I just want more. I am Oliver Twist. Always wanting what I don’t have instead of enjoying what I do have. I have just about given up on all types of social media. TOO MUCH PHONY…people, products, happiness. Everyone does it; and by that, I mean create an alternate version of themselves that is more aesthetically appealing to life’s casual acquaintances. I can barely remember the time before instant media. It was an actual thing to wait for the evening paper for world updates. Walter Cronkite was not to be missed and the only people who bragged about their fake lives were the distant relatives everyone has had to put up with one Christmas or another.

I recently went to Boston to catch the show “Jagged Little Pill” It was very good but triggering, at least it was for me. I wish I had been smarter and prepared myself for the story line. The play was going along fine. Family struggling with drinking and drug issues, marital problems, gender identity, gay, protestors… and I was thinking, “what could this have to do with me? Why do I feel tense?” Teenage trauma undealt with is still trauma. I successfully shelved those unwanted memories for a long time the fear, the self-loathing, my depression. I couldn’t save her. I am almost 60 and I still cry whenever I find myself unable to avoid what happened. Date rape affects more than the person who was violated. I know it changed me forever. My trust or should I say lack of trust runs deep. I was sixteen years old when my kid sister came home one night drunk, and I later learned date raped. She was fourteen. She had a habit of sneaking out at night to walk uptown. You know in our teens years we are all trying to figure out our places in the world. Are we smart enough? Are we pretty enough? Will we ever be loved or wanted?

Once upon a time I was the middle daughter in a family grouping of five. My Mother, my Father and we three sisters. This is where my wanting comes from. I wanted not to be the middle girl. I wanted to Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady“. I wanted to be Barbra Streisand in “What’s Up Doc?” I wanted to be anywhere but Whitinsville MA. I can’t remember a time as kid when anybody told me I was beautiful, or smart, or that things have a way of turning out. I learned to be funny as a survival mechanism. My dad was always at work. My mother was crazy. I know this now but as a kid I just knew that when I was busy being funny our lives went easier. We three girls spent a lot of time at relatives houses because truth be told, mental hospitals don’t let kids visit their loved ones until they are fourteen years of age and by that time, I just didn’t give a fuck anymore. Growing up in a dysfunctional family tends to make one dysfunctional. Every year I watch “Home for the Holidays” because there is a scene where the overstressed mother throws a turkey across the dining room. It makes me laugh, it makes me cry, it makes me so angry. It brings back fresh to my mind so many holidays that ended the same way in our family.

It is time to lay my burdens down. My kid sister is no longer troubled with her past. She took it with her the day she died in a car accident so why am I still trying to make it all better? It was not my fault that I was not there to be her protector. It was not her fault she was raped. It was what happened a long time ago in a small town in America before it was cool to say “ME TOO”.