After effects

For reasons I don’t fully understand, today has been one of those “teary days” that sometimes enter my life. The latter part of the last week has been full of fear, worry, disappointment and, at times, utter panic. As I’ve written previously, my mother died in February, 2012. I’d known for years that she was not mentally competent and known even longer that she had serious mental health issues. She chose not to deal with either affliction. Unfortunately, her affliction became my affliction because I shared a house with her. Day after day, I’d watch her make horrible mistakes and could do nothing. One person in whom I’d confided kept telling me to somehow “make” her do things or “make” her brothers stop protecting her so that she could receive real medical help. My mother was not someone anyone “makes” do anything. The end result was that she lived in a world that didn’t correspond with reality. Nothing I said, did, didn’t say or didn’t do made a difference. I told her in anger once that she would always find a way to screw me over even if she had to go down with me. That’s a pretty harsh thing to say to one’s mother. That didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Two utterly devastating financial decisions she made that I desperately tried to talk her out of or guide her through have come back to bite me in the ass just as I told her they would.

The financial difficulties I’m experiencing actually force me to mourn my mother. I have not had any real time to do so in the last 18 months because I’ve been too busy dealing with two creditors who hold the paper on the house and my minivan–KeyBank National Association and JPMorgan Chase Auto Finance, respectively. To say these august institutions have been “difficult” would probably be the understatement of the year. I have new grey hairs because of them. Fortunately, my attorneys have kept me away from a lot of the upsetting discourse because, honestly, I don’t think I have it in me to remain focused and calm. My mother’s death and the years that preceded it are truly tender spots on my psyche. There is a lot of unfinished business within the family confines that are deeply painful and ugly. There are days when I can barely keep the dam of anger and pain from bursting as though built with shoddy concrete and rusty steel. Inevitably, there will be cracks where the water of my tears will seep through and run down the spillway of my cheeks. Today is one of those days.

I may have written of a favorite great-uncle, Herbert, who was more some combination of grandfather/father than great-uncle. Even though he was only ten years older than my mother, he had a very big hand in raising her. It was a bond that lasted throughout their lives. Uncle Herbert preceded Mom in death by a few months shy of four years. We didn’t have a chance to say a final goodbye, but I think he understood.

Uncle Herbert was always there for me, too. He and his wife, Ethel, were my rocks when I desperately needed them growing up. Lately, as I’ve watched my world turn upside down, I have wished that Uncle Herbert were here because he’d tell me how to fix everything or protect me as best he could from the very harsh realities I may have to face. My lawyers do help me as best they can, but they can only do so much. Aunt Ethel helped me even though I was deeply ashamed for asking. In the end, it is up to me. It is my responsibility to clean up the hot mess my mother made of both our lives because I didn’t do what needed to be done: have her declared mentally incompetent and get myself appointed conservator. Kicking myself is a waste of time, as is blaming her enabling two oldest brothers who interfered when I tried to get her help. I know that I will never have the same relationship with them again. So be it. However, I have to mourn the woman she was before she was crazy and mentally incompetent, then pick myself up, gear up and fight for my life.

I think the thing I do best is fight. My existence has been a constant struggle since the day I was born. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have to fight for something or another. That’s one of the things that would have/will make an excellent litigator. I believe passionately in equanimity and fairness. To me, those are basic human rights. KeyBank made a predatory loan to a woman who had no business conducting any financial transactions at all. I even warned the loan officer that my mother was not competent, but the loan officer saw an easy mark and inserted herself into the relationship with my mother. Anytime a woman “forgets” that her daughter has fibromyalgia and a birth defect that has caused problems in various musculoskeletal areas of her body even though that daughter has been on disability since the early 1990s and several doctors have talked to her about the daughter’s needs, that woman is in serious trouble. Whether Mom really forgot or whether she just didn’t want to face facts is something I’ll never know. What I do know is that I may lose my house due to Key’s greed. I have a feeling that I am not the only person who is in this type of difficulty.

Picking myself up to fight another day is one of the most difficult things I can envision doing right now. I am so damn tired I don’t know what to do. My spirit is tired. What keeps me going is my girls. Without them, I would be locked away in an psychiatric facility undergoing God-knows-what kind of “therapy” to lift the fog of depression. Yes, I am fighting for myself, but I am fighting for them even more. We are a set; a team; a four-some. We are family. I really don’t like this house because it wasn’t built very well. However, it’s got a large backyard with incredible possibilities and I don’t have to worry about my babies making too much noise for the neighbors. I know that I live and do things for them when I can’t do them for myself. This time, I’m fighting for all of us.

God, HELP!!

I’ve read nearly all of my first journal begun one week after I’d contacted Glenn a full decade ago this past March 22. I began it as a woman absolutely giddy with happiness at being able to talk to the man she loved more than herself seven or nine years after he hung up on her when she came out to him in the wrong way, granted, but not deserving of a discussion at least, to; a woman barely hanging on to life, being purposely reckless in the hope Fate would relieve her of the agony of not knowing why he turned on her all of a sudden in mid-conversation, blamed her for even thinking that he’d had any interest, telling her he didn’t care whether she rejected or embraced her love for him because he wasn’t “going there,” saying that she had been “dyking around for a decade,” that she didn’t “want this dick and to run as fast and as far as she can.” Destroyed. Absolutely destroyed. I’d trusted him more than any PERSON on the planet, loved him more than ANY PERSON on the planet and had ultimately given more of myself to him than I had ANY PERSON on the planet. Destroyed. Absolutely destroyed. Even now, after reading 10 years later, hanging on to this reality by my fingernails to keep from sinking into The Pit once more even though someone(s) destroyed the woman who was then. I can’t have relationships no matter the gender of the other person because I can’t trust enough or give enough of myself. I was punished for loving women even though I loved him, assuming the words came from him. I’m not at all sure they did. The circumstances suggest the horror could easily have been from the hagbeast monster or his gay male business partner. If the latter, it was at his request. If the former, he probably didn’t know. We went from flirting to destruction after he went away from the screen for a few minutes. That sceptic cunt could have snuck in easily. Especially since whoever was on the other end of the IM wouldn’t speak to me via voice.

I’ve been struggling with anorexia for about a week now. I’d just worked up to eating a whole sandwich, but was drinking more liquids. Now, not only don’t I care, I don’t want to eat. I mean, I ACTIVELY don’t want to eat. I’m trying to get through this because of the girls. I can’t abandon them. The thing is, I don’t think I can do this by myself and I honestly don’t know who to call who won’t make me feel worse than I already do.

I had a terrible shock. I found a portion of a journal entry meant to be found after I’d properly suicided. It contained two phone numbers. One was Glenn’s cell and the other was for a former mutual friend. I called the one for Glenn, never anticipating that it would work. It did. I was so unnerved I couldn’t talk to him. So, in the course of three days I’ve reached him twice after well over 100 letters sent to the usual usernames owners of private mail servers set up. Over 100 letters he said he never received even though some were sent via the “Contact Us” form for his record company. Granted, for a year or more I haven’t used it because I didn’t get a confirmation of receipt from the server and assumed I’d been blocked. But I have also gotten really good at setting up disposable accounts, hoping that something would get through in some fashion.

I never want to leave my bed, but the girls need to eat and go potty. I feel as I did when I had agoraphobia. Anything and nearly everyone is dangerous outside of this room. There are so many ways to kill a person while leaving them with a beating heart. There are so many ways to die and still breathe. I have to focus on the girls. If not, I will die one way or the other. I can go inside myself and never come out. I am so close to that now that I have to work to just stay present.

