Funnier Than Fiction...

If I was a comedy writer, I couldn't script any of the following any better if I tried. After deliberating back and forth in my head about it, I've decided to go ahead and share the utterly uncomprehensible bullshit I have to deal with from my daughter's father and his family.

So it's been a mess since I broke up with him in March at 6 1/2 months pregnant. For about a month I had to deal with the "Are you sure we can't work this out?" and "Don't you think we should try to be together for the baby?" He even had the nerve to say this one: "Well, one day after the baby is born, we should go on a date to see if it's just the hormones making you feel like this right now." I finally had to just tell him that it was definitely him and nothing at all was wrong with me; and boy did I find that out later.

So, when we were together I said okay to the IDEA of the baby having his last name. NOTHING WAS WRITTEN IN STONE! She was born way after I had broken up with him, so I was thinking I'd have her last name MY NAME-HIS NAME. I call him and tell him that's what I want to do, he goes completely ape shit! I mean beligerent as hell! Threatening to go for custody. Outrageous, outlandish stuff. He didn't end up coming back up to the hospital to sign the acknowledgement of paternity affidavit, so the baby ended up with my last name ALONE any damn way!

So that blows over the day I get out of the hospital. A Thursday. Now, mind you, this jackass had been living at his mother's RENT-FREE for SEVEN MONTHS. All of a sudden, he decides he needs to go rent a place he can't afford the same week my daughter was born. (Genius, I know!) Well, both of our stuff was in a storage facility and he had said over and over that he would be able to put my stuff in the basement of his new place. Friday rolls around, the day after I come home from the hospital, and he says it one last time that he'll be able to store the stuff. Saturday, he called at about noon and left a message saying that he might not be able to store the stuff. Then he called at around three and said he would. His last phone call was in the evening when he dares to say, "You know, tomorrow is Father's Day and I would like to see my daughter." Mind you, not once had he even asked how she was or if she needed anything. I called him up and told him we'd come down there the next day.

Sunday, he's standing in the window and I wish I could have seen his face when my family and I showed up with a big U-Haul to end the game of him having my stuff. We're there for like an hour and a half and he has my daughter the entire time - handling her like she's a doll, more or less. Once the truck was loaded, I was ready to go. I was tired. My daughter and I had only gotten out of the hospital THREE days prior to this out-of-county, hour-long trip. I have stitches and am bleeding. I shouldn't even be walking around my house, let alone going out the county to keep someone from trying to hold something over my head.

She's crying her head off while he's holding her so I grab her and comfort her take her upstairs to change her diaper. He follows and I tell him that I'm tired and I'm ready to go. He gets mad, starts yelling how it's not fair. And I continued down the stairs telling him he knows where we live he can come up there and see her. So his mother, decided to chime in some crap about me changing the baby's last name.

Side note: Let me tell you something about this last name. His last name is his father's last name; her ex-husband's last name. This is the person she kicked out of her house after she walked in on him smoking CRACK on the living room's coffee table. But we want to defend this name to the deaf, I guess.

Anyway, meanwhile, my daughter's father goes and punches a wall in the basement. I honestly thought my uncle and his friend dropped something. He comes back upstairs and his hand is bleeding. So he keeps yelling, you'll hear from my attorney. My crazy ass mother yells, "Call your attorney already and stop singing the same song!" This is about the time when he comes following behind us as we're walking out the door yelling, "Get the hell out of my house!"

Another side note: This dumbass doesn't even have the house anymore. HE'S LIVING BACK AT HOME WITH HIS MOTHER!

So that blew over and he became content with just coming up to see her. Never bringing anything as far as a diaper or anything; but seeing her just the same. I have NEVER stood in the way of that.

So, this is what made me start keeping this log I'm going to start sharing in my next blog:

On September 20, I sent him an email asking him to bring up a couple cans of formula on his next visit. His response, I shit you not was:

"Are you still on Facebook. I wanna see baby pictures!"

I seriously had to read that over and over again to see if I was reading it correctly. When I realized that's what it said, I had to laugh. Like I said, I couldn't script this shit to be any funnier than it already is. I'll post my logs too. It's never all that funny when it's happening; but in retrospect, all I can do is laugh. I really didn't think that real human beings could be funnier than clowns and jesters!

A brief update...

So, last week, my transit riding was pretty short because I only worked two days. Therefore, I'll just combine this week and last in my Transit Weekly.

Friday was my daughter's first Christmas! Unfortunately, I was extremely sick all four days of the weekend!

