Why I hate February.

Okay. Now that I've written something positive, I'm gonna dig deep into my past and tell you why I hate February. I told my husband over the weekend some stuff I'd never told anyone before, and it felt good to let it out, so I'm going to write about it here.

That day must have been sometime in late January. I was living with B's family. The relationships in that household were complicated and unhealthy, and I'm not going to go into that quite yet, but I'll try to summarize it in order to put that day into context. My mother had gone absolutely batshit after she and my father divorced, and I no longer felt safe living with her. My then-fiance's mother took pity on me. She took me into her own household, as if I were one of her own. Her husband didn't like me. Her daughter didn't like me. Her daughter's husband didn't like me. They had good reason not to. I was 19, and unmedicated, and acting out because my own family had rejected me. I trusted no one. I was petty, and so tightly wrapped in my own pain that I couldn't let anyone in.

I didn't really know how sick B's mom was. I didn't have the capacity to care, at the time. And now comes the part that I have never told anyone before this past weekend. It is a quiet thing that has slept fitfully within my conscience, something even the people involved never knew. It was on that day in 1998 that I ignored Be's mother's cries for help. I was on the other side of the house, screwing around on the computer. No one was home except for me and B's mom. She called out. I couldn't be bothered. I don't know why I ignored her. I just... couldn't. Move. I was beyond any capacity for caring for anyone else but myself.

Weeks later, late afternoon, February 10th. I heard her calling again. I didn't ignore her, this time. I brought her a glass of water. I saw death in her eyes. I wanted to care, but I could not. The next morning, B and I were awakened by a harsh knock on our bedroom door. B's sister was screaming, "Mom had a heart attack!"

I watched them take her away on a stretcher. I stayed behind while the rest of the family went to the hospital.  They don't want me there, I thought, and I was probably right. Moments or hours later, I don't remember, they came back. B's sister just shook her head. I was ... I don't know how to describe it. I wanted to show compassion. I wanted my hugs to mean something, but the emotion was not there. When they left again, to see B's mom off to the morgue, I stayed at the house and cried bitterly. I wasn't crying for B's mother, though. I was crying for myself. What would happen to me, now? Would B's father kick me out? Would I have to go back to my mother's house? The thought terrified me. These people, to whom I had shown so little gratitude, hiding in B's room all day until he came home from school or work, these people were the closest thing to a real "family" I had ever had. But I was beyond even guilt for this. Survival. That is all I could think of.

I wrote a eulogy for B's mom. I talked about how she had been more a mother to me in the short time I'd known her than my own mother had. I talked about how she'd taken me in when I had nowhere else to go. Even as I spoke, the words felt hollow. Why couldn't I feel anything? They buried her on Valentine's Day.

I don't remember what happened in the months between the funeral and when we moved to Saratoga Springs. I don't remember a lot of things between 1998 and 2001, but I do remember New Year's Eve, 1999. It was the day B finally told me he could not stand to be with me anymore, and he wanted me out by the anniversary of his mother's death. It was the first and only time I got so drunk as to make myself sick. The hangover didn't abate until late the next evening.

Everything about that era in my life is gone, now. The house where we lived has long-since been occupied by others, the tree B and I planted in the back yard has grown up, the places we used to go are all out-of-business, paved over or otherwise obliterated. Yet, I remember everything about the morning his mother died. The way the sun was coming in at just the right angle to make me squint. The way my Winnie the Pooh fleece nightgown felt too hot on top but my feet were freezing. The EMTs' blue nitrile gloves pumping the purple bulb of the breathing apparatus, trying to bring her back. A large stuffed gorilla B had bought me for Valentine's Day sitting in the glider his mom used, seemingly mocking the entire situation.


B still hates me, wants nothing to do with me and has made every effort to eliminate any mention of me from his life. He has denied me forgiveness, and I suppose that is his right. I don't know if I ever really loved him, or if he loved me. I do know that the relationship was an escape. Out of the frying pan, as they say. And the whole thing had happened before I'd really had a chance to grow up, grow into myself, become who I was. I don't know that I've ever quite recovered from it. I have tried many times over the years to atone for my wrongs, but I can't control what B does or feels, and it's ridiculous to hold onto any hope that he may forgive me someday. It's the charred embers of a bridge I must be content never to rebuild. We were drawn together because we were misfits, but our relationship was doomed from the start because I had not yet learned how to love. I can't get it back.

I try to honor B's mother where I can, in ritual, in cooking the recipes she taught me. I hope she doesn't hate me. I hope she can see now how lost and broken and sick I was, how I was simply incapable at that age and at that time in my life of showing gratitude in the way that I should have. I hope she forgives me for ignoring her, and for hurting her son. I hope she doesn't hate me.

February is the shortest month, but it always seems the longest to me.