Reflections

Wow.
Sitting here reading old journal entries from way back when.
I cringe at how dramatic I was.
Was?
I was 18, newly married and saying goodbye to all of my childhood
friends who were going off to college while I stayed behind to play "wife"...
such was my allegience to the keeper...I mean "husband".
I've always said everything happens for a reason and it was a two for one with him.
My son and daughter.
The ONLY possible reason the universe could EVER have for a union like that.

When we met I was a waitress at a greasy spoon restaurant in The Seattle Center.
I was 17 and living off of Black Label Beer, Old Gold cigarettes and Top Ramen noodles.
My roommates and I drank EVERY night. Sometimes we drank in the morning too if we opted not to go to school.
Which was often .
We didn't just drink, we ERASED.
Time. Pain. Everything.
It was almost as if I wanted to make everything hurt on purpose..to distract me from the things
that were really painful..way down deep.
We lived in a shabby apartment on Broadway in downtown Seattle. I can't even remember everyone who lived there now.
I know there were at least four of us; three girls and a guy.
We were always on the verge of getting evicted.
People would show up at all hours of the day or night to come and drink and listen to music.
We were loud and we liked The Ramones and Fugazi.
Music with a lot of bass...much to our neighbors chagrin.
Often I would wake up in the morning to find a mass of leather jackets, Doc Martin boots and skinheads scattered across the living room floor, beer cans and cigarette butts creating a drunken quilt between the bodies.
We sobered up only long enough to go to class for awhile, or to get more beer. And then it was on to the next party.
Many parties ended in tears or teeth getting knocked out. For awhile Social Distortions "Mama's Little Monster" was our anthem of choice sung while "The Big Kids" ran down the street jumping on cars and kicking in windows.
There were moments of solitude but they were very few and far between.
Sitting criss cross applesause while a mohawk put on Vogner and closed his eyes in quiet contemplation was one of them.
True expression. True love.
We were living hard. Harder than 17.
But that's what we knew.
We ran around Seattle liked we owned it. Afraid of nothing.
There was that night our roommate came home with the would be rapist.
She thought there would be masses waiting at home to save her so she coaxed him out of the alley behind our apartment.
As fate would have it, that night it was just two of us, snuggled under blankets watching WKRP in Cincinnati.
The one night no party raged inside.
He was on to us when he walked in the door. He took one look around and fled.
Lucky us.
The police told us it was our fault for walking around with little skirts on.
Always objectifying, right?
That's when the fear came. But it was fleeting.
I still wandered around at all hours of the morning, one night actually getting in the car
with the fear. He told me I had to, that there was no choice.
At 2 am in the morning on a deserted street in the absolute worst neighborhood in town, I didn't see any other way out but in the car.
When we stopped at the seedy motel, a vision of a gang bang flashed before me and I
jumped out at the very first opportunity.
Running as as fast as my legs would carry me was like running through jello. I dove into the bushes of a church and waited until I could no longer hear his car circling the block and then I ran home.
It's surreal when I think of these times now because all I can see are angels floating above these recollections.
Boy we must have kept them busy.
I didn't even talk about the night lost in the ravine at "Jim's Joint", the popular outside Keg spot.
If a boy wants to get in your pants in the middle of a forest,
and no one hears you say no, is it still rape?
Jesus Christ, the shit we did.

So that was the life I was living at 17. And that's when I got married.
I sobered up, got pregnant and started my life over. I felt like if I didn't move
away from all of that life, the bad parts would overtake me and I would become a lost soul.
I was already pretty lost.

Having children changed me. It made me want to be a better person.

I guess if I couldn't be a better person for myself, I could at least do it for my kids.

So that's what I did.

And perhaps that's what the cosmos had in mind when it sent me off packing and married
at 17.
That's the only thing I can figure.

It sure as hell wasn't love.

That's a whole OTHER chapter for later. Maybe two as it goes.