Excerpt into my Autobiography
Into Darkness
Chapter one
Suzetta had already begun the journey to climb out of the dark hole of her past. She just could not yet see the light and had resigned herself into asking, “What’s the point.” She had an overwhelming need to cut her ties with everything and everyone until she could forget her own name.
Some days she would spend hours writing her own name repeatedly in different lettering and styles as her breathing space began to shrivel up. There used to be this path in front of her that was steep, tiring and confusing, but the end seemed lit if she could keep attempting to conquer the obstacles that would constantly re-route her life’s path without her permission.
Suzetta knew she was not OK. She kept spinning the same endless circles of mental breaking through and then relapsing into her dark past. Was it then or is it now, the heartbreak was so vivid. The trauma so horrifying that not many people chose to believe her recollections.
There was a constant premonition that she would have to be alone the rest of her life and never go home again. Home was a constant reminder of just how unloved she felt. She could not comprehend how she could have loved these people looming in the shadows of her past, always darkening her memories. Even as a small child, Suzetta felt exhausted trying to love them since their concepts of love were so far fetched from hers. They changed who she should have been, but they would never admit to any sort of misconduct or abuse. They would always remain self-righteous.
She had tried Therapy and she thought once she could gain self-knowledge, it would be a prize she would always have, but how to use the knowledge would be the dilemma. However, knowledge was not often offered, only one prescription medication after another was prescribed until she could get past just another fall into total & utter depression.
The doctors would speed up her serotonin levels with the next available designer drug to make her energetic and euphoric sometimes to the point she became manic. Then they would level her of with sedatives. Constantly up and down with her emotions until she really felt overwhelmingly totally lost. She knew she did not want any more challenges for the sake of feeling loved.
There are life boundaries that should never be crossed and at each turn, the family would malign her existence. She just wanted to breathe and connect with the part of herself that had crumbled so many times she had lost count. It was clear to her that it would have been more human to abort her life in the womb because she was not born into the arms of mentally stable parents. Their dysfunctions were not obvious to the outside world, because they put on a great show in public. However, behind closed doors, they were hideous human beings and Suzetta was doomed to be their possession and servant.
Suzetta did not want to fall apart again, locked in a vicious cycle of spinning the same endless circles with these people. She had learned to have emotional restraint and not indulge in feelings of love or anger, to her love was a pretense resulting in unimaginable torture, because when she cared about someone they owned a piece of her soul.
Her life was like living in a prison where no one cares enough to emotionally give back. As an adult, she tried many times to hug her father but as soon as she touched him, she would feel his body go stiffen as he recoiled in a blatant obvious rejection of her that no one else noticed.
None of them really knew her and if they think they did, they certainly never understood her. Suzetta felt desperate as she tried to organize her thoughts and get her head around what has happened in her life in over half a century.
There are many gaps in her life that she would never fully understand. Her memories were a complete contradiction to those who have played vital roles in her life. She thought as long as they continued to conceal the truth Suzetta would never be able to put the pieces of her life puzzle together and be free from their emotional grip on her.
If she fell into their trap and believed that she had an imagination of things that never happened, so she must therefore be the biggest nut job in the world as well as a liar. If the later were true as they claimed then she surely deserved what she got and did not even deserve to live.
Then there was the day her entire life, as she knew it, shattered her to the core of her being, in one split second. She did not have a micro - second to blink an eye and the horror of finding her only son’s dead body on her front porch struck her to her knees.
Suzetta had difficulty trying to defend herself against being a called Dirty Sicilian Dago due to her last name, by proclaiming that she was only half Dago and that her mother was from Vienna, Austria. Then they turned their other cheek and called her a Nazi Lover. Two quick slaps across the face from most people she would encounter over the years. She was about in the second or third grade in school when she gave up trying to defend her heritage because they were right in their prejudices without even knowing what atrocities were occurring behind the closed doors within her home. She would encounter many racial prejudices in her future, but they were the least of her challenges to hold onto her sanity.
However this greatest life devastation; of holding her 21 year old son’s dead body in her arms would cause her to crawl into a hole, deep into a place called despair. Imagine if you will "that place" is so familiar to you that you welcome the defeat. It washed itself over her entire being and she welcomed it like the only true friend she ever had, because in the anguish she could mentally disappear.
The slander took on an even greater emphasis when Vicky snuck into the room Suzetta’s dead son, with a big purse, before the young man was even given a proper funeral, to take his things. Without any concern that Suzetta, the mother would want to hold onto her son’s belongings as keepsakes. More important for baby sister was souvenirs of the dead, to place upon her Stregarian (Italian witchcraft) alter of hypocrisy. At the time Suzetta was so vulnerable she really did not care until years later when so many of her son’s things came up missing. She also did not expect any less from her so-called family. The funeral was even more destructive, filled with offensiveness, disrespect and too much ludicrous drama.
A poem was read that her son had written to a friend of his and through a fog of tears, it caught Suzetta’s attention so she asked to have the poem. She never even knew her son wrote poetry.
FROM ME TO YOU.
By Suzetta Piccolo’s Son
LIKE A WAVE, PEOPLE COME AND PEOPLE GO.
THROUGH LIFE’S TRAVELS TRUE LOVE MANY NEVER KNOW.
SO MANY CHOICES, WONDERING WHICH PATH.
FOR THE BIGGER ONES, IT’S WHICH ROAD.
I WILL SEE YOU AT THE FOUR WAY OF LIFE.
THERE WE WILL HELP WITH EACH OTHER’S LOAD.
WHAT RIGHT DECISIONS?
