My Life: Reimagined

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PART I

You see there are some things that you must understand about me. Not that you must understand but I'm going to tell you anyway. Some things I'm going to tell you about happened to me and then there are some things that happened to me in just the way that I remember they happened to me. Because my memory isn't all that good, to begin with, and that's before I got sick. 

So sometimes the story is in order and sometimes it's out of order and the reason is... I'm like a storytelling carousel. Remember the carousel at the carnivals? So a story will come around and It'll be like, "Talk about me, talk about me, talk about me or I'll fucking go away!" and it will and sometimes it will come back but not like until next April... So yeah, that would make for a like, really long book. So the stories are going to come out the way that they're just going to and they're going to be on the paper and I don't know maybe someday, somewhere, somebody, someplace, bored out of their mind will cut the book into pieces with a pair of scissors put the stories all in order in the way they should. So there you have it.

My mind is like a box with like a thousand boxes in it. My mind is like really compartmentalized. I got things going on in this part of my head doing something. I got things on the other side of my head doing something and I have to tell you that growing up as a child I was very, very confused about a lot of things. I partially learned how to control that storm of information on my own but I wasn't very successful at it, and it was much later on after I did some drugs that it had a great effect on me that when I took the stuff, smoked it or drank it or whatever I could concentrate easier on what it was that I was trying to do.

The only things I believed were things I’d seen with my own eyes. That was the only way I could accept what I was told with any certainty. I was very narrow-minded in the visions of the truth in front of me, and I couldn’t wait to get grown up and gone and as far away from childhood as I could. I never really liked children. I didn't like myself as or being a child and could not wait to get over this most unfortunate and irritating delay to becoming an adult.

~

The room was dark and a voice cried out "I'm gonna hit you so hard, that cartoon words will suddenly appear to cover up the physical violence I am going to do to you." - R. Federle

Thinking back on my childhood I begin to realize that I really had no place in the world with this family. Mom and Dad were not very nice people and had major drug problems. Plus the fact they were fucking assholes. Raised by my Father's grandparents. Despised by other immediate family I was viewed as a dysfunctional interloper into an already dysfunctional family. My time growing up was one of mere tolerance, disdain, and burden. Always there, always weighing the family down. Hushed whispers about the truth of my existence between aunts and uncles and cousins. Always begrudgingly included and always certainly made to be left behind while the others had their fun. I was the anchor. The adopted loadstone. Holding down and holding back the enjoyment and advancement of others. So I must suffer their rage and frustration and suffer it I did.

Name calling and bullying, broken toys, and physical abuse. Mental abuse as well and all because I simply existed through no fault of my own. It's only years later... now that many suppressed memories are coming back and all of them unpleasant. I face what I can on a day to day basis and days where it all becomes too much I run for the safety of Ativan and Gabapentin and mind-numbingly sit and play video games till nothing stirs in my brain but white noise.

So many people denied me that back then as a child and the emotional wrecks of yesterday are where people like me continue to live them on daily in our thoughts and at night in our dreams. I thrive on them. They are the life preservers of tomorrow. Some of you left me adrift and drowning in the ocean of false friendship and some of you went out of your way to make life miserable. I've never forgotten anything. Sometimes memories are what keep me going. Other days I wonder.....  Maybe sleep comes later and total dreamless unconsciousness till morning. My ability to function hinges on those times where life becomes a chemical black hole of forgetfulness and therein can I carry on normally and laugh and smile at the sunshine on my face.

I got left behind as a child as a schoolmate, as a friend, as a husband, as a father and I'm finding new and interesting ways to fuck up a terminal illness. Where is my way in all this? What was the purpose of all this? I only wanted to be included. I only wanted some acceptance.

As I got older I started to notice certain things that were going on with me. Had I seen it or heard about it as if another person was experiencing it I would have immediately said PTSD.  We so often attribute PTSD with those that may have suffered through the tragedy of war or natural disaster but we so often forget those that have suffered physical abuse at the hands of a family member. Time really does heal all wounds, and you learn to cope, deal and soon to function beyond the PTSD, the memories of ass-whooping, smacks to the side of the head. The beatings, all out of nowhere, suddenly, unwarranted, landing like an artillery shell right on your face. Explosive and damaging far beyond the physical realm. As far-reaching as the rest of my life will carry me. They say that you must learn to forgive but that's a process I never want to have. Never will I forget or forgive and if there is a hell in the afterlife I hope that fucker is in it and there's a special place for him there.

