My mother had been sober for nearly a week. Each day I pridefully checked off her daily wellness to-do’s on the calendars I made for her: Gym. Morning meds. Psych meds. Sleep meds. Check. Check. Check. Check. I paid off her utilities, put as much down on her overdue HOA fees as I could. Watered the plants, did the dishes, got the mail; got an extension to fix her garage that is in violation approved. Things were looking somewhat up, despite being broke, isolated, and depressed in Rancho Cucamonga.
Then Kawhi left.
I’m not blaming Kawhi Leonard
for my whole life going to shit.
But he did leave the Clippers.
And then my whole life went to shit.
So.
So, I cried my eyes out, cried even more but made sure to get it on camera because if I’m going to cry about my favorite player leaving my favorite team then god damn it, I should get some content out of it even if Instagram only shows it to 14 of my followers, and I went to work. Waited out traffic with the dude I was dating, both of us morose from the day’s basketball news (LeBron also left the Lakers). I cleaned the molding kitchen of the dirty bachelor pad he was crashing at to put my anxiety somewhere and drove home not crying, which felt like a good way to end the day.
Little did I know
the day had just begun.
My nerves started rattling when I saw the texts I sent my mother on my way home were not delivered. I felt my breath catch somewhere between my tongue and my stomach walking up to her house, completely dark. And my heart sunk by the time I’d reached the landing of the staircase— the stench of hot red wine wafting from underneath her bedroom door soundtracked by my dog’s whimpering barks.
I did not sleep.
My mother moaned for hours as she tossed and turned, each of her eyelids closed tighter than a baby’s fist. I checked on her. Checked again. Checked. Checked. Checked. Until I found her in a pool of her own piss nearly curled up with a child’s sized football of constipated shit.
By the time I cleaned
her, her mess, and all of her sheets,
it was nearly six in the morning.
So yeah, no shit,
or rather full blown shit,
I did not sleep.
At some point after I stopped monitoring her breathing and worrying if she was going to die, I did start to nap; a short-lived dream that abruptly ended when my mother started screaming that I had not mopped the floors.
There is no easy way to tell your alcoholic, mentally-ill, dementia-ridden mother that you didn’t mop the fucking floor because you just worked the over-night shift mopping her fucking ass. Although I did try to tell her as kindly as I could that I had already spent hours cleaning, wishing she would have noticed the dark circles under my sunken eyes or any of the love I had tried to give her.
She did not.
Instead she locked herself in her room.
Until she attempted to drive her car
using her television remote three times.
Every time me begging her
to get out of her car because
she has a suspended license.
(There was no use arguing about the remote.)
The fourth time though, oh that bitch got me. She found her extra fob she’d hidden from herself for god knows how many years and by the time I ran down the stairs hearing her broken, in-violation, garage door screeching open, she was already peeling out. I ran after her as she almost hit a parked car and left her gated community. I called 911 from the middle of the street trying to still catch her license plate number.
She came back in ten minutes.
She had forgotten her purse.
And five minutes after she parked,
the sheriff’s department showed up.
“Can you get the extra fob from her?”
“Not without a physical altercation.
And I’m not emotionally in a place for
a physical altercation right now.”
The garage door screeched open again.
“Ms. Ross, can you…”
She yelled something
as the garaged screeched closed
and I stood there shaking,
shaking in a way I hadn’t in twenty years.
The head deputy sheriff or whatever told me to call him if she left the house again or if she became abusive.
He never picked up.
The next day,
I had to literally flee
from my mother’s home
for the safety of myself & my dog,
as she simultaneously
kicked me out & barricaded me in.
To recap, within 48 hours:
Kawhi went to the Raptors.
My mother shit all over.
The sheriffs came.
And I became effectively homeless.
After spending every dime I had
to move to Rancho fucking Cucamonga
in attempt to take care of this woman
who birthed me & hated me ever since,
and to try to take care of the home
my beloved grandparents bought her.
Since then— last Wednesday— I’ve been in a weird Bermuda Triangle of Time and Fucked-ness. A woman I’d only become friends with a week prior took me in despite her own very real life problems. My old next-door neighbor (not the one I dated) housed me for as many nights as she could. One of my 2010’s Twitter heroes I became IRL friends in recent years opened her home to me.
My car broke down.
My websites expired.
My therapist is out of town.
I really didn’t think I could be much lower than I had already had been over the course of the last twenty-something years, until I realized that I was. And that it was already too late for me to realize I had been only a few poor— even if well-intentioned, wholehearted and optimistic— decisions away from being stranded with my dog, two pairs of underwear, and zero dollars.
While it took everything out of me to turn to my social media to be candid and admit any of this, there’s a good chance that that is the reason you’re reading this.
It’s the reason why
I was able to afford
to fix my car,
to feed my dog,
to be safe.
(Also how I’m even able to write this
since my laptop is locked in my room
in Rancho fucking Cucamonga.)
Because while the world at large is unkind, the world around me has been unimaginably kind in this time of circumstances I would have thought were unimaginable mere months ago.
I still don’t have the words to fully express my gratitude for everyone who has helped me in the last week. I have been wondering if I really ever will.
I can only say that the kindness and generosity that has been bestowed upon me is the kind I would happily give someone when able to, without the expectation of anything in return. And that I know the kindness and generosity I have been shown by you all, will be returned. I hope to return it personally myself one day, but if it’s not me, still, it will be returned.
(THIS IS WHY I BELIEVE
IN THE GOD DAMN UNIVERSE!)
Thank you.
Thank you so fucking much for reading, for supporting me, for showing up in ways my own kin can’t.
I promise I will find the words one day.
But until then, as cliche as it is,
thank you from the bottom
of my fucking heart.
And for those who have asked for other ways to help outside of subscribing here:
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