Truth

I wish I had come to come fantastic realization over the months, but like tiny bubbles floating to the surface, too few, too small, too fragile, my own self-reflections and any self-revelations have gone away with the tide.

One single phrase stuck with me:

"...whoever finally told the truth..."

A motif over the year. Truth.

Only the people who have lost their Constitutional Rights realize that they are the most important things in the world. More important than their family. More important than their money. More important than their friends. The greatest generation was not WWII, but the generation that fought the REvolutionary War.

Truth breathes on freedom. People who are frightened lie. If you think powerful people lie, you should think about all the frightened people who are forced to lie. Without the protection of civil rights, we can't breathe or talk or write our own truth.

There are forces, small and large, that want to take the ability away for the average person to deal and struggle with their own truth. These freedoms, as almost the cliche goes, are taken for granted.

If someone moved the chair in your house, from the dining room to the middle of the fucking kitchen, and you checked with your landlord, and he said didn't do it, and you talked to all the neighbors, and they say they didn't see anyone, and what would you do? Call the police? You have a right against unlawful search and seizure. Who's lying to you? Everyone? NO one? What do you do theN? You're afraid now. YOu know someone can get in at night. Think about that.

What if someone did come in at night? In and out.

I forgot what I bought. It was at night. Drove to the grocery store. DRove home. Brought in my purse. I was living with my grandmother at the time. IN Ridgecrest, CA. Left my purse on the couch by the door. Went to bed. Woke up the next morning. Getting ready to go to the usual coffee shop. The debit card was upside down in the wallet.

Since other things in the house had been moved during the day (drawings in the dust, obviously not my grandmother since she denies doing it, etc), this was not surprising to me. But it meant that someone had come in during the night. When I asked my grandmother about it about 2 weeks later, she exploded on me. Very angry. My grandmother would never get into my purse. Ever. She never has. Still, she denies anyone has been in the house at all.

It's easy to write off one lone nut. It's also possible for one nut to be pushed to the point of turning a minor event (or a relatively traumatic one) into a crusade.