Dance, Monkeygirl, dance!

I've been trying to figure out where that imaginary line lies. At what point does it stop being the former and becomes the latter.

I think I've figured out, for me, where that line is.

It lies with my emotions. I've been struggling with trying to wrap my head around the idea of being an emotional masochist because that terminology just doesn't seem to fit. Yes, I get something out of emotional suffrage, but it is just a small part of a larger picture. The obedience, the physical control, the pain, they're all just a means to get to the root of my enslavement, emotional vulnerability and him making my emotional being HIS, subject to change-at his will.

The difference between enslaving myself and being enslaved comes at the point which he has the ability to control my emotions. Physical control and psychological control do not, by themselves, make enslavement occur (for me). As long as I have a hold on my emotions, it's something he doesn't have control over, keeping enslavement from happening.

Controlling what I do, or how I think or process ideas is merely a part of enslavement.

Controlling what I feel and when I feel it is when I step back and say..."yeah, he owns my ass."

I want to feel everything, every emotion known to man. From the best of emotions, to the worst. From highs to lows.

I'm not talking about controlling every emotion I have during the course of every day, but having the option to. When, at his whim, he can take whatever mood I am in and put me in the emotional state HE wants me in because he knows me and every hot button I have.

He has the power to make me feel fear, dread, joy, terror, contentment, panic, love, gentleness, coldness, suffering, longing, excitement, etc...

My psychological self and my emotional self are separated in my head. After the whole jail thing, and almost being broken in that way, I realized there's a place in me that I go. I dissociate from the psychological and physical into an emotional place that no one touches. Being able to go to that place in me and find feelings that take me mentally as far away from the reality as I can go.

It's like being bombarded by ugly and refusing to allow anyone to take me from my 'happy place', my physical and mental can be controlled and conditioned. I can be taught to turn right instead of left because of repetition and breakdown, but I'm hanging on to my "light at the end of the tunnel", my inner bitches' last hurrah and fuck you. I'll put the face of humiliation on because that is what is expected, FEELING it, however is something completely different.

Having my emotions routinely tinkered with makes me feel owned to my core.

Enslavement, for me, is when I feel what I'm wanted to feel and not what I want to feel.

Dance, monkey, dance.

I've let myself go places in thought, let those places be manipulated, been programmed to think certain thoughts by having triggers embedded and still have not felt owned.

I've let myself go to places of physical pain and pleasure and have not felt owned.

None of it seems to come together and equate to enslavement until he has my joy, fear, terror, horror, guilt, shame and pride in the palm of his hand. Only then do the first two make an impact on enslavement.

My emotions are the one thing I keep an iron-fisted-death-grip of control on. When he can get around my security system and control with a word, touch, gesture or look my emotional state and take me from one emotion to another and I no longer have the ability to resist, I am enslaved.

Ode to the Ghetto

The ghetto gets a bad rap from the media.

I happen to love the ghetto.

Nowhere else can you hit the bootlegger for after hours beer.

Nowhere else can you hire a guy to drive you to hell and back for $10.

Nowhere else can you find an alley mechanic that rivals any hoity-toity shop and pay $30 for a $200 job.

Nowhere else does opening the fire hydrant bring every kid in the neighborhood absolute, unfettered joy.

Nowhere else can you get credit at the corner store until payday.

Nowhere else do the gangbangers come together on a Sunday afternoon and clean the entire neighborhood, then, host a barbecue afterwards.

Nowhere else do the gangbangers keep out thieves and drug dealers.

Nowhere else can you tell a friend in the ghetto network you need a TV and one shows up within a few hours.

Nowhere else can you sit on your front porch and know everyone that passes by, and their families, too.

Nowhere else can you buy a $.35 bag of chips and for $.25 more, get them drowned in hot, nacho cheese.

Nowhere else can you get corn in a styrofoam cup, loaded with cheese, paprika and mayonnaise.

