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Antigone Hodgins
Her Apartment, Upper Tenderloin
June 17 and August 19, 1995
I always talked to myself when I drank. I'd go in the bathroom, look in the mirror and go, "Okay, Antigone. You've had two beers, you feel good...." Well, more usually, like four. "You've had four beers, you're feeling good. You don't need to have anymore, you're feeling really good, you're feeling happy." Then I'd walk out and I'd go right to the beer. I had no defense against it at all. Once I started drinking, I would drink until I passed out, blacked out, or until there was no more alcohol. Towards the end it terrified me to not have any alcohol left. I would buy a lot, and I would always run to the store if it was almost 2:00 a.m.
So,
my high school years were going to school, and on the weekends I would party.
It was a control thing. Nothing else in my life was controllable, especially
from age 14 to 18. My stepmother moved in. She and my dad didn't help us
to deal with the transition. And he never stood up for us ever.
When I went to college my drinking jumped forward a couple notches, because then I was alone. But see, the thing is, even when I was living at home in high school, I would love to be grounded because then I could stay home and drink wine with my dad and my stepmother and watch the news with them.
My mother moved into a studio after the divorce. My sister's and my room was basically a closet, with a bed in it. There was no place for us in her life anymore. She was drinking, but no one talked about it. Then when she got sober, she had no time for us because she was focusing on her program. I didn't understand that at the time. I didn't have a place with her, and I didn't have a place at my father's house. I never felt safe there because we never became an integrated family and there was a lot of conflict between my stepmother and I. Then when they had Helen, they moved Diana down to my room, because I went to college that year. They packed up my stuff, without me there, and put it in the basement. I felt like I got a really big message, "There's no room for you in this family."
Anyway, that was my family life in a nutshell. So, here I was an 18-year-old, coming from all of that, and I went to this college back east that had no rules whatsoever. I was out of control. I drank two nights a week, then I started drinking three to four nights a week there, because I made it so I only had classes Monday through Thursday. I only finished four classes in the whole year.
I always felt like if I had a boyfriend that would fix everything and make me better, and that's where I'd get the love that I never got.
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