June 22, 2004

• I got rid of the music, it was driving ME crazy, and I deleted the mouseovers, since I have the links over there anyway. I’ll cook up something graphical later on. I think the code didn’t work because I made some error in the copy/pasting.  

  
  

  In these few moments before hitting the road I have to relate the weird events of yesterday.      The “bad news” generated some “good news” and has started my “motor running” and I am finally beginning to write a “story” so besides the 38 poems I’ve written thus far this year, my greatest output since 1978, which includes the Cathy Poems.

  
  

  The “bad news” I received was thus. A gal I have known for some years has been living on the other side of the country since her marriage about 3 or 4 years ago. Her husband, a bit of a crazy man who has been compared to one of those “cult leaders” had turned the poor gal against her family, made her destroy all remnants of “her former life” and has kidnapped her and mentally abused her for the length of their relationship. She has left him countless times and always returns because she loves this guy, to everyone’s shock and condemnation. Last week she left him for the third time in the past three months, and finally struck up a friendship with another guy. The husband had severed all her ties with all her friends. They had a hard time trying to set up a life and secure jobs, and finally the gal got a good job, although the husband was on disability for a number of physical and mental problems, I believe which were mostly bogus.

  
  

  I received news that the husband killed himself on Father’s Day. The gal received word of his suicide in an email sent to her work. She immediately called the police and they went into the house and confirmed that he overdosed on pills. There are a lot of story elements in this cautionary tale, and my first thought upon hearing the news was: Good, now the gal won’t have any more trouble with him. Of course right now she is devastated, and her father and mother flew to her side yesterday. I have begun outlining a short story or novella to tell this tragic tale. It needs telling, and will be written with names and places and certain incidents changed to protect the identity of the actual people involved.

  
  

  One of my older correspondents once “laid a whopper” of a tale on me about being kidnapped and abused as a younger woman, and wondered if she should “tell the story” which she had already written as therapy. I encouraged her. And I think my friend’s story, which isn’t over yet, but hopefully the terror and pain is over which was heaped on her family after she met this guy and he “kidnapped her mind, heart, and person” and took her to live in another state and proceeded to destroy her life. Hopefully her life will turn back to normal, although there really is no normal after something like this happens.

  
  

  I and my friends are just so glad that the guy didn’t kill her and her new friend prior to killing himself, which is what I always seem to read in the paper and see on television when these kinds of stories are related.

  
  

  This was strange and weird news to begin the week. I mentioned to the gal’s father a couple of weeks ago when told that the husband supposedly had been afflicted with a life threatening disease. “Good, I’ll be praying that he dies.” Then I told him I realize that was a terrible thing to say. When I heard the news yesterday, my first thought was: Well, I guess my prayers were answered. As I said, weird news yesterday.

  • 8:16 am
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