Pieces of Me (Excerpt)

I refilled my empty glass with the last of the Riesling and bantered for several minutes with some friends, both old and current. My best friends thought they knew how involved my life was, others could only guess. With all of them, I was just elusive enough so they remained uncertain. A private person at heart, admitting just how lonely I’d become would be acknowledging something I just wasn’t able to. Loneliness, along with anger had become my constant companion as well as my greatest motivator. All we ever are to the world is what we pretend to be. We are in constant conflict between the person we are meant to be and the person the world expects of us. My life, however outwardly functional, was a dismal mess.

Pieces of Me (Excerpt)

My fingers frantically pounded the keyboard. The louder he talked, the faster my hands moved, an attempt to block out the nastiness that filled my ears. Writing was my coping mechanism, but he knew me too well, and now even that was corrupted. He was envious of anything I had that was just for me.
Married at twenty-one after one child out of wedlock and I still couldn’t believe that this is what my life had become. Twelve years. Twelve years of marriage to a man emotionally stunted by a dysfunctional childhood. We’d recognized that dysfunction in one another and clung to it. Two lonely and scarred children futilely attempting to piece together a semblance of the family neither had ever had but both had always wanted. Constructing a faulty bridge to happiness with no blueprint. Two damaged individuals destroying one another bit by bit.

Alone

Sometimes it seems we spend our whole lives searching. Searching for satisfaction and for peacefulness. Searching for a sense of worth and most of all for connections with others. We convince ourselves that those connections will change us somehow, and they do. Within those connections we feel whole, joyful even, if only for a brief moment.Our relationships with others is where love is,and within that is a brief glimpse of what happiness could be. Yet, in the end we are really just alone. Alone with ourselves and our choices. Alone with our mistakes and our failures, our flaws, with the knowledge that the very connections that make us most alive are the same that leave us most alone.

Chaos in an Orderly World

I am chaos in an orderly world. Disorderly, demanding and potentially destructive. I am weakness in a structured life, creating cracks and fatal flaws, but causing the realization that things were broken. I am a storm, a strongly blowing wind, whipping, stirring the calm and sweeping loudly through, changing the landscape in unanticipated, unexpected and often unappreciated ways while clearing away the clutter, causing heartrending loss. I am
the rain, torrential and hard, pounding painfully, but soaking the ground to create new life. I am unafraid, unapologetic and unable to stop.
I am chaos in an orderly world.
But chaos can create change, can cause inspiration, can lead to uplifting clarity. Chaos can cause you to feel more deeply than you have ever felt before. Chaos can show that you are stronger than you ever thought you could be. Chaos can lay bare your life and make you carefully examine what it means to live, to love, to be. Chaos forces creation, creativity, and consciousness that the most powerful thing on this earth are the relationships we build with others.
I am chaos. Chaos can be beautiful.

Broken

Trust is a funny thing because once it is broken, it cannot be fixed. Each day, we set a series of small expectations for people in our lives; to get a report done, to answer a phone message, to meet an obligation here or there. We trust that these needs will be met. At certain points in our lives, we risk a much greater trust; our safety, our future, our hearts. The last may be the greatest leap of faith At least for me, to trust someone with my heart is a thing I have great difficulty with. It requires a choice to open myself up or close myself off in self-protection. My heart has been so mistreated in the past that I tend to build a wall around it, protecting it from the inevitable brokenness that will occur. Once in a great while, I slip. Persuaded, charmed, trusting, believing that this time has to be different because of words spoken and promises made. Wanting it SO badly that I am willing to take a chance. Needing to believe I am worthy of experiencing happiness and that, yes, greatness can happen to me. Yet I find myself again, picking up the pieces of my broken heart. Pieces scattered and discarded by the carelessness of others. And I find myself wondering again, what makes me unworthy of love? I realize that I must be fundamentally flawed, constructed wrong, broken, like my worthless heart.

SO we circle back around again....

