This May should be a hard month for me for a series of reasons. It has included within it Mother’s Day, a year anniversary of my graduation from college, a year anniversary of the last time I saw my mother, my mother’s birthday, and towards the end of the month my own birthday. I realized a few months ago it was going to suck but lately I’ve been reanalyzing my life.
Take for instance my birthday last year. At this time one year ago I was miserable. I was frantically trying to find a job and enter the “real” world that I did not feel in the least prepared for. I didn’t want to grow up. I was pissed that I graduated and felt the suffocating weight of the world falling hard onto my shoulders. On the actual day that was my birthday I had no computer, a broken phone, and very little money that I needed to last for an unknown period of time. Naturally I was also depressed.
The strongest memory I have of that day was sitting in a Whataburger in East Austin convinced that I was about to die of heat stroke. I had gone for a ride on my bicycle (because that was the only thing I could think of doing to pass the time besides sleeping or reading which I had already exhausted myself of doing). I could have been at the library frustratedly searching job postings and working on my resume but it was my birthday damn it and I was unemployed and felt like I wanted a day off. So I rode out without direction, told no one and had no way of contacting or being contacted by anyone. Eventually I found myself about to pass out in the street without any water somewhere I had never been and never been since. Today, I don’t think I could find where I was because I have no idea.
I found to my salvation an empty Whataburger. I went in and luckily the staff wasn’t paid enough to care that I was filling up my water bottle and sweating all over one of their booths. My legs had turned to jelly and my hands were shaking so bad I could barely keep from spilling water all over myself which I did end up doing.
“So this is it, you idiot? Everything has been leading to this? This is the future? Well, fuck, you really fucked up this one.”
After cooling off for a bit I went back outside and rode home. I took a shower after laying on the bathroom floor for a while and went to my brother’s house that I would eventually move into two months later. He gave me an old phone to use. And I survived.
The period following continued to be miserable. The only reason I feel I survived with sanity was because of Tyler West (thanks for everything). We would hang out nearly everyday and because of him I actually would leave my apartment. We would go to coffee shops so he could study; I would read and drink his coffee. In this time he also made sure I ate real food and because of him I got more nutritional intake than black beans (which he would help me steal from Taos Co-op) and the occasional hot dog wrapped in tortilla when I was feeling extra fancy.
I did get my shit together a bit. I at some point decided that I should focus on library jobs and with a huge stroke of luck landed a part time job (which has since become full time) at the Will Hampton Branch at Oak Hill Library shelving books. At the time I saw this as something but today I think that it may have been the greatest decision I’ve made of my adult life, luck or not.
About two weeks after starting my new job my lease was up, I had yet to have been paid, and had maybe $20 left to my name. I moved into my brother’s girlfriend’s new house with them. I slept on a folded up futon (there was not enough room to let it down) in an “office” as what little stuff I had not sold or thrown away stayed in the garage.
It sucked. I worked on the opposite side of town. During this time, I had to ride my bicycle to the bus stop five miles away to catch a bus to another bus to another bus to my job. It would take about 14 hours (on a good day) from leaving the house to getting back at night five days a week. Needless to say, it kept me humble.
It had been about a month after that I had been in my new habitation when I got a call from my brother at work. It was a Monday. I usually didn’t answer my phone at work but for some reason on this day I did. I got outside and answered it right before it went to voice mail.
“Hey…so mom didn’t show up at work today and didn’t answer her phone. So Tracy (her boss) sent Mike (Tracy’s husband) to go check on her. He got there and…” He sighed into the phone.
My mind raced to finish the statement as if it would effect what had already happened. Please say “passed out” “in the hospital now” “in a coma”. Say anything but…
“And mom had passed away.”
I remember yelling “What” into the phone. He was on his way to pick me up so we could go to Houston to sort things out.
I went inside and found my boss and said told him I needed to talk. He took me into our small meeting room. As I tried to get the words out I began trembling and breaking down before finishing the sentence. He alerted others and they let me stay in the back room until my brother got there.
I saw him drive up and met him on the sidewalk right in front of the door. His eyes were pink. He gave me one of those fake half smiles that drags you to tears. In that moment, he became a human to me instead of the godlike big brother. In that moment all things became real. In that moment, any innocence or childlike youth I had left disappeared. I guess in the worst metaphor and pretenses that is the moment that I became an adult.
That following week was the worst of my life. I could talk about the clearing out of my mom’s stuff, dealing with family, dealing with funeral arrangements all while living in a cloud of confusion as to what had caused this tragedy. I could talk about the sadness and how weird my eyes felt when I closed them to go to sleep after crying all day. I could, but that week deserves a recount outside of this piece. I lived an entire life and have so many moments that I hold dear to me in the span of a week. I had to grow up a considerable amount just to survive. And I did.
We received the coroner’s report at the funeral and sitting on the foot of a bed in a hotel room I found out what killed my mom, her brain popped and filled with blood. She died in a moment. She died without pain. She died alone, face down in her living room.
