The Rhythm of their Souls

Chapter 1

At the tender age of eight years old, I casually discovered that the dangerous cocktail of drugs and alcohol, when intertwined with the fragility of a wounded soul, swiftly plunges one into an unyielding vortex of destructive turmoil.

How did I learn this at such an adolescent age, you ask? Well, my mother didn’t hesitate to rub it in my face every time she cracked open a chilled beer or set flame to a pipe at all hours of the night.

The sad thing is that even in those harrowing moments, I was just grateful to have her home. You see, her absence became a constant in my life. Another unwanted lesson was when I realized that her random “store trips” meant she would vanish out of thin air for two to three days.

It became normal to the point where I stopped wondering why and accepted the shitty life that was rudely handed to me on a broken wilted platter.

But she wasn’t always this way, you know. She once radiated from the inside out. Maybe I was young and na?ve, but there was a luminous light about her. She was beautiful like a blossomed flower, with her long brown curly locks and doe-like eyes.

She held a huge piece of my heart. After all, she was my mother, the one who birthed me and held me for the first seconds of my death sentence.

The fucked-up part is that I only got a glimpse of her unconditional love.

Somewhere in my short existence, she lost her motherly instincts.

And it was then that I had no choice but to befriend loneliness.

It cradled me on the nights my mom didn’t come home, and adapting became a permanent part of my vocabulary.

Did I mention that I have a big sister? Her name is Nora Ray, and she’s five years older than me. She was the only normalcy in our house as a child; together, we endured the finest of trauma and disappointments early in life.

Nora was my protector, my first best friend, and by far my favorite person.

I’ve always admired her confidence, humor, and welcoming aura.

There were disastrous times I wouldn’t have survived without her protection.

She illuminated my darkest days, keeping the monsters from under my bed at bay. I was fortunate to have her.

Where is our father in all this, you ask?

Well, our deadbeat dad, who goes by the name Joseph, abandoned the three of us when I was around five years old.

Aside from his constant drunken episodes directed towards Mom and Nora, I remember little of him because he wasn’t around much.

When he was home, he spent it outside in his shed.

Once, he surprised my sister and me by building our own treehouse. We loved that damn treehouse. I guess it’s the most fatherly thing he ever did for us. And the day he vanished, my mom never searched for him or spoke of him again.

I think she was relieved, in a sense. If the word “fickle” were a person, it would accurately describe our sperm donor.

His mood swings were the absolute worst. He never lashed out at me; maybe it was because I was so young, but there are some recollections buried deep inside me, memories that do not want to reveal themselves.

They say when you encounter generous amounts of trauma, your brain goes into defense mode.

It tries to suppress certain traumatic events to protect you from the aftermath.

Maybe that’s why I have vague memories of him.

The few that I have are not pleasant and certainly ones I wish my brain could forget.

And the day he left, it was almost as if it lifted a small burden from our home, really our lives all around. Our mom seemed beyond relieved considering he was hardly ever kind to her and smelled like fermented beer most days.

I think it’s safe to say that his absence has become a blessing for our little dysfunctional family. It was just Mom, Nora Ray, and I, completely content in our little tan trailer on Circle St. We could finally live a normal life; we didn’t need him, did we?

One thing is for certain: Blessings do not last forever. Mom made it about a year before she met her new boyfriend, Timothy, and things changed when he came into the picture. Mom had her attention mostly on him. They would stay out late at night drinking at bars.

I never got much sleep on school nights. It didn’t matter what time of night it was. They’d bust through the front door like a herd of elephants. Mom seemed happy, so we just dealt with it. She deserved every bit of happiness thrown her way.

The thing about happiness is that it can be a short-lived fairy tale.

When the round-the-clock fighting began, the drinking habits became more consistent, and I’m not talking about a yelling contest with curse words thrown back and forth.

This was some Jerry Springer-Steve Wilko-type shit, and my sister and I had front-row seats to their scuffling escapades.

We had no clue that Mom could throw hands like a man. I don’t know if it was from built-up anger caused by our dad’s previous behavior. Or maybe this woman was an MMA fighter in a past life.

At first, we felt terrible for him because I don’t think he knew what Jewels, aka our Mom, was capable of.

One night, we heard him yelling from her room.

I frantically ran to Nora’s bed, and we checked it out together.

When we opened Mom’s door, we saw Timothy lying on the floor, yelling for help.

Mom was kicking him profusely in the ribs.

Horrified by what we were witnessing, we didn’t dare get involved. We slammed the door and hurried back to Nora’s room. I slept with her that night. Nora Ray, my sweet protector.

We figured he would be long gone after his brutal ass-whooping because surely his pride was somewhere on Mom’s bedroom floor after she stomped it out of him.