THESE QUESTIONS WILL ALWAYS BE ON OUR MIND.
PERSONAL QUESTIONS OF LOVE,
ANSWERS ONLY ONE’S HEART CAN FIND.
LISTEN TO ALL THAT TALK.
UNDERSTAND THEY SPEAK WITH KNOWLEDGE
TAKE THEIR HAND.
IF THEY COULD ONLY LET THEIR HEART BE TRUE, THEY WOULD UNDERSTAND.
MANY, SOME FRIENDS, THINK THEY KNOW AND STRESS WHAT THEY SAY.
IF THERE IS A WILL, TRUE LOVE WILL FIND ITS WAY.
DIRECT HEART TO HEART, BOTH WE HAVE FOUND ARE TRUE.
WITH MUCH THOUGHT, THIS POEM IS FROM ME TO YOU.
Five years after her son’s death Suzetta was at an impassable crossroads in her life, she devised a plan and set a date for 90 days more. Even with her son’s poem in her hands, she could not see which road or path to take to find equilibrium among these people. Her 22 years with her son slipped by so quickly, as she escaped her family ties and was on the verge of becoming mentally and financially stable. He was her only family and she relished in the joy that their bond of love created.
She would allow them all only 90 more days of her precious life, to show some compassion. During those 90 days, she set out to analyze their behavior towards her. She logged their concepts of who they claimed she was and searched deep inside herself to define their perceptions.
Although she was compiling dozens of pages of conversations, logically she could not make sense of any of it. The majority of their words were condescending, which consisted of contradictions ladden with sarcastic insults.
As Suzetta began to compile her data, she slowly began to crack. One side of her was accepting their version of her life thus far AGAIN, while the other side was giving up all hope that she would ever reach another essential leap forward; she was tired of fighting with them just so she could breathe normally.
As a little girl she thought her nickname was “Stupid” or “Stupid ass.” When she learned the meaning of the word she realized that is was not a name, but a label on her intelligence.
For years, she fought to not do or say stupid things in front of them. She feared making the smallest of mistakes, for they seemed to delight at catching her in a state of stupidity so that they could grind home a bashing of insults that would drive her to run away and hide from them.
Once they had her in tears, they would tell her to “grow up” or rudely ask, “What the fuck are you crying about now.” She then had to prove herself worthy all over again. More than often she felt like a mouse with her feet stuck on a glue trap. Suzetta was still alive, but at their mercy. Daddy’s little dumb fucker as she was often called.
Suzetta’s family, the ones who nurtured her to adulthood began the slow but steady influence over her own children, by bad mouthing her when she was not around, claiming that she was crazy like her own Mother. Especially Suzetta’s sister, Vicky took every opportunity to pull her sister’s daughters to the side and say “let me tell you some secrets about your mother, she is mentally retarded” among other very defamatory comments.
Suzetta’s children would relay these remarks back to her many times when they were young. When they had Suzetta’s children alone insults were uttered in front of the them, which forced the children to make a choice, either keep those secrets so as not to upset their mother or tell Suzetta what was said yet again, creating a continued cycle of mental destruction and dysfunctional love. When her son was a toddler, she made the decision to not only divorce her husband, but to disappear from the family with her children, in order to shield them from the continued slander of their mother.
Once “the family” had Suzetta in the position of feeling defeated, which was a position they liked best; they would jump on the opportunity to take advantage of her. They treated her like their slave and at times would bilk her out of money.
Their’s was a tricky game of manipulation, they were the masters of deception and Con Artists, a trait that had been passed down through generations from the Italian side of her Father known a Mafioso and her mother’s heritage of Yugoslavian Gypsies who bowed to Hitler. Along her journey in life thus far, throw in some parenting by the Hillbilly white trash stepmother. Throw in boy friends of her Mother’s; a few big-bellied white-collar crooks and an Englishman in a stepfather role, which created a boiling pot of foaming mental and emotional dysfunction.
Who could keep up with so many opinions and contradictions among people within her family structure? It was not something Suzetta could get a grasp of, even for the simple questions: “IF I am not like them, then who am I or who shall I try to be?”
The mystery of it all was; how could an individual personality unlike any of theirs be formed from scratch within all of their chaotic violent behavior? Suzetta was tired of struggling with them but most of all she was tired of struggling with herself. She can no longer take on a challenging career because she could not handle the stress on top of the anxiety it took to just keep breathing daily after the death of her son.
In later years, Suzetta’s kleptomaniac sister would take things from her home. Little things that Vicky’s husband could afford to buy 10 of, without blinking an eye. If confronted by Suzetta, her sister would call Daddy to quickly express her concerns and tell him Suzetta is gong insane again.
Then Daddy would call Suzetta and tell her to leave her little baby sister alone. If Suzetta tried to defend herself Daddy would tell the age-old story about how fragile the baby sister was, because she was born prematurely.
Suzetta would then remember that it was Daddy who taught his very young children to steal from Department Stores while he waited in the car reading his newspaper. That way when his children were caught during their escapades in crime, Daddy could pretend to be innocent of their life of crime.
How pretentious he would look later in life when Suzetta discovered Daddy was illiterate, unable to read or write without assistance.
Moreover, around again it would go, until several decades later when Suzetta just gave up her relationship, with her sister, Vicky. She tried to have compassion knowing that her little sister had also suffered a bizarre and abusive upbringing, which manifested itself into different forms dysfunctional adulthood. Especially since the baby sister was the one that who was caught first while shoplifting a new winter coat, a Holiday sweater and a new pair of boots. Surely, someone noticed the children coming into the store alone, dressed in rags, like little vagrants and then leaving in brand new outfits.
