not wasting any time!

My whole life was wasted on total bullshit.  Today I’m not wasting any time!  I wasn’t allowed to go to school as a child because my father thought that once you “join hands with the world” you go to the dark side.  The world was bad – especially the United States! As a matter of fact, the US was so bad that it was doomed to be destroyed, something that would occur in 2012.  We knew because my grandfather -Alma Dayer LeBaron – dreamed it.  Enlightenment was supposed to come to Mexico at the same time that the US was in total chaos & bloodshed.  These were my childhood stories.  We were hiding out in Mexico to prepare.

School wasn’t for us. Learning how to socialize, be part of everyday life, knowing how to move around in society, etc., all that was a world far away.  Kinda like Mars.  We were forced to eat too healthy, having to eat cabbage instead of cookies (everything can be taken to an extreme!), and we didn’t get new clothes. My shoes were one size too big and had holes in them.  Being a shoe lover, one of the saddest things to me was not having good shoes! My lack of proper shoes & clothing went hand-in-hand with my lack of parents.

Being an “Orphan” is a state of consciousness.  It’s how you relate to yourself in the world.  I wanted new clothes so dang bad because it meant that I was no longer an Orphan (with a capital O).  In Austin I would pass the Burlington Coat Factory on my way home from work, and if I had 17 extra dollars to spare (forget paying rent!), I would spend them on earrings because they had to match my new outfit.  It was useless to try to drive pass it because of the intensity of the anxiety attacks that I would have–over not being able to buy those earrings!  Burlington Coat Factory sold very cute earrings for $5, I could afford it! But once I go in the store, I realize there are so many other things I need, and should buy–right now.  

Even though I bought the earrings every now and then, I still didn’t have the clothes I wanted, for my idea of style was beyond what I could ever afford.

Side Note: In a state of Great Orphanness, there is no way a person can handle money & success. No way. The big, bleeding hole of heartache and lack of meaning and importance to anyone, makes a person compensate by blowing money on superficial things.  I connect this to many Third World problems.  Some poor people spend all their money on a fancy truck instead of education.  I know how they feel.  I know too deeply! Ahhh, but I can’t solve those problems! I can only solve mine.

What heals the Orphan Consciousness is something so simple, yet so difficult.  Wanna know? Allowing yourself to grieve. Cry it all out of your system! Do emotional healing therapies like Reiki or whatever else there is out there that can bypass the intellect and go straight for the emotional wound.  Talking therapy doesn’t work because the intellect/mind/personal judgment/idea of reality gets in the way.  Energy healing cleans things out of your system that you have no idea exist! (Your mind blocks them out because you need to survive).

So I lived my life preparing for big things like the imminent destruction of the United States and the Enlightenment of Mexico.  Mexicans were the new chosen people.  I read the bible, book of mormon, Brigham Young’s teachings, Joseph Smith’s teachings, the entire collection called “Journal of Discourses” (what the early mormon leaders taught), and other random mormom books.  I also ready all my father’s literature.  I was committed and prepared for anything by age 9.  Anything.

What a big fucking waste of time! I guess the good thing is that I learned how to read. Oh, by the way, those were the days that I used to fill up notebooks with my drawings of horses. Out in the desert of Mexico where we were hiding, we had horses, cows, goats, pigs & chickens and names for each animal.  We sang to them, talked to them, pet them, and yes, ate them.  We used to ride out in the desert caring for the cows just like western cowboys.  My brother even had a cowboy hat and a rifle, which he knew how to use really well. He could shoot a hawk down from the distance of a football field! That kid was good, and he knew it. He was super good at riding horses as well. Much better than me.  I was the little sister that tagged along and begged to ride too. It took me a year of begging and nagging for my family to trust me on the animal by myself.  And I didn’t fall! I didn’t fall off a horse until I got so good I could run races bareback.  It was when the horse was flying that I had my one and only accident.  I was scraped and bleeding, but I jumped back on because the boys were watching and I dare not look weak in front of them.

I guess that wasn’t a waste of time. I will never regret escaping to horseland because life was too dreadful–both the present and the dark future that we all knew was coming.  Later in life, when the prophesies kept not coming true, I would dream of being a normal girl in the world. We weren’t allowed to have those “vain” thoughts though! God was watching and taking note.  One day, years later, we took our extremeness to the extreme and burnt all of our encyclopedias and any book that wasn’t LeBaron-Mormon-Cult related.  We made a big bonfire in our backyard (now living in Monterrey, Mexico) and my teenage sister cried as she threw in her beloved high heel shoes.

I didn’t try to rebel. I couldn’t help it. There was no force in me stronger than the force that pushed me to make friends.  We weren’t allowed to talk to people.  But I couldn’t help it.  I made friends with the neighbors and learned to speak Spanish again.  But I couldn’t come out and play if at home it was time to pray.  We all kneeled in a circle to say our pre-Armageddon prayers.

