Life As an Afterschool Special

Oh hell no

I have been trying really hard to get my life back to normal.

To take back control.

(I have a bracelet that says that)

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life afraid.

So last night, after church, I decided to go home and get some of my stuff together even though my roommates were out for the night.

I drove to my house, made sure I had my phone in my hand, and then got out of my car.

As I was walking to my house, my neighbor and good friend Steve pulled up. SO I talked to him for a minute, put my cell phone in my pocket, and then walked to my house and went inside.

At first I panicked when I shut the door. I had to take a minute to convince myself that being in my big empty house alone was ok.

I don’t want to live my life in fear.

I let Beebe out, and then went upstairs.

When I got to the top of the steps I thought that I should call my roommates to tell them I was home alone and to see when they were coming back.

My cell wasn’t in my pocket.

I looked for it for a minute, and decided it must have fallen in the grass when I walked to the door.

I didn’t want to be home alone with no cell phone, so I went to my room to get some clothes to take to my mom and dads house.

As I was getting my stuff together I heard someone banging on the door. My heart leapt to my throat and I had to convince myself not to panic.

I yelled out the window and no one answered. SO I decided to just ignore the knocking. They would go away.

And then I head a huge crash and glass breaking.

I panicked.

I didn’t have a phone to call anyone, and I was sure someone was breaking into my house to kill me.

I felt trapped.

I grabbed the bat Katie gave me and flew down the stairs, fully prepared to beat the shit out of someone.

I stopped on the second floor and looked out the back window, but I didn’t see anyone.

I went down the steps and saw that someone had broken out the kitchen window.

I went to the livingroom and stood in the middle of the room crying and shaking and trying to decide if it was worse to stay in my house with no phone and wait for someone to come kill me (who knew if they were already in the house) or go outside not knowing who was out there (but having a pretty good guess)

I felt so so so trapped.

All of a sudden I looked out the window and saw my neighbor. He had heard the glass breaking and come outside to see what it was.

So I ran outside and asked him if I could use his phone to call the police.

He walked me over to his house and I called the police and waited for them to get there.

When they came I made them search my house for someone who may have come in, and then I filed a report.

Oh hell no.

I am so so angry. I mean more then I am even afraid.

I seriously want to beat someone’s fucking head in with my bat.

Because I am not a victim and I don’t want to be a victim any more.

and people have no right to come to my house and terrorize me.

SO today I have decided to not let him win.

I am going to feel sorry for myself, or walk around afraid.

I am taking back control.

I am not a victim.

It went welll

Thank you guys for all your prayers and support..

Thank you for calling me me and texting me and askin how it went…

I just didnt feel like talking much.

But for thoes of you who wanted to know, it went well.

It was really hard, and I cried before and after I testified, but I didnt cry on the stand.

And the judge granted me a five year CPO.

So the good news is if he ever breaks it, he will be arrested.

The bad news is he will bail out and there will be a trail and I will have to do this all over again.

So while I am relieved to know the law is on my side, that I was believed, and that what he did last month is now a “finding of fact”, I dont really have colsure, or feel any resolution.

But it was important to stand up for myself.

And I am so glad I did.

It just doesnt really make me feel less afraid if that makes sense….

COURAGE

Tommorow is my court date….

and I am terrified.

But I have been holding tight to a quote I read once,

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
– Ambrose Redmoon

And this is important.

Even when I have to push to see how far you’d go

Its been a really really long and hard month.

I am a mess.

And I am pushing everyone who loves me away.

I hate how my life feels upside down and out of control.

I hate that I cant stay at my house alone, that I am always afraid, that I feel so so needy.

I hate how much I want to be loved, and I hate how hard I am becoming to love.

Amy, Erica, Lisa, and Katie have all gotten mad at me this week… And told me nothing they do is good enough and I am pushing them away. They have all said that they don’t know what I want.

How could they? I don’t know what I want.

I am angry and hurt and overwhelmed and confused.

I feel like glass inside.

I need constant reassurace that I am loved, that they aren’t going anywhere. I feel alone.

I am difficult to love right now, and I know it. And that makes me petrified that people are going to walk away and then I really WILL be alone.

And sometimes I want to be consoled and comforted, and other times the attempts at comforting me just make me angry. Because in a lot of ways, there really is no comfort.

I want them to tell me they know how hard it is for me, and then I get mad because they don’t know how hard it is because its not happening to them.

I want to be distracted and I want to not worry, and then I get mad when they tell me not to worry because this is all very real to me, and very fresh, and I cant just not worry about it.

