There is one thing I did get from my father, aside from his looks and apparent back issues. I’m talking about something good, something positive, at least for me. After seeing how he treated Umi for so many years, and through recent experiences of my own, such as the reason I wrote the Warning Signs post, I’ve come to realize that my father’s manipulation tactics are the very reason I will not put up with any man treating me like garbage or less than I am worthy – and I am worthy of no less than goddess. Any man who treats me as a goddess will find it reciprocated because I like taking care of my man, when I have one. Any man who attempts otherwise – Oz - will find the door hitting his ass on his way out of my damn life. There are no words that can make up for these actions. None. No apologies. Again, I point to the post to clarify because every couple will argue now and then. Every couple will likely say things they’ll regret at times. But there is no excuse for controlling, manipulative behavior and making me feel like it’s all my fault when it’s not. I know it when I hear it. I recognize it thoroughly. And I will NOT stand for it.

Are we clear on this? Good.

Body wracked
Mind snapped
Soul cracked

In Broken pieces of this life

Soul splits
Body quits
Mind spits

Broken vernacular of my so-called life

Mind soars
Body sores
Soul roars

Screaming for a way out of this Broken life

Body heals
Mind seals
Soul congeals

I pick up the Broken pieces of my life … and move on.

My father died this morning.

Don’t feel bad for me. I’m all right at the moment, although I do appreciate all of the condolences I’ve received. Thank you. I wish my post could be more like my friend Pauline’s, but sadly, I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my father.

If anything, feel bad for him for the judgement he’s about to face. He wasn’t a very good man. We used to think he was an almost decent person until we started learning his history. For me, that education started about 20 years ago with a phone conversation with my uncle (Unca T), my father’s younger brother. I had no idea what I was about to learn. Frightening stuff, but I need to talk about it. You can turn away now if you’d like. It might not be pretty.

I should probably explain who my father was for you to understand that statement. I knew two completely separate people when it came to him: my dad and my father. The former died a long time ago in my mind, and the latter was a man I hardly knew. If anything, I’ll mourn the man I knew as my dad today. My father can face God.

My Dad

Since my parents divorced before I was six years old, I don’t have a lot of memories of this man, aside from the marijuana growing between the corn and tomato plants in the backyard garden, and his motorcycle that I used to play on. He was even absent back then, but it makes sense because by the time I was old enough to retain those memories I have now, he was already being the philanderer he’s always been. When I was eight, I stayed with him for a weekend or two, maybe even three. Not a lot of memory there, either, apart from his bright yellow convertible Karmen Ghia and he took me shopping one day. I remember driving up to Flagstaff with him and his new family, my youngest brother Siege (he’s a rapper, by the way, hence the name) just a baby at the time. Siege stopped breathing in the car. Dad flew over the hills in a mad rush to the hospital. My stepbrother and I were in the backseat bouncing up in the air every time he’d go over a large bump in the road. Yep, no seatbelts. Of course, when asked, we both lied and said we were wearing them. Great parenting, dad, for not even checking. I guess Akhi stayed home that weekend.

I know that he was a Vietnam veteran, serving as an MP in the Army. What I’d find out that fateful day of the long phone call with my uncle was that my dad killed a man with his bare hands while over there. His time there wasn’t something he liked to discuss, so it took several years to get the story and from another source, I believe. I’ll tell what I’ve heard of it to you now:

While on duty one day/night, my dad’s partner was shot and killed by a well-hidden sniper. They couldn’t find the sniper’s nest. On the second night, the same thing happened. The third night, his best friend was his partner and he was shot and killed as well. In a blind rage, my dad ran toward where he thought the sniper’s nest was, found him, and beat the man to death. It took several men to pull my dad off the sniper and by the time they took a look at the dead man, they’d discovered my dad had broken nearly every bone in his body.

Regardless of the truthfulness of that story, it’s what I heard 20 years ago. Part of me would like to consider my dad a hero, but I know better. Heroes face their responsibilities and problems, rather than run from them. I also inherited his temper, only I learned how to control it. I’m sorry I can’t say the same for my brothers.

