Like I said, I was never Norma Jean a candle blowing in the wind...Terror walked with me. Looking at all the positive responses I've gotten from my High School Graduation picture I posted on Facebook while visiting my family in Miami last month, it is not only astonishing but liberating to go back to that time, that exact moment when that picture was taken and recall how ugly I felt. Not only ugly but useless, ashamed and empty.

I don't play the blame game, at least I've outgrown it as I matured, yet...shame and fear was all I knew because somebody else's reality was forced upon me and I always sensed from a very early age, there was something wrong with this picture and it is not me.

I was a rebel with a cause. I had every reason to fight back to save myself from the suffocating stagnation all around me day in and day out. On a daily basis I was made to feel ashamed of myself and my feelings, I was the bad person for having dreams and aspirations of freedom and art. Freedom from the darkness of conformity. Change was never an option. My opinions were gagged and bottled with dirty glances and that non human vapor ganging up on me.

I was a good kid. I was a smart and sensitive girl made to feel ugly and empty. Today all I can say about that is WOW...