The Sound of Silence

October 7, 2019October 7, 2019 Athena DionLeave a comment

What if I were actually somebody who liked me? What if I actually believed I was a lovable person? What if I actually approved of my own reasoning for the decisions I make? What if I considered myself to be responsible and educated enough to make decent, although imperfect, decisions? What if I saw myself for the loving person that is displayed in almost all of my behaviors? Inwardly, I logically know that I’m a good enough person, I just never allow myself to inwardly feel like I’m good enough. This is the training I received in life: how to hate myself completely. That’s about the only thing I’m very certain I’m good at. Out of nowhere, I can suddenly be consumed with an overwhelming feeling that someone somewhere doesn’t like me for whatever reason. It doesn’t matter if I know them, like them, or respect them, for some reason their opinion would always matter more to me than my own opinion of me. This is the only way I knew to evaluate myself… by gauging who I am off of the opinions of others. It is my duty to maintain the status quo of my worthlessness. That has been my life’s path, up until around the beginning of this year. I promised you, guys, that I would slay the fucking lion in my very first post, and here you are watching me do just that.

The insights I’ve been having over the last six months to a year have had me making an incredible amount of positive life changes. I am handling the massive amount of responsibilities I have by using various self-care techniques, I’ve been practicing more kindness with myself, and I’ve been comforting myself during the hard moments.

This has been the pinnacle of the process of mourning the loss of my living mother.

I have finally learned how to be my own mother.

Even though she never did, I am learning to comfort myself, I am learning to tell myself when to relax and how to relax. I am the one making sure I meet the responsibilities necessary for a happy life. She never bothered to get me in therapy, even after I attempted suicide multiple times. But as an adult, though, throughout much of my life, I’ve been broke as fuck, I have never given up the search for the right therapist.

I could have given up after the first few fucked me up even worse with all the drugs they were prescribing me. They have put me on nearly every SSRI, sometimes many at the same time. They have put me on antipsychotics and even stimulants. But they would only give me an anti-anxiety pill when I was in a psych ward because they were afraid I would become addicted. Most of these doctors had known me for less than an hour before they would write at least one prescription. Guys, they are corrupt as fuck. Using state money to buy drugs to fatten the wallets of Big Pharma, while what’s wrong with me could only truly be fixed by someone talking to me long enough to learn about all of the trauma I was dealing with. I never needed any medicine. I needed human contact with a responsible and trained professional familiar with the signs of childhood trauma. I literally fell down the rabbit hole that is the mental health system for decades, spinning my wheels and wasting precious years that I can never get back…

Because no one would take to the time to see the truth about my life… to understand what I was living through, and to validate to me that I could trust my own instincts that told me there was something wrong with the way I grew up. That it all left me with some unfortunate coping mechanisms which, although they were what saved me as a child and teenager, are not acceptable adult behavior.

Meanwhile, each trial run with, not only ineffective, but worsening psychotropic treatments, was causing me tremendous interpersonal problems. When I was put on multiple SSRIs by a psychiatric clinic while attending college at age 18, I became zombie-like just before my semester finals and ended up missing at least half of the tests.

I lost my full-ride academic scholarship because of that. I was hospitalized for suicide watch, and I lost my job soon after. I had to move back in with my narcissistic Mom, who I knew secretly felt better about herself when she saw me failing. She liked feeling like she was smarter than me because I’m the reason she couldn’t finish high school.

When we were alone once, in my bedroom when I was a teenager, she asked me, “You know what I would have done if I hadn’t had you? I would’ve been a high school coach.”

You and I both know she could have become a coach while raising a child. So, how is it that my birth, or my very existence, stopped her from following any of her own dreams?

Because dreams take hard work on your own part in creating them. It was much easier for her to be lazy, and just blame me for all of her problems.

Since starting my new job in the last month or so, I have widened my social connection quite a lot. I have made friends with some new people. I have been accepted into a new circle of friends. This is such a big positive for anyone… except when you (and your son and husband) have been all but abandoned by ⅔ of your family. We’ve barely heard a word in five years… dozens of relatives. Your belief in the security of relationships becomes completely diminished. When the people you have spent nearly every holiday, wedding, graduation, and funeral with, your entire life, just suddenly drop you like a rag doll they’d been carrying, you begin to doubt whether people who don’t share your DNA can love you any better. It becomes incredibly hard to open up and trust new people. It is just too much of a risk.

