As the Wheel turns, I fall off

The wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round, ’round and ’round, ’round and round, the wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round, all through the town.   There ya go ladies and gents, my life in a child’s song.

I’ve not been given an easy path in this life and many a day, well, it gets just too fucking much and I really just wanna give up…then I mind fuck myself into thinking there’s a grander purpose to my existence and really knowing there isn’t but living the illusion is all I can do because the alternative is would too hurtful to my family, because in some bizarre way they see something about me that I don’t…so for their sake I wake tomorrow and endure the torture until I don’t or can’t whatever comes first. I know it’s a bit dark but I’m tired and there haven’t many that have lived the life I have and review the memories I do on a repeat reel of “Barbi, this is your life”.

I stepped back from writing because I felt it only brought out the dark in my mind.  Maybe it does, maybe that’s all that is there.  I don’t know.  I don’t know much at all, but this life is tiring and my mind is hanging by a thread.  Fearful of a nights sleep, fearful of all the thoughts that can creep in and destroy any happy left.  This is my life.  It’s fucked.  Totally fucked.

When I wake tomorrow and shake the sleep from the brain, I’ll realize its just another day in a prison I can’t escape, never moving passed what I hoped I could.  Because there is something underlying in my psyche that is preventing me from moving forward.  What the hell it is, I have no idea, but I’m getting angry.  More than angry, just plain pissed off and would like to strangle the life out of my parents [they are dead, no worries] and ask them, “what the hell were you thinking???”  “You shouldn’t have been parents in any sense of the word”

Today, I’ve given up, and allowing whatever the Universe has planned for me, well, let’s do it.  Not gonna lie, I’m scared shitless.  I’ve been scared shitless since I took this new job, in this new field, in this unpolished skill that I’m quite sure that I may fail in…what the fuck was I thinking???  Thoughts of grandeur, thoughts of security, thoughts of paying off student loans that haven’t done shit in my life but grow double in size.  Yes, scared shitless, I am.

Having trust in moving forward is tough, here’s the deal.  I get paid when I work with clients.  I work within Autistic Services with Easterseals.  However, no clients, no $$$.  Leaving a reasonable steady job, taking the risk, throwing out stability.  Granted, I wasn’t making squat, but I at least I knew what tomorrow would be, at this moment, I’m in daze of unknown.  Again, what the fuck was I thinking????

I was thinking that I needed more in this life.  To do some good, to make a difference and to pay back my success of making it this far without completely fucking everything up.  So here I write to an abyss of names and faces that I’ll probably never meet in hopes that someone reading this will have a direct connection to the Universe transport my cries of help directly to it.

Being home and doing the grandma thing is awesome, but it doesn’t pay, and I need to work.  Yes, being employed is good mostly because I like to pay my bills and eat.  Weird concept, right?  Anyway, if we could make it, I would stay home, take care of the things that need done, watch the grandkids and just be me.  In reality, it’s who I am and pretty much the only thing I’m good at doing 100%

My plea to the Universe, please let my ‘happy’ shine, find the passion that is buried deep in my psyche remove the worry and fear of failing and allow it awaken and soar.  Help me be and do me for whatever I was intended to do in this life.  Living in this earthy purgatory has become overwhelming.  Lift the veil, I’m ready.

This is so much fun

I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down ~Chumbawamba~

Pretty much what we all experience one or more times in our lives.  If you haven’t had hardship, well, I call bullshit.  Or your definition of hardship is well a lot different from mine or anyone else’s.  Whatever the case, there isn’t a doubt that even the most positive person has suffered life blows moments and had to stand up, brush off their tushy and move forward once again.

Life isn’t a series of just good things.  It’s a series of shit happens and it happens often.  Without all that shit, we wouldn’t appreciate the good stuff.  Even in my darkest moments, I can see the light.  Probably one of the factors built-in me of not doing myself in earlier.  Not that I haven’t tried, seems as if I have a guardian angel or something, if you believe in the horse snot, snatched me up at the last-minute.  Whoa, what the hell are you doing, I’d shout, let me die! Nope, I was forced to survive.

