NaPoWriMo: write a poem about the people who inspired you to write poems
April PAD Challenge: write a form poem
notes
I think the shape above is a chess pawn. It started out as a simple diamante but turned into what you see. It is what it is.
This poem addresses my late father. He was a professor of literature and humanities who also taught technical writing. I was a precocious little skidmark who learned to read and write by the time I was four years old. I think my father believed that this prodigious spark meant that I was destined for greatness. He read poetry to me. I started reading Edgar Allan Poe's works when I was six years old.
My father wound up tremendously disappointed in me. I was a fuckup who could never do anything right and I had a slew of psychological problems. I was singled out and abused by my peers. I married too young. I had one abusive relationship after another. I engaged in self-harm. Possibly, worst of all, between a fucked endocrine system and years of yo-yo dieting, I ended up fat. My father believed that being fat was a sign of failure. He always went to great lengths to prevent himself from being fat. He ran six miles a day for many years. However, his vascular system was a disaster. He had a major hemorrhagic stroke at 68 years old. At the time of his death at age 74, he had suffered several more strokes, had congestive heart failure and vascular dementia, and was confined to a wheelchair.
If anyone's first inclination is to tell me "cHeEr Up, U cAn StiLLL LUz3 tEh WaTeZ!!111!!!" my suggestion to you is to check the ever-loving fuck out of yourself. Preferably on ice during a hockey game. I tried to hate myself thin for 33 years. With my endocrine problems, it is highly unlikely that I will ever be thin unless I do what my great-grandmother did. She developed acute myelogenous leukemia, dropped from 300 pounds to 95 in the space of a year, and dropped dead. But hey, she cut a svelte figure in her coffin, and, apparently, that's the only fucking thing that counts. Never mind that she was now, you know, DEAD.
In any case, I'm not going to waste another goddamn minute of my time trying to hate myself into the body that other people think I'm supposed to have. Thirty-three years of that shit is long enough. People who think I, or anyone else should do that, can slam down a hot, steaming cup of STFU, read the following fine books, and fuck off forever. Or if you're not a brainwashed, narrow-minded asswipe and you simply think: "say, those books look like they have some good information," you can read them while drinking what you want and omit the fucking off part. I'd think that was pretty cool.
I didn't want to write about romantic love. (Blech.) So I decided to write about one of the two things I loved very much as a child. My first experience with death involved finding a butterfly still on the sidewalk on a cold, rainy day while walking with my father at three years old. I was devastated.
Fifty-two years have gone by since then. My father is now gone too.
This time, I was a disobedient jerk-face on purpose. I was inspired to write this entire Tanka rather than a Tan Renga. You are still welcome to throw overripe produce at me.
People, you know me. I am not the sort to write heartwarming, Chicken Soup for the Soul, grateful for God and family and Better Homes and Gardens type poetry. I am an agnostic curmudgeon, and the only miracle here is that I'm still alive. They ain't found a way to kill me yet, and neither have I. I believe there is something that survives the death of the corporeal body, and I believe there are advanced spiritual forces which could be termed higher powers. I don't like the Church God, and although I'm willing to judge his followers on a case by case basis, I tend to be mightily skeptical of them.
I was raised Catholic and am the black sheep of a family that tried way too hard to keep up appearances. Today is the ninth anniversary of my father's passing. Although we had a sometimes contentious relationship and he passed his own insecurities down to me, he was a devoted father and I love him. I am glad he isn't suffering anymore. The last five years of his life were increasingly difficult. In the end, he really wasn't himself anymore.
I want to call my mother today. My mother is a loyal person who is too wrapped up in keeping up appearances to see the damage that mindset does. She has no idea who I actually am or what I'm really doing because anytime I have tried to tell her, she shuts me down and criticizes me, so I just let her think what she wants.
My brother and I were once the greatest of friends but now have a civil but distant relationship.
I love my son with all my heart and soul. There are some hurts from the past from when my mental illness was as yet undiagnosed and my behavior was chaotic.
