The Longest Year Ever

Where to begin? It's such a long and tragic story to share. And yet, many people will spend the whole time yelling at me, "Why can't you see what is going on? Why are you not running fast and far?"

Well, hindsight is 20/20 they say. It's more like hindsight is a bully, kicking you in the ass, and rubbing it in that you were blind. And now you have perfect clarity on those past events.

25 years ago I graduated high school, and then I met this guy. Bad boy image, musician, gorgeous, and you know he had to be a good guy deep down inside right? I mean he came from a great family. His parents had been married forever. His little brother was in my graduating class and he was nearly perfect. Or so it seemed. I let my heart lead my actions and soon enough I was quitting art school because I was pregnant and needed to get a job because the tortured musician could not bring in a steady income. Roofing, so unpredictable. At least that is what I was told.

Everything was going well. Fucktard, as I now call him, actually took the initiative to get a real job. He was over the moon about the baby. He would go to the convenience store every single morning and get me chocolate milk to have with my rice crispies because it was the only thing I could keep down. He bought me a ring and asked me to marry him. Everything was blissfully normal. For a minute.

Around my eighth month, I went home to mom's to spend a week. I wanted to visit, and I was getting the family crib from his mom. All four of her kids and her only other grandchild all used this crib. It had decades of paint and stickers, some full of lead I am sure, layered on this poor piece of furniture. So I decided to strip it down and repaint it. I was also painting the megaphones for the high school cheer squad. A once a year job that I thoroughly enjoyed for several years. Best looking megaphones ever! All these projects were so much more difficult with a big fat belly getting in the way. Thank goodness I was only 19 and made of rubber and grand ideas so I could ignore any pain and difficulties.

One week passes. I have everything done, and I am waiting. And waiting. And waiting. He never shows up to pick me up from my mom's house. He isn't answering the home phone. We didn't have cell phones then, it was 1995, we had pagers, but he wasn't answering that either. Worried to the point of being ill I borrow my mother's car and drive two hours home. Our apartment is trashed! It looks like a fraternity had used it for a weeklong kegger and pledge week base camp. Bottles and cans and cigarettes and trash and paraphernalia that I was unfamiliar with covered every inch of every surface of every room. And no one was home. I was so pissed. What the hell was going on?

Finally, a neighbor came and told me that Fucktard and our roommate (who should have moved out months ago) took off to Colorado several days ago for a funeral. We live in Texas. How could he go to Colorado and not even tell me? When would he be back? What was going on? What funeral?

I have to give mom's car back and she takes me home so I can start to clean up and be close to the doctor. A few days later the wanderers finally come strolling in. Drunk. Laughing. Not funeral appropriate behavior. Not sad. Offended by my anger attitudes immediately go sideways. There are no apologies offered. No explanation of what they did or what happened other than an old friend died. Yeah, because that story matches up with the pictures they brought home of all their sightseeing and touristy type side trips and adventures. Nor does it explain the girls draped on his shoulder in the pictures from the one day they were actually in the city for the funeral. Being huge, and uncomfortable, and overwhelmed from the worry I was full of when they were "missing" and so unbelievably angry from their behavior now that they were home I went ballistic. I ranted and railed and cussed and screamed and every other crazy white girl thing you can think of.

That was when the world flipped upside down. Fucktard went dark. He got mad. He got mean. He got physical. Threatened to kill us all. Spewed filth and anger and all manner of things that he could never take back and I would never forget. He was throwing bottles and dishes at me. Screaming at the top of his lungs. His idiot friend, the chain-smoking loser roommate, barely made an effort to tell him to calm down, which made Fucktard lose his shit even more and actually attack the idiot friend. WWIII was actually happening in my apartment and I was dumbfounded. Luckily our apartment complex was small, a compound-like, and tight knit group of residence. Several were beating on the door trying to get in, the managers were calling the police, everyone was right there trying to save me and stop the madness.

The police arrived and somehow I finally got the door open. They handcuffed him and took him downstairs to the parking lot. Questions upon questions were being thrown at me from everyone including the cops. I was so confused. What the hell just happened? Was I ok was the main question? Yes, I think so, I am not bleeding. And even after retelling the events to the police, seeing the Fucktard in cuffs, on the ground leaning against the tire of the police car was more traumatic to me than anything else. I was about to have a baby, why was this happening to our little family? Then, amazingly, it got worse. Fucktard's eyes rolled to the back of his head, he starts having spasms from head to foot and foaming green goo from his mouth, and the police could not get it to stop. That was the last straw and the stress and emotions and fear got the best of me and I went into hysterics. I thought he was dying right there on the ground in our parking lot.

