Take me home to god knows where.

i look at the black canvas they call a night sky with my dilated eyes and i try to find the thousands of stars that promise they’ll take me home. No one answers the call. i am stuck in a body that won’t stop sitting and a mind that won’t stop running. So many trains of thought, but not a single one offering me a ride, just a continuous animation of all the ideas and dictations that leave me behind. i feel the grass twinkling its dewy mess in between my fingers and for the first time, i think i feel god, or maybe it’s just the acid soaked nerves that build up this feigned sense of spirituality.

There’s a single tingle down my spine that lifts me up with a giggle and i begin to remember bible camps and Sunday schools, hula hoop contests where the prizes are mini bibles and cotton candy. i think of the coolness of that dewy mess in between my fingers and it brings me back to the same coolness i felt when i snuck away with a friend to eat all of the snacks in the preschool room that was meant for the children who were too young and distracted to sit through a Sunday service.

It was a three day fasting activity, i still can’t quite tell you what it was for, but they sure made it sound important. i hate missing out, and being the poor kid, extracurriculars aren’t something i could usually indulge in. All i had was the church to encourage my budding social development. So, when they planned a three day fasting event for Sunday School students aged 11–13, i couldn’t help myself. A church sleepover had it all, uninterested, yet flirty little boys i could throw myself at, a chance to show off my short little pajamas, and an opportunity to talk to real, fleshed out human beings in the middle of the night. It had it all.

i showed up, ate the big breakfast generously provided for all of the eager fasting followers, and then snuck away at the prime of 3:00AM to dine on the fine extravagance of goldfish crackers and Swedish fish. i wasn’t alone in my decision, it was definitely a group sin, but that didn’t make them taste any less magnificent. i can only imagine the Sunday panic that ensued when one of the young children arrived in the room to indulge their distracted minds only to be left with empty bellies and empty promises of snack time. i wonder now, if that coolness ever brought me as close to god as i am now, or rather, feel now.

i liked the church. i cried when they sang and i cried whenever they’d pray for me. Looking back, i didn’t realize how much they pitied me, i always enjoyed the special treatment. It made me feel like i could walk on water, eating goldfish crackers and never looking down. Maybe, i really did have a god complex, that’s what my sister always said. How else is a child supposed to feel when showered with charity and praise for the simplest progressions and accomplishments merely because someone of her status isn’t meant to succeed?

They called me a miracle, a blessing, a diamond waiting to emerge under all the pressure of life’s greatest miseries. They did it again when i was homeless. They did it again when my mother died. They did it again when i passed out in the classroom after taking too much benadryl in the high school bathroom. They did it again when i wrote a mediocre poem during my stay at the mental hospital.

Funnily enough, while i was at the mental hospital, the other patients would always save up their goldfish crackers for me because they knew how much i loved them and they knew i’d never eat the food the hospital provided. i’d hide them in my pillow and munch on them throughout the night. Sometimes i’d feel god again knocking on that one way, bulletproof window. Maybe, i should put a little goldfish cracker on my grave, then god and i could laugh at my sins, instead of reflecting on them. Gotta do something to distract the man, he’s too watchful sometimes. i’d like to think that if i can convince him to look away long enough, maybe i’ll have a chance.

But, i digress, they were always doing it, praising me, i mean. They always glorified me for doing the bare minimum of surviving, while my classmates and peers flustered under stricter deadlines and missed assignments that wouldn’t be marked off just because there was too much tobacco on the kitchen table to do homework. It’s no wonder i fell so hard when i finally looked in the mirror and saw those funny little sins all looking back at me like a thousand stars that refused to die out.

i remember the last time i saw the people of the church. They were there when my house burned down. They watched it with me with a strange politeness, a comfort in their company. The news of the fire spread so quickly over social media, that everyone came to watch it with us. The house that burned me now burned a thousand shades of red that refused to die out. My childhood home burst with that same strange politeness, comfort in its destruction. Would you believe me if i said it was Easter Sunday? Sometimes i think my life is full of too many coincidences, too many goldfish crackers. There’s a news article floating around somewhere about it.