Slowly, I am…

I am learning to trust others…

And I am learning to trust myself.

I am trusting that someone out there can be helped by something that I write. Even if you haven’t read this yet, I know there are at least some of you suffering the horrible plights, and I know that you feel alone. I’m here to tell you, if you are suffering silently with incredible emotional pain, even to the point that you can barely function in your daily life and responsibilities…

You are NOT ALONE.

This post inspired by The Sound of Silence (Simon + Garfunkel cover) by Disturbed.

Image by Susan Cipriano from Pixabay

High and Dry

September 18, 2019October 7, 2019 Athena DionLeave a comment

When do I really, actually allow myself to relax? I can’t even pinpoint a single second out of any day where my entire body feels at ease. About four years ago, when the trauma of having 2/3 of my family abandon me and my son after I stood up to my mother’s abuse really sank in, my body just became clenched and stayed that way. It was too much for my heart to really absorb at that time, so I just kind of boxed it in and never processed it. My mother got away with horrid abuses toward me, and our mutual family members have never held her accountable. They have continued their relationships with her and abandoned their relationships with me and my son because it was easier on them that way. None of them truly want to face who she is because it would disrupt the family too much. They have all watched on Facebook as I have blatently made it clear that I am HOMESCHOOLING MY AUTISTIC SON WHILE WORKING AND GOING TO COLLEGE. And I have done this with very little family support. Virtually nonexistent when you count the physical distance between me and my father and stepmother and my in-laws, who are all very loving and well intended, but live 45 minutes away. I have VERY HIGH STANDARDS for my son because it’s what I was deprived of. I wasn’t protected so I make DAMN FUCKING SURE that I protect him from the kinds of neglect and abuses that I was exposed to. I don’t let just anyone watch him. Especially because I’ve always known he is easily manipulated, which I now know is part of his autistic traits.

Guys, my kid is fucking amazing. I know a lot of parents say that about their kids, but, even if he wasn’t my kid, I would adore him upon meeting him. He is different. He is himself. I love how little he cares what other people think. I ENVY that about him. And it is a trait that he shares with his father that was part of the reason I fell in love with him. I adore people who are not afraid to be themselves, even when it’s not socially accepted. This is why I’m an advocate for gay people, or cross-dressers, or transgendered people. I may not understand what it feels like to be them, but in watching the ridicule and hate that they endure sometimes just for being honest about who they are, I believe them that that is exactly how they feel. They are just being honest, even when it’s hard. I don’t need to understand why. I’m not them. It’s not my life to live. It’s just like in the early 90s, no one believed that depression was real when I was a 12 year old girl suffering with it, now how many people are being medicated for not only depression, but anxiety, and multiple combinations of the two?

I am resentful at life in general that I am now working 3 jobs, homeschooling my autistic son in the opposite way from how I was raised. It’s like I’m scraping and mustering whatever inner strength I can muster after the decades of continuous trauma I was subjected to… I find the strength I’ve never had in order to give him all the love I never had. I want this kid to have the absolute best shot at life that he possibly can have, because so much of my life was wasted. So much of it was spent trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Society taught me to love and honor and be loyal to my mother, but my body, my body kept trying to tell me over and over again, with panic attacks, with rage attacks, with clenched, knotted muscles, with a jaw that didn’t release for nearly a decade. And now with the torso of glass. I’ve been doing yoga, stretching more, getting regular massages, and using a tennis ball to loosen the knots. I feel very, very slow progress happening. But any impatience at all on my part just slows it down even more. So, I have to be happy with the pace I am taking. I can only hope that the progress will continue.

This post inspired by High and Dry by Radiohead.

Image by Santa3 from Pixabay

Plush

September 11, 2019September 11, 2019 Athena DionLeave a comment

My body can never relax because I never actually feel safe. In any given situation I will see a reason to judge myself or worry about something that may or may not ever happen. My mind will always find something terrifying about every single situation I find myself within.

