To Thine Own Self Be True
"and it must follow, as the night the day, Thou cannot then be false to any man"
~Shakespeare- Hamlet
(Unless we can be true to ourselves first, we cannot be true to others.)
March 1993 ~ Dream
I am sitting in an apartment, someone is banging on the door. I am frightened. The door gets kicked in and a dark haired man bursts in. I run and jump out of the window. When I hit ground I continue to run around the side of a tall apartment building and into a side door. I think I am in another apartment but it is so dark I cannot be sure. The man finds me. He tries to grab me but I use a Karate type kick to hold him back. An old man appears and tries to help me but the dark haired man kills him. I hear a puppy crying in the other room. I find it and pick it up and start running again. I am in a long narrow hallway and I see a door propped open, I hide the puppy behind the door. I keep running out of the building where I find a white van waiting. The man is still chasing me. I jump in the van but there are no keys for it so I jump out and continue to run. I see a red and white truck ahead, there is a guy driving it, I yell for help but he ignores me and keeps driving off. I find myself in the middle of road construction, the road is wet and muddy and slippery but I keep on running. I come to a building that looks like military barracks but I think maybe it is now an elementary school. I run through the front doors which are being held open by a woman I don't know. I notice there are children walking about inside. I run through another set of doors being held open for me by another woman I do not recognize. As I keep running I realize that I am back in the long narrow hallway of the previous building and as I keep going I end up back in the apartment where the door was first kicked in. I find my mother on her knees beside a big claw foot tub in the middle of the room, she is bathing my daughter Christal who is a young baby. I enter into a bathroom where there is another tub with a small baby girl in it. She has fallen over and is drowning. I pull her out and she is ok. I hold her and rock her and an unknown woman enters the bathroom and says that the baby looks like me, I agree but I say I don't know whose baby it is but I must save her. I leave the bathroom and the apartment and find myself back in the long narrow hallway with the propped open door. I find the puppy behind the door and I leave with the puppy under one arm and the baby under the other and I know that I am going to be ok.
March 1993 ~ Dream
I hear the song "Material Girl" by Madonna playing in the background. I shake my head and realize I am sitting in a balcony seat at a theatre. I am dressed in baggy Levi's, my blue flannel shirt, a blue ball cap and construction boots. I have a suitcase beside me. I notice a group of men sitting in the front row below. I am annoyed and I get up come down the stairs from the balcony and walk past the men. One of the men recognizes me and says I am a Twisted Sister. I ignore him and leave the theatre and enter in to a convenience store. I buy a chocolate bar, ice cream sandwich, and Cracker Jacks. When I pay the cashier she asks me how business at the bar is. I tell her I don't know, I don't work there. I leave and walk down a road that leads me into Beebe, a small town in the Eastern Townships in Quebec where I grew up. I enter a bar but no one is there. I sit down and order the soup of the day from a fat, greasy looking cook. My friend Wendy comes in and we go up stairs into what is a hotel. There are tons of women there. I enter a one of the rooms and I find a change of clothes waiting on a bed. I put on shorts, a jean shirt and running shoes and I go back downstairs and start waiting on tables in a now full bar. Wendy starts waiting on tables as well. A woman comes in who looks familiar to me, I leave with her. We go back to the theatre together. There is a group of men standing outside looking in a window. I go inside and the woman follows me. I walk down a long hallway and into the theatre where I find a group of young girls including my daughter Christal who is just a child. I ask the woman to gather all of the girls and bring them into another room. I enter yet another room myself and come out carrying a machine gun in one hand and my suitcase in the other. I run back down the hall towards the theatre and a man yells "look she has a stupid gun". I enter the theatre and the men start to cheer and laugh and I yell out..."Never Again" and aim the gun at them and start firing. The woman comes up to me and calmly removes the gun from my hands, I tell her that this will make a wonderful story someday, the best I have ever written. I tell her I have to leave and go and write it all down. Before I leave I ask the woman to play me a Beatles song..."Here Comes The Sun", she laughs and tells me it is time to wake up.
