If this blog were a book with any logical order to it, this would be the last post. But, it doesn't, so here it is now.
By that fall, i'd had enough. i took my chances, and made my escape, a story i'll tell another time. November of that year i met J, and began to learn a different life. i discovered for the first time that i was just a girl, not poisonous or bad. For the first time in my life i was loved. By Feb of the following year i had begun to rebuild my life with J at its center. i sweated out an extremely horrible cure and kicked my addictions. At that point my hands still shook more often than not, and Jackson harassed me quite often. my life was still in shattered pieces, with only the vaguest promise i would ever pick any of them up. i was at J's, in his bed, in his arms when the call came that my grandfather had died. He had died in his sleep on a Friday night, and i got the call on a Saturday afternoon. i couldn't even take in the meaning. i went home, cutting myself off from my only source of light, love, and comfort because i felt that my family needed me. my father cried, my mother tried to comfort him. Marcie cried and Vanessa chewed a hole in her lip but took Marcied into her arms and tried to comfort her. i stood apart from them. Watching them as though they were strangers. Finally my mother took my father to the funeral home to help make arrangements. And, without him in the house, Marcie voiced the thought in all of our minds... "The monster is dead." Everything was a swirl of crying faces until the funeral. J went with me. my father's family cut my sisters and me dead. As though we had done the old man to death ourselves. i actually heard my Aunt Beatrice calling Vanessa a lying whore. Marcie told her to shut her fucking mouth. Vanessa and Marcie edged close together and held hands. You could see the little girls they had been very clearly. And, as always, i stood apart from my family. But, this time i wasn't alone. J held my upper arm and stroked my back. People were looking at us as though his touch was indecent, but i didn't care. i wouldn't have cared if it had been. i needed to feel him, and his possession of me. At the graveside service i suddenly felt at though i had been stabbed. The pain was excruciating in my lower abdomen. i thought at first it was only a flashback, something i had lived with all my life, but then i felt the blood flow down my legs and the pain intensified so much i went down to my knees. Everyone simply stood there and stared at me. Muttering nasty things as blood soaked through my linen skirt. Finally J picked me up in his big strong arms and carried me away from that hell. He didn't even pause when my father asked him what he thought he was doing. He tucked me into his car, gunned the motor and drove me to the hospital, cussing my whole family bitterly as he did so. i didn't know it at the time, but my mother followed him. Her friend Anne brought her to the hospital and she arrived right behind us, in time to register me. It turned out i had a cyst rupture on my ovary. Withing a few hours i was okay. Well, physically. i'm still not okay that he died in his sleep and i bled at his funeral. The bastard.
