Celebrities and drugs – do you judge harshly, have mercy, or fit somewhere in between?

ya know, it really just depends. i am pro-legalization of marijuana, but in the same breath i can tell you with absolute honesty that i despise methamphetamines and crack cocaine with a homicidal passion. there’s just a huge difference to me between an herb grown naturally from the earth and cutting sinus medicine with clorox and boiling it in anhydrous ammonia. i could go into the statistics of violent crimes committed while under the influence of each of these drugs, but i won’t.

as for the celebrity part, for the most part i don’t feel that they should be treated or held to any standard i don’t hold for the rest of the world. however, do i want my kids idolizing a teeny-bopper starlet who’s in and out of rehab every week? nope. would i be proud as a peach if my children shared my love for the late kurt cobain? yes. yes i would.

i guess you could say i’m somewhere in the middle. as with all things, there is so no black and white in this world. just a million shades of gray.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
• Link up your post below.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

that’s kind of what i did this week. because y’all…we bought me a new car. shock and awe.

i’ve never owned a new car. i made it to almost 33 years old without a car payment. but, in the words of cara, it was time for me to get a grown-up ride.

she’s such a pretty girl, my 2012 silver camry with a motherhumpin touchscreen thingy in the dashboard. i’m settling into her before i give her a name, for now she’s just “pretty girl”.

mandy and i have extremely different money managing techniques. it’s a challenge, to say the least. the fact that we actually walked in, made a great deal, agreed on everything, got it all done in about an hour? miraculous. which was the cause for the radio silence. i had to be spinning on all wheels to ensure coming home in my new wheels.

come home in my new wheels i did, and i am sofa king happy that shit is over. back to regularly scheduled life after these messages…

you see that? that’s my freak flag, alongside mandy’s freak flag (mine’s the gold). and thanks to the phenomazing brandy-son zen master flash, i am letting that fucker fly.

to celebrate the new year, brandy held a giveaway on her blog. all you had to do to enter was follow her, which duh, and leave her a comment that told her how you let your own freak flag fly.

“i let my flag fly by being me…i’m overweight and sexy as hell…i’m a lesbian in rural alabama…i’m a nurse that is bad ass in trauma…i’m a daughter that is a total mommas girl…i’m tattooed because they make my heart happy…my partner is a paraplegic and it’s not slowed us down not one single bit…i am proud of the scars on my arm from our wreck…and so much more!”
-my winning comment  ooh lala

i dearly love to win things on the internets. dearly. this was especially rad for me, because i admire brandy very much for her special brand of acceptance of all things freak. let’s face it…we’re all freaks. every single one of us, from the uber-mommy to the super knitter to the purple hair nose ring. and it’s ALL GOOD. brandy’s blog is this place where it’s ok to be whoever and whatever you are. you’re cool there. and that’s something i can get all up in.

thanks, brandy. we’re flying our flags high and proud. xo

in a couple of days, it will have been 14 years. 14 years is a really long time. it’s a lifetime, when life is what you chose.

14 years ago, i sat on the edge of a bed in a run-down motel on the outskirts of an equally run-down small town, and i heard the voice of god. and god said, “i will give you and your family safe passage if you will just leave”.

14 years ago, i was a week or so shy of my 19th birthday, and until i heard what god said, i didn’t believe i would see it.

14 years ago, i was about to become a domestic violence survivor.

14 years ago, i had one pair of shoes, two dresses. makeup and hair product were things i didn’t even dare dream of.

14 years ago, i had a job at a local pharmacy where everyone i worked with made fun of me for those things, and because i smelled like the rotten motel i lived in.

14 years ago, i had been brutally raped at gunpoint by my then boyfriend, then beaten severely in my face and body by the glock 9mm he held in my mouth as he violated me. i was being beaten at an alarmingly increasing rate. i had been locked outside of that motel room naked with the barrel of that gun pointed at my through a crack in the door in case i ran.

14 years ago, i knew that i would be killed soon if i didn’t find a way out. i knew that no one was going to say a god-damned thing to help me find that way. i had turned away the only 2 people who ever did ask me to leave. that causes me more grief all these years than any other part or parcel of what happened.

14 years ago, i heard the voice of god. and i did as i was told, for once.

14 years ago, i spent my first night in a women’s shelter. i slept beside a window for the first time in 2 years without the fear of being shot through it. i slept for 16 hours.

