Somebody’s Child – 41 Months

Prison.
You worked hard to get to this. Ten arrests in three quarters of a year, dozens of charges, half of them felonies. It still took all it took to get you actual prison time.
41 months.
You won’t be out real soon, even with good behavior.
Prison.
As sick as it makes me, all anyone really feels now is relief. For themselves, for you.
I don’t check every day now to make sure the sticks are in the windows. I don’t sleep with the 44 anymore when I’m here alone, though your friends, the real danger, are still in and out. But I don’t worry about you robbing my neighbors. And I don’t wait for the phone call telling me somebody’s dead.

Your life will never be the same now, but I doubt you’ve totally grasped that. I doubt you get that you won’t be able to just pick back up where you hadn’t even started to go. I don’t think you know yet that you won’t be able to return to old relationships as they used to be, or that you can never “go home”, or ever turn back the clock.

I doubt you know that I held your four year old boy on Christmas day, and that he announced to the room that his Mommy will be out of jail by his birthday. He’s not sure when that is, but he’s sure Mommy will be out of jail then. She won’t be, but he’s been convinced.
I doubt he knows that Daddy has 41 months. I doubt he knows Mommy’s not far behind. Of course he doesn’t know. He’s four.
Your three year old, remember him? He’s a baby. A baby holding a stocking. They both are. There’s a picture of them both in my phone from the day, holding Christmas stockings of goodies.
They don’t scream and hit as much, and they seem to like being held more. They’ve been away from you for so long now, they’ve calmed down alot. No one’s driving them around, smoking meth and oxy in the front seat while they sit strapped in their carseats in the back seat.

Healing is possible. There’s always that hope. It takes alot for some people, but it happens.
What stops some people, isn’t even a blip on the screen for others. I don’t know what it will take for you. I know it isn’t losing your kids, and it isn’t ten arrests. I can tell you it takes alot of determination to change, to get clean and stay clean, to learn everything anew. It takes alot. There are still drugs even in prison.
But it takes something more than just determination as well. It takes surrender, and a changing of the heart. Some people must become completely broken before that happens, some just never will find it. Many just die first.
Sadly, they take others with them, too. Some of those they take don’t lose their whole lives, just find themselves derailed into a wreck not of their own choice or making. Some of those they take end up heartbroken, or with a broken spirit, and some grow up with a twisted notion of what love is….”Mommy will be out of jail by my birthday.”
Mommy won’t be out of jail by then. Mommy is going where you went when you “got out of jail.” She’s going to prison.

This is your chance. It’s the only one you have left. You can choose what you want to take from prison; who you want to end up being, what you want to become now. No one else can choose that for you. It isn’t going to be easy. You gave away so many of your rights, but you do still have that choice. I hope you choose well. You may not get another chance to choose.

PS- B? I can’t forgive you yet. I know I have to, but I’m not there yet. And I don’t want to see you, or write to you. I don’t want to think about the fallout that’s in all our lives from your selfish actions. You didn’t care what you did to us, and you would have taken everything if I didn’t get this way. I am responsible for protecting so much for so many others, and you would’ve taken it all; you would have ruined me, and them. As it is you took so much, and I don’t just mean the shit you stole and pawned and sold. You destroyed things so much deeper than that.
And you know what? People felt sorry for you. But you didn’t feel sorry for the people you hurt. Good people who worked so hard for what they had, people that were trying to do the right things. And I don’t think you feel sorry for them now, either. I think you feel sorry for yourself.
I can’t forgive you yet. I can’t pray for you either. But I know others do, and I believe in the power of that. I don’t begrudge you that. Maybe one day I will be able to pray for you, too.
What I can say is that I wish you well; I wish you a better life than what you’ve made yours into. One in which you can use what you have been, to be something better. And I guess that is a kind of prayer. It’s the best one I have right now.

Read Full Post »

Somebody’s Child-The Attic

I got the phone call, and she said, “Have you seen the paper? The front page.”
I heard myself, surprised myself even, because it was like it wasn’t my own voice. “No. Aw, God…no…Fuck. No. Please.”

I felt myself sinking down; a part of me hit my knees. But in truth, you could have watched me and seen. I kept working, only missed a beat. If you knew me well, you’d see I was pale, breathing hard. But I stayed upright, and busy with my hands and feet and eyes. The weirdness of carrying on, knowing the world might stop turning, didn’t escape me.

