The ImPerfect Mom(S) of My Life.

With Mother’s Day in the air, I’ve been thinking a lot about mom’s, what it means to me to be a mom, what makes a good mom, and how to be a good mom. I’ve thought about all the cliches, all the stereotypes, and all the examples of which we, as a society, agree fit the definition. And for a moment, I got stuck there. My thoughts spinning in my mind, unable to break free from the sadness and despair sucking me down into self-pity for my own does not fit the mold. My own is not the stereotype. Rather my own is atypical, if you will. An aberration of the characteristic symbolises, a misrepresentation of the socially compiled definition of Mom.

Then it dawned on me that I don’t have to walk with crowd, not ever! I don’t have to fit the mold to belong, nor do I have to have someone else’s model of perfection to say mine is good enough. I may not have one single, great, over-the-top, super fantastic, amazing mother, but all of the moms, (Yes, I said MOMS as in, more than one.), that I have had in my life, all put together, are that perfect model of a mother for me. Standing alone, each would fail miserably at meeting the full course of those qualities that we can all strongly agree upon to be deemable as purely motherly in nature. Yet, when brought together, united as a whole, the few stray tendencies of motherly-ish nature each possesses its able to mold into a mother of award-winning, show-stopping capabilities. It’s just too bad that I couldn’t actually smash em together Frankenstein style and have the actual perfect mom all at once, all the time. But, alas, it’s illegal to perform unlicensed, self-trained, bqasement of your house, medical research, amputation and reattachment surgery, and genetic cloning and reassignment procedures in real life. So I settle for what I’ve got.

1. My Biological Mother- I have never had a mother-daughter relationship with this lady who gave birth to me. She was the perfect mom through my first few years, giving me a brother and doing everything that a storybook picture of a mother should do. She created a warm, loving home and bonded with me in those early years of my life, then severed that bond, as swiftly as a machete would slice right through some overgrowth down a forest path. When her and my father couldn’t make their marriage work just two years after my brother’s birth, she left us kids with my father and moved on with her life, occasionally coming along just to appease some small amount of guilt that just as infrequently nagged her conscious. This was abandonment in my barely four year old eyes,  becoming the root cause of early childhood trauma that triggered my genetically predisposed mental health diagnoses of PTSD and (cyclic/situational) Depression. It broke my innocent, unconditionally trusting spirit, but it fueled my resilient, fight for what I want, endlessly giving, survivor’s spirit. That is something I have only recently learned to appreciate.

Over the course of the next five or six years, the visits became few and far in between, and this lady, the one who gave me the very life coursing through my veins, beating my heart so the valves keep pumping, and flowing through my lungs, became more of a distant aunt than a mother to me. I wasted almost my whole life after that, trying desperately to force myself onto my mother, expecting that relationship to reappear instantaneously. It never has. Every opportunity in life to do something for my mother at her request, to be there for her anyway that she’s needed, or to give her more than she’s asked for, I’ve jumped at, like a frog desperate to catch that darn trickster of a fly. For a long, long time I followed that path of letting my mother use me for her benefit. Even going so far as raising her three daughters from her replacement family while she worked and went to school to move her family up the social rungs of the status ladder. Only in my early teens, I was disconsolate, full of despair, so eager to push back my mother’s constant rejections, that I sacrificed my fleeting childhood to play the mother I wanted her to be, though I never received so much as a fragmented glimpse of the relationship I believed that I needed, in return. Just knowing that I could have a purpose in her life was something-better-than-nothing in terms of filling the void in my soul I blamed her for creating.

It would take a long, augmented amount of time before I could break through the freeze the trauma of losing my mom, as I had known her, seemed to have put on my emotional development. I ended up on a tragic, downward spiral of self-destruction that finally ended shortly after having my own children. My last outcry for help landed me in the office of the best therapist I had ever had before in a thirty day recovery program. With her help, I was able to dissect the trauma, my distorted image of my mother, and my obsession with needing to have that relationship. Finding acceptance in who she was as a person and not just her failures as a mom, especially in light of the discreetly kept knowledge of her longtime, ongoing battle with Bipolar Disorder. I found the strength to close the door on my mother, realizing how toxic her presence was to me, stunting me in ways detrimental to my own mental health. My heart was scared too deep to continue with the insanity I had been living until then.

Over the next couple years, I fought myself to keep her at bay while working on my own recovery. Only when my grandmother died eighteen months ago, did I allow myself to speak to her again. And only after she was diagnosed with End-Stage Congestive Heart Failure, did I give her a chance to speak her peace and let her back in on a probationary period, just for the sake of my kids being able to know their grandmother before it’s too late.
She’s certainly got plenty of issues, still, but I’ve learned, am still learning, to accept her for the woman she is instead of the mother she’s not. It’s taken most of my years to let go of that fantasy, but now I can say happily that she’s, at least, my friend.

2. My First Stepmother- She was just a baby herself when she came into my life. Partially the reason behind my parents irreconcilable relationship. Well, okay… mostly, then. My dad is a narcissistic chauvinist who likes his woman to be more like the girls in his locked drawer movies than the ideal, respectable, motherly-type. Moments after returning home from dropping my mother’s last boxes and suitcases off to her at her fresh new, single lady, start life all over again apartment, my stepmom moved her two garbage bags worth of belongings in. I can look back now, and pity that girl a fool, but then, even only at 4½ years old, I knew she was someone I should resent. Hate. Love. Wanderlust over. Be jealous of. She was seventeen. Everyone will tell you eighteen, because it’s even more taboo now then it was back in the eighties for a man of 34 to bed such a youngin’, but she was just shy of her eighteenth birthday and they had been seeing each other inconspicuously since she was really only sixteen, so what’s the point in denying the truth?

