the road trip to new jersey

I was getting ready to go in to work on Monday morning. I am usually off on Mondays, but I had to cover for somebody else who was off that day. Around 11:00 or so, my mom called me on the phone. My answering machine picked it up and I heard mom saying that mom-mom was in the hospital, and she was probably going to die. I picked up the phone and talked to her.

It is a confusing story what happened to mom-mom. (Okay, let me say this first, people in different parts of the country call their grandparents different nicknames. When I lived in West Virginia, people called their grandparents 'maw-maw' and 'paw-paw.' There are variations on mama, papa, grandpa, etc. I grew up hearing them called mom-mom and pop-pop.)

Mom had trouble understanding what happened, when Uncle David explained it to her. I also had trouble understanding it when he told me the story. I've discovered that if I feel very confused while listening to somebody telling me a story, it sometimes indicates that they're lying about something. I don't think David is outright lying, but I think he feels guilty about something, like it was his fault. Some of what he said sounded like he feels like he should have known something was wrong, or he feels like he made a mistake.

I'm not blaming David or anybody for what happened. Maybe if I felt more strongly connected to mom-mom I would be, but she and I didn't spend much time together and we were not very close. I am not grieving very badly, but if I were, then I would probably be blaming, and thinking, and worrying, and wishing I had done something, or wondering who screwed up.

That's what I did when my stray cat Alexander died. He died because I didn't take him to the vet immediately when he had a problem. I postponed that decision too long; my hesitation was because I didn't have much money, and I wanted to get out of debt, and I didn't live at Eric's house where Alex was staying (since I can't have cats at my apartment) so I couldn't see just how severely sick he was.

He had an unexplained digestive problem, and started vomiting and could neither eat nor drink for several days. Eric said he seemed to be getting a little bit better. I was relieved to hear that - and then, he died. That was in November 2005. It made me want to get a better job, so that I could easily afford things that cost money, like going to the vet, and so I could afford my own little house, or trailer, or something, where I could take care of animals myself. Moving into a more permanent home is a project on my to-do list. But that's another story.

So anyway I'm more neutral about mom-mom. That's why I'm perhaps less concerned about trying to understand what happened.

On Saturday night, where my grandmother lived, some people in the neighborhood ran around knocking on people's windows, as a prank. It woke her up, and she got out of bed and was walking around in the dark. We couldn't figure out why she didn't turn on the lights. They were guessing that maybe she was scared and didn't want the people outside to know that anybody was in there. (It occurred to the more suspicious side of me that she might not have had electricity.) So, in the dark, she reached down towards a low table, but the table was lower than she expected, so she suddenly fell. Supposedly she fell on her backside but also hit her head on the corner of the piano. The idea of hitting your head on the piano makes me want to laugh. I've had stupid accidents before and laughed at myself. I think it's partly just because a piano is a very specific piece of furniture - it's not merely a couch or a table, it's a piano. In cartoons, large heavy objects like anvils or pianos fall out of the sky and squash somebody. Most people feel guilty or uncomfortable for laughing at something, if somebody died. That's how I feel.

(They just now said 'next time, you'll go to the beach BEFORE visiting your grandmother.')

It just occurred to me something - I am not happy about this memory. I remembered that when I talked to Nerdman in the chatroom, an incident occurred - I won't go into much detail now - but he pretended that a piano fell on me and I died. I wasn't comfortable with that idea - it went into the 'bad vibes' category of things that were making me angry at him, making me not sure whether I really liked him or not. Because of that incident, and because of a couple other things - either it was a 'hunch,' or else somebody was in my mind, suggesting that I research this - I ended up reading some books by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, about the psychology of serial killers. I started researching dark, frightening sexual fetishes and fantasies. It wasn't because I myself was interested in them. This is one of the first things that I was 'led' to do, as the hacking-and-mind-control phenomena first began and/or became much more noticeable and overt.

Well, anyway. After mom-mom fell, she was okay for a while. I think she talked on the phone to a friend or neighbor in the middle of the night Saturday-Sunday, and told her what had happened. Then, on Sunday morning, they usually went to church, and - I'm not sure whether she went to church, or whether she decided not to go. She was in pain from having fallen, but she said it was her legs and rear end that hurt badly. David said she didn't say her head was hurting, if I understand correctly. I'm not sure. But they at least spoke to her on Sunday morning, because of church. She was still talking normally.