Leonard Cohen wrote the line "It's Father's Day and everybody's wounded."
I think the same could be said for most holidays.
If you're having a Better Homes and Gardens Thanksgiving, that's great, and I hope you enjoy it. I would just ask that you realize that this is not the case for everyone, and those of us who are unable to have Shiny Happy Holidays are not bad people or just feeling sorry for ourselves for attention. The hurt is real.
Just to lighten the load a bit, here's one of my favorites:
Today we were asked to revise a Haiku by Masaoka Shiki (14 October 1867 - 19 September 1902). I believe my verse is more an interpretation inspired by Shiki's original poem than a revision. In a time gone by nearly 50 years ago now, my father (31 May 1936 - 28 November 2010) would play his guitar and sing old railway and folk songs. The ninth anniversary of my father's passing is tomorrow and I wrote this poem to honor him.
Today's Carpe Diem prompt involved revising this well-known Haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694).
old pond
a frog jumps into
the sound of water
Today's Mindlovemisery's Menagerie prompt was crystals. We were asked to follow traditional Haiku rules, but, sorry, no can do when such a stellar Senryu using both prompts has hijacked my synapses!
I dreamed that my wonderful cat Trinity, whom I had to have put to sleep three years ago on November 9 due to brain and lung cancer, was here with me. November 9, 2016, was a garbage day in history. I lost my great friend on that day, and Lord Dampnut was elected "president." It was a terrible time to be alive.
She was such a special cat. I miss her big, chonky body, her big, chonky personality, and her big, loud purr.
The Hokku stanzas of these Tan Renga were created by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016). The Ageku were created by me.
When I was writing my Ageku, I was remembering my childhood in New Mexico between the ages of four and ten.
It wasn't idyllic by any means. We were very poor. But we did have a half-acre of land, and we had chickens and fruit trees and we grew corn and beans.
We also ate a lot of stuff like boiled soybeans and buckwheat groats. I still like buckwheat groats. You could put a bit of butter and honey on them and they tasted good. However, to this day, I loathe boiled soybeans. I would eat my shoe before I would ever eat another boiled soybean.
I knew I was weird and different from a very young age. These days doctors would probably put me on Ritalin and antidepressants. One did try to put me on phenobarbitol when I was a year and a half old because I didn't sleep for crap. My mother said it had the opposite effect and I was awake for three days straight.
It probably put me into a manic state. It may even have been what triggered the onset of my bipolar disorder. Any doctor who would instruct a parent to give phenobarbitol to a child needs a damn good whacking, and nothing will change my mind about that.
You happier chappies are probably saying "ugh, there goes that gloomy old Cie with another gloomy poem." But I don't think this poem is gloomy. I think it's real.
I worked in long-term care for most of the 25 years that I was in the medical field. I think that people who work in this setting tend to become very adamant that we do not want to end up dying in a medicalized setting.
My father died in a hospice center. It was a peaceful place with a spacious, comfortable room. He was in constant pain and losing his capacity to think and remember things. It was much better than being in a hospital or nursing home. But for myself, I don't want my end to be even that medicalized. I want to look out the window and see my Lone Prairie before I rise up and walk away on the wind that constantly blows in these parts.
"Dagnabit, Ornery, ya morbid ole cuss! Ya done went and made Cactus Clem gloomy with all yer chatter about croakin'. Now, I know I'm a ghost, but I've been a ghost fer near to 110 years. We ghosts like to whoop it up on Halloween night, but I ain't gonna be doin' much whoopin' it up if I've gotta be tryin' to cheer Cactus Clem up. So, what the heck are you gonna do about it?"
In 2001, the first year that my son and I were in the mobile home (the one we are now clearing out to sell), we had a problem with mice. Fortunately, we also had a mousetrap.
