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thegreatjoshb · 1 year ago

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Llama Trauma

I haven't *written* a post in a long time. It feels like not since probably undergrad. But I have recently come to realize that my childhood was exquisitely traumatic, and it has left me a shell of a man who does not know how to navigate the world in an emotionally appropriate way.

My mother is the main reason for my trauma, repeatedly choosing another man over me and my siblings, never having a real conversation about our feelings (because she was likely traumatized herself and just... couldn't), and then topping it off by dying on my little brother's birthday. At like 11 pm. She couldn't even wait 1 hour to die, so add that to the list.

Anyway, my little brother and older sister were having a conversation the day before mother's day, and my sister was finally told about *some* of the horrible events that we went through in middle school and high school. My sister is 9 years older than me, and she moved out when she was 18 years old. She probably got the best parts of our mother for the longest time, but our mom fucked my sister up with her own special trauma.

My sister just apologized to me profusely for not being there, for not even knowing what happened to us. She wished she could have saved me and my brothers, but she couldn't have been there because she was going through her own life shit at the same time, and quite frankly, I was too embarrassed to tell anybody about what was actually happening in my life. I really didn't want ANYBODY to know - not my friends at school, not my sister, not my father, not even a random stranger [I didn't want the pity] - so I mostly kept it to myself. I repressed my emotional needs and became so self-sufficient because nobody else was meeting my needs, and it got to the point where even now, as a 32 year old man, the thought of asking anybody for help doesn't even cross my mind because I always feel like I am alone and there is nobody to help me.

My district manager at work has told me so many times to call him and let him know what I need help with and to contact him if I ever feel stressed. To this day, I have had a great working relationship with him, and the ONLY time I have ever called him was when my mother died. So long story short, I always feel like my childhood self who was left alone to fight and solve all his battles. Battles I never could have won, so instead of fighting, I learned to retreat.

I learned to retreat deep into my head. There is a special place where I go to not feel, and I go so far back. My eyes feel like they look at nothing. I have perfect vision, but I don't see anything. I literally cannot tell you how I am feeling in any given moment. Right now, I feel nothing. I am so disconnected with my emotions that I don't realize how much things affect me until well after the fact. My emotions are latent and powerful, but completely unknown to me.

So, now that we have gotten the background out of the way, here is a story - one of many - I told my sister that night. She laughed so hard when I told her this story, which is honestly the most common response to what I am about to type. She told her husband, who said I should sell the story to a comedian (despite the lack of any actual humor in the story). I have never formally written out this story as far as I can remember, but every time I verbalize it to someone, they literally crack up. It is a truly tragic story, but I also believe that it is so shocking to some people that they don't know how to respond. If anybody reads this entire post, please let me know how it comes across in typed format. Here goes nothing.

BUCKALICIOUS: LORD OF THE LAND

At the end of my 8th grade year, my family was evicted from the 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house we were renting. There were 6 people living in the house - 7 if you included my mother, but I don't because she spent most of her time with her boyfriend. Let's call him George.

Of those 7, my mother and I ended up living at George's double wide mobile home on his 2.5 acres of land. It was honestly not to shabby, and one of the teeny tiny parts of living there was being able to be around so many animals.

You see, George had enough land to home some unconventional animals. He had 2 dogs - Saige - a great dane, who became my dog, my soul, and my entire reason to exist. Stone - a doofy by lovable bull mastiff. Cheech and Chong - two goats that lived on a part of the land that was sectioned off by a fence. And last but not least, Buckalicous: lord of the Land (AKA Buck).

Now Buck was a black llama with an incredible underbite that was a "breeder" llama at Busch Gardens. At 10 or 11 years old, he was no longer useful for breeding, but it is not like he was dead yet. Llamas have like a 15 year life span. George knew the guy at Busch Gardens and convinced him to sell Buck to him for $100, saying he had land for the llama to roam on and a barn to house him if the weather was bad (all true).