This is where David feels guilty. He thinks he should have checked on her sooner, or suspected something was wrong, on Sunday. All of Sunday went by, and then on Monday morning, David went to the house and found her, and there was a problem. He said she would have usually called off work, or something, if she hadn't been feeling well - I think she just didn't call, and he went to check on her. (They worked in the same office.) That's my understanding of it. When he tells the story, it's confusing, and I think he just doesn't understand how she could have gotten in such bad shape so quickly, when she had been talking normally the day before, and nobody really knew that anything was wrong with her head.

He found her sitting halfway off the edge of the bed, holding the phone in her hand. He spoke to her and she made a noise, like 'uh-huh,' but didn't say anything else. She wasn't moving, and wasn't talking. Let me note here that she was in her late eighties, but I forget just how old she was. She was also using blood-thinning medications. They think that maybe her brain started bleeding when she hit it, and it didn't stop, because of the drugs.

During the discussions, they theorized that she probably was thinking, she had a really bad headache, but it's no big deal, because OF COURSE she'd have a headache - she had just hit her head really hard. She would have minimized the seriousness of it and told herself it was no big deal. They said that's why she didn't call for help right away or go to the hospital immediately. I can understand that.

So when David found her, he took her to the hospital. They gave her some kind of drug for pain. I don't know why they gave her any painkillers. I'm not sure that was necessary. They also gave her a breathing tube. But it's my understanding that she was still breathing when David found her, so I don't know any reason why she would need a breathing tube. I don't like a lot of drugs, and I'm suspicious of the painkillers - there are certain kinds of painkillers and sedatives that can CAUSE you to stop breathing. For instance, if the mother gets a shot of a certain kind of painkiller during childbirth, the baby is likely to have trouble breathing on its own. So I'm not sure what their rationale was for all that.

Well, that's what happened to her. And then I got that phone call from mom.

I told mom: thanks for telling me what happened, keep me updated, and I'm going to work today. After I hung up the phone, I started getting ready for work.

This is where I started interacting with 'them.' The relationship with 'my voices' has changed in the past few months, due to a series of events that I haven't completely described yet in the blog. I've perceived them as more positive, more friend-like, and less like harmful attackers - I jokingly call them 'imaginary friends.' However, they still cause a lot of disruption, and it is still my belief that there should not be voices there at all, and that it's caused by human activities rather than (for instance) guiding spirits or psychic phenomena. It's just that the humans involved have been more tolerable, palatable, compatible, or friendly, or benign, or something, than they were before. It's hard to explain that, because I don't want anyone to think it's okay or excusable. It isn't. However, people can do something that I don't want them to do, but they can be less abusive about it, and more likeable. This is similar to monarchies, where you can have a king that everybody hates, for a really long time, and then it changes to a more benign monarchy, where it's still a government and it's still bad, but it's less bad than the previous one. I'm kind of in a situation like that. (It's not analogous to a 'monarchy,' though, because it's actually several groups of various people.)

So, one of the things that they've been 'more friendly' about is that they encourage me to take more road trips. This is rather inconvenient, considering the price of gasoline. However, it's something I always enjoyed doing, and I have spent several years locked in my apartment, doing nothing fun at all, and road trips are an adventure for me - it makes me feel young again. I've been storm-chasing, for instance. There have been some problems with getting me severely lost and confused - much more lost than I normally would be - because of conflicts with 'the voices' over which direction I should go - and I've spent large amounts of time going in circles on some of those road trips. I've gotten much more severely lost and confused than I ever did before. But if you get lost, you go unexpected routes, down smaller unfamiliar roads, instead of just the large, familiar main roads. And just going out someplace is fun. It's something I didn't do enough when I was younger. My friends in college didn't do spontaneous road trips. But anyway, the new groups of people are encouraging me to be who I am and do what I do, but even more of it. They're not telling me to be the opposite of who I am, or do unnatural things that I don't want to do. In other words, they resemble real-life friends.

Well, after the phone call, they pointed out to me that I probably didn't really want to go to work today. Don't you know that if your grandmother is in the hospital, probably going to die, this is considered a legitimate excuse to call off work? For me, calling off work is inconceivable - I've lost too many jobs due to chronic, unexplained illnesses, over the years - I've called off work due to chronic fatigue, and an unexplained digestive problem that lasted for several months, and I've called off because of just being more vulnerable to miscellaneous trivial illnesses than most people. I've had problems over the years with the herbal drugs, when I didn't understand their side effects, and I was sometimes calling off work because I was so tired after using St. John's Wort, which is why I use it very rarely and only at very small doses, nowadays. I've had miscellaneous bizarre disasters, year after year, many of which led to calling off work. So I'm very reluctant to call off work - it makes me fear that I'll lose my job.

