8 years, 7 months, & 26 days later

8 years, 7 months, & 26 days ago I first made your acquaintance. It must have been an exhausting shift at the restaurant I was working at because I missed all the signs that evening; all the flares going off behind you like fireworks.

I came home, trudging up the stairs of my shared apartment, smelling like an amalgamation of raw fish and fine Italian cuisine. I had pulled a double that evening – working the sushi bar that afternoon and closing out my night at the Trattoria. You greeted me at the top of the stairs; I’d never seen you before. Your nose was predominant and oily. My roommate came rushing out from her room to introduce you.

I stood, frozen on the stairs, exhausted. I fixated on you. You looked down at me from the top step holding a tray of mixed store-bought sushi (even now I cringe) and prosciutto wrapped mozzarella. This should have been the first of many indicators that you were no good. I should have torn you to shreds right where you stood. No one with any class whatsoever brings store-bought sushi to a party and certainly doesn’t serve it alongside said prosciutto. Who the fuck are you?

Moving my eyes upward from the atrocity in your arms, I zero in on your shirt. It’s not terrible, but you obviously think you’re headed for a more tropical climate than that in which we currently reside. You’ve unbuttoned it just enough to let the off-white wife-beater peak through, pushing aside the 3 chest hairs that have made their way up, like a plant searching for sunlight. But the worst offense yet rests on your head, slanted to one side. You are wearing a goddamn fedora. Not just any fedora either, it’s a Disney fedora. Jack Skellington? It’s bad enough you’re wearing a fedora (and cocked to the side like a dick slit) but must you also incorporate a cartoon character? My roommate didn’t tell me that we’d be babysitting on New Year’s Eve. I thought I’d be in the company of adults all evening.

Just then you put down the tray of food poisoning, offered to assist me the rest of the way up the 4 remaining stairs (thanks, Prince Charming), and produced two bottles of wine from thin air. At this point, I have forgiven the oily nose & horrendous hors d'oeuvre choice. I can help you make better choices in the future. Let’s discuss where you went wrong over a glass or two of wine.

Two bottles of wine, some tequila shared childhood trauma, and a trip to Jack in the Box later, and we’ve bonded – soulmate bonded. I’m pretty sure we’re going to get married. There’s just one small problem – your current, live-in girlfriend. Ours will be the shit fairytales are scripted around. Urban, co-dependent, addiction-based fairytales.

I’m persuasive and within a month I was no longer your side bitch. You’d kicked out your girlfriend and I was moving in. I’m just that good, I guess. It’s wretched really. If I thought about it for too long, I was miserable. It wasn’t anything that a stiff drink couldn’t fix though, and you were never shy about pouring me a drink. In fact, since the night that we met, that’s all we seemed to do. Celebrate? Let’s have a drink! Worries? Drink! And when we were angry, we drank too.

It seems like the “getting angry” part came quickly in our relationship. I guess that’s a natural progression when your foundation is greed, booze, hurt, and shame. The most troubling part of this whole mess is that we both had children; innocent children we were dragging through the muck. Convinced that we were creating the modern version of The Brady Bunch, we played house in our dysfunctional way. You had your son 100% of the time. You told me about your ex-wife. You painted her a drug addict and a loser mom. You told me you had "locked her inside the house for her own good" when you went to work. Only now do I question how much of what you say is true.

I’m not beyond reproach; I was looking to escape you. The way you smoked your cigarettes irritated me. To this day, I can still hear you pulling from off your cigarette; your thin lips releasing their grip from the filter and the deep, obnoxious inhale you’d take. You’d pinch the filter between your fingers, like an asshole, and take another repellent drag, drying my vagina. We’d order another round of drinks, all was forgiven.

By this time, however, I had caught the attention of the bartender. He liked a girl who could shoot & hold her whiskey. One evening he called you a “lucky sonofabitch” for being able to land a lady who looked the way that I did but could still handle her drink. It was the highest form of compliment I had ever received. I began to unravel your perfect relationship.

