Intro Blog 3/4/24

To Avory & Dominic, 

I held you your whole life, from conception to today, and I may have co-created you, but you made me into who I am now. You have been, and always will be, the loves I never knew I could have, let alone raise. I love you for exactly who you are. I wake up every day, excited to meet you, the you that woke up that morning. I hate that you love your room more than you love being with me, but I accept and facilitate it so that you get exactly what you need. You’re mental and emotional health and growth are the most important duties I’ve encountered as a mom, and I’ve learned to delight in everything you do. Even the shit, it’s development, and that is something I did not have. More than the hunger, and filth, and losing a parent, not developing at the same rate as my peers was the loneliest thing I ever experienced. I knew your lives would be better than mine, but past a certain age, there was no context I could remember. I felt more blind-folded than I had during any other stage of life we’d all lived through thus far. And everyday, I meet you, and I am blown away with the love I feel radiating from us all. Even on shitty days, you find your way to me for a hug. You lay down on the couch across from your Dad, and you watch comfort movies together. We don’t have much time left, I see every moment critical. Thank you, for everything you’ve made me into, and for leaving Heaven to come and love me. I didn’t believe I’d ever get the one thing I asked God for every day for as long as I can remember. And thank you for coming when I could give you my best. I know I’ve grown, more than you even. I love you.

It’s funny, the times I sit down to write are oftentimes the most chaotic times in our house. Chaos and noise have been a constant in my life. I remember falling asleep to the TV playing downstairs, the radio or TV in my room playing almost silently, lulling me to sleep. Then there was the music of the traffic and train horns, the sounds of loud exhausts and tires squealing. Music was the first coping skill my father offered, and he couldn’t provide many. 

My first memory of music was when I was 5. I know it was always in the background, but I remember my father handing me a cassette tape with “All I Have to Do” by the Everly Brothers, and telling me I could play it over and over to go to sleep. We were sitting in our Den, which he’d been so excited to put together. I get to see that excitement live on through your uncles. We were sitting on an old couch he’d thrifted from somewhere, and there was a giant TV in a decorative box on the floor, and the most god-awful painting of the cowboy actor, John Wayne. The painting was one of the reasons I was scared to sleep in the room, but my Daddy thought it would be so cool if I liked sleeping in the Den. I wonder what he’d think of your rooms now, if he’d think they were the coolest. They’re certainly everything I wanted as a teen, and designed for you in my dreams. I think that memory may be one of the top 5 I remember, and it isn’t a long list. I think about the noises that have lulled you to sleep: military aircraft, my music, your Dad’s motorcycle, cars, trains, the woods, the desert, the city, and now the intersection we’ve witnessed more accidents in than any place we’ve ever lived. But it’s all still music. 

Tonight I’m listening to my favorite playlist, “Westminster 2023-” I’m thinking about how you’re going to start going to bed soon, and from the living room you’ll hear “Love Man” Otis Redding, and “Good Kisser” Lake Street Drive, and some Morgan Wade, Beth Hart, Dolly, Bone Thugz, and it’ll be the lullaby I’ve been playing your whole lives. Eddie Vedder will sing to you, what he sang to me as a child. 

I’m writing this thinking about so many things, like the purpose to life, or why only the cherry Jolly Ranchers hit, or how I got so fucking lucky. You’re thinking about dating and friends and the all-consuming drama that feeds your soul right now. And I couldn’t be happier. I cry thinking about how wonderful you both are. I’m thinking about my mom, and my dad, and Aunt Paula. I’m thinking of the stories they all gave me, and the answers they all died with.

So I came up with this idea: a blog, detailing my life, but written to you guys, and the premise is that I would pick a song and write you a letter based on the song. I want to tell my stories, and I figure you’re the only ones I owe it to. It also occurs to me that world will want details that I’ll never share with you. And the world is owed nothing. My parents both died without giving me answers or telling enough stories, and I never want that for you. I’m desperate to know where I come from, and just in case you need more, this will be that. 

I hope you’ll know that from the moment I knew you were both growing strong little hearts, my life became yours. I know I’ve been cold, and difficult to connect with in some ways. I also know I’ve given so much to you guys to let you know I’m safe. I see it working every day, and my heart burst with joy. I’ll never be able to verbalize everything I’ve seen, but I sure hope I write enough to let you know how incredibly important you have both been to me. You both made me a mom, and that is the best fucking job I’ve ever had! I love you, and I hope reading through this brings joy and context. 

Love, 

Mommy

Intro Blog 3/4/23 DONE

I’m sure this will be edited to near obsession, before I post it, but here goes attempt #1.

My name is Liz. I’m 30 something and I have the maturity and boundaries of a 13 year old boy. I’m a product of an East Coast, white-saturated, suburban, 90’s themed upbringing. How do you tell people you don’t know who you are? Who we are lives in others people’s minds. What lives in ours is how we want to be seen, but that can’t translate perfectly with everyone we meet, because they all see us through the lenses of their own lives, universes, god(s), ect. We have no control  on anyone’s individual experience of us. We are unique in each person. We impact people at varying rates. Some people are obsessed with us (waning or permanent) and some people can’t stand us, because the attributes they’re perceiving doesn’t sit well with their soul. We have to be ok with being uncomfortable, and remembering that we did our best, if someone doesn’t like us, fuck em I guess. Bless them, don’t bash them. They;re just doing the very best they can. 

