I tried...
Life has taken turns that I’d never have expected. Some bad, others far past good. You would think things would level out and I’d feel fine…Yeah, you’d think that if you didn’t know the type of girl I am. I am rarely happy with what constitutes my life. Something has always been lacking, for as long as I can remember. I try to seek it out, I get myself into things in weak attempts to fill that part of me that almost always feels empty. I’ve done this numerous times. I try to convince myself that things are real…like the possibility of being in love with someone and them with me. It’s not going to work anymore. It hasn’t been working for quite some time now.
I think back to when I was a child. I still can’t place a day when I didn’t feel I was lacking something. When it wasn’t a father, I was lacking something else. Always fearful. I knew too early on how capable people are of hurting one another. Hell, I watched the shadows on the walls as my father battered my mother. I heard her cry, and then saw her pretend it was all ok. Maybe that’s where I learned to pretend so well. It’s always been more than that, though. More than being forced to acknowledge physical pain. Emotional goes far deeper. I can’t place a day when I didn’t feel that type. I’ve always been that timid girl with the shy eyes. When I was younger, I feared people looking straight into my eyes. I don’t know exactly why. I just feared people. They made me feel to vulnerable. I always wanted to be at the edge of the table, the front of the line…so I could get away as soon as was possible.
As a child, there are a few specific things I remember brought me comfort in the form of what can be called happiness. One was to paint or color…my favourite was to do such to the pictures my mother had pencil drawn. We made beauty together…but often I’d feel ignored. She could only seem to take so much of me. She’d distance to the other side of her room, or ask me to go finish the art in my own room…she wanted to smoke pot…she wanted to escape. Really, I can’t blame her. My sister was happiness. She was what kept me together…no one else was there to hold onto when we know dad was beating mom again…no one else felt what I felt…experienced it right alongside me.
My sister started to fade fast, though. She was older. She understood what was going on more. She remembered my father before his addiction took over, and she could barely bare to deal with knowing him once it did. She was angry. I always tried to be the happy child…I felt I owed smiles to my mother. It became routine…my sister being malicious with me…she’d pull my hair, toss me down the stairs…We started to play a game of escape. She created it. We created our own world in all aspects, and we believe in it. We believed we could morph into cats. We believe there was a whole other world alongside the one we lived in, and we could find it. I truly believe that if it weren’t for that make-believe we created, we’d have been far gone long before now…
Things got weird within that world. My sister started taking on, more often than not, the role of a murderer of cats. We were the cats…my cousin and I…and sometimes my sister. The story was that this murderer would kill the cats and grind their bones for his bread. This got too real. We really feared, my cousin and me. My sister became more and more violent with me.
My mother met a man (actually, a friend of my father’s) and forced herself into loving him…maybe she really did love him, or learn to…but her prime motive with this man was to get us the fuck out of there. I was 5. We left the home which we’d previously shared with my grandmother, my father (whom was never there…even when he was), and my two uncles. We moved to what my mother didn’t know at the time was the ghetto of Monrovia. I remember her coming home, having ran all the way from the corner store because some random men wanted to rape her..That house on Cherry Street.
We lived on Cherry Street for maybe a year. So much happened in that time, it’s hard for me to really remember. I wasn’t particularly happy, then. I tend to let unhappy times fade out of my memory…I tend not to remember most of my life. My sister and I would play in the mulberry tree in our back yard. We had a dog…I believe it was the same Golden Retriever/Aussie mix we’d had since before I was born. Siree. We had a weird neighbor whom I believe was a pedophile and tried things with my sister. His name was Earl. He always made me uncomfortable, but we’d go over sometimes because he’d give us money for little jobs around his house, and snacks. He had a rotweiler. His rotweiler killed my moms b/f’s cat. A Siamese whom used to ride on the b/f, Steve’s, bike with him. Steve loved this cat. He build it amazing window seats and planted cat nip in the garden beneath a little bridge made just for the cat. I remember Steve being frantic because Iggy (the cat) would not come when he called. I remember finding Iggy dead on the other side of our fence…in Earl’s yard, killed by Earl’s dog. That was the first time I saw death. I stared at that cat. I wanted to touch it. I didn’t understand that it was forever. Maybe Iggy was just sleeping. Maybe when I found Iggy I’d told Steve that I found Iggy sleeping in Earl’s yard…
Cherry Street was scary. The kids who lived across the street always beat up my sister. There was blood crusted onto the wall of the bank or whatever by the bus stop. Why did I know it was blood? Why wasn’t I more scared?
We moved. To a good white neighborhood. I don’t know how we manage that. I turned 7. I played with My Little Ponies in the driveway. That’s where it all started. I realized I wasn’t like all the other kids. We really were not going to move back into gran’s house. I really wasn’t going to have a father. I hated Steve. He loved us, I know he did…he’d take us to the canyons and taught us to love them…amongst other things. But he also stole my mother’s time, which I needed most then. I hated when he kissed her…and they argued so much. It wasn’t as bad when she argued with dad, but it wasn’t pleasant. I felt so different from the other kids. I didn’t have a father coaching me in soccer. I didn’t…a lot of things. I was not white and blonde. I did not have the money for nice shoes with ribbon laces, and the expensive brand of jeans.
