Like A Page Out Of My Journal...

is how this one will read...

I'm reading a book on Billie Holiday right now.

It's very well done, gives a kind of impressionist portrait, using a multitude of interviews of the people that surrounded Billie, as well as a grounding in the history and culture in which she lived.

Worth reading.

I love her.

But I especially love a human with that deep- street wounding that fills a person up so fully, like a terrible, invisible infection, until they have to find some outlet- they must or it destroys them.

Like through song. Or painting. Or poetry.

Langston Hughes was like that too.

Some ache so etched into the core that the rest of the person forms around it.

 That passion is a desperate scrambling, for survival, for life . There is no other choice but to sing (or...)

And, hopefully, a deep gratitude that the voice was able to carry the soul, or the hand was able, or the words...

When I got to the part about the famous song "Strange Fruit" I remembered reading someone's Facebook status awhile back.

It said something like "cleaning my room and jamming out to the song Strange Fruit. Alright!". Someone put "You DO know what that song is about, don't you?' They didn't respond.

I could launch into a long diatribe about white privilege here, but I'll spare you.

Then I went on thinking... (yes, it was long boring day at work- I was mostly working on my own)

One, feeling like a serious misfit in this town.

It's never helpful for me to live my day to day life keeping separate from people, simply because of the way I was raised. It's isolating and unhealthy. People are people; we all have wounding of one kind or another. It only pops into my head how strange my background is when I brush up against someone else's background here in this town.

Like, I remember having a heart to heart with one friend or another.

They start talking about being upset (this really happened) with their parents because they didn't get a car at sixteen. ( or seventeen or something)

Or, with another, they would say mean things to them growing up.

Say mean things? Shit, I got the shit beat out of me. Regularly!

Poor? You were "poor"? Give me a motherfucking break!

Poor is eating government issued rice everyday,  and only rice, for months.

And we weren't Asian! (ha)

There are no awards for winning the worst childhood contest, only a sense of isolation and a prolonged frustration that ends up holding you back from enjoying life or moving beyond your history.

If I really, really tell it- I get the "wow, how did you survive? I can't imagine"

But in the end, I am the one who has to wake up in my own skin the next day with the same old ghosts.

I'm the one who's a bit strange about confrontation in social settings (def violence trigger from my group home days- fight or flight)

I'm the one who has to fight to not lay down and let the world walk all over me (violent home) until I let it get to the place where I can just start swinging. I know how to use my fists. I know how to fight. I find it so hard to stop shit from snowballing to that point.

Because quiet is so often read as weak.

Next, I started feeling like I wished I had a nice- what I call "noodle salad" story.

You know, some nice little wounds like, controlling mother, or overachiever siblings, or an alcoholic father, or depressed sister. Something nice.

Or just one doozy. I can deal with just one gnarly emotional scar. That would be alright too.

I don't mind noodle salad people, I just can't handle it when they try to compare shit with me and tell me they can relate. Or want me to pity them. Or worse- they pile a shit load of judgment on me for one reason or another.

Then, I thought- jealousy is such an ugly, ugly emotion. 

I don't want to be stunted by it.

So, I'm jealous.

Jealous some little children were fed, housed, clothed, protected, loved and I wasn't.

I'm jealous.

There it is. The ugly truth.

So, I can be angry. That's fine.

But naming it for what it is.

It's not about the noodle salad-ers. It's about the injustice of my own experiences. Poverty, abuse, violence, addiction, etc. It's about not being provided safety as a child.

And beyond all this- accepting that it is what it is. It wasn't right, but it can not be changed now.

And recognizing where I am re-inflicting this shit on myself again and again.

Billie Holiday acted out her abusive upbringing through prostitution, loving abusive men, abusing drugs, and so on. She continued to try to chase the draining and unloving relationships of her mother and father. She surrounded herself with pimps and hustlers.

So, since Santa Cruz hustlers look like weathered homeless men with crooked backs and missing teeth, I'll say I'm safe on that account.

There's prostitution here. I mean, its everywhere, even if the yuppie's here can't see it.

The point is, I thought a lot today- and my brain hurts. It's all shit I've thought before.

Basically, what do I want to DO with my life?