Nowhere else can you buy socks, shoestrings and 100ft. telephone cords from a guy dressed like Nanook of the North on a 90* day.

Nowhere else do you find a car owner so proud of who he is that he turns his Impala nameplate into a PImpala nameplate.

Nowhere else do women modify gramma-esque shopping carts into baby strollers.

Nowhere else does an entire block save their aluminum cans for the one lady on the block who holds church in her home every Sunday morning and uses the cans to help the homeless.

Nowhere else can you go and tell the 'boys' that someone tried to touch your girly bits and the 'boys' handle it with much more aplomb than the police ever could.

Nowhere else has bartering down to a science.

I love the ghetto and wouldn't live anywhere else.

Hide and Seek

Today is one of those days where the reality of my life truly hits home.

Most days I zip along on cruise control, happy to pretend all is right with the world, seemingly oblivious to the fact that my life isn't much more than a frustrating, exhausting game of 'Hide and Seek'.

I have this curr-ay-zee bastard who is hell bent on finding me and snuffing out my candle. He, also, happens to be my ex-husband, a convicted murderer and suspected serial killer.

He knows all of my personal information. The Internet being what it is and his skills with the Internet being what they are, I am overly aware of the ways in which I can be tracked and I have become hyper-vigilant in my dealings with the outside world.

My main weakness is my social security number. Any activity that needs to use it puts me in a position of vulnerability. They want an address and proof of such. They want a phone number. It surprises me they don't ask for a stool sample, too. Putting any of this out there puts my safety in jeopardy. One quick run of my credit report and he's found the top secret location of my batcave.

I am agoraphobic.

I have a very low tolerance for stress and have terrible panic attacks.

A 'real' job is something I just don't think will ever be an option.

BossMan and I thought working through this medium would be good for me. It would allow me a place to purge all the ugly I pretend doesn't exist inside of me. A place to share my highs and my lows and all the shades of grey in-between. It would allow me to feel useful and productive and if enough people liked it, the money would come.

Then, today I hit that wall...again. Fuck, if it doesn't hurt every time I do, because the wall always wins. ALWAYS.

I want to run ad banners here and a bank account is necessary. 

I don't have a bank account, for obvious reasons, so I am left to depend on others to let me work through their accounts.

It's always the same.

Hurry up and wait.

It's always hurry up and wait.

People get caught up in their own lives. They forget. They don't put the priority on my needs that I would put on them. They don't feel the importance that I feel. I understand this is a very natural and normal reaction for them, but it's still disheartening.

Reminding them always makes me feel like a horrid nag.

Feeling such utter dependence on someone else, someone whose own life, quite naturally, comes before mine makes me feel...deflated and... angry. Very, very angry. However unrealistic or unfair my feelings, there they are, in my face.

Feeling helpless to help myself drives me batshit crazy. I've survived and thrived in the worst of circumstances and, in these moments, I'm reminded how small and vulnerable I truly am. In these moments I'm reminded that my life may never be my own again. I feel all of the pent up, ignored rage at my situation and I collapse like a house of cards in a tornado.

After a blubbering, snotty cry and a might bit of screaming, I do my best to choke it down and put on a smile and go back to pretending everything is o.k. 

But, it isn't o.k.

No matter how much I pretend it is, this is a wall I know I will continue to hit, over and over and over. 

Until he is taking a dirt nap, my life will never be o.k.

I'm afraid of the day when I hit that wall and can't hobble back to the land of make-believe.

With every instance of face-into-wall I feel like I am just one baby step closer to that becoming a reality.

I don't want to be there. I don't want to end up angry to the point of no return.

I'd rather be taken out to the back forty and be put down like a lame horse.

blows my nose, wipes my tears, adjusts my smile, smooths my hair, and skips back to my beautiful world of make believe

Best. Snark. Ever.

I think I was about 23 or 24 and I had found out my kids' dad was cheating on me.

