Take A Good Look

Take A Good Look

I’m not writing this looking or asking for sympathy from anyone, I am bearing some of the darkness of my childhood to truly open your eyes. This is a truly sensitive subject for me as I was a victim of both familial and spousal abuse and no one stepped up to help me as a kid, and only one out of many stepped up in my relationship to stop it. So many people say oh but I didn’t know but I honestly wonder if it’s that they didn’t or didn’t want to see the ugly truth staring them in the face. Others use the excuse it’s not their place to get involved or it was the victim’s fault for not coming out and saying it straight forward or not leaving. It’s a bullshit excuse and in seriously poor judgment to ever blame the victim especially if you have never been through that situation you have no idea why they do or do not do certain things, and most times it is out of fear for their safety or very life!

 

As a child both my parents were extremely abusive, it started with my father in the younger years and my entire family knew and did nothing. They left two innocent little girls to be brutalized at the hands of a drunken monster! I was told well why didn’t you ever go to a teacher or the police? You wanna know why because we were told in no uncertain terms if we opened our mouths we would seriously regret it, but people saw bruises and heard the screaming and violence. Sometimes neighbors would call police or children’s services and our parents would lie when they came out and back then they questioned the kids with parent present you didn’t dare speak out, if you did it was going to get a lot worse not better. Sure my mom would take us and leave for a few months when things got serious enough that she thought she would lose her welfare check if we were taken or we would be sent to stay with relatives for a little while but we always had to go back in the end and it always escalated every time.

In the later teenage years my mother grew abusive and again everyone knew and did nothing, my best friend’s dad worked for the local sheriff’s department and he saw the signs so he would let me spend as much time as I wanted at his house to keep me away from it. My mother used the excuse she became an abuser because our father abused her too, but that was only to her sisters she never tried to justify it to us and always lied to law enforcement or anyone who was trying to help for local services.

Later in life I think I was so blinded by my need to get away from an abusive family that I accidentally fell into the arms of an abusive man. It started with words and controlling my every word and move and escalated sexually and physically. It got to a point where there was no way out, nowhere to go and even if there would have been no way to get there and no way to contact anyone, he kept me secluded all to himself as his personal punching bag and sex toy. He worked with friends of mine and he bragged about the things he did (after I was helped to escape one of them told me), yet they did nothing, needless to say I don’t have anything to do with them anymore. My family knew but what did they care they were just like him and funny how they were so taken with him. I’ll admit so was I in the beginning he was so charming said and did all the right things, should have been a sign right there if something seems too good to be true, more often than not it is. Apparently I wasn’t his first victim I learned later he beat up his ex all the time and tried to run her over.

Look my point is there are always visible signs, you can hear it in how they talk about their abusers, see it in how they carry themselves and how they interact with others. Hell you can hear it in the cracks of their voice, see the broken spirit the fear in their eyes when they’re around their abuser or someone brings them up in conversation to them. DO NOT REMAIN IGNORANT TO THE SIGNS, DON’T NOT LOOK, DON’T NOT ASK, DON’T WORRY WHOSE PLACE IT IS TO GET INVOLVED, EVEN IF IT IS A STRANGER BE A GOOD PERSON STAND UP AND STEP IN HELP TAKE THE POWER FROM THESE ABUSIVE PEOPLE AND GIVE THE VICTIMS BACK THEIR WILL AND THEIR VOICES. REMEMBER “DO UNTO OTHERS…..”  

Random thoughts and emotions that never seem to fade

Sometimes I just sit and listen to music as loud as I can to try and drown out the sounds of my past, yet the louder the music plays the louder the sounds get the stronger the feelings come. I find it odd that I can be at a point where I am at after years passed and I have moved on, and no longer have feelings for the monster that broke me. Yet I can still feel every last ounce of pain he caused me, hear every word, see every memory clear as day, it feels like I’m being burned alive. My head gets hot, my heart pounds, pulse races, and tears fall, but their not tears of lost love their tears of how and why did I let this monster do this to me.
It irritates me how I would let him go and then let him drag me back in over and over the same merry go round every time with the drama and the heat turned up a little more every time. Once more I let him, was it love, was it fear, was it confusion that made me repeat this record over and over and let him rip me apart to finer shreds every time I let him back. I finally let him go and started to move forward in life over a year passed and I relapsed into his arms like a school girl with a rock star crush.
Why do I still have these thoughts, why does it still affect me so, has my hatred for him forever attached his memory to my soul, will it ever be gone or am I doomed to feel this torture, destruction and pain forever? I feel it in my poetry, my ramblings, my writing, my songs, I hear it in the songs of other’s, I see it in the mirror. I’m not sure if it’s that I’m questioning myself and what I may have or did do wrong, or if i brought it on myself, AM I TO BLAME FOR THIS? Or is it that this grudge is so strong and the pain he caused me left scars so deep that they won’t ever heal?

