journal

On writing

/ Outrunning my demons / 4 Comments

I took a step back from writing my book.

I was doing it all wrong. In January, I just jumped in and started writing. I took a break when we went on vacation in the beginning of February and haven’t wrote a word since.

It has become common knowledge now that I am writing a book. When my mom found out, she brought over 2 boxes of journals. I sat down and read through them all over a weekend. Most of them were notes between my mom and special ed teachers. It really gave me a glimpse into some of the school day that I didn’t see.

It was a reminder to me how incredibly violent my brother Matt was. There were times that he threatened school children with scissors and was into poking eyes. That is just a small glimpse.

Then I went and reread all of my personal journals. I flagged all pertinent parts of at least 15 journals and created a general outline of what I wanted to share in the book. Then I am going to go back and rewrite what I already started. I am even thinking about asking my other siblings if there was something that they wanted me to share. But I am afraid that they will be more open to what they don’t want me to share.

I decided that I will not write when I am really stressed out or feeling depressed. The next couple of weeks I will be performing a major part in the community theater production. That would not be a good time to stir my demons.

I have to be careful. I have to know when to run forward and stay back. I could get lost in it or worse dragged back into it. There have been times that I experienced PSTD symptoms. It is horrifying, but I am not afraid of it. I have people around me that will make sure I am safe. This is what I was meant to do.

I see writing this book as a challenge similar to my desire to conquer a 50k. It is a test of strength, determination, and will.

The people who know what I have experienced are saying that I am brave and strong to tackle this. I have a unique story that unfortunately is not unique anymore. When my brother was diagnosed with autism, as the first generation of de-institutionalized mentally ill, it was rather rare.

This is going to be a story of survival and abuse, many people do not realize that when I talk to them about it…the people that didn’t know me then. I seem so normal, healthy, and strong. But remember how I said I am in community theater. I can be a good actress. They don’t know how difficult this is going to be emotionally. I have to be very strong. I have to be smart to notice if I am slipping.

I am doing some public speaking in September for the local autism chapter. When I told the woman that I was going to write a book about my experience, she said that she knew of a publisher who would be interested. Maybe that should be my last resort. Maybe I can do this. Maybe this will be really big. If not, I am okay with it. I want to tell my story for me. I want to heal. I want to help others feel like they are not alone even if it makes me look bad.

I have decided to also keep my blog personal. I am at times tempted to share this blog with family and friends. I can’t waver. If I tell you I am tempted, please remind me of my words. It is a struggle to be fully honest with myself and others. I need to be completely genuine.

I can’t let anything stop me from telling my story.

 

The 5%

/ Outrunning my demons / 5 Comments

If I look back, I would say that I’ve always been a writer of some sort. But is it strange that I never wanted to write a novel?

I wrote a story once when I was in grade school about a grown up version of me that started a home for girls from troubled families. I imagined during the school day that my home for girls was at the school. I don’t remember much about what I wrote. In middle school, I deemed the story as crap and threw it away.

After that I started keeping journal after journal of the darkest years of my life. I have been working on going through them slowly, as not to sink back down.

I started finding pen pals. Some were from foreign countries. I wanted to learn about their lives. There was a girl from Brazil that didn’t write in English. I had the hardest time finding someone to translate Portuguese. The best I could find is someone who knew Spanish. I could only read a line or two from every letter.

Then the internet came along and I got more pen pals(?) using dial up to get on my email.

I still don’t have an interest in writing a novel. I want to write about my own life.

I have had some very deep lows that seemed to sweep the ocean floors. I have had some pretty big highs that launched me out of this very atmosphere. Both are hard to write about honestly.

My experiences have been very unique, but my feelings are universal.

I learned that it is important to do what I want in life regardless of what others think. I live by this motto and refuse to be put in a box. People complain about everything I do anyway. So, who cares?

But yet I struggle.

Last week I lost a friend, my last pen pal from the dial up days. In the almost 20 years that we have been friends, I visited her twice. She unfriended me, along with her husband and daughter.

What is it about me that she didn’t like?? Was it because I took my daughter to the Lana Del Rey concert?? Was it because I visited the Buddhist temples in Thailand? Is it because I like to have fun once in awhile?? I don’t fit very well into the Christian box sometimes. Or maybe it was because I never replied to her last message. I was intending to.

It hurt. I tried to brush off the feelings of rejection.

95% of the time I don’t care what others think of me. It is the 5% that trips me up and prevents me from sharing the full story. I am afraid that you will reject me too. I’ve been feeling troubled about this the last couple of days.

