Thanks Mom and Dad, couldn't have done it without y'all

I don’t like my parents.

Not in the teenage they just took away my new moon poster kind of way. I really don’t like them. Sometimes I find it very hard to speak to them on the phone, and I never, ever want to take my vacation to visit them.

My mom is a recovering alcoholic. She stopped drinking right after I turned 16. Why you ask? Well, I had to wrestle her to the ground one night when she was plastered and wanted more smokes. She busted my nose with her head. I moved out the next day. I guess she decided it was time to start being a sober mommy after that, she has not drank ethanol since. She smoked and drank while pregnant with my sister and I, and I think that’s where my anger with her began.

My dad…where do I start? He is the reason I have to take pills to keep my brain chemicals in check. He is the reason that I cannot sit still while at home and enjoy a movie or silence without feeling guilty that I am not doing something productive. He is the reason that even when I do really good at something, all I hear is his voice in my head well, do better next time.

Hate did not begin to describe how I felt about them in my early twenties. Counseling helped me bring it to hate. Pills helped me not cry about it all the time. Anti-anxiety meds helped me stop having night terrors about the night my mom took my sister and I to our first movie (age 6 and 7), got wasted at the bar next to the movie theater, and got in a crash with us.

No matter what a counselor says or how many pills I take I cannot find it within myself to forgive them. I am confident the reason that I cannot forgive them is because I don’t want them off the hook. I know I need to lay it out there, everything, let them know how I feel. But I just see no point.

My dad the workaholic manic depressive, my mom the alcoholic unhappy housewife that gave up being a hippie for kids. Their marriage is a joke to me really. Dad yells at mom all the time, mom goes into la-la land and no one every talks about, well, anything. So I don’t call.

I called this past Thanksgiving. Hubs, great man that he is, has not met my parents so he is ignorant. I cannot blame him for chastising me for not wanting to call them. I mean, his parents are normal Southern people. So I call, with him right there to hear the version 2.0 of Hell that is a phone call with them.

I tell them that I am pursuing the dream that I was convinced out of in high school (long story, another post) and changing my major to English and becoming a teacher, eventually a professor. So they said “well, that’s ok we suppose Housewife, we could never see you being a nurse, so we are glad you came around”. Laughter. Evil-flying-monkeys-from-wizard-of-Oz laughter. I held on to the call, because a part of me was hoping that it would be different. Oh no, not this year kids.

Grandma Jane is bedridden and childlike. They don’t think she will make it much longer. Well, thankssomuch for that happy bit of news on THANKSGIVING. So glad I made this call. Yeah, and so you should try to get to California before she goes, she had asked about you awhile ago, we told her you were busy…

I’m sorry, you did WHAT?! (I think I shot a lightning bolt out of my eye into the dashboard of the car, I can't remember) On what planet do you tell a dying woman that her granddaughter (not by blood, again, another long story) that said granddaughter is to busy to come see you. Nice. Really niiiiiice.

Hanging up, I looked over at Hubs (I let him listen via speaker since he wanted this phone call to happen so much) and I give him the “are you fucking happy now?” look. Silence.

“See honey, don’t you feel better now that you called?”

That’s when I turned into a raging demon gorilla and beat him into the dashboard of his Honda.