Pilgrim in the Trailer Park

 Unlike Amy Winehouse, when they tried to make me go to rehab, I said  yes yes yes. Well, I must have, because I ended up there. I only had a budding problem with alcohol and marijuana (and my chicken shit ass didn’t dare use anything else); I liked it and I enjoyed it (is that a problem?), but when I got out of rehab I had a guilty complex about using it (thanks!). It was 2021 and I was in the psych ward at Advent Deland, because of, long story short: the DMV, instant coffee, and baby spiders (yeah, weird). This was my second time there within a month, because I just loved that place (really I had a sick satisfaction with their religious program), but they clearly didn’t feel the same about me. I told them I couldn’t go home, as my dad kinda kicked me out, and I was kinda homeless (I kinda lied). So they kinda suggested, would you like to go to a nice rehab in Winter Park Florida?… (the place that shall not be named). I didn’t have a choice because they weren’t going to keep ...

 It feels good to be back on the blog, but it is bittersweet. It seems I really do need to stop dreaming and start DOING.  My new therapist says I should inquire at Daytona State College about career guidance. “You graduated from college, so you are a smart girl after all,” she says. Not addressing the severe anxiety and depression I am experiencing. No, I just need a JOB (no shit). My psych says I should just stay on my current meds. Great. My roommate says I make him nervous, and I need to “get a life.” Great. I went to the therapist because of that statement, a verdict that makes me more hopeless than motivated.  I could keep up the writing, but I will just write myself into a snowballed rabbit hole. The only silver lining is the humor. I thought I was a “sky full of stars,” when really I’m a crazily manic girl with a bad cigarette habit. I thought this blog was proof that I am a sane sober person, and as I type these words I feel key tapping bursts of joy. Every joke ...

 just checking.

  Help! I need some writing, not just any writing… The well is running dry. Either that or I’ve got to dig a deeper hole…but how far down can I go? The famous poet Edna St Vincent Millay said “myself I think will never know/ how far beneath the wave I go.” Well said. So, it’s not so much how deep can I go — I could plunge endlessly — but how much is my audience willing to tolerate? And most of these amorphous concepts I can’t even get down on paper. They’re ideas or phrases or cool title ideas, but they refuse to flesh out. They go nowhere. I always think of that scene from Boondocks Saints where Greenley says to the fat dude lying by the dumpster: “you’re going nowhere! Nowhere!” Yeah. I have slightly more faith than that, like the gumption to take off with a broken wing and try to mend it along the way.  And then there is the writing I have deleted. Yes, deleted. Because I don’t like having too many drafts, and I figure if it was that important I’ll remember it later. My jou...

  The Super Bowl…a holiday I don’t celebrate, but I made a big plate of snacks that was beautiful and I’m very proud of. Although I probably consumed a half a block of cheese (! (the small hickory farms kind)). I don’t care to understand the game; the rules never sink in and the objective is lost. If it makes John happy, that’s cool :) Football is going to be around for a long time, so I better get used to it. I told John most of the commercials make me uncomfortable. It’s true. I’ve been making a “full pot” of coffee every morning (it’s only a four cup maker), and drinking it all throughout the day. I like this better than cup-to-cup (it’s not a damn keurig!), and since I’m going to drink as many, might as well (when I would protest John buying another case of beer he would say “you’re gonna drink it all eventually, right?” True).  I’m trying to ignore the commercials, but I couldn’t help but looking at a Budweiser commercial playing Free Bird , featuring a bald eagle soari...

 I just wanted to make a post with that title ( since I can’t put it on a t shirt ), and also a public service announcement. 

  “Drawn into the stream, of undefined illusion, those diamond dreams, they can’t disguise the truth…” — Level 42, There’s Something About You When I broke up with my boyfriend five years ago, he told my mother “I hope she finds herself.” At the time I had blocked his number at the request of a family member, but I appreciated that he reached out to my mom because he was concerned for my welfare and wished me well. But I was trying to escape, not find myself. But I was indeed truly lost. Well, I found Jesus, instead…and then I did find myself (Here I am!). No, really. I wasn’t being true to myself in that relationship (no offense to him). I think most women can relate to that. We try to change ourselves in order to be deserving of love. And we probably do shit that piss men off, like talk too long on the phone (and too much in general), take too long in the bathroom, etc. But it’s part of the package, just like we put up with them monopolizing the tv watching sports.  I’m bein...

 Sometimes I think the universe is trying to speak to me.  Not literally (hello, Universe? it’s me…). I can’t help but connect the dots sometimes.  I got a little manic after my breakup five years ago, and I started connecting all the dots I could think of, which led to some weird poetry and drawings (I tried to show them to my dad and he was like, get that shit out of my face! Lol, that’s my dad. So I would read them to him so he had  to listen. And then he made me go to the hospital. I digress…). Anyways, I’m a little more hinged now, so the dots don’t make me crazy, even though sometimes I think I am on the verge of a huge epiphany (did you know one time I thought Eminem was gonna discover me and buy my poetry? To quote Bell: “‘must have been some weed.’”). I appreciate the dots, wherever they are leading.  I got sober on Good Friday of 2024. That wasn’t the official day I quit drinking (it was sometime that same week), but it was the day I went into the hosp...

I think I am done with the Satan stories. What started out as a fun story about a “one night stand” gets really ugly. I realize that. I take full responsibility for posting this on the internet, but I dare anyone to judge me, for my poor taste in subject matter, to the choices I made, to the people I fucked over, for the reasons I drank, etc. If this story doesn’t resonate with you, then you’ve never been in the gutter, and probably consider yourself too wise to end up there. Then this story (and maybe this blog) is not for you. I’m lucky I’m alive to write these stories, and I take pride in my ability convey them, with a touch of humor, objectively and subjectively. I don’t write for the masses. If you don’t think John is the hero in all of this, then you can’t see the forest for the trees. Every alcoholic has to decide on their own to get sober, to “see the light” (or in my case, scared enough to get help), and make a commitment and keep that commitment (relapse is always possible. I...

