When Things Fall Apart...

Last weekend began with a phone call at 4:30 pm on Friday afternoon...

I looked at my Blackberry screen...private number. I debated as to whether I should bother answering and then elected to do so.

"Ms. Gonzalez?"

"Yes."

"This is Detective So and So from the LAPD."

I immediately think, great! What's my soon-to-be-ex-husband accusing me of doing to him now? (You all have no idea, dear reader, the shenanigans that have ensued since the official split.) My seconds of contemplation were interrupted by the Detective's voice.

"Ma'am, do you have a daughter?"

My right brow elevated slightly as I answered, "Yeeesss."

"Can you tell me her name?"

Upon my answer he began to relay the scenario that necessitated his call. Apparently my lovely daughter and her posse were smoking cigarettes in the alley behind our condominium. The undercover narcotics detectives spotted them and thought that they looked a little too young to be smoking. Bingo! So, they decided to wrangle the group up and search their persons and belongings.

Guess what they found in my offspring's bag?

Gum?

No, give it another try.

Mascara?

Well, yes. One doesn't achieve beautiful full lashes without a little help from the cosmetic counter, but that item didn't give the officers cause for any concern. No, the item found in my daughter's tote that provoked this Friday afternoon phone call was...oh yes...a marijuana pipe.

Yeah, the fun never stops over at ChezLinoleum!

The detectives said that my daughter and her friends look like good kids, but the pipe could be a sign of more to come if not nipped in the bud (no pun intended) sooner rather than later. Further, they said that they would only give my child a ticket for smoking and release her into my custody, allowing me to handle the situation as I saw fit. Unfortunately, the ticket means that we will be going to teen court (Yay another courtroom experience!) in September and she will receive a fine.

The one good thing that came out of Friday evening's events? For the first time in weeks, my daughter seemed to lose her obnoxious teen 'tude. Yep, when I calmly explained to my daughter that she would be grounded for the rest of the summer she just looked at me and replied, "Okay. I'm sorry Mom." Further, she told me that she will be paying for the fine with her own wages, to which I replied, "Yes, yes, you will."

Unfortunately the weekend just worsened from that point forward...

Weekends have become increasingly difficult for me since the onset of my marital mayhem. When my husband and I were still residing together, weekends were filled with tension and a depth of unhappiness that was nothing short of utter oppression. Now that he is gone, the silence itself and my ever encroaching awareness of the nightmare that I have endured, am enduring, has become utterly oppressive. Now, I am quite adept at keeping my sadness, anxiety and depression at bay most of the time, but there are occasions when no amount of positive affirmation can stem the tide of my despair. And last weekend, despair was the rip tide that caught my leg and tried to pull me under...

I could feel the ripples of despair lapping at my toes when driving home from my teaching gig on Saturday evening. As I edged closer to home, my stomach began to turn and my mind raced with unsavory thoughts. I acknowledged that this did not bode well for an evening of quiet relaxation.

By 10:00 pm I was in full melt-down mode. My body was collapsing under the weight of my sadness, tears streaming down my cheeks, nostrils leaking fluid, hair in disarray...not a pretty sight peeps. I needed to hear a friendly voice. I texted my Mom and said simply, "I'm falling apart." She called me shortly thereafter and by the end of the call, we were both in tears! At this point, my eyes were burning and my eyelids had swelled to size of raviolis. I needed to get control of myself. So, I threw Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring on the DVD player and attempted to drown my sorrows in a bowlful of Cheetos. Normally, Frodo and a neon orange snack would do the trick, but this was no normal bump in the proverbial rode. (Oh, by the way, the whole time I was melting down mercilessly? Yeah, I was also crocheting. Just because I was falling apart and contemplating heaving my body from the rooftop, did not mean that I had became exempt from my design deadlines.) At that point, I decided to pack it up and just go to bed. Yeah, you guessed it, I cried myself to sleep.

So, how was your Saturday night?

*Ahem*

Needless to say, Sunday I awoke with bloodshot eyes, ravioli eyelids and a headache the size of Los Angeles County. I looked in the mirror and began to tear up again. Enough was enough. I called my girlfriends. They were coming over later to get me out of the house. Knowing this made me feel marginally better, but not enough to dam up the tear tide completely. So, I picked up the phone again and dialed a familiar international number. I listened to the crackle and hiss of the line making it's myriad connections before finally hearing the foreign and yet oh so familiar ring go through its repetitions...

The deep resonant voice that I know intimately answered, "Al-lo?"

"Honey, it's me," crying ensued...AGAIN.

He immediately answered me in English, "What's wrong Re? Tell me..."

It was there and then that I laid it all out, the pain, the suffering, the overwhelming sense of feeling like a failure. I told him about LittleLinoleum's Friday fun fest, my parental controls slipping away, the endless crocheting during it all. How could I have allowed my life to go so...sideways? He listened intently and comforted me with his words. By the end of the conversation he even had me in doubled over in laughter. We were both reluctant to end the dialog, but we said our pregnant goodbyes nonetheless. After hanging up, I looked in the mirror and noticed the residue of a smile on my face. I would be okay...

Later at lunch with my band of rescuers, my mom looked up from her plate of food and asked me, "Did you talk to Sam?"

I smiled. "Yes."

She smiled too and said, "I thought so..."