Falling
I’m taking a break this week from writing about my childhood woes because I want to get current. I know I’m choosing to do so, but hot damn it’s hard to face your past head on in a public platform.
Read MoreI was lying on my bedroom floor on a Tuesday night, talking or rather listening to my new boyfriend, Riley on the phone. It was Fall of 1998, so yes, it was a real phone with a telephone plug and a spiraled wire that always got tangled without even touching it. The chord wasn’t long enough to reach my bed, so I had most of my calls on the blue/greyish carpet that hadn’t experienced a vacuum’s touch in years. Riley was a sophomore. I was a freshman. Riley often said the n-word and spoke fondly of David Duke. He was also obsessed with the Insane Clown Posse. ( The ugly, white hip-hop duo who painted their faces in black and white clown make-up and rap offensive things, in case you didn’t know. And if you did know, I won’t tell anyone). The past weekend we took a streetcar, followed by a bus, to Tower Records in the French Quarter. He pushed me to buy ICP’s latest album- The Great Milenko. So, I did. When I got home that day, I started to listen to the CD, but had to press stop 6 seconds in. It was too abrasive and well…the worst music ever. I told Riley I listened to the whole album. “It was really good.” My youth was either me lying or not saying things out loud even when I should have.
Read MoreI grew up an atheist. My father taught me that all religious people were dumb, especially Catholics. Also, all religious people were awful human beings. They were the ones causing all the wars. He would get in fights with neighbors about abortions and the absurdity of their religion. He repeatedly stated that religion was for suckers. It was for those that were too weak to handle the reality of life. In fact, my dad was quite religious about being an atheist.
Read MoreOnce when I was around 5 years, I sat in the back seat of my dad’s van and picked a giant booger and stuck it on the window. That booger stayed there for a solid 8 to 10 years. I’m not sure if my dad noticed it or not. He probably saw it but didn’t care. My booger held on like a barnacle, until my step mother impounded the car when she left him. It was one of her many triumphant fuck you’s since my dad’s car was in her name due to his shitty credit. At the time, the van was 15 years old and had a jillion miles on it because we drove across country every summer and other holidays. I’d like to think that in my booger's final days at the car junk yard, it had one last fight left as the 4000 hp crusher opened up it’s jaws and demolished its rusty victim, booger and all. RIP Booger.
Read MoreGrowing up, my dad would always tell me… your friends are your worst enemies because they take up all of your time. Practice the violin or read a book instead… be careful who you hang out with because they will bring you down. Also the classic hit…Trust no one. Simple, but to the point. He also planted misogynistic seeds into my head as well. Women aren’t as smart as men. Women aren’t as funny as men. They even change their last names to the man’s because they are less superior. He understood having sex (for his son, not so much for his daughter). So for awhile I never trusted women or even wanted to hang out with them. If I can’t fuck you or get a job from, then why hang out?
Read MoreI inadvertently felt protected by going home with this stranger. My hand clasped in his, my safety too. We walked less than a minute to his funky place, but cool/funky since it was in the Marigny Section of the French Quarter where all the artists lived. The Bone pulled out a key to unlock his white wooden gate. And then I remembered, I made out with a boy who lived upstairs. We went to high school together.
Read MoreIt was one of my favorite summers. I never got carded at bars, and sometimes I wouldn’t even get charged for my cranberry vodkas. I would demurely wander into a bar and scope out the room. I felt like everyone was waiting for me to show up even though they didn’t know me like…they needed me. Whenever the bartender would say my drink was on the house, I assumed it was because he detected my star quality presence. Or perhaps he took pity on me. How come this teenage girl is all alone? She doesn’t have any friends? What’s wrong with her? So sad. Let her drink for free.
Read MoreThere’s something about sex and sadness that goes together like cheese and crackers. To be more specific, my favorite combination is fucking a complete stranger while grieving for a deep deprivation that has haunted me my entire life. And that’s equivalent to a Trader Joe’s Raisin Rosemary Crisp with goat cheese. Yum!
I can’t remember a time when I liked my body. Even when I was a kid, way before puberty, we would visit my dad’s father who lived in the California mountains every summer. Grandpa would stick an empty water jug between my legs because I was knock-kneed. He thought that would straighten them out. Well, it didn’t. It just made me more self-conscious of my knees. Every time I saw a doctor, my dad would ask if I was overweight. The doctor would always shake his head no. Then puberty hit, and my body didn’t grow like how it was suppose to. I didn’t have cleavage like the girls on 90210 or the same size thighs as I saw on Dawson’s Creek. My stomach was round and Buffy’s was flat. No one looked like me.