There are voices of a thousand judgmental, hypocritical assholes living in my head, and I believe them as if theirs are the only true opinions that count. The tricky thing is, they are AUTOMATIC. I don’t literally hear them. In reality, I feel what they say, and react to it, without even acknowledging that a negative thought had crossed my mind.

This self-damnation happens constantly without me even realizing it. Then I wonder why I’ve felt depressed and anxious for decades, why no psychotropic medications seem to help. I am not chemically imbalanced. I am not in need of mind-numbing zombie meds. All I have needed to do is just ACKNOWLEDGE IT. I had to see my true reality clearly. I had to accept it.

This is extremely hard to do when the thing you need to accept is that your mother doesn’t love you, and that she never will. Our culture puts so much pressure on children to honor mothers. But this well-intended cultural expectancy is based on the idea that mothers are infinitely loving and giving as our hormones are built to harness within us. Yet, we all know how disgusted we are to hear about a mother killing her own children. We know there are horrendous instances where this doesn’t hold up. And a lot more of these instances involve sadistic abuse rather than outright murder, which, unfortunately, can also feel like death.

Please stop saying to people, “Yeah, but that’s your mother! She gave life to you!” Not all women who give birth are mothers. Let’s get that clear right here and now.

This post inspired by Plush by Stone Temple Pilots.

Image by andrea candraja from Pixabay

Fade Into You

September 9, 2019September 9, 2019 Athena DionLeave a comment

I still reject myself within my own mind. I still discount myself, to my core, as a ‘less than’ person. Even though, logically, I can tell I must be interesting and attractive based on the response I get from other people (mostly men). Yet when people tell me I am beautiful I still assume they must be saying it to be nice, as if they would say it to anyone just to make them feel better. I live in this dichotomy where my inner life does not match up with the outer reflection. For large portions of my life, five or more years at a time, I diminished myself into the smallest space I could fill because that’s all I thought I deserved.

The very woman who brought me into this world was the one who made me believe I never should have been in it. She did not want me to be alive. She resented me because she couldn’t finish high school, because she was forced to be connected to my dad for the rest of her life, even though she’d divorced him; because I ruined the ‘perfect family’ she was trying to portray with my stepfather and half-siblings.

I finally understand, after five years of reflection, wondering how she could have let me suffer silently with depression and suicidal tendencies, which she knew about, but disclosed to no one. She wanted me to go through with it. Maybe not consciously, but on some level she was hoping she would get to cash in on that ‘poor mom who lost her daughter’ thing, look like a fucking hero, and then get to carry on with her plans for the perfect family.

The woman never praised me unless it was over something that would make her look good. I was expected to make straight ‘A’s, meaning if I got a ‘B’, or god forbid a ‘C’, I would get scolded and accused of slacking off, but my sister and brother were praised for their mediocre report cards. She pushed me so hard, and yet never seemed interested in reading anything that I wrote until I wrote a fucking poem about her.

But the thing is, I’m actually over her. That’s, I think, what had to happen to ignite the true healing of the wound. I have actually mourned the loss of the woman I thought was my mother. The fantasy that I had of a mother who would someday connect with me, and acknowledge some of the pain she caused me, has died, and I have finished grieving the loss. I know now that she can’t. It’s not personal, it’s not by some curse put upon me by the universe. I just so happened to be given life by a narcissistic teenage mom whose father was a pedophile. I no longer see her as my mother. I see her as Ronda, the woman who raised me with less passion and love than most foster families would provide. In fact, it was much, much worse because this woman was not just indifferent to me. Not only did Ronda not love me, she actively hated me and blamed me for ruining her life.

Now that I’ve accepted that, into my bones, now that I understand how very little control I had over the circumstances of my own upbringing, I can now undo the self-sabotaging habits that this fact created through most of my life. Now I realize that, as an adult, I have the power to change. I can and will be better because I want to be, and no one can stop me but me. I have finally begun shedding the skin of my childhood.

This post inspired by “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star

Alligator

August 24, 2019August 24, 2019 Athena DionLeave a comment

I had an interview today. It went really well. I think I’ll get the job!

