Chapter 1 - in progress 8-4-2010

UNFINISHED, TO BE EDITED FOR SPEAKER, PERSONS, TENSES - ACTIONS vs THOUGHTS

Chapter 1

DAWN

Dawn stared intently at her monitor. Her back ached from leaning over her keyboard all day, using the internet and writing. Dawn wrote. Dawn wrote all the time, almost compulsively, and would probably continue this way until the day she died. The only problem, for Dawn, was that her work never seemed to go anywhere, being unfocused and without any special purpose other than for her own enjoyment and personal refuge. Her words were definitely her sanctuary, where she ruled and none opposed her, where she spoke and no one else. It wasn't just about some kind of primitive dominance, but something other. It was about being right, being sure. Dawn thought new things as she wrote. She released her conflicts and raw emotions safely onto her computer screen, mere words to be saved until the next time she had to format her damned hardrive over some virus or something, or printed and stacked somewhere, then forgotten, merely new inhabitants of overflowing piles of papers and once-important information. She had been tempted more than once to put up a sign over her desk to read, "I Celebrate My Desk In All its Unbridled Chaotic Glory!"

Dawn leaned back in her chair and stretched her kinks and knots until she was satisfied, then leaned contentedly into her little laptop/PC. This laptop had been a gift from a friend who had gotten a newer model. Dawn had one friend, really, but she planned to try to make more. Her favorite friend was her Word program, providing a blinking I-beam and a never-ending amount of white screen for her to fill. She was silent, looking at the off-white wall just behind her monitor as if she found it interesting.

She was focused on her plans, not new plans, but plans more inchohate until this evening. She had long planned to write the story of her life, including her opinions and ideas, and she had long wondered how to go about it, what form it would take, how she might tell the story right. She so badly wanted to use the real names of everybody ever important to her story, her life. Most of all she wondered who would publish it and would she feel odd to have her heart on a shelf for sale in a bookstore? Would certain people would try to sue her?

Recently, yesterday at the dentist's office, actually, she'd begun thinking about some new ideas. Truly in life truth is stranger than fiction, and so, wouldn't it actually make excellent fiction? She could simply create a character to take the stage in her place, present her work as fiction based-on-a-true story, her own life put into third person, a "she" rather than a "me."

Her lips curled up slightly at the corners as she thought about herself taking a little poetic license with English grammar. Hell, everybody else assaulted the language daily, glibly coining new words as if they belonged in the fucking Oxford English Dictionary. Her words seemed catchier for rhyming, so why not. Dawn's tired mind prattled on. She chortled quietly, laughing at herself. These were exactly the kind of distractions that could and often did lead her into a meaningless, mental no-mans'-land. Though meandering, she allowed her thoughts to go on. This kind of thinking was just part of who she was, and surprisingly, the origin of many of her better ideas.

Dawn knew then how tired she really was, too tired to go on writing. If she tried, she knew she'd have to re-write it all anyway for the garbage factor involved. Her real work though was her newly conceived presentation style; She would invent the character who would stand in for herself in a true story that she would present as fiction, written under a pen-name. Her story would get out. She would present it as based on a true story. Did the names matter so much then? Hers did, and she loved imagining names.

She settled on a name, special to her above the myriad other names she could conjour. This done, she went to bed. She settled gratefully into her pile of disorganized covers, half-read books, clashing textiles and a sweater she would wear at night if the air got too cool. She had to keep fresh air flowing through her apartment so her three cats didn't make the house smell like a barn. Said three cats were likely to gather to their places on her big bed before too long, and the thought made her smile a truly happy smile.

AWAKENING

Dawn came to be at her desk in the evening. She went online to her private blog where she kept a journal and wrote:

True Testimony of Dawn, aka Jewel Isabelle Isqwiette, on this day July 27, 2010 at 8:43 pm.

I felt that I should write the story of my recent history for later editing and inclusion in my project: The Chronicles of an Oyster, which may take the rest of my life, but I feel should be done to benefit not just my life but other people’s lives as well. This is my Magnum Opus.

