whiningsanddribbles

[whiningsanddribbles]

3

EVIDENCE-BASED & TRAUMA-INFORMED

3

Dec 5th 2012

The plane lands.  It is snowing. I’ve never seen snow before. The flight from CA to Utah is a brief 55 minutes. In that time I'd managed to get to know the blonde woman to some degree. She was 24, and had been doing this transporting thing for almost a year. She kept telling me she had never been to Alpine Academy but had heard of how beautiful it was. She said it was the best the industry had to offer. This was supposed to make me feel better but I was still in active rage thinking of how little my mother had to say as I was getting pulled out of my home in the middle of the night. While the woman went on about how beautiful the campus was supposed to be I had intrusive thoughts of running away the second we got off the plane, running and screaming to someone , anyone, and declaring that I had been kidnapped; please arrest this criminal, and bring me back home to my mother who hates me. Another thought enters of getting to the facility, promptly excusing myself to tinkle between pleasant introductions  and hanging myself with the belt I was wearing off of the bathroom door knob. I thought of how my mother would react to that, if she would regret sending me away, if she'd cry. But alas, I had built rapport with the transporter and so that meant I wanted her to like me, and I could not accuse her of kidnapping me to a stranger, and to the second; I didn't actually want to die.

In a haze, somehow we'd gotten to the campus. It was tucked into the smallest roads in rural Utah, for miles and miles all you could see was white. The world looked as if someone had laid down a thick, fuzzy white blanket. I scoffed but really, I had never seen anything so beautiful but I would not allow myself to find any of this good. The transporter gave me a hug once we had gotten to a little house at the front of campus. Looked normal enough.

She told me I'd be okay. The hug was jarring, as I wasn't touched often, or ever. I remember wanting her to squeeze me tighter, and holding on for slightly too long, which made her squeeze hard one last time in a genuinely melancholy attempt at an apology for having to let go. I needed someone to put their arms around me and not let go, keep all my pieces together so I could not collapse into a heap of paper mache on the ground.

I'm introduced to a woman who works there who calls herself an associate, named suzie. She's a great big woman who is wildly caucasian. Up until this point let me add, the only white people I'd ever been around were my own immediate family. And even they were used to being the only white people they really knew either. Maybe my mother had some other white girlfriends but i hardly knew them. My friend groups at home and the school district I was in very much comprised of minority groups, from students to teachers. I had never seen so many red faces before utah. She takes me into a room and does an inventory on the things my mother had packed for me. I'm only allowed to keep some of it. 4 shirts, 2 pairs of pants, 8 socks, 2 pairs of shoes. At this point I'm still too much in shock to put up a fight, and to add to it; I can barely see through the tears that have been constantly and consistently free flowing through my face for at least 5 hours now, without breaks.

She marks off things from a paper checklist. I am quiet as I slide the phone I snuck into the facility under a couch, and make a mental note to come back for it. She keeps unpacking my things and I ask her when I get to speak to my parents. Two weeks. I can not contact them for two weeks. Part of the acclimation process, she says. I go through the backpack my mother had packed me while Suzie goes through the suitcase. You would've guessed my mom was a stay at home martha stewart with all the baked goods she packed me. She knew i wouldn't eat these, i hadn't eaten anything but saltines for 3 weeks, who was she performing for?

I plead and cry to call home. The answer is no. Another woman comes into the room, an associate named ashlyn. She is very, very pregnant. She can't be older than 22, and she's stunningly beautiful with long blonde hair and perfect big lips around her perfect teeth. She is sweet to me but tells me sternly that crying will not help the situation, and that I just need to submit- I mean integrate. I sob for another two hours alone in a room called the “pretty room”. 3 great big couches along a coffee table with a phone, and large photos of the founders of the facility, and the founder of this particular home, lila bjorkland and gene smith respectively. The house I'm in is called Gene smith. That's our little section. There are 9 other girls making us a perfect home of ten troubled girls. This is how each house on the alpine is.

Alpine Academy is a school and residential treatment center -for profit organization put on by the Utah Youth Village, run by the founder's son; Eric bjorkland. They are mormon. The whole staff is mormon. Every adult I would come into contact with for weeks was mormon, who was in charge of the facility. And they were all related in a gross act of nepotism. Here's the breakdown of the Alpine academy system, as per their website:

Alpine Academy was created in 2001 as a program of Utah Youth Village, a nonprofit organization founded in 1969. Both our Lakeview Campus for males and our Mountain View Campus for females are licensed as residential treatment facilities in the state of Utah. Each is certified as a non-public school.

Treatment takes place in a family-style environment, which provides a nurturing, individualized, and strength-based treatment environment.

In addition to an intensive therapeutic environment, we provide comprehensive academic services that are designed to help improve your child’s academic self-esteem and to get them back on-track to be successful at home, or in college.

Alpine Academy is a nationally certified Teaching-Family Model treatment program. Through its strength-based, trauma-informed, individualized approach, students are taught healthy behaviors in a setting that replicates family, school, and community life.

Another click and you get their explanation of the teaching family model:

The Teaching-Family Model

The Teaching-Family Model (TFM) is a philosophy and practice of care and treatment that prioritizes therapeutic relationships with caregivers as the primary conduit of effective treatment in supportive family-style settings.

Family-style relationships are seen as essential to healthy development of social, relational, and interpersonal skills. The TFM is a strength-based, comprehensive, and trauma-informed model of care that builds positive change while remaining focused on the holistic development of the person served.

The Model is rooted in cognitive behavioral theory and can be used with children, youth, and adults with a range of diagnoses and symptoms, as well as with those who have experienced significant trauma, maltreatment and loss.