Our mousetrap was the big gray and white guy, although he was still a juvenile then. His name was Raymond (2001 - 2018). One of my co-workers took in a pregnant cat. Raymond, seen here with his brother Leon (2001 - 2017) was one of the kittens. Leon, obviously, was another of the same litter.
One day Raymond dropped on my pillow what I thought was the back half of a catnip mouse. I was half right. There was no "catnip" to this mouse. I screamed and hurried the mouse ass outside. I can only reason that Raymond ate the head and figured that it would be kind to offer me the butt.
Raymond caught a couple more mice. Then the mice must have gotten savvy to the fact that there was a cat in the house and stopped coming around.
I had to have Raymond put to sleep when he was 17. He had tumors all over his body including his digestive tract and in his forehead. I probably shouldn't have waited as long as I did.
Leon had to be put to sleep a few months prior. He developed feline infectious peritonitis, which puzzled me because I never let my cats outside, except for Isis, who was semi-feral and I couldn't keep her in. The vet said that the FIP had probably been dormant in Leon's system for his entire life. It can sometimes take many years for it to become active.
Anyway, I never was keen on the bone-crusher type of mousetrap. If you don't have a mouse-head-eater like Raymond living in your house and you have mice, try a humane trap like Ghost Town Grover sells in his general store. If you order through the link, we earn a small commission.
Some sundowns rise on another day of loss and one day set forever on a self ravaged by a broken mind.
~Cie~
Note:
Sundowning is a term for confusion in a dementia patient which worsens as evening comes on. Towards the end of his life, my father, who had vascular dementia, was sundowning. He confused reality with events on television.
My father was a college professor. I have cared for more than one college professor or other people whose work revolved around using their mind who ended up with dementia. The junk science sharticles which proclaim that exercising your mind helps prevent dementia make me see liquid murder.
You know what helps prevent dementia? Not having the DNA trigger for dementia coded in your genetic makeup. You could watch nothing but reruns of Jersey Shore and the Flavor of Love for your entire life and not end up with dementia if the trigger for dementia isn't in your DNA. I don't recommend it, but you could.
Dementia is horrible. It destroys lives. The least we could do is not insult those suffering from dementia and their caregivers and loved ones by publishing victim-blaming crap.
Image created by The Real Cie
Copyright taysuffocation @deviantart.com
I'm hoping one day to get this tattooed on my arm in honor of my father
I'm not much for the whole "content warnings on everything" culture, but to avoid that blasted criticism, I will tell you that what I'm writing here is not going to be pretty, so if you feel like you might be upset by discussions of topics such as suicide and suicide ideation, you can give this post a miss.
I have an online friend whose name is Richard. Richard has autism. At one point, he wrote a post which said he hears people say all the time that they support people with autism and would never bully or hurt anyone who is autistic. He followed this up with the statement that a lot of these people are probably unaware of the times when they have been interacting with someone who was autistic and decided that it was okay to bully or belittle that person because that person was "just weird."
I cannot write a first-hand account of what it means to be misjudged and treated poorly as a person with autism, because I don't have autism. My son does. However, members of my extended family like to tell me that he doesn't, because he's high-functioning. He doesn't show signs of being overstimulated when he's in public. In their words, he's "just shy," he "just needs to come out of his shell," he "just needs to put himself out there." "He's intelligent, it's about damn time he went back to school/found a job." "You baby him too much."
If I don't listen to what my son is saying and ignore the fact that he's becoming overstimulated, he shuts down on me and it's hard for me to open communication with him again.
My son went to a school where people were taught to be understanding and accepting of one another's differences. My friend Richard wasn't so lucky. A lot of people are not.
A whole lot of years ago, I learned about a very unusual fellow by the name of Per Ohlin. If he were still alive, he would be 50 years old now. However, he died from a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head when he was 22 years old.
There is a lot of misinformation about this unfortunate soul floating around. After reading a fair bit about him from people who actually knew him, such as his brother and the few real friends he had, I believe that he may have been autistic. Per's brother said that Per would become hyper-focused on whatever task he was working on and get very upset at being interrupted from what he was doing. Although highly intelligent, he performed very poorly in school.
