Truth

your girlfriend is ugly and your music makes me want to dance. i hate you when you ignore me. your hair begs me to rake my fingers through it. the only thing that makes sense is screaming your name at the top of my lungs. warm laundry calms me down. sometimes i want to slap you. hard. sometimes the thought of being slapped turns me on. i am SO ANGRY that she reads the books i read. she has no idea that you will never love her the way she thinks you do. if i could hear all the beautiful things you used to say again i would appreciate them more now. i want o hurt you and then sleep with you abd then laugh about it. i want to wake up a better person.

I've been thinking more and more often that he's embellishing what he says. Making the situation sound better than it really is to reassure me... maybe even to reassure himself.

I don't really mind much, but I'd like to hear the unadorned truth from him. The question is, is he embellishing things intentionally, or does he really believe what he's saying? And how best to bring this up without insulting him?

I imagine 'I think almost everything you say is partially a lie' wouldn't go down very well...

It’s out there…somewhere Waiting to be found in everyone; It’s difficult to see in some, While it’s simple to seek out in others; In a world filled with lies, deception, and manipulation The truth seems like a failed attempt for hope to some; Honestly, that is nowhere near true; The truth is the most precious gift that can be given; It gives us faith to find the hero in us all; It’s up to us to find truth in each other And to show the truth to those around us; The truth will allow you to grow from within; With truth, you will learn how to respect; With respect, you will learn how to trust; With trust, you will learn how to love; Truth… It’s possible.

