Category Archives: my reflection in my blog

my 5 people

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What can I possibly write about now?

I haven’t the slightest idea…of what I can possibly write about that is not positive or uplifting or doesn’t personally attack people whom I don’t know or likely never will or doesn’t call out the bitchy, snarky, passive aggressive side swipes from people I know…people I hang out with a lot…people who justify their bitchy, passive aggressive side swipes with duck-face, fish-lipped photos up on social media with “I am who I am and that’s how I roll” kind of statements.

I have no idea because all I have inside my head is noise…negative, snarky noise…noise that puts down, tears down.

I don’t wish to share that noise because I imagine y’all have your own noise going on…sometimes even with duck faces, fish lips and faux gang signs too, I imagine…because, wow, how awesome is that to witness from grown up, bright intelligent people whom we associate with…right?

Yay, social media at its very best!

Then I see this:

And I pause…

Who are my five people?

Who are my children’s five people?

Who are your five people?

in a word

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Oh 2013, a brand new year!

Welcome!

Four days into it and I am finally considering a reflective post about the start of another new year for me. I have no resolutions. I don’t believe in making them. I’ve said that before here…over the last eight years around this time of year. I don’t. But like so many others, I can’t help but consider this a good time to reflect on what lies ahead. Like my friend Kristen said, they are “days full of wonder without any mistakes in them. Yet.” Others are making plans to run big races or get organized or maybe to break a bad habit or to lose a set number of pounds and those are all good things to work on…for them. As for me, I choose to look ahead.

Okay, fine, there is a little bit of personal navel gazing…but no resolutions.

My hair is now long enough for me to twist it up into a braid…a thick strong braid because my hairs are so dang thick. I like it. I like it a lot because, well, it doesn’t take much to make me happy sometimes. Being able to plait my hair is one of those simple things that puts a smile on my face. So while I took a break from my navel gazing, I regarded this braid of mine. It is pretty cool. It is thick and it is strong.

A braid is indeed a particular type of decorative hairstyle or an embellishment that is created by entwining or twisting round and around three or more strands. This intertwining of the smaller, weaker strands of material or hair creates a bond woven together that is stronger than the singles could ever be alone. In their unyielding embrace they are made substantial and strong.

Yeah, I was looking up the meaning of the word “braid” and as I was I came across these words: embellishment, entwine, intertwine, weave, substantial, strong, unyielding, embrace. And yeah, I was seeking a little inspiration while reflecting on my awesome braid and the start of a brand new year. While I fiddled and twirled my braided hair between my fingers it came to me…

EMBRACE

My one word for 2013.

One word that sums up who you want to be or how you want to live. One word that you can focus on every day, all year long.

For 2013 I choose to embrace…embrace who or what? That is to be determined each day in this coming year but I will embrace each day and whatever that day presents to me.

My well-being and my happiness is no one person’s obligation but my own so it should be my responsibility to embrace this life I am given, this life I have created, this life that I am responsible for each and every day. My life is full blessed with my talents, abilities, my darling husband, my beautiful children and grandchildren and the people I hold dear and call friends but none are the key to my happiness and well-being. No, not one of these.

I have been working hard lately on me for my own health and well-being, as well as for those around me whom I love and who love me back. In order to be a better me, to the me that I deserve and certainly the me that they deserve I must embrace every day.

EMBRACE is my word for 2013.

Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are – completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different.

Stacey Charter

the toxic swill from which I crawled from

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Around here under the Big Top I am often accused of dropping the f-bomb a little bit too much…because I do. Actually I have improved, as in I don’t use it as much as I used to. No, really. It’s true. But I am a work in progress. I will confess I dropped it a few times this week…this evening even when I had to ask two of my clowns to clean their bathroom for the third time today and I was greeted with heavy sighs and eye rolls. Go ahead and judge me. But you have to know what I was nourished on all of my life…so much toxic awesomeness that how could I not believe that the f-bomb is the perfect adjective to be used in every sentence like say, the way Brittany Spears uses “amazing”?

Don’t believe me?

Oh…

Allow me to share some of the toxic awesomeness that is mine all mine and bestowed, dumped, vomited into my voice mail box just today.

I am so blessed!

Really!

