That girl that I prayed for
The one who was in the hospital with COVID and she was so afraid and she said pray for her
And I did I prayed pretty hard for her
But then I was hesitant to pray hard for John prine because I just kept seeing complications and a life that was really full of pain and hardship and I knew he had already been sick and he was old and I just didn't know if he would want that so I didn't pray hard for him not because I didn't want John prine to live I mean
But you know it's not really cool to force what you want on other people so I phrased it more like you know I don't know what he would want but I would want him to live right
But that girl she was asking she was begging please pray for me I'm so scared and so I prayed really hard for her and she has had cuz I've kept up with her she has had such a hard time
I mean she's been unable to work and she was like a proofreader so it's not like she was a bricklayer or something but she can't work and she applied for disability
And they f****** disallowed it
so now she's like you know if I didn't have my parents I don't know what I would do and she's I don't know how old she is but she's pretty young I mean she might be like 30 maybe I guess she could be a little bit older than that but I don't think she is I think she's probably more like well she's probably 30 now but I think she was more like 27-28 and she's just gotten a service dog so she can try to be a little bit more independent
And I just think about all that premonition of hardship and I just didn't think it was her and I feel kind of conflicted like maybe I shouldn't have prayed so hard for her I don't know that she wants this life
But
I guess the answer to that
Is that I should continue to pray for her
That was kind of a weird where place to go
It's just been on my mind kind of bothering me
I probably should explain my situation more well not my current situation my background situation but I really can't right now
I feel like I spent the first like year of writing to you telling you about all my brokenness and my whole back story but I didn't in a very well I felt like it was kind of a detached dispassionate way so that I wouldn't come across as psychotically broken you know
I don't think I'm psychotically broken
But you know that complex PTSD was not something that I had ever learned about I've just recently started seeing that
Apparently it's in the international but not in the s*** I can't believe I can't remember what's called now The psychological diagnostic blah blah book that gets updated periodically it's like number one number two number three number four I think we might be on five or six or something now maybe even higher and that one doesn't have CPTSD at all it has borderline personality disorder
And when I was going to the psychologist and then I didn't like going to the psychologist I would go and I would talk and I would get very upset and then I was completely non-functional for the rest of the day and it just seemed not very productive you know and then she sent me to a psychiatrist to get antidepressants and I don't think I ever talked to the psychiatrist but there was a I'm not really I don't really remember what her classification was it was somebody who did talk to me who was a physician's assistant or psychiatric nurse or cyclinical psychologist I don't know who she was I think she was a clinical psychologist and she talked to me
You know like enough to confirm the diagnosis of depression so they could write the prescription I think I talk to the psychiatrist once but it was more like he kind of sat there for 10 minutes or so and the clinical psychologist told him stuff and he may be asked me a couple questions I don't know but there was some kind of piece of paper somewhere that I saw that had borderline personality disorder on it
And I pretty much freaked out about that and I talked to her and I'm like I do not think I have borderline personality disorder I do not want that written anywhere in my files are permanent records I do not agree with that diagnosis and she's like oh yeah we didn't really diagnose you with that That's just you know a thing
But I had read about borderline personality disorder and those people are I mean they one of the things that is a core function is that like the people that they're in relationships with they like love them and hate them and love them and hate them and they act all psychotic and they yell at them and push them away and it's just horrible and I don't behave like that have never behaved like that
But when I was younger and some of my earlier relationships I did have some of the milder features of the like extreme fear of abandonment thing and that is one of the things that is a feature of the CPSD
And I know I told you this but it's maybe one of the earlier things I told you and so you know I mean it's I don't know I really long time ago and I don't know that you remember everything I've ever told you I don't know why you would you know but so if you remember and I'm telling you this again I'm sorry I don't like to say things again and again and again
But you know my parents got divorced when I was a year and a half old and my father and I went to live with his parents but it's not like you know he was there with me as much as he could be he would get up in the morning and leave for work and he would come back mostly really really late so he was out you know living his life and my gran gran she was the one who took care of me
And I know I had trauma already from my parents getting divorced because when my father was there and he would go to the bathroom I would sit on the other side of the door and make him talk to me while he was in the bathroom because I thought he was going to jump out the window and run away now I know that isn't very sensical but I remember that
So I was afraid that he was going to abandon me but he didn't take good care of me he you know would take me out at night sometimes and drive me around and I would get sick