Per's classmates in his early years accepted his idiosyncratic behaviors. However, when he was twelve, his parents divorced and he ended up going to a new school. His new classmates not only bullied him mercilessly, but they also ganged up on him and beat him so badly that he ended up being declared clinically dead. There was evidence after this beating of brain damage. None of the individuals involved were ever punished.
Per experienced high degrees of suicide ideation and engaged in self-harm. In his case, the suicide ideation ended up being completed. I am not sure that anything could have been done to save this tragic soul.
However, people can prevent the likelihood of further such occurrences by educating themselves about neurological and psychological differences and by attempting to be a bit kinder to those who present with unusual personalities.
I do not have autism. I am not normal neurologically, which expresses itself in problems with balance as well as varying degrees of difficulty walking. I had a small stroke in early 2017, which is likely the culprit in this case.
What I do have is something I refer to as a trifecta of fuckery or a hot trifecta of mess. This is the Universe's Asshat Trick and it involves rapid-cycling type 2 bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Even though there are all too many people who love to use the term "bipolar" to mean "moody," and I do call people out when they do that and advise them to educate their ignorant selves and not use people's health conditions as insults, I'm going to talk about borderline personality disorder, because it is even more misunderstood than bipolar disorder.
I do not write anything that is normal because I am not normal. I use a lot of metaphors, and my characters are extremely fucked up. I am getting to the point with this, so bear with me. It's a bit difficult to put it out there.
The risky behavior has been toned down for many years. I can't drink alcohol and I don't do illegal drugs. I don't even like the way most drugs make me feel. I don't have any kind of sex, let alone unsafe sex, and I don't want to. Most of the time I am able to resist inflicting self-injury, but not always. I tend to keep my behaviors in check, but there are still things that bleed to the surface.
Having been treated poorly by people who claimed they loved me is something that has led to a strong inability to trust. I generally only form very superficial relationships with people because I don't want to get attached to them, even on a platonic level. I do not have strong bonds even with most of my family members. This is not because I am incapable of feeling. It is because I am capable of feeling too deeply.
When I have written about the consuming love/obsession I have felt in the past, there have been people who have expounded that this is the only way to love, and I am rather horrified. I honestly don't think that obsessive love is healthy. I have scars on my arms that will never go away because of an obsessive love for awful men who treated me like a used condom. I'm glad if you liked the poem, but, yanno, it wasn't meant to be a "how-to" guide. It was really more of a warning.
I had a person comment on a character in one of my stories, asking if the character was a "teenager," and, to be honest, I was a bit insulted by that insinuation. The character was an adult in his mid-twenties. Being insecure is not only the hallmark of teenagers. There are some teenagers who are quite self-assured (I can assure you that I was not one of them) and some adults who are extremely insecure. These feelings of insecurity are magnified many times over in a person who has a condition such as borderline personality disorder.
I personally don't "do" romance because I don't like having my every thought consumed by the fear that I am going to be abandoned, which is what happens when I do romance. I sure as hell don't do casual sex, because I don't like it. Since I really don't like sex much in the first place and would only engage in such an activity with someone I trusted, why the hell would I want to do it casually?
I am far from being a teenager, but borderline personality disorder ensures that I will be one of the most insecure and least trusting people I know until the day I die. It also means that I have a high degree of self-loathing.
Writing is two things to me. First of all, it's catharsis. Second, I really don't know how to do anything else.
I'm not sure if I'm a "good" writer, a "bad" writer, or something in between. I write a bunch of shit. If you like it, great. If you don't like it, whatever. I'm probably not going to stop doing it, even if the occasional bad review makes me hate myself for a few days and I might end up with some cuts or bruises.
A lot of writing critics are looking for formulaic writing, for a type of "normal." I learned this while applying for ghostwriting jobs. I don't do formulaic writing, and I'm not normal. My brain doesn't work normally.
