Marina Rose Martinez

So… this is about to get really lame. Stop reading if you’re tired of hearing about my stupid momma drama. I’m hoping that this won’t just be another of the millions of poor me, I cut my self and the sadness pours out of me, LJ-style pity-fests, so here goes nothing.

Monday my mom called me, and if you know me, you know that I haven’t really talked with her since May of 07. After years of trying to be a good daughter and have loving compassion for her as a child of god despite her pill addiction and various other crippling, untreated personality disorders I decided that the only way to be a good daughter to her while still preserving my self respect was to take a break from her. Well, she never really understood the meaning of the word “no,” so she continues to call me every so often, much to my distress. While this will probably sound crazy to all you normal people out there, it makes very specific sense to me and probably will to you if you are lucky enough to have a chronically lying, manipulative addict for a mother like myself (and if you do, God bless you and thank you for not shooting yourself in the head).

Anyway, I recently moved from Anaheim (see Seven Years with Good Rent) to Hawthorne-surprisingly without a rent raise BTW-to be closer to work. I chose not to tell her I was moving, and not to tell her when I moved and not to give her my new address. Not so much because I mind her having these things, but really because I still don’t want to talk to her, and I see no need for her to have this information. So much for that.

So on Monday, I get a message from her that her crazy money hungry grifter of a fake Hindu holy man is coming to Hawthorne “I believe that’s the town you moved to” and would I like to come listen to this wack-job promise me eternal whatever the fuck I want for the low low price of $500 + every paycheck I’ll earn after he ropes me in + my estate after I die, especially if I am rich and old. Every normal person who’s reading this is probably just thinking ’she’s in a cult, it’s what they do.’ First, let me just say: aren’t cult leaders supposed to discourage their members from family contact? The one good thing about my mother being in a cult is that this fuck could keep her locked up in his fake ashram and far away from me. I’ll bet he knows she’s insane and has her calling me in the hopes that I’ll hire a team of anti-cult activists in a van to kidnap her and take her off his hands. No deal swami gimmi monie, no fucking deal at all.

Back to the facts. The facts which are this: The only important part of that message is the part where she lets me know that she knows what city I live in despite the fact that I did not tell her this thing. Remember when I said that I really don’t mind her having my address? I kind of don’t, but now I actually do, because she can’t just have my address and take solace in the fact that someone in this family is still dumb enough to communicate with her tongue chewing, toxic, carcass (Grandma, I’m looking at you-you’re a sweet old lady, but you’re letting the wolf in). She has to call me and lie through her teeth about something which she knows I care nothing for, all the while trusting that her secret mom-code will worm it’s way out of the phone speaker and into my brain like a fungus of anger and guilt. It totally worked.

So now I’m obsessed with the concept of her baffling ability to get under my skin a full year and a half after I decided that the door was closed, that the deal was done, and that she wasn’t allowed inside my fucking head again. She’s back like a cockroach, shitting and reproducing behind the stove of my subconscious, eating away at my mental property value shit by shit. Why do I do this?! Why is it that I absolutely lack the ability to be corporeal when faced with the succubus that is my mother and she’s not even here?

A co-worker had to point out to me that I didn’t have to listen to her voicemail. To be honest, it never occurred to me not to. Here I just opened the door and said “please do come in, vampire queen, tear my heart out and eat it, shit it out and jam it back into my gaping, bloody chest wound. Can I take your coat?” What is so important that this woman has to say to me that I can’t hear it from somebody else faster and more accurately?

I don’t know what’s worse, the idea that this is the relationship that I get to have with my mother who used to be a real person, and not this cliche sack of nastiness, or the fact that I’ve done this to myself. I hold the only key into my mind and heart and I give it to her every fucking time. I don’t have to listen to a word she has to say. If there is anyone alive in this world who has lost the ability to command my attention, it should be her, and yet, I waste my time thinking about her intent, her process, her cruel and selfish actions. Why do I do it, why do I open the door like this? I guess I really have to know that every time she’s going to fuck with my head, I have to test the oven to see if it’s still hot, every single time.

