I’ve been catching up on some reading around the web, and it seems that some people are confused about me. They seem to think that I ‘hate’ them simply because I do not like the fact that they steal or lie. I despise liars. I despise thieves. I do not hate them, I see them as people who are missing something vital in their lives, so they lie or steal to make up for that. I do not feel sorry for them, but I often wonder if they know what they are fully doing in their existence. Do they know that by lying to others, they aren’t going to make or keep many friends? I tried, for eight years, to be friends with a pathological liar. It’s back in my archives last fall. She lied and lied and lied to me and for what? Because she wanted to feel as important as she thought I am? I’m no one important. Did she desperately want to be my friend? She should have been herself. I liked the woman I met, not the woman she became. Ultimately, my friends and family decided that she wanted my brother-in-law’s fame and fortune and I was relieved when she excused herself from my life. I was glad she made that first move because I did not want to be the one to tell her I wanted out of the “friendship” out of fear of causing drama with her. Boy, did she know how to cause drama! During our friendship years, I had sent her several photos of myself, including undeveloped film for her to have processed to “prove” I was who I said I was. Once we no longer were close, those pictures kept leaking online. She would claim equipment failure or hackers or viruses, but I have yet to find a virus or hacker to back up her claims. I also found it interesting that when her power would suddenly go out, my dad’s would not, and he lived just a few blocks from her. Every time my brother-in-law would refuse to call her on the phone or buy her expensive presents, those pictures I sent her would be magically leaked online. Even though I did not send them in digital formats.
It only took once for me to realise what was going on, and I never sent her another set of pictures of me again. When she wanted to meet up, I would make excuses not to, and she would storm the MeetUp boards. It was always hilarious, because others would jump to tell her that they had met me.
Now, the above story would be a good indication of someone I would “hate”. But I don’t hate that person. I don’t hate anyone. Hate is an option I choose not to have. Despite and dislike are different from hate. To me, hate is a point of no return. I’m all about the forgiveness these days, opening the veins of my life to those who want to read about it, and I am willing to forgive those who have done me wrong. That does not mean I will forget what they have done to me, and I won’t make myself vulnerable to another attack. But to second judge me as someone who hates? You’re just wrong. I don’t hate any body, and I’m certainly not out for revenge to anyone. Paranoia: You have it bad.
I’m cleaning up and out some of the stuff that I have … hey, better that I do it than Dennis or someone else after the fact … and I was wondering something. Is it a good idea to just throw away old journals? Journals as in the handwritten books that I kept since I was 11? It’s not like anyone is going to want to read that dreck now. Or should I shred the pages individually? I’m at a loss as to what to do with these old books.
For the record, there’s nothing incriminating in them. Just the boring dreck of a Star Trek TNG geek who begged her parents to take her to Starbase 21 and spent her allowance on magazine with Wil Wheaton on the cover, Star Trek trading cards, and Chekov’s Enterprise. And the occasional Beatles cards or book. My journals went on like that until I was 15. Or until I had sex the first time. I think it was the loss of my virginity that caused me to turn to harder things. I got a job the next year and spent my paycheck on cigarettes and booze and hardcore things. I became a shut in, reading science text books.
Last night, I decided to throw away my old Marilyn Manson calendars from the 90s. I threw out my Foo Fighters calendars. I tossed out several things that proved my adolescent past existed. These journals (and the panties that Michelle and I tye-dyed about ten years ago) are all that remain of my past. I’m torn at whether it’s time to let the past go, or if I should hang on to these journals a little while longer.
I still keep a paper journal, though I mostly draw in it, and use it as an expensive sticker collection book. Rather than glue print outs onto the pages, I get stickers from Moo.com of my friends and loved ones. My journals have evolved from those locked one-entry-per-20-line pages to hard cover notebooks with unlined pages and Monet covers. One of my journals was made by Jess from his grandmother’s old leather sofa, and the wallpaper from his first bedroom.
These journals have seen me through abuse, cancer, surgeries, high school, college, nursing school, addictions, discovery of the web, every job I have ever held, parenthood, marriage, the loss and gaining of friends, discovery of music, more addictions, and losses. A small part of me wants to hang on to them. They are a written record of my history. But my heart knows that I cannot hang onto everything. It’s time to let go.
Four years ago today, on a Friday the Thirteenth, I met one of the best friends I’ll ever have. We met at a job interview. He interviewed me as a pre-screening, and for some reason felt the need that I was whatever they were looking for, and sent me in to the Big Boss. Over the next four months, we became good friends. Chris used to bring me my lunch every day. I took on other tasks to put in overtime, which escalated our project’s outcome. We were promoted twice, and fired at the same time for the same thing. Over the next few months, we went to class together with the same major. Chris went to my wedding. He was there when I had my boys.
Suddenly, in January of 2008, he became ill. He slept a lot. He had nose bleeds. He vomited for no reason. He just didn’t feel right. It wasn’t until March of 2008, after our trip to Texas, where we had a slight falling out, that he went to a doctor. His blood tests revealed that he wouldn’t be returning to class in August: He had Aplastic Anemia, probably induced from our work with tritium while making gel DNA runs for electrophoresis. We never wore masks or gloves. Tritium isn’t supposed to be able to penetrate the skin, but I think there were more isotopes used in the ingredients.