My Father

He was a man who made many wrong choices in life, but he’s proof that bad people can be born of good people and can also produce good offspring. Unfortunately, there will still be a couple of bad apples falling from the tree in the generations to follow, but not all of us are bad. I know very little about my paternal grandfather, but what I do know is that he and my father didn’t get along very well. Grandpa Dan was away at war when my father was born, and he didn’t return until my father was a toddler. They had no bonding time between them and grandpa wasn’t the bonding, affectionate type. It makes me wonder if my father would have still turned out the way he did if my grandfather had been different toward him. Hard to say and I try not to focus on the what-if’s anymore because there’s no point. My Grandpa Dan (Donato) died when I was six years old, and it sounds like the same thing that killed my father today.

My father did not walk me down the aisle at my wedding in 1995. He wasn’t invited and didn’t deserve the honor of that role. Instead, it went to my maternal grandfather, who was more of a father to me than anyone else, and who died two months before my wedding. My younger brother, the one I call Akhi on here, walked me down the aisle instead.

My father was diagnosed with cancer (the one disease that truly LOVES to wreak havoc on my family) seven  or eight years ago, and he went through chemo and radiation treatments. The hospital almost killed him by triple-dosing him with chemo in one day. He went into renal failure. Then, the light flicked on at the end of the tunnel and it wasn’t the train he’d thought was coming. He survived somehow. My thought is that this was his second chance to make things right, to undo or take responsibility for all the shit he’d done in the past. Makes sense, right? Why else would you survive something like that? God gave him an opportunity to atone … and he failed miserably. Oh, he tried to re-establish a relationship with Akhi and me, but for me, it didn’t last long because coming up on four years ago, certain members of my family decided to make an idiotic move and got themselves disowned from the rest of the family because they were stupid enough to make that move against me. This is what I’m talking about when I say “fuck with me and I will end the game in one quick motion across the chessboard because I AM the endgame.” As cousin Lucy (the once matriarch of my big, fat Italian family) once said, “they’re bad people. I never did like them.” She was pissed at my father as well, for his past actions. My father and I had a mutual disownment of one another over these last few years, and I’m okay with that.

His cancer came back with a vengeance, just like I knew it would. Leukemia , very fast-moving and aggressive. It’s been two weeks to the day that I found out about this and they moved him to Hospice. Akhi called him and talked to him even though our father couldn’t talk back, but he never got the chance to go see him due to work. Our older sister flew out from Chicago and spent every day visiting him before leaving this morning. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m the only one who made no contact with him in this last two weeks of his life. I’ll not regret it. He should know how I feel about him by now. And he should know that I forgave him a long time ago, that I let go of the anger in order to heal myself 13 years ago. I had to. Anger eats away at your soul until you become a bitter person no one wants to go near. Yes, I do have a couple of relatives like that, and no, I don’t consider Unca T one of them. I’ll not write my father’s atrocities in this post, but Unca T has them posted on his blog, if you’re so inclined.

I cried for about two minutes this morning and blew my nose twice. I’m done. He doesn’t deserve my tears anymore.

Now, I have to check on my grandmother because if there’s one thing I do know for certain, it’s that a parent should never outlive their child. She must be hurting right now, and that hurts me more than losing my father.

Thanks for sticking around to hear my story. It probably wasn’t what you expected unless you know me personally and are aware of my relationship with my father.

Several months ago, I vowed I wouldn’t write a post about “friends” for reasons that shall remain as silent as I’ve been about the whole situation. Don’t ask. Regardless, I’m here to talk about friendship today because I just talked to my BFF Cyn – a woman I’ve known for nearly 20 years and one of the strongest women I know in the world. Seriously.