The good thing that comes out of this for me is that next time I’ll be less likely to listen to the message, and the next time I’ll be even less likely than that. I think I just have to know a thing a hundred percent. I have to be sure that the mom that I knew from when she was sober; the good, loving woman that I trusted and cared about, who I learned from and looked to for guidance and comfort is completely dead. And no matter if I answer the phone or don’t, if I listen to a thousand messages from her or I never hear from her again, that trust is broken. I guess sometimes it’s better for me to check the message, just to be sure than to never check the message and think that I could have seen the person I loved again, if only for a little bit. But the truth is that there’s no romantic come-back. There were only 9 years of her life where she wasn’t a miserable cunt and just because I was there for them doesn’t mean anything now. I have a life that I cherish, that I built from practically nothing, and I can’t let the shadow of her addiction, of her depression and desperation cast itself over what I’ve worked so hard to carve out for myself in an otherwise dark and uncaring world. It’s sad that she’s such a mess, but I can’t fall apart because of it

If you managed to slog through all that I hope it was entertaining enough. I tried to make it at least a little bit funny in the middle even if it got pretty sad at the end.

I’m writing, not so much as a response to, but a riff on No Arms James’ recent blog about being single, and longing for a relationship. The following is want his blog prompted me to think about for myself.

Attractiveness is so much more about what goes on inside your own head than what goes on inside the other person’s head. I remember when I wasn’t getting laid for awhile and I happened to be on the phone with my friend, complaining about how I just wanted any kind of dick and none could be found. She called me a liar and reminded me that, just like rule 34: if it exists there’s porn for it; if you exist there are several people who would not just fuck you, but thank you for the privilege. The fact of the matter is that I wouldn’t want to fuck them.

As a fat girl, I could get BBW freaks lining up around the block to tongue my cellulite, but I don’t want that to be the focus of my sexual experience. I have no desire to be the object for someone else to project their fetish onto. If I happen to be in a relationship with a man who finds my body to be sexy, all the better for it, but I’m not the kind of girl who needs to embody anybody else’s sexual desires*—no matter what they might be.

I think that every person has to consider their sexual energy and emotional investment to be a valuable commodity, and also to consider their potential partner’s to be the same. I’m not going to pay out my sexual energy on something or someone I wouldn’t consider a fair return, and I wouldn’t expect someone else to be paying more into my bank than I could pay into theirs. I need to feel that I am worth my partner’s time and that they are worth my time.

Personally, I remember lusting after men who I admired because they had what I wanted, but because I didn’t have anything I wanted, because I didn’t have anything I thought that anyone would want I couldn’t fathom why they would reciprocate my feelings.

If I don’t have pride in myself, if I can’t look at my accomplishments and feel that I have earned my right to stand toe to toe with my partner or potential partner, how could I carry a relationship without inequity? At the end of the day, I need to be able to look at myself with admiration in the same way that I would look those men I used to wander after. I would pine away for a man to see in me that which I could not see in myself and that’s why I was so uncomfortable with being alone.** I didn’t want to be with me! How could I expect someone else to want to be with me?

To qualify: it’s not superficialities that I found my worth in. Whether I am fatter or thinner, richer or poorer should have no bearing on my personal worth. I always tried to loose weight, or to look good on paper in order to justify my existence, but that’s not what is really important to me. When I take value in things that cannot be taken from me (humor, creativity, delight, strength, intelligence, love etc.), when I accomplish personal goals that have nothing to do with what I should do, or what I am expected to do, I am able to feel equal to other people in the world. Because when I don’t consider these things, I have a tendency to feel like the best ever or the worst ever, but never just a regular human being.

I waste a lot of time comparing myself to other, really cool people and wishing I was like them. The truth of the matter is that I just wish I wasn’t me, and the solution I’ve found is to make the decision that I’m okay with being me, and that I can be a person I’d like to count among my friends and family.

What this has to do with getting laid is that when I like who I am I have no fear of rejection because if a man doesn’t like me, I like myself enough to value my opinion over his. And if a man does like me, and does want to be in my life, I value my time and energy enough to make sure that I can return that investment before moving forward.

And you can say that this whole blog post means nothing because I’ve been with Ben since I was 18 and I don’t know shit about being single as an adult, and I don’t. But I do know that if I depended on him for my self worth this shit would have been over before it begun. If I couldn’t say to him, “if you don’t like it, get the hell out,” and if I couldn’t have him say the exact same thing to me and me ok with that, I’d be a worm of a woman, always wondering what he wants, what he’s going to do, trying to please him because my worth would rely on him and not me.

This was long and didactic, but for some reason it’s what I wrote so ignore it if you want to, it’s basically mental vomit but maybe it can be helpful to you.


* The truth of this statement varies from day to day, and mood to mood. This sentence is not a guarantee of level-headedness or maturity on my part and should not be taken as such.

** That and my poor neglected libido.