He would take me to the park and we would swing and that was fun I enjoyed that I enjoyed driving around but he he didn't take care of me he didn't he was not a caregiver he was not making sure I was safe he was not he was playing with me I was a toy I mean he loved me because you know I would look up at him adoringly and whatever and as soon as I stopped looking up at him adoringly he well let's not get ahead of ourselves
When my mother would come to visit which I don't recall being very often I would run and hide in the closet and say tell her I went to China because I mean I guess I knew that she had left me and I didn't want to see her but they would make me and I don't guess they told her I went to China or had any lack of interest in seeing her but I just really don't remember seeing her very much at all I know she would take me to cholla's, and she would take me with her to the gallery or places like that and say you have to behave like a grown up or I can't bring you
But I don't think those things happened until after my father married Deborah and she sued for custody I think that was when she started actually having an interest in spending any time with me maybe I'm wrong
I mean I was a child and I remember a lot for a small child but I don't remember much from the perspective of a life you know of course you don't as an adult either remember much You just remember high points and low points
So I mean I guess I had the initial childhood trauma of being my parents being divorced and my mother being gone
And perhaps I had other trauma based on the fact that I can't imagine my mother was a very good mother and I don't know that my father was a very good father so they may have not actually seen to my needs adequately before one and a half but I just don't remember that but I at least had that trauma and it was pretty traumatic I think based on the fact that for years and years after that I would make him talk to me through the door and didn't want to talk to her
But I really think that the only thing that saved me if you can say that I would saved is that I did have like that three or three and a half years of gran gran
And I mean I don't know whether you know if you analyzed what she did as a psychologist a child psychologist whatever whether you would say oh she was some kind of stellar parent or not I mean I was in front of the TV most the time and anytime I coughed or seems like I might be even slightly ill she gave me Paragon Coke or honey lemon and paregoric which is an opioid and I still kind of miss it
She let me go to the park by myself you know I mean I'm not saying she was a perfect person but she was there for me and she made sure I had the things I needed and she treated me with unconditional love
And I'm not really sure if anybody else in my entire life has loved me unconditionally
I mean maybe
Maybe you do
Maybe my parents did in their way I don't know it certainly didn't feel unconditional certainly wasn't like You know no matter what you do I will always love you that was not the sentiment that was expressed and that was not how it came across pretty much ever
And I know I've told you more recently about how it was more important for them to fight with each other than it was for them to not upset me even when they had been divorced for you know 7-8 years
And Deborah thought I was uppity I mean they're really just is not a better way to put that she thought I was uppity and her goal was to break me and it was pretty clear
And my father would tell me s*** like how he loved me more than her and he would get me to tell him all these things you know whatever my little 6-year-old secrets might be and then he would tell her and then she would be y'all coming at me and it would be like why do you tell her this it's supposed to be a secret between us but you know he he just came across to me is very I don't know I think I thought that was weak
But he wouldn't let her beat me and she really wanted to beat me it was very clear she really wanted to beat me
And I saw this guy was talking about CPTSD and he was talking about kids just deciding that they had not very many needs because they couldn't get the mat so they just would stop having them and that just rang so true for me it's like I I don't I mean you know I've tried but it's really hard for me to say what my needs are or even to kind of have needs or know what they are you know
But I was saying that having had that time with gran gran is what saved me and what I mean is that I felt like I had had a home where I was love to take care of and VALUED
And I was stolen from that home and treated badly and unfairly and lived under the care of a woman whose goal it was to break me
But I did not believe that that was the way it was supposed to be You know if I had just grown up like that with that being all ahead ever been exposed to then I would have felt like that was just normal and that was how it supposed to be but instead I felt enslaved I felt oppressed I felt like I needed to be emancipated from that situation
And so then my mother who was now having visits was being on her best behavior which I honestly do not know how she maintained throughout summers I mean I know how she could you know behave well for a weekend maybe or for sure a Thursday night visit because that was only from like you know for 4:30 to 9:00 5:00 to 9:00 something like that and we would pretty much just go to memorial City Mall until right before they closed and then I would go home but I never really felt like that was my home
That was Daddy and Deborah's
And my mom's place was my mom's place
The only place that ever was my home was my gran gran's house
Except it wasn't
And even through all the places that I have lived and you know they've not been bad places I've liked them I've liked all of them
My whole life I just have this feeling like I want to go home but they're never is a place that feels like that
But Joan told me at some point when I was a teenager after gran gran was dead
Because she died right before my 15th birthday I think hang on let me check that
