Clouded

Why is it so much easier to help someone else than it is to help yourself? 

Why do you tell yourself you're fine when you're not?

Why is it so hard to believe it when someone compliments you?

Why do you put everyone before yourself?

Why do you struggle to remember that you don't have to be perfect?

Because someone made you feel you had to be. You put everyone first because it makes them happy and no one gets mad and there is peace. You don't believe compliments because they aren't something you're used to. You tell yourself you're fine because you really want to be. And it's easier to help someone else simply because it's not you. 

Getting too focused on your own troubles brings insanity and a break feels inevitable. Sometimes you look for issues to discuss, just so they are not your own. Just so you can have a minute of peace. 

When even the smallest issue is enormous, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Saying you're fine and smiling when you want to cry is a challenge like no other. It's not a feeling you can wish away or wait out. You are forced to make a decision about yourself and either you fight it or you succumb to it. 

I fight. I get back up and I try again. I cry and I scream and I desperately try to understand and when I feel like I can't take anymore, I push a bit more and fight a little longer. 

It makes me tired. 

It makes me feel like I need to say I'm sorry all the time. As though this fight inside was hurting someone else. As if having emotions and being sensitive...makes others feel uncomfortable. I feel like if I lose the fight, it makes me look weak, it's shows I'm imperfect, it's putting my own feelings before anyone else's and I should be sorry. I shouldn't let someone else fight my battles.

  

So I smile even if I feel like crying. And I ask how your weekend was and how your kids are and how that project is going and I always bring the subject back to you so that I don't have to think about 

Why it's so much easier to help someone else than it is to help myself. 

Why I tell myself I'm fine when I'm not.

Why it's hard to believe when someone compliments me.

Why I put everyone before myself.

Why I struggle to remember I don't have to be perfect.

Mermaid Tale

I had a crush on Prince Eric. Ursula was a personal hero and I thought Sebastian was strangely exotic with his accent and lip puckering. I understood Ariel and saw my own father in Triton. I watched The Little Mermaid on a tiny television that came off my dad's boat. My VHS copy had the "dirty picture" drawn into the cover.

In 1990 I was 13 and I watched that movie all. the. time. My friends and I watched it religiously. A boy touched my boob for the first time during that movie. Under a blanket, over the shirt and it might have been an accident but it still counted.

I knew all the songs and my friends and I sang along with an animated mermaid at top volume about thingamabobs and whozits. No shame in our lack of tone. Sometimes Mom would sing along with us. Her favorite was 'Kiss the Girl'. She always laughed at the part with the little tadpoles.

I saw Splash when I was 7 and two things happened. I began a lifelong crush on Tom Hanks and I became convinced mermaids were real. It seemed perfectly plausible that people could live in the Puget Sound breathing water and gliding through seaweed forests. I was an imaginative child.

When I got to visit dad while he was working, I'd stand near the edge of the dock and stare down into the inky water willing a beautiful fish person to surface.

Once, in my twenties, while experimenting with shrooms I did the same thing on a downtown pier. I almost jumped.


I re-watched the Disney classic recently and fell in love with all of it all over again. Price Eric was still dreamy, Ursula was still a badass and Sebastian's voice still made me pay attention. I still heard mom's voice singing along. This time though, I identified with Triton and felt empathy for Ariel. Poor kid. Being 16 is so hard.

Being almost 40 is hard too. But it helps to have something to believe in. I'm not religious and I don't really believe in mermaids anymore but I do believe in the magic that I feel when I'm near the ocean. I believe in the green leaves on giant oak trees and the pale purple of Spring lilacs. I believe there is something bigger than me that will never let me jump, no matter how tempting the water.

I wonder if it has a pretty tail.

Daddy's Little Girl

He told me I could write about when he got arrested. He said he figured everyone knew about it anyway, so what difference did it make? He's said before that he wants me to write his story but I'm not sure it would turn out the way he wants.

The relationship with my father is...interesting. Complicated. Wonderful and devastating. I honestly am not sure where to begin.

So maybe at the beginning?

The first thing I remember about my dad was that he wasn't there.

Every summer he would leave to go fishing in Alaska and in the fall when he returned, he'd work at the docks. I'd see him in the evening, usually while we ate at TV trays and guessed at the puzzles on Wheel of Fortune. He'd sit in his bathrobe, smoking and growling at Pat Sajak. Sometimes he'd read the newspaper and smoke. Or mend nets during Jeopardy and smoke. It's rare to see him without a Camel pinched between his fingers.  I'd watch his hands weave in and out of the fishing nets, the odd shaped needles clicking against the rope. He would be right in front of me, a formidable presence and still not be there.

