She was so pretty. her eyes are blue like corn flowers. that kind. a bright pretty happy blue. she's tiny. like, 5' 4" or something. and built like a little bird. her hair is blonde. and her smile is beautiful. and she's a genius. she plays these instruments, and reads and retains hundreds of pages per hour. quantum physics is a hobby of hers. she worked designing weapons for the navy. without being taught how, or any formal education. and when i was sick she knew exactly how to hold my hair back while i threw up and hold me in her lap. but she was mean.
one day when i was 12 i tried to reason with her. i sat down in our rented town house that some distant family person was paying for.she couldn't pay for anything. she couldn't work. because she couldn't bring coors to the office with her. someone had mercy on the pretty blonde victim mother of kids she wouldn't support, and put us up in that house. so we were in the kitchen with her at the table. she was only wearing a t-shirt and panties. and she had her jack and water she would drink with no ice. and her coors. and i said, look. i love you. and i need you. will you please stop? can i mean more than that to you? can we fill you up instead of that. please.
and she looked me in the eye, and she said, no. i love this. i do not love you. i never loved you. you ruined my life. you made me this way. and then she sipped more.
a couple of years before that when i was 10, she told me i'd grow up to be a prostitute. and be pregnant by the time i was 13. i didn't know what a prostitute was. i didn't know how to be pregnant. and i was a fat, swarthy, ugly child. but she decided that's what i was and what i would be.
i wanted her to hold me today. but she's gone now. she can no longer walk. she's not pretty anymore. she looks like something from a scary movie. not kidding. like death with a heart beat. open, draining sores on her black legs that she cannot use to walk with anymore. her teeth are black because she has not brushed them in years. she pees on herself and lives in her urine. she stopped bathing too. she scares me.
and i remember being young and holding on to the resolution that i would never be her. and then becoming that. i am 3 years younger than she was when she had me. and i look back, and then forward, and then at me now. and i see her in my chin and my face that is the same, darker, not as fine boned version of her. it makes me quit when i see her staring back.
i tried to love her too. i am so desperate for her not to have this same thing that made her legs dead and her hair scary and made her decide not to bathe or eat anymore. but i have it because she gave it to me. so i went to her and held her in my arms. and whispered to her that she is BEAUTIFUL, because she is. even in that filth. she is so pretty. and i told her that Jesus sits next to her and grieves at her pain. and that He can't hold her so i will. and i told her that she's His baby girl still, and i would keep her safe. and i'm not mad that she hates me. but that i would forever love her and hold her hand and clean her wounds and she was the mama but now i will be and she can rest and learn what it means to be the loved and protected and wanted child of The Living God.
she said no. and told me she hated me. and she was sobbing. and told me to get out.
i finally did.
i love my mama. i don't want to be her. but i guess i have to be to be able to be the only person left in the world that loves her, and always will.
it's not good.
When He talks to me, i get that feeling inside. my stomach gets yuck. i shake and it takes everything from deep within to keep me from weeping uncontrollably. i hate crying. tears are for the weak. hopelessness totally takes over and i picture myself clawing at my own face with rage to try to make myself pay for how horrible He's taught me that i am. i want to scream and never stop.
And i believe in Jesus Christ. that He is real and He came for the hopeless and broken. and that He IS hope and the thing that puts us back together. but not for me. He is not for me. He is for You. and for Him. He isn't for me. not my kind of failure. not my kind of worthless. i've gone too far. too deep, too bad, too black, too ugly. i'm gone. i always was. my purpose was to have The Babies, so they could bring light into this dark place. and then i go away.
and i hold on in moments because of the knowledge of that purpose. i break life up into them. into tiny little pieces so that i don't do something stupid with bigger pieces of time. the moments that follow every interaction with Him are hell. i'm reminded of the promises i thought were real and that i could be pretty and real and good and loved and needed and wanted. i see those, and they mock me and make me crave a knife in my neck and the subsequent death that would come from draining the bad ugly black dirty filth i'm composed of onto the floor and away from this ugly body.
i love to give too. i love to take hands and hold them gently and show them how to make movements towards hope and success and a better life. but i cannot receive. only He fully understood how to give what i needed. but He only did it for his own benefit and then went away when He was done. so there is no thing and no one else that can understand what i need.
so i pretend i don't need and use what i must for the tiny little pieces of life i struggle thru for The Babies.
