oh detroit, lift up your weary head

why i was not aborted, i do not know. bryan barry robb II, born to bryan barry robb sr. and deborah lynn barnette-robb on the 20th day of february, 1981. my mom was a strong woman. gave birth to me at 19. she gave up her full-ride to nursing school and we lived in a motel in detroit because my dad wouldn't get a job. my mom walked the streets of detroit in order to find a job to support us while she was pregnant for my brother. she gave birth to my brother bradley at 21. at which point my father split [never paid a dime] and from then on she raised us herself, worked full-time, and still managed to get her assosiates degree [without the full-ride]. and never did i feel unloved. she smothered us in love.

then in '86 she had a new boyfriend named jim. he had money but he liked to spend it on booze and gambling. the first words he ever spoke to me were 'chew with your mouth shut' while i was eating my corn pops cereal. as if he knew etiquette. i may be wrong, but i'm pretty sure good etiquette doesn't involve taking a girl and her two young children to the casino and laying her in a hotel bed while the two children hide under the covers and plug their ears in the bed beside. he would beat us. he would cheat on her and come home drunk. if we did something 'wrong', he'd make us get in the push-up position and pile phone books on our backs while we held that up-right position for long periods of time while he sat on the couch and watched HBO. and if we dropped the phone books from our backs, the clock started over again. i remember once my brother and i were playing in the drive way. jimmy [jims eldest son] jumped in the car and started backing up in his camaro and roled right over my little brother. ran him over with the tire. it's a miracle he wasn't killed, but i guess he was in a sandy area so he didn't get more than a few scratches. jimmy picks brad up and runs him into the house and a little while later jim comes out, grabs me by the arm and starts beating me because I [yes, me, 5 year old bryan] DID NOT TELL JIMMY THAT BRAD WAS BEHIND THE CAR. yeah, my mom put up with a lot of shit because she didn't have anywhere to turn.

i, on the other hand, don't know why i exist. i say i have troubles but i do not know troubles. i have it easy.

but then why do things seem hard? why is my complete lack of inspiration for living not subsiding? she always tells me 'you do what you have to do. having children shocks you into reality i guess'. you'd think having her as an influence and positive force in my life for so long that i would have learned something from it. maybe i am learning now, but i'm 23. i'm going to school and working but i still feel like i'm doing the bare minimum. i'm not 'conquering life' so to speak. sometimes going to the post office is an eventful day for me. i'm thankfully off drugs but sometimes when i look back at who i used to be, i miss myself, because it seems like i was such a lovely, creative person then. i had emotion and i had fun. now i do not have fun, even doing things i used to love.

i went back to detroit with jonathan this weekend to visit my friend pelot. he got a beautiful new place in midtown. we went to a few bars and acted crazy and had a few laughs, but it was nothing like it used to be. while driving around seeing the littered streets of mexican town and the abandoned buildings of cork town, all i could think about was my mother, walking those streets to find a job to support me. worn out old motels that rent hourly, nightly and weekly. hotels that were probably not too much unlike my first home. hookers and crack heads. steam coming from the man holes.

shit, i got it easy. what the fuck's wrong?