not enough

surviving is not enough.
not really.
what is that bullshit line of the century, ‘that which does not kill you shall make you stronger..’
really? Sound like nothing but a load of crap to me because if it were true I would be miss fucking universe or something but instead I am a nobody from nowhere hiding in the dark.

that is how life is. or should I say, that is how my life is. you can feel it really. when you are born into the pit of hell and you have to fight every day for your soul and your sanity and someway you manage to survive, with a few missing parts and a few broken pieces, plaster and putty, hiding the empty holes..
hiding..
but that was not enough....

no....
not nearly enough, for your childhood is just the beginning.
you must move on, continue forward
you must apply what you learned in the real world. you must go outside, kill the demons , make a comfortable place in the world.
u go girl.
the little family home is not big enough.
money money money money.
i’ve done all I can do at home, now I must learn how to make money.
no problemo...


I remember how I felt when my father died in 1995. I had been waiting for years, thinking and believing that when it happened, when he finally died, that I would be free. that this tremendous burden would be lifted off my soul and I would be free to live my life with carefree abandonment. happy ever after were just lies and bullshit. Needless to say it didn’t work out like I had visualized it. Instead of my burdens vanishing into nothingness, my mind was flooded with horrible memories and flashbacks.
i knew my kinks and my quirks. I knew why I carefully chose to do almost everything that I did. I knew why I reacted and responded to certain thing in certain ways. I knew most of my triggers.
but that was not enough....
no...

where was the freedom? where was my power to overcome? it never failed me when I was a small child and the events were actually happening. so why were the memories so disabling? it was all in my head. why couldn’t I just blink and change the thoughts floating around inside my brain. why couldn’t I just not think about something I didn’t want to think about? For years I use books, cable tv, movies, music, video games, and the computer as my mind altering drugs.
But that was not enough…
no...

Avoiding unresolved issues only lengthens the time it takes to heal. I was trying to fix my adult problems by using my old childhood tools. perhaps because i never allowed myself to feel the reality of the moment the first time around it caused the flashbacks to become a wicked bitch-slap in the face.

happiness is a state of mind. scars are a statement of reality. I am strong. I know I have the ability to survive. Yet from the moment I was born I have been waiting to die. To leave and move on, go back to where I came from, to that better place in the sky, that heavenly place my mother told me stories about...

the truth is i’ve never been afraid to die, i'm afraid to live.

But that is not enough….
no....

I want more than the happy ending.
I want my life,
my whole life,
and nothing but my life
so help me God

stamp of love

Rarely did my mother go out when we were young. So when she did she made the very most of it. Mom loved to get all dolled up. She would do her hair, nails, makeup, fancy girl clothes, you know, the works. It was always an all day affair. It took time to transform from an ordinary house wife into an extraordinary beauty queen. She just loved the entire process. I remember how she was happy and excited and her mood was so contagious.

It would start early in the morning with the washing and rolling of her long brown hair. She had these huge bright green plastic rollers. They had holes in them big enough for me to stick the tip of my pinky finger inside. The giant curlers came with these gray hair clips with little plastic tips on the ends so they wouldn’t scratch the scalp. Mom would use a comb to part a section of her hair. Roll her wet hair tightly around the large curler and secure it in place with a clip. Sometimes mom would hold her pins in her mouth as she rolled her hair up. Sometimes my sisters and I would hold them for her, hand them to her, when needed. She repeated the process over and over again till her entire head was completely covered and there wasn’t a stray hair to be found. After that she would cover her head with a silky multicolored floral scarf. It was nothing to go to the grocery store and see other mom’s with their hair done up the exact same way, curlers and scarves.

In the afternoon, Mom would give herself a manicure and a pedicure. this always require a lot of tools. nail files and clippers, cotton balls and Q-tips, with many little bottles of nail polish. She would lay out a wash rag and neatly line everything out. She would soak her feet in a basin of warm water with some secret potion to make her skin silky soft. than my mom would paint her finger nails a deep ruby red. my sisters and I would always be ready and waiting with the Q-tips and a bottle of nail polish remover just in case she painted outside the lines.

in the evening when it was an hour or so before time to go she would begin her make-up. Mom stood in her slip with her back to us. our eyes would be glued to her reflection in the mirror. she always made funny faces as she put on her makeup. she would start by smearing beige lipstick under her eyes. why are you putting lipstick under your eyes? lip stick goes on you lips. my older sister would laugh and say no silly that isn’t lip stick, it’s cover up stick. you use it to cover up the dark circles under her eyes. she would pluck her eyebrows than darken them with a pencil. brush on eye shadow and glue on false eyelashes. blush time was funny face time. she would stretch her jaw, raise her eyebrows high on her forehead and paint her cheeks .
the lip stick always caused a giggle or two. how could it not make us laugh with the big O mouth, try to stay in the lines, than the big toothy grin to make sure no red lipstick on the pearly whites.