Cyn calls me out of the blue now and then, and always at the perfect time – when I need a “pep talk,” as she put it. We share a connection so deep that she knows when I need her, to hear her voice, to ground me back to reality, and to pull my ass out of the well, if needed. We haven’t talked in probably a year or more. Today, her phone call was just what I needed and have for some time. She has this ability to take all of my huge problems and make them look insignificant, which is exactly what they are in the grand scheme of things. And for whatever reason, she’s the only one I hear most of the time. I have many names for Cyn: she is my soul sister, my Sanity, my best. She is what I consider a True Friend, and those, my friends, are hard to find. I’ve been lucky enough to have several True Friends in my life. Before I go into naming those wonderful folks, let me explain what a True Friend is to me:

A True Friend is someone who accepts you unconditionally as you are with no expectations of what you might be. They love you, flaws and all, and your friendship will never be destroyed by petty bullshit or any bullshit, for that matter, to include the bullshitter. They stand by you through thick and thin, even when you don’t trust their words, whether you know it or not. And they never lie to you.

That last one is very important to me. I have a hard enough time lying at all, so if I consider you a True Friend and I tell you something important, something you need to hear, you can bet everything you own that I’m not lying. I don’t lie to my friends … EVER. Not when the cost is the friendship. I barely lie to strangers. I do NOT have a poker face. And the following people I’m about to name have never once lied to me, betrayed me, etc.

I can name five women in my life, who have all been in my life for some time now, who would never hold me to unobtainable expectations or bring drama and petty bullshit into our relationship. I’d like to show you my girlfriends, my sisters, the women whom I’m proud to call friends and who will be with me for a long damn time. I’ve already proven that with Cyn (almost 19 years) and Mishko (over 24 years). They’ll stick around because these women have beautiful souls, and they are all my soul sisters.

• Cyn, of course, being the first, and I’ve already explained our relationship. Can you believe the bitch is a year and a half older than me? LOL This pic is about a year old, maybe less.

• Mishko, whom I’ve known since my 17th birthday and who just got married recently. We talk once or twice a year, but it never matters. We pick up wherever we left off. She’s a year younger than me.

• Deni, whom I’ve known for about 10 years and who calls me at least once a week to check on me or to vent or to cry or let me cry. This is Deni …
  
  
  Okay, okay, THIS is really Deni. She’s not a zombie. Honest, but if she becomes one, I’ll shoot her because I love her that much. She’s a few years younger than me.
  

• Sharon, my partner in crime … er, the ‘zine, and whom I’ve known for the last four years after meeting on a writing site, and we’ve never met in person and have only talked ONCE on the phone. LOL I trust Sharon’s word over most and will always stand by her when the shit hits the fan, regardless of who started it. I know her Celtic temper quite well now. Y’all should learn it. Why? Because as William Congreve wrote in “The Mourning Bride,” “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” This is Sharon and one of my favorite pictures of her. She’s a few years older than me.
  
  

• Kitty, whom I met on Twitter through her sister CJ Redwine a year and a half ago and who is now my roommate and long lost sister. That quote can apply to her too. Watch out! And this is Kitty, the baby of the group, as she’s over 7 years younger than me.
  
  

Each of these women share many things: I can pick up the phone after not speaking to them for however long it’s been and we’ll pick up right where we left off (that does include Sharon); they will never compete with me in anything (that’s a girl thing that I just can’t get used to) because they are like me and not really girlie-girls; they won’t knock me down when I’m trying to get back up and stand on my own two feet again, but instead, they’ll hold out their hand with a smile and a nod and actually take my hand rather than pretend and end up slapping it away. Why? Because that’s what friends do! That’s what sisters do! And it’s reciprocated.

My girls are all ages, sizes, backgrounds, etc. Why? Because I look at a person’s soul, not their exterior, not their beliefs, none of those things. And these five beauties do the same, which is why we’re friends.

Take a good close look at your friends, and remember, friends listen as well as talk. If they don’t want to listen to you, they aren’t really much of a friend, are they? I call those fair-weather friends. The ones who interrupt you to talk about themselves. It’s really quite sad, actually, but I don’t bother with those kind of friends anymore. If anything, they’re merely acquaintances.