14 years ago, i listened to the voice of god and i began to live. i began to become who you know today. i survived.

i wrote this post to tell the truth. i hope that my truth somehow touches someone, anyone. i support the efforts of violence unsilenced in any way i can, and i hope that you will as well. if for any reason you could use some help, to hear the voice of god for yourself, click on their link. there is help there. there is understanding there. god is there, in however you see him/her.

one would be wrong.

when i am at work, i am at best an attention deficient, horny, potty mouthed 30-something woman and at worst an attention deficient, horny, potty mouthed 14 year old boy.

it’s all glo-zell youtube’s and LOLcats and “take me on your buggy”. i’ve got jimmy buffet pandora on the 1′s and 2′s and a coca-cola iv drip. i eat shit like skittles and gas station hot dogs. well, i used to eat the hot dogs. the little town i work in now doesn’t have an all night convenience store. pity them, because i was their best customer.

i send and receive insane text messages from my insomniac cousin and the on-duty law enforcement. if i’m lucky, my bff can’t sleep either and i catch her “online” and text her my undying affection, too.

my momma and i have this weird thing where we can feel each other if we’re awake when we shouldn’t be, and seriously y’all, i wish my momma would start tweeting the shit that comes to her in the wee hours. we could sell a million copies of it.

so, fellow freaks, what do YOU do in the middle of the night???

i open my glazed eyes to blurred piles of laundry. all mine, because laundry is one of my most messy spots. my ceiling looks stark and angry. i need to paint the damned thing. my walls are a buttery yellow, the color of the solar plexus. with walls that color, you should not have a ceiling that feels hostile.

i’m sick at my stomach from the A.Z.T
broke at my bank cause that shit ain’t free
but i’m here to stay, at least another week or two
cause i’ve got another show to do

put another roll of toilet paper on. empty the trash can. empty her bathroom trash. her foley is full, so i empty that, too. clean out the bucket. pile the laundry in the basket and start a load. don’t drag your feet on the floor in those slippers, she hates the noise and any noise she hates will drag her from sleep and it’s too damn early for that yet.

don’t give me no pity, don’t give me no grief
wait til i die for sympathy
just help me with this amp and a guitar or two.
i can’t die now, cause i’ve got another show to do

cereal in the bowl and cold 2%. i have to get something on my stomach, or i can’t take my own meds. and damn if i don’t need to go ahead and take my first dose. this weather has the fire ants in my joints gnawing their way out. i should drink coffee, it keeps me from eating. i always lose some weight when i get on coffee and off the food.

don’t give me no preachin’ no self servin’
and i ain’t no angel but nobody’s deservin’
i can dance on my own grave thank you.
but i can’t die now, cause i got another show to do

flip the tv on, check twitter, check email, check facebook…until the moment about halfway through that routine where i realize i’m hyper-stimulated and my hearts racing and it’s only 8 o’clock in the fucking morning. so i turn down the tv, to where i can barely hear it. i flip til i find some innocuous HGTV sort of stuff. i have to put the smart phone down until my meds have kicked in and i can handle it all.

some people keep sayin’ i can’t last long
but i got my bands, i got my songs
liquor, beer, and nicotine to help me along
and i’m drunk and stubborn as they come
chain smokin’, guitar pickin until i’m gone
gone, gone, gone

luckily, it doesn’t take too long. i fell back asleep for a half hour or so. when i wake, i’m sweaty and stable. i do a load of dishes after the clothes go in the dryer. the back yard looks bleak out the window over the sink. those damned blackbirds are nesting in my tree line again. i tip-toe back in the bedroom, and try for the first time this morning to wake her, stir her, get her up. “not yet” she says. “i’m just gonna lay here a little bit longer” she says. i ask her to take her morning meds, but her belly is upset again and she doesn’t want to move. “ok, but you need to get moving. you know you won’t feel better til you get moving”. i have a feeling she knows that.

i ain’t got no political agenda
ain’t got no message for the youth of america
except wear a rubber
and be careful who you screw. 

listen

you know what i fucking hate?

wheelchairs.

you know what i fucking hate worse than that?

that the person that i love, the person whose life is my life, was suddenly and traumatically left dependent on one because of a stupid fucking slip in the road.

i just fucking hate it.

we were making progress. we were making plans. we’d remodeled our house, made big changes in our space for the life we were living and planning on living for the foreseeable future. we had a rough start. we fought like cats and dogs sometimes. and sometimes we fought against everything that was fighting against us. we actually had a running joke that so many relationships were fabulous in the beginning and went sour, and that since ours started out so sour we were gonna have it made.

