Plastic Surgery (Part Two)

“When are you actually going to get a REAL job???” My mother bit at me. “Something that has value? When are you going to actually be an adult and stop acting like a kid?”

Dark Pablo could not stand it any longer. The bitch is back, carrying more ammunition than Rambo.

“Fuck you mom.” I hissed while flipping her off. My mother’s face dropped in absolute shock. I tried to be nice. I thought to myself. Now it’s time to show you why you shouldn’t piss me off.

“You know damn well why I can’t get a job. Or are you too ignorant to see that too? I am doing everything humanly possible to get a job.”

“Sleeping in until ten in the morning, writing your stupid stories and blogs until late into the night, and spending time with your friends down in San Diego is not what you call job hunting.”

I think my mother forgot the whole fact that I am moving by the end of summer.

“You know, I can’t wait for you to leave, because hopefully you will grow up and stop acting like a kid.”

“I am counting down the days myself. I can’t wait to leave your stupid house, where there has never been an encouraging word uttered from your mouth since I graduated. You have been nothing but a grievance on me since I was a kid. You treat me like a kid and you don’t treat me like an adult.”

“Because you are immature.”

“Why do you insist on always degrading me. You do it in front of my friends as if it’s the next great American past time. That’s why I beg people to not come up to visit me, because all you do is treat me like shit.”

Want to know why my mom is bitter? She hates the fact that I am gay. So she will treat me like shit because that is what her church teaches her to do when faced with someone that has differing beliefs: treat them like shit until they change. Just watch “Saved.” My mom is an adult version of Hillary Faye.

“Oh we have to make it all about you? Because that’s how you win people over to you? You pity them with your pain until they sympathize?”

The conversation then segues to a very sensitive subject. I am just going to cut to the chase.

“You are going to do nothing but fail, because that is all you have done ever since you went online to meet that complete stranger and do that stuff with him?” (My mother is talking about the time I made out with a thirty-one year old guy when I was a senior in high school and had a freak-out. That happened, but there was something else that happened before that.)

Tears were coming down my face, I could not believe my mother had the nerve to bring back. So I had to tell her what really happened, because she wasn’t going to shut up. “Mom.” I declared very sternly. “Do you REALLY want to know what happened that night?”

“No I do not.”

“well too bad mom. I am not going to give you grace, because you choose to not give me grace. I was raped.”

“That’s what you get for not being where you were supposed to be.”

“This happened outside church after a seminar for the Billy Graham Crusade. A man followed me to my car, pulled a knife on me and told me to drive.”

My mom was silent. The only time she was silent. I was hurt. But I wasn’t going to give up, my mom is not going to win this fight.

“Where does this stupid mechanic of yours work?” She asked.

“I am not going to see him until I am calm. You really hurt me.”

“Well you brought it upon yourself. If you were responsible enough to save your money, act like a normal adult, and take care of your vehicles, you wouldn’t be in this mess. You either tell me where this guy works, or we are not going to get your car.”

The reason why my mom is being so persistent is because she needs to write another check. My parents filed my taxes so I can get a tax refund, and my mom has the tax refund in her bag and was not going to give it up until she visits my mechanic. The price tag to get my freedom back: holding my check ransom while using the liberty to attack me.

“You are just like dad when he beat the shit out of me when I was in junior high school and he dropped me off at church for youth group and told me to go make an ass of myself.” I fired back. “Don’t give me an ultimatum.”

My dad snapped one time while I was in junior-high school. He lurched at me and punched me several times in the stomach while hitting me in the face with a paddle that he would use to discipline me growing up. I had a black eye and several bruises on my body. When he did drop me off at church for the junior-high event. Everyone began to make fun of me, I only told one person of what really happened. Since that day, my dad was warned by the authorities that he was no longer allowed to touch me in his anger.

My mother was finally silent. Thankfully, the tears were starting to dry up by the time we arrived at my mechanic. I put on a fake smile and refused to look at my mother for the entire rest of the day. Once I got my car, I drove off without saying goodbye and made my way to the gym.

I called up one of my older gay friends, someone that a better insight in life. He gave me the most encouraging advice and allowed me to open myself to the idea that although what I endured was painful—and in some morbid way—this pain was actually a blessing.

“It will give you the ability to know, what are you really gonna do about it?” He counseled as I was listening attentively. “Are you gonna lick your wounds? Or are you going to stand up and make a plan of what you are going to do to make the best out of this?

“Family, as much as we may agree/disagree with them, they are stuck with us for the rest of our life. They may get in our hair, we may want to disown them, but no matter what you do, they are still family. However, friends are the family that we choose to be with for the rest of our life; because you are not going to want to associate yourself with someone that is going to say that to you right?”

The pain and the shit that I deal with on a regular basis is like plastic surgery. It is a bitch to deal with, it makes your body sore and swollen to the point where you barely recognize who you once were. However, it is when you begin to heal do you finally notice the results in yourself and see just how the clichéd phrase is truly dead-on: pain does equal beauty.

Plastic surgery is not permanent; if I go in and ask for it, you can bet your ass I am going to get another dose of the scapel, because pain is beauty. When living in such a vain society, sometimes beauty is all a girl needs to feel accepted in this world.

I may not like what is done to my body at times. My parents and the attacks that I receive from people in my life, they are the incisions that are made to my body. They create and inflict the pain in me. But what am I gonna do? Am I going to wail, bitch, and moan about how the scapel is hurting and beg for more morphine/anaestesia/vicodin? No.

The swelling that I receive post-op, that is the physical results of the pain as I spend time trying to recover…or figure out a plan to fight back and get better than what I was pre-op. I may look as ugly as hell, but I know that once the bandages come off, I am going to be looking delicious with my new boob job.