Damaged.

Last week at Folk Fest, a Palm reader, a man I'd never met before gave me a reading and accurately told me that I 'grew up' at four. I almost past out and took a few seconds to regain my composure. It's one thing to personally know that you're fucked in the head, but to be made aware of more scars on your body is proof that child abuse is the worst wound you can inflict on another being.

Damaged. A label I feel I've been trying to escape my whole life, but it follows me, its claws are sunk too deep in my back. I would never be able to escape it. Damaged goods, alone mother. Psychically F.U.C.K.E.D. I am. Violated in every single way, angry, alone, bitter, mad, terribly, terribly mad I am.

My body used to look good too. Now one of my tits is lower than the other, ha ha. I'm...run down. Exhausted. Lilo's been sick and I'm puppy sitting at her great aunt's house. I'm scared being here at night. I don't know how she does it.

Lilo's coughing really bad. I'm scared. My mom's away on vacay so I called my boss's wife to ask her what I should do if her fever won't go or she won't get better. I hate these fucking day cares. I hate having my kid in the system. As much as I care about the bakery and its owners, I don't want to be away from Lilo anymore. I want to start expressing myself artistically again: I want to paint. Draw. Sew. Make soap.Write. Grow my own food. Live far, far away from the city.

The urge to withdraw has grown so large it's like a 5 pound lead ball caught in my throat. I want to defect so bad it's affecting my thought process. I'm going mad, I'm stressed, I'm gaining weight...or I'm experiencing some intense body-image issues. I want to starve again, I want to run away, I'm stuck thinking about the mistake I made being with Mitch and I even regret not sleeping with A. That was so long ago! But I'm so stuck into the FML stage of my pity party that I'm trying to mentally rewrite history.

...Then I met this lady in the parking lot of Community Natural Foods who had been at the bakery once...and she insisted again that I check out her church. Ha ha. Jesus isn't going to glide down on his magical mystical chariot and sprinkle some zombie-religion-perma-high dust on my prefrontal cortex.

She's a lovely lady, and indeed she is truly blessed and intuitive, but clearly she keeps inviting me because she feels I might find something there. I wonder if perhaps she believes I would find support in the African community, despite the fact that the community has views and mores that I find absolutely suffocating, not to mention judgmental and extremely stuffy, close-minded, misogynistic.

Or perhaps she believes that I might find myself a nice Christian boy, probably a black one, so I can become another success story, another shining example of God's loving grace, fished out of the gutters of secularism and anointed by his Holy Name, glory, glory be! Another single mother's reputation saved by some nice Godly man, more than eager to do his charitable part in saving me from poverty and shame. Chances are he would be homely too, because we all know a single mom's gotta lower her standards if she wants to get laid (and fuck, even if he looked like Tom Hardy with a button up suit, hair nicely combed to the side and a Hymn book in his pocket, I wouldn't tou--nah...I would probably 'seduce him', thus making him feel bad about his commitment to Jesus His Savior and make him have to chuck his purity ring...but chances are I would be branded the harlot and run out of the community...even though he would be the one to make the move...does this scenario sound familiar?)

Did you hear Anne Rice quits Christianity? Welcome back to the side of reason! I steered clear of her novels when I found out that she'd 'found' God...but I must say I am glad she's sane again.

I don't mean to knock this woman down. That is not my intention at all. But I've been kicking myself lately for not being more vocal about my 'enlightenment', the full donning of the Atheist coat. Hell, I should have known at four when I was being held down by a grown man and raped and knife-point that there was no such thing as a God.

During my teenage hood, I held on to be the belief that there was a hypothetical being out there, but chances are that yes, he's an Arbitrary Son of a Bitch who didn't care about the rapidly multiplying bipedal, egotistical ape-critters living on this festering, polluted cosmic body, but hey, we were created in his images, so we better worship his Petty Ass!

However, thanks to having what little ability I had left to love a member of the opposite sex destroyed by the action of a certain demented ex-husband and being left to raise a child who's already being victimized by the action of the most important male figure in her life, I've lost my rosy-tint glasses and my eyes have been opened to the true ways of the world, the true nature of human beings.

It's kind of sad that romantic love is the only thing that once held my faith together...First, I felt the incredible need to hide my low self-esteem with an overactive sex-life, and sex being this incredibly personal, invasive ac, it opened the door for certain mental imbalances to creep on me, the big one being that 'psychosis' we all know and...LOVE! Isn't that cute.

 I should have medicated myself, distanced myself, protected myself every time I've ever believed myself in love. In fact it was always my first instinct, to withdraw from a guy that told me he wanted to have a relationship with me but the lies eventually soften me up: "Oh, I'm not like the other guys", "I'm one of the good guys", "I would never hurt you", "We should spent the rest of our lives together", "Let's have children", "Move in with me"...My anxiety level rose another notch every time ND said the exact same thing Mitch told me, which sometime rang similar to some of the things my high school pup-love used to tell me.

In the end, they just want your panty-pudding, then there gone.

I'm shutting the door on that. I can't be so vulnerable and naive anymore. That leaves the door open for predators to prey on my neediness and have access to my daughter. Not going to let that happen.


Yes, I craved love like a drug, like...that little girl I used to be, trying to find the one man she could look up to and be safe with. But I don't think it's so much a gender thing as it is a people thing. People are bad. People rarely ever have your best interest at hart.

Okay. Maybe there are some good people and some bad people, just as there are some good guys out there, but clearly I'm invisible to them, or they're all stashed in Church, ready to convert me...But I'm starting to thing the voice inside of my head begging me not to generalize is just an subconscious attempt to remain PC.

Just like I was in front of that lady, when she came over to the bakery. She asked me if I was a believer and I said...yes.

Perhaps I did it out of an habit I honed at home trying to be the person my parents wanted me to be, though I was pretty open about my displeasure at having to conform to a lifestyle I wanted no part of: Smile! Be polite, submissive! Pepper your speech with a few Hallelujahs, then you can pass!

Or I was just dealing with her the way I deal with every other Christian I encounter. I don't need to become their next 'project', have pamphlets, hymns and bible verses thrown at me. I don't want the so-far pleasant conversation to sour because you believe God wants you to brainwash me.

But the truth is, it's so rare that anyone's nice to me lately, that I have no problem fibbing a little and letting her believe I'm a Jesus-Freak, just to thank her for their kindness.

I want her to believe I'm a nice person, few actually do. Ah, I'm pathetic.
 
Lately though, I haven't been bothering with nicety when conversing with folks. If no one actually accepts me as I am, I've got no problem retracting back in my shell, and rolling out. There's better at the bottom of the hill. At least, the last bit of hope in me hangs on to that belief.