my last thursday in my 30s

today is may 31st, 2012. it is my last thursday in my 30s.

about ten days ago carl asked me if there was anything i wanted to do during the last 2 weeks i was in my 30s, and i had no clue. i had not felt as if time were an issue, or that i had to do something particular before a certain date ect. i mean, every day i think of things i could have done, or should have done, or wanted to do. my close friends know a few years back i lamented over having made it to an age where i could no longer be in the olympics, where i was too old to have that kind of chance. not that i ever wanted to be in the olympics, mind you, but that life had come to a point where if that had ever been a goal of mine it was now too late.

i had hoped to live my life without regrets, and yet i have so many already. mostly they have to do with accomplishments i had hoped for and never achieved. like what? well, nothing neccessarily time based, which means nothing i cannot still do or make reality, but i just expected to have already made several more solo albums, to have had published books, to have this litany of things under my belt that i simply do not have. and why? because i am lazy. because esp now in my life, i am so easily distracted. i have been wanting to write this particular piece for weeks now and find each time i think about it i get a paragraph or 2 into it and then think about the garden. or the store. or new shoes. my ability to concentrate these days is shot to hell, a major casulty of the internet i'm sure. having the "ability" to check a million different websites at a click and read whatever or see whatever and email and chat and a hundred thngs at once - my concentration is at an all time low.

i'm also lazy. i am a dreamer - something my dad always said to me - he told me over and over i did not live in the real world, but how could i? my real world was hell.

my father did not want me. period. when i was close to 30 years of age my siblings told me about how dad did not want me and had been very abusive to my mom over her keeping me. that he expected her to terminate the pregnancy a number of times and she refused. when she gave birth to me, she instantly had both a hysterectomy and a nervous breakdown. she left me, with my dad who did not want me, and my siblings, and the stress of it all has resulted in a number of things. my siblings do not remember much about this time. i have extreme abondonment issues. extreme. to the point that when my friends have the chance to leave detroit and do something different or exceptional with their lives - i freak out. i have knit this family for myself out of the people i am close with and when they need to leave i fall apart.

this has also been the foundation for me not wanting to have children of my own. since my very beginnings in the womb being a child and having a child have been BAD. life threateningly bad. the anxiety and issues i have about having a child are miles long. it's true - i am not my parents, but i've been damned with an imprint i can't seem to shake.

with everyone i have talked to lately about me turning 40 i have said, "i'm happy to be alive." which is the truth. my father did not want me, and he was an absolute asshole. i'll tell those stories some other day. well, maybe now. you see, my mom realy did want to leave him, but when she would tell him that she was leaving, he would say, "that is fine, you can leave, and then i'll track down all of your kids and kill them." honest. i KNOW many of you will think i am lying each time i tell a story like this, but i lived through it, and so did my siblings, and my aunts, and they all know i am being honest.

so i'm simply happy to b alive. and not just for being born.

when i was 4 or 5 my parents had what they thought was mineral wool insulation put in the walls of the house. it was actually formeldehyde. and the foam did not cure properly. my mom and i and my next oldest sister started getting sick within a few months. by the beginning of second grade i had pnuemonia and a collapsed lung. it happened over and over. i had pnuemonia 7 times before i met carl , and bronchitis every 3 or 4 months all those years. my parents did have it removed, the insulation, but not until several years after it was put in, and after the majority of my physical damage had occured.

my health was always poor. but it was even worse in 2002 when we rented a space in west dearborn (where a sushi place is now) that had a basement we were unaware of. the basement was for radioshack, and it was full of 20 years worth of paperwork that had been flooded over and over, and had turned into one giant heap of black mold. i had hives for 18 months. i lost most of my hair. my anxiety was so bad that even 50 miligrams of benedryl 4 times a day did not calm me down. the city would not help. the county would not help. we had to move the shop to get away from it. my family doctor tried me on every medicine for allergies but they only made things worse (i had bad reactions to the medicines and their dyes) and when i saw "the best allergist in michigan" and his skin tests made me swell up and wheeze, there was nothing western medicine could do for me anymore. how i managed to escape anaphalactic shock a number of times i do not know. in the end, accupuncture saved me and moving the shop certainly helped, and the end result is that i am glad to be alive.

losing my mom did not help matters at all - i only survived that one through the incredible love and support carl gave me and that my friends offered up. and when carl and i had a handful of very ugly years btwn us, what saved me then was music.

maybe it has always been music. it is certainly what i live for and what i get the most everything out of. i'm sure that through all my teenage years, all the years of hearing my dad pass out on the toilet every single night at 3 am and fall over on the floor and all those days of trying to avoid him physically so he would not touch me, it was music. when i was surrounded with physical violence and every type of physical and mental abuse you could imagine (the things i still cannot really manage to discuss or talk about - to let those words come out of my mouth, once again due to years of the threat of death if they did) it was music that i hid in and beneath and with. i could put on a record and be somewhere else. or be someone else. it is why when people write us these days about the music we make, and they talk about how it takes them somewhere else, to such a peaceful place, i am so happy to hear that. i am thankful to create that place for others - somewhere they can be safe. somewhere they can be saved. like me.

so today is the last thursday i will live in my 30s. when sunday comes i will be 40 years old. too old to be in the olympics, too old to be a hipster, maybe too old to be someones mom. but i am everybody's mom - i have adopted everyone around me into this flock - i am a shepardess of sorts, and very happy with that being my role on this earth. i wonder if i will ever be able to access my childhood memories without that aching sadness, without this feeling of loss and emptiness. i keep trying to find this stuffed lamb on ebay - the lamb i had when i was tiny, the lamb my mom used to sing t me with. "lamby pammy's gonna get your ice cream, lamby pammy's gonna get your nose, lamby pammy's gonna get your sugar, and lamby pammy's gonna get your toes, and lamby pammy's gonna WEEEEEEEE", and she would tickle me with the lamb, and i would laugh and laugh.

today i am happy to be alive, even though sometimes it's really hard to feel that way.