I like to be able to do something, take action. There wasn't anything I could do to actually help mom-mom. However, there was a chance that I could see her before she died. I called off work. Then I took a walk and thought about it. Both my mom and my Uncle David said, don't bother driving up to see her, because we think she is going to die very soon and it won't be worth the trip. Actually, if I recall, mom told me that she was going to be cremated. So my idea was that at least I would see her body while it was still whole. I don't like it if people, or animals, disappear and I never get to see the body. One of the stray cats, Lynx, disappeared and I never found out what happened to him. There was no body - he just went away. So if you see someone's body after they die, it helps you understand that they really are dead, and it's real, and less confusing. It's bad if people disappear and you never have any idea where they went or what happened. Anyway, that's part of my reasoning. I wasn't urgently rushing to catch her before the instant of her death. It was simply that I wanted to see and touch her body, verify that she really existed and that she really had died, and then it would be settled in my mind.

This is slightly relevant - it has to do with the strange things going on in the past couple months. When Alexander 'bonded' with me, and the other cats as well, they became like my children. People always talk about how animals look up at you with their eyes a certain way, and that's what makes them cute. There are cartoons portraying this expression - in high school I remember we called it 'puppy eyes.' If you saw the Puss in Boots, for instance, he switched between being this fierce, sword-wielding fighter, versus a cute, cuddly kitty cat with big eyes - I think that was on the Shrek movies. I still remember how Alexander looked up at me and made that exact facial expression, with his eyes full of total devotion and trust.

During the past few months, several different people did that same facial expression to me - they were all attractive young men - and several people also used very specific seduction tactics, not just one person, but multiple people over a few weeks. (It's possible that some of them didn't know what was going on. From what I hear, at least one of them is very distressed because of some of the things that have happened - not just 'distressed' but suffering very badly. I take this seriously. The whole thing is a complicated situation with a lot of conflicts in it that have not yet been resolved.) This was unusual because, since my early twenties, I've been only dating much older men, men in their late thirties and early forties, exclusively, and I avoided men my own age, or younger. This was all connected with the seduction phenomena, new voices, mind control, an unknown drug that I think somebody gave me, and their decision that I would start blogging about the mental/physical experiences I have been having for the past few years. The result is that I am not so totally, completely isolated from all of humanity, as I was before. But it is painful in some ways, because I bonded with several people who were not really accessible, people who left, or people who became unable to communicate for unknown reasons, and so we weren't able to actually form solid relationships.

I have had trouble using the word 'love' to describe my feelings, partly because of a guy I dated in high school, who doubted me and interrogated me and questioned me every time I tried to tell him I loved him. He was so suspicious of the word 'love' that I became suspicious of it too, and I can't even define what that word means. I avoid using that word in a casual way. So I've always been curious about alternative words for love and the different types and levels of it. There are some greek words that are useful but I can't remember them and I always have to look them up. I tend to call guys 'friends' or an 'infatuation' if I'm attracted to somebody. The new word I learned was 'cathexis,' which just means a kind of curiosity and attraction, which might or might not lead to a solid relationship. Cathexis is what you experience if you are attracted to someone you don't know very well. I'll have to look up the word again to make sure that's the right definition.

Well, back to my grandmother.

I did agree to make a trip to go find her. However, mom told me that David said NOT to go there. She didn't even tell me what hospital she was in. I hadn't spoken to David in YEARS, and so I didn't have his number and couldn't call him. I tried looking up some phone numbers but there were too many hospitals and I had no idea. It would take too long and be too difficult. I decided to just drive up there spontaneously. Then I might or might not find the hospital, perhaps with help, if I brought my cell phone and talked to my mom or David. The idea was that I would just 'go to the last place where she had been.' I would just go to the general area, as a goodbye to her.

While I was taking my walk, making this decision, the voices told me that she had already died. My reply was that I did not have that information, therefore I might as well make the trip. There are certain types of information that you cannot just accept when you are told by somebody, especially if you're being told by voices you hear inside your head. You have to verify it for yourself. Sometimes they tell you the right thing and sometimes they tell you the wrong thing. Besides, it didn't matter, because I just wanted to see and touch her physical body before she was cremated - that was the purpose of going up there.