I was secretive and untrustworthy. Your fragile ego suffered and sought to retaliate. You didn’t want to let me go, only humiliate and hurt me. I didn’t want to let you go either; you served a purpose for me. You allowed me to be the worst possible form of myself – you allowed me to be an alcoholic. Indeed, you fed it. You cradled and nurtured the beast in me, and I loved you for it. I needed you for it.

It would be another year of heavy drinking and intense arguments. You’d scream at me in front of the children and pin me against the wall by my throat. I’d beg you to stop. You’d tell me to get on my knees and tell you why I deserved to still be your girlfriend. I would have done anything to make it all stop. I would have done anything to ensure that I could continue drinking. I would have done anything except leave you.

The truth is, I don’t remember how or why those arguments started in the first place. As a first class drunk, I can’t remember if I said something terrible or if I simply forgot to switch the laundry over. I don’t remember if you had gone through my phone and my emails again or if I had passed out on the couch and that’s what had angered you this time. I’m not a defenseless woman but I didn’t fight back for a long time. I was afraid of all that I had to lose. And what did I have to lose?

8 years, 7 months, & 26 days later I know what I lost. I lost someone who was okay pushing me downstairs, dragging me by my hair, violating my privacy, harming me in front of children, and degrading me. I’m not ever fully free of this individual. My dependence on him for the time that we were together was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. His sickness, his ability to control and manipulate, arresting.

The last time that you struck me we had both been drinking Jack Daniels. We had likely been drinking since you got home from work. I had probably been drinking for longer. I don’t remember much from that evening. I don’t remember why we had begun to argue, it seemed so commonplace by that point. I hated you. I hated being with you. I hated fucking you. I hated myself with you. I had lost everything, in my opinion, because of you. Here I was though, in miserable Florida, without my son, treating yours as mine. Sometimes, enough is enough.

After that night, nothing was the same.

You’d always had a problem with self-esteem and your ego often took the driver’s seat. That night when you punched me, I finally fought back. I was tired of being told that I wasn’t deserving of your love. I would never wish your brand of love on anyone. You didn’t respond well to my form of self-advocacy. I’d be dragged around your parent’s home by my hair for a bit. They fucking watched you drag me around their living room! They probably thought I deserved it. Maybe I screwed up your dinner. Doesn’t matter, the next day, both of us with black eyes, finally understood. This is fucked up!

You asked me to leave. I hated you for it. I had left everything behind to be with you, even after you fucked everything up for me in the first place. The reality is, I was an alcoholic – I made terrible choices. I spiraled out of control and one bad decision led to shame and guilt. At the end of each of my bad decisions, there you were, with a drink and a promise: It was all going to be okay. I honestly didn’t care how it ended just so long as you kept me in my cups.

There came the day though, that I was more afraid of you, more afraid of myself, more afraid of not being all that I was intended to be than I was of facing all the shit that I had or hadn’t done. I had not been a mother. I had not been a daughter. We are told that we must forgive ourselves if we are to be successful in our recovery but how do you truly forgive choosing a bottle and man over our own flesh and blood? A child that I gave birth to; felt move within me, I was able to cast aside so that I could stay drunk. I missed him. There’s not an easier way to say that, no way that encapsulates it more clearly than: I missed him.

I’ve been sober for several years now. I’m supposed to want the best for you. I don’t. I’m supposed to forgive you. I do. I think you’re a miserable human being and deserve to have someone bigger than you and equally miserable beat the shit out of you and make you feel tiny and insignificant. I hope that you feel as irrelevant as you made me feel. I hope you get help too. I hope that you end whatever cycle of bullshit you have going on; I pray you don’t pass that on to your son.

Should we ever see one another again, make no mistake, we are NOT friends. You may NOT speak to me ever again. You may NOT speak to, or say hello to, my son. I have crafted a sense of safety and personal freedom. You may NEVER infringe upon that again.

It has been 8 years, 7 months, & 26 days since I first laid eyes on you. God willing, I never have to do it ever again.