How could Glenn/hagbeast/gay oh business partner do this to someone whose worst “crime” was loving someone and then determining that she loved those of her own gender more at one point? Had Glenn talked to me, I would have given in. Not to the phone sex, but to allowing him access to body, soul and heart. I would give up women for him. I would have then and I would now if he was willing to do the obvious and make us “us”–hagbeast included, if I just had to, as long as he committed.

This is not the first time I’ve tried to write this book. The first time was way before I was ready. The publisher read the mess I submitted and gently told me to get some therapy and try again later. I told her I couldn’t write it then because all I do is cry while I’m typing. I don’t think she believed me until she saw the mess of the first few chapters. I’d forgotten about that until reading the journals, too. Five or six therapists later and I’m still crying as I type.

What the fuck is going on? Someone please, tell me. First, as I’m about to give up and give in to giving up on relationships, I hear and see my mother frantically trying to tell me NOT to forget about or give up on Glenn. She didn’t even like him! So, I ignore her until I realize I can’t blindside him and his kids. I NEVER intended to talk to him before mailing him a set of questions after getting well into writing a manuscript, but I wanted him to know what was coming. After ten years and a few phone messages as late as last year, he answers the phone. On a Sunday. Today, I call a 10-yr-old cell number I didn’t even know I had and he answers. I cannot hope where he is concerned. That’s especially true now that I’ve read how he or someone tried to blame me for essentially making any perceived interest up. I’ve got notes from conversations. I didn’t make anything up. And, if I made everything up, then how could he have been playing a joke? I did remember that that was part of the conversation I’d initially forgotten due to stress. It was remembered much later. It is a habit my brain learned as a child: bury the most destructive, painful memories deep inside where they can’t be found. That kept me sane and I do not exaggerate.

What does one do when one truly wants to die but can’t? Endure. What does one do when one can no longer endure? I’m frantically trying to determine who can raise my girls if it comes to that. I just can’t bear the thought of their pain after losing my mother so recently. I am in hell.

eXonerated

I’m sitting in my minivan in the Macy’s garage half crying with tears and half with dry sobs. When I’m not crying, all I want to do so scream, “GOD WHY?!!?!?!?!?!” that fucking sceptic cunt of a hag already had him! She didn’t have to destroy my life! I’d respected her space and played according to the rules of the road. Instead, that fuck pretended to be Glenn and he never knew a thing about it . . . until today.

I have a conscience. Because I do, I thought it only fair and right to tell him that I would be writing a book about our relationship. So, I called him expecting to get his answering machine. I got him. Glenn. After ten, horrible, long years. He said he didn’t remember the events leading up to the “it was a joke” comment, nor did he remember ever saying that. My thought at the time was, “So was he always a sociopath and I missed it? Or, did I spend 17 years with someone who didn’t give a damn?” I didn’t know what to think and had to digest 10 fuckhard years into a short narrative. I did it. I don’t know how. I just know that I said goodbye first because I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. It was as if time stopped. The only thing that startled me to action was the girls.

I took them out and tried to remain calm. I was not, am not and will not be “calm” for a very long time. I put them in the x-pen and sat on the bench next to them as I typed something. Oh, I was telling him that I’d send him blog entries since the gist of everything is in the blog. The thing is, I couldn’t breathe. I knew something was very, very wrong. If he’d mindfucked me, he’d gleefully remember.

I can’t write exactly what happened next, but I found the very first journal entries about him after I’d contacted in 2003. There was a lot more information than I expected. It became very clear that Glenn was NOT at the keyboard. In all probability, he never saw the video I made. It was that hagbeast, Dr. Robin Watt. She took my life and she will answer for it. By all that is holy on Earth, in heaven and beyond, Dr. Robin Watt, aka Mrs. Robin Watt Thornton, the original mean, rabid hagbeast monster, will pay.

Damn, Mom said that the sceptic cunt probably did this. I asked her why. Mom said that she was afraid of me. See, I never would have thought of that as a reason and assumed it was just him having been corrupted by proximity to her. She had nothing to fear. I knew that. Glenn wasn’t going to leave her for me. She was his golden girl. But she was scared and tore my life apart. I couldn’t put my personal life together no matter what I did. It’s understandable given how betrayed I thought I’d been. I found even more reason for my feeling of betrayal reading my journal entries. She really did take my life. And I tried and tried, but couldn’t get that one back and had so much scar tissue I’d never be able to love or trust on a very deep level again. So, she took my future too. I don’t have to think. I feel a cold, dead hatred for her and utter shock.

The Story of T & G

I’m feeling angry, hurt and mean this Sunday. Therefore, I revised this post with some visual aids. God(dess) will probably strike me dead for BEING that way.

I’m actually at a loss for words. It’s not that there aren’t enough; there are too many. I’ll start with the title and, perhaps, discuss its inspiration. BTW, for this post, and maybe for others, depending on how I feel, the bâtard is being named. I wish I knew the French words for “septic cunt” and “hagbeast” or even “hagfish” because I’d use them as well.

One, possibly two, people who read this blog know who I am in real life and that I am an aspiring online magazine publisher. I’ve been putting the building blocks in place to turn another blog I have into an online women’s magazine since last fall. My goal is to go live this year. I do have a more specific timetable, but that’s my other life and I don’t really want to talk much about it here.

My heart and soul are dying and my mind can’t hold me up on its own anymore. I can blame it on a week off my antidepressants and that would be partially accurate. However, the antidepressants only allow me to cope with real life and make better decisions (I hope). They don’t change what’s happened. Certainly, they don’t heal me in places I’m not totally sure anyone can, including me. My way of coping has always been sex, music or the written word. I was; I am; I will always be, a musician, even when my only instrument is my voice. I am and have always been, a writer, even without a pencil, paper or laptop. I have written countless stories in my head that never make it to paper because there’s no need. They were written by me for me.

I’ve been playing with an idea for the last few weeks that I’ve decided to follow through. I am going to write a book based on my truth about Glenn and me. It takes as long as it takes. What’s in it is in it. I don’t care who gets hurt as long as I can write the truth. I’ve got a lot of documentation in journals, letters, etc. I only wish I had a screen capture of his wifey-slime pretending to be him saying, “It was a joke” when referring to his supposed interest in becoming involved again after I’d poured my heart out to him. I think the only people who might understand how destroyed I was and still am are the readers here and my shrink. I’m not sure my shrink understands completely. Then again, she did understand that it was cruelty in the extreme, and one of her specialties is abuse, so I guess she must get something.

In the last two or three days I’ve gone from righteous anger to crumbling heap. I’m trying to get angry again so that it becomes a motivator for action. The problem is that when I’ve been angry I’ve also been the most hurt. I’m angry because of the things Glenn did that utterly and completely betrayed me for sport. I’m angry that he let that hagbeast be the one who was in on at least part of it with him, knowing that I detest her and have since I was 16-years-old and didn’t even know she was seeing him. I’m angry that we laid in bed together for 17 years and there was love. . . the love. He never professed love to me, but I most assuredly expressed mine to him. Even though I was sleeping with other people, there was no doubt that he was my heart. He brought me to life in a way no one ever had and no one has since. Sure, we’d get tired of each other at times, but in the end, even when I basically chased him for nearly two years, I believed it would be Glenn and me. I took “themeangirl” seriously, believe me. I watched them together and could read them and knew it would be a tough fight but that she would not be good for him in the end. Therefore, being angry with him also brings up the intense pain. The pain overcomes any benefit I could have received from the anger.

