Post Whatever You Are Thinking At This Very Moment

some lilies came through my till today. i excitedly looked inside them to see if neil was in there but he wasnt. i was disappointed. :(
 
After cleaning it up some, here is Chapter 1 and the beginning of Chapter 2

I was adopted at two weeks old, by a couple who already had another adoptee who was 4 years older. Anne, I’ll call her here. She became jealous of the attention I got and tried to kill me several times. Once, by electrocution, once by drowning, and another time with a baseball bat to the bridge of my nose. Our parents weren't emotionally intelligent enough to pick up on that. Also there’s a pattern of people (and a pet) dying shortly after befriending or complementing me, and I suspect Anne killed them. I suspect too, that she set up a little girl at the elementary school in St. Eustace, Quebec, to get chopped up in an industrial sized snowblower. Actually, now that I think of it, she did try to set me up in the path of that very type of snowblower.

She is 4 years older than me, and I was a lonely kid, and looked up to her, so she had an influence on me, and one day she encouraged me to build an igloo type of snow cave. It just happened to be smack dab in the path of the snowblower. Her timing wasn’t ideal, obviously or I wouldn’t be writing this. She didn’t encourage me to build the cave in the backyard, or the front yard. No, it was on the street. It was her idea to build that snow cave, and she energetically encouraged and guided me to build it. In hindsight, I know she was salivating over the idea of me getting chewed up in that huge machine. I think was she that lasciviously told me about the little girl at the elementary school that died in the machine. It all makes sense now, decades after the fact.

She looks completely normal. I believe she was born indigenous, but I don’t know what happened to her up until the age of two, when she was adopted by our parents. I think she was in an orphanage until 2. Maybe the orphanage was a residential school. That may explain why the psychopathy. She has always kept a steady job, has a husband and two daughters. Not me. I was diagnosed with all kinds of mental illnesses. I used to steal from big chain stores when I was a kid. Then I grew up and became a stripper for 7 years, but she’s the real psychopath between us. She was always portrayed as the good child, while I was the black sheep. In reality, it’s a different story, but she could be your coworker, sister in law, etcetera and you probably wouldn’t know how dangerous she is, until wham.

The only warning signs, aside from the attempts on my life, were that she used to sit on my head, sandwiched between gym mats, until I’d feel lightheaded, and once when I was sick in bed, she kept picking up the extra phone to stop me from being able to call my friend. Later, years after she attempted to take my life, she attacked me over initiating a fireplace. More about that further on in this book. The last time she sat on my head, I warned her that I wouldn’t be responsible for how I’d react if she did it again. She went ahead and did it, and I punched her in the mouth, and split her bottom lip.
____

I had a picture of myself sitting between an ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’ that suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, and I suspect they were my biological parents. Ken and Nora. Nora’s face was horse-like, and Ken’s was monkey-like. Together I think they make my face. I don’t know. I look cozy with them in the photo. I remember ringing their doorbell one day, and no one answered, and later I was told nonchalantly that they’d moved. I tried a little, to find my biological parents, but it’s never been a priority. Maybe that will change.

_____

The baseball bat to the bridge of my nose, happened when I’d been climbing down the stairs to the basement of the house in St. Eustace, Quebec. As I stepped down the stairs, I saw my sister in the doorway below, just her bare tanned shoulder and her long silky dark hair. She had her back to me. I thought that she must be reading there. Next thing I knew, whack! I couldn’t see for 5 to 10 minutes. Anne (I will call her in this book), said “ I didn’t know you were there.” She must have heard me coming down the stairs and swung the bat when she thought she could break my nose and shove the bone into my brain. She claimed to have been practicing her swing.

I didn’t tell anyone about it. No one really ever talked with me, so it never came up. My little mind couldn’t contemplate the horror that my sister was trying to kill me, so I just distracted and cheered myself, with TV, Archie comics, candy, and jumping on my friend Steve’s bed. The candy dependence began with a gift from dad:

One day, mum told me to go greet dad at the front door. I did, and that was the only eye contact I remember ever having with him. His eyes seemed to register that I loved him, and he was very happy at that instant, but then he brought his hand out from behind his back. In it was a brown paper bag, with candy in it. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t want the candy, that I wanted more eye contact, but I didn’t have the vocabulary, so I acted happy about the candy so as not to hurt his feelings, and I went down into the basement, sat in front of the TV, and got high on the sugar.

