It’s 1:43 a.m. on October 30, 2008.

All hallows eve. Halloween has been one of my favorite holidays my whole life. Maybe I’ll dress up as something and go people watching. I love to see all the different costumes. The kids trick or treating is one of the major things I miss from living in town. I loved watching them. Giving the parents cider and the kids candy.

Mom used to decorate the south wall of our living room in the house on the hill. I loved that house. My childhood home. No paint on the outside walls, but love inside. Halloween, Christmas, the first day of school; those were special days. Making scrapbooks with Cambell kids and vegetables, number flash cards, a toy cow that mooed, a tiny piano. Playhouse downstairs. Johnny Quest on Saturdays. That program scared me so much I felt like monsters were going to come through the basement door. And they did. Human monsters stealing food from our freezer, chasing after a young girl with sexual intent.

Mom was always worried that someone would snatch me up and take me away. Afraid to let me go and visit my father. Who knows maybe I wouldn’t have come back. Might not have been a bad thing. The monsters were already in our house, by invitation. One of Uncle Gene’s strays. I’m not sure what to call the men he would show up with. They never really seemed like his friends. I don’t know. I do know one of them was a sexual predator. I know this because he came after me when I was a very little girl; in our milk barn. The creep’s name was Bill. I remember he had a mustache and very dark hair. Not black hair but very dark. He was white. Younger than Uncle Gene I think. I was small enough that I fit through the hole in the barn wall left by a missing board. I must have been 4 years old. I am not sure how long Uncle Gene and the monster were there. I don’t remember ever seeing that monster again. Uncle Gene never did anything like that to me. Just screamed and yelled, over and over and over and over and over. You never knew what would set him off.

The other monster is dead now. He died in a jeep accident in Turkey. He had gone into the military after high school. I remember that. I was somewhere under 9 years old when he came after me. I crawled under a bunch of mattresses and box springs that were leaning up against a wall in our basement and hid. His name was Hanson. He was the son of one of my mom’s friends. I think he was 8 or 9 years older than I was. I am not sure; maybe older. I am not sure. I remember when he died, not the date but being told that he died a week or so before he was coming home. In a jeep accident. I wonder how many other young girls he went after before he died. I wonder how many that other monster went after. I didn’t tell when I was a child. I just ran and hid.

I wonder why I can’t remember 2nd grade. Its as if the year just disappeared.

Grandma used to make me pretty little dresses for the first day of school. So pretty. Mom made me a sewing box once. I loved it. Sour cream cookies and thunder storms. Granddaddy longlegs and rain. Tiny glass Siamese cats, glass horses, dolls on a shelf. Pillows with fringe. Bandaged legs, and tree fans to swat the flies away. A lion water fountain and the Scottsbluff zoo.

Black and white mechanical rider horse. Bonanza, Gunsmoke, High Chapparel, Combat, Bewitched, Ed Sullivan. Bit’s and pieces of childhood. Mexican music as I was playing by the barn with my troll dolls. I always feel happy when I hear Mexican music. Happy memories of early childhood playing in the warm sun. Safe in the sun. I hid their toys under a board once. Felt guilty about it forever. Felt more at home with Hispanic people than white ever since I was a child. Ironically I am a light skinned white. I had deep red hair, brown eyes, very white skin, and millions of freckles as a child. My hair has darkened, and is now flecked with silver, eyes are still brown, but behind glasses now, way too much fat is hiding my body, still have very freckled arms, although they are darkened somewhat from repeated sunburns over the years.

Have had one skin cancer taken off my face so far.

I have been trying to remember some positive things from my childhood. There was a lot of sh*t, but there were some good things too. Sometimes I wish I had died in that car wreck when I was 14. I woke up so angry in the hospital that I was still here. I didn’t want to be in this body any more. Sometimes I sound like such a whiney sh*t. A whiney tired sh*t.

A whiney tired sh*t that has shut down. Not bathing, buried in food, hiding in the TV, not sleeping for weeks. Actually it has been months since I have slept very well. On the edge of completely flipping out. Flipping back and forth around and around; from angry to a rage, to numb, to so sad, to controllable crying, sit and stare.

Doesn’t really matter whether the tv is on or not. Just sit and stare. Haven’t let myself think about all that insulin in the frig. Best not dwell on it now either.

I remember one Veretekk online meeting where Tom was just livid because some guy he had been working with checked out. He was so pissed that the guy cashed in his chips. I wonder just why he was so pissed. Because he missed the guy, or because he was powerless to stop it from happening. It is a b*tch to be left behind.

People freak out over people punching their own ticket. But you know no one knows what’s going on with that person besides that person. You can’t stop it as an outsider. Yes everyone else is an outsider in this event. Death is a very personal thing.

If I knew for sure that there was peace, internal peace-rest, on the other side if I punched my own ticket. Nothing would keep me here. Nothing.

I know it’s not my time yet. I nearly made it out of here when I had that bowel obstruction. I remember that peace. I crave it now. Total peace, and no it wasn’t the morphine. I had morphine after my last surgery and it didn’t have that effect. Total peace. So wonderful.

I remember that another time. Beautiful darkness; so totally black no light at all. Sinking farther and farther away, then some screaming emt dragging me back to the surface. Dragging me back to the surface light. Dragging me away from no pain, beautiful darkness, and peace to pain and years of physical recovery; and emotional turmoil.

F**king people think they are helping and all they are actually doing is prolonging a prison sentence. Trapped in a decomposing body ensnared in a tornado of emotional pain. Raw jagged pain.

I never knew who that EMT was. That is probably a good thing.

This planet is really beautiful. So much beauty, so much pain.

Life is a journey, walking on a razor's edge, the thin line between life and death
Mary E. Robbins
Robbins Run Ranch
307.788.0202