tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61233948914067831652024-03-18T22:49:32.617-05:00Screaming at the Make-BelieveCrayotic Ramblingshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13480766951670643937noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6123394891406783165.post-38614385389575250572010-03-28T20:42:00.005-05:002013-11-03T16:42:09.682-06:00"How did you survive that?"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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I didn't. </div>
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I only lived through it. </div>
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The thing that people who have never "gone through it" don't understand is that in the middle of it all - while it's happening year after year - you are not often of the mind to even consider survival. You just want it to stop. When your parent is going batshit whacko on you with the buckle end of the belt, you're not thinking "Golly Gee Wilikers, now how do I deal with this?" You're thinking things like, "Ow!" and "I hope she doesn't hit me in the eye." and "Did my tooth just get knocked out?" Or "Fuck! That hurt!" (And yes, I thought <i>"Fuck!"</i> at the age of eight.)</div>
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Surviving comes later. As an adult. Surviving comes in (re)learning how to live like a normal human being. How to fuck something up and not cringe and flinch because you'll no longer be beaten within an inch of your life for it. Surviving comes much later in a million different ways you never expected. In discovering what it feels like to be loved in return. In learning the joy of being wanted. In belonging for the first time - EVER. In waking up unbattered and not having to worry about how to hide it from Mrs. Gulledge.</div>
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For me, I am only now beginning to survive it. To pick up the pieces that became my life. Survivorship is dependent on forgiveness - and that can often be far more difficult to endure that a disclocated shoulder or a bruised trachea. The real wounds are on they inside and they bleed freely.</div>
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As a kid, I survived only because they didn't kill me first. It was only physical. It was all I knew. </div>
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As an adult, I am surviving by rebuilding. By learning all the things I was never afforded in my black and blue childhood. Love. Acceptance. Peace. It is a list I hope grows with time.</div>
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I am surviving by closing doors.</div>
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And kicking out windows.</div>
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And letting go. <br />
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And moving on.</div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6123394891406783165.post-12059015013616183082010-03-11T10:08:00.003-06:002013-11-03T16:43:07.853-06:00No Love<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I don't love you, anymore. I am not sure why I ever did. I carried the torch - heartbroken, smashed, destroyed - for a decade. Pining. And then you appeared after all this time. My heart skipped a beat. I remembered. Oh the glory days... New Orleans, where you beat me so bad I had to quit work. California, where you threw the TV on top of me and knocked me down the stairs. Where you put me in a coma and then tried to drag my unconscious body out of the hospital. All the time that you refused to work because you would have to stop using in order to get a job. The relationships you destroyed. The bones you broke. The heart that no longer beats.</div>
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Suddenly from this side of the looking glass, things look quite different. I never realized how strongly heroin affects your eyesight. I never knew cocaine had such a long-term effect on the perception of an otherwise brilliant individual.</div>
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Aching so hard to be loved, the writer in me spun a tale far beyond any reality. <i>"Oh no, when he choked me 'til I passed out and I am wearing turtlenecks in July in California, he was just having a spell. It'll be okay."</i></div>
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In many ways, my fucked up mental state and decade long yearning for you has saved me. I have not been in any modicum of a real relationship since. I have grown to love myself instead of depending on someone to beat their love into me. But, in my defense, that was all I knew. It was my childhood. It was expected. A beating - until I left you - was the only way anyone paid attention to me. Not so now. Never again will anyone raise a hand against me and live to tell. </div>
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I don't know that I ever will date again because of you. That's not a negative. I really don't care to. This journey has made me so much more self sufficient in so many ways. Granted, I am still growing. I still have one last hurdle to overcome and move away from - and it's <i>huge</i> - but it's coming.</div>
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So no, I don't love you anymore. But I thank you for it.</div>
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<i>"Sometimes you meet yourself on the road before you have a chance to learn the appropriate greeting. Faced with your own possibilities, the hard part is knowing a speech is not required. All you have to say is yes."</i><br />