By June of 2008, Chris was gone.
Chris refused treatment, claiming that he’d seen the effects of immuno-suppressed people and he didn’t want to be in that boat. I wonder if there were some other reason he chose to not accept treatment. I wonder why he chose that he chose.
Chris was who I thought I saw last month in the ‘haunted lab’. It certainly looked like him. Though by now, I’m probably sounding crazy. I’m no longer sorrowful that Chris is gone, but happy that he was my friend for as long as he was. Through Chris I met Matt, got my iPhone, and learned that I’m not completely hopeless.
Speaking of my phone, I had a little talk with USC. My information, including the stuff on my memory card, was sent to someone else’s phone. While USC admitted they made a mistake, they won’t just wipe the info from that person’s phone. The best they can do is get in touch with that person and ask if they deleted it. Pretty much, I am at the mercy of some stranger whose Blackberry is just one digit off of my phone’s serial number. I never should have gone back to USC. AT&T was bad about coverage and customer service, but they never lost my information like that. The icing on the cake is when I asked why they couldn’t just wipe that person’s phone, I was told “That would be an invasion of privacy to that customer.” As if sending said customer my information in the first place wasn’t! USC knows they’ve screwed up, much so that they offered me six months of unlimited talk time, to waive my current bill, and not even contact me for any payments until July–if I signed a waiver that they are not responsible for accidentally giving my information to another customer. This person has my full name, photos of me, text messages, emails, email addresses, email accounts, some MP3s I love, my nursing software, pharmacology e-books and reference books, chemical calculations, my themes, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, the numbers of people I have called. All because a USC customer tech didn’t read the serial number right when transferring the information. I declined signing that paper. If my identity is stolen, I think USC is financially responsible.
Other than that, I can never, ever get my information back. They claim they can’t tell what data on that other person’s phone is mine and what is their own data, so I just have to grin and bear it. So if you’ve called me in the past two years, and you get cranks from some stranger, it’s not my fault. Also, I need all my contacts back, so feel free to call me again or text me.
Last New Year’s Eve I watched the celebration across the world.
From my bleak and lonely hospital room, my window held a distant view of bursting colors in the sky. I vowed then I’d be anywhere but where I was for the actual beginning of the New Year. I guess I can at least say, “I’m not where I was.” Geographically speaking, of course.
I teased my friend James that for 2010 I’d meet him in New York City for some serious celebrating. I hope his wife and him get the chance to go. Unless I can manage the great escape I’m pretty much stuck.
I spent almost 4 weeks in the hospital at the beginning of the year. That’s the longest I’d ever been and I almost went crazy. I came out knowing how wonderful freedom was. The smell of smoggy air never seemed so magical before.
I spent a week savoring the knowledge of remission. I searched my soul on the beaches of Corpus Christi and realised it would be so easy to start a journey and walk away from everything I knew. I wanted to. Something inside me changed. I’d sit watching the sunsets I’d missed and I’d cry at the beauty. I cursed the Cancer that wanted to make me run away from everything I knew and loved. I felt a new power radiate within me. A determination to make myself stronger. I felt I had many more things to do. And there was a fear that drove me. It was the fear of knowing Tomorrow is never a promise.
I returned home vowing to pour all my energy into my writing. I’d made a promise to myself and I intended to keep it. My battle was over, I had fought the great fight to the end. This final season would close the chapter of school. I’d be my best or I’d go down trying.
It was my best. And it was worth every bruise, elbowing, and burn I received. I let loose the warrior in me and had fun. It wasn’t about winning, it was about finishing. It was about walking across the stage with my head up and my smile telling the story of how awesome life felt.
There are a lot of lessons in life and I think I suffered most of them throughout the year. Love can stink but it’s also an awesome thing. Prejudice lives and if I could smother or strangle it I would. It affects everyone but unless we stand up to it it’s not going to back down without a fight. Heartache is around every corner, there’s no way to prepare for it. We have to ride it out and hope for the best. Shedding tears doesn’t make us weak, it gives us strength to go on. To every beginning… there’s an end and a new beginning. Everything has a price, nothing we receive comes freely. Know what you’re willing to sacrifice to get it. Life is truly awesome.
I guess I packed a lot of mischief, mayhem, and laughter in all those months. I feel like I accomplished many things. I suppose what I wanted most was quality. I don’t think I’d want to change anything, because even through the heartaches the quality of what I experienced was primo. So in that respect I don’t have regrets.
Did I have happiness? Yes. Did I lose my smile and the laughter? Sometimes but I always found it again. Were the tears worth it? For every tear I was given the brilliance of the sunlight, so yes, they were. Did I find the rainbow? In every friend, most definitely.
That’s a lot of rainbows. It’s been an awesome year.
I didn’t sleep last night. Not last night. Just like three years ago. I’m wearing the same blue night shirt, laying on the same pillows, thinking about the same things. I wasn’t surprised when the bright sunlight came in through the curtains, telling me that the dawn had come. The snow clouds soon choked out the sun, casting a haze over the sky. The snow storm is more than ten hours away, but the clouds have completely covered the sky.
I think back on the night, three years ago, and the tears don’t even come. As hard as I try, I am jaded from the scene. I cannot cry about it anymore. I’ve exhausted all angles of what happened three years ago, and I can no longer find myself guilty of anything wrong. There is no reason for my sorrow. There is no reason for my tears. So why couldn’t I sleep last night? Were the ghosts of one of a thousand regrets walking the halls, scratching on the door to the bedroom? What did they want? The answers?
I am tired now. I think sleep will come. I have my morning meds to take, and then it’s off to bed, to sleep away the day. Sleep like I did three years ago. I have forgiven myself, so I can repeat my past. I can re-enact it every year and try to change what I do. Change the past so I’m not forced to remember how it really is. Take a few blue pills to erase the memories and numb my brain. Become a living corpse, walking the halls with those ghosts late into the night.
But I cannot lay down and sleep.
I don’t deserve to sleep.
No matter how many of those blue pills I take, I cannot erase the memories I want erased. They pick and choose what parts of my brain that are permanently gone, and I have no choice in the matter, except the choice to take the pills. Those memories I want gone haunt me. Perhaps they are the ghosts that keep me awake at night?
The most haunting is what she did and said before she died. What my little PoRo said to me before she died. When she became sick with cancer the first time, she was happy. She said cancer was nothing and when she got well we could be a family again. Momma wouldn’t cry anymore and daddy wouldn’t be ‘away’ as much anymore. She got well. Then she relapsed almost a year ago. This time it was different. She was sad before we even took her to the doctor. Before the diagnosis ever came. After the diagnosis, I asked her why she was sad. Surely a second battle with cancer wouldn’t scare her.
What she said made my heart ice over… “Momma…I’m not going to make it this time. I’m going to die, and there’s no Rainbow Bridge, there’s no misty field surrounded by mountains where we play while we wait for you and daddy to come. When I die, I’m going to be gone forever, and I’ll never see you or daddy or anyone ever again and they’ll never see me again.”
Those words hit hard when I woke to the silent house, when PoRo was gone forever. “…I’m gone forever and I’ll never see you again…and you’ll never see me again…”
Those words don’t bring tears to my eyes. Am I immune? Has my soul dissolved in a beaker of acid? Or will they just scratch at my door late at night on the eve of December 28th, 2010?
Over Christmas, I visited PoRo’s grave. I brought her blue flowers. She loved blue flowers, though blue wasn’t her favourite colour. Her grave was decorated. Kids from her class had been by to leave stuffed animals, letters, someone had left her a can of Pepsi, propped against the cold, icy marble stone which bears her name, the dates, and her favourite Lord Byron lines. I knelt down in the snow, the coldness immediately radiated up my knees and through my shins and legs. I brushed some snow aside and laid the flowers on the slushy ground at the foot of the stone. “Merry Christmas, PoRo…Where ever you may be. Momma still loves you,” I whispered. Her daddy approached me from behind and told me it was time to go. I wasn’t wearing a coat, I wasn’t wearing gloves, I had walked most of the way there, in crocs, no socks, the snow had soaked the legs of my jeans through. How long had I been kneeling there? I don’t remember the walk back to his car. I don’t remember what he replied to me when I asked why he didn’t bring his little girl something. A blanket, a stuffed animal, didn’t he know she was probably cold and scared down in that dark grave covered with snow?
I recovered, eventually. I slept for a few hours. When I woke up, I played with my Christmas gifts. I ate candy. I frolicked in the snow with what’s left of my family. But the ghosts returned. PoRo hasn’t even been dead a year, but she has joined the ghosts that haunt me on this eve, and forever will.
Eight Years Later
I found out via AOL’s main page on the 30th. I even saved the screen caps from back then. I don’t know why, but I’m glad that I did:
Remember The Time….?
I was going through my old diaries and journals and remembered that today is my ex’s birthday. I re-read an entry I made eleven years ago about how happy we were on this day because we were both 18 and able to have sex again. Yes, I was one of those kind of girls. But I was good. I refused to have sex with him while he was 17 and I was 18, for legal reasons.
Another thing I found was a pair of my old eye glasses from 1992-1995. They were silver granny glasses that I got to mimic John Lennon. I was surprised that I was able to find a pair just like John’s in the little optometrist’s office that I frequented during my childhood.
However, I was a very unattractive little girl.
Jamie aka: The being known as Wonder Girl, 30, mother of four, wife to one, she is a senior biomedicine student who is learning to fit in in the world around her. After nearly three decades on this planet, she still doesn't know where she belongs. Best friend of Matt, sarcastic, spoiled, apathetic, kutie brat, babe. Just your average woman, living in a not-so-average world, surviving by her incredible super power of being able to see right through you while
accomplishing more tasks than you ever thought imaginable. She is the being known as Wonder Girl and she is speaking, I believe. More? Aren't you brave!
