Home will always be where my heart is. But lately it hasn't felt like home. It never did. Yes I was born and raised on the West Side. I lived in Seattle for almost for an eternity or that's what it feels. Burien, White Center, Burien again then White Center. That's what it feels like. Never-ending. Never-ending pain, never-ending heart breaks, never-ending disappointments, just lots of pain and there's just so much of it. I can't express how it feels.
Growing up seeing the things I did, feeling the things I felt. Seeing the struggle, going through the struggle and DAMN! I've seen and been through some fucked up shit. I hung out with some OGs back in the day not knowing what else is out there in life or this world. What I grew up with was all I knew. I didn't know anything outside of that. I've seen people taken their last breaths. I've seen all the gang violence. I've faced death and had to deal with so many more deaths of loved ones than graduations and weddings. I've seen the friends I grew up with choose a certain life-style end up in jail or dead. Some how, some way. That's not what I want to see, this is not how I want to feel anymore.
It was always about survival and how to make it out alive. It's about keeping yourself alive while killing yourself with all the poisonous toxins at the same time. People act like they FUCKING KNOW THE STRUGGLE. Still complain about the simplest of shit. When they get everything handed to them on a silver platter. Scratch that, a mf gold PLATTER and still gotta bitch about not having shit. And maybe I'll never understand that because I didn't grow up rich nor did my parents have it all. So whatever it may be, whatever the fuck I wanted and dreamed of, I had to hustle. I've done some shit just to stay alive, to survive. On my own, with Yoko. And also for my family and friends. I've acted out in the past, had my maniac episodes for a fucking reason. I WAS going through shit people didn't understand, but how the fuck do you explain what the fuck is going through your head if you don't understand it yourself?
This time around last year, I had BIG PlANS, BIG GOALS, BIG DREAMS to get the fuck out of here. I didn't want to leave my life behind or the people I love behind. But I wanted to do whatever the fuck was right or felt right at least for me. I had plans to move to San Diego, START my business then. Start a new life where no one knew me or how I was, where I came from. I was very all over the place but the fucking DRIVE. When I want something, I usually try to get it done over night. I make very impulse decisions. Even when they all thought I was being crazy, I wasn't being crazy. I just did crazy things to prove a point. That I can do shit alone, I can survive alone. I always have been able to do that. I haven't always had the best outlet when it came to anything.
I like to deal with things alone because what's the point of ever telling people how you truly feel, what's the point of telling people your dreams, your drive? If ALL THEY DO IS PUT YOU DOWN. The day I was ready to leave, the day I decided and had somewhat money to leave this shit life behind, everyone tried stopping me. I don't need saving, I don't need anyone to tell me what the fuck I got to do to make ME happy. I don't need eyes and a mouth over my shoulders telling me I'm being irrational and crazy. We know I been crazy. Not crazy crazy but I'm fucking ruthless, reckless and restless. When I want something done, I'd rather get it done my damn self than wait around for people to come around or wait for people to be ready. If I don't try, how will I ever know? I had everything ready for me at the time. A place to stay, a job. Everything I wanted, could have been. Everything was logically planned. I had love maps that made sense to ME. It had to only make sense to me. But everyone just thought I was being crazy.
Fast forward, I somehow managed to get picked up by cops and sent to the hospital and later found out that I don't have a brain aneurysm instead I have stage one cancer, a small tumor that can be treated. I denied treatment. Fuck I look like trying to be a vegetable on a hospital bed. I used to work at hospital. I've seen chemo. I've seen hair loss and how fucking miserable it is. Why would I want my blood to be taken or get transfusions? Why would I want to waste my time on Earth, 21 at the time to experience more sickness, hair loss and weakness? In exchange I gave up treatment so someone else can have it. Still everyone thought I was lying. What's new? I have a dark sense of humor but that's pretty... too dark right? I remember the trauma and ptsd it left me in. I still get flashbacks till this day. They stripped me out of my clothes. I felt like the cops, nurses, and doctors raped me with their eyes again.
This time it didn't happen because I was drunk or suicidal, I just had a bad maniac episode because I haven't slept. They ripped my hand of Hamsa bracelet off which means peace in the Middle East and North Africa. That was the first straw, I done cuss out the cops at that point. Yelling and screaming I don't want to be in the loony bin again. Yeah I call mental hospitals and suicide watch rooms loony bins to make it sound less serious. I resisted of course. They gave me random shots on random body parts. I was aching and so high and strapped down that I started having maniac episodes for five hours straight. Every hour, I would have an episode. I'd wake up and say thing like: "my family members are bloods but I fell in love with a crip and if they knew you treated me they'll kill all of you." I don't really know why I had to say that so moving on. I'd wake up talking about everything I ever learned as a child and say how doctors and the system is a scam. All of my theories and memories just came out every ten minutes... every hour for five hours.