Anne's attempt at drowning me happened in the pool at a hotel on our vacation to Florida. She held me down in the deep end, under her. At first I thought she was just joking around, so I humored her, staying down without a fight. I watched her face, which was above the water. There was a big smile on it.

Eventually, my lungs felt like they were going to burst into flame. The pain was excruciating and mounting by the second. I then struggled, to let her know that the joke was going too far. At that point, her elbows locked to ensure I’d remain submerged below her. The pain insisted that I fight. To warn Anne of what was to come if she didn’t relent, I began to dig my fingernails into her ankles. I saw her big toothy smile vanish as she let go of me. She had a lot of murder mystery books. They must have taught her that her would-be bloody ankles would have given her away.

Again, I didn’t tell anyone what Anne had done. I never really talked with anyone. I guess that’s why today, I value sitting on a park bench with friends chatting, getting things off our chests. I don’t think any of us would suffer in silence if talking about our issues will help ease the pain.

The electrocution happened when I was in the basement, under the stairs, where I had a pretend house. A lamp was missing, so I went to Dad’s work table and retrieved it. I noticed that the three pronged plug was missing half it’s rubber, exposing the metal prongs. I didn’t know enough about electricity to realize the danger of wrapping my little hand around that plug and inserting it into the wall socket.

I plugged it in, and couldn’t remove my hand from the plug. My legs were convulsing underneath me. I called for Anne, who was in the trusted position of babysitter. She came bounding down the stairs and stood watching me as my legs continued to convulse. I just happened to have a friend over, the only time I remember ever having one over. What great timing. Stephen. He gave Anne ample time to do something to help me, and then he must have realized she was just going to watch me die, so he came up behind me, grabbed the bottom of my white t-shirt, and pulled me off the current.

I suspect Anne cut the rubber off that plug. There’s a pattern. Other attempts to kill me. Other deaths, the timing of them. Dad's death just when he was embarking on getting to know me. Then there was Pete, our canary’s death, just after I got the only meaningful compliment mum ever gave me, for bringing out the best in him. Pete and I got along really well. I’d open his cage door, take my shoes and socks off, wiggle my toes, and Pete would fly down to the floor and chase me around the apartment in Ville de La Salle, Quebec. He also would sing along to a record we had of birdsong.

It was after that compliment mum gave me about bringing out the specialness in Pete, that I came home one day to find mum and her boyfriend John (This was after dad died, of a sudden heart attack I find suspicious.), in the kitchen with Pete in a small basket on the table, unable to hold his head up. He had a bright red gash on his pale yellow head. I screamed, or rather screeched. John put him in a warmed oven. I guess I buried him in the backyard. I was told he flew into one of the clasps that hold the living room mirror to the wall. Now, looking back, seeing a pattern of deaths that occur just after I begin to get close to someone, I think it must have been Anne, who put that gash on Pete’s head. The suspicious deaths include dad, Pete, Nan, and eventually even Mum.

Dad asked me one day, if I wanted to go horseback riding. This was the only time I remember my dad speaking to me. I said yes. The next thing I remember is being at a ranch, dad being on a horse ahead of me, at the beginning of a forest trail, with many other riders on horses. My horse stopped, and wouldn’t budge (though I think I poked it a little with a hair pin), and dad’s horse continued on without me. The rancher came and led my horse back to the ranch, and led me into a room with a big fridge. There, he told a young woman to keep me occupied with pop and chips.

After an hour or two, some man sitting on a bench with two other men said with his Quebecois accent, “What happened, your father fall of a horse and die?”, and slapped his hands on his knees like it was hilarious. Next thing I know, my Godmother, Inga, drives up and says “Get in.” I do, and she proceeds to drive away from the ranch. I said “Where’s dad?”. She didn’t answer, she just looked ahead at the road coldly as she kept driving. I then yelled insistently “Where’s dad?”. She answered deadpan, “He’s dead.”, and kept driving, as I heard myself wail.

Today, having put two and two together, I suspect that Anne used her elaborate chemistry set she got for Christmas (or maybe her birthday), to poison Dad with a sandwich or something. I mean the timing; just after he begins to try to spend some quality time with me. Pete, dead, after mum compliments me about how well we got along. Nan, dead after she starts getting me to sing for her. And eventually, even mum would die of a mysterious illness shortly after she finally decided she liked me and sent me a Walkman. There’s a pattern, so I suspect Anne didn’t just attempt to kill me, but may have attempted and succeeded at killing several others.