It was the fault of my nephew, but i use fault sparingly. He was three at the time. My brother and aunt had taught him how to light their cigarettes and how to heat up the bottom of their spoons when they were too high off heroin to do it themselves. i was playing Monopoly in the living room, while my aunt, sister, and cousin left to go visit the grave of my aunt’s son, he died of SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, before he ever reached a year old. My mother, or rather my grandmother but she behaved as my motherly figure, was sent to the nut house, my beloved mental hospital, because she believed she killed him. i wonder if they gave her goldfish crackers too. My mother was caring for him for three sleepless days while my aunt had disappeared again to god knows where. In her exhaustion she tripped over the dog while carrying the little baby and fell on him. She begged my aunt to take him to the hospital, but my aunt said he was fine. He cried a really long time, days even. The autopsy revealed he had a broken rib and that it may have been the reason he died, but ultimately they decided to go with SIDS. Or, maybe, that was just a lie my aunt told us to make my mother feel like less of a sin. My mother put the dog down as soon as i was away long enough, i don’t think she could bear to look at the dog that tripped her.

i remember when my mother first threatened to put her down, the dog, i mean. i held onto her tightly, my little hands squeezing the fur clumped together at the nape of her neck. “Let go of that mutt dumbass!” My mother beat me with a branch as i held onto the dog i grew up with, trying to get me to let go, but i just held on tighter, my wails buried in her fur. i think i saw god then, too, but he looked a little different.

My dog’s name was Jesse. The name Jesse is still a password to a lot of my personal things, but forget you read that part. The stick she beat me with hurt, but it didn’t hurt as much as when i discovered what they did to my dog and how they abandoned her at the shelter to be put to sleep. You don’t need the details, some things you have to keep to yourself. i didn’t sleep well after that, especially because my mother and i were forced to share a bed due to the size of the house. It’s hard to sleep next to someone after they do something like that. She was always doing something like that. i don’t think it was Jesse’s fault the baby died, but i think all of life is just finding someone else you can project your sins onto as a way to convince yourself that maybe heaven really will want you.

i suppose i should bring my derailed train back to the fire. i only mention it because it was the first time i saw something actually rise on an Easter Sunday. i was so used to things just going down and never coming back up. My nephew, after i had refused to let him play Monopoly with me, had caught the bottom of the bed on fire. He has Oppositional Defiant Disorder, meaning, if you do something he doesn’t like, he quickly acts out compulsively. i was the first to notice the fire, i called for my father to put it out and left the house immediately terrified of what was to come. i didn’t grab a single thing, nor did i help my crippled mother out of the house. It seems i’ve always looked out for myself, even in the beginning. i remember the fire licking the bullet holes on the back door where my brother almost shot a family friend for making fun of his weight.

“Be reborn!” the shattered windows shouted at me across the street as the devil flaunted in the flames. My sister and her followers finally returned from the grave site only to be greeted by firetrucks and crowds of people watching the house like it was a phoenix. i ran to her, arms opened wide, i remember the electrical lines sparking and making noises only god could understand above us. It really was a pretty bad fire, even though i keep glossing over it and getting distracted. Maybe, they should have put me in the preschool room too. At least i’d be able to look forward to the goldfish crackers.

My nephew was always getting in trouble. i remember the stares we would get in Mcdonald’s when he would pull the straw from his Large Coke and pretend to snort imagined pills from the dirty tables. He was only three at the time, he said he wanted to grow up to be like his daddy. He was only ever mimicking what went on around him. i don’t know if i blame him for the fire or not. On one hand, he was the one holding the lighter, on the other hard he didn’t teach himself how to use it. Maybe, instead of blame, i should thank him. i don’t think i would have gotten out of there otherwise.

