Too Much, Not Enough

Let me tell you what it’s like to be too much and not enough. 

1983 - Gardena, CA

I was born September 9, 1981 in Santa Monica California. 9.9.81. I like to brag that I grew up in the fledgling stages of Punk Rock and Hip Hop in Los Angeles and New Mexico. Beyond that my mom had a great, adamant love of music, and my grandparents had old-timey records, and their jazz standards paved the way for my early years spent singing in an Italian restaurant and later at weddings with my bluesy dude, step-dad playing guitar, just for fun.

My parents are both recovering alcoholics, and my upbringing was loud and volatile and full of chaos and calamity. Thus I learned to read the mood of a room early on, and the meaning in what people say and don’t say and how they say it. It's survival basically, learning to “read between the lines.” 

In this environment sharpness and wit are necessary skills, learning to make light of heavy situations with dark humor because life just be like that and we’re all basically doing our best. And if you don’t laugh about it you’ll die. That’s what it's like growing up with murderers and felons and homeless and junkies and superstars and athletes and cops and astronauts as your “aunties and uncles,” from all walks of life and all ethnicities, through the spirituality of AA. Meanwhile under the iron first of Catholicism (thanks 10 years Catholic School, way to make me HATE organized religion and all spiritual things man-made).

Then you have me – the oldest, loudest and most energetic. I’m the one trying to corral the family for dinner every night, and plan family trips, organize parties, and facilitate connection. I’m the one hosting slumber parties where the moment the parents are in bed, we’re bouncing on the trampoline in front of the TV drinking "Ultra Slim Fast,"chocolate shakes and watching Ghost Busters and Pee Wee.

I’m the one turning up the radio full blast when the family fights get particularly vicious to redirect the attention towards me, and diffuse the argument by way of distraction.

I’m the one who will convince you to ride grammas rescue horse Poquita, and then spank her to make her buck you off (and to make you hold on) after we feed the horse stolen sugar cubes and hotdogs, after braiding her hair and fashioning a She-rah sword on her head like a unicorn.

I’m also the one who will show you where we can sneak grampa's candy from after we get spanked and put into time-out for riding the old gimp horse. 

I’m the one who will talk back to the cops when we get arrested in an arroyo for underage day drinking with those 40’s we scored, and then announce to my mom, “you should be letting me drink, then at least you’d know what I was doing,” before falling down the steps into the splits.

You're the one who taught us to smoke stolen cigarettes and drink and then lie about it when we get caught, saying you just were "given a sprite and started to feel weird." And then you were grounded for hanging out with me.

You’re the one who excels from creative lying and maneuvering as your survival skill through all the chaos. I’m the one who gets busted for telling the truth because I’m like the chihuahua of the group – small and fierce. 

In short, I’m the one who gets told to tone it down, cut it out, be quiet and stop a lot and more than anything, I’m the one who has mostly been told that I’m bad, bad and wrong. Over and over. I actually changed the the way I talk from being constantly told to "lower my voice," as a kid, as diagnosed by a bougie Beverly Hills voice doctor when I damaged my vocal chords from speaking and singing lower than is apparently natural for me.

Now this all became the framework for what I thought I deserved from men as well – the bar was so low. I liked intelligence and creativity, but outright aggression and withholding approval were sort of normal because that’s what the women in my life modeled well: choosing emotionally unavailable men who were witty, whose attention we had to wrangle, and whose deep, misunderstood feelings caused them to be well, frequently cruel. 

It's taken me 44 years to unravel.

My first adult relationship was 3 years long with an overtly abusive partner, physically and verbally. Quiet and smart and with a beautiful smile, I always thought he was just introspective and mysterious. I also thought it was my fault for not understanding his pain. Very parallel my parent's relationship, and their parent's relationships. 

My second adult relationship was 9 years long with a very charismatic man who was a great dancer, an amazing date guy with sharp wit and incredible sense of humor. This was the man who taught me to activate my ideas, not just imagine them – a sharp departure from what was modeled for me growing up (the whole, activate the idea don't just dream it thing). 

A man who I would learn, 7 years in, was spending all our money on cocaine and prostitutes and gambling and various get rich quick business schemes, resulting in him letting our first home go into foreclosure while blaming me for being basically a lying ho. This explained all his disappearances that seemed so out of character, the drugs in the house, the women's underwear in my kids room (he said this was the neighbors from laundry day). 

