The Ugly Truth as Written by Ramblin' Rose

The Ugly Truth later renamed so Hollywood wouldn't sue me for copywright infringement. Yahoo Voices has always published everything I have submitted until this one. I think I will adopt my usual attitude and say blep blep em and continue on to write a book.



Begun writing June 26, 2012 6:28pm


The ugliness started at an early age. So early, I can not even remember when. Ugly words thrown about more often than people or fists and even inanimate angry things. My mere survival happened within myself, within papers, collectable rocks, make believe happenings and worlds. Most did not know the oddly imbalanced life we led where mother was a deaconess whose favorite song was “Amazing Grace” and father was a cussing race car driver. I often wonder hwo two such people that crossed paths decided it was a good idea to attempt a happy life together.


I don’t remember my mother or father saying “I love you”. My mother must have, I am sure at some point. I want to throw in a disclaimer and say she did but it is not one of those things that is stuck in my memory. I will acknowledge she said it with birthday cakes she would hide in the kitchen cupboard and with the yardstick she would break across your back. She said it with Ivory soap that would wash my mouth out and stated it again by bringing home government cheese all the while not letting on where it came from. She said it even louder still by surviving ugly dad which I did not discover until much later.


Ugly Dad. Brought up an ugly lad, grew into a delusional ugly old man. He was not physically ugly for he was actually handsome despite his hair that turned not just gray but white before he enrolled in the Navy. He believes so strongly that God speaks to him that he writes endlessly about it, politics, his version of religion and anything else that gets stuck in his head. This from a man who threw my mother down the stairs and smashed both of his kids bikes because we wouldn’t come visit him. I believe it is not God speaking to him but rather his own memories catching up on him that have soiled his mind with such guilt that he can not function in any other way but the way that he does. Delusion. I hope its not catching.

Disclaimer for ugly dad. In all fairness, he is a genius in some aspects. He built his own house on the side of a mountain and built a generator out of a car motor to run his power. He plumbed his house in the most simplest fashion and did not sacrifice shower, sink or toilet unless you don't call a bucket with a lid a toilet. He could name every make, model and year of a car that would fly by us on the highway at lightening speed and he could draw them exceptionally well. He could invent gadgets, drive cars on two wheels and fix nearly anything except for one thing-the most important, himself.



Mother. I fail to say ugly but tainted and troubled, yes. When I was younger I did all I could to please her and always fell short. She was a red headed freckled sometimes christian and sometimes troubled young woman and I understand her woes fully. She lived in a small community after divorcing the ugly dad and lived with constant fear, harassment and irritation. I often wonder if she ever had enough happiness in her life. She died single, with a boyfriend who married someone just months, maybe six months after her leaving us permanently.


Tainted Mother and Ugly father raised two children to their teens almost always together but never really together. Constant fighting it seemed to me. I sometimes search my own memories for something better and I do remember happy times as well. But the fighting... I remember it too vividly.




The fighting escalated more than once to the point that my brother joined in either out of self defense for himself or for mother. Many troubled years later after defending her honor, he took a swung at her himself to which another came back at him. We both left the home this night briefly. This was not the first time we had been asked to leave. So sibling asked to leave because he took a swing at a tainted mother who screamed while drunk and hated the very sight of her children or did she? Daughter who was asked to leave because she screamed at both of them to stop.



Out of such chaos what do you get? One tainted mother who left the earth before the age of thirty seven and one still living ugly father who I wish would vaporize off the earth along with all the other scourge.
One daughter who comes out of it resembling a wild rose. Slightly pungent, a little sweet and thorny who defiantly thrives just enough to see another sunny day. One son who fought for his life and continues to thrive like the rambling rose. We had these, rambling, wild roses that trailed the barbed wire fences and peeked out from behind beat up cars that were left in our driveway to play in.



Rambling rose daughter works each day for what seems a decent wage but for a family of three is below poverty level and just barely above that same level when you add in child support. She lives somewhat frugally and sometimes spends too much. Her family shop thrift stores as they have all of their life and would continue to do so even if more money were to come. At times rambling rose wants to give up and has known at least two people that claims she has saved from uncertain death because she was there for them. Wild pungent rose does not let on that she has had the same thoughts for life has not been easy and she is growing weary of being strong. She just keeps doing what she is able. Rose works. She works for a decent wage and hopes that the tainted and twisted delusional minds that raised her are far from what I she has become so far.



I, the rambling rose daughter has come to the realization and must admit openly that faith in love has been lost and furthermore, at the same time the belief or notion that she ( I ) might find someone that would love her that she could love too seems lost. Loosing love or someone she loved over and over just cemented this sad notion in her head and heart.