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— Pearl Cleage, "What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day" </div>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6123394891406783165.post-60766836319141708762010-03-07T16:48:00.004-06:002013-11-03T16:43:21.289-06:00Please Pass the Acid (or: An Unbalanced Balancing Act?)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ser0TvH86xI/SvwasasmCOI/AAAAAAAAAwA/pLe3nksSchk/s1600-h/night_owls_at_the_clover_grill_24_x_36.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ser0TvH86xI/SvwasasmCOI/AAAAAAAAAwA/pLe3nksSchk/s400/night_owls_at_the_clover_grill_24_x_36.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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More than a decade has passed since those days on the river, with the smell of desperate chance, chickory and ganga in the air. (Jackson Square at its finest.) Though we were fearful and homeless, in those days we still had hope. The world was smeared out before us for our bleary bidding. Our cares were minimal. Our needs, basic at best. Our greatest concerns were who was holding what that night and what wig to wear with<i> those</i> shoes. We were tactless and tacky and we wore our own inane - if not insane - brand of five-and-dime fabulosity on our sleeves with pride.</div>
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We were The Young Ones. We were the Lost Boys (and gurrls) of the Big Easy: Livin' it hard, burnin' it up, and tearin' it down. What ever <i>it</i> was. Our stage was The Streets. Our cast, a cacophony of Gutter Punks and Drag Queens; High Rollers and Hookers; Poets, Potheads, Vampires, and Waitresses; Runaways and Royalty. We were addicted to the gutted and glittered glamour that was the tourist's Bourbon Street. We were addicted to the rough trade in the back rooms of Rampart. We were addicted to everything in between, never realizing it was all one and the same.</div>
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Looking back now, as what passes for an adult, I often wonder how we survived. We were kidnapped. We were drugged (irony, I know). We were held at gunpoint and raped over the hood of a beat up Chevy, only to learn the gun wasn't loaded. We were arrested; we were released. We stole. We drank. We partied. And eventually, we all turned on one another...</div>
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I guess it's all part of the process. It became the journey that brought us all to the crossroads at which we now stand - good, bad, or indifferent; for better or worse. The destruction was the creation (or was it the other way round?) that destroyed us all, and created the monsters we have become. We are our own end result in whatever medium we now choose to exist... Looking out at yet another smeared world and its own hot mess of possibility. Of promise, perhaps, even?</div>
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Are we really any more the wise now than we were then? Did all the bloodshed and tears and accompanying battle scars really leave us any wisdom in its wake? Or are we just stuck in an obligatory purgatory of all that is expected. In running from that life, did we run headlong into this one - in a losing game of tit for tat???</div>
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I really don't know anymore.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ser0TvH86xI/SvyGbwPCFXI/AAAAAAAAAwY/IH_mmEWCfQg/s1600-h/cheers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ser0TvH86xI/SvyGbwPCFXI/AAAAAAAAAwY/IH_mmEWCfQg/s200/cheers.jpg" /></a>The most disconcerting aspect of it all, though, is that I don't know which is worse: this life, or that one. In this new world, I feel caged. My spirit feels bound and gagged; tethered to a life I don't understand and can not seem to make a go of being a part of. Inversely, who in their right mind would long for a world of park bench amenities and laundry mat Christmases just so their soul felt free?</div>
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Surely there has to be a balance in it all somewhere... Or is <i><b>She Who Holds the Scales</b></i> just as tipsy, fucked up, drunk, and crazy as we all once were.</div>
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Someone please pass the acid... And go ask Alice.</div>
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I think <i>she'll </i>know...</div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6123394891406783165.post-65642165279062771662010-01-12T07:37:00.002-06:002013-11-03T16:43:32.778-06:00This was my normal.<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Insanity runs in my family. Not the locked-in-a-padded cell with Thorazine insane (though some would, no doubt, debate that would help), but more of the barking mad variety. When I was young I was a bit of a wild child, and therefore not often allowed to visit my friends homes, so I never realized that all mothers were not like mine. I did not know that not all mothers smoked and drank and danced around the house wailing to Janis Joplin at the top of their lungs until they just fell down and went to sleep in the foyer. I thought that was how things were done. Mimi (as my mother called herself - she was too young to be a mother and wanted no reminders of it) would often take her "cigarettes" and guitar and her black labeled bottle and climb up onto the roof at night after Trey and I had gone to bed and sing sad songs to the moon about lost loves at Scarborough Faire and dreaming of a world in peace... It became our lullaby as we laid there in the dark. It was normal. But the times, as they say, they were a'changing.</div>
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Elvis died. Then came John's assassination. Then Trey's father, Paul, punched a hole in the wall and left. I don't really remember him much from before he left, but I certainly remember him leaving. It was a three ring event in a psycho circus. He and Mimi were fighting (as usual) but before he could storm out, Mimi proceeded to chunk her old friend Jack at Paul's head, cascading an arc of amber colored courage all over Paul, the tacky orange sofa, and most of the wall. He pitched the bottle back at her, smashing it into the fireplace and sending glittering, stinking shards of glass everywhere. Mimi found this terribly funny and was rolling in the floor screaming in hysterical laughter. Paul was not nearly as amused. He picked Mimi up by her throat and reared back to knock her block off. At the last second, he dropped her to the floor and put his fist through the wall, all the way to the kitchen. That hole stayed in the wall until the day we moved out of that house years and years later; Paul never came back. Not for his clothes, his prized record collection, or even his daughter - nothing. It was the end to end all ends. Mimi became a whole new creature after that. And not in a good way.</div>