My body is so broken, beyond physical repair. No hope for recovery. I'm so tired it hurts to move. It just makes me hate the world more and it just makes me hate myself more and more. It makes me hate everyone who's happy and successful. Those perfect families, with their perfect kids, going on perfect vacations, posting pics of the wonderful time they had. All the wonderful places people go and the exciting things they do. Those perfect little romances that happen and those school crushes that turn into wonderful marriages and people that can keep their shit together.

Change comes to me slowly, indeed if at all, and the more I change the farther I feel away from all those things which used to be distinctly me. The way I eat. The way I talk to people. The number of pills I need to ingest to stay alive. All those little things which by themselves is no big thing, but when you put them all together in the make-up of a human being what do you get? What do you see? What do all those things... those 'little me's' add up to?

My hope comes from Ativan, Gabapentin, sometimes Dilaudid. Maybe, occasionally a frozen mixed drink pouch from Walmart. Sleep comes in sweet, dreamless, soft, all-encompassing pharmaceutical blankets that I cuddle in and with its toasty warm mind numbness, I find peace and solace. And after I took enough drugs all the pain and seizures subsided leaving me feeling as empty as the pill bottles and empty casings on the floor. But I was alive and that .... had to count for something.

My heart was already on the other side. I just needed a way to move the rest of me there. It's hard to exit from that perfect moment. It pulls you in and plays itself over and over in your head. There's a terrible wanting need to be touched and to touch. The way lovers do when lying close to one another. My hands, cold and longing for the feel of warm flesh in their grasp. Tracing, delicately sliding along the living tissue. Glory in the senses of touch. My love is always lost. Just a bit out of reach and it's ever so maddening never to touch it.

I knew that existence was subjective. Life truly is what you make it. I now understand the world is a psychotic schizophrenic. Psychopathic with sexual, cannibalistic, PTSD and identity disorders.

Seems silly to think about all that now. There were darker places to discover within the imprisoned me. It had always been dark in there and the voice never stopped taunting. What was the point? Fat and stupid and dumb. Because no one can ever really change who they are on the inside. Maybe it was boredom or maybe I was trying to remember something.

Most times I never meant to cause any harm, but suddenly there were times that sent my soul screaming and I needed to intervene for the sake of providence .. and then sometimes I just wanted to cause chaos. Chaos. Where did I read about chaos?

~

"And all of Nether emptied out in one great, gloriously, evil belch and all the Devils therein came to call. And there was such chaos to be had the like of which that had NEVER been seen in Earth, Heaven or Hell." - The Hangman's Knot, R. Federle

The first thing you lose when you start to give up on love is a sense of family. If indeed it was not was destroyed within the dysfunctional-ism of the family, to begin with. This then leads to lack of love, trust and commitment issues later on when attempting to become romantically involved with someone. It's a sorry state of affairs to attach oneself to another knowing that there is only failure and heartbreak at the end. I suppose it's expected of most people that they should settle down and pop out a brood of children. In moments of despair, I find that the closer the pill bottles are to the bed the more comfortable I sleep. I am far, far away from me. Through hills & valleys of thought have I walked & walked them in measured steps that are unending.

I guess dying alone would be better than dying in front of someone. All that gagging and gurgling and farting and shitting everywhere. Ew. Internet and cable have been down for the last 12 hours. I have officially lost my shit. Vehicle crash took out power n cable poles last night at 6:30- 7pm EST. It JUST now came back on this minute.

I'm not going to dress up for Halloween this year. Just going to lie around like always stare into the abyss and slip slowly into madness.

All those naps I didn't take in kindergarten I want them all back right now.

Do you hear that? ........That's the call of a wild me... not giving a fuck.

Now that I'm all grown up I'm watering my house plants instead of smoking them.

Instead of going to therapy, I’m using Buzzfeed quizzes to figure out my life.

