Big One-Eight.

The day that lands on May thirteenth,

will be a very memorable one, indeed:

after all these years of waiting separately,

my little girl finally turns the ‘big eighteen’;

The anticipation that grinds behind her release,

is stuff that’s enough for the death of Yours Truly,

my heart pumps to keep up with the thumping beat,

but it’s barely enough to keep my blood flowing freely;

Her entire life, we’ve talked about its eventuality:

silly things she and I would do on this day, specifically:

create the biggest ruckus seen in recent local history,

roll around with the windows down in a rented limousine;

We’ve joked about obnoxious face paint we’d be wearing,

the gaudy jewelry that I brought to her from New Orleans,

spend hours doing nothing but her very favorite things,

truth is: I won’t even get to see her – and that’s our reality;

She will take her newly granted wish of finally being free,

and run with it as far and quickly in a direction away from me,

it might be years until I see her face again, if I’m so lucky,

her lack of any self-esteem or worth keeps her far, historically;

My little girl exists within a place that she can only be,

the pages of the Missing Persons reports, filed repeatedly,

the hours between the sunset and the next day’s dawning:

she’s in there somewhere trying to find any kind of meaning;

This day has long been a source of a most primal fear in me,

the burdens carried so long will either hold or break clean,

from the chains that have rusted around them quite solidly,

the very last of my chances to find the daughter that I seek.

Coms Check.

“There’s been a problem…”
His face is calm now, as he speaks to me; but there are wrinkles on his brow still not completely faded away from the conversation that he just had with someone on his phone regarding my baby, Boo. TWO blessings in the entire legal nightmare that still plays out for my daughter and I have been:
1) The High Profile Child Sex Assault Attorney who (according to courtroom Legend, at least) has secured Boo a large financial settlement from the organization in charge of the facility where she had been sexually assaulted.
2) The District Attorney who is heading up the feather-ruffling prosecution in the current trial of the man who assaulted Boo.
It is the DA who I am greeted by upon my arrival at the courthouse, all crisp and clean in his pinstripes and cufflinks – he’s no older than I am, and driven by sheer fire underneath him. He believes Boo; he has always believed Boo; and this fact caused him to stand out amongst an ocean of professional evil in a time of sheer crisis, back then. He is the ONLY one in the entirety of Boo’s justice that I can depend on to shoot straight with me – good, bad or otherwise. I do not know what it is that creates such passion in his work for him, maybe he was sexually abused as a child – it wouldn’t shock me to learn this given his ever-raging flame, and it doesn’t matter to me what causes him to be so good at what he does – all I have ever cared about was that he’s there, to do his job the way he does it. And let me tell you: the guy has been in the media smeared notoriously by the wealthy folk against whom he has successfully hammered in trial court – as a “circus act in his unconventional approaches to jury trials”. The guy ain’t no joke…I have come to trust his words in regard to agreements he makes with me or things he tells me to take heed to, he has never steered Boo or me wrong to date.
“What? What’s happened?”
I’m sure my body deflated as obviously as my heart did in the moment, but I didn’t care. The sense of control in these situations is so far on the other side of the planet from me, that I easily become derailed by such instances – and the DA knows this (after all of these years together). He puts his hand up in between our two faces and turns it, palm out towards the bench outside of the courtroom. I sit down heavily and with a sigh.
“They either missed this morning’s flight, or it was delayed…or something happened with the flight and she’s not here yet…”
HISSSSSSSSSSS
He calmly says,
“She’ll be here in an hour and a half, and I’ve set you guys up together in the little side room, for her breaks and stuff.”
EXHALE
“Okay, but you’re gonna get me in there with her, so she knows I’m here and I can bring her Chipotle when I come back then, yea?…”
He is rather good at appeasing my combustion switch, or I should say: he has become that way over time, I guess. I agreed to come back with Boo’s favorite lunch at noon.
I saw my beautiful, blonde ringleted, doe-eyed daughter, Boo, today. She did it. She came out here and endured a horrific six hours on the stand in the name of justice – for herself as well as others. My pride over her is overflowing today, I told her so many times how fucking proud I am of her…immensely proud. But mostly, encouraged. Encouraged that maybe there is still some my Boo in there that knows right from wrong, and who will fight for what’s right, even when it’s not the easiest for her in the moment…
Boo made a point to do the right thing today and I can only hope it felt as good for her as it did for me.

