I’m Gonna Git You Sucka

It was a Friday or Saturday night. I was drunk and couldn’t drive all the way home, so I pulled over and parked the car. I realized I was parked about five houses down the street from my house. Oh shit, I parked in front of the neighbor who is also the leader of a Mexican cartel. I was too drunk to drive five houses down, so I chose to sleep in my car instead of walk home.

Not even ten minutes pass and one of my girlfriends starts to knock on my window, “Chelle! Chelle! Wake up, this guy offered to drive us to your house.” She pointed at the 1975 Dodge Monaco Bluesmobile that was waiting beside my car. I get out of my car, watch her get into the back seat, and a horrible feeling manifested in my gut.

His features were disguised in the shadows of the vehicle.  He tried to reassure me in his deep Mexican accent, “Come on, I will take you to your house. I promise.” This guy worked for my cartel neighbor and he was responsible for the transport of goods. I knew what he was going to do.

I looked at my friend, and tried to mask my fear with an innocent smile, “Thanks, but I’m going to walk instead. Friend, you wanna come with?” But she was adamant to ride in his car. I wonder if he already drugged her… I closed the door and watched him take her in the wrong direction. I knew what her future entailed. She would be taken, drugged and sold.

I began to walk towards my house and it came to mind that the cartel knew where I lived. My palms were beginning to sweat, my body was shaking, an overwhelming sense of panic vibrated through me. Do they know I’m afraid? Will they come after me because I know what they’re going to do to my friend? I wanted to be home already. During the walk home, which felt like an eternity, I was hoping that my roommates William and Moe were home so I wouldn’t be alone.

I finally made it home. Before I entered I saw my next-door neighbor, Kid Cudi, peeking through his curtain, watching me. I knew he worked for the cartel, but he’s my friend, he wouldn’t turn me in… at least that’s what I was hoping.  I walked into the house and headed straight for my room… Wait, it sounds so silent. Moe and Will weren’t home. Dammit. I decided to close all the blinds and turn off the lights to make it look like no one was home, so I can stay safe until my roomies arrive. I walked to the livingroom and closed all the blinds. I walked to the front door and immediately the dead bolt caught my eye – it was unlocked. I remember locking it… I wasn’t alone in the house. Relaxed-like, I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed 911. I saw her from the corner of my peripheral vision. She was dressed in black and she was about to slay me with a tomahawk. I ran out of the house as fast as my size 6 feet could let me. I was running faster than Donovan Bailey, but my speed didn’t matter, she was right behind me.  After three blocks, one chaser became ten – I had ten females dressed in black and dark blue chasing me.  I was still on the phone with 911, listening to elevator music.

“Thank you for calling 911, what’s the nature of your emergency?”

“Please, you’ve got to help me!  I’ve got a whole of bunch of bitches chasing me and they’re working for the cartel!”

“Okay ma’am, remain calm, I’m going to dispatch someone to you right now.  Where are you located?”

“I’m running down Reo, and I’m just passing Manos Street!  Wait!  I see the cop car, but it’s going the wrong way!  Please!  He’s going the wrong way!”

“Ma’am, he’s going to help you, he’ll be there.”

“Fuck you!  You’re not helping me!  These people are going to kill me!”

I hang up the phone.  Fuck 911.  I saw a gated community to my left – I made a quick left and jumped behind a gate.  Most of the girls kept running forward.  A white girl stops right in front of the gate I’m hiding behind and a Mexican chick right behind her.

“Hey Martha, this doesn’t look right.” This 90210 bitch is from the valley, no doubt.  Her perfect blonde hair wasn’t rustled even after chasing me for ten minutes.  She pointed at the foliage, bushes and the gate.

“What’s the matter, Kelly? What do you see?”  This haina was definitely born and raised in South Bay San Diego, probably some chola from PHLS.

“Well, look at all those flowers, that’s Hydrangea Paniculata, also known as the Little Lamb Hydrangeas.  These are all white.  But look, there’s a black area where there should be white foliage.”  This scalliwag figured me out, dammit.

“Okay Kelly, let’s go check it out.”

Both these punk ass vajayjays approach my location.  Fuck, they caught me.  They called their cohorts and they dragged me back up the street towards the cartel’s house.  I knew some of these girls, how could they do this to me?  Anger raged through my body and the energy became a part of my bones.  Something snapped… all rationale left me.  All sensibility, reason and coherence separated from myself.

“Fuck all of you!”  I shouted with my arms flaring all around me.  “Fuck your moms, I hope she dies while sucking George Bush’s dick!”  My anger was making me jump all over the place, to where they couldn’t get a firm grab on me. “Fucking shame on you bitches, turning me in, knowing what those fuckers are going to do to me!” I was becoming uncontrollable and I knew it.

