Forgettting Heaven [edit one]

Forgetting Heaven1

A Life Story 2

By Jiselle Hirsch3

You’d think id get tired of telling tales. Of meeting people who think they can cure me and putting any amount of hope into them. Well I am now getting irresistibly tired of people. They say, ‘Tell me your sad story Jiselle.’ And when I do they turn away from me, like my story makes me something ill and noxious to be around. Well I’m tired of fake people. Don’t bother entering my life if you can’t take the story below. If you think that just because of the things I lived through that I am somehow lessened, don’t bother me. What I have gone through has made me strong, made me who I am today weather I like it or not.4

I was born in California to 2 idiots. Mother thought a baby would get father to marry her. Why she wanted and abusive drunk to marry her is still a slight mystery to me. She says it’s this thing called love. I’m sure you can see why I don’t understand. Had she known the reality of the life ahead of us she would have aborted I think. Father just wanted a baby to show his father that he wasn’t worthless. Unfortunately the old man died before I was born. His ashes are still in father’s bottom dresser door. Father Doesn’t let anything leave him if he has a say in it. Though mother and I lived with him in the middle of nowhere, he wasn’t very involved. I have glimmers of tiny memories which have him tossing me in the air, but I could have designed such a memory to fill the void he left there. In less than 3 years I was taken away from them. The whole story is still pretty much unknown to me (thank god) but from what I know, the courts took me away from father because he was sexually molesting me and mother was a druggy. I lived with my grandmother Judith, mother’s mother, for half a year. She’s the one who brought my "situation" to the courts attention. I hate her. Not so much for the trials but for why she started the whole thing. Unfortunately I have the same name as her sister who died when she was very young. [SUMMERY] Grandmother uses me as a chance to right that wrong. I know that some how the charges against my mother were the only ones to hold and I then given to my father while mother got rehab. Grandmother, being an immigrant, was ready to go home to Hungary with me, before handing me back to him. She admitted that to me only recently, showing me my passport she had made for the trip. But instead of running with me she did as ordered and I went 'home' with father. Mother soon returned to him and the baby me and we lived together in questionable happiness. It’s questionable because I have no clue, no real memories of the time. There are those things, these glimmers of dreams I’ve had. They are not whole and therefore they can only that suggests that things were not as they should be. But then dreams are not memories and I refuse to let more uncertainty infect me. For me memories equal chaos. No memories equal a sense of peace. 5

