I’m in the next section—frustrated.
I left off with her daily phone calls. She’s hooked Angelica with money, and she starts calling every day. It smells like a game. What is this game?
I wonder if this really happened to her, once upon a time.
Right now, I go into the car with my father, where he says, she was sent away… which makes me go, “so was I.” Did this present situation reflect the real past? I then go into the dining room at the club… and move into the mirror mirror mirors on the walls… she reflected the truth…
Then the accusation about my father gets launched. I’m trying to determine if this really happened to her. I put the spectacles we put on for my father next, that scene, because I was standing there thinking, in the end, would you have to put on a show for the guy? I read later that families pretend it didn’t happen — one big show? Is that what it’s like?
Would no one do anything even if it were true?
I might have to rearrange these notecards again. The joke? Imagine, the editors are like, “great job,” at the end of it. We loved that. “Can you just tell us the story?” Not the investigation. And I would, gladly, but the thing is, I actually like the idea.
OKAY. SO. I want to throw a chair.
In the first scene, Angelica tells me what Dr. J said, that my father was abusing me, her, the works at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. Maybe I need to complete the scene with “can you imagine?” One of the words she repeated the most…imagine?
“Lying about that? About your own husband?”
But isn’t it already a lie? Wouldn’t it require lying Dr. J?
Maybe I need to get there right away.
Later, recently, I read about the woman who confessed that she LIED that a boy raped her in France in the NYTimes, so imagine that? Imagine, imagine, impossible, Angelica said, in 1989. She lied because her brother did. An expert in the NYTimes said, “that happens.” They point the finger at the wrong person because they can’t accuse their family member, but it’s psychologically impossible to not express it.
I’m on that channel, at nine. Peering at the game, the back and forth — this is a normal game, but what happens when — sexual abuse is in the home?
Let me think this out. In reality, I investigated the entire story, but maybe the trouble I’m running up against is: I’m trying to do too much for the purposes of writing a story.
So in the beginning, it might be clearer, if you know, as the reader, that she lied. That was the story originally. “But isn’t it already a lie?”
Maybe I’ll go: Angelica comes over my house. I can just get to Dr. J and that first conversation. I alerted her and Dr. J throws me onto her like it’s a party, take my child!
“Here! Take her!” Wee.
“What did you think?”
“Was she joking?”
You never knew with Dr. J.
She appeared to crack on a particular line…
This LINE was complex, like, how I spoke out in church when I was four. I was listening to these stories. I was amazed, holding Dr. J out of the corner of my eye. So jolly Jim finally said, “and…” tipping forward, “on the third day he rose again.” That was it. You’ve gone too far, Jim. I flicked my wrist at the guy.
“That’s not true,” come on. Jim. A man rising from the dead. The laughter I triggered in church made me wonder—do you believe in this literally speaking? The LINE she cracked on was complex. What we believe in. She didn’t seem to possess distinctions between truth, lie. People change their stories, which is also why I investigated it, so I could anchor myself to Angelica’s testimony.
And given that many people tried to erase me…the moment I began… I was just playing this investigation over these people’s back pedaling. So you expect it to be a lie, on top of it? Or that I’m losing my mind…? “Like the REASON why she did it was to save you from herself.” No.
But I couldn’t broach the topic, you understand… and any mention child molester doesn’t sound real… It’s like, Angelica was driving over to my house in a vehicle — she had a world, that’s her structure, she has a frame of reference. She KNEW it happens OUT THERE, but never did she think it would enter her world. Forget a man. She didn’t question that a father could rape his four year old? Real tears I get it. “It happens more often than you think…” it’s an otherworldly story psychologically, though it happens more often than you think. There’s a strange disconnect there. In Amy Griffin’s case, why did he chose a rich girl? To be reductive, a well known family? Because it doesn’t MATTER. There are no consequences. Why don’t people SEE any of this? She wasn’t, I don’t know, the daughter of a Head of State. And you can’t talk about it…you’re terrified.
The line was complex…where she cracked. Very very likely, Margaret Atwood said, we’re all getting molested. I’m sorry?
I’m going to call it a night, I just needed to think outloud. I want to be done. I didn’t want to feel stuck in my life because I had to lose a lot to get here… I didn’t want this story to rule my life. So. I’m still sad, because I have one life… and I got pulled down roads I didn’t need to go down because of this stupid story. Older men who projected onto me before I even did anything. I don’t know if I can write…I know you’re not supposed to give up, like talent isn’t the key, necessarily. I just find this hard. And I’m sad, because I feel like my mother, though I don’t know what that means exactly, like I went in too hard of a direction for ME. Like this wasn’t in flow… this story only hurt me. It didn’t bring me anyone into life that was positive, not one person, except when it came to… helping others talk… so I don’t know what to do with that, I don’t know what to do about how men, in particular, could treat me… not so much men I was involved with romantically, but these older men who came into my life — that guru, that screenwriter, broke my heart in a way I didn’t even think was possible. Just that relationship. It was so awful.