The Teaching-Family Model is an evidence-based approach which is fully integrated at both the individual and the organizational level. It provides effective individualized and trauma-informed treatment services to children, youth, adults, and families.

Through peer-reviewed research and clinical practice, the Teaching-Family Model is recognized to be cost-effective, replicable, and highly effective for all participants.

TFM & TFA

FFPSA: FEDERALLY APPROVED ACCREDITOR

TRAUMA-INFORMED TREATMENT MODEL

RESEARCH & IMPLEMENTATION SCIENCE

ACCREDITED AGENCIES AND CERTIFIED STAFF

ENSURES PERSONS AND FAMILIES SERVED HAVE VOICES AND CHOICES

MOVES THEORY INTO PRACTICE

EMPOWERS MILLIONS OF INDIVIDUALS AND FAMILIES

Tall over their website they keep telling you it's evidence based, yet anywhere you click; somehow semmes to be a lack thereof. Maybe if you type it out enough it will be true. What the “teaching family model REALLY IS, is a made up concept. In fact when you google it, you can find no evidence that it works better than any other treatment model, what you CAN find is how substantially more cost effective it is when you're running a for-profit business.

The TRADEMARKED FTM (family teaching model) was developed by a student of Kansas University in the 1960s named Gary Timbers and researched by Montrose wolf, who was the inventor of time-out as a learning tool to shape behavior. You Have Montrose himself to thank for the way all of the boomers were parented by their parents. We know how well that all went, and how loved that generation was.

Basically what it is, is a play. Yes, a theatrical play. It's a makeshift version of a nuclear family. A father, a mother, and associates.

Seems easy enough to understand. Here's how it worked at Alpine Academy:

The moment I arrived I was given something called a skill card. Each day you had the chance to “make your privileges' '. Privileges were being able to talk to your friends, have a sweet snack, and wear makeup at the lowest level called daily. And, daily, you had the opportunity. After you'd gained trust at that level for the amount of time the staff decided, they'd move you up to the next level called weekly.  These were the two main levels. At weekly you had the opportunity to earn privileges on a weekly basis, which meant more could go wrong. Because when you didnt make your privileges, you had to sit at a wooden table, speak to nobody, were starved of food, without access to any tools of self expression like makeup, couldn't listen to music, couldn't read personal books, and had to write essays on your behavior and what went wrong. For a day, this seems medieval but it seems doable, but at a weekly level it meant for a whole week this is what you had to be okay with.

Everyone had the chance to make their privileges by a series of points on your skill card. Each good behavior would earn you 1000 positive points, each negative would earn you negative points. The problem was this isn't an exact science and it was to the discretion of staff. This meant that if you didn't make 10,000 positive points a day, by the end of the day; no privileges. To the table, you go. And you'd have a list of skills you'd be working on at the top of the card. A list of arbitrary skills like “saying ok” “accepting feedback'', “following instructions”. There were over 200 to choose from but you could only have up to 4 at a time. Then finally there was the last level, “achievement” this meant no more points. This meant at the end of the day you had to write down why you thought you deserve your privileges with your words, and the staff had to tell you why you didn't. Achievement was the last phase until transitioning home.

The standard time that each person would move up a level varied. It took me 8 months to move from daily to weekly because I wouldn't say ok when an adult gave me feedback I didn't agree with. I would not indoctrinate smoothly. This became a problem. But let's go back to that first week.

I wouldn't meet my house parents until days later, on account of me arriving on their  holiday week off. My stomach lurched, and i realized i hadn't eaten or drank anything for almost an entire 48 hour period and basically lost every ounce of water in my body through my tear ducts.  The associate heard my stomach from 5 feet away and realized i had to be hungry, and escorted me to the dining table for breakfast. As I sit down I'm watching 9 girls stare at me and trying to avoid eye contact with them all. I eat my oatmeal trying not to feel their eyes on me.

In the weeks following I'd learn all of these girls names, reasons for being here and familial quirks. Some of them would become my  best friends, lovers. One of them, my first love.

[whiningsanddribbles]

Obviously I meant 2022 in my chapter 2 🥴 I feel sheepish!

[whiningsanddribbles]

You are a beautiful vivid writer. As a child once isolated & left to their own devices, I too found comfort in writing. Your writing has moved me, and I am but a stranger but, your words are so powerful, clear, intentional. You’re truly a gem and deserve everything.

YOU will never know how much reading this meant to me. thank you.

[whiningsanddribbles]

I need a good book recommendation that will make me forget what reality is .

if you're looking for fiction, I recommend east of eden, by Steinbeck. or Tess of d'ubervilles.

for nonfiction I recommend ethical slut. im reading it now and its very interesting!

[whiningsanddribbles]

2

1-13-21

I woke up from the strangest dream this morning. My heart was pounding. It was one of those dreams you wake up from and could almost swear was a memory. As if you'd just time traveled or transported from one very real realm back into your present state. I dreamt I was next to a family member in bed, asleep, as he furiously masturbated next to me. I lie there frozen in fear, pretending to be asleep, begging someone to walk in. Perhaps this dream family member,he thought I was asleep and could get away with it? Or worse, perhaps he knew I was faking my asleepness and found my fear exhilarating. I covered myself in blankets and begged the benevolent god of my dream to send someone in to save me, and then, I woke up.

I have never been in a situation like this ever. Not one, that I could think of even resembling this.

A quick google search to dreamglossary.com:

To see other people masturbating

If other people masturbate in your dream, that symbolizes fear of other people finding out your secret sexual desires and fantasies. You are afraid that people might judge you because of it, which is why you never tell your partner what you like in bed. On the other hand, these dreams can suggest dissatisfaction with your sex life. It is possible that you are single for a long time, or that your partner doesn’t fulfill your expectations.