and try to talk to Jesus. my shame and guilt and hate for me keeps me away from my savior. i talk to Him with my head down and whisper because i have no right to go to Him at all. and i ask why. and i say i'm sorry. and i ask for Him to take away My Love and make Him not real and erase the pain and the memories so i can try to live and find out what life is like. it doesn't work. because it's up to me to break the chains. and i don't want to.
i'd rather have the hurt, because i deserve it. i'd rather imagine my death and all the wounds i wish i could self inflict as payment for the horror that i am without drawing attention. and let Him come back every once in awhile and make me feel that awful feeling that is really the only thing i know how to deserve.
more vomit
I fell in love for the first time when I was 24. he had words. He called me 'princess'. nobody else had ever used that word with me. i had been married before. to a person i wasn't attracted to and didn't want to love, who abandoned me at a homeless shelter when i was 6 months pregnant with his daughter. i fought after that. the homeless, pregnant person. walking around in north texas applying for jobs at chicken restaurants and mcdonalds. i fought the good fight too. so sick and fat and ugly and pregnant with this huge baby. we came out of it. she was 3 when i met Him. my love.
but i liked being single. it was GOOD to know i did it. 11.00 an hour during the day. fucking strangers at night after the babies slept. paying for our simple life with the only thing i knew how to do. the little bit i had was mine. it belonged to me. i took on more jobs. i was working at a school that taught kids how to fix cars during the day, 10 hours a day, 4 days a week. then, friday thru saturday i worked 12 hours a day as a CNA. Friday nights i cleaned churches with a baby playing at my feet. i had to drag her everywhere, i was too scared i'd lose her. so she came and helped mama clean. sundays i worked at costco setting up floral displays. and every other moment i wasn't working, i had strangers in my home i was fucking to make extra.
no one could have what was mine. you can't touch my door. it's mine. i pay for the right to decide who gets to touch my fucking door every month. do not knock. you can't look at me. i'm mine. i pay to be me every time i put a stranger's dick in my mouth. i earn 50.00 and that is my self worth and you can't have it. no one. i know people. and i don't want them and i am mine and you can't have me.
then He came and changed that. i drove all night from texas to ohio to get him. and straight back thru. He held my hand. and called me "princess". He gave me my Favorite Place. i got to put my head there and his arms went around me and He'd tell me secrets, whispers. about hope. and that i was pretty. and i would lay in that place and cry and He knew why and He loved me anyway, in spite of and because of it all. my best friend.
and He let me kiss his toes. and serve him. and He worked hard and i worked hard and we were a family. finally. the Princess and Him. i am not pretty. i am ugly. i am built like a tonka truck and struggled with my weight and didn't have princess hands or princess teeth or princess smile or princess anything. but for the first time, ever. i believed i was beautiful. i believed in love. not the fucking kind of love. where people put their hands on your body. the friend kind. where people give you and you give them all of what you have, even the bad ugly things. and they're made sacred and good.
i was so desperate to believe it was real that i did not see that it was made out of things that don't exist. He had a fetish for blondes. i am puerto rican. we aren't blonde. He had a fetish for tiny little girls. i am not a tiny little girl. He hid his truth. while He gave me the secret things i didn't want anyone to know i needed because i was scared. He knew those things i had to have without me saying them. He gave me the pathetic shit i needed so He could have a mother. in the end, i am a good whore. i sold myself to Him, but not for money this time. for hope. and He paid for a good whore, the kind that strokes the black hurting parts of your soul back to life. He was a sick, evil mother fuck.
i'm 30 now and He's gone. He cheated. a lot. and lied about it. a lot. i ran 3,000 miles to get away. by the time He was done with me i'd learned my lesson about what being fat can steal from you. so i wasn't fat anymore. in the end, it was me on the floor, shaking so hard. like parkinson's. and Him spitting on me. telling me to do the world a favor and die. telling me i was a worthless mother. telling me i was ugly. telling me i wasn't allowed to touch him or look at him. and laughing as i sat in the floor choking because i couldn't breathe because i was panicking because i could not understand what was happening. when He was done, so was i. no more me. He taught me to accept the truth. that the babies needed something whole and not broken. something that didn't struggle like this and drag them along through the dirt of mistakes that never go away. He taught me that doing right by them would mean walking away so they could have a chance. He taught me that there is no hope. none.
