One Life To Live

5 days later.

It was like I had relapsed.

A year after my mom died, I was gone. I had to physically distance myself from the once comforting and loving rural home that held all my childhood memories. It was too painful a memory to walk the same halls as my mom did – use the same hair curler my used when she felt a ‘big opportunity’ for a promotion was going to come along. I had to break free from witnessing the mute, glazed-eyed stare of my father and the rampage of my younger brother Devin when Dad turned zombie-like and quit being a father. I stayed for a year trying – anything – to help. Making all the meals, demanding that Devin stayed home at least for dinner, and sometimes that didn’t even happen. ‘What are you trying to do, Mel?’ Devin spat at me, once. ‘Trying to replace mom? Dad doesn’t even want us anymore. Not much different from when mom was still here, but still.’

The reaction my father gave was horrifying to say the least. The automaton he transformed into was worse than if he would’ve gotten loud or started to beat us. At least then he would give some sort of emotion that offered a sign he was still alive.

The loss of my mom hit me the hardest. She and I were closer than I was with my friends. Dad and Mom fought – mostly about his drinking and gambling – but I knew Dad still loved her even when his voice would boom in his intimidating, aggressive voice. He still cared, but he never admitted it in the years I stayed back.

So I went. I took all my college savings and scholarship money along with the money from the waitress job I used to have back in high school. I met Bethany Lynn and inevitably Freddie soon after that. I slowly awakened from my depressive slump and day by day started to feel okay again.

I hadn’t expected breaking apart from Lance would make me feel like I was back in the turmoil and pain that year after my mom passed.

I’d missed sleeping this whole week. Not a wink of shut eye – except maybe when I forced myself to take cold medicine because I had to get good rest for a midterm. I only cried the first night. The time after that, I didn’t have the energy to because of the lack of sleep. Not only that, but I tried to keep the veil of deception over my eyes pretending none of this was happening.

Looking back at the two and a half months we had, I knew I was happier then than I’ve been in a long, long time. Even before my mom died, I was praying and helping her through the tragedy her doctor put on her five years earlier. Meeting Lance was like meeting me back when I was undeniably carefree in my early teen years. Ironic enough, I experienced my first real relationship just in these past months while all my old friends did way back in 7th and 8th grade. The boyfriends I had cultivated in high school could really just have been guy-friends who awkwardly kissed me on my doorstep dropping me off after a double date at a pizza shop.

With Lance? I wasn’t prepared for the intense, passionate, shattering quality of being in a relationship with him. He drew me to him just by looking into my eyes. The hunger, the need, to just be around him…was overwhelming. I felt myself leaning on him, trusting him, even depending on him.

Then the frigid water was splashed in my face. I found out the man I was falling in love with wasn’t the same person I’d seen him as. He worked for the Mafia – he killed people. What frightened me the most is that now…I was willing to forget all of it. Forget that I even found out about it while I was at the Capra’s just to rid myself of intense heartache and loneliness of not feeling his strong, supportive arms around me again. I’ve never experienced such longing and want as I have these past days for his comforting reassurance that this was all a dream and I’d wake up and have him sleeping next to me.

Now, as I was getting on the subway to meet Bethany Lynn for lunch, the monotonous haze and the subtle frown on my face brought me back to reality. The ultimate high of being with Lance creating the devastating low I was experiencing now. I was trying to rekindle myself and at times I wished that…that maybe if I never went to that party with Bethany Lynn in September...I never would have met Lance and I wouldn’t be stuck in this situation.

But did I really want that?

Even if I was experiencing some of the worst pain I’ve ever felt…just being with Lance for that time being…I knew that was a gift. A wonderful, handsome, charming man that like that? I didn’t regret being with him – not at all.

I always did believe that God did things for a reason, and wouldn’t bestow challenges like these on individuals who couldn’t handle it. At this point, however, I just wanted to know why. Why now? Why did I have to get so deeply involved with someone for the first time and have it be blown up in my face?

I sighed. Just thinking about frustrating questions that could never be answered accurately was ridiculous enough. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I reached for it. Girl!, it read, I’m waiting at Chipotle on 10th! Are you on your way? :) My mouth curved into a small smile at the edges. I typed back, I’m on the subway – be there in 5!

Bethany tried – she really did. When she first heard the news she might as well have sat down and cried with me. At times, she did. She told me she thought this was the one. That we seemed too happy and so right for each other – that she was looking forward to going on double dates when she’d finally get serious about Freddie. She gave me the therapy she knew that worked the best when she’d have a destructive break-up mess. It consisted of shopping – ‘lots and lots of shopping’, as she said – carbohydrates, action movies that didn’t involve any love scenes, and rebound guys. She made me try all but the last – she confessed that the rebound guys were more for girls who needed that kind of attention after being kicked to the curb. Bethany Lynn knew me well because she also added, “- and Melly…frankly, I know you wouldn’t tolerate dumbass guys who are only good for a one night stand anyway!”

She was a true best friend – the sister I never had, but wished I did. After lunch, she wanted to hit the salon and be pampered like ‘the queens we are, of course’. I knew without Bethany Lynn’s help I could never be in the semi-sane state I am in right now.

‘One step at a time’ my mother used to say. She’d frequent this line when it was eleven at night and I’d wrung my hands in my hair in frustration and agony of all the homework I had. Or when Devin and I’d get into fights and try to make up afterward.

It was times like these that brought tears to my eyes. Times when I’d do anything to hear what advice she’d give me now.