That emotional moment aside, I’ll keep trying to figure out the investigation… I need to try and make a life now, which I find hard right now. Before that guru came into my life, I was a happy person. I had problems… my family construction was my biggest one… so I try to find gratitude that I worked out what I needed to, but that was a painful road. I didn’t need to get in a sci-fi, that’s to the Hollywood screenwriter. I’d been through enough. His insensitivity was amazing. I would never be triggered like that again, type deal. The psychic talk, these men disrespected me at hello.
I might end up abandoning this angle, like it’s not the right time, or it’s too complex an idea for where I’m at, if you will. It’s just not as easy as just… taking you through these years. Maybe that would help this section. I just want the future as that keeps messing with my head, as this screenwriter was a channeler, ugh, to go away. I got involved with channelers, not knowing it. His brother gave me channeler tapes. I was not the person… to do that to. I didn’t realize that. That royally impacted me. I do not agree. I did not need that. It gets better. They believe in channeling…channeling the future book, shit like that. So I have tense moments, moments where I joke, I have to, or I still deal with that phase.
Like, I end up crying, because this guru’s obsession with FEELING, or the FEELING driving reality, it was a nightmare. Once, right? When I was in Turkey, he had “a feeling that I was close,” and why did he keep doing that? When literally I wasn’t anywhere… he just acted like he had superior psychic senses, and they truly harmed me. I don’t like all that stuff. Where, I “feel closer,” it’s just, what does that even mean? I had to catch myself again. Because this isn’t real. I can’t dwell on the past, but at the top of my thirties, I was so enthused, and what I needed turned out to be not any of what I got… so I don’t want to keep feeling like I can’t get past this step. It just doesn’t work, or something?
And this guru, there are still the tiniest memories that are dissipating…like I would Eternal Sunshine this guy. Erase him. If I could, I would. I really would “Please take this person away, forever.” Like WHY ARE YOU TELLING YOURSELF that, MAKING UP THE REALITY… I’m sorry? I spent years hearing SPINNING UP ENERGY, ENERGY FREQUENCY, getting projected on, not having a sense of self that was able to go: maybe someone else isn’t more right than I am. I don’t need to believe what everyone says. I mean, I don’t think that’s entirely true, but that guy spoke with — I can’t even really look at him in my mind. Because his whole attitude was…how did I even get here? You know? Like my heart broke as a mother, because why would I wish that man upon my daughter, type deal. That relationship? Wanting to hold myself — please STOP talking to this person. Pointing at me as if I were in a sci-fi…
I need to go to sleep, I have to memorize my lines. I might just take you through the story… no one reading is going to not believe me. That was enough to deal with. Just the doubt, disbelief, back pedaling, rejection, refusal, the changing of their stories. People changed their stories on me. Like my cousins in Italy, who I practically don’t speak to anymore, and I don’t want to, they dismissed me, but then, played this we care card, and years later, they’re going to tell me it’s not true again… and then, when I confront them, they are denying it. I can’t follow people like that. And my close friend, she’s going to say, didn’t know… you were struggling with that… except, I told her.
No response. I said I was just going to let this go…
Anyway, I can’t read these social moves. I do not want to. Damn this world, I have moments like that. Just the whole thing. Where, from the start, me, you, damn the whole thing. What a mess. Like, my cousins called at the top of my thirties? Hm, no. The guru? No. The plant people. Nope. That block, my thirties. I look at my twenties and go, “okay.” I wouldn’t have done that, now, but “okay.”
I keep wanting to see success for myself, and to feel, you know, thinking about the guru, that I didn’t write this story in VAIN…that guru made me feel that way. And he had sides that didn’t make sense, in that, he would say, that he sincerely believed in me, but how? Why? That I could be a success? I didn’t know that I wasn’t…? Or that, I didn’t think I could be? He was talking rich. A known writer, respected. He created more problems for me. That’s a lot to put on a person before you read something. Am I wrong? All that was quite confused. Danny DeVito was rejected, 12,000 times. I remember that story from when I was a kid. But like, what I want? A boyfriend and a house. I don’t know about the rest of it. I’d like to have a career, yes, now, after all that, I just want to feel cared for… genuinely. No one turning me into Alexander the Great. A boyfriend isn’t doing that.
The channeler way of thinking… in particular affects my thought process… I should probably stop writing, which I probably will, because, for whatever reason, the channel your future audience has caused me so much distress. I am not yet at a clear head. The channeler shit made my life a living hell. The psychic shit, that whole thing. So, I’m going to let this go.