Her ‘Rents

Open letter to Amikolle’s ‘rents

Amikolle’s Mom;

I am writing to you, to inform you and your husband, that I have changed your names in the writings in my blog, to  something else.

As I heard your husband yelling to Amikolle, that he wanted to sue me for Defamation of Character, I was wondering why since I had not written anything ill about neither of you.  My writings are a telling of a story, that is real and has touched and affected my life as much as yours, and it is a story told from my experiences.  If you think that you don’t want to be part of that story because it degrades your status of what the world can read, that is different.  Nevertheless just to be clear, here is the Definition of Defamation of Character, in case your husband wants to go on and sue me, so he doesn’t waste time and money that he could put willingly into his daughter’s recuperation and medical help:

In law, defamation (also called calumny, libel, slander, and vilification) is the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image. Slander refers to a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report, while libel refers to any other form of communication such as written words or images. Most jurisdictions allow legal actions, civil and/or criminal, to deter various kinds of defamation and retaliate against groundless criticism. Related to defamation is public disclosure of private facts which arises where one person reveals information which is not of public concern, and the release of which would offend a reasonable person.” Unlike libel or slander, truth is not a defence for invasion of privacy.

As the definition stands, I never represented your names in a malicious manner, which if I had, would be Slander.  If I had printed my blog to a print media format, it would have been Libel.  My writings are my memories living the experience that has been loosing and recovering Danielle when she has gone out.  As the definition above dictates (taken from the maryland library of law, and from Lexis Nexis, the general bible of Lawyers), truth is not a defence for invasion of privacy means that you can’t accuse me of invasion of privacy because I was writing about the truthful events surrounding the disappearance and recovery of your daughter, and naming places or people that participated in it.

That being said, I have removed your name and your husband from my blog.  I wanted to advice you, that I didn’t do it for neither of you, I did it so you don’t scream anymore to your daughter.  This is the same exact behavior you said it wouldnt happen when she was in recovery.  On a last note, I said good morning to your husband today, and he failed to mention any of this.  Next time if you both have a problem, call me and scream at me in the phone, dont take it off on your daughter.

I am copying your daughter on this email.  Please do not scream at your daughter or take it out on her, this is not her doing, this letter is from me to you and your husband, anything you have to argue, scream or discuss with me, do it to my attention.

Thank you for reading and have a good day.

Gilbert Palau
Amikolle’s Fianceé

PS. We are getting married on October 10th 2008, with or without your blessing, and I will be writing about it.

What happens now?

I am writing from the Anne Arundel Medical Center, a couple hundred feet from me, around 12 addicts (including Amikolle) sit from me.  I have my headphones on, so I don’t know what they talk about, its their time to talk and I am only here so I can leech the hospital’s crappy free wifi.

I am going to backwards to my morning because I would like to relate my day with Amikolle, but then we will come back to this time and continue on.

We woke up at around 10am, I made Amikolle breakfast, and my plan was to bring it to her bed, but she beat me to it.  The smell of coffee filled the house, I made her buttermilk pancakes with hand whipped cream, strawberries, juice and spicy sausage on the side.  Its been a while since Amikolle and I have been able to have a breakfast like this, overall and excluding her disease its been tough on us.  But we wanted to survive on our own, at the end it gave us more satisfaction.

Around 2pm Amikolle’s long time friends Allison and Chris came over.  They are the first of a couple fo friends Amikolle has from her days in high school, that found out when she left and relapsed that their friend had a drug abuse problem.  They were very emotional and very supportive.  They told her that they were going to be calling her during the day tomorrow and during the week and if she didn’t call them, they were going to call her.  This are the types of friends Amikolle needs around her.  People who remind her how awesome she truly is, and who have a real interest in her getting better.  Her friends brought their newborn, Molly, who was the center of attention, cutest baby I have seen in a long time.  Baby laughed with us a lot and Danielle was able to talk to Allison in private and with Chris, to let them know first hand of her condition.  Overall their visit was a good 3hrs.  They had plans for sunday but they thought seeing Amikolle was a priority and they shifted their plans to come see their friend.