If I never write another thing, I must write my tales to relieve myself of old burdens and air out dark issues that people should be aware of. Light opens the dark places where the cruel and the unwell exist, where they hide their deeds by terrorizing weaker victims into silence and charade. Light cures darkness, filling it rather than destroying, as darkness is merely the absence of light. Ignorance and thoughtless cruelty often coexist in the abusers. I need to be some of that light. I must expose my own abuser and thus expose all those like her.
There need to be options, for children and abusive adults both. Assault on a child? Do we toughen the law, giving the abusers even more incentive to keep their deeds in the dark, provoking more violence? Do we find a way to monitor them? Only exposure and education can truly make a difference. Almost anything else simply inflicts more pain on the abused, as abusers do what they do out of anger and blind retaliation on something too small to fight back, from ruinous personalities or simple inherent craven cruelty; bullies, really. Sometimes abusers take their own sadistic roles as hand-me-downs from their own parents, with the abusers unable or unwilling to break the cycle as abuse passes through the generations. Forget jailing people for petty drug use and filling our prisons, ruining already teetering lives; fill our prisons with the abusers! Spare their victims once and for all and keep them safe. Make our society a healthier, stronger place. A healthy society is a productive, alert and able society. That's what I think, anyway, and I think a lot, even when I don't want to.

My own abuser, one ... no, I'll let Sheila name her I write her tales, that is, our tales, as she lives out for me my own odd and sometimes horrible life in her name, the name of my character, safely deposited into the hands of others as, well, fiction? As something palatable, something not linked directly to myself; that would be Sheila's own domain, and if we accidentally create literature together, what be the blame? ...well, my own abuser's name brings a sick shiver down my spine. She was once arrested for child abuse, with absolutely sound, documented evidence from pictures taken by the informant. She was already a drug felon, so why was she released after two days and given no further thought?
For myself, I need the catharsis, the knowledge that I am not alone. I need to tell the world my stories and tattle on my old, cruel abusers whose abuse still haunts me to this day. It is my intent to do research and educate myself whenever and wherever I can without being a textbook, I’ve read enough of those. I do want to pass on what I learn, perhaps filling up a little darkness.
Then there is this: I must achieve. It’s imprinted into my DNA. I can’t help being a creature driven to achieve, taking whatever opportunity avails. My work? If it succeeds not only will I feel more joyous and fulfilled than I’ve been since I was three, I may actually Make Some Small Difference for Having Lived, my single overall ambition in life. I can’t restrain myself from writing. I can’t wait to see what I can learn, and how I can use it in my Chronicles. I will doubtless learn more about myself. A wise old Greek philosopher did say, “Know Thyself,” a maxim I have lived by without regret.


End of Entry, July 27, 2010
- Dawn

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WORRY NOT FOR THE MORROW...
SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY ARE THE EVILS THEREOF (Danielle/me, 1st per/past tense)


It was less purple than it was last night. I looked at the foot, wondered what its problem was. Today was, let’s see, how many days? I thought for the nth time, “I’ve never broken a bone before…” The surprised, bewildered feeling lingered mutely against the background sense of betrayal. That feeling was not expected. My body had never come in any way close to undergoing such hearty disaster, disaster that couldn’t help but touch the mind like a dark cloud. It was like a cloud of bees, scared and ready to sting. I thought to myself at this point, feeling the way I did, wondering what was still wrong with my foot that it refused to hold me and swelled up if I tried anything funny, “My life is going straight to Hell; ‘Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.'”

Tori, my Mysterious Miss Tori, was such a pleasant weight on my belly as I lay helpless and frustrated with pillows under my feet. She was a feisty little thing, and she took random moments of deep offense without warning, striking out suddenly at one of the boys. I had semi-trained her to jump off the bed when she felt like that, if I was watching, that is. The boys were cautious whenever they had to be near her. Apollo, such a regal and kind, magnificent Seal-Point Siamese Tom, bore her permanent mark on one ear, his only physical flaw. He was ten years old, like all of them, Jaspers, Tori, and Apollo. His coat stayed sleek and my ten-year-old happy Tom carried his tail upward with a slight curl at the top, as happy kitties generally do, and as my own handsome cat family generally did, often walking in tandem to the feeding tray, their curled tails waving with each step. Jaspers was a funny guy. He could take up a page if I weren’t careful. But I am being careful.
I looked over at my feline fan club with pride and, well, joy, or something close to it. I often wished I could have played with them more when they were kittens, and that I could have bonded more tightly to each one as an individual. They functioned as Companion Animals for me under the 1990 ADA law, since I was a Bipolared individual; I have Bipolar Disorder, that is.

I have had cats literally since the crib days, hangin’ out with a bottle and a wet diaper, crying when I was unhappy so mommy could come and try to make it right. I naturally bond with cats. I understand them.

