Merry Christmas Husband,
C.S. Lewis said "To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."
You are indeed still my husband, telling the world we are divorced and that you hate me doesn't make divorce papers filed. We married 1/27/14 and you moved out 10/6/14. I still love you the same. Not for a single moment have I hated you. Not when you broke up, broke things, moved out and I have not hated you for the gossip and slander attached to every mention of my name.
I don't understand what you've done and said but I don't need work towards forgiveness, I know I have forgiven the things you don't regret doing. I always called you a used car, lovingly, you are as is, no warrantee.
Sam still looks for you every day. Still. He looks out the window everyday. Yesterday he kept going into your old man cave. No more goofy jumping like a gazelle. He just mourns. I mourn also, I still cry over you every day, my heart doesn't come with and on/off switch.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Old essays from years before husband
Blog essays
Disruption of life
To dream of dreaming is sometimes the best that I can do. When the sun is shining bright I can dream of getting out of this one stoplight town, I can get away from my mother, fall in love and get married or be a writer in a fabulous SATC apartment with a closet Carrie would die for and an ass that fits the perfect size two. But when it gets dark the truth comes out. I fall asleep and dream every truth that paralyzed me. I am alone. I am a failure that sleeps five feet from my mentally ill mother to watch her through the night. Even in dreams the love of my life isn't mine to have.
Small town crazy lady
Small town crazy lady. Drunk manic depressive, oops bipolar stumbling down the street for one more six pack of the most god awful cat piss beer. Forgetting to get dressed, forgetting to bathe for weeks and wearing a see thru nightgown size 2XL. Other days it was strange combinations of out of place clothing. Sandston in the 1970's was not the place to be fashion forward, but she wasn't trying to be fashion forward, just weird. Psychedelic, hippy, country bumpkin West Virginia general store where she was from, hillbilly, and yard sale out of date combinations that were too strange to gawk at. Sandston 23150 got real good at turning a blind eye at my Mama even in her tie dye Muumuu. Of course it made it easier to ignore the crazy lady so you wouldn't have to address the fact her face was covered in bruises. A black eye here and there, with other bruises everywhere. When no one talked about the black eye on her face, the also didn't talk about the small child that saw it all, every single time it happened. That small child was me. In the 1970's no one talked about mental illness as a disease you couldn't prevent, or spousal abuse as a crime.
So there goes my Mama, she was the crazy lady of small town USA. One stoplight and one small mind in the middle of a shit kicker nothing town 23150. There was no intervention, oh you poor thing do you need a place to stay? Nope it was hush hush, turn your head, don't say a word. Wonder what they thought of the little girl walking with her everywhere? That was me. I was the normal little girl in a bad situation, that everyone ignored. But I couldn't just ignore it, I was right in the middle of it, living it. When she was dressing me just as crazy, I know that what the kids at elementary school were saying what the grownups were thinking. Just out loud and mean. On nights she was too drunk to even handle my dinner, I had to walk after dark to the little store Trio's. I was just a little girl scared of the dark and I knew no one was looking out for me.
That was and is the stigma of mental illness. My father beat my mother, but he had his own demons. He was a police officer that had been stabbed 60+ times by a drug addict high on PCP. Shooting that man in self defense, and the violence of his attack on my father haunted him the rest of his life. Even when my mother wasn't always crazy she was still the crazy lady. When she was normal she was a hard working and highly functioning registered nurse. Her fashion taste was still bad, that was ingrained. She lost more than one job as soon as a supervisor found out her diagnosis. Even in the hospital setting when she was in critical condition in the ICU she was just the crazy lady. I remember how absolutely rude the doctor was when she was informing me that I should have taken her to the psych hospital forty five minutes further away. After all they weren't equipped to handle a psych patient. To that nasty woman it didn't matter that my mother was critically ill and I brought her to the closest emergency room. My mother had such a strange infection that she was hypothermic with a temperature so low she almost died. To that doctor all that mattered was the one second snapshot picture, that on paper my Momma was just another mentally ill patient. Perhaps she had crazied her way into hypothermia. I was worried that my Mom would die, and here is this doctor chastising me that I had the nerve to pick her emergency room. My Monday-morning quarterback wishes I had cursed that woman every which way I could have. I didn't and she wouldn't have cared anyway.
My mother recieved that stereotype frequently when she was medically ill. No matter how many years of college, or how many degrees, some staff members are either gun shy, scared or just too judgmental to have compassion for the mentally ill. Those are not statistics, random numbers on a page. It was my life from 1988 to 2011 when she died. Out of all the emergency room doctors only one stands out that was kind and treated my mother as a human being. Out of all the General Practitioners, just two. All of the dozens of med surg nurses over the years? One. Just one. And for all of the years my Mom battled mental illness, from her teens until she died in her sixties, she died of cardiac arrest.
Disruption of life
To dream of dreaming is sometimes the best that I can do. When the sun is shining bright I can dream of getting out of this one stoplight town, I can get away from my mother, fall in love and get married or be a writer in a fabulous SATC apartment with a closet Carrie would die for and an ass that fits the perfect size two. But when it gets dark the truth comes out. I fall asleep and dream every truth that paralyzed me. I am alone. I am a failure that sleeps five feet from my mentally ill mother to watch her through the night. Even in dreams the love of my life isn't mine to have.
Small town crazy lady
Small town crazy lady. Drunk manic depressive, oops bipolar stumbling down the street for one more six pack of the most god awful cat piss beer. Forgetting to get dressed, forgetting to bathe for weeks and wearing a see thru nightgown size 2XL. Other days it was strange combinations of out of place clothing. Sandston in the 1970's was not the place to be fashion forward, but she wasn't trying to be fashion forward, just weird. Psychedelic, hippy, country bumpkin West Virginia general store where she was from, hillbilly, and yard sale out of date combinations that were too strange to gawk at. Sandston 23150 got real good at turning a blind eye at my Mama even in her tie dye Muumuu. Of course it made it easier to ignore the crazy lady so you wouldn't have to address the fact her face was covered in bruises. A black eye here and there, with other bruises everywhere. When no one talked about the black eye on her face, the also didn't talk about the small child that saw it all, every single time it happened. That small child was me. In the 1970's no one talked about mental illness as a disease you couldn't prevent, or spousal abuse as a crime.
So there goes my Mama, she was the crazy lady of small town USA. One stoplight and one small mind in the middle of a shit kicker nothing town 23150. There was no intervention, oh you poor thing do you need a place to stay? Nope it was hush hush, turn your head, don't say a word. Wonder what they thought of the little girl walking with her everywhere? That was me. I was the normal little girl in a bad situation, that everyone ignored. But I couldn't just ignore it, I was right in the middle of it, living it. When she was dressing me just as crazy, I know that what the kids at elementary school were saying what the grownups were thinking. Just out loud and mean. On nights she was too drunk to even handle my dinner, I had to walk after dark to the little store Trio's. I was just a little girl scared of the dark and I knew no one was looking out for me.
