Writing has always been my escape from life. I understood, at a very early age, that no one really gave a fuck about what happened to me. My job as a child, and especially as a foster child, was to shut the fuck up, don’t create trouble, obey and create as many opportunities for my mother to be complimented as I could muster.

I’m sure at some point I went through the routine channels to alert those around me of my pain, of my discomfort, and of my troubles, but to no avail.

In time, my life became a series of mishaps, abuses, violations and neglect.

I learned to be abused, beaten, sexually exploited, robbed of my possessions, lied to, distracted and to never, under any circumstance, trust anyone, specifically those whose title should represent the highest mode of vested interest.

Those teachers, doctors, parents, lawyers, priests, pastors, social workers, are stick figures with painted on mouths.

I regret life.  

When I hear women and men promote the ‘gift of life’ I often wonder what kind of store do they shop in? Do they just buy into the notion that humans earn some form of consideration simply by taking in their first breath? Do they not see the children who have been abused? Do they not know what hunger is like? Don’t they realize that there is no gift box of resources to help a human play nice with society…?

The gift of life is nothing more than a Secret Santa gift given to you by that co-worker who doesn’t really like you like that.

I sit and read, and I have sat and listened, and I see that no one really cares what happens to an individual’s life. If society does consider life to indeed be a ‘gift’ it is only because that person is useful, quiet and complacent in being consumed by the lack of civility in the world.

How many parents have honestly asked their children if they were grateful for being bought here? Because I know if my mother asked me, my answer was and has always been a resounding ‘NO’ but that is not to say that I blame her for giving birth to me.

We’ve had one whole entire discussion about the circumstances surrounding how I came to be, and throughout the conversation I waited for the point in which things may have been hopeful for my pending existence, yet there was none.

My life would become a series of poorly executed solutions by people with self interests, good misplaced intentions, and ignorance, that lead me to a place of volatility, as it has remained.

I’m going crazy.

Left to my own devices I’ve figured out what countless adults, doctors, therapists and counselors have overlooked. It was only after having visited a crisis coach during Junior college did someone, finally, have a answer. Up until that point, I was chastised for  thinking something was wrong with me, and ignored when I displayed signs of mental distress. I’ve exhibited various traits of a mental disorder all of my life; from rocking myself to sleep as an infant;  to self harm and cutting as a pre-teen, to psychotic nightmares; to the way I was compelled to suddenly get dressed and walk the streets at night, all night, starting at the age of 12.

I am bipolar, and recently, I’ve been informed that Paranoid Schizophrenia also runs throughout my family, but that was no surprise. I observed both disorders and variations of each disorder in certain individuals, however, the crazy is not crazy when its seen as simply a way ‘we’ all behave.

I’ve taken nearly twenty types of prescription medication over the years to assist with my disorder until, finally, I stopped bothering. If I am to go insane, or on a suicide binge and take my own life, then I’ll take my chances with my own mind rather than the sudden change in my thought process that accompanies the ‘relief’ of taking mental disorder drugs.

I am homeless.

It’s been a wild ride for me and my daughter, since I fell for that ‘gift of life/I’m doing someone a favor by giving birth’ thing over twenty years ago. I often find myself without a place to live whether I am working or not. Regardless of the amount of rent I can pay, I’ve never had a place of permanence, and I can’t figure out why.

Landlords have rented to me in hopes that I will fall on hard times and offer an exchange of sex to keep a roof over my child’s head. Money, though hard to come by was always a constant. Yet money doesn’t buy peace, or agency or privacy for me, and I don’t know why.

I am removing myself from a shack of a place that would be condemned if the authorities bothered to check on it. I can’t keep up with the discrete ‘family discount’ rent that I was being charged, and so I don’t cause further financial destruction to the person who owns it, my daughter and I will be back in the wind for the winter.

Neighbors break in and rob me of my few valuable things or single and not single men spend too much time focused on me, my life and what man I do choose to involve myself with.

I’ve walked home to find illegal padlocks, and have called 1-800 numbers hoping help would answer the phone but it doesn’t, especially when the illegal and exploitative behavior belongs to an officer of the law.

Homelessness is what happens to you when you won’t fuck those who feel like you should because they want you to.