Our relationship was definitely one of a love to hate, hate to love quality throughout my childhood. All of the misplaced blame I had over my mom’s abandonment, I thundered down on her with all the force of my bottled up rage. Yet at the same time, I wanted to make her mine, force her role in my life to fit into that missing piece of my heart, oblivious to the reality that you can’t force two different people to fit in the same hole. The inner turmoil caused by my budding mental illness, unbeknownst to any of us at the time, only complicated my relationship with her more. I also blamed her for the changed the dynamic of my relationship with my father, because I was still too awestruck with the king of my childhood castle to believe that he indeed had grown distant from me on his own accord, because of his chronic functioning alcoholism and the stroke at 36 which destroyed just a miniscule part of his frontal lobe. He began to live for his selfish wants and desires alone, putting everyone else that wasn’t his spawn second, and those that were, head last.

As a mother myself now, and a grown woman with more wisdom and maturity than that old Barn Owl sitting perch and taking in all the life moving around it, I am able to see my stepmother’s role in my life for what it really was, appreciate her for all that she did. Even though, when the sun went down every night she became my father’s real-life Bratz barbie-doll Gone Wild, by day she was the best mother to us kids as she ever could’ve been in her predicament. Learning as a tween that she had met my dad working nights at Taco Bel to pay for her family’s electric bill. Her own childhood was spent in poverty, mistreated with corporal punishment by her father and stepmother, physically and mentally abused by her step-siblings, and raped by a prowler taking advantage of her unlocked bedroom window at only fourteen, didn’t affect me then. I only used it as ammo for my case against her because I couldn’t deal with the burden my heart carried and she was the closest person to me to lash out at. The closest person to me, because all along, had I not been so consumed by the hurting over my mother, I could’ve seen my stepmother was the mother I wanted as a little girl, just not in the stereotypical package.

Unlike my real mother, my stepmom was there day in and day out, taking care of all of my needs without a single complaint or rant. Never showing rancor for raising someone else’s uterine trophies, especially since that rape left her unable to ever conceive her own baby. (Modern technology finally did make it possible to fix previously damaged baby ovens, though.) She cooked for us, did homework with us. Went on field trips as our chaperone and when I was sick, she held my hair out of my face and rubbed my back in small circles ever so softly, while I threw up in the toilet. My advocate at parent-teacher conferences standing up for my right to read for pleasure behind my textbooks, she got the teachers to agree to it, so long as I continued to maintain straight A’s, because my elementary school didn’t have a gifted program. My advisor on friendships and the shoulder to cry on when those friendships went awry. The creator of craft store deluxe holidays that made my spirit burst with amazement at all the wondrous decorations, special activities, and homemade treats she pulled out all the stops for.

She was, also, the Queen Bitch of the household and delegator for all chore duties and punishments. The first person to have ever spanked me. The one to declare me a chronic liar instead of seeing through my exaggerated dramatics to the mental illness taking hold and finding me help, making it even harder for me to cry out for help, because everyone stopped believing in anything I said. My stepmom wasn’t able to understand what was going on inside of me, because I never let her get close enough. If I had, she would only have left me, too, said the depression that took over in my head. Because she was my dad’s Playmate Bunny by night, the older that I grew, the more fascinated my friends were with her, especially the boys, because her wardrobe didn’t change for the daytime. The reputation I gained at school for the atypical package that showed up in place of my mother, only fueled the negative feelings I fostered, making me love to hate her even more than I hated to love her. By the time I was in high school, wrapped under my biological mother’s thumb with the hope of renewing her want for me, I was a ticking time bomb. My depression phased into bipolar, with the teenage hormones racing through me acting as the trigger switch, and the fights between us reached their climax. I moved out at 16, never looking back.

By the time I had reached full adulthood and was getting ready to start nursing school, my stepmom had had her surgery to fix her baby oven and because my dad still refused to get unsnipped and give her all she ever wanted- her own baby, she walked away from her 18yr relationship with my father without looking back, herself. She found a new spouse and had two little girls of her own, right around the time I had my sons. A few years later, thanks to that handy dandy thing called Facebook, we reconnected, in a way we never could’ve experienced all those years before, when I was the perfect storm of childhood innocence mixed with trauma, mental illness and, confusion. We still aren’t close, but we can now stand together on common ground. Getting over the loss of my biological mother gave me the chance to open my heart up to get, fitting her piece in where it was meant to be all along, closing up most of the gap where the piece for my mother fell out.

3. My Surrogate Mothers- During my childhood and teenage years, I craved that close knit togetherness, the kind seen in the perfectly captured storybook relationships between a mother and her daughter. It was a novelty to me, the idea of having an all-knowing, ever-doting, confidant with which to break into fits of the giggles with over something only we could understand, like a hidden punchline to a secret joke we made during one of our dates to the mall. I wanted to know the warmth of a mother’s arms who could never see you as broken or someone else’s unwanted leftovers.

When I made my first best friend in life, I also weaseled my way into her mother’s heart, idolizing the relationship between her and my best friend. Instead of playing solely with my friend, I would sander off to find her mom and help her with her work. Need your laundry folded, sure thing, not a problem. Want someone to tidy up the three brothers’ room, I’d be more than happy to oblige. Then, the whole while I would help her out, I’d chatter her ear off, letting out all the good stuff that I had been holding onto, unable to share with anyone. My best friend was just that for the fact that she seemed to unspeakably get it, because she had that same hole in her heart for her own father who had committed suicide just a couple of years after her mother left him because of his instability. Having that extra mom figure in my life was good for me. She was someone on my side, someone I could always turn to when my two mom’s were against me. She helped me see what a real mom should be like, how they can unconditionally love their children and be the perfect package without abandoning them or turning them away. Watching the way she raised her kids with an iron will, a penniless pocket, and gracious heart not only got me through my childhood, but helped shape the mother I am to my children today.

In high school, when my relationships with my real mom and stepmom were at their worst for me, and my best friend’s mother was gone with her a few hundred miles away, I found a new mom to cling onto. She and her husband were longtime friends of my father’s and both worked at my school. She was no fan of my stepmom, either. Employed as a school security monitor, her duty was to monitor the student and teacher parking lots, preventing pranks and catching the kids trying to skip class. She would let me get away with hanging out in her van with her, sneaking me off campus for a cigarette break. Sometimes, she would surprise me and make up an excuse to have the office send me out to the car I didn’t actually have, just to surprise me with some Mom-time. She let me vent about anything and everything before responding with something that would make me feel like I was going to be all right no matter what because I was special. She encouraged me to find my inner strength and take pride in myself. Helped me to try and understand the adult’s side of the story, the reasoning behind their actions, emphasizing that it had nothing to do with me personally, because she wanted to help heal my pain. I don’t think I would’ve came back to school after I ran away from home, had she not been there waiting for me every day to spill all my secrets, fears, and worries to.

