Pink Unicorn - A Short Story

Another childhood memory, hold your pants!

My memory is not what it was, so I'm just going to guess this was the second time my mother and step father moved us away from Ohio to Michigan without telling my father where we went. I'm telling you this for context, I guess. I think I was about nine years old.

So wherever we moved to in Michigan, we lived in this trailer park. This was actually a pretty cool place because there were only like 6 trailers on this huge bit of land. This married couple, Chuck and Bobbi, who owned it all lived up the hill from us in a house with a horse barn behind it.

I would mostly entertain myself my climbing trees and hiding from wild turkeys that would land nearby. There were no children around besides my 2 year old brother and the unborn brother in my very pregnant mother, so I was mostly alone. I think this was my Mother's first attempt at home schooling me. All I really remember is I had no friends.

Somehow, I ended up taking riding lessons from the landlord, Bobbi. She was a rugged looking lady, with tan, leathery skin. A petite lady with short blonde hair and these bulging, bird like eyes. I would help her feed and clean the 13 horses and 2 goats in exchange for my lessons, so I ended up spending a lot of time with her.

Bobbi was stern, but also very kind to me in her way. She would take me with her on errands and to get our nails done. Once she even took me to a horse show. I would study horse books and sing to Jewell in her living room. I remember thinking she must be very lonely to be spending so much time with a little girl like myself.

Something changed in December, so Christmas always brings me back to this lovely little memory. She had been yelling at her husband far more than normal. She always seemed to be angry at everyone, but him especially. But their house was beautifully decorated and cozy, a giant tree waiting for ornaments and gifts.

My family being weirdly religious and very poor was never huge on Christmas, so this tree was awesome to me. As were all her treasured ornaments, each with a special sentimental history. She took me to the mall with her one day to pick out an ornament of my own to put on the tree.

I chose this pink unicorn made out of glass. It was everything my little girl eyes could imagine to be perfection. So we put it on her tree where it honestly looked kind of stupid, this one pink ornament, but it brought us both some weird joy.

Then one day soon after that, my mom forbade me from going to Bobbi's anymore. And shortly after that, we moved. Before we left, I was allowed to say goodbye to Bobbi. She was distant, almost cold to me. Her eyes were hard in a way I couldn't comprehend.

I asked if I could keep the pink unicorn to remember her by.

She said "No, I bought the unicorn to be on my tree, and that's where it will stay."

Years later, I found out that Bobbi wanted to buy me from my parents. I still don't really know how to feel about this. Child me wouldn't even have minded forsaking my family to live with the horse lady. But yeah, a grown woman making this offer is a bit weird in retrospect.

I wonder if she still puts that pink unicorn on her tree, or if she threw it away a long time ago.

Cathartic

I recently engaged in a conversation with the local Fed Ex guy that made me feel somehow finally understood. Has there ever been a more absurd sentence? But years of slowly opening up to close friends has never had quite the impact this brief conversation did.

I forget exactly how it started, but something about working all the time and how he had been working and paying rent since he was 16 because his step dad made him pay rent to live in the garage.

To which I responded, "I thought I had a shitty step-dad."

Which of course spawned further dialogue about our respective shitty drug addict step dads. Which to me is sort of a revelation. I mean, I obviously know others exist, I've just never had a conversation with anyone who has also experienced this. My close friends who have step dads mostly feel as if they got an upgrade. This frank discussion about being yelled at for no reason, wondering which version of him will walk through the door each day...I almost wanted to cry with relief that I was not alone.

Because if you haven't been through it, you can still understand it. But you can't really understand the impact it has on your psyche. You can't actually feel it. The underlying dread of each day. What nonexistent facial expression will I be punished for today? What tiny chore left undone will be treated like the end of the world? What terrible things will he say today, and will they make me cry? That constant apprehension.

I have a friend who experienced emotional abuse during her marriage. She sort of understands. She felt and withstood the insidious nature of it from 17 to 27. Terrible as that is, and terrible as I am to distinguish, I'm still going to say that it is vastly different when it occurs to an adult rather than a child. I was a child, literally molded by this man I had not chosen in any way to have around me.

I wonder if there are support groups for the children of addicts? Probably, there should be anyway based on how cathartic it was for me to have one small conversation about a shared hell.

My First Superpower

When I was a child I used to think I had an ability no one else did. Certainly no one in my immediate proximity. I had the somewhat limited ability to know what would happen in my future, and the future of those around me. All I had to do was think of every most logical scenario for any given situation, and I'd get an approximate idea of the future.

Because of my shitty upbringing, wherein my parents never seemed to think beyond their present circumstances, I thought this was somehow special. Being able to comprehend cause and effect seemed like a superpower. That is literally the only way I could justify why they kept making the same terrible decisions over and over again. They didn't have this special ability.

This all seems rather absurd to me now.

However, the actual realization here is that my superpower was not just self awareness. It was a heightened awareness caused by the instability and chaos my parents inflicted upon me. My superpower was ANXIETY!

Fucking bullshit superpower if you ask me.

Heroes

A hero can be defined as someone whose strength, brave acts, or fine qualities you admire. Heroes have long been prevalent in our society. Lately "super" heroes have become super popular. To me, the concept has been someone you look up to and wish to be more like.

