|
And here it is, the story of the Queen of Rantsville.
So I was born and raised in the San Francisco bay area. I had an atypical dysfunctional family, but I did not know that until a few years ago when all the venom and hidden aggression exploded in an unseemly divorce that continues until this day. Fucking KILLS me to know how bad my family truly was, but it took years of therapy and self-admittance, literally YEARS, before I came to the discovery that it was not my fault. Dealing with things that affect a person in a roundabout way is harder to get over because it's not right in front of you, it's more off to the side in your peripheral vision and easier to miss.
I was normal in school, a bit of an underacheiver, actually, with constant reminders to apply myself from my teachers and authority figures. I took solace in my reading of books WAY above my grade level, devouring them as one would a tasty pizza. I wrote a lot, small stories that were in a way a precursor to my as-yet inactive fantasy life. I was only well liked until junior high, and then was branded a geek and lived out my days until graduation from high school with that particular stigma in the dark unpopulated hallways and libraries.
It bothered me, bothered me a LOT. In retrospect, it doesn't affect me in the slightest, because high school kids are just that: kids. Evil, devious, backstabbing, spawn-of-hell kids. And my friends were never really my friends, just passing aquaintances that cared no more for me than I did for, say, chocolate covered pickles. Yeck.
I had several boyfriends, but only one in my teen years that meant anything, and it turns out that in hindsight it was merely lust and never love at all. My MOTHER may have loved him, but I never did. He dumped me after a year and a half, on my eighteenth birthday, to hook up with some little 80 pound wench he worked with that he kept telling me was hitting on him. I suppose I should have taken the hint, but shit children, I was getting LAID. I was only one of the two people in our clique doing it, so I was cool. Whatever. Turned out, I was pregnant about two months after. I lost it, didn't tell him, and he married the wench. Not that I would have tried to stop him, I had other things to do. They've gotten a divorce last time I heard, so take heed, all prospective men friends of mine: fuck with me, karma will bitch slap you. Yeah.
I joined the US Navy in the summer of 1998, and shipped out on January 10th, 1999. My 'friends' looked at me as if I had gone bananas, and I haven't spoken to any of them since. We don't even acknowledge each other's presence on the planet. Pity.
I went to boot camp in eight feet of snow, then moved on to a technical school in Pensacola, Florida. I learned, I fell in love, and I got fucking pregnant. The last two are now things of a more painful past, but I have since moved on, as has the world. The Navy gave me a work ethic, and it introduced me to a whole new lifestyle. I was a drunken, partying fool. I met some nice people, made some permanent friends, but I saw the darker side, too. I was raped in my first few months at my first command in Whidbey Island, Washington, and I didn't tell anyone. A year later, after many trials and tribulations which I am not at liberty to discuss, I blew. TOTAL nervous breakdown that sent my superiors into a panic. I was immediately moved from my work station, sent into therapy, and put on drugs. So when a lot of people say 'my life didn't start until I joined the military', I can agree, but I would also say that is was not the life I wanted to lead. I made bad choices, REALLY bad choices, and to this day most of them I see when I close my eyes at night. Some of them I can't even remember.
I moved in with one of my better friends out into town my second year in, thereby making it even easier to screw myself into the ground, and stayed there for a year or so. In that time I ended up celebrating my 21st birthday by sleeping with a man who would complicate my life in such a way that I would never be the same, started writing darker and more terrible things about the wars waged for love and hate, and did some really stupid things with a guy heretofore known as Satan (you know who you are, prick). I ran into some problems when my roommate and friend of two- almost three- years informed me that she was a (term censored by said ex-roommate) and that her girlfriend was moving in with us on a permanent basis. (Tabitha, I know you're reading this, please don't take offense to my speeding up of the timeline. It's a crunch to write this all down.) I did fine for a while, but then my friend got pregnant, and pregnant (insert term here) is something I just can NOT hang with. It screws with my perceptions of sexual preference, you know?
I made a few more friends, made a few more HUGE mistakes, and ended up getting pregnant again. This time the father hung around long enough the tell me he was still legally married to his wife, and that his girlfriend didn't even know about me. Once again, I lost it, so the crisis was averted in the most painful way possible. So I moved out of there and into my present abode, with my best friend and her husband, and as of three months ago, their new baby girl. It's funny, because the (insert term here) now baby-sit for my roommates. I guess you just can't get rid of some people. Friends are like herpes: they may diasppear for a while, but you don't pay attention and suddenly there they are. And yes, I said HERPES. And here I sit, the undisputed ruler of Rantsville, telling my darkest secrets to you, sweet children. My life has since mellowed out, I have exited the service of the navy, and I am seeking a better job. My home life is domestic, my love life is nil, but I have my writing and my cat and my computer. I have my friends, too, and they are my family as far as I am concerned. I am a grown up now, as much as I hate to admit, and someday I might just write more on this bio to further explain my trip through life thus far, but for now....
Close your eyes, go to sleep, thank the lord of dreams you're not me.
|
