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#352 - we're the walking dead
02.12.04 @ 6:47 pm

there's this song by the Jim Caroll Band, "Those Are People Who Died", and in it there's a line about an 11 year old girl who killed herself with "24 reds and a bottle of wine". i thought to myself, what must have happened to an 11 year old girl to make her kill herself?

i realized she was just like us, except we didn't kill ourselves. were we supposed to? would life have been easier then? what would the world be like if there weren't so many walking wounded?

s.m. was raped in college. this was long after her dad died when she was a young girl, and her mother remarried another man. and her mother left her existing children in the house they lived in, and moved in with this other man and had a new child with him. my friend grew up living without any parents in her house. just an older brother who quickly skipped town and was never heard from again; another older brother who liked to hit her, call her names, and throw heavy objects at her; and an older sister who, when i knew them, kept to herself and was frequently out with boyfriends. yet s.m. didn't self-destruct until after she'd driven me away, her "mother", and her "father", her boyfriend, dumped her. she gained weight. she did drugs and alcohol. she slept around.

a mutual friend from high school was raped in her teens. had an abortion as well. grew up and moved around, and evil just followed her. she got involved with a policeman in california who beat her. she finally left the state, as she feared for her life because of this man's contacts in law enforcement.

yet another mutual friend from high school, this one already a social outcast, was also raped in her teens. by someone she knew. as if being shunned by her peers wasn't enough, one of them decided to shit all over her, rob her of her innocence, and forever cast doubt over her own self-worth.

my sister was molest by our father, our step-grandfather, our brother. she had consensual sex with two of her cousins before she was in high school. she grew up fast, probably faster than me. she went to an alternative high school before dropping out to get a job. dabbled in drugs and alcohol, but kept her job. until one day she pissed it all away and decide to be wasted 24/7, and say "fuck you" to the job. she thought she was too young to have so much responsibility. she was what, 21? 22?

i believe i was raped or molested by a close relative or friend of the family at such a young age that i have no memory of it, just symptoms. the special ability to become physically ill at just the thought of a strange man putting his hands on my breasts, paranoid delusions about people and demons watching me, panic attacks, strange dreams, an amazing ability to confuse fantasy with reality. and while we're at it, let's not forget depression, a history of suicidal thoughts, possible OCD, and the fact that it's frighteningly easy for me to "forget" things that disturb me.

we are the walking wounded. the walking dead. gouls. sm says we should form a club. we could be a band. girls are gouls. gouls are girls. gouls, gouls, gouls.

should we be here? or should we be dead? did fate throw those cosmic curve balls so that we'd off ourselves and do the world a favor?

most days, i try to be the optimist. realistic, but still optimistic. i believe everything happens for a reason. that our trials make us better people. i am the most liberal person i know and, despite having a hard time to settle in the right place, one of the things that drives me most in life is to help other people. sm is a counselor. of children. children who remind her of herself. of me. of those high school friends.

but today, this week, things aren't looking so optimistic. things are looking scary.

so today i'm not an optimist. i'm a goul. we should get a secret handshake.

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