2 Love and 2Be Loved

Shenanigans

When Mickey and I met we were both emotionally and mentally disastrous. Neither of us was mentally nor emotionally prepared to be in a relationship, let alone think it could be healthy. Gardo, my ex-husband of ten years, was the closest I have ever been to being in a healthy relationship, but there wasn’t a balance. He was too healthy, and I was an unhealed, emotional, naive mess. Eventually, after ten years, I decided to divorce Gardo and take life by the balls on my own. I wasn’t prepared for the real world, and neither were my kids, but I did it anyway.

When I met Mickey, I was living in a tiny 2-bedroom apartment, thankfully, in what I would consider a safer neighborhood in the City of Chicago. I was trying to raise and support three out of five of my boys on my own with little to no help. I have my oldest son, Robert, who is opinionated and judgmental, and his fiancé, Marisa, living with me as well. I had just kicked my boyfriend out, who was also financially responsible for the apartment I was living in. I was bartending at a dead-end job, making barely enough money to cover my $1,200 rent expense, let alone support myself and three kids. I had teenage boys whom I wrongly thought I could rely on. I was also experimenting with the raw version of myself, the non-medicated version. I was confident yet unprepared, oblivious to real-life matters, and not medicated. A perfect recipe for destruction and failure. But I continued to live life anyway.

Mickey was living with his elderly mother and older brother. He had two children, whom he rarely saw, and a baby mama he claimed was crazy. He told me he owned his own locksmith business and made a lot of money but had to rely on someone else to get to and from jobs because he did not have a vehicle due to a recent car accident. In reality, he did not have a driver’s license because he had gotten several reckless driving tickets as well as driving without insurance in the past. The most recent reckless driving charge was a hit-and-run. He had gotten caught a few blocks from where he had hit a pedestrian, injuring him badly. He went to jail. His girlfriend, whom he was living with at the time, provided the bond money for him to be released until his next court date. He never appeared back in court, which resulted in her losing the bond money. She kicked him out of her house. He was on a warrant for his arrest due to failure to appear, so he was in hiding, preventing him from getting a job or his own apartment.

Mickey’s facade was of popularity and power because of whom he was affiliated with. In the beginning, Mickey came off as judgmental and overly critical, which showed me that he was Cocky, not confident, yet somehow still intriguing to my crazy, empathic, bipolar, unhealed ass.

I met Mickey through a close friend (RIP), Frankie, whom I have looked up to since childhood. Frankie was a powerful individual in terms of making money and being respected. He was someone people looked up to, someone you’d want to have on your side if s**t went sideways. Being as sick as he was, you would never be able to tell. He was still radiant and attractive: tall, dark complexion, dark hair, and vibrant green eyes. Frankie had a smile that could light up an entire room, similar to Smiley’s, with prominent dimples; only Frankie’s smile was warm and comforting. I trusted his judgment. I couldn’t imagine Frankie keeping bad company or steering me in the wrong direction. So when Frankie suggested I meet his friend Mickey, I was confident that I would be meeting someone in Frankie's social standing.

We all called that period of life Shenanigan’s because that is a perfect description of what life was about to become. It was the beginning of a s**t storm, and we were blindly wearing whiskey glasses and laughing through life as though we didn’t have a care in the world. The results are nothing to laugh about, but during the time of the original Shenanigans, we felt alive and appeared content and confident, using alcohol and humor as our coping mechanisms to escape our reality and keep the image we created for everyone. We all had choices we could have made to redirect our destiny to harvest a more positive outcome, but we chose to hide behind clutches and excuses instead. To us, Shenanigans represented Freedom, Freedom from Reality, and Freedom of Responsibility. Until shenanigans became our master. Once we imprisoned our minds with meaningless tactics and hid behind the walls of humor, we made conscious decisions that could prevent our minds from fully awakening and our souls from flourishing. These self-induced heavy outcomes not only affected our lives but affected the lives of our family and friends as well. IT WAS A TRAGEDY when I think about it, but we Shenanigan our way through life anyway.