Merriam – Webster’s Dictionary defines a journal as a record of current transactions; especially: a book of original entry in double-entry bookkeeping; an account of day-to-day events; a record of experiences, ideas, or reflections kept regularly for private use. The fact that I take my journal out to the Internet does not change the fact that it is a journal, a collection of musings over a period of time. It doesn’t make me right or wrong, it is just a form of story telling of the rattling of my mind. Most writers have an editor, so the words of the writer are filtered through the editor's style, but not me (obviously *laugh*) and so what you get is pure un-edited me.
It is odd that some men I have known think they have the right to comment on what I write (via email or im - not brave enough to post); down to how I am telling my story or the tone they perceive is there. Mr. Big would probably roll his eyes, sigh, take a puff on his cigarette and say “What a fuc*in idiot” to their remarks. He understands the bravery of taking ones thoughts and life and laying it out for the public to view. It is what it is - it is I. This is a gift, believe it or not in the opening up of my personal thoughts. I write in the hope that it helps other single parents make it through the rough times. So much of the world is about how everyone looks, what they wear, how much money they have, that too few take the time to really get to know a person. It takes a long time to see the many angles of a person's soul. It is my hope to expose the world to mine, and over time see the complexities of human nature. Maybe it will motivate someone to slow down, and understand that often what they see is not all there is.
I do not trust those who attempt to project their opinions on to others; I think it is a direct indication of how they feel about themselves. In the 'pointing out' - the focusing out - they don’t notice the fingers pointing back, which are their own. Would they comment on someone's diary... the color of a person's hair ... the texture of a person's skin? I suppose for some it is easier to look at someone else, rather than look at themselves.
Today I was musing about how I used to write in my diary every day growing up, then in the journal my college English professor had me keep, which she read with great interest. My father was diagnosed with esophageal cancer at the end of my 8th grade year and had surgery sometime in my freshman year. I still can’t bring myself to read my diary from those years. I became an angry withdrawn teenager, into writing for the school newspaper, ballet, ice-skating and male hockey players, I hated my brother, was angry at my mother and more so at my father.
One afternoon, I was in my father’s truck soliciting ads for the high school newspaper, and probably flirting with boys, and returned home late to pick my father up for his first chemotherapy appointment. My parents (and brother) kept much from me about the seriousness of my father’s cancer, trying to give me a normal high school experience. Trust me, there is nothing normal about living in a house where no one talks about the dying man in the room. It is like the elephant on the living room couch that everyone pretends isn’t there.
My father was waiting for me in front of the house, with that angry disappointed look in his face. I pulled up and he got into the truck and an argument exploded between us. I was the typical pain in the ass selfish teenager, until this strong bellowing man doubled over in pain and began to dry heave. “Please Cath I beg you, just get me to the doctor.” I stared at him in shock and disbelief. He was so sick, in so much pain and I hadn’t seen it. When did this happen, when did he get so sick?
I don’t remember the drive from Rohnert Park to Santa Rosa. I know he spent most of it doubled over, and I just couldn’t seem to get to the doctor fast enough. It plays in my mind like one of those dreams where you are running and not leaving from where you are.
I remember sitting in the waiting room hating myself for being late and being so mean. I don’t remember how long he was in therapy. I was also angry, angry that he was so sick and no one in my family told me. From that moment I decided that I would never be like that to him again, and would go out of my way to see to it that he was comfortable when we were home together. I was deeply saddened by everything, like an over whelming cloud of fog that reigned down about me. There was the injustice of his dying, the pain of my mother who had changed profoundly since his surgery. There was my brother, and although we rarely fought anymore, we never spoke to eachother, like strange caged animals at the zoo. It all closed in on me sitting in that doctors office as tears slowly rolled down my face onto my blouse. The waiting room nurse brought me a box of Kleenex and said nothing. No one talked about cancer back then.