somehow my body survived Him. i ran away only for the babies. by the time i got to the place 3,000 miles away i couldn't talk anymore. i would just look at people and blink because i was too scared that using my mouth would make someone spit on me like He did. i was too scared id be hit or pushed. i flinched when men walked too close to me. and i would start not breathing right again and i was so ashamed and furious at myself for turning into this thing. that i would go sit in the closet and cut myself to try to get calm and fucking stop already and just be normal. and i came away with this gift of a rage bigger than i am. because there is no more me, not what i was. im tiny and nothing now.
and He couldn't stop. He followed me. He called me. He tried to give me back what He stole but when He took it, he burned it up and it was ashes. but He was the only chance i had left. after my mama and her sickness. and my daddy and his death. and being thrown away and thrown away and thrown away and thrown away. i gave Him the little part that was left that i was saving and protecting because once it was gone so was my hope and faith and trust and desire to still breathe. He had it, and set it on fire. and it was dead and gone now. but He tried to give it back and i was so desperate to live that i accepted that sick fucking shit.
so now i'm in that place 3,000 miles away just barely holding on. my dream is to get the babies to a place where i'm not so they can get away from my insanity and have a chance. because i can't give them what they need. and then to get on a bus. and go to california. and find some heroine and stick it in the veins in my toes and die while i watch the sunset on the beach and apologize to my savior for throwing it all away.
i am so sorry.
but i liked being single. it was GOOD to know i did it. 11.00 an hour during the day. fucking strangers at night after the babies slept. paying for our simple life with the only thing i knew how to do. the little bit i had was mine. it belonged to me. i took on more jobs. i was working at a school that taught kids how to fix cars during the day, 10 hours a day, 4 days a week. then, friday thru saturday i worked 12 hours a day as a CNA. Friday nights i cleaned churches with a baby playing at my feet. i had to drag her everywhere, i was too scared i'd lose her. so she came and helped mama clean. sundays i worked at costco setting up floral displays. and every other moment i wasn't working, i had strangers in my home i was fucking to make extra.
no one could have what was mine. you can't touch my door. it's mine. i pay for the right to decide who gets to touch my fucking door every month. do not knock. you can't look at me. i'm mine. i pay to be me every time i put a stranger's dick in my mouth. i earn 50.00 and that is my self worth and you can't have it. no one. i know people. and i don't want them and i am mine and you can't have me.
then He came and changed that. i drove all night from texas to ohio to get him. and straight back thru. He held my hand. and called me "princess". He gave me my Favorite Place. i got to put my head there and his arms went around me and He'd tell me secrets, whispers. about hope. and that i was pretty. and i would lay in that place and cry and He knew why and He loved me anyway, in spite of and because of it all. my best friend.
and He let me kiss his toes. and serve him. and He worked hard and i worked hard and we were a family. finally. the Princess and Him. i am not pretty. i am ugly. i am built like a tonka truck and struggled with my weight and didn't have princess hands or princess teeth or princess smile or princess anything. but for the first time, ever. i believed i was beautiful. i believed in love. not the fucking kind of love. where people put their hands on your body. the friend kind. where people give you and you give them all of what you have, even the bad ugly things. and they're made sacred and good.
i was so desperate to believe it was real that i did not see that it was made out of things that don't exist. He had a fetish for blondes. i am puerto rican. we aren't blonde. He had a fetish for tiny little girls. i am not a tiny little girl. He hid his truth. while He gave me the secret things i didn't want anyone to know i needed because i was scared. He knew those things i had to have without me saying them. He gave me the pathetic shit i needed so He could have a mother. in the end, i am a good whore. i sold myself to Him, but not for money this time. for hope. and He paid for a good whore, the kind that strokes the black hurting parts of your soul back to life. He was a sick, evil mother fuck.
i'm 30 now and He's gone. He cheated. a lot. and lied about it. a lot. i ran 3,000 miles to get away. by the time He was done with me i'd learned my lesson about what being fat can steal from you. so i wasn't fat anymore. in the end, it was me on the floor, shaking so hard. like parkinson's. and Him spitting on me. telling me to do the world a favor and die. telling me i was a worthless mother. telling me i was ugly. telling me i wasn't allowed to touch him or look at him. and laughing as i sat in the floor choking because i couldn't breathe because i was panicking because i could not understand what was happening. when He was done, so was i. no more me. He taught me to accept the truth. that the babies needed something whole and not broken. something that didn't struggle like this and drag them along through the dirt of mistakes that never go away. He taught me that doing right by them would mean walking away so they could have a chance. He taught me that there is no hope. none.
