I am not even sure why I am writing this entry, I mean I did plan a very different entry… but here we are.
Home, it’s a very weird concept to me. A place I will always want, but at the same time, also a weird fever dream. And what is home?
There was a time when I thought ‘home’ was a place. Like if only I had the right circumstances anywhere would be home. But in reality it did the opposite, it make nowhere my home.
I thought home was a place you wanted to be, a place you felt safe and accepted.
But I never found it. I searched all my damn life, and never found it. I always had to wear a mask of some kind to ‘fit in’, make it acceptable. Balancing on a line, knowing that this group wanted this side of me, and this group wanted another. And the only thing I learned was now to not be myself, and at the same time terrified of people figuring out I wasn’t like them, I did not really belong.
When I ran away from home, I did so believing there would be a place for me somewhere. I just had to find it, but what I found was not what I expected.
In order to not drown, you have to shut down a part of you. There is no room for many of the emotions most take for granted. And sure, this is not something I talk about all that often, but I write it into my stories.
When most people worried about grades in highschool/gymnasium. I worried about other things, like if I was safe to sleep. Or how to numb that nothingness that grew inside.
See, the part you gotta shut down, are emotions most 16 year olds take for granted, I mean most adults take them for granted too. It’s the part where you care, about yourself, and about others.
You simply cannot afford to care.
Simply put the world is not kind to a 16 year old out there in the wild, it wasn’t back in the early 90ies, and I’m dead sure it the same now.
You know that every goddamn day you wake, there is a chance you end up a statistic. But when this is your reality, you simply have to let go of the fear, sort of transform it into vigilance instead.
I remember I was scared shitless in the beginning, I was just short of turning 16 for fucks sake. It was a lot to process, not just to adjust – because no one is born fucking streetwise, just saying. But also the death of who you were, it’s like shedding skin. But you can’t afford to lament it.
In movies and books you often see these runaway streetkids who have this special bond. Truth is you don’t, people are there for some time, and then they are not. We all knew that was just a fact of life, so while we depended on each other, you never ever trusted someone, not really.
Let me explain it with a made up scenario. So when a ‘normal’ 16 year old goes out for a dinner and a movie with someone, they wouldn’t really think twice. I mean, you’d trust it was a damn dinner and a movie.
For me and my peers when I was 16. First of all you’d be very suspicious of the offer, and your first question would be ‘where’, not wanting to get into a car, or a taxi with anyone. Because odds are it’s not true at all, and they just want you isolated. Then if you go along, and you go to any eatery. If the other person said something like ‘you can order whatever you like’, that would be a major red flag. And you’d silently do the math, if you eat for too much, you can’t get away with paying with a handjob. But on the other hand you’re hungry as fuck, and know this is your chance to get something nice to eat.
You’d constantly be running these pros and cons in your head, when having human interactions, and that went for everyone. You don’t trust your peers more than others, to do that is not wise. And in time you find out why…
I got my first shit apartment, without warm water and heat, when I was 19. And I did share this with a constant flurry of other people. I know I talked about that on this blog before.
The moment I allowed myself to relax a little, having a bed, and a set of keys to somewhere. I had some headspace to think, and I could see just how emotionally crippled I had become.
How efficiently I had shut down.
You reach a point, where the worst case scenario is being robbed; Not raped. Not only does your ‘standard’ of when it’s voluntary or not, slide. But it’s more of a hassle to lose your money, drugs and smokes. And that is some serious disassociation,
When sexual assault is a minor inconvenience, and something that just happened sometimes. And most times you’d blame yourself because you weren’t careful enough, or you got a little too wasted and was easy prey. But losing your stuff – now that was a major deal.
I remember back before me and Nik were ever a couple, we did know each other. And he had overdosed up on the floor above where I was in this squat. And he said he died for a moment, I don’t know if that is true. But I do know that someone else thought he was dead, and so had robbed him. And I remember he came down where I sat with some other people. And he was furious, not because he had overdosed to the point of possible death, but because someone had taken his stuff.
