40 Days of Grace

♠12-06-18♠

Journal,

Today was my mom's birthday. I hate my mom. I don't know if I have already written this down yet, but there are several reasons as to why I hate my mom. She has alcoholism, and if you don't know what that means then I will explain that to you. Alcoholism is a disease that you are born with. It pretty much gives you a higher chance of getting addicted to alcohol than you would regularly be. I guess you could develop it too. But so my mom decided that she wasn't just going to stop at liquor, no she brought drugs into her disease. And I mean, I guess that happens to a lot of people. But, what I don't think happens to a lot of people, my mother would run away. She would leave her two younger children at home and leave to get drunk and high.

From what I remember, I think there have been four instances where my mother has run away, at least when we were in the town we live in now. One of the times, she left when we were sleeping. Sanderson and I didn't go to school that day and instead spent it looking for our mother along with Kelsi, Calla and the cops. She was hungover on a bench at Crystal Park I am pretty sure. Either that or we found her car at Crystal Park and she was in that. Something like that. My dad made us stay in the car and we didn't see mom until a few days later at the mental hospital. she stayed there for 30 days and then went to AA for a little while. She quit that fast.

Another time I remember was when she went to a strip club. She thought that my dad was cheating on her with his secretary, my friend's mom, so she drank, went to a strip club, and cheated on him actually. I remember that my dad was outside of the car and talking to someone and he had been texting someone and left the messages open. I was a curious child and looked at the text message. It was from my mother and only one singular message had been sent in the whole conversation. 'I had sex with two different women last night,' was exactly what it said. I remember staring at it for a long time. She fell asleep in her car and went to the mental institute for another two months I am pretty sure.

The last time and the first time were the worst, most memorable, and most scary. The last time I remember her running away, I was in fourth grade. She said she wanted to go get cigarettes and I told her not to because I knew she was drunk. I asked her if I could come with her and she said that there would be no one to watch Sanderson. Then I said that she should just wait for dad to come home and she yelled at me and said she would be back in five minutes. About half-an-hour later, I was walking all the way down my street and back, looking for my mom and crying. My cousin found me in the street and asked me what was wrong. I told her that I thought mom was gone for an hour and that she was drunk and missing. My auntie apologized to me that day because the day before she was telling my mom that it was okay for her to have one drink and I was telling her to stop. She told me to go, to not worry and to go be a kid. For once in my life, I had acted my age, and then that landed her in the parking lot of Applebee's, childless and drunk. That one got her shipped off to Florida and the only time she has been back since was when my uncle died about three years ago.

The first time it happened she was drunk and I didn't even know what that really meant. She was driving Sanderson and I around to go somewhere. We landed ourselves in the parking lot of a Rob & Roy with a cop car, and the whole family. She was taken out of the car by police officers and taken to the mental institute for the first time when we lived in this town. She had the fucking nerve to drive two of her four kids around while she was drunk. Did I forget to mention that she crashed into a few parked cars while she was driving, committing several hit and run accidents? No?

Well, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

~Grace

(P.S.: I think there may have been one good part about today. We had STARR testing in algebra today and I made eye contact with Sterlyng again a little bit after it. Except he looked away really fast and laughed along with whatever our classmate was saying. After a few more seconds of staring, I turned and did the same with Diana and Anna. I just fucking love life.)