Anyway, I tracked the girl down and befriended her. She invited the kids and me out to lunch. 

She was HAWT! We hit it off splendidly and she invited us to go and spend the weekend with her and her kids. I went home, packed us a bag, didn't leave a note and off we went.

I came home three days later. I had barely gotten the kids out of their car seats and baby daddy was down the block at the car, screaming at me.

Him: "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!?!?!?!?!" 

complete silence as I finish getting the kids out of the car

Him: "BITCH, I ASKED YOU WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!?!?!?!?!"

walked up to him and looked him dead in the eye, expressionless

Him: "I said, where have you been, bitch?!?!?!"

Me: "Well, let me put it to you like this: Ain't it a bitch when your girlfriend steals your girlfriend?"

blank look that said his gears were in motion and he was trying to figure out just what I meant

......pause......

realization hits

Him: "You fucked her!?!?!?!"

Me: "Yes, I fucked her. If she was good enough for you to fuck, I figured she was good enough for me to fuck."

I wish I'd had a camera.

Trailer Hitch Of Doom

I find myself obsessed with weapons.

Specifically, making them. I envision weapons in the oddest of objects.

 

Federal law says if I am caught owning or possessing a firearm, I can be imprisoned from five to seven years. I'm pretty skittish about the ex, to put it mildly, so, I find myself in constant find-a-weapon mode.

I wish it wasn't this way. I wish I didn't see innocuous objects as potentials to my building arsenal.

My latest invention was the Trailer Hitch Of Doom.

Walking down the street I found a rusted trailer hitch that had fallen off someones truck. My mind went into MacGuyver mode and I tucked the little gem into my pocket and brought it home.

I started digging through the odds and ends I keep lying around and ran across an old canvas belt and a couple of tattered, old shoelaces.

"PERFECT!" says my brain.

Screw a light bulb, in that second, you probably could have seen the bright lights of Broadway over my head.

So, I sit down and very meticulously weave this trailer hitch into the belt, creating quite the lovely, but rather nasty, swinging device. I went on to make the niftiest little grip that slides over my hand nicely, preventing it from slipping out of my grasp should I ever have need to use it.

I'm not so sure I like seeing everything as a potential ammunition.

I wish a trailer hitch could just be a trailer hitch.

I wish a golf putter could just be a golf putter.

I wish a vase could just be a vase.

But they aren't, so, my cache of homemade armaments grows.

I see myself in my minds eye and what I see is a very paranoid individual.

I wonder if everyone else sees me that way, too.

Haunted Houses

I come across many people in this life...and for some, they feel about me the way they feel about haunted houses.

Creeped out, scared by the chill that courses through them when they think about them. Yet, thrilled, and maybe even a little fascinated, but meant only to be experienced in sporadic doses...

Those eerie, intricately carved gargoyles, woven into the old, worn, stone facade. Staring down at them with their maniacal grins. Forever mistaken for evil, when really they are only meant as protection. Those weathered, shuttered, randomly broken windows that allude to bygone days of glory and beauty and grace. The overgrown flora that masks much of it's many repaired cracks and natural imperfections. It's very presence wielding a disconcertingly soothing effect in it's solidity and consistency, despite it's seemingly neglected appearance.

Drawing their attention and thoughts time and again like a moth to a flame, yet repelling them just the same, and no matter how many times they pass this unchanging house, they're compelled to stop. Even if it's just for a second or two and gaze at the disturbing oddity before them and wonder to themselves.

What kinds of secrets do those walls keep?

How badly would they terrify, yet exhilarate?

What might it be like to wander freely inside?

Would they feel comforted and safe by the strong, oak banisters they grasp, white-knuckled, as they ascend the now creaky, but once grand, staircase it inevitably possesses?

Would they still be able to feel the velvety, soft richness in the remnants of water damaged wallpaper as they slowly trace their fingertips lightly across it's barely recognizable pattern?

What priceless and long forgotten antiques hide beneath those originally pristine, white covers, now sooty and gray with age?