And that is truly how I remember it.
I think I was lucky in the sense that I was a part of the, albeit pretty dysfunctional, punk scene. And so squats were easy to find everywhere, but that doesn’t mean people were cool. Far from it.
Assholes comes in all shapes and sizes.
I do know many who prostituted themselves back then, and I never did. I mean it freaked me the fuck out. But sexual favors were a different thing for me, not that I really see the difference, besides it wasn’t strangers, and I wasn’t paid actual money.
However I was really good at wearing masks already when I came to be in this situation, that is something I learned with my mothers milk. And perhaps that made me real good at surviving, but it also played into something darker.
And unlearning what I had learned in that time of my life, was some of the hardest shit I ever did. And no I never did get any therapy, that was simply not done back then. After all I did that to myself, right?
In reality, what I was left with was the nothingness. The knowledge that never had I experienced a space where I could just be me. Everyone wanted something, and somehow it was easier to deal with the primitive shit, I mean that some asshat wanted a blowjob for a mcD meal. Than it was to live with the disappointment of my family, that I didn’t live up to the expectations and therefore were a ungrateful little shit. And at the same time they worked the narrative that ‘of course’ I was damaged at birth, my genes were fucked because of my birth parents. So it couldn’t possibly be my foster family who had done anything wrong.
Project, ‘save the baby’ had failed.
And that was the worst really. You know, I know I told you about it before, but I remember when I once called home. Because honestly all I wanted was for them to ask me to come home, I don’t know if I’d actually done it. But I wanted nothing more but to hear it. And so I called home from a phone booth in Berlin, perhaps it was Hamburg? but I seem to remember it was Berlin.. oh fuck it, Germany. That was expensive as all hell, and I would do street performances, like spitting fire and juggling for those money. And my nan picked up, I said I was in Germany and I was okay. And I recall it as she said something like ‘I hope you have fun’.
She didn’t ask me to come home, she didn’t say she missed me, and at no point in my life have they reported me missing. Even if they actually had had no idea where I was for well over six months or something.
I wasn’t missing, I had left. That was it, I had hurt her feelings by leaving like that, and we’re back to the ungrateful little shit – because in doing that, I would piss on everything they had done for me, all the sacrifices they had made.
And I appreciate it, I truly do. But I am not about to be grateful like they wanted me to be. I didn’t ask for it, I don’t owe them anything.
A part of me never left that place, a part of me is still 17 and just want to go home.
I searched for that space to call home for so many years, and I did so many things I shouldn’t have – all for that. Searched in so many places and people, just to come up a little more empty than before.
When I got pregnant at 20, I somehow managed to fool myself into thinking I was creating the space, I was denied before. I didn’t, I just managed to bring another person into my chaos. I thought being a mother would allow me to create home, if not for me, then for her.
I didn’t.
I failed spectacularly in my attempt.
Would it have been better if I was never someones mother? yes, absolutely. I was a terrible parent for the most part, much to chaotic, dealing with all the shit kicking around in my head. Massive mommy issues, self image issues and emotionally stunted.
But one thing I can say, is that I love my kids unconditionally, and they are the only people in the world that I trust. The only people in this world that I love.
What I did learn from having my first kid, is; home is not a place. Home is a feeling.
Right, so I spent the next fucking 20 years looking for ‘home’ in a feeling. I don’t know what the fuck I had expected, like the clouds would part, and trumpets would sound. Let’s just say it was a lame fuckaround.
I didn’t find ‘home’, what I found was abandonment.
And because I was adult, I just had to tough it out. My nan would always say ‘shake your feathers’, as in ‘don’t worry about it, move on’. But you can’t keep doing that, and I realised at some point in my mid fourties that my nan, who was my foster mother, and the only mum I knew growing up. Was absolutely fucking emotionally crippled, herself. She did not know how to express emotions at all, and because she didn’t know how to mentalise, you just didn’t feel any real connection.
