finding forgiveness.

i am a girl with many flaws. my wife will surely agree. one of said flaws is my inability to let go of hurt. i hold onto it as if it were my life preserver in the midst of the Titanic catastrophe. you get to a point in adulthood to where relinquishing hurt is a necessity for survival. question is, what does one do when it is pivotal to do just that and you don't have the tools and mechanisms to do just that? i'm at that place and i don't know what in the hell to do. you'd get better results with al sharpton at an Aryan brotherhood beauty pageant.

as a little girl, that hurt was the only thing i had to hold onto. it was the only thing i had to cherish to be able to connect with my monster, with my dad. he with held all normal fatherly emotion from me. he was never proud of me, he never doted on me, he never ever said the words every daughter needs to hear. that strips away the vital bonding material that glues every parent-child relationship. when there is no glue to hold that necessary relationship in place, unhealthy emotions take that place. every put down, every jab (towards me, my mom, or my mom's family) cemented the ill emotion of hurt. that fosters itself into an awkward and highly unhealthy relationship. the rippling affects of such an easily preventable tragedy touches every single aspect of that child's life and future. if i let go of the hurt, that was equivalent of letting go of my dad. what child wants to do that?

the way he could play puppeteer and manipulate the strings to rain down the ultimate guilt trip for wanting to- or even thinking about- letting him go was nothing short of amazing. like the Vatican convincing the masses that contraceptives are the work of the devil. he learned from the master of manipulation how to make things work exactly the way he wanted. what he wanted was to be able to control me from across town without so much as having to make an appearance in my life. is it any wonder that i was perpetually stuck in a conundrum of purgatorial guilt? i learned to feed off of the hurt. its what sustained my relationship with him until he killed himself and his wife. i no longer wish to be crippled by this disadvantage. i wish to grow. how does one find forgiveness to grow? where does it come from within you? how do you grow forgiveness?

snip this.

this week has been a busy one, for me that is. school started back. this is the first semester that i've been back since the bastard killed himself and his wife. i actually feel like my head is attached to my body again. i don't feel like a walking target for poisonous and false allegations to them anymore. those that know me, and know me well, know my stance. they know (some of) the suffering and the sheer horror. some have said to me that they could not understand why i went to the visitation & funeral. how, after all was said and done (on both sides, because i am not innocent either), how i could go there in front of their peers. how could i pay respects to this man.

i couldn't answer that for a while but now i know. i didn't pay respects to him; i wanted to make sure the SOB was dead. i felt bad that she died. i still do. she didn't deserve it, especially at his hands. i never wished it upon either of them. i wished every and anything else (but that) upon him. the fact remains as this: i went to the funeral because the little girl inside of me was this man's genetic daughter. it is that little girl who, at three years old, sat in her mama's lap in a pink leotard with a matching tutu, tiara and wand, cried out in pain for her daddy to come home. i cried so hard that i cried myself to sleep. even at that age, i knew enough to know this man didn't want to be my daddy. this was a man who was too embarrassed to take me to get a haircut when my parents were still married. my mom got me all dressed up for him to take me. instead his ego and vanity drove us around and i returned home to my mom without a haircut. if i recall correctly, this is a man who reeked of alcohol as his only child, barely a toddler, had very serious open heart surgery.

it still hurts. my temper still flares. but the tears have stopped. i've had enough. in a few months i'm changing my last name, and if you ask me, it should've been done over twenty years ago. its the last string. and i can't wait to snip that bitch either. "here's a hair cut for ya, daddy. so suck it."


i truly can't wait. i believe it'll give me that last bit of freedom, that last molt; to shed any of his attachment to me. if i could strip half my dna to be rid of his toxicity, i damnit would. i'm doing what should have been done decades ago. one thing i'll never comprehend; if he reputed me so badly, why oppose my mom having 100% full custody, why not relinquish parental rights, why oppose the adoption? amidst all of the anguish, hatred, and spite, i think that is perhaps the most evil thing he did... not letting me go. i just won't ever understand that level of hatred. that level that he and his family feed and breed upon. its beyond me.

