classic Sugar to another level by hissing:
“I’m gonna break your legs.”
What the fuck? I was terrified. I stepped back, and she quickly grabbed my head and yanked out a chunk of my hair. MY HAIR. She started to wave it back and forth, rhythmically chanting, “I’m gonna make sure you never walk again.”
At this point I was screaming, “You’re the devil! You’re the devil!”
Rudolf finally found his words. Unfortunately, they weren’t very good ones. “Sugar, NO. NO, Sugar. You give her back her hair. You cannot do that Sugar, give Laura back her hair.”
I swung open the door to the apartment and ran inside. I locked myself in the bathroom. Comet ran inside there with me at the last minute. I glared at him.
“Why did you do this, Comet? Make Sugar go away.” Comet just stared at me with his little eyes and then slumped over to the side and licked his asshole.
The messy and unsatisfying epilogue to this story is the following: Two weeks later, Sugar called Rudolf and told him she was going to kill herself, so he had better come over and pick up the dog. She was very unstable. Rudolf rushed over to find Sugar with a knife pressed to her own throat. He called the police, and she went to a mental institution for a while, until she got out and started breaking my car windows every so often.
I never spoke to her directly again because obviously conflict avoidance always helps with everything. Right? *nervous laughter*
I mostly tried not to think about her. But when I did, I wondered what Rudolf ever saw in someone so needy and unstable. Maybe he thought he could help her, kind of like . . . he was trying to help me.
Life eventually settled down again, and when it did, so did Rudolf and I. We got into this lovely, positive . . . stifling rhythm. We got up early. We exercised. Rudolf was close with Colleen and we had these lovely dinner parties that were healthy and fun. Colleen moved into a studio apartment down the street from us. I was getting my career on track because of him. He was so brilliant and sweet and encouraging and everything was right. But it didn’t feel right at all.
He wanted kids and a family. He wanted us to start a life together because I was the one for him. But in reality, I didn’t know who the fuck I was yet. I was nineteen, for God’s sake. He was thirty-seven. I was not having kids yet. The more he pushed for stability, the more I’d pull away. I knew I wanted to break up with him.
Unfortunately, my nineteen-year-old brain didn’t know what words to use to break up with someone, or how to say them. So instead I avoided the problem, hoping he would break up with me eventually. My drinking worsened. My drug use worsened. My escapism worsened. As much as we wanted it to, addiction doesn’t just go away by ignoring it. As much as he and I both wanted me to just be healthy, I was still an addict. And I was finding ways to hide it from him.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, but I knew that the part of me that Rudolf hated the most was the part of me stuck in my addiction. He tried every day to squash that, and he even got me to stop hard drugs. So if I were to amplify that deeply impulsive, unhealthy, toxic Laura . . . he would have no choice but to leave me. Deep down, that horrible part of my brain thought that this was what I deserved.
I would stay out all night, and in the morning Rudolf would be upset, but he would quickly forgive me. He knew something was wrong and he wanted to help, but I felt myself being pulled away by the hand of my addiction.
One night I came home at eight a.m. to him blasting “(You’re the) Devil in Disguise” by Elvis. He wasn’t even home. He just had it on repeat, loud enough for all the neighbors to hear. I remember thinking this was way more embarrassing than the fact that I was coming home at eight a.m. multiple nights a week.
That was his worst. Rudolf was a sweet, sweet man.
I tried to zero in on a way to break up with him, but I couldn’t think of one thing he did wrong. And that’s the only way