When I was younger I'd wake up and say "Holy shit, I'm alive." Now that I'm much older when I wake up I say, "Awe shit, I'm alive."

What type of comedian am I? One of the cool ones that over analyzes everything & by asking I've answered my question.

I'm thinking about getting a cat... or a small retarded dog.

That's me.

In my own head. 

Hearing things.

So after a weekend of anxiety and panic attacks, I managed to pull myself together and get back on routine. I promised myself 3 laps around my apartment building and I did 4. See I always promise myself what I know I can do, then I always try to do one more. Now next time I will promise myself 4 laps around the apartment building and try for 5. That took about 21 min to do... so I came up and got on the excer-bike and did almost 10 min on the low setting before my legs gave out.

I've always believed that emotion ties directly in with the physical. As the saying goes healthy body healthy mind, cleanliness is next to Godliness, happy wife, happy life. Ok, well, 2 out of three ain't bad and that fucking bitch can go fuck herself.

My health like many other people is tied to my emotional well being. Coming from a shit family, with shit lives it's no wonder that I am in the condition that I'm in today..... BUT the blame only goes so far and at some point, you have to pull your panties up, put on your big boy, or big girl pants and start taking responsibility for yourself, for your actions, and for that inordinately large ass behind you back.

~

Can I get a prayer!!!! When I was alone you comforted me. When I was so very sad you made me smile. In times of need, you were there in my hand.

When the world laughed at me you made me take that frown and turn it upside down and laugh right back at the world.

When they said I wouldn't run wild naked up the interstate you gave me the courage to do it. AMEN! Thank you, Jose Cuervo. From the bottom of my heart thank you!

~

Sorry, everyone. Panic attack. Fight or flight mode activated. Bunkered down for the last 15 hours. More to come, later. Time to go back and hide in my pillow fort. This liquid diet of vodka, NyQuil, SlimFast, and tears is really working for me. Life doesn't ever hold anything back. When it comes... it comes crashing down around you, crushing you till you can't breathe. I deactivated my Twitter... to fucking toxic, to miserable, fucking losers.

Everything fails 100% of the time. Everything is shit again.. always shit. I must have been a real asshole in my last life. I'm missing a page out of my thesaurus so I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about that. Whew... That was nice. Air out all your dirty laundry and get that personal private shit off your chest.

NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP NO ONE CARES.

Can I get an AMEN and PRAYERS, a LIKE, and a SHARE and a smiley emoji and an amusing GIF, because somewhere, something bad is happening to some people and vegetarianism, glue is made from horse hooves, a sack of puppies in a lake, and the floor is lava. God Bless!

People say they want you to be happy but what they really want is for you to be the version of yourself that makes them most comfortable. What you all have failed to realize is that there is no end to my weirdness or how far I am willing to go to impose my weirdness on you.

I didn't know what was inside me anymore. Nor could I express desire of any outward kind. I was an aging lump of flesh just passing the time until the end. 

But what lies between here and the beginning takes a little bit more telling.

PART II

I met my first real live Mexican drug lord when I was 17 years old.

You see when I was a kid, all the way up through till my teenage years, I used to spend summers out west in Arizona with my biological dad. I guess it was thought they maybe we would bond and father and son would take on the world together. Yeah, fuck that shit. I consider myself a people person and I've always known if someone is a hero or a zero, and this guy registered a big fat, fucking goose egg with me. I'm sorry Y'all that's just the way I felt. But his mom was now my mom and I couldn't have asked for better. Because it was his mother that raised me all the way up through till I was an adult, so even though she was my grandmother, I always called her mom. She was a mom to me in every way a mother can be a mother to a child.

Some people in the family didn't like that when I called her "Mom", they used to say "She's your grandmother.", like I had no other choice. People in my family get pissed over nothing and after all these years they still do. However, she's Mom to me and Mom she will remain.

