Published Poet

http://www.poetry.com/historical_users/273117-Abby%20%20%20Manatt/595260-Wasted-Away

 Abby Manatt

We love because we must 
were bitter because we cannot trust 
We lie because we're ashamed, 
there's so many problems in which we get blamed 
We wear the clothes and play the part 
not realizing the strain put on the heart. 
We walk through life with a smile 
letting no one know of the triumphs on the trials 
We're swallowed by humanity 
then give up claiming insanity 
Joking and laughing and wondering why 
staring in the mirror and starting to cry. 
Realizing we've wasted it all away 
wishing to do it all over, praying for one more day. 
It seems we've committed suicide 
by never getting off the crazy life ride. 
We've done it the same as everyone before, 
never taking a new path, or opening a new door. 
Now life has passed us by, 
and we look back and forever wonder why.

It's interesting to look back to the first poem I got published at the ripe old age of 13.  Reading this often makes me wonder, why at age 13 did I feel so strongly about lie & everything it encompasses.   I have always been someone with a deep sense of life and it's "meaning."  My emotional pendulum has always swung very wide.  While I am much wiser with age & now understand that the meaning of this life is for me to never understand or know, but rather live and figure out day by day, triumph after mistake, lesson after trial.  I still look back at this very first poem & find myself in awe, as to how the poem I wrote as, basically a child, still rings so true to the beliefs I still hold dear.  Many things have changed over the course of the years but somehow "I" have managed to still be me in, one way or another, for at least 20 years from the time I wrote it's poem.  Always believe in who you are and what you believe, no matter what age you figure that out for yourself.  Get off of that crazy life ride and do it different than those before.  Make your mark, make your story, make your life YOURS and only yours.  Make it one to be proud of and one to be remembered, not one that has to look back and ask why.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Back to School I Go

I decided about 2 weeks ago to finally quit talking and dreaming about going back to school, let go of my fears, trust in God that everything will work out as it is suppose to and just do it already.  For Christ's sake I have never held back on anything else in my life or let fear stand in my way before....I mean really I had 2 kids before I was married or even 24 for that matter.  I guess I just realized that when it came down to it fear wasn't what was stopping me before, it was a free spirit with a carefree attitude.  Nothing like 2 kids and a family to kill those qualities in a hurry.  I thought about this and realized I did not like this attitude, not one bit.  If anything it was my free spirit and carefree attitude that I want to desperately pass on to my own children.  I want them to see the fun in life and the way that life can change, bend, rearrange and it can be scary but oh so exhilarating and fun.  I, somehow, had lost this about myself along the way and it is high time to get it back.  Children learn from example and I can teach them nothing if I, myself am allowing my own fear to hold me back from being what I want to be when I "grow up".  I keep telling Ocean that she can be anything she wants to be so long as she believes and works/tries hard....well what example am I setting by going to work every day that is nowhere near the star that I shot for?  I am setting up meetings, applying for grants, enrolling for classes and truth be told am scared as hell about it all, but scared in a good way.  I am scared to be going back to school at 30 with 2 kids and a family, but more scared to tell my kids "do as I say, not as I did".  I have hope in my heart that I will accomplish a dream I have had for too many years and not acted upon on.  I have a dream in my heart of my children watching me receive a diploma and get a job doing what I truly wanted to do all along.  I have faith in my heart that this will inspire them to never give up on their own dreams no matter how big or small they may seem at the time.  I have hope that they will learn from me that letting fear hold you back doesn't allow you to grow.  I have hope that going back to school, challenging and scary as it may be, will accomplish so much more than a degree and a career, but a lifelong lesson and pride, 2 things that cannot be taught in any school or class.

I never thought I'd Say....

Upon becoming a  mother I have found myself saying things I never thought would need to be said and answering questions I never thought would be asked, for example this morning while my children were brushing their teeth my son asks "Mom, why can't brothers marry their sisters?"....hmmm.  Well that is a real thinker as it is only 6:00 AM and I am barely able to think clearly as it is.  The fine line of too much reality and just plain lies has me caught in quite a predicament as they are both looking to me for an answer.  I quickly come back with a very generic, and hopefully satisfying, "because brothers and sisters getting married to each other is illegal and could cause health problems if there wasn't a law against it".  I realized very quickly I had said too much and should have wrapped it up after just saying it was illegal.  Lord, if these two didn't turn from a 7 & 8 year old child into Law & Order detectives on me!  "What..., what kind of health problems, why would there be health problems and what kind?  Who made it illegal and is it just because of these health problems, and so on and so forth.  It is right about this time I hear their dad standing in the hall trying to contain his laughter & so I did what any good mother would do.  I told them to ask their dad, he would be able to explain it.  Now I am just waiting to get a call from the school, to which I will again reply "Oh you will need to call their dad".  It's times like these I miss saying the things I never thought I'd say that were so much more simple such as: "Get out of the oven...it is not a hiding spot." or "Take my bra off of your neck, you are going to choke!".  Oh the things we learn along the way, every day is something new, somewhat funny, somewhat scary and just plain "Mommy talk".