It took me 3 years to leave that broken relationship after my mom suggested I first go to Al-Anon and “work on myself.” He spent the better part of that time literally on his knees crying for me to forgive him while he kept screwing some chick named “Honey Girl,” and introduced her to my kids while I was off island. Fun! 

When I left that marriage, I left with nothing. He said I hadn’t earned it and hired the most expensive and cutthroat attorney he could find. I doubled down on survival mode as a single mom, working full time for crap pay and high responsibility. I moved out of the house we bought together when we were 25, and into a beautiful, fully furnished plantation-style, single wall construction house in Hilo -- 3 bedroom, 1 bath with creaky, perfect old growth redwood floors and lots of natural light at $850 a month including utilities. He positioned that to my kids as me leaving them, after telling me our house wasn’t half mine because my name wasn’t on the deed. I was too young to know better.

Our joint bank statements kept coming my way – shopping sprees at banana republic, taking his girlfriend to Italy, professional tooth whitening, a trip to California to party with my family for my grandma's 80th birthday that I couldn’t afford to fly out to or take off work for. Them all holding each-other arm in arm to celebrate the Virgos. That photo in her later memorial slide sequence. Cool.

The narrative was that I had left him for another man (I hadn’t) and that he was a sad single father victim of my cruelty. Ok. My family either directly sided with him and told me so or stayed neutral for the benefit of "the kids." Thanks guys. 

My last relationship was 15 years with a good, stable, kind, gentle man. A Scorpio, INFP, big wave surfer, Hawaiian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese. A builder, an artist, smart and good at almost everything except loving me. No dates, no romance, no spontaneous joy, no real laughter,  no finishing projects, and just piles and piles and piles of construction materials in every available place, spilling out from under the house, filling the truck, filling the 20 ft container and the 10’x10’ pop up and in pockets all over the yard.

I begged, bartered and threatened, “I need peace in my space, I need a clear space to live and work, I need this shit put away some place, I need to have romance not just working our asses off alongside each other.”

After 15 years I finally got sick of hearing myself say the same thing over and over and called it quits. “Look I love you and I feel like I should adjust myself to love you where you’re at because you're a great dad and a good man, but I’d rather be alone than be married to someone basically a sibling. I need peace in my life.” Yeah that story is still unfolding and the narrative is that I’m crazy and a danger to myself and others and should not be allowed back on my land, or to see or speak to our daughter, or walk my dog, or visit the ducks. Ok then. My family again is either neutral or directly adversarial, telling me John is a good man and doing everything he can for our daughter. For real, real?

So this is the first time in my life I’ve been single and its awkward. Men are mostly afraid of me and I find it lackluster and underwhelming. It’s not cute. I’m done explaining myself. I won’t say something more than once without losing complete interest. And I’m not going to be quieter or sit down or calm down. What you see is what you get, and if you don’t like it, you know where to shove it. 

And I’m good with myself. My life is good. I’m good. Except all the fighting. That's a tiring waste of time.

Anyway I have a good sense of who I am and I’m not going to keep jocking for attention from people who can’t keep up with me or find me overstimulating. I’m quicker to say what I want and if my request is ignored I’m even quicker to cut things off.

I’m plucking people off my social media who watch me like a science project but won’t interact with me directly. Why have that kind of voyeuristic access to my life? Nope.

Done, karate chop over, moving on. Ain't nobody got time for that.

I’ve got plants to water, beef to squash, art to make. I’ve got crazy plans, life is short and any of us could die at any moment. Except now I’m not afraid to get hurt, I mean really hurt, or even killed. I’m not afraid to be assaulted or arrested or have my ass beat or be tackled by cops. I’m not afraid to be institutionalized, or fight to the death, or be fired or yelled at and told I’m wrong or be abandoned. It's already happened. I’m still standing, and the ones standing with me are the ones who know what’s up. They know who they are.

Sko den. Stoo dis. The clock is ticking. The powers at play are running this ship into the ground fast and hard. Grow some fucking nuts already and pour all the love and light you can out into the world in all directions, everywhere you can touch.

Do it now, while you still can.