I’ve attempted suicide more than once, even simple as playing chicken with cars as a younger person.  Yep that was me heading for you, and you swerved, should have hit me, but the selfish person you are, you swerved and missed me, just so you wouldn’t get hurt.  Ha! See what I did there? Seriously though, life has its moments and surviving isn’t one to sneeze away.

You see, surviving doesn’t take much effort.  All you really need to do is not do anything.  Yep, pretty much.  Look at all that claim to fame you can have just for doing nothing.  I ‘survived’ cancer twice.  I didn’t fight, I didn’t do shit.  I just let them poke, cut, and radiate my body until it was done.  I wept in silence, because yeah, it did hurt.  I was lonely because people were worried that the chemicals from chemotherapy would leach from my body and poison them.  Even better, cancer is contagious.  Didn’t you know????

Anyway, I was left alone to survive.  There ya go.  Thank you to all and your bizarre reasoning to left me to be lonely while I ‘survived’ through cancer.  Guess you were doing me a favor.  Because I did absolutely nothing, and here I am, spoiler, I survived!

Now you see my reasoning behind not being a supporter of surviving.  I can remember comments like, “you got this, you’re a survivor, you’re a fighter”, um okay….What am I fighting and what am I surviving?  No, I’m a warrior you mother fucker.  I’ve been to war and back.  I did not fight cancer, it fought me.  It took my way of living and it fucked it all up.  I didn’t survive cancer, I ran the fuck away from it, placing obstacles in its way so it will never find me again [7-years out from BC, 5-years out OC]

I did absolutely nothing to survive a horrific childhood, poor decisions, etc.  I’m not a survivor, I’m a doer.  Surviving doesn’t take effort, its mediocrity at it’s best.  When people ask if I’m a survivor and then say ‘woo hoo’ , I look at them plainly and say, “ahem, what choice did I have?”  I either let it eat me alive or do nothing and let the doctors experiment on me.  Either way, it was a death sentence.  So I chose the lesser of two evils.

Ha! Yeah…evils.  Or are they? Someday, we’ll replace that word survivor with warrior, or maybe realize, it’s just life.  Simply as Chumbawamba states, “I get knocked down, and I get back up again.  A mentality that will never let you down.  I love Bozo!

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Even in my darkest hour, and lately it’s been pretty dark, I’ve picked my ass up and did nothing but move forward and will continue to fight the darkness, seeking light, happiness and joy and as any person with depression can only hope to do.  There is no cure for the darkness, embracing it seems to be the only option.  We need the dark to enjoy the light and vice versa, its seems cliché’ and I agree, I’d like to punch people in the face when they use those kind of metaphors on me.  Yet, deep inside, I know the truth, and each day the warrior in me will continue my journey, training, gaining skills and tools, honing the ability and strength to one day cross-over to the real battle, no longer just a survivor, but now, a badass warrior!

If I could lay my brains out on a table…

Maybe, just maybe someone could make sense of the nonsense I call a brain.  There isn’t any logical explanation why I continue to choose or do poorly.  My motivation to fail is outstanding.  It shines brighter than the moon.  When I need to succeed, well, fail stands right up and states, Fuck you, there is no way in your lifetime you will succeed.  Fail flashes me a peace sign and giggles, “bye, Felicia”.

Laying my brain out, unfolding the worm like tissues, untangling the meshuga that transmits thought and possibly putting it all back together then maybe, just maybe, I can after 54 years succeed at something else but failing.

I’m educated, street smart, but for the life of me, when I’m called upon to answer a question, this brain of mine goes completely dark.  Not just a little forgetful, no darker than dark like I never had the information in the first place.  Then suddenly, boom, it returns after I leave the building.  Then failure says, “there, there, you can always try again” with that laugh that you know is pure bullshit.

As I see it and probably appears to others, I am the epitome of fail, find the word ‘fail’ and you will see my face.  Or at very least my brain.  I’m sure its been hardwired to fail, I can’t imagine for any other reason or cause, the path to succeed escapes me completely.