Oh, goldfish crackers, i can still taste the saltiness and i remember the dewy mess on my fingers that would be left after i sucked the salt off of each sinful digit. That dewy mess, that messy sin, that dewy god. Oh, where’s the balance? i wonder if my mother ever made it up there, i know she might seem awful, but when the awful is normal, the goodness in someone shines so much brighter than the sins they left behind. i really do think he’d let her in. She said she’d become a preacher if she ever got better, i really do think she meant it. i think some people just don’t know better.

The reason it isn’t easy for me to completely condemn my mother, even in all the misery she perpetuated is because i know better. My mother wasn’t perfect, but no one really is. We tend to hide our ugliness, cover it up under scarred thighs and deleted tweets. She just wore hers on her sleeve. If anything, it just makes her more honest than most. Or, maybe, that’s just what i tell myself to get by. i said my mother is actually my grandmother. My birth mother left me and moved to Texas. My mother was always the one who told the story of how my father got custody of me, so i’m not sure how true it is. No one else seems to want to talk about it, so i’ll just tell you what she said.

She said she went to pick me up from my biological mother’s house and she could count on two hands the roaches that crawled over picture frames and scurried on yellow-stained walls. She said i had an inch of dirt caked onto my feet and cigarette burns on my back like i was a little ashtray left outside too long. She said she scooped me up out of the broken screen door window and no one even noticed that i was gone. She said she took me to the doctor and the doctor called children services. She said from there, my father was able to get custody and i was with her ever since.

My mother always liked me most because i looked like her. i was small and blonde. i remember she would point out heavier people in the middle of the thrift store and tell me, “you ever look like that, i’ll slap the shit out of you.” i still really don’t like eating. i think the whole process is disgusting and too mortal. i wonder if what she said has anything to do with that. My therapist thinks so. i’ve been gaining weight recently. i finally weigh more than 100 lbs. i wonder if that’s why i’ve been having dreams about her; she’s trying to find a way to slap the shit out of me from beyond the grave. i hope god wasn’t watching that day.

Her negative view on weight was taken out on my sister. She got hit with ball bats and one time she threw a can at her head. My sister was bleeding everywhere and my mother called my father in a panic telling him he needed to come home from work right away. She apologized to my sister, but they didn’t take her to a doctor or anything. She was just weeping saying, “I didn’t mean to. i don’t know why i’m like this. i’m sorry. i’m sorry. Please, stop bleeding.” Honestly, i think they were just hoping the blood stopped long enough to keep the abuse a secret. i just watched. i wasn’t any older than five. All a child can really do is watch. My sister had brown hair and my mother said she was fat. i don’t think she was. She looked like she weighed 140 at most. My sister looked most like her birth mother, her birth mother was someone different from mine. Her birth mother had a thick Kentucky accent and had a habit of moving every couple of years. i never met her until i was 16, maybe 17. Her birth mother called herself a gypsy when my sister asked why she left her. “Nothing can tie me down. i’m a gypsy. i’m always running, it’s how i survive, that’s just who i am.” My sister said, “I feel that.”

My sister was my primary caretaker for my cousin and me, when my mother was away and navigating new marriages. She bathed me and clothed me during her childhood. She gave up school and extracurriculars and hanging out with friends because she was forced to watch us. If she ever refused, it would be met with extreme violence and abuse. i know i’m supposed to show not tell, but some things you just don’t speak about. We weren’t good kids to watch either. We were hell. Sometimes my sister would get so overwhelmed i remember her shaking in a corner, fetal position and all, sobbing and banging her head against the wall until she couldn’t hear us any more. i really wish i was a better kid to watch. Maybe, she would have had a chance if i was just easier. My sister is still alive. Sometimes, i write in such a way that makes my readers think the people in my life have died. Some have, true, but she hasn’t. i don’t know why i do that, but i think everyone dies a few times before they ever reach the grave. She lives in a trailer with her fiancé and two kids. They struggle to eat, but she’s okay because she says, “i’ve always wanted to be a mother, to have children to watch that were finally mine and no one else’s. So i’m living the dream, regardless.”

