Sorry I took so long getting this to you, Don. It’s verrrry long (19 pages) so please don’t feel obligated to read all or any of it. The only reason I think it might be of any interest to you is because of the nature of Internet friendship and how it’s confining aspect often prevents people from “knowing” someone on a deeper level than simply shared interests and opinions. I’m pretty sure you created that Bared Souls board with at least a slightly similar idea in mind. I never posted there because I wasn’t comfortable being quite so open when there was no way of knowing if the person reading it would turn out to be friend or foe. Those kind of details can be used against one, especially somebody like me who treated the whole thing as a fun diversion. I put out a lot of disinformation both on RS and Castaways because I wanted/needed that ballast against trolls, SheRocks, RocDoc, I’m sure you know the list of my detractors. The nature of facebook is very different, what with the privacy controls available, so I went into that venture almost 10 years ago with the goal of being more transparent, of being James Casey instead of JACkory (wouldn’t Plokoon be proud to know the stupid moniker he gave me, which I took up, like a thrown gauntlet, as username practically everywhere on the Internet I’ve been to, is still haunting me to this day?). So far so good, I suppose, barring a few blocked addys (Melonius Thunk ring a bell?). Anyway, I added quite a bit of new material before sending to you. It wasn’t quite finished and had stalled on what most surely was not a “happy ending”. So I took care of that. Take care, my friend. I really wish we had been running buddies back in the late 70s/early 80s. You, Me and Holzman would have been a force to be reckoned with.
1985. Though I was only 23 I had been married for 3 years. Happily married, to be sure, as evidenced by the fact that my wife was pregnant and we were both ready and willing to be parents. The situation was as solid as one could hope for. I was employed at a quartz manufacturing plant which was probably the best job to be had in the small town where we lived. In my leisure time I'd put together a good little band and hoped to make some money on the side with it. I would have been thrilled to see that group take off so I could play music full time but didn't expect it to really happen. I was content to stay at the quartz company, beveling small crystals to specified frequencies for the government contracts that kept the plant open.
The biggest problem I had with the job was Alan, my supervisor. He was absolutely brilliant when it came to the specifics of the job but he was a strange sort, practically anti-social when outside of the workplace environment he was used to. He was a follower of Herbert W Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God (you may recall the old Plain Truth magazine...in reality they were much more of a cult than a true church). Everyone who worked at this place was involved in church, in fact the manager even told me during my pre-employment interview that they ONLY hired people who were active in church. Not any specific denomination, just so long as they were members of a local congregation. As for me, I had been attending the United Methodist Church for the past five years. I'd left the Baptists for two reasons: 1. they had run off a great pastor and replaced him with a fat dude who channeled the spirit and ideology of Jerry Falwell and 2. my girlfriend/future wife was a Methodist. We also had a great pastor there who was to become very influential in my religious life.
Alan, despite his affiliation with what he would say was the only TRUE Christian church, had a bit of a mean streak. He was ALWAYS talking about religion; his was the real deal, of course, and everyone else's was bogus. He had an insatiable desire to evangelize Armstrongism but he went about it by trying to tear apart the beliefs and teachings of every other stripe of the faith, of course mine included. In fact he seemed to inordinately relish dogging what I believed, perhaps because he didn't think I was solid enough in it's doctrines to put up much of a fight (and in hindsight, at that point in my life he was probably right). Basically he liked to see me squirm and clearly enjoyed pushing me as far as he could.
Then one day he pushed too hard. I can't remember the exact words or reason this time was different...perhaps it was just because I wasn't as strong on that day as usual... It must have been something, though, because even though I knew I was making a stupid mistake nevertheless I walked off the jobsite in the middle of a shift and vowed I'd never go back. I can still remember what it felt like walking home through the municipal park with all the anger and worry about what I was going to do next swirling through my head. I never had a back-up plan. Of course I'd have to find another job but for various reasons this was easier said than done. Not the least of which the fact that we were living in Ronald Reagan's America and a recession that had made it practically impossible to find a good job in the area.
...and more importantly, what was my wife going to say about it?
