My One and Only Regret

 I feel like I've talked about this at length before on other posts, but this afternoon I am feeling called to write a new one for 2024. Get ready. Cuz here I come. #HappyPride2024

When I started this blog in 2009 I was a bright-eyed, hopeful 24/25 year-old with the whole entire world of adventure and curiosity for life driving me. I had so much fun with it: thinking of creative twists to get my stories out, telling my stories from a fresh new perspective I (emphasis on ME)  had never seen in writing before, enjoying reactions and comments I would get from readers who proclaimed they also truly enjoyed my work, and sharing my perspective on a variety of topics because I had survived experiences that most people could never imagine, let alone admit to anyone--not even people in their close circle and community--what they went through. I knew I didn't have that problem--if people didn't want me to tell my stories of what they did to me, they wouldn't have behaved the way they did, causing me to suffer the consequences of their actions. I wasn't exactly worried about those who have hurt me facing or owning up to any sort of accountability--I just wanted to make it clear that my voice would not be silenced because, dammit, I had something to say. 

Eventually, I hoped this blog would lead to a lucrative opportunity, which, affording me the chance to travel the world writing NYT best-selling fiction novels for a living and possibly even a memoir or three, by process gets all of the thoughts, experiences, wisdoms and love I wanted to share with the world out of my ever-spinning mind. But I was also a single mother of three very small and truly invaluable people whose memories and upbringing I took very seriously. Being an author was a dream beyond a dream, and I had no idea how to do it. But because I knew how badly I was called to writing, I wanted to make sure I took that call seriously. I also wanted to complete my college education. (I was actually inspired to create this blog either in my first or second semester of community college.) So I thought that I could go to college, focus on my education and learn how to be the best story-teller I could be on paper, and when I was finished, manage to get a good job where I could take care of my children and I, but also write in my spare time, then worry about getting a book deal after my family and I were stable.

I purchased every annual copy of the Writer's Market, writing development, how-to-write books, and how-to-be-a-paid-and-published-author self-help book I could afford. An ex-boyfriend who wanted to support my writing at one point even took me to a Barnes and Noble and allowed me to fill up at least two baskets of books for my birthday before it was ever a TikTok challenge. (This same ex-boyfriend also threw a temper tantrum because he said I focused too much time on this blog & writing. He believed I was neglecting him because I said it was too distracting to sit on the phone with him for hours while trying to focus on working, so that was pretty much a done deal after that. Don't get your hopes up too high. I'm still very happily single at 40 years old, but that's a story for another day.) 

I was living in a very hostile, emotionally, and mentally abusive household. I was focused on garnering enough income to be able to provide for myself, my kids, and chase this pipe dream, all while attempting to save my mother from the brutal effects of her long-term alcoholism. 

Day by day, she wore me down. My second-to-last semester of community college, I had to buy a "new"-ish (to me) car because my 1990/91 Volkswagen Jetta (which I nicknamed "Death on Wheels") was totaled out by my insurance company after slipping on frozen trash someone left in the road and jumping a ditch, breaking the axle and something else. Had my car traveled three to four inches farther to the left, I would have been impaled by a rusty metal pipe from a broken sign pole that was sticking out of the ground and leaning dangerously toward my driver's side window. It's quite possible I wouldn't be alive right now to tell this story today had that happened. 

As a replacement vehicle, I decided on a candy-apple red, 1999 Audi A4 1.8T I found on Craigslist. The deal between the seller and I would be a second-hand, hand-to-hand, cash-for-keys purchase, and I was elated. No car payment. Under, actually not even close, to 100k miles on it (I think I remember it being at only 60k miles in 2011 & today still hasn't yet reached 100k). It was so pretty in person. The red was absolutely gorgeous. (Yes, I am very much a girly girl if you haven't noticed by all the pink, purple and hearts.) It had a sunroof (which I LOVED), and it would keep me with the same mechanic I'd had for the Jetta for years to come because we had a pretty good working relationship due to his excellent customer service at the time. I would not get that same customer service treatment today, but that's for other reasons that is another story for quite another day. 