somehow my body survived Him. i ran away only for the babies. by the time i got to the place 3,000 miles away i couldn't talk anymore. i would just look at people and blink because i was too scared that using my mouth would make someone spit on me like He did. i was too scared id be hit or pushed. i flinched when men walked too close to me. and i would start not breathing right again and i was so ashamed and furious at myself for turning into this thing. that i would go sit in the closet and cut myself to try to get calm and fucking stop already and just be normal. and i came away with this gift of a rage bigger than i am. because there is no more me, not what i was. im tiny and nothing now.
and He couldn't stop. He followed me. He called me. He tried to give me back what He stole but when He took it, he burned it up and it was ashes. but He was the only chance i had left. after my mama and her sickness. and my daddy and his death. and being thrown away and thrown away and thrown away and thrown away. i gave Him the little part that was left that i was saving and protecting because once it was gone so was my hope and faith and trust and desire to still breathe. He had it, and set it on fire. and it was dead and gone now. but He tried to give it back and i was so desperate to live that i accepted that sick fucking shit.
so now i'm in that place 3,000 miles away just barely holding on. my dream is to get the babies to a place where i'm not so they can get away from my insanity and have a chance. because i can't give them what they need. and then to get on a bus. and go to california. and find some heroine and stick it in the veins in my toes and die while i watch the sunset on the beach and apologize to my savior for throwing it all away.
i am so sorry.
throwing up
I told the babies I had to take a bath. And I went upstairs and locked the door. Undressed. Put in the tea tree salty stuff. Stood and looked in the mirror for a long time. I had stopped brushing my teeth two days ago. That's why I needed to bathe. I'm perpetually filthy. It doesn't wash off. But I can ignore it until my teeth are dirty. Then I'm aware of how filthy I really am. So it's bath time. But the mirror stops me.
I glanced back at my naked body and it made me stop and so I stared at the ugly belly from carrying around a too big baby. The belly that stretched so much it tore open in the last few weeks of pregnancy. And remember being 15 and looking down at my flat belly in the shower and being thankful that I was "pretty." I stared at the black under my eyes that wouldn't go away. It came out of nowhere two years ago and it won't leave. It tells on me.I looked at the mouth that pleased so many strangers, and how dirty it was and how it would always be dirty and couldn't stop staring at it and thinking about what it had done to take care of those babies. I looked at it a long time. I got that mouth from my daddy. And it made me cry that the gift he gave me was so ugly and full of filth. So I got in the bath.
I scrubbed. My ugly unpainted toes, and cried. I deliberately shaved, and scrubbed more. Until my brown skin turned red with the effort of my long, long fingers to try to get the ugly and gross off of me. And my silent crying turned into sobs and I put my head on my naked thighs and silently wailed. The water ran and I cried to my dead daddy and opened my eyes to my scarred arms.
Last week the husband I didn't love kicked me out of our home and it was cold and I gave up. The next day I sent my babies to school and drove to a truck stop and ate whatever pills I'd gathered the night before as the clock told me I had 10 minutes to take what I could find and go. I put on my big sun glasses and walked in and it was funny because all the men in line moved five giant steps backwards as I walked in in my black that I always wore and found some box cutter blades and paid my $2.49 to the happily oblivious Indian guy behind the counter and went back to my car at the very back of the parking lot. And I casually ate those pills at the back of the truck stop at the top of a mountain and screamed at the top of my lungs. I don't know why I didn't die.
Then I drove back to the house I was kicked out of and dared him to make me leave again and barely held on as I hid my bleeding arms from the babies and cooked dinner.
Tonight I sit again in the bath tub w/the two-dollar box cutter blades and slowly slice at the thighs slick from bath salt and shaving. I watch the superficial dermis open up. And slice slowly through fat. I am an anatomist. And the dark, dark ugly comes pouring out and it feels tremendously beautiful. I squeeze and watch it flow into the dirty bath water where it belongs. And slice some more. No one can know. There is no tourniquet because the hurting is what stops the flow of the pain and I can't make myself die because I don't want to go to hell and I can't live with this because I don't want to go to hell. So it cut it open and watch the dirty ugly moderately slide out of my thighs where no one will see it because they're not allowed to know my failure. And I close my eyes.
