Our apartment in Westwood with curtains closed, and then opened up to reveal the world outside of it

KC's story continued in a bound blue journal (with gold decorations) starting about two weeks after she'd finished writing her "40 pages" (July 22, 1975 - September 28, 1975).

She organized this "Blue & Gold" Journal into three parts, or "Books".  

Book Three spans Nov. 8, 1977 to July 29th, 1978.

      Well, this should be a good way of ending this book.  I'm listening to True Love Ways on the stereo — truly a child of my generation, in the end. 

      About 2 months ago my sister ran away from home.  I had my suspicions as to why but, of course, I didn't want to believe anything that bad.  I heard my parents' end of the story, then finally I was able to get in touch with my sister and her story rang so true, sadly.    

      The violence in our home has always been there – violence I've rejected since I can remember, but which crept into my own personality in a horrible way – in fits of irrational terror and fury.   Faith and love have kept me going over the years – the only thing I had to keep me from spiraling down.

      My mother, sister, and I have been the victims of my father's frustrations — the chain of bad family life forging one more link in time – until I decided it must be broken.

      I fought back and was beaten, screamed at, and reviled in scathing language – there are scenes that play like tapes from a movie looping around over and over, that I can't cut.

      When I got married politeness set in – I was afraid of how my sister would be treated if I cut him off completely — as it turned out it didn't matter.  She tells me he got worse and once pounded her head on the edge of a headboard until she passed out.  (He tried to strangle me once until I started to faint).

       Now that she's away from home I can cut him off – which I should have done a long time ago, I guess, for my own mental health.

      You're wondering if we provoked him – yes and no.  Yes, we tried to grow up – yes, we were young women, women with strong physical resemblance to both his mother and grandmother who had the strongest influence on him when he was young (His mother beat him).  

      No, we bent over backward trying to understand him, to communicate with him, to love him.

      We forgive him, but we must grow.  Christ said we must leave family and friends in order to follow Him – I think it one sense, he referred to this type of thing – if the ties that bind crippled you, you must cut them.   All the world is your family, in any case.

      Judgment will teach you to walk a careful path in the turbulent world of human relationships.

      Like Francis [of Assisi], I say, father, you are no longer my kin — I shed your anger, your frustrations, your inheritance of despair.  I choose my Father in heaven, the Lord of the universe, He who moves the stars and makes the winds blow; He who loves unselfishly, neverendingly

      My Mother is a source of strength; she has no fear, she is gentle, she is kind.  My brothers and sisters fill the earth, they crowd heaven.

      The family of man is also the Mystical Body of Christ. 

      So.  Love can conquer the worst psychological mess of a life — Love for another, greater Being, who loves back, holding nothing back.   Love takes the young person on their torturous quest for self-understanding and meaning and provides the only answers that life can ever provide.