Free the Birds

There are days. Like today. When I want to do nothing more than to give the world the double bird salute and say FUCK OFF. Then hop in my convertible and ride into the sunset with my unbrushed hair blowing in the wind. I wouldn't even look in the mirror to see if the world's mouth was hanging open in shock. Fuck you world. 

What's even funnier? Is that I COULD do this. Fuck the world and its inhabitants. Let 'em rot and die. Fuck 'em, but I don't. Want to know why? So do I. Why do I care for people? People who don't give a furry rat's ass about me. Not really. People who hurt me day in and day out. People who only remember me on the first of the month when it's time to hand out money. So why do I fucking care? 

Because I don't want to be like them. That's why and I hate myself for it because a part of me DOES want to be like them. To be able to use and abuse others without a second thought. To not give a fuck and just take and take and take. But I don't. And I won't. And I never will be that person, but I want to be. Ooooh do I WANT to be. I pray that someday I will be that person and I wait for that day when I can walk away and say 

But instead I just take it. I take all of it. Heave on top of the pile that already sits on me. Why can't I just be like others? Why can't I just take? If it's the last thing I ever do, I'll figure it out and when I do.Fuck 'em all to hell. 

Secure At All Costs

I have a thing with feeling secure and stable. The thing is I don't ever feel this way. Feeling as if my world can at any moment be sucked out from underneath is as much a part of me as breathing. Even when I KNOW things are ok, there is always this little tickle of doubt tucked in the corner that says prepare anyway. Just in case. 

From my birth my life was in constant flux. I never knew what the day would be like when I stepped off the bus each day from school. My home filled with drugs, alcohol, and abuse. While appearing neat and tidy on the outside was a constant roller coaster ride on the inside. Then whoosh I went to live with my grandparents. But that wasn't permanent either. Every six months or so my mom would pop in and I'd go live with her or a cousin or aunt or back to my grandparents. I never had my own room. Never hung posters on the walls or decorated. I was nearly 14 before I had a bed to sleep in. Usually I slept on the floor or sofa. 

Then there's the asswipe aka my ex husband. If my life was not chaotic before that so not intelligent decision then it sure as hell was after. It's only now today. When my life is starting to balance, when I'm finally connecting the dots that I realize how ingrained into my inner being this feeling of "be prepared" has become. Now as I build the foundation that most people grow up with I realize I have never lived beyond today. I have never thought of tomorrow. My entire existance has always been for the day. If I can find enough money to pay the rent for this week, this moment. To eat today I'll worry about tomorrow when it gets here. The downside to this living in the moment is that I always feel I'm in a constant state of panic. I am constantly in need of collecting, gathering, working, building and I never have that solid foundation that I know I can lean on if there's a bump in the road. 

It's a difficult place to be. To know there is nowhere to turn if things go a little bad. It reminds me of how alone I am in the world. How many bridges I've burned in my quest of trying to find this allusive security I seem unable to get my hands on. I know this is something I need to gain control over, but it has become a survival instinct within me. To the point it causes panic attacks whenever I feel my "supplies" are slightly below where they should be. Even though I'm ok. Even though things are not in danger I still worry. Be prepared. Plan A, B, C, D, and E are minimum requirements for every day of my life. It's exhausting. I'm trying to let go of this. I've gotten much better than I was before, but still that lump appears in my throat whenever I think things are not as ok as they should  be. While you'd think all of this preparedness would always keep me ahead, usually it ends up putting me behind because I use what little I have for some made up "emergency" in my mind. Then if a real one comes I don't have what I need to cover it. 

Blah. It's a never ending cycle. I just need a sugar daddy. Anyone got an extra they might like to share?

Dear Penis Owners

 

This is an open letter to those who have given me unsolicited "advice" (aka telling me what the fuck to do) over the last few days. While I appreciate having a penis is a prerequisite to having an opinion where you're from, it is not however necessary in my world. In my world, a non penis owner has as much right to not only have an opinion, but to *gasp* make decisions based upon what they think is right. Non penis owners do not have to follow the advice (aka orders) of penis owners. In my world, having a penis, makes you  a dick. It does not make you intelligent or know it all. While I appreciate your interference in my life and giving me advice I did not ask you for, I'd like to request you keep your nose and penis out of my life in the future. 

