Well guys, I know it's late, but I'm FINALLY jumping on the 30 day writing challenge here!
DAY 1: RIPPED APART
I decided to write this about Miriam and how she was 'ripped apart' from the life she imagined herself to have including that of her life with Bob and her children. Lemme know what you guys think!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Hey Arnold!
enjoy and stay tuned for each day! I will finish! :)
xoxo
Polkahotness
"Hey Miriam."
"Oh... oh hi Helga... How... how was school?"
she shrugged her shoulders like she typically did most afternoons, and tossed her backpack on the floor. "You care, why?"
"Because... Well I'm your mother, Helga."
"Psh," she scoffed, "you just keep telling yourself that, MOM."
"Don't..." I said, standing up and wobbling for a moment, "Don't you say things like that, Helga. You know... you know I try and have always tried to be a good mom."
"Since when?"
"Since you were born..."
"THAT'S a laugh. You've NEVER tried. I mean... there was that weird brief period in which you took over Bob's job and paid attention to me for what, a week? But that's IT. It's always been about Olga for you, Miriam. So stop lying to yourself."
I looked at her in silence, my heart pounding in my chest like a hammer against cloth and I shook my head. My breath was suddenly becoming uneven and I could feel the tears welling in my eyes.
"Helga," I called out as she made her way upstairs to hide in her room until B called her down for dinner which I still hadn't thought about yet, "I'm... I'm so sorry."
"Whatever."
"No Helga... Helga!" I yelled out, stumbling my way towards the staircase only to hear the familiar slamming of her door and her name plate that we had once hung so proudly after her birth bang against the wooden door.
"Helga..." I whispered to myself, looking down at my feet.
"I wasn't always like this..."
I met Bob when we were in High School. He was the quarterback of the football team, the star of the baseball team and ever young girl's dream boy. His body was... chiseled by the Gods and I, Miriam, had him all to myself. It seemed to us and our classmates that the star jock and star swimmer were a match made in heaven, and we were. So much so that our senior year, we were voted by our class to be the cutest couple.
Believe it or not, but there was once a time that I had a pretty bangin' body myself. All that swimming I did gave me both strength and muscles, but a body that a lot of my friends envied. As my mom used to tell me when I was a little girl, I was getting the curves any girl dreamed of. But, mom didn't make it passed my 15th birthday and quickly after my 16th birthday during Sophmore year was when Bob Pataki came into my life. Once we graduated, we enrolled in the same college and both had pretty generous scholarships to attend with; Bob's for football and mine from swimming.
Quickly, our relationship began to escalate and it wasn't long before the news came in a bright pink plus sign one early morning.
At first, I didn't know what I was supposed to say to Bob. I didn't know if he would leave me, if he would make me quit college or if he would be okay with it altogether.
But as they say... everything comes with a price. And mine, as expected, was my future.
I dropped out of college within the next month, unable to juggle planning a child and school career. Naturally, my hopes and dreams of making the Olympics in swimming... well... swam down the toilet and all I had left, was the child living inside of me.
Thankfully, B asked me to marry him and two and a half months before Olga was born, I was Miriam Pataki: dropout, failure, and surely shunned by her own mother watching her from above. All she had dreamed for me, all I had dreamed for myself... all she had hoped I would become was no longer possible and I couldn't fight the feelings of defeat from the life that had once held such promise.
But life went on. Our child grew and grew and found in herself the person I had wanted so badly to be: a winner. Olga began to win everything. From spelling bees to piano recitals even to beauty pageants, Olga won them all and the living room in our tiny apartment began to fill with shiny trophies with the Pataki name engraved in them all.
Oh, Bob was so proud. He couldn't have imagined any less from HIS child than a winner. So twelve years later when I became pregnant again, Bob quickly changed. Suddenly, Bob pushed Olga further. Pushed her to become even more than she already was. He said he was trying to step up the expectations. Said that he wanted our other child to be just as great as the one we already had, if not better.
But B... he didn't know that he was already setting up our unborn child to achieve just as much as I had achieved... nothing. He wanted her to fail.
In his mind... he didn't want anyone or anything to beat Olga.
This bothered me. It wasn't how I wanted our children to grow up... it wasn't how I wanted our children to think they had to be.
I began to attend small 'mom' groups. We'd meet up at a bar every month and talk about our lives as mothers, whether new mothers or not. Through this group, I met so many great parents... and so many bad ones. But they never encouraged me to make any bad decisions, just offered me their best advice and shared in every laugh and tear that came with motherhood. After Helga was born, I began to go to the bars more often. Helga often stayed at home with Bob and Olga. I had hoped that it was Bob's way of trying to get to know our newest addition to the family... not our newest mistake as he liked to put it. Our child was beautiful... everything we could have ever hoped for.
B didn't see it like that. And that knowledge, ripped me apart.
"He just isn't the Bob Pataki I fell in love with," I voiced one night in the bar, finishing off my one Bloody Mary that I usually ordered before heading home. But tonight, I just needed one more. I had HAD it with my home life. It was time for a night away from my reality that sat in our new home. "He isn't the man I want to be with."
"Honey, I feel ya," the last of the mom's who had stayed answered, finishing off her drink and picking up her things to head home, "but I should get home. You heading out too, Miriam?"
"You know... I think I may stay for another drink."
"Alright, but be careful, okay? From what it sounds like... your daughter is gonna need her mom more than ever. Take care, Miriam." She said, waving goodbye and leaving through the doors that led out to the reality I tried so desperately to hide from.
"Remember folks, it's almost eleven on a Friday night! That only means one thing; KARAOKE! Start entering your songs now before it gets too late!"
Now, I hadn't sang karaoke for YEARS. I wasn't sure if I'd still be any good at it... but that night I discovered just how good I had once been. By the time I called the cab to get me home, I was stumbling all over the stage, the microphone continuously slipping from my hand, and a man on each arm to help carry me out.
But dammit, I was happy. I'd never been happier.
It didn't take long for the bar to become my haven. Every Friday night, you could find me up on that stage singing all of my troubles away... until Bob took that from me too.
Said I was flirting with the other men.
"What kind of wife does that? You tell me Miriam. I see the way you look at them... don't you think I don't see! Now from here on out, you will be staying here, EVERY night taking care of these kids. You understand me? That's your JOB. You're the one who dropped out of college, Miriam. Not me. I have a beeper store to manage." he said. Always about that damn store. About how any day now, he'd be moved up and any day now, he'd be buying his own store.
And... soon enough... that's what he had. Bob's Beeper Emporium he named it. He was the official King of the Beepers. And I was Miriam... Queen of the Liquor Cabinet.
But I tried to be a good mom... I always had. My children... they came first. And when it became too hard to answer the questions about the funny smelling liquid in mommy's coffee cup... I found other ways to hide my quickly growing addiction.
Smoothies seemed to make sense to the girls. They accepted mommy's morning smoothies, and they even began to accept her afternoon smoothies. But by the time Helga hit fourth grade... everybody knew, and everybody had given up on the hopes of me becoming a 'good mom' again.
Even me.
So there I was again... being the one thing I was good at... A failure.
"Helga..." I mumbled again, making my way back to the couch and falling onto it while reaching for the melted smoothie sitting on the coffee table beside me, "I'm... I'm so sorry, honey..."
and I faded away to the only thing that hadn't been ripped from my reality... my dreams.
