My mom had three long term partners in her adult life.

The first was my big sister's father, whom she married at the tender age of 20 and moved to the states with.  He was a violent alcoholic.  Beat her senseless.  Broke her nose--several times.  She finally escaped with my sister (a baby at the time).  The story of her escape is a family legend.  One night, as he was about to beat her, my mother grabbed a loaded shotgun (he kept them all over the house) and marched him out the front door.  He was completely nude at the time.  The divorce was quick and painful.  Knowing little English, my mom came out of the divorce proceedings with nothing, except a baby.

Her first husband never paid child support, despite the fact that he was a very well-off small business owner.  The last amount I heard was something like $50,000 in back child support.

My mom moved on.  Got a good job as a medical translator at a large hospital.  She was the person who explained to non-english speakers which of their organs were going to be tinkered with and for what reason.  She also taught birth control classes.  She joked about the time she sprayed contraceptive foam on the class (young Mexican women who already had a few children each) to get them to lighten up.

She met my dad.  I don't know how, and she never told me.  He was married at the time--I know this much--with two young daughters.  He left his wife and moved into an apartment with my mom.  They had me.  He started smoking crack.  He beat my mom all the time, and then he committed an especially heinous crime, the details of which I will not go into.  The trial took years.  In the end, his sentence was a joke.

My mom moved into her own apartment with me and my sister before the trial started.  I was very small, but I have fond memories of that apartment.  It was tiny.  My sister and I shared a room slightly larger than a closet.  I remember feeling safe, enclosed, just--protected in that room.  I remember how much I loved living with just my mom and sister.  I remember my mom painting us up with her heavy makeup, just to play around. 

Then my mom met my stepfather.  He was a couple years younger than her, a Salvadoran immigrant who spoke little English and couldn't read or write.  He had dark skin and strong arms.  I remember his arms vividly.  I remember what they looked like when I would watch him beat my mother.  I remember veins and muscles tensing.  I remember the impact of his hands when he would hit me.  I remember the sound of his hands striking my siblings.  Fourteen years later, when I am feeling anxious, I still get that cold, sinking feeling that preceded a beating. 

My mother had four children with this man.  Two boys and two girls.  I remember not understanding.  Each new birth making us more trapped with this dangerous man.  I remember resenting my mother throughout each pregnancy.  New babies meant we would never get away from him. 

When I was eight, my mother was diagnosed with systemic lupus.  The doctor sat my stepfather down and explained what a stress-fed illness was.  He said, "take care of your wife".

My stepfather took my mother to the pharmacy afterward, and drove off as she was inside getting her prescriptions filled.  We didn't see him again for years.

My mother's health deteriorated.  My sister went to a juvenile prison for almost four years.  I stayed at home while my mother worked long hours.  I did my best to take care of my four younger siblings.

I am 20 now.  I have already had a string of long, hyperdramatic relationships with very troubled men.  The profile is generally the same...I go for men who need a caretaker, healing of some sort.  I try to fix them.  I form a profound emotional dependence on whoever I get into a relationship with.  I get very needy.  I get very angry.  At times I feel like I am losing my mind. 

Weird thing, when you realize you're stuck in a dysfunctional behavior.  Often, you know it's not working for you, but you have no clue how to fix it.  The dysfunction becomes a sort of refuge.  "It may hurt in the long run, but right now I feel safe and cared for, and I'm not alone.  I'll take this."

I am addicted to men.  For me, they are a drug.  I get high on the attention, the human contact. 

I like men with strong arms.  I like the idea that strong arms can be gentle.  That they can caress me instead of hit me.

Physical affection from a partner makes me almost giddy.  I can't hug a friend without my whole body tensing up, but I don't think twice about embracing a boyfriend.

Men are my refuge;  not my family, my friends, my hobbies or talents.  Just men.  It's unhealthy.  It's crazy.  But I know legions of women just like me.  The cycle is obvious. 

I just don't know how to begin changing this.

Seattle-based job and apartment.

ASAP

1.  Bulldog snoring.

2.  Cohabitation with noisy male.

3.  Library budget cuts leading to early closure

4.  Prescription of horse-sized pain pills for back injury

5.  Prevalence of yuppie bastards at local study spots

6.  Shortage of accessible literature on latino psychopathology (I don't speak shrink.)

7.  Onset of menstrual period

8.  Proximity of noisy little kids in every conceivable study venue.  (Maybe I should study at a strip club?)

9.  Permeating feelings of apathy

10.  Desire to take a nap

I made new friends this week.  No worries, they were very much alive.  Also they were cool.  They invited me to a haunted house event much like this one:

http://www.darkhollowhaunt.com/main_menu.html

The house was one of many Halloween-season possibilities.  There were at least five haunted houses, a haunted morgue, a haunted corn maze and even a haunted cemetery near us.

Apparently they do those.  Creepify a cemetery, hide actors in zombie costumes behind the tombstones, then lead groups of thrill-seeking people through the gravesites and make them pee their pants with scary pranks.

This got me.  I have a certain reverence for the dead. 

I don't believe in an afterlife.  I don't believe our bodies are these sacred temples.  I just can't stomach the idea of drunken teenagers trampling my mother's grave.  Anybody's grave.  I don't find those movie gags about people accidentally spilling Grandma's ashes to be funny.

I can't tell you why.  I'm just not cool with it.

Do you think we should have a reverence for the remains of the dead? 

Would you attend a haunted cemetery event?

That, my friends, is a bulldog reality. 

My poor little 35lb Tonka has staples under her right eye, a double ear infection, and a skin infection nestled between her folds.  She has to wear that crazy cone 24-7, and we can't give her a bath until her eye issues are resolved. 

Every morning we give Tonka a huge dose of antibiotics and pain killers.  We flush her ears with saline and then administer an ear-ointment.  We clean between her folds and then apply yet another ointment.  We give her dilating eye drops twice a day, and antibiotic eye drops every hour or so.

If the cone comes off for even a second, Tonka starts clawing at her face. (We can't imagine how itchy it is.)

We handfeed her and bring her water.  She can't seem to figure out how to eat with that cone on.

My poor little inbred sweetheart.  Hundreds of years of severe inbreeding, the culling of millions of puppies...now we have a very cute dog, yes, but she's in a great deal of pain.

_____

I pulled my back pretty badly at work this past Tuesday.  I'm sitting at home now, smelling of Icy Hot, and constantly shifting positions in bed. 

When it rains...