I have fear that I shouldn’t be buzzed. I have fear that I won’t be able to handle a new job. I have fear that I’m a bad mom. I have fear that I am like characters that I read about or see on screen. I have fear that people don’t like Quarky. I have fear that I’m like Hitler or Casey Anthony. I have fear that I’m like my mother. I have fear of my power. I have fear of my pending success.

Somewhere I developed the belief that I’m a REALLY bad person, even though I have absolutely no evidence of me being this really bad person. In fact, most of the actual evidence of who I am in my life would reveal a kind, loving person who empathizes with people from all walks of life. She’s an attentive mother who wishes nothing more for her child than to be happy, healthy, and successful in his own life. She cries over other peoples’ sad situations, even some that she doesn’t even know. She wants the best for the Earth, for future generations. She truly contemplates things like the meaning of life, treating others as she would want to be treated. She cares about equality among ALL living things.She always tries to be honest with others and herself. She is sensitive and caring about the ways that she affects other people. She is quick to apologize when she believes she may have hurt someone else. Yet, inside her is a mama bear who will do whatever she must to protect her child and ensure his happiness, health, and future success.

When I couldn’t control the rages, I turned to books and therapy. When I realized it was because of the anger I held back from my mother, I unleashed it. I put space between her and anyone who insisted that I continue being around her. I hated her for the way she made me hate myself, and the way that was affecting my son. I needed to own that feeling. Even if it meant losing my sister, my brother, my stepfather, his family, and most of my mother’s side of the family. My son growing up in a home where his mother has dealt with her anger, her own past, her own family’s toxic dysfunction… that is worth all of those relationships put together

He is MY RESPONSIBILITY. What happens to him and how he will turn out, it all depends on the way I deal with him now. I know this because I know what would’ve prevented me from decades of therapy, addiction, spinning my wheels, and dating all the wrong men. A mother. That’s it. And it wouldn’t have had to be my birth mother. I could have been raised by practically any human in the world other than her, and I would have likely received more love, more praise, more acceptance, and more affection than I actually did. Most strangers in my life have shown me more kindness. The other people in my life have given me the shred of self-esteem that has kept me going through the worst of times.

Over a year with the same therapist, and she is still throwing me compliments and making sure I accept them. That’s because a year ago I didn’t believe any of them. I didn’t believe there was anything to love about me. I believed I was worthless. To my core, my entire life, I have believed that I was worthless. I did not expect anything good to happen to me. I didn’t expect to ever feel better than anxious and depressed. I felt defective. I was a mistake. That’s what I believed.

It wasn’t until I allowed myself the courage to truly begin analyzing my past, realistically, no matter how hard it may be to face the truth, that I began to see the change in myself. I had to face that my mother didn’t love me.

Small memories would surface. They weren’t repressed memories. I always remembered them, but I never realized they were bad because everything was minimized by her. To her, nothing was ever a good enough reason to lose your emotional cool.

Once I’d accepted that she didn’t love me, then I had to accept that it wasn’t the fault of the tiny child that I was. It wasn’t MY fault. It wasn’t because something was wrong with me that made me hideously unlovable. This part is way trickier.

Healing from PTSD, whether complex or not, is a big, fat irony. Normally, when you think of healing from something, you think of moving on from it, of the problem going away. But with PTSD, you may think, “I’m moving on once and for all, I’m going to live in the present, I’m going to appreciate what’s in the here and now and in my bright future.” And then one day, the old events and feelings come back to smack you in the face out of nowhere. And then, the shame of not being truly ‘over’ it, of not being grateful enough, of not being appreciative enough, of not being strong enough to let go of the past retraumatizes you. You hate yourself for allowing it to come back. You mentally punish yourself for not being free.

The only way to truly heal from this cycle is by not forcing yourself to be free of it. You must accept it. You can live in the present. You can be grateful. You can look forward to your bright future. But you must understand that that future will also have the remnants of the past in it; that you must be prepared to deal with future replays of the past, if and when they happen. To be healed with PTSD means to truly be integrated with the part of yourself that you hate, to allow that part to show its face, whenever necessary, without shame.

