"The Stray" Some would say that I am an extremely flawed individual. I am covered in varicose veins, stretch marks, cellulite, wrinkles, bad tattoos, sunspots, and grey hair. The bags under my eyes make me look like a chihuahua in the mornings, til about 10 I think I am developing claw hands and my toes look like they got caught in a weed eater. My feet are so big, that I have to shop for shoes in the drag queen section I have a toenail fungus that has followed me for about 30 years and no matter what I do, it just doesn’t wanna clear up Those are just some of the things one can see. Don’t get me started on my mental issues… I am a trainwreck most of the time that suffers from extreme anxiety. I am an introvert that has to use humor or booze just to make it through social situations. I have gone to different therapists over the years because I thought I was crazy. The first one diagnosed me with PTSD and sent me home with a children’s book and 50mg of Prozac After feeling like a zombie, slobbering all over myself for about 2 weeks, I threw the Prozac in the trash and used the children’s book to start a bon fire in the back yard. I sat there, had a beer as I watched Humpty Dumpty go up in flames. The last one I went to see diagnosed me with “Complex PTSD”, as if the first one didn’t think I was fucked up enough I quit her after a few times to… Ya see, I always thought something was wrong with me and I have always been searching for a way to fix it. As if there is some type of magical duct tape out there that you can use to put yourself back together with. For years, I spent so much time trying so many things just to make me feel unbroken. I focused the most energy on my scars….. Not the scars from all the things on the outside, it was the bigger, deeper ones on the inside. The biggest one of all has always been a “4 letter word”…..shame I had been drowning in it ever since I could remember I have felt it all my life I never felt like I fit in anywhere Growing up, I tried to be feminine and fragile like the other girls I saw, but I could never live up. I always felt different, I didn’t feel like other girls. I could wear a prom dress, but I would be the one with a run in my pantie hose before I left the house. I think I was born with dirt under my nails and I’ve always been so damn hardheaded that guys never knew how to take me. I never needed their help with anything, hell I could change my own tire and I have always had a thing for power tools I always had more fun drinking beer and talking about cars and football instead of clothes and boys. As I grew up, the awkwardness didn’t really go away. I didn’t completely fit in with the boys because……well, I was a girl I didn’t completely fit in with the girls because…. well, I wasn’t girly enough All of that I could handle, but the outcast feeling that you feel from the world around you was a much different ball game The minute I said who my father was, I got “the look” It was a look that went through you like a knife….it was a look of pity, judgement, and vulgarity, the look that always made me sick I never once got the look of sympathy…only judgement, which I internalized The feelings of shame just continued to be reinforced in my head throughout my life, almost as if it were a strategic thing Step 1), let’s see if this breaks her, step 2) lets see how she handles this one,, step 3) uh oh, she’s gaining some confidence, let’s aim and destroy… I knew that shame didn’t feel right, but then my environment told me that I deserved it, that I was damned I always felt like I was paying a kind of penance, the reason unknown My earliest memory of shame began in the little white house across from granddad’s house on {~highway number~} There dad was married to one of the stepmom’s, {~stepmom name~} {~stepmom name~} was horrid and extremely abusive She hated me, I think that she wanted to portray a perfect life with a perfect little girl, and I just wasn’t the one She would put me in pig tails and matching outfits, but within minutes my hair would be a mess and I would have dirt on my clothes She would get so angry that she would take a brush and snatch through my rats nest until I cried I felt like such an animal, I stayed outside all day away from her just so I could feel safe She loved to hit me with a wide, white leather belt, it was like she thought she could beat me into what she wanted. She was always let down….. The next thing I know she’s moving her 16-year-old son, {~name~} in with us Something about him scared me from the start, it didn’t take long for me to figure out why. There was something so dark about him, something so evil. He had black eyes and a unibrow, he was like the devil to me. He left a stain on everything he touched. Dad and {~stepmom name~} always left me there with him while they went out I begged them not to leave me, but they ignored me and went on their way It all started with him chasing me around the house, throwing me to the ground and slurping his spit over my face, threatening to let it drop He did this over and over again I would run to my room, lock the door and sit in the corner, but he always found a way in He molested me for months I didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but I knew that I would I never be the same {~name~} used to tease me and say, “did you know {~survivor~} that a person can drown from a cup of coffee?” I know now that a person can drown from a hell of lot less than that I developed passing out spells any time {~stepmom name~} approached me in a violent way or when I was about to face certain trauma The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong After a lot research, I know now that that is a brain response that some kids have to protect themselves from impending danger I grew out of it eventually I literally blacked all of those memories out for years, until one day I was sitting on a park bench at about 16 years old and like a river outta no where, it all came gushing over me, every single detail…..I guess the door to my locked box