Ganja Goji's Green Blog: November 2013

My interpretation of the Song: Demons
By Imagine Dragons

For Michael 1974 -1996 ... Only those who truly knew Will understand
or maybe you Feel me too

Demons by Imagine Dragons (Official)

Both saints and pagans I see

Are all made of gold

When dreams all fail

And the ones I use to hail

Are the worst of all

Bloodlines ran stale

I won't hide the truth

I will hold onto you

With the beasts outside

There nowhere to hide

No matter what we breed

Most are made of greed

When the lights fade out

On the final day all sinners crawl

This is my kingdom come

I am not their sacrificial lamb

This is my kingdom come

I lost you to the eternal grave

Blood feuds created a funeral masquerade

There are no fences left to mend

About you they will always pretend

They heard of your premonitions

They took credit without inhibitions

Don’t want to let you down

Nevertheless this is all for you

I believe that you are my truth

Your eyes, they shined so bright

I want to save your eternal light

I believe what was between you and me

Demons outside, your fate was meant to be

I put them all behind me for the last count

I won’t live with love of a dollar amount

I do not want to escape this now

Unless you show me how

They say it's what we make

I say it's all up to fate

Your woven in my soul

I will never let you go

I AM STILL STRONG

Here are the facts of the matter; When my son died in 1996, I was so traumatized by the event that I allowed my youngest daughter and her husband to pretty much rule my life. I walked around heavily medicated on Xanax 1mg four times a day to help me cope with the symptoms of “Mourning” I think I did nothing but sleep for almost a year. I certainly walked through life in a fog.

Literally everything I suffered through in life thus far, paled to this one single life's tragedy. Only a Mother who has lost an adult child through death can understand completely what I speak of. My reactions to it all had to be a individual journey out of the darkest of days into the present.

I eventually woke from my coma of drugs, to make a few necessary changes in my life, that were causing my daughter and her husband to now judge me with a fine toothcomb. Hum, I did not even know this guy and my daughter translated his disapproval of me for purchasing a computer. In their opinion, I did not need a new computer. Humm, these comments boggled my mind; Dude had his eyes on my money. I knew I had to get as far away as I could from them, I barely had enough to get by on, and they are watching every dollar I spend. Due to finances, I was trapped in the Mid-West again. Comments like this shinned a bright light on the relationship.

Within a week following my son’s death, a U-Haul was loaded with all of my possessions, and it was driven cross country, from West to Mid-west, by my son in law. My comatose Xanax induced, state of mind was settling in for the long haul. I would do or say anything, because I cared about nothing anymore. I had lost “ultimate of love” my youngest child. My mind was bouncing around from 21 past years to the present, cramped up in a U-Haul cab with my daughter and her bully of a husband.

Over the next 10 years, I endured being sucked into another dysfunctional relationship, however, this time I was in the middle. Occasionally my physically and emotionally abusive son in law turn his foul mouth filled with insults in my direction. It was not until, the dude tried to choke me to death, as I dialed 911, that I knew I needed out of this relationship. It was filled with too much drama. I needed my freedom.

My Dad gave me five acres in the country so I put a mobile home on it and tried to find some piece and quiet. Again, my youngest daughter sucked me into her abuse relationship. Stories flew back and fourth again with me being in the middle. Of course, I knew it would eventually come to a point when she would have to choose between moving in with me or getting a divorce the Neanderthal who bred with her. My daughter has married a man just like her own father.

From here on - out, I will have to refer to my son-in-law as “Mr. Big Man” he certainly was not the first Mr. Big Man I had met in my life. I was raised by the first one, married to the second one and so my experiences with men have not changed much. Mr. Big Man was blaming me for his wife’s attitude towards him.

I had to assure him that I was in no way interested in having his wife back under my roof. Facts were as Follows:

1. These dysfunctional relationships had now dragged on for a few more years following D-Day (Death of my son day) October 14, 1996.

2. Mr. Man had now reproduced three offspring by then. I told him in no un-certain terms to get over himself, there was no way I was capable of raising his children under my roof. I knew I was not capable of going back to work. I felt so psychologically damaged by then, that I had lost my patience for the smallest of bullshit and I was very rude to people in public. Especially any check-out person complaining to another worker, while I tap my foot for my turn in line. Then I usually said something very rude and bitchy.

