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Pandemic confession:
I’ve talked before about how downright traumatizing large parts of my high school experience were but by the time I was a halfway through junior year, I, at long last, had an incredible group of friends and so when it was time to apply to colleges, (1/13)
I’ve talked before about how downright traumatizing large parts of my high school experience were but by the time I was a halfway through junior year, I, at long last, had an incredible group of friends and so when it was time to apply to colleges, (1/13)
I didn’t want to — it seemed completely unfair that I had been so lonely and miserable for so long and now that I finally wasn’t, I had to leave them and I was being a brat and an idiot because it’s not like if I didn’t go to college my friends were going to (2/13)
stick around with me, but I just couldn’t let go, so, when it was time to go look at a bunch of colleges in upstate New York, my mom agreed to take me (drag me, really) and we were stuck driving along picturesque wooded highways for hours in our rental car and she (3/13)
let me listen to my Tori Amos mixtapes the entire time (though, at one point she did sigh heavily and say Tori sounded like a cat that was being tortured — we must have been listening to Boys For Pele) and she let me pick all the restaurants and, basically, she (4/13)
did whatever she could to make the trip easier and better for me and I, in return, treated her like ABSOLUTE SHIT and, essentially, abused her the entire time until the night before we were headed home we were at dinner and I have no memory of (5/13)
what I said — something especially nasty — and she reached her breaking point and something (very justifiably) broke inside of her and she began SOBBING into her spaghetti and I was HORRIFIED (there is almost nothing I hate more than seeing my mom cry except, I guess, (6/13)
knowing I was the reason she was crying) and I tried to apologize but it was too late — I had pushed her too far and she couldn’t reel in whatever had escaped from behind her ribcage and the waiter came over to ask if she was OK and I realized that the entire restaurant (7/13)
was aware that something was very wrong at our table and I wanted to die, but not because I was embarrassed, but because I had caused this intense sorrow in my mom who had only ever been my cheerleader and who had only ever loved me and who had only ever done (8/13)
whatever she could to make me happy, and, if that wasn’t possible, then to make things as OK as possible for me, and I realized how unforgivably selfish I was and how I wasn’t the only one who was losing something, in fact, I had my whole life ahead of me but I just (9/13)
couldn’t see it, no matter the lengths she was going to in order to show me and lead me there, and, meanwhile, her boy was leaving her forever and he was spending these last months together acting like a MONSTER and it all hit me and that dinner (10/13)
changed me — it reached underneath all the ancient hurt and fear and trepidation and grief lodged into the deepest parts of me and I think I changed on a molecular level — and I apologized to my mom and I vowed that night to myself that no matter what had happened (11/13)
in my life or what was about to happen in my life, I wouldn’t be that person again — to my mom or to anyone else — and, sure, I can still be an asshole but I never was that person again and every day I wake up I’m grateful that things turned and turned out how they did (12/13)
and it was really because of my mom, a woman I’m lucky to even know, much less have her love me as much as she does (even if she doesn’t get Tori) (13/13)