I realize this comes as a shock to you because in the past I usually bended to your will, and now I'm not. I believe in my ability to decide what is best for ME and I know that your decisions are based on what is best for YOU. Maybe that makes me selfish, but I really don't give a fuck because it's my world and non penis owners make the rules. So suck on that.

Be the Pan and Crow

Yesterday's events just make me realize how grown up I have to be. Three days ago Jigger and I had some issues, but the second his phone rang I let go. They ceased to exist. His need for me was/is more important than my need of being right. It reminds me of how "grown up" I have to be. How the world sits on my shoulders, a female Atlas. I look at others and I long for their freedom. I long to be selfish. I long to put my needs before others. 

I look at them in awe and wonder how they do it. My BIL has sat here for almost 4 years without working. Never once did it ever cross his mind that he needs to do something. He feels no shame for sitting while others work 18 hr days, seven days a week. He feels no shame when he buys new clothes while others are torn and stitched together. How do people do that? Sometimes I want to be like that.

To be able to just take all that is mine and feel no guilt. No burden in existing. No thought of what I might be placing upon another. No worry or fear that my taking means someone else might do without. To just be so effortlessly. I long for that. 

I don't know  what that feels like. Not even as a child. The peace of our house rested upon my shoulders. I could never just be. Could never just spin in circles and then fall dizzy to the ground. Could never close my eyes and just run through the breeze. Could never just breathe. Responsibility is something I seem to have been born with. While I am responsible, I am also resentful in many ways. I resent my BIL's ability to sit and not worry that I have to work so hard to support HIS family. I resent it when I'm asked if I want something and I say no and they don't realize that I really do WANT it but I'm too shy to say "yes". Too fearful of rejection. Too afraid of disappointing. Of becoming a burden. Too worried about hurting someone or making them feel the way I feel inside. 

Then I think of  my children. Of the reasons of the distance separating us. I become angry. Angry at those who so easily cast me aside and brand a letter upon me. Yet they never look in the mirror to see their own brand. I get angry at myself for remaining silent in the wake of their accusations. For not defending myself. For not exposing their own decay. For being a helper of theirs in hiding the rot they carry within them. By allowing them to declare the rot that is theirs to be mine. I become enraged at myself that I am unable to break this cycle. Unable to speak what is inside of me. Unable to be hurtful and vengeful even if it means I am the loser. 

If I can't even defend myself, then how can I expect anyone else to? When I'm unwilling or unable to speak up for my own basic needs. NEEDS. Not WANTS. There's a difference. So if I can't fulfill my own needs then why am I so surprised when others don't either? After all these years I still am shocked when I'm forgotten. Overlooked. Ignored. I don't know why it still surprises me so. I should be use to it by now but somehow each time is like the first. I seem to forget all the times before. I don' t know why. 

Maybe it's because I really do believe in fairies.

Innocence Misunderstood

Jigger came home for a little while this morning and then left again to go to the funeral. While he was here I was asking him what had happened. If his friend had been sick and things like that. He was telling me all about it. Then he was telling me about his friend's 5 year old daughter.

He said she was so excited to have so many people there. All of her family and friends. She was running around playing and kept asking "why you so sad" to her mom and uncles. He said for him that was the hardest part. Watching her and her complete unknowing that her father won't be home from work tonight or ever again. He said he felt so heart broken for her because now she is so happy but soon her world is going to change and she won't even understand why.

I could see so much of myself in that little girl. I could see her future. Her emptiness. The hole that will grow inside of her as she grows and she won't even understand why the hole is there. But she'll know it's there. She'll try to fill it with odds and ends that don't quite properly fit, but no matter what she does that hole will remain. Until either she surrenders and accepts it as a part of her or it consumes her and she disappears inside of it.