After they left, we got ready and head out to Danielle’s Parents house.  Most of you might think, she being with her parents is a great idea until she gets into rehab.  Frankly it’s not, but I cannot leave her alone, she is in active adiction and needs someone with her to watch her and talks to her to keep her mind from scheming.  I have been telling, her mother that she needs to keep a close eye on her tonight, because Amikolle is on flight risk.  She can try and leave because her addiction is in its prime right now.  As we were driving to this meeting, she confessed to me her mind is in high gear thinking how she can escape to go to Baltimore.  I told her she had to be strong, and tell herself that from out there we can’t help her, that she needs to be in our reach so that we can take her to rehab.  But tonight and right now, she is a flight risk.  I hope her mom is not that naive to not keep an eye on her.  Like Steve Jobs has a reality distortion field, her parents have a “Niceness Distortion Field”, they are super comprehensive and nice in front of me, but I know they are going to start bitching to her tonight and if they do that, she is going to take on and leave.

As I have explained before Amikolle’s resort for her addiction was based on her disability to not let things out of her chest with her friends, the emotional pressure that her parents have had on her all this time, the emotional duress her father has her on all the time, I hope they dont cause her any trouble because its a gamble if Amikolle will tolerate her dad’s rants and not use them to fuel her need to use drugs.  I will be able to rest again when she is in rehab which should happen soon, hopefully between monday and tuesday.

As we continued our drive here, I made Amikolle repeat to her self, that in order to get help she must stay with us, and that its understandable that her URGE is difficult, but it needs a lot of herself to beat it, and my concern is that she is weak mentally right now to fight that URGE on her own.  She needs to be very strong and truthful to her parents tonight about her state.

Tomorrow morning she has to call Carefirst, our medical insurance company to see what places they cover, then she needs to get on the horn with two candidates, Massie, which is in Cumberland, Md and Warwick Mansion in the Eastern Shore.  She has been a patient of Warwick.  We have to see which one will take her for a month or at least 3 weeks.  Its very difficult to get into the one month’s programs as there is a waiting list.  So hopefully she can get somewhere within the next two days.  Another thing, which I find ridiculous, is that the insurance determines what amount of time they cover.  Maybe the insurance covers 3 days, but they bill you for $12,000.  I mean how they expect these recovering addicts to recover when they got a medical expense of 12 Grand waiting for them when they get out of recovery.

The good thing in all this is that Amikolle realizes four important things:

1. Continuing her Addiction is no way to live.

2. She needs to get help, go to rehab, IOP’s, and going to NA meetings

3. When she needs help, she has to call people.  Plus she needs to put a lot of her part to withstand the rpessure of going out to use.

4. We need to move far from Baltimore, probably to another state, which very well could be Texas.

But first things first.  Lets all pray to God, she can wake up in her house tomorrow, and her parents keep a good eye on her, until she can find a place to go do her rehab.

For me, it will be another sleepless night… until I know she is there.  Because if she goes out there again, there is a huge chance she wont come back.

Back to work x2

Danielle, is also starting work tomorrow (monday), she is going to work as a Computer Tech at a small firm called AERTight, here in Maryland.  She is pretty excited about this.  She has been doing great, since we made some distance with her parents whose last move gave them the title of mayor assholes in my shit list.

Don’t get me started because I won’t finsh and I need to get to work.  But trust me, they are fucked up as parents go… I really wish I could get away with not inviting them to my wedding, but I have to suck that one up for her.  I think I could get away with a prank, I am thinking in baking a cake and covering it with exlax chocolate or pulverize some viagra over the mix and see what happens.  What I would write on the cake? Well… how about, “To both of you, with all my love!  -NOT!”

Well hey I can dream too…