Teenage Wasteland Mixtape

In my teens, I thought I was a real rock rebel.

I wasn’t.

More than anything I was a misfit, insecure and scared on the inside who paraded around like some kind of badass bitch hoping that everything I thought of myself and everything I felt wasn’t as blaringly obvious as I feared. That was me in a nutshell--always pretending to not give a shit, always hiding behind what I wore and big, scary words. A heart of glass masquerading as a heart of ice, me.

I can say that now that I’m 34 looking and feeling better than I ever have, but then? If this me traveled back in time to give young me some advice, young me would flip the bird and tell this me where to stick it. Young me thought of herself as wise beyond her years not realizing that years are a requirement. Maybe everything I went through did make me a little more mature than some of the other people I knew back in those days, but in no way did I have all the answers I thought I did. No one that insecure in her own skin has the answers to much of anything. Getting over that insecurity, an ever-present battle, is something that comes with time and a whole lot of effort, and maybe just maybe I will have half the answers I thought I did when I was young and full of it.

The songs you might find on an autobiographical mixtape from my adolescence are just as eclectic and confused as I was. In those songs, you can feel my rage from the turmoil and upheaval of my parents’ divorce and the aftermath of death threats against my mom and foolishly moving back in with my dad despite his history of abuse and drug addiction problems. You find evidence of my drug experimentation, of the friends loved and lost, of unrequited love and a budding sense of my own indefinable sexuality. There’s an air of melancholy to it all, to being such an outsider. But, simultaneously there’s a heavy forcefulness that shows just how much I *made* myself an outsider. It’s a soundtrack of contradictions, changes in tempo, and every over-the-top teenage emotion possible. Every song brings up a well of emotions and memories crawling out of locked boxes and dirty hampers and shadowed crevices to both electrify my senses and make me cringe in embarrassment.

It’s time travel that leaves you breathless and nauseated and weirdly nostalgic for days that you’re glad are over.

Teenage Wasteland Mixtape

1. Smells Like Teen Spirit—Nirvana

Did you call that? I bet you did or at least you could have because didn’t everyone who wanted to stand out think that listening to this would do the trick? I think it was supposed to be like some magic pill to take to instantly be about a million times cooler than you actually were at least until everyone took that same pill and it was no longer the edgy thing to do. The lyrics were nonsense, but that made it better somehow. More mysterious to explain to parents. And the naked baby on the cover outraged them which is exactly what made me buy it. I hadn’t even heard of the band, but I was fucking angry. I don’t know that I was angry about the divorce necessarily, but it was so much change, so much fear when my dad came around, so much guilt when I visited him, and so much resentment about my mom moving on so quickly and adding yet another element of change to the chaos and all I wanted out of life at that time was to make her just as angry as I was. Now, I’m not saying that was a fair attitude to have, but that revelation came with time and a whole lot of growing up. Back then it satisfied all my misery and channeled my anger into something I could deal with. That whole album was one of the first times I realized that music could do more than entertain for whatever brief time a song lasted; it can make you feel alive, make you want to keep living--which is something I contemplated a lot in those days.

2. Me & Bobby McGee—Janis Joplin

I moved back in with my dad not long after my mom moved in with her new boyfriend (who has been my stepdad for almost two decades or more than two decades or something like that). It was too much change for a kid my age (12/13) to take one, I guess. I don’t even know why I wanted to in the first place, but I missed my room and the dirt roads I grew up on, the familiarity…I missed home. My dad had his own bar in his house. He built the actual bar and the shelves behind it with his own hands. There were lighted beer signs on the walls and random things to do with dicks. It was definitely an adult area situated essentially in our living room. And, man, did he have a killer sound system. He had progressed from a turntable to cassettes at that point, and eventually got a CD player, but I remember listening to a Janis Joplin greatest hits cassette with one of his many girlfriends over and over and over. This song in particular takes me back to sitting on the kitchen counter laughing it up with her in some of my dad’s old clothes. She told me that day I had a little bit of Janis in me.

