Everything I Never Wanted to Be

by Dina Kucera

  But one thing. Please, God, help John’s tooth feel better until we have health insurance. I’m not saying you made a mistake, but what is the purpose of wisdom teeth? We have to pay large sums of money to have them removed. They’re like tonsils. It’s like you put a whole person together and had parts left over and said, “Just put them in the mouth somewhere.”

  Anyway, thank you. You lead my life and as of right now I’m really waiting for further direction. Like, I’m actually looking up to you and saying, “Hey! What do I do now?” So I’m sure you’re working on something and then I’ll get that message. Until then, I’ll wait. For a message.

  Amen.

  Suck My Dick Van Dyke

  I had Jennifer’s five-year-old birthday party in the park. I woke up that morning with the usual ailments—pounding head, thick throat, still drunk. The night before, I had gone out like I did every night. I worked in a bar so I could get away with this because I’d say I was working, which I was, but at this job, I could drink while I worked—and to me, that was better than medical benefits. Then the employees would all drink until well after the sun came up.

  I jump up. I have seven dollars in my pocket. I get ready, brush my teeth three times, but I’m still drunk so the stench is going nowhere. I run out the door and stop at a drug store and find a five-dollar necklace with a little jewel on it.

  I get to the park where the party is already in progress. I get a couple of glares from other parents, which I deserve for showing up two hours late to my child’s party. I see Jen sitting at a picnic table by herself. I try to act normal and smile, quickly walking toward her. She sees me, starts crying, and puts her head on her arms on the table. I sit next to her and pretend I don’t know why she is crying. I try to hug her but she pushes me away. I tell her I brought her something and pull the five-dollar necklace out of my purse. My hands are shaking from the booze trying to escape my body.

  I set the necklace by her elbow. She looks up and says, “I didn’t think you were coming to my party!” Then she puts her head back down, still crying, and pushes the necklace across the table with her elbow.

  I feel disgusted with myself. Sick to my stomach. We sit in silence for a few minutes. I say, “Come here. Sit on my lap.” So I pick her up and put her on my lap. I hug her and kiss her, and she melts into my arms sniffling and crying.

  Her tears begin to subside. I tell her I bought the necklace especially for her and then I hand it back to her. She stays curled up in a ball in my arms looking at the necklace. With red eyes and a wet face, she smiles and says, “It has a jewel on it.”

  I say, “That’s because you’re a princess.” I put the necklace around her neck, and she jumps off my lap and runs over to show her necklace to the other children.

  I only drank for another twenty years. There are so many stories that haunt me, like Jen’s five-year-old birthday party. Images that don’t go away. Events that were supposed to be happy, but in the end gave me and the kids nightmares. I know I can never fix those memories, or erase them, or regain the time that was lost.

  A week before I had Jennifer, I went to the Goodwill to get a crib. I also found a baby t-shirt that said “I’m spoiled” across the front. I returned to my parents’ house with the only crib I could afford. It had all the pieces, but it didn’t come with any screws to keep it together, so I tied it with rope in thirty different places. You could push the crib with one finger and it would rock back and forth as if it were going to fall to the floor. But I thought it was suitable for a tiny baby that didn’t weigh very much.

  I recall bringing Jennifer home and laying her in that death trap with her little “I’m spoiled” t-shirt and I think, Yes... perfect... a six pound human in a crib that may crash to the ground any second, but maybe not. We’ll see. Knock wood.

  I did so well with the first child, living with my parents, on food stamps and welfare, that I was pregnant with my second daughter at nineteen.

  My job back then was a paper route. I used my father’s green VW van to deliver the papers. Jennifer was two years old, and she played in the back of the van as I threw the paper route. When I would turn a corner I could hear her roll and hit the wall of the van. This is the kind of mother I was. She acted like it was nothing. She just sat up and continued playing.

  I’m nine-and-a-half months pregnant, and I’m rolling the papers as I drive, throwing them here and there. I have a contraction. I don’t think much of it. I continue on, wrapping papers, throwing papers. A short time later, another contraction. I step on the pedal.

  No one knows my route but me, so I have to finish it before I go to the hospital because this paper route is my career. It’s a lot of pressure for a huge pregnant teen with a two-year-old slamming into the walls in the back of the van. But if I do a good job, I can throw these papers until I am dead.

  It is a four hour paper route, so I speed up, feeling a bit nervous. I hear Jen hitting the walls as I speed up and turn faster. More contractions and they’re getting closer together so I stop and pick up my mother.

  I run in the house holding the bottom of my stomach as if the baby would actually fall out.

  I tell my mom, “I’m having the baby! You have to drive! Hurry!” We run out and jump in the van.

  I direct her and tell her, “Mother! Drive faster!” She drives faster and the contractions are closer and longer. I’m throwing papers like a wild person. I don’t know if I’m throwing them at the right houses but I think, fuck it. They get one, they get one, they get one. We speed through the dirt roads for three hours and we’re almost done when my water breaks. We finish the paper route at three o’clock, go back by the house to pick up my little overnight bag, and then finally go to the hospital. April is born at six thirty.