I often compare the way my brain works to the famous images of webs created by spiders on various types of drugs.
I say that my thoughts work a lot like the spiderwebs in the top row. They look normal at first glance, but on closer look, they are not. I can "pass for normal" enough that people who meet me in public don't notice anything particularly unusual about me. But I am actually quite fragile in spite of being rather a hulking figure physically.
So, I write the shit that I write and in the end, it will all amount to nothing. I will very likely die destitute and unwell. When I was young, I had myself fooled that I had something to offer the world. I no longer believe this is true. At this point, I'm just doing the shit that I do, and you can come along for the ride or not. It doesn't really matter that much to me one way or the other.
~Cie~
The ultimate borderline personality disorder anthem
Suicidal Tendencies - Nobody Hears
Lyrics
I talk through my eyes, the words pourin' down
Nobody hears
You ask me what's wrong, but what can I say
Nobody hears
I try to tell you
I try to show you
How else can I tell you?
How else can I show you?
I'm screaming inside, why can't you hear?
Nobody hears
You're looking right though me like I'm not here
Nobody hears
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what did I do to you
That makes you run from me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
You figured it and shaped it to your perfection
Nobody hears
Subtracted my feelings from this equation
Nobody hears
Is it all in my mind?
All in my mind
Then it would be easy to find
Easy to find
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what did I do to you
That makes you run from me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
So if it's all
If it's all in my mind
Then wouldn't it, wouldn't it
Wouldn't it be so easy to find?
When the last tear falls down
Nothing gets washed away
Another plea put to rest
As nobody hears, nobody hears
So what do I have to do
To make you comfort me?
Now I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Don't understand why nobody hears
So I'm sitting here screaming inside myself
Well I'm sitting here crying inside myself
So I'm sitting here screaming to nobody else
Don't understand why nobody hears
And nobody nears, nobody hears, nobody hears, nobody hears
Other than substance addiction issues, one might not think that Bon Scott and Amy Winehouse have much in common. However, both of them were involved to the point of obsession with people who were incredibly bad for them, and although musically speaking they are both artists I can't get enough of, I have to stop listening after a fairly brief period of time because I know what and who they're singing about and it's really depressing.
The other issue is the fact that I can relate all too well to being obsessed with a person who is really, really, really horrible for you. I did it more than once. People think that all-consuming "love" is wonderful. It's anything but, and usually, it isn't really love, it's an obsession. So, yanno, no thanks to ending up in the ER with bloody wrists over some asshole who doesn't deserve my pain. Better to be alone than to be with someone toxic.
Although, unfortunately, in my case, more often than not, I'm alone in bad company.
Plus, in the case of AC/DC, I can only listen for just so long (and that isn't long these days) before I start getting really pissed off about the way Malcolm Young went out. Dementia is the absolute fucking worst, particularly when it takes out someone whose intelligence was a key part of who they were. Malcolm Young was a high school dropout, but he was smarter than a lot of people with strings of letters behind their names.
The late Glen Campbell's wife said of dementia "It's better to die some other way," and she's absolutely right. Fuck dementia.
As Bob Seger once said, sometimes I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.
Hipster music journalists love to decry this band as a one-trick pony, but they were actually full of surprises. Sure, the same five songs get played over and over and over on commercial radio stations. Even though I was an early fan of AC/DC, I started changing the station whenever "For Those About To Rock" would come on so I wouldn't start hating it. That's how badly that particular song was overplayed.
Musical chops aside (and the musical choppage is strong in this lot) these guys were obviously not professional models. Bon seemed fairly well at ease with striking poses, and Angus is a ham. The others never seem to know quite what to do with themselves.
Mark Evans and Cliff Williams both tended to have neutral facial expressions in photos. Maybe it's a bass player thing. In this particular photo, I'm not sure there was much else that Phil Rudd could have done. After all, Angus was stepping on his head.
