Alright, So you are always wondering what I'm writing in that diary of mine... Well, here is a piece I wrote yesterday. Admittedly, most of my entries are not this contemplative or dark. Hard to believe it's been 14 years...

Friday, August 12, 2005 2:39 PM

I guess money doesn't buy happiness, but I'm trying to think how life would've been different if the insurance company hadn't screwed us after the fire. Or if we had sued. If we had sued, it would've taken years probably to do so, but wouldn't we have made out big time in the end? Sure, it wouldn't ease the pain then or make up for the loss of my grandma, but maybe my parents wouldn't have been struggling so much today. Maybe they wouldn't have this huge complex that they do about money, always trying to catch up, never being enough, working for the rest of their lives. It's never good enough. I just want them to stop worrying. Stop worrying about money and not being able to retire. Wouldn't suing the insurance company have helped that? Or would life still be the same? Would it still not be enough? They live at such a high lifestyle that maybe it wouldn't have made much of a difference. And maybe they were right. Maybe suing was not the answer and would've caused us years of unhappiness. Ultimately, I think they chose not to because they just wanted to move on, get back to normal as quickly as possible. But maybe, could it be, that it was too soon? We moved back into our similar house, on the same hill. But the scar was still there. We were alone in a neighborhood full of charred ruins, almost still hot from the smoldering remains. And life got back to normal, I guess. As normal as it could be. But there has always been this unending sense of urgency to return to "normal"... Normality I guess meant distraction filled with busyness, a constant movement from one thing to the next, and that movement hasn't stopped. Perhaps because if, when it finally does stop, when we must finally look at where and how the dust has settled, we will still feel the scars. Is that what they are afraid of? My mom once told me to write down everything I could remember about our car accident, so that I wouldn't forget it later. It was 10 years ago, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. But there are some memories you don't want to remember. Maybe my mom wrote her book about the fire so that she wouldn't forget about it. Maybe they have forgotten some of it in the everyday lives they hide behind and they don't want to remember the scars.