And then the rest she told me, what she knew. And again I wondered how I can care at all, when I know I have stopped caring. When I know that in the end, the terrible news will come. Just not this time, not yet.

They called you a wanted man. They spelled your name right this time; the same as mine.

Of course they got a tip. I told you long ago, “Your friends are not your friends.” You know that’s what happened. They will make sure you take a fall, because you’ve just got too much dirt, all of you. You’re not really safe, in or out. But out, we know there’s just no good end. If you don’t bring it to yourself, someone else will bring it.

They found you in the attic, underneath the insulation. Damn, that must have been itchy as hell. Especially since I’m pretty sure they dragged you from under it and all over the hell in it. Cops have a tendency to shove your face down in shit when you hide from, fight with, or run from them. I’d say from the look on your face in your latest [picture in the gallery], that didn’t feel so good. You don’t look really happy; like you just rubbed your face in fiberglass or something. I’ll bet you’re still itching.

You’re not dead. We’d heard you were, more than once. When the crazy bitch who says she’s your mother told us you were in the morgue, waiting for fingerprint analysis…a sickening wait…
You know she lies, you know not to trust her…but there it is. You hear things like that, and you go on about your business, knowing this time there could be a truth. And you just try not to listen.
Or I do. Try. You, you don’t give it much thought. She’ll still send you money, and that’s what you think about.

It isn’t over. Only the sickening wait of finding you is over-for right now. The wondering if you’ll be found just like you were, or in some unspeakable other way. And I try not to think about what else…what will be learned, found, tied to you. The only thing sure is that it isn’t over.

Read Full Post »

Voices

The words begin while I sleep. Sometimes the volume climbs until I cannot turn away, until I wake, scared and breathless. If I can’t trick the voices into silence first. If I can’t hear them coming before they get too loud. If I don’t have time to turn up the music and color I might be dreaming just then. This is why they catch me in my sleep. They have time to slither in, to make me look, to hear, to get my attention, before I know to tell them, “Be gone.”
Once I awake, they win, and they climb in speed and in their insistence to be heard, their sheer numbers, all saying something different, all demanding attention, and yet all saying some version of the same thing. Yammering, a cacophony of warnings, reprimands, condemnations. Be afraid, they tell me. It’s all up to you, they say; only you can fix all this.
But I cannot.
I sit with shaking hands then, and I pray. I call to the God I know, in all his glory, to put his covering on me and every single thing I see, touch, know, hold. I ask to see what is real, for my eyes to be healed from the pictures the voices conjure, pictures that are not true, but made to convince me I am lost, alone, crippled forever.
I ask for forgiveness for doubting, for hiding, for hating my truths, for buckling in the face of those voices and the world itself that tells me I am wrong. Wrong to believe, wrong to love, wrong to follow my dreams and my heart and my soul. Forgiveness for believing the torment, the words of the voices and the world.
It is only a torment when I stop believing the real truth, when I doubt.
I am not crazy. I don’t really think there are voices that tell me what to do, that tell me I am doomed, defective, unworthy; that tell me there’s no point in going on because the same things will always happen and I know I cannot bear a lifetime of that. They tell me that too; that I could never stand up to a lifetime of what I’ve already seen.
Everything they say, has a piece of truth in it. That’s the hard part, the reason I hear it at all. The voices; I know they are a part of me, the doorways to my brain and heart and soul that anything and anyone can use to crush me.
Everybody knows that the best lies, insults, threats, always have a little bit of the truth to them, even if they’re mostly lies. That would still make them lies. We, I, don’t have to listen. But it’s awful hard sometimes.
So, I thank him, for the power to say, “No.” I will not listen, I will not be defeated, I will not give in, give up, give out, and I will not be denied. And I swear, he hears me, he restores me, when I think I cannot go on again. He lifts me, when I think I will just lay down, and stop getting up. He heals my eyes, and I see the red tailed hawk that crosses my path each time I am here again; the night hunting owl, that shows herself, the recognition in the stranger’s eyes, the coincidence of the same song being played, almost uninterrupted, all the places I go. A seemingly meaningless thing, just for me. I see, I hear. I say, “Yes.” and I thank him. My heart soars, and I am grateful to feel, to know.
The things I see, hear, they are a blessing. Or are they a burden, a curse? They seem invisible, silent; only I know. They are undeniable, deafening, only I can decide. Blessing, or curse? But I can never say they don’t exist.