I just saw Three Identical Strangers, and it got me thinking. Like a deep, sad sort of thinking. You know, the type of thinking that encompasses your whole body, where time freezes, or at least the concept of it vanishes as you think about your total life existence. Suddenly a burst of images, old feelings, a peculiar childhood memory flashes. You are reminded that you were once in a completely different body, in a completely different background, with a completely different sensibility. Yet the same soul, your soul, this soul has been there the entire time. It hits you in a way that it has never done before… what “they” say is right. You are a spiritual being living a human experience. You’ve heard this phrase before, and you’ve liked the idea of it, but now the clarity of it all, knocks you down to your soulful core. This epiphany, as if it has its own beating body, floats over you as you make eye contact with strangers walking down the street. You don’t smile. That would cheapen this experience. You simply see them. Your eyes search out theirs. You observe that they are spiritual beings engulfed in aloofness and fear. You realize that nothing really matters in this life so you might as well follow your desires because your life is led by your desires anyway. Listen to them. Nothing is too small or too big. Go out and seize the day. Stop beating yourself up. No one knows what they are doing. Why do you give people so much power over you? They are just tiny, confused creatures themselves that have popped up in your path. Some are good. Some are not so good. Focus on the good ones. They’re more important anyway. Seize this life. You have just as much of a right to live an extraordinary life as anyone else…. Annnnnnnnnd then some jackass honks at another jackass, and you impulsively roll your eyes and grind your teeth out of pure disgust for people’s road rage. And just like that, that feeling is gone and basically forgotten about.
I went to one of the most expensive private schools in the South called Country Day. It was located in Old Metairie, a suburb adjacent to New Orleans where all the rich, white people lived…the ones that voted for David Duke. We also lived in Old Metairie, walking distance from school. Or as I preferred, a 7 minute bike ride.
Read MoreThe origin of the word gaslighting was that some guy farted in a dark room and then shinned the light at another person, declaring that he was the one that farted. The accused person drove himself to insanity because he was led to believe that he couldn’t even tell if he was farting or not. That’s the story, right?
Why do I feel like I'm plus size when I'm only a size 4, sometimes 6? Why do I clock a chubby woman when I see my reflection? How come my self-esteem just plummeted down into a dark hole of compare and despair? Why do I feel like I just got dumped when I wasn’t even in a relationship?
Sooooo….I’m freezing my eggs in a couple of weeks. That’s right. I’m being injected with a f*ck ton of estrogen and will hopefully release a lot of little eggs, and then place them in a mysterious freezer until further notice. Ahhhh…just how I imagined things would go when I was a 22 year old planning out my life.
Read MoreI don’t speak to my father. I haven’t had a conversation with him for over five years, and I haven’t seen him in nearly ten. As some of you know, my mother was murdered when I was a baby. He’s my only parent, yet I don’t return his phone calls, emails or texts. I’m basically ghosting my own father.
Read MoreIs there anything worse than Tinder conversing? Well, other than dying alone? Or worse, Bumble, where the woman has to send a witty message to a complete stranger while there’s a ticking clock? Dying alone doesn’t sound that bad after all.
Read MoreIf your mother’s dead like mine or if you currently have a shit mom, then you might feel how I feel on Mother’s Day…sad, angry, jealous and profoundly heartbroken. If that’s not already bad enough, you’re then surrounded by people celebrating and rejoicing in gratitude for the exact same thing that has inflicted you so much pain.
Read MoreWriting is hard. I put so much pressure on myself as if I’m figuring out my existence on this planet through the keyboard of my MacBook Air. I sit here with this desperate need to prove myself. To any man who broke my heart or even swiped left, to anyone who didn’t believe in me, to any acting teacher who told me that I wasn’t good as is and that I should change my appearance or voice in order to make it in this industry, to any asshole kid from my childhood who called me fat and made me cry, to any restaurant or bar manager who fired me and forced me to feel dumb, to any dick customers who were rude, to any guy who treated me nothing more than a sexual object for themselves, to any selfish man who I slept with who wasn’t at all curious about my clit, to anyone who lied or deceived me or even cut me in line, to anyone who unfollowed me on Instagram or Twitter, to anyone who honked at me on the road, to anyone who has not invited me to their 4th of July Day parties and then obnoxiously post about it, and then to my father for not loving me the way I should have been loved and to whomever killed my mother and then dumped her lifeless body at a grocery store parking lot with her breasts hanging out as if she were merely just a piece of trash…
I want to have a regular life. I want to have regular parents. A regular job. A regular body. But I’ll keep my ass, thank you.
Read MoreIf I could talk to 16 year old Dixie, I would tell her this:
Yes, it sucks right now. No doubt about it. This pain you’re experiencing is some top level shiiiiiit. If the heartache were a tequila, it would be on the top shelf. I would say hold off on the tequila, but I know you won’t. The death of your grandmother is changing you more than ever. More than a drivers license. More than college. Even more than losing your virginity. This feeling. This loss. This pain. This is transforming you into a wise soul beyond your teenage years. You might not realize it, but you’re also crying for your mother. I know you don’t remember her, but you do remember this longing of home. Belonging to something bigger. And this is something you’ll be chasing for years to come.
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