Going Back

I have always loved the ocean having grown up near it since I was born. The tides soothe my often jangled nerves. The laid back atmosphere is better suited to my needs as I am slow to get things accomplished. The almost constant sea breeze cools me, caressing my skin with its gentle fingers of salt and sand. The sun warms my shoulders, the Vitamin D is so good for my well being. In essence the Beach quenches the thirst in my soul like nothing else can. Nothing can replace it.

But in less than a week I leave my beautiful island of beaches. Back to the desert. Inland and to the South. It has it's pluses. My own house. My children have friends. The children don't bully my kids for their differences. They grew up together. Here, it is so homogeneous that having one small difference is like having blue hair (which isn't allowed, by the way). And my husband will enjoy his job. But I, I will be trapped in a sea of red clay, a cloud of dust, parched and dry, thirsting to my very core for my island in the sea. I have pictures. My house is blue inside. You'd think you were in a beach house if you saw it. But I am hours from the beach. It's not as if I can get up in the morning and go then come back in the same day. And I'm afraid. I'm afraid that because I don't have my beach, my calming tides and waves, that I will become what I was. Lost in a black hole. Depressed. Alone. Solitary. My friends will have all moved on. But I, I will go back to somewhere I was desperate to leave.

And I can't remember, was it because I was excited about moving somewhere new? Or was it because I was excited to leave the people I knew behind? Or was it both. There are lots of bad memories in that house. Bad things happened. Bad memories. I punished myself. I stayed depressed a lot. I never opened the blinds. I never got out of bed. I tried to stop the pain with too many pills, once. I'm afraid. And I can't show it or share it with my family. Because they are overjoyed at going back. And I am not. Because I never told them how happy I was about leaving and all the reasons why.

So, I'll go back. I'll be swallowed up by all the toxic people that I can't say no to. I'll be forced into situations that I have no control over what happens to me. And I'll live around people that think I'm a burden to my family. And I'll hide in my house in my neighborhood because I don't want to be seen. And the depression will come back. And I'll retreat further and further until I'm in my bed. And inside I will silently scream.

Red Headed Demon Weekend Creation Blog Hop

A red headed demon lives in my head
Taunting me telling me I'm better off dead
You're a burden to your family, that's what she said
That bitch of a demon and her hair colored red.


A red headed demon lives  near my home
Threatening my safety, I dare not roam
She's taken my freedom, I hate her, I cry I moan
That bitch of a demon with the red haired dome.


A burden, A burden it weighs heavy in me
Those days when the light is tough to see
And the blackness is all I know to be
A red headed demon lit the way for me


She weighed me down with that word so weighted
I feel it, hear it, taste it, wear it I'm sated
By Burden Burden it rings in my ears  belated
I remind myself  she is to be hated.


A red headed demon lives next to my house
I used to call friend now I call louse
She won't say sorry I won't be a mouse
May her hair catch on fire in her hate filled house.