was so full, it just burst wide open All of these horrible memories came to the forefront, like a scary movie that I couldn’t turn off I went from 5’9 to 2 inches tall in a matter of seconds I couldn’t tell anyone, because after so many years, I didn’t think anyone would believe me anyway, they had already made a judgement call about me at that point Once people make that judgement call, its very hard to recover Its so easy to just be written off as a human being Labeled……. So I just bottled it up with the rest of the shit I remember confronting dad about {~name~} many years later He admitted that he knew it was going on, but just didn’t know what to do about it, so he did nothing It took years to process those words…”to do nothing.” Once that happens to a person, they are forever stained, they feel their value is diminished, and their self-worth torched To this day, I am so overprotective of people, even my dogs. I catch myself touching my husband in the middle of the night or touching my dogs when they are sleeping just to make sure they are still breathing and they are safe I know all too well what it feels like to not be able to breathe I know what it feels like to lose something that is important to you One of the biggest things that I struggled with growing up was how I felt, and then how others told me that I should feel It was a constant conflict in my head… Ya see, Dad was a terrible father….hell, that’s a book by itself But no matter what he did, my grandmother always reminded me, “{~survivor~}, you need to tell your daddy you love him, ya know he’s gonna be a preacher one day” “{~survivor~}, don’t say those things about your daddy, you need to be a good girl and read the bible”. When I wasn’t getting it from grandma, I was getting it from {~aunt name~} Dad would leave for days at a time, but rather than address the issue of a neglected little girl, {~aunt name~} would bring me these little books on how to cook and keep a clean house. She would remind me, “that I needed to know those things as a girl, so I could take care of dad” It was so confusing, and I developed these feelings of guilt for feeling bad and angry about what was happening to me. Everyone around me made me feel guilty for hurting, as if I didn’t have the right The personal shame just kept building Dad’s antics continued, from dropping me off and leaving me at strangers houses so he could get his shit together for a while, to the girls ranch….you name it I lived with so many people that I don’t even remember all of their names It developed something in me that made me very careful not to get attached to anyone, because things were always temporary Happiness was always temporary It always felt like I was the perpetrator, never the victim… No matter what, I never felt like part of that family, I always felt like a stray I always had a negative label attached to me in every situation… What had I done to create the situation…again, I internalized Growing up with Dad, I was always reminded of how useless women were For some reason, he thought it was ok to talk about his girlfriends to me I would watch as he picked up women from gas stations or hitchhikers, screw em and kick them out of the house As a girl, to see your father treat women this way, and to hear the things he said was not easy to overcome. I don’t’ think it ever crossed his mind as to how that was forming my opinion of myself, besides I was a girl to. As I got older, I built a shell around me. All the other girls were shaving and dressing a certain way, but I refused to do it I didn’t want anyone to think of me as just one of those “stupid bitches”, I didn’t want anyone looking at me in a sexual way I begin to feel so dirty and worthless around men I had been sexualized at such an early age and with all that had happened up to that point, I begin to feel that my only value came from being attractive, a girl was worth nothing else I merged into extreme rebellion. I started getting into fights and trouble at school I would fight guys and girls, it didn’t matter Physical pain has always been easy for me I thought that if I was tough, no one would ever have the guts to ask me, what’s wrong, so I would never have to tell them I ran with all the “rejects”, I always felt more comfortable around them I guess I kinda still do Ya do what you know…ya know better, you start to do better These moments taught me that no matter how hard life knocks you down, always, always get back up As I got older, things just kept going south… I eventually ended up in juvey when dad kicked me out of the house At that point I had become a total rebel…black eye liner (I loved joan jett), leather watchband and always a cigarette hanging out of my mouth I was no longer that “little daddy’s girl”, I had long since realized that Superman, had major, major flaws…. There was no Santa Claus or tooth fairy at least not for me, nor was there every gonna be From Juvenile, I ended up with my Aunt and Uncle in {~location~} {~aunt 2 name~} wasn’t really excited about it, but {~uncle name~} insisted I remember that day in the court room when dad signed over his rights to me He didn’t even look at me, he just turned and walked out I didn’t speak to him for years after that {~uncle name~} was one of the first people in my life that ever told me that I was worth something and that I could do whatever I wanted in life He exposed me to what unconditional love felt like for the first time He initiated the change in me…. I am forever thankful for my Aunt and Uncle, but that doesn’t mean it was easy {~aunt 2 name~} in her own way wanted to help me, fix me, but just didn’t really know what to do Trying to deal with a broken, damaged pile of nothing in a teenage body couldn’t have been easy Unknowingly to her, she simply just again reinforced in me, that I wasn’t good enough She wanted me to dress a certain way, cut my hair, go to etiquette school, join a sorority and hopefully if things shook out right, I could marry rich I know now that she did this based on her own experience