Remembering Don Cornelius.....Would you commit suicide if you had Alzheimer's?

I heard the news via a Facebook post on my feed that Don Cornelius had died. I was immediately taken back to when I was about 10 or so and watching Soul Train in 1976 on a Saturday afternoon. American Bandstand was another one of my favorites and I used to love to watch them both. Dancing the afternoon away, watching the pretty girls in their cool outfits. Learning the Bus Stop and the Hustle and dancing down my own Soul Train Line in the living room of the house on Lincoln Street. I passed by the house on Lincoln street today and it is a sad and ugly house. When I lived there it was a soft pale yellow worn by the sun, with a beautiful green yard manicured perfectly. A white picket fence surrounding the back yard. A lot of memories in that little house, and Saturday afternoons were some of my favorite.
When I came home and heard that Don Cornelius had died from a self inflicted gunshot wound I was even sadder, until I heard it mentioned that there was talk of the onset of dementia. Then I understood why he may have died by is own hand. I have seen several of my family members succumb to Alzheimer's and watched the slow downward spiral of the person they were into a person they would not have wanted to become. My mother was one of them. She suffered from early onset Alzheimer's and that has got to be the cruelest kind of dementia there is. She should have been enjoying her grandchildren, not being taken care of by me and my family. When they informed us of her illness they told us that the type of Alzheimer's she had gave my older sister and I the 50-50 chance of getting it too. We have always kidded that we had oh maybe 20 or 10 good years left to live a life. I know to some of you that sounds morbid or sad, but the truth is, its true.
I have often told my children who vaguely remember their Grandma that if I ever got Alzheimer's I would want to go somewhere, a beautiful island and drink a big margarita and take some pills so that I never woke up. They laugh it off of course, and say "Mom you are not going to get Alzheimer's" but I am serious. I would not want them to give up their life to take care of me and damn it all if I would let them put me in a nursing home. I would not want some stranger wiping my ass, let alone my kids!
I saw the frustration, confusion and fear creep over my mothers beautiful face, and in the end her face was stoic and unemotional and just there. She was somewhere inside that body that betrayed her. I know she was, and when she passed away it was a relief and a comfort to know that she would not suffer anymore. To know that her soul was free.
There are days when I lose my keys or misplace something and waves of anxiety fill me. I wonder is this how it begins, is this how it will be? I don't want to know, in fact I don't want to live if that was to be a prognosis for me.
Is that how the legendary smooth as silk voice talent Don Cornelius felt? Perhaps he wanted to keep his dignity in some measure. I know there are those of you who will say, shooting yourself is not a dignified way out, but who are you to judge? To feel that you have lost your greatest power, ability, existence, to become a shell of the person you once were. Is that what hero's do live and overcome their illnesses? You don't overcome diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, and maybe shooting oneself is a slap in the face to those that live with those diseases, but just the same it all comes back to dignity, dying or living with it, is a choice that no one should have to worry about. Did Don Cornelius suffer from dementia, along with other stresses in his life, this may have been the final blow to a man like him.
Whatever the reason for his departure, he will forever be remembered as the man who brought the lifestyle and the culture of Soul music into homes everywhere.
I will remember this man as the man who taught me to dance and to love music..... that's how he would want to be remembered.

Bullying Is Everyones Problem

I have been wanting to write this for a week now, but being sick I was unable to until today. The reason I became inspired to write this was because of a newscast that I heard. Graduations were happening all over the states and here locally. I was listening to the news and heard a reporter say, "Local teens want to remember student who killed himself at graduation with an empty chair, their principal won't allow it for fear it will upset the bullies who led him to commit suicide."  Yes that is what I heard, at the time it created such an anger in me that I sat and spewed obscenities at the t.v. "Fuck those bullies, were they thinking of this kid or his parents when they were taunting him? Fuck them I hope they all suffer!" My daughter asked me what I was talking about and I told her and she said "Wow!" which is her way of saying "HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT!" As you can see it still creates such a reaction in me that I cannot think of any other way to channel this but to blog about it!

When society places concern for a bully above the memory of a victim and the feeling of the victims family there is a serious problem. Don't get all crazy on me, I have heard of the young man accused of bullying who took his life too, and I have every sympathy for that family as well. A good upstanding family. What created this need to bully in their child, what creates it in any child? Why is it so prevalent today? I only believe it is more noticeable today, and that it is only recently that it has garnered a spotlight because of  its inundation on social media. I was bullied way before Facebook and Myspace, way before youtube.com and way before 4g technology on phones enabled recording of fights.