Yeah I didn't think I would get that wrong she died on January 3rd 1982 and it's it's funny because I I don't remember the date that my grandfather died or my aunt died or my father died actually I'm not sure I actually know the date my father died but those other people I should know and I don't remember any of them because I don't know I just I don't I remember their birthdays but I don't remember their death days
But my Gran Gran
It is just etched into my heart
And I remember right after she died my mother said something like yeah it's really hard when a grandmother dies but just imagine how much more upset you're going to be when I die because to have a mother die that's the worst thing
And I was like my God
I mean I know my mother is my mother okay I mean I want her not to be but I know that she is and I know that my father is my father and I want for him not to be but he is but there's a very real way in which at least in my heart at least in my psyche
Gran Gran was my mother
And I'm pretty sure she was working up until the point at which I became her responsibility
I'm pretty sure that piano Rama thing was a recital of her students and I'm pretty sure that that was the last of the recitals of her students I don't know that for a fact but she didn't go out to teach people someplace else she was teaching them in her home and she didn't have students coming over while she was taking care of me so I'm pretty sure she ended her career such as it was
I don't think she thought she was taking me on as a temporary thing to help her son out while he got back on his feet I think she thought he was I don't know whether she thought he wasn't going to get back on his feet or whether she just didn't think it through but maybe she thought she could always go back to teaching or maybe she thought I don't know what she thought but
But my aunt Joan told me when I was a teenager after she was dead that basically the lawyers or somebody told gran gran that since she had been taken care of me and was a responsible human unlike my parents that if she wanted custody of me they were pretty sure they could get her custody I don't know who told her that I can't imagine it would have been my father's lawyer or my mother's lawyer so maybe some other lawyer was consulted or maybe the judge was consulted I don't know but somebody told her that and she chose not to pursue that option
And I understand why she wouldn't okay
I mean she had raised her kids she was older and not in great health and my paw paw had been kind of I don't know weird with his kids and maybe he didn't really want to start with raising other kids you know
Maybe she didn't feel up to it
But I think it was because she couldn't do it to her son she couldn't bear the idea of the unpleasantness of that relationship
Maybe that it would hurt him
So you know it wasn't her responsibility
Maybe she didn't feel up to taking on that long-term of a commitment for a variety of reasons
And she didn't want to go
"Against" my dad so to speak
I understand intellectually
And I don't blame her
But I just feel like that all of that was so bad for me and I continued to see her and we would talk about all of it and she was very worried about me and she was very
I mean I think perhaps she thought she had made the wrong decision
I for sure thought she had made the wrong decision only I didn't during any of that time no that she had made that decision and I don't know whether it would have been better to have known that so I could have talked to her about it and gotten her perspective on it I just don't know if that would have been better or not
But the fact that I know that it damaged something
So that the one little bright spot just has a smudge on it you know
And I could have just beaten the crap out of Joan for telling me that because why what was the point of telling me that I did not need to know that nothing was improved by my knowing that and I would just rather have had that one little bit not tainted you know
But you know gran gran died and Papa died and Joan died and I was the first grandchild and so as everybody has died I have had to help clear things out actually know that's slightly misleading it was only after Joan died Edith had me come and help her clean out the house
And I just wanted some pictures of gran gran
Maybe some things of hers but even though Edith wanted me to help and took full advantage of my labor she wouldn't let me have anything she was like no no I need to go through all this stuff and I mean I guess I was helping I don't even remember it's just all a traumatic blur but I had to help clean things out and get rid of things but I couldn't have anything and she said she was going to go through it and she would get me some stuff later
Which is that stuff that I got and my mom's house Edith got it to my mom like 10 or 15 years later and then I got it from my mom 10 or 15 years later I was it was like right around the time that the Berlin Wall fell that Joan died so what was that like November something I think it was right after that that she died so but I don't think it was right after that that we cleaned out the house I think it was after it got hot so probably May or June or July
No that can't be right I went to Germany with my mom in the summer of 90 so maybe it was after we got back maybe it was in the winter before I don't know I don't know it was 89 or 90 that Edith was going to give me some of Gran Gran stuff
And this is 2022 so how many years is that
Oh yeah about the pictures so has everybody died I was the first grandchild everybody took a lot of pictures of me by the time we got around to John there are like almost no pictures of John they were all bored with pictures by then I guess but there are bajillions of pictures of me bajillions
But none of them are with Gran Gran
I can only assume because at that point she was not happy with how she looked I did not particularly want to be photographed
And also that she was probably often the one taking the photographs
