Let It Be!

[Rant on] When it comes to ignorance in its purest form Facebook never disappoints me.  Recently, an old friend of mine passed away and while everyone else managed to express their heartfelt condolences, a true wingnut twatnozzle named Gail made it all about herself.  Imagine the audacity of Bruce and his wife for unfriending Gail for her "political" posts (i.e. Qanon, Trump, etc) because Bruce and his wife found what Gail posts to be insane, distasteful, rude, nonsense and outright lies and that's on her good days.  I think she might be working for Marjorie Taylor Greene or maybe she's Marjorie's mother...a crusty old cunt tucked away on Long Island! I'm sorry, but I truly can't help myself.  I control my fingers on Facebook and they shake terribly because they want to let loose, but my brain says, "NO! DON'T GO THERE, MILDRED! DO NOT ENGAGE WITH IDIOTS!"  I do as John Lennon and Paul McCartney instruct me to do.  I let it be. I come here instead to bitch.  Lucky you! You get to read Mildred blow off steam. The thought has often crossed my mind that if I didn't have a blog, my eyeballs probably would pop out or I would pop a vein in my head. Either way the result would not be very pretty.

Oh, I'm not quite done yet...

This same "compassionate conservative," I hate to admit I have known since I was 16.  OMG! Say it isn't so! I'm sitting here shaking my head so you're allowed to do the same. Oh yes, I have a long history with her, but we won't go into all of it.  Just that we were in drug rehab together many, many moons ago.  In 2002, I created a website so people from said rehab could reconnect with each other.  When Facebook got rolling, I switched everything over from the website I had created and managed to Facebook and that's where we've been ever since.  About 7 or so years ago Her Royal Twatnozzle and I had a horrible falling out and hadn't spoken since until recently. What caused the falling out was due to me deleting a few of the jokes she posted and that put her in a tailspin. I was called everything, but human and because of it, she humiliated me in front of the entire group. Mildred is now about to make a confession! Buckle your seat belts, everyone! I'd like to confess that I'm weak! I caved in! After 7 years I let her back on the site against my better judgment because I feel everyone deserves a second chance and after all she is a former resident of this rehab also. WHAT WAS I THINKING? AM I FUCKING NUTS OR BRAINDEAD? IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE? ISN'T THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY DOING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN BUT ALWAYS EXPECTING A DIFFERENT RESULT? HELLO, MILDRED! IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP!!! OMG!

Below is the heartfelt condolence Gail wrote so judge for yourself if you think it's something you'd like to read if your husband or wife had just passed away:

I am very sorry to hear about the passing of Bruce. I feel so bad, up until about 3 months ago, him and I were very good friends and I have been on 3 reunions with him plus there were many times we would meet in the city when he was in NY and I have great memories and pictures of those times. About 3 months ago, his wife got mad at me for some political posts I put on my own timeline page and him and her unfriended me and I felt very bad, hurt and angry, but still, I loved him and thought of him as a very good friend. Bruce, may you rest in peace.

In the short time Gail's been back on the site, she's done nothing, but insult people (posted about someone's botched facelift, bitched about some guy she dated from the rehab who wasn't very punctual about picking her up for dates and called him a pain in the ass, slammed another guy about calling her drunk all the time and talked trash about people, yet she made a special point of asking how he is, where he is and if he's mad at her because she hasn't heard from him in a long time and he hasn't accepted her friend request on Facebook.) I had almost resigned myself to the status quo of life with Gail again until today when I went to check my messages, etc. and found she had started posting her political bullshit on the rehab site. I don't know what Gab is and I don't want to know, but from what she claims it's where the conservatives hang out.  Oh boy! You know I'll be running right over there for some giggles and grins.  I'm having a hard time believing that after being thrown off Facebook for a year, she's going to come on and start her crap again.  The only reason she's back on Facebook now is because she changed the spelling of her name slightly and started a new account.  Some people learn absolutely nothing...NADA! They get all their plays right out of the Trump playbook and think the rules don't apply to them and it's always someone else's fault. What I think is that she might need to be introduced to Mildred's tagline...anything is possible with the right attitude, a sledge hammer and a roll of duct tape! [Rant off]

I slept on this and instead of using duct tape, I employed the easiest solution possible. I deleted Gail from the group. No drama! No fuss! Just a click of the button and hit the road, Gail! 

And The Rockets Redglare...

Michael Morra aka Rockets Redglare had a personality that was larger than life itself. His mere presence filled any room he happened to enter. I met Mike many years ago before he was known as Rockets Redglare. We both had the good fortune to find our way to the same drug rehab center tucked away in the woods of Northern Maine. Our friendship formed when we discovered we had a very similar twisted sense of humor. He always called me his "Pig Sister" and he was my "Pig Brother." Somehow we extracted these terms of endearment from William Peter Blatty's, The Exorcist (the movie had yet to be made). Many people at the rehab role-played as cheap form of entertainment. We had to do something to keep our sanity or what was left of it by that time.

When I close my eyes, I can picture Mike strutting across the stage doing his rendition of Mick Jagger. The truly funny thing was that Mike did Mick Jagger better than Mick did himself. While Mike belted out Midnight Rambler, for a few minutes we, his captive audience were transported magically to someplace else...a magical place far from Kinsman Hall. Sometimes that was all we needed to get through another day. Thank you, Mike for those moments of joyful surrender. I was pleased when I find out Mike had gone on to act in several movies and was a stand-up comedian in the Lower East Side of New York City. The thought of that larger than life personality entertaining others seemed like a natural progression to me. Whether it was selling drugs or making people laugh, Mike was a natural at everything he did.