So here I am, 23 years old, wife and baby on the way...Bella (not her real name) had been working part-time so we could afford to live a little better but it wasn't enough to support even the two of us, let alone a child. I worked on getting publicity for the band in hopes of putting us on a circuit and trying to make ends meet that way. But it was no use. I didn't have the window of opportunity I needed. I had to do something and do it quickly...that baby wasn't going to wait for me to get my house in order before popping into our lives.
For reasons that I won't detail, for fear of making this even longer than it looks like it's going to be, I wound up joining the Navy. It's a testament to how desperate I was because even I knew that military service was the last place I needed to be. My personality type was almost antithetical to that of your typical successful serviceman or woman. I had seen the programs on television that detailed the brutal boot camp process. It was very obvious to me that I simply wasn't cut out for that kind of training. I had to act quickly, though, so I bit the bullet and decided I would do whatever it took to make it through. Since it was peace time I wasn't worried about potentially going into combat (kind of shows you what kind of soldier I would have been, terrified of going into battle...I don't feel that way anymore).
Besides, Bella was very proud of me for choosing the military route. Her father was a retired Air Force Master Sergeant who'd served in Vietnam (albeit not in a combat role). He was a tough son of a bitch and I suppose it made me feel good to know that he was proud of my decision, that he supported it and the status of our father-in-law/son-in-law relationship would improve incrementally. I don't think he liked anyone and that included me, perhaps a military career was my ticket into his good graces. Would have been nice.
If there's one thing about this entire memory that baffles me more than potentially being a Naval seaman it's that I failed to realize just how difficult it was going to be separated from my wife and our unborn child. The gulf between basic training in Orlando, FL and my hometown was 1017 miles by air, 1243 miles by land. I had never been so far from home in my entire life. This is a good part of why I didn't make it one week through boot camp. Not the only one but significant.
On the heels of a strange and mostly forgotten incident one night I found myself in what I later learned was the 4th Floor Psych Ward of the Naval Hospital. I'll gloss over most of the details surrounding this turn of events. Suffice to say they were strange days indeed. Troubling, frightening, confusing...and at the heart of it all the weight of missing my wife, worrying about our child. She wrote me a letter every single day but I was so disoriented, they weren't nearly enough to pacify. I wanted nothing less than to have her by my side.
I had no idea what was wrong with me. It took the doctors a long while to settle on a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. During that time they had put me on some serious hardcore medications...stuff that you don't see prescribed for bipolar these days because it's just too strong and the side effects are so prominent/prevalent. Thorazine. Melloril. Haldol. It's no stretch to admit that I was incapacitated during the months when I was on those medications (which they told me I would have to take for the rest of my life or else face serious *insinuate 'fatal'* consequences). You've heard of the "Thorazine shuffle", perhaps? It's all true.
I had gone numb except for the sadness I felt being so far from those I loved. I would sit in the hallway staring at a picture of my wife, her senior class picture, for so long that her facial features seemed to move, making the image appear "alive" (an optical "trick"). I guess that effect could have been attributed to the medication or something along those lines, I never even gave it a second thought.
There was no way of knowing how long I was going to be there. Obviously Uncle Sam had a contract to keep me for the next four years but surely it wouldn't take so long to get me fixed up. Since it was a mental illness that sidelined me I wouldn't even be eligible to continue in the Navy. I didn't think it would be TOO long; I hoped to detach with an honorable discharge (not even a possibility in my circumstances, it would be a general discharge).
I certainly didn't still expect to be in the Naval Hospital for four months but when my daughter was born in August that's exactly where I was. I can't begin to describe the combination of joy and agony I experienced when the call came and a corpsman delivered the news. Thrilled to know that the delivery was a smooth one, my little girl was healthy, Bella had been so strong. What I wouldn't have given to be there with them. This wondrous occasion, far from lifting my spirits as it should have, only drove home the fact that they were halfway across the country and I might as well have been in prison. The only hope it brought was being discharged from the hospital sooner rather than later...
...a misguided hope, it turns out. I stayed in the hospital for another 2 months. I suppose it's a testament to the strength of Haldol that I made it through that last 1/3rd of my committal. It really dumbed me down. So much so that I was actually surprised when I finally got discharged. Six months in hell is a bit too hyperbolic but not by much.