 “You take it on the run baby, if that’s the way you want it baby, then I don’t want you around…” —REO Speedwagon I didnt know why this guy was buying me beer, but I wasn’t about to question it. To me, it was a gift from the gods, even though I was never properly grateful. Much later on John revealed to me that I did something really cute that just tickled him to the bone, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was for a while. Finally he admitted, “when I got you a case of beer, you asked me innocently ‘is that for me?’ and when I said of course you said ‘thank you so much!’ and gave me a hug.” Silly. I barely remember that scene (all it takes is a hug? (Although I do remember walking out the door with that whole case in my arms and enjoying the beer at Ross’, and carrying it with me through the night)). I was giving lots of people hugs at that time, my pathetic way of trying to ingratiate myself with them (and I’m really not a hug person). I did a lot of weird shit, which wasn’t funny-...

 One of my favorite movies is The Royal Tenenbaums, and there is a scene in there that cracks me up every time. The father, Royal, is telling somebody that his foreign companion carried him on his back through the jungle to a hospital when he got stabbed. The somebody asks him “who stabbed you?” Royal points at his companion: “He did.” I think it’s hilarious. You’ll understand how that is relevant as the story continues. One day I was trying to drink a Natural Ice (gross. Why?) in my own yard, for once. I was wearing a very tight and very short flesh colored dress, which I never washed. There were two chairs in the yard, so my Spanish neighbor was sitting with me. “Are you hungry? Did you eat dinner?” he asked me, concerned (This is all in Spanish, btw, but I’m writing it in English for you, my American friends). “No, I’m not hungry, I have beer.” He said “no, you can’t just drink beer, you need to eat. Flaquita…” Our neighbor John (everybody in the park is a “neighbor”) was walkin...

 This is my version of Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar : We got dumpsters, we got motherf*****s Good ol’ boys and fronters We got Dollar General and A Convenience Store The Boat Bar and The (First) Turn All walking distance So you don’t need a car You can get drunk just right where you are Ooh ooh oh I love this park We got night owls, we got fishermen, Three docks and one fire pit We get hurricanes And we don’t give a shit The cops come by for welfare checks And the Mexican drives his white van in the dark Ooh ooh oh I love this park It’s in my kind of state (Florida) Living in a real house would be such a waste It’s not too hard To fall from grace  You can stay inside and hide  but it won’t save you face Ooh ooh oh I love this park I’ve seen possums, I’ve seen raccoons Like Forest Gump said “My mama just chase em off with a broom” But we give em food We got stray cats by the dozens  Fighting and humping each other And we got ladies, they’re real  nice They drink ...

 If you’ve been reading the Satan stories…that’s cool. They’re fun to write. Why did I call it Satan Lives in Riverside Park? I wanted to get your attention, first, and because it’s kind of a joke, and a mystery. Well, I live in Riverside Park…am I  Satan? (I don’t know why spell check keeps capitalizing that word; he must be important). Maybe. What I did was pretty evil. And most people say I’m a nice person. I’m glad I only really drank for eight years of my life, the last year being the absolute worst. Do I really think my alcoholic ex boyfriend is really Satan? No. He’s kind of a mean drunk, but he has his positives. He took a chance on a girl thirty years younger than him…who eventually screwed him over (one drunk is bad, but what’s worse is two drunks who think they’re in love). I have guilt about that, but like A.A. says, it’s best not to make amends to some people. As my Uncle Cravon used to say, Let sleeping dogs lie.  Yet I write these stories, for my benefit an...

 Yes, I think it is. That’s not what I set out to do. I just wanted a platform for my writing, and I ended up coming up with a cool name. But it’s not a trailer park blog either. Maybe it’s a Florida blog. A sober Florida blog (cause that makes sense).

 “Saving all your food stamps and burning down the trailer park…” — Loser by Beck The “forces of evil in a bozo nightmare” were conspiring against me. I couldn’t stay home and get drunk and pass out like a normal person. Because I couldn’t sleep there; I couldn’t sleep at all . Even though I was comfortable in my warm buzz, once I laid down my thoughts exploded like bird shot, like my mind was in a Daytona 500 (my brain was drunk, but my psyche was on point ), and after a short time (idk 15 to 30 min) I would start withdrawing from the alcohol and my heart would race, so it was back to the antics. The fatigue was a ruse, like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey. During one non-nap I saw Jesus, or what I thought was Jesus, in a negative photo film, Shroud of Turin like image. He didn’t appear in order to save me. Just to spook me (the funny Jesus. I knew he had a sense of humor). My favorite place to be was at Ross’, even though I don’t think he wanted me there, but he didn’t kno...

 “I used to be such a sweet sweet thing til they got a hold of me…” — Alice Cooper Peter Criss thinks he knows about Dirty Living. And maybe he does (unless he really was that guy they thought was him, that homeless alcoholic on Donahue). I’m not claiming to be street smart (I’m more like street stupid), and I’m not a “street walker,” like my neighbor Jim says (lol), but I saw enough of these streets. And it was not good.  After Tennessee Morgan Freeman kicked me off his property, I went back to the trailer that I was never at and drank myself into oblivion. That’s what it seemed like anyways. And I did not go to work the next day. And I did not call to tell them I wasn’t coming. And I never did, so I basically ghosted them (and that is why I am probably on the black list and can’t get a job). When I woke up at midnight I drove out to 711 to get a case of beer, so I could drink and get some sleep. I thought it would be nice to drink it on the dock, so that’s what I did. I met ...