Teenage Wasteland…

“Daddy didn’t give affection, And the boy was something mommy wouldn’t wear, King Jeremy the wicked, Ruled his world”

~Pearl Jam~

I have had a lot of requests to elaborate on my personal knowledge of Anorexia. So, here it is…

Looking back on my life this all started around 4 years old. I would spill my milk every night onto my plate just to not have to finish it. At that point I would say I was a disordered eater (which is not the same as an eating disorder). This went on until I was 11 years old. That was the magic year that my family was propelled into the depths of hell know as “The Carthage Years.”

My sister and I rebelled in totally different ways, she was a raging bitch at home but perfect at school, whereas I was a cunt at school and the perfect daughter at home. Every night my parents and sister fought at the dinner table, as the weeks wore on I became less and less noticed, or seen, or what felt like loved. I began to just sit through dinner and not eat in hopes that they would notice. Sadly, they didn’t.

By the time I was a senior in school I was 5’9″ and all of 95 pounds. I had found that by starving myself I got a sense of euphoria–lets not forget that I was jamming an 8-ball of coke up my nose everyday–and along with that high feeling I had this twisted feeling of superiority. Also by this time I had been diagnosed (incorrectly) as ADHD, I would suffer through months to a year at a time with either depression or mania (later I was correctly diagnosed with Bi-Polar II). When I would hit these depressed periods I would focus on eating as little as I could as a form of punishment. When I hit my manic periods I would eat things like Sonic food (where I worked), cakes, pies, anything bad for you, and then spend hours running it off.

I got my first real boyfriend when I was almost 19 years old, I have written about Taylor and his toolish ways, but I thought I was happy. For that 2 year time-frame  I just let go. I freed my mind from the reality I had been living. I took The Red Pill. But when that ended, it came down around me like a cloak of disparagingly realities that seemed all to normal to me.

I began  running a total of 26 miles every day, along with biking at least 5 miles, all the while I was only eating apples, crackers, and ketchup. I was back on drugs and my body was the smallest it had ever been. I went from 144 to 87 pounds in a matter of weeks. If I was at home I was doing crunches, leg lifts, anything to not be fat any more.

When Christmas break was approaching, I was beginning to crack. It had been a little over a year since I had begun my starvation mode and my brain was so sick, not to mention what I looked like. I remember lying to a professor, telling him that I had cancer when he showed concern–he left me alone after that, who knows if he really believed me or not. I had wanted to come home to NC for break but my parents couldn’t afford the plan tickets.

After my last practice in Chambers Choir I felt really faint. I tried to make it to the payphone to call my mom but I hit the floor first. I was so weak that I had to drag myself down the hall to get to the phone, I called my mom and she told me to “eat something.” That night I ended up in the hospital. All of my major organs were failing, my toe and fingernails were beginning to fall off, and clumps of my hair were missing. Yep, that corpse look is so hot. I spent almost two weeks in the hospital, no one came to see me, no one called me, I was the invisible girl. After I got out my parents took out a loan to fly me home.

Once I got home I thought that for sure they would see how sick I was, that they would send me off to an ED clinic, God was I wrong. My dad wouldn’t look at me and my mom denied, denied, denied that there was anything wrong. So while at home I looked up all my old drug buddies and went on a two week bender. I flew home with an ounce of weed an a quarter ounce of coke in my jacket pocket.

When I got home I met who would become my 2nd boyfriend. He knew I was sick and didn’t care. We would go out to eat, at first I would order nothing, then I would pick off his plate, by the end of our relationship I was doing much better. I still restricted what I ate and only weighed 110 pounds but I was doing good. I even gave up drugs. A year and a half of ‘normality’ is what I got. But once we broke up life just went right back to how it had always been.

This is the time that I lived in Greensboro, when I was raped, when I overdosed. This should have been my wake-up call but it wasn’t. Although once I moved to Asheville I did stop using drugs–which that was a plus–I still had to be perfect. There were all these new people I was meeting and God-forbid I be ‘fat.’ Luckily my pregnancy took over every fiber of my being. I gained 87 pounds, I went from 101 to 188 pounds and loved every-last-moment of it. It wasn’t until I stopped nursing that I decided to lose the extra weight that hadn’t already fallen off. And just like that I was back on the bikes, the running, the all night crunch-fests.