3. Say It Ain’t So--Weezer

I listened to a lot of stuff in the year and a half I stayed with dad. Most of it was his music—lots of Allman Bros and the Eagles, Floyd, Zeppelin, the Marshall Tucker Band, Little Feat…all the Southern Rock. But I branched out, too. I had a boyfriend (if you can call it that when you are 13ish) that introduced me to Alice in Chains and Korn and STP. And then my dad got himself a side chick whose son and daughter were a few years older than me. I started hanging out with them when I was just 13 and many of them were 17 or older. It wasn’t exactly the best parenting decision my dad made, but it was far from the worst, I’d say. Trying to kill me was probably the worst. The girl’s boyfriend was in a band, so I started going to their shows pretending I was about a lightyear cooler than I actually was. My life started to resemble something like Dazed and Confused… The parties were in fields, and I was with the band, but I was still Sabrina having bitches like Parker Posey telling me to air-raid when I just wanted to look like I might actually belong there. The band did a cover of this song that was remarkably mediocre, but I loved it anyway. Every time I hear it, it takes me back to the first few times I ever got stoned, listening to music in the middle of a field with people who thought of me as a tagalong they had to babysit while I pretended they actually wanted me there.

4. Glycerine—Bush

I lost my virginity the weekend I before I turned 14. It wasn’t a decision I made or had any control over; that choice was taken from me just like my innocence that night in front of my dad’s bar. I didn’t deal with it very well for a long time. Do you ever really deal with something like that “well?” Maybe not. Either way for a long time, I bottled it in, and lost all respect for myself, for sex, for the idea of choosing to have sex with someone you really love and care about. It warped my ideas about sex in general. I never saw it as special until I was old enough to have sex with someone I really truly loved, but that didn’t stop me from doing it, from seeking attention that way, and from making terrible decisions about my body. In some way, I think I was attempting to exert the control that I didn’t have that night in the worst possible ways. The first person I did choose to have sex with was just a friend, an older boy who was a friend of a friend that I started talking to on the phone regularly and flirting with. That’s the thing of it though. We didn’t even meet in person until the night I snuck out of my dad’s house to screw him in his dad’s shitty white Cavalier. I enjoyed myself in so much as it is possible to enjoy oneself while also being scared shitless about getting caught. Sixteen Stone, Bush’s debut album, was playing in the car and this song in particular always takes me back to that night. I stayed in touch with that guy for a long time, and even now I might hear from him every now and again. There’s a part of me that fell for him in my own way over the years, and a part of me that will always love him.

5. Low—Cracker

The stupidity in my decision to move back to my dad’s didn’t take long to figure out. My dad had moved yet another woman at the house that looked at me like the competition. His drug use had progressed to the point where he was doing coke all the time and sometimes meth. He was drinking more, smoking more weed, and then he got caught trafficking. He was in prison for awhile and married the woman when he got out, literally the moment he got out. They drove straight to the courthouse in the city he was doing time in and tied the knot. He was ever the romantic. He came home worse than ever before, and I knew it was either go or get beaten more. Go or get in an accident because of his drunk driving. Go or let him kill me. So here I was making another move after having dealt with all that and having been raped. I became a really apathetic mess. Truly. I was still getting all As, but I was high more days than not, drinking a lot, still dressing in my dad’s old clothes. My mom and her husband didn’t know how to deal with it, and I didn’t know how to deal with everything going on in my own mind. Depression, zero motivation, a complete and total lack of regard for them and myself. I was a fucking wreck. Taco Bell put out a completion album around this time. Do Something it was called and it was supposed to be full of alternative tracks. This one captured my don’t give a fuck attitude at the time while soothing all the chaotic swirls of emotion. I could listen to it over and over and sing the lyrics and actually get some peace from myself.

6. Loser—Beck

This one, like Glycerine, makes it onto my life soundtrack because it was such an instrumental part of my life. When I moved back in with my mom, she and my stepdad had moved into one of the nicest neighborhoods in this town. It was at that time, at least. Everyone I had become friends with had parents who were struggling to make ends meet. Most of them had single moms barely scraping by. And then there’s me living in this neighborhood with rich kids… So this became my theme song. It was a way to put down the thing that most of us actually wanted—some sense of security and a bit of status—if I had to guess, but I just know it made me feel like an imposter with everyone I knew and strangers alike. I hated it when I should have been thankful my mom met someone that could give her the financial security we never had with my father. You don’t see things like that though when you’re 16 and hanging out with a bunch of stoner kids. I do know that singing along to this song riding in the backseat of a car passing a joint around made me laugh and feel like none of that shit mattered.