This photo of a type of hagfish reminds me of stories told in some parts of the world about vaginas with teeth. That’s my image of the “hagbeast.”

The reason I was/am angry with Glenn is because he has yet to take any responsibility for anything. He’s a coward and what he and his hagbeast did was a twisted, sick thing. That’s not anger talking. That’s what I’d say if someone else told me that they’d been through what I have with him and the hagbeast. I have found ways to survive by running, closing myself off, crying myself to sleep and anything and everything else except drugs, although I have gotten drunk once or twice. OK, three times. Over the course of ten years, that’s not so bad. But it all has to end. I can’t do it anymore. I have things that need to be done in real life. The more I try to suppress what I feel about The Hagbeast, featuring GT as her apprentice, the sicker I will become. However, if I can write constructively and know that this is NOT my fault and that what was done was wrong, even though I already know that in my head, I have to believe I can heal.

I know that I’m no angel in this either. Hagbeast has had a ring through his nose for over 20 years. I don’t know if she knows that we were still sleeping together as late as four years after they were married and did so during her entire residency. However, I doubt things would have progressed as horribly as they did if he’d just not ignored me for two years and expected me to be in the same place when he decided to come back. I can understand him wanting to give his marriage a serious shot. I would have hated it, cried a lot, pleaded, bargained and did whatever I could. But in the end, I would have understood. This ain’t my first rodeo. But he just disappeared without a word. By the time he appeared again, he called me for phone sex. Ladies, I think you have some understanding of how . . . I don’t know . . . MIFFED I’d be about that. So I told him, “Sorry, but I am not currently sleeping with men.” He responded, “At all?!” “No. I am not having sex with men at all, nor getting them off online or on the phone.” *CLICK* He hung up on me. I was too pissed off then to regret what happened or realize how hurt he was–and he was definitely hurt–and that he’d loved me. Mom tried to tell me, but I learned to never trust anything unless he says it. He’d burned me too many times on that. Regardless, that’s when the foundations of my personal hell were laid. It took nine years and barely surviving a relative who tried to destroy me for me to come within hell’s reach. I needed Glenn again. He acted interested, but suspicious. I’d sensed someone else listening to us as he talked to me while driving down to Florida for a convention. I thought it was probably some male friend. Men are often jerks when they get together, so I just tried to pretend that I knew nothing.

By the time he arrived back home, he had a very special present waiting for him. First, a prelude.

I have loved Glenn my entire life minus 17 years. I loved him when I hated him and hated him when I’ve loved him. Hell, I love him NOW. However, when I found him and asked about resuming our involvement, I honestly thought the love had passed and that we could be good friends with benefits, meeting a few times a year to catch up on several levels, perhaps share a meal and go back to our own homes. I’d accepted, I thought, that he’d married someone else even if I detested her. Now, since she was such a hagbeast, I didn’t feel any guilt at all about shaking the chandelier with her husband. When Glenn opened up, we were great together. When he shut down, he was frustrating. He wasn’t all that happy about leaving me behind and he was lonely.

Hagfish are real, slimy, disgusting but necessary. I apologize to any hagfish who were hurt by my bastardization of the name of your species.

I’ve loved him nearly as long as she theoretically had and I’d been the one to soothe him when she was being a right cold fish. He didn’t marry me because I’m his “Gregory.” That means that he didn’t love me quite as much as he did hagbeast just as I loved Glenn a little bit more than I loved Gregory. I also wasn’t going to make six figures coming out of training, thereby allowing him to set up his businesses without having to worry about his next meal. In addition, she was able-bodied. There’s nothing I can do about that, so she won. I don’t happen to think that being able-bodied should have been a criteria, but it was. What hurt so much is that anyone who has ever seen us together felt that they were in a room positively crackling with electricity. Given that, why does having an above-knee prosthesis on one leg make any difference? What difference does it make if I developed fibromyalgia? Apparently, a lot of difference. She’s better arm-candy, a better earner and doesn’t limp and spend much time as a patient in a hospital.

Well, as I said, by the time he got back from Florida and after talking to him a few times while he was down there, I decided to make a film of myself talking to him and telling him of this love that came rushing up from its hiding place out of my mind’s eye view. It was corny, I admit. The music in the background was Donny Hathaway singing his masterwork, A Song For You. But it fit.

Here are the lyrics.

A Song For You
Sung by Donny Hathaway

I’ve been so many places in my life and time
I’ve sung a lot of songs I’ve made some bad rhymes
I’ve acted out my life in stages
With ten thousand people watching
But we’re alone now and I’m singing this song to you

I know your image of me is what I hope to be
I’ve treated you unkindly but darlin’ can’t you see
There’s no one more important to me
Baby can’t you see through me
Cause we’re alone now and I’m singing this song to you

You taught me precious secrets of a true love witholding nothing
You came out in front when I was hiding
Now I’m so much better and if my words don’t come together
Listen to the melody cause my love is in there hiding

I love you in a place where there’s no space or time
I love you for my life you’re a friend of mine
And when my life is over
Remember when we were together
We were alone and I was singing this song to you

I love you in a place where there’s no space or time
I love you for in my life you’re a friend of mine
And when my life is over
Remember when we were together
We were alone and I was singing this song to you
We were alone and I was singing this song to you
We were alone and I was singing this song
Singing this song to you

A Song For You lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

You see, by that time, I’d been a journalist for three very busy years and had definitely gotten people’s attention. I was going a few places to conferences and such, talking to people active in black gay circles and in the Welcoming Congregation movement. Indeed, that’s how I made my bones. I covered the 2001 United Methodist Church General Conference. It was one thing after another. My adrenaline was pumping and I was taking pictures and conducting interviews with people I would never have been able to get next to otherwise. I was in heaven! I attended the First Annual National Black Lesbian Conference where I watched an organization being born. Let me tell you, it was a beautiful experience. I got mobbed by the women when they found out who I was.

The lyrics to A Song For You say:

I’ve been so many places in my life and time
I’ve sung a lot of songs I’ve made some bad rhymes
I’ve acted out my life in stages
With ten thousand people watching
But we’re alone now and I’m singing this song to you

I really had lived my life on a stage of sorts. Mine was the digital and glossy paper stage. I’d written a lot of stories about a lot of people and organizations and they really were my life. To my great surprise, people knew who I was and appreciated my work. But I chose to sit on my office floor, with a cigarette (to keep me calm because I was scared to death) and told the absolute truth. I didn’t realize how much I still loved him when I contacted him and that these feelings came up almost the moment I began talking to him. I loved him regardless of his situation. We figured things out once and we could do it again.

I know your image of me is what I hope to be
I’ve treated you unkindly but darlin’ can’t you see
There’s no one more important to me
Baby can’t you see through me
Cause we’re alone now and I’m singing this song to you

I apologized for the way I told him I was, for all intents and purposes, a lesbian. I should have been more sensitive to his feelings because we had such a long and storied history. I told him that he had me if he wanted me and that I wanted him. I opened up completely. I was totally vulnerable.

