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34goingon9 · 1 year ago

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Cheeseburger in Paradise

This story always gets me. The nature of its premise is so silly and wildly bizarre to the point that it’s almost comedic, except for the fact that it’s one of the scariest memories I have with my dad. It’s one of those stories that you just can’t make up.

My memory begins in the kitchen. My dad must have just gotten home from the bar in the evening around dinner time and he was one of the drunkest I had ever seen him. Many times I don’t think I realized completely the alcoholism and this time I thought he was being funny… until he wasn’t.

I come downstairs to my dad “cooking a cheeseburger.” When I say cooking a cheeseburger, I’m talking waving an overly oiled, greasy, sizzling hot pan at a complete 90 degree vertical angle with a handmade ball of meat slap-dab in the middle. American cheese is oozing down the sides burning a char in the corners of the overly processed slice of dairy. Scorching hot oil is ricocheting off the pan at his face and in every direction like a shotgun blast. My dad’s arm is conducting the cooking show like the inflatable figures outside of car dealerships instead of a well orchestrated symphony. Gordon Ramsay would NOT have been impressed.

“What are you doing?” I would ask my dad playfully.

“I’m CoOkiNg a ChEeSeBurGeR 🍔 “ My dad would respond slurring his words as he confidently waves the metal pan around like a flag.

This exchange would continue back and forth several times. Each time, things would escalate further somehow. Not always aware and somewhat naive towards the extent and unpredictability of my dad’s alcoholism, I remember giggling more and more at watching his performance and the way he was responding as he answered me. I think I even was trying to film him on my new state of the art 2 megapixel cell phone because of how outrageous things looked. I could tell that I was starting to provoke him after a certain point of repeating the same things back and forth to one another with his tone becoming slightly more aggressive, but I did not realize how much I was poking the bear or when I had crossed the threshold of no return. Suddenly, the bottle cap flew off and my dad exploded like mentos in a coke bottle.

“THIS is what I’m FUCKING DOING!!”

At this moment my dad took his eyes off the pan and turned them towards me. They were hollow and black but they also seemed to possess the same fire that was heating the pan he was using. I remember as our eyes met, I felt both the color in my complexion and my over all soul drain down from the top of my head and out my feet like someone opened a valve pipe. In this moment I also began to RUN as I saw my dad lunge towards me as he screamed. I dodged out of the way at the last second before my dad managed to grab a loaf of bread behind me.

Having the advantage of being a traumatized competitive gymnast with an adrenaline rush and my contender being a belligerent, stumbling troll emerging from under the bridge.. I sprinted ahead of him up the stairs. I ran past my sister into her room who was oblivious to what had just unraveled downstairs and hid behind her desk in the corner of her room.

My dad’s footsteps can be heard stomping up the stairs like some kind of “ fee fi fo fum!” in the stillness as I awaited his presence in fear.

He storms past my sisters room which is the first one you pass as you get up to the second floor. The two of us DID NOT get along and never had, but I can’t blame the ways she resented me because of the way I became her responsibility. Nonetheless, she knew her job was to protect me and she did so to the best of her angsty pre-teen ability.

My dad continues to pass my bedroom and turns the corner to his room. I cannot physically see him but I can sense his demeanor and movements like a looking glass and I know time is running out like grains of sand. After a short time of a drunkenly thorough search, he continues to move back through the hall and retrace his steps. I can feel him look into my room like a predator which is like a small cubby. He quickly moves on to the last room and finds that third times a charm.

I am frozen standing in the corner barricaded by my sister’s desk. My sister remains sitting propped on her bed interrupted by the hurricane that just came through her doors. My dad’s face appears in her doorway. He is standing there like the grim reaper but instead of being armed with a scythe, he has a death grip on his loaf of bread.

He sees me and makes a bee-line for it. My sister hops off the bed but my dad makes contact with me behind the desk before she can make the first interference. He screams his words that are still ringing in my ears like tinnitus from just moments earlier, only this time grabbing me and smothering the loaf of bread into my face as he viciously repeats ‘THIS is what he’s FUCKING doing.’

Natalija intercepts and somehow manages to pull my enormous and sloppy father off of me and ensures I can breathe. She puts herself in between us and is pushing him away with her arms outstretched and guiding him towards the door as she is yelling in utter hatred and frustration at him.

“GET OUT!!!! NO ONE WANTS YOU HERE!!! GO BACK TO THE BAR!!! GET OUT!! JUST GET OUT!!!!!”

I do not know why, but my dad listens to this and retreats back downstairs. The dust has by no means settled but the immediate threat is now at least removed from proximity. I am scared and I cannot stay as the risk is too high. My dad is unpredictable in every sense of the word, just like how he flipped at me just prior. There is a chance he could completely forget, or he could see me and immediately be set off again. I live in a household of Russian roulette and you never know when the bullet is going to go off in the chamber.