I kept telling them to just inject me with something that'll kill me but again what's new, testing my limits. Cussing out the authorities, telling them to kill me or I'll do it myself. I've been picked up by the cops since I was a youngin'. I was always time traveling. I was always doing things alone. The first time I got picked up by cops was when I was about three or four, lived in Burien with my moms and my brothers dad, I wanted to take my baby doll to the park, my moms said no and I left with the stroller. Didn't know numbers then, all the apartments looked the same. Cops came to scoop me and saw my moms getting the mail so I pointed at her. She always tells me that they would've called child services on her if it happened again, I remember this so well because she sat me on the counter and gave me a green apple, it was pretty sour.
I remember these apartments well in Burien too because we got robbed when I was sleeping. I didn't know anything because I was sleeping but there were footprints on my blanket. Good thing I didn't get kidnapped or killed or I wouldn't be writing this. I'm invincible at this point. I'll probably die when I'm really happy doing what I love or in my sleep. Anyway, I got rabbits at these apartments too which is why I later on bought a rabbit a couple years ago. That rabbit, Tobi with an I for flare. I made an impulsive decision because it reminded me of my childhood. Also she was the only one rabbit that had issues and she looked like she was broken. I like fixing broken things, I like to fill things and people with so much love that they don't know what to do but sometimes it gets overbearing so my animals die on me because I give them too much food and/or love.
SO why the fuck stay in a place where the roots of my pain and problems grew in? I've been wanting to move to San Diego for a long time; well California. I want palm trees, I want summer all year long. I don't want any more days and nights of depression when seasonal depression hits when I literally cannot leave my damn bed. Make my bed. Even the most basic human shit doings like work. I had to beg my little brother to take Yoko out everyday because I couldn't even leave my apartment. Days became longer nights where I was high as fuck off sleeping pills. Contemplating suicide. But no one knew, no one asked. I never talk about the shit I be going through because who really gonna feel what it feels like when depression eats you up like a dead corpse? I was alive but I died a long time ago. My soul died and I had to revive it so many fucking times just to keep part of it alive for others.
I used to slit my wrists in my bath tub, veins filled with sleeping pills and alcohol. The pain was so fucking unbearable. It LOOKED like I had it together but I was slowly decaying like the roses on my table. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. All I was, was drunk. Going through a horrible break-up, losing my friend, and not so long my grandma. Losing everything I ever worked so hard for. And not even being at fault for the past. When I was going through all of this, I of course, acted "normal" or overly "happy" because the agony in my brain has numbed itself away like the drugs once did. I drank day and night, I drank every moment I was awake. The only time I felt alive or happy was drunk. I drank the false reality away. I drank so much that I had withdrawals whenever I didn't get a drop of alcohol in my system. Why would I want to stay in a place that only ever brought me pain, that rooted all of my pain? Sometimes it feels like I was sleep walking due to lack of sleep and my withdrawals.
Why would I want to stay in a place where I felt like I got molested, raped? Why would I want to stay in a place that tore my body apart before I even got to experience it alone? Why the fuck would I want to stay in a place where my heart broke over and over again? Why would I want these memories where I can't even control? Like I said before; "time does not heal all wounds, it teaches you how to live with the pain." I don't want to stay in a place where I'm only reminded of the demons that took over my soul. Where demons fed off my own demons and then some. I don't want a life here, a future, I don't want to raise my kids or siblings here. There were some times where I lashed out... Yes. Not because I was only depressed but I feel everything, I remember literally everything no matter how long ago. I don't hold grudges but I remember all the pain like it happened yesterday. When that triggers, I have no idea where it all goes. I hate being able to remember every detail of every memory. High, drunk, blacked out even sober. I remember it all so well. It would be fucked up if I get memory loss. That's all it is. Mental illness leads to memory loss and no one talks about it.
Do you know what it feels like to wake up, promising yourself you'll tame your demons and past, then someone telling you, you'd never make it out of your old life? Do you know how it feels to feel like, for once, you'll be great and happy but someone reminds you that moving out of the hell that also gave you heaven on earth is "asking for it?" I don't want these memories, I don't want this pain anymore. Just because it passed does not mean it hurts any less. I still have dreams of what could've been. I still have dreams about people who broke my damn fucking heart every night. I have nightmares about it. And when I bathe in my own depression and filth; that's all I saw when I slept. I slept so much when I was depressed because I wanted half ass dreams of half ass people who did nothing but brought me pain.
People love playing victim as if they weren't the ones who did damage first. I spent so many sleepless nights hallucinating on drugs and alcohol to fill the voids of being hallow. I laid there paralyzed. Not being able to move, finally thinking to myself, my time has come. I've been pretty invincible lately haven't I? I purchased so many sleeping pills since I was 13. That was the first attempt. No one knew. I was in my room. My family were having dinner downstairs; meanwhile I was shoving more than half a bottle of sleeping pills down my throat. After a night of drinking at the beach. No one knew but I knew and I remember. I laid there and my body and mind went numb. But I heard my thoughts kinder. People do say that silence is loud. AND my fucking body felt like a soft feather.
