We were having problems with the instant messaging thing. Besides, I decided I just didn’t want anyone bugging me while I was online. Especially some mixed-up kid.

I finished the clip Mary sent me. This clip was when she ran from Justin in Florida with Gretchen to New York where she and her homeless brother were stuck in a hotel with less than $100 to their names.

Talk about hard times and curses! My heart totally goes out to her and Gretchen both for all their pain and suffering. It serves as a reminder, particularly in Gretchen’s case, that we can’t always count on God to help us and that sometimes God does give us more than we can handle. Again I have to ask myself – how much of God is for real versus wishful thinking? Sure, we’d all like to believe that there’s some loving, guiding salvaging force out there, designed to protect us, but when we consider how much more bad than good there really is in this world, I don’t see how that can be possible. Not for the most part, anyway. It just seems that any good, loving God wouldn’t allow innocent babies to be killed. I know there are those who would respond to that statement by saying that he has his reasons, but I’m sorry. I just don’t see what kind of reasons could possibly justify the slaying of an innocent child. Nothing about what happened makes “sense.”

If only Mary cut ties between them sooner than she did. I cut the ties between Doe, Art, Larry and Tammy and never again can they or will belittle me or try to control me. I pulled back and looked at them as people, not parents and siblings, and when I didn’t like what I saw, I put biology aside and walked away.

I wish more people could do the same when the situation calls for it.

It burns me up to think of how many times Doe and Art smacked me around only to get away with it, while I lose time, money and freedom to bullshit words.

So when the thought of my curses and life’s unfairness gets me down, I think of Mary sitting in a jail cell, feeling like a complete failure for not saving her daughter. For not having the courage to say “no” to abuse, be it physical, sexual, verbal or mental, until it was too late.