"There's only one conclusion to every story...We all fall down."

I've heard tales of mothers who got an adrenaline rush and lifted a car to pull their children to safety after a crash.
I've heard mothers say that after you have a child, everything else matters less...you, your husband.

I know my parents don't think they're compatible anymore, or maybe they think they never were. But they don't realize how similar they are.
My dad has this quality about him, an inherited trait, he's conceited. He's belittling. He thinks himself superior to everyone and he's very open about.
My mom has low self-esteem. She has for years and she always lets him get to her.
He's selfish, but she doesn't realize that she's no different.

She resents all of us because she didn't do anything with her life...or because she thinks she didn't. She made sacrifices, I know that, but it's her reaction to that which makes her selfish.

There are stories about your parents that as their child, you should never hear and I heard them all, several times, even as a little kid.
I know about every instance infidelity in their marriage.
I know every harsh word that was ever spoken and every bad thing that ever happened to either of them, in graphic detail.

My mom made sure I knew how much she hated me for ruining her life at five years old and I've heard that sentiment repeated every time she got drunk for years. Which was at least once a month and during the bad times, once a week or more often.

There are things she can't cope with, so she drinks, and then she spills them to me. And as much as she wants to think herself a martyr, making a kid cope with the things you can't handle makes her something else entirely.
She's as selfish as he is and she always has been, and neither of them love me as much as they love themselves or as much as I love them.

A couple times when he was drunk, my dad locked me and my brother in the basement.
My mom once cut my leg with a beer bottle.
They were so sorry.
Not sorry enough to stop.

My dad's the VP of a beer distributorship.
He's a millionaire.
But alcohol helped to ruin them before it ever helped to make them.

I don't really blame it.
They look for excuses to drink, excuses to say all those things they've been aching to say, to me, to each other.

I've never taken a drink and I never will.
People judge me for that. They think I'm square or that I'm judging them, when I don't care what they do.

My Uncle Gary's dying. People from Hospice care were there today and implied that he didn't have long at all. My mom walked into the house at the wrong moment and heard the sobs and all the terrible things his loved ones should've kept to themselves in front of him but didn't.

She came home, and she got drunk, and she reported it all to me.
She talked about her mom and what it was like to watch her die of cancer, how she'd asked my mom to kill her.
Stories I've heard a hundred times, maybe more.
And listening to her make it about her again, I just got so mad.
I told her to go bed.
I sent her to her room like she was a little kid.

My big brother used to go to his room and lock his door when she did it. But I sat and listened to her and held her when she cried, because I loved her more than he did and still she prefers him to this day. They both do.

My parents are killing themselves, and they're killing me, and they don't care.
But maybe I'm the selfish one.

"Ain't love grand?"