Seeking Relief From My Miserable Life

The beginning of self-destructive behaviour.

Receiving no letter from my boyfriend Will forced me to go on with my life as best I could.

At lunchtime in school, we went downtown to eat. Mostly to The Dew Drop Inn, a smaller place on Main Street with red and white checkered tablecloths underneath a clear vinyl covering. Containers of ketchup, sugar, vinegar, salt, and pepper are on the tables.

We liked to switch the tops on the salt and pepper shakers, and mix it up by putting sugar in the salt and salt in the sugar.

Our favourite table was in the corner by the window where we watched people walking by — always on the lookout for cute guys.

Sometimes we’d go to The Blue Boy restaurant, a much fancier place, with white table cloths and folded cloth napkins and tall glasses of iced water. Food was more expensive there and the servers weren’t as nice. Most of the time, they were downright rude.

Mary, who’d arrived late in the school year joined Debbie and me downtown.

Everything was going great until my younger sister showed up.

Kathleen was in grade seven, attending the same school. As usual, she was so much luckier than I’d been at her age. She got to do all the things I had to fight for at her age. I hated paving the way for her.

Most of all, I hated how my sister showed up everywhere I went. There was no escaping her.

Worse was one of her friends knew my best friend, Debbie, from hanging out in town on the weekends. Even worse, my sister and her friend ended up chatting with Debbie and before I knew what was happening, they joined us in the restaurant for lunch.

Despite my telling Debbie I didn’t want my sister around and that I didn’t trust her not to run home tattling about everything I did to my mother, Debbie was okay with Kathleen being around. That really pissed me off, but I kept my anger in check and went along with the crowd.

Debbie and Mary both smoked and so did Kathleen’s friend Vicky. I’d been thinking of trying it, but held off because of fear that Kathleen would run home and rat me out.

Then one day at lunchtime, I almost fell off my chair in shock when Kathleen lit up a cigarette and started smoking like a pro.

She blew smoke my way and revealed Dorothy and she had been smoking behind our mother’s back at home for quite some time.

I’d been in the dark about it. Thinking she was such a little goody-goody. When she was way ahead of me in badness.

Kathleen told me Dorothy slipped away from our mother when out shopping just long enough to buy cigarettes. The closeness of Dorothy and Kathleen did not surprise me. They’d always had a special bond. When Kathleen was younger she’d even slept in Dorothy’s bedroom, in the same bed.

Over the years, I’d overheard rumours that Dorothy was Kathleen’s mother. But when I asked Dorothy about it, she said, “Not true at all. People make stuff up and shoot their mouths off.”

Gossip had even gone as far as Dad being Kathleen’s real father. That the adoption story was a lie. “Hogwash,” Dorothy said when I asked. “Absolutely not true.”

Sometimes, though, I wondered whether it might be true. Nothing about my family would surprise me.

Slowly, I became more comfortable around my sister. She stopped being such a brat to me at home and I became less afraid of her telling Mom anything about me. Besides, her smoking gave me more on her than she had on me.

This also brought me closer to Dorothy. Soon I learned we even shared a similar story.

Dorothy once had a boyfriend, too, a guy named Tony. He had been nineteen and she thirteen. His parents had allowed her to move in, but Dorothy’s mother didn’t approve. Her mother reported the situation to social services, and if Dorothy didn’t return home she’d be taken to a home for bad girls. Hearing this shocked me. Though I’d not given much thought to Dorothy’s earlier life.

Then I found out Tony was my mother’s first cousin and his mother had asked my mother to take Dorothy in. Along with the agreement my mother would allow Tony to keep seeing Dorothy.

Together, my aunt and my mother had planned to outsmart Dorothy’s mother and social services.

But things changed once Dorothy moved in with my parents. My mother went back on her word. Wouldn’t allow Dorothy to even speak to Tony on the phone. Every time he called; my mother told him Dorothy was elsewhere.

Whenever Tony came to visit, my mother made Dorothy hide.

Dorothy did as my mother wanted, afraid my parents would kick her out and she’d end up in that home for bad girls.

Learning this made me more aware of why Dorothy still did as she was told.

“What happened to your boyfriend?” I asked.

“He gave up and married someone else,” Dorothy said.

Dorothy’s story hit me like a freight train and flattened me on the tracks. Her story was so familiar to mine, and I feared just how far my mother would go to keep Will and me apart. More than ever, it revealed what my mother was capable of, and increased my fear of her hiding another letter. And more than that, I felt Will, too, might move on, just like Dorothy’s boyfriend.

Occasionally at school, I started taking a drag off of Debbie’s cigarette, but always embarrassed myself by coughing and everyone laughing at me.

I hated the taste and the irritation of smoke in my throat and lungs. I couldn’t figure out why smoking was so great, other than making you look cool.

To afford cigarettes, Kathleen skipped lunch a day or two a week and gave the money to Dorothy. If Dorothy couldn’t slip away from Mom to buy cigarettes, then Kathleen gave the money to her friend Vicky, and Vicky’s older sister would buy them. Getting cigarettes turned out to be pretty easy.

Each day at school, I watched all my friends smoke while I stood by with my hands in my pockets.

Tired of being the odd one out, I decided it was time for a change.

I skipped buying lunch and gave the money to Dorothy to buy me a pack of cigarettes.

At home, after school, I sat in my building listening to Janis Joplin while I practised smoking. I wanted to go back to school the next day and smoke without coughing and gagging and embarrassing myself.

I wanted to be like the rest of my friends, an experienced smoker.

Alone in my building, I sought comfort in what would become one of many self-destructive behaviours.

After smoking four cigarettes the room spun. My stomach felt like it flipped end over end. I butted the cigarette out in the scallop shell I used as an ashtray. Headed into the house for supper, even though eating was the last thing on my mind.

While sitting at the dining room table, everything swayed like I was on a ship in rough seas.

As soon as I smelled the food, I bolted to the bathroom, hung my head over the toilet bowl and threw up.

No way could I eat. Just the thought of food made me dry heave. I washed my face with cold water. Left the bathroom and told my mother I wasn’t feeling well and made my way upstairs to bed.

I vowed to myself never to smoke again, but also knew it would be a promise I would not keep.

A few more days of practice, and I pulled out a cigarette in front of my friends and shocked them with how well I smoked, like it had been a secret I'd been hiding.

Finally, something in my life was going right.

But I should have known something worse awaited me around the corner.

The above story is part of a series. If You’d like to read the others. Link is below.

BARBARA CARTER is a visual artist and writer with a focus on healing from childhood trauma, alcohol addiction, and living her best authentic life.