  Back then, I thought I was really living high on the hog. Two days after April was born, I loaded Jen in the back of the van with her toys and two-day-old April in a baby car seat behind me. It was like it was our paper route. The three of us. I was completely stupid, almost to the point of being disabled, but in some ways, it was better than the way I live today. Now, I worry about the money in the bank, the money that’s not in the bank, the rent, the medical bills, the groceries... you know, all the stuff. Back then, it was just the three of us driving along the roads, singing songs, and drinking Cokes and baby formula. It was like not being in the real world, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

  I had Jennifer when I was eighteen, got married when I was nineteen, had April when I was twenty, got divorced when I was twenty-one, and then slept in my car with my girls for a while after the divorce. We only slept in the car for two weeks, but it seemed like longer. Then we stayed with family and friends... floating around from day-to-day, staying at different places.

  ‘Nuff said about my first marriage. I’m sure there were some real interesting things that happened, they just don’t ever come to mind—and the things that do come to mind, I’m treating with powerful antidepressants.

  Then I married John and we had Carly. During the first twelve years of our marriage, I drank until I stumbled to bed, and John smoked pot until all the snacks in the house were gone.

  Every night at seven thirty I would open my first beer. I preferred Heineken, but when times were bad I would choke back Rolling Rock. At about the same time each night, John would have to “go do things in the garage.” He’d walk back in the house happy with red watery eyes. This is how we lived for so, so long. I guess the girls thought it was just normal. They had friends whose parents were doing the same things or worse. All the parents had the same excuses. We were under stress, or had a bad day, or it was seven thirty.

  Toward the end of my twenty-something years of drinking, I began to get really mean when I drank. I would pick a screaming fight with John every night. John, high on pot, couldn’t defend himself because he was confused and couldn’t string together an entire sentence. So I screamed like a crazy person. The girls would sit in their bedrooms and listen to all of it. Sometimes it
would go on most of the night. Or at least until the Heineken was gone.

  John would say the slightest thing like, “Did we pay the phone bill?”

  I’d slur, “Good God, fuck off.”

  One night I told John to “Suck my big fat cock.” The next day he told me he couldn’t believe I had said that to him. I quickly lied and said, “I didn’t say, ‘Suck my big fat cock.’ (Long pause so I could think.) I said, ‘Suck my Dick Van Dyke.’” I told him I said it to be funny. A big fat lie, but one of the best lies I’ve ever told. Suck my Dick Van Dyke? What does that even mean?

  I would scream things like that all night. I know now the damage it caused to all three of our girls. I wish I could erase it, but I can’t. I was a lunatic. The girls started getting into trouble, and I would stagger to their rooms and slur my warnings about how alcohol problems run in our family. Of course, this didn’t include me because I went to work every day and I waited until seven thirty to drink. But those other people were definitely alcoholics. I’d say, “Alcoholismrunsinthefamily” (everything is one word when you’re drunk). The way the words came out of my mouth, it sounded like my tongue was swollen. The girls just stared at me and didn’t respond.

  And they didn’t take my advice. They were teenagers, and they were drinking and using drugs regularly—just like their parents.

  So I would lecture them some more, holding onto the door the whole time so I wouldn’t fall on the floor, thinking I was saying something really meaningful. Then I would throw in something random like, “Wherearemyshoes?”

  They’d say, “One of them is under the computer desk because you threw it at John.”

  Jen raised herself into becoming a teenager and began running wild like nothing I’d ever seen before. She would just leave and not come back for days. We would look everywhere for her. I was having panic attacks and night terrors. I would wake up suddenly in the middle of the night and be filled with terror, with my heart racing. Then I couldn’t go back to sleep. I would lie in my bed wondering where she was and if we would get a phone call saying something happened to her.

  So just for kicks, one night I said a prayer, which is something I hadn’t done for many, many years. I asked God to watch over Jen since she wouldn’t allow us to watch over her. I prayed for sleep without night terrors. I said that if I could have one night’s sleep I would be ready for whatever comes tomorrow. I was just so tired.

  Please God, can I have one night without waking up in terror?

  I woke up the next morning and walked into the living room. It was sort of dark outside. John asked if I was sick. I said I wasn’t. He said that they had been trying to wake me all day but I wouldn’t get up. I had fallen asleep the night before and hadn’t woken up until the following evening. Then I remembered my prayer telling God I was tired. I looked over and Jen was sitting on the couch watching TV. That’s when I started to believe in God again. I started to believe that someone was watching over me.

  I attempted sobriety three times before I had any success. The first time, I went to one of the stupid meetings. These crazy people would go up there and say things like, “I crashed into a car and killed seven people.” Or “I left my two-year-old at a bus stop.”

  I was sitting there thinking, “I’m not like these people. These people are crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m just sad. And thirsty.”

  Five days in, I asked my alcoholic friends and family if they thought I was an alcoholic. They took a sip of their wine and said, “You are so not an alcoholic.” See, you just have to know the right people to ask.

  The second time I tried sobriety was when we lived in Las Vegas. Same deal. I listened to the crazies and thought, I’m not like these people.