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I am not sure if she felt broken, defeated, or just fed up. I do know that after that, nothing was the same. We saw her less and less. When we did see her, sobriety was even more of a rarity. She took a job at some factory on the edge of town working nights and hired an evil, antiquated babysitter named Mizz Iris. Mizz Iris was having none of it from Trey and I. She reminded me of the witch from Hansel and Gretel or Snow White. Mom would come home in the mornings and end her day with a drink - or twenty. By lunch time she was out cold for the day. Mizz Iris would park her rather large and haggard ass in front of the monsterous television to watch The Price is Right and her hours of soaps. We were not allowed to speak, move, or even breathe too loudly. This was when my love for the great outdoors was born. I would have much rather endured a sunburn's sting than risk the wrath of whatever lurked at home. We escaped into fields of weeds that became magical kingdoms in which we both reigned as rulers with wild abandon. We played in the muddy creek behind the house becoming what looked like the spawn of Swamp Thing. We tore through town on our tiny bicycles until our muscles ached and we barely had the strength to walk our bikes back home. We flew through the air on ancient swing sets, letting go at the highest possible peak and launching ourselves into outer space - until we landed with a thud with a mouthful of dirt and grass. We created our own personal Terabithia. No one seemed to miss us; no one seemed to notice. Which was fine with us. In those weeds, and waters, and wilderness, we were free. Free from the screaming, and fighting, and chaos that was our normal. We reveled in our survivorship, never realizing what it was that we were doing at the time. It was not until many years later, after Trey died, that I realized the depth of the sanctuary we created for ourselves - and how much I still carry that with me today. I can't bear to be holed up indoors. I need sun, and grass, and swings, and mud, and the wind in my face or I run the risk of going as mad as the hatter that is my mother. The outdoors of my childhood is what I imagine Heaven to be like, and where I picture Trey at every time I think of her. I can't wait to get back there.</div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6123394891406783165.post-35686637416080998962009-11-29T03:33:00.003-06:002013-11-03T16:43:55.878-06:00Coming Out of the Pain; Umbrella at the Ready<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"It's very difficult keeping the line between the past and the present."</div>
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- Edith "Little Edie" Beale of Grey Gardens</div>
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My life has never been one of luxury. I have never been one to take the easy route - or even known where that route might be if one such exists. The bulk of my life has been a succession of hand offs from whomever wanted me the least to whomever could stand me for the time being. There was never a lot of effort made to actually rectify the problem(s) as much as it was just <i>"Here, you deal with him."</i> As an adult, I am coming to understand just how much that really has shaped who I am and how I deal with things. Or, don't deal with things as the case in point and truth may be. I just walk away. Let it be and watch it fall all to hell and go down in flames. And always from a distance. Distance being key. Next.</div>
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So the grande finale of questions now is: <i>"What do I do about it?"</i> How do I stop the cycle? It's all I have known - starting with the funny farm; then my grandparents; my sister's father; my mother; my mother's husbands... Nothing was ever permanent. Nothing was ever dealt with. An endless series of shuffle the problem child. If they couldn't beat it out of me or shout me into submission, I was passed off like a hot and fetid potato gone to mush. Even in school they didn't know what to do with me. I was dubbed <i>Gifted & Special</i> (heavy on the special, I think) and handed off to the Retard Teacher(s)... Lot of good that did, too.</div>
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I know this now. I recognize it. It has destroyed what life I might have had up until this point and in its wake most of the relationships therein. I just haven't (had) the tools - or even the knowledge of the tools - to begin building something better. I've needed a raft and have been standing knee deep in the river and dying of thirst... Filthy and unable to scrub away the funk. Unable to float away from it all without the fear of drowning in it.</div>
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I often feel like I got beat down with the short end of a shit covered stick engulfed in flames. Like it was all denied me before I even got some vague modicum of a chance to have a go at it. I was described today as Gay (which I am - fine - sobeit) as a negative - in contextual comparison to unwed teenage mothers and cutters; and likened to all as being "trashy." It was a big slap in the face - and quite a wake up call. I forget that such is how people view me. Even, apparently, those closest to me. Just yet another in a string of black marks that I haven't much (if any) control over, I guess...</div>
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But perhaps, this new found knowledge - this <i>recognition</i> of it all - is my power. Perhaps this is my key. In knowing, maybe I can somehow stop it. No one wanted to deal with me then (not that anything's really changed in that regard). It's a harsh truth. But that was <i>then.</i> </div>
