Coming Back to Life

I always knew that opening this can of worms would resurface and reignite that flame that burned so hot that it was cold, but this has waited long enough. I could not run any further from it than I already had. It's time to face the music; that shit song you always skip, Lucy- I tell myself as I pour my fourth beer, into a glass, just like he used to when we would sit on his back porch twenty years prior. It is a counterproductive coping mechanism, and I am well aware of this, but I still choose to carry on. "It tastes better and goes down more smoothly." he would say, one of the life lessons from my alleged biological father. Always sly and crafty tips, but never quite limited to the appropriate variety. Everything he said to me was gospel at this time. I only ever heard of his name after the young age of 8 and sitting across from him at 17, FINALLY, at his home after the tireless search felt like the missing puzzle piece to my identity that has been absent for so long; he was no longer a ghost. The completion I felt at this time I wouldn't trade for all of the tea in China. It was short-lived, but damn, I could have hung on forever in despite of what has been missed; teaching me how to ride a bike, the 'baby taking a nap with daddy' photo, helping me pick out my first car and showing me how to change the tire, bitching about my grades, the full-on 'dad interrogating my date to the prom' experience, etc. I was 17 now and prepared to graduate high school in a month, yet more content with the here and now rather than those obligatory milestones. Swallowing down beers tonight pacifies me from the intercourse of my ears I never asked for. I ask God for the millionth time in my life, why me? I get that old automatic response back: why not me? I have no clue what that even means at the moment. How could I? I was brought into this world by complete primal instincts and teenage hormones coupled with copious amounts of alcohol at a keg party that these kids had no business having in the first place. There was no end game, plan, or direction in sight; it would be pretty strange if there were in this circumstance. But here I am, uninvited and unintentional. I think she was delighted at first after I was born, but the novelty wore off quickly when I cried and/or caused her even only a single second of discomfort. I needed her more than she needed me, and that is the part that she did not sign up for: she handed me off to my grand folks soon after. I was just a toy that she put on a shelf and would occasionally swing by the house to take down and play with until she got bored or frustrated, again, and again and again. The "agains" started as days, then weeks, then inevitably months; months waiting by the door, looking out the window for mom to come and take me home. She always told me she promised to take me to this place called 'home'. Mom said where I was was not that, but I had never seen this 'home' she spoke of before, and I often would dream of what that place was like. I would envision a small, modest home (at that young and vulnerable age of 4, I understood that she didn't have much money and knew that little money resulted in little things, I didn't mind that part much) with a branchy tree that wore a tire swing. I pictured my bicycle thrown carelessly in the yard as I swung on in the warm sun. I dreamt of a cozy couch in the living room with the TV left on, echoing my favorite cartoons as I played with my dolls in their own tiny house while enjoying the sweet vanilla aroma of the pancakes she was preparing for us in the kitchen nearby.

She held to this promise sometime a year or so after the daydream began, but it was nothing like the fantasy I would once get lost in. I was lost in a much different respect. Mom was now pregnant with my baby sister and married a man named Paul when she initially scooped me up from my grandparents. Paul was a tall, whiskery, and profoundly masculine fellow that she would sometimes bring along on her brief visits prior. She confessed that he was my birth father (false yet unknown to me at the time). What ‘home’ turned out to be was a small two-bedroom apartment with only a few windows to shed light and a lot of unmatched hand-me-downs strewn about. I still didn't mind the humble abode as long as I could be with my mother. All I wanted was her and ‘dad.’ A bout of jealousy of my baby sister occurred; I came to adore her very soon; I just needed to catch up on the love and attention I longed for. I shared a bedroom with Maggie and did not mind so much. I had never had a “roommate” before, but the company was comforting, even when she would cry at night in her crib. I enjoyed snatching her out of there and bringing her into my twin to hold and sing her to sleep. I loved this part of the night, and it was always worth the mouth-patting yawning at school the following day. Mom would often claim to go to bingo in the evenings, which disrupted the dreamt-up homemade dinners and lullabies I imagined, but it was still okay.