That was and is the stigma of mental illness. My father beat my mother, but he had his own demons. He was a police officer that had been stabbed 60+ times by a drug addict high on PCP. Shooting that man in self defense, and the violence of his attack on my father haunted him the rest of his life. Even when my mother wasn't always crazy she was still the crazy lady. When she was normal she was a hard working and highly functioning registered nurse. Her fashion taste was still bad, that was ingrained. She lost more than one job as soon as a supervisor found out her diagnosis. Even in the hospital setting when she was in critical condition in the ICU she was just the crazy lady. I remember how absolutely rude the doctor was when she was informing me that I should have taken her to the psych hospital forty five minutes further away. After all they weren't equipped to handle a psych patient. To that nasty woman it didn't matter that my mother was critically ill and I brought her to the closest emergency room. My mother had such a strange infection that she was hypothermic with a temperature so low she almost died. To that doctor all that mattered was the one second snapshot picture, that on paper my Momma was just another mentally ill patient. Perhaps she had crazied her way into hypothermia. I was worried that my Mom would die, and here is this doctor chastising me that I had the nerve to pick her emergency room. My Monday-morning quarterback wishes I had cursed that woman every which way I could have. I didn't and she wouldn't have cared anyway.
My mother recieved that stereotype frequently when she was medically ill. No matter how many years of college, or how many degrees, some staff members are either gun shy, scared or just too judgmental to have compassion for the mentally ill. Those are not statistics, random numbers on a page. It was my life from 1988 to 2011 when she died. Out of all the emergency room doctors only one stands out that was kind and treated my mother as a human being. Out of all the General Practitioners, just two. All of the dozens of med surg nurses over the years? One. Just one. And for all of the years my Mom battled mental illness, from her teens until she died in her sixties, she died of cardiac arrest.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Lab values in crazy pants land
Lab values in crazy pants land
Friday morning I woke up without an alarm clock at 5:30 in the morning. I finished listening to The Fault in Our Stars and thought about my own tumor surgery. Listening to an audio book makes me miss paperbacks. The tangible feeling in your hands. The sound of turning one page at a time is so much better than a hundred pages turning to fast because you hit the wrong computer land do-whatsy. It felt better to cry over Hazel losing Augustus than crying over losing Allan. I have cried in every stupid place imaginable. A friend took me to Bass Pro Shop and a horror movie, and I was the dork crying sitting on a parked party boat.
I rode the bus all the way from Sandston Va to Chesterfield Va to the hospital that kept me for four days, even though my husband doesn't believe I was sick. I cried in the the business office while asking to get copies of my hospital stay, because in my current situation, I need a lawyer.
The lab work, concrete in black and white hasn't made me feel any better. My first blood pressure was 188/105. Stroke range and the doctor didn't care enough to call my husband, she didn't call a medical doctor either. I was in crazy pants land. My blood was taken, my GGT was 244 when it was supposed to be 5-55, my ALK Phos was 159 (45-117 normal range). I thought I was drunk as hell from the rum and tequila earlier in the night, but I was negative for alcohol and all drugs. The doctor didn't call for those lab values either. Instead she sat me down with a stern face and said I need to tell the truth for real now. I have been called a liar a lot in all of this. These lab values showed I had been a bad alcoholic for years and I had to own up to it to get the help I needed. The Doctor said in thirty years of treating alcoholics these were the worst GGT numbers she had ever seen. It took days for my husband to finally tell a nurse that I hardly ever drank. When my husband finally called the doctor (he didn't move out until 10/6/14, my hospital stay was 9/15-9/18/14) he told her about my erratic behavior and asked could these lab values have caused it. She said absolutely not. Nail in coffin, marriage over. I miss having the tumors. That pain was a million times easier than this.
Friday morning I woke up without an alarm clock at 5:30 in the morning. I finished listening to The Fault in Our Stars and thought about my own tumor surgery. Listening to an audio book makes me miss paperbacks. The tangible feeling in your hands. The sound of turning one page at a time is so much better than a hundred pages turning to fast because you hit the wrong computer land do-whatsy. It felt better to cry over Hazel losing Augustus than crying over losing Allan. I have cried in every stupid place imaginable. A friend took me to Bass Pro Shop and a horror movie, and I was the dork crying sitting on a parked party boat.
I rode the bus all the way from Sandston Va to Chesterfield Va to the hospital that kept me for four days, even though my husband doesn't believe I was sick. I cried in the the business office while asking to get copies of my hospital stay, because in my current situation, I need a lawyer.
The lab work, concrete in black and white hasn't made me feel any better. My first blood pressure was 188/105. Stroke range and the doctor didn't care enough to call my husband, she didn't call a medical doctor either. I was in crazy pants land. My blood was taken, my GGT was 244 when it was supposed to be 5-55, my ALK Phos was 159 (45-117 normal range). I thought I was drunk as hell from the rum and tequila earlier in the night, but I was negative for alcohol and all drugs. The doctor didn't call for those lab values either. Instead she sat me down with a stern face and said I need to tell the truth for real now. I have been called a liar a lot in all of this. These lab values showed I had been a bad alcoholic for years and I had to own up to it to get the help I needed. The Doctor said in thirty years of treating alcoholics these were the worst GGT numbers she had ever seen. It took days for my husband to finally tell a nurse that I hardly ever drank. When my husband finally called the doctor (he didn't move out until 10/6/14, my hospital stay was 9/15-9/18/14) he told her about my erratic behavior and asked could these lab values have caused it. She said absolutely not. Nail in coffin, marriage over. I miss having the tumors. That pain was a million times easier than this.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Just Scream
It is six o'clock in the morning and the house is quiet and still. If September had never happened this would be peaceful. Before this, I had always jokes I should run away every September, dodge the bullet, and just not be here for the bickering that always happened in September. One of the perks of loving a combat vet that was in the army when 9/11 happened. Those ugly purple glasses he wears? He was one of the soldiers at the burning oil fields you saw on the news from the safety of your couch eating greasy leftovers. The glasses are purple to try and help keep his horrific migraines away. September will always be a sad memory here, the divorce I never wanted, but couldn't run away from.
Can there be something positive from even this? There has to be. I'm not talking about go girl power, you trade up for a better man. He wasn't a bad guy. He was tough enough for 9/11, strong enough for my tumor surgery. But every camel's back has that one straw that is just too much. One more emergency too many. Four days in the hospital for me and a divorce for him. So where do you find something good? Someone learning from my mistakes. Keeping a secret is never good, especially when it involves a rape or any other act of sexual violence. Holding it in is going to kill you, and trash everything around you. You can put on all the weight you want, to desperately hide in. A cocoon so you don't think your attractive enough, and it will never happen again. What if what I have to say is trigger for someone else instead? For that I am sorry. But instead of my choices, and ending up alone in a house, you fight. You get up, you make that therapy appointment. You can't tell the person that hurt you, well trust me that sh doesn't pan out anyway, but tell the therapist. You have to tell someone, or it's going to hurt you way worse than the way they hurt you. When it gets too be too much, do not self medicate. Work out at the gym, walk around the block a million times until your too tired to think. Volunteer with homeless dogs or anything, just to have some stillness in your mind. Learn everything that can get lost, from me. Twenty years ago, I should have just screamed, I should have fought, hit the guy with anything I could put my hands on. When I got home and my mom was too passed out to take care of me, I should have just screamed then too. Just screamed at her "wake up, be my Mom just effing once". But she was dulling her pain away in alcohol and I was too selfish to care. Then the day after and every single day tell something to someone to fix my own self. All this insight now is just cliche Monday-morning quarterback. But if you do the same thing I did for twenty years, you will be sitting in the same place I am now. Please get the help that I didn't, you really deserve it. You could be so much more happy if you just take care of your self first. Thank you for listening.
