I have had requests to shorten my blogs for easier reading, but most stories lead to the next so this one of about 3000 words, will be halved with a line of ..... so you can stop there and carry on, and be able to see where you left off. For those of you who read the entire thing all in one chunk… just discard this little message. But this is long, and probably the last seriously serious one.
Part 1:
So here we are. This is probably the tipping point of my uncontrollable, distasteful, vulgar and downright-selfish-obnoxious behaviour started to take its form. After the big celebratory holiday with friends, I was off further down the coast with my family for Christmas. It was what should have been a relaxed, beach holiday. But thanks to me and my accelerated thirst for anything containing alcohol I made the holiday a living nightmare.
Every day it was the beach and a couple of cocktails at the beach bar, then home, maybe some dinner, (but not to much because eating is cheating) get dressed and go to one of the siffest but most fun joints in town. The kind of bar where one can see the locals who hang out there every week/night, the bar is sticky from some sweet shooter that was probably spilled the evening or two before, where the toilet has no toilet seat and you would be lucky to find a square of toilet paper lying on the floor. That kind of place. The sort of place that is so rank its fun. So that was nearly every evening.
After one of these evenings, one of our first, there was barely any food in the house, except an undressed salad of cucumber, lettuce and carrots. No cheese, no chicken none of that jazz. So we understand the salad was pretty dismal and non eventful. This was the only food available in the morning. So when people eat a greasy breakfast, or make some buttered toast to cure them of their hangovers, I ate cucumber and lettuce which made me feel even worse but I tried to keep it down. That morning for some or other reason we were all in the driveway greeting guests or something. I could feel my mouth going watery, and cold beads of sweat forming on my forehead, I tried to keep swallowing, I tried breathing but I just couldn’t hold it. Now I have seen projectile vomiting on TV but this was real life and it was me. Huge pieces of cucumber shot out and hit my stepfather’s car. I had a jersey that I tried to catch it in before it flew but no such luck. Everyone funnily enough thought it was kids riding past throwing cucumbers, which was odd because lets be serious a cucumber isn’t really a food of choice when one decides to throw food or objects, but the speed and power that the cucumber bits hit the car at, one would believe it. After a few minutes of confusion from all parties I spoke up and said that I wasn’t feeling too hot and all was ok. But there we have it. The start to the Christmas holidays, and not a good one at that.
I had just got my nose pierced, why I don’t know, I had never had anything against the things I just never liked them, but the answer is yes… yes I was drunk when I had it done. That’s not the point. I had my nose ring, black hair, self-tan of course and I didn’t leave the house without black eyeliner on, even to the beach. I just looked dirty and to be honest at the time I couldn’t have given a continental f*&# what I looked like or who said what. I was numb that holiday. I did meet a boy there though who eventually became my boyfriend, my first serious relationship that lasted longer than 4 weeks. We only started dating after this holiday.
I don’t know if many people find this but after drinking for 2 weeks straight you stop getting hangovers, it is like your body becomes used to the alcohol and dehydration. That’s what happened I stopped hanging, and I drank everyday. The big one was Christmas. My friend and I were at the beach and began drinking cocktails at about lunchtime. And there is nothing quite like having cocktails on the beach and just getting merry in the sunshine, not so cool is going home and trying to leopard crawl past the folks so that they cannot see how utterly pissed you are. We got caught leopard crawling. We were midway behind the couch, half way to the bedroom, so, so very close. I gripped onto the back of the couch hoisted myself to a standing position with a slight sway and said to my mom, after she had been slaving away the whole day to give us an amazing Christmas meal, that I was too tired and I thought I may just take a nap. Well she left the room and came back with a rehydrate and basically said in not so many words that I drink the rehydrate, wash my face and get to the table now.
With that I piled my plate full, like you see on the movies where someone sees a buffet for the first time, and the food is kind of trickling of the edges but space is still trying to be made to squeeze a few more potatoes on, that was it, and I had a second helping which resembled the first. After eating twice as much food as the men at the table did, I said to my mom that we were going out. One can imagine her reaction, so my friend and I went to my room, got our swimming costumes on and took a quick dip, waited for everyone to go to bed and took the car out to the estate about 10km down the road. She went to go meet her holiday squeeze and here I met mine. We drove home early the next day; early enough to sneak back into my room unnoticed. Of course my mom found out later on and was not at all impressed despite the fact that it was Christmas Eve and we had gone to another family and perhaps ‘crashed’ their Christmas party.