Although Vicky left the store before her older sister, Suzetta was the one who caught the beating for not holding her sister’s hand to keep her from being caught. From the time she was born, it was always Suzetta’s responsibility to take care of her baby sister and her burden to catch the blame from her parents if poor little baby sister got herself into trouble again. Thus she grew up a flaming Kleptomaniac, among other bad behaviors..
Vicky learned quickly that she could cross many lines and not suffer the consequences from her parents because it would be Suzetta that would take the punishments. Just another vicious circle that spanned over 40 years, until Suzetta cut Vicky off from any further communication. However, in her heart she longed for things to be different.
As the blame was given; so was it received and Suzetta continued to seek, what she could have done different in the past to stop the lunacy of the present? The weight of it all was a heavy burden to carry.
The Beginning of the End
Chapter two
Suzetta did not even realize that daily she was emptying the powder from the capsules of prescription medications into tall wine glass. She was then depriving herself of the medication that was meant to relieve her back pain, anxiety, and to help her sleep. By storing it she was beginning to feel her physical pain more severely and she was not sleeping well. This only added to her intense writing about her mental and emotional pain. Her focus on the past and her life so far was intent.
The other part of her was connecting and communicating with some of them; “The Family.” She was reaching out and asking them why or how did it come to be so difficult for them to love or simply understand her? Why have they labeled her as stupid, retarded and crazy? It all added up to the same conclusion “She felt she would never be good enough” or worthy enough to feel love on her terms from any of them. She truly felt insane.
All of Suzetta’s life accomplishments thus far would be continually ridiculed. Even though as stupid as they claimed she was, she had managed to get through college. They never uttered a single congratulatory compliment, the negativity continued to be overwhelming. The abuse would continue to be denied or expressed as accurate punishments that she surely deserved.
As she began to accept her worthlessness in their eyes, the wine glass of medication became fuller. The date on the calendar was quickly approaching. Suzetta began to look at the date as just punishment for her confused life, they were winning. It was the means to an end of too many years filled with emotional and physical suffering. This was a path she felt driven to follow as her fate. Withdrawing from the prescription drugs, she was on exacerbated her drive to escape it all.
Suzetta believed in her heart that they would all rejoice when she disappeared forever. Their fodder for condemnation would have to be channeled in someone else’s direction. Maybe Baby sister would finally feel the wrath of Daddy and Mommy (or Step Mommy now).
Simple breathing, for Suzetta, became more difficult with each passing day as the weight on her heart became almost too heavy a burden to carry on. She could always bury away deep in her heart what they said to her.
Most of the time she was learning to tune them out. She could always stuff even deeper what they did to her. Except for occasionally when a panic attack would strike her, especially if their voices became screams. She would hold her breath until she passed out. Her learned defense to violent situations was that if she passed out before getting knocked out by a sucker punch to the head, she would not be beaten.
One day her older brother Franzi, who had then out grown his father by 3 inches, had an altercation with Daddy. As the two grown men stood chest to chest screaming obscenities at each other, Daddy pulled back his fist to clobber his son, but just before the blow he opened his hand and slammed a slap across his son’s jaw. The powerful impact made a cracking sound as it landed just below the young man’s ear. The slap was hard enough to knock Suzetta’s brother off his feet.
Suzetta saw the clenched fist first at Daddy’s hip and her breath holding began. Just as Suzetta watched her brother falling in slow motion she closed her eyes very tight, the last thing she could recall is the sound of a thud her brother’s body made as it hit the hardwood floor.
As the darkness washed over her, nothingness became a peaceful place to be . Falling into oblivion was an addiction for Suzetta when tempers flared and the violence began. Each time it started with a whisper from inside her own head. A calm soothing voice saying “Don’t Breath, Don’t breath” over and over again.
She knew the darkness would follow as the Adult voices became further away, muffled and distorted like they were speaking in slow motion. Then they just became sounds like a pounding drum with indistinguishable words as their noises were synchronizing with the slow beating of her own heart, being deprived of oxygen.
The little girl was able to descend into unconsciousness where they could not hurt her. She never felt the fall but she knew if she could just be limp on the floor she would not catch a blow from an airborne fist or an object that would be hurled wildly in anger.
Everyone is afraid of death unless they feel that they must deserve to die. Suzetta’s last thought was that she would never wake up from her peaceful place, because she knew deep in her heart she was a great disappointment to them, so for that reason she must deserve to die.
No matter what she did it was never the right thing to do, or good enough to satisfy them. Even escaping into her darkness would be wrong if she woke up. The lecture would always be the same as she came back to life, their voices pierced her ears, as she heard their words; be strong, be brave no matter what life dishes out. But Suzetta was not growing stronger or braver , she was growing weaker. They were going to forever change who she was born to be.
No matter what the encounter, peaceful or violent Suzetta could never seem to get past how they made her feel.
As she became older she had lost the ability to pass out at will; by holding her breath. Shuffled back and forth to Doctor’s; medicated and told to stop. Then they kept smelling salts of ammonia, which irritated the mucous membranes of her nose and lungs, and as a result triggered her inhalation reflex, it caused the muscles that controlled her breathing to work faster which would abruptly bring her back to reality. Eventually they took away her peaceful escape into unconscious nonexistence.
That was the last time Daddy attacked Franzi, shortly after that day he joined the Navy and left his father’s house determined never return. But he too would succumb to a life filled with defeat. Less than a year after the death of her son, Suzetta’s brother took his own life and freed himself from the family bonds.