Hey, I don’t play around when I’m talkin’ on the phone. I’m not like tryin’ to do anything like that and you coulda identified yourself…and I luv you and all that and I’m sayin I don’t like bein’ jerked around I never have and I won’t stand for it and that’s what you’re doin’ to me. Sorry you’re havin’ a bad day and that’s all ya know. Ya know you’re gonna sit there for five minutes and ya know jerk me around ya know. All right, I luv you and I don’t play fuckin’ games. I just hope you know that. I’ve known you all my life and you’ve known me all my life actually. You know. I’m sorry. Hope you’re day turns out better but I don’t put up with bullshit like that. I don’t like using the phone to begin with. All right. I luv you goodbye.

I had to respond because, WTF? Right? So I did…by text because I can’t talk to my family when any of them are like this. I aced Argument back in the day as a student but that was civil, intelligent exchanging of differing opinions. No, when any of my family launch stuff like this I learned to duck and cover because if I didn’t it got violently physical very quickly. Let’s just say that I am very good at ducking and covering.

Hey, I don’t need this big long explanation because you were jackin’ me off. But whatever. That’s irregardless. What sort of help do you think Valerie needs? You get information off of her stupid daughter who knows nothing about this planet and is going to sit there and judge her mom? You know. Hey! If you wanna help, if you really want to be this, this CHRISTIAN  you supposedly are, you wanna help? You help your fuckin’ sister cuz she got fuckin’ takin it in the fuckin’ jaw from everybody and she ain’t doing nuthin fuckin’ wrong not like her cunt fuckin’ daughter says. You’re fuckin’ sister got fucked over by some assholes…and she ain’t got fuckin’ no one and I come off the road to try and help her and if you want to help her you’ll get on the fuckin’ computer and find her a fuckin’ place to live around here where she can have her fuckin’ dog where she lives near somethin’ you know, Miss Fuckin’ Cunt Christian! I don’t need your fuckin’ 800 word essay on why you weren’t wastin’ my time because you fuckin’ were. And you fuckin’ know it. Hey, I don’t need this bullshit. Like I told Mom, I’m tryin’ to help my fuckin’ sister. Mom’s busy judging her. So is her fucking dumb, stupid, dumb daughter who knows nuthin’ ’bout planet Earth. Let me reiterate that. And fuckin’ A, I don’t see you tryin’ to help no one. I don’t see anyone tryin’ to help but me. I don’t see anyone in this family tryin’ to help anyone but me. So hey, go ahead and try to go to church on Sunday like you do every fuckin’ week. Yeah, Miss Fuckin Christian. Fuckin A, your sister is more of a Christian than you…luv ya! Bye!

Don’t you just love how I am assured that I am loved? Yeah, me too. The 800 word essay was the text message I sent. For it to be 800 words, considering the rate I text one would receive it in time for the next Presidential Inauguration. Don’t believe me? Ask my kids. Meanwhile, I’m thinking it is a very good thing that my niece was raised by her paternal grandparents considering how her Uncle thinks of her as highly as he thinks of me. What a lucky girl! I might be a “fuckin’ cunt Christian asshole” but apparently I am a fuckin’ cunt. Christian asshole who has a lot of power because I can apparently get my sister secure into a home in Pennsylvania with her little dog too from the comfort of my laptop here in California. I could help my sister. I should help my sister. But there really is only so much help one can do for an addict…an addict who would actually steal her dying father’s oxycontin. yeah, I being a little bit judgmental but for the record, I haven’t been in church for a very long time. Maybe she is more of a Christian than me. Unfortunately, the toxic Springer side of my family really doesn’t know me very well at all or they might know why I don’t go to church anymore.

But then again some of them do like to cyber-stalk me.

:::waving:::

Hey, for your information I was not drunk, asshole and the only reason I freaked out and yelled is because you were jackin’ me off and you know it. You let me talk for three fuckin’ minutes and ask questions. You were fuckin’ jackin’ me off you fuckin’ queer. Go ahead on your Facebook, you’re a fuckin’ simple-minded fuckin’ idiot like all the other idiots who are gonna get taken in by the fuckin’ Douche-bag when He gets here to rapture your ass outta here. You’re a fuckin dumb ass, you fuckin’ queer. Don’t ever talk to me again. Hey, you two-faced fuckin’ asshole, yeah like the way you treated mom, no wonder Randy fuckin’ hated you, you fuckin asshole. Go face your shit on Facebook you fuckin’ queer. Goodbye.