Read Full Post »

Replacements

Till death do us part.

But what if one parts before then?

Do you die, so you can make it right? So you don’t have to break a vow?

Life goes on—that’s the brutal fact you just can never get around, not alive anyway. It did for me, no matter how long I grieved. It went on around me, while I felt dead. I wanted to be dead. Still, it went on.

I lived, and found out one can’t live and not be alive. Least I can’t. So, I began to live, tired of dying.

I didn’t replace you. I found a new life, a new love. Something more than what I was missing, and finally I didn’t miss it anymore. I didn’t miss you. I didn’t want what I’d had.

What I had missed was what I’d thought we’d had, cruelly ripped away from me with a scar put in it’s place. A scar everyone could see. A scar of ugly self hate, slow to heal at all, festering with the delusion that I was deserving of the abuse you gave. But what we really had was just a chapter in a story—your story, made up along the way to fit your needs. Your needs, disguised as ours. You lied about that more than anything else, and you lied about almost everything.

You left me with a sawed off stump, my amputated ego hanging by shreds of aching skin.

In the words of an old song we’ve both heard, “I Wouldn’t Treat a Dog” the way you treated me.

The magnitude of raw hurt I felt for years may have made it difficult for me to trust again, to really love and give myself to anyone. But it didn’t mean I wouldn’t, eventually. I did.

Till death do us part.

But you see, that died; I died, who you were to me died. I grieved, died, lost another chunk of myself here and there as time went on—the old rotting illusion of our marriage would shrivel and fall away, just drop off in chunks whenever I least expected. New little deaths, over and over. And by the time they finally all fell off I was so sick of the disease of them that I wanted them to go, even while it was still painful to let them go. And it usually was. Pieces of my identity went along. My belief system went along. My hope went along. And my ability to fall in love went along as well. So I imagined.

But know something here; I wasn’t really dead. Only pieces and parts of me, the pieces that you could still touch, the pieces you’d told me were me. Well, they’re not me.

I’ve spent some time backtracking, walking parallels of paths I took after you left me broken and bleeding. I didn’t set out to follow these old times, more they came to me, and called me out. Only after the fact can I see that they did so because I was finally ready to give all of myself to someone. It was necessary to see where I’d been since you changed how I saw love. And it was shocking how many wrong turns I made just trying to distance myself from what happened. Just trying to heal.

I visited those old spaces, places, loves, and found quickly that whatever stray parts of me were still laying about lost fit handily in a basket, nothing more than I could carry, although the basket seemed really large at the time. Later when I picked up the basket, it felt small and looked hardly a thing to hold so much woe, yet it was the same basket. And it was easily set down.

Finally one day all those stray, misshapen, fallen apart pieces, they were all gone. The little basket was just empty. I felt naked, and surprisingly light. Uncertain, too young to be the age that I am, I stepped up to my life. And love was waiting for me. I didn’t know I was waiting for it too. Sometimes we have to die a little, in order to really live. Life goes on. Life begins anew.

Read Full Post »

Lies

Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen.

Maimonides

Read Full Post »

Twist

“I’m doing this for you.”

                              –Last words of a sociopath

Read Full Post »

On the Inside

I saw you on the inside

From where I used to live

I saw you where you hide

From my perfect fit

I saw the secrets in your heart

The ones you’re loath to show

I always saw most everything

You didn’t let me know

 

I kept the faith we both did pledge

I never gave a clue

From way back then I always knew

I could see right through

I gave you every chance there is

To just be something more

I watched you when you made your choice

To take the lowest road

 

You saw me on the inside

From where you used to live

You saw me where I cried

Nothing left to fit

You saw the secrets of my heart

The ones you loathed to hold

You always wanted everything

I didn’t let you know

Read Full Post »

Injustice

What are you going to do? Arrest me? I’ve been myself for this long now, how could you think I would stop? And I never could stand injustice.

It’s been said that when I believe in something, I’m like a dog with a bone. Not the most flattering analogy, but likely true. In fact, I believe it was you that said it first.

Try and get it away from me. Go ahead.

Then there was also your description of me as “relentless”. Why would I change my ways now? I’m just getting started.

What are you going to do? Write something about me? I’ve got my own stories. And mine are all true.

 

Gotcha.