~BrooklynBreed~

The inspiration that guided me back to my music

A Single Moment In Time

     At any given moment in life you can look up and see something differently than you had the moment before. I find it funny how there was a time when I was afraid of change, until I realized change is everything. Change can be beauty, love, mesmerizing and wonderful it can also be scary, painful, thoughtless, hurtful and millions of other things but the one thing I see change as now is ever inspiring.

     As a cloud moves it changes and is continually reshaping and forming, what you see it as now I will see it as something completely different a moment from now because it changed. What means nothing to you could inspire me to write 20 songs, inspiration can be and come from anywhere, anyone, or anything and it doesn’t always inspire the same thing even if it hasn’t changed because as human beings we are ever changing and evolving. It makes me think about broken relationships because as we change so does the other person and the things we use to hate we could ultimately fall in love with and the things about them we once loved we may not a year from now.

     I am issuing myself a challenge this being the beginning of a brand new year to find and list atleast 5 things a day every day this year that I find inspiration in and to follow those inspirations, thoughts and feelings and try to channel them into one new song a day based on only those things I have chosen that day. In that I am giving myself a creative writing challenge to broaden not only my horizons but my senses and emotions as well. After going through a transition phase in life where a broken heart nearly defeated and destroyed me and caused me doubt my music, my writing, and myself, I gave up. I stopped playing and writing music my two greatest loves I walked away from because I felt defeated.

     I found the inspiration to write again in 2004 from an up and coming talent, a beautiful young woman who was an up and coming actress and singer/songwriter. Whose still unfolding and emerging career inspires me still, her inspiration was made available through a tv show I had fallen in love with. Miss Alexz Johnson whose portrayal of a young singer/song writer in the 2004 tv hit Instant Star followed her character Jude Harrison as she struggled to follow her dreams while dealing with the ups and downs of every day life. Her portrayal of the this charachter spoke to me and helped me to overcome the most difficult years of my life. Today I own copies of all the seasons of the show and revert back to them whenever I feel like giving up, I have all of her currently released music on itunes and rhapsody and hope to one day see her live maybe if I’m lucky meet her. Thanks to her I picked up the pencil and more recently this month picked up the guitar again after nearly 7 years of not playing.

     I came across her facebook page and it reminded me of the show, so I looked it up found all 4 seasons and watched them all the way through, and it inspired me to ask my husband about getting a new guitar of which he was more than willing to oblige, he went out and got it for me that day on his way home from work.

     I picked up a new journal and now I cannot stop every where I go I am inspired, in everything I see, hear, and every emotion I feel. Being back in that mind set and creating music was and is the only thing that ever felt right for me. I am grateful for the ability and talents to do so, and grateful to have found someone who inspired me to go back to it just by watching her act and hearing her sing, her voice is powerful and angelic and strong it reaches out to her fans, to me….

     Now don’t get me wrong a writer can’t create an album by picking random things and writing about them, I fully intend to write outside my challenge. You have to be able to feel a song, a song comes from inside of you, your thoughts, feelings, emotions all colliding until a masterpiece has come together. It’s hard for me to explain my writing process, but I can say that all I have been through good and bad drives me and has a huge influence on my process and my perspective.

     It only takes a single moment in time for inspiration to strike and grow from a thought, to a note, to a song…

Nothing like th…

Nothing like the bare canvas of empty pages to get the juices flowing n the gears grinding to put you in ur own musical hemisphere, a place where nothing else exists but you, your guitar and those pages begging to be filled with your lyrics, your notes it’s beautiful n peaceful yet exilerating n enticing, it’s perfection!

My first official quote in regard to my gift!