Can there be something positive from even this? There has to be. I'm not talking about go girl power, you trade up for a better man. He wasn't a bad guy. He was tough enough for 9/11, strong enough for my tumor surgery. But every camel's back has that one straw that is just too much. One more emergency too many. Four days in the hospital for me and a divorce for him. So where do you find something good? Someone learning from my mistakes. Keeping a secret is never good, especially when it involves a rape or any other act of sexual violence. Holding it in is going to kill you, and trash everything around you. You can put on all the weight you want, to desperately hide in. A cocoon so you don't think your attractive enough, and it will never happen again. What if what I have to say is trigger for someone else instead? For that I am sorry. But instead of my choices, and ending up alone in a house, you fight. You get up, you make that therapy appointment. You can't tell the person that hurt you, well trust me that sh doesn't pan out anyway, but tell the therapist. You have to tell someone, or it's going to hurt you way worse than the way they hurt you. When it gets too be too much, do not self medicate. Work out at the gym, walk around the block a million times until your too tired to think. Volunteer with homeless dogs or anything, just to have some stillness in your mind. Learn everything that can get lost, from me. Twenty years ago, I should have just screamed, I should have fought, hit the guy with anything I could put my hands on. When I got home and my mom was too passed out to take care of me, I should have just screamed then too. Just screamed at her "wake up, be my Mom just effing once". But she was dulling her pain away in alcohol and I was too selfish to care. Then the day after and every single day tell something to someone to fix my own self. All this insight now is just cliche Monday-morning quarterback. But if you do the same thing I did for twenty years, you will be sitting in the same place I am now. Please get the help that I didn't, you really deserve it. You could be so much more happy if you just take care of your self first. Thank you for listening.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Love lost and a LLBean handbag
Love lost and a LLBean handbag
I still see Sam, the rescue dog from SPCA, flinch in his sleep. I haven't seen that since the months after we got him. He had been abused and was found on the the side of a country road almost starved to death. It took months for him overcome the abuse. Now all the stress is back. His skin is rashy red and a patch of hair is missing where he can bite the same spot over and over, even though I can't see any fleas through his white fur. The breakup that so many people in my husbands life find amusing or justified, is more than just the gossip to giggle about over the water cooler. I am a human being that was in the hospital while my husband was trying to get a date from two co workers in the same hospital that he married me in, in the chapel. It was a sweet emotional small service, I cried and I watched him tear up when the reverend said in sickness and in health. It was two days before my hysterectomy by a cancer specialist. I married him with my Mothers wedding ring, I thought it would last forever and I used her ring. Now what? I have a nasty break up, so nasty that the big screen tv was smashed on the back porch just so I could not keep it. I have bills that didn't get paid way before I was rude to his best friend. I have a LLBean handbag monogrammed with "Mrs Sidell"; I wanted to carry my love for him, out there, huge, in big letters. I wanted in sickness and in health, until death due us part. Not marry me when I have tumors then try to get a date while I'm in the hospital, still thinking he is my husband and reading the intent to divorce on Facebook when I finally get released. Everybody has problems, why can't therapy be a solution instead of hate and gossip. Therapy is cheaper than divorce. I know all the fix it solutions are gone, but I still have a broken tv to clean up, a handbag with a name I don't get to keep, and my Moms wedding ring for a marriage that died as abruptly as a tornado. Now what?
Monday, September 29, 2014
Epilogue
Epilogue
How do you live after losing a million things all at once. How do you decide to get up in the morning, to breathe. When you can't catch your breath, because you can't say I love you to the husband you adore. The husband that is the greatest love you have ever had. How do you understand the ugly gossip and opinions spewed about you like vomit. How do you comprehend what the doctor wrote about you in black and white on paper, to be written about you forever. How can she judge me when she didn't know the love that I lost in a single moment. My husband knew the exact moment he fell in love with me. We were on the phone and I was in front of room 102. I had bugged him with a million questions that day. I thought he was cute and nice and I wanted to know everything about him. I figured my questions were too much and I called one more time to ask if I had offended him with my FBI routine, and apologized. That is the moment he first knew he loved me. He hadn't even asked me out yet. When he first tried to ask me out he got so nervous he stumbled over his words adorably, and asked to take me fishing at the "Lake" beside his house. It was a few days before New Years Eve, a cold winter week, I giggled at how he dorked up the invitation. I kept flirting, I couldn't wait to see what would happen next. When he finally stumbled through getting my cell phone number, he couldn't wait to use it, he called at 6:40 a.m. the next morning and asked what I was going to do that morning. I was about to go to the laundromat and he wanted to come along. I giggled and flirted that it was little fast for him to see my panties already. The first two weeks we dated we kissed a million times, and I remember the exact kiss where I completely fell in love with the best guy in the world. He's the man that makes me want to be a better person and I failed him completely, when he never once failed me.
This last couple of months I have felt like Bella in New Moon, losing Edward, motionless on the couch with her world spinning around her. Except the spinning is inside my head. Losing him is just more than I can understand. My hero is gone and to find a Jacob is blasphemy. I need to be my own safety net and it's hard. No Twilight happily ever after is meant for me, more like "The Crow", with the guy at the end saying "there ain't no coming back"
And what about that guy? My sinking into this situation. Mr 12/28/90. After not saying anything for over twenty years I finally confronted him. I sent a message I wanted to talk, it took him two seconds to give me his number. After all my fear, every moment of my life wasted over this, he couldn't even read two sentences on my blog back to back. All his years of alcoholism have left him completely moronic and harmless. He couldn't remember a thing, not a moment of violence, not a single time he stalked me everywhere. His main reasoning, "I was your boyfriend I never had to rape you"
How do you live after losing a million things all at once. How do you decide to get up in the morning, to breathe. When you can't catch your breath, because you can't say I love you to the husband you adore. The husband that is the greatest love you have ever had. How do you understand the ugly gossip and opinions spewed about you like vomit. How do you comprehend what the doctor wrote about you in black and white on paper, to be written about you forever. How can she judge me when she didn't know the love that I lost in a single moment. My husband knew the exact moment he fell in love with me. We were on the phone and I was in front of room 102. I had bugged him with a million questions that day. I thought he was cute and nice and I wanted to know everything about him. I figured my questions were too much and I called one more time to ask if I had offended him with my FBI routine, and apologized. That is the moment he first knew he loved me. He hadn't even asked me out yet. When he first tried to ask me out he got so nervous he stumbled over his words adorably, and asked to take me fishing at the "Lake" beside his house. It was a few days before New Years Eve, a cold winter week, I giggled at how he dorked up the invitation. I kept flirting, I couldn't wait to see what would happen next. When he finally stumbled through getting my cell phone number, he couldn't wait to use it, he called at 6:40 a.m. the next morning and asked what I was going to do that morning. I was about to go to the laundromat and he wanted to come along. I giggled and flirted that it was little fast for him to see my panties already. The first two weeks we dated we kissed a million times, and I remember the exact kiss where I completely fell in love with the best guy in the world. He's the man that makes me want to be a better person and I failed him completely, when he never once failed me.