I didn’t hear from him for two days. I finally caught up with someone I thought was him but, as it turned out, it was the hagbeast. I asked if he liked the movie. The reply was “No.” I said something like “Oh.” Some other thing happened that I can’t remember except that it made me go cold inside and my stomach clench. That’s when I first got a clue it wasn’t Glenn. He’d never talked to me that way. I ran to my bedroom to phone him and tell him that his wife was online pretending to be him and saying whatever else she said besides “It was a joke.” There was no answer. It is only recently that I’ve accepted that this is what happened. I didn’t want to believe that the hagbeast had that much evil in her. Certainly, I didn’t want to believe that Glenn was complicit in her games. It led me to wonder if they plotted the entire thing and laughed at me while they did it. I picture them making love while making fun of me. Even now, the humiliation is such that I really and truly want to die. No kidding. No exaggeration. If someone shot me right now, I would thank them. The only reason I don’t do it myself is because of my girls. They need me. Even an empty shell of a person is better than what would await them at the local shelter. So I live.

I don’t know how I’m going to get through writing this, but I will. I doubt it will be ready for submission even next year. So, I’m looking at two years. I’ve got to keep myself alive for at least two years. OK.

As the watchful eye of Mother Earth is my witness, I just want to die and get it over with, but I can’t. My babies need me.

Shit.

Congratulations if you’ve managed to get this far! For your efforts, I want to reveal two photos I sent to Glenn yesterday and last night.

This is a photo I sent Glenn so that he can see that I was in so much agony there were no words. The only way I could express myself was to burn myself almost to the bone and cut. I did this after the “It was a joke” comment.

This photo is filled with symbolism. Some of it would only be evident to someone who knows me. I sent this to him with a letter telling him that I’m writing our story.

She did it

Because I’m a decent person, I sent Glenn a letter and a copy of my last post here since it has his name in it for the first time. I also summarized everything I’ve felt and written in the last months about him, including my contempt and the fact that he could have had what he wanted–a promise not to sleep with women–had he chosen to commit. The thing is, he is the only person who could have done so. I would have told anyone else, and did tell anyone else, that I’d give up men before I gave up sleeping with women. All he had to do is say that the craziness of long absences where he seemed to think I should have been sitting around waiting for him were ridiculous and finding a way to be together if only a few times a year as we’d done before would continue OR, better yet, stop lying to everyone, especially himself, about what I meant to him. He had a hard time giving me up. I know it. He knows it. He just couldn’t give up the money, the arm-candy, the able-bodied mate. It is that mate who I now believe was at the keyboard when the words “It was a joke” came across my screen and sent me to the nadir of hell. I remember running to the phone to dial his number to tell him his wife was online telling me that she was him and that it was all a joke. They killed the person he knew as me. What’s left is someone else. It sucks that this other person I became still has the unrelenting pain hiding behind a door clad in black that would be capable of forcing me to destroy myself if I allowed it. I won’t allow it. I won’t allow THEM. Not again. Never again.

So I sent him this letter that tells him of the recent post and summarize the last several posts and letters I’ve written because I had to assume he didn’t get them for a variety of reasons. I send it, take the girls out, try to figure out how in the hell I’m going to keep Prof. B. because I do think she’s going to be an integral part of my future one way or another, and it hits me: That thing he married–the mean girl with the sceptic cunt–did this. I want her to suffer like she has never suffered before. I want HIM to suffer as well because he allowed this in exchange for keeping the money, arm-candy and able-bodied mate. He knew what would happen more or less. Still, he has allowed this to go on for 10 very long, painful years without any apology or acknowledgement of what they did. Everything finally made perfect sense. I’d dismissed this possibility whenever I thought about the possibility that it was that thing he married typing in her husband’s name.

Look we were all adults now. She knew about me before I reached the age of majority. Maybe she felt threatened. I wish I could say there was a reason for her to feel that way, but I can’t. At least I can’t with even 80% certainty. She bought herself a husband. That’s not to say he didn’t love her because I am very sure he did and does. I am equally sure that he loves his family. Even so, I know him. There are a lot of days he has regrets. What I regret is that he has no fucking balls. He allowed this to happen. My suicide was totally and completely foreseeable. They turned me inside out and shredded me. It has taken me a decade to be able to truly love anyone else again and I’m still not sure I can give my whole heart. I am very sure I can’t give my entire heart and self to a man. Yet, there is a part of me that still loves him. I don’t know who is sicker, Glenn or me. I’m very sure that the thing he married is sicker than either of us. The very last thing in the world she should be doing is taking patients’ lives in her hands. She chose a specialty that doesn’t require much contact with patients while they are conscious. That is so like her. I knew she would emasculate him and she did. I was collateral damage. And Glenn let it happen. That’s all that counts. Bâtard!!

I feel sick.

This is all Glenn’s fault!!

The scars of your love remind me of us
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless
I can’t help feeling
We could have had it all

That’s me speaking to Glenn. OK, forget about the rest of Rolling In The Deep for the moment and just focus on those words taken somewhat out of context–but just a little. That was definitely Glenn and me. If nothing else I ever write or have written thus far is worth believing, believe me when I write this: The memories of him do leave me absolutely breathless. For the longest time, I thought that he would be the only person I’d ever feel that way about. I was with someone else for three years during the first years of his marriage. After all, he’d chosen and there was nothing I could do about it as much as it damn near killed me to continue to draw each breath afterwards. That man, I’ll call him “Gregory,” was my first Master and I loved him in ways Glenn didn’t need and kept closed to me. The difference is that I knew that I’d never spend the rest of my life with Gregory. So, although I had feelings that were nearly equal to those I had for Glenn, they fell short. Still, Gregory was probably the person in the number two spot on my list of “Loves of My Life.”

Now, there’s someone else I’ll call “Professor B.” I am head over heels in love with her mind and her heart. I don’t give a damn about her body, but her body is a real factor. It’s a miracle that we found each other to begin with. It’s an even greater miracle that she, a woman who takes love and all forms of sex far more seriously than I do, is willing to wait for me to figure out: 1) If I can promise to never sleep with another person, especially another man, and; 2) Out and out told me to go to a woman with whom I was very much in love once, and talk to her about why and how lesbians of their age tend to turn off their sexuality or take sex very seriously. That takes guts! I should say that she, feels about me the way I feel about her. There is so much to say that I should start from the beginning.

First, know that I’m typing this through curtains of intermittent tears. I’ve been confused about relationships before. This is not new. What is new is that I’ve been caught in this fucking lesbian disdain for women who sleep with men! It’s not like I sleep with men in general. I don’t. There is only one that I know of at this moment I would even consider sleeping with and he’d have to work like a motherfucker to get me to let him back into my pants and actively into my heart. We all know who that man is so I won’t bother with naming him . . . again. I can wrap my mind around making that commitment if it weren’t for Prof. B’s disabilities. Neither of us is sure she can have sex now. I am going to GUESS that if her doctors say that she can, they will also say that she will have to take it easy. That is going to be a problem.

You see, for me at least, there are different kinds of sex. Each kind has its own rewards. I have made love so achingly slow and carefully that, for me, orgasm was not going to happen and I was perfectly fine with that. The only thing I cared about was that my partner reach a pinnacle he’d never forget–or, that she would never forget. I have had sex to satisfy a craving and that meant absolutely nothing afterwards. I have been fucked royally to the point I can’t forget it if for no other reason than its raw physicality and I don’t want to. Furthermore, I want to have that experience several dozen more times in my life. Fucking can happen with a stranger or it can happen with someone you’d die for. I’m coming to realize in this moment that I would probably die for Glenn, even now. Then, there is this great woman I’m falling for and who is falling for me that I’m going to have to promise to give away part of who I am if I expect to keep her. I am so absolutely torn I’m almost incapable of forming a coherent sentence.

