i want my stuff back
7:05 p.m. - 07.15.02
i finally got an appointment to see the therapist at the domestic violence center! i see her next week. man, it's sad that they are so booked, too many women who need help, and too few places to find it.
dave must have gotten the letter i sent to him on saturday. if not he'll get it by tomorrow. we'll see how long it takes to get my stuff back. i could go without the sweater, though it would be nice to have it, but i really, really, really want my art books and my photos. the books MIGHT be replaceable, but one was sold exclusively at an art museum and the other one is a photo book of soundtrack album covers from obscure, classic, and groovy films from the '60s. and he LOVES that book, when we were talking he was telling me it was his best reference guide to find titles of obscure films on ebay.
some of the photos were professional b&w proofs of my only 'professional' sitting. one of my photography friends took them a few summers ago. actually, i think it was the summer of 1998, the season after i left dave; when i felt empowered and was moving on. i just got a new job as an account executive at a radio station, and i needed a good photo of me in a suit for the local business magazine. we took some great suit shots, and great casual ones of me in a white tank top. i love those photos even more now, i have to say, since i've gained 10 - 15 pounds in the past 2 years after my breakdown and being on meds.
the other photos were from my dad's side of the family. Dad set the car on fire and left when i was 10, and his family did not stay in touch with us. that did hurt, considering my brother and i were just kids, and for 20 years we never even got a birthday card from any of them.
then dad died, and i was face to face with his two brothers, my two uncles at his memorial service. Mom and my brother didn't go, and that's ok. they are both choosing to have nothing to do with my dad's side of the family and i can't blame them ---- everyone has to live their lives the way they want to, and i have to respect that, just as i hope they respect my decision. i decided to get back in touch with them. i will never forget the conversation i had with my uncle doug the day before the service --- the day before i was going to see him and the rest of my family for 20 years. he said,
"i haven't been the perfect uncle, nothing has been perfect, but, if you want, i would like to start a relationship with you."
i thought to myself of all the troubles that i have had only at age 29, all of the friends and/or boyfriends i have systematically erased from my life. and then i thought of my uncle, who also had a rough life, and knew and was affected by dad even when i did not know him (both born and unborn). i knew it could not have been easy for a 50 year old man, with a mentally ill brother who just killed himself, to reach out to a niece he hasn't seen in 20 years. I RESPECTED THAT!! AND IT MADE ME FEEL SO SPECIAL, SO WANTED, instead of the feeling i was used to: abandonment.
anyway, i got off on a tangent there, kinda i guess, one day i will get into reuniting with the rest of my family. and the talk my uncle and i had at our first campfire together. i'll never forget it. it was a campfire i needed since i was ten, and it was the time and place where my uncle updated me on some of the awful but true things that really happened to my father.
anyway, it turns out that my grandfather was a photographer in WW2. that campfire night uncle doug showed me tons of photos that my other grandpa took --- the concentration camps, the destruction of italy, etc. he also took beautiful photos of my other grandma, who died when i was a baby; mysteriously, from falling down the stairs (my family says they both drank, and my other grandpa pushed her --- my dad's side of the family has never said a thing, and i haven't brought it up -- both are now dead, anyway). she was beautiful!!!! and there were some photos of her with my dad as an innocent baby, smiling into the camera with a fist up as if he was trying to say 'rock on.'
all those photos are at dave's right now, i just hope he's decent enough to send it all back.
i want my stuff back - 07.15.02
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