It was us against the world

busha/big fish

2008-11-02T06:38:50Z

"Don't remember me this way. Please, don't remember me this way."

"I won't. You know what I'll remember? I'll remember the day you came home from work and I was swimming in the pool at your condo and I dared you to jump in, and you did, with all your clothes and jewelry and shoes on."

I remember crawling out of my own bed that I shared with my mother, and crawling into Busha's bed. But not next to her. Always at the foot of the bed, curled up at her feet like a pet.

I remember standing up in the front passenger seat of Busha's T-top white Corvette, my face in the wind, locking my knees just to see my kneecaps move. We were invincible.

I remember falling down the stairs and Busha rushing to me. As she picked me up she asked me, "Are you hurt, or are you scared?" I told her I was just scared, because telling Busha a lie never occurred to me.

I remember Busha telling me I was beautiful. I remember her telling me that so much that so much that when strangers would tell me that in stores, I'd say, "I know." Busha taught me to say "thank you" instead.

I remember getting surgery on my infected ears and Busha was the last person I saw before I went under, and the first person I asked for when I woke up. And then we went to get an ice cream sunday.

I remember hitting a boy I knew with a baseball bat because he made fun of my friends and when his father dragged me, crying all the way, to our front door, Busha yelled at the boy's father for scaring me so badly instead of yelling at me for hitting him.

I remember trips in the van, the truck, the car, to Tennessee. I remember singing the same songs over and over at the top of our lungs. Billy Joel, Neil Diamond, Elton John. I remember bad food and Busha crying when she talked about my mom.

I remember explaining over and over again to people that she is NOT my grandma, she is my mother's mother. I call her Busha not because we're polish, but because she was married to a polish man when I learned to talk.

I remember trips to Mr. B's and the place smelling SO BAD when you walked in but "just give it a few minutes, you'll get used to it." Busha giving me an endless supply of quarters to play pinball with.

I remember not wanting to go home to a house with an alcoholic father and his friends who hit on me, and Busha not making me go home, even when she could have been arrested for it.

I remember Busha's stories. Getting my dad arrested for trashing her house when she had done it herself because he was hiding me and wouldn't tell her where I was. Stealing the teacup and saucer from The Grand Hotel only to find out that she could have bought it in the gift shop. Having a contest with her friend over who could steal the biggest item from a restaurant, and Busha won because she stole a flower arrangement that was so big that on the way out, when stopped by a server, she said to him, "Don't just stand there! Help me put it in the car!". And he did.

I remember Busha telling me she stopped bowling when she found out she could drink without it.

I remember Busha telling me she was a Sunday School teacher until she asked the preacher why God would make a man who lived 600 years ago in China go to hell just because he had never heard of Jesus, and the preacher couldn't give her an answer. So she quit, and never returned to Christianity again.

I remember Busha asking me which color shoes I liked better, and then buying me both pairs when I couldn't decide.

I remember staying up until dawn watching movies, eating pizza, drinking Kick, and playing on the internet, and Busha never once questioning it.

I remember staying up 'til 3 a.m. playing Monopoly and Busha always had to be the car.

I remember flying down a dirt road in Busha's Cadillac while she turned up Guns N' Roses, Dire Straits, or Fleetwood Mac.

I remember my 17th birthday party with food, a tent. Busha letting my friend's bands play, the co-ed sleepover, and smiling at me instead of yelling at me when she caught me making out with someone.

I remember being brought to fancy restaurants, meeting rich people with soap-opera lives, and opening a card from Busha that said, "You pick the dealership".

I remember starting an hour-long drive at midnight to go to Busha's house nearly every weekend, because I could be myself and had no curfew when there.

I remember Busha getting shitfaced drunk when I told her I had two confessions to make, and how relieved she was that it was only bisexuality and an abortion.

I remember crying my eyes out when I moved out of the apartment I shared with Chris, thinking we'd break up for sure, and crying tears of love when Busha gave me a card that simply said, "I believe in you."

I remember Christmas having piles of presents that never seemed to end but hardly wanting to open them because Busha had wrapped them so perfectly.