Missed Me.

I’ve been walking on wire
high above a horrific crime scene,
looking down at the sheer
size of such a bloody tragedy
the yellow tape is stretching
for miles across the trees
and the vultures circle
widely around
the tight rope
I’ve been walking.
I look down, muted sounds
while little dots of people
mull their ways around
most of them don’t care
that I’m watching
from the air,
but a few, I see
have taken notice of me
magnified by a cross-hair.
They will try to kill me,
they’ve tried so many times
to shoot me down
from the heights I’ve found,
but they can’t seem
to tap that bead.
And so on I look
bullets flying right at me
I do not falter,
just too desperate to see
the object of this circus show,
the victim of this scene…
tell me.
Is it my baby that you
have down there
amongst such a
massive tragedy?
All I want answered
is this simple query
put down the rifles
and answer me.
They know what I’m after
and they know just as sure
that I won’t be going
a damned place without her.
But, I’ve got a shocker
Folded into my sleeve
and it’s something that
none of these cowards are
expecting from me.
This is what happens,
with all of this time
they’ve given to me,
my mind has mapped
its very own crime scene,
and mine’s filled with bodies
of them, not her and me.
Surprise!
from my high place
above the green trees,
and once it’s all done
I’ll climb down finally
Desperately searching
for my only baby…
I know that she’s here
I can hear her calling to me.
But I never could find her
amongst so many
other dead bodies,
she screams to me
Mommy!
The haunt of my dreams.

Denominator.

I guess I just have it in my blood to trust the wrong people throughout my time on Earth amongst other human beings –or whatever you’d call those carbon-based, sets of bones with a thin layer of skin stretched tightly (or loosely) around each one, with seemingly emptied out, bobbling heads attached – I sure as Hell hate to call those things “people”.
I have mastered the unrewarding, often self-masochistic, pseudo-“art” of choosing the most shallow and self-absorbed individuals on whom to place importance and on whom to martyr my dwindling ability to trust. At some point in my life, I got to where I can no longer blame the vernacular beasts that I choose to surround myself with for such miserable incompatibility; sooner or later, I had to swallow the realities that I find consistently staring back at me through the eyes of my own reflection.
I eventually began to accept the fact that if I am incompatible with so “very, very many” of my own species, the likelihood of that incompatibility being born of the “shortcomings” of that group of “very many people” is low, if even in existence. I have truly realized and began to accept that I am the faulty common denominator in the countless equations of social arithmetic that I pathetically fail to wrap my thick head around – the continual negative sum in the mathematics of human behaviors and relationships – worthy or otherwise, I am the common denominator. PERIOD.