Other people’s tales of the time say that there were many fights between mother and father, and at times she would move out, taking me with her. When you hear my father’s side of the story, when she moved out that first time I was being kidnapped by her. This is because my father still had sole custody of me. But since the birth certificate listed only mother, my father being an unknown, she got away with it. I was told of one place we lived when mother and father were disagreeing. We lived with mother’s sister Annette, where she picked up her old habits of drugs and so on. The stories told to me of that place are quite disgusting, my aunt being gay and the man who owned the house, George, supposedly molesting me as well. Men are pigs by the way. I just thought you should know that. Even though mother knew that father was abusive she went back to him every time. She claimed that she thought she could get him to stop, could change his ways. Well I learned my lesson, men don’t change. That ping pong match of “I love you, I hate you” continued until I was 8 when she left 'for good'. At first we stayed in California but father found us time after time, and made it very hard to stay anywhere once he found us. She realized that freedom could not be found in such close proximity to him, because where ever she would go, he would find her and demand her return. So mother packed everything up, and we left for the other side of the country. Might have been the other side of the world for the differences between California and Kentucky are great and numerous. But beside encounters with snow and weird accents, Kentucky was not fun. Memories finally show up here, living with a man named Randy. From what mother tells me, there was nothing in the way of a sexual relationship going on between them, but he did try to treat me like his child. Good or bad he tried. During this time I was for mother a touch stone, something to keep her sane. I took care of her like a mother took care of a child. I missed so much raising my own mother. Whenever I needed her she disappeared, gone for 3 days or 5 days. I wouldn’t know where she was until she decided to come back. While we were living with Randy, she disappeared for 5 days. He called jails and hospitals trying to find her. We both were so scared. She said that she was taking care of one of her friends, and old man who was dying, but I remember that she had burn marks on her back when we went to sleep that night, like someone had burnt her with cigarettes. I still don’t know what to think about that, other than maybe she was trying to get away from her own problems. After all she didn’t have the fairy tale life either. I don’t know the things that happened to her as a child. She was a baby when grandmother brought her to this country. Her mother was fleeing the war of ’56 in Hungary, basically the country fighting the communist. The country was very weak, still recovering from the holocaust. Grandmother was Jewish as well, and survived all of that shit. I can’t believe people would hunt other people down and kill them just because they were different. No let me correct myself, I can believe it. But it makes me sick. Grandfather Lazlo was a small time hero, working from the inside to get people out, trying to help the soldiers win one for the home team. When he finally decided to come to America to be with his family he got an earful for playing with his guns and not coming to America to be a father. Grandmother and Grandfather couldn’t stay together for long in this county and mother and her sister had to stay with their mother when they split, because her father had no way to support her. She hated her mother, a tyrant bitch if I recall correctly. She fell into her horses and her artwork as an escape until she met Steven. She married at 17 and a half to get away from her mother. Her marriage failed miserably. She met my father when she was in her late 20’s. She thought that he was her dram. S divorced Steven so that she could marry Mr. Robert Steven Watson, who never asked her to do such a thing. She got pregnant a few times before I was ‘created’ and she miscarried all of the others. She got pregnant once again after Valentines Day (hint hint!) and had her first child, me, when she was 30. I was born November 12 1986 to be exact, I believe in was a Thursday or a Tuesday maybe. As I’ve told you before father is one of the worse people to fall in love with, mostly because he doesn’t give affection, no matter how starved for it you are.  After her flee from captivity as she called it, her exodus from my fathers control, she had her share of misadventures. I only know this from a diary I found of hers years and years later. I believe his name was Daniel? I’m not sure but he was her dream man next to my father. It wasn’t much more then a one night stand, but mother cried over him in those pages of messy writing. When I look back now I think that maybe I have her heart. Fall in love easy and loves deeply. I wonder if it a good or bad thing?6

I had to take the 2nd grade over again because of how often mother moved us, but I was happy with my friends at my school. I make friends easily I guess. Mother moved us around my school so I could finish a year in one place. One of the places we moved to was a farm, which will remain nameless because I don’t know how to spell it. My only nightmare there was Jay. To make a long story short he was my first encounter with someone who thought of me as pretty and he hurt ended up on my jerk list. He was a neighborhood kid. At the time I believe he was in 5th grade and I was going to go into 3rd once the summer was over. A user from day one, he never took anything serious. He’d have me tag along like some puppy dog and be his damn maid. I hated it but I wanted the instant acceptance that tagging along gave me. In the end I told him what I thought of him, I pushed him into the lake while he was fishing. Get your own damned worms.7

We moved again and again and again, and this time I didn’t stay at the same school. We lived with Dean the old man, and Arnold the man who kept the house freezing cold and Bob with his rotten teeth. While we were living with Bob mother lost custody of me once more. I went to a foster home and even though it was considerably cleaner then home, I didn’t like it. She made me go to church and wear skirts and eat everything on my plate and she even tried to make me be a cheerleader. Yes, silly little things like what I face at this moment, but I can say honestly that the woman completely freaked me out. I was home in under half a year, but it wasn’t quick enough for me. And Bob was gone. Mother says he was to blame for her losing custody of me but I don’t know whether I can believe that or not. I’ve learned believing her isn’t something one should do all of the time. Sad but true. Her drug habits began to leak into her life in its entirety, even where I was connected. I remember being in the car and mother would turn to me. Shed tell me that we were going into a bad neighborhood and that I should hid under the blankets in the back of the car, if I stayed real still, I could have a dollar. Being a child I did as told and eagerly awaited my dollar. I remember mother driving around in circles and asking people for ‘dimes’. I wondered why she asked for change in bad neighbor hoods but I never asked. And sometimes she said they didn’t taste right or something to that effect. I never asked about it, I just accepted it. I’m still not positive but I believe a dime is an amount of crack, not sure how much. I remember one event, where for the first time she got out of the car to talk to the dealer. Curious I poked my head out the window. She was talk to a man and as I watched he pulled out a knife and grabbed her so that her back was to him and the knife was at her neck. I didn’t know what to do, I wasn’t supposed to get up from the back seat, or make any noise, but mother was in trouble. I honked the horn and screamed out the tiny crack in the window. He saw me and ran. I almost wish I did nothing. Also Mother stole to get the money to pay for the drugs. She took ribs from Kroger or liquor to sell on Sundays when you couldn’t buy it at real stores. My mother, such a good role model, she even took me into the stores when she stole and told me to pocket something if I wanted it bad enough. Buy the time I learned stealing was wrong I had a dresser drawer full of playing cards, old maid, and go fish and so on. I burnt them all. But mother never stopped stealing. Mother is a gypsy thief.8