Maybe I shouldn’t share as much as I do.

What are your thoughts?

What do you do?

If I do tell you, maybe you will reject me too.

I want to share my life story with you, but sometimes the 5% holds me back.

Journal 5, part 3

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It has been a rough week of posts here, hasn’t it?? Here is the funny post that I promised…It is akin to my parents stories of walking uphill to school both ways.

10/10/1990

I am feeling tired today. Last night I watched a movie at my friend’s house. Her mom rented a VCR and we had to take it back to the rental place by 10 PM. We left her house at ten to ten. On the way there, the car broke down. We knocked on a couple doors, but no one answered. We walked back to her house which took almost an hour. By the time I got home, it was 11 PM. That sure didn’t help my cold any..

Young folks, times were hard growing up. Watching a movie wasn’t as easy as perusing Netflix for the perfect show. From this journal entry, I am going to assume that the VCR rental was for my friend’s birthday which was a few days before the journal entry date. We watched Gone with the Wind and Adventures in Babysitting (great old movie BTW). I had no recollection of this event before reading about it…the previous day’s journal entry mentioned the movies that we were going to watch. I vaguely remember walking back to her house on quiet country roads late at night.

You were pretty much screwed if your car broke down in the middle of nowhere at night if no one answered the door. Forget Uber. Of course, sometimes you were screwed if someone answered the door. As a teenage girl, it was creepy going into a stranger’s house to use their rotary phone. It was also creepy allowing strangers into the house to use the phone. I think it is something the kids of today are told not to do…allow strangers in your house or go into a strangers house.. Of course, kids of today don’t need to worry about taking rented VCR’s back or leaving the house without someone having a cell phone.

Even going to the movies was complicated. We had to watch the newspaper for the new listings. Or sometimes we would call on a Friday night to listen to a long automated message stating the new showings. Sometimes the phone was busy.

Remember having to rewind the VHS tape after viewing? That took almost as long as the movie. The rental tapes would be plastered with stickers that said ‘Be kind, rewind’ and other obnoxious things. Then upon returning the movie to the store, the clerk would always pop open the tape case while glaring at you with an eyebrow raised prejudging if you were an evil offender that didn’t rewind. If you were a few minutes late (probably due to rewinding) with the rental drop off, you would be fined a couple bucks.

I can almost imagine the fines my friend received for returning the VCR the next day. Maybe the cops were called. Uh huh, car trouble you say…I bet your dog ate your homework too..

I never had to worry about renting a VCR at our house. We always had at least 10 VCR’s in our house at all times. Unfortunately, none of them worked or they ate tapes. My dad repaired them as a living and was always doing favors for neighbors on the side. People would literally stop by with their junk…broken VCR’s, stereos, TV’s…Discombobulated machines laid on our table and were strewn all over our house for months. My dad was a procrastinator. By the time he fixed the broken machines, the people forgot about them or were on their third one. But he charged them next to nothing.

I wonder how much time we wasted on video tapes?? Almost as much time as we spent waiting by the phone…

How did we ever survive???

 

 

Journal 5, part 1

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12-10-1990

Tonight is my choir concert. For awhile my mom wasn’t going to go because Matt was reacting. But she is going to go.

Events were always difficult for my family. My mom always wanted Matt to be included in all of the family activities. We never really wanted him to attend our special days. We were afraid that if he hurt someone that would mar the day forever in our memory. Plus we wanted some time when we could be the focus.

How would we feel if a special day was ruined by Matt attacking someone? It would make for an unforgettable choir concert, graduation, or wedding day.

My parents typically took turns attending events if Matt was unable to go. My dad would often times stay home with Matt because he hated social events.

But if Matt was ‘reacting’ bad enough, my mom would stay behind. She didn’t trust anyone else to take care of Matt. If Matt hurt someone, he could sometimes be hurt in the process of restraining him.

For example, if Matt was at the roller rink and attacked a small girl…what do you think her father would do? My mother said that no one could love Matt like she did.

Usually there were early warning signs of reacting that we became hyper vigilant for.. His ears would turn red, his fists and teeth would clench, and his pupils would constrict giving him wild eyes. Sometimes these reactions would last for a short time and sometimes for several days. Sometimes it would happen unexpectedly and sometimes we just knew..

