She did not call the cops on the guy in Camarillo Springs Park. And that bugged her for weeks. She had chosen a lifestyle that kept her underground. She was always underground, one way or another. She had been keeping terrible secrets since her memories started to stick, and her long memory had amazed people all her life. She would dredge up some old musty memory to share, and peoples eyes would squint and you see them trying to remember and then, they would slowly say, "Ohhh yeah. How the hell did you remember that?" Or some form of expression of amazement. Her long memory for details, people, places and things was both a blessing and a curse. It was part of the nature of the beast, called her life.

If she complained about things to her poor mother, who was raised in an orphanage and had zero parenting in her own childhood, and very little coping skills, her mother would snap and snarl, leading her to believe that it was her fault, or all together better to just keep quiet. Speaking of problems was an invitation to implicate her in the problem, not to solve the problem. That made her feel responsible and hopeless, at a very young age. Therefore, she learned how to keep secrets at a very young age. What's the use to try and change things? They are what they are.

And there were the spankings... Her own mother told her, when she was just a toddler, before her memories started, her mother would spank her so hard, she left red marks on her little baby butt. Then feeling guilty, he mother would put her into a bath of baking soda water, tying to soothe and calm the firey and red welts on her small body. So she learned at a young age, to take what came, and act as if. Act as if their lives were like everyone else's. Act as if she did not come from a house full of anger and violence. Act as if your heart was not breaking, and being broken by the one you are supposed to be able to trust in. Act as if you did not hate the world into which you were born, and were just waiting to leave however God saw fit. In fact, her loco man used to threaten her once in a while, that he would call some people he knew and have her shot. She always replied, "O.K., but look, I have never been so bad that anyone should torture me, and I have had more than my share of that. Tell them, when they knock on my door, and I open it, to look me in the eye, and put one clean shot through my forehead. Tell them to be prepared, because when I see them ready to cap me one, I will say thank you. Thank you for ending my suffering." He would always reply she was crazy. But he knew she meant it, and he eventually quit threatening her.

When she thought about her family, there was one term that she thought fit them the best. Bitter-sweet. It's not like they never had nice times, or that they never knew nice people. But nice times were few and far between. And nice people only lasted so long, in their lives. Nice people left soon after they figured out how dark and sick the spirit of their family was, and in those days, there was hardly ever a way out of the darkness. You lived your life in secret if your household was sick. People did not talk about those things. There is so much more help now for people like her family and she gets really frustrated when people refuse to try and help themselves. God knows, she tried to help her self. She was in and out of mental health offices since she was 18 years old. Shoot, the cop that picked her up off of the streets when she was just 15 years old, right after the rape (that went unreported), told her mother, that if things did not change for her, in her home, they were all gonna pay later. But ultimately, she paid the highest price. Her own mother never asked the questions that needed to be asked, and her mother did not believe her when she spoke the truth...

Her childhood warped her way of thinking to some degree. To this day, she believes that if you take what she did not offer, if you violate her, her rights or her property, she considers it a rape against her very soul and being. She believes in capital punishment. Well, think about it! People murdered the child she was born to be, the moment they assaulted her and raped her, forever taking away her innocence, her right to be whole and healthy. She still believes in "an eye for an eye." And, she knows she could kill someone if it came down to them, or her. She could kill them and get up and have a bowl full of cheerios, the next day, think about it, how to deal with it, and get on with her life. Murder would just be one more thing that could happen in her life. All things considered, she thought, no, she knew, that if she did not have to go to prison for it, there are a few people this world would be better without!

But, she also wanted to be a better person all her life. She wanted to do something with the high IQ God gave her (Jeez, she still believed in HIM!) and she wanted to help people. You see the problem? On one hand she could kill a person without batting an eye, and yet, her big heart wanted to help those who suffer, and really wanted help. After all she's been through though, if you want to see some hostility, try to just use her and get away without doing any real work at helping yourself. She will come down on you with both feet and stomp a mud hole in the middle of you. Her help was conditional, that's for shure!

She was always amused when people recognized her aggressive tendencies. She thinks it's good they know. Let them keep a respectful distance. And she only shows the soft side of her soul to a very selected few. Like a lizard keeps it's soft underbelly from the eyes of the vultures that fly overhead, she keeps her soft heart on the down low.

"Well, today is just another day," she mutters to her self. Nothing special today to look forward to today. Still I gotta get up and do the deal. Face the freaking population of my life again. Shit, I am so tired of all this and I can already tell today, I HATE MY LIFE. Sometimes she does not even know why, but she wakes up bitter and hateful. And she is glad that she can not hear every thought that runs in her sub-conscience, 24 x 7.

She looks outside and knows it's going to be a hot and sunny day, and shit, she has to go to the valley today, in her little VW Golf Station wagon, that overheats, and she has to keep the heater on, and open, all the time or it will overheat. Yeah, another hot and miserable day in the life of a failure. Yeah, she still used that word, in referring to herself, sometimes. So get up failure, unless you really think you have the courage to just lay down, quite taking in food and wait for the grim reaper. Yeah, exactly. No desire to go on and too chicken shit to do anything about it. Well, up and at 'em girl. Loser or no loser, you got another day to face. Wonder if there is gonna be one damn good thing to this day''