Paul would make sure we ate our veggies and played safely. He used to say, "Man, I am sure proud of my girls for eating their spinach." Maggie would giggle in glee as she wore the pureed version like a proud green mustache of goodness. He would make up bedtime stories and theatrically draw cool examples on my chalkboard easel. He was a writer, so it was always good stuff, and Maggie and I would wait for this pre-bedtime show with anticipation every evening, never before he was through with his new episode of Jeopardy for the evening, though. He got a kick out of the attempts we made to guess the answers with the silliness that only little girls possess.

I missed Mom every night but remained content that she still lived there and wouldn't be gone more than the evening.

This sort of fulfillment had later turned into pandemonium as mom's late-night excursions would turn into a 7-day-a-week routine, and the evenings turned into overnights. I often would awake in the early hours of the morning to my loud, screaming, and cursing mother. I would be too afraid to walk out and observe the situation; although curious, I had too much trouble picturing my mother angry. Her long, dark hair, big, soft brown eyes, and petite physique didn't seem capable of this, and the harsh sounds of our household items smashing against the wall terrified me. I would hold Maggie tight as she dozed through it and always felt relief that she was a heavy sleeper. Seeing our broken furniture and such while tiptoeing around the shattered glass in the morning made me sad. I stayed outside and mosied in the woods most days that I wasn't at school. The inevitable came about eventually, as I had a feeling it would. I couldn't articulate in words at that age, but I always knew it would all come to an end. I never knew it would hurt so deeply and leave the scar in my soul that it had…

"Where are you going?" I ask as I look up at the tall, strong, dark bearded man I once called ‘daddy.’

"Can I come too?" I ask in anticipation, peering up at him with sparkling green eyes.

"No, Lucy. I already told you that Mom said no. I'm so sorry," Paul says, with glossy eyes and a deep breath.

"Yes, Daddy, but I don’t understand why I can't go with you and Maggie. Can you ask her again, please? I want to go, too!" I plead, tears staining my porcelain soft face and dampening the ends of my long, straight brown pigtails he had just fashioned for me this morning.

All I could do from now on was watch and wave hello and goodbye. That all too familiar task of sitting, waiting, and watching out the window revisits my life yet again.

I awake from this terrible, reminiscent nightmare for the 7th consecutive day now with a pounding migraine-like headache and a strong affinity for a bloody mary. I find this peculiar since I never used to dream when I went to sleep drunk, but lately, I couldn't escape the reoccurring, harsh reminder of the tell-tale that went wrong. I had to pull it together- just for today, yet again, and make it to my dreary and dull office job at the factory where I managed finances. Thinking of this beige and windowless office was already making me more tired than I already was. I muster up my way to getting dressed and grooming myself, as usual, knowing that I will be on total autopilot today and a silent prayer that nothing will throw a wrench in my robotic plan of making it through the day. Before I depart from my modest and very 'lived-in' 2 bedroom downstairs duplex, I have the dreaded task of awakening my on and off-bed partner of the past few months. Thankfully, he passed out a few hours before me in order to allow me to sit back out on the back porch and wallow in my sorrows as peacefully as possible. He's always like a gnat I want to swat away the following day, and this is what I do, always ignoring the sweet and affectionate sentiment I shared the night before while guzzling an adult beverage with my favorite singalongs blaring in the background. Long and challenging years of being used and played with superseded this mentality, and therefore, I was giving out what I was given over the years: promises of everything with no intent to follow through. I do not even allow myself to feel the guilt of the pain that I inflict on anyone anymore. I do not even bother to figure out if they are using me back or just innocent victims like I once was myself: I do not care.