When I got married, it was a time before I reconnected with my stepmom and during the time where I was falling apart at the seams, unable to cope with the failures of my real mom. My husband’s mother was easy to attach myself to and become close with. Her warm, friendly soul was refreshing and the bond between her and her son impenetrable. It was the kind of bond I had always wanted and wanted to create with my own children, so I took note. Her and I ended up bonding over my husband’s childish habits and need for some more maturity. We lived together for a short while in the beginning, as my husband and I adjusted to married life and it allowed me to take in all she had to offer, filling my bucket over with love and self-esteem. Like everything else in life, soon she began to change for the worst under the spell of love, and just as quickly as she came into my life with her arms wide open, she pulled back and ran off to get married again, leaving us all in the dust, completely bewildered. The time I had with her as a surrogate mother, though, was wonderful and taught me so much more about what it takes to be that perfect mom than I was aware of in the moment.

Fish Out Of Water: A Mom’s Perspective On Household Renovations

Let’s start off by saying that if these in the above title mentioned professions were female-dominated, I wouldn’t even be writing this today. But, alas, it’s not. This is one of few career areas overran with men, bitter over the lack of determinant successes of manhood in their lives. They never won the hot girl, never made it through college or got that spectacular job of their dreams, and they never made a solid name for themselves out in the world, receiving accolades and fame in return. These are the Chihuahuas of men- suffering incessantly from Big Dog Syndrome, and there’s enough testosterone flowing amongst their kind to fuel the entire NFL for the entirety of a season. If only they looked like some of those NFL players… well, if that were the case then, I probably wouldn’t be writing this either, because, duh, eyecandy. I can bet my life that I would be too busy swooning to pay heed to anything else they were doing, therefore having no material for which to write this piece.

Alas, when it does become necessary to call upon the household maintenances service industry, you’re typically in a vulnerable, stressed-to-the-max type situation. The kind where the need outweighs the likability, because affordability matters more than personality, leaving you with a 70-30 chance that you’ll end up with an arrogantly detestable jerkoff showing up to do the bidding. It’s hard to pick off the good guys from the bad guys, but it doesn’t even matter anyhow. First off, the guy who shows up to hook the contract has mastered the sales act and can pitch you into his company’s reliability and proficiency with ease, earning him the title: The Hooker. Secondly, The Hooker is rarely involved with the actual work crew sent out to do the job. The guys that do actually show up… welp, they’re not the same sickly sweet pillow talker that showed up to manipulate your perception of the company, that’s for sure. These dudes are rough and burly looking, and they all show up sporting the ever-so-popular and not-so attractive plumbers crack, regardless of which fix-it profession they are from. From the smells seeping from under the heavy layer of Old Spice body spray, it’s apparent that beer is more of a priority than properly fitting pants and a belt. The stench of last night’s after-work destressing wafts through the air, stinging nostrils and watering eyes, whenever you get within a 3 foot radius of their presence, souring your own mood quickly. The relief you felt upon seeing the caravan of company vehicles show up is deflated with your dying for fresh air lungs. Have you ever wondered why they leave so much stuff in their trucks so they’re continuously going in and out of your home? The only decency you’ll soon find out that they show is to let those beer farts rip outside. Damn whatever circumstance left me in this position! Why did I think this company would be a good choice?! Was I smoking something I didn’t know about or what!?

"...they all show up sporting the ever-so-popular and not-so attractive plumbers crack"

Once you’ve chosen the right company based on The Hooker who falsely misrepresented the company with his opening act, the scheduling song and dance routine begins. They know you’re eager and anxious to have this work done. They know you’re having an emergency of some sort. And they definitely know you’re not thinking about your everyday obligations, taking into consideration what’s really a priority to you. Let’s face it. In this day and age, everything has been invented and designed for human convenience, and what we consider drastically emergent circumstances (not involving our health) are really only slight inconveniences of modern living. A temporary lapse of benevolent luxuries that may infringe upon the comforts we’ve become spoiled rotten by. And these companies kindly prey on that fact. They’ll never be available same or next day, unless you pay a extravagantly higher rate. They’ll give you a four hour block time frame on the day you agree upon after some lawyer-enviable skilled level of negotiations, to which your frenzied brain will latch onto as the time frame services will be completed between instead of the arrival guesstimate it is. In the end, this will come back to bite you in the butt because you’ll undoubtedly end up screwing up something in your schedule. How don’t they get that I have a life, too? I’ve got a husband and kids that I need to account for and our lives are on hold over this house issue! This is insufferable, donchya know!?!

Finally, after just several days (out of your entire lifetime) that feel comparable to like hell on earth, the day of the job arrives. Those dreadfully stanking, fresh-out-of-prison looking guys come barreling into your house, with just enough manners and social etiquette to keep you from slamming the door in their faces, running off screaming in terror, and calling the police claiming you’re being invaded by inmate escapees on the loose. They grunt incoherently, purposely using technical shorthand to explain away what they’re doing as they go, done so you can’t follow along enough to fully understand what they’re saying about the job at hand. It’s a trick just so you’ll leave them do their work in peace, since the human brain equates use of technical terms with exponential knowledge of the situation in question. Once they’ve falsely satisfied your concerns over their capabilities with the familiar bait used originality by The Hooker. You’ve been had- hook, line, and sinker and now you’re a fish out of water, left to suffer the fate of this repair expenditure with all the other tuna plated before you, hoping the outcome is reflective of the stench of the guys doing the work. Dear God, I really pray they know what they’re doing because I can’t afford another dime, not even to sue them! Please let all the recommendations hold true. Please, please, please!

