The Sweet Taste of Freedom and ... Maggots

It feels a bit strange to just start writing about 'something' after the tres dramatique entrance there ...

But since I started this blog, I should continue, right?

So, let me tell you the story of the maggots in my friend's kitchen and by extension give you a little peak into my life and my head ...

I just turned 22 and finally broke up - for good - with the first 'real' boyfriend of mine.  Real as in our relationship lasted 5 long years and I could say I loved him.  We also lived together for nearly 3 out of those 5 years.  I broke up with him the usual way (usual for me, at the time, as I already did it twice that way) by sleeping with someone else.  You know, to give myself no option but to leave because the crippling guilt resulting from infidelity made it impossible for me to look him in the eye and so I had to leave.  By the way, I've done it to him before, but then I realized I still needed him (in the damsel in distress way, I swear) and so we 'floated' back together again.  Well, now it was about a year later and I finally realized that this is it and also felt strong enough to know that this time I will most definitely go through with it ...

But I'm departing from the main topic here ...  And that is my friend's apartment.  She just broke up with a boyfriend herself (who also happened to be my friend and whose apartment I cleaned once a week for 50 bucks, which was toooootally too little for the crap I had to deal with) and so the whole two lonely girls against the big bad world thing kind of kicked in and off only for me to destroy it as I was already rebounding with the same guy I (honestly) used in order to get out of my previous relationship.  And so instead of having lots of good time with a lovely friend of mine - who was dealing with her breakup in a much more healthy and mature way - I spent an inordinate amount of time with an alcoholic coke-head, who really was a sweet guy on the inside - deep inside, a bit too deep if you ask me.  But if anything, I'm a real digger (in more than one way, unfortunately).

So, my friend and I lived in her tiny one room apartment, slept in one bed, parallel parked on a dark steep sloping street ... and all was fine with the world.  Well, except for the stench that came from the kitchen.  It was in the first two or three days that I stayed there (I was mostly out, working, eating out, etc.).  And then I decided to get in there and wash and clean the shit out of the place.  And so I did and guess what - I found maggots in the sink.  The friend of mine, let's call her A, seems to have cooked macaroni and cheese about a month prior to that and from that moment the left overs, together with the dishes, were getting all hot and bothered in the sink, which resulted in little maggot babies!  Yay!  Not ... the shit was nasty.  Well, me being who I am, I threw all the left-overs together with the maggots away, washed all the dishes and then presented my good deed to my friend in a taaa-daaa sort of way.  Well, the problem was that even after scrubbing the hell out of the dishes, they still stank in the rotting food sort of way and so we ended up pitching all of the dishes I just spent hours cleaning ... It made me sad.  Yet another attempt at pleasing that didn't go exactly the way I envisioned it too.  But of course, my friend was right to throw them away as I knew that's what should be done, but it still made me feel dumb, unappreciated and ... well, the whole spiel of negative emotions.

Despite that, I loved her place, and I love(d) her - in a friendly and grateful way.  That was the first time I tasted freedom.  It was amazing, exhilarating, it was so potent, I didn't know what to do with it.  All of a sudden I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and with whomever I wanted and that is also exactly what I did.  I remember sitting in the apartment window - next to the window AC unit making its horrible sounds - together with A - smoking Parliaments, listening to music and feeling strangely zen and excited at the same time.  Everytime I drove past the apartment complex later on, I could immediately transport myself back there again.  I sometimes miss it, I've even cried because that is how hard I missed it ... It's one of those things, happy, amazing memories, in spite of the maggots.

Well, after a few weeks, I found an apartment that came with a roommate, but this time I had a room and a bathroom of my own and a really really pristinely clean kitchen, which is quite shocking considering my roommate was a single straight man.  Rofl.  Life is funny.  Especially considering that just a few months later I found myself rebounding again with another rather damaged individual, which brought me to the brink of self-destruction.

But, such is life of a girl with lots and lots of issues.

A Letter To Y'All

Hey! This is me!