_____

There was a logbook that dad wrote in, about his cub scouts. I could tell by reading it, that he was a sensitive caring person. All that thoughtful writing about his boys. Also, there were voice recordings on cassette tape, of him reciting xmas carols. Not singing them, but speaking them, and I liked his voice. These items were only shown to me after his death. He was never mentioned, and the recordings, both written and audio, were never to be seen again.

Nan would get me to sing the song from the movie The Sound of Music, Edelweiss, in the living room on Harrigan street in LaSalle, Quebec. I remember her giving me a nickel or a dime, after I sang for her, and how flattered and grateful I was for it. Soon afterward, I was told Nan was changing a light bulb in the kitchen, stood on a chair, and the chair collapsed under her. She broke her hip, and she was flown from Quebec to British Columbia, to a hospital in Kamloops. Anne flew to visit her, and Nan died soon after the visit. Part of a pattern. I wonder if Anne loosened the screws in the chair and then loosened the light bulb.

Before nan died, Anne was saying she was racist, and mum was saying she was selfish. They didn’t explain why they were saying such things, and I suspect that they just didn’t like her because she was emotionally intelligent (though not educated emotionally enough to see how vicious Anne was), and same with dad.

Decades later, Mum would send a Walkman across Canada to me, seeming to finally miss me. Soon afterward, Anne called to say that Mum had swelled up from her breasts down, and the doctors couldn’t figure out why. I got to talk to mum over the phone. I asked her if she was scared, and she answered yes. Next thing I know, Anne calls me up, and tells me mum died. We both wept audibly. I remember marveling at how her wailing sounded just like my own. But there’s that pattern again, of the timing of people’s deaths, being just after getting close to me (or trying to).

____


From the time I was eight, mum was alone with my sister and I, as dad died “of a sudden heart attack”. One time, when I was 11, I played a terrible prank. I felt sorry for a bunch of kids because they seemed bored, so I looked around wondering what I could do to cheer them up. I saw a sprinkler, and an open car window, and decided to put the sprinkler in the car.
 
you might as well call your book "a catalogue of all the ways in which i am a victim" because that's what it's reading like. it doesnt have much meat.
There are 52 pages so far and I'm not sure it's all about being a victim. It's true that most of it is, probably. It's not a cinch to be objective about it. I'll have to look at it with fresh eyes, but if it does turn out to be mostly being a victim, then it does.
 
There are 52 pages so far and I'm not sure it's all about being a victim. It's true that most of it is, probably. It's not a cinch to be objective about it. I'll have to look at it with fresh eyes, but if it does turn out to be mostly being a victim, then it does.
a memoir should not read like a point-form biography. your memories or experiences should be carefully selected and should be couched in some present day context wherein you're looking back at certain moments of your life with more insight or understanding or resolution, otherwise what is the point. no one wants to read about someone who was a victim over and over again and for whom the only thing they can take away from their experience is that "people are sadists".
 
or it should be exploratory in a way, a spirit of "im writing this to try to figure things out", a sort of literary mathematics. im not getting that either. you write like you know it all, and yet you offer no wisdom.
 
a memoir should not read like a point-form biography. your memories or experiences should be carefully selected and should be couched in some present day context wherein you're looking back at certain moments of your life with more insight or understanding or resolution, otherwise what is the point. no one wants to read about someone who was a victim over and over again and for whom the only thing they can take away from their experience is that "people are sadists".
Maybe my manuscript will evolve into "understanding and resolution". I'm hoping for 200 pages.
 
or it should be exploratory in a way, a spirit of "im writing this to try to figure things out", a sort of literary mathematics. im not getting that either. you write like you know it all, and yet you offer no wisdom.
I'm trying to write just the facts, to begin with at least. The bare bones.
 
also you shouldnt start out trying to shock people. that's just going to turn people off. it's a very simple rule: dont start out with things that people arent going to understand or may not believe. build up to it. the same way a homeless person when begging for change shouldnt ever tell someone he hasnt eaten in days but simply that he hasnt eaten breakfast. no one wants to be shocked right off the bat, before they've developed any familiarity with the person or subject.
 
also you shouldnt start out trying to shock people. that's just going to turn people off. it's a very simple rule, dont start out with things that people arent going to understand or may not believe. build up to it. the same way a homeless person when begging for change shouldnt ever tell someone he hasnt even in days but simply that he hasnt eaten breakfast. no one wants to be shocked right off the bat, before they've developed any familiarity with the person or subject.
It's urgent to me to tell about the murderousness of my adoptive sister.
 
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