Posts Tagged ‘Friends’
Wanting to feel, to know what is real
I watched the thunderstorm this evening. When I was aware that it was going on, that is. I love watching the stormy weather. The lightening light up the sky, the thunder crash. The walls of the house shaking from the hard thunder. Surprisingly, the kids were mellowed out during the storm. I watched the lightening flicker across the darkened sky. Thoughts of yesterday and my graduation came back to me. It was raining quite violently when I graduated. The storm shook the auditorium. My anger at the people there shook my core. But I smiled through the anger. I smiled through the disputes. I smiled, got the degree, and made a small vow to myself. I am going to get away from these people.
After the graduation ceremony, my mother hit me up for money. What. The. Hell. She only came to my graduation to ask me for money? I told her I didn’t have any on me, and she suggested that I sell my things again. What…? How many people have their moms come to their graduation only to have her demand money out of them? Yes, I think I am in a class by myself. She picked a fight with me. She told me she knew who I was married to. Good for you, you’re now in the same boat as 90% of the rest of the world. I was stressing. I was losing it. I slipped out of the auditorium, mooched a cigarette and from a group outside, and stood there in the canopy of the auditorium, watching the rain fall, as I blackened my lungs some more.
I didn’t hear Matt come out of the auditorium. I didn’t know he was there until he spoke. “I thought you quit,” he said. I shrugged. “I did,” I replied, taking another drag. “It was a nice graduation. You were third in the class,” he said. “Lance beat me,” I muttered. “His father is a doctor. And alumni of the school,” Matt replied. I scoffed. So because his dad graduated from the school and became a doctor, they should just pass the guy? I think I saw him all of five times in the three years I was in medical school. “I know I didn’t know you when you started, but I’ve seen you through most of the journey. I’m glad that you finished,” Matt said. I sighed. “Chris was supposed to be here,” I replied. “How many people made it through? Twenty out of a hundred?” Matt asked. “Twenty two out of one-seventy-five,” I replied. It was true. Out of the 175 people who had been in ‘freshman orientation’ in the fall of 2007, 21 of us made it across the stage that day. Most people had dropped out. The next largest group had been unable to continue their education due to finances. The next changed majors. Some had to leave. One person had died. Chris. “They’re still going to put his name on the wall,” Matt said. “Yeah. Right under Jess’.” I replied. We were quiet for a few moments.
“Look at that!” Matt said suddenly and pointed to the Eastern Sky.
Spread across the darkened sky was a bold, double rainbow. The sun had popped out in the western sky, yet the rain still pounded down on the Eastern horizon. “Do you know what double rainbows mean?” I asked. “Scientifically, I do,” he replied. I smiled. “According to legend, it means someone you love is saying good bye from beyond,” I replied. I didn’t go into the details of how I had been having nightmares about Chris, where Chris was mad at me. I didn’t understand those night terrors. I had done nothing to make Chris mad at me when he died.
We watched the rainbow until it dissolved into the darkened horizon. Matt snapped a picture of it with his camera (it’s terrible web-quality).
While the violent storms were going on tonight, I thought of that rainbow. I thought of the journey I have been on for the past three years. I’ve forgotten why I even came down this road. The job I loved is gone. The person I loved to do it with is gone. There seems no rhyme or reason for me to continue, or to even be here. But here I am. That window will open for me again. I just know it.
The Graduate I
I graduate tomorrow. Duh, right? I’ve been posting about it since I started classes in 2007.
I think communication is not my strong point because people started piling in today, for my graduation. Here. In our house. Fifteen people who all assumed that they could crash here in our puny four-bedrooms-that-are-all-occupied home. We don’t have a couch anymore, and the floor is littered with boxes of movies my mom brought over for me several days ago. Movies that I am getting rid of on Listia.
So where are all these people going to sleep? They’re not like Dennis’ band mates and able to just tent out on the floor. Josh is complaining that he needs a mattress because his back hurts. James said the floor smells funny. Michelle…well, she doesn’t sleep on floors. Those are just the ones not being difficult. People are also expecting us to feed them. That’s not so bad because we had a ton of food here and they’re only going to be here for a few days, but shit… Where are all these people going to sleep????
Dennis suggested we give up our bed to Josh and anyone else who couldn’t sleep on the floor due to health reasons, but then my back would be killing me, and I wouldn’t be able to get across the stage tomorrow.
Who’d have thought getting a degree would be this hard? 
Hypo-Again
I had/am having a low blood sugar tonight.
It started when I got home from the store, and no amount of sugary snacks will raise it. I sent my husband out with his friends because he deserves a night out, and here I am with the tingly skin, rapid heartbeat, and general jitters. I felt hungry just before it happened. I ate four huge cookies and a pair of mini-sub sandwiches with the kids, but then I had to vacuum the rug and guess what? My sugar levels aren’t above 100 yet! I skipped making the bed, but I had to take a bath. The problem with this low blood sugar thing is that I cannot do anything when it’s happening. Nothing. At. All. Other than eat because the more I move around, the lower the levels drop.
Matt’s home. He called me. We talked. He asked me if I was watching House and 24. Dear GOD, NO! But I turned it on while I was talking to him so we could “OMG! *dish* TAUB IS CHEATING!!” and “OMG! THEY’RE GONNA KILL JACK!” *major eye roll*. I swear, I spend more of my minutes on the two hours every Monday evening talking to him about those two shows than I do any other time in the week. But it’s all good. I love my Matty.
I think I shall try to relax. Not think about ‘things’. Tomorrow’s gonna be another day, afterall.
Where Do Lies Come From?