 

        

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Waiting On Him

She waits

Counting hours

Days

Weeks

She’ll wait

It’s been a year now

She’s waiting

For him

 

She stays

Counting fears

Doubts

Assurances

He’ll stay

For all those tears now

She’s staying

For him

 

She hates

Counting signs

Red flags

Hunches

She hates them

There are so many

Waiting

On him

Read Full Post »

The Why

There is no understanding “Why”.

Trying to comprehend, with a compassionate heart, the incomprehensible; the compassionless. It will make you crazy. 

All that needs understood is more stark and brutal than I like to be, but it is the truth still; there are people in the world who cannot be filled or satisfied. Ever. The closest they come is momentary, and it comes from control, which makes them important, makes them matter.

They don’t care who they hurt or whether it’s wrong to do the things they do. It’s all about them; there is no real concience inside. Only the rules and tools they have learned to get them what they need and want. This emptiness, combined with a lack of remorse, compassion, concience, makes for a very hungry and potentially vicious creature. Some are more talented in feeding themselves than others, and not all who lack a concience become criminal. It all depends on what they want, what gives them that momentary, fleeting sense of satisfaction, but it will always be about what they want over anything else that should matter. Especially you. Especially if you have something they want. And they often do want what they cannot have.

Many wear their emptiness , their discontent, as some badge of honor, their persona one of being so rich, creative, intelligent, and individual that the mundane and real life challenges and joys of other people do not apply to them, do not touch them. They are not sheep and have no need to deceive themselves with the banal like those asleep people.

Many also become adept at displaying the traits of actually having compassion, for they study others and learn that it’s a great cover for not giving a shit about anybody at all. They also learn it get’s them alot of ground with the most vulnerable of marks.

For the truly discontented, the misunderstood, the vulnerable, this blend of learned tactics in the concienceless can cause us to volunteer, or at least repeatedly abide destructive and selfish behavior, even as our instincts scream at us  to RUN AWAY. Because, it seems, someone finally understands us. It’s even worse if you have ever been a “runner”, for now you want to, for once, just stay. And they want you to stay, return, let them in, because you are their source of food. Emotional, spiritual, literal, whatever. You are a source, nothing more. Yes, that’s brutal, and always true to the sociopath.

I say “us”, because I have been this one; one who was dragged into a pit so deep and wide I could not see the sky; all because I believed I could apply understanding to another who is motivated by twisting people into mental and spiritual pretzels. My worst mistake; trying to put myself in their shoes, when it can’t be done. It’s like believing a snake is not a snake, but a human that slithers. A snake is a snake and does snake things. My interpretation of the snake has nothing to do with it’s snake-ness, and never did.

Here’s how I healed myself, took back my life: I stopped believing the story, the excuses, the tragedy of it all, all those reasons the person hurt others, all the reasons it wasn’t their fault they did what they do, all those reasons they are “wounded”, confused, torn, jaded, and self destructive. I stopped believing in the allure, the glamor of their darkness and failures. I ignored their “potential” [which was a convenient way of covering alot of "nevers"] It is all a convenient and learned application to blur and cover their selfish destruction of everything they cannot attain, yet cannot accept responsibility for not having, because they believe they should have whatever they want. Simple. At whatever cost to you. At no real cost to themselves, besides playing the game well.

I stopped believing they are victims of their own crappy lives. Many have had crappy lives and have used what they’ve learned to create so much good. And sociopaths have no problem using every tool to their advantage when they are securing a victim to use, in fact, they can become very persistant. They are not inert, powerless, helpless. Just selfish. Just lacking in character. Just not motivated by anything but greed. Those lacks cannot be taught to one who does not want to learn them. There may be something missing in them, but there is also choice, and they’re not crazy. They do know what they’re doing.

This is not bitterness speaking, for I am long past the brush of bitterness beginning in me. I have survived the chasm of coldness, aloneness, self doubt and anguish the sociopath left me to dig out of. I grew through the pains of learning to love and trust after seeing the truth of what one like this can do. It took me a long time, but I made it; I got better, I got stronger. And I love, feel, and care as fiercely as I can. The sociopath stole from me, I won’t let him rip me off in my ability to love too. I’m alive. My heart is alive. My spirit is intact. I won’t become like he; dead inside.

Know this: they are not like us, and trying to understand will be the consumption of all efforts to understand anything, which would be better applied elsewhere. There isn’t understanding, just identifying, just seperation. Just moving on,  and becoming you again. I believe in you.

Read Full Post »