This last couple of months I have felt like Bella in New Moon, losing Edward, motionless on the couch with her world spinning around her. Except the spinning is inside my head. Losing him is just more than I can understand. My hero is gone and to find a Jacob is blasphemy. I need to be my own safety net and it's hard. No Twilight happily ever after is meant for me, more like "The Crow", with the guy at the end saying "there ain't no coming back"
And what about that guy? My sinking into this situation. Mr 12/28/90. After not saying anything for over twenty years I finally confronted him. I sent a message I wanted to talk, it took him two seconds to give me his number. After all my fear, every moment of my life wasted over this, he couldn't even read two sentences on my blog back to back. All his years of alcoholism have left him completely moronic and harmless. He couldn't remember a thing, not a moment of violence, not a single time he stalked me everywhere. His main reasoning, "I was your boyfriend I never had to rape you"
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Open letter to my rapist
Open letter to my rapist.
How much of our time together do you remember, do you remember every time you threatened me? Do you member how many times you hid in the dark to watch me through the window. How about the night you watch me on a date and called me to tell me what the date was wearing detail for detail and where in the room we were sitting. I do.
When you walked up to me in that store did you know that I was a newlywed. Notice please the past tense. You feeling encouraged to speak to me set off a snowball effect I went crazy for every moment of fear I ever had for you and now my husband wants to divorce me. My husband is not the bad guy here. He the amazing man that married me in January two days before my hysterectomy. My hysterectomy included two large tumors that were thought to be cancer the cancer specialist had to do the surgery the tumor this were not cancer and we were happy to be married. I would always jump around like a Chihuahua to hug him gushing "I can't believe we're married I'm so lucky to be married to you" and I would go yay like a cheerleader. Now he recoils when I try to touch his arm, as if I'm poison. All my hysteria exploded the day his grandfather died, and I went to the local psychiatric hospital. I spent four days heavily sedated on the same unit my mother spent months at a time in. I came home banished to roommate status, the pain from everything I've done to him is visceral, set in stone. When he looks at me, I can see there is no fixing anything. I wish I could stamp my foot and cry that it was a bad reaction to the Zoloft I have taken for years, please give me the benefit of doubt and stayed married to me forever like the vows said, in sickness and in health. Beg that, "but the doctor says I have PTSD" but those wash away nothing. In this divorce, I have not a single person telling him I'm a good person, please forgive her, she's sweet, she's kind, not a single person telling him how much I completely love him. Not a single person in his life will ever be Team Lerryn. I am just the psycho wife and it is what it is, move on dude. Let that shit be the psycho ex wife.
I changed when I saw you that day and you needed to talk to me. I know you didn't say anything mean or scary and you didn't try to touch me. But still the fear that I ever had and always had consumed me. I went erratic and unreasonable and I treated him like hell. I got clingy and needy and I got jealous of the man that he was just hanging out with to play video games, and I said mean things to his best friend. I never liked the man I judged him inappropriately because 20 years ago he cheated on his wife and gave her HIV and 13 years ago he beat her. I didn't want him around and I didn't want to be friends with them. So instead of saying everything mean that I should've said to you I said it to this guy and his only real crime was having the same name as your middle name. I thought I could tell my husband him or me and my husband would pick me over this guy I was wrong I was spiraling out of control and I called this guy and said everything to him that I should've said to you. I said I know you're beating your wife I said she so scared of you and she wants to leave you, but if she leaves you she says he'll you'll kill her. Sounds familiar to you? That was really the only reason I stayed with you because you did threaten to kill me over and over. You threaten to kill my mother You even threatened to kill my cat. I even told this fella that she was in love with her first boyfriend and wanted him instead and I know that sounds familiar to you. That was our whole relationship you threatening to kill me so I couldn't leave and I never loved you ever, I was eighteen and was too scared to leave but I was always in love with someone else. You hated him wonder why was it his golden boy status or just the fact that he was my first and I was in love with him and not love with you. I've always wondered over the years what made you do it why why couldn't you just leave me alone when I didn't want you why you couldn't just away. Why did you follow me to college, waiting for me to leave my classes just to stare at me. Why did you slash my tires, trash my car. What was it about me that was so all fire important that you couldn't just walk away. I wish you could tell me. Here I am four a.m. wondering why I can't keep my husband of eight months when I could not get rid of you to save my sanity. Thru the grapevine I heard you are harmless now. Are you? Did you have a come to Jesus moment? You woke up one morning, and the whiskey wasn't working anymore? Or was is just harder to find me? I've spent years hiding in loose clothes, no makeup when I'm out alone, my hair in a sloppy bun slash ponytail hot mess. Even still you found me in the middle of a huge store. Why? What couldn't you forget? A teenage girl a foot shorter than you that was easy to intimidate? The first time you hit me, you picked me up and threw me across the bed, I bounced off the wall and you punched my leg and left a bruise the size of a dinner plate. The night I woke up to you reaching through my window, jerking my arm, trying to pull me out through the window. I thought you were the bogeyman incarnate. I can't remember your favorite song or your cologne. But I remember the sound of your voice, you couldn't speak a single sentence without a "hmm, yeah, uh, you know" Sometimes when you would speak you would do that weird thing with your nose, using your right hand to pull it down to your mustache. You would pull a strand of hair repeatedly from the back of your neck when you where sober and nervous. When you weren't sober the way your eyes didn't get dull, they would flicker in a way that just looked evil.
What do you remember about December 28, 1990, 11:37 p.m.? I was seeing golden boy at the time, and you hated it, you hated him. I was twenty years old. Do you remember it at all? You were drunk, did you believe it was consensual sex? The blood and the fact you tied my hands should have sunk in to your soul that I did not give my consent to have sex with you. That night has haunted me every since. It's been the excuse I gave myself for every self destructive thing I have ever done since that night, hence my room mate status divorce situation. Back to you. It was over fast. When you let me get dressed there was a small bloodstain on the bottom of my cream colored with a small paisley print that I had just gotten for Christmas the week before. Nothing screams "She was asking for it" like a Christmas turtleneck. My jeans had bloodstains on the waist band and the crotch. During the rape you had my blood on your face and down to your genitals. That image was gruesome, and burned into my nightmares for years. I considered you a demon, vampire, bogeyman. I remember grabbing a pair of long john pants that were off white and cleaned my self as good as I could, you didn't wear a condom so it had my blood and your sperm on it. By 1 a.m. I was home. My mother was passed out and I called golden boy. I wanted him there by my side, to hold my hand and take me to the ER, with my bag of bloody clothes. He was busy with his real girlfriend and couldn't be bothered. After he hung up on me, I remember staring at my phone, it was a oval white phone with a black stripe and it had my blood on it. I still had spots of blood on my hand. Does that much blood sound like consent to you? I took a handful of sleeping pills, not bothering to count. I didn't care if I woke up or not. I felt like that I had nothing.