I was down to 105 pounds by the time Chloe was 2. We took a walk around town, she fell asleep while I carried her, her little head was resting on my shoulder. When she woke up she started to cry, she told my that, “Your ouchies hurt me.” She was talking about my collar bone that had knocked against her head while we walked…so much so that she had a bruise from it. But no, nope that didn’t stop me from slowly killing myself. Another year would go by before I broke, before I finally took action, but not before giving my daughter memories of a mommy too frail to pick her up, too sick to play, a mommy who was nothing short of selfish.

A grape juice box. That’s what it took. A 3 year-old and a fucking grape juice box. I was in bed, like always, when Chloe came in and said, “Drink this mommy, it will make you feel better.” I pretended to take a sip and she ran off to play. As soon as she was gone I went to the bathroom and squeezed the juice down the drain. How fucking pathetic. All my child wants is a mommy who doesn’t spend her life in bed *Note: the majority I bedridden times were due to surgeries I had* and to be able to drink a motherfucking juice box!

The next day I sought treatment on my own, to this day my mother says that I “messed around with drugs” and that I “played around with my weight,”  and spent 8 whole visits with my ED specialist (thanks insurance!). But, however brief those 8 visits were, they changed me. My way of thinking about my self, who I am, what I am doing here. Primarily it taught me that I am someones mommy, who has no dad, if I were to die what would that do to this perfect gift that was given to me? It would short-change her of me. Awesome, amazing, smart, wonderful, and loving me–Meridith. And this world needs this Naked Grit.

Ugh….So Sorry Guys!

My stupid e-mail has read all incoming e-mail from my blog as spam and I just now found them!!! I will be relying to all of you today. Again, sorry if you felt like I was being a bitch by not relying.

Long Time…No Write

Man being sick sucks. About two months ago I got what I thought was just a stomach flu. Five days later I was in the hospital damn near close to death and was told I might have a super bug that just takes longer to go away. I spent two days in the hospital getting my health under control and then was sent home with a clean bill of health. While I was there one of the doctors made mention of a smell that was coming from my skin. He said it reminded him of something but couldn’t place it. I didn’t think much of it until 3 weeks ago. I wasn’t feeling very good and I noticed that I had a very sick yet sweet smell about my sweat. Within a day I was back to praying to the porcelain god, and wishing that the real God would just kill me now.

So back to the hospital I went. This time my doctor picked right up on what we were smelling…because his dog smelled that way when he was sick. The tests confirmed it–I have Parvo. Parvo is an ailment that normally only affects dogs, it takes many months to get rid of, lots of rounds of high-powered antibiotics, and if not treated quickly the dog normally dies from it. Oh lucky, lucky me.

I spent the last 3 weeks in ICU being treated for a disease that bitches normally get–oh, wait, now it all makes sense.

We were able to trace my exposure back to my Vets office. I had gone in to get flea medication for my cat and dog about two months ago. I remember the Vet coming out of a room, still wearing gloves, to sell me my meds. He apologized for how long I had waited, that he was short staffed that day, and so kindly handed me my animals’ meds. Generously covered in this fucking death parasite now know to me as Parvo.

According to my doctor It will take up to a year to fully go away. And if I want to avoid barfing my brains out again I need to reduce my stress. Okay, sure, like that’s the easiest thing to do.

So once again I am the 1%. This subject is going to be further discussed in this weeks Full Frontal story…but only Meridith Ann Smith would come down with a disease meant for animals.

“Fuck, shit, ass, bitch, cunt, shoobie-a-doo-wap (Woops!) Skee-bee-ba-bee-wop” Eminem

Let me start by saying I LOVE TO SWEAR. Fuck is undoubtedly my most favorite word in the English language, there are just too many uses for it to not love it. Add in the fact that there is a finger-gesture that is a silent way of saying “fuck you,” it is just the winner in swear words. Hands-down, or rather fingers up.