How else could they know that I am nothing but a simple-minded, fuckin’, asshole queer…even if I am very much a heterosexual woman who LOVES men! But they would know this since they seem to know what I might be posting on Facebook. There is much that can be wrong with Facebook. I read about it often in letters sent to me with very thoughtful, compelling arguments against it and other dangerous social media. But Facebook is the mark of the Anti-Christ? Who knew? Right? well I’m pretty sure that the Anti-Christ isn’t going to be rapturing my ass and all my Facebook friends out of here. At least that is not how I read it in Revelation. But at least I am comforted knowing that we aren’t ever going to be speaking to each other again…especially after that low blow telling me that our dead brother hated me because I was the only one who was with him when he was dying and begging for me to find you all and I was the only one who would so willingly, without even hesitating offer him a portion of my liver because I was the only one healthy enough to offer him such a gift…thank you for that…at least I’m not going to be calling.

But then…

Oh dear…

Hey, just to clarify, you seem to think I’m some kind of drunken fuckin’ asshole or somethin’. But I just have a low fuckin’ tolerance for fuckin’ ignorance and that’s what you fuckin’ gave me. So hey, go play on your little Facebook and all that shit. An ignorant, mother-fucker like you would do somethin’ fuckin’ like that. You’re a fuckin’ weirdo. You’re a fuckin’ idiot. . Luv ya. Goodbye.

Yeah. There is always more toxic hate to be shared because I really, really need to understand that I AM THE FUCKIN’ IGNORANT IDIOT WEIRDO. But, hey, I am still loved. Lucky, lucky me.

Boys and girls, this is the toxic swill from which I crawled out of kind of like that rogue managing to evolve just a little bit and crawl out of the primordial, dysfunctional, toxic ooze the rest of the family seems so content to swim around in. I know that I am not perfect, not at all. I have the lifetime of damage from people whom I share DNA with to thank for a lot of what is horribly wrong with me. Just imagine those four tirades every day of your life throughout your childhood, every waking moment of every day and stir in a lot more…so much more.

This is me.

You created me.

You all should be so proud.

Now forgive me while I give thanks that you are not an everyday part of my life and (THANK GOD) not a part of my circus family’s life.

why you gotta be so mean?

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My younger brother called me out of the blue the other day. Actually, he wasn’t calling me. Butt-dialed, miss-dialed, drunk-dialed…whatever it was, he called me. It happens sometimes. But because I am me and he is a part of the toxicity that is most of my family, it was all my fault…all my fault that he called me by mistake and I was the one to waste his time because it took him five minutes to realize that I wasn’t “Louie” but his sister…no, not his younger sister…but the other sister…yeah, that sister. I know this because he told me so…and then continued to blow up my voice mail and text messages, my email and all over my Facebook timeline to make sure that I knew this. This is me. This is my family. This is what they do when I fail them in some real or real only in their mind way. This always was and sometimes occasionally continues to be my life…the toxic family life I try so hard to stay away from, to shield my circus from.

I’m not too much of a fan of Taylor Swift, as cute and adorable as she is but still I find her lyrics to “Mean” circulating through my head lately.

You, with your words like knives and swords and weapons that you use against me
You have knocked me off my feet again got me feeling like I’m nothing
You, with your voice like nails on a chalkboard, calling me out when I’m wounded
You, pickin’ on the weaker man…

You, with your switching sides and your walk-by lies and your humiliation
You, have pointed out my flaws again as if I don’t already see them
I’ll walk with my head down trying to block you out ’cause I’ll never impress you
I just wanna feel okay again

I have had a lifetime of mean from people whom I share DNA with, people who tell me they love me sometimes but more often will tell me everything, and I do mean everything, that is wrong with me. They point out all my flaws, all my poor choices, my bad parenting decisions, my actions that always serve to disappoint them…because it is indeed all about them.

Always.

Yet it isn’t all about them all the time.

I know that much is true even when I apologize and forgive them and keep them at arms length; because although what didn’t kill me and made me stronger doesn’t mean that I have to choose to accept your incessant criticisms to my face, or by phone or by text messages or email or snail mail or anywhere else. When I was a child I could not choose to filter it out. You made it painfully clear that I could not.

But now I can.

Now I do.

Because you haven’t killed me. You made me stronger.

I know, I know. Believe me, I know. In your eyes, in your heart, I suck. I am worthless. I piss you off. I disappoint you. I should be agreeing with you and your criticisms and that I don’t deserve you or your “love”.

But I don’t.

It’s true, all you are going to always be is mean.

I love you still…we are and will remain family and a lifetime of you kicking me down in every way possible doesn’t change the fact that I still love you…oh dysfunction! But thanks to your toxic kind of love, I have been molded and shaped into the person who I am today. The person who sees your kind of love for what it is. Not the kind of love I deserve. No. I am so much more than you see me as.

So much more.

And you don’t deserve me at all.