Remember the whole me being self destructive thing? I was devastated that golden boy didn't come in and save me. He hated me and I didn't hear from him for seven years. He married the girl that was his real girlfriend there that night. I wanted him to hurt as much as I did, so about a year after I went after his father. I seduced him and busted my ass to have an affair with him for spite. The affair lasted six months.I was young and beautiful and I didn't care. I thought it made me feel better to be so cruel to other people.
Here I am back to being alone because of stupid shit I did. I wish I could run away like I did then. It was so easy to run off to the beach and stay with my best friend. But for the past couple of months I've been such a screwup I don't even have a car, I'm walking to work right here in Sandston. After being off of Zoloft for two weeks this is the clearest I have ever been in years. Except for tonight, I am falling asleep like a normal person and waking up early, every day, cleaning the house to make it easier for him to be my roommate while I am broke. That is how good he is. I had to move him into the spare bedroom, and here I am alone in our king size bed, by a window that is always open with a fan in it. I love him so much I wish I had the money to just leave. Buy an old Airstream and a good truck and just drive. Drive to Alaska and fish everywhere all day and write all night. Go back to LA and cry in the Chateau Marmont, staying until I forget how much he means to me. Take a break in Vegas and waste some of my first husbands money. Then go to Maine, where he was born and we were supposed to have our belated honeymoon and just mourn the way our marriage died. Because that's what I need to do. I can't be cruel and fight for him to fall in love with me. Because that's what you did to me. I didn't want you and you didn't care. This is my rock bottom, I will never fight if he divorces me, if that's what he needs I love him too much to torture him to try and stay.
But I will fight you. Your not the bogeyman anymore. Your just a coward and I never loved you. Never. Not one second not one moment. I loved golden boy the entire time I was with you. You weren't man enough to say shit to him, but a 5'2 eighteen year old girl and your game on. Your such a coward, went I dated Jesse, your best friend, because he was so much bigger than you, you were pissing your pants and shaking in your shoes. I told him everything, he wanted to kill you and I didn't care. I just wanted you to get scared enough to stay away. But you never stayed away for long.
So here I am alone, I'm not hiding behind any guy now. What do want to say to me? What? Here is your shot, you want to talk to me? What the hell did you stalk me for all those years, and still you try to talk to me every chance. I'm not hiding behind messy hair and loose clothes. Can't miss me now, my hair is red, just for you. I am here in plain sight with out my baggy clothes and my makeup is flawless everyday. After all this bullshit I would hate for you not to recognize me for a second. Here is the deal. You get what you want, I will talk to you for thirty minutes and not in a public place. I will answer any question you have. I will be alone, no cell, no gun, no stun gun. Just me. You have to earn it. Put a video on YouTube. Label it Team Lerryn. I don't care if you call me a psycho (not the first time these past two weeks). Tell the whole world I am lying my ass off. I asked for it, I begged for it. Say you were drunk and don't remember a thing while you say hmm and grab your hair. Recite you favorite Taco Bell order. You show up on YouTube, I'll show up. Thirty minutes of my time, when I see the video I will send you a direct message, or call you at work, or better yet, get a prepaid cell phone and put it at the window you tried to drag me out of.
But you be careful, because this time if you try to touch me, I will fight, I'm not scared of you, and this time I'm not backing down from shit.
How much of our time together do you remember, do you remember every time you threatened me? Do you member how many times you hid in the dark to watch me through the window. How about the night you watch me on a date and called me to tell me what the date was wearing detail for detail and where in the room we were sitting. I do.
When you walked up to me in that store did you know that I was a newlywed. Notice please the past tense. You feeling encouraged to speak to me set off a snowball effect I went crazy for every moment of fear I ever had for you and now my husband wants to divorce me. My husband is not the bad guy here. He the amazing man that married me in January two days before my hysterectomy. My hysterectomy included two large tumors that were thought to be cancer the cancer specialist had to do the surgery the tumor this were not cancer and we were happy to be married. I would always jump around like a Chihuahua to hug him gushing "I can't believe we're married I'm so lucky to be married to you" and I would go yay like a cheerleader. Now he recoils when I try to touch his arm, as if I'm poison. All my hysteria exploded the day his grandfather died, and I went to the local psychiatric hospital. I spent four days heavily sedated on the same unit my mother spent months at a time in. I came home banished to roommate status, the pain from everything I've done to him is visceral, set in stone. When he looks at me, I can see there is no fixing anything. I wish I could stamp my foot and cry that it was a bad reaction to the Zoloft I have taken for years, please give me the benefit of doubt and stayed married to me forever like the vows said, in sickness and in health. Beg that, "but the doctor says I have PTSD" but those wash away nothing. In this divorce, I have not a single person telling him I'm a good person, please forgive her, she's sweet, she's kind, not a single person telling him how much I completely love him. Not a single person in his life will ever be Team Lerryn. I am just the psycho wife and it is what it is, move on dude. Let that shit be the psycho ex wife.
I changed when I saw you that day and you needed to talk to me. I know you didn't say anything mean or scary and you didn't try to touch me. But still the fear that I ever had and always had consumed me. I went erratic and unreasonable and I treated him like hell. I got clingy and needy and I got jealous of the man that he was just hanging out with to play video games, and I said mean things to his best friend. I never liked the man I judged him inappropriately because 20 years ago he cheated on his wife and gave her HIV and 13 years ago he beat her. I didn't want him around and I didn't want to be friends with them. So instead of saying everything mean that I should've said to you I said it to this guy and his only real crime was having the same name as your middle name. I thought I could tell my husband him or me and my husband would pick me over this guy I was wrong I was spiraling out of control and I called this guy and said everything to him that I should've said to you. I said I know you're beating your wife I said she so scared of you and she wants to leave you, but if she leaves you she says he'll you'll kill her. Sounds familiar to you? That was really the only reason I stayed with you because you did threaten to kill me over and over. You threaten to kill my mother You even threatened to kill my cat. I even told this fella that she was in love with her first boyfriend and wanted him instead and I know that sounds familiar to you. That was our whole relationship you threatening to kill me so I couldn't leave and I never loved you ever, I was eighteen and was too scared to leave but I was always in love with someone else. You hated him wonder why was it his golden boy status or just the fact that he was my first and I was in love with him and not love with you. I've always wondered over the years what made you do it why why couldn't you just leave me alone when I didn't want you why you couldn't just away. Why did you follow me to college, waiting for me to leave my classes just to stare at me. Why did you slash my tires, trash my car. What was it about me that was so all fire important that you couldn't just walk away. I wish you could tell me. Here I am four a.m. wondering why I can't keep my husband of eight months when I could not get rid of you to save my sanity. Thru the grapevine I heard you are harmless now. Are you? Did you have a come to Jesus moment? You woke up one morning, and the whiskey wasn't working anymore? Or was is just harder to find me? I've spent years hiding in loose clothes, no makeup when I'm out alone, my hair in a sloppy bun slash ponytail hot mess. Even still you found me in the middle of a huge store. Why? What couldn't you forget? A teenage girl a foot shorter than you that was easy to intimidate? The first time you hit me, you picked me up and threw me across the bed, I bounced off the wall and you punched my leg and left a bruise the size of a dinner plate. The night I woke up to you reaching through my window, jerking my arm, trying to pull me out through the window. I thought you were the bogeyman incarnate. I can't remember your favorite song or your cologne. But I remember the sound of your voice, you couldn't speak a single sentence without a "hmm, yeah, uh, you know" Sometimes when you would speak you would do that weird thing with your nose, using your right hand to pull it down to your mustache. You would pull a strand of hair repeatedly from the back of your neck when you where sober and nervous. When you weren't sober the way your eyes didn't get dull, they would flicker in a way that just looked evil.
