Never be bullied into silence

I’ve shared many images similar to this on my Facebook page and Twitter along with a 1 liner about how true the image is, but I’ve never written a blog post because I’ve never actually had something that hit as close to home as this particular image does.

When I began writing my book when I was 19 years old on my old Apple //e computer that my ex brother-in-law sold to me (for $750 that I made payments to every week until it was paid off), I wasn’t sure if 1 I could write it or 2 if I should write it. I lost the disk when I had to sell the computer to live. I could only get $75 for it after only a few short years of owning it.

I spent my entire adulthood wanting to write it, but afraid to because if I ever spoke my mind, my family would throw something back in my face, something that is not really that damning to me really. If I said that someone did or said something to me, they would always say that I ran away from home when I was 13 years old and went to studio city. Who cares! They never bring up the reason I decided to run away, that I was following in my own sister’s footsteps. She was gone for 3 days with her boyfriend. I was gone for maybe 2 hours at the most. Who cares about that, but apparently they seem to think that it is such a horrible thing, like they are comparing it to murder.

In 2010 my HIV doctor told me that I probably only had 10 more years to live, I decided that I really wanted to write it and who cares what anyone thinks. I finally published it in February 2012 knowing that if my family ever found out, they would bring up this horrible running away story as if I were this horrible person. My sister had her friend call me names like a drama queen in his “review” of my book. It wasn’t so much a review as much as it was an attack on my character. This coming from a man who has pictures of swastikas in his Facebook photo albums and calls himself a Anti-Zionist. Someone who doesn’t know me, has never met me, has only ever heard stories about me seems to think he knows everything there is to know about me. I’m an onion Baby Jane Hudson. I have so many layers that you don’t even know about. Don’t presume to think you know me.

Anyway, this guy says in his review that I should stop lying to people and change my book from memoir to fiction. You can bully me into silence all you want, but it’s not going to work because my book is my truth. It is how I saw life through my memories and no one can change that. He threatened that I could be sued for slander, which by the way you cannot sue me because you don’t know me and because I changed all the names for “their” protection. It was more for my protection.

I will never be bullied into silence. This is my life and I will speak my truth and there is nothing anyone can do to change that. I don’t care if it means never speaking with my sisters who don’t really speak with me anyway. And frankly, I could give a rats patooty if I never speak with my step father again for the rest of my life. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have a need to write a book.

Oh, he mentions in his “review” that I used Writing Fiction for Dummies to write my book. Well, no I didn’t, but I did buy that book for another purpose. It was always my dream since I was a child to write a book, it just turns out that the book I chose to write about was my life story. I didn’t read that book to help me write my book. I wrote my book without any help, I did that on my own. I wrote it the same way I would tell someone in person. 4 years after I wrote my memoir, I am finally starting to read that book, but I found another series more helpful and I am reading those now. If I still have 6 years to go, I want to write this fiction that I have wanted to write since I was a child and I don’t care what anyone says about it. It’s my dream and I will make that dream come true, just you watch.

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No Apologies

When I began writing my book, it was not with the intentions of hurting anyone’s feelings. I dug deep down into my memories so I could write what happened to me in my life. It brought up so many bad feelings that I had at the time so when I wrote it, my feelings were hurt all over again. Even though I had forgiven people for what they said or did to me, I felt like I had to type the memories out as if I were still living the experience, as if my feelings were still hurt to convey how it made me feel because I didn’t want to sugar coat anything.

It took me years to write my book because I struggled with the consequences of writing it, like someone yelling at me and telling me that they never wanted to talk to me again or whatever, and today that happened. One particular family member emailed me saying I lied and didn’t mention things that I did mention and unfriended me on Facebook. Although my feelings were hurt that I was accused of lying, as always, but at the same time, this person has not been in my life for a very long time. She has chosen to distance herself from me because I don’t speak with other family members who she is closer to. I don’t know if that is the real reason for her distance, but as it is we haven’t spoken in a long time so what difference does it make if she no longer speaks to me now?

Look, I didn’t lie and I didn’t twist the truth in my book. It took me a long time to write it and I had to really pull out all of the memories with 100% accuracy which meant digging deep and rewriting as I could remember what really happened. My memories were twisted because I wasn’t sure of the chronology of the events, but getting down to it made me remember everything. It does hurt to be told that I did things that I never did and that I didn’t do things that I did, but that is what those certain people have been doing to me my whole life.

The person who has cut herself out of my life today has not read my book and that is obvious because she told me that I left things out that I clearly put in there. When she has read all 400 pages of my paper book, or 293 pages of my e-book then we’ll talk, but as far as I am concerned, she doesn’t know what she is talking about.

When I wrote my book I had to really think if this is what I wanted to do. I had to tell myself that once it was published I couldn’t take it back. I had to write something that I would never apologize for writing because I know it was true. The relationship will probably never be repaired, but it has been broken for too many years anyway so it was only a matter of time before it all fell to pieces. It’s too bad that it had to happen and I am not going to blame myself because I didn’t do anything wrong. I was the one who was mentally and physically abused, I was the one who was homeless and I was the one who was molested and raped. I wanted to tell my story so people would see that I was able to fix my life and I made it better.

I am not sorry and nobody can make me feel guilty about writing the truth.