My therapist asked me, after I read the above paragraph to her, “Do you think you identify with the PTSD so much that you can’t let go of it?”

I thought about it and said, “If the PTSD is part of what makes me empathetic towards others’ feelings, sensitive to others needs, an attentive mother, an honest writer, full of depth, then I don’t want to get rid of it.”

At the end of the spectrum from this point of wanting to be away from it all, I feel a love that could create a million big bangs. I feel my love so powerfully that it consumes my entire body like the weight of the universe sitting on my abdomen. There are no words in any language to describe what I feel when I really think about my love for my son, my husband, our amazing pets, the various loved ones, friends, and strangers who have been there for me. I’m crying just writing about it. In a minute, I’ll probably sob for about 5-10 minutes thinking about it. There’s seriously nothing I wouldn’t do for them. I absolutely hate the time that has been wasted on me dealing with my past. It’s not fair to any of us. I wanted so badly for it to be a quick healing process, 6 months of therapy and I would be over my family’s abandonment. I mourned the loss of who I thought they all were to me, all at once. That takes more than 6 months, unfortunately. You really can’t rush it.

But in the aftermath… there is more life left to live.

The next day…

Got a call. I start training for my new job on Monday.

This post inspired by Alligator by Of Monsters and Men.

Somebody That I Used To Know

May 10, 2019 Athena DionLeave a comment

Now that I am seeing some of the fruits of my Quarky labors, why do I find it so hard to believe that this will work????

Because of all the disasters I’ve lived through. Even my family of origin is a disaster. The secrets, the drama, the games, the denial, the neglect, the abuse, and the abandonment leaves one with a sense they had just left the church of scientology. My fucking mother is the L.Ron Hubbard of our family. That’s why I was cast out when I called her out on her toxic shit.

And I could’ve tolerated her behavior if it weren’t for one crucial thing. The affection and nurturing one is supposed to receive from their mother, or a similar caregiver, is the very foundation of a human being’s sense of self-worth. That is why mine is practically non-existent. Where most people, upon reflection, can say without a doubt that, even though she made mistakes as all mothers do, that they know that their mother does love them. Motherly instinct is probably one of the most innate and strongest parts of a woman’s psyche. Yet, in a very few cases, it does unfortunately go wrong. Mine was one of those cases. I have honestly seen her show more ‘affection’ for a dog than she has ever shown me. Her intentions are, and always have been, so utterly driven by her own ego that it seems, to someone who had witnessed it consecutively longer than any other human being alive, there isn’t a moment that she isn’t stacking herself against those around her, and trying to come out on top. She HAS TO. I didn’t learn why until I was 32 years old, and I had gone for several months without speaking to her.

My aunt, her stepsister, came to visit and we had a talk. She revealed to me that my mother’s father, my aunt’s stepfather, had molested my aunt and some of her friends. She didn’t think that he’d done anything to my mother because she was his only biological daughter… my mother was spared.

This made me realize that, on some level, my grandmother and mother must’ve suspected something, but to preserve the family unit in poverty in the seventies, they had to pretend like nothing was wrong. And that’s where my narcissist mother learned to deny any negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and pretend like everything was great. She pretended when I was attempting suicide over and over again. When her mother died. When three of our family members died in the same car accident. My mother, true to form, was a fucking rock. This led me to various maladies such as depression, anxiety, and trauma-induced psychosis. I was way too fucking young to know what was going on, but I did tell her that I needed to see a psychiatrist when I was about nine. I was told to go back to bed.

Also, because she was spared, maybe that instilled a sort of superiority within her which fueled her narcissistic drive to look perfect at all times. I have never, not once, heard her utter a genuine apology to anyone. I have heard her speak badly, or jealously, of every single person she knows behind their backs. And I’m sharp enough to have some idea the kinds of things she says about me. After all, I’ve been observing the woman my entire life. She GAVE me life. I wanted SO BADLY for her to love me. But when we were speaking alone, with no one else there, it was always like that scene in Ever After where Drew Barrymore asks Angelica Houston, “Was there ever a time, even in its smallest measurement, that you loved me?”

And the stepmother replies, “How can anyone love a pebble in their shoe?”

