In the beginning....

Bullying is a very real thing. It is a very dangerous, cruel thing to do to someone; especially at a young age. I was destined to be a little different. I am constantly finding myself being referred to as an old soul. I fully believe this to be the truth. I am an old soul. I have been here before. I have been conditioned to a world of fears and dreams, and the most bewildering thing I have discovered so far is this:

The world unto us is the biggest bully of all.

I am not saying that life is not a gift. I am not saying I am ungrateful for having the life I have, (which is much better than it used to be) I am saying that when we entered this world, we were, as children the most carefree we will ever be in our lives. Ignorance is bliss. Children are blissfully ignorant to all the red tape that surrounds average adulthood. Bills, insurance, jobs, school, money. Things, people, places.

The world is the biggest bully because at one point in our lives, we get asked a simple question:

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Nothing sinister or depressing about asking a young child what they aspire to become later in life. What's sinister is letting them go so long believing life is going to let them be it- just like that.

It all takes work to get where you want to go. That's how life works. You work to get what you want.

Now lets get back to me.

I was born in Texas and raised in Louisiana. When I was eight years old, we moved to Hawaii. My mom, dad, my older brother and myself. A picture perfect family chapter. My mom was raised in Hawaii so it was already familiar to her, and my father was in need of the tropics as I suppose it was better for his health. He was sixty years old when I was born.

We moved to the islands because of some minor racism as well. Where we were from, we were not white and we were not black so we were not welcome there basically. When we arrived on the island, I discovered a similar feeling. We were surrounded by other people of other cultures who looked at mainlanders (That's what people in Hawaii call people from the mainland USA) as....odd. Different. Not like them. They were not mean, however. The people were very friendly and caring. Very fierce and passionate and filled with aloha.

I was bullied in school by the other students because I was a little unique and they were about to remind me of all the ways I was different.

I am a very hairy person. I am also kinda pudgy. I like to eat. Eating was a comforting thing in my family and boy, my parents could cook. We ate together every night around the dinner table. This is a memory I still cherish as it's long gone at this point in my life.

So there I am, new to the islands, chubby and hairy with glasses and what is graciously referred to now as "resting b#$@h face"

I wasn't angry or grumpy or unfriendly....yet. I was still new and scared and excited and hopeful. Ready to make new friends in a new state.

I did get one. Someone who remains a close dear friend to me to this day, twenty six years later. A few years later, I found another. They are both still very dear to me.

The rest of the kids I grew up around loved to torment my friend and myself relentlessly because we dared to be different. We weren't into going to the beach like they were. We did not speak pidgin English like they did. We were just different and they didn't know how to feel about us. That was okay-we had each other. We were best friends.

Eventually, high school began. This is where things begin to shift again for me. Puberty came early in my life, and around the age of fifteen, I was sprouting hairs everywhere. My arms, legs, butt, back, but most devastatingly-my face. I was growing a beard...I was fifteen years old, cis female...and I was growing a beard. My bullies had new ammunition to use against me...I had the same ammunition to use against me as well. My self esteem was dismantled.

My father was in his seventies now. My brother and I were beginning to experiment with our own identities a little more. He became a silent, stoic pariah of a man- leaving a trail of mystery wherever he went. He was very fond of anime and samurais and martial arts. He was very good at it. We all were. My mother, brother and I used to do martial arts in Louisiana. My mother was a black belt. My brother was great at it and I walked away with maybe a yellow belt before finding another sport or activity. Gymnastics. It was much more fun and not as violent as martial arts.

As my brother walked the school in his junior and senior years like a mysterious outcast wanting nothing to do with his peers, I discovered black and never looked back. I embraced it. I owned it. I took refuge in an oversized hoodie in a dark room. I dressed in black, listened to Marilyn Manson and Rammstein, and spent the bus ride home doodling in a sketchbook and blasting music with my headphones on; desperately pretending to be anywhere else. All eyes were on me. It was not pleasant.

Kids became meaner. Eventually the rumors began. My parents didn't approve of my new darkened persona, yet it persisted. I began to lie for attention at school, eventually getting into some trouble and having to seek some therapy. I began to cut myself. I was alone and I felt alone. Everything I enjoyed-someone had a problem with it, even if I wasn't bothering anyone...I was still a sweet, kindhearted person. I was funny and polite. Well mannered. Nobody was paying attention to that. Nobody was paying attention to the good at all.