3. I could only muster enough patience to deal with my daughter in very short visits. As grandchild number four was in the near future, my youngest daughter’s foul mouth was turned in my direction. However, there was a slight difference; no foul language was being used as was my experiences with her. She said mean and ugly things about me and to my face. Once she told me she believed that my distance towards her was due to my jealousy in her giving birth to a son, and my son was dead. This single statement made me so physically sick that I could not respond and I hung up on her. I think it took us almost two years to speak again.

Again her behavior began to suddenly alienate me, I was fine with that; maybe in alienation I would find the peace I so desperately needed.

However, you slice it my 123 or ABC synopsis of life that pointed me back out West was my destiny. Maybe there has always been something poisonous in the Mid-West water system, or it was the generations of in breeding, that caused the people around me to appear so dysfunctional.

If I were the dysfunctional one then being alone was the only choice I could make. I certainly did not deserve to be driven over an edge, which would result in suicide. I have always been in the mind set of “If you can not dazzle me with brilliance, please do not attempt to baffle me with bullshit.”

Suddenly within her New Found Family, my daughter was attempting to change her well-known bad reputation. Within a cult like environment of “Holy Rollers”, she had to paint a rosy picture of herself and a very bleak picture of her blood family. Please know that I am not stereo typing every Christian Religion. The people she began to associate herself with, ran waving their arms around the church pews and hoping over the ones flopping around on the hard floors in what looked like some sort of epileptic attack. Wow, something must have been in the water.

The back stabbing first reared its ugly head as I was insulted by her Preacher’s wife as she turned backwards towards me from her pew and commented to my daughter “ I have no excuses for your behavior except that I know you were raised weird.” Wow, I could have been knocked over with a feather and had to no longer condone or participate in this type of Christian behavior, not by my daughter or her best friend the Preacher’s wife.

I shunned myself as my daughter and her religion, as she pleaded how she needed to save me from the fire and brimstone of Hell’s fury. Oh Please, how hypocritical, she needed to focus more on saving herself and finding forgiveness. I knew her all too well as a person who never admits a wrong-doing much less apologizing for any wrongful deeds. At least that was my motherly experience with her as a child growing.

As I moved into the Anger Phase of my motherly “Mourning Period”, my heart began to grow cold and intolerable of the bullshit that continued to be thrown my way via covert messaging. I shut them all out, my father, my stepmother, my daughters, my grandchildren and my great grandchildren.

All those years my youngest daughter initiated backstabbing me, along with my stepmother and her Christian sisters who taught her to be a master conniver. You see some bad stories were circulating about my mental stability. Because in the middle of all that drama and chaos, being created around me, I had decided to end my own life. I almost succeeded and either way would have been ok.

Christianity or not God would decide when it is my time to leave this world. He chose that I continue to survive and thrive. According to my actions my insanity was solidified and the Step Mother, who used to Pay cash to my babysitter, who eventually became my redneck first husband, to date me. I need to mention that the babysitter-boyfriend-baby daddy- husband was 18 and I was 12. Well my step mother and my daughter became BFFs.

I desperately needed to put a great distance between my daughter, my ex-husband, my step mother, and myself. As for my youngest daughter, she moved through her sisterly mourning period quickly, while I was drugged, or she sailed though mourning stages during the funeral. She insisted that we never speak of her brother again. However, she painted her own delusional relationship with her brother and spoke it to everyone else around her. In essence, she was giving the impression that I was a seriously bad mother, in which case this was my opinion in reaction to derogatory remarks that floated on the winds of gossip. I do not know who she was, I do not think I ever really did once she became a teenager, even from the time she was born she was a hand full. In an un-medicated HDHD/Bi-Polar sort of way.

I began to plot my escape without guilt of abandonment, my daughters were both over the age of 21 when their brother died in 1996. By 2007 I knew I had a medical class action law-suite ending within the next couple of years. I busied myself turning hobbies into small business to work up some seed money to get back out West. I was determined to be completely on my own; this last determined effort would either kill me or take me back out west. God helps those who help themselves. I have known So-Called Christian thieves to twist this Biblical quote into a meaning to condone bad behavior. I really believe it is meant to say , if you want something don’t rest on your phony morals, get up and start working towards what we think we need/want.

