That Spider Bite Could Have Killed Me part 2

Part one is here and Part 3 is here  

I changed a lot in that year in West Virginia.  Right after I arrived, I was ranting and raving.  It was just after my appointment with Chicago Archdiocese attorneys, I was still communicating with my lawyer, and they were all jerking me around. 

I’d gotten a ride with a pedophile priest survivor, to come to WV and stay with another survivor, but a third guy was supposed to pick me up from here and take me to Chicago.  Strangest thing.  He never showed up. Here is the scenario.

My friend at whose house I was staying was one of the L.A. plaintiffs who is really paranoid about the catholic church after what she went through as a victim of George Neville Rucker, topped with trying to be an activist in the “movement” and having the church, and SNAP, fuck with her life, as she tells everyone who will listen.

I went to stay with her in Spring 2011, and when I was there just a few days an attorney from the Chicago Archdiocese somehow got my friend’s home number and called her to talk to me instead of using my cell phone and calling me direct, and how did they get her number to begin with.  He said something to her that freaked her out, and within days I was dropped off in town in front of a rooming house that advertised on Craigslist.

I was already reeling in rage at the Chicago Archdiocese for telling me they wanted to negotiate a settlement, when what they were really doing was trying to intimidate me into stopping City of Angels Blog.  It seemed, since that intimidation didn't work, they were going to take other measures to shut me up. 

Podunk, West Virginia

Those first weeks alone in that Appalachian town, I would trudge downhill to where there was a little park and a one-block strip of shops that made up downtown.  I’d walk around and around the park.  It was one block of grass surrounded by a sidewalk, with three picnic tables, a few trees, a creek running through it, and lots and lots of bugs. 

I’d walk around and around on that sidewalk, around and around the park, wearing headphones and swearing.  

Swearing out loud. 

In the rant I was swearing about the weather, about the gnats in front of my face that blew into your mouth, about the lousy choices on the radio as I walked.  Forget about Progressive Talk, you couldn't even find Republicans on local talk radio, just the tea party and birthers and the only alternative to right wing politics was stations with preaching about jesus.  For music there was little more than gospel music.  Not passionate black R&B resonating Black gospel music but ma and pa singing around the organ 3/4 rhythm style gospel music. 

I'd stop and watch mosquitoes swarm over the creek, then I’d snarl and swear out loud to myself and walk around and around that tiny park, and then walk around some more, swearing.  Swearing at the church attorneys, swearing at the guy who was supposed to pick me up but never showed up, swearing at the woman who said she had a place here for me to stay and then dropped me off at an old boarding house and disappeared, swearing at the damn local radio programmers who can’t think of anything but anti-Obama treason babbling obscure radio programs and 1800 era church music to put on the air waves. Or NPR.  God, does anyone know what happened to NPR?  The one interesting radio station I could get in this little town was West Virginia Public Broadcasting so I thought, jeez, at least I'll get some intelligent information.  But no, instead it's the life of a blue-tailed wahoo in Nova Scotia for forty-five minutes complete with what sounds like canned bird singing in the audio.  Stories on NPR are so boring it's like they're designed to lull the liberals to sleep while the corporations take over the world. 

I’d snarl and mutter stuff like that to myself as I walked around and around and around in the park. I took a few weeks off from walking when the spider bite was taking over my right front thigh, and then just to break the boredom at the end of a day of working on my weird job in reality TV that is done over the internet, I was back in the one-block square park walking around and around and around. 

And Then The Rage Stopped

And some time between the end of winter and the beginning of spring 2012, it stopped. The raging and anger and endless muttering and tears of anguish pouring down my face, it just stopped.  And I sat in front of the little creek and watched mosquitoes dance above the little fishes. 

I survived it.  Whatever they were trying to make happen to me by leading me to this place and making it almost impossible for me to get out alive, I survived and got out and probably ended up better off for it.   

More to come. 

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-ke