i don’t know why my mother did that to her. She said it’s because my sister looked too much like her birth mother and she absolutely hated her birth mother. i don’t think that’s a good enough reason, but i guess we’re all triggered by something.

i have a brother, too. My mother was always really nice to him, but he has bipolar disorder and some other stuff going on, so sometimes he would blackout and they would get in screaming matches and throw ash trays at each other. My sister, even though i think she may have hated me when i was younger, always protected me. She never let anyone hurt me. One time my brother came in telling us that we needed to be careful because he owed someone money, or drugs, or something, and they might try to kill us. We all laughed and i made fun of him by imitating Paul Revere galloping on a horse, while chanting, “The junkies are coming, the junkies are coming.” i was 7 at the time. He was 17. He punched me in the forehead with all his weight and tried to drag me off the couch. i screamed, i knew what his violence could do. My sister, sitting next to me and quickly recovering from her laughter, grabbed me and wouldn’t let him get me. i was safe, for now.

My sister moved out eventually, thank god, or thank her for having the strength to get out. i moved in with her for the summer after my house burned down. My mother and father moved in with her too. She’ll help anyone, no matter what they’ve done. i think that’s just how we were conditioned. By this point my mother was bedridden. After her heart attack following the death of my baby cousin, the doctor had shot her up with too much dye, or something, and her kidneys were failing. Eventually we bought a trailer and i took care of her.

My sister and i have OCD. My sister would get really upset because sometimes my mother would get blood and shit on the walls from having to prop herself up to get off the toilet. She was always bleeding and shitting.

i love my mother. i know that’s probably not what you were expecting, or even wanting to hear. i just can’t help myself. i don’t talk about her a lot, but i’ve been trying to talk about her a little bit more. i don’t want her to be just a stack of marriage licenses and death certificates. When i tried to find out more about her on Ancestry.com and newspaper archives, that’s all i could find. That was the only evidence that she ever existed. The trauma in my family is generational. Misery breeds misery and the parents of my parents past, their ancestors and family friends, perpetuated a cycle that unfortunately doesn’t end with me, but seeps its way into the fading laughter lines of nieces and nephews, someone to continue on the family tradition of trauma responses and pill-popping early mornings. My mother was a victim, too. That doesn’t make it right, nothing makes anything right. It just is what it is. i have to tell the whole truth or i might as well say nothing at all.

My mother was born 1953 in the depths of Kentucky. The part of Kentucky they make memes about. Her mother grew up in the great depression and my mother suffered the consequences of the era. My mothers aunt would lock her in a cellar as a child and refuse to give her food and water. She called her a whore and starved her. She would throw stones at her and make her walk miles barefoot as punishment for existing. My mother’s mother would pull her hair and beat her. My mother had a bald spot in the back of her head where they would pull her out of chairs by her hair and kick her until she bled when she fell to the ground. It wasn’t just abuse in my eyes, it was actual torture. When my mother abused us it was more reactionary. We triggered something in her that made her lash out, but the abuse she experienced didn’t have much of a source. It was just there, looming over her like the Cheshire cat i see on ceilings when i get a little too high. She didn’t say anything wrong, or make any mistakes, or look like anyone else. She was just alive, and that was enough.

My mother never told me this stuff, i had to learn it on my own by interviewing friends and other family members. i’m really glad we don’t have family reunions anymore, i don’t think i could ever look any of them in the eye again after knowing what i know. My mother found her way out through marrying up. That’s what women did to escape back then. There weren’t a lot of options. i think that’s why my mother was so dead set on appearances. Pretty skinny girls got out. Pretty skinny girls survived another day. The man she first married ended up being abusive too and even threw her through a glass door. She left after that and married many more men. Some nice, some not so nice. It was kind of a hit or miss. She stayed with one guy a really long time, but she left him when he kicked her dog. She was much quicker to leave when a man was mean to her dog, compared to when he was mean to her.

