Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Armor

I have, for the most part, kept a fairly private life. I’ve shared what I’ve needed to share. I’ve switched skins in social groups. I’ve been who I needed to be in order to survive.

This lesson in self-preservation came early and often.

When I was teased relentlessly for not having a mom or dad, I learned how to make up stories to qualify their absence.

When I was raped at the age of 12 after the death of my only friend, my great-grandmother, and was whispered about in the neighborhood as the “slut” because who could ever believe that pre-teen boys were capable of such violation? I learned how to avoid the stares and fall into fantasy and daydreams.

When I went into high school and the rumors about my drug addict mom preceded me, I learned how to smile and joke and laugh because who could believe those rumors were true if I was just so goddamn happy all the time?

When I was a homeless teen runaway and I needed a place to stay, a meal to eat, some form of human kindness in general, I learned how to be charming to ensure another day of getting by.

When word got out that I was an escort and judgmental glares scorched my skin, “she’s a whore” being murmured behind my back, of course never to my face, I learned how to embrace that wickedness and use it as a weapon.

When women hated my existence and men lusted after me, I learned how to be cold and indifferent. Untouchable.

Time after time, each lesson another layer of armor against the world. I became an ever-changing chameleon. Carefree party girl for one, quiet and insightful confidante for another. Crazy but sane, logical yet irrational, emotional though apathetic – no one could ever give the same descriptors.

So now, more mutterings. More of the same peanut gallery gossip. I won’t deny the hearsay.  Though, everyone has their own version of the truth. While I am not innocent, I also carry the knowledge that not one person who speaks of me truly knows me. Or my heart. Where I’ve been. Where I decide to go. So, I’ll continue the same way I always have. Moving forward with my own brand of candor, nursing my pain and heartache alone as I always have. I am human. Fallible. Imperfect. Flawed.

But I’ll keep going.

Everyone’s your friend until they’re not.

In the end, we all die alone.

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Contemplating Motherhood

On paper, I am a married stay-at-home mom of two toddler boys and one college bound dude who I brought into this world when I was very young and oh so many lives ago. I am aware that I am not conventional (this month, my hair is blue/purple and my new thing is cat leggings). I never have been, I doubt I ever will be. I have lived a life my own with so many mistakes and dumbass dangerous decisions, I am really freaking surprised that I am not only alive but intact. But here I am, the harried homemaker, switching out laundry, making meal plans for the week, budgeting groceries, wiping asses more often than should be permitted for one’s own sanity, and essentially – making sure nothing/no one is set on fire and/or dies. Added to this, my husband has been trying to talk me into signing the boys up for the intro soccer program called L’il Kickers. I balked not because I don’t encourage sports but because I have an extreme aversion to socializing and making nice with the Status Quo parental units.

I needed a break.

So, I had dinner with my best friend tonight. It was perfect. It was too long in the coming and I always chastise myself afterwards for not making more time for just the two of us to catch up. The pair of us are both incredibly different people but such kindred spirits with far too many similarities in the oddest of ways. I mention this because over the course of our meal, we touched upon one of our bonds – our mothers (funnily enough – didn’t even realize Mother’s Day was this Sunday) and how they simultaneously screwed us up in comparable fashions.

Of course, as grown adult women who have spent the better part of their life “fixing” themselves and coming to some sort of peace with the neglect and abuse of their own parent(s) constantly under the influence, we exchanged childhood anecdotes candidly with a shared laugh here, a silent nod of understanding there. We spoke of the long road to Self-Realization, the oft stumbled through path of trying to figure out how to love ourselves despite our inclination to do otherwise. We joked that we were surprised how well we turned out, despite having the moms that we did.

We delved further past our maternal caregivers and spoke of how it affected our life choices. She admitted to never wanting to have children for fear that she’d not be an affectionate enough parent, as she was often the whipping post for her alcoholic mother’s rages while her sister delighted in the attention and favoritism that was left after all anger and violence had been spent. I mentioned that I was glad I only had boys because I didn’t know if I’d be capable of mothering a girl, that I would teach my sons to never undervalue a female and to never make a woman feel uncomfortable in her own skin.

These were a few of the things we spoke about and eventually the evening tapered off nicely. I gave her a warm hug, promised that we’d hang out sooner than later, and then I headed home. During my drive, I thought of my little boys. I thought of how happy and full of life they were. How affectionate and sweet. How they hated leaving any park or playground because they didn’t want to leave their “new friends”. And just like that, I knew that I was being ridiculously unreasonable about the soccer program. I realized that I was stunting my own children’s formative steps into building friendships and early socialization. I understood that even after all these years, after all the supposed work I had put into becoming a “normal functioning” human being, that I still wasn’t done. I was purposely already putting up a wall between myself and the activity aka the other parents – whom I hadn’t even met – because I was still harboring underlying fears of rejection and not being liked and/or accepted.