I really do wonder what Malcolm was doing, though. Did the photographer tell him to do that? Was there someone up above pouring some sort of beverage down on him and he was hoping to drink it rather than getting soaked by it? Is he performing a Stupid Big Brother Trick and pretending he's going to bite Angus' leg? Did he feel stupid when he saw this picture after the fact?
Although Angus was the one who became (in)famous for stripping off, Bon was the band member who had a tendency to dress like a member of Chippendale's. There are many photos of him wearing pants which looked like they'd been painted on, and he often struck poses indicating that said pants were about to come off.
This incarnation of AC/DC really wasn't around that long in the scheme of things.
I've likened the way I feel looking at photos of AC/DC to the emotions expressed by the priest in Arthur C. Clarke's powerful story, The Star. The priest experienced a crisis of faith after discovering that the Star of Bethlehem shone as brightly as it did because it had gone supernova, destroying a peaceful civilization.
In some ways, AC/DC had a (crossed) binary star system. There was the band in its incarnation with Bon. This was the beta star in the system. It shone brightly but was short-lived.
The alpha star continued on for 37 more years after Bon's passing. It started going into its death throes when Malcolm became too ill to perform anymore and collapsed on itself when Brian Johnson was no longer able to continue performing due to hearing problems and Cliff Williams retired because things had become too fucking depressing.
I'm in the camp that thinks that AC/DC needs to rock in peace, to remain a nebula rather than trying to cobble together some sort of zombie version of itself. To be clear, I am not one of those ageist assholes who thinks that only the young and the hawt should play music. I subscribe to the belief that as long as you can and want to play, you should, and most of the truly talented musicians I can think of are not "Hawt."
Angus and Stevie Young should work on other projects. Whatever they create together ought to be good, because they're both talented musicians. Certainly, there's no problem with them playing AC/DC's material. AC/DC was, after all, half Angus' creation. He was the face of the band while Malcolm was the brains.
Without its brain, AC/DC was a different band. It was still a good band, but the material on Rock or Bust shows the marked change in a band that had lost its leader and one of its key components. Still, the band could arguably continue working under the AC/DC name at that point. Malcolm's replacement, his nephew, had learned much of his technique from the original and had been given the green light by Malcolm himself to take up the reins.
With the loss of Brian Johnson and Cliff Williams, AC/DC was done although Angus Young was still there.
I feel very sad for Angus. Not only did he lose his best friend of a lifetime, but he also lost the project which had been his reason for living for some 44 years. I hope that if continuing to play can bring him some semblance of peace, he will do so. Despite being a broke fuck, I would find a way to support his work by buying his albums. However, I hope he lays AC/DC to rest. Whatever lineup was created at this point would be a hollow echo of the band's past glory.
AC/DC needs to be allowed to fade to black.
~Cie~
AC/DC, doing stuff that got them on the Satanic Panic Shit List.
Today is the eighth anniversary of my father's passing. I thought about that day early this morning. I didn't appear to be grieving because I wasn't wailing and gnashing my teeth. I had already grieved watching him deteriorate as he did. There wasn't anything left in me. I've felt for a long time that there isn't anything left in me. I'm not cold, which I've been accused of a lot. I just don't have anything to offer.
The memory that comes to the forefront of my mind is my mother leaving two messages on my phone. The ringer wasn't working on my phone; I would be soon to get a new one. I was sleeping with the phone under my hand, but I didn't feel the vibration. The first message was her telling me that my father had died. The second was her telling me that again, demanding that I call her back, and finishing off the message with "you're never there when I need you." She didn't apologize for saying that, which doesn't surprise me. I informed her that my phone's ringer wasn't working correctly, that I had tried to be aware if a call came, but hadn't felt the vibration. Well, she never apologizes when she says hurtful things, so I guess she and I are even.
I fucking hate this new YouTube push to force people to pay for the service by pausing the playlist every so often to ask "are you still there?" No, Bitch, I died, but my zombified body keeps responding by saying I'm still here. The joke's on you.
