writing from
Scars Publications

Audio/Video chapbooks cc&d magazine Down in the Dirt magazine books

 

journal letter, 08/30/99



it was suggested I write to you because I have so many things going on in my life. When I think about cataloging all of them, it DOES seem like a lot. He suggested that I should talk to someone, and if you were willing to listen, I could settle for e-mail...

he mentioned that he told you a few things about myself. The details:..

---

I am 29, I just turned it. I worked as a designer for a magazine publishing company for 5 1/2 years and then I quit, after saving enough money to travel around. I first wanted to go all over the united states, then through europe...

I went through the united states. During that time:..

1. The man that I had dated for over a year had a heart attack and passed away. I do not think I have entirely recovered from it; I feel I still hold some anger about it. I even resent the family for taking the painting that he finished of me for me the day before he died. either way, that alone is a stepping stone that I cannot get entirely over...

2. I started dating another man, one that seemed intelligent, caring, and in many ways very much like myself. It was strange because he was a friend of my long-time friend and man that I used to date, so I couldn’t even talk to people about dating this man...

either way, he seemed to show less and less interest in me as time wore on, so I had pretty much given up on hopes for that relationship...

the plot thickens to where I was at the point where I was planning on going to europe. I had places listed and a vague game plan when I was in a car accident. Visiting my parents on the road another car hit me from behind because they did not watch the road. They were speeding. I saw them coming (apparently through eye-witness reports) and turned my wheels away from the motorcyclist in front of me. I was stuck at the traffic light. This car hit me into oncoming traffic where another car hit me. The records state that there were skid marks from my tires for 108 feet...

I was sent to the trauma unit of a hospital immediately and was ina coma for about two weeks. No one knew if I was going to live; they even asked my mother when she came to the hospital if she could “identify a body”, which seems to me to be the most offensive thing a mother can hear about her youngest daughter...

I was in the hospital for two months. No broken bones, except for my skull, fractured in three places. They even watched to make sure that my one eye set back into my head where it was supposed to. They had a tube into me for the first half - which was 4 out of 6 weeks - of my hospital stay. I had to learn how to eat and walk all over again. I didn’t even want to eat at first; the thought of food seemed strange when I hadn’t needed it for so long...

by dinner time and the ensuing hunger pangs, I ate. I had to tell myself to eat, that I had done it before, that I can do this...

for the first 4 months out of the coma I had to get used to walking. I have lost some balance from the accident; going up or down spiral stairs are not as easy for me as they used to be. My vision has also been worse since the accident; when I did not need to wear my glasses much before, I have to wear them more now...

in light of all this, my sister tells me that I was eating ravenously and that my vision is 100 percent better. I didn’t realize that she could read my mind when I was bringing myself to eat in the hospital, or that she could see for me, that she was just that clairvoyant...

I apologize for my sarcasm. But my problem with all this is that no one - I mean NO ONE - around me knows what I have been going through, and no one can read my mind. All that is left is for me to pick up the pieces...

picking up the pieces isn’t easy when I have pushed people away for all my life. I think people have been used to my needing no one, so they are leaving me alone now. I must be fine. I didn’t even have any broken bones...

but as I am sure you are aware, my spirit was almost broken, which can be worse than putting a cast on to heal a broken bone after six weeks.

It has been just over a year since I have been out of the hospital. In that time I have ben trying to get my life in order, because there are a lot of things you start to think about when you almost lose your life. Get your will in order. Organize your finances. I am a writer, and I have used pen names, and if I had died no one would have known that there pen names were my own creation.

Okay, I know there is more. But I am going to take a turn here and talk about something else. Everything seemed to be going wrong for me. Even the only friend that came to be there for me, the man I referred to earlier, he even wanted to have some time alone, and I did not even have a car, since my car was wrecked. When I was NOT looking for someone to make everything better for me. someone came along. This spring I got engaged to a wonderful man - one that is so much like like me that I am sometimes stunned. I find our differences fascinating and our similarities uncanny. So... now I’ve been trying to get our life together, not just my own. Having to plan a wedding is not fun. I have learned that this entire escapade with John... Finding people - wait, PAYING people - to take care of all of the details that need to be taken care of on my wedding day.

Couple that with the fact that my parents have just sold their house and I have to help them move furniture into storage this Friday, and get books together for publishing that I am doing...

1. a collection book for a literary magazine I am the editor of

2. a book for a woman,

3. a web site,

4. two of three of my reprinting for my own books,

5. and my first novel

---

Oh, I know there are more things, but it always seems like I am being tugged at different angles by different people with different needs. Which basically amounts to no time for me. And sometimes I need that time and I don’t know where to go to get it.

---

Does this all make sense at all? probably not. But on some levels it was helpful for me to start to get it down. I doesn’t resolve anything, but it is a start, at least for myself...

Thanks for letting my spill my guts to you. In theory, you may have chosen to ignore this whole letter. Personally, it is strange for me to write my past-year story out like this.



Scars Publications


Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.




Problems with this page? Then deal with it...