Woke up to the new fuel tanks being put in by Stewart's, it's been noisy, dirty, and had been a long weekend, but the guys were moving along. I was worried about breathing this all in and was having a lot of heartburn, so bad I had been throwing up the other night all night long. I felt like my throat and stomach were on fire. I had eaten the chili at Stewart's and I don't think it agreed with me. I had eaten it before and it had been delicious, but I had never had heartburn like this before, but then again I had not thought I would be condemned to sleeping on an abandoned porch and being forced to eat take-out all the time either. The anxiety and stress were constant—I slept most of the morning before I felt better.
It was catching up with me and I was continuing to have more problems, but I was determined to continue "Peacefully Protesting" what had been done to me. There wasn't much else I could do. I was not allowed to stay in my home or the Lakehouse or our rentals and all other options to house me were ignored. I was having a really hard time trying to write this time. I was confronting the Classism that had made me a target since I moved here as a little girl. I was horrified to learn that white people can also be slaves. I was a poor white woman that everyone I knew thought of as just a "whore." I had confronted my mother's lies and her wanting to sell me and now it was time to face the others that participated all these years.
They were all continuing! "You can't sell an old dog," she hissed at me recently. She had set me up again and they all had ties to Maine, where I was once again evicted and assaulted numerous times when I moved there to start over. The judge I was forced to see after my mother once again threw me out told me she could get an order of protection anytime she needed it. I sat once again shocked, it was a constant in my life now.
My mother didn't even bother to attend the hearing. I was surprised when the Judge called her on the phone asking her questions. He had recently been appointed and I read that he went to school with Judge Sise, my neighbor for 20yrs. He was the Judge that originally prevented me from seeing my Father as a girl and for 20yrs he lived a couple of houses away from me on Evelyn Street. The son had lived there also and was a family court Judge. The father had passed away. I had applied one time when I first married at their law office. I had no idea if it was him, but the man ripped me apart for applying and not having experience. I explained the ad said "no experience" necessary, but this enraged him all the more—today I know why.
His son would have his dog attack me repeatedly and so did the neighbors at the other end of the block. I was to find out this lawyer family another neighbor a couple blocks away had married one of the girls I played with when I first moved to Amsterdam NY, where everyone is either related or works for people that have these kinds of extremist views of others.
We attended the wedding for another one of these brothers, but no one spoke to me except some insults from my SIL about my dog again and another of my ex-husband's friend's mother remarking in earshot that her son “got a good one!” She was talking about their recent marriage—she had been married to my cousin and this was her new MIL. She threw me dirty looks the entire time as she gestured. I knew I certainly wasn’t a “good one,” she insinuated about. She had often been very dismissive whenever I saw her also, but I was told she was just old fashion.
I still had no idea the full extent of the horrible pain the Sise family had put me through and was continuing to do to me, but I explained to the Judge that I would leave, I had no intention of staying somewhere I was not wanted, but I had no place to go and wanted to understand why after having so many properties I was deliberately made homeless and was being told I was a prostitute—a whore! I went to my mother’s because she seemed to know right along what was going on but was playing these horrible games just like she did when I was a child, only this time I was able to understand what they were all doing and how they had been aligned all along right from the start.
It was a love-hate relationship with Stewart's also. They wouldn't give me a job when I stayed with my mother and once again nobody else would either. I applied to all the local places that I could walk to, but knew after having this happen all the time, the chances of getting a local job were slim. I had been hired a couple of times but fired shortly after. Bullied out by the same people that stalked me all my life—it had become a vicious game. I was still struggling to put it all together but was finally unraveling some of it. I still wanted to know why Mr. Francisco another assigned lawyer that lied and played games and put me out of my home in City court had shoved the letter I wrote to HR under his arm and waved it telling me I needed another "psych eval," order by Judge Lorman once again. The letter talked of the abuse at a local nursing home and after I reported the abuse, I was fired.