Life tends to circle back around on us, biting us on the ass from behind. And so, while we think we are experiencing something new, something we are willing to take a risk for, in actuality we are riding a merry-go-round back to where we began. A vicious cycle of the same mistakes repeated or the same heartache experienced over and over since childhood. I guess, really, the only way to avoid the heart breaking pain and devastation is to step right off the merry-go-round.

Happy

It does not take much to make me feel happy; a small kindness here or there, a tiny reminder that my company is desired, an acknowledgment that my thoughts and ideas matter. I was trained for years to set expectations low and be content if peacefulness is accomplished. Phenomenal elation and exquisite pleasure weren't high priorities or even likely possibilities. So I am easily pleased by simple things.
Conversely, I am quickly disappointed by the smallest slight. A too-short smile, an abbreviated attention to things, a missing focus on my needs. Daily life can lead to a massive heaving from high to low. Desperately, I attempt to strike a balance between. The mediocrity of not really feeling, in full, the emotions that each day brings.
But I wobble, ever so slightly, back and forth, up and down.

And so the slightest thing can make me smile...or cry.

Crazy

Sometimes I believe we are all a bit crazy, myself especially. I wake up every morning and repeat a cycle of safe choices or terrible errors, expecting each day to end differently. Outwardly, my life seems normal, safe even. But is anything ever what it appears to be? What is wrong with getting a little wild sometimes? Is it so bad to actually live life instead of just repeating the same safe motions again and again?
I admit I tend to think outside the box, but sometimes the box is so mundane, so ordinary. As a child, I longed for that kind of everyday normalcy. As a teen, I enveloped myself in rebellious individuality. As an adult, well, I am not really sure what I want. I know I want to wrap myself in people who are kind and caring, interesting and uplifting. I long for it, really. But I also crave the titillation of maximizing the potential happiness of each moment. Taking a risk to fulfill a desire. So many people take the safe road through life. I never really have. More often than not, that road has led to great disappointment or caused me enormous shame. Once in every great while, though, it leads me to something deeply emotional and brings pleasure beyond imagine.
So, which road to follow today? The path of safety and predictable consequences? The one of normalcy I longed for as a child?
Or follow the path of the minute? One that is littered with unpredictability?
I have always been a little bit crazy....

Keri Lock CRACKED (Excerpt 10)

I opened my eyes, images of Rob burned in my head, my cheeks flushed with shame. I’d acted so thoughtlessly with him. Neither of us had said a thing to Michele about that night. She’d broken up with him a few months later.
I could tell by the quiet that it was either late in the night or very early in the morning. Someone had dimmed the lights in my room and the soft beeping of some machine softly sounded from beside my bed. A brighter light came from the hall and the body of some medical staffer sometimes walked by.
Laying there alone, I searched my brain for any clue to how I had gotten there. The medical staff either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell me. I couldn’t remember, but my aching body told me much more than I wanted to know.
I gazed into the dark, recognizing the outline of a white tipped hat leaning in a chair close to me. Bertha.
I called to her, “Bertha. Bertha!”
I saw her thick figure slowly moving in the dark and then she was beside me, turning on the reading lamp over my head.
“Hello, dear. Are you all right? What can I do for you?”
“My face is pounding. Is it time for more drugs, yet?”
She smirked at me.
“Let me just go ask the nurse about that. I’ll be right back with you.”
A few minutes later, she returned with a night nurse who took my temperature and administered the meds. With the room fully lit, I saw that Bertha was no longer dressed in her candy striper uniform. Instead, she was wearing a violet velour track-suit and white running shoes. What I’d thought was her cap was actually a shiny, white net, intended to keep her hair styled while she slept.
I eyed her suspiciously. “Why are you here?” I asked her.
She looked at me, surprised. “It’s my job, Miss Becker.”
“Don’t call me that. My name’s Missy.”
“Okay, Missy.”
“Bertha, what time is it?” I asked her.
“Oh, clock says four-thirty am” she answered me.
“Don’t they let you go home?” I asked, forgetting, again, how much to hurt to smile.
“I told you I was going to wait with you until your kin showed up. Dr. Cohen called them. They said they were coming.”
I thought about that.
“They won’t come,” I said.
Bertha reached out and covered my hand with her big, soft one.
“Then I will stay.”

