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Posted by Rhonda J Flanagan on June 14, 2010

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Sweet little bird from local antiques shop. Tulip and lilacs from the garden...Spring is such a sweet time of new beginnings and longings. Hope yours is going well.

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The Lies Unravel

The days go by in a blur. The rain is beating against the roof, it's comforting. Spring came quietly last week. I miss having my garden. Getting seeds in the mail, planning the different flowers, vegetables, and herbs I will grow for the season. But like everything else, my ex-husband hated my garden. Reminded me each time he cut the lawn, one of the few things he did that helped me, that he hated all the shrubs in his way. "I'll eat anything," he would say when I learned to grow fresh tomatoes, basil, and thyme I used in my sauce. Finally feeling good about teaching myself to cook and enjoying how fresh and good everything tasted. I was told continually growing up how horrible cooking was, but I came to really enjoy it and gardening made it especially nice. It will be 8 months here in my mother's garage as April starts. I don't go out anymore, not only because of the Pandemic but because the hoovering was intense and so many of my things went missing. Latel...

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Be the good girl, the good wife. Always be nice, be kind, explain, be a doormat—be a lady. Accidents happen, natural disasters happen, things happen, but this wasn't one of those. This was all planned down to the smallest of details. Everyday part of the ongoing nightmare. Forcing myself to get up, knowing I have to live this hell all these people have forced me into. A hell I didn't create, a hell created for me—deliberately. This is who I have to be now—this is who they tell me I am. I even have a whole write up from the psych ward with their psychiatrists to tell me that my life was all a delusion. "They have a couple of psychiatrists," my mother contemptuously told me the night I went to talk to her before my ex-husband had me arrested the first time. She has since denied saying that, but I had no idea until recently what she was talking about. After I left her house, my ex-husband went on a rageful tirade telling me how "nothing was mine," everyth...

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