First Draft Almost Complete!

I've gotten through the toughest part of writing. I've had my amazing editor review the work and now we're down to the next review/edits/etc. No matter what happens, I may just get these feelings, the truth on paper. Maybe one day it will be able to make a difference for even one person. Who can ask for more than that? It's a great possibility. It's a great start!

I Want I'M TIRED To Die!

Photo by Hélène Desplechin

Not a moment transpires that gives me a breath of salvation from angst and despair!

I am tired of wishing my life away and tired of all of the tears. I'm sick of wondering why things are and wanting someone to make things better. Why do I have to succumb to such daggers of anguish that tear at my soul and leave me without any possibility of experiencing a moment of peace of love or anything of substance that might seem to supply food to my soul?

It never ends. I get just so far and then - STOP! I am knocked down and pummeled by society's neglect of its own, leaving those without protection to wither and die inside.

It's sick isn't it? How is such complacency possible? How is this allowed? Can no one think it possible to move toward someone in despair? But then again, the truth is how could I ever allow such truth to be recognized? This life is not for the weak. The weak are eaten by the strong.

Such sick and twisted behavior is not only tolerated but encouraged by America's dream to have everything. I am not even alive anymore! If I scream and yell it makes no change. No one cares! No one cares at all! I can't stand the way we talk to each other and the way I have to be silent!

Like a pet waiting to be put down, here is the time passing away. I loathe and despise yesterday and can't seem to find my today. It's stuck somewhere in the middle of possibility and hope and lost forever from my dreams.

I can't handle something that others find so easy to weave in their lives. Bouquets are all around others. I am amongst the thorns. And still no one comes to help me find my way out from the pricks that let crimson fall to the ground.

I want "I'm tired" to die! It's over! You're hated. You're no longer wanted. Now, how does it feel? Does it make your heart bleed?

The bile in my throat is all made for you. It's raining down to swell and surface and cause you every discomfort and despicable ache there is to imagine. And I have imagined often of ending your life.

I have fantasized about your demise. You have taken the beauty in air and blinded the sky. And if I could, I would cause you to die a thousand times always, if there could be a way. I would make you suffer the tortures of eternity, all in one day.

You won't seem to leave me or tell me goodbye. So it's up to me to strip you of the pleasure to sense your ability to conquer all who breathe you in without knowing. You will never know peace as long as I live. Why should you have a thread of joy when you dehydrate my soul from its opportunity to soar.

There will come a day when thought takes you hostage. I will laugh through bittersweet water flooding my face. It's time for "I'm Tired" to die! Step up and claim your prize of sanity all gone. You'll get nothing from me or from my life again.

You're dead to me always. And though you may try to seep back under my skin, I won't give you the privilege of knowing that you will win anything from me but the sweat, blood and tears you have impregnated me with year after year.

You're dead, scraped and burned and cast away high! I hand you your death certificate to hold the truth of your demise!

It's time to get back to writing...

It's been some time since I have really even opened the file of my book. I just know that there is going to be a good bit of emotional pain to get through. I thought I could get it done the last time I spent a day writing. But it seems I got through a great deal and then stopped just as the 'fun would have started. Of all the amazing and strange and unbelievable things to somehow put to paper or in a file, it's just too much. I keep avoiding this. I have avoided this for so very long. I have dealt with this, or actually tried to in the methods that many suggest and recommend. But nothing has put it all to rest. I have heard that writing it all down, expressing it all and getting through it in words can be of great use. I just keep putting it off. I find myself doing almost anything else.

The boys are keeping me busy as well. How did they get to be boys or even young men rather than little babies? My 13 year-old actually asked if he could go see a love movie with me. It was one of those 'date movies.' And here he was interested in this? Good grief? I wasn't expecting that quite yet!!

The truth will set you free...at least that's what I am counting on.

 

 'A Christimas Book for Gillean,' by  Merriman Smith

When writing this book, well, all I can tell you is that my short stories come by way of memories cut by shards of glass. One minute life is happening as normal and the next a flood of memories or one single incident walks in front of me from the past as if it were literally happening all over again.