Today, in my heart of hearts I wanted this job.  I wanted to make a difference, I wanted to move forward from the present employment of which is not doing any good for anyone.  I bombed it, brought in my self-destructive personality and bombed it.  The true me, the funny, smart and playful me, hid inside like a turtle, scared to death to show itself.  So today, I’m giving up.  For all I care a bus can hit me tomorrow and end this bullshit.  I’m so over being broke, tired and forgotten.  So over it.

It’s groundhog day everyday in my head.  A labyrinth of failing of which is my only success.  ‘If only’s’ are my only comfort.  Nonsense remarks from others, “oh you’ll do better next time”, “you’re being to hard on yourself”, etc, etc, you all have heard it before.

I write this in hopes that others can know they aren’t alone, not just a forum to bitch and complain, but to see the darkness lies in us all.  I hide it pretty well, which to many may seem that I’m not as unhappy as I state and maybe I’m just a whiny bitch.   People find it hard to believe when I confide in them about my forever state of unhappiness.  It’s not as if I don’t know happiness, I do know happiness and it is a fleeting moment, now and then, never staying for long, just long enough for me to have a taste of what it is like.  Then its gone as quickly as it arrives.

Those moments of giving birth, the giggle of my children.  The playfulness of a kitten or puppy.  The proud moment when your child is more than just a little awesome.  But never a moment where the internal happiness rises from my inner core and says, “hello” do I get to experience it.

I continue to write and allow the process maybe to find its way to happiness, thinking that possibly if I allow all the dark to spew from my brain and physical being so I can lock the door and it can’t return.  Allowing all the darkness to flow into the pages of the internet, trapping it forever, then maybe at some point, at any point, I can say, “bye Felicia”, just maybe.  There, at that moment, I can call a success and push failure to the curb.

 

 

Puzzle me in, Ralph

I truly believe that there aren’t any accidents.  In fact, I’ll go as far as saying that without some incidents that appear negative in evidence are really, just the way its supposed to go.

I’ve never met my biological father.  My mother loved men, a little too much, more than she loved her vows and any type of moral or ethical standards.  I will give you she was mentally ill and her mother was quite abusive, no, she was severely abused to the point I believe my mother became dissociative and she wasn’t my mother at all most of the time.   There was a part of me who loved my mother dearly, she was funny, smart, talented and generous to me, in small amounts, not very often, yet, I saw her when she was our lucid mother and her true being would present itself now and then, and it was beautiful.

Anyway, we lived on a piece of land of which we had many horses and with those horses we had trainers.  My mother fancied one of those trainers.  A man she called Ralph, well, I guess that was his name.  Wish it was a bit more sexier, seriously mom, Ralph? Well, my mother ran away from home like a love-struck teenager, leaving her four children behind.  She left my father [non-biological, you probably guessed that, but ya never know, so I’m clarifying], a doctor, and very busy, holding the bag.  As I’m told, my grandmother, his mother, stepped in to help.

Gone for 6 months, my mother came home, downtrodden and begging forgiveness carrying unwanted baggage.  She was 3 months pregnant.  Several attempts to end the pregnancy failed and the sperm-donor fled like the ‘chicken shit’ he is/was, as my dad would refer to him when discussing him later in life, never to be seen again.  Spoiler alert, here I am and you probably have a clearer picture why I’m as fucked up as I am.  I was a sex-child, not a love child, because it wasn’t love that brought me here, there wasn’t any love at any time.

So I’ve never met Ralph.  It wasn’t until I was 19 when my father’s second wife told me about Ralph and the whole salacious story.  Dad’s second wife, Janet, was my dad’s nurse.  After my parents divorced she wooed my dad into marrying her, then divorcing him knowing after 7 years she would get half his fortune.  So as one of her divorcing gifts to him, if there is such a tradition, bitch, she told me the entire story.  This conversation started with, “you have the most beautiful blues eyes, have you ever wondered where they came from?” I’ll never forget that day, in the middle of the kitchen in grief from hearing the previous news on that day that my stepfather had committed suicide.  Is the picture getting clearer now?