But, there is a time and a place for swearing. We all go through our teenage phase where we don’t give a fuck about anyone or our surroundings and just let the foulness fall from our lips. Now as an adult I know that the only reason ‘we’ did that is because we were not intellectually equipped to find more clever ways of being a verbal-badass. So I can tend to forgive some 15 year-old’s angst-ridden teen moronic behavior in a public sphere. What I can’t accept is a 50 year-old woman who disregards where she is and says what she wants, no matter who is listening.

First, I hate Walmart. I hate having to go there, but there are times where I need to by a cheap birthday present for my kid to take to a party. Second, I hate fast-food. I don’t eat it, I get sick every time I fall victim of a drunk-drive-through. But as it was I was in Walmart buying cheap plastic crap for my daughter to give her friend for her slumber-party. In this Walmart is a McDonald’s. Now I may be against fast food, but her grandparents are not, and so the begging began. I compromised on the nuggets with the apple ‘fries’ for her and a side salad for me. Here we sat in a family, or one would assume, restaurant trying to enjoy the processed crap on our trays. When this woman just went on and on about, ‘motherfuck this, and Goddamn that, and fucking slut blah, blah, blah.’

I turned to her, as a mother, and asked if she could just bring it down a notch pointing at my 6 year-old who is gobsmacked that this grown woman had taken God’s name in vein (believe it or not–I am very much a Christian, raised by a minister in fact). She, this woman, insisted that she didn’t she my daughter, that she was so sorry, and we both exchanged smiles.

Me being the naive moron that I am, I believed her. What happened next could have only happen in a Walmart McDonald’s. The entire table got up, stood next to their table, and began to ramp it up to the nth degree. When I say family, I’m talking; the mother, two daughters, and a friend. I decided that the best thing to do was leave. I packed up the rest of my daughters food and then got up to throw away my trash. As I walked backed toward my child the family was now blocking my table, the one daughter called me a “fucking cunt” right in front of Chloe, my 6 year-old child.

That’s when it hit me. This was not just any potty-mouthed teenager, no, she was an employee of McDonald’s–still in uniform. I pointed out that I was the customer, she is the employee, and that makes me ALWAYS right. By this point Chloe was hiding under the table, crying. This really nice gay couple squatted on either side of her protecting her, talking to her, telling her that her mommy was in the right. When it reached an outrageous level I demanded security. That’s when the family made a quick get-away, but not before threatening to kill me in the parking lot.

The two men sat with us as I filed my complaint and then they walked us to our car, just to be on the safe side. It was a truly scary verbal assault,  not just for me but even more so for my little girl. We drove home discussing why some mommies are so very, very bad at being mommies. I was informed that I am the coolest mommy ever. That might have been because I told her had anyone of them tried to fight me they would have found out that my years of Krav Maga training would have proved too much for them to handle. In general–I am a bad-ass in all aspects of my life!

Flash-forward to a week later; I get a call from the GM of McDonald’s, he tells me that they fired that girl and that I need to come pick-up my life-time free food card from him. Which is both nice and gross at the same time.

FUCKING WALMART.

iDont Really Give a Fuck…

Remember the Matrix? I do, I actually own an official script from it. You know in the scene when Neo learns of his fate and takes the blue pill and then unplugs himself from the machines? I fear that the majority of the population has become nothing more than Copper Tops.

I sat and watch my town today. People moving, bobbing, shuffling down the street. All of them, and I mean that (in exception to the city workers), every one of them were plugged into there iPods, iPhones, iDon’t really care.

Is it that I’m super lame for not buying into this? Am I behind the times and old fashion? I don’t think so. I get to hear the doves cooing outside library. Absorb the rustling of the winter leaves. The babbling of babies. The hissing of the espresso machine. All of that I own. It is a part of me, my memory, and of my character.

Really I don’t understand the almost addictive nature of the mass consumption of music. You all think you’re all ‘under ground’ or uber cool because you know of some obscure band? No. You are not.