Way back when, big hair was in. to have big hair you have to tease and tease and tease some more. my mother’s dark brown hair was long and thick. it took some time to tease it all. My sister’s and I always giggled when she had all her hair sticking straight up on end before she began to gentle brush it down in again.

why do you brush your hair back down after you spent all that time teasing it up mommy? she would look at me and laugh, ‘well don’t you think (tink) they (dey)would laugh at me if I went to the(de) party with my hair sticking up?’

she smelled of hair spray, face powers , and jean-nate. a light sweet fragrance that always defined mom.
My sister’s and I were the four little Indians watching mom put on her war paint. some days we would be there from beginning to end. other days one of us would just happen by and see that she was holding her hair pick in one hand and the tube of V05 in another and run screaming down to the hall, “mom’s teasing her hair! mom’s teasing her hair!” and of course we would all race into watch her finish.

mom would dance the gig getting into her panty hose, slip into her party dress and high heel shoes, turn and look at us all.
“so, how do I look?”
“Beautiful!”
and she was.
and she still is.

she would give us each a kiss on the cheek.
mom’s lip prints,
a stamp of her love

whatever happens happens

i attended a funeral this week of an elderly gentleman who was a distant relation to my husband. funerals are often difficult to bare whether you have an emotional bond to the person or not. unfortunately they tend to remind me of past funerals, darker days i never wish to revisit. that combined with the dress code requirements; girl clothes, make it an extremely uncomfortable experience. so, needless to say, i was not looking forward to going.

i did think of my father but surprisingly it really wasn't that horrible. the emotional backwash i was expecting never came. i was not overwhelmed with unresolved moments. instead i just remembered bits and pieces of past days without all the extras.

perhaps i am turning an emotional corner in my life.

the most unsettling thing to realized about my father was that even though he was a monster, child molesting, wife beating drunk, he wasn't that all the time. there are days and moments and memories that pop into my head that are pleasant and happy. why couldn't he just be a complete and total monster? why did he have to have a kind and gentle side? it was confusing to live with and i hated it. i wanted him to be a man or a monster but not a combination of both.

but i guess that's not human nature. we switch and swing with our moods and emotions
changing on a daily basis, some of us just have better control than others and just like all the other abusers in the world, it's the ones you least expect that hurt you the most.

i find myself wondering which parent was the biggest baddest monster living in my childhood house.

my father taught me the importance of controlling my emotions. in order to survive my childhood i found it necessary to be in complete and utter control of all my feelings and emotions. if any thing, either good or bad, like or dislike was revealed, it could and would be used against me.

my mother taught me that i should always put myself last. that i should never think of my feelings, my needs, and my desires first. everyone around me was more important, more valuable, more than myself.

i keep trying to hold on, to be more for my mother than what she was for me. but i feel i'm loosing my grip, i'm letting her slip through my finger.
i don't feel guilty. i don't feel conflicted. i don't feel bad for not being 'good' or doing the right thing. and for the first time in my life i don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks about how much i'm doing or not doing to help care for my mother.

i decided to allow my mother's life to finish just as it was lived. give it to God.
whatever happens happens.

whack a few balls

i feel myself falling into my old hermit mode again, pulling away from all those nearest and dearest to me and trying to disconnect from everyone and everything. i did this the last time i got a job, my focus turned to the random strangers floating in and out of my life. is it bad to give so much to people that in a years from now will no longer be in my life? why are there so many miserable people in the world? why do i feel so compelled to try and make their life more enjoyable.

i should walk away. i should leave now but it's too late. they already like me and we all know how painfully dangerous that can be.

what the fuck is wrong with me?

nothing, i'm not going to fix myself anymore.
i'm just going to be who i am.

it's okay if i sit in mcdonalds for fifteen minutes and listen to a woman's life story while i drink a small coke. it's okay if a local pastor always gives me a brand 'new' pen that doesn't write. it okay if i allow myself to become entertained and mildly attached to all these nameless people.

maybe i'm not in a hermit mode, maybe i am just giving my time and energy away to strangers instead of sharing it with my friends and family. is it possible to go to work and just work? is it possible to not make emotional connections? i think if i stand stone faced and try not to talk while i work than i will end up just as sad and miserable as everyone else in the store.

that is not who i am. that is not who i want to be. i want to be happy and jolly and i want to enjoy the second half of my life at least twice as much as the first half.

i refuse to live (and die) like my parents: angry, miserable and unfinished.
i'm going to shoot targets at the range. i'm going to buy some golf clubs and whack a few balls. i'm going to learn how to dance. and i'm going to talk to all those strangers at work and give them all my very best.

