Did I finish writing this yet? Apparently not, I was reminded earlier. Let me post a quick something to catch up with where I should be. Where I should be is done as I'm writing about limited years as many things I don't care to discuss with anyone, at the very least, the general public.

Shannon and I grew ridiculously close. She started introducing me to her friends, in particular, drummers as that was what I needed at the time. Through her I met George. George was my first boyfriend. He was moderately attractive and for an awkward, heavy set teenager, that's all that mattered. He was funny and loved Metallica. I think the loving Metallica was prerequisite to anything else.

He took me to my schools homecoming dance. I wasn't allowed to date, at least not by my great grandfather's house rules. My mom, however, was tons more willing to help me land a boyfriend. He was cute, charming and sweet. I was awkward, rigid and terrified. He kissed me, I shuddered. I was so lost in the moment the minutes flew by and like an idiot teenager I fell in love.

Dear Direct Tv,

   I could complain about your inferior product, but instead of that, let's focus on your dodgy business practices.

First off, charging my bank account WITHOUT permission is not right in the least bit. Why is my payment late? Probably because I need to pay rent first and foremost and NOT you fuckwits. So yeah, feel free, charge my account that has just enough to cover the check I wrote for rent. It's ok. It's not like I'll end up homeless over late rent. Now that I can't afford rent, however, now that's a completely different problem. Do you guys give a damn? You sure do! You gave us Showtime for a month, FREE!

So I'm told you're going to refund me the $50 equipment fee because I'm keeping the service I ALREADY PAID FOR. Awesome, I can expect the money IN MY BANK ACCOUNT by tonight? Sweet! Oh wait, why haven't I been refunded yet? OH! You're giving me fucking credit for your SHIT SERVICE THAT ISN'T DUE TIL NEXT MONTH! You're fucking princes among men! I call and complain and get some dude not even in the same fucking country named "Alan" that he's very sorry and not to worry, I only owe $26 and change for next months service. Yeah, that really helps me pay THIS MONTHS phone bill. Thanks a lot cunts. Pure fucking sweethearts, the lot of you.

Instead of feeding your fucking families while mine starves, I'm getting rid of your shit service. I'm done with it. There's nothing on TV I can't watch online or read in it's original book form (which is probably much more interesting).

In short, fuck you Direct Tv.

I really do suck at keeping up with things sometimes. The story I could've told in 15 minutes, even drunk and unprovoked, is taking much longer than I thought it would. I have trouble thinking in straight lines so I often don't. Forgive the sabbatical. Read this for now:

When you have a lot of time to yourself you can introspect a lot. Awake in the dark, silent dawn, waiting for the insomnia to fade long enough to get an hour of sleep before work. That eerie quiet before the neighbor’s dog starts yipping at every falling fucking leaf. When you just can’t shut your brain off.

Or when you’re stuck waiting for two hours for your store to open up. For the last two months getting to work those two hours early because it’s the only time your ride can drop you off. Public transportation out of the question because if gives you sickening and unbearable panic attacks.

So, you sit by yourself on that bench in the corner hoping no one will bother your for those two hopelessly long hours. You bring a book, an old favorite or the newest Dean Koontz. You can’t get through the first chapter because every five minutes another bum is asking for money or cigarettes.

You bring an mp3 player to drown out the noise of the vagrants and passersby. To make a statement, “Hey fuckers! I have headphones on! You don’t exist!” You’ve built a nice, invisible, public, personal space.

It gets lonely in public, but honestly, there isn’t anyone around worth talking to anyway.

So you introspect.

Your mind wanders from current problems like that goddamn blemish on your credit report from that time when you were twelve when someone stole your social security card to open up a gas company account.
You mind wanders to sex. Old partners, new partners, kinky fantasies with latex, dildos and plenty of lube.

Your mind wanders to internal struggles. Do you really want to be a retail slave for the rest of your life?

Once in awhile an interesting passerby may catch your eye. The perfect kind of character you could use in your not quite thought out plot to bomb the shopping center you’ve grown to hate over the last two years.

Yeah, that kind of alone.

You learn more and more about yourself and why you act and think the way you do. That tough guy act? Picked it up after years of being made fun of for being fat. Commitment issues? All because your mom and dad abandoned you at two months old when drugs became more attractive than a baby. Fear of intimacy? Your godfather fondled you when he thought you were sleeping.

It’s all there. Every minor personality quirk and flaw you can dissect and rationalize until you’re justifying your own sociopathic thoughts.
In introspection you can justify just about anything.

Notes:

I wrote this some time ago, found it cleaning up an old profile somewhere on the internet where I used to be an omnipresence.   I can't bear to delete it for some reason so I am recycling it. Comments, of course, are appreciated.

