There's no one to trust...

And so I haven't written in... months? Years? Something.

And of course I'm back not with good news, but with more whining.

So I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about love. I can openly acknowledge that I've been in love with 4 people in my life. And I'm only 25. But I've dated plenty of other people that I played at loving, and I know the difference. And well, I've had a lot of issues lately (just in my head, not in real life) and so I feel the need to start talking it all through and see how it goes from there.

1. Derek was my first ever boyfriend and I loved him. The way that I loved him was different than the way I've ever loved anyone else, and I think that makes him super-special. He was sweet, and kind, and we were so schmoopy all the time that it makes me nauseous thinking about it now. But he was there, and I didn't care if he was goofy looking, or if he was a bit sensitive, it just made me love him more. I'm glad I broke up with him when I did because we were never going to grow into a mature loving relationship, but man was it good when it was there.

2. Brandon was the second boy I've ever loved and he screwed me over so badly. I was young, he was a bit older than me. I still think he tells himself that I didn't love him - that I just thought I loved him. But that was because he only played at loving me. But when I think of him 10 years later and still feel tears threatening my eyes and feel my heart break all over again, I think it's fair to say that I loved him. Do I still? Probably, in a weird, uncomfortable way. It's why I go out of my way to not be in contact with him in any way shape or form. But he never pretended to be something he wasn't. He was a fuck-up of the highest caliber, and I knew it. I know it now. He's straightened up, I hear. He's in the marines, he's engaged (or engaged to be engaged), but it doesn't matter to me. He hurt me, he tore me apart, and as happy as I am for him, it still hurts me so badly to think of him happy with someone else, even though I'm happy with someone else. I spent so long convincing myself that one day he'd see. One day he'd wake up and he'd know. I know that he won't now. Or, at least, it won't matter if he does. I had just always believed he was meant to be with me. And I was meant to be with him. I gave that up a while before I was married, but sometimes, I still wonder what he's doing. And if whoever he's with is being good to him. Because he deserves to be loved as strongly as I loved him - and he deserves to have it be done by someone who he can love just as strongly back. I have to believe that. Or I'm nothing, just a bitter woman. I'm working on forgiving him for a lot of the things he did to me. On letting go of them. On closing my eyes and seeing the baggage he left me with blowing away like smoke on the breeze. But it's hard to let it go. It was hard for me to let him go. I pray that one day I'll be able to do so. That one day I'll be able to smile honestly and shake his hand, and his wife's hand, and look at his children and not wonder how they'd have turned out if I had been their mother. Geeze, I hope it happens soon. I'm sensitive and emotional right now and thinking of him doesn't help. I don't want to be with him anymore, but geeze it hurts. [[btw - I just looked him up on Facebook. He got fat. I'm over him now. This is a serious comment, not a snarky one. I really AM that terrible of a person.]]

3. Toby was just so beautiful and fucked up and broken. And I was so beautiful and fucked up and broken that we would have gone to hell and back and laughed the whole damn time. He's still fucked up, still broken, far less beautiful in my eyes. But I think he's going well, and that's a good thing, I think.

4. My husband. A kind, loving man, who has some issues, and who accepts my issues. I'm lucky. I really am.

I love people who open up anonymous conversations with this statement -

"Can I ask you a sexual question?"

What do people do??? Do people actually say, "Why, you most certainly can, you strange man who is obviously messaging me not because you are interested in holding an intelligent conversation with me, but because you are interested in finding out if I will let you put your penis in my vagina. And I have to tell you. That's hot." If so, no wonder people are getting killed meeting strangers from the net.

I responded the way I always do. "No, you can't. Why would you want to? I'm a stranger."

To which he replied, "Because you're hot."

And so, I once again replied with, "Thank you for the compliment. I may be hot, but I am also married, and a mom, and WAY too busy to answer sexual questions from anonymous strangers. Nice try. Have a good day."

Hopefully, that's the end.

So. I haven't written in a while.

I'm working on a paper in my English class. Well, I SHOULD be working on it. Instead, I'm typing here. I slept on my shoulder funny last night, so the whole left side of my body is aching like a BEEOTCH tonight. Yes. A beeotch.