As my South Side cousin would tell me, “Dang Girl. Dat Shit got real crazy quick.”

I cannot let my own trepidation bleed into the lives of my children. I have fought hard to get where I am at today and now I know that I’ve still yet farther to go. But for my boys, they need to know that their mother always tried. That their mother may not have always gotten it right, but damn it, she tried. It is, the very least, any mother can do.

 

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1/25/16 Kindness

Today is one of those days in which I cannot turn off the introspection. I often become lost in revelries, unwanted reminiscences of the past lives I’ve lived. Of the countless mistakes of youth, poor life choices, of the ridiculous and often dangerous situations I had put myself in – note, I’ve not mentioned regret. Regret isn’t something I have very much of, at least not in the grand scheme of things. My regrets are minuscule, mostly petty and even then, taken with a grain of salt. But I digress. I suppose I must mention this because I know that Regret isn’t very useful since every crap decision and horrible thing I may have done, with or without malicious intent, has brought me to the place where I am at right now.

That, and Kindness.

My brain has moments of elephantine recollection when it comes to people who have been genuinely good-hearted to me. The same with those who have abused my heart, soul, person, etc. I may forget birthdays, what I had for dinner last week and even plans I Just Made five minutes ago, but Kindness is something that has never gone unnoticed or forgotten.

I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped to look away from the screen because this is the hurdle. This is my mountain. To sit here and purposefully remember the less than ideal circumstances I either stumbled or boldly threw myself into, with little fear or concern of consequence or reprisal. It’s a bit more difficult than I had anticipated.

I remember being a teenage runaway and having the good fortune to not have to live on the streets when a girl I met and was briefly romantic with offered to let me stay with she and her mother, not just for a day or weeks, but months. I remember when at a party, my first girlfriend covered for my dandruff flakes as Dry Shampoo – “That happens to me, sometimes”, she smiled. The unspoken understanding and gratitude over escaping embarrassment is something that still sticks with me today. Another party, when the difference between the terms “pretty” and “attractive” were being discussed and I mentioned that my father said I was Attractive. I knew what my father had meant and I suppose the usually catty gay man involved in the conversation did as well. He leaned his body back, head tilted elegantly dramatic to one side, scrutinized me with his intensely blazing blues and said, “Mmm… I’ll give you pretty.” I abashedly took the compliment but I don’t think he’ll ever quite know just how much that meant to me at that time. Or maybe, he did. Maybe he saw the insecurity in my lowered gaze, the way I tried to hide my small underdeveloped body in giant thrift store flannels and oversized jeans. Maybe he knew how much I needed an assurance that I was of acceptable human stock.

Being laid up in bed not able to move, my boyfriend’s roommate coming in to talk to me, recommending books I’d like, pretending that I didn’t look like death warmed over. A mere acquaintance becoming one of my closest friends when he loaned me the money I needed to make rent. When I tried to pay him back, his smile and laugh damn near frightened me but he merely shook his head and pushed my hand holding the money away from him. “One day, someone might need a kind of help of their own. All I ask is that you return the favor.”

And maybe this won’t seem like an act of Kindness, but to me it was. A show of Mercy, after all, aren’t the two related? I was followed by a car on my walk home one night, far too many years and several lives ago. Two men jumped out, physically assaulted me, dragged me into the vehicle and I’m not sure what would have happened were it not for the driver. Was it my pleas for release? Did I remind him of a niece, a sister, a friend? I’m not sure, but he abruptly stopped the car and told my would be captors to let me out.

I ran… I ran to the first house I saw, crazed, crying, delirious. A couple, kind in their own way, let me in. Telling me it would be okay as they waited for the police to arrive. It hurts to revisit that particular memory. That was a day that shattered my remaining trust in humankind. But – BUT – Mercy. I was shown/given Mercy. And while it took me some time to feel safe again for something as simple as walking home, I still carry an appreciation for that man who told his cohorts, “Enough.” But do not mistake my gratitude for forgiveness. I do not nor will I ever free him of his guilt or culpability, but I suppose that’s a subject for another day.

But Kindness. This – each and every act, no matter how seemingly insignificant or of a grander scale, none of them are ever forgotten. Not a one is petty or trivial. From a stranger in front of me at the drive thru buying the coffee for the person behind them to an unexpected text from a friend reminding me that I’m loved, “You’re really kind of a bitchy pain in the ass, but I wouldn’t have you in my life any other way.” I hold all of these close to remind me that the smallest act of Kindness can carry a person who’s having a rough time of it just a bit further down the road. Every day, we run about minding our own business, barely thinking about the brief interactions we have with those bustling back and forth around us. It doesn’t hurt to put some good back in a world that so desperately needs it.  And of this I am ever mindful, especially on days like these where I am most pensive and somewhat blue.