May 16th 1994~ Thoughts
I feel like I am dying but I am afraid to speak it out loud for fear that it may come true. I feel like I never have any good days anymore, like I am ill all of the time. I always have a headache and feel sick to my stomach and I am always tired. I hate feeling this way. My sleep is always restless and I dream bad dreams all of the time, my mind never rests and I am always running in my dreams and feeling like I am running out of time. It feels like my life clock is winding down and there is something I need to do in the time I have left.
May 17th 1994~ Thoughts
I miss my daddy. (My adopted one) I feel that my life would have been different if he had lived. I remember his face that day, he did not look well, and how he lay his head down on the steering wheel and said because of the storm he said he was unable to drive me any further to school. I remember returning home and how we sat at the kitchen table together having tea and he just quietly fell from his chair to the floor. I remember the sound of my (adopted) mother screaming and watching her run away leaving me alone with him lying on the floor with the sound of his last breath escaping his lungs. I remember trying to breathe life back into his lungs and pounding on his chest and I remember how his eyes rolled and looked at me and I was very scared. I remember the sound of the snow plow coming down the road and I remember running out into the deep snow in my socks to flag it down. I remember my mum crying as the neighbor who drove the plow, called the police. I remember our close friend and neighbor Ruby coming in and attempting to calm my mum. I ran and hid on the staircase because I couldn't look at my dad lying on the floor like that anymore. Ruby came and held me and told me I was a strong little girl and it was ok to cry, but I couldn't, I wouldn't. The police came, and family came and the Doctor came and pronounced he had died instantly of a massive heart attack. My life changed forever that day. I knew that I was 2 months away from being 12 years old but that I had become an adult that day and that all hell was about to break loose in my life.
June 7th, 1994 ~ Thoughts
Cry, cry, cry. That is all I ever do these days. I have just snuck off by myself to cry some more. Hubby number two is playing a Woodstock tape and it has triggered a flood of memories. I thought about Mr. Common-Law and how we would all sit around playing guitar and singing old songs. Some of the good memories came back and I almost forgot all of the bad ones...almost. Christal was just a baby then and she would play as we drank beer and sang and played our hearts out. How could something that had started off so fun turn into such a nightmare? I think about hubby number two and think that sometimes it is really hard to have a relationship with him. I love him, I have fun with him but look at what happened with Mr. Common-Law. I loved him once too but grew to hate him by the time I left. I pray that that never happens with hubby number two, but sometimes, especially lately, he has been a real jerk with me and I feel that loathing building up in my stomach. I can't compare hubby number two with Mr. Common-Law, they are as different as night and day, but sometimes I look in his eyes and think, something is missing, but what? I get the feeling that maybe once more, I have chosen the wrong man for all of the wrong reasons and I just want to run away and hide.
December 13, 1994 ~ Thoughts
I am sure I am losing my mind. I have felt so ultimately screwed up lately. I don't know what to do. Hubby number two and I just keep fighting, we are so irritable with each other. I am so frustrated with my life. I feel like something is going to happen and I can almost see it but it is behind a thin veil that I can't quite reach. Whatever is behind that veil is going to destroy my marriage. It makes me angry. I am so angry all of the time.
January 19, 1995 ~ Dream
Hubby number two and I walked into our farm house. I looked out of the kitchen window and I see a white van pull into the driveway. I can't see inside the van because the windows are tinted. Hubby number two sees the van as well. He went upstairs and when he returned the van was gone. I asked him who was in the van and he said he didn't know. I asked him who he thought it might be and he said he thought it was someone I hadn't met yet and they were looking for me. He told me to be careful and to stay in the house and not to go to them if they came back and then he left.
January 20, 1995 ~ Dream
I am in the farm house. There are a lot of people there with me. I opened a kitchen cupboard and there were hundreds of white mice running around squealing, high pitched squeals. I closed the cupboard door quickly and two men appeared that I didn't know. I told them about the mice and they took me by the arms and started to lead me away. They spoke to me, but I couldn't understand the language they were speaking it was not one I had ever heard before. I think they were telling me I am going to be ok but that I would ahve to follow them first.