The Navy psychiatrists eventually came to a diagnosis. I was suffering with bipolar disorder. Manic Depressive syndrome, as it was once referred to. A chemical imbalance in the brain, it was explained to me as I was not familiar with any of it. A mental illness for which there is not a cure. The best I could hope for would be to manage it with medication and counseling. I was much less disheartened by the diagnosis than I was with the prospect of spending the rest of my life in a medication induced stupor.
Six months after I'd left for Florida with the intent of serving in the armed forces they put me on a plane and sent me home. There was a layover in Atlanta and to this day I'm still amazed that I was able to make the connections necessary to return home in the shape I was in. The jet airliner landed, the passengers departed and we were met by a huge crowd. Initially, looking out on the gathering, I thought there would be no way I would ever spot my wife in that throng.
But I was wrong.
There she was, such a vision of beauty, rivalled only by the blanketed bundle she held in her arms. For a short time I was seized by such a wave of joy I could barely contain it. If I hadn't been so emptied by the psychiatric medications I might not have had room in my soul to accommodate it. We hugged. We kissed. Then she showed me our daughter. I understand this kind of thing happens to military personnel all the time, being away, not seeing their children until long after they're born. I feel for them, I honestly do. It's one of the most bittersweet experiences you can live through, with eyes to the future but regretting lost time one can never retrieve. She was a sight for the sorest eyes.
The general discharge meant that I would receive no assistance from the Navy after separation and what I was being paid didn't amount to enough to remain in the house we'd been in for the last few years. I couldn't wrap my head around how devastating being uprooted like that would be.
The original plan was for us to stay with my mother until we could get back up on our feet. She and my dad had been divorced for 8 years and she'd not only remarried but had a daughter with the guy. I'm guessing she was probably 3 or 4 years old by then. Of course mom fawned over her first granddaughter. Unfortunately her husband, a tall, lanky, exceedingly ugly dude with a wicked jealous streak, decided that she was paying too much attention to my daughter at the expense of time and attention he felt was owed to their own. We were asked to leave.
A generous couple from our church had some extra space in their large house in the country and they let us stay with them for awhile. That lasted probably a month.
I'm trying to be thorough in chronicling the main points of the six months after I left the hospital but it's difficult because my brain was so cluttered by the medication I was on. I remember we found a place to stay in a city located about 60 miles from the house we'd rented in my hometown. This was a college town and even though I could barely focus on a page in a book I decided I wanted to take advantage of the University's Vocational Rehabilitation program, hopefully go back to school the following semester.
In the meantime it was obvious that I would have to secure some kind of employment. I had some experience working behind a cash register which helped land a job at a huge travel stop on the Interstate just outside of the city. It surprises me to this day that I was able to hold that job for the few days I did before being let go. The medication had slowed me down, I'm sure my drawer counts were off. The managers could tell there was something wrong with me. They called me to the office, said it wasn't working out but they would be happy to provide a good reference for future employment elsewhere. I didn't ask for specific reasons, didn't even care. I didn't think about what it meant to have failed, what my wife would say or what we would do.
We were no longer able to afford the upstairs level of the duplex we'd barely settled in. The plan to attend college was still at the forefront of my mind. In a grand example of putting the cart before the horse we moved into an apartment across the street from the University. A very short walking distance, which was essential because we had only one vehicle. It was a dank place that constantly reeked of some unknown foreign cuisine one of the residents was always cooking.
When I did speak to the counselor from Vocational Rehab I was told that they could probably help me out. What was I hoping to major in? I told them English, specifically English education, I would be a teacher. No, they said. That was out of the question. It would have to be a course of study which would immediately pay off, something more in the line of engineering and such. I had never had any desire to do those things. Certain of failure I declined their assistance. A real letdown and a serious setback.