My grandmother had been a manager years ago and had invested in Stewart's. After a number of years working for them, they refused to give her all the earnings from her investments. She eventually left but was very upset about the whole thing. I'm grateful to have something to eat, but I don't feel that welcomed by them. I was kicked out of the one in Northville NY by thug friends of my ex-husband involved in this. A group of them would go there on Sundays and bully and say things. I had no idea all these years. We used to visit them over at Cranberry Marina when we first got our boat. There is a large group of them there my ex knows also. One woman, a sister to one of his friends there laughed in my face recently at Silver Maple Park that it took so long for me to "figure things out!" She laughed also about the neighbors there looking in my windows and calling me crazy when we first bought the Lakehouse. She knew them too and told me the courts weren't going to do anything for me, just like all these cops told me repeatedly.
The neighbors at the Lakehouse were walking in front of my windows all the time looking in. I finally asked them in a nice way if they could use the walk now that we were staying there all the time, but they caused a big fight about it and told me "you really are crazy!" It was said in a way to let me know they had already been talking about it, but it was one of those early fights that I chalked up to silly neighbor stuff that would blow over, especially because I was taking care of my ex's aunt that had a real mental illness everyone knew about, but I had no idea that wasn't what it was at all. It was far more sinister and they would eventually call the Sheriffs and State Police all the time at the end telling them I was a Prostitute and did nothing there—was never there.
It would be nice not to have to go to Stewart's all the time, but I have no choice. It's all we have here and everyone refers to me now as the "homeless woman on the porch!" The destruction of who I was now officially replaced in the community by this label. I'm not ashamed of being called homeless, I have deep sympathy for the homeless and it's why I'm protesting, but this community has done this to me since I was a girl and it's all been deliberate. Only now am I able to confront the horrible Classism these people have been engaged in since I was 5yrs old and moved here.
Having my car taken had been horrible and now is contributing to my weak health. I can't take care of my health and sleeping outside the last 3 months still in Menopause is making my symptoms worse, but this was all planned. I was told constantly I would be made to "walk the streets!" That being in Menopause would make it worse and that once again no one would want me or help me. "Even your father didn't want you," my ex said at the end of our marriage all the time. He and his friends all embolden by their plot continuing to successfully unfold.
The digging reminds me of the digging they did at my home on Evelyn Street before they violently put me on the street. They had been digging and banging for days and the foundation was crumbling so bad I took video and complained about what was going on. I wanted the "Schematics," and questioned why the neighbor's fuel line was being put so close to my home, breaking my sidewalk again and doing more extensive damage to my foundation. Putting more holes and damage in the fire-hydrant pipes that continued to leak in my basement, but they all laughed at me.
Last I checked, the fire hydrant had still not been replaced when I tried to re-purchase my home because my ex was selling it this Christmas. He never wanted it and always referred to it as “just a rental.” His brother had listed it on my Birthday, another cruel joke because they would all have parties around that time, his birthday was around the same time and so was his daughters. I was never invited or given any gifts. The rental business income we worked on together and built was always promised for my retirement also, but now I knew it had all been a scam, set up deliberately from the start to only enrich my ex and his family—I was just a "servant!" I would be used to pay and fix up the places and "serve," everyone, but told at the end I was mentally ill and I never owned or did anything!
I was threatened I would be burned inside and that the house would be condemned by neighbors that bragged about “The Civil War” and had countless shelves of memorabilia and made references to slaves at the end before I was put on the street. I had no idea that "slave" references included me. The threats were coming all the time from the neighbors. The garden was being destroyed and they all knew the downstairs where we lived for 20yrs was also being destroyed. Brand new appliances had been removed as had insulation, damage to furnaces, walls, and windows. I had moved back upstairs after put on the street from the home we were getting from his aunt, another scam.
My ex was downstairs all the time before the tenants moved out and there were constant smells and damage, but he told me repeatedly how clean they were. By the time they left, the cigarette smoke was so thick and yellow on the walls I could not stay in there longer than a few minutes without gagging and coughing. I had called the Fire department one time when it got so bad, but they did nothing. I was arrested repeatedly and told I was a "crazy whore!" that did nothing and everything belonged to my ex-husband. My door busted in without a warrant a couple of times. I was also pleading with the local Vet about boarding my dog Bentley, but no one would help as cops swatted my house a few times treating me like a dangerous criminal.