We moved again, great surprise right? And I went to a new school. Meet another boy who thought the wrong things of me and mother did as well. James is a real scare in my life, mother’s boyfriend of the time. Once again memories wonderfully betray me. I remember sleeping... and him trying... I don’t think I have the words to tell you this........ Rape feels so dirty, like theirs dirt everywhere, on your skin, in your skin, and under it. And I know it happened to me, but I can’t remember it well, I’ve blocked most of it out. I remember trying to pretend to be asleep still, wondering what he was doing in my room... and then he took off his cloths and I began to panic, still pretending to be asleep. And he got onto my bed, and took my blankets from me.... and as a child I didn’t wear much to bed....... what I did have on he took off... while I was still pretending, hoping he would just go away. I’m still hoping, 6 years later. Just go away, just leave me alone, and please just die. If wishes were horse’s id own every single horse on earth. I’ve blocked the act out of my mind, but I remember him lying next to me, touching me afterwards. "Don’t tell your mother." I remember crying quietly as I could after he left, pretending to be still asleep. I told mother once, what he did to me. Not just the rape, but his 'spankings' and so on. She said she didn’t believe me, but she can hide all she wants from it, it still happened. I know that. While he was still living with mother and me, he found this place, 6 acres in the middle of no where, and mother bought it. I moved just in time to start middle school in the new town, even thought none of our utilities were connected.9

Unlike previous schools, I made few friends at Harrison co Middle School. There was Megan, who thought to be the leader, typical Leo. And Raye=Raceane, the one who kept the group together and me alive. Later there was Shannon S. She being a typical fish girl was so sensitive. I still worry about her even thou I got away from that god awful place. Even thought the rumors flew everywhere about me, they still were my friends. They were my life, because home was a disaster. There was not toilet, unless you counted the bucket that had to be dumped out regularly. There was no heat, unless you counted the kerosene heater which mad me sick and stank. There was only cold running water, and in the winter no water at all. Mother began breeding dogs. They used the bathroom inside more often then they did outside. The house was hardly ever cleaned unless I had the time to do it myself. You see, the only reason mother had enough money to buy the land was because she got hurt on the job, working with horses, and the settlement was enough to buy the land. But the money and land didn’t heal mother. She because overwhelmingly depressed, not moving out of her bed for days. It infected me unfortunately and I became suicidal and more at the age of unlucky 13.10

I’m too tired to finish this right now, tomorrow you’ll learn more ok?11

Where was I? Ahhh, yes, life sucks. After not seeing my father for 5 years and completely forgetting he existed, mother offered me the chance to see him again, in the flesh, in Kentucky. After I told her yes, she began to warn me of terrible things he used to do, and that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. He came just before winter that year. He cleaned up the tailor and hooked up everything for the house, even cable. It was the first time I could have people come over to my house for a visit and wasn’t to embarrassed. But mother was right in some respects. Father drank and had a short temper. There were a few times when he’d hit me, and if fought he would hit me harder. I could never just let some one beat me, I always fought him. If he had stayed in the house I probably would have gotten the shit beaten out of later, but he couldn’t stand how unclean mother kept the house, and he left only a half year after he came. He worked for some of the big farms around Lexington, KY so he could be close enough to visit me and for me to do the same. Over the summer I stayed nights with him and he told me things about things in my past I never knew about, or being a child, didn’t care to remember. In fact, up till that year I was never bothered but the fact that I didn’t have a lot of memories. The only time it bothered me was when we had to do a personal narrative for class and I couldn’t think of anything to write about. Innocence is beautiful. Or it was once I should say. That is when I learned part of the story of what happened to me when I was younger. He told me when mother took me to live in Kentucky and those other places in Cali; she was technically kidnapping me, because he had legal custody of me. Things like that, and it hurt me more than almost anything else, mostly because if there was something so big that I couldn’t remember then what other event could I be ignorant of? It still bothers me, that there could be something huge that everyone in my family is protecting me from, and I wouldn’t know what it is, even though it happened to me.12