Of course this isn't the lot of the story, and I doubt that I can just google “family member possibly being conscious of you being awake next to them while furiously masturbating “ dream, into google.com.

Another search to ATTN.com

Incest

Incest may be the most unsettling sexual act to dream about. If you've woken up horrified from a dream about sex with a parent or other family member, it doesn't mean that you are sexually attracted to them on a subconscious level.

These dreams tend to reflect tension or distance in familial relationships, Amy Angelowicz wrote on the Frisky. "Sex with a parent may have to do with transitioning into adulthood or becoming a parent yourself," Angelowicz said. "Sex with any family member can be about acceptance, deep forgiveness, a longing to be closer or heal a rift."

This is the closest I will get to the answer I'm begging for. I ruminate briefly while my stomach growls, acknowledging but not quite ready to unpack this before breakfast. I run to the kitchen and back with my breakfast in a low blood sugar blur, scarf down the greek yogurt faster than appropriate,  then place the spoon and empty container lovingly next to myself in bed, where it will stay until the sun sets, right next to me.

No sooner have I set down my spoon; I get the text from my therapist that she's waiting for me to call her for our weekly session. I had forgotten, and I was late. I am a mess, as per usual as i've just woken up 20 minutes earlier, and to google incestual masturbation. I decide maybe to keep this for another time as it's the first time since her 3 week holiday break that I've had a chance to speak to her and I don't want it to dominate the conversation, on the basis alone that I'm not sure it had any deeper meaning than my brain does not work.

The session goes well. I had seen this therapist briefly while in adolescence, before I was sent away to a residential treatment center at 14. I reached out months ago, not wanting to reiterate the WHOOOOLE familial background to a new person, as i've been trying to reiterate it to myself for a decade; making sense of it all and sifting through the reals and the fakes and the realities and the dreams about incestual molestation that never happened to me. I like to stick with what I know. And we were both happy to reconnect.

She always says she didn't know what went on back then, that it was all an anomaly and seh could never pin it down. It probably didn't help that I'd only ever make it about a quarter of the sessions due to agoraphobia, and even when I did make it to the sessions all I would do was lie about being able to see spirits.

I don't know why I lied. I was 13. 13 year olds lie. I think back on it and think maybe perhaps the reason I lied is because I needed a concrete problem to solve. I felt like nothing had HAPPENED TO ME to make me the way i was. Everyone was poking and prodding at me for years, therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists alike to try and figure out what the root issue was. My family seemed fine. They fought, but never too bad right? Everyone had seen their dad punch a wall or watched their mom cry and hide alcoholism. It was the 2000’s. What made me so special was that I couldn't leave the house and would  brush my teeth 35 times a day, lay in the bath for 8 hours and convulse for hours of painful exhausting panic episodes. Something HAD to be wrong and i thought id take it upon myself make it schizophrenia.  

In hindsight, i think the reason nobody new what the fuck was going on for a few reasons. One of them being that I think it's not a medical diagnosis to have a hyper-aware daughter who is 12 and dealing with immense existential dread. What can you do with that? Everyone I'd ever spoken to said I spoke like I was 43 in a very small pubescent body. It got me into trouble, and made adults far too comfortable around me. I knew all of their secrets, and the secrets of the world before I had the emotional capacity to deal with knowing all these things. Another reason was that my mother has the keen ability to play everyone around her like a fiddle.

For fear of you reading this and thinking I'm harboring some unknown and projected anger and resentment towards my mother, as I've already been hasty, I want you to know that I've forgiven her for all of these things. And I'll keep forgiving her. But it doesn't take away the truth, and the pain. I love my mother but I will think of her worst moments before her best ones, because the truth is; is that they are vast. I don't believe in good or bad people. I believe everyone comes out good, and we become a product of our environment. Some people crack under their circumstances, and some people become resilient and rise above those circumstances and avoid familial cycles. My mother is unfortunately the former.

Why my therapist and every teacher, and every professional and everyone scrutinizing my behavior in my childhood couldn't pin down what was wrong was because my mother had all sold them the dream that we were a normal family, and I was a deviant. It must've been a loose screw, it couldn't have been them, it was an anomaly, maybe it was my “biological father”. She would say that last thing in a hushed pitiful tone, like someone who was gossiping in the office about a person she barely knew who also worked in the office. Something like you'd see in a 50’s period piece where they all gathered around and spoke about how unfortunate it was that someone had become a single mother. You get the idea. My mother spent most of my childhood disconnecting herself from me, and I spent most of it attaching myself to her desperately.

I remember one of my first neurotic acts was having panic attacks about my brain falling out of my ears, around 4-5 years old. I'd shake and cry and cover my ears and my parents would laugh at how preposterous the idea was, and I'd scream in typical difficult child fashion. Soon I learned that nobody's brain had ever fallen out of their ears and felt slightly better. Alas the panic attacks would come again years later, this time about death, when I was around 7 or 8. I couldn't grasp on to the concept and I'd work myself up and tug on my mom's arm and ask her if I was going to die, and at first she would answer normally, “the circle of life, everyone dies, hopefully not for a while” ect. Quickly it became everyday I asked, just to hear her say I was safe for a while. But then that wasn't enough so she graduated to something along the lines of “ when you're old enough to die, they'll have found a cure for it”. Which was the only thing that could stifle me. The only thing that could stop me from shaking. And i believed her because as far as i knew, my mother was as smart as god and the idea seemed plausible, we had just switched from dial up to the new internet, the new century felt VERY optimistic.