I dreamed of a nice hot shower, but that still was out of the question. It had poured last night, but no wind so it was kinda romantic watching it pour. It was nice rain. Things got quiet and I was grateful it would keep the debris from the rocks they brought in and the other dirt and bugs from flying around. I was more sticky and dirty than usual, but glad to be getting different kinds of "disposable wipes" at RiteAid to help me keep clean.
There was a new one for "down there," that was really nice, called "Classy and Sassy" Sensual Seduction. I had to laugh because there was nothing really classy and sassy about sleeping on an abandoned porch and certainly I didn't feel any sensual seduction from the entire ordeal, but I loved the nice smell and the clean feeling from using them. I hated being dirty and not taking a nice shower, but this is what I was being forced to do. I have dreams of hot, nice, bubble baths regularly now.
For so long I had been forced into such a dark place that it's taken me a while to even consider interacting with anyone in a sensual manner or flirting—dating was out of the question. My ex-husband had been remarried within the year of the divorce, but I had not had sex for 7 or was it 9yrs?
"You have not had sex in 9yrs!" what the hell? he said shaking his head. I met a couple guys that lived local and we would have a drink on the porch and hang out. They gave me my only blanket and I was grateful. I had no intention of ever dating again and he would joke about me being his girlfriend. I knew the gossip that I was now a Crackwhore and explained that I was not a Prostitute and was protesting against "Forced Prostitution," which was why I was made deliberately homeless. The viciousness continues from the very same people I grew up with. The lawyers, doctors, and judges and now all their sons, some of them now dirty Cops that continue the violence.
The person I used to be had been destroyed and the person they told me I was a "mentally ill prostitute," was so not me that it made me dizzy, sick, and have panic attacks when I thought too long about everything in my life that had been stolen or destroyed. The things that allow us to feel like ourselves. For some, it's their family, a career, a home. It was that for me also. I loved my career, my home, and especially my Lakehouse on the lake. I loved my dog and the life I thought I had created. To find out it was all a lie was devastating. To have my business and career stolen, my new car taken and violently put out of my home and Lakehouse was shattering. Who was I now? It took a while to decide because I was being evicted and arrested so often I had no time to create the new life I should have been able to after the brutal destructive divorce and no one had treated me like questions about my future mattered. I was told repeatedly that I had a "psychotic break," which was a lie. I imagine now they thought I would have and by all accounts, most women would have, but God had another plan for me.
I felt so hopeless and alone, the thought of telling someone I was sleeping on an abandoned porch was not my idea of having a good time on something like a date or meeting people, but I was determined to get out more and live my life. I was starting to visit the RiverLink Park down by the river and while it wasn't the Sacandaga Lake, it was pleasant enough and got me off the hot porch and forced me to try again to walk more and photograph. I had been so weak from all that had happened it was hard to walk let alone run. I missed running. I missed the gym and even my favorite running sneakers were stolen. At size 11, it was so hard for me to find decent sneakers. They were perfect and I just happen to find them at one of the local sneaker stores, which was rare until online shopping, but I had no address to be able to shop online.
I had to also contend with dragging my backpack and suitcase and making sure I could walk home after going there. The hills are pretty steep here and I get winded easily these days, but I knew I had to try. Transportation is really non-existent here. There are some cabs, but they often don't pick me up or it's so expensive to go such a short distance I just don't have the money now. The small alimony I was forced to take amounts to $700.00 per month, enough to feed me, pay my iPhone bill, and save a little, but that's about it. It was all done on purpose. It amounts to the inheritance stretched out over 5yrs one of his aunts and cousins left us after calling me to her death bed. My name clearly on the legal papers I was denied in court. I know now she had been feeling sorry for knowing what they had all agreed to.
I should have gotten it as a lump sum, not my ex doling it out each week as some kind of alimony. Him sitting there moving the $175.00 each week from his account to mine and making me dependent once again each week hoping it's there, in the same way, he would give me the $50.00 I got each week for his share of the groceries, which was so small considering what I had to buy for him and I preventing me from having any access to all our other money accumulated together and profit from the rentals and other monies like our income tax returns that always went into his account. He made sure my money was all used up to pay for household items, furniture, and the constant stuff for his family. I had no say in anything concerning my divorce. I was labeled "incompetent," in need of an Adlitem that attacked me repeatedly, told me nothing was mine, that I had to go to a homeless shelter, and signed the horrible settlement I was forced to take that made me basically "homeless and destitute," which they told me I would be.