At this point, these guys have also completely taken over your home, while you’re left flipping, flapping, and flopping around out of your comfort level. There’s no where to go within your personal domain to escape, because you need to be available for any navigational confusion through the course of the repair, or the twenty billion ridiculous questions they’ll ask you, because they’re not sure what your problem with the problem even is, as if you shouldn’t be bothered by whatever’s gone awry. The Hookers only pass along the very basic details of the problem to these guys, so every special circumstance regarding the structure of your home, detailed description of happenings resulting in the problem, tour of access points, and other necessary spiels, have to be gone over, yet again. Every where you turn, there’s something in your way, out of place, or unfamiliar in one familiar surroundings. You feel like a stranger in your own home, uncomfortable now where you were snuggled up with your cup of coffee in your favorite cozy spot just moments before their arrival.

Heaven forbid you have any young children in the home during any type of renovation or major repair. They’re magnetically drawn to the disruptive happenings, immensely curious over the chaos unfolding in their world. Toolboxes, carelessly strewn up and down the hallway, become treasure chests that must be opened and contents discovered. The workers must be personally greeted and acknowledge in return by the true CEO’s running the show here, or else… Or else those same little people in charge also expect to park their behinds right in the middle of work site, to carefully monitor the business they have no business being involved with. They can’t even wipe their own butts clean, let alone express themselves verbally without using 50 shades of Whinnese, yet they think they belong hands-on involved with repairing the structural aspects of your home. Hell to the NO! Get outta here with that craziness. It’s NOT gonna happen. I’m telling you if you even think about going over there and bothering those workers, you’ll be real sorry! And now that you’ve fired the free child labor, you’re going to pay the price, not them. For now, you’re all entitled to a free concert of The Song Of My People performed by none other than your newly unemployed uterus reject.

" . Toolboxes, carelessly strewn up and down the hallway, become treasure chests"

As you find your way through all the parts, tools, and supplies dumped along the pathway leading from the entry of your home to the epicenter of the chaos, the irritation over this glitch in modern conveniences entitlement begins to boil over. How dare this house break and cause us to be put out, even only momentarily? I shouldn’t have to suffer like this, dammit! It’s absurd to think humans used to live any other way. How did they survive? No wonder kids died so often, I’d be killing mine off, too if I had to live without electricity and the internet. And my washing machine and sewer system, too, since my toddler just took a dump in her pants while fascinated watching these plumber cracks bang some tools around. From this point forward, the barbarians start to feel like the invaders you almost thought they were, and you just want to call the whole deal off and send them packing. You absolutely don’t want to go another minute without the luxuries of living in the twenty-first century, though, either. Pacing around, keeping an eye on the progress being made while keeping back the miniature forces of destruction wanting to help, your nerves are so overly-heightened that you feel like your head is actually about to explode with rage. It’s a fight for control to maintain a reasonable air of nice home owner when the crew announces that they have to get more supplies of some sort to finish the job. Or even worse yet- announce that the job is much bigger than originally estimated and will require a second repair to complete the first. Why must it be so complicated? I just want my territory back! I’m suffocating within the walls of my home, just like a fish out of water. Life sucks so bad! I can’t take anymore of this!

That’s exactly the moment when it will dawn on you, the lightbulb above your head going on and all. You were supposed to pick up prescriptions for your husband before the pharmacy closed that he really needs for his allergies to prevent him from turning into a giant tomato since you have 3 cats. Cats he’s kind of allergic to and can’t tolerate without his magic pill. You were also supposed to bake cookies for the middle-kid’s classroom pizza party tomorrow. Now your car’s blocked in by trucks and vans galore, and even if it wasn’t, you’re obligated to be in your home with these workers until they finish. Of course, you can’t bake those cookies either. If your kitchen isn’t the target of the fixing, your water-gas-electric-fuses are still shut off, preventing any kind of normal household activities from going on because us humans are way to dependent on the combination of these things to live happily and comfortably. You’re seriously blowing your lid inside, mad at the situation, and not yourself because we’re never to blame, for not thinking through the entirety of the situation and planning ahead better. Slamming cabinet doors and kicking laundry baskets is extremely therapeutic at this point. It also is a forewarning to the repair dudes to quickly finish up the job without getting under your feet again. This is also when your young vocal prodigies decide they no longer can contain their boredom and start getting under the worker’s feet again, who have no patience for anyone else’s kids and get snippy with them about backing off. Now I know exactly where the cartoonist’s who came up with Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry got all of those steam-blowing through orifices and blood boiling until they explode into the air like a deflated balloon ideas from! Imagine that, because it’s. about. to. go. down! Ahhhhhh! Give me my normalcy back, right this instant!

For the remainder of the job, you consider tying up your kids in a closet somewhere while drinking a pint of your hardest liquor straight while crying in the bathroom. Every hammering sound reverberates through your bones like a chisel carving away your emergency stores of patience and composure. You start making hit lists for everyone involved in any negative situation of your lifetime, because taking revenge against everything that played the most minuscule part in landing you in this hell would feel so good. Bribery in every possible form is crucial for clinging onto what teeny bit of sanity remains. All of the popsicles, cookies, and candy you can find are thrown to those monsters of shared DNA to keep the damage control at a minimum. Just before implosion is about to begin count down, the worker’s inform you that they’re ready to clean up and get out. The sigh that results can be felt like a low-rumble for hundreds of miles, like the aftershock of an earthquake. It’ll only be short-lived as you come to realize that true to their male counterpart- your husband, they have a totally different concept of what cleanup means than you do. All the while, your hoodlums are running off with the stay tools, trying to prevent their fascinating new source of entertainment and torture against mom, from leaving. They’d sell you out through a trade in a heartbeat, with no regrets over the switch in parents until someone needed a cuddle or booboo kissed. By the time your door is closed, the caravan is gone, and your house is once again yours, you’ll be so exhausted, you won’t even care about your renewed comforts of convenience and go about the rest of the night without using them. You’ll order in dinner and head everyone straight off to bed, without a bath for the third night in the row. You’ll skip the movie before bed even, because sleep is just too tempting after such a tough day.