So without knowing the hospital, without even knowing which city I had to go to, I got into the car with only a few small things, like a toothbrush and toothpaste, and my comb, and my cell phone and its charger. Then I made a day trip of it - it was an adventure. It was hopeless from the beginning - I was resigned that she was either already dead, would die as I was driving up, or was inevitably going to die and there was nothing I could do to help.

During the trip, I actually did not think about my grandmother very much. I don't have a lot of memories of her. When we moved to West Virginia, we stopped going on as many vacations to the beach, or scuba diving, or to my grandmother's house. So I was with her when I was very young, but not much as I got older. I know the Myers-Briggs system and I would classify her as possibly an ESTJ, or maybe ESFJ, or something. When I was young, I didn't know how to explain it, but after reading about personality types, I would say that she just wasn't really my type and we didn't understand each other very well, so we weren't very close. There was an incident one time where she told me I wasn't allowed to go outside barefoot, for instance. I always ran around barefoot - it was no big deal. But she was at our house in WV, taking care of me and my brother, because my parents had to go someplace, so she could tell me I wasn't allowed to go outside barefoot. Most of my memories of my grandmother are kind of like that. She was a protective person.

Well, one of the things we did when we went to New Jersey was go to the beach and the Wildwood boardwalk. I associated that with going to visit my grandmother. I'm not sure exactly WHEN I decided it, but I decided to make this a similar kind of vacation trip. ('Deciding something' versus 'agreeing with the voices whenever they suggest something for you' are very similar - there's a lot of overlap - if you have 'compatible voices' telling you to do things you already would have wanted to do anyway.)

As I drove across Pennsylvania, I looked at the long mountains separated by valleys and I thought that the mountains really were a good place to hide a group of people living out in the woods without government paperwork. That's what I've been thinking about a lot lately. I've wondered what would be necessary to have unregistered children, and to raise them in a community with a strong enough marketplace of its own, or some kind of cooperation, barter, or sharing, in some way, so that you could really be anarchists - not connected to the government at all.

I stopped to eat at a pizza place. A young guy and girl walked in, as though they were going on a date together. The guy looked 'mainstream,' but the woman was dressed in religious clothing, similar to Amish or Mennonite. They don't all dress exactly the same, as they have different small groups and sects. I saw her face, and she was far more beautiful than any normal woman. Her eyebrows were natural and not plucked. She looked physically very healthy. Many fundamentalist religions require the women to grow their hair without cutting it, and to not remove any hair at all, including eyebrows. The American habit of plucking eyebrows makes people look old, unnatural, unhealthy, and clownish, and just ugly. There are diseases that cause you to lose your eyebrow hair - some kind of thyroid problem, I forget what, and also things like chemotherapy. Many women pluck away so much of their eyebrows that they look like they're very sick and their hair is falling out. But thick, unplucked eyebrows make people look young and healthy. I have been paying attention to hairstyles a lot over the last few months, and the reason for it is because of the 'seduction' phenomena that occurred. I was always interested in that subject but I didn't bother talking about it or writing about it, since it seemed unfair to tell people that they 'had to' or 'should' wear their hair a particular way instead of some other way. I didn't want to tell anybody what I liked or disliked because that was a way of judging people, which immediately makes large numbers of people feel that they have been negatively judged or unfairly left out, so I just didn't say anything to anybody.

It's not just how they groom their hair, it's also probably how they eat, how they raise their kids, and how they practice medicine. The fundamentalist religions are giving birth at home instead of in hospitals. They breastfeed their kids instead of giving them formula. They're more likely to eat food that they grew themselves in a garden nearby, although they also shop at grocery stores too. But they have more family meals instead of casual meals, so they eat more healthy foods. They tend to avoid doctors and hospitals, and use more herbal medicine and alternative techniques. And they have their own schools.

This kind of thing makes me interested in religious communities, and how the concept can be adapted for an atheist like myself, so that it works with all of my other beliefs, philosophies, and ideologies. And that's why I am interested in how to rationalize an arbitrary personal preference for certain kinds of grooming and hairstyles, without just saying 'we do this because the bible says to do it.' In my community, the last thing that you fall back on is, 'well, we do this because the founders of the community wanted us to do it this way.' At least that's an honest, truthful statement of fact. You can choose how to respond to it, whether you do all the things that the founders wanted, or whether you do something else. At least there won't be a 'fear of God' element in it, or a 'fear of eternal damnation.' You might fear humans, but that's different from fearing something supernatural.

