options

...Options, I absolutely HATE options. I hate that you can go to a store and there's a hundred different paint swatches to sift threw, or fifty different brands of the same cereal. You go to the diner and there's a million different ways you can have your eggs cook, and even when your in the car you can drive ATLEAST two different ways to get to the same exact place. To " normal " people, options are incredible. It gives them a chance to try a bunch of new things. Although, to a runner, this is horrific. What do you mean I have the world at my finger tips? Your saying that I can choose something, and if it wasn't necessarily what I had anticipated I can simply discard of it, and choose something else instead?? Knowing this was a huge red flag especially as a small child. Out with the old and in with the new.We didn't have a lot growing up. Nothing we had really held any value. So when the couch acquired a burn mark the size of a grapefruit, eghh we'll get rid of it and trash pick a new one. Things changed constantly at our home. A new nic nac or another 1970's computer a friend of a friend of a friend gave to my mother. We didn't hang on to too much, it goes without saying. As the years drug on I made my own interpretation of what it meant to purge. If I had it, you were welcome to it. The shirt off my back SUREEE, I can always get another. This seemed like a very selfless quality, until I started to discard of human beings that is. I'm not positive at which point it was when I started associating love with objects instead of people. I'd have pebbles that I found that I'd love more then most of the people I knew. These rocks were rare...one of a kind. People were stereotypical. You meet one asshole...you've met them all i'm sad to say. I could thumb threw men the way people flip threw the pages of the sunday newspaper. I'd capture a glimpse of everything they were and then build myself an emotional wall as to only get as close as I could to the parts that I could run from, and then ignore all the rest. It's sickening to think about, but I loved these people. I just hated myself. I hated that I knew I was pretty, even though I never personally thought too much of myself. If you asked me i'd tell you I don't even know what it is that these people see. I hated that I needed to collect tiny pieces of them in order to feed my growing ego. Not ever considering the toll I was taking on the ones I loved more then anything in the world. It never occurred to me that the best way to love them was probably to give them those tiny pieces of ME in return. I need to always remind myself that those people love differently then I do, my heart was only able to feel in one direction. I could spill out every feeling that I had, but I could never accept them...I never learned how to be that vulnerable. As long as they were loved that made me feel like a super hero. Swooping down, and then slowly fading away...I'd let them suck me dry, but in those moments i'd never felt so whole. They needed me, and I needed that.

let me count the ways...

They say that as soon as your born, you start dying. They say that your biological clock starts ticking the moment you take your first breath.This must be what that feels like. I want to feel every minute of this pain, this pain that they call living. Every day I want to feel my heart beat once less then it did the day before. After all, every feeling is worth feeling..right? How do I feel the sorrow. let me count the ways..The pain, it comes in waves. Its seen in my expressions. The way I nervously gaze around the room because it pains me to look you in the eyes, the way I always have something witty  to say so I can break the awkward tension. I can cry pure tears on command, pent up frustration strangles me..it easily bleeds through my brittle skin and dry eyes. I fidget in my seat like a 4th grader on a field trip, but you swear to god i'm incredible. I die inside every time I see your smile, knowing that I could never love you the way I needed to. A sick person I am,  embodying my sins mind, body and soul. My own reflection can make my skin crawl, even on the best of days. I see a battered woman, and woman who has lived her life suffering at the expense of others. A woman with hands worn like shoe leather, and a heart torn to shreds, of half hearted love notes, and valentines cards that had gone unread. She views her life through technicolor rainbows, and periods of  freezing rain. Wondering what those shades of grey keep covered...She knows she's dying, the sickness has lived in her for years. "It is always darkest right before the dawn", she'd read in a book one time. Her happy place soon became a prison for her thoughts, and a bunker for her alibi. Hold your breath sammy, can you feel the pressure. Her world becomes COMPLETE darkness, and she whispers, I am HOME.

just as free as we'll ever be....

