a masochists memoir

the visions of my lighthouse are getting distant. I've lost my emergency boat, my buoy has been thrown out to sea with no second thought. there's holes in my ship, in the brains, they creep with cobwebs and I'm losing my head. I'm ready to jump but I need to wait for pitch darkness. I'm so close. it's almost completely dark everywhere I look. water has been seeping in for so long, I can't tell you when it started happening. I can only tell you that it's heavier and heavier and my arms are shaking from having to bear the brunt alone.
I don't know what's on the otherside, I envision it much lighter, I just have to wait for my time to pass. I've craved calm waters for so long I can't remember what they feel like. I only know what it feels like to be in the tumultuous sea.
take me off your worry list 💔

I used to write. every single day of every day of my life until people took my anonymous words and shared them with real, breathing people. they stole them and used them against me.
I wrote a memoir for NaNoWriMo in my early twenties. before I met my children's father. I wrote it as if I were writing from the grave, combing thru each marking, each event that led me to where I was. 144 pages later I thought I'd written the world's longest obituary and it wasn't that my childhood was terrible, it was, of course, certain events that molded me into this realm of thinking that I could not defy death any longer.
I was a daydreamer but never dreamt of actually becoming a mother and having children. my 20 something year old brain couldn't comprehend that I could be responsible for someone else's life.
I destroyed the memoir, aka the 144 page obituary when I found out I was pregnant with my first child. I couldn't risk my child finding it someday.
I wish I had kept it. I can only imagine the brevity of the sequel and maybe even part 3.
I can say with certainty though, I am ready to close this chapter.

when you feel betrayed and the grief is so heavy you can't breathe?

...because I could never be

break your mirrors, cut off the sleeves on your tshirts, cut off your hair, cut off your heart from bad relationships.

pick one: go to church, go to a new church, stop going to church. pray more. fill up a notebook and start a new one, take a roll of photographs, but don't develop them. spend more time dreaming.

make love, have sex, and fuck, and try to understand the differences between them, give birth to something, kill something. let go of something you don't want to. hold on to something you
don't want to.

take a nap when you're tired, make a list of the people you've been wanting to say 'fuck you' to, and say it, in some form, to each one- and then, move on. get wet. spend time alone. read ten books recommended by friends.

photograph yourself naked. sketch yourself naked. watch yourself naked in some reflective surface. if you want chocolate, have some. get a small tattoo. get a box of miss clairol. draw
on your own skin.

fall in love with someone else. fall in love with yourself. fall in love with something ugly. fall in love with the world. fall out of love.

find responsibility, make a really big mistake. make a list of rules and break them. make a list of rules and follow them. take a bubblebath.

learn something useful: how to change the oil in your car, how to knit, how to make great quiche. give in to honesty for twentyfour hours. give in to honesty forever. stop worrying.

cry about everything you've been meaning to cry about. say yes to the next person who asks you to dance. write a novel. tape a picture of who you were at five years old to your fridge. rearrange your furniture. paint something, masturbate.

say yes when you mean it and no when you mean it. ask for a miracle. try blue fingernails and red toenails. stop wearing makeup. emphasize something you've previously downplayed. pay attention to details.

buy a snowglobe and watch it. unplug your television. turn off your radio. write your will. make a list of what you are, and believe it. wear something leather every day for a week. write down your fantasies, and share them.

make friends. take a walk somewhere you haven't been. draw on the sidewalk with chalk until you have any kind of revelation. psychological house-cleaning. physical house-cleaning.

fast until you realize that no, you really don't understand what hunger is. remember to not believe everything you read. find out what faith really means, how long hope lasts, and whether charity still exists. be kind to a stranger without caring if anyone's watching.

sleep under the stars one night. drive somewhere at night with the windows down and the music loud. play under sprinklers until everything feels perfect. change your sleep schedule.

watch the sun rise, memorize someone else's face. let old wounds heal, play devil's advocate. keep your mind consciously open.

just don't try to erase your history.

I thought that pizza and cake
And hot water
would take the sting away
of friends in love

That medication and marijuana
Could cover
all of the salt

to heal what I can’t put my finger on

meet someone from your past again in the future and have immediate comfort when you're around them because you remember life before you found out the world was so harsh?

one of my favorite quotes:

No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved.
Alice Sebold

my mantra, and then someone held their hand out and said "I gotchu"

it's hard to remember sometimes that even though their hand is out - and they say they got you, that hand might be full of lots of things you can't see hidden in the layers of their skin, underneath their fingerprints, following to the depths of their heart.

and that even though they say they got you, they still might hurt you.

I didn't have a terrible childhood. I don't remember a lot of it but the memories I have are mostly okay.

things didn't get really ugly until jr high when I started cutting my shins and wearing knee socks. I wasn't sure why everything was so heavy but I knew that made it lighter.
from there i started doing it on my arms and wearing long sleeve shirts.

and then someone came along, I thought of him as one of those life rings you see on tug boats. until the waves got stronger and he didn't want to be my friend anymore. so he took what he wanted - he raped me in the basement of his parents church. my hair got caught on the castors of the tables. I often wonder if my hair would still be there today if I was brave enough to look. he pulled the life ring and never answered the phone for me again.

I turned myself into a human ashtray. id put my cigarettes out on my arms mostly, occasionally my thighs. I still sliced and diced and tried to cut every last horrible heavy thing out of me.

I scared my mom. I scared her, I tested her, I frightened the fuck out of her. right before her eyes, this sweet tiny dancer had turned into a bloody mess. literally.

one night I took a bunch of pills. told one person and who did they call? my mom.

I scared her again and I feel regret as a mother now myself, that I gave her that fear. she cried all the way to the hospital, screaming my name over and over to keep me awake until we got there.

yet again, my mom saved my life. I don't know how to thank someone for saving your life over and over again.

she taught me different coping mechanisms, how to shove feelings down or scream them into the void, isolation until you make it to the other side.
how to make pizza dough, homemade egg noodles and perfect chocolate chip cookies.

I won't say she's perfect, but she's mine. unfortunately, I know recently I don't call or see her often enough but I'm in that isolation mode she taught me and I'm trying to make it to the other side. some days are better than others.

I just hope it's not too late to call my mom so she can save me, again. I'll never stop needing my mom.

in 2018, I wrote from my then 5 year old's point of view of my death. I still think of this writing often, only because the thoughts of suicide still seem to linger. i have never been able to picture myself as an older person, time is ticking and my heart is still shattered.

I was five when my mom decided to end her life.

It crushed me. I loved her more than anything, I followed her from room to room, I begged to sleep with her every night. I stole her lap, snuggled under the heated blanket. I raced my brother and sister to the door when she got home from work, always winning. I’d run so fast and leap into her arms that she said if I were any bigger, I’d knock her over.

And then one day, she was gone.

My life was never the same again. My dad moved in next to my mom’s parents and my grandmother tried. She tried so hard but she never did quite like kids like my mom did. She had always told my mom that too, that she was always jealous of the times she’d walk in and the house would be a disaster and there was my mom on the floor with one of us, reading books or building blocks. Mom could let the floors get dirty, the dust get thick, and leave the clothes wrinkly. Grandma was a different story and we had a list of chores that included dusting and putting our clothes away. She taught us the proper way to fold shirts and pants, smoothing them out so that they didn’t look like they came from the corner of the floor.

I decided to sleep in my own bed after she left me here without her. I kept her pillow under my head and breathed her smell in every single night. I played her voice over and over through my head, trying not to forget what she sounded like.

I wish she could have loved herself as much as I loved her.