While I was at the pizza place, my mom called me. I called her back and she told me what hospital to go to. She suggested that I should just go back home instead of making the trip. But I was going.

I'll skip to Philadelphia. The next part was just a lot of driving. It was a beautiful day. I got close to Philadelphia and started to feel like I needed to go to sleep. It got worse and worse. It actually felt like a radio frequency phenomenon instead of just normal tiredness. But regardless of the cause, I had to pull over and take a nap.

I forgot to mention something. I was talking with the voices about my resignation about my grandmother's death. Some of them were very anxious that I should be in haste to get there before she died, but I wasn't accepting that. They are always testing me to find out how I feel about things or respond to problems. Mom gave me David's phone number, or maybe she actually gave my number to David - I forget. I hadn't talked with him in years. I spoke to David on the phone and I told him that he should just do whatever he had meant to do anyway, and not wait for me. I told him it was okay if she died before I got there. He was going to take out the breathing tube, so I told him to go ahead and do that, without waiting.

After that, I got the 'radio sleep' sensation and had to pull over. I called David and told him that I couldn't drive anymore, and had to take a nap, and it was important because I was starting to fall asleep at the wheel. I couldn't help it, but I was going to be delayed, for my own safety. I told him it was okay, whatever happened.

While resting, or maybe it was sometime before that, they gave me a so-called 'vision.' I burped, and it was uncomfortable, and they said 'the last time I burped like that, I threw up.' Then, for a long time afterwards, I felt a very uncomfortable sensation in my throat. They were imitating the sensation of the breathing tube, making me feel the same sensation that my grandmother had in her throat. I was fighting not to throw up. It was very unpleasant. That was what I understood, while I was resting and napping. If you nap when you're forced asleep, it's never a very restful sleep, and they make you have dreams and interact with voices instead of just resting alone. Then they zap you awake a short time later.

So I woke up and started driving again. I got a call from David, and he told me that mom-mom was breathing on her own. The doctors told him that she was going to stop breathing when they took out the tube. I'm fighting against an artificial emotion, which makes me angry. They keep forcing this artificial 'supernatural awe' feeling upon the whole situation, and it is clearly unnatural and forced. I don't like fake feelings. They overlaid this 'supernatural awe' upon the fact that she continued breathing even after the tube was removed. That fake feeling has been influencing the way everybody talks about and interprets what happened - including me. I myself have spread the 'miracle' version of the story because I haven't had enough time to explain or communicate any other version, and because my family doesn't understand the psychotronic interpretation.

Medical miracles are often overlaid with this same fake supernatural awe. When people stand up after having been in a wheelchair, it's a miracle - but they forget to mention that there are sometimes unnecessary reasons why they were in a wheelchair to begin with, or 'irrational pessimism,' which is when you assume that things will be FAR WORSE than they actually are in reality. People make fun of irrational optimism, but irrational pessimism is just as bad. Lots of people are told 'you'll never walk again,' but in reality, they have pretty good chances, if only they escaped from the hospital prisons and the pessimism and the mainstream medicine system.

Not only that, but the psychotronic technologies, which are still taboo, are able to artificially do things that affect and control people's minds and bodies. I think that mom-mom might have been breathing artificially because somebody was triggering her to breathe. Some of the stories I read on the Eastern Lightning cult testimonials were 'medical miracles' that can be done using human technologies.

There was a news article a little while ago about a person who was in a coma for a couple decades, and this person suddenly woke up and started living again. That kind of thing can probably be triggered using today's technologies.

I get sick of fighting against people who are trying to fool me all of the time. The fake feelings of supernatural awe are particularly annoying and offensive.

Anyway, while driving, they asked me about my resignation about her death. Just how resigned was I? Is that resignation real and sincere? Is it a genuine acceptance that this is something I have no control over? We thought of a worst-case scenario. I talked about this with the voices BEFORE IT HAPPENED. The worst-case scenario was, if you get there, and she dies only an instant before you reach her body. One of their favorite phrases to use, recently, has been 'All right, I'll do what I'm told.' They pretend that I commanded them to do something, when in fact, they came up with the idea themselves, and I would never command anybody to do that particular thing. They pretended that I was the one who commanded them to keep her breathing until the very last instant when I entered the hospital. The trigger phrase, which they forced me to speak out loud, to the guy at the desk, was 'Thank you for your patience.' I said that to the guy, and felt like it didn't make sense for me to say that to the guy at the hospital desk. The hospital desk guy wasn't waiting for me, wasn't being patient with me for any reason, didn't know who I was, wasn't necessarily expecting me or anticipating my arrival, and yet I said out loud to him, 'Thank you for your patience.'