Father bought his own land in Aug. of that year, and I started my last year in middle school. Once again my parents’ tried to get along “for my sake”, or to be more truthful in the matter then they were, to screw each other over one last time. The tried to start a horse farm on my fathers land, but in the end it didn’t work out, big surprise. Mother wouldn’t stop going on and on about how evil my father was, and everyday I spent with her I hated her more. I started really getting into band that summer but she wouldn’t let me go to any more practices for color guard after I got over heated one day. In fact after that I wasn’t allowed to go any where or do anything. I became almost a prisoner, only allowed to go to school and the court appointed visits with my father who was trying to get custody of me. The moment father asked me if I wanted him to fight for custody of me I screamed yes. Neither of them knew it but from when father moved I had started self injuring myself. Hell, I didn’t even really understand it at the time. I just knew that I pulled my hair out and burnt myself on purpose. I wouldn’t even notice I was doing it until I finished my self-destructive acts. I just wanted to hurt myself so I could feel something, because I was so numb for most of the time. When I hurt myself things feel better, more under control. A feeling that turns out to be addictive, and the reason I still cut, though now I know what it is I’m trying to stop. When mother found out I wanted father to get custody of me she threw a tantrum, yelling and screaming at me, calling me everything unholy and threatening me. When I was finally allowed to go to sleep that night I stayed up and stared at my self in the mirror. I remember thinking how I could hurt myself and make all of it just stop. I scratched my image in the mirror thinking about what death would be like. None of the little destructive things were enough to stop me from wanting to actually hurt myself and so I took the razor from the bathroom and used it to cut my bangs completely off, almost down to the roots. 13

I freaked in the mourning and cut hair from further back into bangs to hide it, but that emotion, of wanting to hurt myself so bad stayed with me. And I never understood it. Of course I looked like an idiot, but it wasn’t like I hurt my reputation or anything. I was the school leper at the time. Only one guy bothered to say hi to me everyday, little wonder that I fell sorely in love with him.  Little wonder that he tried to use me like so many before him. The temptation to sing it’s a small world after all is still here, even after 4 or 5 years. I probably should explain that one. It’s a small world, as in another person who thought if they treated me nice until I fell I love, they could abusive me later. You see, he tried to basically make me into his slave. I was ok with talking to him all the time and I was ok with talking to no one but him, but once other demands started popping up, I became very doubtful that he cared for me at all. I tried to dump him after school one day, but he didn’t like the idea much. He walked off and I didn’t think much of it. I was going to let him alone until he thought things through. I guess he didn’t like his thoughts much because the next thing I knew he hit me. I was flat on the ground with my ears ringing and he was foaming at the mouth screaming at me. He was going to hit me again with his book but before he could I leg swiped him and made sure that he didn’t get up again until the teachers pulled me off of him. I was bleeding from my chin where his book hit me the first time, he was… asleep. And even thou I was the school loner/outcast, they stood up for me. They all reported he attacked me first and I basically got off Scott free, with the exception of this ugly scar on my chin. But as I always say, if you ignore the pain, it might go away one day. I hope.14