The longest it usually lasted was 2 days until it slowly faded away. For 2 days, Matt would scream and be agitated in general. He would often hurt himself or those around him. He would keep our younger brothers, that he shared a room with, awake at night by rocking his body side to side in his bed violently. During the day, he would run in place flapping his hands together sometimes violently enough to make his chin bleed after his hands rubbed against it repetitively.

He had to be watched constantly because sometimes he would run away. Or he would do deviant things like overflow the sinks. Most of the time he muttered to himself. He would laugh after hurting someone or doing something wrong.

After the reaction was over, Matt would sleep all day and all night.

My mom went to great lengths to try to explain Matt’s strange behavior by saying that he was reacting, or allergic to things.

Matt attacked the stranger in the roller rink because the music was too loud.

Matt attacked the girl because she was wearing perfume. The perfume triggered it. We were no longer allowed to wear or have anything with a fragrance in it. No hair spray, no nail polish, unscented soaps…we even had to dip our toothbrushes in peroxide and baking soda to brush them. I found this to be very restrictive when most girls my age used a bottle of hairspray a week.

Sometimes it was auto exhaust. My mom no longer allowed the cars to be parked in the garage. They had to be parked at the bottom of the driveway. If the wind was blowing in a certain direction, we had to shut all of the windows. My mom would panic if we had to follow another vehicle closely on the road, the exhaust could seep in and set Matt off.

Maybe it was gluten, dairy, and artificial colors. My mom started buying Matt organic food. She went to great lengths to make separate meals for Matt that no one was allowed to eat.

Maybe it was the wood stove. That furnace was removed.

Maybe it was the formaldehyde in the curtains. They were removed and old blankets were put up.

I could probably list at least 50 or more things that at one time my mom thought were triggers. We had to painstakingly follow rituals to try to stop the triggers from eliciting a response in Matt, but it never worked.

My mom took Matt to almost every doctor in the state and to several doctors in other states. She had faith that he could be healed from this affliction. As a child, I believed that he could be healed too. We hung on to every hope that he would be completely healed.

My mom took Matt to physicians, homeopathic healers, allergists, and even a lady that read auras. But nothing worked.

I fear that what I am telling you makes my mother sound like she was completely crazy. But I want to assure you that my mother was the sanest person in the house. In her natural state she is an easy going…go with the flow kind of person…She is very compassionate, sensitive, and loving…But with Matt, my mother was fierce and determined to do anything she needed to do to protect him…to feel like she had an iota of control over something that no one had any control over… and to seek answers while holding on to this irrational dream that some day she would wake up and he would be normal.

Quieting the voices again

/ Outrunning my demons / 7 Comments

Last week I shared some really personal stuff about my childhood. What I haven’t told you was that every time I read, write, or think about my past I experience the negative emotions that go along with it. Maybe it is a part of the whole healing process, I don’t know.

I was feeling angry at my mom. This is a real struggle for me because a) she is getting up in age and probably doesn’t have a lot of time left, b) I feel like she was the best parent she could be, and c) she probably was as much of a victim in this whole mess as I was. It is not fair to be angry with her now about things that happened a long time ago.

I should be angry with my dad. He was a) never there for me, b) emotionally abusive, and c) a crappy parent. But I am not angry with my dad.

To add fuel to the fire, the previous weekend when I spoke to my mom she said that the family was going for one last impromptu trip up north. My whole family was going up to celebrate my niece’s birthday and I wasn’t told about it until the day of.

My mom cared about me, but she always cared about Matt more. What I am angry about is that Matt hurt me all of the time and she never did anything. She never told him that his behavior was wrong. She comforted him after he hurt me. She told me that I was in the wrong for feeling angry and wanting to retaliate. Would it have changed anything to tell him what he did was wrong? Probably not, but it would’ve made me feel better.

Did she say she was sorry when Matt attacked my friends? I lost all of my childhood friends because Matt hurt them. I was put in a position where I had to choose between my family and my friends.

When Matt was too violent to go to school, my mom pulled all of us out of school. I was Matt’s caregiver up until my second child was born. I went to college close to home. As a teenager, instead of screwing around with my friends, I was in charge of showering my brother.

When I needed my mom the most, I felt like she wasn’t there…If I dwell on it, my anger boils. I felt rather despondent all weekend. My husband thought I was angry with him because I didn’t feel like talking.

I decided to call my mom over the weekend. I asked her how the birthday party went. She told me that she dropped off the cake and gifts and went back home. She spent half of the car ride home crying. Apparently my brother Luke was not ready to have Matt around his children but that was not communicated. Luke said some harsh words to my mom which was upsetting to his daughter and everyone around.

A couple of months back, Matt was taken off of his anti-psychotic meds. He started hallucinating again and became obsessed with my niece. He talked about killing her. He is back on his medication and hasn’t hallucinated in over a month. But Luke is not ready.

I understand because Matt attacked my daughter Angel at her birthday party. He was obsessed about hurting her too. I’m sure that my brother was thinking that he didn’t want his daughter to get hurt at her birthday party either.

Matt is an adult and our daughters are little girls or were at one time. After Matt hurt Angel I had to cut ties with my family for awhile. At the time, Matt was still living at home with my parents. Matt has always been fixated on hurting girls. Never boys.

My mom pressured me to have Matt get together with the family after that happened. Not long after the incident, I became pregnant with my second daughter. I found out the sex of my baby but never told anyone because it was too painful to tell my family that we wouldn’t be together for a long time.

It took years before I allowed my daughters to be around my brother for more than just a passing glance through the window. Luke is planning on reintroducing Matt to his daughters at my house next month for Thanksgiving. Matt never hurt my nieces. He seems to be doing better. He no longer mutters to himself or laughs at what the voices are saying. The voices are quiet again. Maybe we can move past this. He will have to stay on that medication for the rest of his life.

Delving into the past and the recent events have brought up a mixture of emotions, mainly anger on my part.

I will share some old journal entries with you this week (some of them are funny). Then I will have to put it aside for awhile. I really have a hard time over the holidays because it stirs up all of these family issues. For my mental health, I have to know when to set it aside for awhile.

 

Just a mirage..

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There was a time when I was really thirsty…I allowed a mirage to deceive me into thinking my thirst would be satiated.

The blind date didn’t start well. Mac came to my house to pick me up with another couple. Once we got on the road, I noticed that they were drinking. They were nervous when a cop passed by and stopped at the nearest gas station long enough to drop off their empties.

It was the early 1990’s…I couldn’t call for a ride home..we were planning on going to a bowling alley, but it was closed. We drove around aimlessly until the driver was almost out of gas. When he went in to pay for gas, his girlfriend went through his wallet. She found the number of another girl and freaked out. She got behind the wheel and pulled recklessly out into traffic. She pulled over on a side road and tried to smash the windows with her purse. Then she ran off into the night. We spent the rest of the night trying to find her…It was awful and I told Mac that I didn’t think there would be a second date.

But Mac pursued me relentlessly. He was charming and it was flattering at first. He made me feel like I couldn’t live without him. He was going to rescue me from my troubled home. It wasn’t long before we moved in together. I knew that my family wouldn’t approve.

Things went well at first, although Mac was into gambling. There were nights we went out that he just had to stop at the casino. He said he would be a few minutes as he left me in the car taking the keys with him. It was cold sitting there what seemed like forever in the winter. Security came to the car a few times asking if I was okay..Really, it will be just a few more minutes..

One night Mac went to the casino most of the night, but had to be to work by 7:30 AM. I left early that morning for school, then I went to work. When I got back home it was 7:30 PM. Mac was still sleeping. He thought it was morning, but he missed a whole day of work. Apparently, it was my fault.

It started slowly at first…a shove, a push..Then he started to say mean things…words that even my daddy didn’t say to me. I threatened to call the police. He told me that he would tell them that I stole money from him. He gave me his work checks to cash. I didn’t place the call. It wasn’t that bad anyway…just a little bruise.

He was threatened that I was going to college. He thought that I would leave him so he tried to sabotage me in any way he could. He told me that my papers were stupid. He cut down my ideas. He even deleted a paper that I wrote right before I had to turn it in to class. Thankfully, I always wrote out a rough draft on paper first.

Things got really bad. Mac grabbed me by the neck and threw me against the wall. I spent a lot of time hiding in the closet crying. It reminded me of growing up. There were times that I was kicked, punched, scratched, bit, or hurt by my brother Matt every day for a long period of time. I started having what seemed like flashbacks. I sat in the closet with my arms around my legs terrified.

I wasn’t allowed to feel angry about what happened to me growing up. Matt couldn’t help it. I was lucky because I was normal. I couldn’t retaliate. This is how I became numb to all feelings. This is when it began.

I told myself with every punch and bruise that it was making me stronger, like I was lifting weights. That’s how I convinced myself as a child that it was good for me. It was my mantra that helped me survive.

I didn’t want violence in my life anymore. This was no oasis in the desert. I had to leave Mac.