I didn’t have my drivers yet so my friend drove us around where ever we were headed, but there were a couple of times I wanted to go to the beach in the early hours of the morning and she, having her head screwed on would say no lets just go to sleep and we will go to the beach later. I was not a very reasonable person, I was stubborn and if I want to do something I would. So, if she refused to take me to the beach I would walk myself, pack some kind of excuse for a beach bag and stumble about 2km to the beach, fall asleep on the sand when the beach was still empty and wake up to the sound of children splashing around and families enjoying picnics and such. It was not a very comfortable situation, I remember the smell on my breath, reeking of booze, quite shaky, and just not feeling good. So usually at about 11am I would toddle home to get out of the sun. I also remember people staring at me as I walked past on my way home, pale faced and eyeliner so smudged and stale one could almost chisel the stuff off. Gross. But at the same time I couldn’t care. I didn’t care; I hated everyone because they had the pleasure of not being me.
I wanted to get away. Get away from people, away from confrontation and I suppose get away from myself, but that’s one tragedy I believe people often face we can hate ourselves but we cant escape, and I think this slowly drives us, perhaps not mad, but to severe depression and loneliness.
Part 2:
I couldn’t get away after Christmas we were off to Austria with about 5 other families, the 1st skiing holiday we had had as a family without my dad and he, on all our holidays was the kind of leader of the pack. So this one threw me off. We were all following a different leader and I suppose my family was trying to suppress the memories of my dad as well and put on a happy face. I was suppressing that and my little schoolgirl holiday memory that was still a well-kept secret. Every night was heavy drinking, I would go out drink far too many vodkas and try and lose myself amongst the Austrian air. And did I loose myself. I table drank, (drinking unattended beverages= free alcohol= not a good idea= gross), got absolutely wasted that I in fact did go missing… twice that holiday.
Some worried sick, like my family and a few others, while others made a huge deal about how drunk and reckless I was, and I suppose making a point that I was the only child that had done such things. Talk about other people’s kids and how badly behaved they are, and detract attention away from your own or your children’s mistakes. I walked home at about 12 in the afternoon, and made up a story that the bartender had taken me on a tour around the town and then for an early breakfast. Truth, I ambled around the town looking for people or rather friends I could make. Looking for people I could just talk to and know that they had no connection to anyone I knew. Because in Austria and out alone, I was the only association to me they would have. I went into the most interesting bars. One to my shock and surprise had strippers just roaming around, sitting at tables, kissing the clients, drinking then when it got too much jump on the bar and treat people to a poll dance. I felt very uncomfortable, I felt sorry for the young women getting pawed by the older men. It seemed they too were drugged up on alcohol or something else, possibly to numb themselves from their own reality. They too seemed lost and despondent, there in body but nothing else. I left that bar, and its seedy, opium den-like atmosphere.
I must have walked into the next town because I remember the walk home and it was not pleasant, probable a two-hour walk. And I was in for it. It sort of became the joke of the holiday when really I knew people were chatting about me on the side. Then it happened again and I was not allowed out as long as everyone else, I had a curfew. My mom was actually nice enough to let me enjoy the last few nights in Austria, despite my shocking behaviour. I went out, and when the clock struck 12 I ran to another bar, thinking I was safe amongst the crowds, but my brother found me and pulled me out of the crowd, up the stairs and out onto the road. If I remember correctly I think he had to drag me standing along the ice because I refused to move. I was relentless.
I got back to my hotel and my mom, brother and sister locked me in one of the hotel rooms for fear of me sneaking out. What was there to fear when I was safely locked in a hotel room… well I stumbled over to the window, opened it, and had a look to see how high above ground I was, I was high-ish but luckily there was a shed of some sort below. So with that I unzipped my cowboy boots and stupidly threw them on the roof of the shed/barn thing, see I didn’t want to make a boot-clap sound when I landed. (About 3 days later I had to climb back onto the barn to collect my ice-preserved boots, which were hard and almost crack-able). But now I would have to jump with no shoes which wouldn’t work out nicely at all so I put on some soft flat shoes and proceeded to jump onto the shed covered lightly in soft white snow. I had to cling onto the windowsill and plop off once my whole body was hanging out of it.
See now what I didn’t think about was the height from the shed to the ground. It took me a while to sort out a game plan. I decided not to put my boots back on, I would keep the soft flats, and with that I slid down a wooden pole that was holding the shed up. I landed on my bottom in a not so soft mound of snow. I got up, dusted off the excess ice and proceeded to walk down the road, rubbing what was soon to become a bruised bottom. I thought I was so clever, they thought I was locked in the room, not to have any fun, when actually I was trotting down the street laughing and smiling because I had outsmarted them. Then the thought popped into my head… I don’t have a key…how the hell was I going to get back on the roof of the shed and back inside? The thought was short lived.