I often cry when I write and am reminded that yes, it is a window into my soul. I take little bits of life, memories and what I feel from other people even to write what sometimes makes others cry. I am emphatic and often it hurts me to be around or with people who are hurting. At times, I am better at this than others but often have to exit to save myself. Sometimes, it is I that hurts too much and must exit for fear of falling apart. I wish to be stronger for myself and my own rambling family. I wish to prove to ugly dad that what comes out of chaos can be beautiful. I fear I have fell short once again but don't tell tainted mother for I still have a bit of time. We shall not call it the end until it is truly the end. I am preparing myself.


I have had two cancer scares. Yes, two. It leaves you feeling defeated, cheated and dirty even though you have seemed to gotten a free pass once more. I have lost one child before birth and the feeling of utter despair and wanting to disappear as the life that did not quite come to be leaves you is nearly indescribable. It is a pain so fierce emotionally and physically that it drains you of all desire to move let alone function along with your peers.



I have loved someone and walked away because I knew it was best. I have loved someone and still not forgotten about them even though I know I need to. I possibly sabotage blossoming relationships because I lost faith in love and someones ability to love me and due to my own fear that love just doesn’t exist for me so there is no point. I have loved someone and been moved to words so fluently that I can’t stop them. I have also been moved to the point that what I write I will not share with you because how dare you know whats in my head let alone my shriveling heart.



I hesitate to elaborate on this last subject for I go to extreme measures to not write about love, lost love, someone I love or have loved. I instead write about cranes, death, loss, jetsons, the feeling of the rush of wind in your ear, the gathering of objects and still, about love. For lastly, always, life is about love. Love of one self, love of another, love of what incredible opportunities present themselves everyday and love of simple objects or nature and yes, even created things.


Love must survive a multitude of wrong doings, missed events and misspoken words. Love is fragile yet forever forgiving and ultimately the driving passion that gives us the strength to endure the ugly dads, the tainted moms, the meager paychecks and the screaming kids. Patience of course, helps tremendously. When love is still there but the object of your love has exited, does love really still exist? Yes, I have discovered that it does. Call it what you may. It sits on the back burner, it sprouts and thrives in other places and people.




On to a few closing thoughts. My life so far. Let me sum it up, two years single. A man in her life that befuddles her, seems to love her, hurts her at times without knowing he has and so they go on. Murky and sometimes wonderful for that is how life is. They continue on.


A job. A meager paycheck and demanding tasks that fry her brain. She longs for something more fulfilling, creative and justifying. But she continues on because she must. She is after all, the only one in the household who earns any paycheck.


Two kids. Both special in their own right, one wildly at times hyper four year old and one introverted twenty year old. Paint my rainbow then wash it out is all I am going to say on that subject.


Two bedroom, two bath apartment. Again meager for it is all she can afford. She makes it comfortable, even cozy despite the hot wheels and blankets that get strung across the front room. It will do for now. She grows vegetables and flowers on the deck and misses the gardens she used to have and built from scratch. She does not miss them enough to want her old life back.


So, in final closing~


This wooly mammoth is looking for its last unicorn. Sad, lonely and oddly beautiful mammoth wandering the plains and finding nothing but scraps for life is nearly at its end and time has decided to laugh and mock her. Still, she tries. Often, she cries. So much so that she wakes with swollen eyes and is thankful that no one is around to see. Sometimes she cries because she misses the tainted mother who never was able to see her grow into her own.





She, the daughter, the rambling rose an award winning poet who makes no money at a trade that she wishes she could call her day job. A woman who when she feels broken and down drinks one more drink and dances and pounds her feet defiantly into the ground. When her hair flies as she dances, she laughs instead of shedding tears that threaten to fall. They can all hear her laugh and fail to see the tears that sit just at the corners of eyes that look much younger than her forty four years. They believe her eyes are red from the drink but she is actually on the brink. The brink of despair and the things that save her are also the very ones that drive her there.


Who is she? This rambling rose who lays no claim to be anyone’s daughter...


She is struggling mother
defiant dancer
troubled soul seeker
adamantly helping friends
when she ought to help herself


She is busy bee worker
struggling to keep up
drinking burnt coffee
out of a Starbucks ceramic cup


She is sometimes lover
and dreamer
and hand holder
with a broken heart
that she appears to mend


Yet it falls apart
over and over again



Written by Tera L. Vermillion
finished around 930 pm including a dinner break