#9

You told me I was too much, I wasn't enough
You told me my only purpose
was just to occupy another line
on your to-do list
You used me, though I was sure I mattered
I was more
You've never said anything
more profoundly clarifying
than when you said nothing

I hope the tenth time's the charm.

P.S.

He held me like he used to

so tight, like before

He held me like he would

never let go…

and then he let go

Crave

I want you in more ways
than you can count

on your gentle fingers

Happily Ever After

             I had a wonderful childhood. I really have nothing to complain about. I had the picture perfect life, and a happy family. It was me, my mom, my dad, and my brother. My grandparents also lived with us for the majority of my life.    
            I thought I had the happiest, most complete family in the world.

            I had never questioned whether or not my parents were in love. I was so positive they were. They never really fought or got loud or got angry - which I thought was a good thing - they just wouldn’t talk sometimes. It was rare to see them kiss, but I never thought anything of it. Physical touch didn’t happen too much; I was in my elementary school years, I never even noticed.

            It was during my sophomore year in high school when everything took a turn. October 2011. My older brother was in his second year attending Humboldt State University. 689 miles from home. My parents had been acting so weird, and I picked up a uncomfortable energy between the two. Sometime after October 18 - my parents' anniversary - my parents and I had dinner with close family friends at their house near LA.

            My mom had a friend in the area. An old boyfriend actually.  I had know his family practically my whole life… I didn’t know him too well. He was in and out of jail for years. Growing up, I remember always getting collect calls on the house phone.  My mom had me go with her to visit him in jail once. He was nice. He was released from jail around July and a few months later, my mom met up with him to catch up.

After dinner my mom wanted to step out really quickly to see this old flame, because when they got together to catch up, he left something in her car. I wanted to go with her so I could see his nephews, who were my really good friends. My mom asked my dad if it was okay that I joined her. He hesitated. And denied the request. My mom had never asked my dad permission to take me anywhere. I stayed behind with my dad and our family friends. I felt a slight tension in the whole room but it was never really acknowledged. Something was up.

            It wasn’t until November that I had finally decided to ask.

            My dad was at work but I could not hold it inside of me long enough to wait until he got home. My mom sat down. And I asked her. I actually asked her. Her answer was everything I was worried that it was going to be. Divorce. My dad was moving out in January. She was back with her old boyfriend.

            My parents were still friends. Which made me wonder even more why this all needed to happen. The picture perfect family I had, wasn’t all that perfect. They were never in love, they said.

           My brother, who was away at college, didn’t know anything that was going on. That is, until he visited in December for Christmas. You wanna know the day my mom decided to tell my brother the news? Christmas Eve! After my dad had gone to sleep. My brother explained that he had honestly seen it coming. The majority of his friends' parents were in love, and he could tell. How naïve does that make me, thinking everything was okay. Thinking that when I was a flower girl at their second wedding, they were going to be together forever. Thinking that when I grow up, I'm going to be in love like Mommy and Daddy.

            Would I ever find love after believing in a false reality?

            Things were rough for me from then on. I couldn’t focus in school, I was angry and crying all the time, I lost motivation. And I didn’t even have my brother to lean on. I had to deal with going from house to house. I also somehow had to accept my mom's boyfriend and his difficult children. The boy was nine. The girl was thirteen. I was in for a rough ride.

            After dealing with sadness, confusion, and growing resentment for a little over a year, was excited to celebrate at my 17th birthday party! The whole night was going great, aside from my mom getting drunk and being all over boyfriend, kissing him, touching him, dancing with him. I was around all of my friends, laughing, having a great time. Then my dad shows up. "Someone came by to say happy birthday!" And there was this woman, standing by my dad's side, in front of me and all my friends. "Happy Birthday Jessica!!" It took me a second to recognize this blond, obnoxious, loud woman. Then it hit me. Our old neighbor, who lived on our street, with her now ex-husband and two equally annoying daughters, as I was growing up. What an awful moment for my dad to tell me that he is seeing someone. Good choice, Dad. All the way up to the end of the night, I had to be in the same room with my mom, who was kissing her boyfriend, and my dad kissing his girlfriend, in the house that I'd lived in for 13 years.

            Adjusting Thanksgiving, Christmas, and everyday life - for lack of a better word - sucked! I did not like the changes. I did not like the people. My parents… they weren’t the same either. They told me that throughout their whole marriage, they both felt stuck, they didn’t feel like themselves, they never felt happy. I did not have a good example of what being in love was like. If what they are showing me with their significant others is the real them, I don’t know if I like the real them, and I don’t really know them.