I set off for the RiverLink Park and read the news write-up about a “Sunset Festival.” I love that time of the day and thought I would make it an "Artist date," with myself. Julia Cameron talked about it in her wonderful book, "Artist Way." I loved her books and knew I had to find some way to feel creative again. She spoke of taking yourself on a date. A way to connect with your artist self and have some fun. Something just for you that sparks your creativity. I wanted to go to the Lake, but I was finding that it was triggering me. My beautiful Lake home was gone that I had spent 20yrs working on and photographing the Sacandaga Lake in hopes of one day selling my work. To retire there and here I was sleeping on a dirty, abandoned porch.
There really is no transportation here, it's expensive and often doesn't go to places you need. I wanted to go to the lake but knew it would be too expensive, but when I started thinking about it, I got too upset and started crying again and so I settled on going to the river for now. It was Juneteenth and I had hoped I could show my support. I had been following the effort online and finding more and more camaraderie with those fighting online with the "George Floyd," movement and other "Police Brutality" protests—I was facing similar constant violence.
I knew the event was being sponsored by the Lanzi family, but I was not going to let these people continue to define my life as they had all these years. I had spent my 20yr marriage patronizing their local businesses and had my first dinner date at their restaurant. I went to their small bar on one of the side streets here before they built large establishments on the lake. I went to school with one of the brothers and thought there were no problems with any of them. Hearing lately how they were in the "Mafia," would "disappear," anyone that owed them money, and that I was one of those people was absurd, but this was what was going on.
I never worked for them, owed them money, or knew what their business connections were, but these threats were happening more and more not only by people like my ex-plumber and childhood friend of my family but neighbors at the Lakehouse. Talk of the Mafia, death threats, and me being a "Prostitute," were constant. I was told my ex was "made," was always a racist and that was why there was so much violence and coverup. I had no idea about all this and thought it just scare tactics by my ex and his friends that loved to brag about fights they were in as kids. I thought it male bravado when I was first married, but the stories got more and more sinister as the marriage got closer to ending as did the story of my ex and his friends almost beating a man to death—a felony he ended up getting off on along with numerous DWIs.
Our first dinner date was at this family's local restaurant. It was small, cozy and the food was good. The bar was next door in the basement of an old building and all the popular kids would hang out there—I never did. I wasn't one of those kids. It's a small town, we moved often and I went to most of the local grade schools, so by the time I got to high school where we all converged everyone had their group of friends. I knew everyone, but never really belonged to any group because we moved so much. My cousin and his wife went there all the time. My cousin's wife remarked one time, she "lived at the Annex!" My ex and my cousin were involved in selling coke from the Annex, the name of this family's bar, and my ex told me stories of busting sinks off the walls and damaging tables and fights when they would all go there.
I had no real idea when I first met him how much he sold. He would tell me, in the beginning, he did a few "lines of coke with his friends," a "toot here and there," it was the 80s after all, but it was all a lie. He and my cousin were involved in a much larger business than I had understood when I had met my ex. My cousin and his new girlfriend after his divorce offered to take me to a party at their other friend's house to set up a date with my ex. I had met him out at a local bar and he had said he knew my cousin and we talked and he asked me out. The dinner date and the friend's party that weekend were our first dates. We also went to the movies and saw, "Pretty Woman,"—it was a foreboding of things to come and the violence that would destroy my life these men had all planned from the beginning.
I walked to a nice spot by a couple of yachts parked on the river. There were benches and picnic tables and a restaurant, but I could not afford the dinners I used to at these places now. My ex and I went to their restaurants all the time. We went to all the local ones. There aren't that many and the ones we frequented are Italian and family-owned. I always loved Italian food. We were regulars for take-out also. I cooked from scratch during the week, but Saturday nights we would get some take-out or go out dancing and see a band. We were always out on the weekends in the Summer—everyone knew my ex and how much he drank and he knew this particular family well.