SHUT UP AND LISTEN WEEKEND CREATION BLOG HOP

She was just starting her senior year in high school. She’d been dating him for a year and a half and it was only a matter of time before she "went all the way" with him.  She had been so naive at the time. It was the night she’d come back from vacation. She always faithfully wore the jewelry he’d given her. The little heart ring with the diamond chip in it. The gold necklace with the heart and diamond chip in it. The gold bracelet. It was the only jewelry she wore. She was so excited. Seven days had seemed like forever for her. He picked her up right after dinner. She’d gained a little weight over the previous year, but he’d never said anything about it bothering him. She never thought about it, but it did bother her some. It seemed to bother her family a lot. They mentioned it quite a bit. He took her to his house because his parents weren’t home. She had no idea where they were or when they’d be home. He started talking to her about a "friend" he’d made at the Orange Tree, a hotdog and juice place across from the Peanut Shack where he and his friends worked. Jealousy burned up inside her. She only half heard something about a cucumber on her leg and a trucker and wasn’t that funny? She didn’t know where this was leading, but dread was building up in her stomach. She’d revealed to him a family secret that she’d just found out about on this vacation and she was still reeling from it. She’d been told she wasn’t aloud to ask about it. So she was in the dark about it and needed to talk to him, her best friend. And he was telling her that after he closed up for work he had been spending hours in the parking lot talking to this girl. She’d already been betrayed by her family this week. She couldn’t take another one. She started taking all the jewelry off. She put it next to his stereo and told him to take her home. She was crying. She could never help the tears. They always came no matter how hard she tried to hold them in.
They talked about breaking up. They agreed to break up, though in her heart she was begging him to say no he wanted her to take him back. He wanted her to keep the jewelry. She took it only so he’d take her home so she could really cry.
When she got home, her mom and sister were sitting in the living room talking. She came in with tears falling down her face. No one rushed to hug her. They waited for her to say it. "We broke up." From her mom, "Did you do something nice girls don’t do?" meaning "Did you have sex with him?" Still, no hugs. From her tall skinny blonde haired blue-eyed sister, "You’re too fat! That’s why he broke up with you." Those were the only words spoken about the breakup. Not exactly words of comfort, but words. She went to her room, her heart broken even more from the lack of comfort. Then again she was used to the cold, harsh reality of her family. Her mom was very matter of fact. It happened you moved on. Her sister and she did not cross paths too much, but had never liked each other being total opposite, her sister the beauty, she the brains. Her father was somewhat more sensitive, but he gave her the creeps and she rarely went to him for comfort. She had a dog that loved her very much and a stuffed penguin she’d gotten on her sister’s tenth birthday, a mix up, from another relative. She burrowed under her covers, her penguin to her back and her dog curled up beside her and she silently cried herself to sleep. For the next several months she cried herself to sleep. She stopped eating, doing it only when forced. They’d all complained about her weight, her father being the worst, yet he was the angriest when she wouldn’t eat at dinner. She went to bed at eight o’ clock except on the weekends. She cried at school, she couldn’t help it, even months after the breakup. She partied on the weekends. She lost a lot of weight. She hung out with a different crowd. She got a punk haircut and started drinking before school and eating only chocolate.
At football games she led the cheers for the quarterback in the stands going totally against her naturally shy personality. Alcohol tended to do that to her. She was funny when she was drinking and she said whatever she wanted. She did whatever she wanted. She was with a lot of guys. But she still never went all the way. And she still cried a lot when she was alone. Her ex boyfriend must have gotten a really big head, but it wasn’t about him. She tried to kill herself once, but no one ever knew and it was a half-hearted attempt. She was depressed, full-blown depression, but no one around her recognized it, despite the fact that she had an uncle with bipolar disease. She continued spiraling out of control, but no one noticed. Amazingly, she kept her grades up, but only because she had easy courses and got accepted into a big college.
She almost flunked out of her first semester of college. She partied almost every night with her roommate. They had boys in their room all the time, boys they knew from high school. Any that ended up in her bed, she asked them to take her virginity. None of them wanted to do it. Even the one that was in love with her. She began to feel like she had the plague. Her roommate got pregnant that year. The head of Planned Parenthood went to her church, so she got her mom to get the name of some reputable places to get an abortion and gave them to her roommate. Someone else took her for the abortion. They never spoke of it. Ever. Her roommate had as much feeling as her mother and sister. They did not room together the next year. In fact, they never even saw each other again.