After awhile, father got the custody battle into court and I got to see the judge in his chambers and tell him that I wanted to move in with my father. And it is here that I made the biggest mistake in my entire life. When the judge asked me if I wanted to have visitations with my mother I felt guilty, so guilty that I said yes. I’ve regretted it ever since. First of all, I thought that case would be the deciding case, and it wasn’t. They wouldn’t let me go home with my father, no matter how much I screamed about being afraid of what my mother was going to do to me. I cried and screamed, but the only thing they did was have the sheriff tell me that I had to go with her or I went to juvie. Since I didn’t want a criminal record, I went home, where mother threw another tantrum and ended up hitting me. A slap really, but that’s not the point now is it? I went numb again and didn’t talk to anyone until I got to school. Where I had my friends I could relay on to cheer me up and make me happy. I forgot to mention how crazy my friends were. Our leader, Megan had this show she loved to watch, Sailor moon. It was like a soap opera for her it was that addictive. She began to make it that we each had a person we emulated from the show, and she of course we the ditzy blonde leader, perfectly fitting for her. I was Jupiter, tom boyish and tall with brown hair. Raye was Raye or the Sailor mars person… I wonder why lmao. And then Shannon later became Sailor mercury. Once we had our parts for one show we expanded the thing and we got to be other people form other shows. Like on Buffy, since I was in total lust with Angel, I got to be Buffy. And we created this whole other plot thing where we were these hero’s fighting evil in all these different realms. It was so much fun, and probably the reason I like acting so much. Of course good things don’t last forever. We grew out of the little drama we had going once we entered high school, Raye being the first to drop it and then Megan and me. Once we didn’t have the whole evil fighting thing holding us together, we sort of split. I got new friends, the art freaks and drama weirdoes, Raye went into the ROTC, and thankfully Megan moved. She drove me nuts mostly because she had to be better than everyone and rub it into your face. Grrrr.15

Life was hell living with mother after the court battles were over. I got to move in with father but I had to go to visit mother still. The first visit, now that is the stuff a nightmares, partly the reason I’m scared of cars. She was crying as soon as we pulled away from the drive way. She swerved from lane to lane screaming that her meaning in life was nil if I wasn’t living with her anymore. She said she should go ahead and kill both of us because if I could do something so bad to her then I didn’t deserve to live. The drive from father’s house to mothers is about 25 min’s. But that day it felt like I was in hell for years of retribution. And getting home didn’t fix anything, my room had long ago lost its door to one of her tantrums, so I couldn’t lock her out and read until it was time to go home. I did attempt it but she would come in and beg or scream at me to do something. I did what I have become the perfectionist of. Blankly stared at her still as stone until she gave up, this was rare indeed for her to do. She always thought that words would sway me, but that was not what I wanted from her. I let father get custody of me so that the little money she did get for workers comp could be spent on getting the house cleaned up or getting her out of bed so she could find something to do job wise. I wanted her to be able to become independent some, and I knew that I, being dependent on her, hindered her. Yes, I also did it so that I wouldn’t have to live in that place, but also for her, no matter how buried it is, I always do things for other people. After the agony of the first visit, I didn’t want to come back, so I didn’t go. She came to pick me up and I refused to go. My father supported me on this and told mother to piss of. Well she did piss of, and brought the cops back with her. After a panic attack and 30 million questions later, they told me that I had to go tomorrow to visit her. I went but I was very unhappy about it. Ever since then I’ve thought cops from KY sucked royal ass and should all be put to sleep! Months later she threw her worst fit ever. One that definitely fucking hurt me, not physically, although that was the treat, but emotionally, yeah it fucking hurt. I was reading in my room when she came into my room and started screaming about how worthless it was to go on when I didn’t even love her. She used a huge kitchen knife to gesture everything. “I should just kill myself because you don’t care. But no, that would make you happy, to get rid of me! No I would kill you first, because that would be justice for all the hurt you’ve caused me!” I believe you understand the basic’s of her pleas against me. She didn’t really justify herself really well in my opinion, of course to me there is no real good reason to murder someone. Since she cornered me in my room, I jumped out the window and ran o the neighbor’s house. I called dad to pick me up, and hid inside their bathroom while mother circled the house. When they told her I wanted my stuff, she gave it to me, half emptied and what was left was torn and mostly ruined. All my cd’s were broken or later I found the out side where she Frisbee’d them. I still have the linkin park cd she threw outside. I didn’t want to go back, but she threatened to sue my father if I didn’t and so to keep the peace I kept going back, no matter how much I hated her and hated going back but I still went.16

