coffee for the apocalypse

I had a few other posts lined up but then I read Demi Moore’s book and decided those posts just had to wait a few more days.

First of all, I bought this book the day it was released because I’ve always thought Demi Moore was interesting. I read the description and it felt very close to some of the things that I’ve been through so that tipped the scales. It was released Tuesday and I finished it Wednesday night. The storytelling was good, it moved along at a good clip without any unnecessary fluff. There were a couple words that weren’t used right in the context she wrote them but I’m not someone who’ll knock a whole book for a couple mistakes.

This story of difficult parental relationships, addiction, love/hate, loss, self-doubt, self-loathing, redemption- it hit me so close to home. It’s a memoir so does it need a spoiler warning? I’m not sure but, you know, *spoilers* or whatever. I got to the part where she talks about wishing her parents had loved her enough to be better for her, to change into the people she needed and wanted them to be, and I nearly lost it. I had to pause, go run an errand I had been meaning to, then collect myself and start reading again.

I would recommend this book if any of those themes sound familiar to you, if you like Demi Moore, or if you just like a juicy or uplifting memoir. If you’d like to get a copy click the link below and it helps us both!

The majority of the rest of this post is going to be about me. If you’re only here for the books, that part is over. If you wonder why @alittlelessjenn has been hit or miss for the last year, well, here’s your answer.

The parent aspect, especially about her mother, was the hardest to read. I have wondered all the things she mentioned- is it okay for me to be here? Why wasn’t I good enough for them to take better care of me? She talks of how, after her career took off and she had the money, she helped her mother with things like trips and rehab and yet her mother still couldn’t hold it together enough to not make a scene at Demi’s wedding. My mother was very well behaved at my wedding but there have been so many other times looking back that I wonder what she was thinking.

Before I tell any of this story I want to say my mother is not a bad person. She had a rough start in life and I think it comes down to the fact that we look at the world very differently. I mentioned in a previous post, that I met Rue McClanahan with my mother and we had a great time. Not everything was terrible. I know she loves me.

If you follow my IG (alittlelessjenn) you can see that I have worked on losing weight like it’s my damn job. I went from about 280 to 156. I felt absolutely incredible. I had been sober for 3 1/2 years, eating healthy food, working out consistently. I was feeling more mentally healthy than I ever had. It was my dream life, who I always wanted to be. During that time my mother was working as a long haul trucker. About early August she decided she wanted to be in town instead of always traveling. I recommended that she set up interviews and come back to town with a job already lined up.

She quit her job and didn’t line anything up. I figured maybe she needed to decompress for a week or two. That turned into a month and she didn’t get another job. I was covering everything for her money wise. One night she said she needed money for the phone bill or it would be shut off. I put it in her account because we shared the bill at the time. I logged into her bank account a day or two later to transfer yet more money for whatever and saw that she had lied to me. The bill wasn’t paid and she had spent all the money I gave her on something else. I ran to the bathroom and threw up.

My husband was out of town at the time and I couldn’t handle how I was feeling. I had been betrayed by the person I trusted more than anyone else in the world. There had been times in the past that I wondered if she was being truthful with me but I assumed that I was just overthinking. Once I found out she had purposefully lied to get money out of me for something I would never have given her money for, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I wasn’t crazy.

I decided to confront her about the lie. I didn’t yell or scream or cry. I simply told her I knew and that I needed her to move out in two weeks. She yelled at me that I didn’t love her, that I was making her homeless. There was an I’m sorry in there somewhere that was followed immediately by “but…” and some excuse I didn’t even hear. The next week she gave me a suicide note and said that she had taken her pills but they hadn’t worked and she was surprised to wake up. I didn’t know what to think or believe. I asked her to go to a therapist and ask a doctor to reevaluate her medications.

The night before her move date she asked my husband if she could stay. Not knowing what to do he said she could have another month. When I found out I told her she had two weeks and had to be out Oct. 26, 2018. She was pissed but not pissed enough to just leave.