I broke loose from the group and started running again.  I ran towards my house, through Kid Cudi’s back yard and I rapped on his side door.

“I need your help, they’re going to take me away.”

“You’re safe here, the cops are on their way.”  Right as he said that two cops were approaching his front yard, both dressed in 70’s polyester suits, one tan and one charcoal.  Following the cops were two of the right-hand men of the cartel leader.

“Oh fuck me.  I thought you said I was safe.”

“You know I had to do this.  I need to protect my children.”

“Kid, this time, tomorrow, I’m going to put a bullet right through your fucking head.  Believe you me, I’m going to kill you.”  He looked at me and couldn’t believe what I said.  The unsnapped me would’ve never said this.  He stared at me with a frazzled look on his face.

The cops gently guided me through the side of my neighbor’s house and up the street.  Through only my ears, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana began.  I knew where they were taking me.  O FORTUNA.  Nothing good was going to come from this.  VELUT LUNA.  I abandoned all thoughts of salvation, deliverance and rescue.  STATU VARIABILIS.  I had the will to live, and I was going to ensure just that.  SEMPER CRESCIS…  As we approached the front door to the cartel house, I pulled my 14 inch, 9 inch sharpened, 1/4 inch thick 420 J2 stainless steel blade with a saw back from my right back pocket.  While I fastened my grip onto the hollow aluminum cord handle, I felt around my torso with my left hand to make sure I was equipped with my M2 Browning MG, my AK47, M60 MG, an RPG and lastly I check my back to make sure my bow and arrows were intact.  I knew what I had to do.  No one was going to come out of this alive, except me.

And the mass carnage begins, SORS SALUTIS!  I used my saw-toothed bowie knife and sliced both the cops’ necks as if they were attached.  I held my AK in my left and my M60 in my right, and I went to town.  In health and virtue, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved.

I used every weapon I had.  I used them against cops, drivers, messengers, pushers, dealers, buyers, cartel leaders and their families… it didn’t matter if they were men or women or children or infants.  Everyone in this house was left without a breath.  I knew the only way I could survive was to be the last one living.  I showered in blood, and there was no fear, no oppression.  It melts them like ice, monstrous and empty, the whirling wheel which is malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing.

After fate struck down and the weeping ceased, I was left with silence.  It was a safe silence.  I wiped my face with my blood-saturated sleeve, and I walked out the front door.  One more thing left to do.  I set up my sniper rifle on the porch.  Through the telescopic sight, I aimed at my target, which walked outside to get the paper.  I pulled the trigger and it raced through his right temporal out his left.  I told you, Kid Cudi, I told you I’d kill you.  I walked down the street to my house.  I never felt so secure, so protected.  

I can live without fear.  I smile.

AND THEN I WOKE UP.

this Leo… this Cowardly Lion

My family members are the prime witnesses to my evolution.  From the beginning they have seen who I was and are currently learning who I am. 

It was out of necessity I was strong.  It was required I grow up and parent my younger siblings at the unknowing age of seven.  Responsibility was poured onto me along with the guilt of how my family ended and the failure of my parents’ marriage.  A sense of where I truly belong was unbeknownst to me due to the constant shifting of my life from family member to family member.  I coped the best a child could with never having a true mother or a true father.

As a child, I witnessed fear and the absence of self within my mother and I witnessed the acceptance of failure and abandonment of his own children within my father.  I observed the twisted ideals and willingness of victimization of my grandmother and I observed the callous criticism and obstinate discipline of my grandfather.  I vowed at seven years old to never hold these traits as my own.  These attributes of the four most important people in my seven year old life, angered me.  With this anger I developed a drive which gave me the strength to survive the first 25 years of my life.  The problem with anger being a drive is that anger itself is a double edged sword and although I thought I was empowering myself, I was in fact destroying myself.

My indispensable self-developed anger drove me to be the opposite of everything in which I hated.  I was not weak, I was strong.  I was not a failure, I succeeded in everything I attempted.  I was not the victim, I was the victor.  I was not cruel, I was loving.  But in reality, I was lying to myself.  I realized at eighteen years old that everything I fought so hard not to become, I in fact was.  My portrayed strength was a facade for the overwhelming weakness that only found me when I looked into a mirror.  My self-righteousness behavior was due to the lack of self and sense of worth.  My outstanding competitive drive was a fictitious veneer, when in fact I failed the essence of ethics and morality.  Sacrifice to raise my brother and sister had no value when I moved to Los Angeles for college, the abandonment they felt because of my departure was just as painful as our father’s neglect.  My so-called words of encouragement to my siblings and younger cousins were in reality beautiful big words which disguised degradation and bitterness. 