(Furthermore, though it’s a bit late to figure out how to fit into this story, I believe this was the night my dad was also taking wads of cash out of his wallet every five minutes and handing it to me. I think this added to the bizarre nature of his behavior and why I was particularly childish towards egging him on about “what he was doing.” Also, when I say wads of cash, this is not a childhood exaggeration. My dad had a high paying job and was able to be a functional alcoholic through his cocaine addiction. He had money and he always had plenty on him to spare just in case. My father was always generous with money and gifts to make up for his behavior but this night was not like that. I had probably amassed $1,000 completely unbeknownst to him for no reason. He just kept handing it to me like a broken ATM dispenser.)

Standing in my sister’s room, I am faced with a difficult decision but I know she is neither the target and able to assert herself in ways I cannot. I still have guilt towards leaving her that night, but soon after I must have called my best friend Jaime. I have no idea what was said in exchange, but it was without hesitation that her father arrived at my house to pick me up to spend the night with them. I faced the predicament where I could not go down the stairs and run the risk of my dad hearing me let alone know I was leaving. My trampoline was located below my sisters window, so I crawled out and jumped off the roof onto it. I can remember seeing Mike’s black Toyota Rav 4 off in the distance like a mirage but grass, not sand, was rubbing past my ankles as I ran towards safety that was thankfully not a hallucination or in my imagination.

I don’t remember the rest of this evening. I don’t know if any of us talked about what happened. I do know that the Spiegel’s home was a safe haven for me then and for years to come- even into present day. I mean that in the sense that they not just provided me safe shelter, but also showed me unconditional love and treated me like real family during a particularly sensitive time that I didn’t even understand how bad things were because it was my norm. Regardless, my dad cared more about his appearance to the world than my actual well-being and I remember the next morning being scared in anticipation towards his reaction. There were times where I had to leave overnight for my safety but would wake up berated by my father because in reality, I had exposed his secrets to the outside world which was a no-no. I do want to say this time my dad did not question this decision. This isn’t to say I got an apology either. Things were glazed over. Perhaps I got a sorry in the form of one of his coincidental next-day Bloomingdale hauls, but I don’t think that was even the case here. Either way, life resumed and it wouldn’t be long before the cycle repeated itself.

This memory is a painful one and has as much gaps as it has vividness.

Putting it down for now. But I did give him back all the cash.

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34goingon9 · 1 year ago

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Who Hurt Her Before She Knew She Was Hurt?

I talked about my childhood panic attacks before, and this post is an extension of that.

Moreover than the panic, I also had an embarrassing and uncontrollable tic as a child that would manifest as a result of a high emotional state- be it anxiety or even excitement. I would give myself an aggressive hug and use every ounce of strength my tiny arms could squeeze into my body..all while digging my teeth into the skin of my right arm and/or forcing my fist into my cheek. I would try my best to hide the extreme look of release of tension overtaking my face behind my limbs and turning my head while diverting my gaze (I imagine this to be the equivalent of a childhood the “Kim Kardashian ugly crying face” meme). Humiliated by this outburst that I could not stop, I would try to pretend I was just performing a giant stretch. Shockingly, my classmates and peers were much more astute than a neurodivergent kid would hope and based on the looks of that photo, it doesn’t appear I was as good of an actress or yoga instructor as I thought, either.

I do not know when this behavior began, or why this overwhelming need to self soothe would take over my tiny body like an exorcism. I do know it existed prior to my mom’s death, as not only evidenced by the date of this photo but also because of her frustration at how I would destroy my clothing when I would suppress the urge by chewing on the sleeves and drawstrings of all of my shirts and sweaters- the wet fabric chafing my chin and wrist, dehydrating the cotton, and putting holes in everything like an infestation of anxious, hungry moths after hours of feasting on end.

Furthermore, I talk about this arm biting -which is something reminiscent of The Lion King with Ed the Hyena savagely gnawing himself- like it’s past tense, yet it still exists in present day. And I still am dominated by this pervasive need for oral fixation via other outlets which I have unfortunately found in vapes over the years. Nonetheless, after countless attempts, I finally managed to kick that habit which was hellish and a feat to overcome considering it was often told to me how I would still incessantly use it even while sleeping. I am glad Freud is not my therapist to give me an interpretation on this one, though.

The decades of abuse on my wrist has literally left me with what has been adoringly referred to by my friends as my ‘werewolf patch.’ The skin is ever-dry and comparable to the hyde of an elephant in a famine in which the only thing that grows in this climate is a thick, discolored, brown dry grass much like a stubborn tumbleweed that forced its way through the arid terrain.

I still harbor my childhood insecurities to date whenever this tic takes over. It’s weird, I don’t even realize always when I’m doing it, the action is noticeable, it inflicts obvious injury, and most of all.. I have no idea why I started doing it in the first place-among various other peculiarities I have not all nearly mentioned, as many of which are difficult areas to revisit and discuss. I do know from not just my education but my own intuition that these behaviors -both individually and cumulative- are demonstrative of something larger that happened. An unknown traumatic event(s) that occurred before the onslaught of known traumas that began at age nine.