7. Stickshifts and Safetybelts—Cake

When I think back on being young and stupid and trying to hard with the people I called friends, this song always comes to mind. I can listen to it now and have a few flashbacks of riding around in a little red pickup with a couple of my friends looking for a place to get stoned and listening to it back to back, over and over. Every single one of us would hold that long note towards the end then bust out laughing and do it all over again. I loved those nights when the song was all we needed.

Stumbleine—Smashing Pumpkins

“Nobody Nowhere Understands Anything….About Me. All My Dreams Lost At Sea….” That line still gets me even now, but in my teenage years the melancholy notes of this song and that particular lyric made me feel less alone in the world. I still get goosebumps when I hear it. I still feel that little swell in my heart from feeling the absolute bitter truth in that lyric while simultaneously hoping that maybe the person who wrote it really does understand what it might be like to be me. I needed that more than anything at the time I got really hooked on this band. I needed that feeling of connectedness especially when I could go into a room full of people and still feel alone.

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I wish there was something I could share, some powerful melody that showed that I made it out of my adolescence relatively intact and unscathed and all would be fine like the triumphant moment at the end of an 80s high school movie, but there’s not. Finding music that connected me to other people and that made me feel less alone in the world was the only triumph that could be had back then. It took me a long time to deal with it, to process everything from those years in a way that left me stronger and better than before, but that’s where I eventually ended up—an improved version of me that made it in spite of and despite everything that happened earlier in my life and a version of me that still embraces her rebellious roots with purple hair, tattoos, and skulls on her clothes. No matter when it happened, it's a win in my book, and I still love laying back, hitting play on a nostalgic playlist, and traveling through time.

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So today is, as always, Sunday Confessions with More Than Cheese and Beer. I hope you will check out her blog and the rest of the link ups. The prompt was low so be sure to join in if you have something to add. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Let's Play Favorites

A favorite hip shaking song

I remember taking all those MySpace surveys with immeasurable fondness, so I thought I’d sort of make my own list of favorites and some other stuff I’ve found in old copy/paste surveys in remembrance of one of my favorite wastes of time for Sunday Confessions. Hope you'll read through and maybe copy/paste your own answers onto your blog or in the comments! Have fun with it :)

Basics

Name:  jenniy

Age: 33

Hometown: Eldorendo

Hair color: Naturally, medium brown. Now, brown with green streaks

Eye color: Green

Favorites

Top 5 Music: stoner rock, sludge metal, 90s grunge, indie garage rock, blues

Top 5 Bands: Graveyard, Allman Bros Band, The Sword, Red Fang, The Black Keys

Top 5 Albums: Allman Bros Band-Live at Filmore East, Graveyard-Lights Out, The Black Keys-Magic Potion, Baroness-First and Second EPrepressing (both eps on one album), Jimi Hendrix—Are You Experienced?

Cover band: Me First & the Gimme Gimmes

Cover song: Beastie Boys and Biz Markie doing Elton John’s Bennieand the Jets

Author: Stephen King

Book: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Top 5 Movies: The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, Dazed and Confused, The Breakfast Club, Pulp Fiction

Top 5 Directors: The Coens, Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, David Fincher, Kubrick

Smell: Jasmine

Perfume: Poe’s Tobacco by Tokyo Milk

Food: Sushi

Fruit: Cherries!!!

T.V. Show: Freaks and Geeks

Childhood Cartoon: Ducktales

Video Game: Parasite Eve

Color: Teal

Drink: Whiskey and ginger ale                       

Holiday:  Halloween

Either, or

cream soda or root beer: cream soda all the way, baby

tater tots, curly fries, or French fries: tater tots

comedy or drama: comedy

Dill Pickles or Sweet: Dill. If you don’t like dill pickles, we can’t be friends.

