Why Did You HATE ME So?

I’ve spent most of my life wondering why you never loved me.

I’ve wondered why you didn’t want my father to love me, and why you didn’t want me to love my father.

I watched you push me away like you pushed him away and I allowed you to turn my daughter on me the way you turned me against my father.

I always felt like you hated me. Since I was 7 years old, I was pretty sure you didn’t want me. You worked a million hours and never wanted to be home with me. I used to cry myself to sleep at night with visions of you in a car accident or a fire and you were never coming home.

My father only tried to do what was best for me; he had no help and no parenting skills of his own. History would repeat as it did for me, with my daughter.

Dozens of hospitalizations and surgeries and calls from hospital staff and both institutional and outpatient therapists, not once did you answer the phone or return a call. As well as 7 years of sobriety and never did you come to support me, see me or help me in any part of my recovery.

But I’ve been out of your life and her life for so long now; I’m interested in hearing all about your success. How much better is life without me? How has my daughter matured in the time that you’ve had alone with her? Tell me how she’s doing at WORK, tell me how self-sufficient she is, and tell me how proud you are of her.

I have contacted her but she hates me. That’s all you. You got what you wanted all along, your second chance… You didn’t change a fucking thing. The only reason she’s not on drugs or drunk is because you made food her addiction instead. If she knew cocaine would help her drop 150 pounds she'd be stealing your checkbook just like I did.

The events of the day that ended my contact with you were truly insane. We were supposed to have Sushi for LUNCH, but you purchased a dinner sized entrée and gave it to her  to eat ON TOP OF the dinner sized entrée she ordered herself. You are feeding her like you did to me. She’s heavier than I ever was. That’s not emotional eating, that’s a LEARNED behavior. You TAUGHT us how to use numb the pain.

You took guardianship of my daughter and signed for her to drop out of school. You never wanted what was best for my little girl. You wanted her away from me. Now what do you have? You have your homegrown adult child, wearing out the furniture, eating everything in sight, running up the bills and going nowhere.

Yes, mother, your words ring true, I was always screwed up. Denial on your part that your contribution played a role, the only chapter from my childhood that hasn’t been amended. My life improves without the thought of you in it. My pain is lessened when you aren’t here to slice me up and rub salt into the wounds. I hate you for living long enough to hurt me that one last time but I am not angry with you anymore. My acceptance came when the 7 year old girl who lives inside my broken heart was finally able to mourn her mother’s soul. Damn you for stealing my daughter’s.

She will always be MY daughter, you can manipulate her memories, you can poison her mind with your lies, but you can’t wash me out of her DNA… Mark my words, if I die before you, I swear to EVERYTHING you find sacred, I will see she is protected while you suffer a long, grueling and painful, merciless death.

The War Between My Ears

Dear _______, 

Oh how you frustrate me so! 

You've never failed to be right here whenever I need to see you. I love you for that... But I hate you, I wish you weren't always here, I wish I didn't have to look at you everyday. I try to ignore you, I try to believe the lies I tell myself, I wish you would just go away. Go Away, Get out of my life, I'm so sick of you!

Wait, Come Back!

I'm desperately crying out to you in the night, I need you, where are you? I am imprisoned in my own mind, I have no one to set me free but you. I need the solution, I fail miserably without you! Where have you gone, why won't you tell me the answer? I know you are there, reveal yourself!!

Ouch!! Why do you have to sting me so hard? Why does your very existence hurt me so? Why is pain the only method you use to present yourself to me? Can't you be more kind and gentle with me?

What do you mean I am not kind and gentle to myself?

What do you mean I won't remember the lesson if I don't feel it?

I hate when you're right. Why do you always have to be right? When will I know what's best for me? When can I have a chance to prove I can do it myself? I don't need you! I'll show you. You'll see! 

How could you? I can't believe you abandoned me like that. I hate you. Step up and show yourself! You are such a... You are so... Grrrr. I can't even face you right now!

Can you figure out "who" I'm grappling with?

If I told you the "TRUTH" would you re-read my blog post?