So like they're all these pictures of me with my dad All these pictures of me with my mom will not all of them but there are a few of them I guess enough
There are pictures of me with Joan
But I've not had a picture of me with gran gran
And so when I found that diary and I read it it just infuriated me it just I mean cuz I remember all that stuff happening but of course from my perspective and I remember the lawyers asking me do you want to live with your mother or do you want to live with I don't know which lawyer it was maybe it was grain grants lawyer I don't know but I remember some lawyers sitting down with me at grand grand's dining room table and asking me do you want to live with your mother or do you want to live with your father and I'm like I want to live with my gran gran
And I remember that I didn't want to take all the things from her house because that was where they should be that was my house that was my home and that was where those things belonged
And besides if I had nice things and I don't know I may have already seen some inkling of this but if I had nice things Deborah would take them and send them to her family so you know nothing was safe nothing was ever safe
And I found some of those books and my mother's garage
Edith must have brought them
Now my mother has on many occasions brought me boxes full of metaphorical moldy sandwiches like stuff that I don't know why anybody would want I've been like here this is your stuff do you want this
But then she had all this good stuff that she didn't tell me about and I think I remember her saying that Edith had brought by some stuff but when I asked her what it was she made it sound like it was not really anything and it was at a point in time when I when I was under a lot of stress and only seeing my mother like you know as infrequently as I could possibly get away with so I don't know when it was but I mean this wasn't a small amount of stuff this was a lot of stuff
So I mean maybe I bear some responsibility for my not having it but I don't know but at any rate
I thought maybe you wanted to see some more pictures of me with my grand-gran and so I looked through some of the pictures I hadn't really looked through them before because when I found them was sort of when I started working at my mom's and I was still like super freaked out about just the overwhelmingness of it and so I couldn't like really sit down and look at the pictures I could have done that after I came home I guess but I didn't I didn't really look at them and so I sat down and looked at the first little box of pictures and I found those pictures of us and I think I mean I think I had I guess I had looked through the box of pictures before and I had seen the picture of us in bed but I hadn't looked through the photo album pages that had that picture of us standing in front of the tree thing shrubbery flowering shrubbery I don't know but when I saw that you know I had just gotten over the extreme anger extreme anger that I felt over reading the diary
Just the degree to which what she had written matched what I remembered you know and really how surprisingly like something I might have written it sounded you know have a hard time reading her handwriting though she uses that Palmer script and it's hard for me to read so the part that she had printed that was pretty easy but the part that was handwriting was a little harder and I guess part of it was from a letter she had written to eat it in California and I don't think I have the complete letter although maybe it's somewhere else in the boxes I still have some boxes I have to go through
But I was so mad all the time I just really could barely contain it and I had just kind of gotten back to a you know kind of level plateau and then I saw that picture and it was like that's me and my mother
And it was just a bit much
And my mother is not right
I'm not going to be more upset when she dies
I when she was in the hospital and she had to have the pacemaker I was worried
And when she was having the problem with the oxygen and I made her go to the hospital I was worried
There's a way in which I hate her
But there is a way in which I love her also
A very conflicted feelings about her
But I don't actually wish her ill you know I am trying to make her dream come true although
I am trying very hard to distance myself from that you know I got her moved into the nice apartment I got it all set up for her to live there but now she's not going to put the extra crap in a storage it all has to go to the apartment and then you know when we had a big altercation she said okay maybe we could get a storage briefly but by that time there were no more sales on storage it was very expensive and I was like you know it f*** it let's just try to get rid of the stuff so that there's a small enough amount of stuff that it'll fit in the apartment but I'm not certain that that is going to work and so I'm trying to distance myself from this making her dream come true because you know f*** her
I gave her her dream and if she doesn't want to continue to have the dream I don't want my happiness to be tied up in that
I understand she has issues and she's not responsible for her illnesses but I don't want to have to be unhappy because she's crazy so I'm trying to distance myself
I've thrown away like 173 bags of garbage
And now well more than that really because I've only been counting since I've actually been able to start going out garbage without her watching me
But I did though out bags of garbage when she was in the hospital and I have thrown out bags of garbage while she was watching me just not nearly as many so I don't know we've got to be approaching 200 bags of garbage at this point and I'm still looking around and going I think there's too much stuff I think she's going to want to take all this stuff
So whatever I was going to have to do this after she died anyway and so if I can do it in a way where she gets to have a nicer place to live until she dies then I'm happy for that I don't want bad things for her