November 28th, 1995~ Thoughts
I dread writing what I have to say because I don't want to believe it. Hubby number two and I have separated. I don't know where to begin. I moved to Goderich to take a job at a Wal-Mart temporarily, because money has been tight, but in some ways I think I knew deep down inside that our relationship was about to change drastically. The magic is gone. He came to visit me on the weekends in September, and I kept telling myself that things were good, but my gut said something else, and then he brought me roses, and that was the problem...there was something attached to those roses...it was guilt. The roses solidified what I was thinking and sensing all along. Two weeks later he returned and he dumped me. He was harsh, telling me he didn't love me anymore, that he hadn't loved me in a long time, that he should have left me long ago, that he had come to resent me and even hated being around me. I felt another piece of my spirit being torn from me. It physically hurt. I begged him not to leave me, I told him I was coming home to the farm and he said he didn't want me there. He said there was someone else who had taken my place and then he left me there alone. I decided to move back up North despite what he said. I have found another house to rent and I will be moving soon. I won't allow this to happen to me.
March 4th, 1996 ~ Thoughts
Where do I start? The move went well. Hubby number two helped me settle in to my new house. After New Years he told me he was wrong and that he did still love me and we started seeing each other again. Things were going well until the female musher came in to the picture in February. He lied to me, he deceived me. He said he had to go away for a race for Valentine Day. My friend Mike came for a visit and he and I decided to take the kids to the farm for a winter picnic and some cross country skiing. When we got there, hubby number two's vehicle was there and so was the female mushers. I waited for them despite, Mike wanting me to just leave. I was very angry. How could someone look me in the eyes and tell me they loved me when it was all lies. He returned with her and I despised him in that moment, I threw things at him and then I turned my anger on her when she mocked me and challenged me and I knocked her on her ass right there in the snow in front of him, and Mike and my kids. I should have felt better but I just felt humiliated and used. But, I left with my head up, flipping him the bird and when I returned home I fainted with grief. He blames me. He takes no ownership. I am tired of hearing it. It takes two, it is not all my fault. It is time to let him go, I am just not sure how.
March 31st, 1996 ~ Dream
I am standing in a church and I am singing Alanis Morisette "Isn't it Ironic". People are watching me, I am dancing wildly around and singing at the top of my lungs. I look down. I am wearing a wedding dress and army boots. I am carrying a bouquet of daisies and sunflowers. I think that I look like a fairy or an angel. I go outside, it is daytime but it is so dark outside. The wind is blowing fiercely and it looks like rain. A hooded monk like figure approaches me and hands me a piece of paper, I read the note and cry. The thunder booms in the sky and I start running through a big grassy field. I came to a fence, a man is standing there but I can't see his face. He walks towards me and takes my hand and leads me to a horse. We don't speak. I watch the horse run around a race track and the man stands beside me. I turn to him and say "None of this makes sense to me". I run away. I come to a beach and the waves are rushing up on the sand. I take my boots off and walk barefoot in the waves. I run again, down a driveway in the country towards a forest. I run around the trees and the sun comes out and I realize I am on my childhood farm. I run to my special place called caterpillar rock. I climb on top and look all around. I hear the geese coming and I feel afraid, they are flying South for the Winter. I leap off the rock and chase them. To the left I see bulls in a coral and they are pawing the earth and snorting at me. I keep running. A huge grizzly bear walked into my path and I stopped and walked slowly up to it and touched it's nose and it stared me in the eyes and then backed away and I thanked it. I ran some more and this time a pack of wolves ran alongside of me. I ran faster than them and they stopped and howled in unison. The wind began to blow strong and I looked and saw the man again, standing by a cottage. I went to him and he held out his arms to me and I walked into them. He asked me if I was done running? He said he had been waiting for me, I started to sing, once more and dance wildly in the fields.