Graphic shit I just read the long account of someone else's unfair life. I'm now compelled to share a few similar things. Pain isn't something you can rate, and I'm not competing. But if she can admit all of that, I can say a few things. When I was very young, my mother, sister and I were still welcome and my greatgrandmother's (mom's dad's mom) house for large family reunions. I've spoken with my sister, and she's told me she was molested by at least three different random relatives at these gatherings when she was younger. I didn't know this when I was younger, just that she stuck to me like glue when we were there, and I was annoyed by it, when I was little I much prefered being along and doing whatever the hell I wanted. I managed to escape from her one day, and was playing around in the woods at the end of Grandma's back lot. I was five. I heard strange noises, a rythmic shaking of some leafy plant, moans, and mumbles. I believe I was pretending to be an indian, sneaking up on whatever it was undetected. I came upon some random relatives, brother and sister no less, fucking in some bushes. I was frozen. I'd never seen the violent act of pure emotionless fucking before, and all I could do was crouch there and watch his seemingly hug penis slide in and out of first her vagina, and then her asshole, then her vagina, etc. I was concentrating on the strange sensation flushing through my lower stomach and other parts, and didn't notice that they had seen me, and were talking about me, while still going at it doggie style. Suddenly they're both over here, the woman yelling at me, the guy carrying his pants and pulling the belt out. he grabbed me and turned me around roughly, yanked down my pants, and began whipping my ass. I assumed I was just in trouble, would be whipped, and would run back to my mother. I was unaware at the time of any taboos against incest, or even what it was. Suddenly the woman (I honestly don't remember their names) grabbed me by the hair and threw me to the ground. I landed on my face and was rolled over violently onto my back. She squatted over me, her cunt directly over my face. I nearly gagged from the smell, I don't know if she was actually unclean and smelly, or if I was just unused to the powerful smell of just penetrated pussy. She started trying to sit on my face, yelling about how I needed to 'clean her up' with my tounge, or I was going to get a worse beating. I saw the guy reach between my legs, and I clamped them together. I was completely panicked, with this woman on top of me and this guy reaching towards me. He managed to get a few fingers wedged between my legs. I felt a finger go into my ass, which is a powerfully awful feeling. He was trying to slide another into my pussy, but his hands were dry, and I'm built small. His nail was digging into the soft skin around the entrance. I had to get out of there. I kicked at him, and reached my neck up and latched my teeth onto one of her outer lips at the same time. He hollered in surprise and fell back, ripping his finger out of my ass, making me clamp down harder on her. She tried to stand and fell back, and I, convinced that my life was going to end as soon as I let go, so I hung on. The guy crawled over and started trying hit me, but with the woman writing around and me just latched on like a snapping turtle, he couldn't land a blow. At this point my sister showed up. She'd heard the commotion while out looking for me. I let go of the woman and ran towards J (sister). The guy grabbed me and punched me square in the eye, cracking my cheekbone and rocking my head back. My sister pulled out a switchblade (she was seventeen, eighteen) and advanced towards him. He let go of me, and I ran to J. She put one arm around me, and then told me to run to mom. I did. I fell several times, and bloodied my knees. By the time I got back, my eye was swollen completley shut. Either the penetration or the fast removal of that bastard's finger had made my ass bleed, so when I ran in the house, pantsless, with blood all over my thighs and crotch, everyone was silent for a minute, and then chaos errupted. My mom picked me up and ran to the car with me, yelling at her mom and sister to find J- and bring her to the hospital. She laid me in the back seat and we drove the five or so miles to the local county hospital. The adrenaline must have been fading, because I was exhuasted, and I was in a semi-concious state when we got there. The check for a concussion, and then gave me some dissociative drug, and that's all I remember until the next day. I woke up at my dad's. I found out later I was there because mom knew some of out shitty family would blame me for whatever happened to those two, and possibly come after me. At the time I was told Dad's house was closer to the hospital, and I was staying there in case I relapsed, or something. In the end, I was told to tell the police the truth, only to say I had no idea who the couple was, except I knew they weren't family. I'm not sure what happened legally with Joda and the couple. I know the cops came out there. I've only seen them once since, at that grandmother's funeral two years ago. The guy has a deep scar on one cheek, and his nose is a mess. I don't know who did his nose, but I'm pretty sure my sister cut his cheek. He also limped. The woman, his sister, had a good chunk of her ear missing, and was wearing long sleeves with a mini skirt, in August. I overheard another relative saying how they were having hard times, they'd lost their house and the woman's children, supposedly by another guy, had been taken from her because they all had medical problems and she wasn't taking care of them. That, more than anything, makes me think those poor kids are inbred. When I was fifteen, I was associating with the worst New Castle has to offer. I met an older man, M, at a party and