What might they see in the eyes of the painted portraits of former residents that still hang, dusty and askew, on it's cracked, plastered walls?

Would it make them feel alive, if only momentarily?
Only in moments, of course, because no one can really be expected to live in a haunted house, can they?

The bogeyman isn't real, everyone knows that.
BUT..."what if?"
What if he really does exist?
What if he really does reside, ever lurking, in those deeply shadowed interiors?
He might just trap them inside.
Or worse...
He might just steal their soul if they linger too long.

Gripped in fear, their trance finally broken by the realization of their pounding pulse and moistened palms. Spurring their feet into a near run, but not before a final glimpse over their shoulder at the house that they will inevitably return to again and again, yet never enter...

The headline read: Couple Accused In Grisly Slaying.

I was 20something, and newly separated from a 7yr relationship with my kids father. A single mom. My mom was terminally ill with cancer. I was in my last year of my apprenticeship in the construction trades. There were 94 apprentices in my class, i was the lone female. (Picture Irish ruled, 10,000 member union, and only 14 of them women.) It was damn good money, damn good benefits and school was free. The men i worked with weren't so pleasant. Needless to say, i was stretched about as far as i could be without snapping. I was also a sheltered, stupid girl. Smart enough to graduate high school at sixteen, but absolutely oblivious when it came to the seedier side of life.

I met this "great guy" in the midst of the madness that was my life. He was good to me. He was good to my kids. He was like a knight riding in to save me from my fucked up life. He smelled blood. I believed in Prince Charming, so I married him.

Until the day we married, he had never hit me, yelled at me, nada.

After he had "ownership papers" aka, a marriage license, he decided to show his true colors. He hit me for the first time 30min after we exchanged vows.

He moved his uncle in with us right after we married. This uncle turned out to be his gay lover, and not an uncle at all. When i learned the truth, i left him. He killed all of my pets, 9 of them in total. Calling and leaving messages describing their deaths in gory detail, telling me i had better come home before he killed another. When that didn't work, he went after my kids with a gun. I went to the police, but it didn't do much good. I ended up going back to him just to keep him calm until i could find a safe place for my kids and me. I was beaten, threatened and terrorized into compliance.

During this time, he viciously beat and killed this "uncle" in our home. Afterward, he took me to a hotel, cuffed me to the bed, took the phone receiver and left. After what seemed an eternity, he returned with the story of how he savagely dismembered this man with a steak knife in our bathtub. He threatened that if i went to the police he would tell them it was me that did the deed and i would never see my kids again. I'd never see the light of day again.

A few weeks later the FBI knocked on my door telling me that he was working for them as an informant and had i seen him. Apparently, he hadn't checked in in a while.

My life became a nightmare. He made me ride around in his car with this mans head behind my seat. He told me if i ever told anyone, we (my kids and i) would be next. He'd bring home copies of of the criminal statutes and tell me what laws i had broken, and how he could get around them, but i couldn't. His FBI buddies would help him. He tapped our phone twice. Once from inside the house with hidden tape recorder, once from the pole in the alley. He would call me incessantly. He would break into my house. He hacked my computer. He obsessively checked the mileage on my car. He slept on my front porch in the middle of February in ass-deep snow. He parked at the end of my street and watched my house.

I was terrified of not going to the police and terrified if i did. What if he caught wind of an investigation through his FBI "buddies"?

Fast forward to 2 1/2 yrs later. He had been stalking me for the entire interim period. We had moved across country trying to escape him and when he found me and my kids and told us he'd make "gator bait" out of us, I moved back home with family. I confessed to my aunt what had happened because i just couldn't live the way i was living anymore, i wanted it over. Her daughter, who eavesdropped, in retaliation for an imagined slight, turned me into the police. She thought she was hurting me, in reality, she saved our lives.