I had just gotten a cell phone call from David, when I got in the lobby. He told me to hurry because she was having a problem. But I didn't know where the room was and I wasn't signed in. Again, I find the whole situation annoying. It is not natural for me to be panicking and rushing whenever there's absolutely no action that can be taken and nothing that needs to be done. I don't have any specific medical knowledge that could have reawakened mom-mom, brought her back to life, and made her speak again.

On the phone, David said something out loud, along the lines of 'It's Nicole - she's here, she's in the lobby.' They think mom-mom overheard David saying that. Their interpretation is that mom-mom was holding on to life a little bit longer because they kept telling her that I was driving to Philadelphia to see her. Supposedly she wanted to know that I had arrived safely and there was no further need to worry about me. That is the official interpretation of the events that occurred.

When I finally got to the room, David hugged me. He said, 'She just died.' I said, 'Are you serious?' several times. He told me she had just died right that moment. He took me to her, and I laid my head down on her and said, 'thank you for waiting.' I was crying and a few other people were crying. I didn't cry extremely badly or uncontrollably. I cried moderately and then gradually stopped crying. I hugged David and then it was quiet for a while, and then people started talking. After a bit, I called mom and told her mom-mom had died. She told me to tell mom-mom that she loved her. For some reason, I didn't remember to go tell her that. I remembered it much later, when I was driving away in my car, and I said it out loud in the car.

I had already noticed, when I was a little kid, that every time I went to church, I felt like I was 'only pretending.' Pretending to worship God, pretending to play along, felt so unreal and so insincere that I decided I was an atheist (or at least a questioner) at a very young age. My brother felt the same way. I had that feeling whenever I was supposed to interact with her after she had died. It didn't seem any use to tell her something when she was dead. I occasionally fantasized or pretended to pray or talk to spirits, but if you came out and asked me, directly, whether this was real or not, I would say it isn't the same as concrete reality, and that it was partially pretending.

(However, let me note this: that when Alexander died, since I was very close to him and he was like a child to me, I did, in fact, keep trying to talk to him after he was dead, and I kept petting him, and cried very, very, very hard for a long time, and thought about him for weeks. It really depends a lot on how close you are to somebody. If someone is a distant relative who you don't see very often, then it IS going to feel rather artificial or numb or pretend.)

However, as I just described, the events had already been 'talked about' in advance as I was driving in my car, with the voices, before it happened, and it occurred exactly as described. It was designed to be a worst-case scenario of frustration, of just barely missing an opportunity - it was supposed to be 'dramatic,' the kind of thing that would happen in a movie or a book - something emotionally intense. This is why I feel such disgust and cynicism towards the people who create these unnatural phenomena. Oh, how dramatic! We have everybody fooled! Let's pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves that we're making life interesting - like a book! Everyone's lives are more religious, because of us!

The purpose was to make it so obvious to me, to make me feel so disgusted about it, that I would tell the story of what happened from my point of view and warn more people that religious, psychic, supernatural phenomena are actually manmade, including the physical, emotional sensations of supernatural awe.

I AM angry about it. I wouldn't have wanted any outsiders involved in it. Perhaps they made the kids go knocking on people's windows. Perhaps they knocked out the electricity for a few minutes so she couldn't find the light. And then, even if those things really were an accident, she might have either died on her own, or reawakened and been paralyzed, or something - but chances are, it wouldn't have been the 'dramatic incident' that they staged, in advance, while talking to me in the car. Basically there shouldn't have been any outside involvement in her death at all, whether to cause it or to prevent it, or to delay it until a particular moment. The only people entitled to take actions, in that situation, are the real-world people who were directly associated with her, like family members, and the doctors.

David said on the phone that only God knew what was going to happen. I'm guessing that he, and others, were praying that mom-mom would stay alive until I got there. 'God' is a psychotronic system operated by malicious people. Their 'sense of humor' makes them take things literally, like a genie in a bottle - 'Oh? Until she gets here? Fine then, she'll drop dead at the very instant Nicole enters the building. As you wish.' Like the genie in the bottle, they find a loophole that lets them do as they're told, but not in the same sense, not in the same spirit that it was meant. They obey the law to the letter, but violate the spirit. If anybody prayed that mom-mom would stay alive until I got there, they MEANT that she would continue to remain alive while I was there, for a few minutes, with a little leeway. It's like 'less than or equal to.' It includes the last point on the line.