When I was old enough to understand, it was explained to me that what daddy did was very dangerous. It was never a secret that he might die. I grew up anticipating he would die while fishing the Alaskan waters at the same time he would assure me nothing bad was ever going to happen to him.

That just wasn't true.

I was about 3 when I remember waking to the familiar sound of his voice murmuring with my mom's. I was in the hallway when he ran passed me to the bathroom, "Where's the damn mouthwash?" He drank half the bottle before there was a knock on the door. I watched police take him away. Later I found out he'd hit someone with his car while driving drunk. The person was fine, in fact, Dad had tried to go back to apologize but the police started following him. He panicked, came home, and drank the mouthwash in a fruitless attempt to mask the smell of booze on his breath. Later, in court, the pedestrian walked by my father and spit on him. He wasn't in jail very long. To me it was just like he was away fishing anyway.

The next time he was in jail, I knew before he told me.

Mom had been dead for about a year and dad and I were working on being ok with ourselves and with each other. He and I weren't exactly friends for several years but it's amazing what shared grief can do. We had decided to visit his mother together in Alaska. I'd never been and it was a second home for him. It was the first time we'd ever gone anywhere together just the two of us.

The night before our flight, I called to confirm what time we were meeting in the morning. He didn't answer. I called the bar he was always in. They knew him, they knew me. The bartender that answered was cold when he was usually friendly. "No, he ain't here." I hung up mildly concerned. It wasn't usually hard to get a hold of him. We'd been even better at staying connected since Mom died and he always called me back right away if he missed my call. Some time went by and I tried again. Straight to voicemail. A cold feeling crawled across my skin. Something wasn't right. He's in jail.

I have no idea how I knew, I just did. I got on the internet and marveled at how easy it was to see if someone was in jail. Within moments I was looking at my own last name in a list of people arrested within the last 24 hours. Being right doesn't always feel good.

I called his brother that lived in Alaska and told him. He told me to call their mom, tell her we weren't going to be on tomorrow's flight, but not tell her why. So I did. I lied to my grandmother. And then I went and visited my dad in jail.

On the way I called and cancelled the plane tickets-non refundable. I sat next to a very good friend in her car, watching the county jail get closer as we traveled into the city and felt my insides swirl with anxiety, anger and fear.

The jail smelled. It was big and cold, gray. I immediately hated it. There were women in the waiting room that looked like the women from bad crime TV shows.  I waited with them, alternating between picking my cuticles and twirling my hair. They called my name, told me I could go in to see him and I got up, looked back at my friend. Her eyes held sympathy.

It wasn't like a bad crime show passed the doors. There were windows divided with thin partitions. A small space for each prisoner. No privacy. There was no one else there. A guard told me where to sit and I did. I waited.

When he came out in the jumpsuit, he looked small. He looked up at me and I saw surprise, shame and...pride flash across his face. He sat down on the other side of the glass and picked up the phone. I picked up mine. "Are you ok?"

He told me he was. I told him I cancelled the flight. He told me he didn't call because they took his phone and he didn't have my number memorized. I told him I called his mother but that I didn't tell him why we weren't coming. He told me he called a lawyer. I told him I talked to his brother.

And then, "What happened Dad?"

It took a little while for him to tell me.

Over several conversations through phone calls and visits, I learned that he'd been selling cocaine for a long time. And to a lot of people. He told me he'd crossed state lines and that there were people bigger than him that the cops wanted to know about, that he refused to snitch. He told me it was to pay bills. He told me it was to help me. He told me how he got caught.

A 'friend' was looking to score. She was an informant and when she found out dad and I were planning a trip, she tipped off the DEA. They swarmed the bar he was always in and arrested him with guns drawn and S.W.A.T on standby. They took him away in the back of a car, his life forever changed. The informant was never revealed.

I went to court only one time. The first time. I sat on an uncomfortable bench, surrounded by uncomfortable people, waiting to hear uncomfortable things. I tried to read, waiting for my father's name to be called but it was no use. My mind was reeling.

When he came out in his gray suit, he looked small. He didn't look at me, instead he looked at the judge. I listened to him tell his side of things, repeating the story I'd heard. I couldn't stop staring at the back of his head. His hair was thinning. I hadn't seen him without his trademark fisherman's cap in so long...I hadn't known. His voice caught and my attention was refreshed.

