Perhaps instead of ever HAVING a REAL family in the first place, my "family" may have been a kind of a cruel "life" joke, an illusion. In any case, when I "lost" my "family", I found real freedom. Life was fake until I truly lived without a "fail safe" net of "family" protection, because when I lost my "family", I found myself! Granted, I still have a "RELATIVE" protection "net", namely social security, that allows me to reflect and gives me the relative "luxury", technology, etc., to write here at rsn.org.

There are some people who have survived even without any kind of family OR social protection "net", like social security. These are the real heroes, heroines. These are the people that I would really like to read about and/or hear from and about. However, these kinds of people are busy just trying to survive, they have more pressing life and death issues to concern themselves with, so until they are able to communicate HOW they survive(d), I guess there is only me, and/or people like me, with the time and opportunity to share their experiences.

The first time I found myself really and ABSOLUTELY "on my own" was when I was released from jail in Ft. Lauderdale, FL after serving about 3 months for "Public Intoxication" and "Resisting Arrest Without Violence". I know that almost 3 months in jail SOUNDS unbelievable for such minor offenses, but I do have proof. I sort of "fell through the cracks" and I was WILLING to be in jail that long, because jail was preferable to what had preceded it.

I had been homeless, living in a rental car for a few months trying to find work and/or just trying to get some assistance from an Aunt who lived in Del Ray Beach, FL. On Labor Day, in 1986 I had been at FLL airport, in one of the airlines' private clubs, and because I was talking too loud, etc., I was either asked to leave, or without warning, I was reported as drunk, and the police were called, and I was arrested and taken to jail.

When a FL judge discovered that I had been in jail almost 3 months (From Labor Day until Thanksgiving, 1986) he ordered my release. I had $5.00 when I was released and I was given a homeless shelter address to go to. It was the afternoon on Thanksgiving Day and I had a nice turkey lunch before leaving the Ft Lauderdale jail. When I got to the shelter, they informed me that I needed to have lined up by 8 AM to qualify for a bed that night! I was told where to go and I walked with blisters on my feet to the next address, miles away.

I tried to return "home" to New Jersey from Florida. I kind of "hitch hiked", but on an airplane: "People's Express"! But when I got home, my mother told me that I could only stay at her house for 3 days. I tried to find work, but in a Kafkaesque situation, my mother had a lock on her dial phone (it was 1986) and made me walk to the nearest pay phone to make work inquiries. I changed the last $5.00 I had into coins to use on the pay phone.

Feeling totally alone I somehow dug down, deep into my soul, and I FELT the soul pain, the "pain" of being unable to communicate to anyone at all except to the CONSCIOUSNESS of my self, my REAL instead of my FAKE, socially CONSTRUCTED Barbara, female, white, etc., IDENTITY "SELF". I finally became my CONSCIOUSNESS OF MYSELF, I "gave birth" to my self, myself as a "family" of my own, a "family of one". From then on I decided to be THERE for me, for me alone, instead of living to please what may be illusions of others, because I now see others as only potential consciousnesses.