If anyone had predicted ten years ago when I was graduating form high school that I would be ducking out of the lab and into the stairwell to call the law guardian in my son's custody case, I would have insisted that they were crazy. At 18, the world was my proverbial oyster, and I knew I was setting out to do great things. I probably wouldn't ever get married, much less before the age of 30, and kids, well they're full of germs (to quote myself). However, I think very few of us can accurately predict where this life will take us, not even stubborn 18-year-old-going-on-35 future research scientists. I wish I could say that it was because I followed my heart that I ended up here. All I can say though, is that I don't know how I got here, because the line from point A to point B is anything but straight. The line staggers and weaves like a drunk, like the drunk that I married, and the drunken foolishness of my thoughts, my optimism.
If someone had told me that I'd be sitting at lunch sipping a cup of hot water like some village variety lunatic, I would have laughed. I knew someone once that drank just hot water, and I thought it was bizarre then. Now I am doing it, because my life is too chaotic to remember tea bags and the coffee is eating a hole in my stomach. It's cold outside and I feel cold inside, so I need a little warmth, which I'll take however I may find it. How does an intelligent person and a confident woman allow herself to be abused for the better part of six years? Is it because he didn't hit me, although he cut me to ribbons with his tongue? Is it because I loved or needed him? Or was it simply because getting married seemed like the next logical thing to do? And why does it take finding him passed out drunk, face down on the floor, while watching our 15-month-old to force me to act? When did I become a Hallmark movie or an afternoon Soap? The world was my oyster once, and now it just smells like rotten shellfish.
