Pills & Prom Dresses
In a lot of ways I think I’ve been waiting for my mom’s breakdown for years. The more we learn about her illness with addiction, the more I realize that she’s had a problem for much longer than any of us realized. It’s just that now, we’ve come to a crisis point. And I have to admit, there is a part of me that is relieved.
Fucked up, I know, but it’s just the truth of how I feel right now. I’ve spent so much of my life (pretty much all of it up until this past February) scared of Mom, and realizing she has a problem with pills makes me feel like I’m finally on equal footing with her. Maybe I’ve even gained some control of my life in relation to her. When she’s on the pills, I feel like I have a sense of who I’m dealing with. A pill addict I can understand. I know addicts, I love addicts, I have my own addictions (reality television, pop music geared toward 12-year-olds, cheerleaders). Addiction is right up my alley.
Before last February, I just had an unpredictable, inconsistent, erratic, moody mother whose heart I was constantly breaking in one way or another.
Mom: Are those tattoos?
Me: Yes.
Mom: How many do you have?
Me: Twenty-three.
Mom: Well! You have broken my heart. [Dramatic exit from room containing the majority of my family who had gathered for my grandmother's funeral.]
Actually, this started first because my cousin (now arch-nemesis) and I were washing dishes together and I was standing on her left. Well, I forgot to hide the star I have behind my left ear and when she saw it, she made an announcement to the whole room. her announcing loudly that she had just spotted the star behind my left ear. I brattily believe this was a malicious outing of my decision to have 23 miniscule stars permanently applied to my body. It resulted in my mother’s heart being broken. I hope she is happy.
See it? There on my left shoulder. That spot? That’s one of the 23 tattoos that broke my mother’s heart.
Another time my Mom’s heart was broken happened on my sixteenth birthday when she bought me the prom dress I was dying for as a gift. She told my also 16-year-old best friend and was absolutely livid when she found out my friend told me about it.
I was so excited to give this to you as a surprise and Cindy had to come along and ruin it! I don’t even want to give it to you now! The whole surprise is shot and it just breaks my heart. [Dramatic exit from room, as per usual.]
For months I had clipped pictures of this dress out of magazines and hung them on my wall. It was a beautiful, lacy off-the-shoulder number with a hoop skirt, a white lace pinafore and a scalloped overlay of satin with three-inch vertical pink and white stripes. I thought it was the most stunning thing I had ever seen. As I look back, I realize it only served to make me look like a pastel circus tent and if 16 little people in clown makeup had emerged from underneath it, I am sure no one would have been surprised. But my 15-year-old self adored it. I tried it on over and over. I fantasized about how beautiful it would be next to my date’s white tux and pink cumberbund. And in the span of less than two minutes, I learned to despise it because it had broken my mother’s heart.
(Imagine this dress but with stripes. That’s my dress. Once I find my old photos, I’ll show you the real deal. It’s a good time.)
Everything broke my mother’s heart. My fighting with my sister, my D in English, So, last week when I confronted Mom about her pill addiction and told her that I could no longer participate in her killing herself, her standard response of, “Susan. You have broken my heart,” just didn’t pack the punch it used to.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:42 am
I love this dress. I worship this dress. Why haven’t I seen this dress. I hope you wore it when you met that dude from the Wonder Years.