There is also a two year old who'll grow up never knowing what an amazing father he had. Never knowing that which he lost. It seems such a waste. Three young children fatherless. One minute he was totally fine and the next erased. 

Jigger was going to help him in his business. Some advertising and things for him, but now that'll forever remain unfinished. It's strange how yesterday the world was one color but today it is another. Spinning and turning on while we sit. Helplessly being tossed about where it sees fit. Passengers on an unwanted journey. Stopping at destinations that are not our own. I'm ready to get off now. 

This is my stop.

Connecting the Dots

I was looking at the prompts for Smash365. A lot of my posts are inspired by their prompts. The prompt a day or so ago was interconnectedness. It was based upon the idea of  six degrees of separation. That we are all only separated by six people. This got me thinking about how I connect to myself and my surroundings. 

I have very little if any attachment to "things". I don't save things even from when my children were little. There is no feeling of attachment or connection to any "thing". I am the complete opposite of a hoarder. I throw EVERYTHING out if I haven't used it in a month, then it's gone. I can't stand to have "things" sitting around regardless of what it is. It makes me feel crowded, suffocated. I'm not sure the reasoning behind this or what has made me feel so unattached to anything. 

Maybe I have been numb for so long. I have not allowed myself to "feel" close to anyone out of fear of rejection. Maybe that feeling of not being close to someone has become so ingrained in me that I have transferred it from people to things. I honestly don't know. 

Sometimes I wish I could be attached to something. A place. A person. A reason. Even if an attachment begins to form, it usually fades out pretty quickly. Either I get disappointed or hurt or rejected. Sometimes it's real and sometimes it's my perception of rejection. I so easily let go of things. If I do get a hold of anything, then I sabotage it and push it away. I think I would rather let it go than have it leave me.

But considering I sat in the lap of the Ghamdi brothers when I was 6 I truly believe in six degrees of separation.

Naughtilicious

I was very naughty today. I cut about two inches of dead ends off of my hair. I know. I live on the edge. Jigger doesn't want me to cut my hair so I don't. While he wouldn't say anything if I did, I know it would hurt his feelings so I don't. Even though I hate my hair the way it is. I still don't cut it. But I have split and dead and funkdafied ends which are driving me crazy so every few months I cut about two inches off hoping he won't notice that my hair seems to be in the same spot for the last year instead of growing. 

I've always been a freak with my hair. There is not a color of the rainbow it has not been at one time or another. I've even invented a few colors for it to be. I shaved the side of my head long before Mel C or B or nutmeg whatever spice she was did it. I've had braids. Been albino white blond and elvira black dark. 

My obsession with having outrageous hair began with not being allowed to cut it or do anything with it til I was almost 9. I've always had very bad migraines and at 8 my hair was Crystal Gailish. My doc told my mum to cut my hair that it would help with the headaches. My mum did NOT want to do it but finally agreed that I could cut it up to about the middle of my back but NO SHORTER!

However mum couldn't watch the actual cutting process and was rather emotional while telling the stylist how short so after mum left the room the stylist asks lil ol' innocent angel me how short and I say just below the ears. Needless to say I got my ass whipped with a switch when I got home but it was worth it. I smiled the whole time which only made her hit me more but I didn't care. I won. From that forward I was determined to be as outrageous as I could be. 

I know I'm such a rebel.

Portals Through Blogerapy

The last few months have been turbulent but that isn't saying much. My last few days/weeks/months/years are almost always turbulent in some form or fashion. At times the turbulence seems to have a life all its own. Pulling, dragging and clawing at me. Ripping me down to shreds then taping me back together just to do it all over again. This seems to be the process that is my life.

However since I began writing, truly writing, not just spewing combinations of letters into words and gluing them together with puncuation, but purging my soul. Exposing myself. Making myself vulnerable. Putting all of  the ugly that has been devouring me from the inside out there for all to see. I have noticed profound changes have taken place in my thought processes. When these changes actually started taking place I am not sure. All I know is that they are there now. The nasty voice that lives inside of me that tells me how worthless I am now has competition. Another voice has taken root beside of it. A voice that says I am NOT the things that the nasty says I am.

