This is an on-going mystery. Well, it is to me. I am still here. I am still in the dark.

I have secrets. I just wish I knew what they are exactly and better yet, what they mean. To me. What does it have to do with me. And why do I carry them around almost as if they are waiting for me to solve them.

I used to think, when I could, that all they were waiting for was for me to gather enough tools to be able to clear the mystery and answer the questions. But I am not sure I know what the questions are exactly. They just feel like unanswered questions, and less like a weight bearing down on me and more like a heavy world I am forced to live in.

I have many clues. I have had them for a very long time. Once I thought that all would be clear one day. But now so many days and years have passed and I still hold the clues in me and I still don't know why. Is it more important to know how it started, why it started, why they are still with me, or what they mean ... or even what am I meant to do with them, if anything. I guess the only one that really matters to me is HOW do I get rid of them ... this band of diasbling ticks .. and would it really make me a happier person?

I sit here on this very hot day, writing these things down, maybe even with the intention of publishing them because I have no choice. I feel I have no choice and that comes to much the same thing. I have no one left to talk to. Friends either don't want to understand (too much hard work), or they cannot. There is a predominance of people these days, and certainly with the circle around me now (me not excluded) where mindless fun and enjoyment is preferable to any deep thinking. God forbid that a friend can still remain a friend if they should come with heavy problems to the group. Once is maybe just barely tolerable but one really is walking on the very insubstantial thin ice of friendship if one dares to repeat the problematic-person act too regularly. Once could question the definition of that kind of 'friendship' but what is the point .. it comes to the same thing ... who can one talk to anymore.

Sure you could try therapists ... if you have the time, money, and most of all ... belief. But really, as I have found, it is all a matter of lengthy and not inexpensive trial and error. And undoubtedly they do help you make the next step or they help you feel better for a while. But for me, the mysterious shameful clues have not diminished with the years and the mystery still remains.

So there leaves only one's own ears (which is already ringing with the endless number of times one has churned this round and round in a sadly over-worked brain) or call in the aid of strangers. Preferably strangers you don't even know exist, don't see their faces, don't hear their voices. With them one does not fall into the trap of living up to or down to the conception one thinks they have of you. One does not fear the rejection that over-revelation can bring.

But of course the reason why I am saying all this is because I am procrastinating. I did not sit down to talk about the rejection of friends nor strangers. I wanted to talk about my mysteries. I wonder if they even have to do with why i feel the way i feel in my life. But then, I have run out of other clues that I grabbed onto in my younger years. Now, all I have are the clues that never left me no matter what I did, tried, who I saw, how much i paid ...

I find this exceedingly hard going so I am going to switch pronouns now.

She was about 5, maybe 4. Maybe even 3. Around that. She was sent away from home. She did not get back together with her family or parents till just before 7. Till this day, she does not know why she was sent away. The aunt and uncle she was sent to live with ... well they are dead and gone now. But even when they were alive and she had a chance to ask her aunt, the aunt not only could not tell her how long the little girl was with them and more importantly, why she was sent away to them. They tell her it was probably not important. But strangely enough, it must have been long enough and important enough for the aunt to regard this girl, despite years later of no communication and contact, as one of her own daughters. Even to the day of her death.

Of course, the little girl, all grown up, could ask her own mother. Who would know better? And relations are so good between them now that there is no longer that standing-anger-tension that marred most of the growing-up years. No. Geniunely the mother does not remember. Suppressed or otherwise is not important. The mother does not remember. Oh she remembers the little girl being sent away but probably only for 3 months, maybe 6. And it must have been some financial need thing .. or something. This is the best that the mother can recall. You can tell if you were to speak to the mother that she is not previcating. No she is searching very hard to find another explanation in her head. But what she says, to herself, are not lies. She really does not remember.

Is it possible for a mother not to remember why she sent her own little girl away ... very probably for more than a year ... but even for 6 months ... and later not remember why she did? Is that possible, excluding the existences of any mind-altering substance to cloud the memories? I don't know but it seems highly unlikely.

Ah but that girl could ask her siblings surely? And she did. No one disputes that she was sent away but no one knows why or for how long precisely. Maybe at the end of the day, the only place where this hidden memory lies is in the girl's own head. But she, like her mother, genuinely cannot remember the details, nor why it happened. Somewhere in her body she feels she knows exactly why it happened but feeling some vague knowing and even the flashes of memory, without collaboration, are not acceptable facts are they. Especially when those flashes of memory are so far out from reality, so full of death and blood and indiscretions. It was a very hot still day too then says those flashes of memory. But memory and reality are not always the same are they?