Who is this she? Does she have a name? Of course, but is that relevant to the story? Couldn’t she be anyone of a million girls? All faceless, nameless that you’ve seen on the street and never bothered thinking about or wondered what happened to them to make them so sad. The thing is, this "she" was known for her smile. No one ever guessed that she was depressed, suicidal, taking risks with her life, believing that she wouldn’t be here next year. When someone asked "Hi, how are you?" She always said, "Fine, how are you?" The thing is, she knew they weren’t really asking, just exchanging pleasantries. But, when she asked, they always took it as an invitation to really tell her what was going on. And she listened with a smile on her face and never shared her own pain. She even saw her ex-boyfriend, the one that was the catalyst for her depression and listened to his woes with a smile on her face. She was known as a good listener. But all her hurts, and theirs built up like a brick wall inside of her. She began to get weighed down by all the feelings until she was overwhelmed. But still she smiled. She would skip a class for a week and convincingly lie to a professor so she could be excused and let back in the class. She failed logic. Go figure-nothing in her world was logical. The world swirled in her mind. In spring she was giddy with joy so much so that she couldn’t even contain all her ideas she had to write them wherever she could, walls, hands, jeans, books. She lost her virginity in spring finally and then didn’t even know it. Then in fall she would drag through what was seemingly sludge barely waking for classes, hardly following the teacher lying about assignments and missed classes. She was a very convincing liar.
And still you want to know who this "she"is? Why? You never looked at her when you passed by her on the street. You didn’t look at her when you sat by her in class. You never remembered her face when she parked next to you at the grocery store or sat at the bar next to you. When you saw her with red eyes and a tissue held to them, you never asked what was wrong. When she locked herself in her room, you never tried to find out why. When you saw her sitting by herself always at lunch, you never gave her your company. You never invited her to your room to talk. You never asked her if she needed to unload on you. No, she has to pay someone for that. She sees a therapist and a psychiatrist. Did you ever pay her? When she looked sad sitting under that tree, did you go over to her and ask her if she needed to talk? Or did you just try to preach to her about the Lord? When she never came out of her house even when she had little children, did you go invite her to bring her children to play? When the ambulance came to take her away, did you come and gawk along with the other neighbors? When she came home, did you offer her comfort and bring food for her family or did you still ignore her? Did you ever invite her over to chat while her children played with yours? Did you ever just smile at her and introduce yourself and say, "I’d like to invite you out for coffee?" No. You never did any of those things. None of you did. You went along with your busy lives, unloaded on her and then kept going. The thing is, she didn’t have anyone to unload on. When the cherry on top got unloaded, she froze and slowly the brick wall crumbled and she was just a pile of bricks on the sidewalk. What did you do? Stepped over her or on her according to your needs. In any case, you ignored her. No one picked up the pieces. She swept them together and went to therapy and took pills and therapy and more pills until the wall was up, but shaky. So many years later, the wall is stronger, she can feel again, but only in small doses. She doesn’t go crazy anymore. She doesn’t look for anyone to ask her sincerely if she is okay. She knows they don’t really care. Only her therapist and psychiatrist. But they get paid to care. And they actually do seem to care. But do you? No, of course not.
You still want to know who "she"is? "She" could be anyone. That’s the truth. She could be you for all I know. She could be your neighbor. She could have been the girl that lived across from you in the dorms in college. She could be your child’s teacher. She could be the checkout lady at your grocery store or the store clerk that gets your clothes for you and cheerfully puts away the ones you don’t want. She could be the one that works the take out window. She could be the baby sitter. She could be your sister. She could be your best friend. The point is, instead of talking all the time, shut up. Listen. Don’t interject with how that’s happened to you or it happened to someone you know. Then you’re telling your story. You’re not listening. Listen. Hear. She may be desperately calling for help in the silence and your listening might just save her from going over the edge. She doesn’t want you to solve her problems. She doesn’t expect you to. You don’t even have to give her advice. Just close your mouth and listen. If you’re scared, try it with your children, or your husband and see how much you learn. And see how much it means to her, when you listen. She will smile with meaning for the first time. Just shut up and listen, even if it’s just once in a while. A random act of kindness goes a long way.  So instead of talking for once, look at someone and ask how they are then shut the fuck up and listen!