We would walk into a bar when I was young and he would know everyone. He would always talk to the owners and often buy a round of drinks. My ex was a drinker and everyone knew he loved his beer. When we first met I had drank a little, but I was never a drinker and someone had to drive. I stopped drinking shortly after we dated as the drinking laws were changing and my ex was often unable to drive. It wasn't a big deal for me. I loved the boat we had and being on the Lake. I would also later find out the DWAI that I was charged with was also set up. My ex left me one night in a bar because I wanted to stay later. I followed one of his friends home that were speeding and he was pulled over. I went back and turned myself in and felt bad he was stopped. I attended treatment at St, Marys, but didn't feel I had a drinking problem. I was put in a "Professionals group," and the instructor was amazing recommending books about family patterns of abuse. I was just starting to learn about having an abusive childhood and all these years later know now I would have waited to get married had I continued understanding. I learned about Codependency and went in that direction, but my problem was not really that it was the horrible Coercive Control and the web of people that thought of me as nothing more than a slave including my family. The slut-shaming and calling me a drunk had started as soon as I went to college—party girls went to college.
We knew everyone, but I was often ignored and the Gaslighting started as soon as we married, but I had no name then for the pain of what I was experiencing. If I was talked to it was mostly, "take care of the big guy!" They would laugh and joke and my ex would often stand in front of me if I talked too long or said too much. House parties were the same—women in the kitchen, men in the rec room or outside. The lines of communication were strictly enforced. We didn't really all talk together. It was very much a traditional type of setting. I learned to be a "good wife," was to not talk too much to "the guys." If I did it was more about what my ex was up to.
My ex on the other hand had all these "women friends," and interacted all the time with them. He told me he rarely saw anyone after we married preferring to be with me, but I learned this had all been part of the setup to keep me isolated and not knowing the truth.
Looking back, I was often treated with suspicion. In the early years, I accepted this as not being "in the group." I was often told of their group. They all had been friends since grade school and I thought this was a wonderful thing because so often I would meet friends and they would move away. I had no friends at all and the girls I met at college had all moved away and we lost touch. "Friends," was a new show on TV and they were like that except the roles of being "good wives" and men were more strictly defined. Today I know they were nothing like that and had far more sinister intentions.
The differences between me and his friends started as soon as we met, the most obvious one was that I didn't have children. This was used as a suspect type of insinuation right away. "You don't want children?" It was often said in that incredulous that conveys the subtle denigration of your decision even though it was not anyone's business, but they all made it theirs. I was often called out to answer for why I was not having them in the beginning. This was the excuse to treat me in a suspicious manner all the time. My ex told stories of having "older parents," and the humiliation of it, and that was the reason he didn't want them. His father had been so old when he was born and could not do all the things other boys' fathers did with their sons. My ex was often humiliated, he said. "Where's John?” his friends would say whenever they saw me alone, which was just usually at the supermarket, which wasn't that often—"the Men," didn't grocery shop—only women did the grocery shopping! There were always things only men did and only women did and this was how you had a "good marriage!"
I accepted this suspicion as if not having children automatically meant I was out picking up men. I'm angry today I willingly adopted this mindset. Believing the lies that a woman without children was somehow more of a cheater than women with children. I was more of a "whore!" and had to work harder to be a "good wife." The mothers were kind, loving, chaste, always put their children first, and never "whored around!" The slut-shaming started in a subtle way right from the beginning, plus I was poor, came from a "broken family," did not see my Mother, and had a career. Having a career was some kind of sin, a moral failing as a woman because a "good woman" did not have to work.
None of the women worked except for a couple of nurses and my SIL that was a Special Ed teacher, this was acceptable. These were not careers, not working like a man, not a Feminist, but work women do to "help their families," not the selfish kind I was doing. I shake my head in anger and disgust at the bullying I put up with about not having children and my career at the beginning of my marriage that would eventually go on all the time and result in such violence.
The band started to play and I wanted to listen to some live music but felt that odd feeling when something wasn't right, but I wasn't sure what. I knew to wait and listen. I had always been very intuitive, but would often talk myself out of my knowings only to find later I should have listened to that still small voice all along. I call them "knowings," like when you know something, but the knowing isn't direct experience. You know it beforehand, before knowing for sure and it's easy to talk yourself out of it. Oh, it couldn't be that, only to find it was definitely that you just didn't have all the facts yet—you just knew. "Where do you get all this stuff," my ex would say all the time whenever I sensed something wasn't right but needed validation. I know today, I had been right all along about the abusive things that went on but that they all lied about all along.