It felt like I was fucking screaming for help but no one ever heard me. It makes them uncomfortable how comfortable I was talking about dying and wanting to die. NO one ever believed I'd do it. And I did it so many times. Times to take the edge off. Times where I'd wake up in my apartment from shock and the water in the tub already turned cold. My apartment is fucking flooded again and I think to myself I have to live this stupid ass life again. I have to face and deal with everything again. People think suicide is selfish but not trying to understand it; is selfish. Wanting someone to stay alive for your own resonate problems. Wanting someone to be alive to fill your missing voids and emptiness is selfish.
I never thought suicide was selfish. I thought I was selfish after Miguel killed himself. After he committed suicide, all I thought about, was how I felt. I questioned everything. I questioned why he would do this to me and our friends. THAT was selfish. I didn't even think about how he must've felt when it happened. Depression has no face. He always acted like a goofball and you know what they say, the most depressed people are usually the funny ones. I never knew how empty life could feel after Miguel. I stayed at Marination Ma Kai for so long. For so long I stayed for the good memories but it was my safe haven, I felt like home there. Home is where my heart was at the time. That place was my fucking baby and everyone babied the fuck out of me.
People knew I was on edge. Everyone knew that I was hurting. I could never express it. I stayed because of the memories Miguel. I was the first person to get him out of his comfort stage. I was the person who got him to open up to me. Then one day he decided to just leave me behind. Without any reasoning or explanation. For so long, I blamed myself. I couldn't save him. I didn't do more. I've always given him tough love. He knew that; that must be why he didn't reach out. He made one last phone call but it wasn't to me. If that phone call had been for me, God knows I would've rescued my angel.
Why would I want to continue a life with missing and broken pieces? There are things here that are out of my control. Things I can't fix or change. I don't have any of the missing puzzle pieces anymore. I want to fucking fix and put this puzzle back to where it once is. My heart and soul ain't even here for me. What's meant for me will be for me and right now, it's not here and maybe it never was.
When my grandma died, all I got was a phone call. I drank a whole bottle of Jameson to myself. Cried myself to sleep for so long. How the fuck was I suppose to be there for my family, for my moms when her own moms died? She was hurt and was in so much pain, till this day she is. I still am. I didn't know how to comfort her. I didn't know how to take her pain away. If I could just take peoples pain away and inject them into myself I would. Over and over again. I fled when my grandma died. There was a spiral of emotions I felt. There was so much I needed to do for my grandma before she died. She was healthy. She was a legend. My grandmas funeral lasted five nights and six days. People travelled miles to see her one last time. But all we got was a copy of the video. Everyone blamed me for so long, even myself. I blamed myself for not being able to make things happen. I blamed myself for not being able to revive or save her. I had dreams about her every fucking time I closed my eyes. Her soul doesn't even belong on this side of the Earth.
I had dreams of me drowning and trying to kill myself. I was drowning and she always saved me. I was drowning and her saving me felt like a taste of fresh air. SO I have to continue her legacy. Her empire. My family grew up from the struggle. No second pair of clothes let alone shoes. From Vietnam to Seattle. Everyone suffered. Suffered from their past life. On to this life. No money from the War, from the Great Depression. You won't ever KNOW my struggle unless I tell you. Who wants to know? I grew up in the projects, I watched my moms get mistreated from these dusty ass dudes. All I saw was a woman of courage. All I saw growing up was a bad ass moms busting her ass off bouncing from job to job to put a roof over our heads. Food on the table. Using EBT, making sure her kids got everything first. Even if it meant her clothes being ripped or not fitting properly. Same shoes every year. Spending all she got on rent and on us. Don't tell me about no struggle, I know the fucking struggle. I lived through it and I still am. Soon I can say that I bought my moms a fucking home that feels like home. That's all she wanted from me was a house, a place to call home. All she asked was we come home on Sundays to eat her homemade meals.
Soon, I will be doing what I love without letting it consume me. Soon I will have everything I ever lost. What a damn shame, ain't it? I had things set and planned. I had thoughts and ideas of who will be hugging me at graduation, celebrating all my damn success. Kickin' at my house, meeting my moms. Eating the best out of the best foods. Living lavishly. Having back to back BBQs because those are my favorite things. Family bonding, eating and talking. All I ever really wanted to stand on my two feet alone but be able to say I did it on my own for my own.
Finally, free at last. I'm going to have everything I ever hustled for. I'm going to get that mother fucking house, I'm graduating and doing what I want to do for the rest of my existence, I will have a collection of my favorite cars. I'm talking about the Nissan R34, another Suburu BRZ, STI, Toyota Supras, Mitsubishi Evos, all black. I'm gonna have generations of Yoko's and name them all Yoko. I will have the life style I've been trying to afford. I will have it all and more. I don't say things I cannot do, mark my words. The only way out is up. I grew up in a broken neighborhood but I want more. I want and will get my moms and siblings out the projects. I will be nothing more than what I am. That is GRACE.
Catch y'all in traffic. And goodnight. 💙
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