Cortez's Story: Part 2

Happy to have these parts just waiting to be released! The roommate and I were up until the wee hours with chocolate cravings. We decided to settle for donuts, Tim Ho's being the only 24 hour place around, but it was pissing down rain all night... Coffee to start the engine makes more  a smooth morning but a hell of an anxious afternoon. 
Confused? Read Part 1 HERE

After May twenty third of the year before I met Cortez, I was working as hard as I could every day to move past the haze of the drug phase. I started experiencing panic attacks because no one could get past who I had been to see who I was now. My mother especially clung on to the ‘poor-me’ identity, perfectly content in a twisted way to define me as a hopeless, dirty “druggie.” Any attempt to convince her otherwise was smacked down to earth like a meteorite. When I started getting acne for the first time there was “no way” I wasn’t using and she started reading my journals. She sent me texts quoting them word-for-word. She mocked and punished me for going to parties after openly wishing that I would be normal and go out with friends to ‘dance parties’. She screamed at me that I was a slut, a whore, easy, and I should be ashamed of myself after seeing me hugging two of my male friends. I was scarred for a long time, afraid to touch anyone by accident or reveal any part of myself for fear it would be used against me

I wanted desperately to move out. I mean, what teenager doesn’t? At some point everyone’s mom is a horrible, incomprehensible, ill-willed bitch who can’t possibly understand you. The catch is good moms are trying to understand you; they want to help you be the best you can be, to be the happiest you can be, and they only want the best for you. They tell you about similar situations they were in with the hope that it will be helpful in some way, and if nothing else will be good for bonding and a laugh. When you’re a few years out of high-school, you look back and see all that the ‘psycho’ stuff was actually quite logical and she did it out of altruistic love. But my mother guarded her past like Fort Knox. What did she have to hide? Was she embarrassed because I was following in her footsteps, without knowing it? And if that was true, why wouldn’t she share wisdom or advice when I needed it, let alone when I asked? It seemed awfully self-centered to me that she quit trying to understand me. She happily decided I fit the bill as the problem child who’s every embarrassing sign of existence had  be hidden lest someone give her a sympathetic look that she was convinced meant, “Oh Linda, you terrible mother. You sure screwed up with this one, you colossal failure.”

God, she was obsessed with that role of single mother, and all the piteous attention she received from it. I think that’s why she always looked for something to be wrong with me, and made me believe that she was right.

I tried to improve my attendance after I quit using any drug other than pot. It was impossible though to ignore the whispers and smug looks whenever I showed up, and my panic attacks worsened until one day I was bawling on the short walk to school.

“I can’t do it,” I sobbed to myself before collapsing into a heap on the sidewalk. I lay there for a very long time, no longer caring about what so-and-so would say. I had to leave or I would lose myself in the murky depression I was wading ever deeper in. It wasn’t the same womb that cushioned me and kept me safe in grade seven. If I went back into this new, unfamiliar dark place, I felt I couldn’t come back out.

The next semester I tried to go back to the high school for one class, convinced I couldn’t pass math without a live teacher. Erika, my only friend at the time besides David, told me that many people were eagerly anticipating my return. She put it in much nicer terms, but everyone was waiting to see if I looked as messed up as my former friends, partying hard as rave season picked up. One of them, Josh, had started coming to school high on coke and kept a water bottle full of vodka. He often wore the same clothes for a few days straight, and it was common knowledge that he was living in a tent since getting caught with drugs.

I was already cutting class a week in. I felt like a fat seal awkwardly trying to make it through a flaming hoop, all the while wondering why I couldn’t just chase fish and do flips for fun in the sea. Erika and I would leave after the days lesson to roll a joint at the park near my house. We’d promise to work on our homework together after, knowing it was a lie meant to justify our lack of commitment. We’d get high and listen to the birds, talking about the people we knew, the drugs I had done and she was now experimenting with, the way things were and how we thought they should be. She’d be texting furiously on her phone while I took toke after toke, and before I knew it we’d be headed off to one of her many older guy friends’ basement suites for bong rips. When I hadn’t been to my one and only class for a week straight, I met with a counselor to get set up in full time homeschool. I remember he kept asking why, why couldn’t I make it work, what was so wrong at school that I got panic attacks. I couldn’t make him understand because somewhere in his life, he felt like he belonged.

