more stories- warning strong language

Here's my warning- I'm not actually going to swear, but this is not a kid-friendly piece of work. It's stronger than my usual ramblings. Be warned. It's another piece I wrote back in April, and after some editing, I guess I will share this version of it. Some members of my writing class heard a slightly stronger version, but I really haven't toned it down much. I just deleted a few of the details.

"Stories I do not want to tell"
I do not want to talk about when I was arrested, or the time my mother fell down a flight of stairs. I do not want my daughter to hear about the time I was given a ride in a police car to the edge of town and told never to come back. I do not feel the need to share about being raped by a man who I lived with. I do not need to write about the scar on my arm and how it got there.

I know how hard it is to escape from an abusive boyfriend, but I do not need to write about this. I have no need to share about the speech I gave in a college classroom in 1992 advocating that same sex couples should be allowed to marry. I do not think anyone cares about the paper I wrote for my psychology class that same year. After all I married a man, and I am happy. I do not want to write about leaving a love, and coming back and then leaving again even though I knew it was wrong, and eventually had to leave again. I do not want you all to listen about how I held my breath for days when my period was late, and how much I rejoiced when it finally came and I knew I was not pregnant.

My mother is or was an alcoholic, and all the crazy stuff that comes with that. My father hit me. Once. I was fifteen, just beginning 10th grade, and I left. Before the age of 16 I drank, I smoked you-can-guess-what, and I had sex. I went to church and was born again, and then laughed at myself for that too. The summer when I was 21 was one of my homeless summers, and there is a lot I could say about that, but I won't.

I have lived, I have cried, I have nearly died. I do not need to write about all of that. If that is where the energy is, then I need to find it somewhere else. That is the past, and I am here now. When I hear the stories though, I feel it again even though I believe I am cured. My heart goes out to the world over and over. Maybe that is why I don't watch much television. I may not always show it, but I care. I haven't lived the wildest life, and others have suffered far worse than me. I am just a grain of sand on the beach, just one grain among the masses.