Just Letting it OUT, in Safety

I've always been angry and it would seem it was a side effect of the toxicity injected into my childhood. There was no alcoholism, no drugs, no rape or molestation, just emotional and verbal abuse, adultery, physical violence, delusion, and deceit.

I was writing nasty things about myself on my skin as a small child, in pen and permanent marker on my belly and my thighs, places that were covered up and no one could see. 

I was cutting myself by age 7 and attempted suicide that same year. I would self inflict my first tattoo by 11, and find cocaine in the year between 11 and 12 which relieved much of the feelings of wanting to do harm to myself.

In fact cocaine gave me reason to live. The ecstasy I received from cocaine delivered me into a whole new world. My parents mattered nil. In fact the money that surrounded the cocaine lifestyle left me needing them very little at all.

By 14, I would be virtually on my own. Hustling, going to school, never sleeping, having sex with men in their 20's... I got a restaurant job when I turned 15 and I had legit income and drug money, I was pulling about 1200 dollars a week. My father was out fucking other women, my mother was working and gone about 15 hours a day. When my father discovered evidence of my lifestyle he would "ground" me, but having little control and no support from the other parent, I would defiantly go on with my life as if there were no rules.

I was always fighting or fucking when I wasn't working or in school. I loved the bad boys and I was sure that I would have my chance with all of them (and I did).

At 15 my childhood best friend's older sister would date the baddest boy of em all. I remember telling my friend I was going to have him. She was shocked when 3 years later I would run away with him. But we will get to that soon enough...

At 17, I graduated high school and my mother paid cash for college, my father was long gone at this point. I would be on the highway to hell with drugs, but arrogantly unaware of the signposts on my journey. My college professor and I had a sexual affair which would destroy his career and inflate my ego. The sordid and reckless tale of my "rock star years" would be told in the chapter affectionately coined, my "world tour".

Baddest Badboy would be nearly 21 when we reunited after 3 years. I think he knew I wanted him, but was cognizant of the fact that I was only 15 at the time. Truth is, at 18, he ruined it for other guys for many years to come, 15 would have been just too damn soon to get his hooks into me.

We had a lot of sex, reckless and unprotected, indoors, outdoors, in public, you name it. I was 18 and really just discovering the dimensions of my own sexuality. Although I had been sexually active for 6 years already, I had never had an orgasm and I didn't even know it. Sex felt good and I loved anything that felt good... but then Ohhhh wow, this is a whole different ballgame now, boy. This bad ass motherfucker knew ALL of the moves, hit ALL of the right spots, and was the oral sex MASTER, and THAT was rare in 1991 among the man boys that I'd been playing with.

We happened to be on a crime spree when we were running all over the damn country and Hawaii, so I couldn't get all soft and deal with the sappy part of being in love with him. I needed to show him I was as badass as he was and make this trip one for the history books.

It was, even 20 years later, he's married to a good woman, I sent him a message saying, "Where were you 20 years ago today?"

His response, "Making unforgettable memories and having the greatest time of my life with you".

We were addicts, caught up in the thrill and the rush and the level in which we were both willing to bring it. It wasn't long before I would wind up in prison, he would be engaged, and we would be no longer.  In retrospect, everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to. I needed a wake up call, he would get his a few years later. I came home to get with a guy I had been messing with, that was only interested in showing me affection when drunk. 

He knocked me up, we made it official, I had the baby, a little girl. This was my chance to put my past behind me. By my daughter's 5th birthday, I was done with her father, he never had a job or any interest in being a family, he worked for beer and didn't draw a sober breath for the duration of our relationship. 

I wasted no time getting down with a co-worker and local musician. He played bass in a classic rock cover band. He was "going through a divorce", so I was there to soothe. He also didn't work, but at least wanted to live with me. He would also want to control me and scream at me and beat me. I began to abuse anxiety and pain medication. There were numerous emergency room trips with broken ribs, a sprained wrist, a broken collar bone, and sprained neck, combined with 3 moves in 3 years due to landlord involvement of our domestic issues.

The last apartment had a back door where I would narrowly escape with my daughter under my arm and drive her to my (now retired) mother's house. In the grand scheme this would be a disastrous choice, however the lesser of two evils nonetheless. I did not have the emotional stability to get rid of this madman AND heal from my wounds while raising a kid alone.

I returned to a nightmare beating, and days later the relationship would end with me in a hospital being treated for a broken jaw and he locked up behind bars. Once again everything happened exactly the way it needed to, as he was still married, was never going through a divorce, instead was going to court for beating his wife.

Another signpost I was unable to recognize, that I was pulling this chaos into my life because didn't know how to cope with my own emotional trauma from childhood.

At my emotional rock bottom with no coping skills, no family support, ashamed and embarrassed, a friend came to bail me out of financial ruin by taking over my daughter's room and paying my rent and back utility bills. He was a platonic friend, and a life saver. 15 years my senior, he treated me like a kid sister. But he was an addict too, and not hard to manipulate into bringing home my first and only true love, cocaine.

