December 1982
Excerpts from my journal
“David really likes me but one doesn’t want to charm a man in the midst of a divorce. I am a much better, more sensitive listener than when I was drunk. Bill’s girlfriend is nice but catty.” I have no idea who any of these people are. There are several pages about a terrible accident that befell my roommate and put her into a month’s long coma. Then this: ”I’m gonna henna my hair tonight! Leave it on until its bright red!”
Molly Moynahan’s jouranl, 1982
And this: “I am my father’s child, a writer, full of charm, paralyzed, struck down, crippled by alcohol.” I babysat for Roger and Carol Angell’s child in Brooklin, Maine for many years. He is the grandson of E. B. White. “Molly-age fifteen – Bared her breasts to the boat boy. God, God damn. Shame. Loved John-Henry yet drank like a fish as his babysitter. Passed out so the house might have burned down. Could I ever tell them that? I did love him.”
And this. “Raymond, the boy from the Y came over and got high. He’s a pretty odd duck. I’m not too impressed by his grasp on realty. (Wants to be a hippie in Vermont.) Writing sometimes seems as natural as breathing to me. But then, how natural is breathing?”
We continue. Talk about going off sugar, going off men, finding a job, finding a job that makes me write, “This job is so easy I think I could do it in my sleep.” I have no idea what job this was. Apparently, it didn’t provide a credit card. “Today at lunch I realized I am an adult trying to rent my own car, unsuccessfully. Lacking a major credit card. Oh well.”
And finally, this, “It’s all very well to turn your life over to god but he’s not going to make small talk with you at parties or intervene on your behalf with your mother who believes my being an actress is beneath me.”
In 1982 I was twenty-five, my eldest sister was alive and well, my best friend had been killed four years earlier. I was trying to get sober, obsessed with my weight and men and my parent’s approval. I wanted to write and act and not drink again. I would drink again. My roommate would wake from her coma and recover because she was determined to take her life back. I wish I better understood how hard that was for her. From my perspective ( forty years plus ), this girl is a mess, funny, angry, needy, confused. Constantly doubting herself in terms of men and I can’t remember who 98% of these men she mentions were! Apparently, I was good at meeting them, not so good at keeping them in my life probably because I was spinning too fast to be held down. And, trying to figure out my father. A dead-end for sure.
– Molly Moynahan