Things were taking a toll for the worst. I was a junior in high school now. My fathers health was declining. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and congestive heart failure. An entire list of ailments. He was beginning to forget things slowly. My mother was beginning to break down. The air was constantly heavy at my house. Friends stopped coming over. My brother wasn't as friendly anymore. He became cold and distant. I wasn't taking this change very well and finally, having broken down myself, landed in a mental institution for a few weeks on another island. It was hard, being at a vulnerable moment in your life. Your teenage years; where you're supposed to be focused on learning to drive and going to prom, and what youre going to do when you graduate....

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

All I wanted was everything to be okay. I wanted my dad to be healthy again. I wanted my mother to be happy again. I wanted to spend my days hanging out with my brother and my friends, while silently making huge dreams for my future. The future that had to be coming...the future when I would be able to figure out the answer to that question.

My father passed away in the house. He was seventy eight years old and he died a week before my nineteenth birthday. It was a bittersweet moment. I had found myself wishing him dead for weeks prior, but NOT in a mean way. I just wanted him to stop hurting. I wanted him to be at peace....by the time he died, he didn't even know who I was. By the time he died, I didn't know who I was either. I had begun to smoke. I got my hands on a tattoo kit and instead of cutting myself, I fueled my artistic talent and energy into decorating myself. I was trying to heal and move on. I had gotten a job. I never learned to drive a car, it seemed to give me a lot of anxiety I could not shake. I walked home from work for months. I hitchhiked. I cried a lot. I was losing a lot of weight. I met the man of my dreams and fell in love. He would help me travel home from work and when I got let go from my job, he helped me moved to a teepee on a property for woofing (work on organic farming). I lived in a legit teepee for nine months. My boyfriend moved in as well. Sticks and a tarp. No electricity, no running water. No door, no windows, no walls even. I remember there were chickens and slugs and cats and I just remember saying

"We have to get out of here..."

We ended up getting into an apartment. I have a vivid memory of walking up and hugging the refrigerator and then having to explain to the landlord why I just hugged the refrigerator. We lived there for about three months before we officially tied the knot.

I got married to my husband June 2009. We were twenty and twenty one at the time. we had a very tiny wedding, just the two of us, two friends and the judge, marrying us in a state park on the beach. I remember that about seventy five percent of our vows were to talk and to listen to each other. I believe it was the judge trying to drive it into us that this was very important, as she said when she walked away "I don't want to see you two next year in divorce court!"

That was in 2009. We are still happily married. We've been married for almost 12 years now.

Things were looking up again. We weren't living in a gross teepee. We had a nice little apartment and we were newlyweds. We were just beginning a life together and everything was happy and bright and rainbows and kittens, even though I never stopped dressing in black-I was seeing the world through rose colored glasses and it felt great. I felt like I was healing. I stopped crying and cutting and even though I continued to smoke, I felt better than I did in years. I was getting over the trauma of my fathers death. I was getting used to not living with my mother for the first time in my life. I was going to embrace everything the world was going to throw at us.

Then one day, my husband came home from work with a weird look on his face. He had gotten a call from a mutual family friend who knew both of us and our families.

"She said your brother is missing."

I remember nodding and returning to my computer game. I knew, without a doubt, in a fraction of a second upon hearing what he said, that my older brother was dead.

I knew my brother very well. I knew that he was not the kind of person to go anywhere. He was a homebody. He stayed in his room on his computer all day, all night. We used to hang out a lot, playing games and talking. We were really close. When I moved into the teepee, we began to drift apart. He became very distant to me, eventually responding to a phone call from me, denying he had a sister. It broke my heart. I loved my brother- he was the closest thing to the person I was inside. We thought the same. We shared a lot of the same experiences.

I knew he couldn't be missing. His room was empty and trashed, his computer was still on and his truck was still parked in the yard. He and I lived at a house with my uncle, moving there after my fathers death. It was at this house that he vanished one day. This was the longest day of my life. When my husband left for work the next day, I sat still, quietly praying that someone would find his body. I knew it was going to be a body...

*Warning* Graphic material ahead, not suitable for young audiences*

My husband returned that day and told me that the neighbor found him in the field about a hundred yards from the back of the house. We got in the truck and immediately went to the house, the entire ride being a blur to me. We were met by my uncle who cried and hugged me.

My brother had committed suicide, using my fathers shotgun. He had done so in a field of tall grass on the night of a loud party nearby. No one heard the gunshot.

