Man Part 1

To say I have issues with men is an understatement.

I use the word "man" not as a noun, but as a verb. It is not only to me what someone is but what they do. And whenever it is something stupid, unethical, trashy, sleazy, sexually perverse, crass, idiotic or rude, I automatically equate it with being a man. Of course, I have a complete double standard here that I am very much aware of. I understand completely that women can behave this way as well. But I hold a special contempt for men and choose to use the verb just for them. To me, it has always been what they are. I expect this behavior and when they perform as I expected, it is with self righteous indignation that I gloat over their obvious failures. Because yes, they are such men.

Looking back over the men in my life, i am quite positive that the contempt I feel for them was birthed from a multitude of hurts, beginning with my grandfather and winding it's way up and through my life on a shaky, metal staircase. Going up this staircase, that squeaks and groans, it can barely support me as i come across all the men that have huddled on a step, attempting to block my path, refusing to move and not allowing me to push them down.
My grandfather is the king of all the hideous men. Short, white, portly, average male with gray hair and glasses. He doesn't look threatening at all. But these are the worst aren't they? Because we expect them to be different from what they are and when they show their true colors, the sickness that runs in deep angry oranges and reds, mixed with suffocating blacks and numbing grays, we are confused and shocked. The picture defies the reality and this is how we get caught. The danger is realized much too late.

Up the staircase a little futher to meet a biological father that was never there, didn't want to be, and I didn't miss him. However, he chose to come back in, pretending to care, when really he was being led by his pitiful weenie trying to find it's way back to my mother. How pathetic to be so stuck in life, that you'd try to recapture something that happened twenty years prior. The obviousness of the entire situation made me want to puke but instead I told him to stay away from me.

Moving on to the endless string of my mother's boyfriends that didn't bother to disguise their blatant intentions with her, - how many times did I wake up to find a new man in the house sneaking out the front door while i was getting ready for school? More than I'd care to remember. Once, I woke up as my mom was having sex with a boyfriend on the same bed I was sleeping on. I laid there, terrified and sick to my stomach, moving with them and listening to all of their animal noises. I finally gained the courage to get up and leave the room only to be reprimanded by my mom for making him feel uncomfortable, and then was forced to go in and meet him. As he laid on the bed with a cigarette in one hand while reaching out to shake my hand with the other, all I could think was what a sick pig he was. He just screwed my mother and now he's shaking my hand as if we are meeting over lunch? I wanted to take the cigarette and shove it deep into his eyeball. I hated him and constantly made fun of him until they broke up. I called him "shaky butt." I asked my mom once if he was gay because he shook his butt when he walked more than anyone I had ever seen. This really pissed her off, which of course, made me very happy.
My own marriage that ended in divorce. A "perfect" marriage that was ripped apart by adultery and tore my heart into pieces. It took a long time to glue those pieces back together. For months I felt like i was walking around with a gaping hole in my chest, with all my intestines hanging out and my hand clutching my heart, trying to shove it back inside but mostly, I was trying not to drop it again.
Throughout my life men have based all their decisions on one thing and one thing alone - their desires. Specifically, their sexual desires. As if their desires are the end all - be all for everyone in the universe. It's no wonder Alanis Morissette became one of my all time favorites. Finally a girl that belted out everything my soul screamed - men sucked. We see through you. We know. We're walking right through you. Fuck you. Men.

Men were never esteemed, nor respected, or ever feared again once the 8 year old girl disappeared. They were never trusted. An ulterior motive is always suspected and anything that is ever said is only with the sole purpose to benefit them.
This is what I think of men.
They think with their hard on. When can they use it, where will they get it, how often and with how many people? For most of my life I have come to know men as the most selfish people I have ever seen.
To be honest, I'm surprised I never turned lesbian. That's how much I hated them. But I guess I love their hard ons just as much as they do.
I'll never understand why it is that because they are stronger, they believe it is their right to yield that over someone else who is seen as weaker. The quest to dominate is disgusting. I'm not a believer in evolution but the only time I would even consider it is by watching men. It's as if I can hear the animal grunting inside them, and I swear the chest beating is only seconds away. Of course, they can only act this way if their boy parts are covered, even with only a leaf, because if the whole world saw the size of their ding-ding for real, well then, I guess the jig would be up. Most of the men would be out of the running and women would take over the world. After all, deep down we know our balls are bigger where it counts.

But see, this is the exact type of men-hating that I must get control over.
I do have a son. He's ten and I would never want him to think this is how I view him now or in the future. It would break my heart if he ever thought I loved him less than his sisters or that I would hate him when he grew older because he's a man. As it stands right now, I think he is the coolest little man I have ever met and I am honored that I get to be his mother. It is a privilege, a gift and I will do my best to make sure he does not turn into one of those men. In doing so, I hope he doesn't become gay either.

I also have a husband and I don't hate him. If I did, I'm pretty damn sure I wouldn't be married to him. That's not to say that he has never hurt me. He has. But I also know how much he loves me and that the hurts he has casused me, have also caused pain in him. So see, there is hope, not all men suck.

My therapist is helping me with this one. She seriously rocks. There's none of that touchy-feely crap with her. No, "so how do you feel?", while I lay on a dingy brown couch with drapes drawn and a tired clock ticking the minutes away while i sweat with dread. When I ask a question, I normally get an answer because let's face it, if I knew all the answers why would I see her in the first place? A little help please. And she delivers. My homework? I am to catch myself every time i have a bad man-thought. It's been two days since I have seen her. I've now caught myself three times. That may not seem like much but it is. Three times in the past two days I have thought that men are completely stupid and my man-hates have risen to the surface. Although my feelings are very real and I'm sure no one will argue with the validity of them, the direction in which they are flowing is wrong.

