Alessandra: And I am bleeding out from inside...

How can someone get it so wrong? Have it twisted so wrong? Be so wrapped in their own perception of reality that they can't even see how much hurt they have been causing. Not just to themselves. Not just to their families. But to me. Especially to me.

It's suffocating. The amount of it. I try to do what I can and I feel like I'm wading in water, but it's blood, and blood is thicker than water, physics would declare that the body would have a more difficult time, a more strenuous time trying to wade in blood and keep your head above the level so you can breathe. It's exhausting and suffocating, draining and heart breaking but what can I say? Hello, don't you realize that I am dying, and my doctors are out of ideas, and you're so self involved you haven't even bothered to ASK in over three weeks what is going on?

Nope. Can't do that. So I remain the positive supportive one who keeps pushing for everyone to be their best self, to never stop trying. But apparently, I'm not good at that either.

I guess, I just should stop. What's the point anyway? They won't miss me when I'm gone.

And so it goes.

Alessandra: Looking back at the past

And then it just slaps you in the face. I wrote the following entry the other day. The other night to be specific. And I was so angry, still am. But I guess this is just a disclaimer because those that know me, well, they know my family means more to me than anything. But also, family isn't just what you're born into, it's the life you create with the people you love.

That being said. Here's the fallout...

It’s funny how things from the past come up to bite you in the ass again. Whether it’s the same stupid mindset of a stubborn parent or the way that a parent who always fucked you over finds ways to do so long after their gone. You can’t escape it. It will resurface.

I told my mother to go to hell tonight. And quite frankly. I wanted to say worse. I wanted to say a million things worse than that. Because she deserved it. I couldn’t believe she even spoke to me the way that she did and about the topic that she did. I wanted to slam her in the face and physically hurt her in ways that just, probably would have put me in jail for years. I am sick and tired of her telling me I overreact about my health, or that I’m overreacting about something happening in my health. No, I’m not. I’m having the appropriate reaction to my health and you are being a cunt who doesn’t give a shit. Her body normal is not the same as my body normal and she needs to realize we are not the same, not at fucking all. A tiny cold to her may not be a big deal, but it can kill me.

It’s always been that I’ve been overreacting except that I haven’t been, doctors back me up left and right and yet she still claims that I’m the one who is wrong even though these doctors are telling her how wrong she is. She just doesn’t care. She’s too stubborn and too much of a bitch to even look outside of herself, for even a minute, to realize that she’s wrong. It’s beyond obnoxious.

So something in me snapped tonight. Something in me really, really, snapped. And I found myself realizing that as much as I have grown and changed and adapted and moved forward…she hasn’t. She hasn’t at all. She doesn’t listen to anybody and she thinks shes always right. I have some of the best doctors in the country point blank telling her she’s wrong and what she was wanting me to do would have killed me, but what did she do? Roll her eyes and act like it’s not a big deal. It IS a big deal. My health is a VERY big deal. And her acting as though I overreact about everything happening with me is bullshit and I’m sick of it.

I’m not going to be speaking to her at all anymore. Not until she apologizes for what she’s done and handles the mess she’s supposed to handle. I don’t have anything else to say to her at this moment besides how much I hate her for what she’s done to me, for what she’s put me through all these years and for being such a horrible human being to me.

Things haven't changed much since this all happened. I held my ground, I forced her to realize that she can't just disrespect me like that and think it'd be okay. However situations have arisen with other people in my life where apparently they believe it's also alright for them to walk all over me too.

I don't know when it became okay to walk over me, to shove my face in the dirt and my back into your knife, but please know that you will regret it. And I will not apologize for being glad that you are such a piece of scum. I'm not annoyed by you anymore, I'm enraged by you breathing air anywhere near me and thinking it's okay. You hurt me one more time, you even raise your voice to me one more time, and I will make you regret the day you even thought it'd be okay to start down the abusive path you did with me.

Don't fuck with me. Don't come near me. Don't even come near the people I love. You think I've been a bitch to you before when you've pissed me off? You think I've been 'enraged' before with you? You have no idea who you're messing with.

Watch your back B. There's a lot of guys, with a lot of power, and all trained to kill who have your name in their mind for what you've done.