They say you’re a stoner when you smoke pot alone, and maybe that’s why it felt so indescribably good to have the house to myself five days a week. I swear pot was the driving force that got me through the horrible highs and lows of chemical withdrawal. It toned down the manic phases when I couldn’t sleep, and helped me to accept the longer depressive ones. In the beginning, Erika and I smoked pot in the house without shame, and alone I would hang out of my bedroom window. Whether it was allowed or not was fuzzy in my mind. Mom’s standpoint on the matter wavered, as has every other decision she’s ever made.

I’ll never forget the first time Erika and I hot-boxed the basement washroom, sealing the gap between the door and the floor with a towel to keep breathing in the smoke. We febreezed the whole house but couldn’t wipe the guilt off our faces or the glaze from our bloodshot eyes. When Mom came home, she put her hands on her hips and very seriously said we were never to do it again.

“I like you better stoned,” she laughed, concluding the brief ‘Respect’ lecture. She asked politely that we not smoke in the house and we moved to the storage room outdoors. It came out much later that this wasn’t allowed, nor was the shed or backyard, for fear that the neighbours would smell; however, it was okay when her work friends wanted to get high back there. Somewhere along the way, Erika and I won the back deck. Furnished with comfortable chairs and excellent view of neighbourhood birds, it was a prime spot to blaze. It became THE spot.

“Taylor,” my mom sighed after coming home late one day. “Stop smoking dope in my house. I’m not stupid you know. I know what it smells like.” She dropped her purse heavily onto the counter, giving me the Why-do-you-make-me-do-this face.

“You asked me not to, and I stopped,” I replied, my internal drawbridge rising. I sat up properly on the couch. “I did it a couple times after you asked me to stop. But I understand now that this is your house and it’s a reasonable rule. The porch is a much nicer place, and besides I don’t want to fight with you anymore. You hear when I come outside at night instead of leaning out my window. You asked me not to, and I respect that. I realize that I can’t demand your respect when I don’t give it.”  But my honesty seemed to make her even madder.  I was breaking the unwritten rule that we never openly talk about my pot use like it was no big deal. Indirect comments and innuendos were okay, welcomed even, but it should never be spoken about unless accompanied by negative sentiment.

Around this time the debilitating headaches that I had experienced for a few months in grade nine came roaring back. The doctors could find no explanation for the nearly chronic headache and dull, burning aches in my back and arms. After almost a year and several misdiagnoses later, they found that the small curve in my spine wasn’t causing my pain but rather an incurable chronic pain syndrome. This came after I had already used up all of the insurance money allotted to physiotherapy, something Mom delighted in reminding me of every single day. She acted like I was going on weekly shopping sprees like her rather than trying to manage a seven-month-strong headache.

Fights with Mom got especially heated, and I knew once the blood was pounding in my eyeballs and blurring out the edges of my vision that I needed to get space. A side effect of the constant overload of pain-related information going to my brain, I get overwhelmed very easily. I’d try to explain it to her but these episodes are difficult to explain to the most understanding of people, like a bad dream you can only remember the emotions of. It didn’t matter that she herself was on medication for chronic pain. I was just a big faker making excuses.

“I need … space. Just leave me alone for a little bit. Okay? I just need to breathe,” I would say, exasperated. The blood in my head was hot, burning my eyes but not my cool muscles, clenched so tightly no fresh blood could get in. “Mom! Fuck, just let’s just take a time out! I. Can’t. Think!”

