rue
February 7th, 2022 @ 7:18 am
watching rue in euphoria is rough. she’s a freaking disaster area, and i constantly want to punch her in the face, but i don’t hate her. i know she’s just acting the way that she is bc she’s an addict, but i hate how manipulative that makes her, which makes me want to punch her in the face.
IRL, i haven’t dealt with many addicts, thankfully. my father was the only person that was an actual addict, that i know of. i didn’t deal with him fully as an addict, only towards the end of our relationship did he start drinking again. i only saw him in that rare form the one time and it was absolutely frustrating. he showed up at my mom’s house and i pleaded with him on the front porch for an hour and he wouldn’t budge. tears streaming down his face, apologies spilling out of his mouth… i just wanted him to go back to the bronx to his mother’s house. i told him i didn’t live there anymore (which was true, i was living at christina’s apartment at the time) to make him leave. instead, my goon mother opened the door and let him in. nothing good ensued. i’ll leave it up to the imagination, but i will say that my sister and her boyfriend had to lock themselves in her room for the rest of the night bc of violent threats… i had left, thinking it would make him leave as well.
i brought up my father because from what i’ve heard over the years from my mother and grandmother, was that my father was a hot mess and got kicked out of the house often. my grandfather wanted nothing to do with him most of the time and my grandmother would give him money. once she realized it was for booze, she stopped helping him and he started to steal from my them so he could buy booze. he would be locked out and still climb through windows and take whatever money or whatever he could to score some jack daniels (cue rue grabbing earrings from cassie’s mom). yeah, at age 16, my father was drinking jack “because my grandparents were divorcing”. smh.
i thankfully didn’t inherit the addictive gene and it’s hard for me to understand it. i’ve always generally had really strong self-control and never got addicted to anything (i realize self control has nothing to do with actual addiction being a disease, but i just never got into anything THAT MUCH where it took over), so my brain can’t really wrap around itself when it comes time to addiction.
i feel like i gave up on my dad and that i didn’t have enough empathy for him. i didn’t know him well enough or love him enough at the time. i didn’t have enough patience for a 40-something year old doing what he was doing… not to himself, my grandmother or to my bother(s). i didn’t include myself in that entire era, but it affected me in the long run. he died of liver cirrhosis. he wasn’t even close to rock bottom when he ended up on my porch that night, it took him another 6 years to get there.
my dad was clean for two decades of his life – before teenage years, and right before i met him. i can’t help but blame myself for not being there for him more – but having that small taste of him not listening to me was scary. watching him while SOBER choke out his gf who physically attacked me was scary. i have been told all of my life that the violence he displayed while being intoxicated was frightening – nevermind when he was sober and looked like an uncontrollable hulk… i just couldn’t. i freaked.
i was 22 and scared, wtf was i supposed to do?
when you’re around someone that is out of control and legit frightening to you, sometimes you just don’t know what to do with yourself. watching that episode of euphoria made me feel like that again last night. that adrenaline fight or flight shit (i just freeze, tbh)… i have felt it too many times in my life. i never want that shit again. i am glad i didn’t grow up around my father acting that way. i think i’ve mentioned in a past post, but he legit ripped a door off of the hinges to get to my mother to hit her while she was pregnant with me.
***
i woke up in my hot pink painted bedroom in the bronx one night when i was 7. i had no door bc the “room” i was in was actually an off shoot room from the kitchen. they closed off the entry from the kitchen, but there was my doorway – filled with two grown ass men fighting with a knife and a broomstick against the dining room/hallway wall. these were two men that i knew in my life to be a father figure and well, his brother. i don’t even want to get into what they were fighting about, again, you can feel free to use your imagination.
