Crumbling Foundations At The Crossroads Of Life

Never have I felt more lost and confused about life before. Everything around me is falling apart and spinning out of control. I’m struggling to breath as the world as I know it crashes down on me like the Twin Towers did on 9/11. Some might say I’m having a midlife crisis of some sort, but I’m barely halfway through my thirties and this isn’t about figuring out who I am rather than how this all went so terribly wrong.

My marriage is faltering, my children have lost their sense of family unity, my mental health is deteriorating, and the foundation for which a happy, comfortable life is built upon has crumbled. Everywhere I look there is nothing but failure and disarray and everywhere I turn, I hit another brick wall square in the face. My soul is battered and bruised and my heart is bleeding on the sleeve I have always worn it with pride. I don’t trust my judgement and my confidence is waning. All I can do is cry, wishing some magical fairy godmother would appear out of thin air and fix it all with a wave of her wand. I’m so tired of fighting.

Having a Borderline Personality diagnosis compounds this mess until it becomes a category 5 hurricane. My emotions are skyrocketing off the charts as they bounce between black and white, never pausing to heed the gray in between. Love and hate, love and hate, love and hate- there is no middle ground to hold steady to anymore. My mind is held hostage with racing thoughts which want to overanalyze everything. Breaking down, filling in the blanks, concluding the worst case scenarios, and piecing the structure back together again over and over until I finally fall asleep at night just to wake up and start it all again. Nothing makes sense and I cannot fathom a reason to justify why anything is the way that it is right now. There’s no good answers to quench my thirst for enlightenment so I can find the path to lead me out of this hell.

I just want it all to stop. I just want my life to be happy and content. I want the security I used to have knowing that I would be all right in the end. But it’s seemingly impossible right now.

What is one to do in a time like this? When the roots they’ve laid down deep are suddenly ripped from the earth and everything you’ve latched onto for support and nourishment is gone? How do gather so many fragments of the universe that keep you whole and force them to stay where they belong? Never have I felt so disconnected and isolated before. Never have I felt so insecure about what the future holds. Everything I’ve ever known, everything I’ve ever wanted out of life, is hanging by a thinning thread over the darkest abyss I’ve encountered thus far. I cannot bear the thought of what would happen if I lost my grip.

Maybe had my foundation been more solid and less hollow to begin with, I wouldn’t be in this place at this moment. But shoulda, coulda, woulda’s don’t do anything but waste more of the strength and energy I’m already severely lacking. I need a plan of action. One that doesn’t catapult me face first into steel-enforced concrete barriers that keep me trapped where I am. I need a way to save my life from complete and utter destruction. I need a break from this test of my fortitude and the impact my mental illness has over everything I have ever loved unconditionally without reservation.

I know that everything happens for a reason and very few things last forever. That it’s not my choice how life plays out, though everything I do affects the outcome. If only I had some clarity. Or a crystal ball to show me this isn’t the beginning of the end, as I fear it is, and I’ll wake up one day to feel the sun shining brightly upon my face once more. Miracles don’t really happen to people like me, however. My fate is cursed, after all. Cursed to live with the misery of abandonment, instability, and betrayal; the basic recipe needed to elicit my mental illness in the first place.

Maybe my black and white emotions have simply hijacked this crossroads I’m at and acted as a catalyst to make the state of my affairs worse than need be. But I don’t think so. I think they are just the end result of the pieces of my life shattering as they came down on me on their own. Either way, I’m left to commiserate all alone in this void while trusting the universe to navigate me back to where I belong. I just really hope it doesn’t kill me in the process.

 

 

Influenced Insanity

It’s hard to love yourself when no one ever wants to stay,

When family and friends are easy to forget you even have a name.

It’s hard to love your life, graciously gifted without wanting,

When family and friends taunt you with so many reasons to feel ashamed.

 

It’s a challenge to accept yourself the deplorable way you were forged,

When family and friends beg mercilessly for everything about you to be changed.

It’s a challenge to accept the fate written for you by the stars,

When family and friends make it clear that you are delusionally deranged.

 

It’s a struggle to be brave and face each day with hopeful optimism,

When family and friends are brazenly pessimistic about your valueless worth.

