Brilliant … But Bouncy

It’s Hard to Feel Safe When You’re Self-Destructive.

My dad – who had been awakened in the middle of the night by a panicked drunken daughter screaming and crying into the phone – threw some stuff into a bag and hopped on a plane to Florida.

I assume my dad claimed a “family emergency” in order to temporarily ditch his prestigious job at Carnegie Mellon. Then, I assume, he spent a ton of time on the phone calling airlines to get a fast flight. Then my mom – who was likely shaking from fear the entire time – probably drove my dad to the airport so he wouldn’t have to pay for parking, then drove herself home dazed by the terrifying thought that her daughter was standing on the side of a road somewhere, waiting.

I assume all of this because I wasn’t there. I was the drunken daughter; I didn’t do any of the heavy lifting.

I sat on the curb by the pay phone smoking cigarettes and waiting for hours and hours and hours. I didn’t have anywhere to go, anything to do, or any money to spend. Unsurprisingly, no one invited me to party. I looked like I’d been dragged out of bed and trampled by a horse.

It was pitch black for a long time, yet I sat in the parking lot wearing my pitch-black shades. Then the sky lightened, and lights started turning off in the nearby neighborhood. Then people started appearing at the gas station, heading to wherever they might be going on that sunny summer day.

I sat on a curb; I sprawled in a patch of grass. As the alcohol metabolized and my appetite started to return amidst my usual morning nausea, I bought two liters of Diet Coke, a Fifth Avenue candy bar and another pack of cigarettes. Then my money was gone.

I started shaking – my normal after-effects of extreme alcohol consumption combined with cool morning air – and worrying that I’d be living at the gas station forever. I called my mom to make sure that I’d be rescued.

“Daddy’s coming to get you,” she said. She sounded calm, reassuring, not as though she were dying inside. Everything seemed fine.

So I waited. The day got warmer.

Meanwhile my dad boarded his flight, tried to get an hour of sleep on the plane, and landed in Tampa. Then, thinking ahead and knowing that changing residences requires more than a phone call to one’s parents, my dad rented a U-Haul, pulled out a map, and drove that U-Haul to find me at that gas station.

I had no idea when I saw the U-Haul that my dad was driving it. He parked in front of me, climbed out and walked around to where I was still collapsed on the ground.

I stood up, a complete mess. My dad opened his arms and I walked in. He hugged me and I cried; he hugged me harder and I cried harder.

It’s hard to feel safe when you’re self-destructive. The destruction takes on a life of its own. The cigarettes, the alcohol, the drugs, the sex, the motorcycles … it just masks the desperate need to feel okay, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel safe in a world that’s always so disappointing.

I felt free with Larry, but I never for a moment felt safe, even when Larry was beating the crap out of someone in my honor, even when I was brawling in a bar, even when I thought I was so unbreakably tough.

But I felt safe at that gas station in Daddy’s arms, knowing I was finally going home.