This is a list of reasons that I have come up with that I was bullied continuously from my earliest memory of bullying to my last. I was bullied as early as 3rd grade when I cut my hair short got called everything from a beetle to a boy how original....here are the rest.....
1. hair cut short
2. being smart, being teachers pet
3. being liked by boys
4. having breasts develop before others
5. being a "whitewashed mexican"
6. thinking I was "too good"
7. not being thin enough
8. having an ass that boys looked at
9. being shy
10. not fitting in
11. being gossiped about as being sexually active when I was not
12. not fighting back
13. being pretty
14. being ugly
15. accused of being gay
16. having a locker next to a cheerleader
17. for being me.....

I actually cried as I wrote this because peoples bullying of me has had a profound effect on my life, it created a lot of doubt in a frail developing person. I began to hate myself and to not want to exist. I withdrew emotionally and stopped attending school because it was a nightmare to go to everyday. I know that a lot of people that knew me back then had no clue at the time that I was so distraught, I hid it very well, by being rebellious and  covering my pain up with humor. My parents had no clue, all they knew was that I went from this smart bright kid to someone they did not recognize in a period of 5 years. The most crucial years from seventh grade to senior year. I hate that part of my life and the power I let others have over me.

In high school believe it or not I wore a smocked blouse to school at orientation, and I was gossiped about as being pregnant I was also bullied by boys who probably had a crush on me... I just didn't know it. It was also during this period that a girl whose initials were LB and was a year under me bullied me the most next to my other bully who I will talk about next. LB had a locker near mine and she made sure to stand in my way daily, sidling up to her boyfriend in typical socie, cheerleader fashion. She would not move and when I would ask her she would mutter things under her breath and call me things like fat, ugly, loser....this went on for the whole year, at the end of the year she took a picture of me, that she had access to because she was on the yearbook staff I believe, if she wasn't a friend of hers was. She photocopied it and posted it on the entrance of the language arts building with the words LOST, implying that I was a dog..luckily someone took it down before I saw it. I still get upset that I did not beat the shit out of her to this day! Because if I could go back in time and beat the HOLY shit out of her I would, terrible I know my teenage self still hates her! Really I feel sorry for her because she had issues of her own obviously.

My last experience with a bully in which I took control, came after several years of torture from a supposed cousin, who called me a bitch daily, people, daily! From seventh grade all the way to junior year! I guess she thought I was trying to be too much of a chola encroaching on her little clique or whatever, I did try to fit in with the little homie element but thank God I got over that really quick! They considered me too whitewashed, too good. Which looking back on it now is laughable! Finally one day passing through the narrow Biology hall, she whispered "bitch" into my ear, I stopped and said "look if I am such a bitch then do something about it!Now... oh that's right your little friends aren't here to back you up.... so will you please leave me the fuck alone!" I don't know where that Krisann came from, but pretty much from that day on I claimed my power over my bullies. It was freeing and empowering. I still had problems with depression  but never acted on thoughts of suicide. I was lucky.

Today the shift in bullying takes on  a sexual aspect and that is very dangerous thing. Where girls like myself may be bullied for their supposed sexual activity, kids today are bullied for their sexual identity. If you present as  too feminine, or too butch you are a target. Looking back at all of the people I grew up with there is not one that I can say I did not know they were either gay or lesbian. You knew...it was unspoken. It was never threatening to me though because their sexuality didn't really matter to me they were first and foremost my friends. Now that I am a parent I listen to my kids and their experiences and I thank God he prepared me to handle bullying. They have been bullied about their race and sexuality. They've been called faggot or dike. They are all girls by the way.... I would not care if they came up to me and said,"Mom I am gay..", it'd be like telling me they want gravy on their potatoes, I'd say "ok."  If they told me they were suicidal then it would be a big deal and I would be the light they needed to make it through the darkness, after all isn't that what a parent is supposed to do?

Yesterday I took the pledge to stop bullying when I see it happening http://www.itgetsbetter.org/page/s/pledge/  I want to encourage you to do the same. To learn more about the pledge go to this link http://www.itgetsbetter.org/  and this link http://www.thetrevorproject.org/

Bullying is everybodies problem, you just don't realize it until it happens to you....



This is the first in a series of blogs dedicated to tolerance....