Corinne's Blog

I feel that one of the hardest things for a person to deal with is death. We all have to come to a point in our lives where we accept that the time we have here doesn’t last forever…but when I hear about murders committed I feel that their has been a great light in the world that has been snuffed out like a candle too soon to really light the dim areas.

My little brother Eric is mourning the death of his friend Walter Lee Dolley. Walter was shot the other day randomly as he walked home from the store. I went to the same High School as Walter and I’d seen him around but I’d never really known him. I had no clue that my brother had been friends with him until I began to see the pain and torment that this death has put him through. I think this is my little brother Eric’s first experience with death and I wish I could make it his last. It hurts to see my little brother who acts so tough and independent weeping at the sight of a picture of the young man.

I believe that heaven is a place that welcomes all.

So, Walter Lee Dolley may you rest in the peace and warmth of God’s embrace forever.

Walter Lee Dolley

This is me simply talking about events in my life…as I sit outside the emergency Center at the Hennepin County Medical Center…waiting.

The hospital

The first thing I’d like to discuss is a conversation I had with my Pastor Matt Johnson. I had asked Matt if tomorrow I could testify in front of my church congregation. Technically it isn’t my congregation because I am not a member…but I have found a family among the members these last few years. Matt and I talked about why I wanted to testify and what is important when thinking about God and a testimony. Many people want to just talk about how God has blessed them but they fail to mention that struggles they are still going to God about. For example: I was blessed with a new job…but I’d like prayer because -I am making less than Minimum wage at my job -I am unhappy not being able to start school like everyone else I know. -I am having trouble communicating with people I love because of my lack of a cellphone, the internet. -how it is hard to be on my own and independent when I only really have my mother and Craig to talk to no consistant friends.

Another event that has happened in my life was my choice to wait to go to Scotland for a couple of months. Putting Scotland off till after the holidays will allow Craig a time to meet and get to know my mother so my mother will trust him to be my main emergency contact if anything happens to me while I’m overseas.

My third event is that yesterday was September 11th, eight years after the towers fell. I was 12 years old when it happened and like many others I remember where I was when the towers were hit. I was sitting in Ms. Wilcek’s sixth grade classroom during quiet reading time when my teacher got a phone call from her fiance now husband. I remember I was sitting across from Derek S. and that we were quietly chatting to each other over our books…my teacher left after the phone call and came back crying. She and other teachers chatted quietly in the corner of the room until they decided to turn on the TV and they all sat watching the news as we children sat reading. We wondered what was going on because my teacher was crying and it finally came on the intercom that America had been attacked earlier in the morning in New York City I remember wondering where New York was and if it was anywhere near us. We were told that we were being sent home early and that our parents would be informed of our early release. When I got home my mom arrived a little later and she explained everything to me…I was really sad because I thought we were under attack in MN. I remember going home and watching as they showed footage of it on every channel…I watched the footage of people committing suicide after deciding that it was either jumping out the window with a plastic bag parachute or burning to death. I remember after 9/11 I went to my church and asked if the people who had commited suicide were going to hell…my youth ministers said no…because it was God’s will.

I’ve moved inside because it is extremely hot so I’m sitting now in the emergency room lobby at HCMC and just a few minutes ago there was a young girl who discovered that her father had died…she started yelling histerically about how her dad was dead…the kind of screams that make your heart skip a beat…like true pain. I was thinking in my heart about what may have happened to the girl and the man…was there a car accident? Was it a heart attack? Had the girl herself commited the crime? and being in the emergency room I’m thinking about what’s going on…I was raised and shown on tv that when you are in the emergency room you should expect the worst. I wanted to go swarm the girl to see what she looks like and comfort her…hug her and sooth her so that she will stop yelling and frightening the babies and making them cry. I’ve decided to stay where I am…because out of sight for me is out of mind. My mother on the other hand has gotten up to investigate. The girl was yelling and was taken back into a different room wondering and asking if anyone could help her dad. It makes me think about what Craig is doing this weekend and what I may have to do with my mother having cancer that is slowly getting worse. Letting go of loved ones is very difficult…but even though my mother says that she has “too much to do” to die…it still scares me to think about losing her. While some people like Craig don’t yell and scream histerically when they learn that they have lost their loved ones …people who stay strong and keep their composure to keep their family strong there are people like this young girl whose live are totally shaken and with them everyone around them are shaken as well. My brother has stopped complaining about his burned wrist…the reason we are at HCMC anyway…he burned it on a pan at work and it looks painful..but not as painful as losing someone you love. It might be a third or forth degree burn but he no longer complains of the pain as he was before the girl was screaming…I wonder if he realizes that it could be worse and that the pain he feels now isn’t so bad. Or maybe his pain reliever kicked in.

Now that the girl has been taken away the heavy heart I am feeling remains…the people who also sit in the lobby with my have continued their lives as soon I will continue mine…I think about Craig and his mother and death. This weekend Craig and his family are releasing his mother’s ashes in Elie Scotland…a beautiful place full of many family memories I can tell. I wonder if I was cremated where they’re place me. Or, if it was my mother…where I’d put her…I would never want to think about anyone I love as ashes or in a wooden box to rot in the ground. I do not pray for a fate like that to befall anyone.

“oh my god! oh my god my dad’s dead…no! OH MY DAD! OH MY GOD…NO i DON’T WANT anything I want my dad”…I can hear the girl in my head ringing still.

I need to get my mind off of death because it depresses me…so on a lighter note: my roommate Louie is allowing me to use his laptop. it is nice because i am sitting in HCMC and they have guest wifi. Before when I was sitting outside in the car I was thinking about how nice it would be to just loiter outside the hospital to get wifi…but then I felt bad about not being able to get on facebook because it is blocked.

In back of me are some giant tropical fish…they are like I’ve never seen before and they have huge eyes. I wonder if these fish could be the last things a person might ever see in the world if they were to die in this hospital as the girls father had.

My brother used sweet corn to cool his burn…it reminds me that I am hungry and I reach into my bag and grab one of the boxes of museli bars I won from the slogan contest…there’s a really loud annoying woman calling people to the counter…

there is a girl here with two boys and I wonder if they are here for a maternity test. They look like they might be.

I wonder what the hospitals will be like in Scotland if or when i ever have a child and need to give birth in one.

I wonder why they are butchering a man’s name over the loud speaker…and when they are going to call for my brother.

Wow it has been 5 hours…

wait, my brother Tyler just arrived with a really high fever…they are going to take them in together, I’m going to call Sean and see if I can get a ride home…laters.

Mom and Tyler waiting for the Doctor in room C5

Warning:

This blog is not meant to make Craig Cry…if he is dead set on Crying I think he should make an effort not to read this blog because I am trying to get my thoughts straight

My relationship with Craig has caused me physical, physiological and emotional stress, pain and anxiety. I cannot get through my day smoothly without finding out what Craig is up to… I can’t sleep at night when I’m thinking about my life and how everything in my world seemed SO PERFECT when I was in Scotland, free of rules and authority, totally carefree and in an independent state that made me feel truly happy.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been going through a mental roller coaster with myself trying to find out where I want my life to be going.. . I seemed to have spiraled down to a place where I cry myself to sleep at night (if I even get any sleep at all). I’ve become so depressed with my situation that I’ve thought about suicide and homicide and just plain running away from MN and never returning…turning to the streets to get the money I need to survive because anything and anywhere would be better for me than where I’m currently at.

School isn’t an option for me right now because I can’t afford it and I don’t want to go back home because not only will I feel unloved and hated but I know that when I am home I fall into a deep deep hole of depression that creates thoughts in my life that nothing is worth living for if the people who are supposed to care and support you the most are telling you that you are a failure and worthless and that they hate you and wish that you’d never been born or that you are making mistakes with your life and throwing it away or that you need to find somewhere else to go because you ” can’t stay here”. I feel that every time I come home I just consider disappearing from the planet all together because life is not worth living when all you get from everyone you care about is hate. I feel that suicide is a selfish act and the only thing that is stopping me from committing it is my beliefs in Jesus and my Christianity because I don’t want to go to hell by committing that kind of sin. I’d like to prove my family wrong when they tell me that I’m a stupid bitch and that I should “just die” I want to become successful so I can choose if I want them in my life or not.

But right now at a time where I need vital support and love I can’t get it anywhere in Minnesota. No one here understands the constant ache in my heart that is only released once a week while I sing at church…the ache is only lifted while I’m standing and thinking about what life will be after I die and I have eternal life with Jesus. The only thing that has made me feel loved when I am alone is my belief that Jesus is with me and that God loves me.

When I was younger and going through shit with my father and my family I felt that God sent me a friend that would care for me and my situation and show me love regardless of who I was. The person I thought God was sending to me was my best friend Craig. Craig has been my rock and support for six years now and If he hadn’t been around many times I think I would have simply just jumped out a window or took a knife to my brother’s throats while they were sleeping.