So Buck came home with George.

Now I remember meeting Buck in December, just a few months before I was forced to move in with George due to the eviction. I met Buck because my mother came home one day with a black eye. She had to explain that, no, it wasn't the new guy she was dating [He would beat her up later, he just didn't hit her in *this* instance]. It just so happened she got hit in the face because she got too close to a LLAMA! WHAT??! Why the fuck was my mom anywhere near a llama? How can I meet this llama that hurt my mom so?

Well, she took me to George's place that winter and introduced me to the llama. His name was Buckalicious: Lord of the Land. Buck for short. He was on the opposite side of a fence, and we had to approach slowly because he was a little skittish. My mother showed me where the Sweetfeed was. She scooped some out using an old Folger's container, and she let Buck approach to eat the food. That llama LOVED his sweet feed. She handed me the container, and I let the llama eat. It was honestly magical. Buck's underbite made him look less intelligent than he was, but he was honestly such a great animal.

Fast forward to the summer, where I am now living with my mother and George on his 2.5 acres of land in his double wide mobile home. My brother was not living with us because he got in trouble in school and had to live with my father in the neighboring city to go to a special correctional school. So it was just me, my mom, George, and the animals (Saige, Stone, Cheech, Chong, and Buck).

Now in the Florida summer's, you can imagine it to be excruciatingly hot, especially to a large llama (probably 350 lbs +) covered in BLACK fur. And it WAS HOT! It was a horribly hot summer. I remember because my mother didn't have a job, and we couldn't afford cable that summer, and George was working odd jobs. I spent a lot of time outside. That is when I became so close to the animals, particularly Saige, because I literally had nothing better to do than to go outside and run around the land by myself. We were in the middle of nowhere a mile down a dirt road. There weren't any children my age to hang out with, I had no television or video games, and my brother no longer lived with me. I was trying to make the best out of a rough situation.

The one and only nice thing I will ever say about George is that one time, and one time only in my opinion, he came up with a good idea and made it work. The land was divided pretty equally, animals and barn on one half, the people and the double wide mobile with a nearby, discounted and disgusting koi pond on the other. And instead of walking out to the llama and goats and bringing them clean water every day, George rigged up a bathtub to always have clean water fill to a certain height, thus allowing the animals to always have something to drink. You know how a toilet tank fills up to a certain level without overflowing? Same concept. Except outside and in a bathtub instead of a toilet.

In the cooler months, it was awesome because nobody had to worry or stress about watering the llama. It was just always taken care of. But when the temperature started to rise, we noticed Buck doing something strange. Buck was STANDING shin-deep inside the bathtub! Not drinking, just standing. We believe it was to help him cool down during the hot summer months. And it was just something that Buck now did regularly.

So in this particular summer, I would mow that lawn weekly. It was a lot of land, but George had a riding mower, and it gave this 14 year old something to do for a bit. But then the lawnmower broke, and we couldn't afford to fix it. And the grass grew. and grew. And it wasn't great.

Eventually, George had the bright idea to open the fence and let the goats out onto the people side. Maybe they would eat the grass? It was worth a shot? IDK. Maybe not after all.

Now the fence was open there was no land separation. The animal side was the people side and the people side was the animal side. By this point in my relationship with Buck, I had spent a lot of time feeding him sweet feed from the coffee container. It was a daily ritual for us. And Buck warmed up to me slowly. He would, as long as the fence was still between us, eat the sweet feed out of my palm. I was terrified at first trying this because I knew he had the potential to freak out and give me a black eye like he did my mother, or possibly worse. But he never did.

When George opened the fence in the hopes that the goats and llama would eat the too-tall grass, it changed the relationship dynamic. Now during the day, I would get as close to the llama as I could without him freaking out. The goats never scared me because they were always chill, and I could grab them by their horns and control them if I needed to. I could not get too close to Buck, though, because Buck just wouldn't let me. It got to the point where I would grab a handful of sweet feed to lure Buck my way, and eventually, he would walk right up to me and eat the food directly out of my hand! How freaking exciting. He used his powerful underbite as a shovel to scoop the food from my hand into his mouth. It was cute.

