In a Nutshell

May 1st.

I didn't want the first day of the new month to go by without me posting to the blog. I can stereotypically begin with, "So much has happened since..." but I won't (though it's the truth). While a lot of things have happened, most of it resembled the changing landscape of a hamster wheel. If you missed the sarcasm, I banish thee to the depths of...some really deep and dark place...where ants crawl inside and earthworms salmon-slink up your nostrils-- all while rats nibble on the cuticle area of your toes, swishing their long and disgusting tail against the epidermis covering your ankles.

Me foot's still injured (yes, I wanted a lickle bit of an Irish accent-- now a Caribbean one, eh). I've actually been wearing heels (not supposed to wear flats w/ Achilles tendonitis) and just last week my walking boot arrived in the mail, so I've been wearing that as well.

My youngest...

My job. Sigh. Apparently, there are rumors floating around my job about me. And, in keeping with the characteristic of a rumor, they are rather unflattering ones. The shame of it is that they are not being spread by the students (I'm getting used to the backbiting of the girls-- don't expect better of them and I won't be disappointed). Nay. These rumors were breathed life by coworkers. They do not warrant repeating.  I'm not hurt, just mad because it's like, "Really?". Why? Ugh! How old are we? Thirteen?

My finances...suck major hard-boiled egg with an extremely dry yolk. So, I've been applying for jobs. Teaching is too vampirish on my bank account.

My love life is still quite dead. Or, rather, it's a bit undead-- more zombie like really. A mere shell of what used to be. That translates into he and I exist but not as a "we".

My life...I'm still here; I'm still breathing. If there's anything these last seven months have taught me it's that I'm a lot stronger than even I imagined (and I thought myself pretty strong). I've bent, yes, but I didn't break. I became the palm tree in the storm. And I owe that all to my faith/belief in a higher power I like to call God.

QoMV

Biographically Me

Sooo...I've been writing. Well, not recently. But here's an excerpt from an autobiography I was working on.

            For years I thought of running away and consoled myself by writing letters to the father that was never there for me.  I painted him into this shining knight that was going to one day just come and make me his princess and just shower me with love, love, and more love.  He was going to erase everything bad in my life and I would get to live out my dream of being wanted.  I grew to realize just how much of a fairytale I’d created- but I never consciously considered suicide.  Until the day in which I dashed about my aunt’s home scrounging for anything and everything that would make me sleep away the pain that Band-Aids could never fix.  It was another day of exile.  So when I got back to my grandparents’ house, I continued hunting around for potent medication to swallow along with the small treasure of sleeping pills I’d unearthed at my aunt’s.

            My younger cousin noticed what I was doing and managed to wrestle the Tylenol IIIs with codeine that I had taken from my grandmother’s supply.  He flushed them down the toilet with a triumphant smile on his face and I pretended to be upset.  When I was alone I quite simply took more from the bottle in the cabinet.  The phone rang.  It was my mother.  As I listened to more of the same- stern unforgiving words, expressions of disappointment, and appeals for me to change- I’d made up my mind.  Any doubts that remained about what I had planned to do evaporated.  After hanging up the phone, I filled a glass with water and swallowed handfuls of the pills I’d pilfered.  Not exactly sure of how dying would feel and not wanting to experience any of its physical pain, I went into the room I’d become familiar with over the past few years and laid me down to sleep.

The next morning I woke up in a state of disbelief.  The sun was shining.  The early morning birds were singing their morning song.  And I was up in time to get ready for school.  It seemed like a joke all too cruel.  I felt absolutely normal considering the dangerous cocktail I’d ingested only hours before.  I know that I should have been grateful- I certainly am most thankful now, but at the time I was furious.  I had prepared myself to die and that death had been stolen from me.  I was condemned to serve a sentence of life.

            No one but my cousin ever knew what happened that night.  For the next month I just existed.  My mother, finally at her wit’s end with me, took me to see a family therapist.  The therapist asked several questions which I answered honestly in a wish-I-wasn’t-here type of voice.  It was some time before she asked me if I’d ever tried to commit suicide.  I paused over the answer because the truth of the matter was that I did commit suicide.  The sleeping pills were about a month past their expiration date but the number of Tylenol IIIs alone should have been enough.  Resigned, I answered her question in the affirmative.  Diagnosis:  major depression.  Recommendation:  hospitalization and Prozac.  Great.  Just great.

            From there my life just seemed to snowball.  First it was the unexplained failed suicide.  Then the hospitalization with the crew from the Young and the Hopeless. Next came the rape.  Followed by the phone call confirming the pregnancy resulting from that rape. Add to that a family who looked down on me once they found out about the pregnancy.  Then top it off with the fact that I was still in almost daily conflict with my mother.  All this within 4 months at the tender age of sixteen.  And, thanks to the Prozac, I couldn’t feel a thing.