 I completely lost respect for her when she started the habit of blocking the doorway, boxing me into a fight. Stretching her five foot four frame to fill the doorway, her eyes filled with hatred. I felt rage boiling in the pit of my stomach, wondering what was going through her head. It was everything I could do in those moments not to haul off and punch her square in the face. Mom needed to see me explode, to hear me scream ‘fuck’ in frustration and pull my hair; maybe sweep my arm across my dresser to put something between us because when I blew up, she ‘won.’ When she blew up, it was my fault for provoking her, and again she was victor over my immaturity. Countless times I tried to make her understand that all I wanted was to cool off before coming back to the subject when we were both more level headed. It became painfully clear to me that she was regressing as I progressed along the path to growing up. She didn’t deserve the respect given to adults when she was acting like a pubescent girl.

“I’m NOT FUCKING SMOKING WEED IN YOUR HOUSE!” I screeched a few months after the first accusation, hysterical and near to passing out. “Pot has a different smell when it’s burnt than sitting in the bag, and YOU KNOW THAT! YOU USED TO SMOKE IT! I AM NOT SMOKING IN YOUR FUCKING HOUSE! You asked me not to, so I’m not! Why can’t you UNDERSTAND that I’m a person, learning and growing up! You want me to respect your rules, and I AM! FUCK!” We were in the open living room, and I was able to shove past her star-shaped form to find a safe place to calm down. She grabbed at my arm, spinning me around. I growled, ripping my arm away so forcefully something in my shoulder slid loudly out of place. I shoved her backwards, away from me. Knowing I hadn’t gotten the point through I came whirling back a few seconds later. “You see the fucking ashtray. You know EXACTLY where Erika and I smoke! Smell my room! It doesn’t smell like smoke or burnt pot. If it smells like weed, like fresh, unburned bud, it’s because the bag isn’t sealed properly. ” 

Despite the freedom from homeschool and my disposable income, I had a hard time adjusting to my new life. I think it was because I knew I had outgrown a very brief stage in the process of self-discovery, and I would never be able to go back in time. I thought about how much of my childhood I had been made to feel bad, worthless and loved conditionally. I was drowning in a sea of every imaginable pain, and my muscles ached from the fight. Eight months clean from hard drugs, I had to get a prescription for synthetic opiate painkillers to manage the chronic back pain. They were great for relieving the pain that four or more extra-strength Advil couldn’t, but they are highly addictive. It didn’t take long before I was popping them like candy to avoid confrontations with Mom, on top of smoking upwards of fifty dollars of pot a week.

I concocted an ambitious plan to move out, though it wasn’t really a plan as much as a rebellious dream. There was no way I could afford an apartment with multiple roommates on minimum wage, and if I could I’d still need to eat, buy medication and graduate. I was not lovin’ the burger and fry chain where I worked and there was no way in hell I would risk having to work there for the rest of my life in order to move out. Sure, the guys that used fake accents in the drive-through spiced it up, and it was nice to be within walking distance of work. But a job as a dishwasher in a pub had a certain mature appeal, and it offered something fast food didn’t: tips! I would be challenged so that I was unable to come to work stoned out of my tree, and still do a better job than half of the people there. As scared as I was of putting myself out there, it was the next step in the search and rescue mission for my confidence, and a step further away from Mom. I started June 26th.

Being the stand-up guy that he is, David helped me to get through feeling like I was losing my mind during the worst of the withdrawals and we became best friends again. Over the year of recovery, I worked my way back into Isabella’s heart, and was soon a member of the family again. She knew what my mom was like after years of watching David put me back together after a blow-out, and was happy to help me escape Mom’s elaborate fantasy world. It wasn’t the first time I was ‘coming home’ from my house, since Mom had needed breaks from parenting me, and never Fredrick, a few times since the divorce. It just happened to work out that their apartment was two streets down from The Laughing Trout. After I found out I got the job, I contacted Isabella, David’s mother, about staying at their small townhouse for the summer. I would pay rent, buy my own food and pitch in around the house, I promised. How bowling with bumpers is still bowling, the summer was to be practice for moving out.