Live, Love and Persevere by Acey May
Ulcers. Something I have never endured but I find that the effect will show in my writing as I have one now due to many a thing. Worry and stress, tooth pain, no money, single motherhood and a constant guilt that stems from no absolute place all play a part in the pain. However, I feel it has led me to pondering and action and may be only a smaller hurdle in the face of all that is happening in life.
I am left wondering just how things have gotten so stressful, though I know the process well for I have been working on it for the last fourish years. It began with a simple decision… moving to New Mexico. Some think my decision was a selfish one because being in love was involved. My oldest two children, living with their father after the divorce due to me being poor on my own, lived in Washington as did I before my move. They didnt understand and neither did I if I am to be honest, but we are very much still close and share the deep love only mother and child can understand.
That is how it began. After my lament of leaving and the following excitement, i had no idea what would happen. The ensuing roller coaster ride was still a secret to me when first I rolled into town in my uhaul and my independence. I was happy and found a place I love with such deepness that I know I will never call any other city “home”. This dusty, dry, windy place that is full of weirdos, scholars, freaks, hippies and the occasional businessy human won me over instantly.
Life Changing
Why does any of this matter? It matters because if you have ever been a throw away kid, a person of no kind reputation, an easily forgotten human, you will see that this tiny portion of my life is also the most important. I write to give the depressed hope for it is in every eye I look into. It offers a transparent view of how the mistakes we believe we make and can never recover from can actually change your life forever in a beautiful way.
I was raised in an oppressed environment and shown that I was, in fact, an adopted child. “Adopted” is not accurate even because they never saw fit to go through with that action. I was ignored as were huge and evil events that occurred in my life, brushed off and used. I never knew what it was like to make my own decisions or even to do the normal things rebellious teenagers do because my mom scared me every day of my life.
Then, at 19, I married a man who I loved so mightily and even took on his Christianity until I believed it was my own choice. I didn’t want to believe that he would ever show me anything but a strong Christian man, but by year two I found much of what I believed was false and my love misplaced. But I am stubborn and pig headed and stayed beyond my usefulness and his love.
I divorced him after ten years of marriage and two beautiful children and found myself in a place of happiness. That was, until I finished college and tried to get a job and found out that my seven years as a stay at home mother rendered me almost useless to society despite my intelligence and degree I earned at night. I also found myself at a loss for the children went to live with him.
I stood at a precipice. My life was shaken to the core because of my own actions, but I had a sense of bliss that stuck to me no matter how much I sobbed when I couldn’t tuck my children in, or how angry I became when my ex husband referred to me as Gomer from the Bible (if you don’t know the reference, I will be vulgar here and say she was the biggest whore in the good book), or even how disturbed I was when I realized my devotion to Christianity amounted to nothing more than a false sense of hope. I was stripped raw and had no idea what to do next.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
I met a man in the modern way (Facebook) and he taught me so much about the world I had hidden from so diligently. He was sweet and beautiful and no one would ever dare question his talent as a musician. He taught me how to think for myself, how to see beauty in the mundane and how love could feel when given with no filters. So I visited New Mexico, knowing nothing about it but for Bugs Bunny always wishing he had turned left at Albuquerque.
And in Albuquerque I was warmly and most lovingly welcomed. The man I met I fell in love with, I had crazy adventures and wild sex and found that henna is something I am passionate about even if I am only mediocre. It was the best week I had ever experienced- which we know would not be hard to accomplish for me up to then. I came back a second time and in October, I moved here.
I immediately had guilt over leaving my children and even now I still have leavings of that emotion. Within six months I was pregnant and this was the point at which my family chose to finally cut me out of their lives. I almost died before I could have my sweet new baby and no- that is not an exaggeration. I obviously made it through and was left with a premature, tiny MonChiChi of a daughter who I dote on.
Then I had to leave the man who drew me to my true home. I am no picky woman but I could not continue in the face of the reality of the relationship and spent the following year relying on my friends to offer me a place for my child and I to sleep, food for us to eat and money for gas so I could find a job. I am crying as I type this, because to say that life, though not detailed on any real way here, dealt me depressive darkness and resentment as the main theme of my hand of life poker would be understating by many a mile.
Whew. Are you still with me? That was a lot of vague sadness for which I apologize for, but you don’t want to hear about the paedophiles who groomed me, the mother who forgot to stop hitting me, or the detailed ways in which love can lead to hate and my sexual non importance. There is a point to this, I promise.
Persevere
All of the hate, lust, violence, disappointment, self loathing and deep depressive states of mind have actually done me more good than harm. I am scarred, mangled, chewed up and digested. I am a pile of human goo that few care about in any deep way. But I am thankful for such things. In my current state, I am pliable, I flow with less restriction, I am strong minded and self confident. I now live with my wee moon girl, am about to go get my oldest children for a fun time in my favorite town, I have my first teaching job and my own car. I found the independence I have always craved and though it is scary, I find it the most refreshing took in my so-called belt.
I did it. I survived the darkness, my evil and selfish thoughts about the breath I felt I wasted. I survived love and have found it again. I am goo. I gross and slippery and hard to hold in your hand. I am resilient and have been beautifully tortured. I have found that family is truly what you choose for yourself, that to be in love I must love me, that no amount of piled and stinking manure can truly crush me and I somehow have become a warrior goddess in a world where it is not cherished to be one.
Fight
So to all of you throw away children, waifs that society has forgotten, all you who are about to slice the life from your flesh or drink another sorrow down with malice, I only have this to say to you:
I love you, though I do not know you. If you are in that dark place you have already survived and won. You just don’t know it. You and I share a constant struggle- an endless wave of reality that we have not signed up for. Our lives parallel no matter where you live and for this we are connected like mushrooms- deep and wide spread across the entire earth. I am you and you are me. We rock. We are beautiful because of our scars . We made it. Don’t you dare give up on me now…keep going as I did and you, too, will find your wounds and heal them.
*****
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Acey May is an Educator and Henna artist. She was born in Yakima, Washington and lives in Albuquerque, NM. Acey is the illustrator on the forthcoming multimedia book, Bella the Caterpillar. Acey is also contributing illustrator on Fiona the Funkadelic Freckle Fairy multimedia children’s book. Read more about Acey here.
Community Publishing brings local artists of all mediums together in creative collaborations for distribution as multimedia books while promoting literacy in our communities. #JoinOurCommunity at http://communitypublishing.org We are proud to be Marketers for the Rail Yards Market.