Living with father at first was wonderful. I finally had privacy. It was almost like living by my self. I would go days with having to talk to father. It was almost too peaceful, and I started talking to him more and more. He didn’t like that too much. He said he spent most of his life being a hermit crab, living in the middle of nowhere all alone. Talking to someone was awkward to him. So I ended up growing very lonely and isolated. It worsened when he started cutting me off from everyone. He disconnected the internet first, then the phones. I wasn’t allowed to use his cell phone but for 10 min’s a day, and he listened to everything I said. I was closing down to everyone at this time, and I just stopped using the phone. Some days I wouldn’t even talk to people. Just stare at walls and make images out of the swirls in the paint. Mother didn’t help, bad mouthing him until I learned to white her out. I’d stare at more walls and imagine floating until she finished. I finally did stop going to visit her. But it took so long to find the blackmail powerful enough to make her stop forcing me to go. She sued me. Claiming I stole things from her when I moved into my fathers house. Books and clothes, they say that until your 18 anything you own belongs to your parents. I missed a lot of school because of it because no one knew what to do for my case. In the end they let mother have her way since I didn’t care one way or another. She wanted me to see a shrink. One thing she did that pissed me off to the point of hating her more than the color pink. Mrs. Shrink said I was the sanest of any person she’s had in her office after awhile. She was proud of how strong I was, even in the face of such terrible circumstances. She just went on and on really, that I had situational depression and that I just had to get away from mother and father if I wanted to have a life, which she never helped me do. I would get out of 2nd block and walk across the street to the offices. I was always a little early and so I sat in the office thinking of things I could say. I never felt like I had anything important to say. I felt so misplaced; I usually just sat there and looked at the toys in the office, the ones the little kids played with. After mother threw another tantrum, the only thing she said to do was not to go back if I didn’t feel safe. 17

I should tell you about that. I asked mother, if I let her get custody of me again would she send me right away to live with my grandmother in California. She fucking was so excited at the prospect of taking me from my father, that she started working out this whole plan of action. She wanted me to lie to the courts and say father was hurting me, hitting me and so on. And it also meant I would have to wait for turkey break of this year till I could get to move to Ca, which meant my credits would be royally screwed up. I told her that if I went threw with this I wouldn’t lie to the courts and I would have to go during the summer or I couldn’t go thru with it at all. In the end I realized she just wanted to make it that when I came back she could keep me with out sending me to gm’s, and I wouldn’t let her do that to me, not after how hard I fought to get away. So I was going to go home again, to father’s house, even though I didn’t want to go back and be ignored. She threw another fit this time almost killing me. She had bought a small collection of swords to try and bribe me to stay with her. We were yelling about how her plan wouldn’t work and she kind of snapped. She grabbed the sword and started on her old rant about how we should both die because I didn’t love her… and then she swung it at my neck. I don’t know if she knew I would duck or not, but I did. I rolled off my bed and ran, once more and I swore I wouldn’t come back. 18

Any ways the mind shirker wanted me to finish high school in KY and then move to live with grandmother for college. Well once 11th grade was over and I didn’t have to visit her any more I started planning to move to California. I knew that grandmother wouldn’t like how I looked when I moved their. She’s a perfectionist in all matters, and that included the body. My fathers land was 125 acres of hill mostly with a small creek running in the very back. Id walk down to the creek during the hottest part of the day and swim in the water until it started getting dark and it was time to go home. I thought some of that might help with how much I weighed and then grandmother might not be so disgusted with me. Unfortunately, father had different plans for my summer. He wanted me to work for him. Idiot! He almost enslaved me, making me work from 4 am till 2 pm for no pay, no nothing. Oh, wait, I got room and board and food when he felt like buying it. All of my clothes got raggedy and ruined because I had to wear something to work, and he refused to buy me new clothes to work in. He didn’t buy me food unless I threatened to pour all of his beer down the sink. In a month I got so sick of it that I went to visit my mother for her birthday, even though I had stuck to my refusal to see her for 3 months. She was more than happy to let me hide out at her place until I felt like going back home. The only time I ever visited my father’s house again was when he was not home so that I could get my things out of the house before he used them to make a nice big fire. After I got my stuff, I packed it up and flew to California.19

