What the Hell am I Doing Here
It's always easier for me to start at the end and work backwards. I cannot express to you enough how many times I have started over. I was always rushing through things trying to get to an ending I had never procured.
I am like Phoebe from Friends, 'I don't even have a pla-'. When they asked her what her plans were for the future that was her answer. 'I don't even have a pla-'. I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, living day to day. One day at a time is what they tell you in all the self-help groups and group therapy. One day at a time. Well, you can't take it any other way so that's a pretty stupid saying in my humble opinion. That was part of the problem and how I ended up here. I would always want to stay hungry and stay humble... .I was no longer humble.
I was a growling, barking, chihuahua stuck in the mind of a pit bull.
Bobby was an old man. He was as old at fifty-five as he was at seventy-nine. Out of touch and out of date. Still controlling as ever, still attempting to hold everything together by the seams. Our family had ripped apart years ago. I still tried to bring love into our house of horrors. Some people whispered behind my back about it being a house of whores. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, I wasn't one to kiss and tell. I did have men running up and down the steps of our large home like a revolving door. Who knows why, I do.
I may have been loving on them, but most of the time I was just gambling and smoking weed with them. We would be hitting the bars, stirring the pot, trying to get drunk without getting into anything else. It's the most difficult game I ever played. I could run my mouth like a smooth Cadillac. Once I started throwing daggers instead of darts I would feel one of my buddy's pick me up by the back of my pants and the collar of my shirt. They would drag me backwards as my mouth hung open and words just flew out. My buddies would continue to ensure the other party I was just a little tuned up and didn't mean what I was screaming. The thing was, I usually meant every word.
This is why I don't speak to my spineless brother. He abandoned us when I was thirteen. He had a plan. He had the generic, basic plan to marry a simple, generic, basic girl and make lots of money. Very boring. He's stayed at the same job for twenty five years and still doesn't get several days off to visit his real family. It must make him feel important. He doesn't have a name anymore in my book of memories. He became part of my muck. I sometimes think it would have been better if he just died. His absence physically was never felt. His presence as a micro manager of my household was nothing but a burden. He would say stupid things to me like, 'Sticks and stones'. That was his response for calling me names and talking mad shit on me throughout the years. He was right about the first part 'sticks'. It does stick. It sticks like black tar. Like muck. Like him.
I constantly reminded myself blood did not always mean family. You can make your own family and I had done so. I had family all over the city of Pittsburgh and beyond. Bobby continued spinning is tires in my muck spraying it all over my face. I never quit being his daughter, being his helper, because in the end he was all I had left. And that's where my muck really started. Seventeen years old my mother died. Bobby lost his mind in a deep, dark depression that spread like a wildfire throughout our house. Around every corner. On every wall. In every room. The depression, the sadness, the muck. It stuck. My anger simmered underneath all of that. Simmered and simmered like a pot of water that wasn't watched. I wasn't watched. I wasn't expected. I was forgotten about. And I became angry, isolated, and soon, vengeful. My muck. Where the fuck was my glass slipper, dammit? I began therapy and other cognitive behavioral skills twenty years ago as I tried to overcome the opiate crisis myself. One of the things the talked about were emotions, dramatic emotions. What they said was, if emotions feel ignored or unheard, they become bigger. That's what was happening. My invisible dramatic emotions were becoming bigger. I was coming back like a hurricane. (Check out that song: 'Hurricane' by Cannons).
This is just a little journal entry I started today as I sit here in the Chartiers Center with all the other misfit toys. Rat Island. Sometimes you have to label things they are not, to keep it interesting, to keep it secret. One thing I was: a good secret keeper. And no one saw that coming. They always heard about me. They never saw me. I was fast, most of the time too fast. I'm learning to slow down. What are you learning? What have you learned from family? Heavy questions, huh? Swimming in the deep end. Out of the muck, into the deep water. Learn. Fast. Do everything else slow. That's all I can tell you for now.
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