There are some people who’d say that I was very lucky to have loved two very different men and one woman, going on two. This is true. However, it should be noted that I am not with them now, except for the one that is current. Of the three people, only two were viable in the sense that a very long-term relationship was possible. Gregory was, I do believe, a love/sex addict. In the end, we wore each other out emotionally. Anytime ALL of a Master’s slaves get together and say that he’s in trouble, he’s in trouble. He wasn’t happy with any of us afterwards, but that’s neither here nor there. I know that I stayed with him and tried to help him, terrified half the time that I would lose him. He kept the woman I loved dearly (I’ll call her “Khat”) and, although he consistently failed to acknowledge it, was really his primary partner. There is so much pain there still that I’m going to move off of him as a subject. Suffice it to say that Glenn and Khat were the only viable relationships. Although memories of Glenn turn up in odd places, he is effectively gone from my life and has been for many years. The same is true of Khat.

The title of this post was half in jest. The other, non-humorous part, is true. I don’t think I’d use the word “fault,” but he showed me how all forms of sex, but especially the combination of fucking and making love, can have a power that is absolutely indescribably, utterly, wonderful. I want that again and Prof. B cannot give it to me. I’m not sure it’s even in her to give it to me regardless of her disability. She’s more of the slow, aching kind of sex. That is going to leave me very frustrated and ultimately unhappy. I know that I absolutely must have the raw, physical kind of sex from time to time to keep me happy. She’s said that if I or anyone she’s with has an itch that just has to be scratched, she didn’t want to know about it. I can deal with that. However, when I pushed the issue tonight, she told me that she wants total monogamy even if I end up moving out of the state. I don’t think I can promise that to anyone. That’s not to say that I’d fall in love with someone else because I am damn hard to satisfy intellectually and keen intellect is a deal breaker. Therefore, I’d say that falling in love with someone else is remote. That notwithstanding, wanting to jump someone else’s bones, or vice versa, is inevitable in that circumstance. For that matter, it’s inevitable in the circumstance I’m trying so hard to get my mind around.

It has occurred to me that maybe I’m just not ready to give Glenn up. That is to say, to put him in the proper perspective of someone I loved more than I loved life itself and would have laid my life down for if need be. Notice how that’s all in the past tense. I think there’s some small part of me that knows he did what he did to me for a real reason and has a damn good idea of what that reason is. Yes, what he did was unforgivable. However, I just know/knew him too well to accept that he’d be vindictively cruel to someone who’d been his lover for 17 years. Add to that the knowledge that he knew I’d tried quite hard to kill myself due to his words and actions and I still can’t see it. I know that he’s a coward in some respects and to be pitied in others. He’s both in this one, for sure. I deserved better and I deserve better. I deserve, if anything from him, that he be a grown ass MAN and not some cowering manchild afraid of wifey and me! I don’t know if or when he will do it. I do know that I can’t put my life on hold waiting. Nevertheless, can I promise someone else that I will forsake all others, blah, blah, blah when I’m pretty sure that she cannot give me what I need sexually? We won’t even talk about our different needs where people are concerned! And, she says there’s a large class difference that I don’t see. I just see two people with different, though not incompatible, life experiences. I don’t care that she’s the first in her family to go to college or be ABD. Why should I? Yeah, there would be some things that she couldn’t relate to in my long-ago past, but I don’t even relate to them now!

Prof. B and I talked off and on all day today from the time I woke up this afternoon until I went to bed very early. I was busy going about my errands and so forth, but she was on the other end of the line. It’s a good thing she’s on leave or I can imagine a whole lot of things wouldn’t have gotten done on her end. It took a very long time for me to know through experience that I belonged with women. Glenn had gone and Gregory and I were temporarily off for the zillionth time. I was actually with someone else who I inadvertently pissed off that weekend, but he should have said something. *sigh* My point is that I’d known since I was four years old that I liked females be they girls, young women or women. That didn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t like men. Glenn was my first whole-hearted love and that’s something he can’t take from me, nor can anyone else. He married his first whole-hearted love. I should be happy for him and, on some level I am. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know I had a right to expect more from him, especially since we both knew that he wasn’t wild about the idea of giving me up completely. Had he been honest with himself, with me, with his wife, we’d have had different lives. Mine, for sure, would have been better. Then again, he would have done what Prof. B is doing: He could not deal with me being with another woman and loving it.

Whatever I do, I can’t win unless I choose. I can’t choose. Not now.

Sick+Tired=Sick AND Tired

So many thoughts permeate my brain even though I’ve got a riproaring headache of a kind I seldom get. I really shouldn’t feel the headache given that I’ve taken my nightly pain meds. And yet I do.

I’ve been sick for just about three weeks now. I was diagnosed with borderline severe asthma about 18 months ago and bronchitis is hitting me with an unforgiving hammer. Thankfully, the asthma doesn’t seem to be related to my four-legged family. Even if it were, I’d just have to cope because they really are my family. We humans cannot be separated from our other human family members no matter how much we may wish we could. Why on earth should I feel any differently about the four-legged family? This bunch has helped me survive a hell of a lot more than my human relatives. The unconditional love I receive and try to return is simply amazing. I am alive because I could not bear the thought of my girls wondering what happened to me and asking themselves why I’m not coming back. I must live because I promised them a home for life. I have every intention of keeping that promise.

The six month “anniversary” of my mother’s death will be upon me in ten days. There is an enormous part of me that is walled off because I just can’t deal with the grief right now. I’ve only broken down once since Mom’s memorial service last March. Once! I know what kind of pain lies behind that wall and beyond my reach. It is a devastation that needs to pour on to this dry earth that is my consciousness. I know that I am not able to will it so. Nevertheless, please, for God’s sake, pour onto me like the Nile pours its nutrient-rich soil onto the surrounding delta, allowing plants to grow and feed a nation. The most important relationship I will ever have is over because the other half of the pair has died. There is no second chance to get it right in this lifetime. Perhaps, if I am lucky, I will do so in the next. My mother died not knowing whether I loved her. I understand why she would question my love because she really did do something nearly unforgivable. I never got a chance to tell her that I really and truly do forgive her. How do I make this right? I can’t.

I have found that I am becoming an adult at the ripe age of five decades. (I put it that way because I just can’t believe the actual number.) My mother infantilized me by never taking me seriously as an adult. I couldn’t possibly be right about anything in her mind. Unfortunately, I was right way too often for either of our tastes. I don’t know how to describe the financial mess she left. I am only scratching the surface. There’s a whole file cabinet filled with things I haven’t had the emotional energy to peruse. She needed a guardian badly. I tried to take some of the weight off but she lied to me about financial matters on a regular basis. It’s my fault. I just couldn’t stand seeing this woman who’d shrunk about five inches due to osteoporosis fold in on herself and plead, in the most desperate and quiet voice, not to wrest control from her. At that moment, she was the one infantilized. I hope and pray that I didn’t make her that way. I’m not sure I could forgive myself.

Still, my mother regularly threatened to throw me out of her house when I insisted on thinking and acting in a manner that suited me, an adult woman, and not a five-year-old child. I constantly had to watch what I said around her because, in her mind, anything short of kissing her ass was a lack of respect. So, because there was no way I could support myself on a disability check alone, I did what I had to do: anything short of ass-kissing, although it came within millimeters. She could be mean and spiteful. Indeed, truly hateful. She tried to tell me that my father tried to molest me when I know for an absolute fact that he would never, and did never, lay an inappropriate hand on me. No, that task fell to her second husband and she let it happen. That’s the thing that was unforgivable. She knew and she allowed it to go on due to her own pathology.