            Being a child of divorce, I don’t think it ever stops hurting. At age 19, I still don’t get it. I still don’t like it. I still don’t accept it.

            I'm sad.

            I'm confused.

            I'm resentful.

            And that constant boiling in my chest, will probably never stop…

The Long Way Home

MOM: Jessica… I need to get away for a little while.

ME: Where are you gonna go?

MOM: I don't know yet.

ME: Wherever the road takes you?

MOM:  Pretty much. Haha. You should come with me. We could go on a road trip. What do you think?

ME: Seriously? ….. okay!

MOM: Where do you want to go

ME: (jokingly) Hmmm… New York!

MOM: Really? …. Okay lets go!

Summer 2012.

            My mother and I and her GPS, who we named Helga, set out on a two week journey across the country.

            California to Arizona.

            Arizona to Utah.

            Zion National park was our first major scenic stop. Breath-taking. Giant rocks to the left, and right. I've always really appreciated fresh air, and blue skies. After doing some hiking and taking some tours of the park, we drove around to find a place to park. Perfect. We maneuvered our bodies around the natural skyscrapers and kept our eyes our for lizards. Lizard fishing had recently became a hobby of ours. All we needed was bamboo sticks and fishing line tied into a noose. Carefully inching our way to the scaly creatures, we caught and named the little guys. Then after reluctantly having to touch the lizards while avoiding threatening nibbles, we set them free. There was plenty of pavement ahead of us, so we popped in the car and pursued the road. In third grade, my teacher Mr. Stampe told the whole class about Four Corners Monument. Four states intersect at one point.

            Utah to Colorado to New Mexico to Arizona

It was part of the Navajo Nation. Ever since then, I wanted to visit the monument and begged and pleaded my mom to let us make a stop there. And we did. It was awesome. My mom and I took pictures of each other in four states at one time. Like a dream come true. We were a little too fascinated and spent a tad too long at the park and finally decided to leave and continue driving.

            Utah to Colorado

            Cortez. I didn’t like Cortez. We had to stop for a hotel because it was starting to get late and we figured we needed a bit of a break. Our hotel was scary. I walked into the room with my mom at my side and we set our stuff down and closed the door. Then my mom says, "I'm going to go have a cigarette." She left me in the room by myself. When I looked out the window to see if I could spot her, just to reassure myself I wasn’t alone, I saw that, standing up straight, my eyes were level to the ground. Our room was halfway underground. As I peered out the blinds, I noticed a man staring at me from outside, as if being underground wasn’t creepy enough. I dropped to the ground, heart pounding, and waited for my mom to return. The next morning, we were headed for the next state. To our dismay, we were caught in an awful rainstorm. Cars were traveling maybe five miles per hour, halfway buried in flood. No doubt, we were scared. We couldn’t see a half a mile in front of us. The only image repeating in my head through mine and my mom's laughter was the tornado scene in the Wizard of Oz. We were headed for Kansas so I was nervous, to say the least.

            Colorado to Kansas

            Miles of flat land, tractors in the distance, crops being tended to. Kansas was beautiful in the simplest way. After traveling through the back roads for a good while, we were hungry. Moosette's Café. I ordered a burger, and corn nuggets. The only way I could really describe corn nuggets is like fried balls of creamed corn. Different… and delicious.

            Kansas to Missouri.

            Missouri to Illinois.

            Illinois to Indiana.

            Indiana to Ohio.

            Our goal in Ohio was to rush through a visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. It was an incredible to see memorabilia from many of the inductees. My favorite to see was Jimi Hendrix. His drawings were displayed along with his guitars, psychedelic outfits and his family couch. Total immersion into the life and the fame that he had made me wish all the more that I grew up in that era. It was definitely a Jimi Hendrix Experience.

            Ohio to Pennsylvania.

            Dense, lush green everywhere you turn. Also, the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, my dad's favorite football team.

            Pennsylvania to New York.

            What a sight to see. Despite the many rude people in the area, New York was fantastic! We stayed in Queens with my mom's cousin but we got to see Times Square, Central Park, Wall Street. We walked and walked and walked for two days all around New York and I had never been so satisfied being so tired. My mom was born in Romania. She has taught me some of the language, culture and of course, the food. In Queens, we ended up stopping at a Romanian restaurant where I got to eat food I was somewhat familiar with and I got  to see my mom speak Romanian to the waitress. Rockefeller Center, World Trade Center Memorial, Empire State Building. Spectacular.

            New York to New Jersey.

            Did you know it is illegal to pump your own gas in New Jersey? We didn’t.

            New Jersey to Delaware.

            Delaware to Maryland.