As a child, I remember being asked in school quite often who my heroes were. Like it was a normal thing to have and share. Other children would reference their parents, grandparents, coaches, or teachers. They would even let you include singers or athletes you admired. My family was never typically heroic. I had no coaches, and liked none of my teachers all that much. I hated sports, and even singers to me have always just been the conduit of what I love. I never knew what to say.

As an adult, I am still searching. Though it would be apt and honorable to list some human rights activist as a hero, it would also be dishonest. I'm not even pretending to strive to be that great. But I have found that I did have childhood heroes - they were just mostly fictional. And largely female.

Laugh if you will, but Buffy and Xena are the feminist icons that taught me a girl could be physically and emotionally strong despite adversity. Because of adversity. No knight in shining armor needed. This is heroic to me because growing up as a born again Baptist, this isn't the lesson you are taught. No females in my life stood up to men (or vampires) as an equal. Women weren't allowed to be leaders above men, or to strive for a life without men or children. Female heroines of Christian culture always fell short for me because they were valued for their meek and servile qualities. Bleh.

So, Joss Whedon is also sort of a hero to me because he created Buffy, and Robert Tapert for Xena.

As a teenager, I began to value the works of poets like Dorothy Parker, whose blunt and morbid prose got me through high school. Silvia Plath was by far the greatest strength to me when I was in my massive depressive slump in college, despite her own eventual self destruction. In many ways they are the foundation for the poetry I write today. Recently I have discovered Rupi Kaur and her work The Sun and Her Flowers, which has been a revelation. I don't know if this makes them heroes, but it does make them admirable and brave to me.

In terms of expression through art, Frida Kahlo is my biggest hero. She lived a life of pain and turned it into beauty. She had such a vibrant self-awareness that she portrayed through her surreal and sometimes visceral artwork. How could that not be heroic?

The past few years I have been searching for inspiration as a boss. Been living that Manager life, which is terrible and exhausting, but also necessary to my journey. But balancing professionalism with authenticity is sort of strange and hard. Sophia Amoruso of Nasty Gal has become a hero to me with her ballsy entrepreneurial spirit. I'm not sure I ever want to start my own business, but if I did, she has shown me that it's possible to remain your cool, weird self while doing so. And even that it's okay to fail sometimes, so long as you pick yourself up eventually. #GirlBoss Other women like Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling have also inspired me in this way.

Musically, some fantastic women like Joan Jett, Kathleen Hanna, and Brody Dalle, taught me it was awesome to be loud and crass and, well, "unladylike".  David Bowie of course (not a woman) is an inspiration in his no fucks given long career (R.I.P) creating convention by defying it. That's all I want to do.

Finally, yes, someone in my family has become heroic to me. My Grandfather. First generation Mexican/American. Joined the Army and jumped out of airplanes. He was injured and discharged with a purple heart. Became a History, Spanish, and Math teacher, then eventually the Principal.  Aside from all that, I've always known him to be heroic in everyday ways. Like how he takes care of the many many animals my Grandmother insists on acquiring, even though he has no real fondness for them. His love for her and his family is the most heroic thing to me.

Sorry this post has been so unforgivably long. But if you made it this far, your prize is...NOTHING! Congrats.

May Remembers

I haven't really posted this month. I've been in a weird mood. In May I feel like I get to be openly sad without being a freak. Maybe that's not actually true because after 8 years  people might think it's insincere. But it's not. To contradict myself a sentence later, I guess it's not exactly sadness anymore, though. It's more...reflection. I just like to reflect upon the sadness. Remember my time with Chad. Remember losing Chad.

remember to never lose this comic.

I go back to my old blog and read through 2005. Remember how Chad influenced my life. Remember when Chad told me he was gay. Remember our car rides. Remember who I was at that time. It's strange to remember feeling all those things, being in those places, but also feel strangely disconnected with that girl that was me. That embarrassingly open book of a girl. That dumb girl. That naive girl. That awkward girl. I don't see much of her in myself anymore...even though I am still sort of all those things.

May is a time of learning. Learning to move through life again, like I did all those years ago. Learning that I can make new habits, form new friendships. And I can lose them all and still exist. May is a time of acceptance, and defiance, and happiness amidst the shitty. May is a time of many cigarettes.

Random Childhood Memory

When I was 6 or 7, I was at a Thanksgiving at my Great Uncle Manson's house (I used to call him Uncle Mansion...he had a big house). All the children went out when it got dark and were playing flashlight tag. At some point, this got boring, so they decided to play a different game. I don't know what you call it, but one cousin grabbed my hands, the other my legs, and they picked me up and started swinging me.

this, sans black guy jumping around.

This was probably the most terrifying thing I had experienced at that point in my life. I don't know why, but probably because I gave neither my consent, nor would they let me go when they heard me screaming and crying. They just laughed. I should mention they were all quite a bit older than me, 10 or 12 maybe. When they finally put me down I'm pretty sure I ran to the grown-ups, sitting with them the rest of the night. I remember feeling shame at being so helpless, and rage at their ridicule. Rage at the way the grown-ups dismissed what I felt was a great indignity.

I saw that GIF the other day and it brought that terror and shame back to me in a perplexing flash.

Looking back on this, I realize the only reason I reacted that way was because I was singularly unused to other children. I was an only child still, I had no close relations my age around, and my friends were church kids. Every childhood indignity was deeply traumatizing to me because of my lack of interaction with other children. Now that I'm older, I can set it on a grander scale and say I probably still struggle with this as an adult. Which is just a little ridiculous, I think.