I had a teacher in 3rd grade. He was gay, I’m sure. He was wonderful, and kind of took me and my friend Alicia under his wing. Me and Alicia were troubled. I don’t remember just what her trouble’s were…but we just were. We’d walk home together talking about how green the grass was and how blue the sky was. We’d stop at the corner store to buy Doritos, which we were addicted to. I loved Alicia. She was a friend. I needed one. This teacher in 3rd grade roused passion in me. He taught us to sing, whether we were good or not. He taught us to get lost in expelling our voices. We sung and sung before the beginning of each class. We sung in French for the x-mas play…
I remember I’d sit in the the garage at this new house. This house on Encinitas. I’d listen to Cat Steven’s…I believe the song was “Blackbird” on repeat. I’d find myself crying. I didn’t understand. The song was beautiful. I just didn’t feel right. I’d paint nonsense abstractions on old canvas’ with Steve’s paints. I’d yell at my sister and cousin to leave me alone when the came to join me in there. I’d wrap up in a blanket all alone and sleep in there. I felt I should be alone.
There was a ledge behind the garage. My sister, cousin, and I would sit there counting fireflies. I really didn’t care so much about the fireflies. I wanted to see more dragonflies. How could such a fairly small thing house so much breath-taking beauty? The dragonflies made me feel hopeful in a way I can’t quite explain.
I am going to tattoo a dragonfly on my right wrist someday. Greens, blues and purples. It’s body spanning down the vein, it’s wings wrapping the wrist itself…and that…that will remind me there’s always hope, it’s just flutters about instead of making its presence constantly known.
I have to give my mother credit. She let us choose whether we wanted to see our father. She let us go to gran and dad’s house for weekends and school breaks. We went. Dad made us uncomfortable, but happy. Gran was my best friend. I talked to her. I would sleep in her bed, both with one foot extended out from beneath the covers. She understood. I’d sit in her sun room…I’d play with her makeup. I learned to be a woman. There, I did feel beautiful…and in gran’s hugs I felt held together. I felt okay. I would cry sometimes and not know why. She understood. Dad…He was always in and out. I remember long car rides here and there with him. Sitting with my sis parked in a hot car in downtown LA…drug runs? I don’t doubt it. I know it.
We moved more times. I met a girl who lived behind us, across the alley. I was in 4th grade. We were inseperable. We would sit in the garage and cry, listening to that gawd awful song “Angel Baby” on repeat. We would dance together and talk about when we grew up…
We moved again. A mere block down into a bigger house. Colorado Street. A nice two-story Victorian which was so old it shook when my sister and I rough-housed in our second floor rooms. Steve was in and out of the picture. Me and the girl stopped talking…I don’t know why. My sister went to junior high. Things got worst. I cried every night. I had reoccurring nightmares. I took a liking to hurting myself. I stitched designs into my skin…usually the bottoms of my feet. I liked feeling it sore when I walked.
In that house…my dad had broken his leg…my mother took pity and let him stay with us. He’d been on the streets with his drugs. I’d had a constant fear he was dead in a trash can. It was odd having dad around, but it was better than worrying where he is. He cooked us breakfast…usually o’brien potatoes with hot-links and peppers and such. It was nice feeling like a family. But it also messed with my emotions more. I don’t remember why, but as soon as I knew it, dad was gone again.
Gran had moved out of her huge house and gone to Nevada with her job. I felt even more alone. Too alone. My sister and I had visited her once, there. Her and my uncle Jan. We pet horses, and it hailed, and we went to Reno…and...played a lot of video games. I didn’t want to leave.
We found out soon after that Gran had cancer. Mom explained it to me. Gran was dying. That’s all I heard. I couldn’t stop crying. Somehow I knew, this time, that death was forever…but I didn’t understand that no one could just snap their fingers and make her stop dying.
There was an earthquake, I remember. The house shook like bloody hell. That didn’t matter. I didn’t care what might have broken. I remember being in fetal on the couch. I couldn’t stop the hysterics, screaming about how could God just be taking her away from me…about how would I live…
Gran moved back. She had to be close to us. Her granddaughters. We did everything together. We’d sing. I talked to her about my dreams I never told anyone. We’d go for long walks and do yard work. She tried so hard to let us forget she was dying.
Things got really messy. We’d moved again. Gran lived on the block behind us. We could jump a fence and end up there in no time. I did that often. I always ran to her. My sister was breaking up. She was becoming abusive to my mom and I. Very. I couldn’t take it.
It was summertime, and mom and Steve dropped me and Gran off to the farmers market…Gran ran back to the truck in a frenzy and asked “what about Thanksgiving”. Yeah…what about it?
Gran ended up in the hospital. I remember visiting her there. She had the thing on to assist her breathing. She looked old and small. I crawled onto her bed beside her and tried to smile and be happy as she told me everything would be ok. I knew it wouldn’t. She was dying. She was dying. I hated the needles in her. I hated how her voice was not beautiful as always behind that breathing thing. I hated everything then…but her, it seemed.
We got a call on Thanksgiving saying she’d passed. I would never be the same.
My sister snapped. She was angry. She had started using drugs a lot. She would beat my mother black and blue. She would beat me the same. There were always cops. They wouldn’t help.
A lot happened. My father’s father died. My mothers father died. Steve moved. Abuse got worst from my sister. Sister went to Juvi. Sister met an older man and ran away. I bought her soaps and brushes. I wanted her to always be pretty.
More when I do not feel so drained.