I didn’t even get on the show.
Colleen got a DUI on the way home. So, lose-lose.
At this point I was just ready to leave my town, to go anywhere but here. I hated school and I hated getting in trouble and it felt like that was all I was doing.
After acting out in one of my classes, I was brought in to see the school counselor. I remember wondering why I wasn’t just being punished like usual.
“Is everything okay at home?” The counselor looked at me with understanding.
I looked at him and narrowed my eyes. “Can I just have detention?”
I didn’t really know what to say. He recommended therapy for me.
I brought it up to my mom that night. I told her that I maybe thought it was kind of a good idea. Maybe there is something going on with me and I could talk to someone and get better.
“If you need to talk to someone, you can talk to me.”
It was one of two things. First of all, we never, ever went to the doctor. We didn’t have health insurance growing up. So she might have thought that there was no fucking way we could afford therapy for me, which was completely valid. She also might have not wanted to expose what was going on at home.
I liked my home life. I loved my parents. But I suppose the unsettling thing at home for me was my dad’s drinking. It could be scary at times. He didn’t beat us or anything like that, but he was six four, and he could get so angry. Like throwing-glass-at-the-wall, breaking-things sort of angry. The scary part was that we’d never really know which dad we were gonna get. He could be a nice, funny, supportive drunk that I loved so much, or a mean and angry drunk. But very consistently, drunk.
One time I called him to pick me up from a restaurant in town. When he arrived, he was noticeably drunk. The mean, angry kind. He was so mad that I asked him to come get me that he was driving 80 mph on the suburban streets while slurring insults at me. He swerved onto our neighbors’ lawn, barely missing the lampposts, and almost hit the house. I remember sprinting out of the car, into the house, and locking myself in my room. I thought he was mad enough to kill me.
My mom, however, was so loving, she really made up for it.
I was scared, but my dad was not a monster by any means. He was sick. He was stuck in his disease. When he was sober, he was this funny, creative musician and scientist. Always pushing us to think outside the box and be ourselves, no matter who that was. He taught me to question the status quo in a way that I am so grateful about today.
I’m not complaining about my childhood or where I’ve been, but I can see how that would have caused me to act out. I can see now how much pain I was holding. I would sleep with a knife next to my bed, because for some reason it soothed me to know that if I wanted to, I could just grab it and end it all for myself. (Admittedly, it was a butter knife. . . .) I once took six of my mother’s sleeping pills. I passed out and got really sick from them, but I was going to live.
You know, if I was really trying to kill myself, I would have taken the whole bottle of pills or chosen a sharper knife. Six pills and a butter knife were not gonna take me out.
I decided to channel my emotions into finding ways to escape my reality, through drinking or smoking or, even better, both. The kids in my town needed a new place to party after getting in trouble for all our motel parties, but no fear, my friends were problem solvers when it came to getting fucked up. So they chose the next best option—breaking into our friend’s house while his family was on vacation!
Okay, not so legal, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t my party and I wasn’t getting in trouble for it. A boy named Richard invited me, and while I barely even knew him, I wasn’t about to say no to free booze and weed. I took him up on the invite, and obviously brought along Jack and our friend Holly.
Once I got there, this five-foot-tall girl in a strapless top and miniskirt (’00s fashion, amirite?) came up to me. “So you’re Laura Clery?”
I had never seen this girl in my life. I was already six feet tall by now, so I looked down at her—literally—and said, “Yeah?”
And then BOOM! She punched me in the nose. Honestly, like, how did she even reach my nose? She tackled me to the ground and started beating the shit out of me. But she was so much smaller than me that I put up my fists and took her down like she was nothing.
No, I’m totally kidding.
I’m not a fighter at all! I was just screaming and crying and taking it and begging her to stop.
Some of the other kids at the party grabbed her and pulled her off me. Jack and Holly and I ran into the bathroom and locked the door.
“Who the fuck was that?”
“Richard’s ex-girlfriend.”
Seriously?? Seriously????? She was that mad because her ex-boyfriend invited me to a party????
I was furious. I started pacing around the bathroom. How could she do that to me? I felt like I was a tetherball being slapped around a pole. There was nothing in my life that I had control over.
I looked up and saw this painting of a boat on the bathroom wall. Just a boat floating on the water. I saw my own face reflected faintly on the glass. My fucking black eye and bloody nose.
I punched it as hard as I could. Glass shattered everywhere, including into my hand and wrist. It hit some major veins, and blood was gushing everywhere. I slumped down, crying.
Holly immediately jumped into action, picking out the pieces of glass. She rinsed it with water. Jack wrapped the wound in his shirt. How convenient that we were already in a bathroom.
We didn’t go to the hospital, even though I knew we should have. The avoidance of hospitals was something I had inherited from my parents. Plus, I didn’t want to get in trouble—we had all been drinking. We just bought some bandages and wrapped me up, and I went home at two a.m.
There was my dad sitting on his La-Z-Boy, red wine in hand.
“Who did that to you? I’ll fucking kill him!”
“It’s fine, Dad.”
Richard, who invited me, did eventually apologize for the whole thing.
“My ex is a crazy bitch, right? Ha-ha.”
I’d just stared at him until it got uncomfortable for him. “We are not bonding over this right now.”
“Sorry about that,” he’d said awkwardly.
That family who owned the house we broke into returned home eventually . . . and saw a bunch of fun things all around their house! Empty bottles of alcohol. Cigarette butts. Oh yeah, and BLOOD AND GLASS ALL OVER THEIR BATHROOM.
It was on the news one night. “A house in Hinsdale was broken into while that family was away on vacation. There is evidence of physical violence and property damage, although nothing was stolen.”
“Mom! Dad! That’s my blood on the TV! That’s my blood!” I was so desperate to be on TV that even my blood making an appearance on the seven o’clock news was an accomplishment.
That night, Holly had left her phone in the bathroom. The tiny girl who beat me up found it. I started getting texts from her. I know what you’re thinking, and no, she didn’t want to go for coffee. I was surprised too!
You have 2 hours to get us 500 dollars. Or else we’re smashing this phone.
Clearly, they wanted us to pay for the damage we caused in the bathroom.
It would honestly be cheaper for Holly to buy a new phone. Sorry, Holly.
1 hour left.
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