{"id":721,"date":"2014-08-21T21:59:53","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T05:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/biz141.inmotionhosting.com\/~akweko6\/sacollins.com\/wp\/?p=721"},"modified":"2014-08-21T22:24:05","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T06:24:05","slug":"growing-up-in-the-kool-aid-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sacollins.com\/blog-wp\/?p=721","title":{"rendered":"Growing Up in the Kool-Aid House…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up in the Kool-Aid house…<\/span><\/h1>\n

<\/h2>\n

-or- <\/span><\/h2>\n

<\/h2>\n

“I’d rather have a crap load of kids over my house because at least I’ll know what my kids are up to…”*<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

So I got a rather interesting response from yesterdays emotive vomit (I really was all over the place with that). I swear I try to keep it in check but hey, that’s why I called the blog Errata – cause it’s chock full of musings, errors and all, meanderings, and down right what the fuckeries all over the damned place.<\/p>\n

It isn’t meant to show off my writing prowess.<\/p>\n

It’s more of a series of brain flatulence or random stream of consciousness of whatever strikes me.<\/p>\n

So anyway, back to the comment from my last entry – I brought up my wacky crazy family life (not that it necessarily detracts from your ball of whacked that may be your family – just sayin’ I got my own that made me the overall freak fest I can be from time to time).<\/p>\n

So I guess there comes a time to acknowledge that.<\/p>\n

We were the Kool-Aid house – and if you need a clarification of that pop-culture ref then you probably ain’t gonna get what I’m on about in this blog entry.<\/p>\n

When we were young we had all of the kids over to our house from the neighborhood. It wasn’t unusual to have 10 or 12 of us running around getting into all kinds of strangeness. I mean once we held a funeral for a cockroach. Yeah, a cockroach. I mean, who does that?<\/p>\n

We did…that’s who. It was more about the spectacle of a Roman Catholic styled funeral and the pageantry of everyone who attended and the morose feelings the assigned mourners had. The matchbox coffin was rather inspired as I recall it – covered in tin foil and carefully crafted marker designs. This roach went out in style!<\/p>\n

Then we got bored with it and tossed the damned thing on top of an ant hill and watched\u00a0those<\/em> fireworks for the better part of an hour as those ants devoured its carcass.<\/p>\n

We also decided one particular summer (I think I was like 11 or 12 at the time) where we all (the kids on our street) had decided enough was enough – we went on chore strike. We outfitted our bikes and wagons with big propaganda signs protesting doing chores (even if we really copped to the fact that our parents were rather generous with our allowances – we were just bored and it was something interesting to do – commiserate with our union brethren, ya know?).<\/p>\n

Yeah, we were a bit strange. Goonies didn’t begin to cover it – though I will admit that when that movie came out we totally thought we got ripped off. Only we were far more gooned out than those normal assed kids were. They went Spielberg Hollywood. We were the ones keepin’ it real.<\/p>\n

We had the whole homie swagger goin’ on. We were freakishly goonie – but we were cool doin’ it.<\/p>\n

So yeah, my being gay – coming out to my parents – eh, not so much of a out of the box thought. Not that I was swishy or anything but my parents just loved us unconditionally and (more importantly) meant it<\/em>! It was more important for me to be happy with who I was than for whatever hopes they had for me.<\/p>\n

I remember my parents saying that – “If you’re happy and your not hurting anyone else or they aren’t hurting you, then I’m good with it.”<\/p>\n

Cool, huh? Yeah, my parents rocked.<\/p>\n

Epically rocked!<\/p>\n

That’s not to say that everything was a bed of roses… well. it sorta was but, as with those beloved flowers, there were thorns along the way. In fact, some things that tripped us up were buried and germinated back then that now, some forty some odd years later, are only just sprouting and quickly testing the ties that bind us.<\/p>\n

One of my sibs is having a tough time. He’s the middle kid with serious middle child issues. They’ve always been there. They’ve always been thorny to deal with. He often masked it with humor – a good sign that there’s an underlying problem.<\/p>\n

Robin Williams had his own demons to grapple with. My brother does too. He has a great sense of humor but it had a definite edge to it. Something that now has led to some serious and debilitating outcomes that the family is trying to sort out along with him.<\/p>\n

I hope he comes out of his current trauma a stronger person. It’s gonna get a helluva lot darker before he ever sees some light. It’s not a good situation. I find I think about him a lot. We aren’t close (not my doing – he pushed nearly all of us away over the years). I want more than anything to be there for him, but I know I am the last person he would ever want there. It’s just how it has played out. I have had very little part of his life over the last twenty years. I’ve kept in touch through my sister and mother (dad passed 15 years ago) to see what he’s up to as they live in a different city from where I am in the SF Bay Area.<\/p>\n

He’s always felt the need to compete with me (though I often said that out doing him was never my goal – I compete with one person in life – ME). I am tough enough on myself, believe me, I don’t even need anyone else to bring it. I do it enough all on my own, little brother.<\/p>\n

But it still hurt that he pushed me away. To be completely sidelined to just one email a year if I was lucky. Often even that wouldn’t happen. The message was clear – I wasn’t wanted in his life. Message received.<\/p>\n

But I wish nothing but love and hope that he makes it through okay. That he’ll be all right. I don’t want him to go through any pain – but I know he will.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if I could’ve done something different. If I could’ve but didn’t then I would wish I could go back and set it right. But I know I can’t and I know it won’t happen. But it doesn’t detract from that singular wish.<\/p>\n

Wow, that went down a dark road, didn’t it? \u00a0I swear sometimes I don’t know where I’ll end up with these things. I start with one thing and the stream just takes me downstream to some end goal.<\/p>\n

I didn’t start this out to go dark. I swear – I guess it’s just where my heads at, at this point.<\/p>\n

Goes to show ya, it never hurts to spread the love… even if it’s from a distance and over digital bit and bytes.<\/p>\n

Love ya, bro.<\/p>\n

Get better…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PS – * The quote in the title came from my dad when he was asked why we had so many damned kids at our house. My dad rocked.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in the Kool-Aid house… -or- “I’d rather have a crap load of kids over my house because at least I’ll know what my kids are up to…”*   So I got a rather interesting response from yesterdays emotive vomit (I really was all over the place with that). I swear I try to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[125,261,48,216,43,199,198,32,169,145,18],"tags":[284,287,290,288,282,283,281,291,286,289,285],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epic-failures","category-geeking-out","category-giving-back","category-journey","category-life-inserts-itself","category-male-feelings","category-men","category-pathos","category-social-issues","category-words-have-power","category-writing","tag-childhood","tag-coming-out","tag-depression","tag-family-life","tag-lil-bro","tag-mental-illness","tag-pablo","tag-relationship-woes","tag-rockin-parents","tag-sibling-rivalry","tag-whacked-families"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p75tPU-bD","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1088,"url":"https:\/\/www.sacollins.com\/blog-wp\/?p=1088","url_meta":{"origin":721,"position":0},"title":"Our Dirty Little Secrets – Part 2","author":"S A Collins","date":"November 8, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Our Dirty Little Secrets - Part 2 \u00a0 \u00a0 My on-going conversation with Savannah Smythe\/Jayne Lockwood on the craft of writing, how gay authors are under represented in our own literary house, and my forthcoming novel - Angels of Mercy. 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