I heard from a dear, sweet, kind person who was helping my ex and some Arab friends he met to do the rewiring of the home, that very bright people can fall into years of confusion, and suddenly I see that it really is true and it really was what happened to me. Simple confusion.
I saw my sister on the Tower unit, showing up to find evidence. And then, because there wasn’t one yet, demanding to sift through the files. I was in a lone room, but I could hear her and see her in my mind. Who knows, I was still waking up from 5 days in the woods in December. Then there was SLUG, who has been discussed before I think but not recently. I don’t remember too well now. I have processed her out of her life. I suggested that she spend 5 days treading water in the Atlantic. Because I know what she did to me through having the advantage over me when she shouldn’t even have had a relationship with me. I hurt her once because I was scared of her and that was my ignorant and naive way of handling my feelings: writing some nasty things down about her. She should have taken it to the authorities and had me thrown out. Instead of stalking me for the next 35 years.
Who is crazy here? I spend a decade’s worth of time incarcerated over this.
I see a connection between her and the woman at the program at the state hospital who I had trouble with. That was done right. THAT WAS DONE RIGHT. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I WAS GETTING THE SHIT KICKED OUT OF ME FOR HURTING SOMEBODY’S FEELINGS!!! With my writing! That person was smart, too. And she knew how to get help, which I didn’t. I always won. But not that time.
I have spent almost my entire adult life trying to figure this out. I used to hurt people with my writing. I was a very good writer but I didn’t always use it in the right way. Just now I’m thinking of the other time I got hurt over somebody else’s writing at the state hospital, that was the time I finally got thrown out. (The argument was over her talking about blood on her rectum in the middle of the dayroom.)
So now I finally know, after 36 years, what that tangle that has held me back, was about.
This is phantagorasmically thrilling for me. I can finally release this person from harm. She was doing me a favor. She called me on doing something inappropriate She was doing exactly what I was BEGGING for someone to do for me. Cracking me open so I could see myself. It was done through a disciplinary note, the kind that patients wrote on one another for morning group that was how the program worked. She hurt my feelings and noone had ever done that to me so I wrote a long, insane note back on her and the Program Director called me on it indeed, he called a whole weekly community meeting on it. He didn’t say my name, he just read the whole mean, nasty letter out loud and said “These are serious accusations.” In fact I was just blowing out a lot of crap. But he didn’t like me and never wanted me in his Program and more or less said so when I went in to meet him before being admitted to the program.
I’m out!
Singe age 24 I have been stuck on this. Somehow I learned to live my life with this going on in the back ground. I am now 61. The first thing that came out of it was that I came to understand that I was British and what that meant. Gradually I eased into the grooved and it felt like I was watching my life go by. In the meantime I had a crazy marriage and a beautiful son that justified it.
And I stood for Pro-Life and I stood for Pro-Black and got dunned for it but, I tried. And at the last minute, I stood for pro-woman; and that was the most beautiful thing of all. It marked understanding that I had never had before because of this stupid mole-wart that hadn’t come off yet; but I was moving toward it. It was about women in the armed forces. Because I thought about wan ting to join the army spring term in high school; but I couldn’t because I was frail because of the mole-wart and being kneed in the crotch and spending my life reading books.
But for me, there was always the writing to fall back on. I was a childhood reader. Nothing else ever meant more to me.
Until I had my son. And that connection, link, and bond, both with my son, and with other women, opened a whole new world for me. And, interestingly, I started writing again after they took it off of me at the state hospital. When Ian was born I picked up my pen and started writing. And I was able. I had lost the block.
I sat at the table and Ian stood with me and enjoyed making messes for me to clean up to get the attention he needed and I didn’t mind. It was sort of like I had a stay-at-home job and could take care of him myself while I worked. I didn’t really take myself seriously because I wanted a typewriter and my ex wouldn’t get one for me. So I was writing in pencil on paper. Constantly erasing. I actually wrote some quite beautiful things. I have a zippered notebook that has the story of Ian written over and over and over again, I have it right here with me somewhere. When I get settled I will have to look at it again. It’s been 27 years.
Am I allowed to quote Jerry Garcia?
“What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
I have my life.
My son has his.
More work to do.
More work to do.
I’ve got this bull by the horns and I am wrestling it down. My whole life, in short.
I was the one you couldn’t touch and there was narcissism and flattery in that but it wasn’t any fun at all. But then I hurt HER feelings and there was a Viet Nam Vet who was her close friend and he was not about to tolerate that kind of bs. (She made a rude comment on a personal matter in the day room and I took offense). With this, everything falls into place.
Un.Bon.Mot 