I started hanging out with this Shannon girl. We had some in common, her mom had left her to live with her grandmother at a young age because she had a major drug/alcohol problem. Her mom sobered up and became, yet another, upstanding member of the church community. Her mom was nice, I never had a problem with Catherine, save for her self righteousness and her constant berating me for choosing the Marquis de Sade as a personal hero during some church project thing.

At first she was in charge. Every Sunday after sacarament we'd duck out before Sunday school and hide out in the bathrooms or on occasion outside to grab a smoke before the bishop came hunting us down. The first couple times it was getting out because neither of us wanted to be there, after awhile it became getting out because we wanted to hang out together. In a lot of ways, she was my first real girl crush. At 13 I had thought a lot of girls were cute, but I never really knew any of them as well as I knew her. This drew me to her, this made me love her a little.

Soon, no one was in charge. We fell in step. I was thinking what she was thinking and vice versa. It was beautiful and crazy and I loved it.

My Tata didn't like her. Everything I loved about her, he hated. The multi-coloured hair, the boots, the loud music, her ripped jeans. The list went on, but I was allowed to hang out with her simply because her mother was (here we go again) an upstanding member of the church. She'd come over nearly every day or on occasion I'd go to her place. I opted for her to come over to mine more often because there was more room (I lived in a big house, her in a small apartment) and I'd have ready access to my keyboard or guitars if inspiration struck as it often did at random.

She started staying with us for days at a time. Tata hated having her over, aside from the obvious reasons, she was a vegetarian and therefore a thorn in the side of our meat eating asses. Out of all the friends I could've had, she required the most effort.

It was with her I was finally allowed outside with. She and I would take my dogs for long walks around the nearby school or we'd walk to the park and back. We'd go to the mall even. Normal teenage girl stuff. Well, usually.

We had our moments of insanity. One brilliant afternoon we tore up a circus magazine, I took a picture of Marilyn Manson and her a picture of Kurt Cobain, taped them to our foreheads and put on crazy hats. I had the top hat, she had a mon-chi-chi hat. We sat on the corner for hours watching people watch us. Not saying a word to any of them. Most rambling on in Spanish, some praying for whatever reason.

Other times we just went around pretending to be British. You'll be amazed at how much free shit American's are willing to throw at you if they think you're a tourist, particularly a tourist with money. Watch enough Absolutely Fabulous and you can pick up the idea of how we were acting. I was Eddie she was Patsy, it was strange and fun. Shop and drink, drink and shop.

Those times, even after and during the bad... I always felt like we were invincible. Not even the gods themselves could've torn us apart.

cont...

a continuation of "Down the Rabbit Hole".

   I suck at continuity, I'll place everything as well as I can, though I can't make any promises.

I stayed with my godparents nearly every weekend and half the week. Most important, of course, were the Sunday's we spent at the mormon church down in North Hollywood. Every Sunday before church I was given my usual dosage of a 750mg Vicodin or the occasional 10mg of Percocet... whatever was lying around the house at the time. Just to "calm my nerves" as they put it. There were days that were a blur of sleep and television. There were mornings I would wake up with hands on my breasts and ass and me being too out of it to do anything about it.

My godfather, up until that point, had been someone I trusted with everything. We had talked about my wants to get into acting, as he had worked in the studios for nearly two decades at that point. My dreams, thoughts, feelings. The man had me in the palm of his hand. I was a stupid, trusting girl and he knew what to say to keep me from saying anything. He was right though, no one would've believed me.

He was an upstanding member of the priesthood. Paid his tithes, took care of his family, including the two sons that he had adopted. His family loved and trusted him, my family loved and trusted him and most importantly the church loved and trusted him. I was fighting a losing battle.
I had to let it happen. No matter how much I let on, no matter what I let "slip", no one was really interested in what I had to say. More and more they slipped me their drugs and more and more I couldn't say no.

I stopped trusting them completely. His wife started claiming I was stealing stuff. I was stealing stuff at the time but not what she said I was. She told my great grandfather I was stealing her jewelry and toiletries (for whatever reason), no, that wasn't me, it was her shitty neighbor kid. I stole the good stuff. They had vicodin and percocet just lying around the house along with various depression meds. I don't know why they noticed missing toilet paper but not drugs. I started cutting almost every day. I couldn't handle the constant barrage of pain and disgust but physical pain started to feel like an orgasm.

One day I just fucking snapped. I couldn't take it anymore. I was 12 or so just something in my brain fucking snapped. I remember walking into their kitchen. Having a rough night, no sleep, no pills, nothing but the freezing fucking cold to keep me company, I was already in a bad mood. He walks up behind me as I get my toast, a quick smack to my ass and a punch to his throat later and he's on the floor looking absolutely terrified.

"Don't fucking touch me AGAIN."

That was it. A gesture seemingly small seemed to end it. At least mostly. I caught him a few times after that groping me in my sleep. The drugs again, kept me quiet but the words that came when I was mentally clear reminded him that he was scum of the Earth.