So that's last week in a nut-shell. Nothing out of the ordinary when all you want to do is sleep!

Public Transportation and its Wonders...Introducing "Transit Weekly"

Not having a car does piss me off, make my life harder, suck (and did I say pisses me off?); but it does allow me to come in contact with the finest people of my city! And I've been riding the bus for years and am still dumbfounded by almost everything I witness! From the blind man who I swear could see to creepy Santas who later end up on the news, I've got stories for days. But six years is a long time worth of info, so I'll stick to a few things I can actually remember from recently.

"The Blind Man Sees":
One morning on rail transit to the city, an apparently blind man stepped up on the train. He's holding, but not using, his cane; trying to find a seat. And all of a sudden he points at a lady and says, you have a lot of junk. Mind you, he was not close enough to her to touch and feel the stuff. What she was carrying made no sound, at least not to the untrained ear. However, she was a bit on the big side. So if he could sense that, that says volumes! But I digress.

"Baby-Snatcher Santa":
A different day, earlier than the blind guy, I was on a lunch break and walking through the main transit center downtown when I ran into a Santa Clause passing out candy canes. His pants was to short, his beard was a mess, and he was just plain creepy! When he gave me a candy cane, he whispered: "You wanna know the secret? Only people who wave get one."
Two nights later, I'm on one of the local news' websites and who do I see? Santa Creeping Clause! Mugshot! Apparently he was in a suburb earlier that day and had jumped out of a bush to offer a little girl some candy. When she ran off screaming, he jumped on a bus.

Other things that happened this week:

• Not only did one driver almost pull off two minutes early without me (and I had to nearly chase him down); he also bypassed my stop by two blocks!
• A bus was supposed to leave at 7:25 a.m. and the driver was nowhere to be found. At 7:26, here comes the driver and she's slowly taking a leisurely stroll to the bus from Starbucks.
• A guy at a bus stop was trying to "spit game" about lobster dinners, and such. (You're at a bus stop. You have no car. HOW MUCH OF A BALLER CAN YOU POSSIBLY BE?!)
• The guy on the trolley gave me the evil-eye every single time I stepped on. (Probably because he saw me pick up a complaint card that was no way going to be about him.)
• And this doesn't really have anything to do with public transit, but while walking from one bus stop to another, a pigeon tried to step on my foot!
  
• A guy got on the bus with three cases of beer.
  
• And to top it all off, as I was struggling with to get my stroller down from the bus, this (for lack of a better term) bitch-nigga stood right in the doorway and watched me struggle. And then when he saw the guy with the beer, he had the nerve to say, "You need any help with that?"
  

All this happened in a week! One week! So just imagine what I've seen and dealt with in 6 years. All the psychedelic freaks in headbands and gaudy rings; the pimp cane-carrying weirdos; the people who like to sit down next to me when there are plenty of open seats. These are the people who keep me company and the things that keep me engaged every day. They also give me plenty of stuff to put into my "Transit Weekly" report!

A Day in the Life...CRAZIES EVERYWHERE!

So, as an aspiring Best-Seller, I'm supposed to work on my craft every day in some form of writing or another. I'm going to be honest. I haven't been doing that. I've been pretending I've been so busy and making up so many excuses as to why I have to put off my writing that it is just disgusting. So I came up with a solution!

When I intially created this blog, I had every intention of blogging more often than once every damn month! I mean, look at the description. I even state I want to share some day-to-day craziness I experience; so now I intend to do just that!

First step to motivating myself torward the right direction is changing the name of my blog. From this day forward, Roxy Pebble's blog shall be known as "A DAY IN THE LIFE...CRAZIES EVERYWHERE!" Same Pebbz station (URL); definitely a different station (more frequent post)!

Enjoy!

Be less than who you are? NO! STOP IT NOW!

Do not "turn down your shine" to ease the insecurities of a mate you are not guaranteed to be with in the long run? It does nothing but limit where you can go and what you can accomplish.

I'm watching an old episode of "America's Next Top Model" and one of the girls has a boyfriend that is so insecure about himself that he's projecting it on the relationship. He yells at, belittles and threatens her because he's so afraid of what she's doing in her life. It made me mad as hell. Now, had she listened to him and just came home from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, her life dream of becoming a world renowned fashion model would have been squashed. And for what? Some guy who probably wouldn't even be around six months down the line?