The glass of powder became seductive pulling Suzetta towards its direction; she checked the date marked on the Calendar several times a day. The choice to not survive was going to be her new escape into darkened peacefulness.
Although brought up in a Catholic religion, she no longer believed in a Heaven or a Hell. If God existed he surely had abandoned her at birth. If there was a Hell, she believed she was already there. Earth was Hell. Her family appeared to be the spawns of Demons.
When an adult child tragically dies, their parents try to get close to God, if only to ask “Why God, Why?” Suzetta felt so close to God immediately following the death of her son, that she could smell the bad breath of Satan. Caught between their ancient war, Satan whispered into Suzetta’s ear these questions: “Who shall you be now humble little girl? Will you be a conniving, ruthless dirty little Dago or shall you be a violent revengeful insane Nazi.
It is so easy to follow attitudes or a mental path laid out by parents. On the other hand it is a helpless internal war to strive to be different.
God was not giving Suzetta any answers. Suzetta remained silent, withdrew into herself, deciding to not choose either side, for she had now lost any glimmer of respect for either side. Their causes or opinions fell onto deaf ears, aided by the medication she was now addicted to called xanax.
Suzetta longed for the abyss. Carpe Diem (Seize the Day) is what she wrote on the Calendar date. And Death Cocktail written in bold marker on her wine glass filled with powder.
Through the eyes of a child love and pain became the same. Children like Suzetta will crave any sort of attention they can get from their parents. Excellence or Dysfunction are not absolute antonyms in the eyes of a child; there is a gray area of limbo where bad behavior from loved ones becomes acceptable and almost sought after just to feel alive, loved and accepted.
Suzetta’s behavior from the point of view of what would motivate and drive her depended largely on the functional importance of her emotions which were at times a roller coaster ride of fear.
For years she worked hard at not showing any emotion, for fear they would criticize her feelings and punish her for them. During the times she would break down, she retreated in private, so they would not catch her weeping or sad, until she could approach them again with a straight stoic face. Not happy, not sad, but numb and submissive.
They insisted that she feel and act the way they expected her to and her own feelings were wrong. Their philosophy was to never show weakness even during the most physical or mental abusive punishments. She learned to take a beating because, the lesson was that she deserved it.
Suzetta had learned at a very early age that any crying, screaming out, or protesting to the onslaught of any physical or mental abuse; would only cause the abuse to become even more bizarre. She learned to keep her mouth shut, her face stoic and accept what was dished out.
Suzetta was trying to base her belief on the concept that an individual's total personality and reactions at any given time is the product of the communication between her family foundation and her environment. Her family had no strong foundation to nurture children. Their personality dysfunctions were enormous and none of them should have ever joined to reproduce off spring.
In the back of her mind Suzetta continually thought “If I can not see what they see, how can they expect me to feel what they want me to feel.” They made her feel like a freak of nature, their puppet, an emotionless compliant Robot, void of any opinions of her own. Agreeable to anything just to share their environment, but leaving with an over whelming sense of negativity, self loathing and contradictions.
There were too many mixed messages and mind boggling confusion. Her mind was so exhausted from trying to analyze their covert messages and unfathomable behavior.
She often turned on herself analyzing her reactions to them; in hopes of finding a safe place within their environment. Each time she tried to change and be who they wanted her to be, they changed the game again.
In her 30’s Suzetta had tuned into plenty of daytime talk shows depicting children of abused parents and spouses. None of which were available to her as she grew up. She hoped she would surely finally be understood, maybe be given some knowledge of why people act the way they do. But she could never quite relate them to the degree of chaos that enveloped her life.
Mostly what she could learn was that the emotions she was experiencing were dysfunctional at best. She was forced to shift her own personality many times to meet her loved one’s high expectations of her.
Her birth mother Rosalina renamed her several times in her life, in relation to her various personality shifts. Out of Suzetta came Veronica or nicknames like Verna or Suzie, her mother even called her Laurie for a period of time; just to quote a few.
Suzetta would have to study the inter-relationship of various parts of her own mind, and personality, as they related to her mental, emotional, or motivational forces especially at the subconscious level in order to not meet her deadline of destruction.
But going deep inside ones self is extremely difficult, especially when there is so much hostility and utter turmoil to review. Could she trust her own memories and make sense of them?
Suzetta could only find an overwhelming amount of mental illness piled up against her. She was brought up on the Philosophy that only “their” perspectives mattered. If she was given advice and if she did not follow it to the letter, she would be shunned for months. But they still monitored her, waiting in the wings ready to pounce on her if her own ideas failed. If she was successful they quickly demoted her attempts. Daddy’s favorite comment was “Big Deal.”
A measly microscopic action towards Suzetta, could affect her and she could go from magnificent states of emotional richness to an emotionless one of total isolation and depression.
The Family constantly told her that she was overly sensitive, when she tried to get an explanation of certain events she instinctively knew where abnormal. The typical cliché comments would be; “You think you had it bad as a kid, well we had it worse“.
Suzetta could not even remotely conceive of a notion that they could of “Had it worse”. In school she learned of the Holocaust that surround her mother’s upbringing. When she tried to relay a violent childhood memory, they cut her off, claiming she was either crazy or lying or both.
They were destroying her and literally driving her to take her own life. How could these memories continue to haunt her if they were lies? In her mind they were so very real, as real as if they happened just yesterday.