CRACKED (Excerpt 9) by Keri Lock

Don’t move,” he grunted, stepping with effort through the snow. I wobbled with his imbalance.
After several minutes, we made it over to the car, me perched precariously in the air. I was oblivious to any danger. Breathing heavily, Rob grasped my buttocks, pulling me forward in one motion and lowering me to the ground. He grunted with effort.
“Jeez, Rob,” Michele watched, shivering in the freezing wind. “She only weighs a hundred pounds.”
“Ha, ha,” he grumbled. “It’s not that, smart ass. My feet are sliding all around in the snow.” He sounded annoyed with her.
I released a drunken giggle, some part of my brain finding that humorous.
Rob and Michele were both seniors at Ohio University. He played football and she played soccer. The perfect couple.
Rob eyed me, smiling, “You are wasted, little girl.”
“I’m not a little girl!” I protested, indignant, slapping his chest with one hand.
“Whatever you say,” he winked at me.
“Brrr. I’m cold,” my teeth chattering. “Can we go home now?”
“Get your grown up ass in the car,” he said, smacking my rear as I leaned forward into the back seat.

CRACKED (Excerpt 8) by Keri Lock

“All I’m saying is if she had tried a little harder to keep him happy; fixed herself up, put away the booze, who knows? Things might be different. She never tried to make him stay.”
Venom spewed forth from my lips, “You know NOTHING! You are nothing but a stupid, senile, old hag! Get out of my room!”
“Missy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it”.
“GET!” I leaped from the bed and shoved at her with flailing arms.
Speechless, she limped from the room, me slamming the door behind her.
I stood there, stunned. An invisible energy raced down my limbs, sapping every ounce of strength.
My knees buckled.
With a thump, I collapsed to the floor, staring at the ceiling above. Beams of light shone though the window and danced a musical game on the wall.
He was gone.
Again.

Cracked by Keri Lock (Excerpt 7)

We stood quietly, stunned. This was a first. The man was snoring, face down, body balanced on a huge belly, dimpled buttock slightly raised. The pale flesh of his middle lay in thick folds, scarred with angry, red lines. His bulk looked oddly misshapen, almost inhuman. Curious, I leaned forward, peeking over one massive shoulder to his face.
“Stop!” Michele whispered, “Don’t get any closer! He might wake up.”
“Who is he?” I asked, ignoring her request. Inching closer, I inspected the side of his pudgy face. Red cheeks swollen, hair matted with sweat, he emitted a low guttural snort, like a pig. Reflexively, I jumped back. It was the noise that had frightened me in the dark.
“Mom’s new boyfriend?” Michele guessed, curiosity, overpowering caution. She stepped closer.
“What about Joey?” I asked, glancing at her. My sister had never liked our mother’s on-again, off-again boyfriend.
“Maybe he’s out of the picture” in a hopeful voice “but I guess this isn’t any better” she motioned towards the stranger. We stared, fascinated by his mass.
As we looked, the enormous man turned his head and vomited violently onto the yellow shag of the carpet. The churned mess slowly spread, soaking the flooring with flakes of brown waste. The putrid stench of soured milk and bile filled my nostrils making me gag convulsively. I ran from the room. Michele followed me to the bathroom, wiping my face with a wet cloth when I was through being sick.