AA is a group of sick people working to get well, we go to learn how to live a quality life without alcohol (and/or drugs). With the help of those who came before us, we watch the others, we take what we need and we leave the rest, we try to live a day at a time without hurting one another, and we work on our individual shortcomings rather than pointing out the shortcomings of others, these are all things that do not come easy for the alcoholic, which is why we keep coming, and in time, things get better. We learn about things like patience and tolerance, we hear and see slogans on banners that say things like, "Live and Let Live" and they suddenly start to mean something to us, we are able to reflect back upon our own behavior in early recovery, and we start to see how sick we truly were, and years later, if we keep doing the next right thing, we can still see how sick we continue to be, or still are! We learn how to be grateful that this is a journey not a destination, nothing is meant to be done perfectly. I have days where I want to jump out of my own skin rather than to listen to someone dumping their problems on the group, however, I also have days where my problems feel like the most catastrophic issues of the world and when I try to talk about them everything comes out like a manic cyclone of drama and emotion... I don't want to be viewed as the over dramatic psycho, but maybe that is my fear of people actually getting to know who I am inside, childish, grandiose, and insensitive...

18 and Straight-Edge, STILL My Daughter

The more things clear up for me, the sharper the reality becomes. I am a product of two people who have always had their own internal, personal, or even psychological issues and both continually make the same poor choices, and refuse to acknowledge that they "own" even a fraction of accountability for the things that happen in their lives as a result.

That is OK, I have no control over them, or how they wish to live their lives, and I made one poor choice in leaving my daughter with one of these people when I was actively abusing drugs and couldn't take care of her myself. Sort of a lesser of two evils decision, there really wasn't a better one in hindsight. So for the past 6 years while I've been soul searching and working through 12 step programs to make a serious effort to improve my thinking on a daily basis, my child has been living in the very toxicity which I could not bear. I did make room for my daughter to come and live with me, repeatedly extended the offer over the past 4 years and finally stopped asking. She knows that she wouldn't be allowed to live the way she does where she is. (Up all night on the computer or playing video games, sleeping all day, no job, poor hygiene, no structure, no therapy, no school). I can't control how a teenager behaves, but I can lay down the boundaries of what I am willing to tolerate in my own home.

Needless to say because my child has not lived with me for several years and is now 18, she's not really interested in the whole mother daughter relationship. I have talked with her about drugs, about alcohol, about sex, about peer pressure, about anger and rage, she views everything as a lecture, and responds with "I know, Mom". She won't talk about anything but girl gossip and teen-aged drama, I don't  know what to give her on birthdays and holidays, because she is so over-indulged to begin with. She's over 300 pounds, her inevitable addiction has manifested itself in food, although she denies it. I don't know how to help her and suddenly it becomes clear that she doesn't WANT my help. I can't be the one who helps her, I get that, but I am the only one trying. In fact, I am the only person in my family working on improving my life, and that makes me the enemy.

My daughter, views me as an asshole for having not pulled my head out of my ass 12 years before so that I could have been the mother she imagines I would be. My mother thinks that insanity is a choice and blames my father's side of the family for the choices I made which "made [me] crazy". Both are living in the past. I made my amends, and continue to, I follow through by being available and reliable and keeping my promises, my temper improved, although there were many days when I had to cut my visit short, as my bullshit meter was in the red and I was about to blow a gasket.

Which brings us to yesterday. Thanksgiving Saturday with my mother and daughter, out to lunch and to a movie... We get to the restaurant and my anorexic mother says she doesn't want to eat, but orders a meal anyway so that my food addicted daughter can have two entrees. When I make a comment about it, my daughter decides she doesn't want anything at all. The tension begins, there is a disturbance in the force, and I am already the bad guy for having pointed out the obvious. Then we go to the movie, walking back to the car, it is COLD out, my daughter is dressed for early fall not 30 degree weather, starts complaining about the temperature. I point out that she's not dressed for the weather, she argues that her winter coat is no warmer... Naturally, I say, do you need a new winter coat? She says "No, I hate the cold weather" (she has never lived in or even visited ANY other climate). My response is, "OK then, get a job and move out to a warmer part of the world" She SNAPS before I know it she's gone, now my mother and I are sitting in the car while she has her tantrum somewhere outside in this cold which she cannot handle... 30 minutes go by and she finally gets in the car, I ask her why she took off, especially if she is "so cold" she flips out again, almost psychotically, screaming at the top of her lungs and making little to no sense.

