(Originally written on December 8, 2008)

This is an image I "saw" in my mind's eye in Fall '07, deep in the throes of Medication Spellbinding, finally coming to terms with the fact that what my family did to me was wrong. I can't find the place i recorded it in my journal, so i can't quote, but this is what I saw:

Imagine a minnow, or any small fish you like, swimming around in a sealed jar. Imagine the jar is so full that there's no room for a single air bubble: there is the fish and water, water and the fish. This is impossible, of course, but imagine.
Imagine that the jar is unbreakable, pressurized, rotating slowly, and floating in outer space, light years from the nearest atom.
I am the fish. The jar is pain, and the water that fills the jar is pain.

That was one year and a lifetime ago... I was the fish then, but I'm not the fish now.

I have to go to bed now, but I had to put that down first. It's important-- though I don't know why. I know that it's what you have to know before I start, though I don't know why that is either. You have to know before I write about anyone specifically...
And next, I have to write about my father.