When my father came out into the waiting room, I stood up and went to help him. He suddenly seemed so old, so frail. My John Wayne father was withering before my eyes. There was nothing I could do. In the truck I told him I was sorry, something I would say to him in the heavens for many years after he died. He told me that he loved me. It wasn’t until I had Brian that I understood why. Thus began the ever-shortening days until my father’s death. I would never be the same.
I excelled at writing during those years before his death. I put everything on paper, hoping that the words would somehow cure my dad and return my family to the normal, fun, dysfunctional family that we once were. No amount of writing saved his life and in the summer of 1978 he slipped away from me as I watched without the power to keep him alive. By then I didn't want him to stay. He was in so much pain and suffereing that I didn't think I could bear one more day of watching him endure excruciating pain just to try and stay with us. I hated God, and thought he was a selfish bastard for taking such a wonderful loving man from us. I felt cheated and bitter that other kids had their parents and were clueless as to how lucky I thought they were.
I was suppose to go to England and Ireland that summer as a graduation gift, but when it looked like he was slipping away, we cancelled the trip. I didn't want to leave, and in the fall, began classes at the local junior college. I was lucky enough to land Ms. Korb, a terrific english professor who took a real interest in me and the obvious pain and suffering reflected in the dullness of my eyes.
She made everyone keep a journal, that we turned in to her to read. I loved her comments. She would often write that she was "transfixed". I wrote about death, cancer, anger, bitterness, confusion, self medicating, pain, suffering, and joy, yes sometimes in all the fog, there were brief moments of joy. I wrote everything in that jouranl, my thoughts about almost losing my virginity, but deciding not to. The drugs I tried to use to bury the pain. I was a lost ship in the fog and Ms Korb and her class seemed to be the only thing preventing me from drifting away.
Then it happened. I came home to my mother sitting on my bed reading my journal, her face white. I stood there in shock, in disbelief that she was reading my journal without asking. I kept it under my matress, and this meant she had gone there to find it. The only thing she could focus on was the fact that I was becomming sexual and the drug use. Looking back I know she sensed she was loosing me, hell I was loosing me, but the idea of her pouring through my journal made me sick and angered me beyond control.
We had one of the worst fights ever, and I moved out that day. I moved into my boyfriend's house in his brother's old room. His mother was a raging alcoholic and welcomed anyone as dysfunctional and screwed up as she was into her world. Stacy, the boyfriend, was the kind of guy who could see a girl in trouble and wanted to keep her that way so she would never leave him. However, they seriously underestimated me in my state of fog, and I managed to save enough money to get myself a small studio apartment and remove myself from living around the alcoholic rages of his mother.
I began writing less and less in my journal and slipped further and further away from Ms Korb. I would go to work, then to school, come home and put on my pajamas, crawlin to my bed while it was still daylight and stare at the wall. Eventually, I would curl up in a fetal position and cry myself to sleep. Stacy worked construction, and would come by after work, get me up from bed and make me eat, The unhappiness I felt was like a wet cloth over my face, preventing me from really breathing, from living. I wondered what in the hell he was doing with me.
Funny, how when you hate God with a passion,he still manages to rescue you in spite of yourself. One late Spring day, I was on my way to school in my pinto (yes, I had a pinto), crossing a busy intersection, when a drunk guy in a big truck runs the light and smashes me, pinning me in the car. At this same time, my x boyfiriend Steve's (the one who never showed up at my Dad's funeral) friends are helping a friend move. They are coming off the freeway and see the accident happen. They all jump from their vehicles and run to my rescue. One,Brian, that I still know today rushed to my window to ask if I was ok. The others took off after the guy that hit me who was attempting to flee the scene. Steve was somewhere in the mist, but kept his distance, afraid what I might say to him. He later told me that watching me die my slow painful death of dispair killed him and confessed he was forever changed by my father's death too.
Brian was wonderful keeping me calm and working on getting me out while waiting for the cops to arrive. His friends (and Steve) had the other driver pinned to the ground. Suddenly I remembered the good parts of high school and why I adored these guy friends so much. I asked Brian to call my brother at work. I had not talked with or saw my brother in over 6 months. Brian called my brother, as the police got me out of my car, which is now obviously totaled. My brother was at the scene in minutes with a tow truck from work. He was the senior parts man for a local car dealership, and had my car towed to his work.