The next few weeks I was expected to secure employment. The apartment, in addition to being close to the college, was also in walking distance of the main strip, with it's fast food joints and small businesses. Bella expected me to beat the pavement and find a job there. Of course she did, it was the only thing to do, our financial situation had come down to the wire. And I did go out a few times...but I never stopped anywhere. The experience at the travel stop had convinced me that I was too messed up to hold a job. If you had only spent some time with me back then you would have agreed. No doubt Bella saw it as a lack of responsibility, which I suppose it was but there was no convincing her that I had come to the point where I simply and honestly could not do it. No matter how much I wanted to rise above my circumstances it was no use. I had way too much going against me.
On top of that, her schedule and my inability to watch over our daughter by myself meant that my in-laws had to be conscripted to watch over her. For days in a row my little girl was 60 miles away from her parents...the same little girl who was already two months old before I ever got to see her. Bella missed her so badly she was in agony. I will never forget the night she broke down crying, wailing "I miss my baby". And me? So doped I couldn't feel a thing. I judge myself, in retrospect, very severely for the apathy that was surely like an aura surrounding my frame. But I try to cut myself some slack because as I saw it, this wasn't me. It really wasn't. I don't know where *I* went off to for that time and I'm thankful *I* eventually found my way back but no, this unfeeling golem was certainly not me.
It all came to a head one afternoon in April, 1986. I should remember much more about it than I actually do. An educated guess would be that it started as a small spat about the "responsibility" I spoke of earlier. We'd had a few disagreements during the four years we were married but always managed to resolve them before anything drastic transpired. That being the case it was even more bizarre and hard to believe that these harsh words resulted in my telling her I was leaving. I called my dad and asked him to bring his pickup truck and we loaded what I considered to be my stuff into the back. We drove back to his house and I piled my crap into my old bedroom.
I don't remember it at all but it's most likely my father spent a good deal of time that night telling me I'd made a mistake, that I would be a fool to walk away from his daughter-in-law, who he loved very much, which would almost certainly mean losing my daughter. I was certainly in no condition to care for her. No judge in his right mind would award custody of an infant child to a zombie, even if he was her father.
We might have even fought about it, though I would have made for a very weak opponent. Regardless, I came to my senses. I never really wanted for us to break up, it was frustration and anger which pushed me over the line. I made a point to see Bella the next afternoon, tell her how sorry I was and hoped she would forgive me. Surely we could work something out. Once again I cannot recall the specifics but if I know me I probably convinced myself she would accept my apology. Reluctantly, perhaps, because she was bound to still be upset and angry at me. But we had, I thought, a solid relationship. I felt sure she wouldn't want to mess with that.
I was in for a rude awakening.
She had gone to her parents' house the day before so I went there, knocked on the door and her mother answered. I asked if I could speak to Bella and she let me in. I don't think she even looked at me when I walked into the room. I told her I was sorry. Everything you'd expect me to say, I said. I don't know if she could tell, through the medication induced mumble, that I was sincere. I was. If ever I had been before, I certainly was now.
But it all fell on deaf ears. She heard what I was saying but it was as if she'd thrown up a wall between us that prevented her from caring.
She never said a single word.
Not a word, and it was obvious, through her gestures and body language, that she wanted me to know she didn't plan on speaking to me, now or ever again. Who knows how long I tried. It could have been just a few moments before I realized it was useless. It might have been 15 minutes. It would not have mattered if I had stayed there until sunset, it was over. In her heart, I suppose, I had become anathema.
As for me, coming to terms with it was a slow, torturous process teased by hopes of a reunion that were pathetic under the circumstance. Sometime in the next days she moved to a location unknown to me, taking our daughter with her. With all the emotional turmoil and upheaval I suppose it's not surprising that the following months are a confused, mixed up jumble of blunted memories. She served me with divorce papers which gave her full custody and, for some reason I still have not fathomed, did not stipulate terms of child support.
I didn't see her again for 26 years, in 2012 when she and her husband attended the high school graduation ceremony of her niece and my son. She was seated a long way from where we were but I have no doubt she saw me. We never made eye contact and there was no way I was going to place myself in the awkward position of bumping into her.
One thing I'll never forget was the sense of pride that swelled in me as my son gave his speech as Salutatorian. I'm not sure I can explain this sense of "See what I did? This intelligent, articulate kid is MY legacy, he's the successful product of MY parenting (though my wife gets the greater share of credit for that).