I sensed something when I saw the lead singer for the band—j. Marco Johnson band. I came to see a professional band play and after paying $8.00 for a little too watered down drink plus tip, I was a little disappointed—I didn't have much money. The drink was called, "Toxic relationship," and I thought how fitting. Some twisted tea and peach schnapps it said, I figured that the music would make up for it, but I had this strange feeling about this guy that was playing as if he was someone's son or relative. It seemed like some kind of family event rather than a public event to kick off the Summer for Amsterdam NY. It was marketed as a "Sunset Festival," for the riverfront; food, and drinks, but instead of maybe those guys that BBQ chickens and you can have a whole nice meal for $7 or $8, it was the usual expensive fare inside the new restaurant hosted by the Lanzi's. I had been hungry and thought at least there would be some food on the bar, but there was nothing from these people after all these years, not even a drink. Denying me jobs, destroying my business, just like my father's successful band had been destroyed and our relationship, and making me homeless and destitute had always been the game—I was finally being able to know the lies and hatred.
Having it advertised for "childhood hunger," for the School district made it all the more heart-breaking. My recent experience there was abusive, degrading and they fired me. Yeah, I thought, give the poor kids a few treats, but beat the fuck out of them and destroy their lives if they happen to grow up and become successful like I had been before this nightmare started. Make sure they are jailed and you all give them a "criminal record,"—also an option. It had all been the way I had been treated recently and knowing so many I went to school with were here made it all the more disgusting—40 years later and here we are, your all successful and I'm the official, "Crackwhore!" What fucking scumbags I thought!
I sat down by the river, while they seemed to warm up for a long time, and waited. The band started to play and my suspicions were correct. They weren't bad, but they didn't seem quite yet a professional working band, they seemed inexperienced and not quite ready to play at a live venue, I thought for my personal taste. I did not recognize the name, but when I glanced across the lawn I saw my childhood friend from so long ago when I was 5yrs old. She looked the same, but a lot heavier, I had always thought how pretty she was and I had loved her like a sister when we were girls. I had seen her recently and gave her my condolences about her mother's passing. I told her I remembered her mother always fashionable and wearing her little kitten slippers and her capri pants.
My friend at that time acted odd and remarked how devoted her mother was and hurried away. I chalked it up to having just lost her mother and possibly having a hard time with her mother's passing. I had no idea the destruction she had wished for me all these years. The slave way they all treated me and the horrible envy of my father's success. I had no idea her father and brother had played music and this was her son now playing. I had no idea they knew exactly what I did for a living because this young man that was playing worked for an Advertising agency. After I Googled his name and learned he worked in the business I was in. Once again the lies were piling up and were horrible.
Every morning in the Summer I would hurry and brush my teeth, comb my hair, and rush to play with my 2 friends a house away. I had just moved in with my mother's new boyfriend and we had made friends. They were beautiful and I thought how lucky I was to make new friends. I was still seeing my Dad and camping up to the Sacandaga Lake and watching him play in his band—I loved my Dad! I was taking Ballet and excited about being a Ballerina. I had no idea the violence lurking in my life as my mother became increasingly violent about all the court dates we had to attend. I was forbidden to call my Father, "Dad," and after my mother told me repeatedly my father was a "violent no-good drunk," I was not allowed to see him. I was not allowed to go camping with him or watch him play music around the lake. I was not allowed to talk about him or see any of the small family I had. I started school and immediately I was shunned and called names for being a "welfare kid," with no family!
I sat listening and watching my old friend and her son. I remembered my mother recently saying after learning her mother had worked all those years at the same place my mother had—Amsterdam Print that we had never been friends we had just been "acquaintances." I had applied there numerous times over the years even going on an interview, but they always refused to hire me.
I thought to myself how silly, we were 5yrs old and I said "friends" because what else do you say about little girls. My mother swiftly corrected me and I sat confused why she was defining all these relationships that basically weren't her business and yet as my divorce started to unfold she was defining more and more of my intimate life and relationships in ways that I was shocked that she had such access to my personal business. I thought what difference did it make? We were little girls and we played together in the Summers we lived with her new boyfriend, my two 1/2 brothers' father.
