Deleting Some Posts & Why

I told a few people I would delete some of the posts I made, a few days ago. Then I got upset again. I'm stressed out.

But I started thinking, if all of this is happening just because I don't seem suitable because of my finances, maybe that is all I need to do.

This guy was really encouraging, and said if I got that together, this was the main thing. I don't know why and I can't understand, because I would think TANF would cover me for awhile if my son was back in my care, but everyone seems to be saying the same thing.

It's not like I haven't been trying. Believe me. I have documentation to prove it. But if people are lying about me or distorting things, just because they look at my financial situation, I suppose I could work that out and then try to show how I am independent financially.

I know the state was really trying to get me off of state aid before, and I believed it was retaliation. But maybe the state just doesn't want to spend any more money than they have to and didn't believe I was injured?

I need to find a lawyer too, and while I had concerns, I should have left it at that if I want a lawyer. I think to myself that I'm just trying to defend my position, and I keep running into issues, but everyone says to just do what they tell me to do, no matter what.

I don't know why, because I feel it's important to show I'm not the oddball mother that I'm made out to be. I am creative, and I put my foot in my mouth, but I told Exxon I didn't want to be a spy or save the world, I just wanted a normal life. Again, not that I was directly asked to be a spy, but I kept being handed business cards from the Dept. of State and CIA contracted workers. I don't know what was going on. One thing my lawyer said, is that it wasn't my job to "clean up the town". I know I had concerns about her but maybe some of the legal people in town badmouthed her too, because she takes on things they don't like or wouldn't take themselves. In general, even if she wasn't totally on MY side, she has probably helped some people that needed help.

I went up to the old cabins today, and thought about how Nacho was killed being on one side, and then how this other guy who's a neighbor, was killed in the line of duty, and I don't want that to be me. I met this neighbor who is an ex-sheriff and he said he saw his buddy die and he decided to leave.

I seriously do NOT know why this got out of hand to begin with, but I'm willing to try to understand. Well, I don't think I will ever understand actually, because I guess I got close to information I didn't know very much about or that it was that big of a deal.

I have never been involved in a gang or dated anyone who was, knowingly, but maybe I did. I have no idea. All I know is that a lot of what started happening seemed to be gang-related.

I also checked on something today, at the public defender's office, and I found out someone told me something that wasn't true, that they had a case against them and I was going to try to find out if I could help in anyway, and asked to talk to the PD in charge of her case. It wasn't found. So I don't know if the info just isn't there yet or if she got scared something bad would happen with her if she helped me, so I thought about that. If she was scared enough to tell me all the things that were happening to make up even more additional excuses, maybe she is smarter than I am.

I was raised in a home where no one was ever involved with police, or drugs, or lawyers even. I've never been around any of this, until later in my life and I haven't been able to figure out how to be street smart because I don't have those skills. They do NOT come naturally to me. I don't know how to shut my mouth, because I assume everyone handles it fine. I don't know when not to say something, sometimes, because I wasn't trained or brought up with these kinds of knacks. I think someone in my more further extended family did drugs, but that's all I've known and they lived far away from us. To me, that was "big excitement" because to hear about anyone doing drugs at all was huge. I thought it was exciting enough to hear about my cousin B. smashing one tennis racket after the other at exclusive boarding schools on the East Coast. That was a huge deal to me.

I was also raised with a father who stood up for an overweight woman who was being discriminated against, who even went to court for it. I only heard the good side of this.

I have always thought my Dad was a hero for speaking up about:
1. church embezzlement of funds,
2. discrimination

I thought it was noble and at some point, decided that was IT, hell or high water. But I never heard about the downside.

I never knew or put together how my Dad was made to pay for doing this. Everything always had a happy ending.

I knew, yes, that my Dad and Mom suffered because when my father spoke to someone privately, the pastor, behind closed doors, about what was going on, the pastor turned around and publicly humiliated my parents in front of the entire congregation.

I heard about how the entire town then thought my father was having an affair and doing all these other things he wasn't doing and they were socially ostracized because of slander, after he spoke up about the embezzlement.

But THEN, it always turned around. People found out what was going on and their names were cleared and even though he had to work as a manager at a fast food place, because he couldn't get work anywhere else and was shunned, he got into another job and started climbing ranks...

