My life has been a wreck off and on my whole life. I’ve spent time as an alcoholic, a social reject, a drug abuser, and a mean person. I used to think the mean stage of my life was the reason life was punishing me, then I realized one day maybe I was punishing myself.
I now have a husband and a young son. My husband was diagnosed as a schizophrenic two weeks after I found out I was pregnant, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t go in the bathroom, look in the mirror, and blame myself. I accepted the facts and we are doing just fine five years later. Sometimes it isn’t a bad thing for things to be hectic, crazy, or a mess. I’m okay when everything is not okay.
In one year I will be a commissioned officer in the US Army. It frightens me and drives me that people will trust me with their lives, the well-being of their families, and the safety of our future will be placed on my shoulders. I am worried that I won’t be able to bring everyone home and that some daughter or son will have to grow up without their father or mother. The stress has led me to drink and I am worried that I may become an alcoholic. I hope that I can live up to all the expectations that have been placed on me and that I can be a role model for others.
My name is Tali. I am 21. A recently discovered gay woman. What I have been working on recently is not knowing things. I realize that inherently fucks with this project and for that I am sorry. I have spent my life thinking I had myself and the world all figured out. I don’t. For the first time in my life I can say that I feel emotional and personal growth. No intellectual bullshit. Real fucking emotion. The type that you have to lay in bed, cry on the street corner, and fuck random people to process. The type that oozes from your conscience, subconscious, and heart all at the same time. My name is Tali I just broke up with my first love and for the first time in a long time, I feel like a raw, real human being should. Open-ended, beautiful, unknowing, and entranced by the delicious ambiguity of NOT KNOWING.
My life is blessed… I’ve got three great kids. I’m getting back into my art (Musician) and having clarity and a spiritual connection has literally saved me from the abyss from which I was in for years. I was a professional musician that became a stock broker and literally had everything you could want in terms of a life. One thing I didn’t have was a connection to something and I was a total alcoholic. Didn’t even know it. Thought everyone drank until they got drunk and avoid life everyday. Anyway, wife divorced me, lost my job and became homeless (does this sound like a Country song, haha)… Long story short, went into rehab, got sober, got connected again and life is fantastic! I’m the Dad and guy I always knew I was but could never be. So, people… there is ALWAYS hope and help, just reach out for it. Life is more beautiful than I ever imagined! Peace!
I’m very seriously afraid that I am turning into my mother. I avoid binge drinking—or heavy drinking of any kind because I know I have an addictive personality and my mom is an alcoholic. Though studies have implied that sexual orientation may be a genetically inherited trait, I identify as a straight female but my mother is bi. I am not, nor have I ever been attracted to any sort of fiber artistry; my mother used to be known as Spiderwoman per her exceptional skills with turning fresh sheared wool into a multicolored sweater and hand processing every step of the endeavor. But it’s not becoming a lesbian who knits her own beer cozies that is weighing on my mind. It’s the fact that, just recently (like earlier today), I’m pretty sure in addition to her nose, my mom gave me a handful of the grab bag of mental disorders she possesses. Serious anxiety issues, to be specific. I am fully aware that substance abuse since the age of thirteen may have antagonized her problems to a degree I vow to never achieve, though when I bawled for a good two hours this afternoon, I truly shudder at my “full potential.” I have a solid job in this 2009 Michigan economy, a family that loves me dearly, a best friend who is most accurately described by that Aristotle quote (something like): “a true friend is one soul inhabiting two bodies,” and a boyfriend who I’m pretty sure I have fallen in love for real with (don’t tell him yet, I don’t want to jinx anything). But lately I’ve been wrecked with the kind of troubles and grief that remain inexplicable by any outside variables which only leaves me and my insides. My insides which are a combination of my mother and my father. My dad is damn sane. It’s gotta be the maternal factor. This possible decent into madness terrifies me to the max. I feel strange and somehow hypocritical about seeking medication—I just want to break it down and work it out myself. Hypocritical in the sense that medicine and all studies related, I feel, are going too far and Darwin must be spinning in his grave and I have a brilliant idea about a comic where he comes back (not in a zombie way) and, well, maybe you’ll read it some day. ANYWAY, I think I’m running out of steam. I guess I just needed to get some shit off my chest. Still freaked out but definitely more calm. Later Days!
I’m 19 years old and wonder why it is I keep going on each day…
I look back at my life and just see a long road of nothing.
Already in my life I’ve watched friends die, and love ones leave, I had my childhood stolen by someone I thought I could trust when I was 7, lived through my dads alcoholism just to watch my brother fall into his place, fell in love with a boy just to watch him leave me standing alone.
But I look at my mother, so strong and so powerful, who overcame abuse and raised two kids on her own at my age and who still fights everyday… I feel like I owe it to her. To my mother… to keep holding on.
I love her.