I was my mother’s biggest mistake. She never had to say it. It was observable in every deniable way to anyone who was willing to look. She hated my dad and my presence got in the way of her perfect little family with my stepfather and step-siblings. I secretly wondered if her denial of my suicidal tendencies wasn’t, more simply, her subconsciously hoping I’d eventually succeed. She did not want me.

And this is why I have self-sabotaged the hell out my life. I have wasted so much talent, and skill, and creativity. I have caused myself endless frustration and agony to carry on the internal opinion of myself that she imprinted within me.

My very first memory, when I was potty-training, was of my father chasing me to spank me for having an accident, and I ran to my mother, sobbing. She looked right through me at the TV. It was like I didn’t even exist. Her crying baby wasn’t even worth a glance. That cuts deep. It leaves scars that never actually heal. Every relationship you forge after that, every goal you strive for, every single step you take in life, is shaded by it. If your own fucking mother can’t even love you, what the fuck are you worth?

It goes against the very grain of human society, past and present, to sever ties with one’s family members, let alone one’s mother. But we know that there are a few Casey Anthony’s out there. Just like there are serial killers and child molesters. These people are among us. We have to be brave enough to name them when we see them, even if they are our family members whom we feel obligated to protect. I’m disgusted by my grandfather’s actions. I respected him and loved him when I was a child, and he didn’t deserve it. Generations later, we are still undoing the damage he caused to our family. Fuck him.

Over the last few decades, something major, among other things, has shifted within our society. Throughout history, humans have depended on family members for survival. I remember how much my grandparents helped my parents, especially with me and my siblings. But my husband and I feel all but alone caring for our autistic son. I have very few people stepping up to help. It’s just as well because I don’t trust many people anyway with my background, and the fact that he is the only child I was lucky enough to have.

Now, people can call on Care.com and fork out the big bucks for the best day cares and preschools. We don’t need our parents to help us raise our children.

This changes the dynamic of what constitutes ‘family’. Families can no longer afford to behave badly and then pull the ‘family’ card without consequence. Family is no longer an obligation. It is a choice. If your family is not a source of love, support, and affection, why are you obligated to spend time with them? Make friends who can give you the emotional relationships that nourish your soul. Do not feel obligated to EVER sit across the table from someone who has bullied, belittled, abused, or neglected you without remorse. I AM TELLING YOU WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING YOU… YOU DESERVE BETTER THAN THAT. Realizing that one concept was the first, and biggest, step I ever took toward developing some sense of self-worth: no longer allowing others to abuse me just because they shared DNA with me.

Now if I could just convince myself that I am worthy of success…

This post inspired by “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye (feat. Kimbra)

Listen here.

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Love It If We Made It

March 4, 2019 Athena DionLeave a comment

I must admit that my intentions with this blog are not purely to share my story and help those who can relate. I’m gonna lay it right out there. I want to make money off of you. The fact of the matter is that I’m probably not going to make any positive change in this world as a poor person, so I have to stop being poor.

Meanwhile, in the sky up above us, there is some asshole riding around in a private jet, drinking champagne and snorting coke off a hooker’s ass. The money that he’s wasting in an hour on animalistic frivolities could feed an entire village of starving children for the day. For me, it could make the difference between me being able to take a stress-free breath for once. That’s the world we live in. I can’t even imagine living in a world where everyone could be financially comfortable because human greed is so deeply rooted that the wealthy will almost always selfishly ignore the needs of the less fortunate. There are a few amazing exceptions, but never enough to improve the overall situation. It’s going to take more than a handful of the ELEVEN MILLION millionaires sitting pretty in our country to want to help mankind rather than sit on their dragon hoards.

Of the three people living in our household, all three needed dental surgeries within the last two years, and my son was evaluated and received therapy for autism. So, that’s a third of our income spent on medical bills on top of the premiums we pay each month just to HAVE insurance. We had to take out loans and credit cards that we just can’t pay. If you are living off even less, I REALLY, REALLY feel for you. Poverty feels like every opportunity is always just out of reach, and every second of every day is spent worrying about how your family’s needs will be met today and tomorrow. Poverty is an all-consuming stress that you just can’t escape. That’s why poor people break laws, that’s why poor people use drugs, that’s why poor people ‘milk’ the system, that’s why poor people try to sneak into other countries. That’s why when poor people finally strike it rich, they blow all of the money before they can blink.