Again, I said this before. I was never read bedtime stories, not once. I was never hugged as a child either, and to this day I find it super awkward. I was a child on the adults terms, like all my childhood I fell asleep on the sofa, listening to the adults as they watched tv. I would eat alone in the kitchen, while reading comics, because my parents ate at half past four, and I wasn’t home then most days.
I can’t remember a singular time anyone asked me how my day had been. I was just kinda there, and was expected to be grateful for that.
What I am getting at, is the fact that my parents didn’t know me. They assumed shit from my actions or whatever, but they didn’t know anything about how I felt. And if I tried to express it, I was shut down. Because feelings made them uncomfortable, and even when expressing my feelings, I had to be careful not to say anything that would offend them.
And that was the first of my masks, learning how to navigate feeling all this emotional pain, but realising that no one listened, no one cared. And if I was unhappy, it was my own damn fault for not listening.
Like they probably felt like they had given me the keys to the kingdom, when they took me in. But you see, that kingdom was not empty. It already had a king and a queen, and they weren’t about to fucking share it with my daddy’s unwanted kid.
And my parents ignored it, they pretended it was a non-issue. But it just wasn’t, it was a major issue. Huge and oppressing, crushing everyone under it.
To some extent I see myself in both Michael and Sussie (my uncle and aunt), because they too learned how to navigate the world without emotions. They are both, in each their own way. The most ruthless people I know, because they, like me. Have never experienced unconditional love, and my uncle once ridiculed me for that, and said it was like unicorns and fairies. Unconditional love is a fairytale, it does not exist.
I know that is not true. Because my children taught me, they made damn fucking sure that I knew what true love and sacrifice was. And there is nothing in the world my children could do, to ever make me reject them, or abandon them. I will never give up, and I will never not care.
But it also feeds my nothingness, knowing that no one cared enough for me, to do that.
Most my relationships they ended because I am not ’emotionally invested’, but the truth is, I simply don’t know how. And I am well aware of the cycle of it, I mean I can’t commit fully to someone, yet I claim I care. It is because that I can’t commit fully, they end up leaving. Which in turn just causes me to commit a little less next time around.
I mean – it’s hard to explain man, it’s like that phone booth conversation with my mum. All I want is for someone to see me, and still stay. But at the same time there is nothing I fear more.
If there would ever be a day, someone came into my life, who actually cared enough to get to know me. And not just be satisfied with whatever part of me they subscribed to. I would never tell them, because I would instantly be suspicious why they’d want to know, and I’d never give them the ammunition they need to take me down.
Now in my head, that makes sense. You know like in old 80ies movies where the villain goes ‘oh I do hope they don’t find out the only weapon that can kill me, are those Sardines from Aldi, on the back shelf two months past date’.
Why the fuck would I give anyone, what they need to hurt me? Because they will, of course they will.
When I was a little girl, you know I loved the idea of ‘there is someone just for you’, and I used to dream about how this person ‘just for me’, would be like. I never said anything this dumb to my kids, because there just isn’t someone out there just for them. We aren’t Pokemons for fucks sake.
People don’t resonate on a spiritual level. We might pretend we do, but we don’t. We are individuals who happen to be walking down the same path, until we are not.
And I am simply not willing to give them anything that is mine. Like imagine you had 2,000 stones, and every time you had any relation with another human, romantic or not. You’d give them a stone.
You’d fucking run out of stones, wouldn’t you?
And then what? what would you do when you stood there and looked at the last five in your palm? would you give those away? No, you’d hoard that shit like the dragon, Smaug. Because it was your last attempts at feeling something real.
I know I was broken before I ever ran off. Perhaps my parents were right, perhaps I was indeed broken at birth. I don’t think so, but I can’t remember – so who am I to say.
