Lefty's ✓

three.

June

It's been a week. The only person I've talked to is my father and the cashier at Lefty's. The only reason I keep going there is to hope Melissa might come back and have another conversation with me.

My dad said he knew I'd need more than a week; my mom was the same way. She hated being social and never talked to people unless it was necessary. That was until it was necessary. Her job at a pharmacy led her to talk to people, bad people. Advil for her "headaches" turned into medical marijuana for her "stress", which eventually turned into heroin, which turned into her only son and husband crying at her funeral when she couldn't. stop. talking.

She meant the world to me, before everything, at least. Mom got her new job when I was thirteen, almost fourteen. Together we would take short road trips every other weekend wherever the road took us. We'd talk about our lives and how great they were with each other in them.

My parents' constant fighting will forever be implemented into my brain. Dad and I have never been super closer; losing Mom pushed us even further apart. For so long I blamed him and their arguing on her death. If he never made her mad, she never would've had the "stress" that pushed her to drugs, right?

I'll never forget the verbal abuse I took because I thought that it would inevitably end. I thought that if I endured all the horrible things she yelled at me when she was high off her ass, she'd eventually get better. My logic was that once everything she said was released, she'd be back to normal. I can't begin to describe how many weekends I prayed she'd come into my room with the car keys in her hand, but she never did.

But praying never helped. As a kid, we went to church almost every Sunday. Mom and Dad believed that the Lord would help and soothe all of or troubles. So where was he when I would be sitting, crying in my room with pillows over my ears to try and muffle the sounds of screaming and glass breaking? The simple answer is: he was nowhere.