Decisions, Decisions

Due to the low-level security of cell phones, I hacked into my fathers cell phone in fifth grade (1999). My siblings and I found a startling reality: messages from other girls waiting to see my father. It didn’t surprise me that my father cheated on my mother. He worked constantly, and the times that I did get to see him he would sleep. Apparently, he had been having sex with a nineteen-year-old.

We all tried to inform my mother of the happenings, but she clouded herself with lies, hoping we told lies ourself. This went on for a while, and months later she found out we didn’t lie. I think she knew the truth all along. In September, they had a short separation then re separated. Eventually, he moved in with my uncle Rob until he moved in with the same woman he cheated on my mom with. He never introduced us, but we found out her name was Rachel.

This sent my mom beyond the veil, and I really haven’t seen her since then. But, we did have some fun when we saw the negatives for a pack of photos my dad took of us at the beach. There was a couple of pictures of Rachel, so we went off to the Walgreens and got one developed. I figured my dad could do better; she wasn’t very pretty in regards to her body or her face.

I think he was in the middle of his midlife crisis. Actually, I know he was. He shortly afterwards got a convertible. This ‘love’ lasted for a couple of years. I did like my dad under these conditions for a while. I saw him more than I did when he lived with me, and he always took us to do cool things when he came over. He worked at Disney and Universal, so we got into those parks quite frequently, we’d go mini-golfing, and sometimes we’d even go out to a dinner show. I didn’t really care that him and my mom split up, I was just pissed about how he screwed her over.

Soon, though, he wanted to move back into the house he had left behind. He ripped her off for the house, and she went to move in a couple of neighborhoods over. I was stuck between moving in with my mom who had lost her mind or moving in with my father who started becoming an asshole. I didn’t really want to move in with my dad, but I didn’t get along with my siblings. I also felt bad that nobody wanted to move in with him.

It wasn’t bad for the first few months. He stocked the cupboards with food I liked to eat; worked a lot, so I didn’t see him much; and didn’t give me any rules except to start going to school more often. I didn’t really have a problem with going to school at this point, skipping bored me. But, soon, he wanted to bring someone over. We called her the succubus. She bitched and moaned about each and every thing. Her kid annoyed me, but I did eventually care for him. He asked me whether or not I cared, if they moved in with us. To be honest, I have some weird anxiety whenever anyone asks me anything. I always say what people want to hear, it seems, which can be what I feel but not always. I am very indecisive. So, they moved in.

Each and every little thing brought on the havoc of Maria. It didn’t occur to me how obsessive compulsive people can get until I lived with her. I’d list specific examples, but whenever they speak I sort of just don’t pay any attention at all. The tone sets off my lack of care. I got sick of the whining and moaning, so one day at dinner I bitched at my parents and told them I was moving out. My father cried in his bed, and I had trouble not laughing. He always said I was too sensitive, but didn’t bother to mention he was a hypocrite. In the next couple of days, my father dropped me off at my moms. I couldn’t bring any of the furniture they bought me and whatnot, but I didn’t care. I just wanted out.

So, I got out.

Cardboard

There’s not much one can do for fun when he or she lacks money. One has to be inventive to come up with a free form of entertainment in a day and age where almost everything revolves around money. Minds have been spoiled into believing fun can not be had without expenses. Cardboard box sledding down a steep and long hill provides endless entertainment and exercise with the hike back up.

It’s 2004. None of us had cars, jobs, money for cars, driver’s licenses to drive the cars we didn’t have. But, we did have legs. Hunter, a pothead, Shaniqua, a Jewish-American princess, and I took the walk from my house on Hillside drive to go to the Target on HWY-50. The distance spread about 7 miles, so we decided we wanted to take a break at Whitney’s house (one of Shaniqua’s friends). Shaniqua called her on her cellphone when we got near her house, but they got into a fight and we just kept walking.

The humid Florida weather etched red into our skin as the sun burned our skin. The walk wasn’t so bad with people to talk to. Still, it stretched on and on, since summer and thirst brought on slowness. We took shortcuts through developments, walked through sandy terrain to-be paved into more and more houses, and crossed many busy streets to get to our destination. Soon, though, victory was ours.

We scanned the parking lot then went to the back to find a dumpster. We searched through the bacterial abyss for something rideable and got some possibilities. We rounded back to the hill and climbed all the way to the top, near a fence. The speed and sheer fun of rushing down a hill spread smiles on our faces. Another idea stuck our minds as we rode down. We brought our boxes back to the dumpster and instead took the huge plastic lids. Hunter also decided to grab a shopping cart.