It’s a struggle to be brave and face each day through the agony plaguing your mind,

When family and friends don’t see a purpose in you being here on this earth.

 

It’s painful to watch all the others get by, conquer and succeed,

When family and friends make it seem so damn fucking easy.

It’s painful to watch knowing you’re broke and will never truly belong,

When family and friends scorn you relentlessly for being so wretched and sleazy.

 

It’s incomprehensible to think about what life could really be like,

When family and friends see only your diagnosed mental health disease.

It’s incomprehensible to think about how deserving you are of love from yourself and them,

When family and friends wish you would be anything but yourself to appease.

 

It’s difficult to fight and break free from the suffocating mold of normalcy,

When family and friends have chained you to a box of over-value.d conformity.

It’s difficult to fight and break free from their unrelenting pressures to convert,

When family and friends refuse to accept that you’re more than just an aberrational deformity.

Now that you’ve read mine, come check out these other amazing blogger’s poetry for our February Poetry Challenge- Family and Friends!

Blogger and Blog: Karen of Baking In A Tornado

Name of Poem: Hugs and Kisses

Link: http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2017/02/hugs-and-kisses-february-poetry.html

Blogger and Blog: Diane of On the Border

Name of Poem: Toast

Link: http://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/2017/02/toast.html

Blogger and Blog: Dawn of Spatulas On Parade

Name of Poem: Friends and Family “How I love ya”

Link:http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/2017/02/truffles-friends-and-family-how-i-love.html

Blogger and Blog: Lydia of Cluttered Genius

Name of Poem: Friends are family

Link: http://www.clutteredgenius.com/friends-are-family/

 

Overgrown Insecurities

Never did I imagine as a young teen that I would still be dealing with my insecurities well into my thirties still. Bright-eyed about the future with all my youthful naivety, adulthood seemed like a magical place where all my issues would disappear with instant maturity.  

When I thought about what it would be like to be a mother back then, I imagined myself being a responsible and level-headed, calm and collected photocopy of any late eighties and early nineties family sitcom mom. Never did I consider the possibility that emotional growth wouldn’t just happen the same way my body grew and changed overnight with puberty.

Here I am, over fifteen years later, and I am still struggling to get a grip, fed up with the insecurities consuming my mind.

Growing up, I had the stereotypical child of an alcoholic thing going on. My father was a police officer and my stepmother his wannabe Barbie doll barely over the legal age. Both were seasoned drinkers with no time for raising children. It’s easy to conclude that my self-esteem never quite developed and my ideas, views, and values were a little skewed after growing up in their care. There was no one available for nurturing or guidance, after all. I was left to raise my brother and keep the house the best I could for a young girl because when my parents weren’t working they were at the bar and when the bar closed they brought the party home until it was time to go to work again.

Approaching the only mother figure I had when puberty began turned out to be the biggest mistake for my already fragile core. My stepmother fits the mold of womanly perfection, as her trophy wife status disclaimed. She was everything I wanted to look and be like. Naturally curvy, carrying an extra five or ten pounds around my middle, it was obvious to me early on that my body type was never going to be like hers. I still can’t say for sure, all this time later, if anything she said to me about accepting my differences was genuinely sincere or a calculated manipulation to keep me from coming under my father’s spotlight. She never took the time to show me how to care for myself or do any of the womanly things a girl learns from her mother. Never showed me how to feel pretty or how to love myself.

All I walked away with was more self-doubt and shame than I had ever felt before.

Uncomfortable in my own skin doesn’t even begin to explain how I felt. From that point on, I lived in constant fear of my flaws, seeking fault in everything I could find to validate the growing insecurities I gathered like friends- my looks, my personality, my intelligence, my worth. Nothing was free from scrutiny. My confidence and self-respect had been blown to smithereens.

Deep down, I really believed my daydreams of feeling whole and valuable would become a reality once I left home as an adult. That I would be able to fix all the broken pieces of myself just because I wanted to. I hadn’t the wisdom to know any better, yet. I lived in a bubble of fairytale hopes and aspirations too unrealistic to ever become a reality until the truth hit me in the face. The damage had grown rooted in the core of my being, becoming part of who I thought I was. It would be necessary to unthread parts of my identity in order to begin the re-stitching process needed to mend the insecurities which plagued my soul.

