Goodbye, Balboa

Love her writing style….

Survivor

I just had someone call me a survivor the other day… then I had someone call me over zealous in my duties at my current job.

Well… when you’ve lived a life that forces you to be a survivor, someone who can thrive on nothing and someone who can make a living by just wits and pure dedication, can that person really be accused of being over-zealous?

I consider it a blessing. I finally have a job that I enjoy and love – one that I have no problem dedicating my time and energy to, yet I’m getting name called by the more apathetic employees. To them I say – go lose everything you have and live on a street for a bit – maybe then you will appreciate all that a JOB can do for you. It gives you purpose and it gives you a drive to get things done.

Even if it is the most unpleasant job in the world, it is giving you the means to live your life out! How is something that great not worthy of your efforts and talents?!

There’s my ramble.

–Pseudonym

Cello Lessons!

Dog-gone troubles…

I live with a roommate… a roommate that works out of state quite a bit… 

While my roommate is gone, I usually end up taking care of the dog. The trouble is… she is stupidly spoiled and it’s up to me to train her while her owner is away… then as soon as she comes back, all the training I did goes out of the window. Then it starts all over again when the next work trip comes around for my roommate. 

Yesterday I tried walking her again… and it’s getting tedious. Somedays the dog walks just fine…but then yesterday she almost ripped off my hand and gave me blisters from holding onto her so tightly… 

Dog problems. 

I resorted to looking online.. this was about the best that I could find… http://www.perfectpaws.com/leash.html

I’m quite tired of taking care of this dog… she’s demanding and it’s so frustrating that everytime I teach her something… it goes out the window as soon as her owner gets back. 

At least I’m complaining about training a dog and not about having to live in my car again… 

–Pseudonym 

The Absurdity of my Abstinence

Don’t get too excited by the title… there are (believe it or not) more than one use for the word “abstinence”… in this example I am using it referring to the pleasure that I used to get from writing in my journal and using that as my own form of therapy. 

The past 6 months… I have abstained from writing in my journal… not by choice but by some wall that has suddenly cropped up in my head. I don’t want to write in it for a dumb and terrible reason – I don’t want to look back in the years and see what I was doing now. How stupid is that? I know that not all of the choices I make are solid… but I should at least be able to write in my journal about them so that I can vent in my own personal “truest form”. I don’t do well talking to other people about my problems… obviously… I’m writing my issues into a blog instead of talking to a close friend about them. 

My biggest issues at the moment are my improved living situation… and my romantic situations. For some reason I feel the largest amount of unease when I think about writing the happenings of my life… or even the thoughts that I might have about what’s happening. 

Where I live is so much more improved from 9 months ago… I no longer live in my car, I don’t have to crash on friends houses and scrape up quarters and pennies for my laundry and food. I love where I live – most of the time – and I am slowly building up my professional life to exist in more of a solid nature. 

Yet… when it comes to putting pen to paper… the words all leave my mind and I’m left to simply write a narration of how uncomfortable I am writing in my own journal. The words “maybe it’s my stupid pen” actually exist in my journal thanks to today’s effort. 

At least I’m trying… and soon I need to try again to write more about the unbelievable happenings of my life. In this blog I’ve written some of my most intimate secrets… and can you believe it…. there’s more! As I say to myself all the time, “it’s simply horrendous how many stupid secrets I have”. 

That’s all for today… I don’t seem to be in a writing mood … no matter what the platform. 

Mind Bloggling Inner Workings

On my post Janitor’s Closet I got a comment that said “you are not alone”.
How sad is that… how sad is it that there are so many other people out there, hurting, and mostly… alone.

I know that I’m not alone, that there are other people who have gone through the same things I have… but the sad part is… most of us keep so silent. Perhaps not out of fear, but for reasons concerning personal space and things like that.

Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if more of us stood up and said, “you’re not alone”. Would we be closer as a community, get tired of the same ol’ story or would we work together to help and heal and support each-other? Hopefully it would be a combination of the first and last.

There’s my short little rant for the day… I’m much too tired to divulge another emotionally wrecking story… so there’s a little bit of my minds inner workings.

-pseudonym
…and here’s a picture… just for kicks…

Still figuring this out…

So I made a page that was for pictures… but I guess it didn’t really work? Well… I’m going to re-post the first one and then I also wanted to share a new one.
You can have 10 points if you can guess what building this is…

This is one of the few places that makes me truly happy. Even just seeing the picture of it I get all excited and can’t believe that I was lucky enough to go there.

 

Also… here’s the last picture that I posted… slightly edited… but still the same feeling – first day of the Fall Semester and I saw the most beautiful sunrise.