Hunter had the bright idea to stand in the front of the shopping cart while he went down and ended up tumbling through the grass. This wasn’t enough, though, he still did it again and again. With the huge dumpster lids we had races, and instead of stopping at the curb like the cardboard they slid on the pavement. A worker went back and said that he didn’t care, if we did this, as long as we cleaned up our mess.

The sun soon went down, so we made our way back to my house. My home was essentially a second home for them.

Fun can be cheap.

Valentines day

Love is not in the air. Air is in the air. Wind is in the air. Carbon Monoxide is in the air. Airplanes are in the air. Smoke, fog, commercialism, anything but love is in the air. This post will not be about love.

Father’s cheating gave mother a lobotomy. She is addicted to pain killers and cocaine along with the alcohol that everyone else in the family loves. She lies constantly. She’s also tried to get my brother to snort with her. She wants to divorce her husband.

My stepdad smokes pot and drinks, but is probably the most stable due to being rather dumb. He writes music and lyrics.

Father is a fierce alcoholic and is in love with a lesbian. He hasn’t done anything for a couple of years. He worked at disney for 25 years, but got fired for fucking his boss (my stepmom)

My stepmother drinks but gets inebriated on working constantly and women. She left my dad last year for a woman.

My sister drinks and used to smoke pot. She talks about people behind their backs.

My brother drinks constantly and smokes pot. He also was/is addicted to oxy. He uses women.

My uncle can’t function on his own. He’s a sexual predator and decided he was giving up wiping his ass. He prefers to spend his money buying fonts and bibles.

Kelly does every drug she can get her hands on and wishes for the ones she can’t. She steals, drinks, and does whatever it takes to not have a job.

Scotty drinks and prefers the cock.

Scotty’s dad/brother (we aren’t sure), Scott, is pretty much the male equivalent of Kelly. Scott’s parents were in the mafia.

Jennifer drinks, but not as much as everyone else, and provides a stable living environment for me.

Julia and I are straightedge. Perhaps, that’s why we are the most depressed.

Welcome to my family!

Blood Isn’t Thick Enough

People use other people but usually don’t back talk them afterwards. This isn’t always the case, however. Those who are ballsy enough to take and not thank also can spread hate about the person they used. The words said aren’t necessarily truth at all. But, those words can also pierce the person’s being.

Both sides of my family are often in chaos, though very much more on my mother’s side. My grandparents died last year, and my uncle, Andy, and my aunt, Kelly, stayed in their trailer. The aunt that I live with, Jenny, has ownership over the trailer and finaces and basically holds the family together. My sister visited her not too long ago.

Sophie borrowed money and used my aunt as a means for transportation among other things such as a place to stay. Not once did she give a thank you or anything. The whole explosion with the psychiatrist and what needs to happen with Andy caused another struggle of power.

My sister decided to send Kelly an email. This said that Jennifer called my sister a liar on the fact of her molestation and this was the reason the same thing happened to her daughter. She also said that my aunt had never once done anything to her or helped her. This reminded me of the fact that my dad and stepmom said they treated her better, and she argued that they treated her worse than us.

Trust shouldn’t be given to blood.

Unstable

Emotional stability does not occur to everyone. Today, there are many people and many more people diagnosed every day with some kind of depression. Pills usually hold an answer for those that desire to take them. Not all of them help, but they can lessen the symptoms and whatnot. Sometimes they don’t help at all.

I’m not going to lie; I’m depressed most of the days I’m alive. It’s not that I don’t have what I want nor need. Perhaps, it’s genetic, because my brother and sister also struggle with bouts of depression. Sometimes, we’re knocked out, sometimes we win. My sister used to take pills for it, but I never did. I’m sure our depression wasn’t brought on from the constant alcoholism or divorce or anything else random that happened in our lives.

I didn’t even think of writing this as a topic until last night. Not that I wouldn’t have eventually got to it, but it totally reared its head again. A lot of people say I have a way with words, but poetry is different from speech. I slur my words, I trail off into random thoughts. I suppose that’s basically how my poetry is, but it makes more sense on paper. I also have a habit of making my own pronunciations when I know what the real one is.

What does my awesome speech impediment have to do with depression? Probably nothing. Let’s say I have a nice way with honesty and animosity against people in general. This leads to an often occurrence of me saying the wrong thing and making an ass out of myself. Not only that, but this causes me to lose the little amount of friends that I do have. This leads to depression. Depression causes me to be all emo.

It’s in my blood to fuck things up.