Then came the vomit phobia, all day I'd make my mom tell me I would be sick. Every hour I plead , “I'm not going to be sick, right?” and she'd answer most times, saying of course not. This went on for years and years and years, until she sent me away so somebody else could deal with it. I think my mother both hated this and loved it. I think my mother had children out of the habit of everyone having them, but also because she needed something to need her. And I needed her. More than I needed anything I needed her. Yet, I never got her. I still don't know if she did this purposefully. I always begged her to look at me, to see me. She never did.

A couple instances I can immediately recall is senior year of highschool when she was asked, by someone cooking a celebratory dinner for me, what my favorite dish was. She said steak. I hadn't eaten meat in nearly two years. I can laugh at this now, and I do it frequently with my boyfriend, when I have the monthly breakdown about what our relationship did to me. Laughing is the only thing you can do.

Another instance is when I began cutting myself for the first time. THis was the apex of my dramatics career. In true pubescent teenager form id cut myself for the first time, 3 little gills done with a dull razor blade id taken apart. I painted these while listening to my immortal by evanescence. It was 2010 and yes, I had side bangs. Then,  I'd left my sleeve slightly too high up at dinner. I'd purposely ssat in exactly the seat across from her at dinner so she'd had the forced perspective of looking at my barely mangled wrist. I'd daydreamed all day that she'd find out and burst into tears and see how much I was hurting and see me destroying myself and vow to LOOK AT ME. I did not get that reaction. She got angry. It led to one of the many screaming matches we had, and quickly divulged to me running to my room and slamming the door, where she would follow me, and begin laughing at me. And id sob, confused and disgusted by how she could laugh at me like a super villain while I was begging for.. Her. she pulled out her phone, and while i was having my meltdown and sucking down sobs, i heard the faintest beep of a recording button. I looked up to see her recording me, and covering her mouth to stifle a laugh. “I'm going to show this to the therapist so they know how insane you get.” she would say. She showed the clinician and they looked disgusted that my mother had done that, but never said anything because other than that, my mom was a charming, intelligent, beautiful woman ; who was taking me to professionals so she had to care, right? I think more than her troubled daughter, I was her problem.

The morning therapy session was a lot of me crying, talking about Weezy. Pathetic, it's been a decade. I am frequently caught up in her nostalgia. It ended and we said our goodbyes while she told me how happy she was and how lucky she felt to be able to see me a decade later, like she always does, and it makes me feel sweet and happy. Then I called my dad.

My dad and my mom divorced in 2019. Turns out I wasn't what was causing their marriage to fall apart like they'd so often put on me. I'd been out of the house for 3 years at that point, and they still couldn't figure it out. +1 to me, for not… being the problem, i guess. It felt like a win. It was a nasty divorce. Turns out they hadn't really loved each other at all, ever. I remember growing up and never seeing it. I remember never understanding why they were together even very young. I'd never seen them even have a proper conversation. I think I only ever saw them sitting in silence next to each other, or drinking together, or fighting. They'd been on the precipice of divorce for what felt like the whole 17 years they were married. My dad will say it all felt like wasted time. This always scares me, the concept of wasting 17 years with someone.

My dad's father died last year in a prolonged freak accident, and since then he's been different. I knew him growing up as angry and controlling and exhausted, but also funny and interesting and cool. We didnt talk for almost three years after i moved out at 17, mostly because his relationship with my mom became so tumultuous that it also extended to me somehow, and while i was doing full service sex work around that time i was too embarrassed to even see him.

He's been seeing a new woman, Kelly (Aries, i believe), since 2020, they're engaged. She's incredible and I've never ever seen my dad so happy and at peace. The first thing I heard of her was how sweet she had been while my dad's father was dying. My Opa was in the peak of health, traveling the world as usual. He was an avid hiker and world traveler. And just  then out of nowhere, got one of the rarest forms of mad cow disease known to modern medicine; and deteriorated in a dementia state for 6 months until he eventually succumbed. Traumatically. My Dad  told me Kelly  had been singing him to sleep, and sponge bathing him until the bitter end. I cried when he told me that. I thought to my mother, guiltily, feeling as though I was cheating on her  and wondered what she would have done if still married to my dad, maybe not wondering but silently knowing that she wouldn't have done those things. But happy that finally after almost two decades, my father got to experience that kind of love.

My little sister says they cant keep their hands off of eachother. I'm sure that's weird for her. But she's happy. I have a new littler sister, named Scarlet now also. She's 4, which is the same age as when my dad and mom were married and he bought me those runts in that courtroom after changing my birth certificate to say his name. It's an interesting parallel, and I've been known to bring it up to my older little sister to laugh. She's cute. Normal, does not fear death yet.

While on the phone with my dad we talked about my mom. He doesn't like to speak ill of her regardless of how messy the divorce was and still is. I appreciate that. The only person who can speak ill of my mom, is me. Everytime i speak to someone about her I learn a new story. Like I said, the woman is a mystery to me. This one was a story about how one time she was so drunk coming home from the bar that she was dragging her purse like a caveman across the apartment hall, barely able to stand on one heeled foot, leaving purse breadcrumbs, sunglasses and loose change in a trail behind her. He laughed as if it was a happy memory. Perhaps I adopted my “all you can do is laugh” attitude from him.

Everytime i speak to my dad he apologizes to me, for everything. Brings up how he could've been better, how exhausted he was with my mother, how that's not an excuse but how often he thinks about it. He texts me once a week or every two weeks to say hello or ask how i'm doing. It feels cathartic for both of us, I'm sure. Everytime he says it, I hold back tears and gag on them. I can never keep them in successfully. I ask if he'd gotten the gift I'd gotten for scarlet for christmas, a cardboard house and markers she could decorate it with. He says he's not sure. I scoff because my older little sister was supposed to give it to him to wrap. You can not trust 16 year olds girls. We end the call and say I love you. The words still feel foreign on my tongue as I say them to him. “I love you”,  after our years-long hiatus, even now that we've been in good graces for a year. Not that I don't mean them, but because in that space we'd both become aware of the fact that we have no obligation to love each other anymore now that I'm an adult and he's not married to my mother, so now it feels more serious, like a choice we’re making. We are choosing to love each other after everything.