I feel guilty because there were times when I had to verbally smack my mother down. About every six months or so, she’d work my last nerve and I’d retreat to my bedroom–the only room with a lock on the door. She’d often follow me and call me names you’d call a whore in the street when she rolled a date. I don’t miss those arguments at all. In fact, I don’t miss the near-ass kissing either. It feels so good to be an adult for the first time in my life. I’m pretty sure that my maturation stopped around 35 years old. I feel like a 35-year-old most of the time. At other times, I feel like I’m a 30-year-old. I have more empathy now with transgender people. They look in the mirror every day and are astonished at the face looking back. This shell of a body that doesn’t work properly can’t be me. I am so completely disconnected from my physical self that I am a stranger. There’s a song I heard on, of all places, the daytime drama General Hospital. It’s called Stranger In My Skin and is sung by Christine Dente. I was lucky to find it on iTunes. It’s quite haunting, as though Evenescence had a hand in it.

Finally, I come to another sad end. For the first time since I was 16 years old, I don’t want Glenn. It is at once freeing and isolating. Loving him was so much a part of who I am. When he made the choice to marry someone else, then keep seeing me (with my blessing, I might add), and then doing something so vicious, cruel and inhumane to me I can’t even write it, he changed both of our lives forever. In reality, he changed our lives when he chose to marry Dr. H. Bitch instead of me even though I didn’t realize then what a profound affect it had on us both. He’s trapped, whether he wants to be or not, and; he and his wife inflicted a wound that has festered for approximately seven years. It was intended to be one of their mindfucks. Instead, it was no less than a mindRAPE! It was toxic, but it, too, became a part of me.

Removing Glenn from my emotional being leaves me with a hole I have no idea how to fill. As an adult, I can go out to bars (something I’m not really into) and enjoy the drag king/queen shows, meet people and socialize. I can even bring someone home now should I choose to do so. I’ve tried Match.com only to end up with some guy in Nigeria who claimed after a week that he was in love with me and could I please send him money so he and his son could eat because, see, he was over there in Africa building a road and, like, he’d stay up late to chat with me while his son slept in the other room and, so, somehow, he wasn’t getting paid enough by his employer and he was afraid because, like, he didn’t know how to feed himself and his son. Yeah, right! Keep movin’ buddy-boy! I just can’t wait to see my next phone bill because he sent a ton of international texts. OY!

The fact of the matter is this: Right now, at 5:35a Eastern, my body is in pain; I’m emotionally and physically exhausted; I am empty of any illusions about Glenn (really Faux Glenn) and why he and his wife did such a horrible thing that nearly cost me my life in the nuclear emotional fallout that followed; I both miss my mother and feel guilty because, for the first time in about 30 years, there is peace in this dwelling I’ve hated for so long.

I want to ask something I don’t think I’ve ever asked on this blog. I am in dire need of good energy. I don’t care if it’s in the form of a prayer or if you visualize fireworks. I really, really need positive energy to flow my way so that I can absorb it and be replenished.

I can’t write anymore. I am so very tired. I am going to sleep and hope like hell my body and mind begin to heal. Thank you for reading this rather long and rambling post. G’morning!

Naked Honesty

I’ve been running around in circles all day because I couldn’t decide what to do. I damn near had an accident on the freeway because I was trying not to have another panic attack and not to cry at the same time. I am in so much pain I don’t even comprehend it. How can I expect someone who isn’t in my head to do so?

My mother and I had a very complex relationship, to put it mildly. I was 10 minutes too late to tell her that I forgave her for allowing her husband to molest and rape me. She needed to know and I hope more than just about anything else that there was enough of her brain functioning to hear me when I took her cold hand and told her. I don’t think I’ll ever forget her collapsing in my bedroom and on my bed, face contorted, no doubt that it was absolutely urgent that she get medical attention immediately. My thoughts were confirmed when the paramedics/EMTs did a “scoop and run,” much against her wishes. Then, they got diverted from the closest hospital to the Cleveland Clinic. That would have been great IF she’d had a survivable injury. She didn’t.

I got back to her cubicle as they were running a second code. I knew who they were trying to save, but I asked anyway. Cardiology wouldn’t come down unless they could see her via either a CT or MRI, I think the former, but my memory is a little fuzzy on that detail. She coded for the third and last time. I got there just as they made a decision to stop compressions and call time of death. (And yeah, that part of it is very much like one sees on television.) It was the only thing they could do because they were just doing more damage, but she hadn’t been conscious since the first code. Had I ridden in the ambulance, I would have had a few more minutes. I don’t think they’d let me anyway, but I knew there was no way she was going home with me and drove to the hospital myself. That took so much longer because I couldn’t risk being stopped by the cops and further delayed. Damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. The death certificate says “cardiac arrest,” presumably doing as cursory an autopsy as possible since I didn’t want her body to go through that at all. In reality, she died of an aortic dissection. I know far too much about medicine for my own good. When the attending told me that, I called the attorney and told him to begin preparing the paperwork. He insisted on waiting, not that it would do any good. However, he’s one of these holier than thou people who work my last nerve. I think that was the first time I wanted to yell at him, come to think of it. I called my uncle and his wife answered. I told her to haul ass to the hospital because Mom is dying. My uncle’s wife made it, but he didn’t.

[ETA: Remembering that night made the dam burst.]

I remember when my cousin died in Arizona died around the same time I ditched one of my dear friends because she wouldn’t pick up the phone and tell me her father died, no doubt because of her asshole racist husband who didn’t think I belonged and made it his mission in life to break us apart. I collapsed. I mean absolutely collapse in wails and screams on the floor on this very room, my bedroom, the same room in which my mother, for all intents and purposes, lost her life. I haven’t had the chance to grieve like that for my mother. It is costing me a lot in so many ways. It’s not that I don’t feel it. I do. I feel it probably more than many would think. I don’t know what the reason(s) is/are, but I strongly suspect it has something to do with the past, the present and the pressure to will myself to go on because, if I don’t, I’ll never stop crying.

Oh this is just great. I’ve just received a push news alert that means I’m going to have to find a way to insert myself into the Obama campaign. FUCK!! The last thing I need is to work right now. However, I’ve got to get my butt in gear before it’s too late. I haven’t watched much television since my mother died. That was months ago. I’ve only paid a scant amount of attention to politics because I knew who the Republican nominee would be. I’m far more interested in the senatorial campaign. *sigh* Yeah, I’ve got to make some decisions and start putting them into motion early Monday or Tuesday. It was inevitable, but I’d really hoped to be farther along in my healing before all this hit me in the face. There are too many ways to screw up.

Colder Weather by Zac Brown Band is just ending. I’m looking for the person that song brings to mind and hope like hell I still know someone who knows someone who knows where he is and what the hell is last name is. I’ve tried to remember for weeks. I got home today and an old black & white photo of him working on a gel light for one of the gym shows at my alma mater popped into my head. I wonder if the kids running the organization know anything about its history and, most of all, where that photo might be. It might give me his last name. My life is just too damn complicated. I was going to write about him but thought I’d better wait until I hear something definitive. Honestly, I’m hoping he’s still alive. Please, God, let him be alive. I don’t think my head can take any more deaths of people I’ve loved even a little. And yes, it is quite possible to not remember a lover’s last name if it’s been as long as it’s been and I had to leave while he was out of town. Don’t judge!

Between all of this and trying to figure out which part of my brain is trying to reinvent history, I’m a barrel of laughs these days. I want to go back before conception and start again. I’ll get there one day. I’ll get there.