The following week was a return to life. I went about my life at work. It wasn’t until that Thursday night that I went out with people (which was an awful decision). I was dropped off at my bicycle much too late. The bike I was riding at the time was falling apart and so was I. I pulled my hands back off the handlebars, the tire swerved and I fell forward. I scraped my hands and removed the flesh off my knee down to the bone. I screamed into the night and pounded the cement. I jumped back on and rode home before the adrenaline and shock wore off. I got back to a dark house. Sitting there alone in my room I had the most complete emotional breakdown I’d had since I got the news nearly two weeks before. I pulled myself together enough to send an email to my boss saying that I wouldn’t make it into work because I needed a “personal day.” Then I wrapped a dirty shirt around me knee so I wouldn’t bleed onto the futon and passed out. I woke up five hours after I should have gone to work feeling a little better. They say that time heals all wounds, but scars will only fade and I wouldn’t change that for anything. I had started on a long road to recovery. I felt like I had been destroyed and had to rebuild myself piece by piece. But that is how it is when you lose someone so integral to your life, you have to rebuild it with only their memory.
Today my knee is still not completely healed. That weekend my brother and I returned to Houston. I limped around with gauze wrapped around my leg but was getting more mobility by the moment. We filled the car with a load of my mom’s stuff, a kitten she had rescued six weeks before passing (that I have since given away to someone that needed her more than I), and my mother’s remains in an urn colored ‘desert rose’ that I keep hidden in my room. I guess some people keep skeletons in their closet, mine have just been burned up. Driving back I couldn’t help but feel the rhythm of the road painted in the light of the sunset that maybe, just maybe I would survive. And I did.
Life became as normal as it could be. I tried my best to cope by staying as busy as posible. I would breakdown regularly on the bus and on days off of work I would stay up all night and drink more than is healthy with people that tried their best to keep me sane (including but not a complete list: Zeke Guadiana, Madeline Olsen, Katie Hardgrove, Raquel Breternitz (thanks guys)).
Since I’m on the subject and I am rare to actually open up about this particular subject I will go on. The relationship I had with my mother was close and her death came without warning. I spoke to her on the phone every day. Then one day I called and she didn’t answer, the next day they discovered her body. After countless hours of thought and sleepless nights I have placed the blame on stress. She was a high stress person as long as I can remember and for good reason. When I was five, my father walked out in an “other woman” situation and soon married the other woman. As my father never kept up with child support it was up to my mother from that day on to not just raise us but solely support my brother and I. She worked exhaustively to give us everything we needed. And she did.
Then when I was about ten my grandfather remarried a woman who I think less than positively about. Through complicated events she eventually very nearly evicted us from the family. My mother did everything she could to maintain a relationship only to face mistreatment and bullshit. So for most of my life it had been me, my brother (seven years my senior), and my mother against the world.
Growing up, we had bad times and were for the most part insufferably poor but she gave us everything she had. She gave her life for us. The last time I saw her alive was for my graduation from college, something I am much more proud of knowing what it meant to her. In life she was never in short supply of love and support. Everything that I am is because of her. I live my life for her.
As for the rest of my family most of my relationships were based on my mother’s badgering (“there still your family”) but now my twisted mind blames them for her death. I honestly don’t have the heart to deal with them any more. I possibly may never speak to my father or grandfather again and it doesn’t bother me. The only family that still tries to maintain contact is my aunt/uncle duo and a cousin I didn’t know existed before my mom’s funeral. My aunt and uncle took care of us during our stay in Houston and try to still be family to me and my brother which I can only imagine is hard dealing with our unresponsive nature to such acts. In November my uncle took me hunting for my first time in Minnesota to, I suppose, bond over being bored as hell. I killed and cleaned a deer, it was gross. But alas, the support of Gary and Nancy Frankel has been undeniably important for my prosperity and since I am no good at saying thanks I mention them here as if this makes up for it.
Anyhow, a couple months more of living in the house and then I was to move into an apartment with my friend Zeke. As the date of move out approached it was revealed to me that my brother’s girlfriend had felt it be best that he also leave the house when I did. As previously mentioned, my family relationships have not been the best and she had tried bringing us into her’s. We spent holidays with with her family (my mom was there too, of course). She bought my first tattoo. She came with us to Houston and stood by us every moment we were there and lent us support in our darkest hours. I entrusted her in my weakest moments as if she were a sister.
Then, without a reason or word, she rejected us. But above all, that bitch hurt my brother. So when I had finally earned my freedom, I took him with me along with our insecurities and trust issues. So for the first month at my new apartment I shared my room with my brother until he got an apartment situation worked out. We had grown so close that it wasn’t a problem and when he got his own place I was almost sad to see him leave. I’m glad I have him and my life is made better by having him around.
Since that time, life has slowed down. I’ve had highs and lows and successfully ignored every holiday that has passed by going to Ihop instead of celebrating (just me and my brother as apposed to the previous years). I’ve built up a close friendship with Halie Pratt even when I was less than easy to deal with, she stuck by. She has been there for me for much of my healing process and once again I extend thanks in this indirect way (also to all people I have named).
So I enter the month of May after the year that I became an adult, the hardest year of my life thus far and hopefully the hardest I will ever face. A year ago I was scared and broken, directionless and lost. Today I have so much more than I did a year ago. Today I stand proud and strong. Today I am worn and fucked up but real and interesting. For the first time in my life I look in the mirror and like what I see. I love who I have become. Looking back at my journey from dying in an abandoned Whataburger a year ago, I have earned everything I lacked then. Today I look to the future with comfort, elation, and hope. After everything I’ve survived. After everything, I have learned to live. Even with all these reminders of my mother this month, I embrace them lest we forget to repay those that got us here. Today I will live on.
Anyway that’s it. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to vote.