So. Title. It's a song lyric. Like all my others. Except like, one. This is going to be my confessional post. Why? Because I need one. Really badly. And I don't think anyone would want to talk about the things I need to talk about, except my husband. And, well, he's at work. So anyway, I got a Jason Mraz cd for Christmas, and I was listening to it and I was jammin along when a song popped up called, "Love For a Child." Those of you who are familiar with it, well, you know what it is. For those of you who aren't, it's just a really sad song.

And one of the lines hurt.

It's kinda nice to work the floor since the divorce
I've been enjoying both my Christmases and my birthday cakes
And taking drugs and making love at far too young an age
And they never check to see my grades
What a fool I'd be to start complaining now

What about taking this empty cup and filling it up
With a little bit more of innocence
I haven't had enough, it's probably because when you're young
It's okay to be easily ignored
I'd love to believe it's all about love for a child

I've done some bad, bad stuff in my life. Some stuff where, if I was a Catholic, I'd be in confessional for hours talking about it. But, I'm not Catholic and I believe in a kind, loving God who will speak to me without an intermediary, and so I think I'm okay.

I am truly sorry and I humbly repent for certain decisions I made in my life.

And yet, I can't help but choose sometimes to blame others for some of my choices. They didn't do it on purpose, but still. Everyone I know is in some way at fault. I am broken and no one can understand how to fix me, so they choose to ignore it and move around me.

So, let's do some confessing.

My mother married a man with a very nasty mean streak when he drank. And he drank quite a bit. One night, he beat her up real bad, and so she left him. Go mom. When they signed the marriage annulment papers, she told him she was pregnant. So, nine months later, along came me. And, well, by then, he was pretty much gone. Not that I can blame him, my grandfather told him to leave, and not look back. He did as he was asked. Was that right? Maybe. Was that okay? Maybe. It didn't matter to me when I was younger. I grew up in a house full of love (and loving, silly fights) that was inhabited by myself, my mother, my aunt, my gramma, and my grandfather, who I always called Papa.

And that's how I lived. Papa had wanted to adopt me and raise me as his and my gramma's child. My mother said no. Would things have been different if he had adopted me? I believe so. I would have grown up with two sisters whom I would have felt I could confide in, not what felt like 3 moms and a dad. Was my mother wrong to want to keep me as her child? Definitely not. Was it okay that she kept me for her child? Definitely. Was it the correct... the best choice? I don't know. But so I grew up in that sort of atmosphere. And things were fine.

I got my first boyfriend and if we did a little bit too much to be as young as we were? Well, it happens sometimes. I loved him, though. More than I could have ever thought possible. Do I think now that I loved him? Yes. This wasn't one of those, "You think you're in love with someone but you're not, it's just your hormones talking" kind of things.

And then, the worst thing that could have possibly happened happened. My grandfather, who had always been strong, loving, kind, and fairly invincible in my eyes (I watched him fall off of the roof with no harm done to him, as well as various other random crazy things) suffered from a massive stroke. Was it his fault? Well, you can't say that it was, but you can't make him blameless. He smoked, he drank, and in 1998 when this happened, you knew the risks. Especially since his father had died of a stroke.

And in the time it takes for a human heart to push a small, barely visible little clump into somewhere dangerous, my life changed forever.

I had no other father figures. I was 12 years old and felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. Being exceptionally intelligent didn't help in this situation. Nor did my family's expectation that I should behave as an adult and accept what happened to him in stride. There was no way to take what happened in stride. My Papa (for he was mine, not my mom and aunt's, not my gramma's, not his mother's) was no longer invincible. He was a baby again, not able to walk, not able to use the bathroom, sitting in his chair and crying and (at times) begging my gramma to give him his gun so that he could kill himself. Of course, she didn't do that.

And, in spite of all this, my faith in God never wavered. Huh.

But I couldn't have been expected to handle the situation properly. I know that now. I have always felt that way. I was a child still, a poor, broken child who didn't know how to express her feelings in ways that could be understood by the adults around her in a way that would make them find it acceptable. And my friends? What did they know about the loss through which I suffered? Basically, I needed to man up. But I didn't know how to. So I pretended everything was fine, and sought male attentions in other ways. My boyfriend, bless his heart, wasn't monstrous enough for me. Not that I wanted a monster, but I wanted someone who would tell me what to do. And so we grew apart and within a few months, I broke it off with him and went gallivanting around like a whore.