And it’s all right. No one’s going to die without home-cooked meals, a hot shower, charging their gizmos and gadgets, or having tv and computer time for just one more night. Tomorrow, waking up, life will be waiting to go on, like this glitch never even happened… a fish happily swimming back in it’s bowl again. Thank you, sweet baby jeebus!

The Slut I Was, The Woman I Am

There was a time in my life when I was a straight up slut. At least, in my own personal opinion of myself. It was a wild, exciting time in my life, full of self-discovery and the freedom to explore as a woman, finding out who I was. I was young, irresponsible, and enraptured with the power I found within my womanly curves. For a long time after that chapter ended, I still felt ashamed for what I was, what I did; the choices I made and the way that I lived. I lived with the stigma of that name hanging over my head, but eventually I came to see that back cover summarizes the story as a whole, not just a single chapter.

I can sit here and blame my childhood, my upbringing for who I was then, but that wouldn’t be completely fair. Or honest. I may have had bad examples on how to get the attention, I never had bad examples of what to do once you gained it. My step mom was a trashy version of a Playboy arm trophy, dressed no classier than a strip club shot girl. My father pushed her around, proud when other men coveted her, but despite this, she was as faithful and loyal to him as a preacher’s wife. It was all on me to take the attention I got when I flaunted myself to the next level. And flaunt myself I did, but I never got the kind of attention I wanted for it. It’s probably a good thing that I wasn’t blessed with the classy to match the flaunt, otherwise I would have drawn in the kind of attention I was actually looking for, and would never be where I am today. I never would’ve burned through all the wrong guys, tempted to see if just maybe, there was enough pieces for the glue to hold. But then, because I was afraid to lose out on a better opportunity, I always ended up cheating.

I slept my way through a group of friends once when I was eighteen, just to get back at the ex-boyfriend I naively thought I had loved, all because he didn’t wait long enough for the glue to dry between us before he gave up on me. This is when I figured out how manipulative the taunting of sex was forever taking advantage of what I needed from these douchey guys that seemed to be magnetized to me, somehow. If I couldn’t get the kind of guy I was dreaming of falling in love with, then I was going to make sure I the guys I did hook up with ran away scared of me, no longer innocent in the bedroom. I used to take pride in how well I did these guys, like it would actually be something to be proud of for! I had the body any young, barely twenty-something man boy desires: double-D boobs; a curvy, but not too full, butt; perfectly toned legs with incredibly strong thighs from years of dance, swim team, skiing, and soccer; not quite thin body, but not nearly fat enough to be considered chubby or pudgy thanks to being on the tall side of average female height. It disgusts me now to think that I was so desperate for someone to need me sexually to feel worthy of myself, that I would brag about my skills to other guys, like a creepy infomercial trying to entice you to the buy the goods. In comparison to those who make a living off actually selling their bodies, I’m far from meeting the definition based on numbers alone, mine are less than the total number of digits on my person, but it’s the behavior that counts. I was living like I was on Girls Gone Wild everyday of my life.

It took me a long time of hitting brick wall over and over again, to realize I had it all wrong and the only attention I was ever going to get acting like that was from guys just as broken inside as me. Guys with problems that needed multiple therapists to break apart the tumultuous levels of crazy that go on to the depths of the earth. Guys that had unhealthy habits, cracking any foundation they would ever lay. Two broken pieces will never stay glued together, there’s too many missing shards in between. Baggage from my childhood combined with a mental health illness clouding my mind, creating a monster of guilt and shame that raged down a sexually charged path of inner-destruction, crying out for attention. I just didn’t know it then. Instead, I bounced from guy to guy, searching for answers that I would never find with spread legs wide, sprawled across the bed on my back, only temporarily satisfying that drug-like craving to be loved. I gained reputations amongst my closest friends that left me crying behind closed doors every day. I was unable to discern how to control the impulse to use my goods to feed the monster, living in the darkest corner of my soul, just to feel the love and acceptance that I didn’t have for myself.

Being a woman in this day and age is quite harder than it ever was when women were considered property of their husbands, because that chauvinist perspective has managed to evolve and become, though a slightly softened around the edges version, the collective view of society when casting judgement upon a single woman in question. Which is completely and utterly ridiculous in the hypocrisy of it all, considering the same social acceptance and celebration of women as a group, to be free of any sexualized boundaries that cast judgements upon their expressiveness. These screwed up moral perceptions do a number on a girl’s self-worth and self-love, especially during those early years of discovering who she really is as a woman. The power of my sexuality was falsely believed to be the key to unlock the doors my happiness was trapped behind. Quite frankly- I hated myself for a long, long time, even after finding the help I needed to get my mind in order and find the respect I needed to have for myself to have a healthy relationship.

Looking back with the wisdom of middle-age, the knowledge of awareness, the lessons of therapy, and maturity of motherhood and marriage, I understand where I was coming from during those years. And I sympathize with that young woman now. I feel sorry for the misconstrued guidance she had. She is a part of me, a chapter in the story of my life, who taught me invaluable lessons that have carried on through the course of these years since that time. My inability to see someone as the cover they present to the world is uncanny. The compassion I continually show others stems from a time in my life where there was no compassion to be had, no forgiveness of sins for myself, even. These chapters do not define nor summarize the whole content of the book, and I can respect the slut I once was for the woman I’ve become. And I’m perfectly okay with that.

I Can’t Be Your Friend Either: A Follow Up To A Friends Blog Piece

A follow up to I Just Can’t Be Your Friend: The Teenage Mom’s Version.

Rustic Musings of a Scattered Mind

My son is approaching 18 this year. Don’t get me wrong. He’s funny as hell, but of course he doesn’t say cute things anymore like, “Mommy come wipe my butt,” or “Mommy! I went pee-pee!” I digress. He actually has said these things but in an annoying, sarcastic look-at-me-I’m-funny-and-embarrassing-my-mom way when around his friends. What he doesn’t know is I’m not easily embarrassed. I’m excited he adopted my sarcastic attitude towards life and its comical day to-day happenings. It’s perhaps the only thing that will save him from hating life in the end.

