Who is Rigel Star?

Rigel Star is a modern philosopher.  She lives in New York City with her two cats, dog and girlfriend.  She has been trying obtain higher education but seemingly can't because she makes too much money for financial aid and too little to pay for it herself.  She works a regular job and like many of you, just got sick and tired of being one of the millions of American Slaves.  So what is she doing now? Rigel is currently seeking the means to start filming a story about what she thinks is the annihilation of humanity: Capitalism and Religion.  Below is Rigel's autobiography.

The Beginning

I was born on February 17, 1977 to parents who didn't want me but decided that they were going to be a "normal" family.  They got married four months before I was born and divorced six years later.  I haven't seen or heard from my father since.  My lonely workaholic mother raised me.  We didn't have much.  My mother would work seven days a week, and sometimes, days in a row.  I was alone a lot and I was my own best friend.  By the time I was ten years old, I was taking care of myself in everyway except monetarily.  

School Years

In elementary school, which was a Catholic school which I attended for my first nine years of my schooling (from September 1981 to June 1991), I was ostracized.  I had an unusual imagination and I looked different from everyone else.  The school I was sent to is in a very close knit Italian neighborhood.  My mother being Irish/Italian and my father being Puerto Rican did not sit well with any of my classmates.  It didn't help that I didn't live in this wealthy neighborhood, in fact, I didn't even have my own room;  I lived in a one bedroom apartment which, of course, I lied about.  I lied that my father was dead and that I was really Irish and Italian.  Actually, to this day, I still don't admit that I am half Puerto Rican, I usually say that I am Hispanic or Spanish but that is as far as I go.  I would even lie on homework assignments about heritage.  From the fourth grade to graduation, I had one friend.  She was my friend because like me, she was different.  She was Greek and wasn't even Catholic.   We were as close as friends could be in this situation; I was not allowed out of the apartment other than going to school and I wasn't allowed to have friends over, ever.

My home life during these years was another thing entirely and I learned quickly how to make up stories about my home life.  Like I mentioned before, my mother was always working so I was required to do the house work and no matter what time she would come home, if it wasn't done, I would be awaken to do it.  These episodes where frequent because I was still a child, I would rather play than clean or do the laundry.  Before I was thirteen, I had tried to commit suicide twice and failed both times.  I would cry uncontrollably for hours when I was alone.  I hated when my mother would come home and I had actually planned out her death.  I was too scared of getting caught though and what she might do to me when she found out.  I couldn't run away because my mother worked for the city's Department for Abused Children so she had every resource to find me and of course, I was threatened that if I did anything or if she got caught, I would be dead.  I was a very scared, lonely child.

Adolescent Years

When I got to high school in September 1991, I immediately because one of the most popular people in school.  Even though my mother always told me that I was ugly and fat, and then I thought I was, now that I look back at it, I was pretty and had a good body.  This is when began taking diet pills and exercising sometimes for six hours a day.  I like having friends and people respecting me, even though life at home was awful.  I didn't have to lie anymore about who I was and where I was coming from.  I began to study music and theater.  I began to start appreciating myself and what I was capable of.   This was probably the only time in my life I had self-esteem.

Of course, high school was where I learned the most about myself and where I started filling to voids of my childhood.  My second year in high school was when I realized that I liked girls but found them completely untouchable (they won't like me because I am too fat, ugly and dumb).  At fifteen and sixteen, it was difficult to date anyone.  My mother had become possessive of me.  Going to rehearsals was a task in itself.  My first boyfriend knew of what my mother was doing to me. I dated him in secret for the first few months.  It was very difficult to go out with him.  He wanted to help me, but he was fifteen too and didn't know where to begin.  I would meet him during school sometimes with blue lips and bruises everywhere.  He took care of me emotionally and for the first time in my life, I felt I was with someone who didn't want anything from me and that wasn't going to hurt me.  Three weeks before my sixteenth birthday, I lost my virginity to him. 

As we grew up and apart, things at home got a lot worse.  I was starting to cut a lot of classes because I still wasn't allowed out of the house except for school.  I wanted to hang out with friends and do normal teenage stuff. I also was asked to sing for this band and couldn't go to rehearsals after school.  And then, everything changed January 1994.   Another report card and another beating.  I knew I was getting kicked out again.  I knew it was only getting worse.  Normally, I would get kicked out and go to my grandmother's house but she lived downstairs from my mother and a couple of days later my mother would call and tell me I have to do home or else.  But this time was the last time.  As usual, I would ask her to stop hitting me if I left and I did.  I walked out in a leather jacket, a sweatshirt, Doc Marten's and black jeans.  I hopped the turnstile on the B train and went to Alphabet City and never looked back.