Nope, we can all laugh together. This fool continued to stick around and get his ass handed to him, and that’s when I decided I would no longer feel remorse for that loser.

We wondered if he enjoyed getting manhandled by a woman. Little did we know that all it would take for Timothy to run for good was a car accident that left Mom with permanent damage.

I was seven when he and Mom got in their bad car wreck. They were driving home late from a bar, drunk. Mom was passed out in the passenger seat, and Timothy took a little nap while driving. His car went around a curve and viciously rolled down an embankment.

He left the scene in handcuffs with nothing but a few scratches on his face. Mom was left on a stretcher in an ambulance with a fractured spine.

Timothy spent a couple of days in jail until our mom quickly paid his bond from her hospital bed.

Just for him to go to our house to retrieve his few belongings, and we never saw him again after that.

He didn’t even check on Mom after the accident or thank her for bailing him out.

She was once again abandoned without explanation while now recovering from a back injury caused by both of their careless actions.

This was a huge hit on her for sure. We saw a daunting shift we hadn’t quite seen before. A person can only bear so much. This was when our lives spiraled into something tragic. This was when addiction busted down the front door and claimed our broken mother.

I was ten when my heart broke for the second time. The morning I watched Nora walk out the front door was a hurt that made my bones ache. She was running from our family curse. But can I blame her?

I was relieved for her in a sense, but a part of me envied her escape plan. I’ll never forget her haunted expression, eyes brimmed with tears. She quietly opened the front door and slowly looked back at me with so much guilt in her eyes. “Stay strong for me, Olive; I’ll come back for you.”

In that painful moment, I slowly nodded. I felt a sliver of hope, but in the back of my little damaged mind, I knew there was no saving me. I was the little sister being left behind to deal with our mother’s chaotic shitshow.

Nora went to live with her high school sweetheart, Jake, and his easygoing parents.

He was just a couple of years older than her, and they were “in love.” Shortly after moving in, Nora got a serving job at a little place called Bebops.

Jake’s parents didn’t charge them rent to live there or anything.

She just didn’t want me to go without. Mom was reckless and struggled to keep the power on at home.

She never cared to explain when inconveniences happened. I would just always assume she blew through her disability money. It seemed like her booze and drug habits were more important than the essentials we needed for survival.

One afternoon, I walked home from the bus stop, but there was no power at our house.

When Mom finally came home, she said no word.

Nothing new there. We went almost a whole week without power.

We ate from cold aluminum cans and managed to stay warm during the brisk nights.

We would snuggle up together under massive blankets.

And in a way, I loved those cold nights; it was the closest I’d been to Mom in a long time. And I’d desperately take anything I could get from her to subdue my aching needs as a child.

I appreciated school days more during this time.

Sometimes, I would sneak off to the bathroom to embrace the free, cozy heat.

It took six days for Nora to find out about our living conditions.

She was livid that I didn’t tell her, and I don’t blame her for it.

It’s not that I didn’t want her to know.

I just didn’t want her to scold Mom, even though I knew how wrong the situation was.

Plus, we would have only had to suffer one more week.

Then, Mom’s disability check would have been deposited, and just like that, we’d be back to civilization.

Nora paid the bill, restoring power to our small trailer.

She restocked the cabinets with food and gave me enough money for a week of school lunches.

She always tried her best to make sure I didn’t go without.

I always felt bad asking her for anything; I wasn’t meant to be her responsibility, and I felt like a burden most days.

Unfortunately, we had to mature at an early age, which is a harsh reality. Survival is a word that still clings to me. I am still to this day just thankful to have someone like Nora in my life. Because without her, what would be the point of my survival? She is the best big sister.

It’s appropriate to say that we received the last shit pickings in the parent department. Maybe that sounds cruel, but does it seem wrong?

Life can be so damn ruthless. It will take something that was once pure and set it ablaze, and then it will take a seat and observe the destruction it caused. And I truly believe some of us are born broken. Why? That’s a question I don’t have the answer to.

All I know is that our parents are both examples of it. And somewhere along the road to misery, Nora and I became very much broken, too.

And as I grew older, the monsters crept out from under my bed and infiltrated my mind insidiously.

They manipulated my emotions and evoked feelings I struggled to put into words.

The relentless monsters inflicted unhealable wounds deep inside me.

They had discovered their perfect home and resolved to make it their permanent abode.

I was to be internally feasted upon for the rest of my existence.

I quickly realized that there was nothing to shield me from them now, not even Nora Ray.

This was when I discovered trauma and mental illness, two very real things. And I don’t think people understand the dynamic of the two, working together to destroy anything in their path. Leaving behind debris that sticks to everything like thick honey.