I am a walking contradiction of needs.

And I am so so needy. And so so demanding.

And they have all been there for me in so many ways.

Katie has spent countless nights on the phone listening to me cry, letting me be silent, waiting for me to finally fall asleep. She came to stay with me when everyone else went out of town, and held me when I broke down.

Lisa has let me yell and scream about how frustrated I am. She has let me cry. She and her husband drive by my house, check on me, offer to let me stay at their house, and even spent the night on my livingroom floor last week because Matt had come over and the police had let him go and I was terrified that he would come back.

Erica has gone out of her way to spend time with me, serve me, and understand. She sat with me in the hospital, has gotten out of bed in the middle of the night because I was a mess and afraid I would hurt myself, and she has tried to be patient. She has driven me to our parents house and stayed with me so I didn’t have to be alone.

Amy has held my hand when I am afraid, held me close when I cried, listened to me yell, and let me talk. She has taken measures to make sure I am ok, and that I don’t hurt myself.

All four of them have loved me through the hardest time in my life… And all I do is push them away.

I wish I could tell them in a way that they understood how incredibly grateful I am for all of them… How much I adore them… How much I need them.

I wish they understood that I couldn’t get though this without them.

I wish they knew hoe sorry I was….

I wish I was easier to love right now.

I just wish everything was different.

and since I always say it better in a song

For Katie, Lisa, Erica, and Amy…

SARAH McLACHLAN

Your love is just the antidote when nothing else will cure me
There are times I cant decide when I cant tell up from down
You make me feel less crazy when otherwise I’d drown
But you pick me up and brush me off and tell me I’m OK
Sometimes thats just what we need to get us through the day

My dad is amazing and he loves me.

In the past two weeks he has come to my house to fix my car when I couldnt get it to start, and then towed me from the middle of a cornfield when I blew up my radiator.

He let me drive his truck to work while my car was broken.

He has spent hours fixing the battery, altenator, radiator, and sensor on my car.

And then he washed my car, cleaned it out, vaccumed it, and put gas in it before he gave it back.

He is good to me.

When I was younger I sometimes had a hard time knowing that he loved me. He always lived so far away, and he a man of very few words.

he was never good at calling or writing…

But as I have gotten older I have come to understand that my dad loves me not by what he says, but by what he does.

He is always there for me, always ready to help, to fix, to take care of things…

and the is no question in my mind that I am loved by him….

The saga continues

Today I had the day off work, so I went with my sister and spent the day lounging by her dads pool.

I decided to take the back way home from Grove City to Galloway.

As I was driving down the back roads, I heard a loud pop and then steam began pouring out of my car.

When I got out to look I discovered the radiator has busted and I lost a belt (how proud are you of me that I figured it out all by my self!)

The major problem was I was literally in the middle of nowhere. Cornfields as far as I could see.

And no one would answer their phone.

Well Kim and Dena answered their phones, but they don’t even live in this state.

I was outside, in 93 degree weather, wearing a bathing suit and a towel, and I couldn’t get anyone on the phone to come get me.

At which point I did have a complete meltdown, and sobbed.

I cried for a good 45 minutes sitting on the hood of my car wearing a bathing suit, surrounded by cornfields.

Its just been a really really really hard day… Hard week… Hard month.

Finally after waiting just over two hours my stepmom showed up, took me to go get a belt for my car, and then we met my dad back at my car.

They used my dads truck to tow me back to my dads house…

My step mom poured us a glass of tequila.

And I know its just a little thing… But all the little things are starting to add up…

worst day ever

I hope this post makes sense.

I am heavily medicated.

As I have mentioned before I have had trouble sleeping. I have been stressed out and emotional. I have been emotionally, physically, and mentally drained.

And yesterday it caught up with me.

I passed out on the pool deck.

One minute I am yelling at a kid for dunking, the next I am on the ground with my lifeguards above me.

I had fainted on the deck and hit my head really hard on the concrete… I don’t remember any of this but the knot on the back of my head tells me its true.

They called 911, strapped me to a backboard, and sent me to mount carmel west.

Where I spent the next 4 hours getting Xrays and CAT scans and blood tests. Apparently everything was just a little off. My sugar was only an 89. My potassium was 3. My blood pressure was low…

All of that together combined with the fact that it was 90 degrees outside and I had only slept 6 hours in three days and I have been stressed out of my mind was apparently just too much for my body.

It decided it needed a break right then. On the concrete.

On the plus side, I did get both pain killers AND sleeping pills.