  When people talk about their “bottom,” it’s sometimes this really horrible thing that happened. But there are people like me who didn’t have that one big event.

  For me, it was a gradual thing. I felt empty and sad for years, and for a long, long time, alcohol worked. I’d drink, and all the sadness would go away. Not only did the sadness go away, but I was fantastic. I was beautiful, funny, I had a great figure, and I could do math.

  But at some point, the booze stopped working. That’s when drinking started sucking. Every time I drank, I could feel pieces of me leaving. I continued to drink until there was nothing left. Just emptiness. If someone had screamed and I had my mouth open, it would have echoed.

  The third time I tried to quit drinking was after we were back in Phoenix. I went to bed drunk one night like I always did. Moses was seven months old, and April was having a really difficult time with the reality of his condition. Moses was on several different seizure medications.

  Jen was just gone. The alcohol, drugs, cutting, craziness.

  I said a prayer that night asking God to help me find a way to help the girls. I just didn’t know what to do for them. The alcohol made me more depressed, so I would sit on the couch and cry and drink one after another. Cry, drink, throw things at John.

  The next morning I woke up and the first thought I had was that I was going back to the meetings with the crazy people.

  I got there and I couldn’t get in because it was too crowded. So I sat outside and talked to a crazy person. He was a recovering alcoholic, and we talked and laughed. I was leaving and he said, “Just for tonight, don’t drink.”

  I went home and I thought, Just for tonight I’m not drinking. I began having panic attacks in the middle of the night. The second night I decided not to drink one more night. The second night was really bad. The panic was overwhelming. My body tingled (in a bad way) from the top of my head to my toes. My skin itched. My head was pounding. I went back to the meeting the next day. I listened to crazy people and thought, “What a drag. I’m exactly like these people.”

  Days went by, weeks went by, meetings and meetings. I made great friendships and had more laughs than I have ever had in my life. Months went by and then years went by.

  For the first thirty days of my sobriety, I had a migraine that never went away. Some days I would throw up. It was ugly but so worth pushing through to the other side.

  What’s on the other side? The exact same bullshit. But now I can at least deal with it—and what I can’t deal with, I can laugh about. You have nothing to cushion the blow of life. All you can do is laugh. You’ve been robbing Peter to pay Paul and then there’s a knock on your door. Guess who it is? Peter. He wants his fucking money. All you can do is laugh.

  If you use drugs or alcohol, your kids will also use. Your kids do what you do, and in my life that’s very scary. If you’re following in my footsteps, wear a helmet.

  John and I fought for years, and I know this is a big part of what is going on with the girls. Our drug and alcohol use is another big part. I stopped drinking and John quit smoking pot around the same time. It’s hardly a coincidence that our fighting, other than normal you-annoy-me fighting, completely stopped when we stopped our seven thirty routine. Our whole life changed. We began to treat each other with more respect. I stopped throwing shoes at him. For the most part. There are still times when nothing says it like a Nike to the back of the head.

  When you drink too much you lose things. Car keys, your purse, money, kids. It comes with the territory. Every alcoholic has lost her car at least once. You wake up in the morning and you look out the window and say, “Hey. Where’s my car?”

  Losing a car is not unusual for an alcoholic, so you call friends and try to find your car. I called a friend, and she said I gave my car away at a house party. What? She said I went out to my car, came back in with the title and signed it away to some stranger. I said I would never do such a thing. She said she tried to stop me, but I told her the guy was real sweet and he was having trouble getting back and forth to school. Apparently it was more important that the stranger got to school than it was for me to care for my two small daughters as a single mom. At the end of the party I actually had to find a ride home.

  People have asked me what the difference
is between just “having a good time” and actually being an alcoholic.

  Most people at happy hour are having a good time. But some of those people go home and pee on their floor. That’s an indication there may be a problem.

  Regular having-a-good-time people don’t wake up in a pool of vomit. If you have been cut off in a bar, that could be a problem. If you don’t remember the night before and you wake up with random injuries on your body and leaves and sticks in your hair, could be an issue. If you get drunk, call every person you know, tell them you’re going to kill yourself, and then wake up the next day and decide to join a gym, something is very wrong. If you think everyone in the world is against you and you are completely mistreated... if you think your drinking only affects you... if you drink because your life sucks more than anyone else’s... if you drink because all the people around you are fuckers... and the biggest one, if you’ve ever asked yourself, “Am I an alcoholic?”... God bless you, you are probably an alcoholic.

  Here are some other ways to figure out if you’re an alcoholic or addict.

  If a sign says, “Take One,” alcoholics and addicts always take four. They always park in handicapped parking spaces and fire lanes. They always have sixty-five items in the express lane. They don’t let people merge on the highway. If their eyes are brown, they say they’re blue. They have a sweet collection of shot glasses, but their children don’t have diapers. They stack empty beer cans in the built-in bookcase to look like the Egyptian pyramids, but they don’t have a single book. They challenge walls to a fist fight and lose. If any of this sounds like you at all, cut people off all the way to detox. And make a mental note: the wall always wins.