I was arrested and charged with first degree murder. I was also facing the death penalty. I was given a one million dollar bond. My face was all over the news and the papers. My family walked away from me. I got stuck with a overworked, underpaid public defender. Bless his dedicated, smart-as-a-whip self. He never let me go to court alone. He never gave up on me.

I had a complete breakdown upon my arrest. I spent the first three weeks of custody in the mental ward of the jail. Gorked out of my mind on drugs.

I was blessed with this awesome therapist, Dr. Gary. He helped me work through a lot of the "whys" i ended up in the situation i was in. I didn't want to come home the same person that went in. It was intense. I worked my ass off. I refused to accept any possibility i wouldn't go home, much to Dr. Gary's frustration.

Jail was absolute hell. The difference between jail and prison is like the difference between sleeping in the woods without a tent and kicking back in a luxury spa. The rules for detainee (jail) treatment and inmate (prison) treatment are vastly different. I also learned for the first time that i could depend on me. I could survive. I earned my street smarts the hard way. I learned and saw things i never wanted to know, yet, those same things keep me safe now.

All through the court process my ex tortured me. Horrible letters. Visits from creepy people with ominous warnings. On one occasion he was able to reach through the bars of his holding cell when i was walking past it to the courtroom and get me in a choke hold against the bars. Surrounded by armed guards, i knew he could reach out and touch me. Anywhere. Anytime.

They found evidence after the arrest that he was planning another murder and they suspected it was mine. They also managed to get the FBI involved. Their criminal profilers came to the jail and grilled me for hours and hours, only to tell me before they left how sorry they were that i had married a "sociopath the likes of Ted Bundy" and that they were certain there were other victims, but they just couldn't prove it.

My family didn't show up for court dates. They refused to hire a lawyer. They didn't visit (well, i got 3 visits in 3y8m). They told me i "ruined the family name" and they were done with me. Now i have a pretty nifty family, hand-picked by yours truly.

I didn't get to see my kids the entire time i was incarcerated. My family tried to make them forget me. They figured I'd never come home, that my kids just needed to move on.

I sat for 3y8m in a county facility awaiting trial. It took over a year for the prosecutor to realize i had nothing to do with this whole fiasco (even though he gave a 17 page confession), but i was their only witness. A witness who saw nothing, but heard everything from behind a locked door.

They refused to drop my charges. I ended up never having to testify, as they offered him a sweet ass deal for 20yrs. He did 8 1/2. Apparently, their case against him 'mysteriously' fell apart two months before his trial was set to begin, because the coroner changed his mind and could no longer definitively state the "uncle" was murdered, even though that was what was originally on the death certificate and had been for nearly 3 1/2 years. They came to me with a choice: take a guilty plea to concealing a homicide or they would take me to trial on ALL charges, death penalty on the table, and use my ex as a witness against me. Dirty bastards. Ass covering at it's best. Make sure i cannot ever sue. Being that there was too much risk involved with a jury trial, i jumped on it. I was home 4 days later. I stepped off the bus to see my kids waiting. We had Subway sandwiches in the park. It was, and continues to be, an indescribable moment.

He still attempts to contact me with veiled threats. He told our judge that if he ever got out, he was going to hunt me down and kill me.

I suffer from PTSD now and am almost completely agoraphobic. I've also been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

Recently, the full weight of my life has finally registered in my brain and i feel like i am drowning. I know it will never go away. I can't hide it. My name and the ensuing story come up five entries down on a Google search. Things will never be "normal" again. I feel like any kind of romantic relationship just isn't possible. I keep everyone i know at arms length. How can i put anyone else at risk with this lunatic roaming the earth? It isn't their fear to carry.

I don't regret what happened. I've taken responsibility for my bad choices. I paid whatever debt i owed to society. I did my best to fix what got me there. It's made me into the woman i am today. I do, however, regret what it did to my kids. I regret the time i lost with them. I regret my family walked away from my kids because of me. I regret all the pain this has caused them.

