i got kicked out of my little local band about a month ago & it’s really been tearing me up inside. i don’t understand how my one bad night turned into my exodus via a discord call from someone i considered a friend but now haven’t spoken to since. i’m far from the only one who has had bad nights in the nearly 5 years we’d spent playing music together, but for some reason mine was the tipping point. whole new direction, a whole new member, a whole new set of shows, all new band photos, all new sets of songs to play (something i’d been secretly hoping for for roughly 2.5 years), all because of my one bad night.
i’m not stupid, i know there’s other factors at play (the other guitarists now open marriage with another couple, one of whom is the new band member previously mentioned, the singer starting a new career & feeling inadequate in the face of the struggling economy, the drummer who was on his second child & was so busy he couldn’t even show up to practices anymore, the bassist who was soon to be married and working on his house, and finally the other singer who’d been on his 3rd bad relationship since i’d met him & lost his house due to drinking himself into a stupor at the bar he now works at & lives above) but it felt so Targeted at me. maybe i really did suck. the show we played that night was rough, but we had a replacement drummer, played a new song & had a whole myriad of technical issues that were beyond our control. so why me? was it because i just wasn’t there until 2am like the rest? because i’d already been having a bad day & just wanted to go home?
since i started writing this post (i left it alone in my phone for about a week or two) i also recently cut all communication with my mother. it’s been a really weird feeling because on one hand, i finally feel so free from her grasp. the grasp that i thought would never let me go, the grasp that was forever coated in a veneer of “worry” and “care”, when in reality all she ever did was do whatever she could to put me down, control me financially and scream at me whenever i didn’t tow the line. she almost kicked me out of the house 3 months before i graduated high school, and to this day the only reason i believe she didn’t is because she knew she’d lose all control. shortly after that, she stole nearly $5,000 in savings i had from a bank account and proceeded to start “charging” me for car insurance off that $5,000 as a way to “pay me back” and would send me a picture of piece of paper with a running tally every month, showing how thoughtful she was while she robbed me blind. i thought this was normal. when i came back from college after realizing it wasn’t for me, i was charged rent to live in my childhood bedroom. one night i got a call from her at around 2 or 3am to come pick her up from the bar. on the way home, she proceeded to drunkenly tell me that having me at 22 nearly ruined her life. we never talked about it again.
i don’t know how to cope with these feelings. i don’t know what to do with the pain and the anger and the sadness that just wells up inside me now. i don’t know where to put these feelings now that i’m not a little kid hiding in my bedroom from mom & her boyfriend of the year in one of their screaming matches. i don’t know where to put these feelings now that i own my own home & live with my partner. i don’t know where to put these feelings now that i’ve never felt less like myself. why did i feel more like me curled up in a ball in my bed trying to drown out a drunken argument coming through the floor than when i lay silently in bed with someone who loves me deeply?