 

I get to see lots of really beautiful sunrises now… living in your car it’s hard to not wake up with the sun… but at least it usually has beautiful colors to make up for the groaning sounds of an awakening city.
-pseudonym

Janitor’s Closet

During the time that I’ve had on this planet, I’ve heard many people say, “oh… that was the worst night of my life!”. I usually tend to deeply dislike people who say things like that, even if I don’t know them personally and I just happen to hear it in a passing conversation. I understand (to an extent) that everyone has different degrees of pain that they can undertake… and that it is also used as an expression… but as someone who has experienced the “worst day of my life” multiple times, it’s hard for me to have compassion towards people who have it so good and use it so carelessly.

If someone were to ask me what the worst day or night of my life was… I would have a top 3 in my head… but the one at the top as #1 happened at my childhood church. I was 11 years old and my church’s services were being held at a community building while our new facility was under construction. Even from a young age I was very involved in many of the church services and activities/ministries… helping was always something I loved doing and was one of the things that I felt I was truly good at.

One night after one of the services I was staying late with the family that drove me to and from church (since my parents no longer attended) and we were helping “tear down” from the service. I was helping stack chairs and put things away. They were very caught up in a conversation with someone else who had stayed to help clean up. So while they were in the throngs of what seemed to be a very serious conversation, the woman (for the sake of anonymity names will be omitted, so we’ll call her “Mrs”) had told me that it was going to take longer than usual tonight so I could go play somewhere. I knew where my favorite tree was so I decided to go and sit under it, relax and cool off after the hard work of clearing the gymnasium of the chairs our service had just required. On my way to the tree I had to pass what I knew to be the Janitor’s Closet. As I was walking past it I felt someone come up behind me and just as I was turning around to see who it was, I felt cold and callused hands clamped around my mouth and pin my hands behind my back. Next thing I knew, he was shuffling with the Janitor’s Closet doorknob and then we were swallowed by the darkness inside as he closed the door, closing out what little light there was along with my hopes of being saved. Being so startled with shock, I don’t think I could have screamed even if I wanted to. My eyes were open as wide as they could get, yet, I still couldn’t see a thing… my other senses however, were working on overdrive. I knew he was still standing at the door, “don’t scream. If you do… I’ll have to hurt your little friends over in the big room…” he said ominously. The most terrifying thing about all of this was my inability to move… I could only stay there petrified and feeling as if I was trapped in a nightmare. I had been shoved in the door and as result I was up against the back wall and I knew he was coming closer to me because his terrible voice that was whispering terrible things was getting closer… terribly mean and horrible things to me that I will never forget… things that I won’t even write on here. It was pitch black but he obviously didn’t need light to go about his hell-sent task.

Out of the darkness I felt all of my clothes stripped from me and another piece of cloth clamped around my mouth… not that I needed it… I was still too scared from how fast this was happening and his threat towards Mr and Mrs still ringing in my ears… I would not scream. He raped me and not one sound left my lips. It felt like an eternity of pain and after the pain ceased… a scornful sense of forbidden and terrifying pleasure. Just as soon as I had stopped feeling pain and started feeling something akin to pleasure it ended and was interrupted by a stabbing and sharp pain in my thigh and my ribcage in alternating…stabs… that’s the only way I could explain it. It was a needle… he was shooting me up with something… I don’t know what it was… only that my mind was starting to get fuzzy and I’m sure that if there was any light in that room… that I would have started seeing doubles. Even after he stuck me with the needle and injected whatever it was… he kept stabbing me… he was muttering terrifying words describing his pleasure to my terrified and shaking body. From there… the night is a blur to me… I remember him leaving after whispering one more thing in my ear, “you’re just a whore and filthy bitch now…” and then just as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone. Somehow, through the fog, I got dressed and pulled myself together enough so as to not raise suspicion from Mr or Mrs… their daughter, my only friend. Thank God… I wouldn’t have known what to say… all I know is that the rest of the night was a foggy blur… and the next thing I remember was waking up in my bed in the middle of the night hoping desperately that it was all just a bad dream… but the blood that soaked my sheets told me otherwise. I got up to change my bedding during the dark hours of the night so my parents wouldn’t see anything… I threw away the soiled sheets, grabbed the box of band-aids from the bathroom and didn’t tell anyone about it for 7 years.

For the first few months I didn’t tell anyone about it because I still had his threats bouncing around in my head… I was afraid that he might know where I lived and that he would come after me or after my friends and family. As I got older and he made no other appearance I knew that his threat was empty now… and that I could tell someone like… my parents?… but I wouldn’t. In my household… if you lost your virginity you weren’t pure.. and it was shameful. You wouldn’t be pure for your husband and you were just a dirty slut. With my dad being who he was… an abusive hypocrite… I wasn’t going to give him another reason to hate me and “punish” me… so I didn’t tell my parents.