I didn’t talk to my dad for almost fifteen years.  If I was capable of hate, he would be the sole receiver of such a feeling.  I placed a huge amount of blame on him.  It was his fault I grew up so young.  His fault that I was out casted from his side of the family and blamed for the way the divorce went between him and my mom.  His fault no one showed up for Dad-Daughter day at school.  His fault why I know what poverty is like… when there’s absolutely nothing in the fridge or the cabinets.  His fault that I had to feed my brother and sister the only food left in the whole house – a can of Alpo.  His fault I couldn’t be who I really am, because I had to be someone for everyone else in my life.  His fault why I can never listen to smooth jazz or Sade.  His fault why it was impossible to truly be a sister to my brother and sister because first and foremost I had to be a mother.

Surviving through a drug overdose is being born again.  When you are awake, you cannot see.  Your speech cannot be deciphered into comprehensible sentences.  Your legs are shaky when you try to stand, and your arms cannot support your weight in order to crawl, so you must be carried to the bath and be bathed by your mother.  Strength in your limbs are built in order to crawl… and your first step, oh the first step – when you’re learning to walk it’s absolute invigoration.  When you’re able to see objects and the details of your mothers face, you cry due to the simple appreciation of its beauty.  When your able to annunciate your words correctly and those around you can understand your broken language, connections spark through the very core of your being.

My outsides didn’t reflect my insides and I felt torn apart.  I wanted real strength.  I wanted to value myself.  I wanted to stop fearing the unknown.  I wanted my own life.  All this began with learning acceptance.

I am my mother’s daughter.  I am my father’s daughter.  I am my grandmother’s grand-daughter.  I am my grandfather’s grand-daughter.  Like my mother, I put others before I put myself.  I practice selflessness and it partially brings me happiness.  I am able to communicate to others through emotions.  I love to sing and I am a lover of canines.  Like my father, I am a thinker and philosopher.  Most of my thoughts are outside the box and randomness is in my nature.  I appreciate diversity, art, talent and share a passion for food.  Like my grandmother, I am a helper and companion.  I am available for those I care about at the drop of a dime.  I am willing to extend myself at most means necessary.  I can offer comfort and friendship with sharing my company.  Like my grandfather, I have an appreciation for structure, discipline and education.  I appreciate a clean kitchen and bath tub.  I love to travel, my humor tends to be dry and I have many sounds of laughter.

Talks with my mom helped.  I shared with her the challenges I faced as a young child acting as a parent for my brother and sister.  I told her the truth – I am nothing of what she thinks I am.  I am afraid of the world.  I don’t fear death, but I fear living.  I find myself as strange, because my thoughts are intense and the feelings I feel in my chest when I experience life are enough to bring tears to my eyes. 

I re-established a relationship with my father, and it happened in such a fairy tale manner.  I no longer cared about the past and was able to put that behind me.  I wanted a future and I wanted a father, and these true desires manifested my current existing relationship with a man whom always brings a smile to my face.  A man I can call Dad. 

Through my period of realizations, I have established a relationship with myself.  I have found myself in an epoch of my life where I want to be me and no one else.  I am completely open to seeing my faults and facing my demons. 

I share with you this particular story in which has great meaning in my life:

Today, I made a step.  I find myself in moods in which I would like to share with all, but instead of using my own words, I quote others.  I posted a quote by Cushing today on Facebook.  My brother responded with his own words in a quote like fashion which was stating the same meaning by Cushing.  I realized there are many attributes in which I lack.  I lack the courage to express my anger.  I am unable to be honest with myself, by feeling the constant need to sugar coat everything.  I am unable to tell people what I truly think, and instead tell them what they want to hear.  I’m terribly frightened to put my actual, real thought into the public for fear of humiliation and judgment.  I am a coward.  I use scapegoats often.  I make excuses for myself.  I don’t want to be scared anymore.  I want to live.

I gathered my imaginary balls, and I created and posted a quote which came so naturally: Doubt is our only enemy which is created by thyself.  Through doubt produces fear in which success is a dying ideal.  Through fear creates failure, BUT through failure we have the possibility of realized opportunity and with this opportunity we are given the gift of wisdom, choice and living.

I have doubted myself.  I have feared all and every thing.  My fear has produced my failure in myself.  Oh, but there’s hope at the end of my thinking… With my failure I have gained opportunity which I didn’t know existed.  I have an opportunity to make the choice to change.  I have an opportunity to take this change and begin living. 

Through my twenty-nine years of life as a lion, I gave the impression I was grand and confident.  All the while inside, I was a cowardly lion in search of courage, only to find that it resided within me all along.