The general barrage of fuck you's and I hate you's were followed up by, "You were never there" and "you don't even care" as it turns out, the trigger phrase that had set her in motion was the "get a job" part. "I've been trying so hard to get a job, Mom, you don't even know." A better parent may have allowed this to end right then, however my parents did me a dis-service by not calling me on my lies and bullshit. Earlier in the week and again in the day, I had asked my daughter if she had tried on ANY of the $200.00 worth of clothes that I had bought her 5 weeks prior, "not yet" was the response. Considering those clothes were "help find and secure a job" clothes... Considering every one of her "posts" on social media sites was something about video games or horror movies, and had been time stamped all throughout the hours of the night when most people sleep, and my mother had been complaining to me that she sleeps all damn day long when most people job hunt, I called her out. I threw the bullshit flag, without a notion of my how my actions would be received, and it was ugly.

Although emotionally hung over, I do not regret what I did. I placed the accountability back on my 18 year old, because my mother never did (on either of us). Of course blame has been passed through the family several times, not the same, and not something that I have time for. My daughter has adapted her skills to be in shape for the blame game and this has become very convenient for her. I made it very clear that I wouldn't allow her to lie to herself in my presence. We all make our choices, and we are not victims of the consequences when we make one that doesn't turn out the way we WANT it to. Since life is such a learning experience, I am grateful today for the consequences of my choices, some are a jagged pill to swallow, but all are a direct result of the way I choose to make decisions.

My mother and daughter may never change, what changed yesterday was my participation in their game. I do not have to go to every fight I am invited to. I've changed and I will continue to change, I am a work in progress and I do not do everything right. However, I crawl beneath no one, and owe no more apologies to this family. My amends are continued as I live and continue to grow and continue to learn from the errors of my ways, like any adult is meant to do. I hate the thought that my daughter is inevitably going to have to suffer through some of the most difficult times of her life, almost needlessly until she finds that she's lying to herself and that blame doesn't matter. Other people's behavior doesn't matter, as it is uncontrollable, that all she can control are her own actions and reactions to her choices and consequences. However what she finds along the way is part of her journey, not mine, and I refuse to be abused any longer.

I am NOT OK

I am not strong, so don't lean on me.

I am not smart, you don't want to hear what I think.

I am not sane, stay away! Why are you drawn to me?

Keeping up appearances is about the worst habit I could have picked up along the way. I have perfected the art of creating and presenting a false persona, one far different from what I am or how I feel under my skin. My insides do NOT match my outsides. Like an actor on a stage, I portray a likable and friendly, fun-loving, smart, strong, and well rounded individual. Internally I am antisocial, sad, angry, I spend a great deal of time in the clutches of an agonizing depression. It is like a bad neighborhood that you wouldn't want to be in alone. My gut tells me that these feelings have roots in living this lie which may not be unlike living a double life. A life and a lie which I don't believe I can continue to carry on. 

That is why I started this blog, and it is virtually unknown to people who think they really KNOW me. I want my fresh start on an empty canvas, a clean slate so to speak. I want to be me, without walls, with no aggressive defenses, and no bullshit. I want to make true friends based on who I am inside and that I am working to help myself heal from there, rather than continuously trying to put on a show. Such honesty would be sure to render me powerless over the cruel and calculated predator known as the human animal.

Trust does not come easy, as I feel as though I am vulnerable to exploitation if I am to allow an open view into who I really am. This may be why I am prone to abuse. I generally find the good in all people and become weakened as I listen to their sad, sorry, stories, I make convenient and well packaged excuses for everybody's shit-bag behavior. I put myself in danger by doing so and I continue to allow it and defend it and excuse it over and over and over until it hits a nerve. Then, being the extremist that I am, I turn to drop the motherfucker in the most vicious and dramatic reactionary style that any retaliatory attack could be. Unacceptable behavior needs to be nixed immediately, not tolerated until it reaches a breaking point.

Knowing this, one may presume, is instrumental in getting a handle on it... If only I knew how to view things for what they are as they are happening. I  sometimes feel that I am at an extreme just before I hit a wall and dramatically, I turn radically into the opposite extreme. So when dealing with people and the way I cling to the good and bypass the bad... In that exact moment of discovery, after extracting all possible inner goodness real or imaginary, the only alternative that my mind can see happens in the immediate and turns to complete suspicion and skepticism. Sniff out the conspiracy and go to any lengths to prove that there is one in play. 