I was 18 when I finally told someone (a close friend at the time)… I felt so terribly ashamed that I wished I hadn’t… but then I was overwhelmed when they hugged me and told me that I was still their friend… I cried then, not from telling them that terrible secret… but because of their reaction. I was not familiar with safe touch… it was foreign… but it was amazing to feel someone still love me even when I had just told them the thing I was most ashamed about, even though I had no power over it.

Even now… I hardly ever tell anyone about it… people look at you so differently, it’s sad. Not so much for me… but for them. Sometimes I just want to wear a shirt that says all of my shortcomings and all of the horrible things I’ve been through and been involved in… so that if people aren’t cool with those things… they can just stay away and save themselves the trouble of being friends with someone who has such a horrible past. I’ve lost more “friends” than I can count from things such as that… but the ones who know about me and stay around… I treasure them… even though it’s still tough for me to deal with someone knowing about me.

That’s it for today…

-pseudonym

Open and Honest?

Well… since this account is incognito… I suppose that it’s more than alright for me to be honest. It’s scary to open up… even just to a blank screen on my computer.

I said in my last post that I’ve lived a life of unfortunate happenings… well… it’s unbelievable even to me the extent that it’s true. In my :real life: as I’ll call it, I rarely choose to share it, mainly because it interferes too much and makes people look at me in a different light. But you, reader, don’t know me. Let me paint a picture…

Circa 2002 – I was ten years old… and it was the first time that my dad ever hit me.  –NOW– I don’t want anyone to think that this is a pity blog… this is just simply the easiest way for me to vent… also as a way to spread awareness… that different kinds of abuse happens and goes untold for years. Maybe through reading my posts you can recognize some signs and save someone around you….

———————-

I was 10 years old and 2 months! So naturally I was 10 and 1/2 (as all kids are so eager to say)… I was so excited to finally be a double digit! A whole decade old… it was fantastic and so exciting to think that I was finally an age of importance. Being homeschooled I was rather odd; read the dictionary for fun, never got to hang out with friends my own age, started playing music when I was 5 and I was basically an only child. My other siblings were all 10+ years older (and thus lived on their own) or lived with their own parents(very confusing family tree).

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In my childhood backyard was a huge hill with trees everywhere and it was the best place to have adventures! I loved to build treehouses, to play with imaginary friends and as I would soon find out… it was a great place to hide. On a summer day, after a full day of climbing and planning new fortresses in the trees, I went looking for my dad to tell him about all of the great plans I had! I was so excited and had thought through all of the delicate details; I would only need 19 nails and 3 planks of wood. It was going to be my castle and I was ecstatic to tell my dad all about how I was going to do it all by myself. Running through the house, I couldn’t find my mom or my dad, so I decided to go look out in his “workshop”, the garage. Immediately upon opening the garage side door I felt and smelled that something was different. There was a funny haze in the garage that I wasn’t familiar with yet and the smell of something woody and sharp. My excitement overtook my caution as I spotted my dad hunched over his desk. While running to him I was talking at a mile a minute (and for me, talking at all was a rare thing), stuttering my way through the excitement, I started telling my dad about the cool story ideas I had to play out in the fortress. Soon, however, I was sharply interrupted as I was suddenly on the floor and my face was stinging like I had never felt before. Shocked I looked up at my dad and saw something in his eyes that I’ll never forget. Hatred. Complete and desolate hatred.

Even at that young age I knew that suddenly I was no longer my dad’s princess… I was just a ‘thing’ in his way… just some mistake he and my mom had made…. With tears running down my cheeks I started to get up to go back in the house and then I was struck down again… this time I knew it was a fist and it found it’s mark on the side of my eyebrow. Pain exploded in my head, but most of all I was just broken inside. No longer was I “Daddy’s Girl”…. After that blow I ran into the house and locked myself in my room until my mom got home.

When I heard my mom’s car door close I stayed in my room, not being sure how to deal with what had just happened… I barely understood it myself. My mom came in and yelled that she was home with dinner, so I tentatively came out and wandered into the kitchen to find her with my dad who was hugging her and then he looked at me and said “sweet girl!” with a real smile. He ushered us into the dining room and we sat down to have something with chicken… the whole meal I kept looking at him to try and see if there was a trace of that horrible hatred I had just witnessed, but there was nothing. I was terribly confused and the only thing that kept me thinking it was real was the pounding in my head and the red on my face. My mom looked at me and just told me to stop spending so much time in the sun and out in the hill, that I was bound to die from falling out of a tree.

For so long I thought that those incidences were just punishments that I didn’t understand yet… so I kept quiet and never told anyone… I started making up stories for the marks that were left over from fists or slaps… and sometimes from tools. I would say that I fell out of a tree or that I just tripped going into the garage…etc… Eventually, if someone asked me what had happened to my face or to my arm, hands.. whatever… it just came naturally to me to tell a lie. I didn’t even think of it anymore… all of that at 10 years old. It continued until the day I moved out. But I never told a soul.