A few minutes ago, they, the voices, were making fun of me and calling me a liar, for not admitting to being sad. I'm not sure if that's directed at me or someone else, perhaps David, who had to be 'strong' and hold everybody else up. Or if it's directed at me, that I'm not admitting that I need people and that I need family. I don't know.

My grandmother's death made me think about what is a community, again. In the Amish communities, people still live near their parents and grandparents, and interact with them. There are benefits and drawbacks to this, and I've been thinking about that. Both the benefits and drawbacks are very real and I'm taking them seriously. The drawback is that you don't feel as independent, and you can get stuck with people who have contempt for you, or view you as a little kid, or have no respect for you, for your whole life. You don't necessarily like the people in your family, so a lot of people don't WANT to really be involved with their families forever. It can make you feel trapped and undeveloped, like you never achieved your potential.

However, there is something nice about knowing that you are loved and protected, all your life, and that you are surrounded by people who care about you, instead of just living in an isolated apartment, not knowing anyone, in a hostile city or town, surrounded by people you don't know and have never spoken to, who don't care whether you live or die, and wouldn't even KNOW if you had an accident while walking around your house in the dark.

One of the issues they were talking about recently was the concept of 'fake feelings.' When I see people acting sad or hurt, I take it as the truth. Even if you sort of pretend it, or partially fake it, it's often based on a real feeling. You don't have to actually have tears coming out of your eyes - the crying is still real. There are some situations where people really do totally fake emotions for a conscious, deliberate reason. But most of the time, in the ordinary world, that doesn't happen much. I just assume that everybody's feelings are real. I am hardly ever in any situations where something so dangerous or manipulative is going on that anybody would NEED to act out totally fake feelings. I assume that fake feelings are a rare exception, not a normal event.

It happens sometimes when people cry, they feel fake about it. The crying is real, and it's perfectly legitimate, and they're entitled to cry, but they feel like a liar. I read something in Nathaniel Branden's book, once, where he mentioned that sometimes, a child starts crying, or expresses an emotion, and the parents accuse them of faking. They'll say 'stop fooling around!' or 'stop pretending!' or they'll just blatantly call the child a liar. He said it's really harmful to do that to kids. You should always assume that children's feelings are the truth, even if you yourself don't share the exact same feeling at the same time, or you disagree with them, or you don't really understand why they feel that way.

I missed my family when we moved away from Pennsylvania. I loved West Virginia, but it was very painful to move, and we never got to visit the family anymore. So in that way, a long time ago, I already 'lost' my grandmother. She was already gone from my life. The sadness was a long-lasting overall feeling, instead of a sudden, acute, immediate feeling all at once upon the moment of her death.

After she died, I went to Uncle David's house and spent the night. The next morning I got up and ate breakfast with him and his friend Sam. I left pretty early, for I had decided that I was going to the beach.

I had been awakened artificially at 7:00 AM, and so was my uncle. He didn't understand why he had awakened so early, and he thought it was because he was grieving. When I woke up, the voices were talking to me, as always. They said I was the only person who had noticed the 'camouflaged' guy. The camouflaged guy was the guy at the hospital desk. He was 'camouflaged' because originally, I had tried to go in through the wrong door, and the desk guy was sitting behind a bar or post in such a way that I couldn't see him from where I was standing, and he was gesturing that I had to go in through the other door, but I missed it. So I went to the next building and asked them to help open the door for me. Then I went back and walked through the right door, and he told me that he had been gesturing but I couldn't see him. After that I went upstairs. He was camouflaged again as we were all leaving the building, because we were a whole group of people walking out the door, and nobody spoke to the invisible guy at the desk, but I waved at him and said 'goodnight' or 'thanks' or something like that.

They asked me if 'camouflaged' meant he was a hunter, or if he was in the military. I assumed they meant it as a joke because at first I didn't see the desk guy, and then nobody else saw him either as we were on our way out. Then they asked me if I had noticed anything about another guy there, in the group with my family, whether he was robotlike and military-like. I didn't know anyone, I hadn't seen them in many years, and had to be introduced again. I didn't know a lot of the cousins and spouses and girlfriends that were there. They said the one guy was the obedient type of person, and they used the phrase, 'all right, I'll do what I'm told,' and then showed him pretending to cry because he was supposed to cry. I hadn't paid much attention to anybody, not enough to get many detailed impressions.