I fought against the truth for far too long, hoping, wishing, and praying I would wake up and be well. The idea of trying to find my true self under the false beliefs and self-loathing was daunting and overwhelming. Enough to make me contemplate suicide to end my miserable existence at one point along the way. Underneath my negative self-imagery, though, I was a fighter and always up for a challenge. Living was not going to beat me at living. No way, no how.

Here I am, a decade and a half later, finally ready to take action. No more ugly business. No more picking and poking at every little glitch on my skin. No more resentment and jealousy over the traits I do not have. No more comparing myself to The Mold I became so obsessed with – and for what? To live in fear of being disliked… rejected… tormented… because I didn’t fit within it? Fuck that.

Excuse my language, but I have had enough of some ridiculous stereotype defining my sense of worth and leaving me trapped in a void by my overpowering insecurities.

Looking back, I can now see what I never could see clearly when I was younger- those I knew who fit The Mold, had very little else to offer this world. Certainly not compassion. Something I know without a doubt I excel at. I may not be the prettiest, the skinniest, or the most breath-taking of female specimens to grace the planet with their presence, however, I am the most kind-hearted, caring, and selfless giver of them all. For me, those are much more valuable traits to possess and be known for than all the beauty in humanity.

Those positive traits are the key to unraveling the roots wrapped around my core, squeezing the ability to love myself right out of me. Focusing on what I have to offer instead of what I lack, I can find myself all over again. I can learn to live with who I am.

With enough hard work and dedication, I will lay these overgrown insecurities to rest once and for all. The challenge has finally been accepted, as terrified of taking on myself that I am, and I will not let life win this time, either. I can’t. It’s already taken away too many years of my life making me hate myself. I will not let another fifteen years go by living in fear of loving myself.

 

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Lonely Girl Waiting

Waiting. It is all I ever do anymore. Everything inside of me is at a stand still, wanting for something no longer in my reach. Life has left me far behind and now I am so lost, I can’t find my way by myself. My parents always told me to stand still when I am lost, back when I was a much braver, more courageous young girl full of the beauty that is innocence. Someone will come find me and return me to where I belong. So here I stand. Very still. Wondering if anyone even realizes I am gone at all?

Everything around me keeps swirling on past. Like the plastic shopping bag dancing in and out of lanes of the highway, floating high above each hood and tumbling below the undercarriages of these cars whizzing by furiously. If I dare move a muscle, I am afraid I will be mowed down, splattered, as if I was my favorite childhood game, Frogger, come to life for but a purposeful moment as this. So I wait. Watching as they bustle on without a care given to the girl standing here all alone in the misty morning fog, thickening the air until it makes it hard to breathe. Do they even see me?

It was so hard to keep pace with them. I didn’t mean to drop so far back from the herd. The stampede was deafening and my head was going to explode with agony at any second. I had to close my eyes as they were beginning to bulge from my head like an overripe banana fisted by a two year-old. The fluorescent lights buzzed as they shone blindly into my pupils like the flashlight of a nervously armed security guard. The skin on my neck began to get icy and the hair on my arms began to raise with the goosebumps as lightning bolts of electricity struck my heart. Blood was rushing to every far off crevice in my body, a bursting dam crashing through the floodgates, stirring up the murky waters of my soul. Consumed by the fiery energy in the air, I crumpled to a heap on the dirt, screaming silently for my words have been swallowed whole. How did they not notice?

With the weight of my sins sitting heavily on me, I mustered the strength to stand time and time again. But each time it got harder. My shoes were filling with cement, my clothes were dripping wet, and the ground was just the same as quicksand. I kept stumbling and tripping. Collapsing under the pressure. I reached out my hand, over and over and over, but no one ever grabbed it. It fell with me each and every time, flopping like a pancake dropped on the floor. Desperate to follow in his footsteps, I sacrificed myself. Every time my knees hit the ground, I took out a piece of myself to leave behind, so that my load would get lighter. So I could manage to stand on my own and continue struggling along in their shadows. Dragging my weary body behind them unnoticed; the distance between us growing quickly as the midday sun gigantisized their shadows. My trembling legs give out once more and they were gone out of sight before I even raised my head off the ground. Why would anyone stop to bother with someone like me?