Cracked (Excerpt 6)

The air was stifling. Summoning every bit of courage in my seven-year-old body, I inched my fingers along the satin edging of the blanket, widening a tiny opening. Unsullied air wafted in and I gulped it greedily, louder than I intended.
A disturbing snivel exploded somewhere in the room, followed by a series of retching noises. Under the quilt, my body trembled and acted of its own accord. The scream emerged soundless, impeded by my suffocating circumstance.
Frenzied clawing released me from my cotton cavern. I gasped. Inhaling powerfully, sound exploded from my mouth, the volume reverberating in my ears.
“MOMMY! MOMMY, MOMMY, MOMMY!” my screams continued, one uninterrupted sequence.

Cracked (Excerpt 5)

His rough grip left a bruise. I noticed it forming as I ripped my arm from his hold. Frantically, I slapped out, my palms stinging as they met the boney part of his shoulder. Being several inches shorter and many pounds lighter, it was the only area of his body I could reach. Sobbing at my own vulnerability, I turned to flee.
He laughed, grabbing onto both my hands with his one and stilling them in his vise-like grip. Stepping forward, he pushed me back onto the black velour of the sofa, my back bent in an impossible position. I sank down, head tilted painfully to one side; neck feeling as though it would break.


Trying to wriggle free, I managed to become even more entangled in the fabric of the sofa and my own body. My shirt inched up, exposing my, still tan, belly. Brutally, he plowed his knee into my soft flesh, holding it there, as I struggled for air. Breathing raggedly now, I struggled against his entrapment and the control he had over me. Frustration, as I realized I was, once again, powerless.

Life like Clay....

The molding of a life, not a map or a plan. Life, really has no map that we can follow. We can hope and work but so much is guided by the people we become because of things that happened to us long before we were in control; the people we encounter, the experiences we have, the traumas we endure. Each marks us, molds us, adds this detail or that. Each little bit of a personality becoming stronger or weaker, each character trait developing based on our interactions with others, either selfish or selfless. We never really recognize this until forced to, sometimes slapped in the face with it. Some unexpected event or dramatic conversation acts as a wake-up call. Until then, we never really know ourselves. We just act as the person we think we should be, or hope to be, always wondering why we are never truly filled up inside. The recognition that we never really accepted ourselves makes it clearer why others, maybe, don't accept us either. Every flaw magnified, each mistake enlarged, dramatized. Understanding that we don't develop who we are, but that other people do, is like the death of a loved one. Deny, accept, mourn, heal. Then be who we are meant to be, love ourselves, be happy, enjoy life. Screw up sometimes and don't feel too bad. From this day forward, we are who we want to be.

Novel

Renee’s parents had been shocked when she told them she was leaving Greg. She’d never mentioned a word to them about their problems, trying to protect them from the unpleasant knowledge of their daughter’s failures as a wife and the reality that their son-in-law was a jackass. Though they weren’t Catholics like Greg’s parents, divorce was still rare among their circle. Initially, they’d worked to talk her out of the divorce, even tried to persuade her to seek counseling. That had been Greg’s doing.

Somehow, he’d convinced her parents that she’d become a different person. A selfish, jealous, unhappy wife and mother. Of course he’d blamed their problems on her. He tried to tell them she had been abusing drugs and even needed to be rehabbed. Renee had been furious when she realized the lies Greg had told about her. She’d known he was desperate to hang on but hadn’t thought he’d sink so low. It had taken all her powers of persuasion to convince her parents that Greg had been lying to everyone.
“Mother, how could you take his side over mine? You are MY mother!”
“Renee, we just want what’s best for you and the girls. We love you and Greg and Missy and Michele. Let us help you!” her mother had cried tearfully. Her father stared at the floor, unable or unwilling to participate in the conversation. Renee felt his shame and rage washed over her.
“Daddy, you believe all those lies? You honestly think I am lying to you?” she called to him, intentionally drawing him into the fray.
“I don’t know what to believe, Renee. Nothing is what we thought it was. You aren’t the person we used to know”, quietly, slowly, painfully. He wouldn’t meet her eyes and she stood, glaring angrily at him.
“Daddy, please. I need you. I can’t do this without you. Think of the girls. Daddy, look at me!” intentionally standing directly in front of him so he had to turn his head away to avoid her gaze.
“Renee, maybe just for a while. Go to that hospital and they will make you better. It won’t take long. We’ll take the girls until you are home” her mother had pleaded, agony in her voice.
Ignoring her mother, Renee gently reached up and turned her father’s face towards her “Daddy. Please. I am your only child. Your daughter. Your baby. I am in trouble and I need you. Please believe me” speaking softly and only to him. Her mother sobbed uncontrollably from across the room.
“You promise me? They are all lies? The drugs, the tantrums, the other men? All those stories he told us are lies?” he questioned, finally looking deeply into her eyes.
She met his stare and held it “Yes Daddy. I promise. I need you to believe me”.
“I do, Renee, I do” hugging her tightly. Her mother walked over to them and encircled them both with her arms. Renee still felt hurt when she remembered that afternoon. Something had changed between her and her parents that day, something that would never be the same again.