I remember driving Busha's car, depositing her checks, taking out cash for her from her ATM.

I remember going to Frankenmuth and Canterbury Village. I remember Busha never waiting for more than 30 minutes for a table at a restaurant and how the manager would follow us out the door apologizing.

Yeah, I do remember the end. I remember the day she told me she was dying. I remember driving to Tennessee so she could tell her parents that she was dying in person. I remember her shitting the bed. I remember her paranoia, her delusions, her hallucinations. I remember dripping the liquid morphine into her mouth every few hours. I remember her eating nothing but graham crackers. I remember her losing her red hair. I remember calling her friends and family and telling them to come see her, that it wouldn't be long. I remember talking about the memorial, her favorite bar, her closest friends, no funeral homes, no body, just laughter and tears. I remember the nurse rubbing a sponge with water over her mouth and tongue to ease the discomfort of dehydration. I remember her last smile. I remember her moans of pain, when she couldn't talk anymore. I remember her labored breathing. I remember the anxiety and the stomach cramps I had that made me go home at 3 a.m. and getting the call at 6 a.m. that she had taken her last breath. I remember the aftermath, the family drama, and the drive to Smoky Mountains National Park and her ashes crumbling down the overlook, flying in the wind, and landing on my clothes. I remember brushing the ashes off and how relieved I was that I didn't get caught and that the rain that came so soon afterward would wash the ashes away and spread them far down the valley and through the soil.

But I don't focus on the bad things. Those things are so overshadowed by the memories that came before. Busha was a big fish. She'll live forever like that.

Someday, I'll be a big fish too. We're still invincible.

11-02-08

vietnam

2008-04-06T06:01:20Z

I could have loved you like napalm

My madness is a crocodile lurking in dark water
Breaking the still glass surface only to feed
Split-second. Blink. You've missed her.

04-06-08

doing the wrong thing right

2007-06-30T03:23:40Z

It wasn't much, but I knew it was wrong. I was only 12, he had his hands between my legs, and he was my father. I had been sitting on his lap, and I was pretending to sleep. I pretended to sleep because I was too scared of what might happen if he thought I was awake.

I didn't move. I didn't breath. I relaxed a bit when he stopped. It wasn't that big of a deal, right? I mean, he just rubbed my crotch. He did it outside of my clothes and he didn't do it for that long. So it's not a big deal, right?

The next day I was thinking about it. I thought about it more and more. I was distracted from my classes. I was quiet and withdrawn. I knew it was wrong. I didn't know what to do. I went to the one person who knew what to do. The school counselor.

Mrs. St. Amour was a mid-30's recently re-married mother. She ran several "support groups" for kids to express their frustrations about various topics ranging from a death in the family to divorce. She let me be in several "support groups" because I had a rough life up to that point and I felt like since no one talked to me about that stuff at home, I could at least talk about it at school. She was a sympathetic ear and I trusted her. When I couldn't bear to hold it inside anymore, I asked to go to her office.

She ushered me in and had me sit down. I told her the whole thing. She had me repeat it. Then she dropped a bombshell on me. By LAW, she had to tell the police. I had no idea! I just wanted someone to tell me what to do. I just wanted someone to help me sort out my confused and hurt feelings. Instead, I was about to be embroiled in one of the scariest experiences of my life.

She called the police, then called my step-mother (called Bern, short for Bernadette). Bern came to bring me home. I cried the entire ride. I was terrified of what would happen next. My father came home but never spoke to me that night. And I never spoke to him. That would be the pattern for the next few months. No more affection, the absolute minimum of talking.

My memories about the events of the next few months are scattered and painful.

I was brought to an office of some sort so a police officer could take an official statement. He and a counselor sat in a room with me that looked like a child's play room. They asked me to repeat my story. I don't remember if he wrote it down or if he recorded it. More than likely he recorded it but took notes. The asked me some simple questions and then I could go home.