She thought she must be a crazy whore like her mother and everything else they said about her must be true. In the long run how could she trust herself to know the truth? And if they were right she did not even deserve to take another breathe of life, she had no right to life, her time in the womb should have been aborted. Even in the womb she served a devious purpose; which was her mother’s passport into the United States.
As the text books depicted Holocaust survivors who overcame enormous adversity, there was never a mention of those who snapped and carried out unimaginable violence onto their offspring. Suzetta often wondered; Of the few that escaped into a better life, with mental stability in tact, to do good deeds, how many thousands lingered in the shadows of Hitler, behind closed doors to impose their dysfunction upon their own offspring. To her mother physical torture was normal, she grew up witnessing it in the streets as she threw flowers to line the motorcade of Hitler's reign.
As they all kept Suzetta under a microscope, in search for molecules of behavior they could comment on, she in turn began to do the same towards them. Suzetta would stay up all night documenting the contradictions of whom they used to be and who they pretended to be now.
Some days her equilibrium could be sustained, while other times for no reason except within the darkness of her own mind she would stagger out of balance and feel the need to retreat.
If a sensory memory could be triggered that set off a chain reaction of contradicting emotions she would literally run from them in fear. She had to withdraw by pulling the covers over her head and rocking herself to sleep for days. However now she was in withdrawal from the prescription sedatives that knocked her out.
Suzetta had once read that “Molecules that interact have a greater chance to be healthy-looking or downright destructive.” For Suzetta to in turn exam her loved ones and their actions was becoming destructive to her relationships with them and to herself. It all stopped looking healthy a long time ago and she literally felt ill enough to die.
In the last 30 days of her 90 day deadline she completely cut off any communication with them, even though they were leaving daily messages on her answering machine. She was exhausted from mental warfare with them all.
Mental battles are far more exhausting than any physical combat. Daily she read through her notes as a memory was triggered and she had to see if she had already confronted them with a bizarre incident. But the amount of trauma was so overwhelming; she could spend another 5 decades rehashing the past with them, which would have no positive or satisfying results.
Peace of mind at this juncture of her life, would be too difficult to capture, although hope could be seen in the distance, it was unattainable when Suzetta’s own mind continued to stop her dead in her tracks. She would stumble again and withdraw from any emotion that included being loved. She was losing her own battle, reading what she wrote, their words exactly. Should she believe them, she loved them; over and over again she trusted them with her heart.
There are too many deviations of what love should be. Debating its fine distinction was grueling. Suzetta knew she must accept the foregone conclusion that love has failed her in the way that she wanted to be loved.
To overcome the bitterness would be an enormous journey of forgiveness, but before forgiveness could take hold of the heart, understanding what motivated those who tried to teach her about love was essential to her. However how could she forgive what they would not admit to?
Even with understanding, justification and forgiveness Suzetta thought she may never be able to accept love on any terms. For her love resulted in being physically and mentally harmed. How could she ever trust anyone?
Her beloved brother had killed himself years earlier, not only was Suzetta happy that he had finally found peace; she was preparing to join him and her own sweet son, who never found validation from any of them. He was the son of a black sheep and would never know his grandparents or his father.
Love so dearly held was tragically lost. When she woke up that ill-fated morning she had no clue what awaited her. Her beloved son had not come home the night before, which she had been trying to overcome as he constantly reminded her he was 21 years old now, so she needed to stop doting on him.
The night before she had stayed up late hoping he would come home, but he often spent the night with his girlfriend of 5 years. They met in Jr. High School and were planning to get engaged now that they were both in College.
To keep busy she made a nice big batch of rice crispy marshmallow treats, one of his favorites. She cut them into squares and stacked them on a plate for her son to indulge in. What was left over she would re-wrap so he could take some in his pocket during the week.
Although Suzetta stayed up late she had to get up early to get to work on time. She woke suddenly at around 1:00 AM and jumped off her bed. Half asleep she had to brace herself against the wall to keep from falling. She looked around her room for what could have made her wake up so abruptly. She saw nothing as she tried to get her bearings. So she practically fell back into bed to fall back asleep.
She was doing her usual routine of hair, make up and clothes selection when it was time to see if her son needed to be wakened to start his day. As she opened his bedroom door she saw the empty bed, and tried to brush off her feelings of worry.
Her son was a good kid and although he still lived at home, it was an arrangement that Suzetta wanted. They had agreed that as long as he was going to college she wanted him to stay focused on his grades and to get his degree in Electronic engineering. She would not ask him for anything except to get good grades.
He worked part time and occasionally he would leave his mother a $100.00 dollar bill on the kitchen table and when she found it he would grin from ear to ear. He enjoyed helping out although he knew it was never expected of him.
Ready to go Suzetta grabbed her car keys and headed for the front door. She pulled the door open and through the screen door she saw her son curled up. She called his name but he did not respond. How odd she thought that he would go to sleep on the porch. Even if he had lost his key he would bang on the door until she woke to let him in.
She could not wake him, so she tried to push open the screen gently as to not hurt him, through the crack she slipped her arm to shake his shoulder. As soon as she touched him she knew. His body was cold and hard, he was dead. Most often than not the mind has a tricky way of not accepting the unacceptable.
Suzetta began to scream No No NO, she pulled her arm back inside and ran to the back of the house and out the back door. When she reached the front porch from the outside, she began to throw things off of the porch that were in her way.
By now her screams were only horse grunts and all she could think of was CPR. She grabbed at her son lifting his shirt looking for wounds and found none. She attempted to roll him on his back, his face was a gruesome shade of blue and he his body was ice cold. She cleared his airway but had to press hard on his knees to unfold his body.