Weekend Creation Blog Hop- My Mother the Terrazzo Floor

This is a memory that may be disturbing to those who read it.  If you are a survivor of sexual abuse, you may not want to read this.

My father enters my room and he is in my bed when my mother walks in.  I can remember her dark glasses against her milky white skin-her black hair that never changed styles no matter what the weather was.  She didn't even have to say anything.  The look was all- it blamed me for everything.  Blame that was what I remember learning most from that house with its ugly green cinder block and red brick front and the white wood on the back where they made the porch into a room.  It was a roomy house with wood paneled walls and an air conditioner in the window.  I remember the terrazzo floor with its black and orange and gray specks against a cold marbled white.  My mother is that floor-cold, hard, icy, solid, unforgiving, no emotions, stony and silent.  Later, there was shag carpeting over my mother, the floor, and I tried to forget it was there-tried to make friends with my carpeted mother.  Then, I gave up-I hated her more than I hated him, but I ate my rebellion and hatred up in Thin Mints and chips and cokes.  I cost them only as much as they wanted me to.  No one ever guessed the secrets behind the green cinder blocks-no one guessed behind the smile.  My father tried to fuck me over later in other ways.  And again, I was his victim bursting into tears when his drunken arguments got the best of me-yelling at him that I hated him, my mother trying to comfort me like only a mother can, a mother that's a terrazzo floor covered by green shag carpeting.



H.

Weekend Creation Blog Hop

              Beginnings

These are the types of desks we had when I first started school in first grade.  Lord that was a long time ago.  I was five and it was 1970.  Most of you bloggers probably weren't even born yet.  But first grade left a memorable impression on me.  As it did on everyone in the classroom.  We had number lines and our names taped to our desks and if we were caught peeling them off we were forced to stand on a tape line at the front of the class.  I was never there, but my best friend Jill, never one to follow rules was there more than once.

We had a mean teacher.  I mean she was a bitch.  She shouldn't have been teaching children or adults.  She wore a beehive hairdo, strawberry blond that I swear was a foot tall.  She was petite and covered with freckles and her face always looked like she'd just smelled something distasteful, probably us.  She had rules and one of those was the number line.  Another was, act like a grown up, no more sucking your thumb.  She said it over and over to a cute boy who hadn't lost his baby fat yet, with big rosy lips that had his thumb in his mouth.  He hid his face in shame, but obviously needed the comfort of his thumb to get him through the day.  Why she chose to pick on him, I'll never know.  But she was relentless that first day.

Finally, she got a pacifier out of her drawer and told him to suck on that, it was for babies.  I was embarrassed for him and started to cry quietly.  I don't know if others laughed.  Probably, but she was the teacher, so he did what she said.  He put his head down in shame.  Teachers got away with a lot of shit back then.  Some good, some bad.  Anyway, Tony, the boy sucking on the pacifier was mortified and stuck his head in the table of his desk. (Our desks were a table and a chair, just like the one pictured above.) But when she saw what he had done, Mrs. Nicholson (yes, someone had actually married that bitch) told him to pull his head out and sit up.
As Tony tried to pull his head out, he realized his head was stuck in the desk.  The janitor had to be called and if memory serves, they had to take the desk apart to get his head out.  Meanwhile, the whole class is disrupted.

I don't recall the pacifier incident being repeated.  I don't know if Mrs. Nicholson got reprimanded for her behavior.  What I do know is that Tony's first impression of school was a bad one and he was scarred by it.  He was a troublemaker and never succeeded in school after that.  Sadly on the night before he was going to get married, he was running across a busy highway to get a pack of cigarettes and got hit by a car.  He was killed instantly.  Do you know who I blame?  I blame Mrs. Nicholson.  He never had a chance after what she did to him.  He went through life expecting nothing but shame and ridicule from school.  First impressions are everything.  But for school it can make or break you for the rest of your life.  So Tony, may you rest in peace and know that we all remember what happened to you and how she humiliated you and some of us were ashamed for what she did, but too afraid and too little to speak up for you.  I'm sorry I never told you this before, but I'm sorry that happened to you.  You deserved a better first day.  You deserved a better beginning.

Monday Madness "C"

Shah is doing an A-Z post in April which I've already missed, but I can tell you, yes, I've tried some of the C's and am still on one of them.  First drug I was given was Celexa.  There is a reason you go to a psychiatrist for psychiatric drugs.  THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE PLAYING WITH! I went to my family doctor and after three days on Celexa I decided if this was what life was going to be like, a zombie like state of living, I would rather be dead.  Not at all good for a person edging towards mania.  I have also tried Clonazepam and am still on it in the generic form Klonipin.  I was on 4 mg for sleep and am now on 3.  I have found with the lessening of it, my dreams have returned, I don't sleep well, but I can feel a lot more.  The numbness is gone.  My son tried clondine, but whatever it was supposed to do didn't work.

