Misplaced Monologues: "Abandoned"

Abandoned.

Is it worse for a parent to leave, or to die?  Either way, it's a form of abandonment.  I don't mean freak accidents, plane crashes, murders.  If someone chooses, from the moment they breed offspring, to do something clearly detremental to put them in the express lane toward the end of their life.

My father was a smoker.  Probably also a midnight toker, from what I've heard, but it wasn't that type of smoking that took him down.  You can read goverment and independent studies that show things of an alternative nature show little to no harm.  Not the same goes for the effects of tobacco, and it really pisses me off.  Like, so much.  Like, why is that girl leaving the party 'cause of the cigarette smokers?

It's fucking awful.  I re-live his death constantly when anyone that I even begin to care about picks up a cancer stick.  It hurts and does not compute.

For some background, I'm a pot smoking athiest.  Love animals but I eat some of them, never litter but I drive a car, always positive but I have some hang-ups.  I can't see past the cigarettes, or cigars.  Or dip.  The tobacco.

It feels like a very real choice for my father to have abandoned me, had a decision to make the minute I arrived and chose himself first.  Any parent who smokes tobacco is committing a near-felony, IMHO.  Shit is no longer about you when your skeet creates another human.  Fact.

And it makes me feel alone.  All I could know, the stories I miss, the support I do not have.  It makes me enraged.  I was second choice to a person who chose to give me life.  Second choice to a drug that gives little to no return, drains your pockets and isolates you.  It burns me that my life and childhood was fractured because he couldn't make the choice to man up.

From cigarettes, to the patch, to cigars: he never dropped the habit.  People accept it, let it go.  No one looks at you and says, "This will kill you, without a doubt."  Maybe not true for a lucky few, but for the majority, their fate is fairly set if they cannot set it down.

So my life is missing something I can never regain, and it's sad, but mostly I'm pissed.  Pissed at his choices and his lack of regard, for himself, his wife and for me.

Abandoned.  That's precisely what it is.

Misplaced Monologues: "Sabotage"

    Sometimes, when something is very important yet relatively easy, I just freeze up.  I hit this metaphorical wall and my chest gets tight with fear.  Of what?  Not sure.

    Success?  More likely failure, or even pressure.  The stress I create around a situation where all I have to do is just freakin' try simply boggles my mind.  It's unnecessary and it sucks butt.

    I'm sitting here needing to make a call about a job offer I received on Friday and all I can think is that waiting over the weekend has ruined my chances, so why bother?  My logical mind knows it's an employment agency and they're just trying to help, but my emotional side just wants to run and hide.

    Is it phone phobia?  I get this way when having to make calls I don't choose to make, and being just a voice on one end of a communication makes me feel stripped down and vulnerable.  I don't have my charms to fall back on, no other gaze to meet with knowledge.  I feel like a total blathering idiot on the phone and it usually comes through.

    Why?  Why? Why?

    Damn it.  I cannot blog myself out of this phone call.  I tried to make a self-imposed deadline of calling before 4 PM, but I already shot that one to shit and downloaded Venture Brothers ringtones instead (and still couldn't find one of Hank going, "I'm the Bat.")

    Self-sabotage is what Chris would say, but that's because he's commonly guilty of that offense.  Chris is my man, my bestie, my life partner, and sometimes my wife.  He is usually the emotional girl about stuff; I get sad and get over it, but I have this horrible block with communication.  I think it comes down to fear of being judged.

    What is Sally Nobody at the employment agency going to care about this?  Not a smidge.  This is my fight, and I have to just push forward.

    Defeat is not an option.  The truth is out there.  Well, maybe more the first one.

-@haleybcu

©2012

Misplaced Monologues: "So, death? Yeah, okay."

I only really go to one bar, only with the man I refer to as "my gay" but who is really my best bud.  We were there Thursday night into Friday morning, yuking it up and being young and irresponsible.  An ever-present force at this bar is the tender, a friend of my gay, who always just goes a little bit out of his way to help us out.

A few months ago we were discussing walking for 1$ slices of pizza at the bar; he slapped down a 5-spot, told us to bring back 2 slices for him and enjoy the rest.

He was that kind of guy.

My gay became incredibly close with him (resembling a lost puppy when he's wasted just begs the giving to help him out.)  I can't tell you how many times he would loose his jacket and the tender would simply smirk and inform us it was in it's perpetual place, tucked safely under the bar.

He always went that extra mile to care for my gay, was always kind to me, and the world feels a little colder today because I learned he fell off a bridge and died a little less than 20 hours ago.

The last time I saw him was so recent that I can close my eyes and see him, smirking and pouring drinks like the smooth mo-fo he was, and I think of what I'd give to be able to see it again.  I know it can't hurt me a fraction of what it's doing to my gay, but I can be strong for him.  I'm good in crisis: I play the Mom.

When we left just prior to closing time Friday morning I waited at the end of the bar for a formal good-bye.  He had given us righteous cheese fries (with an additional helping of cheese) and some witty banter, leaving me happily obligated to bid him good-night.  He spotted me, cracked a more honest grin than usual, and when I came in for a fist bump he opened his arms.  "C'mere," and he welcomed me into our first hug.

It was also our last.

My gay called me in tears; he couldn't believe it, it couldn't be real.  I was a cool customer, there for him.

I washed dishes with tears in my eyes, a slightly gouged feeling in my heart.  I keep coming back to his girlfriend, her son; my gay.

Sometimes shit is just terribly sad.