Mac read my journals. He tore out pages from them and threatened to send them to my family if I left him. Most of my relatives were very traditional minded, all law and no love. Anything less than perfection was not tolerated. There was no doubt in my mind that I would be disowned by my family. I had already lied to them about ‘shacking up’ with Mac. I was screwed.

He also used my journals to blackmail me in other ways. I bought new tires for his car after he wasted his paycheck at the casino. I had to leave.

One winter day while Mac was at work, I packed my things and left. But Mac didn’t leave me. I would wake up in the morning to flowers left under the windshield wiper of my car with notes begging to take him back. He would come to my house while I slept.

A few months later, I moved in with a friend a block away from Mac. He started hanging out with my roommate. She fell for his charm. He got back into my life again and we became friends. One night he invited me to a party with our old neighbors. I remembered the fun times we had.

When Mac walked away for a few minutes, an old neighbor came up to me and said…I know what he did to you…Leave and don’t come back..

I left.

Several months later, I received a package in the mail. Mac returned all of my scandalous journal pages.

It was finally over.

Who am I?

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Who am I?

Sometimes I wonder who you think I am.

Have the things I told you painted a picture in your mind?

Do you know the kind of person I am by the words I write?

I sometimes think about this in the dead of night…or the early morning light..

Who am I?

Sometimes I don’t even know.

This past week I finished reading journal 4. Last year I started the project of slowly going through all of my old childhood and early adulthood journals. It has been a healing process for me…to finally come to grips with my life…my demons..

My oldest daughter has been begging to read my journals for the past year now. I now am also tasked with the duty of reading my journals with the thought that someday they will belong to my children. I want them to have a certain image of me in their minds, even after I am dead.

Journal 4 was difficult. I was angry. I could feel the rage coursing through my words. I tore out half the pages of my journal, ripped them up, and threw them out (recycling). I crossed out some of the writings with a black pen. I never destroyed a part of my life’s writings before.

To tell you the truth, I didn’t recognize myself. It was like I was reading about another girl.

Maybe I don’t really want to know myself??

I just don’t want my kids to see my darkest days. I am describing a girl that is gone now..

I just started reading journal 5 which was written before journal 4. I will probably be sharing some stories with you…

But how will you know me if I don’t recognize the old me in me anymore??

Do you really want to know the real me anyway??

Or do you think of me as a character in a book with a twisted plot?

 

Day 7: Weathered in

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We awoke at 4:30 AM to the sound of thunder and the howling of a great wind. The waves rocked our tied up sailboat like we were on water. I worried about George and Beth who were planning on leaving at 5:30 AM to beat the strong winds, but the wind was already here. They are still having problems with their inboard motor. Their options to get back home in their boat are facing strong winds or waiting a few more days and sailing without wind. George has to get back to work and there aren’t any slips available to stay longer.

Water is starting to trickle into my bed on the berth. The boat just slammed into the dock. The tied down lines are flapping. The waves are crashing against A dock where we are staying. Water is spraying across the dock and trickling down the other side. The boat is creaking. I’ve never been on the boat in so much wind.

Paul is still sleeping. It was a rough night’s sleep. I awoke to the sound of a ping thinking it was a message from George. Instead, it was an early morning Facebook wave from Paul’s step-dad Darryl.

When Paul woke up, he told me that George did not sail out. There is a gale warning on the water. It will be dangerous walking down the wet A dock to get to the shower.

Paul and I walked down A dock hand in hand to get to the shower. Paul was worried that a monster wave would send me over the edge slipping on the wet dock sliding into the water electrocuted by boat current or something of that nature. We made it safely to shore but we really didn’t need that shower since we were already soaking wet. Standing water was pooled on the dock. The tops of my toes were chafed from my wet sandals and a few of my toes were bleeding.

We went shopping this afternoon downtown. I bought a pair of sunglasses that everyone said made me look like Zsa Zsa Gabor. Wait, isn’t she dead?? I also bought an anchor ring to remind me of the vow renewal ceremony. I bought these lovely items at Al Johnson’s. It is the place with the goats on the roof.

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When we arrived in Sister Bay, I thought that I was seeing things when I saw goats on the roof nearby. I was told that the goats were eating the grass on the roof of a restaurant named Al Johnson’s. I had to ask if the restaurant was like Red Lobster. Do I pick the goat I want to dine on tonight and they cook it up for me kind of place?? Surprisingly, goat was not a menu item. Oh my! Thankfully sometimes things aren’t the way my wild imagination thinks they could be.