The next thing I remember is sitting in my room while I heard my father yelling in the living room to someone about how he didn't do it. That I made it up. That I must have "learned it from those damn books". He then barged into my bedroom and took "those damn books" off my shelves without saying a word. The 3 or so V.C. Andrews books I owned among Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and a dozen other authors that should have been out of my reading ability or understanding were what he was talking about. I didn't really care about the books. They weren't that good.

The fucked up thing is that it wasn't the crotch-rubbing that made me feel betrayed by my father. It was the fact that even to me, in privacy, he couldn't admit that he did anything wrong. He insisted that I made it all up. Somewhere in him I knew he knew he was lying when he said those things. All I ever wanted was for him to admit that he screwed up and say he was sorry for it. All I hoped for was that he swear he'd never do it again, to me or to anyone else.

I was brought to lawyers and counselors and repeated my story over and over. I went home to a cold and quiet house and sat in my room, alone.

The night before the case went before a judge, my father finally broke his silence. A few months earlier one of his best friends had been busted for sleeping with his own daughter, who was 17 years old. He had been sentenced to 10 years. This was what my father feared.

"Do you know what they want to do to me?"
(I shake my head)
"They want to do to me what they did to Scott. They want me to go to jail for 10 or 20 years. Do you want that?"
(I just look at him)
"Your step-mom and little sister won't have anywhere to live. Bern can't afford to pay for a house. They'll have to move back in with grandma and grandpa."
(I continue looking at him)
"Do you really want to do that to them? Do you really want me to go to jail?"
(I look at him, holding back tears)
"All I'm asking is that you think about that."

He went back into his bedroom. The house was quiet but a hurricane was going on in my brain. He had asked me to think about it, and I was. I was thinking long and hard. I was thinking of my little half sister, Alicia. She wasn't even 2 yet. I thought of her growing up without a father and how she'd blame me, because I probably wouldn't be living with her. My grandmother would get custody of me the second she found out what happened and my sister would be living with my step-mom. She wouldn't have anyone to explain to her what really happened. She wouldn't know what was truth and what was lies. She'd struggle and it would be my fault.

The only thing I didn't worry about is if my father would do to her what he did to me. I knew he wouldn't. Deep down in me, I knew that what he did was the first time he had ever done it, and I knew that I had scared him so badly that he would never do it again. It wasn't a brain-know. It wasn't a heart-know. It was a deep-down GUT-know.

I also knew something else. I knew that if I did what I was about to do tomorrow, no one but my father would ever trust me again. He would know the truth, I would know the truth, and everyone else would think I was a liar. A liar who lied so bad that it got people charged with crimes.

But I did it anyway.

I walked into the courthouse that day already knowing what I would say. The lawyers prepped me, rehearsed with me, and then I sat before the judge and lied my ass off about what happened that day. I said it never happened. It was all a dream I had because I was asleep. This created a huge uproar in the courtroom. The prosecutor nearly jumped over the podium, screaming at the judge that I was "obviously influenced" and that it was obviously the wrong move to have let me live in the same house with my father the whole time leading up to trial. But the judge's hands were tied. Without my testimony, they couldn't prosecute my father for anything. The case was dismissed.

Walking out of the courthouse my father said to me under his breath, "Thank you." I didn't respond.

Even though my father was the one person who knew I wasn't a liar, I knew he was. I also knew that I was going to cut myself off from him emotionally from then on. I couldn't trust him. He made me the bad guy. I didn't need anyone. The only person I could trust was myself. The only person I could love was myself, and maybe my baby sister.

I don't tell a lot of people about all of it. After all, I was right. He never did anything like that again. To me, or to anyone else. It had scared him so bad that it took him years to even hug me again. It scared him so bad that he never let my sister sit on his lap.

I'm sure that many people would think that what I did was disgusting. I let a child molester walk free. I cost taxpayers money. I let people down. Even Mrs. St. Amour never talked to me with affection again. Even in my own head I wonder what would have happened had I been wrong. But I wasn't. I had done the wrong thing. But somehow, it was right.

6-29-07

go ahead, read my notes

2007-03-14T13:05:34Z

Sticks and stones may break my bones
But that's better than your words
I wish they would

If I slit the wrists
and spilled the blood on you
would you finally feel the pain you bring?

