My parents would have given Ward and June Cleaver a run for the money. Modest home, exemplary parents. It wasn't til I was older, high school and college, that I saw my Dad drunk. He may have been drinking heavily all along, I don't know.
I was kind of a homely kid. I blame that for a lot, but it's a stupid excuse. In my school, a year behind me, was a girl just as skinny, nearsighted and flat-chested, made and wore bravely all the latest fashions Simplicity, Butterick and Vogue had to offer. She managed this even in our little podunk town. Failing cheerleader tryouts, she made a deal with the faculty advisor: Someone had found the head to a mascot costume. She'd make the rest of the critter, if they let her be the mascot. It was clear from her antics as a mascot that large motor skills were not her forte. She didn't intentionally move in a goofy fashion. She also didn't care what others thought. I slunk away defeated from repeated failures and sulked.
It's hard when the popular kids pretend to like you, just to set you up. Or send you notes allegedly penned by the cutest boy in school, inviting you to a party that won't happen.
College was a little better. I dated a little, but not much. By the time I'd shlepped into adulthood, I figured I may spend the rest of my life alone. When I met Late AH, I was thrilled. He was funny. He was brilliant, He thought I was funny and brilliant. I thought his drinking was a bad habit leftover from being alone after his divorce. I was wrong.
After I'd been married for some time, I saw the truth. By that time though, I'd come to rely on his income. The specter of being alone forever still loomed in the back of my head. We, or I would have to give up the house in the 'burbs, the comfortable income, the companionship that did surface when he was sober. And with my pride, I was frankly just embarrassed to admit I'd made a mistake. We had married six months after we met, which was kind of stupid. Maybe my shrink would have reasoned in my co-dependency, I had someone to feel superior to.
He died just a few months shy of our 25th anniversary. In a bizarre way, it spared me (or us) from the embarrassment of explaining why we weren't planning a big party. Actually, the very day I decided to start looking for an apartment of my own, he told me he was terminally ill.
Once bitten, twice shy for me, though. When I began dating the lessons I'd learned steered me in a different direction. The older, more mature me looked at the time I had left, and thought, better alone than legally, morally bound to the wrong person.