And I'm not going to like dance around and sing ding dong the witch is dead when she dies you know I'm going to be sad on some levels but
I don't think anything could compare with how distraught I was for years
In fact I have a vague recollection when I was writing to you about my relationship with her and how distraught I was for so long about it and again you may not remember this stuff this was a really long time ago because I really did try at the very beginning when I was telling you about myself I really did try to lay out all my brokenness for you because I mean I never was thinking anything other than that we were soulmates and going to be together
So I wanted you to understand where all my landmines were so you wouldn't accidentally step on them or you know that if they did get triggered it wouldn't seem to not have a reason you know
But I just realized and I really need to be asleep I just realized like I don't know just within the last few days and this seems incredible to me but you know I haven't had that many relationships but with the exception of Nikki and I'm not sure whether you would call that a relationship exactly I guess you would maybe it was certainly not a traditional form of relationship or maybe it was but never anyway with the exception of Nikki who I do not believe had a father and I'm uncertain if she ever had a father maybe she did I just don't know
All the relationships I've had I'm pretty sure have been with people who had parents who were still married to each other
No I think that's pretty remarkable considering I feel like the majority of the people I've known have not had parents who were still married to each other maybe that's not right maybe the majority of people I've known have had parents who were married to each other and just a very large minority of people were from broken homes and I'm not going to say that there weren't some problems in the relationships between the parents of the people that I have been in relationships with but I think I think that's pretty weird and I don't know whether
I don't know whether that's some sort of subconscious protection mechanism like those people are less crazy
Or I don't know I just I don't know and maybe it doesn't mean anything maybe it's purely coincidence but I hadn't snapped to the fact until like just a few days ago so I thought that was interesting
And I mean it's not to say that people whose parents aren't married to each other can't have childhood trauma of course they can have childhood trauma but you know people who are still married at the point when their children are grown
In a culture where divorce is completely acceptable probably are a little more stable they may or may not be happier but they're probably a little more stable
That's not really safe to make generalizations but these people seemed to be more stable
And I'm sure that your parents loved you and took care of you and that you don't have any kind of extreme trauma from your early childhood in fact imagine that you probably have some psychological stuff because your parents for sure had some trauma but I'm guessing that it was a pretty high priority for them to give you a safe stable life so while I'm sure it was shaped in some ways by their trauma I would be very surprised if you had any early childhood trauma
And I could just remember thinking man you know as soon as I turn 18 I am leaving these people because I want to have control over my life that was so important to me I wanted to have control over my life so all these other f****** weren't f****** with me and f****** me up because I knew they were f****** me up but I was very disappointed to learn that there are an awful lot of factors that keep you from having complete control over your life once you don't have other people f****** it up like you know need to earn money and so subsequently having to have jobs that you have to get and what not anyway it's just a much more complicated world than I imagined it was when I was eight
And of course there are some theorists who say that we never really have control over our lives we're programmed early and then everything we do is something that are not really our conscious mind but our monkey brain or our reptile brain or one of those other brains that just responds to things that they make the decisions and then the big brain just makes justifications for why we did the things we did
And I of course think that's an oversimplification but it's not completely wrong unless you're very mindful you will do things that you don't really know why you did and then you will make justifications for why you did them later or you will just very honestly say I really don't know
Anyway I needed to be asleep like I don't know an hour and a bit ago at least and I'm down to single digits on battery so I think we're going to leave it there and hopefully this is information that you wanted
And hopefully it makes you feel loved that I shared it with you because it certainly did make me cry a lot
But I saw a video by the crappy childhood fairy or something like that talking about how CPTSD is mostly neurological and I found that extremely helpful because I really have an understood
I feel like I've had a very hard time handling stuff in my life that other people have less of a hard time handling and stuff that other people have a hard time handling seems well I don't know every way that I say this it sounds kind of conceited and I'm not meaning it to be that way what I'm saying is or what I'm trying to say is I don't really understand
My life
But maybe it's all just been based on avoidance
I never really had anything I wanted that I could identify except you
Everything else was more a series of I don't even know
Anyway I slept like I don't know 18 hours or something last night yesterday
But I haven't really felt right all day either
I just don't really know anything
But it was really really good to see your face and hear your voice that made me really happy
goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋
