Twenty years ago, most, not all, but most of my “friends” were little more than a bunch of crazies going nowhere. That’s to be expected, I guess, when you yourself were taking a walk down the Crazy Path that was seemingly leading to nowhere. Today, however, I have a nice handful of good, caring friends, both cyber and not, who are quite with it, and I’d like to take this opportunity to say “thanks.”

Thanks, D, for letting me know you’d kill those scary spiders for me if you were here, then make sure I was okay and then laugh at me running through here hysterically.

Thanks, Eileen, for letting me know you’re in awe of the fact that I’m still standing after all I’ve been through and for sharing your life with me and letting me share mine with you.

Thanks, Paul and Dorian, for taking the time to read about my sometimes crazy life, and for sharing some of yours with me, along with some great website recommendations and jokes.

Thanks to my other friends, whom I’ve actually met in person, for keeping in touch.

Thanks to Miss Perfect – ok, I’ll call her Mary just for this entry – for putting out the distress signal, and thanks to my folks for coming to our rescue that fateful night. It was an event that prompted them to remove their collect call block.

Thanks, most of all, to my husband, who loves and accepts me unconditionally and is also in awe of me. I am just as in awe of him just for surviving nearly 17 years of me! grins Now THAT’S quite an accomplishment.

I’m glad he and I didn’t kill ourselves like we almost did a few years ago so that we could do the things we’ve done, and I could have the wonderful opportunity of finding Eileen, reuniting with D, and meeting fine people such as Paul and Dorian. If you’re wondering why we almost killed ourselves, that part of my bio will be posted soon enough, but yeah, we were close to doing ourselves in to escape going hungry in the streets till my folks, whom I hadn’t spoken to in a decade, came to our rescue. It was guilt that stopped me and made me scramble to think of a way out of our situation as Tom did not want to die that night. He just wasn’t going to leave me to die all alone either. This was when I learned my lesson about cussing God out for I truly believe that’s part of why we got into the jam we got into. It’s okay to be mad at Him, but NEVER swear at Him!

I still live in the fear (I guess you could call it a case of PTS) of some crisis occurring that’d leave us faced with either starving in the streets or death as our only options, but are doing all we can to help ensure that this never happens again. If 36 hours of homelessness nearly killed me (even if it was to sit in our truck in a Walmart parking lot), an indefinite amount of time would surely do me in. So we’re saving all we can. Only problem is that right now there’s not much to save on unemployment.

Eileen asked me if I could answer why I did the things I did in camp and if there was anything she could have done to help me. As I told her, therapists would say I was rebelling against my unhappy home life and taking my fears and anger out on others, and no, she couldn’t have done anything as far as getting me to a better place. However, she did a lot for me just by showing me what it was like to just be a normal kid who could be herself, and that’s why it was important for me to find her and thank her for caring. People didn’t usually cry when one or both of my folks would come to pick me up from wherever. Breathing a sigh of relief was more like it if they didn’t jump for joy altogether. Some may not understand why I would want to find someone I barely knew for 5 minutes so many years ago, but all I can say is that people like me don’t usually take good people for granted.

This was the 70s when most people didn’t recognize things like ADHD or care about what abuse may be going on to trigger unacceptable behavior. You were simply written off as a nut and people were always encouraged not to bother with us “nuts.” As I told her, though, I wouldn’t pull someone’s hair these days because they may not want to share their candy with me, but I am sometimes still haunted by bad memories.

I was never sexually abused, in case you’re wondering, but I did go through a lot of other forms of abuse, mostly emotional and verbal. And because of this and being tucked away in hospitals and private schools I was lacking in social skills big time once I became an adult and went out on my own. The so-called “better” people in society often looked down on me. People with decent homes, jobs and incomes usually couldn’t be bothered by a low-income basket case on disability. Even the driving phobia was a turn-off. And then one day, as I also told Eileen, I realized that anyone I wasn’t good enough for was not good enough for me either.

I myself don’t expect my friends to be perfect. Hey, we’re all a little crazy in some ways, LOL. But I can understand the discomfort that comes with hanging with those who are moody, hyper, unstable and unpredictable. These types tend to turn me off at times, too. I’m just saying that while we all have our insecure moments in life, it’s nice to have a more with-it group of friends like I do these days. I think it helps keep me moving forward in life as opposed to the Frans and “Nervouses” of the past.

