Why i really hate X-mas

No i don't mean in a "Grinch like" i don't want anyone else to enjoy it either. My last real secular Christmas ended let's say poorly...
My Mother suffers from insanities as many and varied as traditions on Christmas morning. Being adopted she had always wanted to know her birth mother and biological family to the point where she was willing to accept a woman named Paula into our lives. Paula seemed a nice enough person if somewhat delusional herself, and with her came her husband who i rarely saw and their two young children. My baby brother at the time was living in a private school in Albany where they could study his behavior 24/7 to understand his learning disabilities and behavior/mental issues. I'd gotten my certification to babysit and perform first aid at the local college and was expected to babysit Paula's young children constantly with no pay as part of my rent.
I was 12... I was set to be Mary in the Christmas pageant that year, a high honor considering i'd typically been cast as the present nobody wanted, the elf with low self esteem and the angel that was just a little quirky ( think Larry the Cucumber). My mother was going to go pick my brother up from Albany that night and my father was working, i'd been looking forward to the time with my mother and brother but was informed last minute that i instead would be babysitting Paula's kids while she and my mother did some last minute shopping in the city. I relented on one condition... be back in time for me to be in my pageant that night. As they were going out the door Paula whispered to me, "Don't count on it." I was so mad but what could i do? And besides my mother would make sure they were back on time right?
10 o'clock came and went... then midnight... her little boy peed the bed, her daughter had a nightmare... 1 am. or shortly thereafter they came in the door laden with bags. I was mad. I asked where they had been that it had taken so long to get back, i asked if they'd remembered i was supposed to be somewhere hours ago. "Paula wanted to shop" insisted my mother as if that was enough of an explanation to avoid any responsibility. "But i was supposed to be at church..." Paula laughed a little bit and said "I'm your cousin."
"You're NOT my cousin." i whispered. It felt brave... This woman had no actual relation to me... she had convinced my mother that she was her cousin not with paperwork but with a similar build in her face that i never could see and with a "psychic feeling" that they belonged to each other. It was b.s. but it was life with my mother's ever evolving idiosyncranicities and madness. It wasn't brave, it was most decidedly stupid. If this was a movie or a story i am fairly sure there would have been the traditional "What did you say?" followed by either a retraction or swelling music and a brave gesture of defiant youth in reiterating the statement louder. What there was instead was a fist knocking me down onto a couch face first. This woman was short but not light, at nearly 300 pounds she was about double my tall but chubby weight and all of it came down knee first into my ribcage. She beat me...
I'd been hit before, by my mom and her plastic hairbrush that she broke over my jaw attempting to spank me, by fellow students ( i used to thank people who hit me in the face for saving me the cost of paying the orthodontist bill by straightening my teeth for me ) and in more extreme cases by fellow students, many of them older, who had a club named Kids Killing Cat... lovely moniquer right? who beat my brother and i one day with boards with nails stuck in them. (One of them has actually apologized, my friend James asked me how long after that he asked me out... yeah, i guess that doesn't really count.)
I'd been hit, but this was an adult beating me and she was pissed off. I remember my brother trying to help me and my mother holding him back telling him that i had been a bad girl and i deserved this for being disrespectful to my elders. The beating went on for what seemed like forever and no one stopped her. She stopped herself when she was too worn out to hit me with any real force. Panting, she stayed on my chest a bit longer then let me up and told me to go to her daughter's room. I couldn't stand. My mother and she picked my up under the arms, dragged me there and threw me onto the floor of her daughter's room and shut the door. I was alone, i didn't remember her kids getting up but they must have at some point. I rolled onto my side and coughed. Mixed in with the spit i was choking on was blood. When the door opened i had been expecting an apology... for no earthly reason... what i got was a terse, "when you are ready to apologize to Paula, you can come out and we'll leave. I can't believe how badly you embarrassed me tonight." I...i...
I have always been a creature of impracticality but with that comes a heavy dose of creativity. I couldn't bring myself to apologize for putting my body in the way of Paula's fist but they were expecting some kind of apology.  I got up, slowly using the bed and walked even slower out to the kitchen. "I'm sorry..." i said pausing but not breathing so i could tel myself it was one big phrase. "i got blood on your kids carpet." "Well there is going to be blood in the kids' Christmas cookies this year too" she said displaying the single scratch i had managed to get in in an attempt to defend myself.
I was excused to the car just after 3:30 am Christmas morning, it was freezing cold and i sat there and had probably the most worst decisions of my life to make. Do i report this? My mother would deny it, and be blamed for it... I would be removed from my home... and placed with the people who had been suing my parents for custody of me for 4 years at that point. So at 12 i'm sitting in a car at 3:30 am Christmas morning a walking bruise and asking myself which is worse? Do i want to be beat or raped? I decided being beaten was by far the better answer. Almost an hour later my mother and brother came down the stairs and out to the car and we went home.
My Father freaked out, by then i was turning a darker shade of purple and looked pretty alarming. My mother tried to convince him that it was my fault and failed. I tried to convince him that this was still better than me being dragged out of the house to live with my mother's parents. I succeed. We all sat down to open the presents we'd been eying under the tree for weeks. Mine were plentiful though as we opened them it became clear it was a misnomer... what greeted me under the tree was individually wrapped socks and underpants, my father had let mom do all the shopping and mine had been done at the dollar store. I was then instructed to bring Christmas cookies to the neighbors houses and forbidden from hiding my bruises... I snuck my scarf and hat and gloves in my jacket and but them on around the other side of the big trees where mom couldn't see me and refused all invitations to come in, removing them in the same place before coming inside again. What to my wondering eyes should appear returning home but mom... destroying all the ornaments, throwing them hard into the box of decorations, since i had ruined Christmas for her and then.... she kicked me out.
When i was 14 my dad did the best thing ever by kicking her out instead. His following girlfriends insisted he spend Christmas with their family and one year i even went along sat in the back bedroom watching movies and everyone forgot i was there. When i was 20 we opened presents one night it was small and fake in a way i couldn't stomach but it wasn't even on Christmas night. If i had a husband... If i had kids... I might be sitting at the foot of a tree all lit up and sparklie, singing carols and drinking egg nog ( well nog ... i'm egg intolerant) but i've gotten a tree... put it up and decorated and it just feels... wrong somehow... I love Christmas service with the candles and pageantry but i am sworn off typical x-mas for a time undisclosed... please understand that i just don't want to play with this fake Norman Rockwell image of a perfect happy Christmas day. I am much more satisfied with quiet lights and nog.