As she took in a breath Suzetta lost touch with reality as she blew out that breath she had crossed over into unimaginable insanity. In the blink of an eye her entire world crashed. Her screams were so disturbing that her neighbors had called the police to report a serious domestic disturbance.
As the patrol car rolled up Suzetta sprung from the porch and ran to it. Crying out for help and not making much sense, she was asking for an ambulance to help her son. The officers assessed the situation and indeed called an ambulance but not for her son, but for her. They ushered her to the side of the house, where she could sit down. One officer gently began to ask her questions about her name, her son’s name, who he could call for her. Inside her house they found her address book and began calling everyone in it.
He reassured Suzetta that his partner was taking care of her son for the moment. More police cars arrived on the scene and then the ambulance. Suzetta was becoming increasingly agitated as the paramedics began to examine her vital signs. They were trying to convince her to get into the ambulance, but she refused. She promised to stay calm and sit quietly while the police did their job.
Six hours would pass before they would allow Suzetta to back into her own home. Off and on she would begin to sob, she did not even have a tissue to blow her nose. She would make herself stop crying, telling herself out loud this was going to be OK they would help her son.
Eventually the coroner would arrive to take her son’s body away and that is when she saw her sister cross under the yellow tape onto the scene. Her reaction was not welcoming. How the hell did she get notified? From the address book on Suzetta’s desk. TOO BE CONTINUED LATER
Eventually all people become byproducts of their environment and upbringing. For many years Suzetta accepted the unacceptable for the sake of being loved until she was hard hit with an enormous point of view that is the biggest surprise in most people’s life “old age.”
She felt very old and she was tired after more than 50 years of emotional abuse, and the loss of her son, fortunately the physical abuse had stopped when she was in her late 20‘s. But the mental abuse was never ending.
Suzetta had lost loved ones to death, her only son and her brother. If there was even a God, maybe he would allow her to join them in some other universe.
Suzetta had already pre-paid for her own cremation and left instructions with the Funeral home that there not be any type of funeral. The stage was set. She did not want to give them the satisfaction of viewing her body in a coffin. She could imagine them walking past her corpse and having nothing nice to say about her life.
She had night mares that the room would be filled with people laughing at her corpse. Criticizing what she was wearing and the style of her hair. Their faces flashing past her zooming in and out like a circus mirror of distortions.
They made a mockery of her son’s funeral, several of them were actually kicked out of the funeral home, as the funeral director was threatening to call the police.
She could find the strength to forgive the things they said about her. At times she could even find the strength to forgive the horrible things they had done to her. But the battle to overcome how they made her feel about herself was being lost.
When the day arrived, without stress or remorse Suzetta added water to the powder that filled the wine glass and drank it through a straw, so that the bitter taste would pass her tongue. She drank all of it quickly as if it would have no consequence.
She had intended to just lay back and feel the effects of the dark peacefulness she had longed for, to wash over her. The deadly combination of prescription powder hit her so hard and fast, she fell off the bedside, her head slammed into the wall and she landed face down on the floor almost immediately.
She slipped into a toxic coma and no one contacted her for 10 hours. They all knew what they were doing to her. Their game of pushing and pulling at her emotions was obviously deadly. At times they would have a good laugh behind her back about how easy it was to get her twisted into mental confusion.
They would gather, without inviting her, to discuss all of her imperfections. They could then stroke their own egos believing they were superior. But no more, Suzetta floated into her abyss. There was no blinding white light, no sign of God or Angels. Just simple black nothingness. It was exactly what she expected it to be.
Time no longer had meaning; the utter silence was awesome, as she fell from grace, with no dignity left. Suzetta embraced the dark emptiness, like that peaceful deep sleep we all hate to wake up from and try to catch just a few more minutes of while we live life. Her last thought was Death is calm, quiet and beautiful.
The Awakening
Chapter Three
Suzetta remained in a coma, on life support, in the Intensive Care Unit of the Hospital for 4 days. As she finally opened her eyes, the bright lights of the hospital environment, rudely awakening her. She then saw the shadow of her daughter Angelic standing over her, calling out her name to get her to wake up. Suzetta’s surroundings faded in an out like an hallucination for several hours; she did not want to be alive. She struggled to slip back into the darkness to escape this nightmare.
As the recognition of life came over her Suzetta struggled instinctively to remove the breathing tube from her throat. Her arms were strapped down; she heard her daughter’s voice call out for help. As soon as the nurse removed the tube so Suzetta could take a breath on her own, the overwhelming feelings of failure took hold of her again. She felt she could not even get this right. She closed her eyes in humiliation and refused to talk to anyone.
Seriously attempting to take her own life and failing at it would only land Suzetta straight into the nut house. Legally committed into a mental health facility run by State funds for more than 30 days was worse mental abuse than any thing Suzetta had ever experienced from complete strangers. But in some cases these detainees looked pretty close in attitudes to the conduct of what her family had imposed on her.
As with her sister Vicky; Suzetta believed whole heartedly that if she swallowed a silver dollar her sister would gut her with a knife when no one was looking to obtain that silver dollar.
Sometimes people can’t see the fine line between Needy and Greedy. Suzetta’s little sister was flat out greedy and materialistic, Daddy taught Vicky well.
In the hospital Suzetta was stereotyped and diagnosed within a matter of hours after she woke up. She had left all her journals on the bed and strew across the floor. She wrote on each page a simple statement: “You all must be right about who I was.” followed my her memories. She also left a copy of the paid funeral arrangements.