That night when we came back to the boat for the evening we heard something buzzing. We discovered that we were out of water and the pump was running like crazy.

Soon we turned in for a restless night of sleep.

 

Day 6: Sister Bay

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We couldn’t escape the rain.

If we left the marina today, we would’ve been faced with the strong winds and waves of yesterday with the addition of rain. We decided to stay an extra day or two in Sister Bay. Tomorrow we are facing 40 mph winds and a high of 62 with the cold front that came in.

We caught a glimpse of the schooner we saw out on the water a few days before snug in the slip across from ours.

This afternoon our group is taking a cab to the winery.

As for now, I am sitting here in the boat writing while watching the rain fall.

We are doing a load of laundry. Last night after finally being able to shower, we hung out our towels to dry but they never did. My towel smells so musty that after showering today I felt dirty drying off with it. Paul threw everything together in the washer…towels, dark warms, dark colds, and whites. It really threw off my anal laundry sorting fetish, so I had Paul do the wash..

It’s starting to thunder..

The clothes didn’t dry well in the dryer. We couldn’t put them in longer since we were leaving and our friends were waiting for us to use the dryer. So we hung half wet clothes and towels around the boat.

The cab driver drove up from Green Bay which was quite the hike (almost an hour and a half one way). She took us to the Lautenbach Winery where we sampled wine, took the tour, and did the cherry pit spitting contest. Paul and I won the cherry spitting contest based on our gender. Wow, I bet that would look really good on a resume.

I bought a bottle of my favorite wine Summer Breeze with the sailboat on the label.

Then the cab driver picked us up and took us back to the marina.

I decided to wait in the cab by myself with the driver while everyone braved the rain to walk their wine back to their boats. The cab driver proceeded to tell me her whole life story and all of the issues she is having with her teenagers. I really felt rather uncomfortable.

Who shares all of their personal life experiences with a complete stranger?? Oh wait…isn’t that what I do?? Damn…who am I to judge then?

The rain keeps falling..

Day 3: Washington Island

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The storms parted around us and we arrived late afternoon in paradise. The marina in Jackson Harbor on Washington Island was small, rustic, and quaint. I was taken back in time to the 1980’s without the big hair.

There wasn’t a big boater’s lounge here. In fact, there wasn’t a boater’s lounge at all. The weather channel was not blasting on a big screen TV. There wasn’t coffee and magazines set out to enjoy. There weren’t any showers or bathrooms besides the pit toilets down the road. There wasn’t a wifi password and most of our group didn’t even have a cell signal.We weren’t constantly bombarded with several forms of media. I didn’t even find out what my facebook friends ate for breakfast.

It gave a sense of seclusion. It took me back to the pleasures of simpler times like having an uninterrupted conversation and being content to watch the sunset.

Instead of modern conveniences, this marina offered amenities such as peace and tranquility. I thought it would be the perfect place for our vow renewal ceremony, except for the no shower part.

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The marina was also the home of old cars and boats. Next to the marina was an area where old cars were parked for a monthly charge. I saw many cars that reminded me of my childhood. I saw an old station wagon like the one my aunt drove. I saw more old cars than newer models which also gave the feeling of nostalgia for times past. I didn’t realize how much I missed the quiet.

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I also took some pictures of the old fishing boats. Shortly after, a man left on this boat to go fishing. He probably thought I was a bit crazy for taking pictures of his fishing boat with all of the beautiful sailboats around me.

City folks come up north to take pictures of trees and country folks go down to Chicago to take pictures of skyscrapers. How easily we tend to become immune to the beauty of our everyday environment…

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There was a feeling on the island of getting away from it all. Getting away from the noise. Getting away from the money, crowds, and big boats. Getting away from the hustle and bustle of tourists.

There was a small cafe and a concession stand on the island with limited hours. There was also a museum of some sort that we didn’t have the opportunity to walk through.

It was my favorite marina by far.

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From the marina we saw this small building. We had to walk across a bridge to get there. The door was unlocked so curiosity got the best of us and we opened it one night. Inside there was a small ice packaging display. Some of the tools looked like they belonged in the closet of some of our states serial killers. But we won’t talk about that today.

We stayed in this paradise for two nights until the wind pushed us in a different direction.

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From Jackson Harbor we were able to view Rock Island. There are no cars on Rock Island. It contains some historical buildings, hike in campsites, a lighthouse, and a sandy beach.

This was the place where I wanted the ceremony, but stormy weather was headed our way.