To generalize all men because of the jacked up actions of a few is unfair.
To judge them all according to what my grandpa, my biological father, and my mother's shitty boyfriends did, is ludicrous.
How can I hold all men accountable for that?

I can't.

Sometimes I want to. In my past, I have. But I can't continue to do that. The ones that have wronged me, i can hold them completely responsible. But to hold men accountable just because they are men? I have to let that go. Otherwise, it is going to eat me up and I will end up being the one to suffer. A part of me will be lonely and missing a chunck of my own joy because in hating them, I am giving away that space in my heart.

I remember saying that if Jesus was God and God walked the earth as a man, who would be Jesus, that I would never, ever, EVER, serve God. I would never ever ask some man to forgive me. Forgive me for what exactly? For trying to survive in a world where everywhere I turned some man was going balls out trying to screw me over? Is that what I should be forgiven for? Should I be forgiven for running away and fighting back? Should i be forgiven for doing everything i could to escape my life?
No way.
If anything I felt that God, that this Jesus man, owed me a few explanations. Like, where were you when I was giving my grandpa blow jobs? Hmm? Where were you when it was nap time and I had a pillow over my head so he didn't have to hear me scream and cry? Where were you when my mother told me she'd rather have a child molester for a father than a daughter like me? Oh and hey Jesus,. what's so wrong with me anyway? How come you made me so defective? You know, if you're God and all? Do you think you can answer that for me?

To say I have issues with men is an understatement. One that is not going to be solved in two weeks worth of homework and one night's blog. Nope. This.... this is going to be painful. I can feel it. I can feel the scab breaking away and the blood and pus is starting to ooze out. I am choking on it. The hard part is going to be not choking it back down, but to instead puke it up and get all the bad shit out.

I just wonder how long it's going to take.

Broken glass

Why? The question that is forever asked and never answered. It holds me hostage. Keeps me firmly in place. Stuck. Immobile. It is flaunted in my face; mocking me. Why? It laughs at my pleading and my anger, my desire to break free and move. A last stance. His last showing of control. The one thing he'll never give up.

I 've asked this so many times.
Why did you do this to me?
Why did you let him?
Why didn't you protect me?
Why did you leave me there?
Why don't you defend me?
Why don't you love me?
Why don't you believe me?
Why do you hate me?
Why? Why? Please.....God....... please, tell me why.

I've come to realize asking "why" is a form of self-inflicted punishment. Each time it is asked I give a piece of myself to them. A piece of my pride, my well-being, my peace, my sanity, my heart. Each time I ask, the darkest, most secret places of my soul are opened, exposed, laid out bare and they start to bleed. It bleeds for me.
For the girl that used to play with dolls and sing Strawberry Shortcake.
For the childhood that was stolen in the shadows of his bedroom.
For the girl that opened her mouth to show her mom freshly brushed teeth before going to bed, and was slapped across the face because she thought I was trying to kiss her.
For the girl that was told I love you, I hate you, I wish you were dead; in the same breath.
For the girl that slept on a mountain because the police were looking for her and she couldn't go back.
For the girl on suicide watch in juvenile hall and was not allowed a blanket with square corners.
For the girl that preferred living in trucking yard and showering with a water hose than being at home.
For the girl that sold produce on the side of the road after school so she could eat.
For the girl that enrolled herself in school even as a runaway because she knew somehow she was going to have a better life.
For the girl that had no clue what a mother should be even when she became one .......
i bleed for her.

Each answer to my "why" is a joke.
What can be said? What answer can be given? What will satisfy my heart? what response is there that will allow me to say, "ohhh, well NOW i get it ." There isn't one. Any excuse given is a mockery of my horror and the road I traveled. I am asking for validation from all the people that stole it from me in the first place.

The only answer that can be given, really, is so simple, so clear, and so unimaginably cold and heartless that my head wants to scream at it in denial. To yell and shout, " That isn't good enough! Give me more." No, it's not. But there it is anyway. I might as well face it because it's not going to change. The answer to my why ......

Simple.

Because he wanted to.
Because she is sick too.
Because she doesn't know how.
Because she chose to.
Because she can't even defend herself.
She does.
She does.
They do.

Even now as I write this, I shudder with anger and I gulp back tears because the answers to all my whys are so, so.............. not enough. I want to argue with myself, to scream out, but I have to remember what I am dealing with. I am expecting the sick and perverted, the perpetrators and the enablers, to react the way I would react. The way the healthy and sane react.
But I can't get caught up in what should be.
I can only be in touch with what is.

A grandfather that molested his daughter and his granddaughter.
A grammy that knew.... and did nothing.
Aunts that knew.... and did nothing.
A mom that knew.... and did nothing.
A family that turns its back .....and denies.
A daughter that runs, fast and far, and then stops running, choosing instead to turn and fight.

It is what it is. I can't make them any different.
I can only change myself and the lives of my children.

I've been told that when something like this happens to us, it is like swallowing glass. It goes down, ripping us apart and leaving our insides with huge, gaping wounds that can't be patched. Our insides are in pain and we start to die.

In making the choice to live, to be free and whole, I have to throw the glass back up. It is still glass. It rips and tears. I fling myself open, arms stretched wide and let it pour out, through all of me, to the tips of my fingers and out of my mouth.
It hurts and I bleed.
But I am not silent. I am not denying. I am not running. I am not turning my back.

I am healing.

And one day, I will be complete.