he kept sharing his coke with me. We became what I thought was friends. After a month or so of seeing him at parties, he invited me over to his house. It was just me and him, but I was depressed and not to worried about dying, so I didn't care. We were smoking crack, and he was shooting OCs. I was just snorting them. Suddenly he grabbed me and pulled me too him, and stuffed his tounge in my mouth. I struggled away from him and told him I had a boyfriend, I'd been with him for over a year, and I didn't want to cheat on him. M tried to tell me it wasn't cheating, we were best friends and I was just helping him during a dry spell. I said no. He said I owed him for all of the coke, pills and booze. I said I'll set up a payment plan, but I'm not doing anything with him. He grabbed me with one hand around my throat and told me not to scream. He tugged off my pants and underwear. He pulled this ornamental knife out of somewhere, and drug it along my thigh lightly to show me it was sharp. The pain, although slight, and the sight of my blood killed most of my buzz and put me in a hellishly aware state. He raised my shirt and cut through the little piece of my bra, between the two cups. He then placed the knife at my throat and told me to spread my legs. I said "no fucking way", and he pricked my neck. I swallowed, closed my eyes and aksed if he would at least shoot me up first. He did. Having never shot up before, and being dosed by a hardcore junkie, I almost immediately started losing conciousness. He smacked me and told me to stay awake. He then unzipped his pants, pulled his cock out, spit on his hand and lubed it up, and started fucking me. He didn't hurt me physically. He was on the small side of normal and I was no virgin, and thank the gods he stayed away from my ass. It didn't take very long. Afterwards, he picked my up and dumped me on the couch, covered me with a blanket, and then, just to make everthing super bizzare, kissed me on the forehead and told me to sleep tight. I welcomed the darkness as I passed out, and hoped I'd never wake. A few weeks later, I was walking in a bad part of town, when a van pulled up beside me, and a couple redneck thugs jumped out, picked me up bodily, and put me in the back. They stripped me and tied me up, and tortued me for around three hours. They tied chunks of my hair to a wooden stick, and then twisted and twisted it until a large clump of hair came out. They cut my thighs and upper arms, and threatened to cut my face. The stuck pushpins in the soles of my feet. They shoved a candle in my ass, one of those long taper candles, lit it, and positioned me in such a way that the wax ran down onto my skin, and the heat kept getting closer and closer. They threatened to cut off my nipples and make me eat them, drawing black lines with a sharpie and playing the knife over my nipples. They rubbed salt and rubbing alcohol into the cuts on my upper arms. They yanked the candle out and burned off some of my hair with it. Finally, they hog tied me, and one sat down in front of me. He asked why I wasn't crying. I spit in his face. He looked up, to someone at my feet, who promptly grabbed my left foot and started twisting the hell out of it at the ankle. He told me if I didn't cooperate with his questions, he would have the guy break it. I nodded. He turned on a tape recorder in his pocket. Why wasn't I crying? I didn't want to give them the satisfaction, and I was using a bastardized meditation technique to "go away". I also had a lot of painkillers in my system but I wasn't telling him that. (I had tried to not yell or anything, to give them no satisfaction, but I yelped when my hair came out, and hollered a few times when they were using the push pins.) Why hadn't I asked who they were, or begged. I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction, and I knew they'd tell me what was up when they were ready. Did I remember a very generous man, M-? Yes. Did I remember how kind he had been to me. I remember. Why did I break his heart after leading him on for a month? I hadn't led him on purposefully. I never flirted. I made it clear I had a boyfriend. How could you resist him? I've seen your boyfriend. He is young and broke. (This guy really couldn't understand why I did this) I don't love him, I love J-. I see. He nodded to the guy, and I thought I was going to get my damn foot snapped off, but instead I felt a needle prick in my leg, and the unmistakeable muscle clenching burn of narcotics. I passed out. I awoke to being smacked gently. I was still in the van. M was there. He smiled. He held up a mirror with white powder on it. He offered me a straw. I realized I was no longer bound. I took it, and asked what it was. He said it was cocaine, to help me wake up. He took the straw and snorted a very large amount out of the pile at one end, then handed me the straw. I did two big lines. He picked up one of those waffley folders off of the van floor. He opened it, and pulled out some papers, and began reading. "J-D-B-, born (date), address, blah blah. Then he listed infor for my dad, mom, half brother and sister, sister's kids, cousins in Ohio, grandmother, and several friends. He told me he was going to let me go, he'd slept with me once and he never let a girl get away without "Making her mine" and as long as I didn't go to the police, nothing would happen to the people I love. They dropped me off at my grandmas. I see him from time to time, mostly at walmart, shopping like he's not a damn crazy person with a pharmacy in his house and freaking henchmen When I was seventeen, I dated a boy for five months. He was beautiful, and had a tortured tragic soul, which I'm always attracted too. At the end of our relationship, I knew things were ending and was self medicating constantly. Apparently, we had sex after my depo shot quit working. A few weeks