I do spend time writing about specific events that include visiting the White House, shaking hands with a U.S. President and growing up with no family for most of my life. I suppose in my instance, writing my story is not an easy task. And being asked time and time again why I would write such a book sharing a good deal of unimaginable events, extraordinary circumstances involving well-known political and military officials, my answer continues to remain the same.

One's voice should not be taken away from someone so young. Just one example; a child should not have to worry that the money left to her by her father can be taken away without someone representing the child's best interests reviews the situation. But it did. A man of legal age should not be 'tucking a young teen into bed' every night by sitting on the bed she is in for an hour or more 'touching her.' But a man did. But what is so very sad is that a child could be selected as a 'gift' to help a troubled family.

Who was looking after the child all this time? How could this happen? And why did no one stand in for the child to say, 'enough!' I don't want to hear of any boy or girl lose his or her voice again. Yes, it's a lofty goal. But without trying, some of the things I have mentioned here that are detailed in my chapters will again come to life in the lives of other young boys and girls if I don't speak out for those voices who so deserve to be heard. There is much to say and much to learn. I hope you will be able to walk through each chapter with me when the book is complete.

"Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory" - I Should Have Found My Refuge

I suppose there are many who prefer the original movie, "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory," with Gene Wilder rather than the newer released version, starring Johnny Depp. To, me Johnny Depp's version was dark and showed the lack of love between Willy Wonka and his father and how he found happiness by escaping into the chocolate factory and never giving up on being a child.

Although  I have seen both versions, I like the original version with Gene Wilder as well. But I can't help hating the fact that the dysfunctional relationship between father and son reminded me of my dysfunctional relationship with my mother. Continuing to write a book about my childhood, my mother's strange behavior and sometimes suicidal tendencies does make Johnny Depp's version more realistic in my case but one I have no intention of watching just to torture myself.

I recently wrote about the incident with the gun. What's most painful is to put myself back into that exact moment in time and feel what I felt and think about what I was thinking, what could have happened, what I had racing in my thoughts to come up with some solution that would change the potential outcome.

Writing this book is emotionally exhausting. I see my boys and when my 13 year-old continuously disrespects me, I don't know what in the world I am to do to change the behavior. I have tried to take his expensive electronic toys and devices away but it doesn't stop him from treating me as if I don't matter.
So where does the emotional roller coaster end - or does it? I suppose life just continues with its ups and downs and we each have to decide how we choose to handle each up and each down that lands in our path.

I'm getting closer to writing about 'the man' who took advantage of a 13 year-old. In this case, it wasn't my son. It was me. And what could I do but to endure it. I had no place else to go. No one would have ever believed me. But here I am, at the place I don't want to talk about the most. I thought I would be past this part by now. It seems as though other moments and details resurface out of nowhere. So, I write these chapters down. Am I stalling? I don't know really. But soon there won't be anything else in front of me but re-living one of my most hated times in my life. I will face, in writing the story with all its details that cut like shards of glass, about the part of my life where no one came to my rescue and no one apparently saw anything and only I had to endure nightly moments that kept me from peaceful sleep for years.

Even within the last 5 years, I have had nightmares of not being able to escape. I have been back in the same home and had no way to make it to the front or back door. I was trapped. I was caged in the house. And there was no place to run or hide or escape what would take place over and over and over again. I know I am not free from the nightmares.

What I don't know is what it may take to make the fear of having other nightmares from happening. And what I still fear is getting closer to re-living those days again as I write the words down to continue to book, move forward with another chapter and pound through the hurt and my own personal hell that will make this one of the most challenging portions of my childhood to capture in words and to be willing to share with you. It's almost time. Pray for me. I will need it.

The Book: Removing the dust from hidden engravings

If you have young children, you may spend some portion of your Saturdays getting chores done as a family. As my 13-year-old son was dusting my bureau, he came across a hand-held mirror of mine that I received as a child. My son thought the design was really fascinating because it was so detailed. He read along the side that the design was 'hand decorated.' And in an instant, time seemed to shift back more than 30 years ago as I listened to my mother share the story once again about how I had received my own sterling silver pattern that included this hand-held mirror.

