Dark Memories, Dark Nights

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.” 
― Chuck Palahniuk

The ghosts of my past show up more often than not, sometimes I give them a silent nod as they pass by, sometimes though, these ghost play out in my everyday interactions. I’ve been going to counseling to help deal with this, to get a hold on these experiences  to understand my past and present so they may not consume me or even worse…consume the ones that I care about.

Now this may be TMI for some, so if you don’t want TMI stop now. I have no idea why this memory keeps playing out in my mind in the past weeks other than in counseling we talked about my past recently…

It was late spring and I was 18 years old, I worked at this little country gas station called Kuntry Korner (yes that’s how its spelled) in Calhoun, Louisiana. After school that day I went to work as usual. Now, I looked forward to coming to work here because I worked with friends and of course I was a single male and girls came in all the time but I digress at the memory at hand.

            That night was like any other night working there.  My best friend Chris was hanging out with me at the store just shooting the breeze. He is a ginger that worked at a roofing company at the time and when he got off work he typically came into the store and hung out till I got off.

            The phone rang at the store and I picked it up “Thanks for calling Kuntry Korner, this is Joe. How can I help you?” Silence on the phone, was that a sob I just heard?
“Joe….it’s John. Hey can you come home? Mom is super drunk and flying off the handle.” Deep sigh, this again.
“Hey, I’m at work. How about you go to your room and stay out of her way and keep the phone on you just in case.”
 “Ok…” he responded. I could hear her yelling coming from the background a jumble of accusations and curse words. The phone goes silent.
 I look at Chris “My mom is apparently trashed tonight.”
 Chris responded, “When isn’t she?”
I laughed that’s a good point. Looking back over 10 years later I didn’t realize that this wasn’t the norm for everyone.

            Maybe 20 minutes passed and the phone rings again “This is….” I answered.
 I’m interrupted by John screaming, “Joe! Come home now! She is going to hurt me!”  I hear her screaming on the other side “Who the fuck did you call?! Get off the fucking phone NOW!” I hear this loud crash and my bother screaming…then silence.  My entire body broke into sweat…don’t panic…don’t panic… that wasn’t a gun shot…what was that sound?

            I look at Chris, “We need to get home.” I tell my coworker that there is a family emergency and disappear into the night. I remember hitting close to 100 mph in my Chevy S-10 on my way home... I pull into my driveway and barrel down it in a rush. Coming to a sliding stop I see that the front door to my home was wide open…I can not see anyone moving around inside. Leaving the headlights on… Chis and I get out of my truck and walk to the porch. Blood and shattered glass greets me…puddles of blood…foot prints of blood…blood splatter everywhere…I hear shuffling and my mom comes walking out of the hallway…I quickly see that she isn’t carrying a weapon and that she is bleeding from her feet. I call out to John and was greeted with silence. My mom responds “That little shit took off outside.” I see now that there is a blood trail leading out of the house where he left on foot. I look at Chris and tell him to go find John; he is walking toward Choudrant because we didn’t pass him on our mad dash home. He heads out and speeds off toward where think John is walking.  I look at my mother…anger and disgust boil inside me; I head to the bathroom and grab bandages and tape. I come back and tell her to sit. Which she does, she smells of piss and alcohol, when she gets drunk she tends to piss herself. I pick her feet up and slowly take out the glass, washing them, disinfecting them, and then bandaging her feet up. All the while she glares at me with contempt from her drunken stupor.

            Chris pulls up in my truck and I run out and see that John has a 9-inch gash in his arm, he proceeds to tell me that she threw a glass bowl against him in her drunken rage. I ended up taking him to the hospital for stitches. I tried my best at lying to the nurses, telling them that he fell down the stairs, isn’t that the go to excuse with abuse? Oh…I just fell, well they didn’t buy it and the cops were called. We left and went back home to meet with the cops but nothing happened in the long run, the cops said that we could either leave or have her arrested but then we would have had to post her bail which would cost us money that we didn’t have as a family. It was my call. So we left our house at 3 am in the morning, got up and went to school like everything was normal…because frankly that was normal for us.

This is one of the moments that have shaped me into the man I am today. The effects still playing out in my life and my brother’s life as time unfolds. The effects are both positive and negative...being able to identify these demons of alcoholism that lurk beneath wanting to drink during times of stress even though Ive never been drunk. The other more damaging effect has been that it made me more susceptible to abuse toward me and not recognizing it for what it is and not having healthy boundaries with people but that’s a story for another time.

In His Grace,

Thanks for reading

Joe