later, I was at a party, and I decided I was going to die a nice, stoned death. I started shooting vodka, which I can drink and drink and drink, and not get sick. I took three forty milligram OCs. I took i don't know how many purple Xanax. I kept drinking. I was at a party, and was socializing, enjoying myself because I knew I'd be dead and painless tomorrow. Around three AM, I'm laying on a couch with a guy I'd met, we hadn't fucked because I didn't want too, but we were having sloppy makeouts, and feeling each other up. I told him I was close to passing out. He said, okay, let me make you feel good while you go to sleep, or something to that effect. I felt dizzy and ill, and I was cramping pretty bad, but I was coming off of the Depo shot, so I chalked it up to that. He unbuttoned my pants and reached into my underwear, giving me what I'm sure he considered a sexy look. That quickly changed to revulsion, and he brought his hand up quickly. It was covered in blood. He started giving me hell for not telling him I was on the rag, and I was apologizing, telling him I hadn't been twenty minutes ago, the last time I went to pee. I stood up to fo clean myself up and find a pad or tampon, I didn't want to die and be bleeding all over a rug or couch. When I stood, I got extremly dizzy, and fell to the floor like a sack of suicidal potatoes. He got down on the floor next to me, and asked if I was alright. I grinned and said "Honey, I'm better than I've ever been. I'm dying. I'm sorry if I make a mess." and that's the last thing I remember for a while. I woke up in the hospital to blinding lights and a hot rock in my womb. A couple people from the party were there, ones I knew and were sort of friends with. I started to say hi, and screamed instead. It felt like someone was opening up my abdomen with a rusty electrified knife. The nurse near my IV shot something into it, and I passed back out. I woke up the next day with an awful ache in my womb, and a worse one in my soul. I was still alive, and I had probably ruined something, somewhere. I started crying. My sister came and sat on the bed, grabbed me and started hugging me fiercely. The mocement sent a spasming pain through my lower stomach, and I thoguht Oh god, I've done something to my intestines, I'm seventeen and I'm going to have a serious medical problem for the rest of my life. I wish. Joda shooed everyone out, and very calmly told me I had been pregnant, and all of the drugs and alcohol I had consumed had triggered a misscarriage. I went numb. I didn't hear anything she said. I didn't hear anything the nurse said. My palms started bleeding from my fingernails pressing into them. My hollow empty womb ached, and so did my soul. I had wantonly killed my own child. I was released from the hospital the next day, and taken to a mental pace in Anderson. I was there a month. I mechanically did everything, only wanting to get out and kill myself. When I did get out, I didn't kill myself. I'm still not sure why. I just went back to self medicating. When I was eighteen, I was hanging out with a friend who I'd known for four years. He was a little weird, but so am I. He kept talking about how horny he was, and I joked around with him, saying stuff like "There are nice ladies who you can pay to pretend you're they're favorite person for and hour" and such. I finished my Mt Dew and stood to get another. He said he'd get it, he wanted another drink, and had to piss anyway. I thought nothing of it, and sat back down. He returned, gave me my soda, which was already opened, but I'd known this gy for years, I didn't think anything of it. We were smoking pot and snorting coke, so I drank that Mt Dew pretty quick. We were messing with our Tarot cards, we both had several sets. Suddenly he turned to me and pushed my upper body down onto the futon, and climbed on top of me. "No..." I mumbled. "Why not?" He said. I couldn't really think of a reason, I just felt reluctant, but not reluctant enough. He was saying things like "We've been waiting for years to do this, you know you want me, all women are attracted to money and power (he's WAY into witchcraft, shamanism, all of it. It never worked, as far as I could tell. I asked him to cast a lust spell on this girl once, and I ended up obsessed with her. So he's either really bad at it, or a liar) Anyway, the things he was saying were echoing around in my head and replacing my own thoughts. We ended up having sex, although I was confused as hell and reluctant. I passed out before he was done, and, from the soreness when I awoke, that didn't seem to deter him one bit. When I woke up, I didn't even remember what had happened. I was just like, okay, I'm at my friends house, and I took a nap, I wonder what time it-HOLY FUCKING HELL. I grabbed his stupid shamaning stick and conked him good on the back of the head with it (He was playing a video game with his back to me.) I then threw it at his altar and left. I never called the cops, although I should have. Those are the big things. There are smaller things, like my mom making me sleep in the pantry off of the kitchen, downstairs, at the other end of the house from the stairs, where everyone else slept upstairs. I was always terrified. I remember my greatgrandmother calling me a sinner and a harlot, telling me I was unclean and damned since I had been penetrated, and my mother throwing a coffepot at the old broad. I remember my mother sitting me down on the couch in the middle of the night when I was four or so, and drunkenly telling me all the awful things my father did to her. She was lying, making up outrageous shit so I'd be on "her side" I'm numb now. I took some stuff, and I think my mind is keeping me from hurting. I don't know if I should post this or not. I want to. Nobody knows some of this stuff. Not my sister, not Owen, not any exes. hell with it.