I find that the trial and error of medications with this disease, oh I have Bipolar Disorder, is the most frustrating part of it all.  I don't know of any other diseases except mental illness that have such trial and error, no exact medicine that treats all people.  Heart disease, they have a couple of drugs, a cocktail to give you that helps you, doesn't cure it, but helps.  Diabetes there is insulin.  But for those of us with depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and various other mental disorders we take drugs that are off label, some with horrible side effects, usually in conjuction with several other drugs and we have to work up to a dosage called the theraputic level.  But then I'm probably preaching to the choir. 

What has really started to piss me off though is the plethora (I like that word) of books that depicts those of us with mental illnesses as burdening our children with our care because we don't take our meds and our spouses have left us because of the strain of caring for a person with a mental illness.  First off, where is the condemnation of the spouse who left behind the child to take care of the sick parent?  Or another adult who knows about the parent's condition.  It seems that only the sick person the one who can't think straight without medication is the only one condemned in these books.  Unfortunately, these books seem to keep falling into my hands and my anger is building towards the general writing community.  They say they have done their research but only site they googled the disorder they wrote about.  How is that research?  Let them feel what we feel on a daily basis, let's say, just the side effects of our meds for a week and then write a book condemning us for not wanting to take them.  I stumble, get dizzy, need naps, feel nauseous and  have trouble concentrating as well as getting out of bed.  Do they feel that every day?  And there is a fine line thinner than a hair that I walk between depression and mania, and that line is called balance.

Anyway that's my rant!

Heather

Lilly's Song from my Current WIP

This is Liam of Liam and the Poets.  He is sitting on the stage singing only to Lilly, a song he wrote for her, for her birthday.  She says words have lost their meaning because everyone leaves her, mothers, fathers, brothers, people that make promises, they'll never leave her, always protect her, never hurt her, always love her.  Words don't mean anything at all because they break their promises, they leave without goodbyes, break her heart and leave her empty and alone wondering what she did wrong.  Liam wants to say "I love you" but they're just words to her.  So he says, "This song is for Lilly.  I know she doesn't believe in words, but I hope when they're sung to her, they'll mean a little more to her.  She'll understand the difference between words and songs and I hope she'll believe them.  Happy Birthday, Lilly."

                                                                        Lilly's Song

                                                      Sunflower yellow, midnight skies,
                                                      Whisper soft wind, tells no lies.
                                                    Wildflower picking, swimming, fishing
                                                    Summer nights full of falling star wishing,
                                                       That Lilly would give a sign,
                                                        She's wanting to be mine. 
                                                   Days of band practice, guitar riffs
                                                   Lemonade smiles, shady picnics
                                                      Back to those eyes those heart shaped lips
                                                   Lilly won't you give me a kiss?
                                                     Your smile, your laugh, your shining eyes,
                                                   I'd be yours, I'd tell you no lies.
                                                       If you'd give me a sign you want me too,
                                                  Lilly how long I've been waitin' for you.
                                                       Summer is past, turned to fall,
                                                  You have my heart, I've given it all.
                                                       To Lilly with your eyes so blue
                                                    Lilly I'm in love with you.
                                                      Take my heart you have it all,
                                                        The only thing I ask is very small.
                                                         Give me a sign you want me too,
                                                      Lilly how long I've been waiting for you,
                                                    I don't ask for much just one small kiss,
                                                        It's all I want, It's all I wish.
                                                        Lilly with your eyes so blue
                                                        Lilly I'm in love with you!

In case you're wondering, Lilly is spellbound and Liam gets his kiss. And no, I don't have any tune in mind because the only thing I play is a piano, but I have no access to a piano.  And Liam plays guitar.

Okay, not that you'd want to, but you may not beg, borrow, steal, reprint or use in any form any where else.  Please.  Read the disclaimer.  It tells you what I'll do if you do!