3.14.07

maternal instinct

2006-12-07T02:36:58Z

I have very few good memories of my mom. The things that always stuck out for me were the bad times.

The time when she was passed out drunk in our bed and even my physically lifting her eyelids did nothing to wake her.
The time when she had a party and offered me pot and beer, giggling because she thought it was funny.
The time when she argued with her boyfriend and drove away from his house squealing the tires while I rolled all over in the backseat because she never made me wear a seat belt.
The time when she told me to go play in another room and when I choked on a penny and came running to her to help me breath again and she was in bed with a married man. I had met his wife and child.

The most vivid bad memory I have was of the day she died. It was October 30th, 1986. I had just turned 6. I was in kindergarten or first grade. I can't remember and what relatives that might have known are dead now. I'm sure I was looking forward to Halloween the next day. I can't remember what I was going to be that year but it never happened as far as I know. I only remember that day, that afternoon.

I was kept from getting on the school bus home by the school counselor. She was a nice woman. She didn't explain what was going on, only led me to a play area inside the school and told me to wait there, that she would be driving me home that day. I was content to play by myself and thought it was kind of cool that I got to play in an empty school by myself. When eventually she came and got me to drive me home, only then did I start to worry that something was wrong. Who was this person, really? Where were they taking me?

The counselor walked me into my home and it was complete chaos and confusion. Police, relatives who didn't come to visit except on holidays, and strangers. I run up and hugged my grandpa and he smiled at me and hugged back but was very quiet. My grandmother, who we lived with, asked me to go downstairs and watch television until she could come down to talk with me. So I did.

So I watched MTV, Nickelodeon, and Disney. I was confused, and I was starting to get tired. When my grandmother came down to talk to me, she brought the counselor. They explained to me that my mother had gotten in an accident and died. She wasn't coming back. If I needed to talk I could go to the counselor at school anytime I wanted. Then they left me alone to watch Lassie. I cried. It was a very sad episode.

The funeral is my next memory. I don't remember how she looked but I remember that she wasn't her. What made her HER wasn't there. It was like looking at a statue made in her image. My grandmother had helped me write a letter to her that we put in the coffin. All of that didn't bother me. What made me scared and sad was when my great-grandmother, who I had only ever seen smile, broke down screaming and crying and had to be physically lifted from her knees and removed from the room. It's still a painful memory for me.

I remember one incident in the weeks that followed that makes me sort of sad when I think about it. I was in the bathroom and I opened all the cupboards under the sink to look for her. For that moment, I had convinced myself that it was all a joke and she was just hiding somewhere. She'd jump out at any moment and yell, "Surprise!"

I grew to accept the fact that she was gone. I lost most of my memories of her. I focused most of my love on my grandmother, and then my step-mother too. My father got custody of me after a year or two. I've blocked most of the custody battle between my father and my grandmother out but from what people have told me it was pretty brutal. My grandmother "acquired" a gun that she told me years later she'd intended to shoot my father with. There was no way to trace the gun back to her so she might've gotten away with it for all I know. She never did it though.

When I was 11, I went through a legal battle again, this time because of something my father did. I won't talk about that now, that will come later, but in the process of going through that I was exposed to a psychologist (psychiatrist? I don't know) who in one question to me rocked my whole world to the core.

"You understand about your mother's suicide, right?"

Tunnel vision. Hesitation. I told her what I'd been told, that it was an accident. Even as the words came out of my mouth I knew what she said was true. Even as she backpedaled and tried to cover her mistake I was going over all the times I had been denied further details on my mother's "accident".

On the way to school after the appointment, I didn't say a word. My mouth was sealed shut with the news that I had been given. My heart was in shock. I went through the motions at school but it was just too much. I excused myself to the office and proceeded to have a complete breakdown at the age of 11.