So I'm 17 I'm out in Arizona and I'm bored out of my skull, and me being 17, and always looking for something to get into. I decided to help my dad out with this business that he had going. He always had a lot of "business" going. Selling chickens, raising chickens, rabbits, ducks. Selling one and all of them to local Asian restaurants in Phoenix. This time he was selling fresh frozen fish out of the back of an ice cream truck at the Park-n-Swap right out by the airport in Phoenix, Arizona and what the Park-n-Swap was, was a huge, humongous flea market. I mean this thing was in a parking lot and it was a mile square if it was an inch. A square mile of a flea market baking under the Arizona sun and the parking lot belongs to a what was called then, that you don't see him much anymore today, but it was called Jai alai.

Jai alai is a sport involving a ball bounced off a walled space by accelerating it to high speeds with a hand-held device. It is a variation of Basque pelota. The term, coined by Serafin Baroja in 1875, is also often loosely applied to the fronton where the sport is played. The game is called "zesta-punta" in Basque. I never understood the game I don't think half the people that were betting on the game understood the game but it was a betting game, and you have like five or six guys on each side and they have these long wooden claw-like things, that acted as a catching apparatus that they catch the ball and they throw the ball and bounce the ball off the wall and catch it. Then they spin around and launch the ball. Much faster than a major league baseball pitcher could throw it, and guys used to get taken out by the ball even though they were wearing helmets and you were allowed to climb and jump off the wall and this was a fucking inside sport, right?.

Anyway, so dad is going to the Park-n-Swap and we're selling the fish out of the back of an ice cream truck and I kept wondering to myself where is he getting this fish from. So one day he's going to go get his re-supply of fish and we jump in his truck and we drive outside of Phoenix on the on the back side or something that's like the back side of Phoenix. It's out past the airport this is more of an industrial area and there's this place at everybody knew they called it the Co-op and the Co-op was a front for the Mexican Mafia.

Now here's how the deal works. In a little fishing village in Mexico, the fisherman would catch fresh fish and the fresh fish was loaded onto trucks and taken to a factory where this fresh fish was frozen into blocks of ice with about 200 to 300 kilos of fresh frozen cocaine or heroin. This then was put into trucks and shipped across the border to Phoenix, where they took it to the Co-op, where they thawed out the fresh frozen fish, cocaine, and heroin, and in the beginning, they were just throwing out the fish. Now somebody, somewhere who probably had too much time on their hands, and who liked to stick their nose into things that you shouldn't stick your nose into, stuck their nose into the business of the Co-op. That's not good for anybody's health. So just to alleviate the situation, without a mess the Co-op needed to find a way to get rid of the fish so nobody would say anything and what they came up with is, they would give the fish or sell the fish very cheaply to the people in town and those people can sell the fish and keep the money all themselves and that was how the deal worked.

So on this day, was the day that I met Juan Carlos Ybarra. And just to let you know he's dead, so it's safe to talk about all this now and I'm sure most of the people that were involved with him at that time are either in jail for life, or dead because that was the life of a Mexican drug lord. Juan Carlos Ybarra was as about as Mexican as you could look. He was just below average height, not a bad looking man with a moderate temperament. He had a wife he had two kids and he drove this four-door beat-up Mercedes sedan. Now, most of the time a person of my stature and conditioning is never even noticed by anyone of Juan Carlos's stature and conditioning. but as I was standing around waiting for the ole man to conduct his aquatic transaction for the fish, some of the Mexicans around there were telling jokes. Well, I knew a little Spanish so I was picking up on what they were saying and they were all gringo jokes. So I told them a Mexican joke in Spanish. And the joke goes like this...

"There's this airplane flying very high in the air and one of the engines burns out and the pilot says to the passengers,

"We need to eject all of the luggage in order to lighten the plane."

So they eject all the luggage and it's still not enough to keep the plane in the air so the pilot figures it out and he calls back to the passengers,

"I need three people to jump from the airplane in order to lighten the load."

So this Tibetan monk stands up and says, "I have no fear of death, I will be reincarnated I will jump." So the Tibetan monk jumps out of the plane.

The next person is a Russian and he stands up and he says, "I will jump out of the plane and show all you decadent American capitalist how are true Russian meets his fate." and the Russian jumps out of the plane.

The next person who gets up is this big, huge fat Texan with a big Texas hat waddle's over to the door and says "Y'all remember the Alamo!" and then he grabs a Mexican and throws him out the door...