Warning:Graphic content

Sometimes when I smile, hug people I love, and ask them about their lives, it feels like I'm lying to them. I have this unshakable feeling that they don't know who I am, or that I'm not telling them the truth. I guess I'm not, really.

I'm sure I whimper in my sleep. Nearly every person who's slept within earshot of me in the last 12 years has confirmed this suspicion. But despite respected advice to write about or talk about these things that keep my sleeping mind fighting, I've only given one minimal account of one memory to a tattered blue notebook that disappeared somewhere shortly after I told it my troubles. Lately I've had this nagging feeling that it's time to change that. So here goes a long, potentially disturbing tangent about some of the memories that keep me from sleeping properly and make up a part of my mind that I've focused much time and energy into keeping subdued. Again, fair warning: Some of these are graphic and, well, icky.

I was 4 years old and at the park with my older brothers. They were off talking or playing with friends while I sat in the grass thinking and soaking up the sunshine. I distinctly remember the feeling of the sun on my skin and noting with a small sense of satisfaction that I'd be slightly sunburnt. Sunburns were a novelty back then. It was this thought I had in mind when my attention was caught by a man going into the bathroom maybe a dozen feet away. He dropped some change. Normally when someone dropped change in that town, a tiny town with dirt roads and a population of maybe as many as two hundred, I ran to pick it up for them. I loved nothing more than to be helpful. But I hadn't seen this man before, so it wasn't until he said "If you come pick this change up for me you can have some of the pennies," that I hopped into action. I leaned down to pick it up, and next thing I remember is laying on the bathroom floor and opening my eyes to see his pants around his ankles directly in front of me. Young but not stupid, I automatically tried to get past him to the door and failed. He pushed me to the far wall. "Put it in your mouth," he commanded, holding his penis while approaching me. In retrospect it's pretty amusing to rethink his pants kept him from spreading his feet and caused him to kind of waddle towards me. But at that moment, in that space, and at that size, it was a hopeless situation even with him having that disadvantage. Again I tried to run out the door. I almost made it before being grabbed again and thrown, face down, to the floor. I tried not to scream as something was crammed suddenly and painfully into my ass.

"If you don't do as I say, the next thing I put in there will hurt more."

As soon as his weight left my back, I made one more desperate, half crawling attempt to make it out the door. Immediately, I was grabbed by the hair and shoved into a cock, face first. I struggled to breathe as he shoved me into a corner where my head hit the concrete wall behind me with each thrust into my mouth. The last thing I remember was coughing up a swirly, red-pink bloody goo.

I was 7 or 8 years old, in a different town. My mom had taken my baby brother to the hospital after a day or two of flu-like symptoms and found out that he needed to be rushed to a bigger hospital (by helicopter) to take care of some sort of serious medical problem. He had a lot of those. My two brothers, my father, and myself were all going to the hospital to see him before he was flown off. Being teenagers, my brothers had no problem biking the few miles to the hospital themselves, and I was left to make the trip with my drunk father. After a long journey there, including a stop at a frat house to bum a beer off some guys on the porch, we arrived at the hospital too late. He was already on the helicopter on his way to Indianapolis for brain surgery. Dad and I walked back to the house slowly. "FUCK!" yelled some anonymous voice somewhere on campus. "Do you know what that word means?" my dad asked me. I said no, even though I did, and he explained to me that it, this "fuck" thing, would become the focus of my life in a few years, as I grew into a "harlet". I knew well enough what he meant to know that I should be ashamed of what had happened in the bathroom years before. I hadn't told him about it. I hadn't told anyone. But I had this lingering feeling that he knew about it and that he hated me for it.

