When you have nothing in your life and things that were wrong in it, start to be "in your face," you're hit like a ton of bricks. When you have or had a job and you're moving in a right direction, those things are less of a problem. You don't see them as problems, but when you've been rejected by it seems everyone and everything, it can be overpowering---and when somehow you did a bunch of things wrong in your life, it all hits you, and I feel I did a bunch of things wrong. I feel things came to a screeching halt. I hate admitting I did a bunch of things wrong--I somehow was not as judicious as some or most people. I think if I had just had one person be a real person, a person be true--- I had a dream last night that that one person lived like in a store front by a store, and I went to this store and was just peaking beyond over to that other store where he lived and (she, she) lived--oh, sorry, his wife--I wondered if she had been in the store that I was in very recently or was even in the store at the moment. I have wondered outside of dreams and while awake if I have passed her or seen her and didn't really know it. You know, you do things to help process what happens--at least I do--if something doesn't make sense, I try to do things to process it---even if it may not be right or if it may hurt--I know that accepting things is always the best thing to do, and I have done what may hurt, gone up against what may hurt, just to help accept things--and there's something else I could say but won't. I have a very vague sense of what her voice sounds like, and I was somewhere once where it seemed I heard that voice, and there was a young woman waiting to pick up a drink at a coffee shop and had a very young little boy in a stroller. Little boy had blond hair and blue eyes and was wearing a plaid shirt--he ("Josh") always wore plaid--Cameron Mathison or whoever plays him will wear plaid shirts and faded jeans all the time--She wasn't really paying attention to the little boy, who was in a stroller. I wondered if it was her. I doubt he told anyone that he led someone on or did things to make someone feel extremely comfortable and then say what he said. I bet I'm never mentioned, or if I am, it's not in a flattering way, but then there's the Alanis song. There is the Alanis song and I stand by it. He stands like a cold stone wall and I stand by that song. In my book, I talk about the last time I saw him and he said he had a girlfriend---it hit me like "a ton of bricks" at the very moment--but in some way I didn't really believe him. I wonder now if she is the girlfriend he was talking about-- I woke up with it all in my face---the snapshots I have had of him in my mind and those words, which I will say on Oprah---I doubt all of America is reading this---I'm lucky if I have 2 people reading---I want to say what he said---what he said and the way it really ended. I could roll over and play dead---I really, truly could. If I did not have my dogs and (cats, and there's a story behind them), I would. I wouldn't care about anything. I live for them and am doing everything I can to stay afloat for them. I also thought about my lack of a career as I awoke. I thought about everything I have lost and then I read some more of my mom's writing. She was talking about right before I was born and right after I was born. I wiped tears from my eyes as I picked up this computer. The life she lived. I don't know who will play my aunts (the Taylors) in the movie. They were older when my mom came into the family, and I am afraid I will be ex-communicated from the family I have left on my dad's side if they are portrayed as my mother wrote and felt---I'm not sure how this sounds or how it makes me sound in thinking about myself--but she should not have gotten involved with my dad--it wasn't a good situation and she didn't know all she was getting into when she got into it. She felt she was somehow "beneath" or it was wanted her to feel "beneath" one of my aunts (my dad's sisters)--because most of them (my aunts) depended so much on my one aunt, and what happened with the school system did nothing to help how she felt. She wrote about how shortly after I was born, I was crying and she went to pick me up, and this one aunt told her not to pick me up, that she would spoil me. She said she picked me up and went across the street (she lived in an apartment across the street from my aunts before and shortly after I was born), and asked God what she was going to do. I love and have loved all of my aunts. I never really saw things as she did--I never really saw that perspective but she felt somthered by the influence of this one aunt and how everyone in the family went to her for everything, and she resisted going to her, as everyone else did. I wish I had gone to these papers that she wrote out, months before she died, when I was writing my book. I try to go back and put things in but it's difficult. What I originally wrote was so "tight" and I think I have a different voice now than I did from 1998-2001, when I was writing the book. I do not want anyone but especially the Superintendent to look extremely villainous. There were others involved in the school system that were bad, mean but the Superintendent (love you George Clooney, but this part is for you) and I don't want it to be underscored that they were bad but the Super is going to be the master villian. One guy was "hot and cold" and I say in my book, like "Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde), who was a principal. One guy, who Tom Hanks should play, an assist. principal, I don't understand. He and someone else wrote my mother a glowing recommendation letter, spoke nicely to her after throwing blows at her, and when I saw him while subsituting (I was a substitute in the school in 2003) put his head down when he saw me--kind of put his hand out to wave, but had his head down. Reminds me now of something "josh" did--when people have their head down and wave to you, there's something going on, somewhere inside their head. I thought the "Tom Hanks guy" told my mom she should never retire, that she had too much to offer students (and then threw blows against her), but it seems from my mom's writing that it was the "hot and cold guy--Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde who said it. I don't know who I want to play "Mr. Hot and Cold--Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde" I also don't want my aunt or aunts to come off bad---but it's impossible to ignore that my mom felt under a cloud since my father died and she did, herself. She tried to "get along" and would just always be very quiet in get together situations---it was difficult for her--- Got to go. Cindy