Beer, Wine, or Liquor: Whiskey

Pizza or Tacos: TACOS

Cat or Dog: Ducks. ha. I have some of everything

Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, or Toad: Princess Peach all the way.

Tattoos or piercings: Tattoos.

Singles or Full Albums: Full Albums

Republican or Democrat: Neither

Morning or Night: Nighttime is the right time.

Right or left handed: a little of both, but mostly right

call or text: text. If it can’t be texted, it’s not worth knowing.

HAVE YOU EVER

Gotten a ticket?: yes     

Been out of the USA?:   no

Triggered a fire alarm?: on purpose, no. But cooking accidents do happen

Been toilet papering?:   no

Done something illegal?: um, yes. plenty of times.

Been caught by the cops?: no

Wanted to move out from where your currently living?: I think everyone does at some point or another, but these days, I love where I am for the most part. I don’t get people who blame all their problems on their location.

Been ashamed of your family?: One side of it, yes.

Been go cart racing?: no

Broken a window?: yes, throwing my purse at my ex. I can’t even remember why now.

Been attracted to an animated character?: Mayyyybe. Ok, I guess I had a little thing for Shaggy from Scooby Doo. That probably says more about me than the rest of these questions.

Been in a car accident?: yes, but not driving

Caught your hair on fire?: no, thankfully

Done karaoke?: no, I have awful stage fright.

Tripped in front of an entire audience?: I’m a klutz, so more than likely, yes. Earlier today I stepped in the cat’s water bowl. That should tell you something about how well my feet function. My heels are all like kitten-size or thicker, retro-style because I do not trust myself to walk on a stem not much bigger than a toothpick and not kill myself.

Cut your own hair?: all the time. No one else has cut my hair in years. I cut my bff’s hair too.

Had surgery?:    yes, I’ve had my gall bladder out and had an emergency c-section

Broken/fractured a bone?: my nose

IN A GUY/GIRL

Funny/serious: funny

Competitive/laid back:  laid back

Good dancer/singer: dancer. duh. The sex is likely better that way ;)

Tall/short: either

Long/short hair: No preference. I’ve dated people with both.

Sweet/Attitude: A little sass goes a long way.

Outgoing/shy:   I’m not shy, but I am most definitely introverted, and it’s easier to be around other people who are than a person who is extremely extroverted. But, I do prefer outgoing introverts that keep me at least somewhat social.

Bearded/Clean-shaven: No beard, no service. Period.

Dependent/Independent: I’m far too independent, so I think this question is a bit tricky. One person shouldn’t be an extreme of either, so I’d have to say a little of both. You can’t be afraid to ask for help the way that I often am. A little dependence is a good thing. Clinginess is not. It’s about balance.

YOUR BEDROOM

Clothes on the floor?:    No, never! But, I do have some folded up on top of the antique stereo in my room. I put those away regularly, so it never gets out of hand, but I do throw things there for convenience during the week.

What color are your walls?: teal accent wall. The other walls are gray. And the moldings are black. Not that you can really tell with all the things I have hanging on said walls.

What is your bedspread and curtains?:  My bedspread is a floral sugar skull design and my curtains are black.

TV/game system:  In my room, just a TV and record player, but we do have a ps3, a ps4, wiiU, an old modded xbox, and some handheld game systems.

Do you need a drink by your bed when you sleep?: YES. Double Yes.

How many windows do you have?: 2 in my bedroom.

Light/Deep sleeper?:     Light. Any little thing can wake me up especially creepy kid stares.

How many pillows do you sleep with?:   2—one firm gel pillow and a softer one under that

Do you sleepwalk/snore/talk in your sleep?:       Snore, definitely.

RANDOM QUESTIONS

Are you more like your mom or dad?:    An equal mix of both, probably. Some ways I’m like my mom, and in a lot of ways, I’m like my dad. I’ve taken the qualities I’ve gotten from them and twisted them into my own in a pretty balanced way.

Do you mind getting up and speaking in front of a large audience?: Can’t do it without having a panic attack.

have you ever made out with 2 different people in one night?:  um, yes. I don’t want to say more than that, though. ha.