For the past couple of years, I have been keeping up with the Janna St. James scam. I feel for the woman who fell victim to Janna’s lies. I felt like I could connect with her in some ways. The most goes back to nearly ten years. My first ‘web friend’ was named Janna. She was nice, kind, considerate, and abused by her step daughter and her own daughters, identical twins, who verbally and emotionally tortured her. She did not have any friends with cancer, but she used to spend time sending me emails and messages telling me how she wished she had money to spend. I sympathetically listened to her stories. I had met Janna in a chat room, however I had other friends online, some I had met in real life, and some whom I communicated only through a message board for writers and bloggers. I never introduced Janna to that board because of the language and the rips on people that weren’t very Christian.
When a major web hoax was uncovered in May of 2001, my blog was nearly a year old, and the entire thing shook me to the core. I felt cheapened. I felt sad. How could someone take my real life experiences and twist them into their own perverse fantasy? Since it was a blogging issue, it was a hot subject on the message board that I was a member of. While there were hundreds of bloggers, message boards, and general communities that were discussing this all over the web, I stupidly sent Janna a link to the board I was a member of so she could read up on what true writers thought about this. Within a week, she was a member there. In two weeks, she was posting regularly. In three weeks, she had her own blogspot.com blog. By the time a month went by, she was known as “Momma Janna” because she was counseling, laughing, and supporting all on the board. The average user was a college student, but Janna was in her 40s–the oldest person by age on the board–and one of the most-liked and well respected.
Janna became close to my friend James. Janna went so far as to read his blog and started making hints on the board and her own blog that she had been gang-raped in November 1979, by a group of minorities. She never went into great detail about what happened, but she claimed to have been visiting a friend on a farm (Janna St. James claims to have been raped in a cornfield by Mexicans). Soon Janna revealed to James that she had gotten pregnant during her rape, gave birth to a baby boy in the summer of 1980, and gave that baby up for adoption. How convenient! James was adopted! His real birthday is in July 1980! He was born in Chicago! Janna lived in Chicago! It wasn’t long before Janna had convinced James that she was his biological mother. For the next nine months, Janna screwed my friend James out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, computers, jewelry, and other things. I sent her a heart pendant from Tiffany’s as a peace offering, since I doubted her story. She made me feel like the worst person in the world for doubting her tragic tales.
What broke the hearts of the members of the message board was the fact that people saw how Janna’s antics were hurting James. He wasn’t really eating. He was never over weight, but he lost over 60 lbs. He was selling his blood. He didn’t pay his tuition to his college and was expelled. When I brought this up to Janna, her next words to me were, “James promised me $50. Why hasn’t he sent it?” That’s when I went postal. I cried. I screamed. I cussed at that selfish woman. This is where her story fell apart. The next day, she posted on the board to sabotage me. Because James was using a very old picture of a Japanese-American singer as his avatar on the board, Janna downloaded several recent photos of the singer, and posted them to the board, claiming he was one of the many men who raped her and must be James’ father. Now. The singer is very popular. Janna even created email addresses on AOL.com (where she was pinkprarie or something similar to that), and emailed my friend James from these addresses, claiming to be his father, and begging for forgiveness. She also posted on the board with this alternate identity, and claimed that I was trying to keep James from knowing his parents.
I wasn’t a moderator on that board, and our admin was on a road trip and couldn’t provide the IPs of Janna and James Sr. I publicly posted that Janna was behind both accounts. She and her alternate identity both misspelled “Osaka”–they spelled it “OsaCa”. This was back in the days before Wikipedia and Google spelling. Since my public post that Janna was putting James on, she dedicated her time to making false identities on the board to back her up and bash me–I was an alcoholic, my views shouldn’t be trusted, I was a cocaine addict, I was probably hallucinating, I had had a baby out of wedlock and the baby’s father was a drug addict, so I was immoral and a liar. This went on for three weeks until the admin came back on the board and posted screen caps of the IPs attached to the accounts–all the same as Janna’s–and he banned each and every account. No one had said anything bad about me publicly, but I wondered what they privately chatted about. Janna stirred the pot and planted seeds of disbelief in the minds of what few online friends I had. I banned all AOL.com IPs from my site. I canceled my own AOL.com account so I could view my site. I never communicated with Janna again.
I just have coincidences that the Janna I conversed with is the same Janna St. James. Much of what I had is lost. I have changed computers three times since I last conversed with Janna. I have packed away the emails. I don’t have her address anymore. James eventually was told by his grandmother that his own parents were dead and had been since he was a few months old; he was not the product of rape, and he had stayed in his family after his parents had died. Board members who saw through Janna’s pictures of the Japanese singer also brought up the fact that James was a brunette with blue eyes and pale white skin, not a hint of Japanese heritage in him. Because this was so emotionally tragic to James, I haven’t emailed him and asked him to give me the contact info he had on Janna. All I know is she had an AOL.com account from 2000-2002. I don’t know what happened to her after that. And I don’t think I want to.
I feel bad that I did not publicly talk about this when it happened. Reading the Janna St. James blog makes me feel as though I let a criminal walk away to get another victim. The Janna I knew also had no inhibitions about impersonating famous people to call me filthy names. Almost like Bindy’s Erasure scam. At the time that Janna was exposed, I thought she would slink off to the gutter which she crawled out of, like several other scammers my friends and I had uncovered on our message board. I never dreamed she’d rear her ugly head and scam more people. I know if I were a scammer and got caught, I wouldn’t keep coming back and going again and again and again. Especially if I knew people were watching for me, anyway.
That’s all for me for today. I don’t feel any better for letting this all out, and if you read all of that, you deserve a cookie. Or maybe a bran muffin. Whichever.
Oh, and answer this: Where do lies come from??
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