————

Who could I tell that would believe me? Throughout the years I had tried to tell my mom about these encounters with my dad… but she never acknowledged me when I started telling her those things. My mom lived in her own world I came to found out… and as the years progressed it only got worse. It got to the point where I knew that if I actually told her the truth and even provided her with evidence that she wouldn’t be able to handle it. My mom now believes that fairies are real, and she used to invite me to tea with the fairies. Now… that would be cute if she was doing it to 10 year old me… but she was doing it to me when I was 17-19 and were I still in contact with her I’m sure she still would. Upon realizing that my mom was too fragile to see the truth… I started protecting her from it… and I know that I became her stronghold. If she started getting upset or too anxious then I would get called over to help her calm down. My mom, the woman who has tea with fairies, I love her so dearly and it makes me so sad to not be able to talk to her now… even if I would have to interrupt the Fairy of Pots and Pans to get my turn to talk, it would be worth it.

Since birth, till the day I left, my dad made sure to drill a few things into my mind: if you get hurt then tough it out, your problems are your own, no one else needs to know your shit and to take care of your momma… above all else. The thing is… I agree with all of those with differing degrees… but moderation is a thing I wouldn’t learn until I was almost ready to leave. So I hung to those things as if they were my life-line, because they were things that I had learned before he turned on me.

My dad had Multiple Personality Disorder. As diagnosed by myself. It was the only thing that made sense… he never seemed to remember the “eviler” sides of him. Along with many other symptoms of course, I did as much research as I could on the subject… and it appears as though MPD was the answer. It at least helps me to think that is what ailed him.

Sometimes I was his sweet girl (i.e. when my mom or company was around), and other times I was just the scum of the earth that wasn’t even supposed to have been born. So I took the punishment for it… sometimes there would be 4 straight months of me being the scum and then there would be a relief period of about a month where I used to believe that things would change and I would stay his little girl… but then I would do something wrong… and it would start all over again.

I have countless scars on my body from that man… from him and from a few others (but those are stories for another day). For each scar I also have a story to cover it… and what’s sad… is that I still use those cover stories….

How do you answer someone who asks you about your scars if you are a child of physical, emotional and verbal abuse? “oh yeah… my dad gave me those when I was 10… still there too! Stubborn little shits…” … like… I don’t even know how to answer that honestly, or if I ever will be able to. There isn’t a right time to bring up things like… well… like my life.

Well… there’s a small part of my life… and that’s all I can stand to tell right now… that was draining… but I hope that if I keep going with this it will help me. I also hope that it will help you… open your eyes and maybe… just maybe you’ll be able to recognize things in the people around you, maybe you’ll be able to save a life.

-pseudonym

Lightning Storm!

The other night was crazy… there was a lightning storm that you could see all over the county… it was beautiful all the while looking dangerous and foreboding. I tried getting a photo of it all but the best I could get was a really bad photo…

Anyway… right now. I’m homeless… I’m still going to school and working two part time jobs… so I’m just basically going crazy. But the other night when I saw the lightning… it made it cool to go and lay down in my makeshift bed in my car and just look at the dark cloudy sky getting lit up by these streaks of gold white…. While it’s really hard… and also humbling to be homeless… there’s a tiny feeling of adventure. Never knowing where I’m going to park so I can sleep that night, waking up almost every half hour to make sure there’s not a ticket on my window, feeling the warm touch of the rising sun and then getting into the drivers seat to go to school (super early…study time, right?).

There’s a duo personality about it all… feeling adventurous most of the time… but then feeling defeated and embarrassed. What do you tell people when they ask where you’re living… or when they ask you if they can come over… sometimes I just feel defeated.

BUT! That’s not going to break me… yes, it sucks to have to lie to people about where I’m staying… but this is just a chapter in my story book life. JUST A CHAPTER! I tell myself that all the time… I have to. I will make it through this and I will figure out a way to make everything work. I’ve dealt with hardships my whole life… this is just another chapter that I found in the extended edition of my book, I suppose.

This is teaching me so much about saving… about where to park if I’m ever traveling and need to stay somewhere overnight without spending too much… and most of all… I’m learning what I’m made of… yes it’s hard but I can rise above all of this and I CAN turn this around for good. I can and I will. I just need a little bit more time.

That lightning storm the other night was by far the most beautiful night I’ve fallen asleep to as of yet… even though it started out as a dark and cloudy night it turned into something so beautiful… that is going to be my life! My entire life has been so dark… but soon my own lightning will come and it will light up my own clouds.

-pseudonym