In other frustrating news, I guess I paid the price for thinking I could buy yarn and get away with it. I ordered three skeins of yarn to keep working on my blanket, and some payment clashed with another, so I ended up getting an overdraft charge and am now $36 in the hole. Those fucking overdraft charges should be criminal. They only ever harm people who are struggling financially anyway.
Tonight's supper will be turkey chili and baked potatoes. At least those are two things I can ensure that my son will actually eat. My mother's right that he's kind of fussy, but there again, she refuses to believe that he's actually autistic. People with autism tend to have issues with food textures far more than people who don't have the condition. But, of course, my mother is always right.
I was just talking to my son about how we are both, in spite of what has been drilled into us by members of the extended family, very productive. However, we are not productive in the ways they deem worthy. We are terrible with housework--absolutely rubbish, let's be real. We are unable to work the kinds of jobs that they deem worthy.
If I had ever been able to make my writing pay, they might be proud of me. A little. But it still wouldn't have been the kind of work that they would truly have deemed worthy.
All I'm doing as far as holiday decorations this year is putting a string of lights up on the fence at my son's townhome. We can't have a tree because the four-legged dumbasses will knock it over. When I was a kid, my father became a kid again every December 24, because that was when we decorated the tree. He loved decorating the tree so much and went way overboard. We had so many decorations. Now they never see the light of day.
Maybe one day I will decorate for the holidays again. I don't know. The first year we had a really nice tree was when I was ten years old. That was the year my father got a good position as a professor at a small college and we moved from Albuquerque to a suburb of Denver. Everything was so wonderful on that Christmas when I was ten years old.
I realize now that my bipolar disorder onset when I hit puberty, which is why I was an emotional wreck during the holidays when I was eleven and trying to hide it so I wouldn't fuck things up for the rest of my family.
We always took the tree down on the day after New Year's. The year when I was twelve years old, I was once again in a tailspin but trying to hide it. We got the call that my paternal grandfather had died from a massive heart attack while he was out feeding his horses. I burst into tears. I thought it was my fault that he was dead because I hadn't been grateful enough, so God took my grandfather.
I learned a lot about my father's side of the family that year. I wrote a cheeky poem about it recently, which is titled "My Family Skeletons." You can read it here.
At the time, it was actually very traumatic. My twelfth year of life was not a lot of fun. It seemed like everything was falling apart. There was a lot of contention surrounding my grandfather's will, and I was being bullied mercilessly. I started self-harming, and on one occasion, I swallowed a bottle of aspirin. I ended up with a sick stomach and throwing up. I didn't tell anybody what I'd done.
So, I guess what I'm getting to in my long-winded fashion is that the holidays are not happy-happy-joy-joy for some people. I tend to have kind of a neutral approach to them at this point, but that's because I'm emotionally numb. For some people, the holidays are extremely difficult. It's supposed to be a happy time, and people who are already struggling get added guilt heaped on them for not presenting a happy face to the world.
Please do not shame or berate people who aren't "in the spirit" during the holidays. The joy is not universal.
I didn't always agree with his politics, but I felt that he was a genuinely kind and noble soul. He was smart and compassionate, and he didn't back down from a fight. He didn't toe the party line, which sometimes earned him flak from other members of his party. He had grit. I liked him.
Hi. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Michael Neil Lee, but you can call me Mick. I am a recovering addict and alcoholic, and I believe in angels.
I realize that some of you will think my beliefs are antiquated and unscientific. I believe in science, but I think there are some things that science can't explain. Like angels, for instance.
I know there are some of you who will be like "let us be nice to the fry brain and we will humor his belief in angels" and you will say things like "yes, there are angels here on Earth who help people. Like nurses and doctors and your counselors in rehab."