I'm clean. Except for my teeth, and it's driving me crazy. Stand up. Let the dirty go down out of the house down through the pipes. away. and turn on the shower, cold. to wash my hair. the dirty keeps coming out of me but it's pink now so I know it's safe to wash my hair and get out and let my thighs close up until the next time.
i was born 30 years ago in a blizzard. almost in alabama. but not quite. to another, less obvious whore. and i am a real whore. my daddy died and my mama left to go consummate the last whore deal she made before she couldn't walk anymore. and i took up the torch and started stripping in a little boxy building outside the gates of an army base when I was 18.. i'm good at love. i can love you to life. ive done it for so many. the walking dead like me that i can see right thru that tell me their secrets and fall in love because i know when no one else knows. i'm a real whore. it's not a self-deprecating phrase, i sell me, to make it. i sell the gift of love, i make it filthy, to make you better. there have been thousands. i do it to make you better and make me better so the babies never know this pain and the torch can go out and rot in the cold snow somewhere close to alabama where it was born in that blizzard 30 years ago.
this is the truth. i have to make it go away. i have to get rid of it, and give it away to someone or something else. and know that i was honest. because i lie. i lie.
I glanced back at my naked body and it made me stop and so I stared at the ugly belly from carrying around a too big baby. The belly that stretched so much it tore open in the last few weeks of pregnancy. And remember being 15 and looking down at my flat belly in the shower and being thankful that I was "pretty." I stared at the black under my eyes that wouldn't go away. It came out of nowhere two years ago and it won't leave. It tells on me.I looked at the mouth that pleased so many strangers, and how dirty it was and how it would always be dirty and couldn't stop staring at it and thinking about what it had done to take care of those babies. I looked at it a long time. I got that mouth from my daddy. And it made me cry that the gift he gave me was so ugly and full of filth. So I got in the bath.
I scrubbed. My ugly unpainted toes, and cried. I deliberately shaved, and scrubbed more. Until my brown skin turned red with the effort of my long, long fingers to try to get the ugly and gross off of me. And my silent crying turned into sobs and I put my head on my naked thighs and silently wailed. The water ran and I cried to my dead daddy and opened my eyes to my scarred arms.
Last week the husband I didn't love kicked me out of our home and it was cold and I gave up. The next day I sent my babies to school and drove to a truck stop and ate whatever pills I'd gathered the night before as the clock told me I had 10 minutes to take what I could find and go. I put on my big sun glasses and walked in and it was funny because all the men in line moved five giant steps backwards as I walked in in my black that I always wore and found some box cutter blades and paid my $2.49 to the happily oblivious Indian guy behind the counter and went back to my car at the very back of the parking lot. And I casually ate those pills at the back of the truck stop at the top of a mountain and screamed at the top of my lungs. I don't know why I didn't die.
Then I drove back to the house I was kicked out of and dared him to make me leave again and barely held on as I hid my bleeding arms from the babies and cooked dinner.
Tonight I sit again in the bath tub w/the two-dollar box cutter blades and slowly slice at the thighs slick from bath salt and shaving. I watch the superficial dermis open up. And slice slowly through fat. I am an anatomist. And the dark, dark ugly comes pouring out and it feels tremendously beautiful. I squeeze and watch it flow into the dirty bath water where it belongs. And slice some more. No one can know. There is no tourniquet because the hurting is what stops the flow of the pain and I can't make myself die because I don't want to go to hell and I can't live with this because I don't want to go to hell. So it cut it open and watch the dirty ugly moderately slide out of my thighs where no one will see it because they're not allowed to know my failure. And I close my eyes.
I'm clean. Except for my teeth, and it's driving me crazy. Stand up. Let the dirty go down out of the house down through the pipes. away. and turn on the shower, cold. to wash my hair. the dirty keeps coming out of me but it's pink now so I know it's safe to wash my hair and get out and let my thighs close up until the next time.
i was born 30 years ago in a blizzard. almost in alabama. but not quite. to another, less obvious whore. and i am a real whore. my daddy died and my mama left to go consummate the last whore deal she made before she couldn't walk anymore. and i took up the torch and started stripping in a little boxy building outside the gates of an army base when I was 18.. i'm good at love. i can love you to life. ive done it for so many. the walking dead like me that i can see right thru that tell me their secrets and fall in love because i know when no one else knows. i'm a real whore. it's not a self-deprecating phrase, i sell me, to make it. i sell the gift of love, i make it filthy, to make you better. there have been thousands. i do it to make you better and make me better so the babies never know this pain and the torch can go out and rot in the cold snow somewhere close to alabama where it was born in that blizzard 30 years ago.
this is the truth. i have to make it go away. i have to get rid of it, and give it away to someone or something else. and know that i was honest. because i lie. i lie.
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