Naturally, the majority of “relationships” that I can stake any claim to throughout my scarce and, undoubtedly warped experiences within the realm of human intimacy have each been notably unhealthy in at least one major aspect. I do not know what it looks or feels like to be in a healthy relationship with anyone in a romantic context. In spite of the insatiable hunger and longstanding desire I remember always harboring to have this elusive, healthy thing. At the end of the day when all’s said and done – I wouldn’t recognize a healthy relationship if it came up and bit me in the face…how could I recognize something I’ve never seen before? I have only misidentified the chances that I might have had in the past at healthiness in a committed relationship with someone; I have only mistreated the good standings I’ve had with men who may have been exceptional if I had given them a fighting chance. I just can’t trust the words that people choose to waste on me anymore, at all – not women, not men – not anyone – ever, in any circumstance. My issues behind the inability to foster commitment run so deeply entrenched at this stage of “the game” that I have truly started to question whether or not any amount of therapy, strenuous physical exercise, or exhausting mental stimulation by the opposite sex could ever actually change my perceptions back to what I think that they once must have been.
I do not know if I find this revelation a good one or a horribly life-altering one, either. I have been behaving so ambiguously the past few years in general, in all honesty. It’s been very strange to feel so indifferently over everything – another HUGE shift from the person that I used always like to think I was; Life’s formerly Technicolor scenery has been replaced by a drabber, grey-scale version of it. The white noise of my existence resembles the constant, bellowing rolls of thunder that accompany the bolts of constant lightning that crack like live wires of energy gone awry: a chaotic soundtrack that perfectly mirrors my psyche and syncs naturally with my soul. During nighttime the soundtrack only shifts into the noise of a low-volume baseball game’s announcers and noise.
I have not lived a perfect life by any means; I don’t claim to have, and I am also much too self-aware to dare try. I know that I have let many people down along the way to where I stand now in life, and death. I know that my combative spirit is NOT the ONLY reason why I have survived as long as I have; I realize that I hold no special title to the world’s shallow, robotic inhabitants, nor would I like to if given the chance to hold one:
…a bunch of fuck-heads…
People disgust me with their’ all-consuming need to rise in rank – to “ever-aim-higher” – to continuously yearn for what ISN’T in a given existence…bigger, stronger, faster – better and worth more money…
Me: I don’t have this parasitic social handicap I suppose; because I could honestly care less about having bullshit possessions that I can carry around and flaunt – to show off to my heartless “friends”. I do not count the monetary value of my possessions against my own cha-cha in the Universe; I don’t ever let my head fill entirely up with the environmentally poisonous, bullshit hot air.

MMMM MMMMM MMMMM.

I’d trade anything I own in a nano-second in exchange for some sort of true comfort that Boo could eternally call hers – that nobody and nothing could ever steal from her. The rest of the world and the bullshit happening in it just seem so insignificant and muted to me – while my daughter spirals downward into what should have been her future. Her eighteenth birthday quickly approaches now – in May…and I carry so much fear and dread as well as excitement and relief over her coming of age and being set free. I’ve only recently opened my fucking eyes and seen the striking similarities between Boo and I in regard to commitment issues, somehow…not sure what the fuck I have been paying attention to, but it’s like a metric fuck-ton of bricks from the top of the Empire Reality Building have crumbled and landed on my head, in terms of Boo’s shiftiness.
Basically, somehow I have managed to totally overlook the FACT that despite my painstaking efforts when she was a baby and her father and I were together still – to protect her from seeing things that he’d done to me, in a wide and creative array of ways, trust me – she still KNEW. She always knew. Even before she knew that she knew, or what it was that she knew – she knew. I’ve always known this deep down in my heart, for obvious reasons…but as with my former drug addiction during the same era of her life, there’s nothing I can do un-do any of it, so other than to simply try and persevere onward and upward from those past mistakes of mine – there’s little I’ve ever been able to process surrounding any of it. Of course, she and I have always had issues over her father’s sudden and permanent absence from her toddler-hood; she remembers him being there always and then one day just not ever being there again. In her perceptions however, she does not recollect the FACT that I also disappeared from her life at the same exact time as he did – only temporarily. All these years later as a full grown woman, I see the unacknowledged trauma that must have created for Boo, in itself. She doesn’t deal with it properly because she has somehow warped her perceptions into something other than what they actually were. She would tell you that her father “just up and left me and my mom one day…”, which anyone who knows anything about our story knows wasn’t even close to how shit went down. She hardly ever even talks about my absence/injury/hospitalization period at all – never has.
These thoughts of mine have me wondering things about why it seems to be so much more difficult to really get through to her about ANYTHING. I’m realizing that her entire perception of all things shared between our life experiences, together or separately, is contrasting to my own.

…which brings me back to my original point with this:

Who then, in these instances between Boo and me, is the common denominator?

Don’t Dream it’s Over.

“There is freedom within,

there is freedom without,

try to catch the deluge

in a paper cup;

There’s a battle ahead,

many battles are lost,

but you’ll never see the end of the road,

while you’re traveling with me…

Hey now, hey now
Don’t dream it’s over
Hey now, hey now
When the world comes in
They come, they come
To build a wall between us
We know they won’t win

Now I’m walking again,

to the beat of a drum,

and I’m counting the steps

to the door of your heart;

only shadows ahead,

barely clearing the roof,

get to know the feeling of

liberation and release…”

Justice is Burned.