Every night I prayed to a Supreme Being to help me find the strength again with every new sunrise. Some nights I called him God and asked him why were my first 55 years of life were destined to be a living Hell on Earth. There were days I thanked him for the taste of fresh brewed coffee every morning. As the days dragged on, I thought I would never find my chance to be free of the past roads I traveled. The horrific violent physical and emotional trauma I had endured and been a victim to; from my first memory at about age 3, when I took my first physical beating, and many more until about age 50.

I hung on. People would ask me how I am doing. I would reply “Hanging in, Hanging-out and Hanging on. This sarcasm usually resulted in a chuckle or two from my unexpected reply. I listened a lot to Cheryl Crow’s song “ I am Going To Soak up the Sun” as I awaited one or two miracles to occur; My Class- Action Suite would pay off or I would die trying to start over from nothing. I took on a big challenge to withdraw from all prescription drugs that were numbing both my physical and mental pain.

Well folks in 2009, only 13 years later I am back out West. Where I can live closer than ever to my Son’s spirit. Our relationship was for the most part drama free, out West. I cannot say the same for all of the relationships I endured and suffer through in the Mid-West.

I sent a few post cards that I mailed from Texas, as I traveled alone across the country again from East to West. I have been on this Road several times in my life. Some by Plane during my parents divorce. Some on the freeway in Vehicles I thought just may not make it accompanying people I despised.

Until 2008, in a nice new dependable car, to my final destination. Here is were my last words delivered on those post cards were given. I wrote; “I want to Thank you all for being just who you are. If not for you, I would have never found the strength to continue being just me. I would have not found the courage to be on my way again”.

With thoughts of the poem written by my son and read at his funeral by his girlfriend, running through my head, it was easy to drop those post cards in the mailbox. I occasionally look into the rear view mirror of my life, but I shed no tears of regret. Tears can never alter the past. It was what it was. Keep moving forward.

I felt the words my son wrote before his death were words from the wise and what an evil riot they stirred on the day they were read out-loud to a crowd. A message to all, especially the travelers in funeral attendance from the Mid-West to here out West. Some of whom had never journeyed West before.

I hope others find the courage to live this way:

FROM ME TO YOU.
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 OTHERS 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. WRITTEN BY : MIKE MANNING 1974--1996 ©
He left too soon♥

As the years past by now in my 6th decade, the dark memories of my life fade away more often than not. I was not dark today in writing this to you. I needed only to re-enforce my life changing decisions.

I am grateful to God that I am spending my golden years in a tolerable warmer climate. I have a comfortable and I am living out my teenage years 9 the ones I missed) in my golden years. I had 3 children before I was 21 years old, and lived a redneck life. Looking back on my life up to 2008 maybe there is a positive answer to it all. I have been granted a fresh start surrounded by a peace of mind and living out my second childhood (or teenage hood).

I have not been judged harshly for the sake of Love, for the past 5 years. Maybe this life on earth is meant to be a living Hell, so we can look forward to some sort of Heavenly, off this earth, future.

I like where I am now and I like who I am. There is not one person within my breathing space, who would beg to differ my opinions of “myself”. Nor is their anyone to coerce me into living by their standards. I am free to just be me, take me or leave me alone.

Life is as it should be for me, in the autumn of life’s journey. Find a niche for yourself on the roads that you travel. Sometimes you may have to settle for a path you have chosen and see it through until you can find the road again.

Eventually the short paths we choose lead to a time in our lives when the best we can pray for is to not start wearing diapers again. As I approach my fifth Anniversary as Western Girl again, so far I am not wearing diapers. So Thanking God for small favors again.

My son died on October 14th. I left on my last adventure, which I might add was one of my bravest moments, on Oct 03. Although the Holidays each year since Oct. 14th are emotionally difficult, I am not finding the devastating crying spells or overwhelming sorrow has smothered me very much at all. I have been in Therapy on a monthly basis to help me cope with the traumatic events surrounding my son’s death, however I rarely have to medicate my self to cope.

So from here on out I celebrate the Adversaries of my complete freedom. I am not exactly the Spinster with cats. I am just an old dog loving woman enjoying the sunshine of every day to the fullest. Me and my little dogs call ourselves the “Dream Team.”