But it does serious damage when your parents just abandons you, and leaves you to whatever fate. And then you live your life trying to not be the product of those two fuckwits. But every time you stumble, someone is there to remind you, it’s because of them. And how are you going to argue with genes? How the fuck are you ever going to win that war? You can’t it’s that simple.
Now I don’t believe it’s my genes, or for that sake, in anyone’s genes. How you respond emotionally to abandonment, and isolation. I think it’s actually quite human to react, trying desperately not to let it define you, even if everyone else is adamant it does.
But they were right, I am broken, and I am damaged. I wish it didn’t define me, but I actually think it does. It dictates how I interact with people, and now I find myself so utterly alone, that I think I lost the will to even entertain meaningful deeper relations with anyone new.
I just don’t care.
That is the ugly truth.
I’m still that girl in the phone booth. Hoping for someone to care, but not allowing herself to feel bad they don’t. Because why would they? I’ve done nothing but to push them away, if not with words, then with actions.
There is no one who is going to take me home.
I know that I will never find a home, I will never settle. And as much as that realisation does give me peace, it also makes me sad. I wish I could go back and tell that little 15 year old girl to not even try, because it will never be hers. There is no need for all those battle scars, getting up and trying over and over. She will never find home, because there is no home to be had.
I think the divorce from Nik, and my parents deaths was what allowed me to see this. I mean that I spent a life searching for something unattainable. Listen, before you think this is in my fucking head, let me tell you.
When I met Nik, I was already running on fumes. I thought I finally found someone who actually cared for me, I was suspicious, but I let it happen. Because I thought we connected, I thought we were of the same fabric. We were not, and the person I had loved, trusted, and thought I’d grow old with. Turned around and told everyone how I had kept him prisoner in a loveless marriage, how he had been forced to have affairs because I was broken and frigid. That I had used him to play family, and how I had made his life hell.
That was wild to read. I am quite sure I was not meant to read it, and I only did see it because he had forgotten he had befriended my then business account on facebook, while he had blocked my actual account like years earlier.
He is the one who had a gun in my face twice, who tried to strangle me, and I forgave him, like the fucking idiot I am. I forgave him, thinking that I understood why he would push me away, because after all, it wasn’t like I told anyone about it, how could I?
I figured I just had to nut up, and adapt. And after all, adapting was something I was real good at. And who knows, had I tried to talk to someone, things could perhaps have been different. But I don’t think so; I think I’d gotten the ‘you bought the ticket, you take the ride’ lecture. So I kept it secret how many times the police was here, and how unhappy and trapped I felt.
All because I so desperately wanted to not have been wrong. I wanted to show them all, my marriage wasn’t one of my disastrous spur of the moment things.
But I was wrong, I couldn’t have been more fucking wrong if I’d tried. He was not my anything, he was just some fucking grifter who happened to see beneath my armor, and somehow spoke to that lost little girl, who just wanted to be loved. Hells, she’d settle for ‘liked.
When my dad died, I was basically pushed out of my mum’s life by Michael. She started to accuse me of stealing, and scamming her. shit like that, I mean my other uncle John did that shit too – bringing up the fact that I lived a youth with no limits, and people like me – we are more than broken. We have no soul, and will do terrible things if we gain something.
They are wrong, but how would they know. It’s not like they were there when I needed them to be. They could all have helped me back then, but they didn’t. And as I know I talked about before in this blog, when I had to run from where me and Nik lived, after he was arrested. My mum wouldn’t let me live in their house, they had plenty space. But no, that was a ‘family decision’.
That hurt, not going to lie.
So I was back at sleeping on couches with 3 kids, that was not something I wish for my worst enemy. But in some aspect I had been homeless before, and knew many of the weird pitfalls there are. Like you wouldn’t believe how the most mundane tasks becomes something you gotta plan.
And when my mother died, I was there holding her hand. And she said ‘you’re kinda okay’, or ‘you turned out sorta alright, after all.’ – That is a rough translation, I mean ‘you er da meget okay’ is kinda hard to translate.
But it does carry the meaning of ‘maybe you’re not as bad as I thought’.