Who am I? I don’t fucking know, to be honest. I’ve blinked and my life has occurred, and I’m left wondering where the fuck I was the whole time. I know where I was. I was sad. I stopped drinking and functioning at the same tome. Like Bender from Futurama! I was sad, and I didn’t know how to manage without alcohol’s help, so I went to bed and stayed there. I have fuzzy memories from the years of trauma and drinking and drugging. I have hazy memories from the depression. I could never really release the pain because I was so afraid of who I’d hurt in the process. After the depression lifted and I regained control and clarity, I regained ambition and motivation to start this project. And really, I think it’s because I don’t know who the fuck I am, that this is so important. I don’t need fame and fortune, and most of all validation. Those are best case scenarios, but with them would come shaming and judgement and hate, and a lot I’d have to sau “Sorry, but I don’t carry shame and guilt, so please don’t waste your efforts trying to make me.” I wouldn’t tell them that I spent decades trying to kill myself over the shame and guilt I had, and there’s nothing they could say that I hadn’t already told myself. Who I am doesn’t live in what I’ve been through. None of that is my identity, but people want it to be. No, I’m Liz. Mom, wife, best friend, sister, Director, GED graduate, C-PTSD, multiple meds a day, therapy attending, Aquarius, obsessed with the Virgin Mary and the Earth and magic, post-menopausal, sober, artist, mentor, yoga teacher, recovery specialist, art instructor, house plant mom, lover of literature and fairy tales, visually defined by an “I Spy” book from the 90’s, horror movie fanatic, goth princess, failed skater girl, stoner, acrylic nails having, side shave, tattoos, and piercings, biggest softy in the world, and friend to all. And my music, like a boombox I’ve been carrying along my whole life, in constant repeat as time marches on.  I fall in love with people every time I have to do outside things, like work. I find humans out in the wild that most people don’t have access to. I don’t go to exciting places and spend my money. I go and make friends with people serving the people I want to serve, and then I join them. I’m a member of a system whose only mission is make the world better for people who’ve experienced hell on Earth. And Hell is on Earth, I’ve been there. I absolutely refuse to believe in a God who allows and plans for this level of bullshit. My God, the God I’ve been praying to my whole life, even during my Hell, that God loves me and everyone on Earth, and there’s no suffering after this. I truly believe that. I pray to the God more than I realize, since my brain is wonky. My identity comes from others. It’s a gift we hand each other, because it’s the only way we know we’re doing good. I’m so thankful for the gifts of identity I’ve been handed along the way, but everyone I’ve loved and has loved me, even the bad love. 

I was a Teenage Dirtbag long before the song influenced my life. Music has always been the best means of escape, something I perfected at birth. It was one of the rare gifts my parents bestowed that didn’t hurt me. Music is life, universal, always present for as long as humanity had existed. Music is poetry married to movement that our ears take and create into incredible visions. Music is how I vet people. It’s how I know I can trust someone. I play my music constantly, and I inflict evertone with the soundtrack to my life. I have playlists that go on for days, curated for decades. I evolved from my few cassette tapes and my dad’s radio, to the radio itself, listening to the popular tracks as they came, as they shaped our world. I couldn’t get enough, I had to hear it all, and I had to hear some all the time. Eventually CD’s became the easier thing to steal, and I cherished each one as I did my pictures, the two creating a bigger picture for remembering my life. The trauma and ADHD stole my ability to remember everything, and even important things began slipping rapidly, the more trauma I endured. Even when I was being pimped out of a dank hotel room, I had VH1 playing constantly. I counted the days in songs, trying to recapture linear time and not just the same shit in the same room, over and over. After that, music became less about “what’s new?” and more about “How do I tell my story? How do I make sure I remember as much as possible?” The answer was music. Eventually, I found stability, safety, and Good LoveTM and was able to safely resume exploring music without it becoming a source of conflict. I soaked up so much, accepting my husbands influence to help me explore outside of what I’d always known and loved. I met people and they gave me songs, and I’ve been listening ever since. My siblings send me songs now and then, knowing I’ll study them. My children add some of my music to their lists, and it makes me wonder why “that song” and what does it mean to me. Music is generational like that, meaning something entirely separate for one generation, and the next listens because it just reminds them of you. Fucking magical! Music is God. In all my years searching for God, it never occurred to me that music WAS God, and each time I listened, I got insight into memories my brain set aside to make room for survival. Music is all I have left of people who I loved that have died. A single song can be the secret between my soul and someone in Heaven. Music can be the words I always wanted to say, and never could. 

