Friday, March 28, 2014

My friend who lives in Turkey...

As a mother of two children with speech issues I didn't have the luxury of being able to laugh/enjoy mispronunciations. So Hansolo's yesterdays mispronunciation was a rare opportunity to laugh my butt off...

We are doing a map puzzle of the USA. and calling out states, I say," I found Florida...where does it go?"

Hansolo: "Right here, mama." she points, then adds, "Who is Ken Turkey?, where does it belong?"

Me and JUR: "Who the heck is Ken Turkey?"

It took me a few minutes to figure out that Ken Turkey goes under Ohio. BWAHAHAHA!

Friday, March 21, 2014

stoptherideIwannagetoff!

o.O

*places finger over lips and moves it vigerously going PPbububububbbbbbbbbttt*

No I'm not dead Sanka...

In the mists of a massive upheaval at work and long long days of covering for co-workers and trying to do my part to keep the department a float until the new member get here and the sick co-worker gets well.

I decided I could blog for 15 min to unwind before I go to work this morning. How sad is that? I need to unwind after getting up?

weather is just K.I.L.L.I.N.G my back....freezing nights and hot-hot days = vicious upswings in the arthritis in my back. A yearly thing that makes me walk funny and get a touch crabby.

I got to talk to the police x2 yesterday. And there was no time to blog the adventure. Sigh....that's a mean thing to do to a writer.

I need two days off and a big bowl of pudding.

The cooking kind, that is hot and then forms a weird coating as it cools in the fridge. I love cold-cooked pudding skin.

I carefully scoop it off and then lay it on my tongue like a second skin. I feel like Hannibal Lecter using others skins on his face. It's weirdly...exciting.

Like just how fast do you think I would get locked up if I called my doctor and confessed to wearing pudding skins?

I know I can't be the only person on the planet who loves pudding skins. But I like to think I am the only one who wears them. Because the thought of a bunch of us out there with pudding covered tongues is a bit freaky, and more then a little worrisome.

Times up. I have to go to work. Sigh...darn it.

****UPDATE work just informed me I get Saturday off.  I shall use the day to get to know my family again.  I have been working so much, they are starting to look at me with a look of *who are you and what are you doing in my house?*in their eyes.

but wait....daughter has a birthday party to go to...and hubby is off to a chess tournament...and my son is lost in Rise of Legends (ie sucked into a virtual dimension)....sigh, well there is always next month.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Roll over Beethoven

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TRIGGER WARNING - you are stepping into my head TRIGGER WARNING
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My early years were lonely. Shy to the point it crippled me I was often alone and isolated in my head. The shyness was easy to hide in a large family, there was really no need for me to have a bunch of social friends. I kinda "ghosted" on the fringes of my siblings friends.

This is my first neighborhood friend.


I always had just one-friend at a time. Any more would have been too stressful/taxing.

She moved away a year or two later.

It was hard to loose her.

I found the Beatles record in my parents closet soon after that and at the first sounds of "Roll over Beethoven" I was hooked. Oh was I hooked on this fabulous band.

Next friend moved.

No worries I had the Beatles records to fill in the gap.

another friend moved.

Again there was the Beatles records to fill in the gap.

the next one died.

and the next one moved.

FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU ALL.

I retreated behind my walls and stopped trying. With everything else going on in my young life at the time I closed off completely. Emotions shut down, stuffed down, hidden, concealed, denied.

Except for my boys.

There I could sing and express every emotion in me. Head phones on, listening to my stack of Beatles records over and over and over. Encoding my emotion into song.

They were the perfect friends. They were always there, they made me feel something, and above all they could never hurt me.

they could never hurt me

after a while KKW came into my life and I had a friend again. I reluctantly let her into my life. She was a writer as well. Three years younger than me and after explaining The Children of Starr to her, she joined me in the imaginary world and we spun fabulous stores together.

She had the very very misfortunate luck of being my one-friend when Lennon was murdered.

Within a few months of his death I turned on her and made her hate me. I systematically drove her from my life.

No one would every get the chance to hurt me again on that level.

no one.

And no one has.