Why? I can't tell you. Maybe I just needed male affection. But people always say those things, and so I pretended that it was all okay. And I just got sneaky and ruthless and cold.

And so followed a string of boyfriends that I controlled and used and left in the dust. Why? Because I could, of course.

I wanted so badly to be in control. Of everything.

And on it went, until I was 15 and my grandfather (who had bounced from getting better to getting worse, back and forth like a yo-yo) died. I had prayed for him to, you know. No one knows that, but no one on this site knows me and I find that it was an acceptable decision that I made - one I felt I had to make because I didn't think anyone else in my family was strong enough to.

And I'll tell you something else - the night before he had his stroke, I knew he was going to be hurt. Badly. I woke up in the middle of the night knowing it, the way you know that you slept through your alarm the minute you wake up on some days.

But so, at fifteen years old, I lay in my bed and I said,

"Dear God,
Let's face it. Papa isn't going to get any better. So here's what I'm thinking. Either make him better or let him stop hurting. He doesn't deserve this, and neither do we. So you do what you have to, but do it now. Because no one will make it through this if someone doesn't make a decision. So, if he's not going to get better, which I think we can both agree is what's going on, then please just let him get some rest. Amen."

And, NO LIE. I fell asleep to the sound of the sirens coming to my gramma's house, where she had awoken to find him lying next to her, not breathing, and without a pulse. We lived on the same street, you see. And while everyone else in my family was hoping against hope that my Papa was going to get better, I couldn't play that game anymore. And when I was woken up by my mother and my Papa's sister to tell me the news, I didn't cry. I didn't feel relief or anything like that, I just knew it was what had had to be done. And while I wanted to hate God for taking my grandfather away, secretly, I thanked Him. Because He had answered my prayers. And because he had rescued my grandfather from what must have, in some way, been a fate worse than death. Papa experienced hell on earth for almost 3 years exactly. And I couldn't bring myself to cry for him until much, much later. After he was in the ground.

And the shit kept piling on. My new stepfather did some pretty terrible stuff to me, and that was bad, but I just turned to drugs and alcohol to keep it from bothering me too much. Eventually my mom found out. How? She walked in on my boyfriend and I having sex. And he felt guilty and told her why I was acting the way I was. Was my stepdad the cause of it all? No. And I never said he was. My family can believe what they want, but my stepfather (the man I had chosen to bless with the name, "Daddy") was just another in a long line of males who had received what they wanted from me.

And it was at that time that my mother took me to therapy. Which lasted one session. Until the therapist accused me of feeling guilty and feeling like I had somehow encouraged my stepfather's behavior. Of, secretly, on some level, liking it. And the truth? She was wrong. So wrong that I was disgusted with her for even suggesting it. How could I have encouraged such behavior? It had happened from the time I was 15 to the time I was 17. I was a child. Not some sort of smutty porn star seeking sexual gratification from my chubby, balding stepfather. Hell, I didn't even like having sex with guys my own age! It was just something to while away the time. The way I saw it then? I was 17 and knew from the bottom of my soul that I was not to blame.

Did I hate my stepfather? No. I loved him fiercely. Should I have hated him? Maybe. But I don't hate anyone. Not really. And I was broken. I was like a porcelain doll with a crack down her face. Like the doll I had - Rita. Who had broken and been glued back together. But you couldn't get rid of the crack, no matter what. I was like that. I couldn't hate someone else for being broken. It would have been the most hypocritical move I could have possibly made. It would have made me a monster.

And so I drank, and drank, and drank. I had (sort of) stopped the drug use (except for the occasional foray into mushrooms), but my days quickly became tedious. I woke up, I drank. I went to work (because I had dropped out of school - college, not high school. I graduated high school with a 3.5 GPA), I got off work, I drank, I passed out. Sometimes at home, sometimes not. The where of the whole thing rarely mattered. My mother turned a blind eye. She didn't want to see it. My stepfather was gone, and it was just me and her, but I didn't want to be near her. I just... couldn't. There was something in her eyes. There was something in my whole family's eyes now. A kind of pity, but a more recognizable kind of hatred.