So now I sit here. And I wait. I hold tight. It doesn’t surprise me that they left me behind. He just kept on, racing against the clock to reach the final destination. Unaware… or, just, maybe, fully aware- and grateful for the lessened burden. No amount of ostentatiousness from me would catch his eye. Would signal his heart to open wide and let me in. Would captivate his soul and turn his attention away from the road before him. Though he would be too fascinated by his following still to take heed of my anguished distress over the love I was promised with my head held between his brutal hands. Yet, here I wait. When they couldn’t even wait for me, as the tide waits for the moon to rise across the night sky. Like a cicada waits for mother nature to signal the time has come to rise from its resting place deep within the earth. Patiently, dotingly, assuredly, I wait for my rescue. Will it ever come?

For as long as it takes. Until the world stops turning. Through the changing seasons and hands of time. Here I will stay. I will remain. Watching as life continues passing me by at the speed of light. Wanting him to need me. Needing them to remember me. Remembering them as they have forgotten me. Forgetting who I am as I sit tight and wait. They say good things come to those who wait, after all, and he is the greatest love I have ever known. So here I am. – a lonely girl life left behind in the hustle and bustle, waiting for the love he promised to come and save me. Will the day ever come?

Home Is Where The Rainbow Ends

My subject is “Follow the rainbow to the end, where does it take you”?  It was submitted by Not That Sarah Michelle.  Here goes: 

On the outside, all you might see is a woman. A woman ragged and hardened by the trials of a cursed life. A woman struggling to keep one foot in front of the next as the ground continuously shifts under her feet.

She seems disconnected from the rest of the world whizzing by her, out of place in the shallow wastelands of society – with those woeful eyes, warm and beckoning for something more than the material world could ever offer her. Always wallowing dangerously in the deep end of the universe, she was. A place few dare oft go. Where very few ever would want to go, for it simply does not nourish the ego. But she loves it here… this secret place at the end the rainbow.

It is here where space and time collide, where humanity is born and goes to die, and where the fires burning intensity awakens the passions in one’s soul. A place where everyone’s dreams live. Where color transcends back into the energy it is made from and becomes opulent and iridescent, all at once. Reality no longer seems concrete and everything moves at the pace of your subconscious thoughts. The melody of your inner most desires escaping the trappings of your soul is the only sound, taking your breath away with the beauty you hold within. Beauty you never knew was there before; hidden from sight under the pressures of social conformity. This is a place for nurturing – and she needs all the nurturing she can get as an outcast of reality.

Others never understand her. Others could never fathom her course. The windows to her soul open into a world unlike any other – a world people endlessly seek out, instead of looking for within. For, her soul did not die at birth when the windows opened her consciousness to the physical world, like theirs did. Her soul was not traded-in for an ID, Ego, and SuperEgo. She somehow slipped through the cracks of the universe as she was born, bypassing this rite of passage into humanity. Free of the earthly bound traits defining humans above all other species; though they are merely descendants of star dust and cosmic energies, too. Just the same as you, or, I.

Yet, as fate would have destiny, humans have evolved in a way which closes off the gateway to the very universe which brought them into being. The end of the rainbow sacrificed in order to develop and nurture those ID, Ego, and SuperEgo characters, ensuring humans ultimate superiority. They turn away from the very thing which created everything they have ever known. And they will never know what it is like to find this magical place of hers – to never connect with their roots. They plead with meaningless pandemonium, obsessed with her rejection of conformity. She is deaf to their blasphemous cries and false prophecies, adept in the ways of empty promises and disassociated desires. She is so much more than the lost little girl she is mistaken for time and time again. She wishes they would just leave her be.

The end of the rainbow feels better than any home she has ever had, providing the kind of comfort, security, and belonging she craved which the physical earth could never satisfy for her. She stays within all they will allow, but it is never long enough. Constantly tugging her, pulling her into their ostentatious reality, willing her to feed her humanity and let go of her celestial being.