“I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.”   – John Keats

 

I cannot blog about my current state of ‘scarcely kicking’ as of yet – because of legal constraints – but let’s just say that a trial is FINALLY underway now, and Boo is to be on a plane to fly home for six hours to testify on behalf of not only herself, but for the rest of his victims, also. This is because Boo is officially documented as “Janey Doe #1” – his first legally acknowledged victim in a long string of them who came after she tried to tell everyone about what he is. I am surprised as Hell that they haven’t found a way to disallow her testimony because of the horrid implications that her truth screams behind the broken ass child welfare system.

Boo didn’t ask to be sexually preyed upon by a man who was her “counselor” at the “treatment facility” to which she was court ordered to reside; she never asked to be steamrolled and labeled as a liar for telling on him – way back in 2009; Boo didn’t look to become the cynical, dissociated, unruly and self-loathing creature that she has been molded into because of these very things, either…so, Boo definitely struggles with the notion of her burden to testify now, after all this time and all the lies and bullshit that she has been force-fed in the time between then and now. Boo comes and goes as she pleases – physically and mentally. THAT is how she has evolved herself in order to SURVIVE.

Each time it comes up (which is often, and always has been), she shrugs it off and says stuff like, “I don’t even want to think about it after all this time, let them [by ‘them’, she means the subsequent line of girls younger than she, who fell victim to her abuser as well, after she tried to tell everyone what he’d done to her] deal with it.” We have gone round and round about this element of the bigger picture…a debate that I argue passionately from either side – depending on either one of our mind states at the time.

On the one hand, I feel it is intrinsically necessary that Boo testify in summation and on behalf of ALL of his victims; she is ferociously honest and raw when it comes to shock value, she enjoys triggering people – she feeds off of the collective stunned reactions, it’s the only form of reaffirmation that she’s ever been able to scrape up off the fucking floor from these despicable “professionals” charged with her “care”. I am of the opinion that with Boo on the stand, his justice will be served much more unanimously and without further delay (for lack of a better description, as there is no such thing as justice in this circumstance at all).

On the other hand, I agree with Boo when she says, (verbatim):

“Mom…it’s been like five years…I just want to forget about all that already, he’s not even my biggest problem anymore…”

And she means that – she has grown up quickly since she was preyed upon by the man on trial now…she has been involved in much more dangerous and lastingly traumatic situations since age thirteen, She is currently also a “star witness” in TWO additional court cases as well…one of which is EXTREMELY HIGH PROFILE and has caused me to start sleeping with a loaded pistol nearby because she witnessed a fucking murder/robbery and the men in question are out on bail with my contact information – thanks to the courts. Boo has bigger fish to fry…which is a sad thing in itself. Tick tick tick….next week shall be the climatic catch to the cliffhanger in regard to Boo’s decision to testify or not.

And, if she flies out here to testify, she will likely take off afterward and be missing again…thing is: as much as Boo hurts me and as much as I brood over her well-being and safety when she disappears, it’s not very different from the ways I worry when she is locked away to rot in a different state without her Mommy, she’s being fucked up either way…I keep hoping one of these days, instead of running away to the cesspools again to hide and feel safe, she’ll just come home and let me hide her instead. Yeah, I might end up in jail again, so what? I’d do it. I’d do it to send a message to Boo, that she’s safe with me despite her lack of ability to feel safe anywhere. Criminal charges added to my file for protecting my own kid…done it before, I’ll do it over and over again. That’s what a Mom is for.

KaBoom.

KaBoom.

It Is What It Is.

Last night, at around 8pm, my phone started ringing in my pocket; I was surprised to see Boo’s name brightly lighting up the screen through the dimness in my lap, playing the custom ringtone “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd loudly to the vibrating beat. It made so many wrong things feel right to talk to Boo on Christmas, last night…

It has been since our dog Ozzy died in late June, that we last spoke. Since we have seen one another, she had a birthday…our relationship truly couldn’t be any more estranged and alienated. The more time that passed by without any contact, the more guilt was stacking up behind each minute spent separated from each other like we have been forced to be. It’s been so, so long this way…inhumanely long. She writes to me often enough, robotic letters that hold no meaning – just words that she thinks she’s expected to write to her Mom at a given point in time. I admit, I have been withdrawn from her; which is inexcusable, so I won’t bother with coming up with any excuses behind this fact; it is what it is.