Just wait. Push me one more time.

Alessandra: Some Things May Never Change

I had a rough child hood growing up. Everyone for some reason thinks its what this beautiful way of living, with my big happy wealthy family with every thing a little girl could ever wish for. I mean, for Christs sake I even had my own horse in the stables. But that's just it, that's all I got. I never had my father when I was little, I have very little memories of him before he left, most of which take place in his black Mercedes. I remember running my hand over the leather interior and watching him smoke a Cuban cigar and sing along to Eric Clapton. He loved Clapton. He called me his princess and believed that I could change the world with the light I have inside of me. He also disappeared and was never there. He gave me presents, jewelry, horses, tuition to Ivy League schools. He gave me every thing he financially could but it doesn't really matter because he was gone and he was what I wanted.

When it all happened, I remember every one in my family hurting. I remember for the first time realizing that my mother was an alcoholic through one too many traumatic moments that, at age 8, I had to handle on my own. I realized that someone I trusted, a family member, took advantage of me. Raping me for his own pleasure, molesting me daily for over three years before I saw something on the TV showing a story about how that happened to another girl like me, saying it was wrong and people could help me. I remember being so scared that I ran into the basement of the house and hid back behind the massive electronic panel box that controlled the house. I had to balance on the wall like a tiny Spiderman to avoid the mouse traps that were set up to catch any mice. I was in the scariest part of the house, the part of the house I used to believe was haunted. And yet I ran there because thats where I felt the safest, because I knew he wouldn't come after me.

He tried to, a few more times before finally turning that sexually molestation into anger. There were multiple times when he would throw me against the wall with one arm, choking me by the neck, punching me in the face repeatedly until my cousin David would run upstairs hearing the commotion and throw him off of me. I would run and hide behind the TV stand, afraid to let anyone touch me. I was 11. My mother had remarried my fathers ex best friend who happened to be a drug abusing lawyer who got violent and abusive when angry. My mother finally broke free from his physical abuse when I was 13 and took me with her to her own place. That's when I finally realized that her alcoholism was no longer just something she did to cope once in awhile that I'd have to watch, it's when I realized that her alcoholism was her.

I had to check on her through out the night to make sure she was breathing, make the right combination of foods before I got ready for school in the AM to soak up all the alcohol she drank the night before so she could function at work, I had to constnatly remind her via post-its of every thing that she needed to do that day so she could remember. I can't count the number of times I was left at school for hours because she forgot me. The nights I had to drag her body from the floor onto her bed. The times I had to fight off her alcoholic rages where she'd start punching and slapping me.

I don't remember all of the details of my childhood because I stopped being a child when I turned 8. I stopped being a child the second my parents become so self focused that they forgot about how they would effect their children. I stopped being a child the second my own blood raped me. I stopped being a child the second I realized that there's no magic in the world...I got lost. For a long time. And I immersed myself in what I could to survive. I took care of my mother, I ignored my own needs for therapy which winded up with me having an eating disorder that proceeded to get my quite ill multiple times. It varied, sometimes my mom would go in tirades about me asking for food because we had none in the house even though she was making millions a year. So I'd stop eating to stop causing problems. Other times she would yell at me to eat more so I would but then I'd get chubbier and she yelled at me then. There was nothing I could do, but love her the best I could, swallow down my tears and just try to survive and get through it.

There are times I've tried to take my own life, there are times that I did things I shouldn't have, there are times I told people things that I shouldn't have, and a lot of times that I didn't tell people enough. The way in which I reacted and handled what was happening to me as I started to mature was not the best way. I wasn't able to see a psychiatrist and actually get help for what was happening. How could I do that when I constantly had to take care of everyone else? My step-dad started protesting in court against my mother for my custody, I began an object. No one cared what I wanted or where I wanted to go, it was the competition and who was better and they both wanted to be the best. Neither of them could probably even name the major I had for the specialized art school I went to. Neither of them were there when I won a Grammy for my school. Neither of them were there when we all won our second Grammy. They weren't there when the Pope requested us to come to Italy to sing for him, when Clinton and Bush both invited us to come sing at the White House and Congress. They weren't there when my best friend died when I was 14, they didn't care when the love of my life and my fiancee, my high school sweetheart, was shot down in Iraq two weeks before he was supposed to come home and be my husband. They didn't care and they didn't notice because what happened to me, what my story was, didn't matter. I was just an object, a trophy to show off.

