an update
so, i'm typing up this journal entry on notepad. and looking at the desktop wallpaper i have of robert downey jr as ironman. i know, it's not really him the actor i like so much. he's just eye candy. but i love the character of tony stark. stark is german for strong, btw...

anyways.

the news about my male parental unit's impending arrival doesn't have me in a panic. not at all. i've grown rather still. in a "deer in the headlights" kind of way. but i do have moments.

not moments of hysteria. just... moments. like last night when i was thinking as to what i would probably need to say to my best local friends who have no clue why this is such a big deal.

so, i did as i always do: i practiced saying what will probably need to be said. i couldn't even think the words without crying. and i don't even see that little girl as me. that is someone else. just some strange little girl who doesn't understand what is going on. and i cry for her like i do for any child caught in that kind of life.

wtf. my heart skips beats right now even just typing this up. or maybe it's the dr pepper...

ok. in my autobiography here i don't even go into detail as to when some of That happened. can't do it still.

it wasn't even me. just some strange little girl.

and you don't really want to know, and i don't really want to remember.

i had a photographic memory back then. but when i was in my 20s, having nightmares and pictures flying through my mind randomly, i trained myself to stop the unbidden memories. to stop the retraumatizing of it all. so they don't sweep over me unawares at all anymore. well, until recently. but surprisingly not as much as one would expect. or at least as much as i would have expected. or maybe i didn't expect anything. i certainly never expected a call after 24 years of complete silence. 26 years since i saw him last.

funny that, too. he said he'd been searching for me. for us.

bullshit. the info he had dated from the one time my mom came to visit me and the kids in florida. she called him, he said as much. maybe to rub it in his face. we'll never really know why. i just know that through the years she did occassionally call him. and so he always knew where we were. he even called us right before i started my senior year in high school in corpus christi. seems i'd called his mom, using a friend's credit card. which happened to be stolen...

so. the question remains, as i stand here, still, in the oncoming headlights, what am i going to do come august 15th...

heathen crone, i may take you up on that roadtrip destination. the youngest has been wanting to go camping in teh mountains. and well, i miss them too.

maybe i can get the g'rents to spring for an el camino for me. for camping, you know...