You Lied to Me, Didn't You?

There are people in life that you end up wishing you’d never met. There’s no away around it…it just happens. Perhaps it has something to do with basic personality chemistry.
There are some people you meet in life that you simply don’t like right from the gate. Something about them spells bad news. There’s no explanation for the feeling. You don’t even know the person. You just hate who they exude themselves to be.
Then there are others that you get to know and it takes months to wash and scrub the stink of that relationship off yourself. You might even use a metal brush or sandpaper but, no matter how hard or long you scrub, the stink is still there.
Sometimes it’s just a friend you thought you could hang out with. Those inimical instances never last too long and forgetting about them isn’t too difficult.
But then there’s the other relationship. The people you fall in love with for some ungodly reason. The more you peel away at the fabric that is them the more you find dismay, disillusionment, and utter failure. Something about it just doesn’t seem to want to work.
Is there a solution? Is there some cosmic way of avoiding such unhappy life qualms? Ego, maybe? A backbone, perhaps?
If you’ve got the answers, I’d like to hear them. The choices we make about people are almost never lucid and logical. Insanity typically clouds over the most banal of judgments in these cases.
My solution is this: Day to day movie and ice cream…an appreciation for nature and the larger scope of the world…and revenge. Happy revenge.

Grandest Birthday!

Her eleventh birthday marked the beginning of adulthood for young Amber. Her mother, in the midst of the family celebration, let Amber know that she was never planned. She was a mistake and an embarrassing one, at that. Of all her mother’s regrets, Amber cut deep.
With that Amber was out of the house, all the while her mother screaming at her with lovely “Whore!” and “Failure!” and, finally “Don’t ever come back”.
Amber was seeing Mark at the time, a sixteen year old drug dealer who lived outside Barstow in the land of Grandview. Counter to township's name, Amber's subsequent relationship and engagement was anything but grand.
Four years of drug-induced beatings, rapes, and death solidified Amber’s core to a reality that would dictate her demeanor for the next ten years.
How she avoided ten years of incarceration was mystery.

Haunted

I grew up needing attention. I was the son of an Army Sergeant and Japanese wife who boasted an MA in English to back up her broken interpretation of Americana.
They both worked.
And I’m the oldest of two. The first to be blamed. The first to learn responsibility. The first one my dad punched.
We moved all over the world until I was age twelve and the military dropped us in the middle of the desert.
Ft. Irwin.
National Training Center.
NTC.
I saw Tokyo. I floated along the Rhine River. I gasped at the White Cliffs of Dover. Marveled at the Mona Lisa. Was a troublemaker in Rome.

In Korea I watched a kid shit yellow in the village square.

Both my parents worked. The only time they really took time out was when either one of us got sick. Then they were parents. Blankets, food, reading, television, stories, jokes, laughter, and medicine.

I am sick. And I need attention.

I am thirty-eight years old and I have over one year of sobriety. My dad has near three. My mom never drank but, then, she never really understood either.
Thankfully, my brother escaped this tide as well.
God bless.

Hindsight

Hindsight really fucking blows.
...So does...getting older...
...a world without snow...
...ice cream running out...
...pumpkins that won't pie...
...thoughts in brain...
...regrets...
...life without you.