Broken

She awoke with a start. She wasnt' breathing. Why couldn't she breathe? Scared and panicking she snorted air in through her nose. Good. It smelled awful and each intake was sore and headachy, like she'd just run a mile and couldn't take in the air fast enough through her sore and tortured lungs. She drank the air in like cool water except it was a hot hose on a summer day.  When her thirst for air was manageably sated, she moved her lips. If she moved them back and forth she could feel the sticky canvas backside of the duct tape over it. The more she wiggled the more freedom she gained, but such triumphs were small and increasingly frustrating. Her nose was broken, she was aware of that now. She could feel the splintering and swelling. The swelling that made it so hard to breath in through her nose in the first place. Her hair was wet with sweat and blood. She could feel it sticking to her forehead and tiny tugs where blood had started to dry it to her skin like a scab as she tried to move her head around. The room pitched and vomit rose at the sticky sweet smell of her own blood and the blinding white pain behind her eyes as she reached unexpectedly the limit of her motion.
Her head bobbed there for a moment and it all sunk in very quickly. The itching feeling of the rope around her wrists and the burning where she'd been trying to wiggle free in her sleep.  A quick tug told her the efforts had caused her wrists to swell, any hope she had of slipping out was dashed. The shooting pain in her left arm let her know that when they'd been wrenched behind her it had been either strained or out and out broken. She'd have to worry about that later. She was on her knees on concrete. The tiny bits of gradient bit into her kneecaps and shins. So she was knelt on her knees but standing was impossible not just for the bounds around her legs, arms and hands but as the bonds were  connected. 


... Not sure what to do with this yet the first part came to me suddenly and the rest is fading a bit... maybe because i'm sick or maybe cause i don't want to go here...

Lines: On a quote by Oswald Chambers

"Doubt is not always a sign that man is wrong;
it may be a sign that he is thinking."