Last night, we talked for 37 minutes straight! This is by far the longest I can ever recall having a conversation with Boo (in person or on the phone) without some type of major drama or explosion on her part. We are typically like fire and water; and the older Boo grows, the less often have we been able to even remain in the same vicinity for very long without combustion. She is very different than I am, always has been. She thinks that I am a “goody-two-shoes” somehow; this is a truth that still just blows my mind. I’m not sure where she ever got that from, but that’s her perception of me. It is what it is. I think she is a disloyal and conniving, beautiful and intelligent little blonde, long-lashed, doe-eyed creature; who has unfortunately come to epitomize the poster child for the self-imposed cycle of traumatic experience; she wouldn’t even begin to know how to break down that label into anything that made any kind of sense, though…she barely reads. It is what it is.

We talked last night about all kinds of stuff that I wouldn’t have expected to talk about with her. She has decided that she’s gay again – which is a song and dance that she has played with me since she was thirteen years old – for a reaction that I can’t believe she hasn’t learned by now, she isn’t gonna get from me on that score. I always tell her without fail (and I mean it, too) that she can be with whoever she wants to be with and have my approval so long as it’s a healthy and somewhat “normal” relationship. I couldn’t give a shit if she’s gay. It is what it is.

We talked about her caseworker and how useless she is, which led to other conversations that got my blood boiling, as usual, in the context of that good for nothing, stinky bitch caseworker assigned to my daughter’s gig. Boo said, “I wish I could just get myself arrested somehow so I would get a probation officer, instead (of the caseworker)…”; a remark which at first made me cringe, until I remembered having once said the exact same words from a juvenile holding cell…damn…it is what it is.

That Way is ‘Up’.

It is December 5 today; 20 days away from the worst day of every year. In twenty days, I will spend another Christmas holiday alone, without family – without anyone who really cares one way or the other about the status of my presence…

By 20 days from now, I will again be wishing for death, fast or slow; peaceful or brutal.

For me,, all of the days leading up to that day will be filled with open wounds and overdoses of shame.

There will be triggers and flashbacks that make me run on edge and cranky as Hell.

Not a single day between then and today will leave me feeling even remotely complete, as I’m shopping for gifts for the normal people in my life who celebrate the holidays like normal people – as I’m fucking pretending.

All of the nights in between Christmas and last night will suck just as badly as the days will suck, no rest for the wicked…or broken-hearted.

I will dream of things that will never be and never could’ve been.

I will wake up with that gut-empty feeling and feel afraid for three straight hours with each sunrise, never learning to put my finger on the source of these feelings, or, to put them in check, despite my frustrating efforts.

And, on Christmas Day, itself:

I will sleep as late as I can in an indentation at the edge of my cold bed – between it and the cold wall.

It will take me hours on end to force the salinity from these swollen eyes and face my relatives, solo.

I won’t want to open my eyes at all on that day, I promise…

It feels as if the shameful cycle of my existence always gets close to erupting at this time of every year.

Everyone knows to leave me alone.

People know that there’s nothing they can do for me, there’s no solutions to offer or insight that hits on point.

If I feel lonely enough to expose myself to my extended family on that day, I’ll regret it rather quickly;

And, eventually wind up saying something fucked up to a member of my own family in an over-anxious, depressed and defensive state, before storming out in tears.

Been there, wrecked that.

I call this entire song and dance “The Circle of Holiday Death” – it happens over and over and over and over.

Each time that my heart, mind-state and blood pressure begin to “normalize” after the re-opened wounds, it’s Christmastime once again, and it all starts over.

People will ask me if I am okay until I will begin to respond with anger and irritability;

They will not understand.

Even my closest friends will avoid me because they simply CAN NOT offer me comfort in any way and they know this (the friends who have not already become totally overwhelmed by my reality and disappeared, altogether, that is).