It is pointless, though. She always goes back to her place at the end of the rainbow. Through her soul, to the darkest depths of the universe, she is one with all that ever was and ever will be. This is right where she belongs.

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

 Baking In A Tornado

The Bergham Chronicles

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

Southern Belle Charm

Not That Sarah Michelle

My Brain on Kids

The Lieber Family Blog

Never Ever Give Up Hope

Someone Else’s Genius

Confessions of a part time working mom

Spatulas on Parade

Climaxed

By: Kristina Hammer, aka, The Angrivated Mom

Nothing Wrong With That. Nothing At All.

I am a married-single mother. Meaning – I am betrothed to my soul mate but he is unable to co-parent alongside me because his job keeps him away from home sixty to seventy-two hours a week. He is the family provider and the children’s extra special Sunday playmate. I am the stay-at-home mom-ship captain-prison warden-public relations director-service coordinator-keeper of allthethings.

This is by far the hardest job I have ever had. I have worked in an upscale, posh fruit market and deli with over two hundred register codes to memorize. I have worked in Bingo halls, ice rinks, and daycares.  I have been employed as a food counter cashier, a restaurant hostess, and a banquet hall dishwasher. For many years, in between, I held down a second job as a nighttime security guard. After college, I worked as a Health Unit Coordinator, managing patient care in some of the most fast-paced, unpredictable units of the hospital- Labor & Delivery, Pediatrics, Neurology, and the I.C.U.. None of those jobs even begin to compare to the stress, exhaustion, and physical drain of Mom Duty as a married-single mother. A married-single mother without her tribe, that is.

Everyone undoubtedly knows, it is the village which makes or breaks a good mother. This mother was breaking under the pressure.

Going into my first pregnancy, I was a bit on the younger side of the average age for first-time moms. In my naïve twenty-two year old mind, the picture of motherhood American Baby and Baby Talk magazines painted, would become my reality. What a slap in the face it was to realize those farcical illustrations were far from the truth. Having the best of everything baby and following the crowd of sheeple down the trail of baby care fads was not enough to join the exclusive motherhood village. I did not have the right socio-economic bank roll and suburban background to be noticed. No matter how many Mommy and Me classes we went to, how many playgroups we auditioned at, or how well I adhered to the advice in articles like “How To Find Your BMFF (best mommy friend forever) At Gymboree” and “Build Your Mommy Crew In Style,” I never felt welcomed, nor, did I ever make a single friend.

I did not give up my search for belonging and acceptance without a fight, though. I continued on relentlessly, trying to make myself a village to rely upon; to belong to. However, there is only so much fight in any one, and, by the time I was expecting my third baby, five years later, my fight was gone. Dried up. Vamoose. My tribe would never be, and, I was surprisingly okay with that. A natural introvert by nature, it was truly torturous bearing the barrage of mother-baby socialization necessary to find a gaggle of girl friends who weren’t single, childless, Molly-loving club goers. Those kind vanished, to never return again, the first time my newborn baby cried in their presence. So, when the third child was born, I finally began to let go of the fairytale depicting, magazine idealism entirely. All it had done was leave me friendless and on the brink of insanity – and, truthfully speaking, I was afraid of what would come beyond the point of insanity if I continued. By the time my fourth child came, I had fully adjusted to motherhood without the stress of social pressures, and, subsequently, without any outside support. Yet, I was still riding the crest of the wave, dangling precariously on the edge of sanity and did not understand why.

Four kids and one mother – twenty four hours a day, three hundred sixty five days a year – with only the varying levels of school during the school year to break up some time with a few of the kids. Coupled with the task of managing the entire household, and all the bullshit associated thereof, my hands got so full, I began losing my grip on it all. My sleep, random and sparse, is constantly interrupted by one little person’s needs or another. My body is perpetually ready for bed and continually fighting wakefulness, because it has no idea when sleep is supposed to happen anymore. The chores have gotten farther behind then I ever imagined possible; giving up on the idea of ever having a presentable looking home. Not even a flawlessly clean home, just presentable. Looking around, all I could see was failure in the overflowing piles of paperwork, stacks of laundry baskets that will never be folded before we’ve worn it all, dishes in the sink for days on end, and a smell emanating from our dingy carpets the kids are surprisingly not nose-blind to, but actually seem to prefer. Days turn into nights which turn right back into daytime again, sending shockwaves of confusion through my brain as it tries to decipher time and date. It is because of this, that I am perpetually late to everything, since I feel as though time ceases to exist within the walls of my fortress. I am one thread away from unraveling into a heap of tattered remains and no one will be there to help stitch me whole again.