No one could console me. My father tried explaining. My step-mother tried comforting. Nothing worked. I got in the shower to be alone. I didn't wash myself. I just sat in the tub letting the water run over me while I sobbed as quietly as I could. Not only had my mother chosen to abandon me but my entire family had lied to me for almost 6 years. I was worthless, my own mother hadn't thought me worth sticking around for. Furthermore, I couldn't trust a single person I knew. If they could all lie to me about the most important person in my life to have died, what else had they lied to me about? What else would they lie to me about?

The full impact of my mother's death had hit me and I was left without hope, trust, or love. My heart became black and hollow and I ceased to care about anyone or anything. I immersed myself in music and a self-imposed solitary confinement that would last until I was in high school. To this day I have a deep-seeded anger about every aspect of the situation.

I will never be like my mother and damage and betray those around me with such a selfish act. And I will never lie to my own child about anything so important.

12-6-06

Strength Times 4

2006-11-27T00:43:02Z

"Are you a virgin?" he asked. I hesitated.
"I don't know," I said.

Four years old and I'm playing in the living room of my babysitter's house. She keeps all the toys in the closet and I drag out my favorite book. I've had her read it to me probably a hundred times but I never get sick of hearing it. I never get sick of looking at the colorful pictures of ghosts in the haunted mansion.

I hear her say, "I'm getting in the shower, could you watch her for a minute, Eric?" I keep playing. Eric is 14. He never plays with me. He's hardly ever home anyway. But he's home now and we are alone.

I don't remember him saying anything. It just started with tickling. Tickling led to dragging me to the middle of the living room floor. Then he pinned me down and I stopped laughing. When he unbuttoned my pants and pulled them down along with my underwear, I started screaming. I fought him hard. I fought him with all the strength I had in my little body. I just couldn't remember if I won that fight.

It wasn't until I was a teenager that I thought about that day. It never occurs to a non-sexual person if they're a virgin. I remembered Eric. I remembered being scared years later when I saw him after years of being away and he tried to pull my pants down again. I could not remember what happened when I was 4 though. Did he rape me? He pulled his pants down, too. Did he enter me? I had no idea. It makes sense that a little girl would block something like that from her memory.

Years later, when asked if I was a virgin by the guy I was going to have sex with, I answered honestly.

"I don't know," I said.

He accepted my story. He accepted me. He was loving and caring and made it special. I never asked for that. What meant more than that to me was the blood staining my underwear later that day.

What meant more was knowing that when I was four years old, I had the strength to fight and win.

11-26-06

speed dial

2006-10-26T02:55:18Z

It's funny how our best conversations are by text
Like to hear my voice is too much to bear
Good or bad I love to see your name, your face
I never know what you're going to say next

My first love was never actually a lover
She was a fairy in a fairy tale
She was the best kept secret
She was like no other

When you break down you break my heart
But I wouldn't have it any other way
Keep my number on your speed dial baby
I'll keep yours next to my heart

10-25-06

landscape

2006-09-04T08:00:07Z

I don't want this heart, you can have it
I need to break myself of the habit
Of keeping it to myself
But you're like a tidal wave
You thunder through and destroy it
I'd much rather have you lapping gently at my shores
I am a quiet village not some busy resort
Your water sustains me and maintains me
But I can't have it contain me
I need the mountains and the rivers
To become something more

9-2-06

such a liar

2006-09-04T07:57:51Z

You said "you're such a liar" for the millionth time
But I've never lied honey, I've just kept things inside
So I told you to get the hell out of my house
And yes, sometimes I wish you'd get the hell out of my life

See I can't tell if when you see the light in my eyes
If you're jealous of others or just envious of me
And I think it's fucked up that you'd rather not see it there
Than see the person I really want to be

I'm not trying to leave you honey
And I'm not trying to run
I don't want anybody else
But I'm not having any fun

9-2-06

the writer

2006-09-02T21:12:32Z

I'd give anything to walk through your head
I'd give anything to have you walk through mine
I know that I could give you hope
I know you could pull me through hard times

8-30-06

fear

2006-09-02T21:10:47Z

I know you want to smash your fist into my face
I know you want to make me bleed
I know you want to hear the bones break
Is this what love really means?