So I retaliated. I fast-tracked in high school. With the help of my amazing choir director (I was a choir major at my academy) I was able to get emancipated from my parents so I could graduate early and go onto a full ride scholarship at one of the most prestigious music colleges in the country. I was free. And I took full advantage of it. To run away, to get away, to distance myself. I threw myself into my studies, I fast tracked there, I graduated with high honors, two degrees, being called an incredible talent, landed an amazing job that people would literally and have killed for in the past. And yet I realized I never slowed down. I was so terrified of what could happen to me, what might, that I never stopped fast-tracking. I was on the fast-track for everything. And it never ended.

I came back home to see my mother, to visit her. And my heart instantly broke. My mother and I are incredibly similiar. We are driven and stubborn, intelligent and thrilled by business, law, medicine and we follow our hearts. When we love someone we take bullets for them without thinking. We love them no matter what they do because we just love them so. We hurt often but we take the pain because we'd rather have the pain often and be able to help rather then harm. She's an incredible woman. She was a brilliant scientist as head of radiology for one of the largest and best hospitals in the country. When she ran it and was chief, it was number 1. She invested wisely, bought the right kind of company and did the right things to get away from my step-dad so she could have a job and get her life together. I realized that me getting away from her allowed her to greive and get herself together a bit as well. Maybe she was so worried that she was breaking me that she couldn't even function back then? Walking away from her back then, was the hardest thing I've ever done and I sometimes think back and try to figure out if I regret it or if I helped her.

Sometimes, you need to say goodbye to people for them to grow. Sometimes they use you as a crutch and without you letting them go, no matter how much you love their prescence, they need to be able to survive and learn life's lessons on their own. Sometimes, you saying goodbye is you saying I love you more than anything. Sometimes, you saying goodbye is showing how much you love them. Goodbyes like that are mostly temporary, hopefully. If they aren't, they aren't. But you need to let them go because they have to grow and you need to be able to move forward without them holding you back and torturing you mentally/emotionally the way that they do. They love you and they may never wish pain on you but they can't help it. That's when goodbye is needed. When love just isn't enough. When strength is what is needed so you can part your ways and let them find their way and hopefully they'll find their way back to you. You say you have to go and leave them alone but that they should always know that you love them so much. You say that you want them to stay safe, to think carefully, to be kind and that you hope to see them soon.

I've had moments like that with many people and unfortunately the fact that I first had to learn how to let go was with my mother. It was the most brutal, and unfortunately the most painful and it did mess me up and I am aware of that. I know the ramifications of those actions and why I am the way I am and why I respond and act how I do. I know it all stems from my childhood, from my adolescence and what I went through. I know all of it won't change because it's the past and the only thing I can do now...all these years later is to change myself. I can't just say I've learned how to be better, I have to show it, to prove it.

Yesterday I felt 13 all over again. He was back, physically abusing me again and my mom was there, doing nothing like before and I realized that while I may have changed they havent. They're stuck in the past still because they're afraid if they let go of the past what will they have? They think if they let go of what has happened before they won't be able to move forward. No matter what I say to them, they won't listen to me, they will just have to find out for themselves and that...is the most painful thing to watch.

I won't cry, I won't fall down, I won't break. I will take care of myself, I will fight everything I have to stay alive, to move forward, to be happy, to love with my whole heart, to be the best person and friend I can be and I will never let anything stop me. I won't let negativity win like it used to. I refuse to. I'll get by. I'll succeed. I'll survive. When my world crashes down and I hit the ground, I will turn it all around again, just like I've done before time and time again. Don't even try to stop me. Because I know what I'm capabale of and that's just it. I can survive. I can fight. I will fight and I will win. I will survive this. I will survive all of this. And come out of this shining. Because some days it may feel like a devil town but the light does shine in the darkness. Et lux en tenebris lucet.

Have faith in me, and I will always have faith in you.