Finding Seventeen (On Hold)

Amends... not so much

"Mom, what are you doing here?" She just looked at me like I didn't have a right to be asking her that.

It was the first time I'd seen my mom in three years. She'd had come to see me in New Orleans. She said she missed me and wanted to make amends. She said she was in another twelve step program and she needed to make amends. I believed her against my better judgement. She asked for money, she said she was getting her life together and she wanted to make a fresh start. I don't why, I'd never given her money before, but for some reason I gave in to her. I think it was more that I wanted her to get her life together. I always thought, eventually she'll get sober.

After I gave her the money she skipped town, later I heard later she used the money to buy booze and pills, she fallen off the wagon yet again. She been in AA and NA on and off for about six years. She wasn't just an alcoholic she was a pill popper too. She'd gotten addicted to pain killers after she'd had a wreck about eight years ago. I never understood why she couldn't get herself clean.

I never told anyone that she came to see me, especially not my brother. At first I felt responsible for her falling off the wagon because I'd given her the money, but in the end I knew she would have gotten the money from somewhere. I learned later that Ryder had cut mom off for a while, I guess she thought she'd try to exploit her other child for a while.

Seeing her standing before me, made me angry.

"I heard you were back in town and I wanted to see you?"

"Why mom? You need more money." I gritted my teeth, I couldn't hold my tongue.

"Jules, that's not fair. I've been clean and sober for a year."

I just shook my head. "How many times have you been sober mom, what is this the tenth, twelfth time now. So many that I can't even keep track anymore."

She gazed in my direction as if what I was saying wasn't true, "Jules, you're not being fair. It is not easy being an addict and an alcoholic."

I couldn't hide the anger on my face. I tried hard not to bite the inside of my cheek. It was a bad habit that I had acquired trying to deal with my mom. I hadn't bit my cheek in three years. This women made me furious. " It isn't easy being the children of the addict and the alcoholic either."

"Julia, what can I say or do to make you believe me." She stared at me as if there was going to be something that was going to undo all the years and things that she had said and done. When Dallas died she was so drunk when I told her that it didn't even register to her what I was saying. Even though I had told her that Dallas had died, a week later she asked me why I wasn't with Dallas. She made some snide comment about Dallas. She'd never liked Dallas because we spent all our time with her, instead of trying to take care of our drunk of a mom. The week Dallas had died, mom had been on one of her drinking binges. She was plastered for a whole week that time. It was a wonder she herself hadn't died.

"There is nothing you can say or do that is going to change my mind, mom. Your actions the past twenty-eight years had proved enough to me."

"I didn't come here to fight with you Jules."

I rolled my eyes, I felt like that teenage girl again fighting with my mom. "Then you shouldn't have come at all. You are welcome to leave anytime."

That was exactly what happened. She just left, like she always does, but it didnt' hurt my feeling at all.

I wouldn't hear from her for another two weeks.

The first two weeks back in town had been nothing but sheer craziness. It was a never ending loop of the same routine.  Trying to manage helping Jodie with Phoenix, helping around the house, visiting Ryder at the Rehab facility, and starting my new job. It was only a part-time position because I couldn't not handle anything more.