I’ve packed up countless houses, of countless objects and packed Uhauls, cars, shopping carts and vans alone and without help. I’ve pushed, pulled, dropped and struggled with beds, dressers, televisions and refrigerators with the entire 5’2 of me.

I’ve packed bags of clothes, personal identification and paperwork, and shut the lights out before walking away from entire apartments containing our existence because I couldn’t afford, or had no place to take the scraps of my life. I’ve opened my home to other unstable and transient people so that they may recycle and find use with what little I have accumulated.

I have no possessions in this world, including myself. I’ve learned to enjoy what I have, when I have it, and to walk away with no strings, no regret and no expectation of ever returning. I’ve left a trail of people, stories, and objects in the world as I continued on in search of whatever it is that optimism stirs in a person who hasn’t yet given up on ‘maybe next time’.

I am sick.

I’ve had an eating disorder for most of my life, which may or may not be related to my behavioral disorder, either way, I am and have been extremely malnutritioned. I haven’t had health insurance in years, and when I did, I couldn’t afford to pay the co-pays to use it. I carried the insurance because I was required to so that my child would have coverage. When money had to be spent for a doctor, it was for her and not me. Health is one of the most valuable things you can have. I’m piss poor and maybe always will be.

I can’t tell you the irony of seeing hundreds of dollars missing from my check yet being unable to utilize the privilege of having health insurance. I can tell you what it feels like to wake each day and feel your body deteriorating yet knowing that I can’t stop…..until I can or must by death.

My ‘food insecurity’ has contributed to so much that I have lost. I need an operation to alleviate my endometriosis, and to keep my reproductive system in tact, but since I’ve become living on one meal a day these last few years, my body is experiencing signs of early menopause.

But that’s the least of my concerns now. The menopausal rages are what’s on my mind the most. Hurling objects across the room and breaking into violent fits can’t be a good thing. I’m am an emotional wreck, and always consider my options, so I ask myself, can I make it much longer without hurting myself or others.?Day by day I work it out but I fear what I am capable of doing. It took nothing for you to find me with my hands wrapped around your throat, squeezing the life outta you for one reason or another as I experienced puberty. I fear your safety and mine, yet again.

I’m so tired.

I’ve cried nearly every morning of my life. Upon waking, I am overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. Whether there is or is not something to fear, and there usually is, I sleep in insomnia fits and wake nearly hysterical.

I’m tired of listening to people who haven’t a clue to the reality that I face. I’m tired of hiding things about myself and about the treatment that I have received at the hands of others. I’m tired of making due with much less than was due to me. I’m tired of bearing the burden of many human’s willingness to bear down on whomever is nearby because its convenient. I’m tired of pretending like people who are disposable aren’t because they may get offended.

I’m tired of hiding, and of lies, and of internet bullies and social whisperers.

I’m tired of being the main attraction at the zoo of my life, where family members who once greeted me when it was popular to do so spend much more time reading my writing and dissecting my life for their own conversational fodder. I’m tired of feelings like I’m the odd one knowing dam well, that I’m also more intelligent then a combination of several people put together. But I must play along, behave as requested and never, ever, reveal that I am aware that my mind is different.

I’m highly intelligent.

Which makes the lies, the cover ups, the kinda-sorta method in which society handles societal problems all the more frustrating and difficult to me. But with this intelligence and a disorder, I fear I may be a victim of the relationship between Schizophrenia, Bipolar and madness. I was informed that it is the habit of the most intelligent of my ancestors to become reclusive, and withdrawn, lost in a world of creative silence.

My frustration with society, sensitivity to the ways in which human’s treat me and each other, and my ability to do several creative things exceptionally well could be a coincidence or it could be me doing what my blood has determined for me. I can’t begin to tell you how much I value being indoors, and will only allow certain people into my home, and into my life.

Will I die alone, among piles of books of scribbles and unfinished thoughts…? I may die like that because I live in this manner already. I knew I was losing my mind years ago, as I age, or as I evolve, or whatever this progression is called. I am aware that my ideas change, and my ability to make sense of things dips and wanes like the waves of an ocean and I can’t swim.