I have only known one true-blue music  aficionado in my life. Someone who doesn’t just collect music but respects it in its purest form. When she left to spend time in Europe and returned to find her expansive record–yes record–collection raped and pillaged she wept. My sister, who when we were kids wouldn’t allow me to like Nirvana (instead I loved Pearl Jam), had spent the better part of a decade collecting rare records was left with 20 out of the hundreds she had carefully placed via band and style in crates.

It has been 10 years since then and she has not yet reclaimed all that she lost. But what she has collected she is sharing her love of music with her niece, my daughter, in record form. How many almost seven-year-olds do you know that loves Devo, the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, Motorhead, Tom Waits, and Leonerd Cohen to just name a few?

So you can stay plugged in. You can ignore the world that is going on around you. That’s fine. But don’t think you’re better than me because you know more band names than me. Because I don’t care.

The Five “P’s” of Amanda…

My sister, Amanda, has done more for me than any other person that has been a positive influence in my life. It was a year after she had person-napped me that my mother sent us on a trip to NYC. I stayed in my first real squat. I got to go to an underground art show hosted by Anna Sui. In general I was submerged fully into the real  punk/Anarchist movement in that two week window of time.

I had just gotten out of my first, albeit abusive and downright emotionally damaging, love relationship. One of the things my sister was trying to get me to understand about real love and real relationships is this; that no matter what–your partner should be able to love you even when you are perfectly imperfect. It was on Wall Street that she dropped this knowledge on me, I live and love by this philosophy. The philosophy of the five “P’s.”

1. Pee

2. Poop

3. Pick

4. Puke

5. Pass

Let me elaborate a little further on these five words, most are obvious, but two of them are a little ambiguous and need to be clarified just a bit more. The basic idea is that at some time or another you should be able to do all five of these natural bodily functions in front of your lover with no fear of judgement or disapproval. That you should feel no shame in what your body does, because your body is fucking amazing–even when you are praying to the porcelain Gods.

Some examples are as followed: After sex it is common knowledge that we ladies need to go pee to avoid getting a nasty bladder infection. You should be 100% okay with hopping out of bed (couch, floor, kitchen table, you get my point) and leaving the bathroom door wide open when you tinkle. Or as you shower your lover should have no reservations of taking a leak while you rinse the shampoo out of your hair, just as long as they don’t flush, brrr! At some point you might find yourself with one of those dry, bothersome boogers. There should be no hesitation with picking it out when no tissues are to be found. Whether you’re hung-over, or you have a stomach bug, you and your partner should gladly hold back each others’ hair or just caress their back as the retch into the potty. Now, those three are generally accepted as normal behaviors, the last two…well, for women there seems to be some residual 1950’s ideal that we just should not do these. Or better yet, that you can’t do them because that would remove the allure of who we are as a sexual identity to our male counterparts. To that I say, pish-posh!

The idea that we, women, don’t poop is such an archaic stereotype that it actually makes me laugh. But I worked with a man whose wife, let me restate that–WIFE, never pooped in their home. She would rather drive to the convenient store to take a shit in a nasty bathroom than allow her husband to know that she did in fact take a poop. Although I am in no way saying that the ‘pee’ rule should be upheld here, there always comes a time when you are doing the sitting-on-the-pot-while-holding-the-bucket song and dance, your lover should not fear bringing you a glass of water. At the same time the person doing this song and dance should not feel the slightest bit of embarrassment, everyone does it so why try to hide it.

The last one, to pass gas freely, was the hardest for me to ‘let go’ of (pun intended). I personally was so guilty of never doing this in front of my first lover. I would have a reason to go outside or worse I would wait until I was alone in my car to avoid the shocked expression on his face. Butt again, there should be no reason to fear the fart. “Better out than in,” to quote Shrek.

What my sister was trying to get through to me is that if you cannot does these human, normal, natural functions in front of the person you are fucking–then you have serious intimacy issues. Which she could not have been so right about. There is something so inherently liberating about being snuggled up, watching a movie on the couch and sharing the warm-love that rumbles out of your ass. Only to have it met with a high-five or, if you are able to do this, one up your partners gaseous release with your on-command anal-acoustics. The giggle factor should be your reward for this, not a look of disgust or worse a denial of affection or further cuddling.