Craig has talked me down from many episodes and he’s been there when I’ve been in the biggest dangers…like when my brother Tyler was attempting to kill me and my only way of defending myself was stabbing him in the side with scissors…at that time though helpless to help I’d been on the phone with Craig and he’d been there to tell me that everything would be okay. I remember thinking ‘if my brother does kill me at least Craig can call the police or testify against Tyler in court’.

I’ve been drawn to Craig because I felt that he was the solution to all my problems. I never asked him to become that kind of person to me…he just became that person when everyday after school I would rush online and talk to him all night about whatever was going on in my life.

I remember being banned from my families computer and trying all I could to get through to Craig so I could have someone I could vent to and cry to.

I used to find myself crying myself to sleep at night. I had bottled up anger and emotional baggage and with Craig’s support I got out of those bad habits. When my brothers would say how stupid, fat and ugly I was I would think about how Craig would call me cool. When my brothers and little sister told me that No one liked me I would think about Craig and how he didn’t only Like me but he even went and told me that he loved me and would consider me his best friend.

My relationship with Craig is a strange bond that I never want to see broken.

Recently though I think I’ve made some choices that have made me a subject of my own crazy emotions. I’ve been stressed and depressed about my lack of a connection with Craig as I used to have. When Craig and I stopped being friends and became lovers I lost a lot in him that I used to have. I would call on Craig when I wanted affirmation that someone in my world loved me because it seemed that everywhere in my real and present world everyone was letting me down.

I feel like many times I’ve put up signs that are like warning signs calling for help to anyone who was willing to listen. Mainly people like Mike Boosalis, Jacob Babcock and Kyle Parsons.

These signs have been witnessed by many people including my youth minister Michael Von Gross who told me that my only way of escaping this kind of depressing fate was to try something new and escape it.

Craig hasn’t been able to help me in my current battles and I’ve realized that his reasoning might be because I’ve put him on a high pedistule thinking that he could be my superman when he  was just another average joe who couldn’t fix my anything.

I feel that I’ve been asking him for a relationship and more love than he could give me and commit to at his age because for me I needed that love that I’ve been missing in the past. While I was in Scotland I was able to physically express myself and show my love for Craig in my actions…but now that I am away I’ve been expecting and wanting and waiting for that kind of love again but since I haven’t had it I’ve been suffering and beating myself and Craig up in order to get it.

Just tonight my mother called me into her room and gave me a speech about how she doesn’t want me to throw my life away. She told me that I am asking Craig for a lot more than he can give me and that I should never have gone to Scotland and done the things I’ve done. She told me that I’m in a position where I am on the edge of a cliff waiting for someone to give me the approval to jump off. She told me that Craig isn’t capable of returning the love I’ve been giving him and that I’m putting forth too much effort on my side for someone who “just isn’t that into you(me)”. She says that if Craig truly loved me he would have sent for me, or made an effort to come and at least meet my family as I did his. She said that he would put me as a priority and respect me like I’ve wanted…she said that a person who really loves you will show it in all that they do. She says that she knew from the start that I was putting all my eggs into one basket with Craig and now that the basket has a hole in it I shouldn’t be disappointed that I am losing all my eggs. She says that we might be better off returning to being just best friends. She says that Craig is not in a position in his life to make the commitment to me that in my mind he’s already made. She says that I am thinking that we are already married when he hasn’t even been brought home to my parents yet. Meaning that I am giving too much of myself to Craig and now that he’s found other things that are more important that I shouldn’t be upset that he’s not crazy pining for me. Craig is distancing himself from me like Scott did right before he broke up with me…and like Jason did when I broke up with him…yet Craig and I are supposed to be “together forever” in my crazy already thought out mixed perception of life.

Craig doesn’t see himself with me forever as i see myself with him…Craig wants to live his life now as it is and not think about the future as I am…Craig doesn’t want to be bothered with having me around this next year in Dundee but is only agreeing to it because I need the reassurance in my life and he doesn’t want to hurt his friend. To Craig everything I’m doing is forcing him into a frenzy with his life so he is avoiding me till he gets everything on his side figured out. Craig thinks that everything with me is going too fast and he wishes that I could slow it down and act like a normal girlfriend with a life outside of him. He wishes that I hadn’t put all my eggs into his basket and he wants me to find something else to fill my time other than him.

I want to go somewhere where I can feel real love, I want to love and be loved in return because my home life is unsatisfying… I just know that Craig will never feel that same way about me as I do him because I don’t see him suffering as I do…mentally, emotionally and physically and am going Crazy because of my relationship.

I am a bit crazy to begin with and I think I need to find something that will make me happy…I need to find myself before I try to ruin someone’s life by being around.

I don’t really know what this realization means… all I know is that my mom might be right about my relationship with Craig… Are we better off friends?