I feel trapped in the twilight zone of stay-at-home parenthood, where every day seems just like the last and the memories of each blend together in jumbled chaos. This is the life of a married-single mother.

In all of my painstaking endeavors to become an attractive, friendable Mom, it has become apparent to me, motherhood is an isolating, punishable, and taboo feat in which society makes you feel as if you haven’t done enough. It is a lonely and daunting role which threatens to consume you, if you let it. For a long, long time, it seems, I have done just that. I have focused solely on the parts of motherhood which were unexpected and/or unattainable. I was blatantly ignorant to the value of what I had staring me right in the face. Becoming aware of the fact that I am miserable by my own fault, has been liberating. I have realized I was only mirroring the rejection I felt from my endless attempts at finding my best mommy friend. I was finding fault in my inability to be a real life Wonder Woman and keep up with life in its high-speed chase towards death, to prove there was value to the opinion of a bunch of mothers I only knew the back page summary of the story of their lives. By judging them, I was only personalizing these missed connections (which may very well have been not meant to be for good reason), therefore judging myself. I was holding myself to someone else’s standards. I was putting unreasonable and unrealistic expectations on myself, ones which I could never meet – even on my best of days. Their circumstances in life were different than mine. They were living the stereotype of suburban stay-at-home lives. I was a married-single mother. They had a village of family and friends waiting to step into their roles long before they ever conceived their first time and the crew only grew with each subsequent child. I did not. I was on my own. Both mom and dad, and everything in between.

And, you know what? My way of getting through is a-okay by me. I haven’t made the leap off the insanity cliff, yet. Actually, I am probably a lot further from the edge than I ever was before, without the added pressure of a motherhood fantasy dangling above my head. This is the most arduous, back-breaking, demanding, and wearisome role I have ever been graced with. The most rewarding and fulfilling, too. I have the opportunity to see my children every possible moment along their journeys. I can take the time to talk to them, play with them, learn with them and from them, sharing a bond we wouldn’t have had on the same level, otherwise.  So what if I’m not good at managing household repairs and spring cleaning regimes? My children’s laughter fills the air and their smiles brighten the rooms of our home, bringing joy to even the most mundane of household chores.

We are busy making memories and memories can be quite messy at times. So can dealing with temper tantrums, sicknesses, and injuries, too. Not to mention those natural kid disasters which No Body and Some Body-Else were fully responsible for causing.

My children are healthy, they are excelling in school, activities of interest, and athletics, they are kind and compassionate, they are immensely and uniquely humorous, and they are confident in their own skins being exactly themselves. Raising kids to be as such, in this day and age, is quite a tremendous feat – one which I have done with no helpful support, whatsoever. I have no more room for comparisons in my life. The opinions of others do not make me anything unless I allow them to. The pressure to conform to society’s misguided idealism of motherhood will no longer have the power to create a tunnel vision of failure in my mind. I am merely doing the best I can with the hand that I have been dealt in life. I am incredibly proud of myself for coming this far on my own, as I should have been all along.

Life as a married-single mom tests my limits and capabilities on a daily basis. It plays on my weaknesses and empowers my strengths. It brings me to my knees in despairing frustration and lifts my heart to the heavens, bursting with unconditional love and wonderment.

My physical and emotional well-being can falter at times, but at others, they are unstoppable forces to be reckoned with.

For whatever reason, I was meant to go this journey on my own, but, for the first time ever, I am so damn grateful that I have. I have proven to myself that I can. That I am. That I will. I am simply a married-single mother whose course is a little off the beaten path, but still in the race. I am the mother I was meant to be and there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.