We've managed to get through this and remain extremely close, but the guilt of it all still eats me alive.

As for our justice system, it is broken. I sat beside so many women charged similarly to me. All but one of them are doing lengthy prison sentences. Some, as high as 88yrs. I was that truly rare instance where, in the end, it worked for the most part. Yes, there was a ton of suffering along the way, but the 'good guy' won. I realize, too, just how lucky i really am.

Don't even get me started on The Media. Pawns in the court of public opinion. They don't report the news, they report what they are fed as news. They maintain enough of the truth to keep from being sued. They embellish enough to destroy your life and reputation, without consequence. Without retraction. Tried and convicted with skewed and twisted versions of facts.

The most difficult part of all of this is the fact that i have to live like a recluse. I can't get credit, utilities in my name, a bank account, order a magazine subscription, sign up for my favorite store's mailing list. Nothing. I have to live and leave no electronic footprints.

This 'community' is the one place i know he'd never be and never expect me to be. I never shared this part of myself with him. I've lived it, felt the passion, the control, it still burns in my belly, it always will. It would have to be a pretty extraordinary set of circumstances for me to ever be there again and i am not putting my eggs in that basket. I have to be content with what i do have, lest the longing drive me mad.

He knows all of my personal information and he is also a computer fanatic. He does searches for me. How do i know? He finds my friends and family and contacts them. He is absolutely fixated on me.

I can't get an order of protection because he is smart enough to get right to the line of illegal, but never cross it. I can't own a gun, i am a convicted felon. I was issued a new social security number based on domestic violence. I can't change my name because of the felony. Without a new name, the new number is useless. If i marry for a new name, i lose my social security benefits. I don't qualify for witness protection by federal government standards and my state doesn't even have a program for witness protection. He still lives in the same state as i do and knows people everywhere. I am too fucking broke to move. I'm scared shitless i'll run into someone he knows and it'll get back to him.

At one point, this was almost a crusade for me. In the end, because of all his involvement with the different government agencies, FBI, County Sheriff, Postal Inspector, and given the judge that presided over our case was also the same judge that gave my ex probation on another charge and while on that probation, committed this murder, no one wants this shit in the open. No one will touch it. It's my gut feeling this is precisely the reason he got such a sweet deal. Either that or he found someone to inform on in jail.

I've been to the reporters who covered the story originally, from the onset of our arrest. I've talked with criminal attorneys, civil rights attorneys. I've mass mailed letters to everyone from my local politicians, to the governor, the state police, both our federal senators. I've assaulted their fax machines with letters. It made a few ripples and i received a call from the states attorney (who penned a letter i had attached with my letter, where she states clearly, "Based on my knowledge of the case and the information obtained, I believe XXX XXXXX is a threat to "Snippette" and her family. Please assist her in obtaining a new social security number.") telling me i had better stop showing that letter around or i wouldn't like the consequences. She was running for office as a judge. Seems there is nothing that can be done to protect myself, legally.

Fucking politics.

As much as the thought of a confrontation with him scares me, i know he'll be there for one reason only, my demise, the mere thought of killing him in a frenzy of fear scares me more. Fear of turning into an animal capable of killing, even if it is self-defense. Fear of turning into something resembling him. Fear of being victimized by the justice system, again.

I am mentally prepared, but i want to avoid it at all costs.

I am physically prepared. There's a weapon of sorts within arms reach in every room of my apartment.

My nightmare isn't over. It may not be fear based on imminent danger, but it's the fucking purple elephant in the room no one ever discusses and everyone pretends not to see.

I don't want pity. I don't want revenge. I don't want to be rescued. I'm not really even concerned with getting justice anymore.

As for those i have met since this occurred, I've yet to have one person NOT throw it in my face in the heat of anger. "Fucking axe murderer." "Fucking cannibal." You name it, I have been called it. I don't trust anyone anymore.

Judge me if you will, but I have already been judged. It's over and done. My debt has been paid.