But it wouldn't last long. I was able to get close to Buck only a few times. He wouldn't always be calm and cool, and sometimes he would sprint away. When he started running, Saige, the great dane, sprung into action and chased after the llama. She did not do so because she wanted to chase the llama, but Saige saw the llama's erratic movements as a danger to me. Saige loved me so much that she would chase a llama that was 3 times her size to protect *ME*. I fucking loved Saige.

One day, George found an odd job to do and left to go do it. My mother and I were hungry in the afternoon, but we didn't have anything in the house to eat. So we left the house and bought like $3 worth of Totinos pizza at the nearby Walmart. We came home, heated the pizzas in the oven, and then we just enjoyed the pizzas. The last time I will ever "enjoy" a totinos pizza.

As we are eating, George bursts into the house screaming:

DID ANYONE NOTICE THE DEAD FUCKING LLAMA OUTSIDE???!!!

huh? wut?

Dead? Llama? What is he talking about? We were literally just outside not 15 minutes before bringing in our pizza haul. And no. Both my mother and I, in fact, did not notice the dead fucking llama outside.

Well, because we opened up the fence and let the goats and llama onto our side, they were farther away from their tub-water than they normally were. But Buck noticed nasty, koi-less koi pond in front of the house. And to an animal that is used to standing shin high in a tub of water to keep cool, this looked like a fun little option.

However, it was not fun. Buck slipped on the algae that lined the koi-pond and hit his head. Buck was just trying to keep cool, and he ended up drowning in the koi pond.

FUCK!

He was dead, and there was nothing we could do to bring him back. But we also could not just leave him there in the koi pond! Something had to be done, and the dogs ensured that it must be done immediately. Before we could even compose ourselves to come up with an action plan to deal with the llama carcas, Stone, our doofy bull mastiff has already started eating the llama's face.

We had to pull Stone away from the llama, and tie him and Saige up to a tree to prevent them from gormandizing on this llama feast. If it wasn't already a heartbreaking situation, seeing those dogs tied up and trying to get to the llama made it worse.

There was no plan. There was only chaos. We had to do something, and we had to do it RIGHT NOW. George grabbed some rope and tied it around Buck's body, then he tied the rope to the back of his truck. George turned on the truck and tried dragging Buck's body out of the foul water. It was not a smooth or easy process. The only thing I can think of that is heavier than a llama... is a soaking wet, dead llama.

Eventually, George was able to drag Buck's body out of the koi pond, and he drove the truck across his land. He drove it deep into the 2.5 acres he owned, and he dragged the body to a nice woody spot.

Now we both have to start digging the llama grave. That was the day I learned how hard it is to dig a grave. Not emotionally, though that did take its toll, but just how physically hard it was to shovel the dirt out, even with two able bodied men splitting the work. The sun was setting, and light was fading fast. So we had to be quick.

George was finally satisfied with the size of the grave, and we had to shove the llama into the hole. One, Two, PUSH! One, Two, PUSH. The llama fell into the grave, and we covered it back up with dirt.

I grabbed two sticks and used some of the rope that we dragged the llama body with to make a Cross, and I used that cross as the marker for Buck's grave.

It has been almost 18 years since we lost Buck to this tragedy. George eventually lost his land due to not paying for it, so I currently don't know who lives there. Or if they will ever find Buck's grave.

It was one of those things you just cannot be prepared for. In hindsight, there are so many things that I would have done differently. Clean out the koi-pond. Mow the law by hand. Or just not let the animals on the other side of the fence.

Buck was an awesome animal who deserved better, and I will never again look at a Totino's pizza without thinking of a dead llama.

#trauma #childhood trauma #complex ptsd #storytime

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