The internet… It brought me my village. There is a place where moms can belong without judgement or social pressure to be anything but, well, Mom! Just as you are. No rules, limits, or boundaries. No unsolicited advice, shaming, or leveling up. Just pure kindness and loving support. Wanna join? Come on and make a #Mommitment today!

CLICK HERE

By: Kristina Hammer, aka, The Angrivated Mom

The Collector of Wrinkles In Time

I am a collector. By the light of the moon, as darkness slinks through the night and seeps into every nook and cranny, I search. Looking for the next great addition lurking in the shadows of my past, I wander deep through the rubble and wreckage of my mind. Aberrations of time spent and past long ago stick to my soul like superglue. These gems of what used to be are the treasures I search for in the loneliness of the night, lost within myself. They are my collection.

Those tiny slivers of treasure are the lifeline to the fire burning passionately within me. Coursing through my veins, waves of emotion ripple from my amorous heart. My mind floods with feelings captured in each precious gem, every time I enter that revered place. I hold on tight to all which has paved the path I stumble upon through this journey called life. Those moments, people, places, and melodies stored in my soul are the very foundation of me and everything I stand for, believe in. They are like miniature time capsules, each one containing a snippet of time leading me to this point in life, today.  Letting go would only mean losing a part of myself; the glue which holds all the pieces together as one. It is an unbearable notion. One I could never possibly even begin to contemplate. Collecting is simply just an inherent part of my physical nature.

I was born to be a collector and I will die clutching the last and final gem of my story.

This force inside drives me to endlessly seek out clips and reels of the past. Ones which hold the greatest meaning and add significant value to the shaping of my identity or the purpose of my being. It can catapult me into the depths of depression as quick as it can lift me into the clouds of rapture or turn me into a clumsy Weeble- tumbling along in confusion as time replays itself in my dreams. But never falling down, nevertheless. This deep, emotional sensitivity can easily set me off on a wild corkscrew rollercoaster ride, overwhelming my mind with an enigmatic disarray of both the past and present. A tidal wave of emotions compressed by the spiraling ups and downs, rockets me through a pendulum of timelessness, where memories perpetually play on loop; back and forth, back and forth. It is in these moments of temporary insanity that I find wisdom and knowledge greater than I, awakening a self-awareness or enabling a connection to be made which had previously been lost upon my consciousness.

A beautiful mess. A tragic thing of beauty. Bruised, but not beaten. A wild soul with a loving heart, penetrating eyes, and empathic abilities.

I am too much for the average person to handle. My intensity is cumbersome and perplexing to those who aren’t as emotionally charged as me. Who aren’t collectors of nostalgia and keepers of sentimentality. Who don’t hoard fragments of time in their soul or feel their way through life, merely following the intuition of the universe, pulling on them ever so gently. Every person who comes across my path, whether they stay a few days, months, or years, remains steadfast on my heart for eternity. The imprint of our time together is carefully inscribed upon my soul until it eventually compresses under the weight of memories by those who came after.  Withstanding the pressures of time, my mind solidifies the most poignant and paramount moments and they become the gems of my cumulation. They have all but forgotten they ever knew this sentient deviant, yet each one has graced me with new paragons to add to my collection.

This is just the way it goes for the collectors of wrinkles in time. We cling to those gracious enough to give us but a moment when our lives intercepted, yet we are never enough for others to want to keep for themselves, for all of time. People move on and leave us to comb through the remnants and scraps of memories remaining for the gems with which to define such a brief juncture between. Gems which to hold in the solitude of the night when the dark threatens to swallow even our souls. Treasure to lock away tightly, where it can outlast the changing of tides and stay protected from the harshness and cruelties of the world around. A collection of chapters to a story forgotten by time itself. A story that needs to be told.

I am a storyteller. I am a collector of paradoxes, paragons, and poignant proceedings. Of love, laughter, and tears. Of bygones past. And, you, are now a piece of my collection. Just a page in a chapter written within a sacred gem stored in the treasure chest of my soul to remain evermore.