When we were girls they would come out onto their large wrap-around upstairs porch and let me know they had to finish up and brush their teeth. As the friendship unfolded these things they had to do in the morning before we could play became longer and longer as I waited down below. I would amuse myself by making little drawings in the sandy dirt that pooled in the crevices of the driveway and sidewalk, waiting patiently to play.
We have to brush our hair they would say and would laugh and take another hour. Each day they would ask me to come back and play and the time it took for them to come down became longer and longer as the Summer went on. Their mother would stand in the doorway and coach them about what they had to do next in order for them to play. They would return and say they were finishing up breakfast and had to wash up. Eventually, this would go on all morning as I would wait to play. There were a couple of times, it would be noon and they would say they now had to go to their grandmothers. I would by that time have waited for close to 3hrs for them and be told they would have to leave. They were like princesses to me as I waited for them to play. The porch, elegant and ornate, the podium of the castle. I had no idea this was done deliberately and did what it was intended to do—make me feel less than, unworthy, and like a little servant—a whore. "You were such a little girl," their father remarked recently before he died. I saw him for the first time in years at the local gym watching me. I went over and said hello, he leered at me in an odd way. I know today watching me was part of the game. He was often home and was a hairdresser at the time. I had no idea it had all been a filthy joke to them right along just like their friends on the lake.
This friend's sister would often tell me to pull my pants down—she did it all the time before they eventually moved to the "Southside." I had no intention of pulling down my pants and wondered where she got such a thing—today I understand. Today so much that eluded me then comes sharply into focus. The time they called me five years later after they moved to the Southside of Amsterdam NY to invite me to their new home, bragging about chandeliers and the new built-in swimming pool they were getting. I was told I didn't have the latest bathing suit like her popular friends had and they spent the entire time making fun of me. I was brought home by their brother. I felt humiliated and sad but told myself my old friends were rich and I had my other nicer swimsuit at home and it would be okay. These memories came in waves as I sat drinking my drink and wondering why there was no mention of Juneteenth!
I felt my stomach turn, thinking of the holiday "Juneteenth," and all the hard work I had done. All my Art, Graphic Design, and Photography Portfolios were gone and I would never have them again. Recently there had been some Graphic Design jobs in Maine, but the retort was the same, without Portfolios I would not be considered. It took 20yrs of hard work to be able to show what I could do along with my computer equipment. My MacBookPro was smashed at my mother's. I told her it cost $3,000 but she gave me the finger and told me to get out! I had no way to get work now and was told by the psych-ward it was a delusion of mine to think I was a professional.
As all this was running through my mind, her nephew the Cop strode up on his bike. I think it was him, or one of them. I was told she also has a son that's a Cop. There had been so many involved in my Divorce it was hard to remember if I had seen him—there were always 5 or 6 of them when they would arrest me. I thought of the house they moved to when I was a kid, the one they invited me to the awful pool party. It was a shabby little ranch now and had only been a ranch back then, but I was so little, just 11yrs old by the time they invited me to the pool party. After having so many nice homes now, I have to once again contend with this constant brutal competition from these people. Their new houses are even bigger now in a fancy cul-de-sac in Suburbia a few miles out of the city—deja vu once again! I was also over to the Southside recently trying to look for apartments, but told by the then Mayor Villa's brother that, "there were lots of nice apartments, but I was never going to get one!" What the hell, I thought?
It had been so long since I had my contacts or glasses, another health item stolen that I was denied from the Divorce. There was no consideration for my healthcare. The last ones I bought had been deliberately messed with. My neighbor now worked at the place I had been a regular customer for over 20yrs and there were numerous problems, but because I was moving so often and with no car, I was unable along with so much else denied being able to deal with it. I was being arrested all the time and my contacts were being ripped repeatedly from drying out or slipping out because of crying and wiping my eyes and other things you should not do when wearing them. I would ask for solution at the jail and the psych ward but would be told they would get some and then I would be told it's not allowed. Other new packets of lenses were stolen and my glasses were damaged so seeing was often a problem these days.
