Gambling Addiction

My mother is a funny lady, smart and experienced, kind and sweet. I should learn a lot from her experiences but I’m stubborn, hard headed, determined and a bunch of other things you could read about here. She loved my father very much and he loved her. They were so in love with each other it was retarded. My dad, he was such a romantic. He sang to my mom all the time, he was always looking at her like he was lusting after her. All along he was cheating on my mother with so many women we lost count. Eventually, he left us for one of those ladies.

In my adulthood, I’ve done everything in my power to fulfill my Oedipus complex and date people just like my daddy. Except a helluva a lot less attractive, a helluva a lot less charming and a helluva a lot less attentive.

After my daddy left us, my mom started dating a guy named Mark. She wasn’t in love with him, but she kept him around to keep her mind off my daddy and his new young girlfriend, Sheila. Keep in mind my mother, my father, Mark and Sheila all worked at the same branch of the Post Office and saw each other daily. It was like “ER” where everyone sleeps with each other in the workplace except with real hurt feelings. Mark was this banal, boring guy who looked like Jack Tripper with Cliff Clavin’s personality, it was so odd to me how my mother could go from the crowd pleaser that was my daddy to Cliff from Cheers. 19 years later, my stepfather, Mark and my mom are so in love with each other is sickening. They’re always laughing and kissing and making me nauseous and shit. It’s really gross.

My mother has since told me “A woman and a man are different in that a woman’s heart can learn to love a man that is good to them.” She’s always advised me to date the men that I may not be crazy about and give the guys who are good to me a chance. I met her halfway on this. I date men just like my daddy and date men just like my stepdaddy. I’m a fool for those like my daddy and a bitch to those like my step daddy. Go figure.

The whole point of this blog is to give everyone access to the one piece of advice my mother gave to me that always resounded with me and many of the girl friend’s I’ve shared this with/ My mother’s a gambler so bear with this analogy.

Bad men are like slot machines.

You go up to a slot machine with $20 in quarters. You stay and spend $19.75.

You’re on your last quarter and right when you’re ready to leave empty handed the slots spit out $15 in quarters!!! WOOT! YOU’RE RICH, MAN!!!!!

So you stick around. And you stick you’re quarters in and every once in a while, you get $5, $2. Little by little, you stay in the hopes that the big pay out is right around the corner.

Hours pass, and you lose your whole wad. At the end of your day, you’ve only lost $20, but you’ve lost something you can’t get back, your time and your hope.

I hope you are all smart enough that I don’t have to break this down for you. Figure it out.