I have a lot of blogger friends. Most of them are “mommy” bloggers, meaning that they blog about their young children and their never-ending hilarious antics. I like that, although sometimes I feel left out because the things my son says and does now happen in such rapid fire succession that for me to blog about each day…

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People Watcher

Do you ever sit back and just watch the world go on around you? Watch life move around as if you were watching a movie on a gigantic, all encompassing 3-D screen? The hustle and bustle continues on, unrelenting and unnerving, taking no heed to the fact that you’ve stepped out to look in, as if peering through a magical looking glass at another place and time. I do this quite frequently, drawn by some internal desire to take in the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the stories unfolding right before my eyes. Never do I feel more connected to life, more alive, than when I’m in this fully aware, hyper-vigilant state of being.

Maybe in part, it’s because I’m more an introverted dominate kind of person or because I prefer to be the wallflower in many social situations. Maybe it’s the cyclic depression that takes hold of my soul or the tormenting of emotional, verbal, and physical abuse I went through at different times in my life. Whatever the reason, I am able to separate myself from the bigger picture. I can find serenity within the stillness I create while getting drunk on the essence of life. It is in these moments that I reconnect with my soul, perceiving every molecular structure, built under the strictest of blueprints and perfected over the course of the past million years or so, that combines with chemistry as old as the universe, to become the mind and body I am. I’m inarguably aware of every stray hair out of place, goosebump rising, tear about to water up in my eye, raised body hair, and slight scratching of my skin. My peripheral vision blurs as my eyesight becomes keen on whatever I chose to focus my attention on, my brain’s wheels grinding away at an alarming rate as it processes these empowering sensations and delves deeply into a philosophical level of thinking, simultaneously.

There’s so much lost in the act of living. We’ve come to a time where our bodies are merely just vessels required to do so and our minds are taken for granted because technology has opened a door to a blackhole that disables people from thinking for themselves. Society has forgotten what it feels like to just simply breath. It thrives on the chaos created by it’s sheep fighting to be first in line for worship and imitation of the image protected by their immoral God-like shepherds. It’s suffocating for me to stay in that madness for long periods of time. It’s like being trampled by a herd of water buffalo that keep turning around and coming back at you once they get passed, leaving you trapped and unable to find safer ground. Day to day, the struggle to move against the flow of the crowd happens and you find yourself in a mind-numbing fog just going through the motions until one day it’s all over. The same rollercoaster ride of emotions playing out as a never-ending movie with the hand-scripted characters of each soul, made for the entertainment of the writer-producer-director of this world-wide production. When I am living, I no longer feel alive, like I’m connected with the universe with whom I share ingredients with which my vessel is made from. Just as the galaxy of our home planet continues to rotate around the great star that is the Sun, and our planet, Earth, continues to revolve around the Moon, our hearts beat to pump blood against the flow of gravity, intestines contract with digestion, and our lungs breathe without a single conscious ability to control through willpower alone.

When I am in that outside space, I’m guessing it’s somewhere between reality and insanity, I can be one with my entire self. Here, I can let go of the binding confines, constrains, and censorships that living on life’s terms as dictated by the master plan, chain me down with. I find myself able to cherish the positive moments more when I can hold them in time, deposit them into an internal memory bank of memories dear to my heart. In the stoppage of time, I decipher the reasoning of the negativity going on, find wisdom and truths blinded by the shepherds’ ostentatious gospel. How I wish I could stay in this magical realm of being. It’s a place full of inspiration and passion, a place to throw out all the garbage as I watch everything just speed on by me. All the while, I’m letting my body do the talking and embracing all of the capabilities of it that are taken for granted. People-watching is what I would do if I could spend my day doing anything at all that I wanted to, because it’s the only doorway I’ve ever found to where I’m truly aware of all that is my vessel and how alive it really is. There’s no better place to go if awareness is what you’re seeking. We can all be bench zombie buddies together at the local mall….

Today’s blog is brought to you thanks in part to the AMAZINGLY AWESOME Ash from More Than Cheese and Beer. Her Sunday Confession prompt today was: aware. You can find her Facebook page here for more link-ins and anonymous confessions.

Writing The Open Book

Somehow, my maker got things a little screwed up when creating my existence. It seems that my brain only works well to communicate my truest feelings when I’m writing them down. Nothing that comes out of my mouth is even slightly close to being a mirrored resemblance of what’s going through my head, especially under emotional duress. I’m literally physically unable to connect my thoughts to my tongue.

When I find myself among others conversing, I ramble on uselessly and off-topic, seemingly with incoherence of the proper social etiquette of conversation protocol. I find myself being open about private details with total strangers that leave us both feeling embarrassed for me, yet when I’m with someone I know very well and feel comfortable with in every other sense, I can’t open my mouth and speak a word. Not about things of great importance or of serious value to our relationship. No matter who it is I love- parent, friend, relative, lover, or spouse (but never those last two in the same realm)- I’m cursed from being open with verbal communication. All I end up doing is creating more trouble, more pain, more negative happenings in my life when I have to speak my way through something.

It’s the one thing defining thing about myself that I’ve battled coming to terms with my whole life. I’ve had to learn the hard way that when I stop the writing, my soul cannot find peace. Or joy. Or even experience love, actually. There’s no serendipity in my life without the flow of words through my finger tips. Like a magic doorway, the words coming through open up my soul to the world for their understand of just what exactly I’m trying to say without the spoken words destroying it all. I’m an author, a poet, a writer: born to put pen to paper, fingers to keys on a keyboard; letting the words coming out form my thoughts, opinions, perspectives, and beliefs, while telling the story of my life, sharing my deepest desires, and singing of my loves. I’m an open book, just as long as I’m the one writing it.

Another contribution to More Than Cheese and Beer‘s Sunday Confessions. This week’s prompt was Open. Check out her Facebook page for more confessions from her followers.