Once off of life support Suzetta was transferred to the 5th floor of the hospital, she was allowed to stay in her bed until her IV and bladder catheter were removed. Then she was forced to mingle with people who are a danger to themselves or others.
Unlike a true hospital environment for patients who are ill, the 5th floor was more like a place where patients are imprisoned. She was only a danger to herself; but not segregated from those who would cut her throat with a plastic eating utensil because they were a danger to others. Nothing they could do shocked her; her life up till then, in whole was Shock Therapy and not for the weak.
After every meal utensils were counted, if the same amount did not come back that went out, utter chaos would ensue, immediate lock down of all patients would follow. Guards appeared through locked doors and every room was searched.
Patients with murderous mental problems would be heavily medicated, confined to their room and even strapped to the floor in the so-called “Quiet room”. It was named “The Quite Room” because no one else could hear the screams or protests from a patient through the padded sound proof walls, formally named the “Padded Cell.”
Each day patients were being released and new patients would be coming in. It was constant pandemonium. There was a plethora of Drug addicts, Alcoholics, and many other unsavory characters. For the first week Suzetta was not even examined by a doctor. When she would ask for one, she was told one would only be provided if she had medical problems, mental health professionals were the staff behind the desks.
The main function of the staff behind the desk was to hand out medication and keep the peace. If a patient refused medication they would be dropped to the floor by strong male nurses, restrained and given their prescribed medication in the form of an injection. If they acted out or argued they would be dropped to the floor, dragged away and locked into the Quiet Room.
The medical doctor finally began to visit Suzetta about every other day because, after her overdose she must have gotten up, took a few steps and passed out. She had no memory of it, but there was evidence of a head trauma where her head had hit the wall, leaving a large bump. She also had pressure wounds from laying on her left arm and the left side of her face pressed against the heater vent of the floor, which caused huge blisters to appear that were not healing properly. Her right eye was swollen completely shut and her jaw ached from a couple of broken teeth.
Suzetta thought great, I am injured and no one here cares. Ah the story of my life she thought. Once as a young girl she stayed with an older couple who taught her to ride horses. She was thrown from a horse and had a green stick break in her collar bone.
Upon returning home from the weekend, Daddy was angry at her for getting hurt, on top of her severe shoulder pain he slapped her around as he complained about having to take time out of his busy schedule to take her to a Doctor.
Her parents were divorced and Daddy’s weekends were consumed by dating some very unsavory women.
After an X-ray was reviewed, Daddy was told in front of Suzetta that surgery would be required to set the shoulder straight. Daddy marched his daughter to the car, and all the way back home he screamed at her about how he did not have time for her bull shit. His favorite saying, everything she required was bull shit, even Medical care.
It took weeks for the shoulder pain to stop and settle into its new contorted shape. As for the surgery, well that bull shit never happened, the solution was that there would be no-more horse back riding, although she was still sent away on the week-ends, so Daddy could bring his female conquests home.
One of her most humiliating encounters with one of Daddy’s female conquests was in the hallway at school. Suzetta was a freshman in high school and as she was changing classes, she dug through her locker trying to remember what book she would need for her next class, when she was abruptly hit with her own locker door.
The girl who slammed her with the locker door was a senior. Apparently this girl had been abandoned by Daddy. How they met was irrelevant, but a couple of weekends prior to this moment Daddy took this girl back to his house for a tryst.
As they lay in bed Daddy let his last name slip; Piccolo was a distinctive unusual last name and the girl remarked I go to school with a girl who has the same last name. Daddy panicked and ushered the girl out of his house, calling her jail bait.
Now this girl was pissed off at his rejection and was going to take out her vindication on Suzetta. As she was hearing this girls story her thoughts were of jealousy.
Daddy never allowed her to have friends much less invite them into the home, filled with secrets. She always had too much housework to do, then home work and laundry. However, now Daddy could take a high school girl home and have sex with her, while Suzetta was shuffled off to the old couple who were her “babysitters”
As Suzetta got her ass kicked by this girl, she knew she could never mention this incident to Daddy for fear it would set him off in a violent rage to defend and deny what he had done.
As the days past in the Mental ward, without her medical complaints being addressed, Suzetta’s mind focused on how she would do this job right the next time. She refused to believe she was a total failure, she would find the determination to succeed at this one last ting.
When the medical Doctor finally showed up he was really rude and told Suzetta that he had no respect for anyone who tried to take their own life, but that he was obligated to the Hospital to treat her. Suzetta was hostile, called him a filthy names and told him to get going on his obligation. She wanted a head x-ray and something for the blisters.
The Doctor explained that blisters were caused from rigor mortis settling into parts of her body that were not receiving blood circulation. A gruesome description, bluntly stated by a Doctor who had already told her he did not care about people like her.
Wonderful this was just the attitude Suzetta was used to, just another mistake to add to her long list. Rigor mortis, well then Suzetta knew she was so close to getting it done. Surely the Doctor was taken a back by the smile that came across Suzetta’s face when she realized she had reached a bodily state of rigor mortis.
The Doctor went on to explain the circumstances of her arrival to the hospital. Suzetta had been air lifted by Helicopter and if her kidneys had stopped functioning the Paramedics would not have been able to revive her heart. This Doctor left her feeling humiliated and was not interested in listening to any of her valid reasons for wanting to escape her world of malice. She enjoyed telling this Doctor “ you are just another muther fucker on the long list of my life. I did not ask for your respect I asked for medical treatment.”