            I haven’t been there since I was almost four years old. I was born in Maryland. Silver Spring to be exact. We decided to take a little detour and visit our old house on Contee Rd. in Laurel. A little yellow house that I hardly remember. We wanted to see if possibly the current owners would let us take a walk through memory lane in the halls of their home. We knocked, we rang the bell, no one was there. We did ring the neighbor's bell. Yang. Now, I remember her. I grew up playing with her daughters, Alison and Amanda. She remembered us too and invited us in for a few minutes to catch up after almost twelve long years. Mike, our other former neighbor, also lived in his same house, two doors down from Yang. He had new wife and a beautiful baby daughter. And Miller, my dog, Lucky's, brother they looked just alike. But he had fleas like crazy. The next hotel we had stopped at, I counted all of the flea bites I got from that visit. Seventeen. It was wildly uncomfortable!

            Maryland to Virginia.

            Virginia to Tennessee.

            Sweltering heat. As soon as we stepped out of the car in Nashville, we were both equally dripping with sweat in seconds. The live country music on the streets got my mom and I dancing, laughing, bonding. We had a wonderful time. We stopped in Memphis too. Listened to some live jazz and we drowned in the culture. There was a barbeque joint on Beale St., Blues City Café, and our stomachs were hungry and intrigued. As our mouths filled with saliva, we waited on barbeque ribs, coleslaw, baked beans, and fries. All of which were darn worth the wait. I was not surprised that it was some of the best barbeque I'd ever had since Memphis is pretty know for their barbeque.

            Tennessee to Alabama.

            Alabama to Mississippi.

            Mississippi to Louisiana.

            There is no way I could ever forget the food there. Cracklins, boudin, gumbo. The Creole and Cajun spices sent my taste buds on their own trip.

            Louisiana to Texas.

            The only thing I remember about Texas was that  the roads were hectic.

            Texas to New Mexico.

            New Mexico to Arizona.

            Arizona to California.

            After a two week journey together, the bond my mom and I shared had never been stronger. It was a wonderful and well needed getaway. We never laughed more, and we only had one, very short lived argument, which was quite the feat. Then we were back home. Back to Victorville. Back to reality.

More Than Just Words

            Stephen King said, "The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them." I put my most important thoughts on paper and even though words never entirely express how I'm truly feeling, I've never felt more complete than with a pen and a paper.

            Eighth grade. That’s when inspiration first struck. It was a poster of sixteen different butterflies on the wall in my classroom that caught my attention. I don’t think I had ever been more fascinated with the colors, shapes, and sizes of butterflies. It was at that time that I first felt the strong motivation to express myself and be creative and tell a nice story. I saw the poster and a fire ignited in my body. And I started to write.

            After that, I wrote a poem about trusting in your self and being your own friend. The praise I got for that piece encouraged the hell out of me and it was especially meaningful because it was some of my deepest thoughts that I expressed. Belief. Confidence. Independence. I had written something beautiful that others appreciated and they pushed me to do more. Life was seen through new eyes after that. Discovering that way of expression had changed me. My deepest fears and thoughts are what I wrote. The things I could never talk to anyone about. Somehow it felt safer to have it written down, like no one could take those feelings away from me because they were recorded in ink. Every experience became a new addition to my table of contents, and the list grew and grew. The first time I fell in love, I spun words on the page so effortlessly. My heart was thriving and I felt like if I had people read it, I wanted them to feel as good as I felt. I was happy. My first heartbreak, and second heartbreak, and third filled the lines with tears. If I had people read it, I wanted them to feel as sad as I felt. I wanted sympathy and comfort; sometimes my expressions were cries for help.

            Poetry had been the best outlet for me to not keep in my emotions. My mom always tried to get me to talk when I had stuff on my mind. "It’s not good to keep things bottled up," she'd say. I'd reply, "Well, that’s why I write."

           I was in high school when my parents split up. I felt my situation was so unique, no one could ever relate. At the time, I had been writing for the school newspaper and I was urged to compose an article about divorce in families to remind students that they were not alone, and it's okay to not understand. A student wrote me a letter thanking me for the write. She felt like she wasn’t the only one going through a tough time; there were others out there like her. In retrospect, it really helped the both of us get through a painful time. This made me realize my purpose on this Earth, to change lives through my writing, to make a difference,

            There was a time when I had stopped writing. Life became a blur and getting through the day became so difficult. My inspiration disappeared. I was broken. It was as if I was a flower vase that someone had dropped and put off sweeping up the shards of smooth glass. The one thing that always made me feel better when I struggled, my escape, I had no motivation to do. In a time where I needed to find myself, I lost my magnifying glass. My mind became a prison - I was trapped and quiet. A pen and paper was the driving force that bailed me out. One night, I was feeling powerful, hopeful,  like happiness was a possibility again. So I started to write.