God, PLEASE Let This Day End

I’m sitting at my living room table typing this post on my laptop. That has never happened before. In fact, there are very few computer-related things that take place downstairs even though I’ve got a 700 MHz eMac here that I somehow made run Leopard with a software patch and a bit o’ tinkering. If I only had myself to worry about, I’d still be in bed, probably in tears, feeling empty and wishing I’d followed my gut and bought another fifth of Jim Beam. Empty because this is the first major holiday without my mother and I feel empty except the enormous well of pain and loss that could easily drown me. Hence, the Jim Beam. There’s a somewhat amusing story that goes with the JB that I’ll indulge myself by telling.

The very first time I got rip-roaring drunk was when I was 17-years-old and everyone on my floor at Oberlin was going home for the summer. Oberlin was and is a dry town, but getting liquor wasn’t hard as much as it was inconvenient. That was also the last time I got rip-roaring drunk and whiskey, specifically bourbon, were largely the reason. I have to laugh as I think about it now because my mother came to collect me and I vaguely remember her shaking her head and cutting me a whole lot of slack. I don’t think either of us ever mentioned it. That’s not to say that I haven’t felt impaired in some fashion by alcohol, but I rarely drink, (even though all three of my dogs are lushes). I take too many drugs that would not mix well with alcohol of any kind were I to imbibe. That’s why it’s taken me over a month to go through the fifth of JB Red Stag I’m just finishing. I wouldn’t even know about that had the guy from whom I bought my guitar and I not gotten into a conversation one day about hot toddies because he was sick and didn’t have anyone to take care of him. There is some mixture of maternal and sexual instinct going on inside me where he’s concerned that I am damn sure ain’t right, but I’m equally sure would feel oh so good if I could just get myself and my life together. Because I can’t, I’ve stopped going to the store and hanging out. It’s too hard. And so, we come back to the raîson d’etre of this post.

So much has happened since I last wrote I don’t even know where to begin. There is a very large part of me that has absolutely no idea how to cope. I can list the things that need to be done, but that doesn’t mean I can do them. On top of that, I was using my mother’s lawyer, a cousin-in-law who either bought or inherited one of my great-uncles’ law firms. That bastard got pissed off at me because I dared to call him on a Saturday at 6 p.m. because I got a call from an antiques dealer who was coming by the next day, a Sunday, and I needed to know what I could and could not do legally. It was on from there. I should have cursed his ass out then and there, but I didn’t. In fact, I basically hung up on him when he started whining like a little human bitch about interrupting his freaking Saturday. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to tell him that when the probate judge asks me why I did such and such, I’d tell her that my lawyer didn’t want to work on Saturday. Instead, we got into a shouting match that Monday and I had him send me the paperwork to open my mother’s estate. This is now the third time I’ve had to run behind him cleaning up his messes. [ETA: Actually, the fourth time because his paperwork was supposed to conform to my mother’s will and it didn’t. I cleaned up what would have been a big and very ugly mess that would have created a rift I don’t know would heal at all among her brothers. In addition, the probate clerk caught another error that I didn’t.] I’ve made more appearances before judges on family matters than he has and I’m not licensed to practice law. What does that say about him? Yet, this is the man my mother trusted with her will and there was nothing I could do to shake her into making a proper trust for our circumstances. She’d always say that we’d do it after whateverthefuckwasgoingon was over. It never happened and I’m supposed to take this manure and turn it into a watermelon patch.

I didn’t realize it, but I’d gotten to a place where I just couldn’t function. That was in large part due to one of my mother’s creditors. As far as I am concerned, most of them can go pound salt. However, technically, the minivan that allows me to be mobile and have a life is in my mother’s name for a number of reasons, most having to do with an unsteady stream of income. At any rate, the lender’s probate department was relentless. I could count on at least two calls a day even though I couldn’t tell them any more than I had the previous day. I’m going to run into trouble with them again and it will be my own fault, but I’m jumping ahead of myself. I could see my life slowly ebbing away thanks to them. It wasn’t as though I had nothing to sell that would get them off my back for a minute, because I did, Mom’s truck. The problem was that it would cost me more money to get it repaired than it would to sell it outright. However, selling it outright wouldn’t even come close to what it was really worth, but it would take care of the money the lender informed me she was in arrears. I think that’s when something inside of me broke. Everyone has certain buttons that if pushed will cause all sorts of generally negative reactions. I knew two of mine already. I learned a third.

The one time I broke and didn’t attempt suicide, the local shrink police had me committed because someone in my family, and I’m beginning to figure out who, got scared. It didn’t help that I publicly upbraided the cousin-in-law for being a jerk and said that my uncle most assuredly did not allow him into his practice to ignore his family. That sure as hell went for ignoring my mother and me where both of my great-uncles were concerned. They raised her!

The thing about any psych floor is that the patients have to figure out what it is the doctors want and give it to them. It’s the same game with everything. I’ve been through this too many times, so I knew what to say and what not to say. It helped that my lawyer is my former Mistress and now friend. She said that she was actually glad someone from the family did it because she’s been quite worried. Yeah, well, so have I, but I couldn’t say it. My actual psychologist was on frakking jury duty! What idiot of a judge puts a practicing shrink on jury duty knowing that there are people depending on her? Had I known, I could have gotten her out of it, but I didn’t know until my last appointment with her. By then, it was too late to have someone intercede on her behalf. But when I find out what judge this was, I’ll make a contribution to his/her opponent along with a note. In the meantime, there was no one I could turn to. I was more or less alone. I say “more or less” because I had my mother’s youngest brother, the only two cousins I have in my age range and my great aunt. I couldn’t and wouldn’t trouble my aunt because she’s got health issues of her own and I didn’t really want to lean on anyone. My mother’s brother has what is both a passive attitude and a vengeful one. He’s sure God will take care of those who don’t make amends for the dirt they’ve done. Me? I’m more active. You fuck me and I’ll fuck you harder. That’s the phrase that kinda had the ex a bit worried. She hadn’t seen the side of me that’s basically Rahm Emmanuel in a darker color and a sex change. It wasn’t necessary when she knew me. It became necessary over time.

To close this out, Lady A is singing Dancin’ Away With My Heart and I’m thinking of someone I shouldn’t. (For the uninitiated, that would be Glenn D. T-something-or-another. *smirk*) Something occurred to me today for reasons I honestly don’t understand. I would have made that person I shouldn’t be thinking of an excellent wife. I hope he got what he wanted when he chose someone else.

Another thing occurred to me as I reach the end of this entry that has nothing to do with the above. I’ll always have a weakness for red-headed rockers/roadies, beards, badboys, and; women who love fast cars–both of which make me drool–like the cutie one who picked me up yesterday to take me to Goodyear to get my minivan which, if I didn’t say so, I did save, but only for a little while. If that chica weren’t engaged, we’d both have gotten ourselves into some well-deserved trouble. I even let her get lost so we’d have a few extra minutes. She may not have been from the area, but no one is that directionally challenged. *laugh*

It just occurred to me that there’s another reason I want this day to be over. If I plan to survive, and I’ve never had a really strong survival instinct, I absolutely must put the insurance paperwork in the mail that I’ve carried with me for months. No one seems to understand that by doing so, I’m admitting that the person closest to me in the world, who was also a stranger in other ways, really isn’t coming back no matter how many dreams I have or call out for her. She’s gone. She stupidly trusted me to survive. If it were just me, I wouldn’t care if I ever drew another breath. However, I have three furbabies who depend on me and I will not allow “the system” to have them. They are the only reason I didn’t take my life a few weeks ago. I found a way to do it almost perfectly, but I refused to take them with me and I could only find a destination for two of them. I don’t think God would forgive me for making the third come with me and, frankly, I don’t think I could have forgiven myself in whatever afterlife there may be. We’ve been together 12 years. With some luck, there’s no reason she can’t stay another two or three years. Little dogs tend to live longer and she’s small. She’s the one who sees my soul, although I think the youngest is here for a reason, too, and it frightens me. I think she’s here to develop the same empathy that the eldest has. I see it happening more and more as she’s gotten older in the nearly one year we’ve had her. Thank you doG for sending someone to watch over me and giving me a reason to be here.