Who said life would be easy? who said it was all gonna be worth it in the end?? why do we spend our time waitin' on the world to change? and not taking it upon ourselves to change the world?? There are years and years of unanswered questions. Hate crimes, gender crimes...race crimes. why? Do we not all bleed red, do we all not cry when we get hurt, and smile out of joy? Jealousy between young girls about whose prettier, skinnier, more developed.... high school girls killing themselves because they can't live up to the standard that society has created for them...We should be disgusted. Hating people for who they choose to love. Banning gay marriage as if they don't love the same way straight people do. Well ya know what, they don't love the same way...they love BETTER. They are more accepting and patient then we will ever be. We as human beings take our lives for granted. We mock the sun for not being the moon, the land for not being the sea. Why is it that we can't accept things for what they are? Why must we ruin the purity of everything, is it because we are so damaged that we've taken to using that as a coping method?? Instead of pin pointing each others faults, realize that we have faults of our own, and we are better then no man. I guess, as sad as it sounds that this is as free as we'll ever be...politically caged like animals...emotionally jailed for mental and physical battery...sad

take it easy

Today was one of the very few days i've slept in in my whole life. I was always the kid that would be wide awake as soon as the sun shown threw the windows, i'd tip toe into the living room to see if the beast was still asleep on the couch, and pray that I could leave for school undetected. I knew at a very young age that it was always going to be my own responsibility to wake myself up, eat something....if there was anything to eat, double check my own homework and leave the house. I knew that nothing would ever get done...on time...the right way...if I didn't take it upon myself to do it. There have been mornings i've woken up to swedish fish trailing our home, in my moms last stitch effort to rummage the house for a snack at 4 am. There have been nights where I had been woken up by screaming, or police officers hovering over my bed, or my mother clumsily trying to ram sack my drawers for an outfit she could wear the next day. The days were long, but the nights were longer. Sleep was my enemy, i'd fight it, id fight the urge to doze off for the shear fact of the terror that would be in store for me. If I didn't sleep then I could see all these things coming before I was startled out of a rem sleep coma, and nearly given a heart attack. In my adult life i've grown to be the same way. I no longer stay up at night waiting to be ambushed, but my sleep is interrupted with visions of killer electric bills, and the repo man coming for all my worldly possessions. I still rise with the sun on most days, whether I choose to lie around in bed or get motivated I spend alot of time gazing out of my bedroom window in those early hours and thanking god that i'm alive. " waiting for daylight, prayin for that mornin sun...so I can pretend my whole life ain't goin wrong.." I still get up every day, in my own home now, and detail the house before I have my coffee. Relentlessly wiping down the counters in my kitchen horrifically picturing the grape flavored jelly that used to covered the cabinets as a child. Digging threw my freezer for old food still searching for my mothers frozen solid morphine patches that she'd store for later. I'm glad that I have been bread to do those things, the compulsion keeps me on track. The routine is comforting, it always has been. I slept in today, a littleeee longer then i'd like to admit, but my body needed it. I run on fumes most days, and most days turns into most weeks until i crash completely...today was that day. I sucked in every last ounce of rest I could get before jumping out of bed with a smile ready to burn threw the day. I need to learn to slow it down. The counters will still need wiping in an hour, and my rabbit will not, despite my psychotic  thoughts, eat threw her cage and come attack me for not getting up soon enough to feed her. I enjoyed this morning very much. I don't know when my conscious will let me sleep this long again...but until next time....TAKE IT EASY!

try

I"m sitting on my couch dabbling on my facebook, and I see a post that says "mistakes mean your trying"...wow. I feel like i'm always trying, trying to be a better woman, trying to be better then I was yesterday. One upping myself whenever possible. I am my worst critic, and my own biggest fan on most days. I can look in the mirror and admire myself as a woman, and absolutely hate myself as a human being. There are days I get dressed in my ribbons and pearls, although my reflection shows my scars, the blackness that runs threw my veins, skin on bone. Ripping myself apart for not being a better worker, friend, lover, partner...the list a mile long. Hating yourself for the extent of your life for being as needy as you are, as terrified or for how you absolutely go mad when you have to spend any time alone with yourself. Cursing every decision you've made because it was under false pretenses or lust filled delirium. Trying to make the next right move, always conscious to keep your side of the street clean. What if we all stopped trying so hard? What if everyone just went with the flow for a little while, would it be all that bad?? Human nature is to surpass the next guy. We learn as children to form clicks, and out number the enemy on the playground. We get worse with age. The problems grow increasingly more difficult, and the force behind the blows is generated by years of abuse. What if we all beat up ourselves a little less? Before committing suicide, really thinking who it hurts?ourselves?? I've waited my whole life to die, instead of "trying" to enjoy the moment. I tried convincing myself that the world was better with out me, all the while the world was better because I was in it. "Everyone has a purpose", that phrase makes up the entire circle of life. You live until god feels you've fulfilled your duties on earth. There is a sadness in knowing that death awaits you one day, but a joy in understanding that when that day comes you've done everything you needed to. Death changes people. It awakes something in your soul. There is something about witnessing lifelessness that makes you feel alive. You start trying hard, living moment to moment, appreciating what life you have left. Its beautiful. The vulnerability it releases between individuals is powerful. People walk a little lighter, smile bigger. Make it your lifes goal to always say hello to someone you pass on the road.... take a little longer to chew a good steak, and TRY to the fullest and most important tense of the word to live a little bit sweeter. Even when you fail, you will know that its ok because mistakes mean your living, and living means you let go of what you can't handle, and surround yourself with what really matters. Today is your day