Again, I was 7 or 8 years old. There was a clique of highschool neonazi skinheads who liked to do fun things like threaten and throw rocks at the kids walking to and from the poor, mostly black elementary school. I was one of such kids. Though I was white, I was usually walking with some black friends, and I always have been an easy target. After a few weeks, the rocks were becoming bricks. The kids I walked with would play along, throwing shit back, yelling insults and threats. I always just kept walking, and they would always keep throwing things at me, sometimes after they'd stopped targetting the other kids. I asked a neighbor who was friendly, older, and seemingly knowledgeable about conflict what I should do to avoid trouble. He gave me an oak staff that was taller than me at the time and told me to carry it with me whenever I thought that somebody might need "a good whompin'" to keep them from causing trouble. A few days later there were police and paramedics at his apartment. There were police there over the next few days. Every time I knocked on the door after that, there was no answer. I heard rumors of a murder in the neighborhood. Nobody would tell me any details. I just kind of assume...

An older guy, somewhere between 16 and 25 I'd guess, once cornered me in an alley when I was 8 and demanded to know why I was wearing red. I told him it was a Little Mermaid shirt. He said it didn't matter, that I needed to watch what I was wearing and who I was talking to. He said he knew that I was a runner and that I needed to give him all my money and bags. When I offered him the few dollars that I had, he yelled something I don't remember and pulled out a gun. The bricks a few feet above my left ear crumbled. We both started running at the same time, in opposite directions. Either he didn't really want to shoot me or he was a terrible shot. It seemed to scare him as much as it did me.

Same alley, few months later (you'd think I'd learn to stay out of the damn alley, hm?), a guy picked me up and dragged me, mouth covered, into his car with him. He tried taking off my clothes. I shoved my Lion King backpack in his face, kicked his gut with both feet, unlocked the door, and jumped out. I hit the ground at a run. When I went back to the alley a few hours later, my backpack was on the ground. I think I still have it somewhere.

Same town, we'll call it Town1, about 5 years later. This time I'm 13.

I hadn't spent much time in Town1 for a few years. My family had ended up in a smaller town about 30 miles away. So it was just pure bad luck that I was wandering around and ran into one of the skinhead kids from when I was 8. We recognized one another almost instantly, like something straight out of a cheesy Western. All we were missing were some tumbleweeds and sixshooters. He actually probably did have a gun on him at that point, and if he didn't, then his friend in the passenger seat of the car almost definitely did. But I didn't have time to ask. "Still running around with a bunch of dumb nigger kids?" he asked while his friend chuckled. Then he continued, "That Gary kid you used to try protecting from me... well you missed your chance to say goodbye. He learned to try sticking up for himself after you left, but he never did learn when to shut up." "Well he knows now. He won't be talking shit anymore," the friend chimed in. They both laughed and sped off. I hadn't seen or heard from Gary in years, but the thought of him being dead hit me like an anvil. So I just stood there like Wile E. Coyote and watched their car disappear around a corner a few blocks up.

Later the same year... I was mostly asleep after a night of shooting Everclear finally caught up with me. I laid down on my back with the clear hope of choking to death on my own vomit. At that point in my life, I'm pretty sure that I'd never forgotten things that happened when I drank. I could be drunk off my ass, unable to stand, and still remember every thought that popped into my head. Anyway, the death by vomit... I had come to view it as an appropriate way to go out. It was death I had in mind when he came and laid beside me and asked what I was thinking about. "Myself, because I'm silly and selfish," was my honest drunken reply. He said he could take my mind off such things and when I asked how, he climbed on top of me. At that point in my life, such an action would normally have been greeted with a butterfly knife to the ribs, but I was unprepared and uncoordinated, and I'd left my knife in the bathroom after carving a failed attempt at a sun into my thigh. When I started drinking I'd thought that I would be alone and drunk myself retarded with that assumption in mind, so I was beyond the point of having the physical capacity to forcefully stop a man 10 years my senior and twice my size from doing whatever he wanted. I simply commanded that he leave me the fuck alone, to which he replied, "I'm going to give your life meaning by giving you a secret that you'll never want to share." He then leaned back, holding my shoulders firmly, and pulled me towards him. I kind of collapsed on top of him with my head on his stomach, then rolled off to the side in a pathetic attempt to escape. He unzipped his pants and lifted me up by my hair to lay my head back down on his lower stomach. "Have you ever given head before?" I rolled away again and started sobbing and asking him to just kill me instead. He refused. He tried several times to force his penis into my mouth and I simply would not open up.There was no chance in hell that I would let that happen again. Getting frustrated with this, he asked if I was a virgin. I nodded. "You're stubborn, and I respect that. So I'll let you stay a virgin. Get on the floor on your knees and lean over the bed." He shoved me off the bed, just a mattress and box springs on the floor, and took my pants off. He turned my face back to meet his and tried to kiss me. I did the first thing that came to mind - the only physical expression of disapprovement that I could manage then - and spit in his face. He calmly wiped it from his eye, used it as lube, and bent me over the bed.

