The Mean Time

"If only.

If only I hadn't gotten the call from my Army buddies.
If only I had blown them off.
If only I had gone to the party.

If only.

I would have been driving.

I ALWAYS drove.

As smart, beautiful, wonderful as she was, she was a terrible driver. Scary, in fact.

She had been in numerous fender benders in her short driving career.

She just wasn't good at it.

I should have known. I should have been driving. I should have been there for her.

I was RESPONSIBLE for what had happened. I killed her, by my absence."

This is the soundtrack running over and over in my head. My only respite was when the alcohol sucked me into a drunken slumber.

I saw her there. Alive. Beautiful. Mine. Forever.

In the aftermath, I dropped out of college. I couldn't concentrate on school. Rather than flunk out, I withdrew. I would return when I had dealt with what I was mired in.

Several months later, I went back. I was still drinking most of the time, still running the soundtrack.
Disaster.

My hasty withdrawl from school had done something to my GI Bill. Some faceless drone in a cubicle had placed me into an ineligible file.

I had to pay my own way.

Kids do it every day. It is tough, but not impossible.

Unless you are a drunk, stuck in a bloody bog of sorrow that you cannot even begin to fathom.

If that is the case, you get another job... and begin dating someone as broken as you are.