I went straight back to the club waited in the entry cue. I got to the front pouting and giggling like a complete fool in hopes that the bouncer would let me in again and he did and he said, “I don’t want trouble here,” or something on those lines. Arrogantly I assured him there wouldn’t be and he let me go in. I must have walked two feet when he called me back. I was about to repeat myself and say that he had nothing to worry about until I felt two hands grab each of my wrists. Two people pulling me out of the club again, my brother and my mom. And they basically frog marched me home, because, as much as I thought otherwise I couldn’t walk straight.
I was drunk off my mind. Absolutely wrecked, and as we got back to the hotel the fighting started. Everyone was crying, and shouting. I was shouting out that nobody cared and I was alone and I hated everyone and myself, my family shouting at me asking me what I was doing, why I was behaving in such a way, and saying I need to look at myself. I have never seen my mom weep like that, weep not cry but weep with complete desperation. Desperate for me to just take control, desperate for me to stop saying such terrible things, and I suppose desperate for her child back, not this foul mouthed, drunken brat who had the nerve to say no one cared about her (Because if anyone was cared for in that family, It was me because I was the baby). I even remember my face being held up in front of the mirror at my bloodshot eyes, smeared makeup, greasy hair and bad skin. “Look at yourself Juliette! What are you doing?” I hated the person I saw, I did, but at that time and that moment that was me and I couldn’t change it. The thought made me die inside.
I was put in my mom’s room; she locked us in and hid the key from me. I screamed and yelled and cried banging on the door, hating the fact that they wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do which was go out. When in reality the safest place I could be was right there with my mom. I ran to the window again but this time, not to jump on a shed because there was no shed outside my mom’s window… this time the intention was just to jump, jump to an end. I pranced up and down the window ledge, I suppose trying to build up the confidence to jump. My mom never made a big deal over it she kept very calm, I think that’s what made me get back in the window, and she hugged me. I didn’t return it. I got into bed and started saying that she had no idea what happened, and she would never know. And apparently I went on about her not knowing what happened and not caring until I fell asleep. The next morning I was the last to come down for breakfast and my mom, sister and brother were all there waiting for me. Their faces were serious, not the usual happy joking faces I was used to seeing, not the faces that would slide a bread roll in front of me, wait for me to open it and find that they had stuffed it with fresh cigarettes as a practical joke indicating I smoked so much I ‘ate’ cigarettes. These were not those faces. It all came out on that morning, nearly 2 months of suppressing something I wanted no one to find out about, and it was one of the worst days I have experienced not to mention the sort of, innocence lost factor.
Then came the remnants of the night before…the corners of my eyes bruised from crying and constantly wiping the tears away with an angry force, my mom and brothers arms bruised from me pinching them to make them let me go, and my mom telling me what happened when I was trotting up and down the window ledge that I was saying, “I want to die, I want to be with dad. I’m going to jump. I want to die!” it was awful.
About 2 days later we left. Back to South Africa and we were all so grateful to get out and go home, to our home, away from people away from there. It was the worst holiday we have ever had, one we still call ‘the holiday from hell’.
After returning home, a doctor and a psychologist later, things seemed to settle down, I got a boyfriend and things ran smoothly for a year. But life is not a movie and the hole I thought I was crawling out of sunk in even further, allowing me to royally botch up a lot of friendships, my reputation and a person I once was.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Here is where the blog may get more exciting but that’s why I’m doing this so you can decide if you want to read further or you may well decide that what I write is actually horse shit and bores you to death. With that being said, this is what is on the cards in no particular order
Never Ever Have I Ever:
Proposed to someone. For real
Been the master of sneaking out and camel toes
Vomited in a handbag.
Passed out cold on a toilet
Fallen asleep in the dogs’ bed (more than once)
Had my name turned into a kind of verb. ‘Jube-drunk’ (not as fun as it sounds)
Fallen in a fire
Lit my hair on fire
Let another light my hair on fire
Urinated in my bed… in my early 20’s
Urinated in someone else’s bed
Been urinated on by some chop
Nearly been run over
Flashed on numerous occasions
Fell into walls, doors, off banisters and tables with no serious injuries most times keeping cigarettes alit and drink intact (this is not talent)
Had 9 lives and 90 personalities
Found glass a centimetre long wedged in my knee after a drunken weekend
Been arrested… twice, with a few other police run ins
Spent a night in jail, not one of my most fun moments
Wound up in the kitchen cleaning bar glasses and/or floors (numerous occasions pretty much inevitable)
Met people for the 1st time EVERY weekend
Been more alone in a crowd than by myself
Been ‘that’ girl (not in a good way)
And more but all will lead into one another, and hopefully be of some kind of entertainment to those reading.
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