Note: If you are reading this and are my family and imagine that I am writing this about you well, you are correct. Just know that sometimes to survive you, to forgive you and to try to continue to love you in spite of who you are and how you continue to treat me I have to get your shit off of my chest, out of my head and out of my heart or I just might shatter into a million little pieces…and then who are you going to be mean to? Really? Get over it or better yet just add it to the list you keep of all that is wrong with me. I’m fine with that because I know that is who you are.

this is mine

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Years ago a family member declared that I was a Golden Retriever. I was insulted and hurt because a Golden Retriever is a dog and having been called a dog to my face by classmates through junior high school and high school the last thing I ever expected was a family member would, you know, call me a dog. But then it was further explained that it was my personality that was like that of a Golden Retriever based on one of way too many pop-psychology personality inventory exercises that were all the rage in the late 80′s and 90′s. Truth be told, I am, for the most part, a loyal, non-demanding, accommodating, adaptable, sympathetic, co-dependent, peace-maker kind of person who does hate confrontation and change. I am also desperately afraid of heights, an overly cautious driver, bad tempered, depressed subjected to almost paralyzing anxiety attacks (especially when someone else is driving) and not always such a good parent. All of that…and a lot more…is me. I admit it. I own it. I have never tried to hide who I am. Thankfully people who know me best, people who love me best accept me for me…and choose to focus on all the stuff that makes me amazingly awesome.

The co-dependent-y, Golden Retriever in me is the person I have been since I was a very small child. It was who I had to be. I was the nurturer. I was the care-giver. I was hurt…hurt a lot…hurt way too much by people I should have been receiving nurturing and unconditional love from. I survived the only way that I could denying my own feelings, my own frustrations, my own fears, my own anger, my own opinions, my own accomplishments, my own self. And like a Golden Retriever, I remained loyal, reliable and trustworthy and kind hoping…hoping for just a little love, a little patience, a little praise would come my way. What Golden Retriever doesn’t want that?

But the years have passed and I have changed a little…for the better…for me. I am still a nurturer…hello…wife, mommy, Mi-ma, nurse! I still am sensitive. I still hate change. I still want everyone to just get along and like me. But I am not so much the doormat that I was as a child and a young adult. I no longer wait desperately for the approval from the adults of my childhood and young adulthood. I don’t have time because I am too busy juggling this circus life of mine. Well, except for when I re-arrange schedules, cancel a much needed medical procedure, turn down extra work, cancel 16th birthday dinner party plans and anniversary plans, miss my child’s Tae Kwon Do belt testing and basically drop everything because I want people whom I love to be happy and to love me…just like the loyal dog that I am. Here you can’t help but recall that old saying about teaching old dogs. I know that I can’t.

Almost eight years ago I began this blog for a number of reasons that boil down to one basic cause…I did this for me. I don’t write to share my family life in pictures and words with family. I don’t write to make money to support my Starbucks habit. I don’t write for free stuff. I don’t write under the pretense that I am a great writer…or even a good writer. What goes into this blog is simply for me. I write what I want to write about. I share what I want to share. Yet, surprisingly, I have an audience. A pretty awesome audience that literally spans the globe, many who have been here since the very beginning. And surprisingly most of you aren’t even related to me.

Still, this, this blog, is mine.  It is my perception of the life happening around me, the life I am living. It is my thoughts and my thoughts alone…except for the couple of times that I have allowed someone else to write their thoughts and their perceptions. This is mine. The adventures described are how I see them through my eyes. Another person living the same event at the same time most definitely will see it differently but here in this blog what they see or feel or hear or understand is not a part of what I am writing about. I’m writing about my own reality here…even if one might perceive it to be melodrama…

Sidebar:
Melodrama?! Seriously? This is melodrama? This life I am living now? Honey my life was a fucking melodrama when I was younger than my grandchildren…you know, when a child’s parents should be making it all about the innocent child and not their crazy, fucked up-ness. I look at my grandbabies and I shake my head over the fucked up-ness that is the adults I was wholly dependent upon then. There are no excuses…none…seriously don’t even try…not when you are talking about the life of an innocent, wholly dependent child fucked up by the adults she depends upon to meet her most basic needs. What I write about now is boring, stupid, vapid shit in comparison to say my life as a three year old…no, this now is not melodrama.
Not.
At.
All.

You don’t like it? Well, there is so much more out there on the Web that I’m sure one can spend their time on. But this microscopic slice of the interwebs is my reality and is mine. I thank you for reading it. I thank you for commenting on it. I thank you for respecting it and respecting me and my reality here on my blog.