we were gonna have it made.

as long as i live i’ll never get the out of control roller-coaster gone wrong feeling of that car spinning off the interstate out of my body. it’s the same feeling i still get on nights like this. nights that the emotional toll of a very physical thing seems so fucking high.

i can walk. i can reach things on the top shelf. i can climb a ladder to reach what i can’t. i can still do my job, the one thing i love more than writing. the only physical reminder on my body are a few scars from shoddy suture work that some jackass er doc did.

she can’t walk. she can’t reach shit. she’ll never climb a ladder again, not that she spent much time on one before, but still. she’ll never do the job that made her, her. she’ll never, ever, ever work as a paramedic again. the work that i’m convinced god sent her to do, because that’s the only way that people are ever as good at something as she was.

but…but…there’s so much she could do! she could teach! she owns her own business, she could lead that business with such passion! she could be a pioneer in disabled health-care workers’ defense! she could build a fucking spaceship and go to mars!

because couldn’t we all do amazing things? couldn’t we all go the extra mile? sure we could. if only…dinner didn’t need to be on the table. or our bum knee wasn’t aching again. or we had just a little bit more time, money, energy.

tonight my heart is broken. old wounds oozing shitty feelings and thoughts. it’s hard to rebuild a whole entire fucking life out of a pile of wrecked steel and sharded glass. it’s hard to find your place, hers or mine, when you’re somewhere you just don’t want to be. it’s impossible sometimes, to see the “blessing in disguise”. sometimes all you see is the fucked up disguise.

tonight, i fucking hate wheelchairs and wish that the universe were a place that unicorns flew, owls brought the mail, everyone had great boobs, and nobody ever, ever, ever needed one.

i don’t talk about it an awful lot here at blahyaya, and i started to think that was kind of strange, which prompted the thought for this post. because the fact that i am an ER nurse is pretty much my life off-line. i try not to be completely obnoxious about it, but it’s one of the great loves of my life.

i am a self-professed trauma junkie. the gorier, the better. i don’t wish tragedy on anyone in this world, but i’d be a damn liar if i said that i didn’t want to be there to help fix it when it happens.

sirens make my heart race, hearing radio-talk between law enforcement, medic units, and us is like a fine symphony. blood and needles make me tingle. abnormal EKG’s are the stuff of my dreams.

the strangest thing happens to me when i’m in work-mode. when the shit hits the fan, when everyone else starts running, this crazy, deep, almost supernatural calm comes over me. every sense i have hones in.  my voice lowers, my hands steady. everything in those moments makes sense.

i’ve not had a personal life history that has had an awful lot of that calm. i was an incredibly fearful child and teen, that grew into a young woman with one hell of an anxiety disorder. impending doom became an integral part of my life and psyche.

when i fell into emergency medicine, it was coming home. i had a place for all the trauma in and outside of my head, my heart. and for most of it, i had the healing power. it became evident quickly that i had the gift for it. i don’t believe that would be true if i hadn’t lived through my life, experienced my experiences, developed my own personal neuroses.

i am able to provide something for people in the midst of a tragedy…i’ve been there. in many ways. i have been there. i know that sometimes, your worst nightmare…it comes true. it comes true and you have to keep going anyway. i’ve walked through that fire. and it makes my entire life to be able to reach out a hand from my own flames, to help lift someone else out of theirs.

doing this for a living, i have so much gratitude for it. for how it has healed me. i have so much respect for it. for what it teaches me. i have so much love for it. for what it has made me.

i’m alisha, i’ll be your nurse tonight. tell me what’s going on…

i want to be happy.

what do you really want?

i want to be a mother. i want to hold my child in my arms in this life, and just experience it.

what do you want?

i want to love and be loved.

what do you really want?

i want to be fired up about life and i want that fire to ignite everyone i meet. i want to see that fire burn brightest in my love, the person i share my life with.

what do you want?

i want peace for those i love.

what do you really want?

i want my family to have a run of just really good years. great years. i want everyone tucked in and resting each night and smiles on their faces every morning. i want to laugh more than we have in forever, joyous laughter, not sarcastic or cynic tinged you-might-as-well-laugh-than-cry laughter.

what do you want? but…what do you really want?

i know that’s not really the point of sharing your life with someone. there are so many things i love about the everyday-ness of long-term love. but even when i’m fighting it, a part of me will always be the girl who wants to run away.

must be the fever…