SEVEN.
that apartment was filled with horrendous memories. seeing my mom do things i shouldn’t have seen at that age, that fight, leaving all of my toys behind in the basement of that apartment building. i can’t even describe how selfish that sounds, complaining about material things like toys, but it was so traumatizing for me at age seven – losing EVERYTHING i ever held dear to my stupid little heart.
i was a horribly spoiled little child. i threw fits and tantrums. i was given things to shut me up all the time. i used to get bribed on the regs to behave at doctors with toys. i had every 80s toy one could ever hope for… i didn’t want a sibling, but i got one, and acted out more. i didn’t want to go to school and i threw fits and sat in my cubby or the play refrigerator all day. all i ever wanted was to be at home with my stuff. that was my happy/safe place. the townhouse that we lived in had four floors, i had my own room, that’s where all of my toys were. my mom was basically a stay at home mom at the time. it was always just us before my sister came along. hanging out around the house, driving around listening to music and going shopping… THE LIFE.
when my sister’s father left, we went from that townhouse to a 1BR apartment. i tried to run away every night. i hated it there. i was bullied in day care by my day care provider, who would only call me by my last name. from there, we went to a nicer apartment in whitestone for a while, then up to the bronx – where i had my hot pink bedroom. the tradeoff for the hot pink paint that they tried to talk me out of, was that the bulk of my toys would be stored away in the basement and i would only keep my stuff animals on my bed. this shite apartment was supposed to be temporary – so why did they even paint my room? i dunno, but had i known they were going to leave all of my shit behind, i would have just left the walls white.
my mother didn’t have an easy life, so i give her a lot of wiggle room and little judgement – but holy shit, the entire era of that guy she was dating and that apartment’s goings on, i will never understand how she let all of that happen. it’s terrible of me to even say that – but smol me was affected terribly. she should have done more to protect me. she should have never let her children be around anything like that – especially coming from an abusive household, herself.
i am really trying hard not to judge my mother, but that episode of euphoria last night brought me right back to those feelings. not just of that apartment – but every single moment throughout the course of my life that made me feel that way. i can tell you right now that there were many. too many.
little kids need protection. they should never feel any trauma… ever. it absolutely kills me that people have kids in any circumstances that make them feel bad. whether it be the struggle of being poor or neglectful rich shitheads. no kids deserve to carry that shit with them or should ever be traumatized in any way. i hate it.
***
i know i’m a broken record about me needing to go to therapy, but i can’t even imagine how much throughout my 20s and 30s this affected my life and i didn’t even know it. relationships, friendships, how late it took for me to professionally prosper. all i ever want is some peace of mind, and instead, every year – every decade, there’s something new to deal with… losing a job, having some unexpected financial issue, health issues, my cat being sick, my mom fucking up, having an insecure loser stalk me to the point where i can’t even use social media freely, cutting friends out of my life, people i’ve dated not having their shit together, people dying, my sister and my mother both moving away, it just never fucking ends. it’s really hard for me to just be happy. i don’t know wtf that even is.
my mother always used to throw in my face that i “felt sorry for myself” like my father. like, i do feel sorry for myself. my poor self that didn’t even know she needed saving. now she’s a fucked up adult and is stuck in a dark place. self-pity is disgusting, so i try not to give into this shit very often, but sometimes it hits me hard. whenever i think of things that make/made me feel like this, a lot of the time it’s not even my fault. the stuff i listed above – the only thing i can control in that scenario i spit out would be my relationships and friendships.
at age 40, i KNOW i need to turn it around and i don’t even know where to begin. i am so tired of life that i don’t know how to turn it around and enjoy it. that in turn makes me feel like a boring bummer of a human, and it’s a vicious cycle that makes me hate myself for not being one of them LIFE IS DOPE people. like i said, there’s always something. i woke up this morning and found out i owe $800+ for the fucking MRI i had a couple of weeks ago.
i’m so glad that me paying into healthcare that i barely use because i never really have health issues really pays off.
i just want a fucking break.
i just want to not worry about SOMETHING for like, a year.
i want to be more gracious in life. i want things in my life that make me FEEL that way.
i just want to be happy.
what a fucking snowball from watching an episode of euphoria, lol.