Back in Town1, a few days later, I was walking alone near downtown after midnight. I knew it was slightly dangerous and really didn't give much of a damn at that point. After being anally raped, the idea of being shot or stabbed seemed pretty damn appealing. So I wandered. I met a pretty cool trainhopper guy and got an brief lesson in the idea of squatting. After wandering from that, I saw one of the skinhead guys from the memory before last. This specific skin was one that alluded to killing my friend. (We'll call him R for sake of simplicity) He was walking, seemingly aimlessly, about a block ahead of me. Then he left the sidewalk and trudged through the snow into an empty lot that I couldn't see. He came into view as I got closer and was revealed to be pushing an old man that I'd seen near the Mission earlier that day. He yelled, shoved, and punched the guy. I winced and looked away, and by the time I looked back the old man was in the snow, being dragged off into a darker corner behind some bushes.

I immediately went back to get the trainhopper. Now, normally I handle my own fights, but with the state of mind I was in, I knew that I couldn't trust myself with any sort of violent interaction. The trainhopper was less than 2 blocks away and immediately agreed to help me out, so we were back to the scene of the beating in less than 5 minutes. We checked on the homeless guy, who was still unconscious but alive, then went to find R. He hadn't gotten very far down the block. This thought is getting long, so I'll fastforward.

... I stood with my foot on R's chest and my oak staff, my "whompin' stick", in my hand ready to come back down, end first, on his already bloody face. The trainhopper had done what I'd asked him to, and tried to confront R peacefully. It was me who started the violence. I thought of Gary, and I pushed past my trainriding friend to talk to R fist first. I punched him until my hand hurt, then knocked him down and just started hammering him with my stick. If I'd been alone, I'm not sure if I would've stopped. It's the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to me. If I hadn't given my knife to trainhopper beforehand, I'm pretty sure R would've gotten it in the kidney and/or throat.

That's why I don't carry a knife anymore.

There's no more. Well, there is, but it'd seem excessive at this point to give detailed accounts of all the random bits of violence throughout my life that nag my conscience. And I think I covered, maybe too thoroughly, the rape parts. Some of these things I've never talked or written about, others only minimally. So there's the truth. If you've made it this far, you now know me better than anyone has previously.

Congratulations, or something.

There is no truth in me. But it is not lies either, nor is it half-truths, or most days, even stretching facts. No. Everything I say is factual. But I still do not know whether to believe it, to believe my own words. "I don't love her." But how can that be true? She was my best friend, you don't just stop loving someone. It's true, some of the things she did to me were awful, emotionally, and there's things about herself that she refuses to admit, while calling me out on perpetrating the same crimes. How can I love her after that? But, given everything, how can I not love her? "I do love her." This is a different her. We met on the internet. We've never met in person, and we've only talked on the phone a few times. But I feel for her. I feel for her as much as I've felt for anyone I know from actual human contact, maybe even more. I keep telling myself that I'm just setting up ridiculous standards for her, but she keeps meeting and surpassing them. We have never felt each other's touch; how can I love her? But, unrequited as it might be, how can I not love her? "There is no truth in me." Even this concept, which I have attempted to depict here, even that I don't know whether or not to believe. I do not lie, though most days I can get away with it. I try to be as honest as possible. To myself and to others around me. You may think, "if you are honest, how can you not believe yourself?" Because even as you don't know that everything I've said here isn't a lie, I can't be sure either. Given this, how can I believe myself? But given that it is me talking, and I've always trusted me... how can I not believe myself?