I am not perfect. I am flawed. Broken in some places. Chipped in others, but nevertheless I have value even if that value is only within myself. I don't know how long this thinking will last. I hope it stays because I kinda like it. I like the lightness of it. It doesn't remove the darkness instead it has incorporated itself into the darkness and I kinda like that. I like my differentness. I don' t want to lose it. I am certain this road is just the beginning. I have no idea where it is going to end, but I do know that I plan on shaping its journey instead of just allowing it to drag me along like dirt stuck on the mudflap. I am tired of the world shaping my existance.

Now it's my turn.


I wrote this awhile ago, but never published it. Seems I need to read this again. 

Rebuilding

A lot has happened this week. Most of it I haven't blogged about. Some is too personal and I just don't want to go there. Some I just don't have the energy to get into. This week has been super busy and the injury did little to help with that. For now I'm in a very strange moment of time. I feel suspended as if I have been frozen and am just stuck in place. Waiting for some unknown entity to come and start my clock again. 

Rebuilding is beyond difficult. It is much easier to be lost in the delusion of insanity than to forge my way through reality. I feel out of place. I never know if what I'm doing is the correct response in any given situation. I feel a constant state of panic. Like I'm just waiting for the wind to blow my house of cards down. It's exhausting. But if I ever want to get out of this hole, then I must climb. I honestly didn't realize how deeply I had buried myself until I began climbing. I had no idea I had gone that far down the rabbit hole. I truly believed it wouldn't be this difficult and if I return to my old ways and old life, then it wouldn't be, but I don't want that life.

I want the life that lives beyond the rabbit hole. The life that has only existed in my mind. The life I've never actually seen or touched or breathed. A life I'm not 100% certain truly exists, but yet I climb. Searching, hoping, believing there is more beyond.

Safety Measures and Precautions

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise. ~Tacitus

Determine your desires for safety. What is holding you back from what you really want to do? What makes you think twice about pursuing things on your “bucket,” “to-do,” or “wish” list?
Why do you even have a list at all?

Write about discarding those desires for safety. What is possible for you, right now, if you stopped holding back? Smash 365

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To be safe is one of my greatest desires. Safe from the pain of the world. Safe from the daggers it throws, piercing through me. I remember telling Jigger when we first met that I just wanted to feel "safe". However I very rarely ever do anything that is "safe".

I have flown to the other side of the globe to a country where I knew no one. Didn't speak the language. Didn't have a job or place to live with only $500 in my pocket and no clue what I would do if things didn't work out. I tend to find safety in chaos. In pushing to the edge and then jumping beyond. There is a twisted comfort in the unknown. If I hadn't worked things out, then I would probably be dead so maybe that is my safety net. Pushing so far that if it doesn't work then I won't be around to know.

I wonder where I would be if I had played it safe. Stuck in a hicktown never knowing there is vast expanse of land beyond my little bubble. I have experienced so much and learned so many things I would have never done if I had been "safe". Yet I crave "safe".  Then when I get it I feel bored and push it away. Prefering the uncertainty of unknowing over the mundane comfort of every day living.

I have had moments where I have pushed too far though. Where I have almost broken myself. Yet I somehow manage to pull myself back in  before I completely fall over the edge.. At the moment, the only thing holding me back from doing what I really want to do and the only thing in my entire life that has ever held me back is finances. I dream big. I don't worry about the consequences. If I had the money, then there is no telling what I would have done by now. I always wondered why I never can manage to get ahead financially now I think maybe that is a good thing. Because it is the only thing that keeps me from completely jumping off the cliff.

So I guess for me being "safe" is being different. Pushing against the stream. Not being another faceless entity. Although sometimes I think boring would be good, and then the moment passes and I start  trudging ahead again. The world be damned. It's my way or the highway.

