7/01/99

Okay... I have found places for everything in my large storage area that would not fit in either my pick up truck, my small storage area, my RV or my small storage area.

This gives a net of $100 savings...

I am very glad I finally could put it together enough to do that...

It is funny that I do not have much emotions attached to the furniture, and other stuff that went away... Like it was ripped out of my brain, and I guess, indeed it has...<shrug>

I have kept most of anything that is made of paper-words written long ago-I like them, and hope one day to be able to return to the ability to make them...

Yesterday I started carving a duplicate to the carving that I finally decided was good enough to display and some interesting things happened .

For a time, my synapses started clicking-in ways they never had before. It was a brief time, but one that allowed me to write down some ideas... and they are to me, wonderful ideas...

You see, when I was young my Father divorced my Mother at at time when I was developing an interest in wood. That interest became a foundation, a "calling" if you will, a consistant underpinning to a life bound to become a nightmare for many years indeed.

At this same time I developed ability to write, and this too I carry with me today.

Of course with my Father no longer around, often times hospitalized, unavailable, I turned to my Grand Father, and he was a boy in Grand Rapids, Michigan-a furniture captital... A pharmasist by trade, he had a shop in the basement and sometimes when visiting he and I would build a project. Those projects added color to a section of my life that felt safe, secure, dependable. My mother worked very hard to provide for us, but that work, sometimes 18 hours a day for stints, would force us into my Grand Mother and Grand Fathers arms.

It is those days that I would snap into, when I came out of a "PTSD" episode.

Then of course my mother re-married a recovering drunk, and for a time he was a grand person. Then he purchased us a different house, one far away from the Rail Road tracks that I had lived beside for so long.

In this house he arranged to have his boys to live with us. I believe now that his boys were victims of child abuse, for that is what they doled to me... It was a painful time, and confusing.

Later, through their own actions, they were asked to leave, to return to their Mother and Step-Father...

Christmas was always a difficult time in the house where I lived. My Step Father worked as a supervisor at the Post Office, and took his job very seriously indeed. Christmas was a difficult time, and we were asked to accomodate his rages... we did of course...

Then one day my Step-Father succombed to a heart attack, a serious one, and at an early age... I prayed for him, would stop at the hospital and visit him by skipping the school buss and walking home... I cried many a tear...

Because of the stories I had heard about my Father, and some [what I know now were relatively minor] behaviours, I took my Step-Father up on the idea of his adopting me... I was still very young, and did in no way know the real man that I was adopting as my father...

His rages became more pronounced, he had re-started drinking, he displayed what I now know were "typical Alcoholic behaviours..." He also was apparently a child abuser.

When something would happen, not to his liking, the blame must be laid, and it was nearly every time, placed at my feet. Punishment was often brutal and physical. It seemed all that was within him, came pouring out in rage and destruction... of me...

There was no one to defend me, an introvert back then I would simply sit inside, read a book, and then stare back at him, not understanding his anger, or... his actions.

A "friend" made my aquaintance in a Junior Achievement hall-the "friend" was a Junior Achievement advisor, who I still fear I should not name. I told him of my fathers behaviours, and of his sons, and this new "friend" reassured me that it was "going to be all right... stick by me if you need help..."

Finally it felt, like I had found someone with the time, and stability, to look up to, to respect, and in many ways, love. <shrug> I suppose he was a "father surrogate..."

And so, this new "friend" [14 years my senior] and I became close companions. Certainly he must be safe-he had a wife and two wonderful children-I will say their names were Kelly and Kevin... Certainly he must be a refuge.

Yea right...

Without too much detail, when I told him about my step brothers behaviours, I was reassured-

But wound up being used for the same purposes.

And now I amonce again finding myself thinking of ways to hurt myself...not take my frustration out on those who hurt me... and that I cannot do... I will not do...

It is like a membrane is before me, and I push on it sometimes... I get the feelign it is not un-breachable... if I only will continue... but lessons of a long dead past are still virulent...

And that is what my past is, like a virus that keeps on returning... it has spoiled relationships by causinig poor chocies, or rendered me incapable of accepting lies, mis-statements, or being ignored, as something besides the evil that they are...

I feel exhausted, and brain is near to hiking again... best to finnish...