All i want is to have a life again. Is that too fucking much to ask?

Sit Down!!!

Sometimes, no matter how good a person you are, the Universe, in Its infinite wisdom, rises in ultimate dominance, and and orders you to "sit down!!"

Forces you to endure the most horrific of humiliations, but you learn what it means to be humble.

Strips you of everything you thought was important, and shines a spotlight on everything that is.

Denies you the smallest of considerations, and you realize in amazement, the smallest things mean the most.

Removes you from everything you know as comfortable, and you learn comfort comes from inside your own skin.

Shatters your heart, and the gratitude for enduring, unconditional love deepens.

Teases you in your dreams, and through longing, you develop patience.
heaps weight upon weight on your shoulders, and you become more strong and stand more straight.

So, cry when you need to...
Scream when you have to...
But, when it is all said and done...
Every tear is worth every laugh.
Every fear is worth every accomplishment.
All the pain is worth all the love.
Roll with it, baby, it's life...
Live it, enjoy it, appreciate it.

The passing of the snark gene.

I have a 7 year old grandson.

His spermdonor hasn't made an attempt to see him or speak to him in over a year.

This last week he has been blowing up my daughters phone. Not once in any of those conversations did he ask how my grandegg was, or state he wanted to speak with him.

The last time he was supposed to see him, I watched my egglet sit in the window for two days watching for this piss poor excuse for a father, crying.

My daughter brought it to the spermdonors attention that he'd not asked about the egglet or asked to speak to him this last week, and she wanted to know why.

Well, he finally did ask when would be a good time to talk to the egglet and my daughter asked the boy what he thought.

His reply?

"Tell him maybe next Thursday, because I still just need some time to think about it."

Yeeup, thems my chillens.

So, you're a teen mom? You'll never amount to anything! Your life is over!

This attitude surpasses race, religion and social class.

It's also the same attitude that perpetuates "the lie".

Tell a kid they will never succeed, wash your hands of them, tell them they don't deserve a second chance, stand back and shake your head quietly in disgust and they will hear you. They will live up to your expectations. They will take on your attitude, make it their own and allow themselves be defeated.

It doesn't have to be this way. It really doesn't.

Set the bar higher and they will reach for it.

It isn't going to be enough to just set the bar higher, either. You'll have to be prepared to help them along the path when you see them stumbling. You may have to remove a log or boulder. More than likely? Several logs and boulders. Sometimes, you may even have to carry them to the next campsite.

It has to be a team effort.

If you make it a team effort, failure is no longer an option or a certainty.

My daughter got pregnant at thirteen, a few months before her 8th grade graduation, and had my grandson at fourteen.

We could have been content to accept that her life was over and she could have, too.

We, as a family, chose not to accept the status quo. Most of us, while devastated at the prospect of the hurdles she'd have to overcome, never let it determine her future (or lack thereof).

We pushed her and, in turn, she pushed herself.

On those days when working a job, homework, an up-all-night-crying baby and sheer exhaustion threatened to break her, we gave her strength she didn't possess.

We believed in her when she was too tired, too stressed, too self-deprecating and too frustrated to believe in herself.

She was encouraged to keep on truckin' and, amazingly, she has.

Now, she is twenty-one and one semester from a college degree in psychology.

I'm not talking a community college associate degree, I'm talking a full-on degree from a top university.

She's even begun preparation for a Master degree program.

My grandson is bright, inquisitive, well-mannered, respectful and happy. She has done a beautiful job raising him. She is, and will always be, my hero.

These girls don't have to be statistics, people just give up and choose to allow them to be. They believe the hype and follow along like sheeple are wont to do.

Welcome to my jungle!

I've finally decided to compile all of my thoughts in one place. To share them with others in hopes of making an impact, however minute. BossMan thinks I have stuff to say and he thinks I should say it.

He's always right, so, here I am.

Welcome to my jungle, baby! It's a hell of an excursion!