What is truth? The philosophical debate that I never had a problem with. Truth is an interesting concept, one of which I rarely think of anymore because the concept of Being becomes my prevelant in my philosophical thought pattern.

But truth, back to truth, I don't find myself thinking about people actually preforming it so much as falling through it to being false. I consider truth to be absolute, with no questionalble material...so how much is true?

If you're over the age of 12, you should be able to handle this. You should not need people to sugar-coat things for you. When someone is up front and honest about something to your face, please appreciate the fact that they've respected you enough and thought enough of you to percieve that you could handle the information in a relaxed, mature, sophisticated and groovy way. Don't get all bent out of shape. I understand that we sometimes need time to process information, but if you could at least be aware of your mental processes enough to say, "Look, I just need some time to process that information," it would make things a whole heck of a lot easier.

Why do we want the world dumbed down for us? Why can't we just accept the way things are without putting our fingers in our ears and humming to ourselves, or turning a blind eye or pissing and moaning about things we can't change?

I think Jack was right when he yelled, "Truth? You can't handle the truth!"

Seems like most people can't. Either that or they twist truth and actuality in their heads to something that they can deal with.

There are a couple of members in my family who are notorious for twisting the truth in their heads. They take a situation that happened and completely make up a fantasy to go along with it. Then, when they tell their fictional story to those that do not know what actually happened, everyone who knows they are lying is supposed to just play along and agree that what they are saying is true.

I got so sick of watching my family and friends do this that I made a vow to myself never to lie. Now, I am known as the bearer of unedited truth. My word is believed over everyone else's because of the fact that it is known that I refuse to lie ('cept to certain school officials and, occasionally, parents).

Once, I was called "tactless" because of the fact that I do not lie or sugar coat things for anyone under the age of 12. I was insulted. I am never tactless. Apparently, just because I won't dumb down what I'm saying for you, or paste it with little rainbow and flower stickers, I have no sense of timing or finesse and anyone who knows me, KNOWS that is not true.

I've run from the truth for so long. I hide in clouds of smoke, cower behind mountains of powder, submerge myself in alcohol, all in the hope that my worries and guilt will pass me by for a small while. I've done horrible, horrible things out of selfishness. I burn to tell the truth, instead of the lies I'm still maintaining. But I'm simpley not strong enough. Maybe someday.

Truth hurts. I know it's cliche but what else can I say? when I hear the truth I'd almost always rather it be a lie. Tell me anything but the truth and we'll be happily ever after

Knowing the truth can help you, Finding the truth can enlighten you, And often, both will hurt you.

If ignorance is bliss, then what is the truth?

There's two ways you could look at it. That truth is sometimes beautiful, and sometimes not.....

Or

That truth is always beautiful, but realize that beauty is completely subjective - that sometimes the hideous is beautiful. So even the hideous truths are beautiful, simply because they are true.

Supposedly, we all want the truth.

We ask it of our lovers, our friends, our parents.

It is said that beauty is truth, but even one's beauty can be altered.

We want our leaders to be truthful, or religions to have an ounce of truth in what they teach us.

But when you get what you want, will you be satisfied?

Do you really want the truth?

It is said that beauty is truth, but is truth beautiful?

Truth be told! Truth be known! I'm of the chosen few, for those that wonder who, I am, the one, the Christ, the Muhammad, the Joseph Smith, the prophet who... Truth be known. It can be shown, to be known in me. Of Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah; my golden truth... and, and, it is the... I, I, I, should've wrote this down. Why don't they have pens in heavenly visions?

Oh yes! I remember, Truth be known, again! Truth be told! My warning, your hope, It was... the two, the three, the thirteen, the fourteen... The united, because they are divided. They don't... They do... They, they, they, told me, but I, Shouldn't have gotten high. It was nessesary, but I Shouldn't have gotten high. Now we're all doomed.