I know you want to fucking rape me
I know you want to make me beg
I know you want to hear me screaming
But I will close my mind
And I will close my legs

8-29-06

invisible girl

2006-09-02T21:09:33Z

When I was 4 years old I was left home alone
I wandered through my empty home and cried
I am the invisible girl
It was easy not to see me and to leave me

When I started school I disappeared on a school bus
I found myself cold and alone in a dark garage
I am the invisible girl
I was a mirage
So they left me sleeping

When I was 12 I had a teacher who never saw me
Hand in the air and calling her name
She looked beyond me
I am the invisible girl
And even my voice goes unheard

When I was 21 I was screaming for relief
Invisibility is so lonely
It leaves you clawing at the walls
I am the invisible girl
I have to save myself

I am the invisible girl
Look through me
Walk past me
Don't mind me
At all

8-28-06

I am stuck inside my head

2006-09-02T20:33:55Z

I think the reason that I idolize the people I do is not because I want to fuck them. It's because I want to be them.

I am stuck inside my head with no way to express it all. And no one who cares.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Throw it all away. I know I could do better.

6-11-06

untitled 5-14-06

2006-09-02T20:29:00Z

Give me just a second, baby
Show me that you love me
Look me in the eyes, baby
Show me that you see me

I've been invisible my whole life
I could go on like this forever
If one person would actually listen to me
I think I could get my head together

I understand you, why don't you understand me?
We're all caught up in our own little worlds
We never hear each other's hearts speak

5-14-06

random 4-26-06

2006-09-02T20:22:20Z

She's like a rabbit's foot
I like the luck she brings but I hate people to see her on my keychain
How fucked up is that?
I think maybe the fur has rubbed off and the luck is gone though
A bright shiny lucky penny might be nice

4-26-06

untitled 4-26-06

2006-09-02T20:20:20Z

When was it that I clipped my own wings?
Was it when I kissed you?
Maybe it wasn't at all your fault
Like a ball on a roulette wheel, I landed on you
I was still spinning when the dealer made the call

Give me a chance and I'll tear your heart out

* * *

I'm running and you hold the carrot
I'm the jackass that follows your lead
Every time I give up, you let me have it
Imagining I'm your trusty steed

Piss on me and call it rain
Baby, I'm not down for pain

Stop touching me like you love me
You only want security
I'm the most convenient target
Shoot your arrow, watch me bleed

Lies don't look good on you
Anger is much more flattering
Choke me like I know you want to
I'm better off dead the way I feel

* * *

Hope fades. Hunger doesn't.

4-26-06

untitled 4-24-06

2006-09-02T20:18:45Z

My cold feet are in your warm sheets
I can't decide if what's in your eyes
Is something I can live with forever
Wrong moves and fuck you's
And then I just wanna give up
But you're my best friend
I don't want that to end
Even if it makes me want to throw up

There might be something better than this
But the truth is I'm too chicken shit
To try and find my way to it

I won't say goodbye
I see my children in your eyes

4-24-06

inspiration: unknown - NCD

2006-09-02T20:10:22Z

The truth is I never stopped loving you. I locked it up inside, threw away the key, and put up a wall between us. You were so damn cold it felt like I didn't know you.
We started as little girls holding each others hands. We finished each other's sentences and laughed. It was us against the world and I was curled against your back.

If I could change it all, I would change it all. Either love you more or not love you at all. The bigger they come, the harder they fall. The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

Then I went and fucked it up beyond all recognition. It was her and you and her and I and never all together. I didn't see it coming and I felt powerless to stop her.
Where once we kept each other's secrets we were keeping secrets from each other. The guilt and shame still remains and will be there forever.

If I could change it all, I would change it all. Either love you more or not love you at all. The bigger they come, the harder they fall. The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

Yes, it's true, I never stopped loving you. In fact, I don't think I've loved someone more. I see you now and god, how I've missed you. But I know it won't be like before.
Still, I'll press on because it's getting better. There's something here that time and space can't break. If you promise to forgive me for the fucked up shit I've done, I'll promise not to make the same mistakes.

5-5-06