That is wild, hearing your own mother say that, and all I wanted, man. All I fucking wanted was for her to be proud of me, just once. Just for once in my fucking life, I wanted to hear her tell me I did something right, that I was not a huge fuckup. But no, I didn’t get that.
And I’m here living with it.
Even if I sadly experienced, the man I had believed to be my partner till we died, betray me. I still have absolute faith in my few friends. It is not like I am unable to trust, but that trust was established a very long time ago, the bond is old and have withstood many crisis and storms. It is rare that I trust anyone, but when I do – I trust them completely.
And I know Nik is just one person, and what he did. That is something he will have to live with for the rest of his life. I will never forgive him, because if anything then he of all. He is my Judas, he is the one who I thought shared my table out of love, and too late I realised it wasn’t love. It was convenience, or some lame attempt at shaping that family he felt was denied him? I don’t fucking know. What I do know, is that I loved him very much, I trusted him unconditionally. And he fed me to the wolves for a laugh, after twelve years of grooming me, to just jump by myself and say thank you.
And so to end this long ramble… is it worth it? I mean home. Perhaps it’s good to never settle, to never get numb and static. And for what it’s worth, I did experience some years of relative calm after my divorce.
I can’t remember a time where rage wasn’t my companion, and the older I get, the more I wonder, if that rage wasn’t born out of the sense of isolation I felt since I was a kid. I am always too withdrawn, too much and makes too much noise, making people uncomfortable and annoyed. But you see, the masks I wore as a kid and a young adult, they were easy. The masks I wear now, they are far more complicated, because it’s painfully obvious that I am not even the same species as most people. I don’t mean that in ‘oh I’m so special’, I mean. My life have been very different than most peoples, and thank fuck for that. But that is what I know, that is what I am.
As much as I want to be something else, I’m just not. I don’t know anything about mortgages, gold membership at the local gas station, and booking family trips to Greece. Dude I know a lot of weird survival skills, – But we’re not living in the fucking apocalypse. And if I try to follow the conversation I fall flat and expose myself as the helpless outsider I am. And if I stay silent, I come off as disingenuous and arrogant. I can’t win, and there is no mask to save me.
Only thing I can do, is shrug. Believe me, the fact that I don’t watch television, I have no channels on it, we only use it to watch the occasional movie, and play on the playstation. That excludes me from 50% of all ‘educated’ adult conversation.
And over time, I fear I lost my ability to actually communicate with these people at all. It’s like we speak different languages.
It’s exhausting and I hate it, but I do it because I must. I know they want me to engage in conversation with them, just as little as I want to be a part of the conversation. It is what it is, but it also makes me feel so fucking lost. Like I read the first volume of one book, and three random books, and then the fifth volume of the same series as the first – and then I have to give a verbal summary of why the characters in volume one, is on a ship in the fifth volume, – at gunpoint. Seriously.
I think my home is in my head, I think it’s a unforgiving, hard and broken place. But it is also a soft, gentle and honest place. I think my home is me, and I am all of those things.
Like my crippling fear of abandonment.
It’s my deepest self destructive insecurities.
But it is also my childish excitement when something works after all, or I learn something new.
It’s my need to to be irreplaceable, to know my existence mattered to someone.
It also is my naive dream to be good at something, but on the same time, my impending certainty of failure.
It’s my tears of loss and loneliness.
It’s my undying loyalty, and love for my children, and my deep regret that I am not the parent they deserve.
But It’s absolutely also my unflinching bravery in the all the battles I had to fight alone.
It’s my sorrow, my pride, and my will to live.
Every single one of them are a part of me, so I would know better than anyone else; All they want is to be heard, felt, and perhaps understood. They just want someone to pick up in the other end.
It does make me sad that no one is listening. But I try, I hide it in story plots and padding, but I’m there. I am definitely there right under the surface.
DREAMS OF A LOST MOONCHILD 
Leave a comment