Yesterday I got two more paragraphs written on my Leaving Home scene. I added some detail and then read it out loud and I like it! It will do for a start. As for structure, I figure if I can get to the pill popping part, then I can lay down on my bed, on the blue and white floral bedspread in my pretty bedroom with the bay window, and while I wait for the pills to take effect and before my mother comes up to talk to me, I'll wander around in the past and see what's there and why I would do such a thing. I'll tell the story of my life up till then.
I was such a tomboy, fearless and alive in so many ways and yet I longed to be a real girl and wear pretty clothes and have people love me. I climbed trees and played in the dirt, examined bugs from every angle and made sure I was the toughest and the fastest of all the kids at school. And as much as I want to write about that part today, I'll go ahead and continue with my last day at home. With only four paragraphs, I have a long way to go to get to the pills.
I had that silly car, an English Ford with a flathead four engine, whatever that was. It was dull red and tall with a narrow wheel base and it was boxy. It always felt like it would tip over on a corner and it used a quart of oil a day. Cousin Connie drove it while I was in Portland for two weeks later that
But I'm getting ahead of myself again. That day, being warm and me being active, I wore a t-shirt of some kind and a little pair of shorts. I was barefoot, running up and down the front staircase with my boxes and the items I had decided to take with me. I was tiny back then but I didn't know it. I may have weighed 112 lbs at that time; I seldom ate. I was chronically depressed and never talked to anyone. I had been like that for months, maybe a whole year, and yet no one noticed. And on that day, even with all that activity, no one noticed me packing up my car. I had been at it for hours and everything I owned or valued was in the car by mid-afternoon.
Finally, Dad must have seen the suspicious activity out at my car parked at the curb in front of the house and he met me in the foyer on my last run loading. He looked over my shoulder at my obviously jam-packed car and then at me, slightly sweaty and a little breathless, barefoot, keys in hand, and asked me what I was doing. I said simply, "I'm going now." I didn't know how to tell him that I was moving out which is why I hadn't brought it up before. I can still see the looks that poured across his face as he stood there glancing from me to the car --- confusion and then suspicion turned to insight and finally, the look I dreaded: anger. He demanded to know where I thought I was going and I stammered, not wanting to tell him, but I finally choked out that I was going to stay with Auntie Jan for a while. He wanted to know why and all I could say is, "I can't stay here anymore."
Well that did it. He demanded that I hand over the keys and informed me that I wasn't going anywhere. The moment that I needed to be strong and stand up to him came and went. I held out the keys, powerless, and again said, "I have to go." His face was red by then, his anger big, filling the foyer and almost knocking me backward. He lashed out verbally and informed me that if I was leaving, I could go with the clothes on my back.
I've never written any of this down before, not in any detail. There's still plenty of emotional power here ... Just now, I welled up and asked him to forgive me for telling, saying that it has to be told now in order to understand and maybe help others to understand. I realize how much I love him, still, and how I came to get to know him somewhat but not really knowing him at all. He's still a mystery to me, even now. I would never do or say anything that would hurt him or embarrass him. And yet I have to tell this story. Dad, I hope you understand that no matter what I say or how it comes out, I love you dearly and I always will!
This is my story to tell and while there are others populating it, it's really not about them, it's about me and how I learned and grew and discovered myself. I'm sorry that my parents where so clueless and that even after they got a clue, they were still so unwilling to help me. I guess that's the part that hurts the worst. In the big picture, that's what I tried so hard to do better with --- listening to my sons and helping in any way I could. I tried to do for them what my parents had been unwilling or unable to do for me.
And yet I still feel like such a failure! At the end of my life, I can go out with a wail ... But I tried to be better! Like Stephen passionately telling me when he was five, "I'm trying to be good, mama!"
Oh, that just breaks my heart. How many of us in how many generations have said just those words to adults who were too broken to hear them? My mother, Stephen and me, for sure, but who else?
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