Sometimes I think the worst thing I can do is dream or want something for my future. I can want something as innocent as getting away from my parents constant fighting, but such things still have their consequences. I turned around one day and found I was far beyond sick of my parents. Only so much a person can take before they say enough. I thought I refuse to be used any more; I refuse to be the victim and their prey. I wanted more for my life then the day in and day out fear. I remember once I was sitting in my room at fathers and he came home earlier than usual. He didn’t say anything, just started ruffling thru his things and stomping thru the house. This was a week after mother threatened my life and I refused to go back to her house. I had thought it was mother come to hurt me or my father. I sat by the door way and had a panic attack thinking of all the horrible things she could do to me to settle her revenge. I finally got enough courage to look down the stair way and saw in the mirror that it was just father working on some paperwork. It was that panic though', that made me decide it was time to find another escape. I knew father wouldn’t just let me leave. He has this problem I call ownership. Once he sees something, he believes he owns it. I knew the only way I would get away is if I basically ran away to live with my mother, but she was the one person I wanted to avoid over everyone else. In the end I didn’t have a choice. I spent a couple of weeks with mother and then she flew me out to my grandmothers to live in Cali. I almost wish that I hadn’t come here.20

I’ve always been very good at taking insults. In fact most insults don’t faze me. Who is this person who thinks calling me a name is hurting me? A stranger or some idiot who thinks belittling me would make them look bigger and badder. Please! But there are some people in this world where no matter how numb you are to simple words; you will still get hurt when you hear it from them. My grandmother is one such person. I knew stepping off the plan that she wouldn’t be to happy with me. I hadn’t seen her in years and because of the way my life had gone down hill in that time I had put on a lot of weight. My grandmother is a health nut you see. She believes that to be perfect, you have to start from the out side. Well the only good thing I have going for me is my height. The rest just has to change to please her. So far I’ve lost a lot, just by changing what I ate and working out randomly. But it’s not enough for her. Its really getting on my nerves how she’ll come up to me and look at my arms and say.21

“Look at how much smaller your arms are. You should lose more.” And I would be ok with that if it was really random, once as week type of thing. But she does it time I see her. Everything I do she measure against how it effects my ‘diet’. It drives me nuts. The other thing that’s pissing me off is she doesn’t like me being on the computer. Oh, like I’m posting nudies on my page and cybering or something. Yeah, that will never happen. And she instantly thinks that any guy I talk to online is some 50 year old man who planes to kidnap and kill me. She got to the point where she wouldn’t allow me any privacy. I locked my door so I could get some alone time to think. When I came back from the bathroom I found her taking my door knob off. I didn’t get it back for weeks! She began photocopying my diary entries of which I found 10 of in all. She asked me to look for her sunglasses in the purse one day and I recognized my hand writing. I was like what the fuck? She tried to snatch them out of my hands but I was able to keep them. I got so pissed I decided to do the same to her, and go thru her stuff, which is how I found others. Lately I’ve been going thru some of gm’s records. The bloody witch prints out her emails to keep them as evidence for some demented reason. There was this huge email war between mother and her sister and aunt rocky sent all of the emails to her mother. They were fighting about things that happened in the past as usual. Mother even mentioned her grandfather molesting her sister, but she denied it. Things I never knew about. I guess I’m not expected to know these things, but they affect me too don’t they? The stories I hear from grandmother are not anywhere near pretty. It makes me wonder what life is like when you have that perfect American dream. I wonder about father sometimes, what his life was like. All I know is that he was very attached to his father. His parents split when he was young as well. My dad was a football player, line back, and got a scholarship on his football playing abilities. He was in the ROTC and was drafted for Vietnam. He was part of a medial supply unit. If a hospital was blown up or they need more doctors in an area his team would fly in to help, even though father was only like a nurse. He never talked about other than the facts. He went into selective service later, and went to England to box. Honorable discharge brought him home with nothing to do. And that’s about all I know of him. Mother tells me that she met him in Cali. He built horse jumps for shows and she was at a show when she ran in to him.22