And I try really hard to shut up and listen, rather than talk about myself. Most of the time, I’m pretty good at it. =)

“My Family, My Life.”

Quote: “If you’re going through Hell, keep going.” ~ Winston Churchill

This past Sunday, I drove up to Tempe to pick up Umi after dropping Kitty off at the airport here in Tucson. Umi came down here to stay with me for the week, just in case I needed to go to the ER again, so I wouldn’t have to go through this all alone. While I was in Tempe, I stopped by my grandmother’s house to visit her and my aunt. I had a nice talk and visit with both of them for a while (whereupon I hijacked seasons 3 through 6 of Xena), and then Umi and I were off to visit Akhi, who lives in Mesa. All in all, I’m glad I did it, regardless of how much pain it caused me the next day. That would be because my stupid brother lives on the third floor of his apartment building.

Anyway …

Funny thing about family, they give you strength when you least expect it, rather than drive you mad as usual. Then again, this isn’t the part of my family that has ever drove me to the brink of insanity. I disowned those idiots. I realized two days ago, as I’ve been getting stronger each day this week (save for the quick illness Tuesday), that that short visit with my family and having my mom here with me in Tucson this week has given me strength to heal, to move forward, to fight past that which ails me.

I feel stronger than I have in weeks.


I’m not saying that Kitty couldn’t or can’t do the same for me. She was here through the worst of my pain and took care of me, just as I took care of her through the Gallbladder of Doom when I first moved down here. I consider her family; a sister. But as I said on Twitter one particularly bad day, I wanted my mom. It doesn’t matter that I’m 41 years old. Sometimes, you just need your mom. I know she won’t be around forever, so I’m taking advantage of that now. As much as my mother has taught me in life and not taught me; as much as she has enabled me to not care or to quit at times, when I am strong, my mom is strong … and when my mom is strong, I am strong. These past few days has shown me not the woman who enabled me last year through my Hell, but the woman who has mystified people with her strength to quit drinking a few years ago without a program, without help of any sort. THAT is where my strength comes from; inside her, through my ancestry. Though I went through 30+ years of watching her kill herself slowly and teaching me that it was okay to quit, the woman before me now bears a strength I’ve not yet seen, and I’m proud to call her Mother. She has endured more years of Hell than I could possibly fathom, and yet, she’s still here, laughing, smiling, cracking jokes that I just have to tweet. She obviously wasn’t always like this. The woman I put before the world on Twitter to entertain all of you is not the woman I grew up with, but she is the true person my mother has always been, locked up, hidden away for many years behind the alcohol. I’m glad and I’m lucky to have this chance to get to know the true person my mother is. And it has been through her that I have discovered my strength within. I come from a long line of fighters and strong people, most especially women.

The biggest part of this is knowing I’m not alone. My grandmother and uncle are having similar issues as me with the pinched nerve and such. My father and one older brother, both of whom I’ve disowned, have back problems too. It makes me wonder if what we’re all so similarly going through is hereditary. And every one of us is on some sort of pain killer. I don’t like drugs, prescription or not. Before my money ran out last year, I was going to the gym and that helped more than any drug. I’d like to get to that place again, where activity takes the place of pain killers, where my mind is alert and not in a drug-induced fog. Where the pain has subsided because I’m taking care of my body. It may take a while, but I’ll get there.

Until then, I’ll keep looking to the strength within me and borrow the strength from my family and ancestors because they are my life, and without them, I wouldn’t be here today. I mean, c’mon, where do you think this Roman nose came from anyway? Although I borrowed Vin Diesel for a bit in my mind, I don’t need a man to be my rock. Part of my family comes from a land where Amazons once existed. Camilla, a warrior in Roman mythology, stood strong, as shall I. I will get there, and when I do, watch out world – this ain’t no Queen Bitch here. I’m the mother fuckin’ Goddess. And I’m my own goddamn rock.

Peace.