I spend the rest of my day doing what I do everyday, renovating a new part of my home, making it look like a 1800s whore house, waiting for my lover to be done with work, and vibrating. Preparing myself to write the next chapter of this book.

[whiningsanddribbles]

1

A calming and chilled mist falls over my neighborhood in Venice CA. In December the closest we get to a season change is an uncomfortable wetness and eerie fog bank. My mother says it’s cozy, I think I agree.

It was my grandmother's birthday, dec.4th. A Sagittarius woman through and through. you and astrologists alike, wouldn't immediately think that a Sagittarius and Cancer (me) would get along. But my god, did I love that woman. Fiery, free,  and loud. She can cry at the drop of a hat.  At nostalgia, happiness, fear, anger, despair. She Taught me every dirty joke I knew, mostly through wine soaked breath, in the bedroom of my childhood. It had been my mother’s room, and the walls were littered with graffiti that her and her teen aged friends had drawn, music, signatures, hearts. We’d sit in that room for hours and her soaps she loved would be background noise, and she’d rub my feet, or tell me something I was too young to hear, all surrounded by my mothers teenage angst. This is where her and my grandpa had slept for 10 years, and they never painted over it.

She wouldn't clean up and get sober until years and years later, and in true fashion  traded her addiction to alcohol to an addiction for Alcoholics Anonymous. she'd go on and on and on about surrendering, serenity, every greeting and every ending would end with a John Lennon quote, or some other aspirational Facebook quote she'd read that day. I thought it was sweet, my mother would scoff and go on about how annoying it was. I was happy my grandma could walk in a straight line again.

My grandmother loved Facebook, as she had loads of friends from AA, far too many than I'd ever remember the names of upon meeting them. All sweet, all reeking of cigarettes, all sober, all artists, all incredibly interesting, and all of them loving my grandmother as much as I did.

For fear of you not understanding the dynamic immediately, here's the story made simple and quick. A backstory of the swartz, little and obermeyer families':

My grandmother Claudia, was young when she had met my grandfather Wayne Swartz. Maybe 14, and him 18. I could ask again. it was the 70s, and they had a whirlwind hippie romance, lots of sex , lots of drugs and  lots of rock and roll. I've heard stories of them dropping acid with Stevie Nicks after my grandmother's shift at IHOP, others of my grandpa playing the house of blues with his band, as a self taught blues guitarist. They'd both come from traumatic homes. On one side my grandmother grew up in Boston mass., in a home of children. her mother didn’t know how to stop having them; but couldn't for the life of herself take care of them. She much preferred the company of men, who preferred the company of her children. a story rings in my brain of one of my great grandmother's boyfriends trying to catch glimpses of my grandmother's young sisters nude, coming out of the shower, even propositioning them. My grandmother hasn't told me much more, they promptly moved away to California in her childhood soon after all of that. Los Angeles is where she met my Scorpio grandfather, Wayne Swartz. A catholic mother, an absent vaguely orthodox father. He slept in the same bed as his mother in their Chicago, and then Hollywood apartment, until he was 18. his mother, Bebe, grew big, fat, and angry. As she aged she grew more neurotic. As my grandfather watched her, so did he. When they met I assumed they were each other's only hope. My grandfather, a pessimist by design, a tortured musician, a tortured fatherless boy; quickly fell in love with my grandmothers supportive and optimistic nature. My grandmother most likely inherited her mothers “man on a white horse to save me” complex. and just like that, they were attached very quickly, and fell in deep hippy love.

They’d have a baby girl years later, my mother, and a boy after that. My mother then went on to get pregnant in her teenagehood with yours truly. My grandmother has told me on multiple occasions through tear soaked eyes she begged for my mother to abort me, how she wished she hadn't, that she couldn't even fathom the gift I'd grow to be. I never understood how she’d wanted me to react to this. My mother, I'm sure, does not share that same sentiment. In fact in some ways, I think she imagined her life would've gone a lot differently and thinks often about what her reality would be if she had terminated the (me) pregnancy.

My biological father was much older than my mom, a mysterious and ethnically ambiguous surfer. Tall-ish, dark and handsome. They were opposing forces, opposite on the zodiac wheel. My mother, a capricorn. Selfish, cold, stubborn and loyal. My father, sharing a cancerian sun with me, is emotional, tormented, manipulative. It didn't last long. I'd forgotten every memory I had of him by age three, my mother had decidedly marked him as weak, and left him with me in tow. I don’t remember if he liked me. They'd met on the beach, where my mother and her immediate family spent all of their time. Everyone, a surfer, or a deep lover of the ocean. We lived 4 blocks away from it for most of my childhood. You hear that now and must think OH MY you grew up loaded. Let me put things in perspective; my mother and her brother and their parents. My grandpas geratric, NOW present in his disabled and decrepit state, father all lived in a one bedroom home. By the time I came around, the doors were rotting and unable to lock, the ceiling caved in after a leak too many, and the paint ravaged by the moist ocean breeze. I spent summers; in plastic pools over asphalt, 10 paces away from 12 huge marijuana plants, Springs; picking the bugs off of those plants, Winters; inside playing Barbie online games back when you still had to call for the internet. Not that that was normal in 2003, but my grandparents held on to dial up far past it’s expiration.

They bought their house for nothing and a ball of lint  in the 80s, when Venice was for artists, for the poor, for the brown and black. They were in the service industry, coming into small amounts of money quickly, burning it just as fast, for as long as they were in the workforce. No formal education, music and soul as their guide.