As I mentioned at the start, I live and love by this philosophy. If you can’t handle that I pick my nose, pee with the door open, get the occasional bout of diarrhea, barf my brains out after too much to drink, and the Holy Grail of the five “P’s” pooting when the I need to…then you will never be able to pleasure me. I will never fully give myself to you. By holding that all in (literally) it halts my body in other, and much more pleasurable, ways. I know this to be fact, at least for me, I never experienced a single orgasm in the 2 and a half years I was with my first boyfriend. But after this life-lesson that Amanda gave me I got a serious flu. The toilet, the bucket, the snot…all of it was coming out of me. I met my second boyfriend, and father of my child, while in the throws of this flu while he was visiting my roommates. He actually said to me that he thought that it was ‘hot’ that I didn’t give a fuck. That he had come over to meet me, saw me at my worst, and was able to see me for who I really am. And I am fucking AWESOME.

So be liberated, be accepting, and be human with your lovers and you will find that you will have a truly deep, intimate relationship with them. And at the very least you will get a good belly-laugh out of all of it.

 

Where Everyone Knows Your Name

I always feel as though I am walking onto a yacht with an apricot scarf when I step into Fred’s Speakeasy on a Wednesday night. This night was no different. Well, that’s a lie. As a matter a fact nothing was what it normally was. Purple color had vomited onto every surface. That included my corset. It was Doug E. Freshs’ birthday, subsequently it was Mary Magdalene’s day of honor, so to honor them both the collective we draped everything we could in purple.

As a creature of habit I am used to the ‘Easy being dark, smoky, and full of familiar faces. Not this night. You know those ubiquitous college kids? Yeah, they were there. All sparkly and rich. The gaggle of girls was taking so many pictures with their camera I nearly had an epileptic fit from the flashing white light. As I am sure many of you feel this way about your watering-hole; Fred’s is my bar and I’ll do what it takes to get you to leave.

The night wore on, Doug arrived, and I lead the crowd in a Marilyn Monroe-like version of Happy Birthday.  It was all very bourgeois. The glitterati were now crumpled in the doorframe attempting not to vomit. As the brightest and bubbliest babe stammered to leave I was compelled to stop her. I said to her, “I may not like you but I will not let you drive drunk.” You can be a rich-bitch whose friends encroached and violated my space; but you will still get a ride when wasted from me.

Sadly, that was the last time I went to the real Fred’s Speakeasy. They closed they’re doors for about 6 weeks, they reopened the bar using the same name–but it is not the same at all. Every square inch has been painted, with new flooring, big-screen TV’s and electronic dart boards. Fred’s looks just like every other college bar in my small town and I refuse to go there now. For 7 years I went there every Wednesday for karaoke, conversation, and good, cheap drinks. It almost feels like I’ve been broken up with. Like I went away on a family vacation only return and find another lover in my bed with my partner. It’s been a year now since I last walked down the steps of the ‘Easy and I have yet to find a suitable new bar.

What Are You Doing New Years Eve?

I seem to be rather obsessed with the subject of kissing as of late. Maybe it’s because I’m not getting any or maybe it’s because I am a sappy-love-struck fool at heart.

There is a tradition of kissing the one you love at the strike of midnight on New Years. I have never done this. The first party I attended was at my best friends’ brothers house, I was 15, we drank a whole lot of Purple Jesus Juice–but no kissing took place. Every year after that there was some reason or another that I just didn’t get the chance to get my midnight-kiss. I was either single, or to lame to go out that night, or my lover at the time was already too drunk to even know that we were supposed to be in close proximity to each other let alone kiss each other.

This year I will be at The Southern, a great local bar here in Asheville, and I don’t care who is near me but I plan on planting a most passionate kiss upon their lips. Who knows, maybe I will meet my future lover by doing so. Or, I could get in a fist-fight for making-out with some other chicks’ boyfriend. I can already feel the sting of the cold, hard slap across my face now. But, I hold out hope that a certain someone will meet me there and will kiss me before I kiss another.