I stayed on the train for a couple of days but it wasn't easy.  I then went to the only place I knew no one would bother me and no one would find me, Tompkins Square Park.   I stayed there for only a few weeks, until I saw a friend of mine who lived several blocks away.  He offered me a place to stay until I got a job and some money to make some arrangements of my own.  He actually was going to Hungary for the summer and didn't care that I was there.   So on East 13th Street I lived for six months.  This was a tough time for me.  I hadn't gone back to school for obvious reasons.  I didn't even realize that my birthday has passed.   I was still lonely and even though I still had my band and their friends, I found myself getting by just getting fucked up.

This was the start of my drug craze that went from smoking pot now and then to the occasional tab to snorting coke (and sometimes heroin) every day.  There isn't much I remember about the summer of 1994.  My band was playing every other night, which kept money in my pocket.  In August, I got a job selling magazines on the phone and I didn't do badly, I saved enough money to move in September to my own room in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  I slowed down with the drugs a bit to save even more money.

In Greenpoint, I lived with at first five men.  They were all models and their agency found this two-story house and I how I got to live there, I will never know.  Getting out of the City did help curb my drug addiction.  I couldn't (or just didn't know) get my hands on any blow or anything other than shrooms or weed.  Of course, this was hard but my addictions started taking other shapes.  I was still very lonely and now without drugs to fill that emptiness, I found fulfillment with others, particularly men and in not the way later I would realize that I didn't want.

My Age Catches Up with Me

On the verge of my 18^th birthday, I had already been through so much.  Now I was starting to realize that sex made me feel loved and appreciated and alcohol made it all easy.  I was still so lonely, all I wanted was to be loved and cared for.  I found this for a few moments every time I was with a guy, or two, or three.  This was my new “drug”.  I didn’t feel dirty, just lonelier.  I wanted to be accepted more and more.

During the end of the summer of 1995, I met this guy who I thought was there to save me but later realized that he was my mother in a male form.  He was compassionate, loving and generous and all the shit I was doing, he made it okay.  During this time I was attempting to reconcile with my mother, to put the past and my entire life up until this point behind me.  I was also trying to move into my own apartment and become more independent and during this time, this boy gave me the image that he was supporting me and making me strong, not that I had been the strong one all long.  He was making me feel guilty about who I am and what I have done in my life, and what was worse was that I was starting to believe it.

As the relationship went on, I started to suffocate.  He talked me out of a lot of things I was into and my look went from East Village Punk Star to Corporate Secretary in a matter of a year.  I thought that this was the way it should be and I should deal with that feeling of having a plastic bag on my head.  As I progressed, things started getting worse.  Going out with friends was a hassle and he would check up on me.  When I planned on going back to school, it was even more of a hassle.  He did not want me to make more money than him or become independent.  This is even more difficult because I had been independent since I was born.

The relationship went on and there were several incidents when I called the police on him.  In the fours years we dated, I tried to leave him every other week.  He harassed my boss and swore that he didn’t remember.  He would drink a lot and brake things in my apartment.  There would be times where I could not get off the phone late at night and I would have to be up early in the morning and he would call and call and call; and if I left the phone off the hook, then he would call my grandmother or my mother.  I hated him so much that I didn’t care about being alone, I just wanted peace.

By September of 1999, I had started junior college in Radio Broadcasting and Journalism.  I had spent the summer dating women behind my boyfriend’s back and only remaining friend was covering for me.  I knew that I was going to leave him, it was just matter of time.  I also realized that when I would leave him, I would need to leave my job and probably move, because I felt that he would probably kill me.

For the First Time, I am in Control

 In September 1999, I met the girl that would be my motivation to get up and leave, and that is exactly what I did.  At first, I thought she would become another fling, a toy that was behind his back, but the first time I kissed her, I knew that I wanted her, more than I wanted anyone.  I didn't want to regret not doing this.  So on October 5, 1999, I decided to leave him and of course, my job and eventually, move out of my apartment.  I didn't care though because I was happy and for the first time in the twenty-two years I have been alive, I was happy and complete.

So here I am now, in another valley of life, looking up at the mountain, ready to climb it.  There is so much left that I haven’t even seen yet.

I will keep updating while new chronicles unfold.

Top of the page