My faulty thinking as a child was, believing that anyone could be in my life and not hurt me. When all my life, people had been hurting me. My brain was hardwired differently. I had been taught vulnerability meant pain. Love equaled pain. Nurturing equaled pain. Yet I still held out hope that something/anything could just simple be, without it equaling pain.

I let my guard down with the Beatles. Their voices were constant and unchanging. Their messages had no hidden meanings. They wanted nothing from me. They simply were in my life as a life preserver. It seemed like a win/win for me as a child. I got to hear their comforting voices, and have a human presence in my life that wasn't harming me.

My frail soul could never perceive of this strange one-sided needship as every EVER being harmful to me.

(yes I have a long history of inventing words.... NEEDSHIP (noun) a one sided relationship based on one party "needing" the other,  unlike a friendship with is a mutual attachment, in a needship one side of the equation may not be aware of the other.)

I was unprepared to be hurt.

and oh, god did it hurt.

That moment in time is the worst moment of my life. In all of my 48+ years on this planet, that day come right to the front of my heart when you ask me. "What is the worse day of your life"

It also comes up if you ask me, "What influenced you most in your life?/had the biggest impact on you."

Everything in my life changed that night.

Hell...who I was changed that night.

Dark secrets. Altered destinies. Revenge plots.

I'm was 15 year old child who was now thinking about becoming a nurse so I could in the future seek employment in the mental hospital and take justice into my own hands. Holy hell...there was a man on this planet who made a powerful enemy of me and he didn't even know I existed.

So yes. 

mdc you son of a bitch ...you killed more people that night then you realized.

*********************************************************************************

Did I work on this trauma in therapy?

It was so raw that when it did come up, a cavernous sink hole opened up under me and I plunged into inky black water and nearly drowned.

So the answer is no.

Its lingering effects haunt me to this day.

why. why out of all the hellish hell you lived through is this the worst of the worst?

Simple because, it took me by surprise. I am no longer surprise-able... I simply have expected the rest.

I have lived my life knowing that people will come and go and hurt me. I expect to be harmed. I expect to be hurt. I expect bad stuff to be heaped on me and my life. And when it isn't...I have a history of hurting my self.

I am always pleasantly pleased when people come/go without harming me. You would think eventually I would let my guard down, but it does nothing to disarm the booby-traps in my head.

I greet new people in my life by shaking their hands and saying, "Its nice to meet you." while my head silently seconds that with, and what kind of pain are you going to bring into my life? How are you going to hurt me.

And then I wait for it.

A strange sad legacy of years of abuse and emotional neglect.

Monday, March 3, 2014

"It was the 8th of December, for I do remember"

Interesting response to last post.  A reader wanted to know if that memory was the most painful from my past.

I had to drive to work last night and I figured a long dark commute would be a good time to do some digging into my head and see what the absolute most horrific thing that happened to me was.

Cause, I like to perform lobotomies on my self when I have no where to run.

I got in my truck and turned it on and posed the commute question to my self.

"What is your most painful memory."

And before I had fastened my seat belt my mind burped it up. Just like that.

Ugh!! damn it that is not how this game is played! its suppose to take me most of the commute to grill my soul and hold my self under the bare bulb to get the answer out of me.

Now what was I going to stew on for 45 min?

Feeling a little cheated I headed to work in silence.

Then a small quiet part of my brain spoke up. why. why out of all the hellish hell you lived through is this the worst of the worst?

And that took the full drive to and from work to figure out.

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TRIGGER WARNING - you are stepping into my head TRIGGER WARNING
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Shortly after Little House on the Prairie started on the night of December 8, 1980, the show was interrupted by a special new bulletin. John Lennon had been shot out side the Dakota and had been rush to a hospital with multiple gun shots. Doctors were trying to save him, the reported relayed to us.

then in a blink LHOTP resumed.

I got up and walked past my father and my mother and all my siblings and went to my room.  I stood beside my bed and starred at the four posters on my wall. John, Paul,George and Ringo. My boys.

On my phonograph was the Beatles White album.

I grabbed a sheet of paper and quickly scrawled a few lines down. please be okay please be okay, oh let him be okay

I climbed up on my bed and kissed each face there. pausing for a moment to look John in his eyes.

My heart was breaking. My soul was breaking. I was breaking.