Identities erased

Someone once said that music a person likes is the soundtrack to his or her life. People’s taste comes fueled from the happenings in their life, their surroundings, and what they think of themselves. Many, many genres hold unique and different styles of expression, and new ones evolve from past ones into their own type of sound. Some say new music sucks, some say old music suck, and others say all music sucks. Those people obviously need to try something different.

I have never really been a big fan of the radio, though music has always been a huge part of my life. I did like it more before I found the music I truly enjoyed. My father listened to all of his old music, some classic rock, while I was younger, so I immediately loved AC/DC, Cheap Trick, and the like. I’m not so fond of them anymore; it’s not that I don’t like it, but I have changed over time.

My interests basically went from classic rock to Blink 182 when I got to about 4th or 5th grade. The whole punk, or pop-punk, filled my skateboard dreams with songs about rebellion, sex, and general guy things. This pointed me toward other bands such as The Ramones and the Misfits, and Tiger Army and whatnot. My brother and sister got into New Found Glory, but I never really enjoyed them much. Jimmy Eat World became one of my favorite bands. I also liked and still like musicals, but only certain ones really get stuck in my brain. I’d say Phantom of the Opera haunts me the most, because Sarah Brightman is love.

After I grew out of the whole punk scene, about the time I got into 7th grade, I got into more indie bands. Bright Eyes helped me through hard times, though listening now I kind of feel rather emo. Brand New also played often. Indie broke through this with bands such as Rilo Kiley, Broken Social Scene (my favorite band), and the Decemberists. Garage rock also played often with bands such as The Thermals and The White Stripes. Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service are also big hits as well as an intense obsession with David Bowie. Of course, I don’t feel like naming every band, because that would take far too long to write.

Lately, with writing, I find instrumental music to be the best, as I have a bad habit of messing up sentences by writing part with my thought then pasting a lyric here or there without my intention. Do Make Say Think, Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, God is an Astronaut, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Broken Spindles, Russian Circles, Nine Inch Nails, of Montreal, Reverie Sound Revue, The Strokes, Emily Haines (well, I suppose all the artists from Broken Social Scene), and many many others have influenced me more than I could have ever asked. Their music is also a likely reason I haven’t offed myself. (Not that I want to, but music always helps during hard times)

There’s music in every genre I listen to. I don’t have anything against anything in particular. I do listen to a lot of post-rock and indie most of all, though.

Music is life.

Divorce # 1

Marriage doesn’t last until death much these days. It seems that the divorce rate increases more and more each year. Parents either force their child to decide who they want to live with or don’t give them an option. People marry for security instead of love, and that’s the main problem with marriage today.

As a child, I created havoc quite often. My parents locked all of the Christmas presents in this huge green locker, and I found a key then looked at all the stuff we were getting. I’ll go into detail more on that another day. When I was in eighth grade, I skipped 45 days of school (a whole nine weeks.) They wanted me to go to court, but I went there and acted all depressed. They dropped the charges. Now, you might be asking what the hell any of this has to do with divorce and whatnot.

Well, in the midst of creating havoc, I hacked into my dad’s voicemail. This wasn’t very hard, because my siblings and I are smart enough to get passed not very safe-guarded passwords. What we found was striking: he was cheating on my mom with a young, young woman at work. Don’t get me wrong– I have nothing wrong against huge age gaps. Christine was 16 years older and my lovely British chipmunk is 30 years older.

Nobody ever seems to trust anything we say until after the fact. So, my mom sort of blew us off for a few months until she found out herself. Chaos ensued. First, my dad went to stay with his friend for a few weeks then came back. Eventually, he moved in with my uncle Rob until he moved in with the same woman he cheated on my mom with. He never introduced us, but we found out her name was Rachel, she was four years older than my sister at the time, so she was 19, 19 years younger than my father.

This sent my mom beyond the veil, and I really haven’t seen her since then. But, we did have some fun when we saw the negatives for a pack of photos my dad took of us at the beach. There was a couple of pictures of Rachel, so we went off to the Walgreens and got one developed. I figured my dad could do better; she wasn’t very pretty in regards to her body or her face. I think he was in the middle of his midlife crisis. Actually, I know he was. He shortly afterwards got a convertible.

This ‘love’ lasted for a couple of years. I did like my dad under these conditions for a while. I saw him more than I did when he lived with me, and he always took us to do cool things when he came over. He worked at Disney and Universal, so we got into those parks quite frequently, we’d go mini-golfing, and sometimes we’d even go out to a dinner show. I didn’t really care that him and my mom split up, I was just pissed about how he screwed her over.

Stop labeling every intimate feeling love, and I think the world will be a better place.

