Holding the line.

I'm exhausted, should be sleeping, but I'm furious. So I'm writing. Furious at the choices life leaves us and furious at how much tougher it becomes to know or feel the right choice the harder, the longer, the more ferociously and loyally we love. I've talked and written much over the past two years and some about my growing pains, decisions, strengths and failures. Examined openly and privately my motives and questioned myself and my behaviors in this growth. Taking the lessons I could from all of these experiences.
 The single most helpful thing I learned in earning my mostly useless Associates degree was to ask myself, What's that about". Whether pertaining to myself, someone I know or even a stranger on the street. What's that about? Be it a feeling, emotion, thought or behavior, what is it all about, why am I judging, defending, hurting, caring, laughing, smiling, what's driving my reaction,or lack of one to any given event, person or thing. The statement has effectively changed my perception for the better and was worth every penny spent on all that fancy book learnin!

As a kid I stole, I'm not proud of it but the shit happened. My favorite thing to steal was brownie mix. Like a true fat kid lovin cake and all things cake-like I would  hide out under the bed or in a closet and eat the fuck out of that shit. Sometimes the whole box sometimes just a little. I ate it dusty and dry, or added water and once or twice when there was a spare egg I would mix it all up and it that way too. One particularly unforgettable afternoon my mother went to make brownies only to find that some run by psycho brownie mix thief had thieved half a box of brownie mix. So, my Mothadear in a rare yet justifiable fit of what I can only describe as rage and exasperation, interrogated and promptly chased my lying ass around the house from the kitchen, up the stairs (on which she nearly got me), to the bedroom I shared with my sister where I narrowly and briefly escaped, only to come full circle and be caught in the kitchen. On my hands and knees I pleaded with her through tears and snots, not to kill me, (whether aloud or silently I can't recall). My mother, mommy dearest, Mothadear herself, proceeded to beat me about the head and face with what remained of the aforementioned brownie mix. When the last of the mix had spilled out and the floor and I alike were covered, I was told to clean up the mess and I quote, with conviction, I quote, "This, NEVER, happened!"

This never happened. It's a statement, a declaration that haunted me well into my twenties. Before I began to ask, what's that about, before I made any conscious effort to grow the fuck up. This tiny statement held power, clinging to my psyche like a barnacle and driving me for a long time to question many of the things that have actually happened in my life. Forcing me to store carefully and exactly all those, You can't make this shit up moments that for many go from memory to tall tale ever so quickly. This single experience shaped and implanted a part of me that will always doubt my own memories no matter how clear and confident of them I may be. She said it never happened. But it did. Denied it for years, would probably still deny it if you asked her today. I used to bring it up around friends and family, she would laugh, tell them it never happened, convince them I'd made it up by passing it off. It did happen though, I was there, I knew it was real, factual and true. Then FINALLY at some holiday or family event later in my twenties, after I'd once again told this story and she'd once more denied it and everyone had just about cleared the room she leaned in, this maniacal mother of mine, and quietly confirmed what I knew yet still doubted was, indeed true. Mothadear admitted that she had in fact beaten me about the head and face with half a bag of fuckin brownie mix.

For over ten years I'd been made to question my own memory. Even now as I write this I think wow my mom was kind of a dick. At the same time I appreciate the lessons she taught in this among other things. It taught me what it felt like to to tell the truth and go unheard, to hold my ground on the important stuff, the stuff that really mattered such as the truth. I was no angel, I was a lying liar from Liarsville until a particularly altering relationship at 18 taught me the value and sometime necessity of a lie as a survival mechanism rather than a way of life. The brownie mix incident also taught me slowly over time that I despise and detest being lied to. I'm not talking white lies people tell to get out of helping you move. I'm talking the big whoppers, the manufactured kind of webs people weave for sympathy, jealousy, pure fucking stupidity. Sometimes loosely based on facts but lies nonetheless. These are the ones that burn me to my center, they hurt me the most because I was there and know it didn't quite happen that way or because somewhere inside I see through the bullshit I'm being fed. It hurts when people take you for an idiot. Misuse your trust and faith in them and even worse than that keep it going until caught. I hate being cheated, manipulated, or played for a fool to me they're all unnecessary risks of friendships, support systems and pieces of my life I value.

I have this terrible grey area though, and I'm not much for grey on such things hence it being kind of terrible for me. The grey area lays between the place where I see a person for what they are and love them anyways, want them in my life flaws, warts,  lies and all. That's where the hard choices come in. Thats where its been getting tougher. Some of these people I keep in my life lie to themselves more than they're lying to me, convince themselves of their false truths, but aren't fooling me. Does that forgive the toxicity or offensiveness of behaviors like lying for two years about some pretty heavy shit out of jealousy, all the while proclaiming "I just wanted to protect you." Does it excuse revisionist history about saving my ass from an extremely unhealthy relationship which makes you the hero and me some victim? Does my knowledge of the facts as well as the flaws of these people I continue to keep in my life, whose offenses seem, so minor in comparison to the their champion moments and positive contributions to a life filled with amazing highs yet also intense lows that they stood by for in what ways they were capable of, change the amount of chances they get to essentially break my heart? Like a video game where you earn extra points just by bein there for the tough times. Is my loyalty, friendship AND presence in these lives as they are in mine worth wondering when the next time I hurt will be?
 Also, what in the fuck is this need to keep these people all about? Yep, I'm finally bringin it back around, bringin it to a close. See, the fatty in the closet, under the bed, that bitch mostly died a long time ago but she left a thing or two. That girl had one booger flickin friend, we were weird lonely kids with parents who were too poor or cheap to buy us new uniforms or normal kid clothes, eventually that girl had two friends and at some point they multiplied and so forth. Recently, these past few years the friend pool may have downsized but the people with the deepest roots in my heart are the ones who accepted me for all my weird, mostly right out of the gate and didn't disappear when shit got hard. Friendship, like life is one hard badass bitch. I don't believe in giving up on people you love unless you really fucking have to, but every time one of those original weirdos sticks a little jab in there I question, What's it about? I wonder, can this person love,  accept and appreciate how far I've come and want to go from that lonely lying liar from Liarsville eating her mothers brownie mix and her feelings, under the bed? I wonder do they see the person I'm capable of being or just the person I was or even worse the person they want me to be. I question it all because I think it's rare that we ever really look outside our own realities. My mother inadvertently trained me to question my own reality in addition to others, my father taught me to see what and who people really are and accept them anyways, keep them anyways, be good to them, find the good in them anyways.


** Sidebar/ Disclaimer: Aside from this incident I don't recall my mother ever hitting me while she did make us drink soap, the liquid dishsoap, a few times, I am certain I mostly, always, deserved that shit...