Can you prove it to me as true?
Can you let it exist through you?
Let me be proof of my beliefs.
If i close my eyes i can barely see.
Black and white should not define
the colours of my life.
Life is a curious thing.
We first run from it
afraid of the darkness it brings
Then cling to it and hold it inside
Like lovers hungry for more
Entwined inside this darkness
Our emotions hide
Pulling on yet pushing out
the bittersweet world it knows.
We want to change, to make things "right"
but what we find we no longer want.
If i close my eyes i can barely see
the person that i want to be
the person that i mean to be.
Through all my corse agitation.
Through all my rough jokes.
I want to be something i long ago lost that
My friends and i used to joke with
but now that is gone.
My situation is quite normal but that does not help.
i've loved someone, i'm sure of that now.
So what if he shuns my existence,
tells me lies?
(or at least he used to,
It was better like that.)

Wow... okay this was written way back in 1994 and my goodness it's so funny for me to think of the way i used to look at my life as being so long when i was so young... 

Lines: Written upon the occasion of being bored in Modern Philosophy

And yet,
in the darkness of the soul
we stop to have tea-time and discuss
our own reality.


What exists?
What creates?
What do i know?
Why can’t I stop thinking about…?


If i created myself and my reality,
then, why did i make it suck?
Why can’t I control my life?
Why does it matter to you,
after all you’re my creation.


“Whether or not there is such a thing as a ‘triangle’
it still has three sides.”
someone argues, and no one disagrees.


All the arguments presented to us this day
are only disproved by insanity but none of them know,
that a sane person in an insane world is just as mad.


...Okay that one is quite a bit old written way back in college i'm thinking fall of 1998 but still one of my favorite thoughts at the end.

Duct tape

There is a need inside for me
to control me
i must stay just like this
i must be this image
in this way
i kill myself
slowly
a little each day
i am a prisoner to what i expect me to be
though my hands wring in my bonds
till i bleed
i can't seem to let me free
i hear myself begging
to say things i shouldn't say
and so slowly i replace the duct tape
and muffle my own screams
though a knife a needle never break my skin
i can feel them enter in
manipulate that smile
spread those legs whore
don't you know this is what you're made for?
i abuse myself 
i lay myself open to attack and abuse
because...
right now i'm just me
the me you don't really get to see
the me i don't share
the me that i hide
that scared girl cowering in the corner
the teen learning to fight to survive
all those people i've had to be
laying scared inside me
knowing nothing but the abuse and the fight
and if i am the evil i can control 
live with the things i cannot say
live with the things i cannot fight
live with the me you expect me to be and can't

...Written recently and part of a trend in my writing that is going a bit outside my comfort area lately. I used to allude and hint and now they are just blunt, much more so the way i talk to a close friend and in the vein of some of the poetry i've been afraid to share that was written when i was younger. Maybe now... maybe here... is the place to do this.

i like your lie

not going there
don't dare to hope
it's not like it's really even a chance
it hurts so bad
this being close
but i see him and want to dance
shove it down
good girl choke on it
shut it up
he likes me?
push it further down girl
i can't hear you gag yet
those words don't happen
they just don't
i'm your fuck toi
i'm your girl
i'm your kitteh
i'm your pussy..hmm.. cat
i'm your wet dream
i'm your cumming scream
no one's ever jealous over me
i'm your duct tape
i'm your glue
you'll just walk out when you're through
don't play this game
don't lie to me
don't tell me you like me
fucken cum and get off me
no
don't take the armor off
just slip my panties to the side
not showing you this
not showing you where i hide
hold me now
i kinda like your lie


...Written about 2 weeks ago and when i looked back at it i was kinda shocked. It does everything poetry is supposed to do for me ... reveal me and leave me naked to myself long enough to understand what i was thinking. But it is a style i have felt vaguely uncomfortable sharing with all but my closest friends and that is beginning to feel like a deception.

Typical Poetry

I cannot dream; yet sleep be merry.
My nightmares thrive on paper; may the reader be wary.
Me peace a sweet garden; where others may tarry.
My life an eerie chord; that others may very.
To hide my nightmares i have tried hard.
To my real life for Them, the path has been barred.
Seeming to Them only as a card
Or to others, a local bard
Who by chance, can dance the galliard.
Awoken by fears, replaced by a rhyme.
Crying out just the same, silent as a mime.
Acting as if melancholy were it’s own crime.
Hope all will reveal itself in its own time.
Staring absurdly at the “a.m.” on my clock.
Quietly going over everything, taking stock.
Hope that others, this poem will not mock
even though i write these lines wearing only one black sock.


...Oldie but a goodie for me. It's the first poem i read to someone who asks about my poetry. Non-offensive and fun and it sounds like poetry when read aloud. Written at 3:02 am in 1997 sometime between high school and college. and as with all the ones i'll post here free form moments.