...but anyways. changing the subject dramatically... i'm going home friday for the weekend, even though honey disagrees. i hate being home alone. i hate being home alone on weekends. i hate being home alone on weekends without friends or family. even though it wears me out, i absolutely adore spending time with my friends and family. its uber cathartic.


oh and btw yall, i was wrong about the michael jackson thing... apparently, he's still chillin in a freezer. just... nastayyyyyyy. yuck.


i have been too damn slack on it, but i must pick it back up...

GIST #9: I am thankful for my family's unconditional love.

(yes, the picture is like 7 years old.)

grandmas.

my family. gawd. what can i say about this seemingly random sack of debauchery that i share a common link of DNA with? i most definitely have a hell of a love/hate relationship with the majority of them. it also depends on which side of the genetically linked familial bond with which you are referring. don't misconstrue what i am saying; both sides are a licentious maniacal batch o' individuals. and yes, one side is way WORSE than the other. one side is simply the epitome of lunacy at its finest, whilst the other is a deranged batch of mental hospital escapees that crawled out of the trashiest trailer park that SC has to offer.

my maternal side could theoretically fit riiiiiiight in with LaVonda and Sissy up in Nolita's trailer park. as opposed to goat murderers we have a herd of leftover hippies from the free love era. then, there is our solidified proof of the darwin theory reversed. let's talk grandmas.

my good grandma slow danced with strom thurmond, the biggest hypocritical bigot known to man. she rode the train with ladybird johnson when she was a big political activist. she single handedly went to Texas to care for her cancer ridden best friend, for whom i'm partially named after. that same best friend was the one who told her once, on a trip to africa, to quit yelling at the cab driver. he could hear her fine, he just couldn't understand english. my grandma's maid once told her, "due' god, miss bettiejane, its a good things mister pete married you 'cus won't no other man have you!" she took me to my first reba concert in charlotte, nc. she was always the lady you sat behind in church because she was the really nice and funny one who's breath didn't reek of molded mothballs, but when it came time to sing the hymns, your ears bled in pain. she knows how to cuss in italian and greek. and when she had her kidney removed and was still super woozy, she told our church's BRAND NEW preacher (so new that she'd not had the chance to even meet yet) to get the HELL out of her hospital room. from this amazing specimen our family was born. its just a damn shame them bitches got warped comin out the birth canal.

then there's the bad grandma. that woman, now she's evil. she laughs at the story where my sperm donor HUNG.HIS.SISTER.IN.THE.BARN. (the only reason my aunt survived was because my grandma found her and cut her down.) she attempted to serve divorce papers to my biological grandfather while he was ON TOUR during WWII. couldn't wait until he got home, no. and the reason? hold on to ya underwear, ladies and gents... because he got stationed in like china or somewhere, and she "just wasn't about to leave this state of SC for him." she "wasn't leaving SC for no man." not that he cheated on her, not that he hit her, not that she didn't love him anymore, no... and then the evil wench was able to get my step-grand daddy (although he's always treated me as his own) to marry her by having her brothers threaten him into marriage. yes. yes, don't you wish this was your grandma? her daughter, as a kid, once drew a picture of her sitting at a bar stool in a bar. what'd she do? not get mad, no. she was so proud of it, that she hung it on the fridge for all to see. she once took a cousin of mine and that cousin's grandma to a drive in movie show that was equivalent to soft core porn. i shit you not, yall. my cousin's grandmother made my grandma leave the movie once well,... people were gettin their groove on. she was able to produce a daughter that is her mini-me, a son who was was an abuser on ALL accounts (and that's putting it VERY nicely), a son who used drugs to the point of a drug induced mental illness, and another son who's an ex convict with a part of his hand sawed off in a power tool accident.