growing up in a home that just didn’t value women It was her way of passing down things to me in an effort to make my life easier, however that life wasn’t for me I didn’t want any of that stuff, I wanted someone to accept me for me, I just couldn’t verbalize those feelings very well, so I acted out instead Life got hard for me as an adult. I was emotionally stunted. I reacted to things abnormally, then I beat myself up for doing so I would go in and out of deep depressions, there were days I couldn’t function because of the enormous weight I carried People could look at me and tell I was a mess, they never had much expectation I never felt trusted growing up, I never felt whole. I was always waiting for the next bomb to drop I became so adept at anticipating bad things happening, that looking back I wonder if I had manifested certain things I lived every second of my life in defense mode It took a long time to realize that my behavior was simply a result of my experiences in life I had to learn how to forgive myself, how to let go. I had to understand that the mistakes I had made and the things that were done to me did not define me as a person. I had to stop hating myself so deeply I had to understand that every step of the way, I had to be the person I was at that very moment to survive my circumstances It took a very long time to realize that all these things were simply programming me to become the person that I am They taught me that I can overcome anything and that I was obligated in life to use what I know to help someone else I was fired from my job last year after 15 years, I wasn’t given a reason, just that “I was not on the same page with the boss”, I simply said, “ya know, your right, I’m not” I had been the only female to ever make it to that level with that company, I had been the most successful Director in the history of the site and had achieved many, many accommodations in that role, including the highest engagement scores in the history of the business However, out of all of that, my biggest accomplishment was the fact that I had had a positive impact on the lives of other people. People came out of the wood works to tell me what I had meant to them and how I had helped them in their lives That I, the useless stray had a made a difference in many people’s life I had discovered my superpower; my purpose and it was through writing and painful self-reflection that I formed it, into something useful People that I worked with and friends of mine would randomly come up and tell me about how I had helped them, how something I had said or done had changed them in a positive way I realized that I had a power, that I was not useless. I realized that I was strong for a reason, that I had survived everything for a reason I knew that I simply could not withstand one more ounce of suffering and only I could find a way out and I could use these qualities that I had uncovered to do it These lessons I had learned were priceless and most people don’t learn them in an entire lifetime It was a moment of rebirth….one that I desperately needed I begin to dig deep, to peel back every layer within me to fix it and self-correct I started with controlling my internal talk to myself No more negative self-talk, it had to stop It was extremely difficult; I would even have feelings of guilt or arrogance if I gave myself too much positive feedback Besides I was trained to suffer right, it was a hard habit to break I realized that every negative thing I said about myself just programmed my brain to believe it…I was poisoning myself I began reading every book I could get my hands on about controlling emotions, dealing with anger and abuse and higher levels of thinking I studied everything I could to try and break through. I started trying to look at people differently and realized that there was evil and good in everyone. That that in itself was the human condition Through this process I discovered that every single thing that had ever happened to me happened for a very specific reason I began to tie those reasons back to the situations and take a look at what I learned from it and the value in the lesson. I started thinking deeply about the people who had hurt me and why they did what they did. I developed compassion for them on a different level and began to see them as the humans they were. I began to teach myself that to have the best life, you have got to let the past life go. I had to shed my skin, free myself from the chains of my past once and for all. I had to embrace every single thing over and over again until I got it. It was extremely painful, and I had to consciously work on it every day. Today, I sit here and completely know that I have zero regrets and if given the opportunity, would not change, not one moment in my life or how I reacted to it. It taught me things about people and the world that you simply cannot learn in a classroom. It gave me a 6th sense and the ability to see deeply inside another person without them ever opening their mouth. I realized that I was an empath that like a sponge I took on the pain of others. I can feel what another person feels by just being in the same room. Through that, I am able to allow them to feel safe. Through this process, I was able to define 6 very important things about myself: 1) I absolutely hate bullies and I am very protective of those that are vulnerable 2) No one can hurt me anymore because I have already experienced that shit….you got nothin! 