Since I’d been sidelined with a broken left distal fibula as the direct result of a “syncoptic episode,” I had accomplished two things: I had begun to read again, a phenomenon after my college years, (all of them), and I had formed an unexpectedly close bond to little, feisty Tori, “The mottled one,” as her mother’s owners had described my eight-week-old dappled tortoise-shell queen of ten years prior. I can’t help but rename my cats affectionately with silly love-names, or funny names, such as Jaspers: “Space-cadet, Jazzie, Jaspees, Jaspers P, Big Fluffy Guy, Cinnamon Boy, Garfield...” Jaspers? He was my huge, lazy, unflappable flame-point Siamese, an early son of Tori and Apollo. Tori, “Her Highness the Queen,” as I had been calling her for the previous few months, turned into a very sweet and devoted little cat. The change was extraordinary. She and the boys all grew closer during my long, hateful convalescence.

It had been four years since graduation. After being forced to read textbooks that I would have rather eaten I found myself with an unwelcome aversion to reading. I collected books, joined six book clubs. What would make it right? The books just kept stacking up, unread, undesired and unfulfilled. As I lay there that day, injured as I was, I had nothing to do but wait and let my body heal. Beautiful, colorful, interesting books lie stacked and standing in my headboard. I was the bait. If I could not bear to pursue, perhaps they would come to me. Sci-Fi/ Fantasy bit me first, so I read four books and discovered a new idol: Ursula K. LeGuin. After these, what might still be available should I just take it off the shelf, store the pristine dust jacket, open it up and see if I could get it to bite? Could I? I could.

I labored to hold my book up so I could read while I was down in the bed with my swollen foot and ankle up. It had to be the left foot, too. My arm was cramping a little, but I supposed it was good discipline. My arm would just get a little stronger. I was on page 460 out of 745 pages, single-spaced. I’d been bashing this author pretty harshly, but I had decided to read her series as it was a cultural phenomenon among the youngsters and I was a mother of one. My unspeakably wonderful only child, a daughter, was 17. She didn’t care for the whole thing. She has a good head. Bashing or not, I had to say that the author had me glued to the underlying plot. It kept my attention, but then, the last book in the series seemed to be written better than the first three. The books were deceptively slim, nevertheless I was hooked so I read on and on and on.

The phone rang, welcome proof that Qwest hadn’t disconnected my phone service yet. My crutches were barely balanced on the towel bar and picking up the phone within ten minutes just wasn’t going to happen, so I let it ring. I knew it was Anj anyway. She had been keeping me sane and connected to a larger world than my stuffed bedroom. My foot! Damn it! It was painful and weak past the heel, and looked big and purple again.

Apollo jumped up to the bathroom sink and looked at me, then said, “Mow?” I looked into his bottomless blue eyes and smiled, then turned the cold water on ever so slightly for him to lap up and lick off his paw. The water bowl? It was full and fresh. Mr. Mow lapped and licked, bit at the water, lazily closed his eyes a little when he looked back at me, speaking without sound, then his huge frame and great musculature hit the ever-messy bathroom floor with two light thuds. He lifted his tail proudly, stopped to lick something and then stalked off gently without any sound. I despair of containing my kitties’ messes to their proper unsmelly places, their animal smells cleaned and gone after one might occasionally decide to claim something or speak out. My old plastic junk bin made a good dishpan and it frequently lived near the latest event with a small scrub-brush and soapy water in it.

I went back to bed, dejected, tense, bored. It was fairly warm and the air was moist and smug. I left my little broken fan face-down on the floor by my bed where my crutches kept knocking it down. Tori lay at the other side of my large bed, deliriously content with herself, showing her white-splashed belly and chin. Jaspees slept beside my pillow, where he liked to be. As usual, my attention went towards the cats and helped keep my mind off my many-layered problems until I could think about them productively, though nothing could have obliterated my distress completely.


THE WAY IT IS WHEN IT RAINS (DAWN-me speaking, 1st per/past tense)

My bills and my mail were everywhere and either I had a computer virus or Qwest had disconnected my internet service. I didn’t know which was worse. I had credit card debt like crazy. Social Security had me on the “Ticket to Work” program, actually more like a ticket off Social Security, disability benefits my only income as for multiple reasons I cannot work. Further, there was a matter that could haunt me and drain me for the rest of my natural life, thirty thousand dollars in student loans that I could not pay. I did NOT get the happy ending that I had hoped for, me in a cozy desk job with a livable wage and enough cash to make proper payments for my loans. I thought, what if I don’t get forgiven after filing my doctor’s comments and diagnoses on the proper form and mailing them in? What then? Pay enough to avoid legal action and keep the interest from capitalizing? Go dead broke for 20 years to try to repay? Do I default? That’s a lifetime of shameful credit and a stained conscience. Why did I ever have to develop a damned conscience? It seemed superfluous to my happiness, a weight about my feet, hindering my harmless occasional manipulations that helped me survive. Life is hard. Principles are expensive.