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This is my now.</div>
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Mine and mine alone.</div>
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I needn't anyone to <i>deal with me</i> any longer. I am my own man, standing (or trying to) on my own two feet - albeit a bit wobbly in my stillettos - but hey, you try standing on Size 12 feet in 8 inch heels. I am standing, damn it. (Okay, maybe I am just on hands and knees, and learning to crawl but it's progress.) <a href="http://www.davepelzer.com/"><i>The Child Called It</i> became <i>The Man Named Dave</i></a> and he did alright for himself despite it all. He endured horrors not completely dissimilar to my own and came out on the other side. It was a struggle for him as well, but he prevailed. I believe - I hope - that somehow, someday, I can also.</div>
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I just don't quite know where to start. I do know now that I <b><i>WANT</i></b> to start. I want to begin to end all this horseshit and drama. First instinct, of course, is to start cutting... Break out the knives and start hacking away like a crazed and hungry hunter salivating over a fresh kill... But maybe all those melodramatic razor blade kisses of the past are part of the problem in the first place.</div>
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Who knows, really? I find myself in such a vastly different place for this part of the journey - for this leg of the race. </div>
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I have followed a hundred and two roads less taken for my entire life. </div>
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Perhaps now it's time to put on my waders and big boy britches and start trudging through the ruts that others have made in their own paths to salvation? </div>
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Perhaps if I want to get to the other side, the only way to get there is to go through it? Heavens knows all the bridges have been burnt at this point.... And I sure can't seem to get around the son of a bitch...</div>
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Perhaps... Perhaps...</div>
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Perhaps...</div>
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But, I'll tell you this: I am bringin' my own damn flashlight, though. That tunnel sure looks pretty fuckin' dark to me.</div>
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<b>After a While</b></div>
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<i>by Veronica Shoffstall</i></div>
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After a while you learn the subtle difference</div>
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between holding a hand and chaining a soul.</div>
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And you learn that love doesn't mean learning</div>
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and company doesn't mean security.</div>
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And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts</div>
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and presents aren't promises.</div>
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And you begin to accept your defeat with your head</div>
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up and your eyes open,</div>
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with the grace of an adult,</div>
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not the grief of a child.</div>
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And you learn to build all you roads on today </div>
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because tomorrow ground is too uncertain for plans.</div>
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After a while you learn that even sunshine burns</div>
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if you get too much.</div>
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So you plant your own garden and decorate your own </div>
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soul, instead of waiting for someone else to bring you flowers.</div>
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And you learn that you really can endure...</div>
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That you really are strong</div>
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And you really do have worth.</div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6123394891406783165.post-73299468746521553282009-11-29T03:31:00.002-06:002013-11-03T16:41:42.849-06:00I'm a Cutter<div style="text-align: justify;">
My sister toyed with the idea of "cutting" at one point, though I think hers was more for the dramatic license of teen angst bullshit and a middle child's look-at-me antics than anything. My ex went the cutting route on a balcony in California, bathed in the spotlights of a frantic SWAT team in a broken culmination of an unloved life. I am a different (and worse) kind of cutter - too vain to wear my scars on the outside for all the world to see. It's hard to rock a poker face when you look like you've been gangbanged by a pack of hungry Exactos. I do not cut myself. My cutting is more permanent. It leaves no marks. It does not grow back. I cut people - entirely and completely - off and out of my life. It's a cut that seldom heals.</div>
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Despite my oft perceived Surly Demeanor, I really do have a big heart. Huge. And of Gold. It bleeds for more lost causes than Saint Jude. It weeps for more stray and lost children than Sally Struthers. And it often costs me dearly.</div>
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But, when It is over. It's Over. I. Am. Done. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/01427085574473513923">Deb</a> asked me yesterday what <a href="http://rabbityblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/hate-me.html">the song I posted</a> meant to me. Initially, when I put it out there, it was directed with vehement intent at one person - an ex. But upon listening to it - really listening to its message - I came to realize that it was something else entirely.</div>