gods will

This soul searching quest i've been on is more exhausting then I had anticipated. There's a reason I chose to put this on the back burner for as long as I did. As I learn and grow i've been told many times that my life isn't on my time, it is not my will to enforce how I feel or what I think is best for me. The world runs on gods time, it is his will and not my own that projects what it is I need to be doing. There are times when I choose to trust him because the situation is far out of my hands, I trust him because I know that his decision will never fail me regardless if it is one I agree with or not. There are also times that I test his will. Imposing my own guidelines, and regulations. There are times I get ahead of myself, I think that I don't have to wait for him to guide me...I will just as well go off on my own and find the answer. Although, This always lands me in the same place. I am back down on my knees because it is the last place left to fall, and I pray. I pray that he will forgive me for rebelling and allow me to start fresh. God is always willing, a good friend once told me that, and knowing that has changed my life. I have reacted lately out of sadness, anger and even loneliness. Since I was a child I could never stand to be alone, if I was the last person left on earth I wouldn't even hang out with me. I saw no need for "me" time, no one wanted to deal with me...I wanted to set out on my next journey to cure someone else. Today I have "me" time. I have time when I reflect on the decisions i've made, and I feel the pain of that. It hurts....who knew? but I like it. It makes me feel alive. I am grateful for that. The pages of my notebooks are now filled with gratitude. Do not get me wrong my " give it up to god" list still stretches a mile high, but today my faith is strong...and that is whats important.

oh the places you'll go...

Yesterday was life changing. I never in my entire life ever thought I would experience such a moving moment. I don't know if I have mentioned this in my blog previously, but my father had left when I was just a little girl. This is  hard to talk about sometimes, but if I want my message to reach someone out there then I have to be honest with my story whether that pains me or not so here it goes...I remember my dad up until a point i'd say I was probably 3-5 roughly I could describe what he looked like, how his voice sounded, but as I grew apart from him I could remember less and less. Growing up I heard a bunch of stories, especially from my mother. You'd think that when people seperate they talk trash on the other parent and yada yada, but my mother never spoke a poor word about my father, and for that I have a great respect for her. She said he was a good man sammy he just didn't know how to be a dad then. I didn't understand when I was little...I couldn't imagine someone could leave their child with the beast, but as I aged I realized that he couldn't save us...that wasn't his job. I'd stay up at night and wonder how my life would've turned out if he had raised me instead or if I had both of them, but after all that has happened I wouldn't change a single thing. I wouldn't trade a single day for a hundred years the other way. The pain has made me strong. Its been a long time since i've really thought about my dad. After almost a quarter of my life passing by I kind of chocked it up as a loss. I didn't know any different so it was hard to miss someone you barely knew. Now that i've made it to adulthood I can see life for what it's really worth. I myself has grown into quite the runner. I questioned why he ran, why he didn't stay or call or any of the millions of questions kids ask themselves. I was mad, but I find it easier to let go now that I share that same quality with him. Maybe he ran because he was scared, maybe he wanted to save us both and just wasn't strong enough...or maybe he " just had to go" a phrase I have used far too often in my own life. Yesterday has opened up a door to finally knowing the answers to those tough questions. I was on my fb and checked the others category of my inbox message to find a year old message from a mister you know who. Needless to say I almost fainted. My mom had said to me a million times " do you ever wanna reach out to your dad sammy?" and I never quite had an answer, I was so emotionally strained then that I couldn't have appreciated it for what it was worth. She said that he is the same way, and I may have to take one for the team and make the first move. The sound of that made me cringe considering ive been QUITE the team player, the team captain one might say, and i'd hoped that he would step up...and he did! I received the message a year late, but even one year ago it wouldn't have meant as much to me as it does now. After an exchange of messages and voicemails I heard his voice for the first time in 20 years...it sent chills down my spine. I laughed, I cried, I felt numbness and uncontrollable fascination at the same time. It was life changing. He has lived down south for many many years now so seeing him has been impossible until now. What are the odds that the day I call him hes in the area for the weekend, and I get to meet him all over again. Im so excited to see what he looks like, even last night on the phone I can tell hes my dad...the way he talked the things he said. Hes the other half of me. my blood ruins in his veins. I dont know who this post will touch, but for anyone who has been without one of their parents this is life altering. It completes you....You can't run from where you come from....this i'm learning everyday.