A Second Vision

Writing is only part of the work to produce something wonderful. One must also edit and revise, rewrite, and proofread their work. Creation must be mastered, but a step in spit shining the work should also be worked upon. A first draft is just that: a first draft. Real writers understand that their first thought needs to be poked for any possibilities before choosing the right one.

The key problem in me writing anything is that I don’t have the drive to perfect my mistakes. For some reason, I don’t want to edit it when I feel too close to it, but I feel wrong editing something really old because I don’t feel connected to it whatsoever. Almost every time I do get into revising, I either like the original better or think both are trash. I keep wanting to revise, but I prefer to create more than to revise past mistakes with the hopes of creating something that won’t need to be revised.

This problem holds me from actually writing something worth reading. I’m hoping to somehow overcome this by forcing myself once a week or so to edit something. I don’t have to like my revisions, but I think I will eventually like them once my skill in revision intensifies. I am a person, so of course I’m imperfect. I do have the drive to write often. I write poems, short pieces of fiction, this, and most of the time I’m working on a novel draft I’ll never finish, a play that goes totally off the wall, or something completely different. I think my problem is that I never have writer’s block really, so I don’t have a problem creating. A lot of people can’t think of what to write so they fix old pieces.

Note that this wasn’t revised.

Is this it?

Parents provide basic needs for their children until they are old enough to do it themselves. Sure, a child may not get all that they want, but a parent does their best to give them exactly what they need. Perhaps, ends don’t meet one time or another. The parents still tries to put their children before them with basic needs. One would think this would be common sense, but some parents think otherwise.

Mother and father did provide for me and what not, but my mother lost her mind when my father cheated on her. This caused her to think of nothing except her next drink, and us three children would sometimes suffer because of it. Still, I moved with my mother, because my dad and soon-to-be stepmom treated me badly. I couldn’t pinpoint in one way, if you asked me, but being around them pained me emotionally and physically.

At Hillside, the first house I moved in with my mom at, we always had food. Sometimes, this food would stay on the counters and maggots would appear, but we’d just need to toss out the problem and everything would be okay.

The house on Sunset was a totally different story. Hunger woke me quite frequently. I’d stumble downstairs, check the cabinets downstairs, then bitch, frustrated. There was to solutions to my problem: I could scour my house for money or go to a friend’s house and eat. I would do the latter when I could stand walking quite a distance, but it wasn’t as convenient as when they lived down the street.

To get there, I had to cross HWY. 50 which was all but impossible even with a walk sign telling you when to go. Drivers didn’t seem to understand what a red light meant. I had to proceed through the hood and finally arrive there a half an hour or so later. Most of the time, I would give up that notion and bark at my mother on her conveniently turned off cell phone to get me something to eat.

This resulted in a fight, and sometimes I’d walk over to the bar to make a fool out of her. Nobody seemed to care, though. Everyone was drunk, and everyone loved my mom. I could go on about how their faces and bodies looked, but I averted my eyes before I could get a good look. Oh boy, some even tried talking to me.

When my mom’s friend moved in, we started having food again. I’m not saying my mom totally didn’t get us food at all, but it wasn’t all the time. This also wasn’t long before she got her DUI and I got shipped to Puerto Rico.

I’m alive, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

Stillness

Movement and exercise can help a person’s blood flow smoothly. Something about running fills some minds with a happiness that person cannot describe. The euphoria inside the brain removes any negatives. On the other hand, some do not feel any of this. The thought of exercise can be that of pain and smelliness.

My body has never been that active. Of course, I played outside, but I still spent the majority of my time playing video games. This is due to laziness and the pain caused by my very unhealthy diet that once consisted of little more than soda and chips. Still, my body always stayed small.

My rampant obsession with the internet moved me less and less, and eventually I didn’t play outside at all. My only form of exercise was that in PE, but I sat down where I couldn’t be seen whenever I could. Body odor and pain did not equal that of a few more years in life. Especially, since I’m not the most positive person out there.

More and more soda went down my throat. Constant visits to the dentist ensued, and later in life I had to have a few root canals. They didn’t hurt one bit. Caffeine didn’t ever affect me much. I hoped it would keep me up just a few more hours, hours that didn’t exist.

Stillness held much more relaxation for me. Twitchy fingers became my only form of exercise in my life through guitar, typing, and video games. Of course, my left hand likes to hurt every now and then.

I did stop drinking soda cold turkey. I figured, if I’m not going to exercise, I might as well do something that will help my body. I do take walks every once in a while to clear my mind. It helps when I am stuck on a poem or with what to write next.

Being still is the only thing that stops my heart from exploding.