3) I am capable of anything, because I have nothing to lose and zero fear of failure 4) I don’t identify with anyone or as anything, therefore my mind is open to all things 5) I don’t need anything because I am survivor in many forms 6) I am unafraid to walk alone, go against the majority and I can stand my own ground These things about myself that I discovered help me understand that I would not be these things if it were not for my experiences. That I am fully liberated from the bullshit stigmas, judgement and expectations of other people That you can throw me to the wolves, and I will return leader of the pack That someone can take everything from me, and I will survive That money, material possessions or other people’s opinions about me, mean nothing That I have already proven who I am time and time again and that I owe no apologizes or explanations for anything Most importantly, I know that I can help other people. My strength is my purpose. I have the strength to carry the pain that others can’t carry alone I realized that I am a warrior and that everything was preparing me for my purpose I realize that I am the one that is meant to fight the bullies, change the perception, and help the demons see their own reflection I know that I am the one that is meant to help others see the beauty in themselves I would not be able to do that without being scarred and fitted for armor I know now that true power, strength, and the ultimate peace can only be forged through intense self-reflection, ownership, awareness and personal forgiveness. I have fully embraced all of these things I have fully forgiven myself I realize now that the intense shame that I have felt, was simply their shame reflected on to me It was never me I now know that I have people in my life that love me unconditionally, that rely on me and believe in me I know that I am not the evil I withstood I know that I have been through hell and survived it over and over again I know that I have faced many, many monsters in my life and that I defeated them, every single one That up to this point, I have survived every worst day, I have ever had I know that I have skills to help the people that too feel written off The abused, the ones that have been devalued and tossed out I can offer a hand to pull others up when they are drowning in pain I have the ability to teach them what happiness and joy can be I now embrace every flaw, every fucked up thing about myself, the bad tattoos, the varicose veins…everything I see through all the people that hurt me, I see their weakness, their pain, and their own lack of self-forgiveness I realize today that most people don’t experience or understand true joy in their lifetime I was so thankful growing up for the little things, a peaceful day, horses, animals, getting to go for a ride with the windows down, watching flowers bloom or shop lifting a candy bar from {~location 2~} Those small things kept me going, I am so appreciative for the peace I feel today I don’t look at people with any judgement because I have encountered people of all backgrounds that have touched my life in extraordinary ways The black waitress at the truck stop that watched me all night and gave me her tip money for video games while dad was next door at the dog track blowing all of his money Because of her, I don’t see race My high school teacher {~teacher name~}, who was an atheist, but taught me more about acceptance and self-love than any preacher ever did Because of her I know not to judge what I don’t understand The local drug dealer with the speedy gonazalez tattoo on his leg, he taught me street smarts, how to know a con when I see one and how to protect myself against the worst of kind Because of him, I have the ability to walk amongst demons and come out unscathed To the drag queens that cried with me, danced with me and helped me through my first divorce Because of them, I was allowed to be exactly who I was meant to be To my husband {~husband name~}, who loves me unconditionally and believes that I can do anything Because of him, I can do anything People often ask me, why do you even speak to your dad? Why do you even have anything to do with these people? I just kinda smirk, because you can’t put true forgiveness into words It is a living thing, it is an understanding of the human condition It is a realization that these individuals are weak and that the people you were most afraid of as a child, are simply extremely fragile human beings that suffer greatly that they to have a purpose, even if its just to teach you something That you are so much stronger than them and the situations you have endured, it makes you wonder why you were ever afraid It makes you realize that having the ability to let go of your anger and truly forgive someone is an amazing thing It doesn’t mean you have to have these people in your life, because it’s your life If they are toxic in your life, you never have to see them again, its ok You don’t owe anyone anything and you can own your feelings It means that there is nothing to be ashamed of, that you are beautiful just as you are That you are loved and that you have the right to fully be yourself in every way That the darkness you walk in is just a lesson on how to really see That life is a journey and you should embrace it full bodied That you are not one thing or another, that you are everything that you need to be That you are filled with purpose and power and that you can overcome anything That it all lies within you There is no magic pill, no therapist, nothing that can help you, but you That taking the journey toward freedom is a painful one, but worth every single step The feeling of shame is a label that can be ripped off and thrown out, it is not permanent, and it is not meant for you That it is simply a feeling projected on to you by an insecure society that lives in fear of your personal power That deep inside, you scare the hell out of them because you have seen the bad within them You are a truth teller That you are their {~name 2~} a reminder of their own personal failures I wrote this mantra and say it to myself every single day…it helps me. May you find your own mantra to….. I am a warrior May I behave as such May I be vigilant without vengeance May I be humble and quiet even though I am powerful May my armor not be penetrated by the arrows of fools Nor my shield chipped by the blades of the callous and the cruel May I protect the weak and vulnerable against the wicked May I be prepared to fight and die for the right May I not be afraid and live this day with honor For I am a warrior, and we are few