By: Kristina Hammer, aka, The Angrivated Mom

I Am The Angrivated Mom: A Post-Thanksgiving and Birthday Musing

It is hard for me to believe sometimes, just how far I have come in life. In the grand scheme of life, it may not seem as though I’ve taken more than a few baby steps down the beaten path. But, if you look over yonder past the trampled down, worn out road everyone else seems to favor, you will see the deep rutted grooves where I’ve been off-roading instead. It is in that bog of trials, triumphs, and tribulations in which I owe a debt of gratitude to life for always giving me more. There are many a’ times when I didn’t deserve a bit of what I got. Yet, I journey on still.

When life gets flipped-turned upside down frequently and dysfunctional is your middle name, most people would just accept their despondent fate and live with it in misery. They certainly wouldn’t keep fighting for better than the wretched excuse of good hand dealt to them time after time again. People come to terms with the facts of life too easily, taking their place in line without question or concern and without a care over whether they really like it, or, not. I am not one of those people. I am always seeking the who, what, where, when, why, and how, because the cut and dry of seeing everything in black and white is never good enough for me. And I couldn’t picture it any other way. I just don’t understand the sheeple who like to stay within the parameters of their. perfectly square box and pull the ignorance card anytime they feel cornered. Someone has to balance out all the idiots in this world country, and I guess I’m one of ’em. That’s a pretty big thing to be appreciative of; I could always be sheeple. I would hate to be a sheeple. Hate it!

Being the type who cartwheels her way through life, tumbling along nonchalantly as time does what it pleases, I’m very accident prone. Things just seem to happen to me. Mostly bad, very little good, and all of it coming without any forewarning or inkling of a clue. I manage to run right smack into roadblocks, face plant over speed bumps, and break more mirrors worth of bad luck then I have years to live. (Unless you know if it is indeed possible to live until you are 193!) I guess it’s the price I have to pay for getting more when I least deserved it; in return, now, I’m getting what I least deserve when I’m least deserving of the shit storm. But I’m thankful to pay such a price.

I’m a big dreamer with very little luck, yet I never stop believing that my dreams might come true one day. One of them already is through these words I type today- sharing my writing with the world has always been something important I really wanted to do. And I’m certainly doing it now! Now, I’m not so irrational as to believe my chance at being a Prima Ballerina with the NYC Ballet Company and being cast as the lead soloist is still a reasonable possibility, but I digress. I dream big, nonetheless. Even having the odds stacked against me with the short ends of the sticks constantly can’t put a damper on me wishing on every fallen star. My soul runs wild and free off the beaten path despite all the gazillions of reasons life has given me to stay on course and get with the program. Spinning donuts through the mud and the muck and caking everything within a hundred yard radius is more fun then following the straight and narrow; just way messier to deal with in the long haul. I’m grateful for every bit of mud I’ve ever splashed through, even if I’m still scraping it off some years later.

So much I could be bitter about. Dodging pot holes and scaling sheet rock between spin outs is only fun for so long before the struggle gets old and wears you down. But, I’m not most people. What breaks others and bends them until they snap only fuels my drive. It’s why I’ve never ran outta gas despite stalling out and rolling over so many times while off-roading. Something inside me likes the difficulty and turbulence of the road less traveled upon and thrives from the overcoming of the trials it presents me with. The struggle strengthens me. Makes wise of me. Empowers me. I am forever indebted to my travels through the sludge for showing me who I am and what I bring to the table. And, most importantly, how to love myself. Some people will never be able to figure out what their real purpose in this life is or figure out how to be genuine. Some people will only define themselves by the opinions of others and never see themselves as they are.

Not me.

My journey through life may be a bit muddied, messed up, and full of plight. It may be an astonishing aberration in comparison to all those who walk a straight line with society. It has most certainly been WTF worthy a time or two…Okay!…Okay!…a bajillion times, but who the Hell is counting? Oh. Yeah. All those damn mongrel naysayers and ignorant hate trolls. I have ZERO fucks to give them though. Notta. Nuthin’. Zip. Zilch.

I am who I am and that’s that. Angry with the world and aggravated by the easy life…I am the Angrivated Mom. And I love it! Don’t you, too? That’s right, I know you do!

By: Kristina Hammer, aka, The Angrivated Mom