Midnight Toking Mama

I’m a pothead. A stoner. A midnight toker. And a mother. In my experience, you can cue in the gasps right about now. You can also cue the shaking heads, the tsks, and wagging fingers when I admit with all honesty that I do not hide my marijuana usage from my children, either. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a bad parent. I’m not raising gang banging, illiterate white trash, free-spirited hippie wannabe, dumb, or neglected children. They’re not at risk. They’re not unsupervised or exposed to anything that would jeopardize their safety or innocence. I’m not a drug dealer. I’m just a mom of four kids with a debilitating spinal disorder that causes chronic pain who also suffers from cyclic depression and is licensed by the state I reside in to legally medicate herself with marijuana.

Now, that does NOT mean that I openly smoke in their faces, or expose them to second-hand smoke, nor would I ever condone their usage without being a fully grown, consenting adult, under proper physician supervision and being accurately informed of all the pros and cons of it’s use. What it does mean is that I’m not a hypocrite parent. Okay, sure, once upon a time it wasn’t always legal to procure and engage in such a wonderful medicinal properties, but it’s always been an herbal remedy as natural as the grass your kids run across and the trees that grow tall from the earth. Just edible, smokeable, cookable, pleasurable, vegetation that can be used as a vice of pleasure and enjoyment, as well as for medicinal purposes. What other medicine can your physician prescribe you that’s fun to actually take? I’m not going to raise my children with half-truths, misinformation, or sheltered views, either. From my own personal experience, I know that that can cause more damage than good in the long run. At the same time, though, I will not glorify or encourage it’s use irresponsibly.

Throughout my life, I’ve suffered from cyclic depression. My parents always summed it up as me being a troubled-defiant-overly sensitive kid. There wasn’t enough awareness of child mental health issues back in the eighties for them to think otherwise. In my early adulthood, with the increased ease in access to the internet and all it’s infinite knowledge at my fingertips, I was able to find answers. I sought out mental health care for my symptoms, finding out after many appointments with therapists, psychologists, and physicians alike, that medication was a quick cure-all answer to my problems. Every. Single. Medication. tried, failed. It was a nightmare that only managed to throw my already imbalanced chemicals into a tailspin heading right for a nosedive crash landing into the gates of hell. I went into a bipolar state, unlike any part of the disease’s course thus far, destroying more of my life than saving it. The only time I ever seemed to find any balance was after getting high with marijuana, but at this time, it wasn’t readily available, legal to use, or socially acceptable. I wasn’t even aware of how helpful it actually was for me until some years later.

Eventually, I found myself in a place in life where I was unable to smoke at all, without great consequence coming down on me. I gave it up completely, without any of the withdrawal issues that not only illegal narcotics cause, but alcohol and antidepressants do, too. During this period of time, the benefits of the great green bud plant on my psyche became apparently visible- not only to myself, but also to those closest to me. I was extremely moody all over again with no middle ground in sight, lacking the ability to control which end of the high and low chart I was bouncing on at any given moment, and allowing the wave of darkness wash over my every thought putting me in a miserable state of mind. My depression came tumbling back at an alarming rate, plunging deeper into the illness than I’d ever been before. A new game of medication-around-the rosy to try to find a level of functionality that didn’t have me lashing out violently at my significant other’s mere moments after cuddling with him sweetly, like a black widow spider ready to eat her mate after intercourse. We had in fact mated already. Twice. Within two years. During all of this craziness came the diagnosis of degenerative disc disease. It was only discovered no thanks in part to the epidural that almost paralyzed me during my firstborn’s delivery. The chronic pain that unfolded from there on out sent me heading straight into the debilitating realm, setting me on a head first crash course with the crippling inevitability. After years of being on severely dependant-causing narcotic medications to deal with the hurt and a new game of medication-around-the-rosy, I ended up in a position where I could finally smoke that sticky icky greenery again. Hallelujah!

What a not so surprisingly surprise it was when that sweet bud eased my pain in ways the narcotic pills never did. Without any side effects, either… hmmmm, okay. Well, maybe a healthier appetite than the deceased one the pills caused and much deeper, more rejuvenating sleep, but who’s complaining there? Certainly not me.

Once Michigan became a legal medical marijuana state, I jumped at the chance to get my license so I could use the only tried and true medication to keep me functional, lucid, and balanced. It’s the only reasonable and responsible thing to do for my children to give them a mother who’s able to manage her short end of the stick. Because, it’s just not kosher to parent your kids when you’re a raving lunatic. You can’t even have an autistic child without being blamed for doing something wrong to cause it somehow these days. Who truly wants to be bad mom, let alone raise their kids all screwed up? In my gigantic heart of hearts, I can’t imagine that even the most strung out crack whore at their lowest point in life, wants to be a bad mom. Some just aren’t equipped for the real deal the same way others are overly equipped and make everyone else look like Martha Stewart’s prison friends. It’s not like they choose to be that way, they just are. So, for the past three years to maintain my sanity & reputation as a mediocre Martha-wannabe, I have been a licenced marijuana prescription card holder. With it, I have reduced my pain meds down to the barest, most minimum dosage able to be prescribed. Now, I only need to take an antidepressant for situational purposes. Like when my Grandma Pauline, my mother by heart, passed away, I was having a hard time with the grief and needed a little extra help. Overall, though, I’m able to manage everything so much better with cannabis.

For all the nonsmokers or those who haven’t smoked since that last kegger at university, or if you’re like me, in high school, than you probably have a misconceived idea of what I mean when I say I get high. Either Cheech & Chong, Scooby Doo, or Woodstock type stoner, comes to mind, baked out of their skulls in a cloud of smoke that’s so thick it can’t be through it. Or possibly, you relate back to that time you tried it and hated it, smoking with the cheapest of Mexican dirt weed, not ever knowing it was Mexican dirt weed, which makes all the difference, until you read this. (The lowest grade readily available for street sales while marijuana was still illegal. Very few dealers had real stuff back then, it was garbage and made you feel like garbage.)