I went back and walked past my mother, my father and siblings and slide under the chair waiting for the next news update.

It wasn't long.

He was dead.

I was 15 years old and one of the four reasons I was alive, had just been killed.

As the news caster kept talking, a lump formed in my throat and I fought back tears.

I heard my father say casually, "Someone should go get P."

I'm right here my soul said.

Parents know I eat sleep and breath Beatles. My whole family knows I am a huge Beatles fan. Can you guess who went to look for me?

no one.

a few seconds later, he repeated "Someone should go get P."

"I am right here." I said aloud for al the good it did. I have always been right here and it doesn't matter none of you see me anyways. A huge part of me just got murdered. This is a life changer. DAMN IT YOU ALL KNOW HOW MUCH THE BEATLES MEAN TO ME, HAVE ALWAYS MENT TO ME. I LIVE, BECAUSE OF THEM, I GO ON BREATHING BECAUSE OF THEM.

They had become my life. my therapists, my companions, my life line. my surrogate parents, my friends who were always there and would never hurt me...could never hurt me.

oh, gawd...oh gawd ...this I never saw coming. stabbing pain in my heart and in my soul and in my head. I had let my guard down, I allowed my self to love them...to need them, all because I thought. they could never hurt me.

they could never hurt me

but life had a cruel twist for my poor damaged soul.

I slide back out from under the chair and stood up, both my parents looked right at me. I waited a few seconds to see if they would offer to comfort me. what the fucking hell is the matter with you! you know they won't help you with this pain! why are you torturing yourself!! stupid girl stupid girl!!

Like a hammer hitting a window I felt my soul shatter and fragment out into jagged slivers. To be conscious of  ones mind shattering and dissociating out into nothingness is painful. How did I allow this to happen, how the hell did I let my guard down and allow this much pain to hurt me?

Then my parents rushed forward to embrace me and mourn the loss of there daughters dear friend with her. They allowed me to cry on the shoulder as they rocked me and held me together.

right?

Wrong. They didn't say anything to me. I walked past them and went into my room and turned on the stereo. White album still on the player, needle still where it was on the record. It made that draggy sound as the turn table ramped up to 33 rpm. And of all the FUCKING SONGS TO BE GREETED WITH THAT GODDAMNED NIGHT, I heard John's voice singing, Happiness is a warm gun mama...

I had to fight to stop from hyperventilating. I took the arm and scratched the hell out of that song on the album. Ground that needle down to nothing. Turned off the player, climbed into bed. Put my back to the wall, tucked Parker my stuffed raccoon under one arm and took my hunting knife Seven out from under my pillow and held it in my other hand.

Pulled the blanket over my head and pretended to be asleep. Waiting to cry till after the house was in bed and still.

*******************************************************************************

After I had JUR and need to pay off my hospital debt, I sold my vast Beatles record collection. By then CDs were all the rage. I listed that copy of "The Beatles" (commonly known as the White album) on eBay. It was pressed in all white vinyl. I was honest I told them in the auction description that it had two skips on side one after younger brother had messed with it and that THAT track was scratched to hell and back and I had not tried to play it since I damaged it 12-8-80, and there was no way I would listen to it at that point, so I couldn't guarantee it could be played. It sold for over 50$ after quite a few people bid on it.

have to do this in two parts to not push me over the edge. Its been 33 years and it still stings, still has the ability to level me and reduce me to a triggered fucked up mess.

Rest of the story tomorrow.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Powerful essay

That's the comment on the bottom of the essay I wrote in college.

Powerful essay

then my grade: A

I found this last night when looking for a copy of the story: The Stretch of Midnight.

I was interested to read it because it contains a very powerful part of my teen years. A part that I have never shared with anyone except that teacher who had to read/grade my paper. I'm a bit shocked that I shared this at all. usually the really deep stuff is stuffed down so deep that it takes years and years for it surface so I can work on it.

This was written in my late teens/early twenties, before I when to therapy.

This is an unflinching peek into my life. A clue to the mystery that is me. Names of my brothers changed for privacy, but make no mistake. This is a true story. Entered a originally written. because omg...my grammar and run on sentences are too many to fix.

 * * * * * * * TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDE * * * * * * *

Maturity is a state of being not an age

I let the seven tiny ball bearings roll out of my cupped hand into the saucer of oil. Carefully I lift the roller skate wheel up on its axel shaft and catch the other set of dusty ball bearings and plink them into the oil.

I start to remove the nut on the other wheel but the dilapidated pliers I am using just chew up the metal ridges.

"fuck" I hiss as I pound the wheel with the pliers.

"Ummmm, I'm telling." brother3 smirks as he looks up from the other end of the table.

I glare at him. "Look you...mama said we can say any word as long as we know the meaning, and sex without love is fucking."

"Oooh you're so mature," He retorts and punctuates his message with a funny face.

"what would you know about being mature? you're only twelve, I'm fifteen...so go out and get me another pair of pliers you dweebi."

He laughs and leaps up from the table and heads out to the workshop.

I return my attention to removing the stripped nut. Holding the skate between my knees, I grip the pliers with both hands and twist. The pliers slip off and crack my knee. "SON OF A BITCH!" I bellow and pound the skate down on the table. I regret my hasty action as the saucer of ball bearings does a back flip.

"P." Brother3 says quietly as he lays another pair of pliers on the table.

"I know what it means!" I fume.

"Something's wrong with Daddy. He's just laying on the steps."

My anger dissipates instantly.

Daddy is laying face down on the stairs. We roll him over. His face is ashy grey and his lips are light blue as if he had been eating a blue fla-vo-ice. He had to fight for every breath he pulled in.

"Has he been here the whole time?" I ask.

Brother3 points to Daddy's truck. "No he was standing out there when I came out to get the pliers."

I glance at the truck. Deadly carbon dioxide exhaust is traveling up a hose to the closed off cab. I Bolt from the porch and run to the phone. My fourteen year old brother is chatting with his girlfriend. "I NEED THE PHONE!" I holler and snatch it from him and hang it up. "Daddy just tried to kill himself."

"Where is he?"

I grab him and take him, while I explain how Daddy tried to end his life.

We find him sitting up, but his breathing is still labored.

"Help me get him up" Brother2 orders.

I am thankful that he is assuming command. The three of us walk Daddy to the front porch and set him down in a crumpled heap.

"Go call the emergency room." Brother2 orders. "Find out what we should do."

I get the phone and stretch it outside to the porch. My hands starts to quiver as I dial.

A grown up voice answers. "Josephine Memorial Emergency Room."

 I shove the phone at Brother2, and sit down on the porch, wishing mama was home.

Brother2 explains what happened, then calmly describes the physical condition of our father. He would be the one to call a family friend to drive Daddy to the emergency room. He would be the one to tell mama what happened when she got home. He would be the one I talked to about what happened. He would be the one to turn off the truck and dismantle the hose.

I may have been physically older than Brother2 that spring day, but he was far more mature. Thank goodness.

***************************************

End of essay.

not the end of the story.

I can still see it in high def-clarity. Mama was at the store and we planned what we would do when she pulled up. We waited.

We swarmed the van as she pulled in, I yanked open the door before the van stopped all the way. I jumped in and passed sister2 out, and as I grabbed brother5 from his seat I told mama "Don't turn the engine off - stay in the van" I turned to and handed brother5 to brother3 and then grabbed the grocery bags and pulled them out as quickly as I could.

While I did this Brother2 spoke to mama though the drivers window.

I slammed the door closed and stepped back.

And she was gone.

I stood there shaking as I realized that my father might have died if I hadn't sent my brother3 out for a pair of pliers.

Now in a healthy sane world, the three of us would have been helped to deal with the trauma we had just endured.

But we lived in a very dysfunctional world. We were left to rot in in our own pain.  Parents returned from the ER and we early waited for an update and to see our father. Daddy headed into the bedroom and closed the door. Mama said this to me:

"It's after 5:00 why haven't you started dinner?"

No thank you for helping our father. Neither of them ever mentioned it. Nothing.  Life was going to go one with the events of that afternoon erased. I spoke to brother2 about it that night at bedtime. Thanking him for being there.

Then it disappeared.

The raw truth edge carefully folded over and mended into the crazy quilt that is my life.