“Dad!”I yelled, slamming the pantry door.“Mom quit her job.I can’t pay the rent from now on, that’s not fair.”
“Life ain’t fair.”He muttered, then opened the fridge.“Where the hell is the cream?”
“All out.”Mom shrugged.
I stared at them both as they seemed to be completely uninterested in the situation.But I didn’t drop it.
“I’m trying to save so I can move out.Get my own place.You can’t expect me to support you and pay for everything for the rest of your life.Dad, you don’t have a job right now.I can’t pay for all three of us.There isn’t enough money.I don’t earn enough money.”
I began spiraling.Fear and panic settled heavily on my chest as a new future began to build inside my mind.One I did not want.
Dad shut the fridge door with force and shared an annoyed look with my mother.The two of them had always stuck together through thick and thin as if I were a burden.
I knew in that moment I wouldn’t win the argument.
And I didn’t.
I loved both my parents despite their addictions and the way they behaved, but that day I rode the bus to work with my headphones on and let the tears fall.
It was the first time I let myself see them for what they were: broke addicts who were never going to change.
It caused me enormous pain to admit that my mother had left her job to live off my earnings, knowing it would stop me having any kind of future.
Selfish.
That’s what she was.
When I was hungry and needed new shoes, she’d spent her money on bottles of wine instead of feeding her child.
As rent became due, Dad bought drugs.
No kid owes their parents for raising them and certainly not for neglecting them.
I had no idea where my sense of survival came from, but that morning on the bus, I knew I had to make some terrifying choices.
“Your mother has worked hard all her life to look after you, Court.Least you can do is let her have some time off.”Dad had said that morning when he joined Mom at the kitchen table.
Just thinking about it made me feel sick to the stomach.I’d be stuck in a low-paying job, stuck at home with the two of them leeching off me and never able to make anything of myself.
It was as if they’d waited eighteen years for me to be their retirement plan.
With no qualifications or job experience, except for the short time I’d worked at Walmart, I saw no path out of this.
So I prayed.
Which is what you do when you’re out of ideas.
That night I lay in bed and did a calculation of the money I had in my bank account and purse.Then made a life-changing decision.
I was going to New York.
I wanted to see Times Square and Broadway.I wanted to see the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and walk through Central Park.
Dreams could come true in New York City, and I wasn’t staying in Arizona to let my addict parents leech off me.
That was abuse.
I deserved more.
