March 13, 1993
Mae Sot, Thailand
Dear Mom, and Jack,
and Chief Rex with the Luck, Wisconsin Police Department,
and whoever this might concern at the FBI or INTERPOL,
I know I've made a mess of things, and it’s been hard for you.
And you probably have a lot of questions. I’ll do my best here because this is pretty much the end of the line for me.
I was just an ordinary girl. Never been anywhere other than Luck, and Minneapolis. Never done anything too special. Wasn’t great at school, or one of the popular kids who went to parties or made trouble. I was just that weird girl who liked animals but wouldn’t go to FFA, and who knew about Sushi and wore boyish clothes and played guitar in front of Wayne’s Food Plus. The daydreaming quiet girl most people dismissed, or ignored, the misfit, a ghost… Even though I grew up and went to class with the same few kids since kindergarten, in a small town where everybody knew everyone. Except they didn’t. Not really. Not me. Nobody would ever know me there. Even I didn’t know me. It was a perfectly forgettable and obscure place for people to hide.
I followed everyone’s rules. I tried hard to please, and did my best, as student, employee, friend, daughter… To fit whatever. It wasn’t easy being a disappointment. Or invisible. I gave everything I was; yet nothing was ever good enough. I hated my self.
Then I got sick. And when I got my diagnosis almost 3 years ago, really, it was a death sentence. And everyone around me made sure what little time I had left wouldn't be my own. Mom, you wanted to just hand me over, and leave me there. You knew the hell I went through, with treatments and trying different medications, like some kind of Russian roulette or something. I’ll always love you. It’s been in everything I’ve ever done, even this. But forcing me into that treatment, more of that hospital, which I said I couldn’t believe in, couldn’t take?? I begged you! I was only 17, but I wasn’t stupid, and it was MY LIFE. Why couldn't you have gone slower or tried a different doctor or just let it all be? Why weren’t you on my side when it counted most? You said going back to the hospital at the end of that week was for me, but really it was for you.
That's why I tried killing my self. Yeah, you were at work and had no idea about a lot of things. And when that stupid Living Room curtain rod snapped, I went into the garage and soaked my self in gasoline to try again. But I was so upset I forgot the matches, so frustrated and frantic dripping all over the place I couldn't find a lighter or anything, and that just broke me. That was it. All I could do was sit there in the stinking garage, on cold cement, skin and eyes burning like hell, crying. I couldn't stop, for I don't know how long. I cried myself empty I think, until there was a peace, and a feeling, like everything would just keep going its own way anyhow, without me, same as it ever did. And there was a wind whistling through the window frame, or some unseen cracks, one of the loneliest sounds ever, but it started to make me feel a little better. It was calming and something my mind wanted to follow I guess, like a mantra or chanting. I couldn’t stop listening. It had me mesmerized. And then I thought I could hear words in it, you know like seeing things in the clouds? And this same word kept gusting through the cracks. Again and again I heard it, an idea really, that I kept turning over and over in my mind, and it gave me new hope, and I thought maybe it might just really be the voice of God. Finally, He had come to me.
So I’d keep my life. Just 1 or 2 years, but it would be all mine, and wide open. I’d be free, no thanks to you. I’d spend it on things interesting to myself, things nobody would ever believe.And no, I didn’t really want to join some group or clique anyways, or to be like anyone else. I doubted I’d ever be pretty enough, but at least I knew there were more important things to care about. And I thought, you’re the one’s who are dead. You’re all dead to me now. And you deserve it. You had your chances. Its my world now, not yours. And in my heart I was already gone as gone gets gone.