So that's what they talked to me about whenever they woke me up at 7:00 AM.

Going to the beach was one of those family vacations that we stopped doing when we moved to West Virginia. So I decided that I would do that while I was in New Jersey. I didn't care what beach, but I considered going to Cape May. But that was a somewhat longer distance. So I decided to just go straight east, directly to the ocean.

It turned out that that was the way to Six Flags. I had to go to the bathroom, because I was drinking lots of coffee. It's funny, the voices were joking that I should tell people I 'accidentally' went to Six Flags after my grandmother died. However, I spoiled that joke, because actually what happened was, I did, in fact, get off at that exit and went to the bathroom, and then I got back on the highway and started driving again, avoiding Six Flags. I decided I didn't want to go there. They started complaining to me and frowning and they said 'i've never been to six flags.' So I finally turned around at the next exit and went back. I had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to go have fun - that's how I described it.

I wondered what it would be like to go to Six Flags with my grandmother. She wasn't a roller coaster kind of person. I don't know if she would have ridden them when she was younger. But certainly not when she was older. So if we had been together, I would have ridden the very quiet, tame rides. I've played a game called Roller Coaster Tycoon, and they have ratings for the intensity levels of various rides. It would have been the train rides and merry-go-rounds and that kind of thing. But I am a fairly hardcore roller coaster rider, although I still have some limits about what I won't do. There was one thing that I saw, and the little dialogue box would have said, 'Roller Coaster 1 looks too intense for me.' It looked like a - I forget what it's called, but it pushes you up with a blast of air, and you go directly over the top of a hill crest and down again, in free fall. I didn't go on that one. Maybe someday.

Of course, I didn't end up riding the easy stuff. I went on the coasters. My first one was Medusa. I've been to Six Flags before, so I knew Medusa was one of the best.

There's a way to get into the coasters, if you arrange to get permission ahead of time, where you're allowed to walk up through the exit lines instead of the entrance. I forget how you do it. It's for people who go there frequently. Some tatooed guy got in that way and sat next to me on Medusa. He was cool. He said, 'Yeah, that was pretty good,' in an understated way, at the end.

People-watching was my other entertainment at the park. For the past few months they've had me looking at people when I'm at work. I usually ignored people and avoided looking, but they (once again) dragged me kicking and screaming back into the world of human beings. There's a rumor going around that yes, I am human. It's true. So they started sending various people to get my attention, and asking me whether I found them attractive. That's why there's been so much focus on physical appearance, grooming, obeying or breaking the mainstream rules, etc. They wanted to know what kind of men are attractive, to a woman like me, whatever type of person I am.

Well, if you go to an amusement park, that's a great place to see hundreds and hundreds of angelically beautiful young guys well below the - wait, what's the age in Pennsylvania? I forget what the age is. They were in their early and mid teens. Those were the people who I had been ignoring for many, many, many years, by simply not looking at them, and not admitting that I liked them. It's a great place to see lots of healthy, attractive young people out having fun. The recent, amazing discovery of the past few months, the big secret, is that yes, I'm human, and I feel the same way that everyone else feels about attractive young people. It really was strange, since I've been with several late-thirties/early-forties men for about a decade now. This was a paradigm shift, sort of like, 'Wow, I forgot they even existed.'

I don't have much more time to write, and I haven't talked about the beach yet or the trip home. So I'll cut this off for now. I rode more coasters but none were as good as Medusa. I rode Nitro, and believe me, if you have ANYTHING that's not tied down, you will lose it on Nitro. It rips the coins out of your pockets. When I rode it several years ago, with Eric, we saw this surreal image of anti-gravity coins floating slowly through the air as we passed and left them behind. I didn't see any floating coins this time, but it took some guy's hat. There is this one particular hill that takes everything from you. It took something from Eric, too - I think it was his wallet. He had to get somebody to go hunt it down for him. Maybe it was his glasses, I forget. So wear pockets with zippers.

I have to go get ready for work. I'll tell about the beach, when I can. It involved me getting horribly lost and going in circles again and again while trying to leave. 'They' made fun of me while that was happening and told me I wasn't a good leader and they were losing patience with me. I got lost near Philadelphia too. But mostly, the beach experience was very pleasant. I'll go back again.

time to go...