I Hit Rock Bottom With a Bang

Dear Me, My Best Friend + All Of My Imaginary Friends,

WE DID IT!

Love to You,

Ashley Marie

28th Year

You want to talk about a rough year? Nah. Well, maybe. I really want to tout my survival. Over these past 13 months I found out truths of lies that devastate me. I have found out things that made me want to turn my back on love and run for anywherebuthere. My picture perfect fresh start turned out to be anything but. How did I get to here? To today? How did I make it? I have something to say about maturity. Coming to terms with reality and taking responsibility is hard, especially when there are other lives complicating things but lives that also depend on your ability to be an adult. It's rough when you are really trying to muster up the courage to run to your mother and blow your cover of "Everything is great!" but it takes all of your energy to try desperately to shield your children from the stark realizations you are having. I feel as though I am the child in The Giver who has realized pain in the world for the first time. As a victim of several childhood abuses, I never thought I would suffer so vastly as an adult. I have spent my entire life fighting to not be an adult victim. However, as one dark day clouded the next and then the one after that went up in flames and then the one after that I lost completely... I have flashbacks of myself lying on the floor in a flood of tears and sorrow, I have flashbacks of myself pitching fits to rival Catherine Linton's, I have flashbacks of those times I tried to get out of life. I am a victim of not only my surroundings but my mind. With just enough support to keep my lifeless head out of the water, I have survived. As a plus, I survived with no visible scars and not a single {obvious} mental disorder. Yay Me!

How? That's a loaded question.

I guess realizing that where you are, no matter who's fault it is, doesn't matter nearly as much as who you are while you are there. You can either let your surrounding consume you or fuel you. I'll be damned if I give up and live like this for the rest of my life. Although, I would be remiss if I did not count the blessings that I receive that have given me a place to pull strength from. I not only have relationships to nurture to keep me alive but also a certainty of support in case I to need to rely on someone besides myself for protection from a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. That, ma' dears, is how I made it through.

"Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away."

Here, I wrote this:

As I look at myself in the mirror, it is as if I just woke from a sleep that relieved me of the past year. I have come to this place by way of an epic journey. The details are not as important as the success of endurance. Determination, blood sweat & tears, damned stubbornness, sheer willpower, and love have been my companions. I can see the effect these experiences have had on my age. Twenty eight years of thread have already spun a tapestry of such detail and story. This is the tale of the pretty girl in the trailer park.

Well, there's much to share and many ways and days to let it happen. Later.

Eventually Karma Runs Out

"I think that when I die it will be from exhaustion of managing the constant struggle between fate and choice." -Me

Yet again I'm standing at the foot end of a project that once completed could be one of the most crowning achievements of my life. It is going to be so hard. Most people buy a house. I'm salvaging one. It's going to take a long time, a lot of elbow grease and so much blood, sweat, and tears I cringe at the thought of Summer 2012. I want it though, and I want it bad. But why, again, does it have to be so hard!? In a moment of weakness and exasperation Thursday I asked the following question:

"Why does it seem that everything I get or want I have to work ten times harder than most people? I don't mind really, but why can't I be one of those girls that just gets the things she wants?"

And then this was said:

"Eventually Karma runs out and you're given an opportunity to take an easier path."

Wait. What?

Really?

I haven't been able to stop thinking about that line for days. Have there been times like this that passed in my life? Times where an easier path was offered to me and yet I chose to take the harder one? It makes me sick to think that, or realize that, I deliberately chose to make my life more difficult. *Note here that I consider the life I've lived thus far to have been hard and I obviously don't feel as though anything has really been given to me. At least anything that I haven't squandered.

Perhaps it was the time I was offered the chance as a teenager to move in with my father and stepmother. I would have been catapulted from a strenuous stressful childhood into a comfortable life where I could have focused on myself and my goals and would have had people to help me and guide me and encourage me. I chose to stay behind because I felt an extreme need to be with my siblings, in an environment that left me no time to focus on myself.

Perhaps it was the time I was offered the chance to model for The Ford Agency. God only knows the opportunity that would have risen from such a once in a life time offer. Although it was decided for me, I did follow order and stay on the path that was laid out for me by well meaning grandparents. I was only 17 but I still regret not being strong enough to reach for the support of those who were offering to help me take control of my dreams.

Perhaps it was the time I was offered the chance to attend the University of Michigan... a school I no doubt would have had a greater chance of succeeding at considering there was significantly less distraction. I chose instead to follow a boy to the University of Georgia... we broke up three days before classes started. I majored in whiskey. I dropped out before the end of the year.

Perhaps it was the time I chose to abandon responsibility and float through the next 7 years without really making any hard decisions or putting any real effort into taking control of my life and forcing the direction I wanted to go. I basically floated downstream, without a paddle, working only to keep my head above the water.

This past year I've become stronger and more aware of what I expect from myself and my life. I have decided that through the past years I've worked so hard to fulfill goals and dreams and expectations that weren't mine. I've followed the leader down all of the paths that seemed right but actually were all wrong. If I redirect that energy and desire to please others into an energy and desire to please myself,  I'll succeed as a mother and a wife and get what I want for myself too. Then maybe I won't look back on these years and think of them as another hard road leading no where, but a hard road leading to exactly where I want it to.

I'm not going to give up on fate though. I think instead that I'll accept it, take control of it, and direct it rather than continue with the passive aggressive acceptance I've mastered.

Broken Love

*DISCLAIMER* This is not a post intended to spout hate towards Valentines Day... I am actually quite thrilled for this year's occasion! However, the moment seemed right and the song conjured a link to emotions from my past. Warning: This is not for the faint of heart!

One of my favorite lyrics is sang by John Mayer in his song Split Screen Sadness:

"All you need is love is a lie... 

'cuz we had love but we still said goodbye. 

Now we're tired, battered fighters." 

and is now followed closely by the line Lana Del Rey sings in this song, Born to Die:

"Sometimes love is not enough 

and the road gets tough 

I don't know why..."

Never before has a female artist hit so close to home for me. This song and video mimics all too close some of my very own written words. The emotion of the lyrics, I feel, is perfectly balanced with a sort of pop backdrop that I continuously find irresistible. 

I'll tell you a love story

Whiskey, smokes, and the occasional whore

I've had more accounts...

I can't keep track anymore

I'm desperately seeking the comfort of a bed

I've never been in before

I haven't loved anyone 

The only way I'd imagined I could

Don't fuck with me Darlin'

You'll only wish you'd run when you could

Have thought me just pretty

Before you knew the secret -

Self destruction and deceit

Are my favorite players in the night.

I'll walk in my night gown

Through graveyards of memories,

Drinking whiskey & marlboro's

To my empty bed full of him.

written words

tell me I'm strong enough to understand


grab hold of my skirt


hold on, Baby, I've got you


take my hand, stand, guide me


through valleys of shadows & death


sorrow has seen the last of you


LOVE has taken hold

written words

I've fallen in too deep my Dear
Touch my lips with yours
Fill my lungs with your breath
Swell my body with life
Pull me back to the air


There's a taste on your tongue
Such satisfaction is rare
My heart is a vessel and your
Promises like dynamite
Whisper the truth
Like the rage of the sea
Your moon swells the surge of
Emotion within me