I don't know

 Yesterday, the people who own the house and property I live on, returned from their winter home in Florida.  They stay three months and then fly back with the other snow birds.  Evey year when they show, I have a literal gut reaction that feels as though I have been punched.  And I begin to shake.   I wanted to write about it last night, but after I'd written a particulary open story, a truthful story that unveiled a few profound scars from some of my life experiences, I did not want to come across as pathetic.  So I concluded that I would write about something funny today.  I simply could not get a grasp on funny.  The present needs to breath also.  After reading an article on gather, directed at the politics of this war we are in, I found my toe hold to begin.

   These people next door who I will nickname the Dimmers, are politcally and perhaps personally intertwined with G. Bush Jr.  Mr. Dimmer is a lawyer who was one of many involved in the Florida Ballot debacle.  Mrs. Dimmer stayed longer that year in Maine, while Mr. Dimmer stayed, or according to Mrs. Dimmer, was sequestered to the matters at hand, and could not leave the state of Florida until the issue of the ballots was solved.  I was not surprised that Bush was still president a week later.  Not at all.

   I came to this farm after being asked to come here and to bring my riding business with me.  Mrs. Dimmer told all her friends that I was the best damn trainer and instuctor there is, and that was why she wanted me here.  She also concluded and made a few overtures of good will, that she would help make the farm, then quite delapidated, inhabitable.  I had no reason but to believe that this was a true union of the minds and spirit of the horses.  Close to one hundred acres on Mt. Desert Island, Maine is close to unheard of here now.  Yes, the fields were growing rocks, the barn was falling down, the small barn was missing half the floor, the house was inhabitable, the fences were artifully held together with various ropes, twine, chains, rotten wooden posts, broken boards and oh so many other things.  But new fencing was coming.  The arena area was several feet deep in manure that I and the man I then was partnered up with, pulled no stops to get hauled into the fields along with fertilizer, while hauling rocks out of the field, to bring grass to an area that resembled the tundra.  We also hauled several tons of garbage to the dump and sold several more tons of heavy metal to a junk man.  All of the burnable stuff,: brush, boards, cardboard, a building that was falling down, etc was burned.  For three years we had fires every time we got the ok from the fire marshall.  The fence came and we put it up.   A plastic fence that, it turned out, would shatter in subzero weather.  Neighbors came buy and helped; Anne occasionally stopped by...Anne Dimmer.  People poured out sentiments of how wonderful the old place looked again.  Though I had begun to become irritated, that when exhausted and ready for bed, either Stephen or I would recieve a phone call about a 'little' problem that needed to be fixed.  Stephen burned out after three years.  In fact he had become so beligerant that I had to tell him to hit the road.  I had spent every cent I had, and recieved nothing in return from the Dimmers.  I also took care of horses for the Dimmers, and found that I also was responsible for shoeing, worming, feeding and the cost of the Veternarian.  Being who I was, I will not let a horse suffer one iota.  So I paid. 

       I also had had an accident before I had come to this farm, which led to the disorder of fibromyalgia.  Also neurological problems began to show after a severe head injury.  I am not a person to give up in the face of adversity so I kept on keeping on.  Then came the inablity to pay my bills.  Two winters were so bad and so hopeless that suicide was constantly a companion; a safety valve should the suffering become too much.  I no longer could take care or improve on another thing.  In fact, I called the Dimmers in the middle of a horrendous north easter, saying that I had no heat.  I could hear the sound of ice cubes against crystal and laughter in the back ground.  Mrs. Dimmer told me that the insurance on the farm was draining them.  That I needed to take the chain saw up into the woods and cut my own firewood.  I do believe that was when communication became very strained between us.  My little shack was leaking.  A friend, God Bless him, got another friend together to put a new roof on for me.  I became so sick that I had to find homes for most of the horses and also had to apply for disability.  I remember one morning waking up, with my three large dogs surrounding me to keep me warm (three dog night) and I was laying there, shivering and aching, hungry and so so sad, thinking, "It would be worth a million dollars if someone would bring me a cup of coffee."  Didn't happen.  I survived though.  And got tougher from it.  People came forward, not rich folk...well that is not true. I have one wealthy friend who did help alot, until she felt that if she kept helping me, that I would never leave.  The problem was and is, is that it takes a lot of money to relocate, and anyone who has never been in this position cannot pull the facts together.  For them, they just move. 

      Every year the summer home has become grander and grander.  This little three room structure has no life left in it.  Electrical fires happened twice due to faulty wires.  The water pressure is not enough to keep things going, so the water heater burned up also.  Snakes have open access the bathroom and also under the front door and my bedroom.  The Dimmers know this, for I have told them.  When asked two years ago about what I planned to do, I said, "Move as soon as I can afford it."  I recieved a grimmace.  You see, I had been duped.  I found out later that I was simply the last in a row of tenents who were brought there under false pretenses, when the real reason was to use a person or persons until they had nothing left to give and then make it uncomfortable to stay.  Several things happened after Stephen left that I cannot go into now because it sounds like a fabrication, but please trust me, it is not.  I will only say that I confronted Mrs. Dimmer under the auspice that she had deliberately created situations that were harmful beyond belief.  Of course she denied it.  She is the back bone behind a politician. 

        So how did the article and this piece intersect?  The wealthier the people who gain from other peoples destruction, the greedier they get.   And the fact,  that Mr. Dimmer was in cahoots with the voting 'mistakes' in florida and the reelection of a man I didn't vote for, is my landlord.  And soon I will be hearing about all I haven't done here, and I will say, 'it's up to you Anne." and the chill will get chillier while the gap between the poor and the rich gets wider.   And why do I not move?  I have no family to go to.  And it takes money to move.

       Do you see why I didn't want to say any of this?  Don't I look like a whiner or sound like one? I feel that I appear pathetic, and am actually.  Because I am blaming the victim.  That is how it works. This is also why I have been writing for the first time in years.  I want out.  The only way I can see is to use the gifts God gave me and hone them up to the point that maybe, just maybe, my dream of having a little farm of my own...in California near my son and my grandchildren, can come true.

     I am simply going to post this so it is out in the ethers, and not weighing my heart down so heavily.  Someday perhaps, I will beable to write about this in retrospect, as I did with my Thanksgiving at my Uncles, and write from a stance of empowerment.  But right now, I do not feel strong when it comes to such a vulnerable situation that is happening now.

    Please do not judge me harshly.  I am merely working hard to survive.