Holiday Hell: Days 12 - 17

I have no clue how 2001 kicked off. I don't remember it.

Fade to black-and-white

✨ Holiday Hell: Days 12 - 13 ✨
January 1 - 2, 2001
28 years old

…For the last part of the New Year’s show and the entire time while the band packed up, I crashed out, burrowed underneath the nest of fur and leather coats that the Band Babes had made for me in the farthest corner of the ballroom.

I have no other memories of that night.

Or the next day.

Or the next.

I only have one brief journal entry from this time:

1/2/01

Had to refer Gwen to Dakini for a private show. Also two girls I had met at one of the restaurants last month called to start taking lessons. Had to refer them to Dakini as well. Really bad headache today. My whole body is cracking & popping – which is good, means it’s adjusting on its own now. Ears have been ringing horribly the last few days. Still don’t have any appointments except chiro – he still hadn’t heard from my insurance adjustor yet. Totally wiped out today. Crashed for a heavy sleep most of the afternoon. Tired already – 7:00 p.m….ZZZZZZ…

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✨ Holiday Hell: Days 14 - 17 ✨
January 3 - 6, 2001

The ultimate Hallelujah of Holiday Hell came on January 3. (Yeah, I know. That's technically after the season. Whatever. As the gears of the world ground ever-so-slowly back to life, it felt like one big never-ending season to me.) O Holy Night, I finally got ahold of my insurance adjustor, and she answered some of my burning, anxious circus-monkey questions.

Of course, she also informed me that, in order to get paid my full lost wages, I would need to produce signed, notarized affidavits from every one of my students and dance employers to prove half my monthly income. Know how long it took me to herd that many cats down to the courthouse so I could send in that huge packet?

Six. Months.

Until that time, I received only the equivalent of my part-time office work paycheck.

Oh. Excuse me.

Minus the two weeks they averaged out from when I was sick in October. How convenient for them. Now, you might think, "Pssssh, losing 2 weeks? That's not much."

It's not.

Except when you've only been working there for two months. Yup. They averaged out a quarter of my income and made that my official allotment.

I had a similar battle with the criminal case. I'd finally learned that the DA’s office had been told by the police, who had been told by the ER that I supposedly "had no injuries." To add insult to all these invisible injuries, on January 6, yet another drunk driving incident was reported on the news. They listed the charges for injuring two men as "Vehicular Assault"—a felony, unlike the misdemeanor DUI traffic charge pending for the woman who had hit me. My wreck certainly hadn't warranted a news crew.

It would take multiple statements of outrage from me, my family, and my friends to alert the DA's office that I even existed.

Seriously.

My name and contact information weren't even in the file.

For the next three years, this would become the theme of my life: having to prove everything in black-and-white triplicate, backed up by a gazillion witnesses who needed to go out of their way to notarize their complaints on my behalf. Either that, or I would just have to bend over and grab my ankles.

Talk about making the Victim defend themselves and pay for the crime.

I'm still paying for that woman's refusal to get a taxi because she thought she was "good enough" to drive and she "didn't have very far to go." I hear those excuses all the time when people try to justify their decision to drive impaired, especially when they've never hurt anybody.

YET.

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Wanna see something horrifying? Or heck, maybe you’re laughing at all of this. Maybe you’re like the conscienceless commenters on this YouTube video.

I would leave the link to my initial BLAM post as a comment unto itself, but honestly, the people who would brag such things are just like the drunk Vehicular Assaulter who laughed in my friend’s face during his sentencing after he pulverized her spine and smashed her brain to bits.

I don’t write these tales for people like that.

I write them for me, and I write them for you who need them. For you who want them. I also write them for the people who were standing by two blocks away from my house on New Year’s Eve the other night, watching as some jackass spun rip-roarin’ donuts in the cul-de-sac, then REVVED and lurched and REVVED and lurched and spun out and came back and flipped some birds and roared in laughter and peeled out, leaving half his tires on the pavement.

Yes. I was the bitch who sent the police after you.

And I will do that EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

When you’re weaving on the road in front of me, I will give the cops your license plate number and location.

When you’re tailgating me like Bubba and his Other Brother Bubba on Christmas Vacation, and then you rip-roar past me, saluting me with your beer can and your birds after I slow down to an excruciating 28 mph on these tight, curvy Ozark roads, I will give the cops your license plate number and location.