Anyway, forgive me for romanticizing. My own parents met on the beach and in a month he whisked her off to maui, for a romantic vacation. Weeks later, it would prove to not be as romantic when my mothers breasts started to ache and her period failed to come. I didn't know much about their relationship, my mother did not talk to me about him. All I've learned of him at that point was through my grandmother's slurred apologetic stories.

My mother was a beach bum on her best days, a surf groupie on her worst.

My mother, the capricorn, is named Windy. Yes, windy, not wendy. She was not a natural mother by any account. I can't remember growing up feeling any maternal influence from anyone other than my grandmother. My mother would hear that and gasp. Perhaps look melancholy for a moment, perhaps yell if the light caught her right, but then would retreat to her room frantically and ruminate over it while distracting herself with trash TV, and she would eventually agree sullenly, shrunkenly, while alone in her room. She would never tell me about that.

My mother was strikingly beautiful, still is. In her early 40s now as I write this, it's a mature, beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless. 5’5 and long legged, a natural chocolate brunette with hazel eyes, my mother was the most beautiful woman i had ever seen. I remember staring at her while she poked and prodded at herself in the normal female way, in front of a mirror. While doing her makeup. I’d always stare. She spent days nude, opulent and full. She was shaped like an aphrodite. Rounded and lifted natural breasts, a waist ratio that kim kardashian would pay for years later, and perfectly moisturized and somehow always  hairless skin. My mother had always been beautiful, and I suspect much of her childhood she was told so. She was a popular dancer in highschool, popular. For a fleeting moment she was then  an adult, and then just as quickly as she turned eighteen she was swiftly dragged into motherhood by my arrival.

There are few photos of her and I from my childhood. A couple where she's dressed up, coming home from or leaving to work in a hostess uniform, and holding me. I spent most of my time with my grandparents, while she worked. She was a mystery to me then, and even now. My mother is naturally secretive, discreet. I'll spend the remainder of my life and hers wondering what she's thinking, or what she's doing, what she’s done or who she’d been when nobody was looking.  I never lost sleep over it, in my youth.  Between McDonald's happy meals and unbridled access to daytime TV. I kept my malleable child brain content with steve wilkos and jerry springer, my grandmother making me any delicacy i wanted (it was always toast and nesquik powder  chocolate milk, or an occasional bagel with cream cheese AND boysenberry jelly). The home permanently smelled of marijuana and white wine. I remember watching my grandmother stumble, but wasn't perceptive enough nor aware of my surroundings enough to remember how bad it became.

My mother met christian when I was 3. She had also inherited my grandmother, and her mother before hers’ curse of white man, white horse syndrome. Christian (Aquarius) was my mothers saving grace. I remember loving him instantly. I wasn't old enough to have known I was fatherless, and he came at just the right time. He adopted me as his own, and saved my mother and i from ourselves and her family who still at the time were in active addiction, just before it got bad. I remember the courthouse the day it was made official. My dad bent down and gave me a quarter, I thought he looked funny in a suit. I was four.  We walked down to the lobby and got some candies out of a rusted metal machine,  called runts. Very tiny fruit shaped sugar. I loved him as much as any little girl loves their daddy. The only father I'd ever known.

And now I'm back in my adolescent bedroom, it's midnight. My rat, Weezy, is nestled between my body and my floral sheets. She bruxes and boggles, cuddling  in my warmth, and I take a deep breath. I can't sleep until it happens. Until my stomach growls, I will not let myself. I waste time on youtube watching minecraft lets-play with commentary. I'd never played, but I craved the noise of it to break up the silence in my bedroom. I’d spent most of my days in my room, alone, with nobody else home. Both of my parents worked, I’d developed an agoraphobia. I dropped out of school. I promised my mom I’d do the online packets, I never would.

It's 2012, the world is supposed to be ending. I turned 14 this year. I’d discovered tumblr, I’d discovered my clitorus, I’d read the whole of the twilight series in 2 business days. I’d gotten two rats, one for me, one for my rat as a companion. I’d wanted a rat for 5 years. I begged for one. There had been a family owned pet shop close to my home, and frequently my grandma would take me on trips to see all of the creatures that lived inside. Turtles, birds, one angry parrot who had ripped all his feathers out and yelled at customers (the owners rehabilitated bird). It was one of my favorite places. Alan’s aquarium was its name.it would go out of business when the white hipsters came and bought most of venice in 2015.

My grandmother, naturally, knew the workers. Everywhere we went she’d make friends. I wasn’t never interested in guinea pigs, even birds, barely hamsters. But rats! Perhaps in my youth while I was exploring the philosophy of empathy I could find kinship in ugly, stinky,  misunderstood rats. Most of my childhood I’d felt how most people would describe these tiny worm tailed puppies. I adored them.  Finally, when I was 13 after years of begging and bartering with my parents, my grandmother was allowed to buy me one. I picked out a little blonde one with big dumbo ears on the sides of her little head  and big brown eyes. My grandmother squealed as I held it, disgusted and confused as to why I’d wanted this creature over a fuzzy hamster. I squealed in happiness, not even bearing to part with her on the way to my grandmother's cigarette soaked car. My grandmother carried the cage behind me. Weezy never left my hands that day, maybe for the week after.  It took weeks for my grandma to warm up to weezy. But, it usually took only moments for most people to warm up to weezy. She was the friendliest, sweetest thing. She’d lay with me all day if she could. Even my family cat, Merlin, liked her. Or perhaps even he could pick up on the fact that weezy was all I’d had, and he couldn’t dare make her dinner. Weezy was my best friend, and  months later I’d pick up a little gray one as her companion, named muggles. Muggles preferred to stay in the cage and had a hermit temperament. I didn’t mind, weezy liked us both the same.