confident

I feel confident today. I wear my smile as a suit of armor. I bat my bright green eyes at the world, and take them by storm...most days that is. Some days I feel lower then dirt so I thank god for days like this. I picked up a second job to help get myself out of the hole I am in, and today was my first full day alone. I don't want to say my coworkers aren't friendly, but lets just say there not out for your success....Needless to say I had to think on my feet. This is where i'm thankful for my people skills. As long as you can stay positive you can talk yourself, and mainly anyone else off the ledge as well. One of the other servers I work with is an older woman named Ruby, I guess you'd say shes the b i t c h of the group, but we've taken to one another quite nicely...you know what they say about birds of a feather haha I think the others are a little intimidated. I know what I know and I don't take crap from anyone, if anything i'd think they'd rather work with someone down to earth, but...not so much. I was also bustin out some spanish to the kitchen staff that they gruffed at as well. Today was a do or die kind of day, or like i've mentioned before eat or be eaten.  I'm proud that I have the skills I do. Im glad I had all those crazy jobs growin up where I learned patience and management skills. People are ignorant because they don't know better themselves. Hard work never goes unnoticed even if it takes far too long to get noticed. The greatest reward comes to you at the end of your life...when all is said and done I want to stand before god and say with a clear conscience and a whole heart that I couldn't have done anything better.

blessings

I've been writing this blog at a seemingly depressing time in my life, but today I want to step outside of myself  and count my blessings. My mind has been so wrapped up in whats wrong in my life, and not enough of whats right. Harping on bad break ups, unpaid bills, my lack of sleep and starvation. From experience I know that what doesn't kill you indeed makes you stronger, and knowing that alone has gotten me through. I have some of the most incredible people in my life today, some amazing opportunities for me to better myself and I would be a foolish woman not to acknowledge that. I have 2 jobs, sure they drive me nuts and some days its not as easy as I hope, but I have to remember that people struggle to find one job and I was blessed to find 2. I have stacks of bills that I can't even look at sometimes for fear of crying, but they are bills that have accrued because I am lucky enough to own my own home at 23. I drive a nice car, I may not have much but I have worked hard to have the things I do. With that being said the bills seem worth it almost. I have an incredible roommate who I am not only blessed to have the financial support, but to have such an amazing person to stand beside me threw my mess that I call a life right now. Also my girlfriends you all know who you are if your reading this. We have fallen apart, we have grown together, and for the rest of my life I will carry us threw the best way I can. We were and still are just a couple of kids trying to save each other....FINALLY I see it in color...and as hard as it is the reality of that is beautiful. I am wise beyond my years, aged to not quite perfection, but I am better then I used to be and that's a blessing in itself. The moral of my story today is remember the little things, remember why your here and where your going. The troubles are just road blocks god puts down to test you. My heart is strong and so is my will....by all means...LET IT RAIN

broken

 Today was such a profound wake up call that I desperately needed. For this first time I can look back on my life and say whole heartedly  that I absolutely messed everything up. I came out of the whom backwards (literally I was breech), but man did I take ass backwards to a whole new level once I emerged. I'm a good person, I pray, I always go into everything I do with the best of intentions although my running instinct always kicks in. Your a lover, I'm a runner....we'll go round and round. I prided myself on a quote i'd heard once " always leave them better then when you found them". This pertains to people in general, my relationship partners especially.  To me that always meant that they would be wiser, or happier or atleast held themselves at a higher regard after I was done. I convinced myself for 23 of my 24 years of life that I was a super hero, and I would've done anything and everything I had to to uphold that role, including hurting myself. I have been my own last priority for as long as I can remember, my life  held very little value. I had prepared for death since the very day I was born. My mother wasn't supposed to be able to have children so the fact that i'm here at all is a miracle within itself. Knowing that I decided to live each day as if it were a gift. Sometimes that gift wouldn't be a gift at all. More like a punishment. If I was lucky enough to survive it then my reward was to live another day, but sometimes that gift was a new friend, or a 10 dollar check my grandfather sent me to buy shampoo and toilet paper for the house. God knows no one else would put out the money for it. I was selfless, I still am, and that has ruined me. I am the strongest woman I know, and in the same breath I can say that I break just like a little girl. Somewhere there's a miracle in that too.