And I suffer from crippling depression and anxiety.  All the time.  With brief moments of respite and happiness.  Why?  Because world sucks and my brain can't come up with anymore excuses about it - can't make shit up for me to be happy and carefree about ... I simply lack the bullshit hormone ... or something.

I envy every single one of you how happy and totally carefree you can be.  How you can just sit there talking shit and laugh and look as if there was nothing wrong with the world around you.  How can you do that?  Is there some sort of secret I've not been privy to?  Am I just on the outside, not being let in to some special "Lucky People" group?

I'm sick of this really.  I like to joke around (partially) about me actually being the one that really sees reality for what it is, but truth be told, I'm really over feeling like this.  I don't want to, because it's killing me.  I can even see that in the goddamn mirror.  All of this worry, all of this anger, all of this resentment, all of this sadness and all of these memories, images and the KNOWLEDGE of horrible things happening right now to the most vulnerable and innocent members of this planet ... it's killing me.

I've thought of and wished for not being alive anymore.  It's different from having suicidal thoughts or attempting a suicide, so don't get your knickers in a bunch.  I just sometimes wish I could just stop being alive, so that stupid brain of mine could stop endlessly working out how many kids are being abused today, which one of the fathers I see at the daycare when I'm picking my daughter up is molesting his daughter/son ... if something is going to fall on me and my daughter as we're walking under the bridge ...  You know, the usual catastrophic scenarios 24/7.  It's more than a full time fucking job.  How am I not a junky yet, shooting up in a gutter somewhere?!?!?  Oh, yeah, I love my daughter and the people around me and I've had enough love shown to me during this lifetime to know that some people do care, so I should really consider myself lucky.

Anyway ... I thought you should know why I've become a totally asocial mess whose only social interactions boil down to the fight or flight response or some coping mechanisms such as sarcasm and just general weirdness (I swear I'm not stupid, I'm just feeling threatened all-the-time).

Yes, I have sought help and as of now I'm sitting here, on my cellulite ridden ass, waiting for a phone call or a letter that will tell me when can I finally start my therapy.  Whatever that is or is supposed to do ... which is really also my only hope at a normal (what the fuck is normal anyway) life.  And yes, I've had a crack at anti-depressants as well.  They worked for a little bit, but being the freak I am, I really missed 'being myself' and ended up getting myself off them after a couple of months.  Now, how masochistic am I?  Being myself.  It really is no fun.

I won't go into detail about why I am the way I am, but let's just say that having a child put things into a whole new motherfucker of a perspective for me.  Her innocence and helplessness made it more poignant and painful to read stories of physical/sexual abuse that happens to such children day in and day out, war stories, hunger stories, natural disaster stories, ad nauseam.  Yes, you guessed right (or you already knew as there is a shit ton of us out there), I was sexually abused as a child.  For years.  I've also survived a home invasion and almost killed someone that tried to rape my mother.  Anything else?  Any more questions?  I'm fucked.  I know why and I am trying to fix it.  Decades later.

Am I looking for pity?  No.  I am, however, looking for understanding and compassion as that is pretty much the only thing that makes us humans, human.  I'm looking for other humans.  Psychopaths and sociopaths need not apply - or folks that abuse children.  Thank you very much.

I want to point out, that my husband is one of the most amazing human beings to have ever walked the surface of this planet and so is my daughter, who is an angel embodied.  I've also had the absolutely insane luck of meeting many other people thanks to whom I'm still alive.  One of them is Bobby and the other is Taty, my two best mates in the whole wide world.  One of them lives in Georgia (USA) and the other in mothefucking Oregon.  I miss them horribly and I hate them for hating each other so that I can never hang out with both of them at the same time (I'm seriously not trying to guilt-trip you though, I understand).  I also love my messed up mother, who, as opposed to me, has the WORST luck in meeting people - she is a magnet for abusers, predators and general sickos.  God bless her heart.

There are many others to whom I'm thankful.  Many.  And I am thankful, I swear I am.