I got out of the hospital, had dinner with my dad, and then went to our neighbor Brian and Lisa’s house.

While I was there I got a call from my sister, who was alone at our house.

My ex fiancee had come over and would not leave. He was pounding on the doors and calling for me. I had a protection order so called she the police. They caught him as he was pulling away from our house.

The police however, could not find my protection order in the system, and had to let him go.

I cried and yelled, but it didn’t help.

Steve, Lisa and Brian all slept in my livingroom because we were afraid he would come back.

and today I spent all day first at the police department, then at the prosecutors office, then in domestic court trying to figure out what happened and to keep it from happening again.

And now I have a trail next tuesday.

See kids, THIS is why my life is an afterschool special.

Yesterday I found a piece of my past at the thrift store.

I was so excited to take it home and show my sister, who I knew would be as thrilled as I was.

She went out on the front porch, and I put my new treasure in the CD player, turned it up loud, and went to join her. I wanted to surprise her.

After a few notes she sat up and said “SHUT UP!”

“I KNOW!” I squealed.

I had found Tiffany’s cd.

I remember summers at my dad’s house, when Erica and I would go into the basement and put our Tiffany tape in, and make up dances for hours and hours.

Sometimes my brother would join us. Sometimes our friends would come. But Erica and I were always the stars.

She was the better dancer by far, but I was the dramatic one. Between the two of us we had whole productions… with props and costumes and dramatic endings… we even have a few of our plays and dances on tape somewhere…

“Wear your jacket like it was her own… I used to wear it so well”

As the Tiffany sang that line last night I had flashbacks to Erica and I in the basement, jean jackets tossed over our shoulders, singing our hearts out about love and loss and things we didn’t really understand…

At one point last night, I couldn’t contain myself any longer, and I jumped from my seat and began to dance around the porch. Oh yes… I so remembered the dance to I think we’re alone now…

Erica and I were both laughing and singing really loud, until the neighbors came out and Erica told to me to sit down because they were watching.

“Running just as fast as we can… holding on to one another’s hand… trying to get away into the night… and then you put your arms around me and we tumble to the ground and then you say… I think we’re alone now”

Man… good times!

Its amazing how desperate people can be.

The past month I have looked my own humaness in the face as I grapple with the reality of my deperation.

And today I was reminded of my own desperation in an unexpected place.

I was at the pool and decided to run down the the corner market, Sally’s, and get some bottled water and popcicles for my staff.

Sally’s is on the corner of Sullivant and Davis, one block from my house and three blocks from the pool.

Its central in the bottoms, and there is always a slew of questionable people both inside and outside. Its the kind of store that you would never rob, because you know then men behind the counters would pull out a gun and kill you if you even looked at them wrong (And thats not even me being dramatic, people HAVE died trying to rob sally’s)

When I pulled up a woman came to my car and asked me if I had five dollars.

She was overweight and had stringy greasy hair and a stained tee shirt on. She was dirty and smelled liked body oder and cheap liquor.

“I really need five dollars” she begged. “I am hungry”

I told her that I wasnt going to give her money, but if she was hungry she could come in the store with me and I would buy her something to eat. (This is how I usually handle beggers in my neighborhood. Sometimes I even run to McDonalds and bring them back food)

She said she just needed five dollars and I firmly told her no and reiterated my offer to buy her something to eat if she really wanted the money for food.

As I was talking to her a man pulled up and she turned her attention to him.

“Please give me five dollars” she begged.

The man looked at her and smirked and said “What are you you willing to do for five dollars.”

The woman said “Whatever you want me to.”

The man then opened his car doo and she got in and they drove away leaving me standing there open mouthed.

There is no way that just happened! Are you kidding me!

There are just so many things wrong with that whole scene I dont even know where to start.

FIVE DOLLARS.

She just sold herself for five freaking dollars.

And he… he wanted to… touch her smelly body … and pay her to let him do it.

To be honest, at first I judged them both.

And I when I started writing this I was going to make it a funny story about life in the bottoms.

But the more I sat and thought about what I had just seen, the more I realized I wasnt so different from either of them….

The more I thought about how low and desperate people have become to fullfill the desires of their flesh, for cheap thrills and temporary fixes, the more I realized how broken they must be.

And I am no better. I justify and judge and act rightous because I would never sell myself for five dollars… But really, what seperates me from that woman?

Becuase I am just as desperate sometimes… for a quick fix.. to make the pain stop.. to feel far away and distant from my life.

And although it may be wrapped up in a prettier package, the desperation is the same…

Does anyone know how to add titles to my posts?