A Family Disappointment

There is a pall on this day. Almost a week ago, give or take about six hours, I was rushed to the hospital via EMS because I had all the signs women get when we’re having a heart attack. My sternum hurt; the right side of my face went numb while my left arm tingled and hurt; my back ached, and; most alarming for me, the hearing in my left ear was completely gone, replaced by tinnitus while I “only” lost about 50% of the hearing in my right ear. I attributed all of this to stress, even if a heart attack were indeed the result. I’ve been stressed and distressed for months now. The latest because I tried to be a good friend and mentor to a younger cousin and her lazy ass boyfriend who believed the world would be a fab place if everyone blew off doctors and smoked dope all day. This same joker, Chad, stole quite a bit of my recently deceased mother’s costume jewelry collection with pieces far older than I am today; broke her sorority pen when he never should have had it in the first place; stole a small point-and-shoot camera that was only good enough to catch pics and video in a breaking news story, and; stole a very expensive digital recorder with a microphone that fit into my ear so that whatever I heard in that ear went into the recorder. It is that last item that puts a huge crimp in my ability to work and the theft of jewelry that makes me want to cry. That bastard also tried to get my smallest and youngest dog killed by encouraging her into the street–a boulevard where cars regularly surpass the 35 MPH speed limit–because he was mad at me for throwing his ass out of my house. If my now-estranged cousin, Marguerite, hadn’t protected him with her body, and if she wasn’t bigger than I was, I would have stabbed him with any sharp object I could get my hands on and never regret it other than the fact that my girls would be without me.* So fuck you, Marguerite, for caring more about how well your pussy is licked and not giving a crap that your sick motherfuckin’ boyfriend tried to kill a defenseless animal! You are about the third most disappointing relative I’ve ever had the misfortune of trusting.

When Chad tried to get Snippet killed, I called the police. I have no idea what lie they told, but I really don’t care as long as they are gone and remain so. Then, I discovered the thefts. I texted Marguerite and asked where the items were. She lied and said that I was, paraphrasing, “imagining things.” Yeah, right. That’s what I do all day, child. I sit and imagine things and then write them up as news stories. Puleeze! Oh, did I mention that the two nitwits tried to frame me as a dope dealer in the event that I did call the cops? Chica went through my mother’s bedroom, where they slept, and had to see the three Mary Jane plants that had sprouted. I went right behind her, but after she’d left, and that was the second thing my eyes caught. The first was a drawer that was out of place. I called the police and that’s where I have to end this horrible little chapter other than to say that I tried, even after that foolish little girl went along with the setup at the very least and, for all I know, might have orchestrated it. I took the frosting for the brownies and Rice Krispies to her last known address, her mother and stepfather’s apartment, but got no answer. That’s when I began soliciting legal opinions. I asked four attorneys what my liability might be. Let’s just say that I wasn’t concerned when I called the cops. One of the attorneys, after seeing the texts that arrogant butthole, Chad, sent, said that the attempt at extortion alone would probably be a major factor, and; that here, animal cruelty isn’t looked upon kindly even though I’m very sure I had the misfortune to draw the officer with the least concern for any animal that didn’t walk upright on two legs and communicate some form of English in the first encounter.

There is a pall on this day because it’s really hitting me how badly I screwed up. I never should have allowed that scum access to my house, even if Marguerite and her mother approved of him. He claimed that his mother and sister both threw him out and that his father was “iffy.” Knowing a little something about the fallibility of parental units, it wasn’t such a stretch to believe. The two stayed as guests because Chad didn’t have a job then and there, but was supposedly working on getting one. He had about a quarter of his food stamp money to contribute, but that might as well been Monopoly money given all that he ate and drank. I could never imagine anyone drinking an entire 12-can box of ginger ale in one morning until he did it. Things we ordered from a Chinese restaurant that delivered and I helped pay for were gone before I even had one helping. Yes, MJ can give a person mad cravings, but being stoned is a decision. Choosing to fix the after-effects of being stoned is a decision. Telling the person who was kind enough to allow you to stay in her house rent free until you found a job that she wasn’t “trying hard enough” with a disability that only maybe eight doctors in the entire world have actively treated, after every relative you’d previously asked had thrown you out, was a decision. Literally hiding behind your larger girlfriend was most definitely a decision, as was threatening me, making fun of me and trying to kill my dog were all decisions.

Chad supposedly has ADHD. Yeah, I can see that. However, these two forget that I’ve been in the world a lot longer than they have. This family breeds cops and lawyers like farmers breed cattle for slaughter. My mother was a teacher just like her grandmother, great aunt and many of the women on this branch of the family tree. Learning disabilities are not new to me. ADHD is not an excuse for everything small, medium and large that happens even if he’s got Marguerite believing it is. The disability, once diagnosed, must be addressed, yes, but not like this.

As I said, Marguerite was more interested in how well he performed sexually, forgetting or outweighing all the times he’s made her cry (believe me, it was a lot),and that he/they were stealing from a dead blood aunt who ALWAYS cared about her and her education. She didn’t care. Chad could throw tantrums and she’d do whatever he wanted. In this case, not only did he set me up, but he set Marguerite up as well. Everything he texted was from HER phone and not his. His is sitting on my mantle along with some other things just waiting.

Chad’s statement that: 1) He didn’t think he should have to find a job, and; 2) that I wasn’t trying hard enough, made me see red. That is especially true of the second statement. I was so angry at his arrogant, ignorant, generally assholish comments that I stripped down to my skin, including taking off my prosthesis, and screamed at him while asking if that is good enough and that he knows nothing. Damn! I wish I could have caused him severe injury without leaving my girls to fend for themselves.* His tongue would have been about the only thing that worked, so Ms. Marguerite would have still been happy.

I feel as though I’ve disappointed my mother and so many other women who came before me by allowing myself to get duped by Chad, who is quite charming, articulate and definitely an angry young man. I just couldn’t stand the thought of the child I believed I knew and that I would have been proud to have as my own daughter, out on the street with this 20-year-old kid who’d had a rough life because of his learning disorder where god knows what could have happened to them. She was devoted to him and I took them in mostly so that she wouldn’t be put in danger. To steal from me and my just barely-dead mother was an abomination–a blasphemy that I will never forgive. I will send her mother a copy of this post and tell her exactly what her daughter and her boyfriend did. Then, unless the police get a warrant or I can get a photo of the one-off piece of jewelry I purchased for my mother from its designer and take that to the cops, I’m done. IF she goes to college, and IF she manages to graduate, then I’ll re-think my position. However, those “ifs” are very, very large. I wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up pregnant first. As I said before, Marguerite is an enormous disappointment.

ETA the following:

* After many days to think, I concluded that Marguerite did me a favor. Had I stabbed Chad for trying to murder my youngest furbaby–because, let’s face it, that’s what he was trying to do whether statutes, prosecutors and case law call it “murder” or not–all of my girls would have been without me. That’s unacceptable under any circumstance.