exhausted

Its hard to say if its the weather or just a combination of the way i'm feeling, but I woke up today absolutely exhausted. An oh too familiar feeling i'm sad to say. I feel like I sleep, but i'm not dreaming, I lay down although my body is not at rest. Irony plays a humongous role in the past 24 years of my existence. For instance, I KNEW to run before I had ever even learned to walk. I don't mean the kind of running where your kicking around a soccer ball with your friends, or running to keep up with the crowd. I mean bolting threw life constantly defying the odds of time. Running out of fear, vulnerability, confusion. Rushing into relationships, rushing out of them, making hasty decisions because the pain of taking the time to think it threw is too unbearable. I've lived fast, but for that I know I will die slowly. The world is funny that way...race to the end only to find a wall, a wall you have built yourself over the course of life, that by the time you reach it you have not an ounce of strength to stand beside it let alone take the journey over it. Let me clear some of this up for you.. from the time I can remember I was taught to be a survivor, to eat or be eaten.. Everyday was a war between the beast a.k.a. my mother and myself. We didn't LIVE in my house, we battled to stay alive. Who was gonna eat the last can of corn in the cabinet or who was gonna take their turn being locked out of the house. Atleast I was handy with a butter knife. To this very day I can break into almost anything....THANKS MOM that's one for the resume. I was taught to believe make believe, that what I saw was never what it was. Your mommy is sick sammy...she doesn't mean it. The jelly covered counters, and burn holes in the carpet definaetly spelled out the FLU. I was young but far from stupid. So of course I tried to hurtle my way threw that sector of my life. leaving for school an hour early only to hopefully sit quietly alone in the rain on the bus stop, I was cold...but it was safe. Id beg my friends to stay over or if  I could escape to there house just to sleep threw the night. Those days were long, but some how these days feel longer.....

        until tomorrow....

this is me

hello all,
 My name is Samantha, and thanks to my adoring friends I am now a riveting blogger. haha. This actually all came about at a pretty dire time in my life so I am thankful to be able to have this outlet. I will apologize in advance for most of my posts being sad, but I find that in my weaker moments I do my best work. Hopefully someone will come along and read these one day and it will change there lives, because these experiences have forever changed mine. For starters I have a wicked case of attention deficit disorder, so reading my mental and emotional roller coaster ride threw life may be a bit confusing,but please bare with me. I was raised in a pretty unorthodox setting. No father, a grandmother who played both mom, dad, supporter, disciplinarian, and so much more. all the while My mother: a blue eyed, thick skinned, opiate dependent woman minoring in parenting, and majoring in full blown paranoia had the run of the show. So needless to say god didn't make it too easy for me. Also let me put it out there that I am very spiritual. I am open to every different religions takes on life, and culture even though I prefer to follow my own path. I believe in the will that lives within myself. That may sound a little crazy, but as a child convincing myself that I had some soul searching to do was much easier then thinking no one cared enough to relinquish  my unanswered prayers. I was lost...I am STILL lost, but I have made it my lifes goal to find a little peice of who I am in everyone I meet. I'm  an avid collector of people one might say. My friends are amazing examples, there is a sliver of all of them that live in me. My mom had brought home a paper from one of her many trips to rehab that spoke of 2 men. One was an old deteriorating man with a heart that was beaten and torn practically to shreds, and the other was a man with a whole crimson perfect beating heart. The whole hearted man boasted how he had the most beautiful heart in all the world, but in the midst of his public display a young girl approached the elderly man watching in the crowd, and declared that HE indeed had the most beautiful heart. The old man chuckled and said theres nothing left of this tattered muscle however could you think that. She assures him that the emptiness is what makes it beautiful. The fact that over the course of his life he has  given so much of himself away, and never took anything back to fill the holes. The beauty lies within the people whose lives hes changed with his selfless ways. I have never forgotten that...and that has kicked off the theme of what my blog will not only represent for me as a person, but for every one who sees this. I hope you stay tuned