I hate how ambulances and the authorities all go into full business mode and are way less than helpful or forthcoming with any useful information when the shit hits the fan. I mean I know they have to handle the situation, I do it too when everything and everyone is depending on me and my actions. All business until the danger passes, then I freak out. That's how my daughter describes me. She laughs now, "Why do you freak out afterward when you know everyone is ok?" Well.... because now I can, the danger has passed, and the anxiety and fear are leaving me in a tidal wave.

So the all business authorities got what they needed from me, and eventually, after the ambulance left, told me what he was being charged with should he survive. Apparently, they believed he was going through some kind of drug overdose. No that can't be I insisted many times. He smokes pot but that's it, he promised everything else was done and over with the minute I got pregnant. he was going to be a dad, he couldn't be partying anymore. Pfft, stupid me. Sometimes I can't believe how naive I was. How easily I believed everything I was told. Never questioned it. Never looked deeper. Never got suspicious. Come to find out, not only was he suffering some sort of reaction from the combination of drugs and alcohol he had consumed, but an overdoes he lived through when he was a teenager was complicating matters, which is what led to the convulsions and green foam mouth syndrome.

Who was this person? I mean the tortured musician, the lost soul, the bad boy, that was all an image I thought. That wasn't who he really was. Was it? What was I going to do? What could I do? Well - I was going to have a baby, and soon. I could get a job to pay the bills and rent since I just signed a new lease and my managers, as nice as they were, strictly believed in following the terms of legal documents. Leases are legal documents with very specific and very detailed rules and regulations. They were not going to let me out of it. I personally think part of their reasoning was that they wanted to keep an eye on me.

So, I had a game plan. A direction. It had been two days and I had no new news on the Fucktard. I had less than a month until my due date. The idiot friend had been holed up in his room since the incident. He hadn't emerged to shower or help clean up or anything. And I once again lost my shit and went ballistic. I threw open the door and told the idiot friend that a) he was not my friend, and b) he was a jobless loser who had way more than ample time to make alternate living arrangements since he was currently inhabiting my soon to be born son's room, and that c) he had 24 hours to pack his shit and get out because his chain-smoking ass was not sponging off me anymore in any way. I was not feeding him, and paying the bills and taking care of everything while he sat in the room smoking and playing music and not even attempting to get a damn job. "You are 23 years old asshat, get off your butt, and support yourself. Or, go home to momma, either way, you are getting the hell out of here because you are not my child and I am not taking care of you." His response to this speech? Crying. Full-on bawling. A grown man. Crying to me about not having anywhere to go. Not knowing what to do. Being traumatized by the freak out event. Seriously???? "You are a grown-ass man," I snapped, "I am a 19-year-old fully pregnant girl. I think you will be ok. But if not, too bad, I don't care what happens to you as long as it happens elsewhere."

Wow, I was so harsh back in the day. Really I was. My own mother once said, "I cannot believe you have not gotten your ass kicked more often. You must piss people off regularly. You just don't care. You say whatever you want to everyone." At which point I corrected her. "I don't say whatever I want mom, I say what is true. And if someone is wrong, I'm going to call them out on it. And if someone is rude, well yep I will let them know. And if someone is being a dick, then boy howdy, they are going to understand they can't get away with that just because they always have. I am not going to put up with that kind of bologna from anyone."

As if. I didn't put up with anything from anyone. Except for Fucktard. For some reason, I could not stand up to him. He had me cornered in a mental space I had never been and I couldn't find my way out of. I was too scared to think logically, so when he threatened to take our son from me if I left and said he would make sure the judge wouldn't even give me visitation, I actually believed he could make that happen. Duh, with his sterling record? I was such a fool back then. And of course, it was not all bad. So it became easy to tuck away the bad times way in the back of my head and pretend they never happened. Back then the good times outnumbered the bad. And the rest of that year and the next were fairly normal. Or so I thought. He was obviously an alcoholic, and he could not control it as he claimed. And I finally came to terms with the fact that he was doing other stuff besides pot, but I was under the impression that it was only on occasion, and not every day. Boy, I never get over how stupid I was.

And that was the first two years of my adult life. Already a mother, already disenchanted with the idea of being married for life, and I was unconsciously planning an escape route. A plan B for when all hell broke loose again. Plan B would become my mental security blanket from that point on. As long as I had a plan B I could handle everything else that came along. The next 23 years would test that security. And we will get into that in the next chapter.