Her diary is candid and engrossing. It is not filtered. She is not pitiful, and she is not seeking pity. She isn’t trying to atone or justify. She’s just letting us know that she was here for a little while and that she was drunk and hurting for most of it.
If I had met Patsy, I don’t think I would have liked her: She was a bad friend, a bad mother and quite often she was teetering on the edge of a blackout. But when you read someone’s diary, it’s different. You see more of the person. Patsy at the Silver Dollar bar is different from Patsy out fishing or Patsy in her room, decompressing into her journal. I would’ve liked that Patsy, the one who spent her life seeking love, both from others and for herself. “I enjoy this writing,” she wrote after her son died. Grieving the death of her mother, she wrote, “You know I’ve tried to kill my mother with a butcher knife.” And a few sentences later, “No matter how much I hated her then, I love her now. … I miss her terribly.”
"I can recall when my uncle used to babysit with us kids. I always thought he was a little crazy myself. He had sex relations with me and I guess I’ll always remember that. I used to run and hide in the bushes after that happened. He told me never to tell anyone because if I did I would be punished and God would put me in hell. Big deal. I didn’t have to worry about that because he had already put me there. I was really glad when he died. I should be ashamed of myself for being that way but I’m not."