I stare in awe at the eloquent way that I can sometimes write, and I am moved to tears when I sit down and sometimes can’t recall how to put together a cohesive sentence. So I draw the emotions instead.

I’m so sorry.

I don’t believe in God, or Jesus  and I never did and if believing in a deity could alleviate some of what I have in my life than I would or wish myself capable of grasping that particular concept of imaginary comfort. I seek answers, and resources among those who are living and breathing, which may be why humans gave up holding humanity responsible for humanity and instead tossed the function into the arms of a concept they think bigger and more capable.

People hate me.

Because hating me is easier then getting to know me or taking the time to understand why or how I came to be who I am. It’s painful to sit and watch as others judge humans on things that are not so much in their control. I resent the armchair therapists but I know they focus on downing others as a way to alleviate the discomfort they feel about themselves.

It hurts me to my core that all I wanted in life was to be accepted, to be loved and to have someone to love and care for back. I am a nurturing person who is always aware of the feelings of others. I want nothing more than to make people be okay. I wish to comfort others. I want to hug, and rock the pain away from people. I want to give you whatever it is that will make you okay.

I only wanted to be loved, but instead, I was dropped off in a place with hateful black women of various hues who both taunted and raised me, with half hearted and broken black men who turned their heads and stepped over their responsibilities.

I was dropped off in a place that I would describe as cold, lifeless and pointless.

It hurts me that I found my family, believed they welcomed me only to have many of them go strangely silent, and others, accusatory, because I am not like them. Or maybe it’s because I am.  It hurts that my father would rather read Facebook updates and find fault with a random post and then publicly make an attempt to chastise me. This is the epitome of his interest in his oldest daughter. I resent that man and everything he isn’t capable of being, because he may not have had control when I was born but he dam sure isn’t so helpless now. I am disgusted that I came from such piss poor stock; but I am grateful that I was in the care of Big Jessie for those 15 years that I had him, I was raised by a man, thanks to foster care.

I’ve taken to slicing my wrist with broken glass, my prefered object since childhood, because watching the blood bead up and drip down my hand is the equivalent of the tears that I can’t cry for fear I”ll hurl myself into traffic. I don’t have the energy or interest in going to clinics, and jumping through administrative hoops, and round pegging a square hole for a solution that hasn’t yet been found in thirty years.

I am jobless.

And why in the Hell do average folks things a college degree is magical? As if educated people aren’t also on welfare lines and in food pantries. The worst part of being unemployed is the look of content you get from those who are usually employed. It’s as if these people want everyone to do bad including themselves. I am not jobless by my own failure to look for and obtain a job. I’m jobless because I made the mistake of working for a Black man, knowing that I should have trusted my racial bias and gotten far the fuck away from that little start up company and back into the arms of a Jewish law firm where I belong. Working class people pay in I.O.U’s and have no concept of what structure is and how one needs routine and dependability  (like a steady paycheck) to make their life function. I feel like I”m living in a jungle and I want to get so far away from here I can’t begin to explain.

I love you.

And I’m so grateful that I can finally say these three words without feeling like I’ve insulted someone. I’m grateful to have the internet and the people that I have found here over the years who did care, even if all they could do was type on a screen to make their presence known. I now know so much of my circumstances and experiences can be changed if people cared. I can tell my friends that I love them and they understand, they love me back, and when we say these things they are not merely words. Love helps people like me stay here.

All or nothing.

This is what I believe in, and so I wake up and wipe my tears, or just cry on the bus stop, during the ride, into the elevator and as I sit behind my desk. I write because the paper won’t tell, and it’s always here to listen. I write because I’m tired, and I’m frustrated, and I am real and I get to have feelings and emotions that should match the bullshit that is my daily routine.

I am angry.

Because it didn’t have to be like this. Many people involved in my circumstances are worthless excuses for human beings. Many things that happen might surprise you but it doesn’t to those like me. I’m angry because certain people open books and point to rules and look at people like us as if we mistook what was written. Instead of asking themselves why don’t the rules adhere to the rules, folks like us get blamed for doing nothing more than taking the rules at face value and trying to make it work.

I regret everything.

I regret nothing.

These three words are only the start.

My questions is…where will this end and by whom?