Judging by the time they air lifted her, Suzetta had calculated about 10 hours had passed from the time she drank her death cocktail until they found her. It made no sense to her that so much time could pass and she could have failed at her attempt. She thought she had used the same method as her brother, and he was successful in half the time.
The doctor left behind a prescription for her and she never saw him again. And she never got that head x-ray. As the golf ball sized lump began to recede, her hair fell out in an area about the size of a quarter and would never grow back, a new constant reminder of her stupidity.
She medicated the blisters herself with cream the nurse would allow her to “check-out” for 15 minutes, as she applied it next to the nurse’s station. They were afraid that she might eat the medication, Oh yes this was definitely a serious crazy place.
None of Suzetta’s family came to visit and she was glad, she was not ready to face them. She was hoping she would never have to lay eyes on any of them again. She was laying out her next plan to get her life over with, without failure, just as soon as she could. And for what ever reason they may try to stop her she knew it would not be out of love and concern, so it was good that they stay away from her, a welcomed relief.
They could not get to her if they wanted to, without granting permission to the Hospital visitor list. These mental hospital visitor rules, sparked a less deadly plan for Suzetta. Could it be that simple lock them out completely physically, work through the emotional and physical pain, the guilt, the trauma and the insanity of it all and find the freedom to survive, she so desperately needed.
POSTED TO BLOG 07/18/2013
[the pages you have just read are 2 1/2 chapters of my autobiography. Of course the names have changed to protect the innocent, which are few and far between.
I am speaking to you from a third person as I now stand on the outside looking in.]
It has taken me 12 years to write about 42 chapters, which if ever published might be to heavy to even pick up and read. But I have not written it for anyone else but myself. In doing so I have found validation along the path that was almost my destruction. I have taken the bigger road and escaped them all.
It took me about five years after, to enact my plan to move back out west and sever my ties with the Midwest and everyone from my past.
Many are now dead from old age, and before that I feared publishing any of this, for it were ever linked back to me, their wrath from telling secrets, may very well have resulted in a violent vicious attack.
In sharing this my main goal was to let my readers know, where I am coming from in my quest for a peaceful existence. Through all of the turmoil of my past, I never found much relief for the diagnosed PTSD I suffer from, through Prescription Medication. As a matter of fact the cocktails of Prescriptions, instead of curing me, I believe almost caused me to kill myself.
Now 12 years later I am on Medical Marijuana Therapy. There is no cure for PTSD, but the symptoms can be treated. Although I am only 30 days into this, I feel I have found a niche of contentment. At the risk of sounding cliché, I am now the old lady and her little dogs. They are filled with hugs and kisses, they bring me love, joy and laughter.
I am not a very social person, but I am a good social media person LOL. Toking my medication is something I look forward to every couple of days, when I feel the world closing in on me.
Medical Marijuana lifts my mood within minutes, it allows me to be creative. In writing poetry, I think of my son, but no longer in a sad state of despair, but as a proud mother of a gifted talented son who had a gift of writing words. I like to think those genes came from within my soul, which was stagnated by my upbringing. Expressing my mood or desiring to uplift others through my Art work is very satisfying.
Andy Warhol wrote: “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
Words of Wisdom (I hope)
That first person on your mind when you wake from a deep sleep is the reason for you happiness or your pain. It took me a life time to learn few things we should never waste our time on: things that do not matter. People who think we do not matter. We can not let other people dictate who we are, you have to decide that for yourself. Never allow your past to defeat you, destroy you or deter you.
Let your past strengthen you. Stop allowing people who have done so little for you, control so much of your heart, your feelings, your emotions and your mind. Take your life back.
Solitude is a time that can be used for reflection, inner searching, growth, or enjoyment of some kind. Deep reading requires solitude, so does experiencing the beauty of nature. Artistic thinking, writing, and creativity usually do too.
Solitude suggests peacefulness branching from a state of inner richness. It is a means of enjoying the quiet and whatever it brings that is satisfying and from which we draw mental nourishment. It is something we cultivate. Solitude is refreshing; an opportunity to renew ourselves, it replenishes us.
Loneliness is a circumstance of feelings. Aloneness is a circumstance of being. We can be alone without feeling lonely. Our soul would have no rainbows. if our eyes have not shed tears.
Loneliness is not a state of being, Loneliness is marked by a sense of isolation. Solitude, on the other hand, is a state of being alone without being lonely and can lead to self-awareness.
Loneliness is a negative state, marked by a sense of isolation. One feels that something is missing. It is possible to be with people and still feel lonely. When you are standing in a crowd of people and feel lonely. —this is the most bitter form of loneliness
Solitude is the state of being alone without being lonely. It is a positive and constructive state of medley with oneself. Solitude is desirable, a state of being alone where you provide yourself magnificent and sufficient company.
Loneliness is harsh, punishment, a deficiency state, a state of discontent marked by a sense of estrangement, an awareness of excess aloneness.
Solitude is something you choose. Loneliness is imposed on you by others. Move forward in solitude, do not long for what has been left behind you, reflect on your future
Who I was, Who I am now, and Who I will be, Are three different people. When I look back upon my Life, I see Mistakes, Struggles and Heartache. But when I look into the Mirror I see Strength, Lessons Learned, Tenacity and Self-Respect.
Knowledge is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment. Work, love, art, and knowledge. When I look forward to each new day I see, Inspiration, Motivation, Creativity, Life, and endless I m a g i n a t i o n.
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: we can know a lot about something and not really understand it.
Sometimes halfway through a Dream, you get lost and find a better Dream. Put your heart Mind, Body & Soul into the smallest expressions.
No Matter where you go: There you are. ♥ GG
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