Reunited with coke, after almost a decade, I had found inner comfort at last. Cocaine brought out the funny side of me, my sense of humor was sick and twisted, I couldn't produce a tear to cry if I had wanted to, I was never shy, I could always make a friend in any setting. Guys loved me, girls loved me, and I was hyper-sexual to begin with. My life felt continuously positive. My career was beginning to catapult, I was a young 30, and vibrant, I was eager to succeed.

Like everything I ever loved, cocaine would betray me. What used to bring me out into the spotlight was pulling me in and keeping me at home more. What I used to look forward to in the evening, I now needed to get out of bed. All that I wanted so badly, I couldn't care in the least about. Fear and paranoia began to overshadow my confidence and self assured appearance. Soon, I would find myself in the depths of my addiction's depravity, barricaded in a bathroom, crawling on the floor, hallucinating, and still wanting more.

In a moment of clarity, I got up can called for help, cocaine wasn't working anymore, the isolation was too loud for me to stand as the only thing for me to hear was the noise in my own head. My mind wanted me dead and for that moment at least, I wasn't wanting to die.
After 90 days of rigorous honesty (as much as one can muster having been clean for the first time in years with no ability to reflect or relate) I was suddenly 7 years old again. Writing horrible things on my body, cutting myself, confused, depressed, terrified, unable to trust or be trusted... homicidal, suicidal again. I would check myself into a hospital and find that I require the safety net of a structured environment. Yet more than a few days of structure and routine only serve to antagonize my psychosis. I've yet to learn how to allow redundancy to penetrate my life without breaking out into a rage.

I deliberately removed anything routine or planned out from my life. I take a different route to work every day, I listen to a different radio station or genre of music altogether. Even the repetitive sound of fire or burglar alarms, car alarms, police or emergency sirens can set me off. I HATE techno music or anything with the same beat pattern or melody that goes on for more than 4 bars at a time. Certain tones, like those which mimic my mother's condescending voice, go right through me. Patterns annoy me, visual and audio, yet I am a whiz at identifying patterns and making proactive analysis from them. Trends annoy me: douchey boys with faux-hawks and white framed sunglasses, sporting Ed Hardy clothing walking around looking like catalog cut outs from a Jersey Shore photo shoot made me want to kick babies. I've learned to let the things that annoy me go, as they aren't going to cease until they've run their course.

I will have to deal with my intolerance of things. I will have to deal with my emotional pain. I will have to face the truth about it all eventually, a day at a time. Things will happen the way they are supposed to, and there will be signposts that I miss, and there will be things that I defiantly cling to or discard altogether. When the pain is great enough, I will buckle down and do the next right thing. Or I won't and I will write more self loathing angry pieces like this one. Because 7 years after the devastating emotional realization that got me to stay clean, I am here AGAIN...
After having rebuilt a portion of my life with the help of DBT therapy, some 12 step programs, and a high degree of internal fortitude dropped into whatever situations which I would find myself lacking faith in. 

Today I AM finding friends, I'm having fun, things are good, and then there is guilt, so I'm pulling myself inward again, isolating, feeding my fear, overwhelmed by the noise of my own thoughts, drinking, dreaming of cocaine, knowing it's not something I can do in safety, knowing it's a big lie, wanting to cut myself, hurt myself, kill myself.

I can't live this way, I can't fathom or accept being "broken" like this forever, I don't want to take their pills or be adjudicated a mental defective, I don't want to live among some fucking clan of anonymous rejects. I work really hard toward creating a better life for myself. I just want to be free, I want to succeed, and I want to be loved, is that too fucking much to ask for?

The Thief Called Love

People are drawn to me, they call upon me, they often ask me for advice which I have no qualifications to give. 

I am very careful not to give advice, but to give factual accounts and reflections of my own behavior as it mirrors what they are exhibiting in their moment of need. Mostly to reassure that their conundrum is not some strange alien behavior, but a common thread between us all. "You are not alone, I feel this too sometimes, in fact, we ALL go through this in one way or another, it's OK, relax, you are perfectly normal". Typically when someone asks me for advice, they are merely seeking validation.

One thing we all struggle with is love. Love occurs naturally, yet we feel we can manipulate nature and people and manufacture or facilitate the cultivation of love.

We don't understand it, yet we desperately want it. When we have it we don't even recognize it, we certainly can't control it. It's like a spell has been cast upon us when love comes around. Under the spell we act erratically, irrationally, fanatically, neurotically. Some of us have deep emotional scars so we feel like we need to avoid it, disregard it, ignore it, or cast it aside. However we can't control it and when we try to we end up hurting the other party deeply.

I see all of this; I can articulate it, blog about it, recognize it in my own behavior patterns. I admit it, I work on it, I am the epitome of "seat of your pants" living. People surround me, and all of those who ask for my thoughts, my advice, my validation, my opinions... somehow they get stronger, their lives improve, they move on, their love comes true, they succeed, they get married, start families, and even stay together for decades or life. I continually struggle and at times, inevitably suffer, through the depraved, and even deranged, self destructive phenomenon that accompanies depression, loneliness and the lack of feeling loved. 