What do you remember about December 28, 1990, 11:37 p.m.? I was seeing golden boy at the time, and you hated it, you hated him. I was twenty years old. Do you remember it at all? You were drunk, did you believe it was consensual sex? The blood and the fact you tied my hands should have sunk in to your soul that I did not give my consent to have sex with you. That night has haunted me every since. It's been the excuse I gave myself for every self destructive thing I have ever done since that night, hence my room mate status divorce situation. Back to you. It was over fast. When you let me get dressed there was a small bloodstain on the bottom of my cream colored with a small paisley print that I had just gotten for Christmas the week before. Nothing screams "She was asking for it" like a Christmas turtleneck. My jeans had bloodstains on the waist band and the crotch. During the rape you had my blood on your face and down to your genitals. That image was gruesome, and burned into my nightmares for years. I considered you a demon, vampire, bogeyman. I remember grabbing a pair of long john pants that were off white and cleaned my self as good as I could, you didn't wear a condom so it had my blood and your sperm on it. By 1 a.m. I was home. My mother was passed out and I called golden boy. I wanted him there by my side, to hold my hand and take me to the ER, with my bag of bloody clothes. He was busy with his real girlfriend and couldn't be bothered. After he hung up on me, I remember staring at my phone, it was a oval white phone with a black stripe and it had my blood on it. I still had spots of blood on my hand. Does that much blood sound like consent to you? I took a handful of sleeping pills, not bothering to count. I didn't care if I woke up or not. I felt like that I had nothing.
Remember the whole me being self destructive thing? I was devastated that golden boy didn't come in and save me. He hated me and I didn't hear from him for seven years. He married the girl that was his real girlfriend there that night. I wanted him to hurt as much as I did, so about a year after I went after his father. I seduced him and busted my ass to have an affair with him for spite. The affair lasted six months.I was young and beautiful and I didn't care. I thought it made me feel better to be so cruel to other people.
Here I am back to being alone because of stupid shit I did. I wish I could run away like I did then. It was so easy to run off to the beach and stay with my best friend. But for the past couple of months I've been such a screwup I don't even have a car, I'm walking to work right here in Sandston. After being off of Zoloft for two weeks this is the clearest I have ever been in years. Except for tonight, I am falling asleep like a normal person and waking up early, every day, cleaning the house to make it easier for him to be my roommate while I am broke. That is how good he is. I had to move him into the spare bedroom, and here I am alone in our king size bed, by a window that is always open with a fan in it. I love him so much I wish I had the money to just leave. Buy an old Airstream and a good truck and just drive. Drive to Alaska and fish everywhere all day and write all night. Go back to LA and cry in the Chateau Marmont, staying until I forget how much he means to me. Take a break in Vegas and waste some of my first husbands money. Then go to Maine, where he was born and we were supposed to have our belated honeymoon and just mourn the way our marriage died. Because that's what I need to do. I can't be cruel and fight for him to fall in love with me. Because that's what you did to me. I didn't want you and you didn't care. This is my rock bottom, I will never fight if he divorces me, if that's what he needs I love him too much to torture him to try and stay.
But I will fight you. Your not the bogeyman anymore. Your just a coward and I never loved you. Never. Not one second not one moment. I loved golden boy the entire time I was with you. You weren't man enough to say shit to him, but a 5'2 eighteen year old girl and your game on. Your such a coward, went I dated Jesse, your best friend, because he was so much bigger than you, you were pissing your pants and shaking in your shoes. I told him everything, he wanted to kill you and I didn't care. I just wanted you to get scared enough to stay away. But you never stayed away for long.
So here I am alone, I'm not hiding behind any guy now. What do want to say to me? What? Here is your shot, you want to talk to me? What the hell did you stalk me for all those years, and still you try to talk to me every chance. I'm not hiding behind messy hair and loose clothes. Can't miss me now, my hair is red, just for you. I am here in plain sight with out my baggy clothes and my makeup is flawless everyday. After all this bullshit I would hate for you not to recognize me for a second. Here is the deal. You get what you want, I will talk to you for thirty minutes and not in a public place. I will answer any question you have. I will be alone, no cell, no gun, no stun gun. Just me. You have to earn it. Put a video on YouTube. Label it Team Lerryn. I don't care if you call me a psycho (not the first time these past two weeks). Tell the whole world I am lying my ass off. I asked for it, I begged for it. Say you were drunk and don't remember a thing while you say hmm and grab your hair. Recite you favorite Taco Bell order. You show up on YouTube, I'll show up. Thirty minutes of my time, when I see the video I will send you a direct message, or call you at work, or better yet, get a prepaid cell phone and put it at the window you tried to drag me out of.
But you be careful, because this time if you try to touch me, I will fight, I'm not scared of you, and this time I'm not backing down from shit.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Cleaning with Zote soap
Some days I think a little too much about cleaning. To the point of watching cleaning videos on Youtube. Wow Martha Stewart geek moment galore. But back to the main point and away from random looping of thoughts. The cheapest cleaning product I have come across is Zote laundry soap from Mexico! A huge bar that only costs around $1.50 at the cheaper grocery stores. My husband used to be married to this Mexican woman when he lived in Texas, so that's where he heard about it. I started using it for more than just clothes and wanted to share a short list of extra uses.
1) Cleaning a cotton mop, cute hubby got the mop all nasty from naughty Pomeranian. I put on the gloves and washed it with the Zote and was seriously shocked how clean it got.
2) Counter tops, cute hubby again (trust it's a trend, he is cute but messy) cooks and splatters oily gross messes and it works better than using up expensive dish soap.
3)My beloved cast iron pot! Cute hubby again baked in barbecue sauce and left it. The Zote was the only thing that softened up that barbecue sauce. Of course when your done you have to dry and season again.
4) Mildew clothes, when somebody forgets the clothes in the washer and the smell is sour. I took a knife and scraped flakes all over the load and washed as normal. It's stretches a lot further than a $10 box of name brand.
5) The shocking one, underneath the stove eyes. I lifted the stove thingy lid and of course somebody had left spills that were baked hard. I scrubbed a lot and nothing really happened, I said screw it and wet the bar of soap and laid it on the spot. Left for a while and the soap soaked into the spot and this time it all came off, good as new.
Some days I think a little too much about cleaning. To the point of watching cleaning videos on Youtube. Wow Martha Stewart geek moment galore. But back to the main point and away from random looping of thoughts. The cheapest cleaning product I have come across is Zote laundry soap from Mexico! A huge bar that only costs around $1.50 at the cheaper grocery stores. My husband used to be married to this Mexican woman when he lived in Texas, so that's where he heard about it. I started using it for more than just clothes and wanted to share a short list of extra uses.