Novel

Novel by Keri Lock
(No part of this may be reproduced without the express permission of the author)
November 1978
Standing at the counter in the upstairs bathroom, she could hear the girls arguing in the kitchen. Sighing, she swiped at the tears stinging her eyes. “How am I supposed to do this on my own?” she whispered to her reflection in the mirror.

She felt old. She looked old. The lime colored paint on the wall behind caused her complexion to appear green. She turned away from her image, angry, a wave of nausea rolling over her. It had only been two months since the divorce was finalized and the exhaustion was overwhelming. Trying to be all things to her daughters was taking every ounce of energy she had. Work all day, pick the girls up, make dinner, help with homework, put the girls to bed, laundry, cleaning, packing lunches and into bed at midnight only to get up and do it again the next day, never a moment, not one, for herself.

Pieces of Me

by Keri Lock (No part may be reproduced without the express permission of the author)

I developed many surface friendships with girls, and a small group of boys. I had a social group, a gang who consistently accepted my presence among them. There slowly grew a handful of people, who, for the most part and God knows why, accepted me for exactly what I was. I will say right now that but for two of them, Jessie and Gabby, I likely either would have dropped out of school or been committed at some point. Sensing I needed their protection, they kept me grounded enough to get me through most of High School without having a nervous breakdown. I have never asked them how they knew exactly what I needed from them. They loved me fiercely, and I them.

I have not had such openness, such unquestioned loyalty from female friends since that time and am not sure I ever will again in my lifetime. I took what they gave and offered little of myself in return. They certainly knew more about me than others did, but still, my real ideas, thoughts, dreams were kept locked away. As close as we were, I never exposed half my true-self to either of them, even when Jessie lived at my house for the last three months of our Sophmore year of High School. Her father had been transferred to Florida, and had decided, in response to our tears and heartfelt pleas, to let her stay at my house so she could finish the school year. She spent every waking moment with me for weeks and still, I confounded her. But, to her credit, though she sensed the otherness, she never pushed me away as others had. It only made her hang on more tightly to me. Sometimes during one of those innocent moments of transparency that happens in young friendships, she might share some intimate detail with me; about her dream to go to Law School and become a trial attorney, about love or her relationship with her parents.

She’d quietly pour out her heart in the darkness of my bedroom, trusting me to hold her deepest, darkest secrets dear. Then she’d silently wait for me to share with her. All I had to offer in return was lighthearted sarcasm about my future, kids of divorce and how I’d probably never get married. It was complete and total pretense and we both knew it. She never called me on it, but would give me a hurt look, after having delved into her most personal depths and still I couldn’t be myself with her. Yet, Jessie knew there was more to me; I often shared my writing with her. I just couldn’t talk about it. For the sake of the moment, I would try to offer up some sacrifice, some small part of myself that I hadn’t shared with anyone. It usually fell flat but the gesture would satisfy her and she would laugh, “You are SO WEIRD!” She knew me best.