What makes me so unworthy? 

How can they have true love when I'm the one following the suggestions, doing all the work on myself, trying to be a better person? 

When will it be my turn to be blissfully ignorant, fat, dumb and happy in love?

When will someone hold me in his arms and tell me that everything is going to be OK, and mean it down to the root of his soul?

When will I believe it?

How will I trust it?

Love is a drug and like all drugs, it has taken from me.

Love flew in and scooped up my best friend and pulled her off into another direction now I barely hear from her.

Everything I feel, everyone I meet, I desperately wonder, "Is this love? Finally here to take me off to a happier world?" But no, it's not. It's just more pain, shame, toxicity, abuse.

Love comes to everyone who gets close to me, their relationships with their own families improve, and they get swept off their feet. While it rips a hole in my gut to feel and to show happiness for them, the absence of love burns like lava through that hole and leaves a deeper, darker scar on my soul. 

At what point is enough truly enough?

Give it a Name, Who's to Blame? I've Got No Shame!

Expectations based on warped ideas of "the norm"
Never account for the ashes from which I was born.

There's a cloud of destruction, for miles behind

Masquing every indication of an unsound mind.

Your hope is that I bridge this ridiculous gap
In a union absent of foundation, liable to snap

A pawn, a novelty, a doll, an excuse
Used to continue this ugly cycle of abuse

You mixed to produce life and tossed it into your clutter
Decades passed, destiny delivered me up out from the gutter

Disqualified, discounted, discontent, and diseased
I was the one who was crazy, it set YOUR mind at ease.

My instinct is what cautioned me from following your lead
Your self centered motives came before my emotional needs

Finger pointing at each other was your one claim to fame
Passing the buck, playing dumb, always pushing off the blame

I learned to adapt, from manipulation, evolved a fine art
To get what I want was habitual, I had a talent for it, I was smart

But you didn't even know me, your own flesh and blood
Busy chasing your own demons, pushing me down in the mud

The hurt turned to hate, the sadness to rage, and the lonely became lost
"THE ICK", that black hole in my soul proved to be the highest cost

Fighting down through the sordid dimensions of hell
I tapped out, had enough, and the ref rang the bell

Healing began when I let go of the blame
Disallowed your shame,
and could utter your NAME (again) and not shed a tear.

Identity is something I never learned,
I must have missed that class, unconcerned

Defiance was just a defensive support,
Allowing the distance required to abort, from this family facade, this delusional game
I wanted out, to be free, and to change my tainted name.

I worked hard, and I cried,
confessed wherever I had lied
I admitted things I thought I'd take to the grave
Later to find it was what made me a slave

I worked with others, I gave back to the group
Each day brought me toward the center of the loop
"Stay on the edge and you may fall out"
Cautioned my sisters who knew what it was all about

I'm grateful today for the new life which I've built
free from bondage of remorse, of shame, and of guilt

I feel regular feelings, and live a good life
I'll never be perfect, there will always be strife
If I choose to engage, mindful is the way,
My tongue is still sharp, I live just for today.

There is a path before me, it's not always clear
What I let get in front of me begins with fear.

Others who share experience give me strength to cope
We all struggle with it too, and that brings ME hope
When we can't find it within us, faith appears to be gone
Yet it sorts itself out, and there is a new dawn

Buckle up, hang on tight, and just come along!

IN2L2BWUMHB... another portion of correspondence with my father.

...

Christmas was rough without my friends or family. I can imagine that you were met with some unexpected sadness being the first holiday season without Mimi (even just to speak with on the phone). It's been a LONG time since I had heard from Mimi, so my memories of holidays with her and Pepere were very pleasant for me.

This was my second Christmas without {my daughter) in my life. Not for lack of trying on my part. God damn my mother is good at what she does... I really feel like (my daughter) sold her soul to the devil for some material bullshit and unlimited cash flow.

But I need to live my life and let her follow whatever path lay ahead, just like you had to with me.

More and more I understand how frustrated and dis-empowered you were 30 years ago. Yet our relationship still lacks so much.

If it never resonated or meant anything before, please know, Dad that I do love you very much. I've processed and worked through my resentments and emotional issues from my childhood (most of them, anyway). I used to be sour about the fact that you left me behind and got a "do over" with some other woman and 3 other kids. Today I realize you needed to fulfill your own happiness and pursue a better life. Sometimes I wish that it had played out differently, you might have actually known your granddaughter. However I realize the Zen in phrases like, "It is what it is".

Basically, everything has unfolded exactly the way it needed to, in order to get us all to where we are today. You needed to demonstrate your ability to be the husband and father figure that you always known in your heart you could be.

A great friend gave me this: IN2L2BWUMHB

Translated: It's Never 2 Late 2 Be What U Might Have Been

Dad, this is our story!

I've got so damn many dreams and ideas and convictions. I want to do great things, and for the first time in my life I know that I will. YOU are the power of example that helps me to believe it today.

Please stay in touch with me. I will do a better job at that as well.