I Shed A Tear.....A Life Gone Before My Eyes

I watched a woman die the other day and as I stood there to watch her take her last breathe and watch her heart tire to its' very last beat, I could not help but feel a flood of various emotions racing throughout my own, very much alive, body and mind.  I shed so many tears, yet for so many more reasons than one would originally think.  Don't get me wrong, I was sad as well it was an emotionally charged room with an extreme aura of sadness and grief weighing heavily in the air, so heavily that it felt hard to breathe at times, yet I continued on, as in living and in healing there is no other choice.  There maybe no other choice, however I did shed a tear, a tear of happiness for the pure luck and happiness that I felt for getting to be there and be a part  of the process of watching this woman's years of life leave this world while being surrounded by so many people whom love and care for her so deeply.  I shed a tear of happiness for this woman, that she may now leave this world and all of her pain, suffering, worries & sorrows and go to be with the ones whom  have gone on before her, all the while knowing that the ones she is leaving behind will be OK.  They will be OK because she taught them how to be, she raised them to be, she prepared them to be, she made them nothing more than mighty warriors able, willing and ready for any battle even the this, the ultimate battle....losing their chief.  I can only hope to be so lucky as to have such an impact on so many.  With this being said I must also say that I shed a tear of sadness for those left behind.  Not only for being left behind, but also for their grief process to follow in the days, weeks and months to come.  Though I know in my heart that they all will be OK, I could not help but shed this tear, as losing such a close loved one and being the ones "left behind" is never easy, and in that one second between life and death the mind can race, change, play tricks on oneself and just plain overwhelm you.  A person is never prepared for that one second when it changes from one form to the other and reality hits you with a blow so hard it knocks the wind right out of you.  No going back, ever!  Life will never be the same and from this one second going forward you will have to find a new sense of normal.  No, no one is ever truly prepared for that 1 single split second when life as we know it ends and death comes to stake its claim on "our" loved one, as though they were ever truly ours to begin with.  I shed a tear because I never truly stopped to thank God that I, among so many others, were blessed just to have been a part of her life.  Janet Quinn I respect you, will miss you and may God Bless.

Is it Just me?

Is it just me or is 6 and 7 years of age WAY too young to be going to a shooting range and firing off deadly weapons?  My husband, an avid hunter, and myself seem to have very different views on this topic.  I prefer to keep my children protected from harm rather than put them in it's way, while he sees this as an extremely unreasonable argument from me.  I in no way, shape or form have any desire to have my children out hunting, and have even less of a desire for them to have the skills to operate firearms at such a young age.  Apparently this is not something that is unheard of as the shooting range has all kinds of "goodies" for first time kids, such as badges, key chains, etc!!  They make it seem as though they are in a fucking toy store...way to hook them in and keep them coming back.  How many of these kids do we think end up owning and operating firearms legally and safely later on in life?  I was appalled when my son came home from the shooting range for the first time a few weeks ago, as he had gone with my husband without my knowledge.  I was even more appalled at how much he seemed to have enjoyed it...and why wouldn't he have?  After all don't all of his favorite super hero's sport guns and ammo of some sort?  Isn't my 7 year old daughter suppose to have pictures of Justin Bieber and High School Musical on her wall, not the test papers from her first target shooting?  Is it just me or is this something that I am overreacting about?  I hear other people telling me to relax, that it is the best place for them to go, they learn all about gun safety there, blah, blah, blah.  Is it just me or what, but why do they even need to know this in the first place, and why at this age?  Is hunting that important and do they really start this early...seriously?  Please someone give me your insight because I'd love to know an outsider's opinion.  Am I too overprotective or is this just plain ridiculous?