I don't know about nurses and doctors and my counselors. But yes, I believe in angels in the flesh. My little sister Nicole is a for real earth angel. She believed in me even when I was on rock bottom. She was there for my kids when both me and their mom couldn't be there because of our problems. Even when I was at my worst with meth and heroin and drinking and pills she still loved her big brother and I am sorry for the times I caused her to worry that the next time she would see me is in the morgue. I am crying when I write this so I am sorry if it is not the best writing. Nikki, you are a for real Earth angel. I believe in you.
Nikki's new girlfriend Thalia who she met last year is also an earth Angel. They both thought they would never meet anybody to be in love with, but they met each other. They love their nieces and nephews like they were their own children. They are in love with each other like they thought they could never be with anybody. Also, now I have a new buddy to have (Clean and Sober) fun with and listen to music with and tease and play practical jokes with. To be fair, Tally, you had to know it was a Snake in the Can, but you opened it anyways. I'm still waiting for the payback.
Thalia introduced me to instrumental music like this. I still love my Rock and Metal, always and forever, especially my Crue, in case you can't tell by the picture on my profile. But when I need to relax and to chill out, I listen to this instead of lighting it up or shooting up or drinking, and it's way better. Now my kids know their Dad will be around for them and not dead in an alley or something like that.
Also, my friend Cie who has said to me that I can write and she will help me edit my story, you are also a real Earth Angel. My story is called Earth Angel, and it is inspired by some of the people I met along the way. The Angel in my story is called Katarin. She is a real angel who has lost her way and has been abused so much. I have met so many women who have been abused and used up. One of them had schizophrenia and she had been raped so many times when she was trying to get drugs to forget her pain for awhile. She had abortions and also kids that were taken away. She was homeless. I tried to protect her a little but couldn't always watch over her. One day they found her dead.
I miss you, Karyn. I wish your life could have been better. I thought of you as my Sister, I really did. I wanted to be a good brother to you, the kind you never had. I am sorry I failed you like everyone else.
I believe she has gone back to be with the angels. I do. Even if she was messed up, she had a good soul.
I mean she is gone back to be with the Angels in Heaven. Because I do believe in them.
I know some of you think that is stupid, and it is unscientific, and maybe hypocritical, because I don't go to church. I believe in Heaven and Angels, and I believe in Jesus and that he is good, but I don't believe you have to think he is the Messiah to go to Heaven. I think he loves us all whether we believe he is the Messiah or no. I don't think Christianity is the only religion or the only way to be saved, and I don't think you even have to believe in anything at all to belong in Heaven. I think you only have to be kind and to try your best, and some people don't like that too much and they tell me I can't be saved if I think like that. I don't think they are right.
But I do believe in Angels, and I do believe in Spirits.
I have seen some shit in my life.
When I was a little boy, way before I ever heard about drugs and when I was going to church like a good little boy and believed what I was taught in Sunday School, I met a spirit one day in the attic at my maternal grandparents house. I was three years old and I would go in the attic and it was like a treasure hunt. And that day he was sitting there near the window. He was a boy who was older than me but still young, maybe like seven years old, and he was quiet and didn't talk, but he was nice and he smiled at me, and I stayed there with him until he faded away. I always thought it was about 20 minutes but It's hard to tell, it could have been more or less. I was never afraid of him. I never saw him again. But I always remember him. I didn't say anything to anyone because even that young I knew they would tell me to stop telling tales. I only told Nikki a lot of years later when she was 18 and I was 20, and she punched me in the arm for keeping such a cool secret to myself all that time. I told her it was fair though, because she didn't tell me she liked girls until about that same time, and we could have been liking girls together all that time but I didn't even know it!
So I believe in Angels and I believe in Spirits. And maybe some of you think that's pretty stupid. And maybe some of you think it means I am going to hell. I don't think so either way. I think there is stuff that Science doesn't understand and I don't think that too many people go to Hell.
So this is my story about me, and sort of an introduction to the story I hope to write. Thank you for listening and for your support. This is the first time I have really told my story, and I am kind of nervous for it.