Until I am able to explore my inner psyche enough to answer that question, and if I choose to even try to ever access that part of my deep past or subconscious, I can choose to look at that photo in a way that reframes things to: “I love the similarities in mannerisms between me and my mom,” even if hers is an intentional and well controlled pose.

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34goingon9 · 1 year ago

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Since before my mom died, I know that I always demonstrated signs of extreme anxiety and panic as a child.

I want to chalk the particular phobia of having my house catch on fire to the fire safety assemblies we had in elementary school and not some sort of foreboding clairvoyance. Sometimes I think that we were never meant to be in that house and the fire was destined to happen in another twisted line of fate. Perhaps not while my mom was alive and kept it clean, but certainly not with all the hazards within a house of a hoarder after she died.

When the fire happened, I first heard about it from my neighbor(?) telling me my house was on fire over AOL instant messenger. My dad left the house after he lost custody and was living in NYC. I’m not entirely sure the circumstance behind that as my father considered his custodial rights terminated to be a result of my sister and I “abandoning him.” He stopped speaking to me after losing custody in 2004 despite all my desperate efforts to maintain the volatile relationship with the only parent I had left in a herd of family members who wanted his head served on a silver platter. Though those feelings were mutually shared from both parties on either side..

At the time of the fire, my dad was still ignoring all my letters and changed his phone numbers. I tried so hard until he finally caved and reached out when I came down with appendicitis and needed surgery when I was 16- just a few months after this picture was taken. My sister, Natalija, was living in NJ for her senior year to be back with friends because she didn’t acclimate to CT. As the story goes, she left a very brief note on his windshield informing him I was in the hospital. It took two years and the fear of me dying to finally get my dad to reach out. But that’s a story for another entry…

After learning of the fire in real time from old neighbors and friends in my home state, I obviously must have immediately sounded my own sirens and informed my aunt. True to form, she went into disaster control mode. As much as she has caused tremendous suffering to my life, I will never take away the manners in which that woman can take immediate action and have a game plan. She really has done her best to try and protect me in the best way she knew how for a while but what she provides isn’t at the crux of what I always really need- which is just love, listening and really understanding. I have always needed a mom, but no one can replace the one I had.

But, when I say she and others wanted his head, I mean it. After the fire, I listened to countless talks from my aunt accusing my dad of setting the fire himself to collect on insurance- as if she didn’t know what a fire hazard that house was and that he wasn’t even living there. She said it herself after coming a weekend to clean her concern for a fire…. But again, that’s another story for another time.

Jumping around as I tend to do, at some point it was arranged for my sister and I to go into the house and be escorted with my aunt and I am sure officers and fire marshals were present due to the nature of their contentious relationship and safety concerns. I remember walking into the house and seeing my childhood just destroyed even more. The wallpaper was stained with smoke and water up and down from floor to ceiling. The smell still lingers in the old ash laden albums that were still packed away with other articles of clothing from my mom that my aunt carefully packed away 7 years prior. The smoke could not overshadow her ever lingering Chanel No. 5 which still permeates the scent from her Louis Vuitton make up case- one of my two most treasured items from the very few things I have of hers… and this was not a result of the fire (plenty of stories..)

As I passed through the second floor hallway, I crossed paths with my dad in front of the stairs. He turned to me and snarled, “YOU were the reason I was in the hospital for my heart last week.”

I was always my dad’s outlet for anger and the muse for the bulk of the abuse. I will always attribute this to being similar to my mother, and if for no other reason, I can sleep well knowing how much I emulate her and remind others of her.

#34goingon9

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34goingon9 · 1 year ago

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You know the story of Dorian Gray?

Every sin and wrinkle the portrait would portray

But Dorian himself would not physically age

Much like the tale I’m stuck on the page

Here I am nine but you can feel her burden

I am thirty-four now although I’m not certain

I’ve tried to suppress her but she’s desperate for attention

In an empty room by herself, but that’s something I will mention

Though I find the voyeuristic nature somewhat sick

An intimate moment with every individual flower I would carefully pick

I walked past each wreath and approached the casket

“Please let her come back” I would cry, plead and ask it

But Nobody would hear me, not in that room

And who could conceivably imagine normal life would resume?

It was then and there that time would freeze

Despite Another year older with each winters icy breeze

Twenty five years I’ve worn Dorian’s mask

Unaffected by tragedy, I excelled at every task

But the child was continued left abandoned and neglected

And emotions would erupt every time she again felt rejected

How can someone compete with a nine year old?

A broken hearted grieving child alone in a moldy parentless household?

I can disguise her with my appearance and education

And I make sure I suppress her with heavy medication

I knew she was there but tucked deep away

Aging inside me like Dorian gray

I did not know she existed in an old picture still

You can see the pain of a child and the sterile rooms chill

So come a time where the two would converge

The adult meets her younger self and an alliance would emerge

For years the two have refused to meet

But only until then would I truly be complete

So twenty five years since this was taken

Enough has transpired for my soul to awaken

I want to be ready and meet her in proper attire

Only to find a burnt child just loves the fire

#34goingon9

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