You can read this and learn a bit about me, learn how I define a certain “Saying” or skip to the end and read the line that makes me who I am and how I learned to smile in hard times.. Carry on.
Everyday you wake up is a chance to right some wrongs, to apologize or to say “I love you” to someone you may have been afraid to say it to before.. Smile at a stranger and possibly change their path from sad to “Things will be ok”.. Start that dialogue with someone you find interesting and maybe they’ll become your other half, “The One”..
Last night we went to sleep a little bit older, a little bit wiser.. Today we woke, one might say re-born, into the universe to try again. To do our best or to do what we think is right.. Whether that be making someone laugh, or holding someone’s hand for the last time as they exit this plain for another..
I hear people say all the time, “Being me isn’t easy”, being anyone isn’t easy. We all have “Issues” or “Problems”.. Things we don’t readily discuss with just anyone.
Me?, I’ll talk about anything at anytime. Why? because it’s who I am. And it isn’t easy. I don’t complain about it, I don’t whine to people about how disgustingly bored I am with “Normal” stuff. Or how there was a sale on shoes at Nordies but I couldn’t get away for lunch to buy any. That didn’t ruin my day.. Things that ruin my day are things I can’t change, things that would be considered an “Ineluctable destiny”, an unstoppable force. We all have opinions and beliefs.. I have mine, some are valid to only me. Wanna know why?.. Ask.
In my life I’ve seen a lot of pain. From a very young age (2 years) I’ve felt things considered unimaginable to most. Things that were set upon me by what some would refer to as a “Monster”.. We all have that, you can’t deny it. The Monster under the bed or in the closet. That noise in the night that stops our heart and paralyzes us with fright, unable to call out to our protector, mom or dad..
My “Monster” was alive, mine was 6’2″ and 210 lbs. Upset at the world with a desire only to inflict a fierce amount of unholy rage upon his youngest child, Me.
Leaving the other two be, they being the Italian princess, and the oldest, well he was untouchable. for 14 years I endured that mans wrath, I took my stitches and bruises for one reason, a reason that kept me from committing suicide at age 8 (First attempt at 6), My mom.. But that’s another story..
I feel it my humanly duty to use certain gifts, attributes born of the pain and horror that was my childhood to help make others realize that it isn’t “So bad”.
I learned to not follow the rule “Live in the moment”.. Why?.. Those that do will sometimes find that when it all crashes, when it ends, the life they grew so fond of, that the pressure of beginning anew, starting over is too much and they become so wildly depressed, so distraught that a bullet or a bottle is the only way out. They turn to drugs, they wanna force their pain and anguish onto others as they feel they don’t deserve ALL or any of what’s happened.
I don’t necessarily plan ahead all the time. I’m not perfect, I just know what could happen, as many do.
Most are selfish, they wanna keep to themselves, not talking about how they feel, or what might have happened to them at a young age. They feel they have grown past it.. Dealing with ones “normal” youth is typically a disaster.. While dealing with that youth and having to hide traumas, physical, mental, emotional abuses from those that may further your torture and from those who could stop it. Being afraid sucks.. I was in constant fear, pain, growing up. Whether it was being sent into the backyard of a neighbor only to be surprised by two bullies and forced to fight, or waking in the middle of the night to a man who was suppose to be your protector, your hero, standing over you with a knife, telling you that you don’t deserve to live and thrusting that cold steel into your guts, then walking away while you sob quietly because if you made a sound and woke your mom or anyone else, there would most certainly have been hell to pay. As if laying in your bed, bleeding out with a 6 inch knife in your stomach wasn’t hell enough, well, for me it wasn’t.. Believe me, it could have gotten worse, and it did, over and over again.
I stopped feeling pain when I was 5 years old.. Already having had my jaw broken, fingers snapped and thrown into the brick fireplace mantel more times than I could count. Life on Powers Road wasn’t ideal. But what I did notice at that age, I was developing a sense, a sense that would drive me to keep going, to stay on this earth. I remember the night it happened.. I was getting my head crushed in a drawer, being told by my brother (Poway Fire Captain, Bill Clark) that if I moved or made a sound… In his words.. “I’ll tell dad you broke something of mine so I can laugh at your screams”.. It was at that moment, I smirked.. I felt better.. I wasn’t afraid, I almost turned around and kicked him but I was more afraid of my dad so I stayed put and laughed at things for 4 hours.
I made things up, I laughed.. I remembered the first time I yelled at my dad and called him names to get him away from my mom.. “You’re a fuckin dick!!”.. He beat the shit out of me for 20 minutes.. I laughed.. I felt better.. In that 4 hours of being stuck with my head in a drawer, my first life changing breaths, Humor heals.. And it was that sense that saved me, saved me from being just like him, or my brother.. Saved me from hanging myself in the rafters. Today, I hope to save others..
I found that laughter literally saves.. I built on that.. Through school, bad days.. I laughed.. I made myself smile even in the face of certain agony I looked at him and said.. “Give it your best shot, asshole”.. Then went to my happy place as he laid into me.. I could smile because I knew he wasn’t hurting my mom.
As the years past and the injuries mounted.. All total by age 8, but continuing on through age 16, courtesy of the man called dad.. 11 broken bones, 43 stitches from being thrown head first into objects that were considered NOT bodily friendly.. Being slashed across the chest with the same blade he used to open the dog food bag, So not sanitary.. Being stabbed in the lower guts with the knife mom used to cut my food.. Who does that? .. In the backyard and hearing the words, “You’re lucky you lived this long, you little bastard”, turning around to look, BLAM!!(sound of a gunshot,.38), looking down at my leg, then back at him as he laughed and said.. “Oops”.. I passed out, don’t remember anything funny from that.. And it being my birthday, I got an RC car, he decided to make it known he was not happy about the amount of $$ spent on the car, so he broke it.. I then said.. “You need to hurry up and die, you fuckin asshole!”.. To which he replied.. “Oh yeah!! (breaking a beer bottle) we’ll see who’s gonna die”.. I think he might have said. “Unguard!” just before he slashed wildly at my body and connected at my shoulder, ripping 7 huge lines that should have been stitched but I had to deal with duct tape and toilet paper. He was a real tight ass.. And just so you know, my scars tell a whole different story than my tattoos do.
I like to talk, I like to share, it helps me, and, the spirits willing, it helps others.. I wanna know your story, I’ll tell you mine.. What you read up above, that was just the beginning.. If I have reached out, and you aren’t sure why.. I hope this helped a little. It’s because I care.. And for someone “special”, it’s because I wanna know everything.. Fear is a lie, all bad thoughts are inaccurate.. I made it out of that painful time, I learned, I healed, I made mistakes.. I do my best everyday..
Anyway I was trying to not talk a lot about my stuff, but it crept in a bit.. I apologize.
My reason for this was to maybe get some to realize that, things aren’t so bad.. It will get better.. I did.. I lived, that’s all I was concerned about.
Being alone, with nobody to help me, I made it through, by laughing, by teaching myself to “Roll (Laugh) with the punches”..
Wanna know more?, ask.. I’m here… Cheers.