To Be Continued.....
March 1993 ~ Dream
I am sitting in an apartment, someone is banging on the door. I am frightened. The door gets kicked in and a dark haired man bursts in. I run and jump out of the window. When I hit ground I continue to run around the side of a tall apartment building and into a side door. I think I am in another apartment but it is so dark I cannot be sure. The man finds me. He tries to grab me but I use a Karate type kick to hold him back. An old man appears and tries to help me but the dark haired man kills him. I hear a puppy crying in the other room. I find it and pick it up and start running again. I am in a long narrow hallway and I see a door propped open, I hide the puppy behind the door. I keep running out of the building where I find a white van waiting. The man is still chasing me. I jump in the van but there are no keys for it so I jump out and continue to run. I see a red and white truck ahead, there is a guy driving it, I yell for help but he ignores me and keeps driving off. I find myself in the middle of road construction, the road is wet and muddy and slippery but I keep on running. I come to a building that looks like military barracks but I think maybe it is now an elementary school. I run through the front doors which are being held open by a woman I don't know. I notice there are children walking about inside. I run through another set of doors being held open for me by another woman I do not recognize. As I keep running I realize that I am back in the long narrow hallway of the previous building and as I keep going I end up back in the apartment where the door was first kicked in. I find my mother on her knees beside a big claw foot tub in the middle of the room, she is bathing my daughter Christal who is a young baby. I enter into a bathroom where there is another tub with a small baby girl in it. She has fallen over and is drowning. I pull her out and she is ok. I hold her and rock her and an unknown woman enters the bathroom and says that the baby looks like me, I agree but I say I don't know whose baby it is but I must save her. I leave the bathroom and the apartment and find myself back in the long narrow hallway with the propped open door. I find the puppy behind the door and I leave with the puppy under one arm and the baby under the other and I know that I am going to be ok.
March 1993 ~ Dream
I hear the song "Material Girl" by Madonna playing in the background. I shake my head and realize I am sitting in a balcony seat at a theatre. I am dressed in baggy Levi's, my blue flannel shirt, a blue ball cap and construction boots. I have a suitcase beside me. I notice a group of men sitting in the front row below. I am annoyed and I get up come down the stairs from the balcony and walk past the men. One of the men recognizes me and says I am a Twisted Sister. I ignore him and leave the theatre and enter in to a convenience store. I buy a chocolate bar, ice cream sandwich, and Cracker Jacks. When I pay the cashier she asks me how business at the bar is. I tell her I don't know, I don't work there. I leave and walk down a road that leads me into Beebe, a small town in the Eastern Townships in Quebec where I grew up. I enter a bar but no one is there. I sit down and order the soup of the day from a fat, greasy looking cook. My friend Wendy comes in and we go up stairs into what is a hotel. There are tons of women there. I enter a one of the rooms and I find a change of clothes waiting on a bed. I put on shorts, a jean shirt and running shoes and I go back downstairs and start waiting on tables in a now full bar. Wendy starts waiting on tables as well. A woman comes in who looks familiar to me, I leave with her. We go back to the theatre together. There is a group of men standing outside looking in a window. I go inside and the woman follows me. I walk down a long hallway and into the theatre where I find a group of young girls including my daughter Christal who is just a child. I ask the woman to gather all of the girls and bring them into another room. I enter yet another room myself and come out carrying a machine gun in one hand and my suitcase in the other. I run back down the hall towards the theatre and a man yells "look she has a stupid gun". I enter the theatre and the men start to cheer and laugh and I yell out..."Never Again" and aim the gun at them and start firing. The woman comes up to me and calmly removes the gun from my hands, I tell her that this will make a wonderful story someday, the best I have ever written. I tell her I have to leave and go and write it all down. Before I leave I ask the woman to play me a Beatles song..."Here Comes The Sun", she laughs and tells me it is time to wake up.