This Cop looked like he knew them all and greeted each of them—I got up to leave. It was like everything else here, I thought, another event for certain families here. Families that have always treated me like a slave and continue. There would be no honoring Juneteenth because I now knew these people were extremists that believed themselves superior to others and wanted people as slaves, including my own family. I felt sick and had to leave—I needed air and felt too enclosed. This Cop had known exactly who I was, what I did for a living, and had been involved right from the start if it was in fact her son or nephew. I had mentioned when I first met him I knew his Aunts.
I usually don't name-drop, it's not my style, but I was trying to understand why they were being so cruel to me and was desperate for some understanding. He had been condescending and cruel all the times I interacted with him—cold and calculating and dismissed my questions telling me no one was going to help me. I had also said it would have been nice to meet these women's nephews, an "honor," I had said still believing Police officers were "heroes," not the violent thugs that were banging down my doors and calling me a whore. It had been disconcerting that everyone was all grown-up and pretended not to know me or what I did for a living, but I still had no clue that all the violence was deliberate.
"She can stretch out my shoes," my MIL remarked one time when she had one of her "spells," common when it was a long weekend or holiday and we would spend the entire Holiday getting her and her sister who had them too the care they needed while my SIL and BIL was off traveling. She had been admitted to the hospital and we were bringing her some things for her care. Memory after memory came flooding back as I finished up my drink and headed for the door. I couldn't breathe by this time and needed to get out of the enclosed area. I looked around and saw others I had went to school with and felt sick. My friend by this point was having her picture taken and looked like she was some kind of Rockstar signing autographs.
It all made sense, I horribly thought all these years later, here I was back from the dead and witnessing the hatred and filthy way these people had treated me my whole life—God did have a plan I thought. The destruction of my relationship with my father and the denial of any of my talent or musical ability. The way they were all involved in launching Photography businesses or in this case this young man's Rockband and Advertising business, but all were still pretending like they always did "they had no idea what I was talking about!"
I watched my friend greet supporters and sit with an ex-Mayor, another one I went to school with. He had been at the bar one night after the first time I was violently arrested and pepper-sprayed and told I could not return to my home. I was in shock that night, but thought getting my favorite meal and talk to someone would make things make sense, but I listened to a woman they all said "they loved," that worked for CPS talk about "all the men in and out of her apartment on the weekends," my 1/2 brother sitting a couple seats over—all were laughing. No one was going to tell me what was going on and my 1/2 brother refused to speak to me. I was being forced out and needed help moving, but he laughed all night and I had learned he was working regularly with this restaurant owner too—Russo's. It was a local pizza place I had take-out from the last 20yrs close to my home on Evelyn Street. I had no idea I was now a local joke. The humiliation and degradation violently crashing down all around me once again.
I knew as I dragged my suitcase home that there would be no Juneteenth celebration by any of them. Slavery was alive and well in my horrible hometown and had been since I was a girl and my mother had wanted to leave me at a campground up North, but like everything else I had no words for the filth that seemed to be drowning me. A park that she knew catered to incestuous families of pedophiles that had settled up there so long ago. I know it had been my Grandmother that prevented this. I was told she wanted to adopt me, but it was not allowed.
I thought of another neighbor and the grandson who had been left with a neighbor and never seen again. I was told they just left him there one day and didn't want him. I thought of the constant threats by my own mother to leave me places as a child. She would often leave me sitting for hours to pick me up from things like Girl Scouts. All the times she threatened to throw me out as a child and that she would put me in a "children's home!" The door swings both ways, "don't let it hit you in the ass," she would yell after beating me, usually after my Grandmother would visit.
I made my way up the steep hill hoping I could still sleep on the abandoned porch I had been sleeping on the last 3 months. The same house my cousins had rented all those years ago, grateful I had someplace to sleep. My protesting deeper and more real than I had previously thought. I was sweaty and sick, but I was determined and thought how just by attending I had made a statement to these people that the filth they had done and were doing was no longer a fucking joke. It had never been a fucking joke and I was back from the dead to prove it. There was a reason God spared my life and allowed me to unravel this horrible nightmare of lies and fraud that almost killed me. The attempts that continue on my life and the constant violence to keep covering it all up. The "slavers," that resided in my very own hometown.
RiverLink Park "Sunset Festival,"—Juneteenth
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