But enough of all that. On my birthday my aunt came down from Colorado. She started fiddling with the computer and I knew what she was doing. You see, my aunt is the computer genius of the family. She installed this program on here called net nanny which is to control and monitor the people using internet a computer. Well needless to say I was pissed off when I realized what the program not only made it so that I could only go online from 7 to 10, but that it made the internet useless to me. I couldn’t log into and of my favorite sites because to log in you have to accept a cookie and net nanny blocks such things. Also my mail and IM’s would be recorded. I nearly lost my cool when I realized I couldn’t read my mail (couldn’t log in) and I couldn’t post an entry it my friends begging for some sort of reassurance that it wasn’t the end of the world. I had already dealt with being blocked from the internet once before when gm’s niece came by one day and blocked internet explorer with an administrative password. Meaning without a password I couldn’t go online, because the other ip [{internet provider} (mozilla)] she had taken off the start menu and off the desk top. Well I figured that one out in like 5 minutes. All I had to do was go into a program that used mozilla to launch and I was back online. Hell, the program was still in the c drive. Well aunt rocky fixed that loop hole when she came out here. Good thing is she left another one in its place. The net nanny 5 program has a MAJOR flaw in its make up. When she set it up, aunt Rocky gave me 3 hours 7 to 10 pm to be online. If I turn on the computer after 7 I had to sign in with the program if I wanted to get online. It does everything it’s supposed to do from 7 to 10. But if it’s before 7 or after 10, meaning in any of those 21 other hours, it sends me a warning:23

“You are not allowed to access the internet at this time; your Net Nanny administrator has restricted your access by time of day.” If you click ok, then the program works. But if you instead just move it out of the way or ignore it, you can get on the internet all you want. That’s right boys and girls, just ignore the warning and you can log in to sites and read your mail in peace. I can’t believe such a major program would have such a HUGE flaw in it. Thankfully it does lmao! I can not only get into my sites but I also hacked into her email account. I guess I’m asking for pain when I do that. I know that 2 wrongs don’t make it right but I think that she’s pushed it to the point where I can’t trust her anymore.24

Emotions, it happens now and then. Ill be sitting in bed trying to sleep and then... I wonder why am I here. I’ve spent 18 years just walking straight forward not thinking twice about things. If I was scared I ran, if I was happy I danced. I don’t think why, usually I feel it and act. Right now I'm feeling purposeless. Not just right now, but all day, and the night before that. I’m scared. There are so many things I want to be apart of but there is this part of me that just knows its not going to happen. It knows that I’m here for a short time and what I’m here for isn’t needed any more. I feel sick and panicky. I’m freaking out over an emotion! I can’t do this anymore; I need something, hell if I know what. There is this guy. His name is Chris. I’ve known him for close to 2 yrs now. It’s a cute story really. I was bored out of my mind one day while on the net, basically search for something to keep my mind off of myself when I remembered my friend wanted me to add her on my buddy list. Well I only could remember that she had the word angel in her screen name and so I set myself the task of searching thru AOL’s member directory for her. Well I don’t think I ever finished, because I came across this one name that totally caught my curiosity. Cryptic angel. My first words to him where questioning his names meaning. And I guess it was enough to get me added to his list. And later for a phone call when I need it. For almost 2 yrs he's been there for me when the going got bloody bad. I hoped for some time that maybe he could be more than a long distance savior but when I moved to Cali I 'knew' that chances were it wasn’t going to happen. But instead we've gotten closer. He's asked me to be his and I said yes (several times). But right now I’m scared to death. My only goal in life has been to survive. Grad hs and get some freedom. And that’s the problem I think. What if I end up running again, like I ran from my mother and my father? If I run from gm, does that mean that I’m bound to that curse? Will I end up running from him as well no matter how much I love him? No Chris, I love u, I don’t want to run. This is just senseless fear eating at me. I don’t want to hurt anyone but it seems like I drag this black cloud with me where ever I go. I’m scared that my reactive running might never stop. God I don’t understand myself. I ran from mother because I knew if I stayed I would die, drown in depression and self loathing. I ran from father because I knew if I stayed I would never get away, I would belong to him as surely as mother once belonged to him, branded as property. I ran from KY searching for safety thinking that I would finally be ALIVE! Yet nothing turns out the way I intend it. Here I am still that girl who fights with herself about whether or not she should get up in the morning. I’m still thinking that I am a waste of space because I’m nothing. I’m meaningless and most terrifying of all... futureless.25

~string of random curses~26

I can’t take this, its like everything is crashing down on me! In one hand I say, I can be someone, just put one foot in front of the other and you will make it. The other part of me says they're r 12 razor blades under the papers in your nightstand; just one should be enough to end the questions. Oh god I don’t want to cut, I don’t need to. I’m just down, ill be better. Why now? Why? It’s just an emotion Jiselle, chemicals in the body. Its just fear and fear is nothing you haven’t fought before.27