By the time I arrived on the scene, the body had been moved already. I did not see my brother. I never saw him again. However, what I did see gave me PTSD. I saw the stretcher lines in the grass from the gurney that carried him away. I saw a human outline in the tall grass where his body lay for two nights before being found. I saw brain matter covered with flies where his head would have been. I apologize for being graphic or too forward but it needs to be known....I suffered immensely for someone so dear to me.

This wasn't happening. This wasn't real. I had just gotten married. This was not the way things were supposed to go. Unfortunately, it was very real and very painful.

I had to separate from everyone for a while. I was very detached. I would go for a walk to the park with a photograph and cry my heart out for hours. I would return home exhausted. I couldn't sleep. I would see things whenever I closed my eyes. I started to see my brother everywhere. My eyes were trying to trick me. I couldn't bear to listen to the music that reminded me of him and movies and video games we played together, I still hold so dear to this very day. I discovered quickly how PTSD could work as I had to be very careful watching television or even new movies. I chose, instead to opt for things that I have seen before. I didn't want to see things that might trigger other imagery. I was becoming withdrawn. I would break and take it out on my husband, but he remained very supportive. I would be lost without him by my side.

This went on for about six months.

I was emotionally shattered at this point. I had been healing slowly from my fathers passing, and all the emotional drain that came with dealing with an elderly parents descent. Then I struggled through the grief from my brothers loss-what could possibly happen at this point?

Slowly I started to overcome again. Some television shows I had watched with my brother was not as painful to see again. I found myself laughing at Star Trek, immediately seeing remnants of my brothers personality peeking out from all this mixed media I had inherited from cleaning out his room after his death. I was beginning to realize that he lived on in some video games now- and in songs and even some anime...He was a memory now. He was everywhere. I started to become okay with it. I was starting to talk about him again without breaking down in tears. I was gonna be okay again.

There were many regrets in my past. I never got a license, nor learned to drive (although I can if I have to) and I rely on others to get around. I never made it to college as I spent my time caring for my father at this time after high school.

I am a very good artist. I have been good at art since I was a child but I always lacked the exposure and audience needed to make anything from it. My art doesnt exactly fit the island theme of palm trees and seashells.

I discovered what it meant to be a "starving artist". I always wanted to leave the islands and return to the mainland, to go live in a place like San Francisco where there are other people dressed in black like me- but I soon discovered that it is very, very expensive to leave especially when you have no job or car. I started to work online here and there.

I began to get bored. I started to withdraw again, this time into my computer games, lost in digital worlds far away from Hawaii.

Things were quiet for a while before the next blow struck. My former boss and close friend was killed in a motorcycle accident. He left behind a wife and two boys. I had become quite close to the family and after his death, his widow and I became good friends, talking a lot and being there when either of us needed someone. I needed this in my life. I needed someone to unleash this pain on. I had felt trapped. I was stuck on an island that took people from me. I was on an island where my heart was broken more than once. Yes, I was still married, so why not talk to my spouse? Why not let him help? I'll tell you why.

My husband is my rock. My world. My best friend. He has been there for me through some incredibly difficult times. I have bared my soul to this man on several occasions, sometimes out of the blue on a nice day when he had no idea it was coming, the poor man. I have told this man my dreams, my fears, my memories, my feelings....

I do not want to have to continuously bring him down with my baggage anymore. I want to share my story with the world. I want people to know what has happened to me-not just for those who can relate to me and need someone who can relate to them, but so they might begin to tread lightly; for everyone who is going through really hard times.

The world really is the biggest bully and it is because of other people like and unlike ourselves that we are able to be built up so high and love so deep as well as being brought down so low and hurt so bad. Everything we have to go through, experience, and learn from is shaping us into the people we are going to be later in life. It is important to remain positive. It is beneficial to your soul to remember that times are not always going to be tough.

My story is sad, yes. I was unhappy for a very long time. It is the year 2020 now and things have been quiet and peaceful (aside from quarantine and pandemics). Its a good thing I have had a lot of practice being a recluse in my house. I am still happily married. I don't think about my father anymore. I can think about my brother and smile. I am laughing again.

I can watch movies and see things that may or may not hurt me. I still cry sometimes. I always will. I felt everything and I probably always will. I am really here on this planet, experiencing my life in chapters and this book is still being written. I am hopeful that the next few chapters of my book are going to be lighter. I am still going to wear black though.

Thank you for reading. This is my first autobiography.