Something Was Choking Me.
People often confuse me for being callous and cold, both brash and reticent. I’ve been told that I need to be warmer, kinder toward people. Sometimes people read me as angry and standoffish.
What I am, quite honestly, is afraid.
There are many things that hurt me during my drinking years. But very little compares to the night I went home with Todd.
Todd and I had worked together for months – me with my slimy green forks and disastrous termination, and Todd with his bright white smile and ringlets of wavy brown hair.
One night I saw my friend Todd smiling that dazzling smile at a party. And next thing I knew, he and I were walking back to his place together.
After that, things got a bit fuzzy.
I was wasted. This was nothing unusual of course, but on this particular night, I was exceptionally wasted. My liquor level was somewhere between severe double vision and fatal alcohol poisoning. I could barely stay upright, let alone walk. I leaned on Todd the whole way back to his place, stumbling over my feet, his feet, the sidewalk, the grass. I remember laughing.
Then … I remember nothing.
Blackness.
Nothing.
Maybe a blackout…?
Then suddenly I was choking. Something was choking me, something jammed in my throat, blocking my airway. I gagged desperately, begging to breathe. I flailed my head wildly, finally forcing the thing out of my mouth as my eyes flew open.
Todd stood over me, yanking up his jeans and smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
I was lying on the floor on my back and Todd was laughing.
Then I saw other guys – four or five of them – staring down at me, hooting with laughter while Todd looked right into my eyes, grinning and tucking himself back into his jeans.
I tried to focus and figure out what had just happened; I didn’t understand the joke.
But I didn’t stick around to get the details. I leapt up and darted out of the room, dizzy, still stumbling and confused. Their laughter followed me down the hall, out the door, into the cold … and forever.
Todd humiliated me, profoundly degraded me: purposefully, viciously, hatefully, for no purpose that I’ve ever been able to discern. I was nothing more than a languid prop for Todd’s joke.
My instinct, while choking, had been to thrash violently trying to breathe. I found myself wishing my instinct had been to bite down hard, like a vice, and tear that thing to shreds.
The vulnerability and trust that I’d so carelessly offered was shattered that night. Not only could I not trust Todd, or the imbeciles who thought he was funny, but I couldn’t trust … anyone.
But laughing Todd showed absolutely no remorse; he simply never spoke to me again.
I can’t help but wonder how he raised his children. Did he teach his sons to be like him? Is this what he wants for his daughters? The concept of karma keeps me sane when resentment will not leave.
But Todd is not the worst thing that ever happened to me. Todd is just one repulsive thing in a long line of repulsive things that stick in my brain, hanging there, sternly reminding me: I should not drink today.