On the way home from the mechanic after taking my mom to see the car because I was going to have work done on it, she says to me from the passenger seat, "Well, since you bought this, I'm going to go buy a Corvette." To which I responded, "That's great. I love that for you." Even now I still don't understand the jealousy and resentment she holds for me. I thought, Don't parents want their children to grow up and do good things for themselves? Why was she taking offense to me buying this car as a graduation gift to myself for achieving something that statistically is considered impossible on top of improbable? My mind is still completely baffled to this day. Worse than that, the car was a damn lemon, and the guy who sold it to me knew it. (Both my cars since were purchased from CarMax.) I took it to the mechanic right after the purchase so he could perform the requested maintenance work (change the timing belt, repair something in one of the windows that didn't roll down properly, and I believe he recharged the A/C or something just in case). Most of these requests were expected because I was experienced, due to my time with Death on Wheels, and this gave the mechanic a chance to overlook the car and tell me any concerns he might have about its condition since I couldn't take him with me to give it a once-over. He explained to me how the seller reset the computer on the car to make it reset the check engine light so it wouldn't pass the state inspection to get a registered license plate without exhaust repairs, among other cosmetic subframe and transmission issues the car had. Because it was a cash-sale and was final, I was stuck with the car, but I loved it anyway and didn't care. It was cute. It was red. It was fast. I was happy. Over the next 18 months, he and I put almost $30,000 worth of parts, labor, traveling for parts, repairs and maintenance to get the car safe enough to drive regularly, and I was only able to do that because by then I was 27/28 and fucking the mechanic for whom I worked under the table. I mean, it was the least he could do. 

When I achieved my associate's degree, my mother sabotaged it by ordering me a 3X-4X graduation gown because she, "thought I would be too big for a regular-sized one," when I was a jean size 12/13 (I still have the gown in its plastic bag in storage somewhere because I was so disgusted by her attempt to sabotage and embarrass me, I didn't even attend my first post-secondary graduation). More than that, I felt like time was slipping through my fingers like sand, and I just wanted to move on and complete my bachelor's degree. Neither I nor my kids were getting any younger. 

Throughout my transfer to the first university I attended, I felt even more empowered by this blog. I was experiencing life. I had responsibilities, but I was very good at making sure I still scheduled time for myself. I was dancing for a local semi-professional basketball team during their games, I was exercising and running five miles a day at the park, and I was managing my school/workload like a pro, I felt. But in my journalism classes, I felt like an imposter. I wanted to learn the ins and outs of proper journalism, and I started feeling like my writing style wasn't serious enough. I wanted to learn how to use the proper voice because I obviously didn't write in it, and felt like because of that, my work would reflect poorly on me being taken seriously as a journalist. I started being more and more critical of myself. Listening to my mother's voice as it became embedded in my psyche saying, "You're just writing nonsense. It's not important. You're not doing anything. You don't have a job. Your existence is not worth what it costs to keep you alive. You don't contribute anything. You're just wasting everyone's time and using me for my money. What about me?"

I lost focus. I put this blog aside because I was overwhelmed with university life and raising my kids, while also being hypervigilant, exhausted and constantly trying to ward off a toxic upbringing for them. I was determined to break the chains and cycles of child abuse and neglect that I experienced growing up. I felt like Elastigirl, stretching herself thin into a parachute after being forced out of an on-fire, crashing airplane to protect my precious babies. I cried a lot. The critiques and jabs from my mother about my lack of worthwhile production in her opinion started to poke through the thinning barrier I had when I was younger. I had already cut my father off at 20-21-ish when he threatened to disown me when I moved to New York City, I didn't want to have to lose her, too. I wanted us to work together to overcome the shit experiences we shared throughout my childhood. I wanted to see her happy. I felt she deserved that happiness as much as I was working to achieve my own, but if you asked it the other way around, she would say I was the source of all her ire and woes--meanwhile, she's sucking down two gallons of Bacardi Superior alone every week. I needed a job desperately because I desperately needed to get out of her house. 

My kids would bring me bottle after bottle they found hidden in the furniture and closets all over the house. I was so confused and had no clue why she was hiding the bottles in the first place--she was the only person in the house who drank alcohol, so all of her bottles were safe and untouched by anyone but her all day and night. Hell, my kids couldn't even sneak it if they wanted to because they weren't tall enough to get into the high cabinet she stored the "main" bottle in. 