So this little blue-eyed Barbi went on a mission to find Ralph.  Instead I found my biological grandparents who in turn notified Ralph.  He never took the initiative to find me or talk with me.  I found that out why later. By the way, wonderful people, sweet as could be, huge hearts and wonderful souls, they said, I had his laugh.  Sadly and with great regret to this day, I abandoned them and moved forward.  I’d like lay blame and defend my actions by saying that it was because what Ralph had done to be when I reached out, but in reality, it just hurt too much to keep a relationship with them.  However,  I did allow them to see their grandchild when Joshua was born.  I don’t have much memory in fact, bits and pieces are missing, yet what touches my heart, I remember.  Good or bad.

Writing a letter in manic mode because I had not slept in 3 days.  Flooding in my brain were memories of conversations I had overheard as a child.  Over and over again hearing the name Barbi Christensen and never understanding why they called me that, my last name was De Coro.  As a small child hiding under the dinner table during family gatherings, listening to adult conversations and clearly not understanding shit, I knew my name in those ‘talks’ had some significance, but not enough to put the pieces together. As I got older the dinner conversations ended and so did my memories, locked away forever.

I received a letter from Ralph [which I never kept because it was too painful] in response to my letter.  Asking him why he didn’t take responsibility for me, why wasn’t I good enough for him, why wasn’t I part of his puzzle?  He responded, “I can’t have my family know that you exist, I have a wonderful wife and 3 daughters, they must never know about you”, it’s all I can remember, because it killed me and that part of my puzzle went up in flames.

Truth: I wasn’t an accident, I was born of different blood for a reason.  Granted, I’m not as smart as my siblings, and thin or pretty, but I’m different in other ways.  Stronger in many ways, yet, not sure what my purpose is and should be in this life.

Once I became comfortable, as the decades passed, that he was only a tool in bringing me here, it hurt less, and yet, it hurt different.  All I can surmise is that with each hurt, I grew and now have grown to see the world differently.

Our family is not close, my 5 other siblings they are close, not I, I never made that puzzle or click.  I kept/keep a distance because it’s what I do, and a side effect to what I  remember about my treatment, because they knew, trusting them or anyone and it’s probably something I’ll never be able to manage.  I have 3 half sisters out there somewhere and wonder if I had known them, maybe it could have been different.

A year ago, I wrote a letter to Ralph, sending it to an address that I was 99% sure it was his last residence.  Inside I wrote my story and the purpose of my story.  I wanted them to know about the cancers and if they had any information for me as well.  Considering, my 5 other half siblings didn’t have any of the cancers that I did.  I enclosed a self-addressed envelope, email address, etc., in hopes that someone would reach out to me.  Like I said, its been a year or so and the crickets are still chirping.  I would think that even if the wrong people got the letter they would contact me back informing me that it was the wrong address, and it wasn’t ‘return to sender’ either.

My father told me before he died that Ralph committed suicide.  How my father knew, no clue and some things you don’t want to know.  Seriously, I already was swimming with the sharks in the sea of shit, I really didn’t need additional shit added to the sea.

Back to accidents are not real.  I refuse to believe any of us are accidents, that some sort of divine purpose has been laid before us.  I’m not a religious person in any faction of the belief.  However, I do belief that a force bigger than us does exist and its energy based, where as, we are a piece of a bigger puzzle along with the grand scheme of things the purpose to the puzzle, well, I don’t think its been determined yet, really, it’s more of a plug and play sort of puzzle.  I feel upon a quote one day that Ram Dass shared, I believe he got it from Rumi, it states, and it really hit home for me, “we’re just walking each other home”.  Striking, isn’t it?

This is why when I say, I’m okay with Ralph’s decision in not taking accountability for his actions, I believe it.  Not to discard the fact that I do wish at times that he had taken the time to puzzle me in and not had placed me as being the proverbial “elephant in the room” in this life and never quite fitting in to anyone’s puzzle.