A Long and Hairy Battle

If any of you have a little girl or multiple little girls you will be able to relate, if you do not have a girl let me just tell you it is not always all ribbons and bows.  At some point those damn ribbons & bows have to come out and the hair must be brushed.  This encumbers brushing out any number of tangles from a day of sweating at the park, rubbing balloons all over their heads to make them stick to the wall, getting any number of sticky items, not just stuck, but completley rubbed in and made a part of MANY strands of their hair (these items include, but are not limited to, gum, sticky tack, tar (yep that's right), melted jolly rancher, rubber cement, glue and these are just the items I can think of right now). 
Now maybe I just have an extremley clumsy girl, but I am dealing with this on a pretty regular basis and a daily basis ritual would be the dreaded MORNING HAIR BATTLE.  Now, if you have never had to wake a child up from a slumber when they are clearly not ready to be awake yet, well you'll just have to try it sometime.....it's loads of fun, kind of like accidentally tasing yourself, (especially when you aren't particulary fond of the fact that you have to be awake yourself!).  When you start your morning off with a pint size child screaming and crying at a volume that is considered illegal and would for sure get me a citation issued (that is if the police were brave enough to even approach the situation which grows into a bigger monster every second) let me just say you start your day feeling a tad bit stressed and a little less than "pumped, energized and ready to face the world!".  I have fought this battle for a good 4 years now and as much as I was holding tight to my dream of my daughter having long hair and trust me I love her long hair.  I love the braids, the pig tails, buns and all of the fun you can have styling it, but the battling just plain wore me down.  So I fought the battle, I gave it my all and I must admit I have lost.  I finally broke down yesterday and cut her hair off.  The worst part is I know myself well enough to know that we will just grow it back out and dear god start this battle again someday.....but for now I rest.  I rest for the next hair battle. 

The before picture



I think she may be tired of battling in the morning also???




All done and minus quite a bit of hair or stress, whichever you prefer to call it.



The finished product.  She looks so much older to me now.                           

My Perfect Sister...a Post to get me in Trouble for sure

My sister has always been the perfect one, and I have always been the fuck up.  I will admit that since having my children I have been given much more credit by my family than I ever had before, but the fact still remians that Jessica is the perfect one and Abby is the fuck up.  I have always been very aware and reminded of this throughtout my life in ways no matter how big or small, it was something that was just a given or known, sometimes spoken in such words, sometimes just subtly thrown out into the air for me to breathe in and absorb into my being and becoming a part of me the way that nicotine becomes a part of you when it is inhaled into the body over extended periods of time.  No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you work that damage is done and can never be 100% reversed.  That being said, I will go into the part that will for sure get me into trouble.
Everyone who knows me knows how desperatly and badly I want to have another child and how that is not going to happen for me.  Yes, unfortunatley the reason this will not happen for me is all because of my own free will and doing.  My children are 17 months apart and my 2nd was a terrible baby.  Needless to say I was stressed, tired, out of my mind and in no shape to be making any kind of life altering decisions, but did I?  I sure did....I walked right into that Dr's office with my husband and watched as his Vasectomy was performed.  Watched as my future hopes, dreams and livelihood were sliced, clipped and burned away from him in a matter of 30 minutes.  This is very important for you to know because I have the perfect sister that will say to me "Hey, I told you not to have it done." and "Hey, it isn't my fault you can't have any more babies and I still can".  I cannot recall my sister ever having made a bad decision...I mean a truly bad one.  I, on the other hand, have made more than I care to count, and she will be the one of the first ones to throw them out there and in my face for me to chew on, remember, feel bad about & then bask in the fact that she herself is such a great level headed person who takes calculated risks and makes decisions only after weighing them out, blah, blah, blah.  Don't get me wrong she loves me very much, but that love is very much conditionally based on the person I became once I had my children, and also very much based on the fact that she loves my children, therfore she loves me.  This is what I believe to be true anyway, and I don't even have the energy to get into why!  Either way, I hate to sound like a whiner and complainer but sometimes those old sibling rivalries and those old demons of growing up together get the best of us and take over.....this is definatley one of those times!  I feel as though I have never measured up to my sister nor will I ever and I have accepted this, what I have not accepted is that she is going to take the one thing that I feel that I have done right, am damn good at, and definatley as good as her at and upstage me with it.  I cannot be the person who lives with regret and I cannot be the person who holds a grudge, but damnit I want my 3rd, 4th, 5th (whatever the case may be) child.  I want my chance, I want my turn to prove who I am & what I can do and be, I want my family for once to throw me in the category of my sister, instead of the one just below her, as always.  So in all of my shame and embarrasment, yes I left my perfect sister, her perfect family, her perfect house and her perfect future last night got in my car and sobbed the entire way home.  I cannot believe I cried when I should be happy, I cannot believe I cried when I have every reason to be grateful, I cannot believe I cried when I thought I had matured and grown past my jealousy and envy of my perfect sister (ha...guess not).  I just plain cannot believe alot about last night, I do believe, however, that I cried so much that my eyes were swollen and my husband found the need to hug me (this is VERY rare!)I am happy deep down I really am, I will be more and more happy as time goes on, but I fear I will always look at my perfect sister, her perfect life and know that I will always be just the runner up, #2 or just plain the fuck up, just as I have always been.