May 16th 1994~ Thoughts
I feel like I am dying but I am afraid to speak it out loud for fear that it may come true. I feel like I never have any good days anymore, like I am ill all of the time. I always have a headache and feel sick to my stomach and I am always tired. I hate feeling this way. My sleep is always restless and I dream bad dreams all of the time, my mind never rests and I am always running in my dreams and feeling like I am running out of time. It feels like my life clock is winding down and there is something I need to do in the time I have left.
May 17th 1994~ Thoughts
I miss my daddy. (My adopted one) I feel that my life would have been different if he had lived. I remember his face that day, he did not look well, and how he lay his head down on the steering wheel and said because of the storm he said he was unable to drive me any further to school. I remember returning home and how we sat at the kitchen table together having tea and he just quietly fell from his chair to the floor. I remember the sound of my (adopted) mother screaming and watching her run away leaving me alone with him lying on the floor with the sound of his last breath escaping his lungs. I remember trying to breathe life back into his lungs and pounding on his chest and I remember how his eyes rolled and looked at me and I was very scared. I remember the sound of the snow plow coming down the road and I remember running out into the deep snow in my socks to flag it down. I remember my mum crying as the neighbor who drove the plow, called the police. I remember our close friend and neighbor Ruby coming in and attempting to calm my mum. I ran and hid on the staircase because I couldn't look at my dad lying on the floor like that anymore. Ruby came and held me and told me I was a strong little girl and it was ok to cry, but I couldn't, I wouldn't. The police came, and family came and the Doctor came and pronounced he had died instantly of a massive heart attack. My life changed forever that day. I knew that I was 2 months away from being 12 years old but that I had become an adult that day and that all hell was about to break loose in my life.
June 7th, 1994 ~ Thoughts
Cry, cry, cry. That is all I ever do these days. I have just snuck off by myself to cry some more. Hubby number two is playing a Woodstock tape and it has triggered a flood of memories. I thought about Mr. Common-Law and how we would all sit around playing guitar and singing old songs. Some of the good memories came back and I almost forgot all of the bad ones...almost. Christal was just a baby then and she would play as we drank beer and sang and played our hearts out. How could something that had started off so fun turn into such a nightmare? I think about hubby number two and think that sometimes it is really hard to have a relationship with him. I love him, I have fun with him but look at what happened with Mr. Common-Law. I loved him once too but grew to hate him by the time I left. I pray that that never happens with hubby number two, but sometimes, especially lately, he has been a real jerk with me and I feel that loathing building up in my stomach. I can't compare hubby number two with Mr. Common-Law, they are as different as night and day, but sometimes I look in his eyes and think, something is missing, but what? I get the feeling that maybe once more, I have chosen the wrong man for all of the wrong reasons and I just want to run away and hide.
December 13, 1994 ~ Thoughts
I am sure I am losing my mind. I have felt so ultimately screwed up lately. I don't know what to do. Hubby number two and I just keep fighting, we are so irritable with each other. I am so frustrated with my life. I feel like something is going to happen and I can almost see it but it is behind a thin veil that I can't quite reach. Whatever is behind that veil is going to destroy my marriage. It makes me angry. I am so angry all of the time.
January 19, 1995 ~ Dream
Hubby number two and I walked into our farm house. I looked out of the kitchen window and I see a white van pull into the driveway. I can't see inside the van because the windows are tinted. Hubby number two sees the van as well. He went upstairs and when he returned the van was gone. I asked him who was in the van and he said he didn't know. I asked him who he thought it might be and he said he thought it was someone I hadn't met yet and they were looking for me. He told me to be careful and to stay in the house and not to go to them if they came back and then he left.
January 20, 1995 ~ Dream
I am in the farm house. There are a lot of people there with me. I opened a kitchen cupboard and there were hundreds of white mice running around squealing, high pitched squeals. I closed the cupboard door quickly and two men appeared that I didn't know. I told them about the mice and they took me by the arms and started to lead me away. They spoke to me, but I couldn't understand the language they were speaking it was not one I had ever heard before. I think they were telling me I am going to be ok but that I would ahve to follow them first.