I cast myself out of my family. When I spoke to them, they hurt me. I remember, one night, my gramma made a comment that I probably liked what my stepfather had done to me. She was angry with me (I forget why now), and I could see the moment she said it that she wished she hadn't. But she couldn't take it back. And while I let it go, it has stayed with me to this day - 7 years later. But I digress.

I was lost, and I'm found now. And I have someone who loves me despite my broken, cracked, glued back together self. And that's good. Because I love him, too. I have a new family, one that doesn't still (on occasion) make me feel like something under their shoe. And while my relationship with my family has healed immensely, I am still broken. And I will always be broken. So how do I fix that? Can I fix that? And, most importantly, what if I can't?

So thanks for reading. If you did. And take care of yourself and love your family with your whole heart and love your children fiercely and remember that they're just children, no matter how old they are. And treat them accordingly.

So. I've had a headache for the past week straight. It hasn't been fun. And while I know deep down inside that it's probably something sinus-related, I can't help but believe quite firmly that one of my greatest fears has now come true and I do indeed have a brain tumor. It's just how I function. I know. Ridiculous. But still. Not so much.

So my head hurts. Like I said above. It hurts bad. I don't feel good, either. I feel icky and gross. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I exist.

I need to express something, and that's why I'm writing this, but I don't really know what I can do about it. Or what it is I need to express. So I'm going to write, and if something comes out, I figure I'll probably realize it's what needs to come out. So, come and be my team and we'll figure this out together.

People can be really cruel to each other. I'm guilty of it, and so is everyone else. You can't honestly say that never, at any time in your life have you been meaner than necessary. It's just really not possible. We get this petty urge to one-up someone else and then we're in this situation where maybe we should stop - maybe we've made our point, but then we keep going because maybe we haven't made our point yet. And before we know it, we've gone too far. We've crossed some invisible line that we can't uncross. And then comes the guilt. We didn't mean to really hurt the other person, we just wanted them to nod their heads and say, "Yeah, I guess you're right." But instead, we hit an unforgivable point and we push the wrong button, and someone gets really hurt. And by really hurt, I'm talking major blow to their self-esteem.

And sometimes, I'm a cold and angry person and think that it's good to knock someone's self-esteem down a few notches. Until you realize that most people with "high self-esteem" are actually really weak and fragile and they're trying to make themselves feel better by pushing other people's buttons. I hate it when I come to such realizations. Some people are quite frightened of confrontation. I enjoy it. But I will back down or let things go if the person I'm confronting is being hurt. I wish people would do the same for me.

But, regardless of such things, I feel a need to keep talking. Which means that the cruelty of the human race is not what I was trying to talk about. It's just something that came out.

I've been really needy lately and really sensitive. I get this way every time summer fades into fall. Which is weird, because I friggin love fall. Maybe it's because I have such icky sinus issues. I don't know.

I have a mom. Duh. And a step-dad named Hank. Now, Hank has two daughters - one older than me and one either just older than or just younger than me. I can't ever remember. Anyway, we were adults when they married, and so it's not like we know each other very well - none of us live with each other, none of us hang out outside of hangin with my mom and Hank. Hank loves his daughters as fathers are wont to do, and so it's no big surprise that while he's never been anything but kind and caring toward me and my family, his girls get a bit of extra-special attention. I'm not hurt by that. Since being with Hank, my mom's realized that she actually likes me, and so she's been focusing on giving me and mine some extra attention. Go mom.

Now, long story short, Hank and his girls haven't been a part of my family all that long. But we all get along pretty well. And my family is very big on certain things - one of which is gift-giving. We give presents for everything - Valentine's Day, St Patrick's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Grandparent's Day, Halloween, Christmas, and birthdays. And when I say presents, I mean, we all give each other gifts. That means that on Valentine's day, I don't just buy gifts for my husband, I also buy them for my kids, my mom, Hank, my gramma, my aunt, my great-grandparents, etc. Same thing for Easter (which is like a whole nother Christmas when it comes to presents) and all the other holidays. It's pretty wild.