When you’ve tippled too many Tasmanian Devil mugs of Vampire’s Blood at that Halloweenie partay, I will be the bitch who hides your keys after you argue with my attempts to get you to accept a ride home from me or at least call an Uber.

When you’ve tilted one too many beers at the fair and are now whirling toward your truck, I will be the bitch who sicks security on you.

If any of my tales here happen to slap someone like that awake and inspire them to never drink-and-drive again—*cue Angelic choir*—well, that would be awesome. I will scrape my jaw up off the floor and sing Joy To the World. Otherwise I’m writing them for us, and for every person who just stood there, shocked and mortified at Peel-Out Petey—BUT DID NOT YANK THEIR CELL PHONE OUT TO DIAL 911.

I’m also writing them for any loved ones who might have had the chance to halt Petey before he got to the rip-rev-roaring stage and just…didn’t.

Maybe changing the future actions of bystanders who don’t want to “harsh the holiday vibe” or be “THAT person” is as futile a hope as waiting around for Petey himself to wake up, smell the fumes of his own puke on his morning-breath, and vow to never commit such an abominable act again. ✨AND THEN KEEP SAID VOW.✨

I hope you got home safely on New Year’s, Petey.

I hope everybody you passed on the road got home safely, too.

I hope you wake up and get a clue someday, and I hope it doesn’t take killing the five-year-old little girl on your lap to do it, like it did to the drunk father who killed one of his twin daughters not long after my dance with a drunk driver.

I hope it doesn’t take waking up after a six-month coma to find that they had to amputate both your legs and your right arm—but not like it really matters because you’re now a quadriplegic who has to shit into a bag, speak through telepathy, and be fed through tubes.

Unto Sir Laughs-A-Lot: I hope you found Jesus or Buddha or chakras or Zen painting or the wonders of mind-blowing science while you were in prison for what you did to my friend. I hope you found something to heal your obviously pulverized heart.

And unto Ms. Lynn Monterey,¹ you who rammed me into a construction median while coming home from your company’s holiday party… who lied about me to the police while standing on that frozen freeway, praying to save your drunk ass and get away with what you did to me… who got drunk and drove again (and again? and again, who knows how many times?) and got pulled over a few months later, once more over the limit…

There are many, many things I have to say to you.

I wonder about you all the time.

After the letter your attorney helped you write to me when I learned of your second DUI… after I demanded the full extent of the law be thrown at you because I was 99.999% certain it wasn’t only your second time drinking and driving and I was even more certain it wouldn’t be your last if you didn’t ever have to answer for what you did to me… after what you said to me in the courtroom when they told you that you weren’t allowed to speak directly to me but you just couldn’t help yourself…and after the exchange you and I had in the lobby of the courtroom after they fucking let you get away with it because there had been too many paperwork technicalities…

I have a sneaking suspicion you also think about me from time to time.

We’ll get to all that. That doesn’t happen until Month 9.

We’re barely past Day 9 on this Hap-Hap-Happiest Slay Ride, and today I don’t have much in the way of sunbeam-shiny motivational posters or gentle Om-finger practices to induce forgiveness.

I’ve absolutely forgiven her. We’ll cover that in fine detail, too.

It happened the night before her sentencing, just after I finished writing the final draft of what I would read in the courtroom, and after I read my mother’s final draft.

FORGIVENESS DOES NOT NEGATE FANGS.

Not when it comes to this topic I’m just a little passionate about. Toldja. I’m a dichotomous being. I run simultaneously in at least two opposite emotional directions at all times. It is Law.

So is this. On its 80th Anniversary, we still sing this sad-sad song.

And I am MADD about that.

Because it’s both.

UP NEXT:

• Holiday Hell 2024 - I mean, I had so much fun the first times, I figured why not reprise?

• Or if you want to continue this timeline, Holiday Hell 2000 at long last ends, so we can slide into Just January.

Sheesh. Can ya tell that I’m still pounding out word count on my ‘80s fiction novel, The Wreck Room? Oh, you don’t know about my NaNoWriMo project this year? Not like it’s completely unrelated to this topic. Here. Here’s a change of pace from my normal Related Post List:

© 2024 Hartebeast

1. Duh, that’s not her name.