what prompted all this? i had an angry customer screaming in my face a few nights ago. i don't react or respond well to anger. i never have. i guess the first thing i thought about when it happened was why am i here listening to this bitchy bitch? at first i didn't say anything to her at all. i just stood there and listened to her ranting. which made her even more angry. than i did the old "the customer is always right" route. which made her even more furious and made me think about quiting my job.

one angry bitch. am i really that weak inside?

enjoy the laughter

i've been spending more time with my mom lately. some days are good and other days, like today, are just hilarious. i keep waiting for chevy chase to pop out of the background and shout "cut! great job people, that's a wrap".

last week i took her shopping, dragged her around while i picked out which box of cereal would best fit in my pantry. my husband and i had a little squabble over nothing minutes before i was to go meet with my mother so i was not in the best of moods. i am certain that i was pissy and rude almost the entire time i was with her and of course i didn't explain why my mood was sour. so while driving her back to her apartment i felt overwhelming burst of guilt for being in a nasty mood. we were only together for a few hours. i should be more tolerant. i should be more understanding. i should be more....
she was babbling and i was just nodding my head and not really listening to anything she was saying. she was talking about her car, how she needed to go to the car wash, wash her windows, than the long story spilled out...
on my last day off i decided to wash my car windows, they were filthy. so bad that i could hardly see through them when i'm driving. so i took my windex and my paper towels outside and started spraying and wiping down the windows, i did the front windshield and both sides before i realized it wasn't my car...
what?!!? omg! what?
yeah, can you believe it? well by the time i realized it wasn't my car i was almost done. so i figured, what the hell, might as well do the whole damn thing. so i did. man those windows looked good too. can you believe i wasted all my paper towels on my neighbors car? didn't have any left for my car windows. and of course she never noticed a thing, the damn birds shit so much, it's impossible to keep the cars clean anyways, i don't know why i bother.

she laughed the entire time she was telling me this story. than she laughed about laughing, said she could really believe what she had done, and laughing was better than crying. when i pulled up in front of her apartment she pointed out the car she mistook for her own.

OMG! it was nothing like her car. it wasn't even the same size, shape or color! completely different make and model!


today she just received her first social security check. we talked about the next step in her retirement goals. she was happy, seems comfortable with the plans of no longer working. we said good bye and hung up the phone.

she calls me back five minutes later and tells me happy birthday.
what? mom, my birthday was last week, you came to my house, we had pizza and beer together.

my mother has misremembered almost every unpleasant or painful event in our life together. why should now be any different? she is aware of what she is loosing, that her mind, her memories, are slowly slipping away.

my older sister feels sad for her; sorrow and pity. i honestly don't know what i feel. mostly i am impatient, irratated, and angry. i don't know who is more confused by my lack of empathy, my mother or myself. for now my mother chooses to laugh at her mindless mishaps and i will continue to laugh with her. what else is there to do?

so like my mother, i will let everything else roll away and enjoy the laughter.

life is just a blur most days. some how i let myself get lost in the minute details and can't focus on the big picture. and even though i realize this i still, day after day, year after year, continue to repeat the journey. perhaps i still hope for miracles, that things will change in my life, that i will be more than what and who i am today.

have i lived to my full potential? have i given enough to the world? have i made it a better place for myself and my family to live in?

my new years resolutions was never to make another new years resolutions again. i'm not going to lose weight. i'm not going to diet. that would require eating less and exercising more. i like food. i'm flabby. fuck it.

change must be welcomed and embraced, not rejected and shunned. i'm climbing to a new plato in my life. for the first time, i can't see ahead, i don't have a purpose or a clue where i will end up or whom i will be meeting once i arrive. does that make sense? that since i was a small child i plotted my life course to a certain point, all my energy, time, focus was set upon surviving, overcoming my childhood abuse and not allowing it to negatively effect my future children. but i never dreamed of what would happen beyond that. what would happen once they were adults and living their own lives.

at first i was overcome with fear and i had a horrible sense of displacement. a fish out of water, what do i do now? i don't have a career, i have no technical skills other than toilet washing and g baking cookies, so what is there for me to do? i have to have a reason, i have to have a purpose for existing, i have to have a spiritual, mental, and/or emotional goal i am striving for.
when i was a child i prayed for strength, wisdom and understand. what child asks god for world peace and a sex change? now i think the peoples of this world will never stop fighting each other, i'm finally comfortable in my own flabby skin.

i'm happy with my choices i've made thus far. i am exactly the person i was born to become. my potential, like everyone, is only limited when i make it so. i decided to no longer be displaced and lost without set goals and guidelines, i decided to change direction by having no direction at all. i decide to stop trying to fix my inner child and just set her free.

today is my friends birthday. blessings to her, today, tomorrow, and always.
touch my soul, nic