Down The Rabbit Hole Of Love

Shenanigans

Mickey and I were both emotionally and mentally disastrous when we met. Neither of us were mentally nor emotionally prepared to be in a relationship, let alone think it could be healthy. I don’t think we knew what a healthy relationship looked like. 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 had a tiny 2-bedroom apartment in a duplex building, 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 had 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 bar-tending 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 without insurance tickets 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. His facade was of popularity and power because of whom he was affiliated. 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 dumb, empathetic, 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. Mickey’s façade was so thick he could maintain an image suitable enough for my friend Frankie to suggest him to be someone I should get involved with.

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 the 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 IS A TRAGEDY when I think about it, but we Shenanigan our way through life anyway.

Like every decision I’ve ever made, Mickey’s and my relationship was impulsive and without thought. My impulsiveness is the reason my encounters are usually intense and dramatic, never-ending well. Mickey and I met blindly. We had a few conversations on social media through Frankie’s f*******: page. We both had commented on a humorous post Frankie had posted on f*******: and hit it off from there. A few days later, after both of us inquired about one another, Mickey and I agreed to meet at a bar to have a few drinks and get to know each other. Unlike Smiley and Frankie, Mickey was short with a small build. His smile was crooked and silly. His eyes were ocean blue, extensive, and transparent, showing a lot of emotion and pain. I wasn’t a heavy drinker then, but I got DRUNK that night. We were taking shots of Jack Daniel's and having a wonderful time!! To my surprise, Mickey was a gentleman. After the bar, I dropped him off at his house. He didn’t invite me in to try to sleep with me, which was impressive.

Like most of my relationships, Mickey and I were inseparable from day one. About a week into seeing him, he and his brother got into an argument late one night. I told him he could come to stay at my apartment if he needed to, but apparently, I needed to be more straightforward about his stay time. I was thinking of a day or two for him and his brother to cool off. When I got to his house to pick him up, he had all his belongings packed and ready to be put in my car. I was a little confused because we had just met, but I let it happen anyway because I never thought of consequences or cared if there were any. I was always a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl, and if s**t went sideways (which it usually did), I’d worry about it and clean it up then.

The first week or two of living with Mickey was a blur. If I wasn’t at work, we were out driving around the streets of Chicago in the middle of winter, getting drunk as f**k. This was the beginning of my alcoholism. I remember those nights as magical. They were passionate and childlike. We went dancing; we had s*x in public places; we laughed A LOT! We did everything I needed Gardo to do with me for ten years! It was refreshing and euphoric. I felt like a teenager while forgetting that I had teenagers at home. My relationship with my kids was slowly deteriorating, and I was being blinded by freedom and alcohol. Three weeks had gone by, and the rent was about to be due; my car payment and insurance were past due, so I started panicking a little because, at this point, I still wanted to be responsible and cared about fixing my life for my kids and me. I still had some hope of being what I claimed I would be when I left Gardo and walked out of our white picket-fenced house and almost perfect life.

Even though our nights and parts of our days were spent in the bars acting like we didn’t have a responsibility, I still had my bar-tending job. I would come home from work, and the house would always be clean, the dog would be walked, and he made homemade dinners most nights. Most importantly, he was someone there with my boys, which was a big relief. Leaving three teenage boys home alone to fend for themselves every evening and expecting them not to get in trouble was insanity. In those aspects, having Mickey around was great. Nonetheless, none of those things were helping me pay the damn bills.

The honeymoon phase was fading fast, and things in the house were becoming tense. I began worrying about s**t again, which made our relationship less fun. Mickey had no idea who I was when the party was over. I forgot how emotionally pampered I was by Gardo and started missing my life with him because it was safe. Mickey was great for everything I mentioned earlier, but by no means was he good at or even capable of helping me manage my emotions or supporting me mentally. A lot of times, I would call Gardo crying about life. He would always comfort me but could never solve any of my problems. Mickey and I started arguing quite often. He hated it when I would call Gardo for emotional support but he didn’t know how to be emotionally supportive like Gardo. He would either talk down to me or run away if I were anything but in a good mood. This prompted me to begin looking at my life differently. I began seeing the reality of my situation. I also call awakenings like these bipolar as f**k. One day I’m in Lala land, and nothing matters, and the next day my head is removed from my ass, and reality beats me almost to death. Mickey wasn’t good for me. I couldn’t afford to live like this, and my kids were losing respect for me by the day, but I continued to do it anyway.