November 28th, 1995~ Thoughts
I dread writing what I have to say because I don't want to believe it. Hubby number two and I have separated. I don't know where to begin. I moved to Goderich to take a job at a Wal-Mart temporarily, because money has been tight, but in some ways I think I knew deep down inside that our relationship was about to change drastically. The magic is gone. He came to visit me on the weekends in September, and I kept telling myself that things were good, but my gut said something else, and then he brought me roses, and that was the problem...there was something attached to those roses...it was guilt. The roses solidified what I was thinking and sensing all along. Two weeks later he returned and he dumped me. He was harsh, telling me he didn't love me anymore, that he hadn't loved me in a long time, that he should have left me long ago, that he had come to resent me and even hated being around me. I felt another piece of my spirit being torn from me. It physically hurt. I begged him not to leave me, I told him I was coming home to the farm and he said he didn't want me there. He said there was someone else who had taken my place and then he left me there alone. I decided to move back up North despite what he said. I have found another house to rent and I will be moving soon. I won't allow this to happen to me.
March 4th, 1996 ~ Thoughts
Where do I start? The move went well. Hubby number two helped me settle in to my new house. After New Years he told me he was wrong and that he did still love me and we started seeing each other again. Things were going well until the female musher came in to the picture in February. He lied to me, he deceived me. He said he had to go away for a race for Valentine Day. My friend Mike came for a visit and he and I decided to take the kids to the farm for a winter picnic and some cross country skiing. When we got there, hubby number two's vehicle was there and so was the female mushers. I waited for them despite, Mike wanting me to just leave. I was very angry. How could someone look me in the eyes and tell me they loved me when it was all lies. He returned with her and I despised him in that moment, I threw things at him and then I turned my anger on her when she mocked me and challenged me and I knocked her on her ass right there in the snow in front of him, and Mike and my kids. I should have felt better but I just felt humiliated and used. But, I left with my head up, flipping him the bird and when I returned home I fainted with grief. He blames me. He takes no ownership. I am tired of hearing it. It takes two, it is not all my fault. It is time to let him go, I am just not sure how.
March 31st, 1996 ~ Dream
I am standing in a church and I am singing Alanis Morisette "Isn't it Ironic". People are watching me, I am dancing wildly around and singing at the top of my lungs. I look down. I am wearing a wedding dress and army boots. I am carrying a bouquet of daisies and sunflowers. I think that I look like a fairy or an angel. I go outside, it is daytime but it is so dark outside. The wind is blowing fiercely and it looks like rain. A hooded monk like figure approaches me and hands me a piece of paper, I read the note and cry. The thunder booms in the sky and I start running through a big grassy field. I came to a fence, a man is standing there but I can't see his face. He walks towards me and takes my hand and leads me to a horse. We don't speak. I watch the horse run around a race track and the man stands beside me. I turn to him and say "None of this makes sense to me". I run away. I come to a beach and the waves are rushing up on the sand. I take my boots off and walk barefoot in the waves. I run again, down a driveway in the country towards a forest. I run around the trees and the sun comes out and I realize I am on my childhood farm. I run to my special place called caterpillar rock. I climb on top and look all around. I hear the geese coming and I feel afraid, they are flying South for the Winter. I leap off the rock and chase them. To the left I see bulls in a coral and they are pawing the earth and snorting at me. I keep running. A huge grizzly bear walked into my path and I stopped and walked slowly up to it and touched it's nose and it stared me in the eyes and then backed away and I thanked it. I ran some more and this time a pack of wolves ran alongside of me. I ran faster than them and they stopped and howled in unison. The wind began to blow strong and I looked and saw the man again, standing by a cottage. I went to him and he held out his arms to me and I walked into them. He asked me if I was done running? He said he had been waiting for me, I started to sing, once more and dance wildly in the fields.
To Be Continued.....
