for not coming home, for not calling, even on my birthday. So I left.

I never saw her again.

About two weeks after that, right before Christmas, my aunt called to tell me my mother had died. She wouldn't tell me how on the phone. She said she needed to tell me face to face.

The night before, my mom had called my aunt around 1 in the morning, telling her she needed to come get my sister (who was staying with her for the night). She wouldn't say why. When my aunt went over to the house, there was no answer. The door was unlocked, so my aunt walked in. She found my mom. My mother had put a shotgun in her mouth.

My little sister (3 at the time) was asleep in another room, thankfully. She hadn't woken up. I am very grateful for that.

To this day, we're not sure why she did it. there was no note, no warning. She had seemed fine earlier that day. She'd always had a drinking problem, so we suspect she was drunk, upset about something, and decided to take her life rather than try to get help.

My mom had tried to kill herself once before that, when I was 13. She downed a bottle of sleeping pills and half a bottle of wine and went to bed. Somehow, she woke up, and I realized something was wrong when she came stumbling into the living room, incoherent, and tried to make a phone call with my sister's sippy cup. I called 911, she went to the hospital and had her stomach pumped, all was well. She seemed to be fine afterwards. Everything went back to normal.

Looking back, I realize someone should have made her get help. But no one did.

I'm spilling all this I guess because today I realized that it's about time to let God back into my life, and I wanted to give a little background on why He hasn't been in it for a long time. I lost what little faith I had when my mom died. But this morning, when I went to check the mail, I had one of those hokey church letters. You know the kind, where they ask you to return a card or something similar so that the church can pray for you and help Jesus into your life. For some reason, instead of throwing it out, I did it. Some small voice inside me just told me it was something I should do. So I wrote down what I needed prayers for, which right now is money, and sent it off. I am barely scraping by this month, so close that I probably won't be blogging for a couple of weeks, as we need lights and a car more than the Internet. My cell phone got turned off yesterday, leaving me no way to call anyone for anything since we don't have a house phone.

Except earlier today my cell phone came back on.

I did not pay the bill. Ex did not pay the bill. No one paid it. But it is on and paid for nonetheless.

I know some would say big deal, so your cell phone is on. But how often do you hear about bills paying themselves? Maybe I am reading too much into this, but that coupled with the fact that I just sent off a letter to a church this morning after years of being ambivalent at best about God, maybe it is something.

Maybe Someone is trying to tell me He's there to help me. That I'm not as alone as I've been feeling.

I'd like to think so.