*****You gave up on me, you didn't have what it took to cling to your vows and stick with me through sickness and health, you thought I would be too far gone forever...well look at this. You were wrong. You loved me, I know you did, and I don't bear any ill will against you for the choice you made but you shouldn't have given up, you didn't have to sacrifice that to your fear of potentially spending your life with me in the condition I was in. You should have had more faith in me, you should not have written me off as if I consciously WANTED to be a loafer and not provide. I don't know how you got that idea unless it was from your hardline father (which I've always suspected but then again, it was your decision to make). You left, married a man who treats you like shit (or so I've been told by an extremely reliable source) but worse than that you placed our daughter in the position of having such a person come into her life as his stepdaughter. I know more that situation than you could possibly imagine and these days I resent more you doing that than the fact you left me. Look down here again from your seat in the upper bleachers...see that woman with me? We've been married for almost 20 years. She knew what she was getting into when she accepted my marriage proposal...has she seen some hard times as a result? Of course she, it's part of the deal. But those difficult times are only a fraction of the life we've lived together and she's strong. I loved you, Bella, I really did. With all my heart and soul. But we were husband and wife in name only. You kind of aborted the potential growth to that stage when you cut me out of your (and my daughter's) life. Still, I don't begrudge your inability to cope with the situation because if I put myself in your shoes I can't say I wouldn't have reacted the same way. Bipolar Disorder (and the poison medications used to manage it) came into our lives and no one was thinking clearly, I suppose. But don't listen to me. Listen to that tall young man with the cap and gown standing at the podium, waxing wise well beyond his years. Take a good look, then look down to the floor and see the proud woman sitting beside me...and then you'll understand why through it all I can now say, well aware of the dripping irony, 'Thank you for leaving me.'"
******During the 20+ years between the separation and October 2010 I periodically performed an Internet search for the names of my ex-wife and daughter. The former out of curiosity, the latter out of a desire to find out where my daughter lived. Those searches were always fruitless, as I knew they were bound to be, because I didn't have a surname to work with (assuming my daughter had taken her "stepfather"'s).
Looking through the local small town newspaper one day I noticed my ex-Mother in Law had passed away. That was sad because not only did I always like her, she seemed to go to bat for me in the days when the separation was going down. I read the obituary not even thinking that the answer to my search question was right there at the bottom: Bella's last name was Simon (not real name) and my daughter had gotten married to a guy named Truman (not real name). I also learned I have both a grandson AND a granddaughter!
Armed with that information I went to Myspace (which, at the time, was more popular than Facebook), typed in her name and BOOM! First try! There she was, a very beautiful young woman who I really almost recognized from the photo, even though I hadn't seen her in years (I had a couple of photographs from when she was in grade school, procured and delivered by her grandmother). I sent an e-mail and crossed my fingers.
I got a response the next day and we began to catch up with each others' lives via a few telephone calls and e-mail messages that weren't quite as long as this has turned out to be, but very lengthy and detailed nonetheless. We took that process fairly slowly but by December of the next year we'd arranged for my family and myself to reunite with her and to meet her husband at a steakhouse in Tulsa. I feared it might turn awkward at some point but actually the dinner and conversation was very free and easy. Everyone had a wonderful time, photographs were taken to commemorate the event and a new chapter in my life had begun. I felt like the luckiest person alive, as I honestly had lost hope of ever finding her. We got along just fantastically and I really liked her husband...although unfortunately they are no longer married.
A few months later we made plans for me to visit them in their home and to meet my grandchildren. Maybe just a liiiittttle more awkward than the grown-ups meeting but not so bad as all that. I think they took to me well enough, though it had to be difficult for them to process how this stranger had come into their lives who, they were told, was their grandfather. We'd decided at the time it would be better to have them call me by my name, which felt kind of weird to me but I'm sure it was easier for the kids.
Of course we are still in touch, albeit not as regularly as we would prefer. Speaking of "awkward", I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when she told Bella that we had reunited and had resumed our familial relationship.
I heard she took it as well as can be expected.