Now, the eating thing. The eating thing didn’t start out as a ploy for thinness actually. The eating thing actually metastasized as a symptom of my panic disorder, which had given me the gift of a phobia. The phobia: vomit. I’d spent the last year scared to put anything in my body. Fear of food poisoning crippled me. I mean, crippled me. My family had to make up code words for nausea and emesis, my dad thought it was funny to use pig Latin but I didn’t think uke-pay was much less anxiety provoking. A full stomach was my worst nightmare. I ate calcium tablets until my hair and nails broke off from anemia, I’d only eat every 6 hours ON THE DOT. Safe foods only; chips, oatmeal, cheese, juice only on the first day it was opened, steamed carrots I’d steam in the microwave. Then, when my stomach would growl and only then would I oblige it. Eating was a nuisance. I’d always been a strange and peculiar child, but my parents couldn’t have predicted my adolescence. Most children at 14 are out with friends, kissing boys, stealing their first cigarette. I was shaking and convulsing every 3pm in a panic attack that would send aftershocks until I’d fall asleep at 3am. I’d created rituals like brushing my teeth 23 times a day exactly, I’d spend 10 hours in the bathtub. By the time I’d get out, my skin was so fragile from dampness I couldn’t even use a towel, for fear of even the courses of those ripping my skin. I’d walk, still soaking back to bed, undried, and curled up in my sheets that smelled like mildew, open my rats cage next to my bed, and she’d hop in happily. I’d get into the occasional screaming match with my mother, who would swear I was punishing her by doing this to myself. My father would laugh through most of it, but might’ve been more scared than my mom. If not for me, then for my little sister. She was 6 years younger than me, and theirs. Not just my moms. She was both of theirs. She looked just like them, and I’d grown very aware of that through the years.

The therapists, all 12 of them, had never known what to do. Everyone was at a lot, i had 13 suspected diagnosis

Bipolar

Panic disorder / generalized anxiety/ phobia

Depression with self harm

Autism

Oppositionally defiant

Sexual abuse?

Anorexia

Adhd

One rang deeper and louder than the others; Borderline. It was too soon to tell. It all made me dizzy.

Something was strange about this particularly December 4th. My mom and my grandmother weren’t talking, which to be fair wasn’t that peculiar as they’d fought often, but usually i could call her and at the very least wish her a happy birthday. Typically I could hear my baby sister snoring with my door open, our halls connected. But, my sister was gone with a friend for a sleepover.  It was a Tuesday.  I didn’t think too much about it but, there was silence that hung over the home.

I’d heard whispers between my parents all night, thinking it was them not wanting to involve me in their own marriage matters. They fought often. But, never quietly. And never at midnight, they’d at least had the good sense to not fight after 8pm. Must’ve been serious. I drowned out the whispers with a tobuscus Minecraft video, and decided to put weezy away in her cage tonight. Even she seemed a bit uneasy. Where I’d usually let her sleep next to me while I slept, she seemed restless.  

I spent the hour on my phone, swimming in websites that were becoming my undoing. I’d spend every night bouncing between applications on my IPOD touch, games, Instagram, tumblr, YouTube. I’d distract myself and keep my eyes busy until I grew too tired to vibrate any longer, and my eyes would close while I held my phone on my chest, and just like that, I’d fall asleep. And just like that, that night I fell asleep.

The next part of this story escapes my memory. I see it in flashes, dreamlike. I can’t recall all of it, and what I can I can only see in strobe.

I am awaken by the sound of my door open wing, weird

It is not my mom or dad

It is a stranger, it is two strangers

I catch my breath and lay paralyzed in my bed. I am going to be trafficked, these people have killed my parents oh my god I’m

“I’m ____ and this is my partner ______”

What

The woman is a petite build, white and blonde, her partner is male, black and as big as a tank. They are wearing coats and sneakers inside my room. Jarring.

“I know this is a bit confusing and I’m sorry we have to do this now but I need you to quickly get dressed”

I sit up, still unable to speak but with a questioning look.

I see my mother’s shadow moving in my doorway and call to her

No answer

She repeats herself

My mother sobs from the hallway

“We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way. We have to catch a plane in an hour and if we miss it, we’ll have to drive you. Is that what you want?”

I shake my head no and I sob

Flash

Anger

Flash

Despair

Flash

I looked to weezy's cage and fall into a heap on the ground in front of her ,opening her hatch. She runs to me eagerly.

My mother tells the woman that my rat is my best friend between sobs.

Flash

I’d can’t bring weezy

Flash

Anger

The woman apologizes genuinely, she tells me she does n't know what they’re going to allow at the facility. Better not bring her, assures me I’ll see her again.

I give Weezy the biggest kisses I could muster, all the way up and down her body, on her nose. I wrap her tail around my fingers. I hold her and vow to hold her until they tell me I have to go. That really, “we’re on a time crunch”. wetting her with snot and tears, she licks the salt from my face. She doesn’t know this will be the last time she sees me for a year. Neither do I, but neither does she. She doesn’t know why I’m leaving. She has no idea, she is a rat.

Flash

My clothes and shoes are on, I pass my mother in the hallway, the blondes hand on my shoulder. I could spit on her. I am livid. She cries, I assume the tears are fake. Everything is a performance, everything is fake, now she gets to play mom, now she gets to play victim. Now she gets to-

Flash

My father is deeper in the hallway in the dark. He looks at me, holding back tears. Somehow this makes it real. I’d only seen my dad cry once, when our dog, Bago,  had passed away years earlier unexpectedly and horrifically. This pillar of strength stifling his tears calms me. Perhaps I’d really gotten myself into this, perhaps they really didn’t have another optio-

Flash

I tell my mother something. I don’t remember. It was angry, and I will never ask her what it was.