Surviving the Storm

For weeks I have felt it coming. I could feel it in my bones. A storm was brewing and a big one at that. Even though I tried to prepare for it, even though I did my best to stand against it, I crumbled. It picked me up and tossed me about. Ripped at me. Crawled inside of me and tore me open. Then when it was through, when it had satisfied its craving, it threw me aside like unwanted trash.

Discarded by the side of the road. Frightened and alone, I lay there. Wondering if someone would come along and pick me up or if I would lie there for eternity. Forgotten.

Unwanted.

So there I lay. Exposed. Vulnerable and scared. Until from nowhere, she appeared. Beautiful and strong. Radiant and alive. She kneeled down beside me and for a moments just stared. I was afraid she was going to pass me by. I was certain that she would not want me. No one wants me. I am unwantable. Then before I realized what was happening she scooped me up and placed me in her pocket.

Safe.

And there I remain. No longer discarded. No longer abandoned. Protected in a pocket. I snuggle up and sleep.

Preserve the SELF At All Costs

 

 

Smash365: Self-Protection

Jul 21, 2011 by rus vanwestervelt

Self-protection is our strongest reaction pattern — it seems to be programmed into every cell of a living being in order to maintain, defend, and perpetuate itself. It is the essence of the life program and is also functioning within our elaborate me-structure. The entire me-structure demands to be protected and perpetuated as though it were a living being. The moment somebody says something critical about me, the instant reflex of preservation, defense, and aggression springs into action. ~Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence

When we are aware of this instant reflex, we are better able to slow down or halt the defensive measures we take for self-protection. Spend some time being aware of your feelings and your reactions to certain situations, personal or otherwise. When you are aware of your inner reactions, how does your “public” response change? What if you prepared yourself before probable confrontational situations. What would those preparations look like, and how might that bring about a different outcome?

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I learned at a very young age that either I took care of me or I would be food for the carnivores. My fight or flight response is super sensitive and kicks in without me even being aware of it at times. While I am accutely aware of preserving my self, I am extremely unselfish. I do not take more than is my fair share and in most cases, I actually take a lot less. However, I give multitudes more than I take. Having said that though, I am always aware that if I do not look out for my self then no one will. I must always be on guard. Always in protective mode. Always on the look out for dangers to the self. The self must be protected, guarded at all costs.

This feeling of self preservation keeps me at arm's length from people. I cannot fully trust anyone because of the fear they may harm the self. I cannot allow anyone to get close because if I do then they may hurt the self. They may take from the self leaving it with nothing and alone. Scared. Frightened. Protect the self at all costs.

This is my mantra. My manifesto. My singular purpose in life. Simply to survive. Not live. Not even exist. Just survive. At times I feel like I am in a war zone. Constantly fighting an unseen, unknown enemy. Anyone and everyone could potentially be a danger. Even those I do allow close to me, there are times where I see their words and I wonder "is there some hidden threat behind what they are saying"? I will distance myself from them until I am certain that the threat  to the self has passed.

This type of survival is exhausting. It is why I prefer being alone. When I am alone I don't have to worry about hidden dangers. I don't have to worry about people taking from me. Leaving me with nothing. Abandoning me. I don't have to fight for basic necessities.

I do this. I hide food. I gather things and save them. Just in case. In case I have no food. In case I have no shelter. Just in case. I have done this for as long as I can remember because since I was little my life has always been uncertain. I never knew where I would be living the next day. If I would have a place to live. From as far back as I can remember these fears have been with me and the more my illness grows, the more they grow. There are times where I am not hungry but if I am served food I will eat it. Every last bite. Until I am about to vomit. Until I can feel it sitting in my throat simply because it may be the last time I eat. I don't know when or if I will eat again.

Now these fears, in my current situation, are groundless. I have a home, food. I don't need to worry about these things. We don't have much, but we have. We always manage. There is always something. Even if it's a little, but I cannot let go of this preservation of self. Sometimes when I am eating even though I am not hungry and these thoughts are rolling through my mind, I realize how ridiculous and irrational it is, but even though I recognize the irrationality of it. I cannot stop myself. Just in case.

Preservation of self at all costs. Even from the imaginary ones.