My friends still loved me even if they knew there was something weird about my family, and about me. I couldn’t say a lot of things. We had fake names and were still hiding from the law.  My older siblings had just been imprisoned and two were running, and coming on the news quite a bit.  Things were getting really tough for us and God was going to curse us and the whole world if we didn’t straighten out.  I think this is what lead us to the infamous bonfire.  Even though we had no money, everyone left their jobs.  The world is bad, remember? We had to quit faking that we could join the world and have normal jobs.  Everyone except my sister Estephania who called it all bullshit at the risk of going to hell forever.  She was one of the trailblazers and the main actor in leading us out of the cult. She not only took a job in the world, she became a model. That’s like a nun doing a sex act on TV! It was really, really bad!.  Oh, she took things to the next level by having a boyfriend who had nothing to do with our religion and didn’t even know we were a thing.  He was just a normal kid going to high school.  Then she had another boyfriend and another one.

I loved her but I was not going to be bad like her.  I was just having friends.  And they were girls.  I wouldn’t even talk to the boys–except for one best friend.  They all wanted to get my attention, and god knows why, because I was such a weird girl, but I was so popular.  Everyone knew my name and I had no idea who they were.  If a boy was calling me as I was walking somewhere, I wouldn’t look at him.  I would just walk by with my stuck-up attitude, which was the only thing I knew how to do.  We were born to save the world, remember? I was way too good for anyone.  On top of that, I knew I was pretty.  Of course I was! I was may dad’s daughter.  Even if he didn’t know I existed and never wrote me a letter, I was still his daughter and I carried his genes.  That made me very special.

After a few months of being homeless because everyone quit their jobs and everyone in the US was in jail and couldn’t send us money, my older sisters, one by one, went out and found jobs.  I eventually got a job too.  I became and English teacher and had to wear high heels and a lot of make-up to make myself look old enough to work.  I was 13 pretending to be 17.  Or sometimes 16.  Sometimes 20. Depends who I was talking to and what story came out of my mouth then.  My name was Rosy Alexander and I was from Denver. (I actually lived in Denver for a short while as a 3 or 4 year old).  I couldn’t tell you anything about the town or where I went to high school.  It was really bad when I met someone who was from Denver too!  I didn’t talk to him.

Somewhere along the line I decided to put myself through the Mexican equivalent of GED but at grade school level.  It’s called Primaria Para Adultos.  This is what people do when their family couldn’t afford to send them to school, and they’re pass the age to be in 3rd or 4th grades.  I don’t think they’ve ever seen an English speaking person in class!  The only ones who spoke English were the rich kids who went to expensive private schools, and of course, gringos. I was neither gringa nor was I a rich kid.  What was my story?

I couldn’t tell them that the United States was going to be destroyed, that my grandfather dreamed it and he was a great prophet and I had lived my life in preparation for that.  Those were our well kept family secrets.  As anyone would guess, I got really good at inventing stories as the moment called for them.  I had as many personalities as I needed.  They were ready and beamed down at any moment.  My friends loved me anyway. So did their mothers.  As a matter of fact, the mothers loved my so much they all wanted to adopt me! I ate up all their attention, and their tamales.  They brought me food when I was stuck in the house taking care of the little kids.  They didn’t judge me for taking Primaria Para Adultos.  They didn’t care!  Because of this, my whole life I knew that Mexico loved me.  And I loved Mexico.  I was Mexican with my friends and their mothers, and would not be gringa ever. 

When my older siblings were calling everything we believed in bullshit and moving to the United States, of course I didn’t want to go.  I even schemed of all the ways in which I was going to run away! In spite of that, when the moment came, I was in my sister’s Jeta headed for the US–forever.  It wasn’t my choice!  I cried every day and I missed my friends.  The people in the US were cold and heartless.  I thought they were evil, which was why God was going to destroy them. It was getting nearer and nearer.  Of course, I couldn’t confess that I thought that!  I worked hard, tried to act normal and make friends.  Unlike Mexico, the American teenagers don’t accept you if you’re weird, which I was.  And everyone belonged to a religion I didn’t like or understand. I wouldn’t join, and they wouldn’t talk to me if I didn’t join.  But I thought they were all somewhat stupid.  They acted stupid! I was grown up and knew smart things, these were kids still acting like spoiled children.  But I still wanted friends!  With all this friendlessness, the intensely loved and popular girl in Mexico began to whither and die, and someone new was being born.

That new person was the rebel, the artist, the defy-everything-in-the-world girl. She was the wild one. She wanted to blow past all lines. Her song went like this “I want to go too far, I want to go too fast, someone draw the line so I can blow right past”.  I lived out those words for years.  She learned how to dance salsa and became the best, so much so, that everyone would clear the floor when she was dancing.  She worked in bars that she would never confess to her family she’d even been to.  All form of religion went down the drain.  She abandoned all and went to live in the jungle.  She came back and painted circles… more and more circles.  She thought and thought and thought.  She began to weave a new reality.  One that fit her size.  Her family broke her heart because they didn’t approve of her rebellious and wild ways.  She wouldn’t change.

Underneath it all, the great Orphanness kept emerging, and she would “crash and burn” as her friend Wendy would call it.  Completely fall out of orbit.  Keep a job? Are you kidding me?! Never once did drugs. Never crossed her mind. But she did do tequila, and lots of it. Now she does whiskey. Before she had thousands of stories to remember and keep straight.  Today she has one story–but with many arms and legs!

Today she dreams of learning all the things she could never learn growing up. Stuff like history and how to write well. She wants to be educated and smart.  She also wants to paint great things, and sing again! Yes, sing for sure.  She doesn’t want to work at stupid jobs that get her nowhere. She’s already wasted too many years on bullshit. Today she’s not wasting any more time.