Back to the tin receptacle of invertebrates: I had a meeting with Pete later this afternoon and the sweet and gentle-sounding lady on the other end of the phone last week who is employed to swab the spit from our inner cheek to determine paternity. I numbed myself up good enough the night before in order to be in a semi-sedated frame of mind that I am in now to handle a long-lost past situation and the velocity of the intensity that it truly is. My therapist recommended this, knowing that she saw the dim light in my eyes weekly, which she knew surely sparkled brightly once before. I appreciate her selfless attempt to revive me from this walking state of comatose, but I honestly didn't share the same enthusiasm as her, yet I was promised that the will to live in peace would come back if I followed her instructions. This was a tough one, and one of those humps she said would get worse before it got better, and it will be well worth it when it is said and done, she has said on numerous occasions now. I replay her positive reassurance as I drive to work on this damp and gray day. Sure thing, Miss Sue, I said out loud, sarcastically, to only me on the way into this tedious day at work. I was a mixed bag of emotions at every turn and stop en route: pain, anger, confusion, and now- empathy. My telephone conversation with him the week prior still haunts me. Pete explained the adversities he had endured over the past 15 years. If you asked me briefly before said therapy, I would have said, "Good, he got what he deserved." Yet my coping mechanisms still being subpar, and my heart has softened considerably in some ways. Nothing could prepare me for the feelings I never dreamed of having learned of his recent hardships. However, the oversharing on his behalf has amplified since the last time we spoke, and the telephone conversation started rather crass. I was not easily offended by any stretch of the imagination, but this man I bore striking resemblance to could be my father, for Christ's sake!

"Well, hello there!" he answers the phone with glee and so very familiar with the disposition he showed when we were in contact years before.

"Hello, Pete. You still sound the same.", I say with a sad attempt at a cavalier tone.

"Hey, not too bad for a 62-year-old man still reeling in the hot 20-something-year-olds!".

Here we go again, I think to myself, feeling forced to neck down the three-quarters left of my adult beverage.

The conversation, although virtually one-sided, wasn't tense or angry. He described his hardships. he now lived in an RV and traveled around to various parking areas that allowed him to crash, vastly different than his massive house on 5 acres of land when I knew him prior. Pete described the knock-down-drag-out divorce he scraped by with the skin of his teeth, coupled with a nasty drug addiction that he was in the process of overcoming. I found myself sympathizing for him greatly, in spite of several years of absence which I could not muster up the "balls" to ask why. The conversation took a relatively sharp turn when I asked a question that I indeed wish I hadn't, but it felt like an essential question at the time.

"I know this is a very personal question, but were you with mom only the one time?" I ask. I remember his affinity to overshare a half second after the question leaves my teeth and brace myself for the reply.

"Oh yes, just the one time. I'll tell you why right now, I could very possibly be your father- I came in your mother that night. I remember it like yesterday..."

I damned myself for the asking immediately and still marvel at how unapologetic and satisfied he was with that reply. Honest, yes, but damn, that could have been worded much more gently!

The workday is done now, and in my mind, I am now heading into the oven like Hansel and Gretel. I wasn't expecting us to tesselate, so to speak, if the results came back positive. But I did know that if it was not him, I would never know who. I was not hoping for the latter for that very reason.

Upon arrival, I was relieved to hear that he came and went for the test, and she called me back for only a moment to get my specimen.

"Nice fellow he is!" she says as she rubs the dry cotton on my inner cheek.

"Yeah, we'll see", I reply softly.

"Well, honey, you will know in a day or two. I do not know your story, but I pray that you find peace in whatever the outcome may be."

The next few days, I was in a deep haze, yet checking my email anxiously every chance I got. Waiting for an actual notification didn't seem promising enough; I was afraid that this would be one of those circumstances that it 'fell through the cracks'.

The email finally came at 4:44 on day two, and I had the unforgettable task of ringing him to verbally hand him the results, the news came out in a way that I did not recite but certainly matched his energy.

"Well hello, Lucy. What's the verdict?" he asks, so very casually.

"It's a girl." I say, feeling relieved yet indifferent.

The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening and felt like hours, yet only lived for 30 seconds or so. He finally speaks...

"I'm so sorry. We should have done this much sooner. I am so damn sorry, Lucy." He says and I hear the choking back of tears on the receiving end.

I instantly sob. All of the years of anger, confusion, doubt, frustration, fear, and so many more adjectives that I can not put into words subside. I feel free. I catch my breath and deliver him his response.

"Better late than never."

I took a heavenly ride through our silence

I knew the moment had arrived

For killing the past and coming back to life

-Pink Floyd