Those images are so far from how it is, though. I’m not in college, or high school, anymore, for goodness sakes. Sure it’s fun, in it’s own acquired taste kind of way- to roll, pack, dab, break up, snip, grind, and all those other great things that are done before taking that first puff, but it’s also a very controlled act regulated by responsibility and governed by priorities. If you’re counting change to pay bills or feed your kid, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re medicating irresponsibly by over-using it into oblivion or disrespecting the medicinal factor and using it just because, you’re not doing it right. My day does not revolve around getting high, as some would like to believe. There are things to do, people to care for, places to be, as life goes by in a hurry, and it’s not always the time nor place to be high. I try schedule time three times a day, just as with any old antibiotic or blood pressure, or sinus medication, to try and smoke enough to alleviate the aches and pains, and energize my spirit, per say (or de-energize if it’s night time). And if duty calls while I’m doing so, well then so be it. My children will always come first. 

All these years, long before the legalization movement came to be, I always wondered exactly what the fuss was all about. Especially since I was raised with a father who was employed as a law enforcement officer who has always felt similarly about the plant as I do. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, they say. Each strain of marijuana is cultivated to enhance or muffle each of the many properties that make up the THC component, which is the active chemical within the plant that gives the affects. These properties control every aspect of the high and are tailored to maximize the aggressiveness for all of the many diseases, disorders, and illnesses that can be helped with medical marijuana. It’s really a amazing wonderment how one plant can be genetically manipulated without chemicals, without scientists in labs using specialized machinery to alter the basic structure of the genetic strands, or without harming the overall quality, growth, flowering, etc. I’m able to obtain just what I need to help my symptoms without being impaired unless I purposely go over board, ultimately, which is in my full control.

The stigma that’s attached to parents who use medical marijuana is slowly changing as the legalization movement goes forward across the nation. Key word: slowly. The stigma attached to marijuana alone, it’s changing rapidly. I’m just a mom, trying to stay healthy so I can do right by my kids. I don’t hide or lie to them about my choices in medicine because I don’t ever want them to think I condone that either. If they’re ever going to grow to trust me as their confidant, than I must prove that trust is there, because we all know it’s a two-way street. Before the kids wake up, I try to smoke a little to wake up my body, alleviating the stiffness that sets in overnight. If the toddler actually takes a nap or if I’m going to be in a situation that would set my anxiety into panic mode, I’ll try to smoke a little bit to reduce my angrivation, keep my emotions along the middle line and away from either end of extreme. After a long, exhausting day, it’s so nice to sit back and toke under the light of the midnight moon, finally able to ease the fire that burns in my spine and the tension that’s built up throughout the day, once my duties are done for the day with the kids sleeping soundly in their beds. Just as you would do with a glass of wine, a bottle of beer, a quiet stroll through the woods, a bubble bath, or a xanax. Everyone rewinds in their own way, mine just helps keep me mentally balanced & free of pain as well. I’m a midnight toking mama, who’s thankful for the sweet Mary Jane medicine that works as no other has before, to get her through life. If that’s really so wrong, than I NEVER want to be right.

The Push & Pull of Parenthood

Parenthood is an aberration of insanity. In a sense, it’s its own mental affliction or state of mind. It’s like living with a never-ending battle between push & pull within your brain.  Being faced with new challenges in every waking moment, it’s like running stuck in overdrive, turning the brain into a computerized robot of sorts. Input challenge, output choice of push or a pull. Yet, as with all computers there’s always the occasional viruses, glitches, & freezes. Some parents have way better upgrades & seemingly more sophisticated equipment to work with, while others have the most primitive of electronically connectible devices. Either way, the systems all run on the Push vs Pull method.

Every decision is made based on whether you give em a little rope to hang themselves with, or reel em back in. You want to go on a sleep strike the second week you’ve slept more than six hours straight consistently? The choice to pull & risk their health to stay awake as long as the newborn is, to provide endless amounts of comfort tactics the interweb swears is guaranteed to induce slumber with ease is the right solution for some. On the other hand, there some who chooses to push says: Screw It! Go ahead & wear yourself out with that crying, I’m going to crank this fan on high & take a fifteen minute power nap before I jump off the nearest cliff & welcome hell with open arms. You want to stall the whole household from getting out the door on time because you don’t want to wear your coat in the dead of winter? If you want to push, go ahead & let them learn how cold it is without the coat, taking the coat along if & when they change their mind, making sure to get an apology before handing over the great provider of warmth on an icy day. Go with the pull & you’ll be the one who chases them down to the ends off the earth to hold em down, forcing them to bundle up until they look like a mini-abominable snowman.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a helicopter parent, a soccer mom, a baseball coaching dad. A white trash baby mama with eight kids all from different dads, or, an executive CEO of a major corporation who provides private jets & boarding schools galore. Every single moment of parenting is filled with choices that require a response to push their child’s limits, testing their own self-reliance capabilities & life knowledge skills or pull them in closer, maintaining their innocence, aiding their reliance on you as their caretaker of all things, & keeping them from learning anything on their own the hard way. The greatest thing about this unbiased system, though, is how flexible it can be. Yeah, some challenges may cause a major malfunction with the complexity of the situation at hand, freezing up the system for a bit which will throw off the entire balance of the household, which some never recover from. It can also glitch & lead you to choose to pull when you would’ve preferred to push, but your brain was under fire from other battles of life coming at you, that you glitched for a moment & made the wrong choice. Shit happens, right? You get over it, learn from it, move on, & continue with the pushing & pulling with the new knowledge ready for next time.

Life is all about finding balance to keep from going insane & somehow, no big surprise there, so is parenting. There’s a rhyme & a reason for every season. Just as there is a push & a pull for everything in raising the offspring of your once steamy loins; before those crotchfruit washed away all the sex appeal down there in the netherlands with visions of their crowning moment, or the separation & clamping of the abdominal wall for all those c-section parents, forever burned into our memories. Sometimes you gotta take the pull, keep your babies close & protected, sometimes you have to go for the push & show them exactly what their made of, but in the end, it’s all for their own good & no choice is right or wrong. It’s just about what choice is necessary for maintaining the balance of the entire family. Some have the newest & greatest models, giving them an advantage of those who only have the antique editions, but there’s no law against upgrading, that’s just a matter of wanting to keep that aberration of insanity from turning into a living nightmare.

Thanks to More Than Cheese and Beer for another opportunity to write for her Sunday Confessions prompt! Check out her page for more awesome confessions from other bloggers & page followers alike. Today’s prompt was pull.