Before that, I was watching MTV's "16 and Pregnant" (I know I need to stop watching reality TV, right?), and the girl was doing everything from working to going to school to being on a dance team. All the while, she was the only one taking care of her 6-week-old son. The father lived in the house, but that's all he did! He would go to work in the morning then go out with his friends the rest of the day and night. He wouldn't even feed or change the baby without being begged. She was trying to study and he refused to do anything with the baby so that way she couldn't get anything else done. He was threatening to leave if she asked him to help her out and she said go ahead and leave. She had the right idea.

In my own life: When I was pregnant with my four-month-old daughter, my EX (the emphasis here being that these people are NOT going to be a significant part of your personal life and growth when the hand of times keeps going on!) wanted me to give up my plans of going back to school and just sit around the house like somebody's housewife. (Mind you, I wasn't a wife, so had I let him supposedly take care of me, he could have up and left and I would be out on the street with no job, no education - not a leg to stand on.) I held my ground. And then I found myself being the only person trying to better our situation before the baby came, so I left him because he was causing me more stress than he was helping. Now I'm taking care of her on my own and he still isn't doing anything for her. (That's not really the point though.)

The point is: Limiting yourself or lowering your own goals and abilities to make someone one else feel better about themselves is some straight up and down b.s.! That person that's trying to make you feel like you should be less than to boost their confidence does not care about you if they can't be happy for where you are or where you're going. I know I only showed examples for women, but this goes for the men too. If there is anybody in your life who is ultimately dispensable, don't let them throw a monkey wrench in your plans so they can have some control and better feelings about themselves!

God's purpose for my life...

After a lot of soul searching and numerous attempts at failed endeavours, God has shined a light on what I'm supposed to do in my lifetime.

I've attended two universities, had over ten majors (three different branches of jouralism, education, English, psychology, sociology, religious studies, electronic media, communications), and many failed starts at careers only to find myself with no degree, unemployed, and unable to go back to school (defaulted loan - I'll get into that whole bag of worms in the next blog).

For a few weeks, I was starting to believe that I was doomed and that I had no future. I would be working a mediocore job for the rest of my life that: a. didn't offer me any stability, b. wouldn't fulfill me, and c. wouldn't allow me to make any kind of impact on the world. Then after going up to the alter for prayer one Sunday, the next day my eyes were open to what had been there all along.

I was sitting around depressed about what my life had become and what it never would be - or at least what it appeared to never be. I was thinking back to high school, where I had an opinion or feature article in every issue of the school's paper for at least two and a half years. I remembered how I always got such positive feedback because I always had a valid point to make and expressed it so well. Then I remembered how much I love to write and I realized that was God's gift of talent to me and that I had to figure out how to use it to make a difference.

I had stopped writing for so long that I had forgotten how much I loved it and how good I was at it. I had let everything - school (which I hated and never gave it my all), work (serving jobs that were taking up so much of my time and gas, but barely paying enough to keep up with the bills), distractions (partying, drinking, smoking, guys) - get in my way of utilizing my time to do what I really should have been doing all the while.

Then one day, it was as if God had reached down and yanked my ass out of the hole I was digging deeper and deeper for myself. I found myself pregnant, which quickly ended my partying; I lost my job, which I thought would have led me into a tedious career; and I eventually grew so tired of my daughter's father being so immature that I broke up with him at seven months into my pregnancy and moved back in with my mother. I found myself broke, on public assistance, yet rent/bill free.

While sitting at home with my beautiul new arrival, I pulled up a story I started writing my junior year of high school (almost six years ago). Even then, I had fans of it who said, "You have to keep going with this!" I finally decided I would start writing again, but I was doing so half-heartedly.

I've found out over the years that the very best writing has a message or meaning behind it. For the longest time, I didn't see how I could send a message. I don't know what it was, but it all of a sudden hit me. My novel - tentatively titled 'Unhinged' - could be my way of creating awareness of mental health.

There is such a negative stigma associated with mental health that a vast amount of people are afraid to address it. There are so many people out there that need help that refuse to get it because they're so afraid of what others might think of them. I want to stand up and speak out against the misconceptions associated with depression, bi-polar disorder, and any other common illness. I want to inform people and encourag people to be more accepting and others to seek treatment.

I believe that that is God's purpose for me. I've been suffering from depression since junior year of high school (I've actually been diagnosed as bi-polar on more than one occasion), so I know first hand about being looked at in a negative way. I've been ridiclued by people closest to me - saying I need to suck it up. Mental health/illness is real and serious; and I'm ready to fight for awareness, acceptance, and assistance!