I don’t want that to happen to us. I want to do the Sam Walton thing, and continue to drive the same older model cars and wear the same thrift store clothing… but not feel guilty when I buy groceries because the money came out of our mortgage payment, or it’s going to trigger an overdraft fee with the bank that we can’t afford. I’ve been so worried about money for the last 7 years that I can’t remember the last time I was able to take in a full, relaxing breath. It’s about finally pulling my family up out of poverty. It’s about me, my husband, and our son being able to move up to the next level of living.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not JUST about the money. I also have finally realized that I’m not gonna live forever. And I don’t want to die with all of this left inside of me. I don’t want to waste any more of my life wondering why my mother couldn’t love me. Why my brother and sister just let me and my son go without even a conversation. I know now that it was their loss. I just haven’t forgiven myself for all of my anger. I hate that I feel anger and violence over the things that have happened to me. I resent it so much, which just makes the anger worse. I’m bitter inside. I can’t help it. Life has really left a terrible taste in my mouth, the bittersweet of finally having the family that I’ve always wanted, but having our freedom and patience eroded by poverty. I am so fucking tired of being broke. I’m so tired of my son missing out on things just because we don’t have the money. I’m done with it. I. Am. Done.

I’m learning that you have to believe in yourself a whole hell of a lot to make it in this world, because there are hoards of people who will try to bring you down and hold you back, just out of sheer habit. Getting support from others is so hard because we are all so involved with our own agendas. The sooner you start being your own champion, your own cheerleader, your own warrior, the sooner you will find success. No one else is ever going to drag you to it. That’s why we respect and live in awe of celebrities. Because we all know how hard it is to believe in our own selves. It’s the hardest thing in the world to truly believe in our own capabilities. Most of us find it easier to live and die in mediocrity. Those very select few push themselves past the self-doubt, into the elusive realm of genuine confidence.

The advice we all heard growing up doesn’t help either. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Don’t burn your bridges. Interpretation: don’t take chances. Don’t risk. Play it safe because you’ll probably fail. Sometimes you should put all of your eggs in one basket. When you really, really believe in something. Yes, you might fail. If you do, you will learn. But if you cower away from living your passions, you will risk living a lifetime half-assed. This is your one life. Time is of the essence.

Quarky is my masterpiece. I’ve turned a business into my work of art. Quarky is my proof that I have finally learned to trust myself. Quarky is my belief that everything will finally be okay. How ironic is it that I’m edging closer to failing my Entrepreneur class at APUS because I’m too busy building my business that I’m not doing my homework? I’ve been so obsessed with this idea that I didn’t want to entertain other ideas anymore. I’m on fire right now, and I’m using the momentum. I’ve been in bed, literally, for a week straight doing nothing but creating ads and adding product to this store. I told my son we are taking an early spring break from his homeschooling because I wanted to get my Quarky Shop to making money again. When it hit big a couple of years ago, we would celebrate every time I made a sale with dancing and running high tens. Then when it slowed down, it started costing me money each month just to keep it open, and I thought about shutting it down. But my son told me not to give up on it. So, I didn’t…

I’m not a scientist. I consider myself to be a scientific philosopher. Science is everything that we think we know, for sure, but it’s not everything. New things are being discovered and proven by science all the time, and the possibilities of what may be proven in the vast future are almost beyond human speculation. For me, science is even better than religion at inspiring personal beliefs about the meaning of life and its mysteries. I find my spirituality as I marvel at the beauty and wonder of the universe.

The known and the unknown mingle together to create our realities. Welcome to Quarky.

This post inspired by “Love It If We Made It” by The 1975. I think this is the music we should be sending into space. Listen here.

Click image to purchase song.

I’m also gonna throw this suggestion at ya. I haven’t read very far into it, but the last few weeks, whenever I read a few pages or a few paragraphs, I have felt more like a badass each time.