What color underwear are you wearing right now?:  gray with teal and pink polka dots

What 3 things can always be found in your refrigerator?:  coffee creamer, dill pickles, and spicy mustard

Ever worn your pajamas to places other than your house?:  I wont even wear pajamas in my own yard, so that’s a resounding no. No, no, no. I get dressed up to run errands and do other things despite how busy I am throughout the day. It’s a mode of self expression that I truly enjoy. I wouldn’t be caught dead in my pajamas outside my house.

Name 5 of the most important things in your life:  My son, writing, music, family and friends, my pen pals

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Be sure to check out the other confessions this Sunday over at the More Than Cheese and Beer page!! And as always thanks for reading :)

Remember That Time...?

It never fails, and I always sort of dread it--my mom will be sitting at the table with us during a family dinner

me...in that other life

or holiday or special occasion and she’ll tell a story from my childhood or maybe my brother’s back from times before my parents were divorced. There’s never that look of familiarity or recognition on my face during these stories and she’ll ask me if I remember what she’s talking about perhaps because she sees my blank look or perhaps out of habit.

I never do.

My parents separated when I was in 7th grade in my 13th year of life. Their relationship was tumultuous at best plagued with problems from the start. My mom was young when they met and from a problem home where she’d suffered abuse of every sort and had already been through so much shit in her life that maybe my dad didn't seem all that bad. He was, though… Drug and drink-addicted, mean, sexist, violent, and a bit of a criminal—growing and selling the substances he loved most, making ‘shine, and really not giving a shit about the law in any sense. The world was his oyster, and rules were for assholes.

this was his nickname for a reason

It’s not surprising, I suppose, that he didn’t exactly make for a stable childhood.

I don’t have many memories from that time in my life before age 13. I have stories shared with me by my mom and my brother. I have clips and hazy images of fights, of heartache, pain, and suffering. I have residual feelings of fear, of not knowing what it was going to be like when my father walked through the door likely already drunk from sticking around after his welding jobs were done on the farms where he worked and having a few while he talked shit in his way with the “guys.” There are fading voices in my head that echo the names I was called when I was younger. And I have memories of what it was like when I lived with him for a year and a half before I turned 16 during which time I was beaten, raped and blamed, turned onto drugs and alcohol, and saw him beaten, high, drunk, arrested, in jail, and so fucked up on cocaine that his nose would bleed and he couldn’t move...not to mention the various women that were in and out of his life who were inevitably even more fucked up than he was.

I still flinch when someone raises a hand in my vicinity even for something so benign as a high five.

There have been so many times in movies and on tv that you see someone suddenly remember what they have forgotten with a little help. They unlock repressed memories and suddenly recall all the horrible things that happened to them that were buried deep within the recesses of their minds. It’s not like that for me though. In high stress environments, storing memories is low priority for a child’s brain and eventually affects their ability to remember things for the rest of their lives. It’s not that anything is locked away to be forgotten until some day in the future when the key to the box magically presented itself; there was simply nothing there to forget. There's no box, no key to unlock it. I cannot forget what I never stored in the first place...it's just part of having that kind of life as a kid.

As a mother, I strive so hard to make sure my son will be filled to the brim with memories. We haven’t

always had the easiest life. There have surely been struggles for us, but no matter what we have made the best of our time together. I like to imagine the two of us sitting at a dinner table surrounded by family with me asking him if he remembers the time we turned boxes into miniature cars for a night at the “drive-in” or the time he peed in the cat’s bowl or when he got his first vinyl record. I imagine he'll smile and share my laugh at old times without the blank looks, the questions, the empty files where memories should be stored. I imagine that he feels secure and warm instead of so alienating, so abnormal and weird. I want that for him...those nostalgic laughs that light up our eyes when we relive those shared moments over a cup of coffee while the grandkids play in the living room making memories of their own.

My hope is that his life is so filled with warmth and laughs that there’s too much for him to possibly remember it all.

The prompt this Sunday for Sunday Confessions with More than Cheese and Beer was Forget. I hope you'll check out all the other linkups on her blog and the anonymous confessions on Facebook!