My mother had two children, my father and my aunt. She loved my father, probably a little too much. i think she just liked having a man around that really loved her. Sometimes when we have children, we realize no one else ever loved us the way they do. My mother had issues with loneliness. She was never alone too long. That probably stems from her time in the cellar. Every time my father would get a girlfriend, she would find some reason to cuss them out and chase them out of the house with metal baseball bats. She made all his decisions for him and after marriages fell through over and over again, she moved in with him for the rest of her days. i think she was happiest when home with him. My mother was the only one to ever take me to the doctor and when no one else had money to buy food, she’d do whatever she could to make sure i was fed. She was also the only one besides my sister to keep me safe and kept other relatives from hitting on me and calling me a whore. She was a protector. i told you my mother always liked me most because i looked like her. i think that’s why she wanted to protect me so badly. My therapist said it’s something about wanting to protect her inner child and being unable to, or something like that. “If i ever die, promise me, you’ll get out of here as fast as you can.”

i did, mommy, i did.

When my brother and sister had left home to live on their own, i was the only one that lived with my father, his sister, my mother, and his new girlfriend. We lived in a trailer after the house burned down. After struggling with homelessness my father became a heroin addict. i remember watching various people, some i knew, some i didn’t, od’ing while watching cartoons or doing my homework. It was just so normal. i remember when my mother and i watched my aunt od. She was in my arms when her heart stopped. i dabbed her forehead with a warm washcloth until the ambulance arrived. My mother looked at me with tired eyes and said, “You shouldn’t be here for this. i’m so sorry.” i didn’t cry about it til she said that. i didn’t know i wasn’t supposed to be there, but that’s when i first realized the things i were witnessing weren’t normal for the other kids. She taught me that normal was far away from here and i’m happy she taught me how to leave. They were able to bring my aunt back to life with some narcan and a couple paddle shocks. i remember holding her shoes for her while they did it. i hope god was watching me then.

My mother died July 6, 2014. She was the center of my world, as odd as that sounds to outsiders. i even have a shrine to her in my closet; her driver’s license and letters in her handwriting dancing in the shadows of a closed door. Now, she exists somewhere in the shed of my sister’s trailer in the box the crematorium gave us. The night before she died she held my little fingers with her left hand and caressed my cheek with the other. “You’re my little princess.” i wonder if god will ever see what she saw in me. i don’t even know if i could look in her eyes today. Princesses don’t look like this, they don’t take medications and sleep with random men.

Wanna know something fucked up? After all this writing and lamenting about religion and faith, i don’t even believe in god. The drugs make me spiritual, but not like that. Yet, if he’s real, i hope god was looking away from my family, i hope they flew under his radar. We’re all just projecting trauma and eating goldfish crackers of sins waiting for someone to love us enough to make it all go away. i hope he was distracted, but more than that, please, if there’s a heaven, tell me, he let her in.

i let my dilated eyes focus on something else, i can’t focus on that stuff too long. i really liked the church, i really liked that god they told me about, i really liked Jesse, i really liked my mother, i really liked goldfish crackers. i really liked me. i like all kinds of things i’m not supposed to. But the mirror isn’t as kind as it used to be and being traumatized as a child is much more thrilling compared to being traumatized as an adult. It loses its luster. No one accepts the bare minimum anymore, not even yourself. All you’re left with is your sins and this aching feeling that you’re not diamonds, you’re just coal. One day you’re just munching on your goldfish crackers and eventually you‘re too sick to your stomach to eat another bite. i wonder if that’s what god really feels like. Not some dewy grass while tripping in a public park, but that feeling of fullness while everything inside of you is screaming that you’re empty.

i wonder if those stars will die out before i do, i just wanna know that they’ll be there to welcome me home when i do. i won’t be able to stand it if they leave me behind too.

Tags: #trauma #god #religion #psychadelics #creativenonfiction #nonficition #memoir #memory #creativewriting #childhood #truestory #reflection #recovery