Flash

I am in a car with two strangers, drying my tears asking as many questions as I can muster, barely audible through my hyperventilatic sobs. She has no answers, I don’t believe the man spoke even once.

Flash

I am in an airport

Flash

I am in a plane

Flash

I ask where the plane is going, finally. The one question I was too afraid of asking.

She replies, “Utah”.

[whiningsanddribbles]

a moment in time

I am covered in droplets of my own blood. Thick steam from the shower I've left running (for too long now) is encasing me in this bath-less bathroom. I can hardly see my own toes, I must've only touched the hot dial. I am in a small box and I can hardly breathe, my lungs full of warm wetness. I pray the steam doesn't escape through the doors seam, alerting the associate outside. I let myself worry what she would think only for a moment ; I am either burning myself alive in scalding water, or I am…

I take deep breaths, gulping down what oxygen I can find. I steady my arm and my melancholy “paint brush”between my fingers, directly over the first one.  I've whittled myself every night this week, hoping to carve a girl.

My eyes close and I silently count to three as I rip this jagged, uncleaned glass shard across. I wince. I am a coward. In perfect irony I am squeamish.

but I've

 made a mistake.

I look down and my stomach pulsates in my throat now.

Exposed in my own flesh are purple and green strands of my livelihood, with cascading tendrils of crimson blood pooling and then wrapping themselves around my wrist, my jeans,

the ground.

I sit in shock

I've never

I mean I've done… this but i've never seen

But i, was

Only joking i was

Kidding I

-wait,  but i

Don't want to die

I didn't mean to

please

I can't breathe, the steam is choking me, my heart races, I force myself to breathe slowly, I move quickly but also  somehow in slow motion . The faster my heart beats, the faster this blood pools around me , the faster i …

I am so sleepy.

I grab the shirt next to me that's been encasing the broken mason jar shards, rounded like a beautiful supple sparrows nest. Only 30 minutes earlier I'd stolen this treasure from the kitchen, wrapped this jar into my favorite yellow knit sweatshirt tie around, holding it like a football, taken it outside without staff permission, and smashed it madly. Until I heard it.

The sound of the glass breaking rings in my ears. A congratulatory standing ovation cacophony plays in my head. Nobody has seen me do this, nobody has heard. The sweater has held grasp onto all of the shards, waiting for me to explicate them, waiting for me to find my perfect shard, my paint brush. I sneak back into the home, and I yell that I'm taking my 10 minute shower. The staff  tells me she sets her timer.

and now i’m here, and i’m bleeding, and its 

never been this much and 

I empty the contents of my nest onto the ground slowly, bit by bit, willing for nobody close to hear the sounds of the shards hitting the tiled floor.  I make a tourniquet for my arm. The yellow knitting  fills with red, as I push my arm into my torso applying pressure. My head aches and the water  hitting the bottom of the shower floor sounds thunderous. I stretch up and up and up and up for what seems like 4 arm swings, and my wrist enters the shower curtain blindly. Finally my fingers grip the dial and finally, there is silence. I can hear my breath.

“THATS 15 MINUTES KALEA” the associate has a hint of jest in her voice.

I yell back “I'VE INDULGED MYSELF, I'M SORRY! I TAKE MY PLEASURES WHERE I CAN”

She chuckles faintly and i can hear a murmur of something similar to “hurry it up”

I am safe.

She suspects nothing.

I am a funny thing.

I gather my eggs back into my nest, in shock at how almost all of the yellow is some shade of orange now. I blink drowsily and I pull on with one arm a black hoodie, I can still feel myself dripping. I apply pressure to my wrist and sleeve. I look down and notice the frayed acrylic lettering on the hoodie. 4 years ago my dad got it for me at one of our weekly father daughter gun range trips. the letters spell out; OAKTREE GUN CLUB. another memory I've defiled, my specialty.

Still, I'm feeling  pooling around my wrist, unnoticeable under the black of the garment.

I take a deep breath before I step out. I prepare myself to be HER, to put HER on.

I open the door and

 “What were you doing in there? Flicking your little bean?” In a proper English accent, the girl whispers the second part as not to alert the staff of my promiscuity.

My best friend here at the facility, Monet, stands smiling , waiting for me to answer. Towel in her hand, curls clipped up, she passes me bubbly and bright, to enter the cage id crawled out of moments earlier.

I repeat cheekily “I take my pleasures where i can”, and wink. I am willing god to make it so my crime scene clean up was adequate. my smile drops as she's out of view, I pause while she walks in. She closes the door and I hear the thunder of the shower roar again.

I sneak away to my shared bedroom, wondering with each step how to position my arm out of my roommate's sight, practicing positioning to look natural and normal. I walk in and to my fortune she's already asleep, snoring like a cartoon. 

I get under my covers with a bright pink reading light and I book i’m not supposed to have, probably feminist, probably angry. I feel contentment in my secrets. I try to keep my eyes open going enough to read even one page, and dog ear lazily the same page, moments later. I’ll have to reread when i’m awake.

 All of 3 minutes later the associate does checks on our rooms, I groggily lift the sheet from my head to see her and smile. She sticks out her tongue, closes the door and alarms us into our sides of the bedroom and into our rooms. she whisper yells “sweet dreams” in the hallway.

I am so tired I just fade away. 

I fall asleep checking my arm every few seconds until the blood pooling in my sleeve feels tacky, 

until my arm is glued to the linen fuzzies inside.

I fade into my dreams and pretend I am now one with this hoodie, that we are a single organism; that without this shell I am a nude turtle, organs exposed.

Finally I dream.