I will seethe will anger at certain thoughts during this time of year.

The people who have created this Living Hell for Boo being able to happily celebrate around a table with their own loved ones, their own precious children;

While my baby’s spending the day alone in a locked cage, being told that she’s unimportant and being shamed.

IT HURTS ENOUGH TO MAKE ME DERANGED…

And through it all, I MUST keep my grip on composure; for I am NO good to the (God willing) older Boo if I end up in prison or dead before she turns 18.

I do not plan on abandoning Boo ever – – no matter how fucking bad it hurts me to follow through with.

SHE NEEDS ME; even if she doesn’t know it yet.

I have long been aware of the fact that I can’t undo whatever it was that did Boo;

I can only build from where we stand, upwards.

Our “relationship” is so far gone that I don’t feel as if it’s even possible for us to grow any further apart anymore.

So I guess there’s just one direction to go with it all, when it comes to Boo.

The Last Time.

Almost Like Me…Kinda(ish).

It was almost a full year ago – the last time that I laid my eyes on my only child, my daughter…Boo.

I struggled not to fall apart the entire time that I was blessed by her physical presence that night; the circumstances were, as they tend to be when it comes to my daughter, next to unbearable for me…but I remember how grateful I strangely felt the whole time that she lay unconscious in my lap at the Emergency Room. I was quite dissociated during the entire holiday season last year (every year for the past six years); and when I found out that Boo had finagled her way into a “home pass” from the facility in which she is court-ordered to remain, out of state, high security and with no socializing included – I became even more detached as a means of cushioning myself emotionally from the inevitable train-wreck that I associated with the “home pass”. I somehow remember the last two times that I saw Boo so vividly and clearly, it stabs my belly to reflect upon either instance, though.

The last 10+ “home passes” that Boo has been given ended in catastrophe, and I am not exaggerating. It began even before they moved her out of state and out into the sticks (when she was still somewhat socialized from her former life with me in a family unit): the disappearing act; she has it down to a science, and always pretty much did. Boo can POOF! Be gone within the blink of an eye, before you even know what hit you, she’s off on another death-wish driven expedition that she may never return alive from. Boo has always been uncontrollable by nature, I don’t know how else to describe her – she’s explosive and impatient as Hell – she’s a chameleon, and has her mother’s total lack of attention span – she has no sense of Self at all, she just goes with the flow that will lead her to the most trouble and danger – unfortunately, that’s just Boo.

Last year’s “home pass” was no different: I picked her up at the airport on the 28^th of December (close enough to Christmas for me to have actually been okay through the day without her on the 25^th), she was gone by the 31^st. She remained missing that time for nearly two full weeks with no word of her whereabouts or well-being…it was sheer Hell, fucking Hell. I wouldn’t wish that shit on my worst enemy, I swear. When they found her that time, she was in bad shape…bad, bad shape…wow. She ended up being involved in a serious sex trafficking bust and returned to the county where I live by the police to the hospital, from which she left again almost immediately – before I could even get there. Boo knows how to betray me better than any living soul that I know, even when she’s not trying to. This happened three consecutive times over the duration of the following month and a half: Boo missing for unreal amounts of time – my not knowing whether she was alive or dead – HELL.

The final time that they picked her up on a highway in the desert somewhere, half-naked and so fucked up on drugs that she didn’t know who or where she was, beaten and burned with cigarettes, two busted ankles – unconscious and dehydrated – was the last time that I saw her face. I went to the hospital at around 10pm and held her until the morning, at which time she had been deemed stable enough for transport out of state, back to the locked facility that the courts leave to her in to rot. She was hardly coherent for any of the time that I spent with her that night…in and out of delirium and on heavy duty painkillers…ankles both freshly plaster-cast, eyes both swollen closed. I saw cigarette burns all over her arms and shoulders and hands. My heart broke the rest of its way into two separate pieces that night; I know that much to be true. As much as the whole thing was terribly painful and trying on me to endure – I could only imagine what her process of endurance for these things must be; I remember thinking: “Just rub her hair and don’t let her be alone…”, so I did.