Yes, really

Until the age of 12, and without my knowing it, I was being groomed as the future bride of a future British pop star.

"Future" is the operative word here, because my intended future never arrived. It was canceled for several reasons, mostly because I opted out, beginning at age 8 -- and later at 12 when they flew me to England and I witnessed reality at Edith Grove. Child trafficking by any other name.

At age 8 I began to ditch the plan after reading The Little Mermaid which plunged me into an emotional crisis. The "fate" of the little mermaid was a grim, conscious choice to abandon her Prince after a series of traumatic shocks made it clear to her that she wasn't cut out for life as a Princess. Her fairytale lover is too self absorbed and busy being a Prince to see her for who she is, while in various ways she is crippled by her deal with the witch. Her tongue gets cut out and the legs she acquires make walking on land unbearably painful. Besides, she's much too young for this whole charade of marriage and public life in a foreign country. Therefore the mermaid chooses to die and turn to foam or, in an alternate version, she returns to her home under the sea and lives out the rest of her 300-year lifespan doing good deeds.

This was the scenario and the choice laid out for me at age 8 after experiencing my first big failure (as a ballerina) and later getting raped in a secretive 'summer school' in Toronto.

I chose myself. Just let me be Me. But the psychiatrists had other plans, I.e. to train me as a Monarch slave/ child prostitute and use my incredible height to persuade the future pop star that I was 12, not 8, and therefore still a candidate for an arranged (bloodline) "marriage."

He was on board with this due to my mother's strong negotiating skills. So the charade continued for a few more years with my parents disagreeing and almost divorcing over their differing views of the program. My father saw through it while my mother naively believed compliance with the British shrinks would result in a fairytale wedding for her daughter.

At 12 I made my soul-based decision to opt out of their crazy scheme, supported by my dad who had been depatterned at the mental hospital but still had his marbles and was determined to expose the program and protect me.

When Mick arrived triumphantly on tour in 1965, my mother made a last attempt to seal our engagement by inviting him to our house where he met the nearly 6-foot 14 year old that I had grown into. Although I knew a lot about him from teen fan mags and had seen him on TV, I had no interest in a silly marriage proposal. This came as a huge shock to my mother who quickly became an invalid, her dream for me consigned to the trash bin, while she retired into the shadows.

Eighteen months passed until I watched this eerie Stones performance on the Ed Sullivan show. It was the evening of September 11, 1966 -- the date that appeared a year later on the cover of Sergeant Pepper, notorious as the alleged day Paul McCartney died.

You decide. https://youtu.be/MCEbKfgrbWc?si=Tk2owBW4vgK28y-W

Does anyone else find this weird? I vividly remember that show on 9/11/1966 - I was 15. Mick's bad haircut suggests self-mutilation or something traumatic was going on somewhere off stage.