"My daughter is in the audience Judge. I ain't proud of what I did," he paused. "I'm just glad my wife isn't around to see this."

That was when I started crying. The tears fell silently at first but I had to step outside for a moment to breathe again. For as long as I live, I will remember that moment.

He was in jail for a few months and then he was on house arrest. He lost his right to vote, own a gun, and was banned from the bar he'd been arrested in. He was mandated to attend AA meetings regularly but only went to a few before deciding he didn't need 'that shit'. A friend signed his name for him so he was still on record. After the ankle bracelet was removed he found another bar. They know him, they know me. He stopped selling drugs. He ran out of money. Eventually I paid for us to visit my grandmother in Alaska.  To my knowledge she never knew why the original trip had been postponed.

Our relationship changed again. I realized he was fallible. He and I talked a lot, got to know each other as adults instead of father and daughter. We never talked about the arrest until I asked him if I could write about it years later.

"I don't care. I figure everyone knows about it anyway so what difference would it make?"

Bad List

I've had a lot of things happen in my life that weren't good. Sometimes it feels like they play over in my head like end credits of a movie and my mind starts flooding with every tragic moment.

I see my experiences as a list of things that have helped shape me. I write it now not to be reminded of every painful situation but to try and remove them from my mind. For the credits to fade into black. t

1. The first thing I remember is my grandfather dying when I was four. It was Christmas Eve and the holiday was never the same after that. He had a brain tumor and I remember a big red X on his bald head, marking where the surgery had been to remove it-too late. I also remember seeing the white sheet pulled over his body. He was in a hospital bed in the middle of the living room, the Christmas tree lights casting an oddly comforting glow. I wanted to look under the sheet but no one let me.  I remember my grandmother crying, my mother and father holding each other and lots of emergency technicians milling about. White coated doctors and nurses from the hospice and EMTs. I wandered under their feet, lost in the intense sad chaos that my family was in, too young to fully understand. I had nightmares for years about giants stealing me in the middle of the night.

2. I was incredibly fearful of sirens and had nightmares that haunted me for years in my young childhood. I believe it was in part from being there that Christmas.

3. At a young age-perhaps about 6, the neighbor boy played doctor with me. My father was enraged and we moved soon after. Not because of the boy, because we were kicked out of our rental house. I pretended it was because of the boy.  We'd been under the porch where it was dark and smelled like dirt. It was more of a 'show me yours and I'll show you mine' kind of thing until he touched me. When my parents went to kiss me good night I recoiled and they eventually got me to tell them what had happened. My father went to the boy's father and I don't know what happened, but I heard him yelling from under my covers in my bedroom. I was terrified that what I'd done was the source of his rage.

4. My dog and my cat were run over and killed shortly after moving in to the new house. Both of them were named Muffin. I had other pets-a dog and two cats. The dog adopted my mother and after I moved out and my parents were evicted, they left the cats behind.

5. The house I grew up in had black mold on the walls.  The mold climbed from the floor to the middle of the walls in some places and I tried to cover it with posters. There were only two wall heaters for the whole house, windows that were falling off the hinges, holes in the floor where the wood had rotted through and no insulation. I was cold a lot. We were broken into several times-it wasn't a good neighborhood. There was one instance when we came in through the front door while the robber was running out the back. He stole my mother's jewelry and broke a box my grandfather had made. She cried for days.  Once we came home to find a snake in the middle of the living room.

6. I lived on an alley that I walked up and down countless times. Two girls lived along the alley, one on each end. They were cruel to me, calling me names and telling me things like, "You'd be pretty if you weren't so fat." I didn't know that wasn't right. They would tell me that my dolls were alive but that they only moved when I wasn't in the room because they didn't like me.

7. In fifth and sixth grade I learned about drugs and alcohol, specifically the DARE program. I was enthusiastic and excited to participate in the war on drugs. I made flyers about the dangers of smoking and drinking and put them in people's mailboxes. I went to both of my parents individually and expressed concern about the other's habits. Both parent said the same thing, "Ok honey, I'll talk to them"  but did nothing different. I grew up surrounded by alcohol and drugs.

8. When I was 15 I had what I can only describe as a panic attack while staying overnight at a friend's house. In a moment, I remembered every painful moment I had blocked from younger years involving the sons of my parents' friends. I didn't talk about it for another seven years and that was only after I was found clutching a bottle of pills.