Until he spoke up again.

There was this woman at Willamette who was fired for being fat. They didn't want a fat receptionist at the front desk. They thought she was frumpy, even though she did an excellent job. My Dad thought she did a great job and she was hilarious besides. So when she filed a discrimination lawsuit she asked my Dad to testify and he agreed, even though he was still working at the same place he would be testifying against.

So he testified and she won the lawsuit. To my knowledge, she won. He had to speak about supervisors, his own supervisors, in order to tell the truth for her, but he did.

I always heard this part. I never thought about the second half of the story until about a week ago, and why it took me this long to figure out I don't know.

They pushed him out. He didn't just testify and get pats on the back. People were PISSED.

I remembered that he would say, way back then, how he wasn't getting any work anymore. He was given something he could do in one hour and then made to sit with nothing more to work on, as an accountant. I still remember, as a younger girl, how my Dad would come home and talk about this a little, with my Mom, but I didn't know what was going on. I realized just recently, he was pushed out. They didn't want to give him work because some people didn't like what he'd said and who he defended, so they wanted to bore him to death.

I'm being buried to death, but my Dad was bored to death.

They just wanted to find a way to get him to quit. They weren't going to fire him, they were going to ask why he wasn't working on anything when they were giving him nothing to work on.

Unfortunately, I am not smart enough or skilled enough, to think of a back up plan. I just think everything will work out and everyone is going to like me more for taking a stand.

My father got his real estate license on the side, at home, and then quit to become a realtor. But I still don't think it was made very easy for him.

So in some ways, I have idolized "whistleblowing" and imagined this is the bravest thing to do and that I will be thanked for it. I didn't get to see the downside to whistleblowing from the right, nor did was I ever raised to understand what having street smarts is about, from the left.

There was a time when I felt my job or responsibility was to just take care of myself and try to be the best person I can be, as an individual. I took a lot, but I thought it was my job to be quiet, and perservere, and I even believed taking the most lowly job was the best way to learn "humility". I had that word, "humility" written on a telephone/address book I had for years. Which is ironic.

I guess I felt, after trying so hard to work on myself, I was ready to take on whistleblowing. But I have been stupid and have probably not known when to say something and when to never say anything at all.

I haven't meant to sound superior, or like I'm the moral taskmaster and that others are worse than me. Maybe some people know this, some don't. Maybe some just thought I was trying to cause problems, when my intentions were good. And then I have all these people telling me about things and I've thought it was my "responsibility" to say something. Over and over and over, and it is maybe a miracle I'm not dead but I don't even realize it.

Other things I've said are maybe wrong or misguided and not even something to be killed over, but just something that pisses people off.

I have seen how this has been working, but I still never believed it, that I was doing anything wrong. I have thought I was doing what we're supposed to strive to do and then I've written out of a defensive mode when I thought I felt attacked.

If someone told me something about someone, I thought it was my "duty" to say something or "report" it. Most of the time it's not even anything to do with me personally, but I just think I'm supposed to say something anyway.

I haven't known if anyone thought I was attacking religion, or a gang, or the country, or what. I still don't know what my biggest offense is. Which is maybe stupid, but I DON'T know. Today this old friend had me read Revelations in Spanish, about "the end times" and I started to wonder, with all the other things that have been going on, and what others have told me about how they quit or changed to keep peace and just work on themselves, I've wondered. The book was given to me and it has two dead fish on the front and then a torah scroll. So of course, I think about religion. I thought about what groups I may have offended, as a group, or people individually.

Even with the things going on that affect my life, yes, I'm not blind, I see these things happening, but for the same reason I still tend to trust strangers, I think it can't be me. I'm not kidding. I am not naive in that I've learned a lot, but I am naive in that I don't understand what I've learned or what to do with it.

I'm not a cop, and I don't want to be a cop, and I'm not a criminal and I don't want to be involved in understanding that either. I have insulted every group there is to insult and thought it wasn't an insult. Most of the time, I truly think in my heart of hearts, that what I'm doing is making me a better person because it's somehow making me stronger or that I'm brave. I have never thought I'm perfect but maybe I thought I was better than others for being willing to "take a stand" which I thought was a right stand to take, no matter what.

I was wrong.