1) Cleaning a cotton mop, cute hubby got the mop all nasty from naughty Pomeranian. I put on the gloves and washed it with the Zote and was seriously shocked how clean it got.
2) Counter tops, cute hubby again (trust it's a trend, he is cute but messy) cooks and splatters oily gross messes and it works better than using up expensive dish soap.
3)My beloved cast iron pot! Cute hubby again baked in barbecue sauce and left it. The Zote was the only thing that softened up that barbecue sauce. Of course when your done you have to dry and season again.
4) Mildew clothes, when somebody forgets the clothes in the washer and the smell is sour. I took a knife and scraped flakes all over the load and washed as normal. It's stretches a lot further than a $10 box of name brand.
5) The shocking one, underneath the stove eyes. I lifted the stove thingy lid and of course somebody had left spills that were baked hard. I scrubbed a lot and nothing really happened, I said screw it and wet the bar of soap and laid it on the spot. Left for a while and the soap soaked into the spot and this time it all came off, good as new.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Chanel dreams
Chanel no. 5 & Chanel 2.55
Here in the one stoplight town of Sandston, Virginia; built on the outskirts of the Chickahominy swamp, how practical is it to dream of Chanel? I was a elementary school age girl in love with a Marilyn Monroe biography that I checked out of a library so many times they should have just given me the copy. That book is still on my bedside table today. When I was old enough to get my first bottle of grown up perfume, my mother bought me Chanel no. 5, because she said that was Marilyn's favorite perfume. I was having a wow moment like all teenage girls. No more drugstore little girl perfume in the candy pink bottle. I had Chanel in the center of my dresser. The black case, the sleek lines. No eighties high school fashion could stand the test of time next to it. When I got older and past my coordinating outfits from Express circa 1990 my taste in fashion magazines evolved. No longer was it that interesting to read a magazine that described the best way to perform oral sex and how to get and keep your man. You can walk down the aisle at a supermarket and get a man. Check out reality tv and you can see a chick juggling a dozen. What sparked my interest was Vogue and pictures of the Chanel 2.55. Coco Chanel's iconic bag named for its debut in February 1955. That was a real goal, not how to get a man with tramp tricks 101. How could such an expensive bag be a goal in this economy in small town USA? Simply for what it represents for me. Yes it is an image of timeless style, an elegant bag that will still be in style in fifty more years. But the root of dream is how much you have to have your act together just to afford it. Yes it is an object of cost that most of Americans will never afford in this economic standstill. In some cases one bag is more than a semester or even a whole year in a community college. To own one bag without being financially stupid all that money would have to be completely separate from your necessities of life. A roof over your head, a working car with a full tank of gas and a great job that you have been at forever and will always be there. Then when you have everything you need, you can cut out that awesome coffee, pack your lunch, and then decide even if you can afford it after being financially responsible is it an ok purchase? That is what my goal is, to someday be so financially secure that beautiful bag could be mine.
Here in the one stoplight town of Sandston, Virginia; built on the outskirts of the Chickahominy swamp, how practical is it to dream of Chanel? I was a elementary school age girl in love with a Marilyn Monroe biography that I checked out of a library so many times they should have just given me the copy. That book is still on my bedside table today. When I was old enough to get my first bottle of grown up perfume, my mother bought me Chanel no. 5, because she said that was Marilyn's favorite perfume. I was having a wow moment like all teenage girls. No more drugstore little girl perfume in the candy pink bottle. I had Chanel in the center of my dresser. The black case, the sleek lines. No eighties high school fashion could stand the test of time next to it. When I got older and past my coordinating outfits from Express circa 1990 my taste in fashion magazines evolved. No longer was it that interesting to read a magazine that described the best way to perform oral sex and how to get and keep your man. You can walk down the aisle at a supermarket and get a man. Check out reality tv and you can see a chick juggling a dozen. What sparked my interest was Vogue and pictures of the Chanel 2.55. Coco Chanel's iconic bag named for its debut in February 1955. That was a real goal, not how to get a man with tramp tricks 101. How could such an expensive bag be a goal in this economy in small town USA? Simply for what it represents for me. Yes it is an image of timeless style, an elegant bag that will still be in style in fifty more years. But the root of dream is how much you have to have your act together just to afford it. Yes it is an object of cost that most of Americans will never afford in this economic standstill. In some cases one bag is more than a semester or even a whole year in a community college. To own one bag without being financially stupid all that money would have to be completely separate from your necessities of life. A roof over your head, a working car with a full tank of gas and a great job that you have been at forever and will always be there. Then when you have everything you need, you can cut out that awesome coffee, pack your lunch, and then decide even if you can afford it after being financially responsible is it an ok purchase? That is what my goal is, to someday be so financially secure that beautiful bag could be mine.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
White linen and pink rhinestones
White linen and pink rhinestones
Think about 1991. I was 21 and hair metal was oh so something or another. Big hair and bad clothes reigned supreme and I thought I was rocking them both while for four whole months I worked as a stripper. Before you get any judgmental panties in a bunch, please note I don't care about anyone's opinion of me. After all, reputation and opinions are what people whisper behind your back when they don't know you well enough to know your mamas name. I was not some naive little girl that got victimized by a cruel cruel world. I was a grown up and it was a job, and I had a damn good time. It was a hoot. In my current state of chubbiness, if I ever got that skinny again somebody is gonna have to duct tape the clothes on me. When I have extra pennies I would love to take a burlesque class. I would shake my butt and have a blast taking a fun dance class. Throw on the sequins, ruffles on the butt retro panties and call my self Miss Cherry Sunshine. Hence the name of the blog.
In my time at the gentlemen's club named Greca I regret the awful neon tie dye costume with ugly long fringe. Think Randy Macho Man Savage in the eighties, but a thousand times worse. Not all my fashion choices were cringe worthy. I had a white linen blazer that was perfect. The lines were crisp and simple. I wore it with a pink silky polka dot button down. Think Julia Roberts by the pool in "Pretty Woman". I even had the spiral perm to match. My roommate and best friend, a platinum blonde stripper named Electra wore said jacket with a rhinestone bra. Sadly the jacket did not last the test of time. It was dry clean only and I was young, fashion dumb and washing machine only. The only item that survived from that summer was a bleached and ripped up Levi's jean jacket covered in studs and pink rhinestones. And with that, I hope the rest of your day sparkles as my old jacket.
Think about 1991. I was 21 and hair metal was oh so something or another. Big hair and bad clothes reigned supreme and I thought I was rocking them both while for four whole months I worked as a stripper. Before you get any judgmental panties in a bunch, please note I don't care about anyone's opinion of me. After all, reputation and opinions are what people whisper behind your back when they don't know you well enough to know your mamas name. I was not some naive little girl that got victimized by a cruel cruel world. I was a grown up and it was a job, and I had a damn good time. It was a hoot. In my current state of chubbiness, if I ever got that skinny again somebody is gonna have to duct tape the clothes on me. When I have extra pennies I would love to take a burlesque class. I would shake my butt and have a blast taking a fun dance class. Throw on the sequins, ruffles on the butt retro panties and call my self Miss Cherry Sunshine. Hence the name of the blog.