I feel I’m becoming a happier person overall, perhaps partly due to Eileen’s suggestion of meditation (whenever I remember to do it). No, we never do forget the past, for abuse stays with us forever (as my sister herself would agree if she’s reading this), but we can survive. Knowing that these once-suppressed issues are now regularly addressed helps, too. These days what shocked a person to hear about 50 years ago doesn’t really affect them any differently than it would to read or hear about a good recipe for homemade blueberry pie.

I can now be around black people and not associate them in my mind with the sickos that legally screwed me down in Arizona. I was one of the most open-minded and accepting people alive, but then like a fool, I let my tormenters steal a little of that part of me. That’s one of the few things, however, unlike the time I lost with my husband and the money we both lost, that I have been able to slowly take back from them. Tom, a native Arizonan, once asked me how I would feel if someone was picking on him cuz of something some other Arizonan may have done to them. Well, the answer’s obvious. I’d want to do things to them best left to the imagination. The reader’s imagination, that is.

It seems I spent most of my 20s picking on whoever I could pick on and pushing whatever buttons I could push, pulling pranks, getting on people’s nerves, and just being a general nuisance to humanity. Some of the pranks were fun and so I can’t say I regret all of them. Then I spent most of my 30s and even some of my 40s pissed off at the world. Still am in some ways, but I think the more I grow and experience different things in life, the easier it gets to deal with certain things. This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t fight back, though. I would do everything I could to defend myself and my husband from any potential troublemakers out there trying to screw us, legally or not, which I hope we never have the misfortune of encountering. I will always have a bit of a feisty side to me cuz that’s just who I am just like Tom tends to be shy and quiet. Some people may complain that the shy types come off as wimpy and the ones who don’t tend to be aggressive, but we are who we are.

Can I ever forgive those who had a hand in getting me thrown in jail? Certainly not, and frankly, I don’t want to. My sister, however, is a different story even if she was indirectly involved. I’ll never be “ok” with what she did, nor will I ever begin to fathom why she did it in the first place, and I don’t want to be sisters anymore than she does, but no more hard feelings anymore if you’re reading this, ok? At least not on my end. I think I’ve screamed at you enough in this journal to get most of the anger out of my system. You’re not perfect and neither am I. So regardless of who thinks they were right or wrong (and we’ll probably never agree which is ok), it doesn’t really matter anymore, for the past can never be undone or changed anyway. But don’t worry, Drama Queen, I may still be the black sheep of the family, but you’re still twice the bitch I sometimes still wish I was.

I don’t want to be an aunt to my nieces either, for I can’t make much of one anyway on the other side of the country, but I don’t fault them for any problems they may have either. We all say and do crazy shit when we’re young and I know that they will settle down and mature with time like most of us do. And so while I wish them the best, they’d be much better off getting Sandy or Bill’s sister to be their aunt instead of me.

It is a good feeling to give back to those who’ve been kind to me and to know that I have touched some people’s lives in return, like how I made D laugh when she was feeling blue.

For a long time, I believed that I should stay as angry as possible at those who have wronged me, figuring that by being an ice princess of sorts I would be protecting myself from further grief. But the anger was bringing me down and so I’ve been trying to find the balance between not being too forgiving and not being such a grudge holder either. As Eileen said, we all get angry. It’s how we handle that anger that matters. I still may vent my frustrations in this journal at times as it’s not only very therapeutic but also what journals are for. While some may say that there is no right or wrong emotion and there is no right or wrong way to express oneself in their journal, I understand that some of the things I have had to say about some folks have been rather harsh. And whether or not my anger may’ve been justified, I guess it was a bit extreme and uncalled for. So I’m just trying to focus more on what makes me happy than what pisses me off or makes me sad, as hard as it can be at times.

I would often go out of my way to avoid people and avoid making friends. I drew a tight wall around me knowing that that way I could only be judged by myself, and that if anything went wrong, I would usually only have myself to blame. I still love living like a hermit, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t feel the need to build such a fortress around myself these days to the degree that I once did. It’s true that I was never much for socializing either way since there’s nothing my friends and I can’t say to each other over the phone, in the mail or online, but like I said, it’s nice to have good friends out there, and sometimes I do wish I could see them if only for a few minutes every once in a blue moon.

So I will go on, still preferring not to communicate with siblings, nieces and in-laws, but understanding that we all make mistakes and it’s okay to get angry. We just shouldn’t let it eat at us so much, for anger can be just as destructive as it can be healthy.