Leigh
Leigh is a sweet girl. She took care of me once when I really needed it. I never thanked her properly.
I never went back to my parents’ house after the morning of my high school graduation. My parents are members of a Pentecostal sect and very active in the church. Until I left home, I spent twelve to fifteen hours a week in church services. I can see now that it helps sustain my parents, but it became toxic for me pretty early on.
Once when I was about eight, a particularly graphic sermon about the apocalypse caused me to vomit in the pew. I would learn about Amazonian indian tribes from reading a book and then at church I would learn that they were all going to burn in hell. I couldn’t quite cope with any of this. I couldn’t reconcile their world with the one I was learning about from books and no one in the church ever offered to help. I got smacked around by a pastor when I was 14 for being disrespectful, but I was just trying to pretend I was somewhere else. My dad put me in the guy’s car the next day and let him drive me away for a serious conversation about my relationship with the church. It went downhill from there.
The night of my senior prom my parents told me they weren’t going to help me pay for college, even though this had been the plan up until then. I had always kept my head down, done my school work and tried not to start anything. My little brother had started doing whatever he wanted at a precocious age and my college money went to pay for private schools to straighten him out. I had scholarships, but none would even put a dent in the tuition at the schools I had been accepted to.
I was essentially estranged from my parents for about ten years. I was going to drive to my mom’s birthday party when I was 22 but I came down with appendicitis and had surgery instead. No one came to visit me. I still feel like they pushed me away too, but I am a parent now and I know what kind of grief I must have caused them and I regret it. They were doing their best.
The night I left, I started living in a one bedroom crashpad over a flower store with 3 other people and sometimes more. The place was affectionately named “The Taj Mahal” because it wasn’t one. Leigh was sleeping in a hallway that led to the kitchen.
Taj Mahal was mostly a fun place but regularly crossed the line into crazy. One roommate, inspired by Dead Poets Society, I think, tried to paint “Carpe Diem” on the wall with the remains of a can of house paint that had been found in the trash. The paint dripped and his mental state was not conducive to concentration. When he was finished the brick red house paint looked like dried blood and the message looked more like “Scare you to me.” It always made a big impression on guests. Setting kerosene fires on the carpet and trying to put them out before they spread was a fun late night party activity.
When a guy who was visiting took something, had a nervous breakdown, and moved into the niche formed by the enclosed fire escape, I started sleeping in a girl’s attic around the corner. I had met her at a house party and she had given me a haircut in the kitchen. I slept other places too. Lot’s of people who I can’t even remember helped me, but I was a wreck and didn’t see that. I was totally broke and breaking down and I didn’t really have the skills to pull my self out of it.
While I was bouncing around, Leigh found an apartment with heat and paid all of the deposits. She found me and flat out told me that I was her new roommate. I moved in and I think I slept for a week. We wound up living together for several years.
Even though I had never applied and had missed the deadlines by a mile, I went to the state school and they let me in right as classes were starting. I was a National Merit Scholar and they gave me some other scholarships that I don’t think I ever applied for. Out of the blue school was paid for, but if I dropped out for even one term, the money was gone. I didn’t drop out and graduated faster than anyone else that I knew. There was still craziness around, but I stayed on the edge of it instead of falling in fully. Some of my friends did fall in and took years to climb out, if they came out of it at all.
Leigh gave me a hand and led me to a solid piece of ground when I need it most. None of the other stuff would have happened without her. It took me years to appreciate that truth. I have tried to help other people over the years, but I don’t think I have ever made as big a difference as Leigh made for me.
reblogged from polaroidjesus