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It is my Modus Operandi for failed - or fed up - relationships. It is my blade. I have a hard time saying "no." I have a hard time being ugly. So I push and I cut. I hack and dismember. I make <i>YOU</i> hate <i>ME</i> so I don't have to deal with it. If I succeed in making you hate me and you walk away from it all, I don't feel like The Bad Guy. I feel validated in taking my knife and carving out the chunk of my life in which you existed. You left me. And now you are gone. You are no more. You no longer exist. So many people in my life have fallen prey to these tactics. Bled dry and eliminated. Never to return. I don't look back (often). It's what I do. It's how I operate.</div>
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It's how I survive.</div>
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Sane? Probably not. Healthy? Not in the least. But how often is self-preservation really either of those things? Sometimes, be it good or bad, we all have our own fucked up ways of getting through a day - a lifetime - a cess pool of broken hearts and open wounds.</div>
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For me, it's cutting. (But... I'm working on it.)</div>
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<i>"Maybe I aint used to maybes smashing in a cold room</i></div>
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<i>cutting my hands up every time I touch you...</i></div>
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<i>Maybe it's time to wave good-bye now..."</i></div>
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~ Tori Amos, <i>Tear in Your Hand</i></div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6123394891406783165.post-14326725742470546352009-11-29T03:26:00.003-06:002010-03-07T11:23:40.735-06:00Of Tigers and Dwarves<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><a href="http://i42.tinypic.com/2yvnfps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i42.tinypic.com/2yvnfps.jpg" /></a><br />
I knew in that moment that I was done for. I felt it in that single, solitary instant like some cosmic blast from an unseen flamethrower...<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">"Who is he?" I asked.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">"The big one? Or the little one?" She countered.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">"The tall one that looks like Dopey..." I replied. "I want to meet him."</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Her eyes lit up with all the trouble-making tenacity that made her her. "Are you gonna bring him home?"<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I chuckled. Bring him home, I did. And for years following, there was seldom a night that he wasn't by my side.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">We lived fast. We loved hard. We fucked harder, and partied the hardest of all. We dug our nails into each others flesh and held on for dear life as the angry tides that were the world around us tried like Hell to beat us down and tear us apart. We were having none of it. We were two warriors without the weapons needed, fighting a battle I think we both knew, in our hearts, that we were destined to ultimately lose. We were our own private Waterloo.</div><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">I can recall telling myself one night towards what would become The End:</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">"Remember this. It's fading."</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">And it already was. We were like a still-developing photograph exposed to harsh light. Our shadows were dissipating and washing out what was left. Gone - or going - all too soon for us to even cherish were our wanton ways and wild whims. I knew this. I saw it coming. I think he did too, but he refused it with all the bravado and fuck-you of the teenager that he still was.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Not surprisingly, it all came crashing down. A falling house of cards... Dominoes tumbling... Bubbles bursting... My realities and his recreations could no longer coexist within the same hearts. The hands that once held each other so close against the world now throttled the voices that once whispered forevers, hurled daggers so vicious that perhaps not even time could heal. The carousel had spun wildly out of control and thrown us both on our asses in vastly different directions.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">The only thing left to do was walk away while there was still some semblance of something to walk away from. It was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make. But the fight for it was destroying it faster that anything else that could be done.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Bags were packed in virtual silence. A fairytale divided into cardboard boxes. Princes became Ogres. Apples became Poison. And suddenly, it was over. He was standing on the front porch, his ride waiting... And the last thing he ever said to me:</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">"I always loved you, Mama."</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">And my heart shattered into dust. I didn't say a word. I didn't dare.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">He turned away.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">I shut the door.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">I've never wept so completely. Never known the meaning of mourning as I did in that moment.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Never before.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Never since.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Never again.</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com