 

A Sleepy-Kiss Kiss…

In my opinion there is nothing better than kissing. I find it to be even more intimate than having sex. That might sound strange–but for me kissing is this incredible build-up for what might come…or conversely what won’t be coming. A bad kisser can let you know to not waste one more moment on someone. Whereas an excellent kisser can bring you to the breaking point in antici…”say it”…pation. To that moment just before shirts fly, belts clank, and the tugging, pulling, and yanking off of clothes takes place.

There is one particular style of kissing that I most desire. To be honest, when done right, this kiss can leave me weak with passion, left with wanting more, and willing to always go further than ‘first base.’ I crave the sleepy-kiss kiss and unfortunately I rarely receive it. When done right it is a guarantee that the giver of it will lay down in my bed, that he will get to take me and my body where he wishes, I will become whatever kind of lover he wants for as long as he wants it. I have only ever had one lover who could do this (or I should say that he choose to listen to my desires and acted on them), he is the only lover who actually broke my heart when we departed from each others lives, and just typing this–I can feel his lips on mine.

What is a “sleepy-kiss kiss?” For me, it is that kiss before the kiss. It is when your lips are just barely touching. Their softness, as they just grace across mine, is so sensual that my entire body is set asunder. Your lips just barely take a-hold my top lip, not a true bite, a slight pull–only to pull away as the tip of my tongue catches yours. When your tongue does enter my mouth it is in the most gentle, almost not there, touch to my tongue. No deep thrusting, or swirling takes place–just these small tongue-to-tongue touches. It makes me melt with wanting. Small movements, light licking of my lips as you pull back, my lips take your bottom lip as if I am taking your hand and I don’t want to let go–maybe even a bite on your chin too. When you move to my neck I will undoubtedly wrap my legs around you, pull you close to my body, I can feel your soul now. While you lightly kiss/bite my neck, I pray that you have my hair in your hand softly pulling it back to expose more of my neck–you then make your way back up to my mouth. In these last moments we breathe each other in like there is no air left on Earth, that if we do not go further everything will cease to exists, all that is around us is gone. It is just you and me and the smell of lust, of intent–of sex. Now, when our lips meet again, we actually passionately kiss. That your hands are pulling off my shirt while mine are unbuckling your belt. Now when our mouths are open to each other, tongues swirling, licking, biting. When the sleepy-kiss becomes the fucking-kiss.

It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? I tend to think that I am an ‘easy’ lover. I mean that in the: I am pretty adventurous way…not in the I’m a slut way. I love and respect my body, I want to give my lover my best self, and I want it to be worshiped by my lover. I will return the favor in kind. But just like all women I can’t do that if you aren’t willing to fall down the rabbits’ hole with me–and for me it really does start with the kiss.

Parents Just Don’t Understand….

When I began my journey into becoming heavily tattooed I tried very hard to inform my parents of what I looked like. At the time I lived in California and they in North Carolina. Whenever I brought up the subject my mom would just say, “Yeah, but you’re not so why try and warn us?” Even though I am a trained tattooist, I worked in a shop, and it is a known inability for me to lie–she still would not listen to me.

When I finally came home for a visit my mother was devastated. She cried every time she looked at me for about three weeks. My dad just shook his head. It was a pretty heartbreaking experience for all parties.

When I was getting ready to leave and go back to CA my dad and I were sitting on the porch. He was checking out everything I had on my arms. He twisted my arm this way and that until he got to my right arm on the underside. He stopped and sort-of started to cry. He asked me why I had that one–the one he spoke of is a sacred heart that says “Daddy’s Girl” in the ribbon.  My dad adopted me and my sister when we were just babies, so biologically he is not my ‘father’ but he is my dad. When I said that to him he began crying even harder. He told me how beautiful he thought all of my work was but that his was the best–which for him is totally true!

My mother has just now come to appreciate my artwork–but my dad still will point out ‘his’ tattoo to anyone who will look.

Tattoos are like bookmarks. They hold the place for our memories and are there to help tell the story.