I go through phases where I will pass this negative judgment upon any and all who I encounter. Therefor the slightest thing set's my neurosis of intolerance in motion. (As a post-conscious observation... especially relevant in the event of my own misunderstanding). If it defies logic, or neglects to make practical sense in my thought process, my tendency is to adamantly reject it, aborting all other protocols, casting it out as alien, and publicly voicing my displeasure. My sharp wit morphs to a razor tongue which aids in the personal dissection of  character. I'm on auto-pilot, spinning beyond my own control, while systematically, my cyclonic behavior constructs the soapbox that I stand upon while I emotionally execute my newly manufactured enemy.

What has seeded such extremes of passive and aggressive anger inside of me? Why do I continue to allow myself to become enraged when the slightest issue arises? Human beings aren't perfect, we ALL make mistakes, we ALL have issues around admitting we are making them, don't we? Why do I feel in the deepest point of my heart, that I have a purpose on this earth? When will it be revealed? Which way will I turn? Who am I supposed to help? I can't understand this fire and ice, bi-polar, good vs. evil, human oxymoron, love me or fucking kill me... chemical conundrum which drives me and tears me apart from the inside! 

Sometimes I think I can completely  accept all of this. In actuality, it is but a momentary thought that allows me to believe any of this it is within the limits of  my own comprehension. I am told to let it be as it is, but I cannot. At my core I'm a fixer, a problem solver, a puzzle finisher, and I won't stop until I've connected the dots. At this moment, I am in fear I may be losing my grip, I am shredded inside, the pain, it burns deep today, and I fear that I may be falling apart completely.

What have I become?

I was a head strong little girl, much to the dismay of my parents. I never took no for an answer, I rarely did as I was told, I refused to accept fact as fact, I wanted to be just like the people who proved the world wasn't flat. I hated myself yet I held myself at such high regard that I thought the grown ups around me were idiots. This was the birth of the human oxymoron.

Running was what I did whenever I felt the chains of society bind me. I refused to be confined or enslaved, I wanted to explore, I wanted to discover, I wanted to uncover, I wanted to be recognized for a groundbreaking historical find. I've not given up this quest!

As I got older I was impossible to tame, I played sports and was always arguing rules and semantics and never taking any answer as the right one. My teachers and coaches were at a loss. Parents wouldn't let their kids play with me. I was angry, and defiant. I ate what I wanted, slept when I wanted, drank, did drugs, had sex, fought, stole, ran away, worked, went to school, lived away from home, went to college, worked, and fell apart over and over and over again. I went to prison at 19 years old. I got out and more discreet about my beliefs, I kept my opinions to myself and my close friends, I stopped trying to be so extreme with my reckless behavior, I gave up select drugs, which I was sure were the cause of my problems. Inevitably, I was back to the old me in no time.

I had a kid at 21, I was a complete train wreck, I defiantly took her without help gave her a home. I subjected that child to the most depraved and unhealthy moments in my life. I settled for less than what I truly deserved, and I got exactly what I had coming to me. When my daughter turned 7, I dropped her off at my mother's house and never returned for her. This was the moment that I became free to live the way my addiction wanted me to live. I had no morals, no spiritual values, not a lick of common sense, no affinity, no allegiance to anyone or anything but cocaine, my one and only true love.

Cocaine called all the shots, for the next 5 years. Every breath I took was around using or obtaining it. It never rejected me, never neglected me, never hurt me, never promised me anything, it was always there when I needed it most, it always made me feel better, I was popular because I always had it, I wasn't a criminal, I was a rock star, I wasn't hiding, I was advertising, I wasn't lonely, everybody loved me.

Until it stopped working. Nobody trusted me, I was alone, isolated, hiding, paranoid, miserable, full of guilt, shame, remorse, pain, anger, and rejection. I wanted to end my days on this planet, the pain was great enough for me to try one last time to check out for good. I did it, I definitely did it, but nothing happened, my heart should have exploded, it should have stopped, I should have dropped to the floor, I should have had a seizure, a stroke, a heart attack, something. Nothing fucking happened.

The realization that my work here was not yet complete gave me one option, to get help, and there was no better time than the present. My mission was simple, "How the Hell do I exist in society without putting poison in my body? How do I learn to stop fighting everything so furiously?" That's all I wanted, it's all I needed. It's coming true, the answers are being revealed, more and more each day.

It's now 6 years later and so much has changed. So much remains the same as well...

I am defiant, I am full of self will, yet I am humbled, I am less reactive. I want to allow someone into my life today, I'm ready to relinquish some of the power and share it with another human being, a person who is kind and loving, someone whose strengths fill in my weakness and vice versa.