But it's not that my family likes to GET things. Don't get me wrong. We like to GIVE things. We're all constantly buying things for each other and saying, "I saw this and thought you might like it. Try it out!" It's just what we do. And when it comes to money, we don't stress it, either. We (obviously) pay our bills and everything, but we're more than willing to give up something we want to get something that someone else wants. It's just how we do. We're close-knit and very adamant about the fact that we have to stick together because we're all so damn crazy that people don't hang around for long. Now that doesn't mean that we're all happy-go-lucky all the time. We're not. Far from it. We get in vicious fights and hurt one another's feelings not because we want to, but because (going up to the cruelty thing) sometimes we don't see those lines that we're crossing. But in the end, we have to let stuff go (at least until we're angry again).

Well, Christmas is (of course) our biggest time of gift-giving. We all love it. We spend all year finding things that we think will make people happy and we work hard to make sure that we can get them. We're the sort of family who, if you don't have much money, you just get something in your budget that you think they other person would like and we'll be pleased. Or, technically, most of us in the family are the sort who, if we know money's tight, we put presents on layaway in January and hope we can pay it off by December. We love giving gifts.

Hank's daughters don't want to trade this year.

This means that we can't get them anything without seeming like asses. Now, I would be perfectly happy giving them something and having them say thank you. Or, "I really like this." Or, "That's really neat!" Or any number of weird things that people say when they get gifts. I don't want anything in return. Just a little something for people I care about - that's what I see gifts as. Instead, it's like we have to pretend that Christmas doesn't exist around them. And that makes me angry. To no end.

BECAUSE. If there's one thing my mother loves, it's buying Christmas presents. She's friggin insane about it. Seriously. And if there's one thing I love (but rarely admit), it's my mom's happiness. And for these two people to darken a holiday that my mother wishes came every day is... well, it's wrong. And I don't like it. As a matter of fact, I hate it. And I'm upset about it. Because my mother wouldn't care in the slightest if no one gave her anything for Christmas. Instead, she wants to give all of her family everything they could ever dream of. And now, she can't for two people. And that makes me livid.

Hank's livid, too. But ugh. It's just awful.

And, well, that's about as far as I can go today. Maybe I got it out. Maybe I'll be back later to try again.

So I'm role playing again. We weren't for quite some time, but it seemed like it was time to start doing so. As some of you may remember, I was playing with Janet, Jimmy, Loren, and Kevin as our ST. Well, Kevin's storytelling again, but this time we're playing with Andy, Wes, myself, and Janet. Now, I'll give you a bit of a run down so far so you can get what I'm saying.

We met Wes online. He's a nice enough guy, and seems to really be in to playing his character well. I like him as a person. Then, we have Andy, a veteran player who does extremely well with cool (if not a touch offbeat) characters. Then, we have me. I've only played a few times, but I suppose I do okay. I was a little overpowering with the bitchiness and really need to back off with it, because otherwise, I'm gonna screw myself over. And then we have Janet, who wants to play a powerhouse ALWAYS, and I don't have a problem with it, but her character's really over the top and not necessarily a well put together character.

And you know, whatever.

But Andy now wants Janet out of the game. And I don't like that. My reason why? It scares me. If the least competent role player gets "voted off the island," then what happens when Janet's gone and I'M the least competent? SCARES ME!!!!

Plus, I like Janet as a person, despite the fact that her characters always kinda suck.

I don't know what to do. I really don't. It bothers me and hurts me.

Ugh.

Too bad I love Sylar.

And I DO often get involved in a lot of shenanigans.

My bestest friend ever, G, sent me this today on my myspace.

So I now know that my life is nothingness.

I've been refreshing the Virginia Lottery page for the last 15 minutes to find out what's been drawn. Seriously.

I feel like a total idiot.

I just totally beat two solitaire games in a row without having to re-deal. AT ALL. I'm totally kicking ass this morning. My husband and son are playing Lego Star Wars on the Game Cube. The original trilogy, not the dumb-ass new pieces of crap Lucas is pretending are Star Wars movies. They're hilarious to listen to. Seriously hilarious.

I've been working on my school work, and I have to say I'm a really crappy artist. But I'm going to start a deviantart page to keep all my stuff on. So that's where I am now.