Like many friendships our friendship fell by the wayside. I don't think everyone who enters our lives is meant to go the distance. Knock! Knock! Who's there? And then they enter. They stay awhile sometimes making a lasting impression on our hearts and souls and then they leave us with memories to always cherish. Our lives had simply gone in different directions after we left rehab. For a short while, we stayed in touch and then silence. Pig Brother and Pig Sister were no more. Many years later, I watched a movie made about Mike's life. As the tears streamed down my face, I knew that we, the residents of Kinsman Hall who knew and loved Mike had gotten the best he had to give and all those years he spent after we knew him was a steady, tragic, downward spiral until Mike died from kidney and liver failure caused from a lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse.

Mike was a junkie before he was ever born. His mom was a fifteen-year-old addict who passed her addiction to her son while still in utero. They had to put methadone in his baby formula. Michael's father wasn’t any more of a positive influence than his mother. A career criminal, he was not afraid to conduct “business” (including murder) in front of his young son, and was eventually deported back to Italy after robbing a local post office. Left to support her family and a drug addiction, Mike's mother
turned to prostitution for income. Mike eventually left home when his mother took up with an abusive ex-boxer, who eventually beat her to death. After his mother died, Mike changed his name to Rockets Redglare. He was a true American original and was as bright as his new name...Rockets Redglare.

Many people in and around the New York City's drug culture believed Mike was the person who killed Nancy Spungen (girlfriend of Sid Vicious of the punk rock band, The Sex Pistols)  Mike was one of Sid and Nancy's local drug dealers who had been in the apartment the night Nancy was murdered while Sid was passed out elsewhere in the apartment. Whoever killed Nancy stabbed her once with Sid's knife and left her to bleed to death. The next morning, she was found dead. The roll of cash that was in the apartment the night before mysteriously turned up missing and suddenly Mike was out buying drinks for people, an act he never participated in doing before then. When asked by a close friend where he got the money, he admitted to stabbing Nancy and ripping off Sid.  Whether or not that was the truth, no one will ever know for sure because the truth died with Nancy, Sid and Rockets Redglare.  All else at this point is pure speculation. I'd like to believe my friend is innocent, but I know how drugs twist and deviate a person until they're unrecognizable.  I just hope wherever Mike's spirit is now, it rests in the peace he never knew in life.

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE - PART I

To say I was a troubled teenager would be a severe understatement. When I was 18, after spending two long years in drug rehab (Kinsman Hall), I was finally released two days before Christmas. Was I excited? Yes! I was filled with what I thought were endless possibilities. But I was more afraid than I was excited. Those two years kept me alive, but it did little else. When I hit the streets, I was armed with absolutely no tools for a drug-free and drama-free existence. How can anyone cope when they're left up to the their own faulty devices? Two years of not having to think for myself weighed heavily on me especially when I was suddenly faced with a real life filled with real problems and real decisions to make everyday. 

Towards the end of my two years at Kinsman Hall, I got involved with a staff member who was about ten years older than me. Oh, we had big plans of living happily ever after, but that happily ever after never happened. Bruce left the program a few months after my departure. The plan was for him to come get me in Florida and we'd start our life together. He got as far as New York where he was from and never made it any further. Denial works great for awhile and then reality sets in...Bruce and I were never going to have anything, but some sheltered memories of a relationship that was never put to the test of surviving in a life away from Kinsman Hall. I knew I made the wrong choice by getting involved with Bruce to begin with and instead of choosing with my heart, I chose with my head.  If I had chosen with my heart months earlier Bruce wouldn't have been in the picture.

Shortly after my departure, life slapped me in the face twice. The ferocity of the slap left me questioning everything I thought I knew. First, I lost my closest friend, Charlene. When she left rehab, she started shooting dope again. Although I knew what the writing on the wall predicted, I wasn't prepared to deal with a death...any death. Charlene died a week before her wedding. As Bruce broke the news of Charlene's death to me, I felt as if someone had reached into my chest and ripped my heart out. I could barely breathe. I could barely think. Yet with as raw as my emotions were I couldn't seem to cry. I just teetered on the edge.  I just wanted the hurt to go away, but before my wound could form a scab, I found out Bruce had started using again. He, too was shooting dope, but was lying to me about it. 

Another one bites the dust! There wasn't going to be any happily ever after for us. Drugs had won out again, so I tucked my tail between my legs and went off to lick my wounds. All I wanted to do and felt like I needed to do was insulate myself so no bad news could affect me again. Instead of tuning in, turning on and dropping out, I tuned out, turned off and then jumped into emotional obscurity. My first instinct was to hide and to fade far enough away so pain couldn't find me. I adopted a true fuck it attitude. What's the point of getting close to anyone when all they're going to do is break my heart? 

That summer was a memorable one. It changed my whole trajectory.  After being away from my hometown for 3 years, I foolishly returned. My first year of faux emancipation, I spent living on the streets. I was 15 and got one hell of an education. The next two years I spent in drug rehab. Oops! That was a completely unplanned detour.  I was probated there until I turned 18.  I knew going "home" would put me in harm's way, but I went home anyway because like a person who needs to physically cut themselves repeatedly, I was an emotional cutter. I needed to beat myself up until the pain subsided and I was comfortably and completely numb. I thought about returning to the drug rehab from which I had just been released because I felt I had unfinished business there but I didn't return for fear of rejection. Fear paralyzed me until it won and I too started getting high again.

WHEN SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS

This photo was taken in Jackman, Maine during the summer of 2007.  I spent two years in the early 1970's in a drug rehab located in Jackman that was more like a concentration camp at times than it was like a drug rehab. This quote describes exactly how I feel about that whole experience.  Just for the record, my choice was to let it strengthen me.