9. My mother would get drunk and fall or run into things. She broke her leg, foot, toe several times. She was diabetic and didn't take care of herself. One summer evening she took me on a "treat run". A spontaneous trip to get ice cream. She'd been drinking and we hit a parked car. While we were out trying to find the owner, someone stole my ice cream from the car's open window.

10. The people working at the liquor store knew our name because of her shopping frequency. I can still remember the way the store smelled, see the bottles on the shelves.

11. My father would often call from the bar and my mother would tell him not to drive. She'd hang up and be angry or cry.  A little later we would hear his Cadillac rumble up the driveway. She was fine then.

12. When I was very little the police followed my father home because he'd hit a pedestrian while driving drunk. I remember him frantically drinking mouthwash to kill the smell of booze before they arrested him. I was three.

13. He passed out in his chair once with a little cigarette and nearly lit himself on fire. He still does it. This last Christmas I bought him a new bathrobe. He said it was good timing since he'd burned so many holes in the old one.

14. My grandfather was in town for a visit and dad took him out. They came home drunk and grandpa fell. They all laughed at me when I cried. That was the last time I saw him-he died a few months later. I didn't go to the funeral because I was mad that the last memory I had of him was his mocking laughter.

15. The neighbor kid was mentally challenged and he used to chase me, naked, demanding I look at him. When I told my mom I didn't want to go to their house anymore, she told me he was 'special' and didn't understand. She made me go anyway.

16. Every boy I have ever dated cheated or dumped me for a friend until I was in my early 30s. Every. Single. One.

17. I failed driver's education in high school. My parents refused to pay for another course.  My dad told me they had bought me a car but were returning it because I failed.

18. My father would come home drunk and try to box with me, or he'd fight with me verbally. He treated me like one of his cronies-guys that he surrounded himself with.  My mother's reaction was always,"now now, that's enough." She didn't try to stop it.

19. My friends loved my mom because she let us smoke and cuss. They were afraid of my father and would often ask if he'd be there before deciding on if they'd come over.

20. The mother of the sons that hurt me committed suicide and I was forced to go to the viewing. She was short and wearing cowboy boots and very dead. I can still see her face.

21. I have been in no less than 10 car accidents and maybe more than that. I lost track. I was never driving the car.

22. My grandmother threw me in the deep end of the community pool one summer so I'd learn how to swim. I nearly drowned. I remember the lifeguard taking me into the locker room and sitting me on the bench, helping me regain my composure. She kept looking at me to make sure I was ok.

23. Same grandmother told me I was going to lose weight and stop sucking my thumb or Jesus wouldn't love me anymore.

24. The guy I lost my virginity to told me he could never be with me because I was too fat, I didn't drive and I didn't have enough sexual experience to ever please him.

25. I lived with a man for two years that wouldn't touch me. It wasn't until years later he told me he "never liked me that way".

26. I fell head over heels for a guy that literally disappeared from my life one morning after he kissed me goodbye. I never talked to him again. Eventually a friend told me he'd gotten married.

27. My mom was in and out of the hospital for the latter part of her life-about a decade of mine. Heart attacks, strokes, near diabetic comas, broken bones from falling or running into things. Many many nights spent in the ER or ICU. Eventually she was put in a rehab place that I visited dutifully every Sunday for over a year. It was a wretched place that caused her intense depression. She was miserable there and every time I visited it became more clear that she was giving up.

28. I stayed with her one weekend and she fell. She had asked me to go to the store and buy her a jug of wine. And I did. And she drank it. And she fell. It was a pattern. The EMTs recognized her and addressed her by name.

29. She died in the fall of 2006.

30. My grandmother died that same year. She died first, in August. I had to go to the service alone, Mom couldn't travel. I went to my grandmother's house and watched in horror as my aunts and uncles went through her things.

31. My father would visit my mother at the rehab place drunk. Or show up at the hospital that way too. Except the last time. Then he was just angry.

32. Dad sold drugs. A lot and for a long time. He was being watched by the DEA and when they suspected he was leaving town (we were going to visit family in Alaska) they swooped in and arrested him. I had to call his mother, my grandmother, and tell her we wouldn't be coming but not why.

33. I saw him in prison, in court, and later with an ankle bracelet. He was ordered mandatory AA meetings and refused, instead getting a friend to sign off for him.

34. In my mid twenties I had the closest thing to a breakdown I can imagine. I sat with a bottle of pills and some very dark thoughts before a friend found me and took me to see my doctor. I started a very difficult journey.

There's more. I count that moment after the pills as my half way point and that was nearly 20 years ago. Since then a million other things have happened to make this list but that's enough for now.