~

And that's the joke.

Most of these Mexicans didn't laugh at the joke, or they didn't understand it, but in another room behind a closed door, there was this loud outburst of laughter. "Hahaha….", this was Juan Carlos Ybarra. Luck was with me that day because Juan Carlos was in a bad mood, but he really liked racist jokes. Gringo jokes, Greaser jokes, Black People jokes, all kinds of racist jokes. So he comes out of the room and he walks right over to me and he stares at me with those piercing brown eyes and he said: "What is your name Miho?"

I said, "Raymond"

And he says, "Ramon?"

And I said, "Yeah my name is Ramon."

"You're a funny guy,"

I think to myself I've heard this before in a movie and I'm not sure that ended well, but I figured what the hell. If you're going to do something, do crazy. It works for me and I do it well. So I said, "Thanks, I try."

"I'm having a little get together this weekend. You will come by and tell me some more jokes, yes? You and your old man come out to my Hacienda for steak and lobster. You will come yes?"

And I said, "Why not?"

"Beuno muchacho! 

So next Saturday came and the ole man decided he didn't want to go and he told me I couldn't go but I went anyway. About noon time a car pulls up and once again it's just kind of an older model Mercedes sedan and it drives out to Glendale Arizona. We pull up to the Hacienda and it's a one-story Mexican style open floor plan, very modest considering. I walk up to the door to be greeted by a maid who directs me back through the house to the pool area where they're having their fiesta or whatever.

Juan Carlos gets up from the table, he walks over and shakes my hand and he had a very firm, very firm handshake "Welcome, welcome! Sit have a drink have a drink, get something to eat and we will talk."

We filled our bellies with steak and lobster. I just gorged on steak because I wasn't partial Lobster We had Dos Equis beer, Tres Equis beer, Corona with lime (which is my favorite by the way) They were also drinking mescal. Now, Tres Equis beer is Mexican beer and it's thick man, I mean this shit has hops floating in it and God knows what else so I didn't drink any of that. After all of our eating and drinking and talking and drinking and eating and eating and talking, Juan Carlos stands up and says, "Come with me, muchacho." and he puts his arm around my shoulder as we're walking and we walked through the kitchen and there's a door, and he opens up the door. 

It's a garage and it's like a four-car garage, and it's got a convertible, yellow Mercedes for his wife apparently. The rest were four-door Mercedes sedans in various states of condition. Juan Carlos points in particular at this red Mercedes And he says, "You see this car Mijo? This is the car that I come to America with to carve out a piece of that fat puta and take money from the stupid Gringos with Cabezas up their assholes. Do you know I drove this car all the way from Oaxaca with no air conditioning and do you know how hot Mexico gets between Oaxaca and Phoenix?"

I said, "No, I've never been out of the country before but I imagine it's hotter than a snake's ass in a wagon rut."

Juan Carlos threw his head back and laughed in such a way that only Mexicans can.

"I will tell you Miho, I almost junked this car, but I like things that are reliable. Things that are reliable are worth more than anything. But at the end of the day Miho, everything is replaceable. Everything. Comprende, yes?"

"Si comprende, muy beuno Juan Carlos."

"Hahaha! I like this for you to learn your Spanish good. Mijo you're the funny guy and you make me laugh don't ever stop making me laugh, yes?"

I said, "Fucking A Juan."

"You have never been out of the country before?

"No."

"We shall have to remedy that soon."

The next thing I did was buy a book on learning Spanish.

PART III 

My time spent abroad in Mexico probably is still to fresh to print. A lot of the people I met and friends I made are still in the game. A real Playa knows when to hold'em and knows when to fold'em. (Thank you Kenny Rogers) 

Maybe someday there'll be a "My Mexican Adventure" book but for now mums the word and to all my chicas and hermanos.... Que tu burro nunca se canse. Que tu producto sea puro. Que tus coyotes sean rápidos. Te ofrezco buena ruta.

And that's all I got to say about that.

WORK IN PROGRESS, PART III ... WILL CONTINUE

By RayFed

From: United States

Instagram: @mr.rayfed

Twitter: @MrRayFed