I�m in a quandary. Okay, so not really, but I�m� I�m fucked up right now. I�m extremely emotional. I�m making myself sick, and I can feel it. I�m ashamed, so ashamed.

I�m scared and feeling lost and alone. I�m feeling like I�m the only person in the world who gives a damn, and the problem is, I don�t give a damn.

I�ve been sitting here for an hour and a half, crying. The thoughts have been running through my brain. I know that I should be doing something, living something, believing something� I don�t know.

My brain is going at about a million miles an hour and nothing is coming out. Nothing is really surfacing.

So, lets put a face on this.

I�m feeling: scared, lost, alone, empty, frozen, terrified, hopeless, scared, so very scared, so lost and alone and scared.

I�m feeling shame. Shame because I�m so fat I don�t fit into my truck. How humiliating is that?

*sighs*

Okay, pull yourself together here.

The situation: From this morning�s meeting, or rather, beginning with yesterday�s activities, things have been popping. I�ve had a lot of revelations, understandings, etc. First was the rage. Perhaps rage isn�t the exactly right emotion, but it�s what I recognize. Fury, rage� not anger. Anger is tame. The things I�m feeling �. The rage and fury� it�s so strong. It�s the kind of stuff I felt long, long ago when I was on Capitol Hill in Seattle. When I walked around capitol hill so early in the morning, almost blind in my fury.

I can feel it. I can feel so much � so much� murderous rage. This is the feeling I think I can�t control.

Rather, rage is the feeling I can accept from myself. Like the lesser of two evils.

The emotion that really is at the base of all this� the emotion which rips me apart from the inside out is fear. Palpable fear. So terrifying that all I want to do right now is curl up into a ball and hide. I want to remain silent because if I make a noise, the monster will get me. I can�t move or breathe even cause the monster will see that. The monster will know. And then the monster will get me.

What is the monster? Evil spirits? I don�t think so. I think the monster doesn�t exist. I think the monster is left over from childhood.

It�s the reason I was so fucking pissed off with vonna. She acted exactly like the monster did throughout my childhood.

*sighs*

You see, when I grew up, I didn�t have a normal home. Many people in this day and age have bad childhoods. I know this. I have long told myself that my childhood wasn�t that bad, that no one was sexually molested in my household. My parents didn�t beat us for no reason. Hell, my parents didn�t beat me much at all. I was only beaten once. I was spanked once. I was spanked too hard and for the wrong reason once. I was backhanded for the wrong reason once. I was slapped for the wrong reason once.

When I was about 16 or so, my mother and I were having an argument. She asked me some question or said something and I replied, but she thought I was being sassy� that I was back-talking. On reflex, she reached out and slapped my face. After each of us calmed down, we talked about it and I explained what I�d said and she apologized (quite profusely).

When I was somewhere around 7 or 8, we were at my Grandfather�s place in southern Cali. I did some stupid thing.. I don�t remember what� and Mom took me in the bathroom to spank me� she gave me like three swats on my butt which I barely felt. Proper discipline for the situation.

When I was about 6 or so friends were over and we children were playing with the baby guinea pigs. I accidentally killed one. I didn�t know it was dead� or rather, I hoped it wasn�t dead. I put it back in the cage, hoping it would wake up once its mother took care of it. Later, Dad discovered it, thought I was trying to cover up (lie) the death of the animal. He �spanked� me, beginning with slapping my behind with his hand, then when I tried getting away from him (he didn�t ask me what happened, he just told me I was a murderer and a liar) and smacked my thigh a couple times. I was so scared and terrified and hurt (it broke my heart to know that I had actually killed the little thing� completely broke my heart), that I peed myself. Unfortunately that meant I also peed on Dad. He didn�t like that, smacked me again and shoved me away from him saying something about how dare I pee on him�

Sometime between 8 and 11, we had friends over again. The boy started shooting the BB gun out the window. I also wanted to shoot, so I took all the BBs out of my gun, even firing into the pillow a few times to make sure there weren�t any stray BBs left in the gun. Then, I was in the room with the other kids and I was aiming at the tree tops (second floor of the house), at the sky, at certain clouds. My aim was up and my gun was empty. The boy was using Dan�s BB gun which still had BBs in it. He was aiming at passing cars etc. When the same car came back and slowed down (I didn�t see it, I was looking up) the boy quickly left the window, dropped the BB gun onto the bed and started doing something else. The next thing I knew, the bedroom door slammed open and Dad stormed in pissed as all hell. All of us kids were marched downstairs and interrogated. We were told that a BB had gone through the window of the car very narrowly missing the wife�s head. We were then asked who had been shooting the guns. I admitted that I was shooting mine, but that I had taken all the BBs out and I was aiming at the treetops. Dad took that as talking back and backhanded me so hard I couldn�t see straight and got a massively fat lip. Then I was exiled to Mom and Dad�s bedroom by myself. I was not allowed to associate or be around any of the other people. Again, I was the pariah.

(this is part one, please read on)