I stopped staying at their home, much to the dismay of my godmother. She then began to blame me for all her problems from the pills to the drinking she would later take up after her only daugher's marriage. I made my grandfather take me back, first met with objections but he knew damned well I belonged there. It was either there or with my mom, 3 brothers and her growing heroin addiction. I was met with some conditions: 1. Church was mandatory 2. Good grades were mandatory 3. No visiting friends 4. No boyfriends

At the time boyfriends and friends weren't really an issue. I hung out with few people to begin with and boys, while interesting, were not interested in the porky goth girl hiding out with her books and music. I hated church more and more, being forced to participate more as a teenager. Dances, camp, sports and such. Some things I didn't mind. I loved playing on a team, I loved dancing with some of the incredibly hot guys only a strict religion can breed (though they never put out). I hated camp, 10 mile hikes up mountains, getting hit with nightsticks (did I mention my bunk buddy was a fucking cop?), and ants in my breakfast. It was supposed to be all fun and bible stuff, but in the end I felt nothing for the religion, less for the people there and just wanted to be done with it.

One day that all changed when I met Shannon. OK, it wasn't really "one day", I had met her before and not really cared for her acerbic personality. It had matched my own to some extent which is probably why we didn't get on so well at first. Her mom had been my Sunday school teacher off and on through the years. One day we started talking, next thing I know she's my partner in crime and NOTHING could fucking stop us.

more tomorrow... this girl needs sleep.

No childhood is perfect. Most marred by some kind of mental or emotional fuck up by ones parents or guardians. Many worse than just mere fuck ups. I don't really talk about mine much because its been a subject of nearly pure pain on my part, but for the sake of mental health I'm letting this out. I'm a quiet type of introspective normally, though writing is proving to be more of a therapy than anything.

This will be broken up into a couple pieces, for the time being lets start at the begining.

On the 3rd Day of May, year 1984, I was born to Lonnie R. Shrum and Lauragene Hernandez. A 17 year old high school drop out and her abusive 20 year old boyfriend. 2 weeks later, he would try to kill me as she held me in her arms. 6 weeks after, both parents would abandon me and leave me to her grandparents, my GREAT grandparents. My maternal grandmother had died the year before from a heroin overdose and I've never really known much about my maternal grandfather or either paternal grandparent. Anyhow, I lived happily for the most part with my great grandparents until my Nana died when I was 2. My Tata couldn't bear her passing and from then on I was passed from home to home like a football.

  Tata spent the next 6 years threatening to kill himself if he lost custody of me but never wanting to take me for more than a week at a time. When I was with him most of my time was spent studying. By the time I was in first grade I had already read two dictionaries. I rarely misspelled anything and if I did, I was severly beaten for it. Hangers, belts, the cord for the iron, whatever. I generally kept to myself, locked away in my room playing my keyboard when I could. I wasn't allowed outside for fear that I would be kidnapped by my father's family.

I spent the majority of the time with my ever increasingly Mormon godparents. I won't say they were terrible people. At first they took great care of me. Raised me as one of their own. My godmother got cancer and everything went to hell from then on. When I stayed with them I was usually drugged with some mix of vicodin and whatever else they had lying around to keep me sleepy and quiet. They took me with them to church where I was usually the center of ridicule for not having a conventional family (because you can't go to the Celestial Kingdom without your family!) or simply because I wasn't as white as they were. When I turned 8 I was baptized, stoned off my ass. Not my doing, of course, my god parents wanted to make sure my second guesses were quieted by the drugs.

It was soon after that I lost my faith in humankind.

Its late and I'm tired, so I'll leave it at that for now. More to come soon.

Definition Courtesy of UrbanDictionary.com, spell corrected by yours truly:

There's something about starting a new blog that feels just like opening a new box of crayons or, better yet, a new tub of play-doh. Play-doh truly is the scent of the gods. Throw in some construction paper and super sharp scissors...I think I'm drooling a little. Art supply fetish aside, this new blog feels good. I had started another blog recently, but something about it didn't feel quite right and being the self-serving, massive bitch that I am, I have the philosophy that if it doesn't feel right, drop it like a baby. So this is pretty much take two.

If this is your first time around with me, first things first (or second in this case), you can probably expect a lot of swearing, it's my specialty, mix in some acerbic wit, a dash of crazed and obnoxious opinions and possibly a small handful of drunk posts that will hopefully entertain, though I'm not sure if that's the point of this or not. Actually, there's a possibility that you won't find any humor in my ramblings. In that case, by reading this you've already waived your right to sue and have opened yourself up for some hearty mocking.

All that being said, I want to have fun with it this time around and if someone ends up naked in the process... even better.

ps-send naked pics to whatinthehell@aclkwrkstarfish.com