The 26th came and I found out that she’d told my son that she would be staying the weekend. When I told her that wouldn’t work she finally packed her things. She was crying and when it was time to actually drive away I said “Bye, be safe, I love you.” Instead of a good bye I was yelled at for 10 minutes about how I was heartless, I didn’t love her, she thought she could trust me to take care of her, and that I was only kicking her out because I was resentful of things that had happened when I was younger. I told her over and over that it was because she lied to me but she refused to see it that way. Finally I told her I loved her again and to have a safe trip.

She went to stay with family several hours away. They were glad to have her until she got on her feet but after a few weeks they insisted that she get a job, help more around the house, and not panhandle. She told them that I had kicked her out for no reason. Luckily, one of them called to ask me and while I said that wasn’t the whole story I didn’t tell them what really happened because I didn’t want them to think badly of her. She eventually told them what really happened but showed no sign of moving toward a job even with several leads around town.

I spoke with her on December 5th. She chatted with my daughter and she and I caught up a bit. Even though she had made a mistake and I couldn’t trust her to live with me any more I was never mean to her or said anything to hurt her and we could still laugh when we talked on the phone. She mentioned that she wouldn’t have the money to drive down and stay with us for Christmas. I just said “That sucks.” I wasn’t going to poke the bear and remind her that I said she couldn’t stay with us again. I was trained as a kid that when my mother said something like “I don’t have xyz. *sigh*” that that was my cue to jump in and instantly do what I could to fix the problem. I didn’t do that this time.

I went out on a date with my husband on December 15th. I put on a dress that made me feel like a million bucks and even wore heels. It was a great date and I had a wonderful time. Looking back over the last year I’m almost positive that it was the last time I felt happy and secure and it wasn’t followed by immediate heavy guilt.

I left my phone at home with the sitter and when I got home I saw that I had a text. It was from my mother. “Just remember I love you” followed by several emojis. It was pretty late but I texted her back “Aww, love you too Ma. Talk to you soon.” She had occasionally sent me little texts like that but something about this one felt off. I ignored that feeling and went to bed.

The next morning when I got a call from one of the people she was staying with I knew instantly that something was very wrong. I psyched myself up for the next crisis and answered the phone. They hadn’t seen my mother since 5pm the day before… right around the time I got the text. She had taken off in her car and they asked if they should call the cops. I said yes right away. After the message she’d sent and then not coming home I was worried that she had decided to do something stupid.

I hung up with that person and called my mother’s phone. It was off. I started calling anyone she knew and asked if they’d heard from her. Her sister had gotten a text from her the night before, around the same time I had, also saying to remember that she loved her. That was when I really panicked. I hung up and called my husband into the room. He’d been hanging with the kids, who had no clue what was going on, because they were off of school for the holidays. I shut the door and told him everything I knew.

“When they find my mother, she’ll be dead.” I sat on the edge of the bed trying to wrap my head around the inevitable. I repeated it to myself over and over. My mother is dead. It had been more than 24 hours and west Texas is a huge expanse of land that you could disappear into and not be found for years. I went to the cellphone store and signed a release for the police to try and track her phone. I thought of logging in and using the locate my phone app but her phone wasn’t like mine and she didn’t have that feature.

I spent the whole day coming to terms with my mother’s death. With each hour I became more and more certain that I would never see her alive again. I did what I could to keep myself together in front of my kids. I didn’t tell them what was going on and let my husband distract them while I was on the phone and pacing the floor in my bedroom with the door closed. I wondered how I would tell them she was gone. I was planning to say that she had passed away in her sleep. I know, that’s pretty shitty but even if I thought my teenager could handle it, I wasn’t going to lay the thought of grandma killing herself at my 7 year old’s feet. I continued to check the phone for news every few minutes until the sun had begun to set.

Part 2 will be up soon.