            Writing to me is the most special thing to share; it’s a part of yourself you are giving to someone, and to me, that is beautiful and I am lucky to be involved in something so impactful. Everyone wants a voice. Everyone desires to be heard. Stephen King summed it up best when he said, "That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."

Our Not So Love Story

It started with an attraction

A connection

Modern technology

Introduced me to perfection

You gave me compliments

We made small talk

Technology advanced

And a friendship was unlocked

Then you called me

And I called you

I learned little things

Like that your favorite color is blue

I was discovering who you were

Our bond was growing fast

Getting lost in the call

We noticed 4 hours passed

Then we got to meet

Our first Skype call

You read me some poems

And I managed not to cry at all

 I asked you to celebrate my graduation

May 24th was the date

You said you'd try your best

And then I had to wait

It all became real

When you walked down my street

It was such a surprise

And my cheeks filled with heat

I had the best 7 hours

Spending it with you

I enjoyed our time together

And I hope you did too

Then the party was over

And it was time to say goodbye

I fell into your arms

With a great big sigh

You held me so tight

It felt warm and comfortable

And that last hour

Was truly wonderful

We kissed a lot

Even better than the first

Then having to watch you leave

That feeling was the worst

I missed being in your arms

The second you left me

But you had a long drive ahead

And I had to let you leave

I started looking forward

To what could have happened next

And getting to see you again

Would have really been the best

We called each other again

Almost every night

And talking to you

Just felt right

You came to visit me

More times than I expected

Our late McDonalds run

Could only be described as perfection

Then you surprised me again

When you brought me ice cream and flowers

I think it was July 3

And I was smiling for hours

You drove me places

And couldn't stop singing Latch

It was when I saw you dancing

I knew you were a catch

You always got my heart pumping

And you sure made me smile

You kept coming over

And staying for a while

Cuddling up next to you

Was the sweetest thing ever

The way you made me feel

I hadn’t felt in forever

It was exteremly wonderful

Waking up to your embrace

I was so happy that when I opened my eyes

The first thing I saw was your face

After spending some time apart

It was driving me crazy

All I wanted to do

Was spend some time with my baby

Then you moved down to Victorville

Getting to school became much easier

You invited me to your house

And I became a frequent visitor

Our bodies got close

In your small twin bed

On your chest

Is where I rested my head

September 4

Is a day I won’t forget

Ill remember every second

From sunrise to sunset

Then I learned even more about you

During our study sesh

I understood you much better

All of your emotions seemed so fresh

I didn’t know what the future held

But I wanted us to find out

I still loved getting to know

What you were all about

Ill still always remember

How we first met

We talk about it all the time

How could I forget

You were always so sweet

And you always made me giggle

Even my worst days

You brightened more than a little

I counted it as a blessing

Each day we had that was new

I didn’t know who or what to thank

For bringing me you

I tried to be there for you

As much as I could

I hope you felt like you could rely on me

If you did, then good

We spent a lot of time together

You came over with dinner

With a guy like you

I felt like such a winner

You kept showing up

Not because I invited you

With surprising luck

It was because you wanted to

We stayed together

And woke up so beautifully

Every second we had

Was spent so perfectly

After a while

There was a falling out

You said it had to be done

You wanted to take your own route

I was so confused

And I didn’t want to lose you

I was realizing feelings

I guess were not mutual

With the rollercoaster that followed

I couldn’t stop crying

There was nothing more I could do

And I had to stop trying

The possibility of something more

Started to fade away

I saw you less and less

And it was hard everyday

 I wasn’t sure how to let you go

Or even if I wanted to

I just wish I could have told you

How much I really loved you

It got harder every time

My heart was feeling sore

And as much as I loved you

I couldn’t do it anymore

We had been through a lot

Our relationship was complicated

All the things that I wanted

Were never reciprocated

It grew into something dark

And the both of us struggled

Our relationship then

Became a burden to juggle

The days we spent together

Were far and few

Our hearts and bodies grew distant

And we didn’t know how to continue

I drove out to see you

One last time

We forced ourselves to talk

And it felt like a lifetime

I found it hard to open up

But was ready to admit

It was time for me to move on

And I finally felt okay with it

I conclusively accepted

Something I never wanted to

I was holding on to something

That ruined us two

I am so much happier now

And wish nothing but the best

We just didn’t work

And now we can rest

I don’t want to lose you

And would love to be your friend

Because there is something about you and I

That will just never end

Written 8 October 2014 Updated 28 March 2017