As the tow truck drove away, my brother turned to me, put his hands on my shoulders and asked me to quit being such a pain in the ass and to pleasecome home. He went on to say that he couldn't take seeing mom cry herself to sleep every night about me anymore and I had to come home and work it out with her. If not for me or mom, then for him. He had never asked me to do something for him before and I moved home that day. I felt selfish for my actions, and wanted to roll back time.
My mother was touring Europe, and it gave me time to give notice on my apartment and put my belongings back in place in my bedroom. God how I missed my bedroom. I worried that my mom wouldn't want me there and my brother looked at me like I was nuts. I will never forget when she returned from her trip and walked through the front door. I was standing at the end of the entry way, my heart racing. "Hi mom, welcome home" I said. She put down her bags and began to cry and rushed up to hug me. "Can I come home mom?" I asked, fearful she would say no (even though like a typical kid I had moved all my stuffback already). She kept crying as she said, "I was hoping you were already back". That was the beginning of the end of the dark days of fog for me.
For some reason I didn't feel like writing anymore, and turned my attention toward fashion and marketing. I wanted to be surrounded by beauty; to wash myself of all the ugliness I had witnessed. I broke up with Stacy, who tried becomming violent in an attempt to intimidate me into staying with him. But by this time I was back safe in the arms of my home and my family and began to focus on rebuilding my life. His threats fell on deaf ears and eventually he gave up. I had stopped self-medicating and took interest in long distance bicycling, along with marathon aerobic dancing and running.
I never did pick up journal writing again to the same degree as those school years, until I began this one here on AOL. It was the Internet that brought me back to writing. In 1995, while out on maturnity leave, a friend gave me my first home computer and came to my home to set it up in my kitchen. "You'd be good at this" he said. Little did he know just how prophetic that statement would become. I remember sitting in my living room when I received my first instant message on AOL. It scared the crap out of me and a new facinating world of writing online was opened up to me. A writer's paradise, especially in the early years of the Internet.
My first Mr. Big wrote to me in this new world of Internet chatting, Mark. He saw me through the end of my marriage and the beginning of my new found single parent life. We used to stay up until 4 in the morning laughing and chatting about life. It felt great to laugh so much and be wicked funny again. With the right straight person I can be dead-on hilarious. I began exploring my irish heritage online and wandered my way into Irish Heritage Chat on AOL. People are clueless today about the degree of whit and brilliance that found its way online back then.
Within the confines of the Irish chat room, and the messages with Mark, my writingability began to florish anew. I loved the clicking sound of my keyboard, creating magic with my fingertips. I forgot what it was like to write my thoughts. Mark and I were close friends for years. I lost track of him 5 years ago, about the time Mr. Big number two, Joy began instant messaging me through Yahoo. Joy is different though, brutally funny and amazingly brilliant. I have to be on my toes to keep up in my writings with him. Both men admire my brain, my comedy and understood the jokes I often make, and better yet, feed off my jokes by adding their own creating laughter that fills my living room.
Now, too few online conversations compare to the Mr Big's mesmerizing chat comebacks, writing ability and style. These days most instant messages bore me, and far too many don't look for fun and laughter - they look for sex. Others are over-sensitive and rarely check that they aren't projecting their own pain into what is written by mis-reading the inflection. The new McDonald's of the Internet is online sex, fast hot and cheap.
Rather than be disappointed by these changes, I chose to imbrace the new: Internet bloggingby creating my own online journal. I have returned to that from which I came. This time, if my mom wants to, she can just click a button and read what she already knows.
My mom now owns her own computer and is careful about what she reads of mine, and how far into my life she steps. I love her so much. She is thrilled to know that I am writing again...and that
I am back...and you all keep coming back...what the hell is up with THAT??
Until next time-
C