Would some bored Social Security-biased doctor “find me no longer disabled?” What then? That last one just begged for some dire catastrophizing. Somehow, someway, I had to find a way to now and then earn a little cash. If I did my damnedest, got a part-time low-paying job that was absolutely ALL I could handle, my life-line benefits would be reduced by much more than I could earn and Social Security would soon claim that I was able to earn my own way and cut off my vital benefit check...that keeps me housed and provides for my feline companions.

The bill was $20,000.00 a year to keep my medicated and thus sane, which for the time being was covered by Medicare D. Without every single drug and adequate dosage I would melt down into an unrecognizable wreck, a shell full of psychosis, darkness, rabid insecurity and an almost unbearable depression. I knew working would seriously disrupt Medicare D coverage even if I only worked part-time. One essential medicine was about $900 a bottle, or thirty dollars a pill and one pill a day, just like a junkie. No fix, no Dawn. My $75 a month food benefit would disappear. My very beneficial DSHS aid with Medicare Part B would cease. I would need to pay about $90 a month for the premium and then 20% of all medical costs, meaning I would lose all ability to see doctors.
I already couldn't get help with eyeglasses or dental. I was wearing broken and ancient taped eyeglasses, my last pair. I just kept losing teeth. I sometimes couldn't even pay to pull a bad tooth. I once nearly overdosed on Tylenol due to a nasty infected cavity. I was trying to keep going, stay in school, function somehow despite the pain. I was unaware of the serious risks I was taking. DSHS lets you rot in darkness if you have bad teeth and poor vision. Perhaps the last is more like a metaphor for the feelings one gets when one can’t provide for one’s self nor find aid, and suffers greatly as a result, all over a few hundred dollars that can seem like a few thousand.

I was getting $760 a month and serious help with my rent, worth at least $400 a month as I only was paying $161.00. One year the housing inspector stole an item from my home while inspecting, and the next year I was stonewalled and no one would answer my calls nor appear to inspect my home so that I could receive the same benefit rather than be kicked off the vital HUD Sec 8 program, which took two years to get on. When once kicked off, there is no going back. This benefit was practically impossible to gain at this time, with applications accepted only in narrow windows of time and potential recipients waiting up to ten years.
During the 2009 stonewalling by THA, I was so wrecked I was bed-ridden and in a tight ball. I lost ten pounds over the two weeks or so that I was dysfunctional and waiting for the call or the visit that had to happen soon. I was accused of missing the inspector, a work of fiction, using up my one-time reprieve and leaving me with a second inspection appointment letter without any dates. I was house-bound and helpless. I finally talked to my doctor.

The lead inspector for Tacoma Housing authority appeared, one Mr. Terri Williams. He asked what he could do for me. I said, “Well, I just need to have my home inspected so I could get re-certified for the next year, 2010?" I was saved, for one more year at least. The theft happened in 2008 and I never reported it for fear of reprisal. I guess I got reprisal anyway. Will they inspect this year? God, I’m not as well as I appear. Every year I am a little less, as I face a little more. When will I just disappear?

Somehow things have to work out. This “Quantum Agnostic,” formerly (but still) a “Hopeful Agnostic,” has prayed to a possible God who has possible benevolent awareness of humans and the ability to grant prayers, like men all to the most ancient lineages, in dark prehistoric times, probably prayed to the full moon or volcanoes or spirits they imagined roaming free in animal forms. At any rate, my beliefs are only thus: It has to be okay. Somehow I have to make things better. My possible loving God has given me miracles; the stunning results of my prayers, I would like to believe. In the manner of Jesus soon to go to Golgatha to be murdered by the Romans, I said, “Please, let this cup pass from me.” The student loans, the ever-growing debt with no way to pay, no more life to give. The miracle may already be in progress for all I know. I will take action despite my fear. I will call the loan company, AES, face them, and will do all in my power to gain loan forgiveness as the result of total and permanent disability as I got written up and signed by one of my doctors on a proper form from my lender. This matter will affect me for the rest of my life. I cannot pay and I cannot work. At all. Amidst my actions and feelings my thoughts had wandered freely, so that each seemed almost entertwined as I examined my problems and hoped for answers.

She ended with this,

I must go. I am weary and my back hurts. I am a terrible typist and this has taken a long time. I just go back and fix things every few mistakes or so, or so I wish. If only it were so easy.





STATS:
3038 words
15.8 words/sentence
Flesch Reading Ease 69.6
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Lvl 7.3

About 3 to 4 hours. + 1hr (initial copy)


NOTES:
verb tense? past? present?
my own rules? 4 consistency.
nature/category/time/subject matter
generalizations to guide overall work