Rejection

Reaching deep into my chest and twisting my heart painfully, rejection tells me I am not good enough, I am not worthy. Rejection denies me my truest dream, one I have worked for an immense amount of time. It rips away the status-quo and exposes me for a failure, a fraud. It makes me question what I know about myself, what I feel, what I think. Rejection topples my confidence and leaves it into an irreparable pile of rubble. And I wonder. How can my everything be so dependent on this one thing?
It is not, I know. But so much of me is in it. So much of myself exposed and open. Rejecting it is the same as rejecting me, my validity as a human being, as an artist.

My Generation

My Generation offers a contradiction to society and history, alike. While the one previous to ours is known for their vocal advocacy for peace and forthrightness of government, and those prior to that as dedicated to country, sacrificing and selfless, the population of Generation X are at once selfish and sarcastic, caustic towards the overly principled, critical of the self confident.
We were at first known as the slacker generation, a lost age, named thusly because of our lack of ambition, or so it seemed. It is said we were self expressive to a fault, self absorbed and shallow, we seemed interested only in now. Immediate gratification was our mantra. We depended on our parents for financial support, long past they had theirs. We changed college majors three and four times, or dropped out all together. We had no sense of responsibility, slept in late, called in sick to our menial jobs, skipped classes and bragged about it. We complained about our lot and felt shorted when life didn't offer itself up on a Golden Platter. We were self interested and self seeking. We would accomplish nothing, or so it was said, written off as a failure of an entire generation. We took for granted things that the greater eras had fought for. We were unappreciative and immature, wearing flannel shirts and smoking pot while listening to Suicide Rock and writing poetry to memorialize Kurt Cobain.
Much is written about the failure of Generation X to contribute to the greater good or think beyond today. Yet little is said about how this failure phenomenon was created. There is no book examining the impetus of our morals or research determining the catalyst of our isolationism. "Experts" are sometimes quoted as saying we were given everything, worked for nothing and there were no expectations of us. And my generation says nothing. It is as though we are too unapproachable or imbecilic to contribute or respond.
It is true. We are Generation X for a reason. But is isn't because our childhoods were
idyllic and easy or because we are too self absorbed to care about the future. It is because we are damaged. We are children of a generation who valued personal freedom over selfless devotion to family. We are children of a generation who divorced often and easily, resulting in throwaway relationships. We were throwaway children, deemed by experts as "self resilient", our parents were told we'd adjust and it was better to move on and not to indulge us when we acted out. Our feelings were neither considered nor valued. We are the result of feminism, where woman, mothers, were told not only could they have it all, but they SHOULD have it all. So we were left with countless babysitters, daycare providers and relatives while our parents indulged themselves in supporting the "greater good", while our single parents partied and while adults came and went in our lives, never dependable or constant. We learned not to depend on anyone but ourselves, not to trust that tomorrow would be what we expect and that the future is NOT in our control. We were not listened to and our concerns were not taken seriously. We were immediately deemed less important than the prior generation because we had no noble cause to unite around, no difference to make in our world.We are Generation X because we were not given a name, allowed a voice or determined to matter.
But we do matter and we are making a difference. We care about our environment and are changing the way that people view the earth. We are willing to change our lifestyle, live outside the box, do what is not easy in order to save it. We are tolerant of all people, religions, races, lifestyles and cultures, without exception. We realize that America is not the center of the universe and care about how the rest of the world lives. We play very different role in our families than our parents did. We are not the central figures, but our children are. We are stay-at-home moms and dads, volunteering in their classrooms, involved in their activities. We make decisions based on their emotional well-being instead of our own personal ambition or desire. We are there. Even when we divorce, we accept non-traditional versions of family in order to maintain stability. We teach our children that they matter. And we have learned that we have a name, it is Mom and Dad, Brother, Sister, Lover, Teacher, Lawyer, Friend. We are neither feckless nor uncaring. We are here and we have a voice. Despite we were were taught when we were children, we matter.