When I was little my mother told me of her grand life as a child. Her father adored her and built her a single lane bowling alley at their Michigan mansion. And when she was with her parents visiting their Palm Springs home, child star, Shirley Temple was her neighbor. She also told me that her mother and father took her to select her own silver pattern as a young girl. And that's why, my mother said, she and my father took me as a little toddler to select my own silver pattern to be engraved with my initials. I always loved the next part of the story. The way I remember my mother telling it, she and my father took me to the appropriate store and the two of them were talking to the shop owner when I walked up to my mother with something in my hands.

"Well, what do we have here, Gillean?" I had selected flowers. I found something with lots and lots of flowers. And thus my silver pattern was selected, even though in my mother's mind she was pretty sure I happened to like the flowers from the pattern. Mother mother would always smile at the end of the story.

To this day, I still like the pattern. I have a mirror, comb, napkin ring holder and other items. Now, seeing my eldest with the mirror in his hands, I asked to see it, noticing some markings, barely visible as the sterling silver so desperately needed to be polished. I knew my son was watching my face as tears began to fill my eyes. The tears were tears of unexpected compassion. All these years, I had looked in that mirror and never knew of the personal message engraved around it.

To Gillean with love and kisses from Mother
June 6, 1973

 Photo from "A Christmas Book for Gillean 1969," by Merriman Smith.

Had my mother truly loved me all this time but not been able to verbalize it? At the same time, a bit of reality set in as I looked at the date again. My father died in 1970. My mother and father would not have been together when this moment was said to have taken place. There was much my mother said to me as I was growing up that turned out to be far from the truth.

Was it her illness that caused my mother to make up something that she believed to be true but wasn't? Back then was it still so hard for my mother to think that my father was not beside her that she simply imagined that my father was with her everywhere she went? I'm not sure. As Mother died in the spring of 1983, the truth of that time will have to be left unanswered but engraved forever with love and kisses.

The Book - Deciding on a Dedication

It’s probably fair to say that most everyone wants to feel loved. I think a good portion of my own life, feeling loved has been on my ‘to do’ list. And sure enough, I got there and can’t describe how much I love my two sons.

Writing this book about so many extraordinary events that have taken place in my life, both good and horrific continues to be a struggle with every word that I add. I am already beginning to learn how challenging this is going to be to offer such blunt truths for you and anyone else to read about how many times I feel someone stole my voice.

You need to understand that writing a book just to shock people is not at all my intent and/or purpose. I also have no interest in pointing fingers at certain people who, in some instances I think should have spent time in jail because of what they did. But I can say writing this book is something that I must do. And thanks to an amazingly talented writer and editor, two chapters are complete.

For those who have been blessed with loving parents and a decent life, you may find much of what you read disturbing and maybe even impossible to comprehend. For now, let me share with you who I dedicate this book to specifically.

Dedication
To children who feel like they have no voice or dare not speak out for fear of abandonment, I am here to speak for us all. God is a just God. And judgment day is coming soon and swift for anyone who harms you physically, emotionally or mentally. Hold on. You are not to blame for the horrific actions others have done or do to you that hurt your body or mind in any way. And you are not alone. You are never alone! You too will find your way out of the darkness because you are worth it and you are loved.

The Book - "My White House Life"

I am not quite sure how things reached the point of me writing a book.

But when the First Lady of Journalism, Helen Thomas reads your first chapter and says, ‘You should do this. It’s well-written,’ you pick yourself off the floor after getting over the initial shock and great honor Helen bestows on you and re-read what you wrote in chapter one. You keep scanning for the ‘well-written’ parts and wonder if you can continue chapter after chapter until it’s all done. Meanwhile, you continually look for connections in the publishing industry as well as considering finding an agent! If you know one, don’t hold back from letting me hear from you.

Follow along, if you like as I wander through the writing process of my first book. Current working title is, ‘”My White House Life.” The working title has now changed seven times and counting.