In my time at the gentlemen's club named Greca I regret the awful neon tie dye costume with ugly long fringe. Think Randy Macho Man Savage in the eighties, but a thousand times worse. Not all my fashion choices were cringe worthy. I had a white linen blazer that was perfect. The lines were crisp and simple. I wore it with a pink silky polka dot button down. Think Julia Roberts by the pool in "Pretty Woman". I even had the spiral perm to match. My roommate and best friend, a platinum blonde stripper named Electra wore said jacket with a rhinestone bra. Sadly the jacket did not last the test of time. It was dry clean only and I was young, fashion dumb and washing machine only. The only item that survived from that summer was a bleached and ripped up Levi's jean jacket covered in studs and pink rhinestones. And with that, I hope the rest of your day sparkles as my old jacket.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Miss Cherry Sunshine
Miss Cherry Sunshine, my blog. This is me jumping into the deep end of the pool. I love to write, it's all I think about. I love words, I'm the kind of girl that will search for a antique dictionary. One of my favorite old words is haint, a very old reference to a ghost. My first essay is a small introduction to myself. I took it from a letter to my sister. We didn't speak for twenty five years because of how bad my mother abused her. My mother was mentally ill her whole life, and my sister just couldn't have a relationship with me until after my mother died.
Not all my essays will be sad, as time goes by I hope to include travel, food, lifestyle and more typical blog post. And if you stick around, a sneak peak of my first manuscript will be happening soon!
"well-behaved women seldom make history." Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Not all my essays will be sad, as time goes by I hope to include travel, food, lifestyle and more typical blog post. And if you stick around, a sneak peak of my first manuscript will be happening soon!
"well-behaved women seldom make history." Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Dear Sister,
I thought about you today. I was at a farmers market on Pole Green Road and I was thinking of this little notebook. I wonder if you ever go to farmers markets and do you like it? I love the simplicity of it. Going on a bright sunny day. Feeling and hearing the gray gravel crunching under my feet. I always look at the tomatoes first hoping for a big green tomato. Watching the honeybees flying slowly around the fat peaches. I wonder are they too drunk off the nectar to be a bother. All the signs are just old lunch bags with black marker. Just a simple day. A sweet memory. I wonder how to pick which ones to share, I can't fit them all in here but I wish I could.
My daughter was just beautiful. I could just look at her and just fall in love with her all over again. She was just a happy little baby and she was just fun. Easy going, not a picky eater. My doll baby. The first time I tried to breast feed she was trying to latch on and we both were not quite in line. She took her little fist and smushed it into me scootched my breast into the right spot, she latched on and that was it. Dinner bell was rung.
Not every memory is sweet and kind. Some are melancholy. A sad song playing on a piano somewhere, always in the background, a broken record of a memory. A memory that can't be changed or fixed. I can remember the moment that I realized I could no longer remember what our Daddy's voice sounded like. I was in my mid twenties and there it was his voice was gone. That was a sad memory. Trying to bring back things he said to me, only to hear my voice saying his words.
To compare what memories get lost along the way, and which ones get etched down to the bone. The scarification of my mothers disease on every aspect of my life. How I can still hear the shrill screaming every time she became manic. The words she chose to use against me. Then last week I saw a popover pan and I could hear her promising to make me popovers when I was little. I was so sad from grieving her I wanted to cry right there in the store. I can remember her picking daffodils for me when I was six as strong as I remember all the bitter words.
Her illness did give her the kindness of forgetting the bad things in her last years. There was a day I came home from work and she was sitting there crying. She had been watching afternoon tv and there was a bipolar mother that had truly abused her children. My mother was crying at the thought had she ever treated me that bad. She could not remember my childhood at all. There was my mother and she just looked so fragile, it was so alien to me. In that moment I could have been cruel and spewed all the venom in the world. And you more than anyone know that it would have been truly honest. But I didn't. I held her soft weak hand and said "no sweetie you weren't like that at all. Yes ma'am my childhood was fine."
My daughter and I barely talk about the bad times with my mother. It's a past that is shared and equal, with silence to cover up the parts we want to edit out.
There are many things that I wish I could edit out like someone fudging there resume. I would edit out LA Boy and all the money I wasted dating a commitment phobic rock and roll roadie. He'll let's get rid of prom date Boy too. Well then while we are on this page I wanna get rid of everybody I ever dated before my husband. There was a whole lot of what the hell was I thinking. The cheesy boy that took me to the beach and literally got me bitten by a snake at a pet store and then we went to a haunted house on the ocean front and he got scared and ditched me right there when the teeny bopper in a cheap plastic mask jumped out and said boo. That was winner central right there. The weird guy that reached over my dinner plate and his long arm hair touched my sushi- yuck!
It would be nice to get rid of every dating disaster. One date wonders. You go on one date and wonder and you wonder why you didn't stay home reading fashion magazines. Some dates so bad you should join a convent. But in the end every ex had their place in your life as a bookmark to get you where you need to be in life. If I hadn't been so mad at Prom Date Boy for marrying someone else, well I wouldn't have married some cheesy wanker barfly and after three months and been blessed with my daughter. So it balances out. From Prom Boy I learned there is no good reason to wait for someone to marry you. Have respect for yourself because if he ain't marrying you than let it go. Let him waste some other girls time. From LA Boy I learned a ton. Never spend your own money to see a guy. Dating someone three thousand miles away because you think they are oh so cool doesn't really work in the long run. When you are 27 a guy that works for rock bands and goes on tour is exciting when you live in a small town. When you grow up its a guy that doesn't want to wake up before noon, or get a real job. Not so cool when you consider he has never had health insurance, a retirement plan, and no financial security. I'm no psychic but I can't really see a twenty something rock band hiring a 65 year old roadie. So with all those dating disasters, when I met my husband I was a picky high maintenance brat that saw what a great guy he was and I snatched him up and settled my butt on down. Better late than never.
I know the exact moment I fell in love with my husband. It was during the most fiery intense kiss I have ever had. It was crazy and sweet and passionate and boom I was in love. You could say it was just lust but after three years he still falls asleep holding my hand. Yes that is love to me.
Isn't love such an alien concept. You can't make it behave or appear out of thin air. It makes butterflies in your stomach but I never truly understood it until I had gave birth. To compare any dating drama or high school infatuation to true love is just blasphemy. Knowing how much I love my child, live for her, breath for her I can't even remember what feelings I had for her father. I have been in love only three times in my life and her dad was not one of those three.
My mothers love was such a strange manifestation of behaviors. She did truly love her only granddaughter but I will never be sure what her true feelings about me were. Perhaps with my childhood it's a miracle I'm not locked in Central State finger painting my rubber room even when they don't give me paint. As much as I know I love Ashley my feelings for my mother have been more in the murky shades of gray. But this I know, every time she tried to kill herself I saved her. She would overdose on a different drug every time and I didn't leave and go the movies. I would haul her dead weight ass into the car or call 911. She wasn't a monster just a human with debilitating disease. She abused me and my sisters as children. She was mentally ill. That doesn't make me a victim or martyr and I was never a saint. I am just me. I am just a girl that wants to finish college. I want to make out with my boyfriend in a LLBean living room. And maybe when I look at the ceramic baby doll that my mother made by hand when I was eight I can know that she cared for me as much as she was able to.
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