I’ve been told my whole life to “write a book” and I tried. God, I fucking tried. I still have notebooks that are more than 20 years old, all the same, all the same opener, and that was the fucking problem all along! I didn’t need to write it alone! The songs had been telling me how to write it all along! That’s why they were the most powerful tool I had to connect me to my life, to the shit I’d disassociated from to live, because sometimes it was me and the music, no bed, no home, no food, no warmth, no options. But music was there, playing as a soundtrack all along. I woke up one night and realized, I just had to literally write between the lines. Let me back up a little. Instead of writing a book, I decided this would be best done as a blog, but a blog alone wasn’t sufficient. My friend (and ElizabethSquared) Dr. Beth suggested a “Legacy Project” where I could design what I did want, and have a central space where everything lived. This sparked the idea that music should be playing while the reader reads the post. But more, I needed to write love letters, not just stories. I need to connect to the lyrics, unless the song is just a silly inside joke with someone. Some of them nail it completely, others I have to use for the sake of interpretation. Lastly, I wanted this to be for a purpose, not fame. I wanted to give my kids something I’d been cheated out of: answers. Generations of bullshit and pain and trauma, and all the people with the answers are dead or intentionally not speaking to me. There are SO many questions I’ll never get. But that doesn’t have to be the case for my kids. I have this giant fucking story inside me, and I’ve always needed to get it out, but not for the world. I won’t be promoting it, I’ll quietly share each post on a page that ties back to a Facebook and Instagram that just share the posts. I’ll provide my kids access to it when they turn 18, or I die. What they decide to do with it is up to them. This is their Legacy, not mine. I won’t be here forever, and while I’m here, I’m healing wounds I didn’t have anyone to prevent from happening. My kids get a different opportunity. They get parents who’ve grown and evolved and do better every day, focusing on their emotional growth and well being in literally all they do. 

Some posts will clearly be for someone in particular, and that’s because I needed to write what I would say if given the chance, knowing I’ll never have it. Some are dead, some still hate me, and some can’t be friends because their partners aren’t comfortable, which is understandable. But they’ll likely never read these, so I’m choosing to be raw and authentic, and provide my children insight into the many layers that created the mom they know now and will know until my time is up. 

I think my fear of death is the main source of my obsessive need to write as many of these posts as possible, so that if something were to happen, I’ll have made all the preparations for my family. I think it’s born from losing my father at 12, and despite him and my mother trying their hardest to kill him, I was in no way prepared to lose the only human who loved me. His love was never enough, he disappointed me every single day of my life, and I was so angry at him for making me do his job, just because he couldn’t stop loving my mother, and just take us and leave. I truly believe he might’ve made it if my mother had just left earlier. 2 more days, and she was going to be gone. 2 more days, and the trajectory of my whole life might have been everything it’s not. 2 days is all that stood between me and an entirely different future. I’ll always wonder, but never regret. Not a single fucking day. Even when I was being tortured, the pain meant I was still alive. I’ve been raped more than 1000 times, being trafficked for years, some on my own, and some by pimps, and even that, is worth being alive right now. I’m sitting in my fluffy bed, in my clean, well furnished home, co-existing with my husband while he plays COD and streams, and my children keep coming in to tell me some random joke or fact, or gossip from school. I practice coping skills and reasonable responses to certain experiences. I overheard my oldest telling her friends that I’m cool, after she made me talk to them about witchcraft. I heard them say “she even pierced her own nose!” and I giggle and think that I’m the luckiest fucking mom in the world. I have an entire collected catalouge of knowledge to offer them, let alone cut off the ancestral stream of trauma and bullshit. But I also know that they’re making choices I don’t want them to, and trying things, and almost all kids will. I’m not delusional about that, which is why I want to write this so badly. I want them to get to 18 and start reading this, and seeing the similarities in why we made similar decisions, but the stark differences due to a lack of abuse and neglect. They’ll have their traumas from things I have zero control over, and from me, from when I hadn’t been as evolved as I am now. 

I’ve spent a lot of time day dreaming about what I want to tell you about me. Assuming you aren’t my children of course. I love commas (obviously,) and I used to be a guaranteed good time, before I quit drinking 5 years ago. I’m deeply tied to my geographical location, and I dig deep into my ancestry for my identity. I grew up in deep poverty, but was nurtured by my family members around me, desperately trying to keep me alive and my parents accountable. I rolled in grass, played Barbies, played “House,” went on dangerous adventures and rode my bike as often as humanly possible. I went to school and played with my friends, and I played with my cousins after. I read my siblings stories before bed, and bathed them after making dinner. I did my homework at bedtime, or right after school, when my father wasn’t too drunk and traded a game of Gin in exchange for helping him read the bills and letters. That’s how I really learned how poor we were, and there was little doubt in my mind that I’d been born a White Trash Beauty Queen. Life was transient, and the most nourishing food I got was the music. 

I hope that as you go on this Willy Wonka ride of memories with me, you’ll leave your judgement and condemnation behind, because there’s nothing you could shame me for that I haven’t already tried to kill myself over and survived. Move forward with love and kindness, and buckle up buttercup! 

11/12/23