I've always been averse to liquor because I saw how consumed by it my parents were and didn't want that life for myself. Liquor was so much a part of my upbringing that it took 25 years for me to figure out that my parents were alcoholics in the first place--I just blamed all of their abuse and violence on insanity and evil. In all actuality, I didn't like either of my parents. I loved them, but I hated who they were as people. There were a lot of times throughout my childhood when I fantasized about their divorce and when I envisioned the day I had to choose which one I went with, I imagined myself telling the judge, "Judge, If I have to I'll choose my mother because even though she's overdependent on me emotionally but also uses me as a verbal punching bag, she doesn't hit me. If I went with my dad, he would definitely hit me." The tenacity of a child because even throughout all of that, I still wanted to achieve their approval for the longest time because I wanted to know what it felt like for them to love me. What I didn't realize was they were hateful because they hated themselves. 

That brings us to present. I named this blog The Love-Cracked Chronicles as a play on words. Love-Cracked is a noun. It's a feeling. But it's also an addiction. It could be a state of existence. Or it could be an adjective to describe something or someone. Love-crack is a drug. It's the state of being so desperately in need of someone else to fill the growing void that expands as the crack gets deeper and deeper, spreading with spider arms that continue to weaken the structure until it shatters apart completely, forever changed from before. This could be an attachment issue, a mental health problem, or you could just be batshit. I knew I was Love-Cracked because of my volatile relationship with my father, my ex-husband, and my failed spring fling with my baby daddy, but I also knew I was Love-Cracked because I was slowly watching my mother waste away and become this lump of a thing I could not even recognize anymore, neither physically nor emotionally. The person she was in 1991 was not the same person I saw in 2002, 2006, 2007, 2009, and so on, and I don't mean in the way that "everybody hopefully changes somehow over time." I was Love-Cracked because I was saying goodbye to a marriage that I wanted to last forever, but I knew the person I was married to was not the same person they proclaimed to be. I was Love-Cracked because I was too cracked to function, and in another life I was the original Janis Ian from Mean Girls, I mean, Mean Girls the Musical Janis is nice, but she doesn't say, "Say 'crack' one more time." Crack. (Thanks, Lindsey. I heard it in your voice.)

That same lighthearted unseriousness about coping with these topics I chose to deactivate my blog. I didn't want it to affect any potential gainful employment. I had a family to raise. I didn't want to be seen as unworthy in the professional workplace. I was a Girl Boss before Girl Bossing was a thing--I still bought the book, though. I also didn't want my sassy little think pieces giving companies and people I was applying to and eventually could work with a reason to feel comfortable stereotyping and cosplaying my community in my face. So I deleted it. It was the worst mistake I ever made. 

I knew it as soon as it was done. I was so very sad for the longest time, but there was no way to undo it. Google said as much before I clicked "Delete and Deactivate." I was warned that I could reinstate it at any time, but the blog the way it was was forever changed. It was like I shut the door on myself, attempting to erase any evidence that my personality ever existed. I still have the handwritten notes; I even have an external hard drive that may have some of the posts encrypted, but I wouldn't know the first thing about unencrypting them and seeing if I could repost them. The handwritten notes are topics I wanted to or already wrote about, but the truth is, the way I am free to just type a thought as I think it on the keyboard, handwritten notes are just that--jotted ideas and blurbs that are later embellished key by key, stroke by stroke, and molded until they are complete, somewhat organized thoughts later onscreen. So even if I did try to recreate the pieces using the notes I have on them, it wouldn't be the same, nor would it be remotely accurate to the perspective I had fifteen years ago. 

TL-CC will never get back to where it once was for me emotionally, but I haven't given up on it, just like it's still here waiting for me whenever I choose to return. I started other blogs that I gave up on almost immediately, but they weren't this one. She was calling me. Even if she isn't sentimentally perfect, she's mine, and better than ever. Unabashed, unashamed, oversharing, and exposing my wounds. Hiding myself, wanting to disappear from the world and just "blend in" because I wanted to be "normal" and "respected" was such a mistake. I am different. My light shines brighter for a reason, and if you don't like it, you can go hide in the dark so you can feel powerful because you're all alone. Cuz I'm back. Whether you like it or not. Flaws and all.