Mentally Ill, or Brain Damaged? Does the distinction matter if it looks and feels the same? The Devil’s advocate might still believe I suffer from “inherited propensity,” or in other words, just look at my parents, one schizophrenic and the other suicidal. I was unfortunate enough to be injured before neurologists could recognize my particular symptoms. Otherwise, doctors might have at least granted me that I am not my mother.

To settle on a diagnosis, Dr. Rogers was oblivious to the Frankenstein scar across my forehead since they hadn’t discovered things like “Executive Function,” But his specialty understood “neurotic.” The judgment settled to Bi-polar since its genetic, and Type 2 since I didn’t lose touch with reality. He told me my IQ was 145, but my emotional maturity was 3.

Not eighteen, but three years old. Thus begins recovery's daunting spiral up, Chutes and Ladders back to start.

He explained it wasn't low self-esteem, but no self-esteem. I had the rare opportunity to literally grow up again and be able to describe the process.

At first I had a vague sense of boundaries, or what defines a “self.” For the first month or so on the ward, conversation was a challenge, only because I had no real desire to find words in the first place. People expected me to talk, but what to say and why? Then, if I had the inclination to say something, it felt like the words were locked away in a different room. Add pressure to speak them and the door was shut tight. I could make my way in, but all the words and ideas were scattered about the floor. Give me a sec, please excuse the mess. If under too much pressure, nonsense would spill out like word soup. I learned to snap my fingers once to clear my thoughts, having to start the sentence over with more concentration.

Finally getting started to talking, there is no off switch, prattling on with mundane detail. I began to recognize a certain look on people’s faces, I've heard all this before, remember? which became my cue to try to stop. Another aspect of this is a tendency to interrupt. The desire to say something demands front and center in my brain like an excited kid, shutting out the ability to listen. It becomes all I can do to hold back the impulsiveness and maintain the engagement of conversation. Here’s the new question I realized: if I know I need to just shut up, who is doing the talking?

Without personal boundaries, the outside world was me. One morning, a corpsman on the ward mentioned he had a dream about two girls fighting, one blond and one dark haired. I told him, that was a dream about me. Development-wise, I was realizing the most essential archetype, the struggle of good and evil within one’s self, but “out there is you” and “in-here is me” hadn’t coalesced yet.

Empathy was exaggerated to where other’s feelings were my own. A damaged Executive Function meant those became floods of emotion. I couldn’t differentiate a movie as a “story.”

For a while I didn’t have wants. Not in the emotional sense, I could certainly feel desires, but I couldn’t form the idea of what I liked. Field trips for us special residents of the Third Floor took us to the mall in a white van. Just sitting at the food court center, I was overwhelmed by it all, the people, the noise, all that stuff. After a month or so, I, me, began to actually want something: flavored popcorn at a little kiosk. At least it was a start, something to look forward to. Recognizing this was important, I had to allow myself that childishness.

I didn’t feel sexual feelings unless someone else was attracted to me, practically living vicariously, so other’s needs were the priority. “Mine” didn’t exist. One corpsman took advantage of that and got reprimanded. How to uphold self-esteem balanced with shame? 19 years old but not? It just is what it is.

What had become of the woman/girl who had always wanted to be an artist? The activity room in the ward offered donated yard-sale quality games, mundane puzzles, and juvenile model kits. Reading “Ages 6 to 12” on the box, I thought, Are you kidding me? ... Oh, what the hell, spending a day or two assembling a plastic sailing ship. I recognized there was me, the woman, and me, the child, and it had to be ok. This became the foundation of mindful meditation later on, the key to managing flooding emotions when medication didn’t exist.

In the hospital, my perspective was so new; I was nothing but naïve. Anything and everything was true and believable. As a sort of entertainment, some of the medics used to tell me the most fantastic lies I’d fall for hook, line, sinker.

I remember one guy said, “My vacation home is shaped like an eagle, up in the mountains next to a lake.”

And I replied, “Wow, I’d love to go visit, maybe stay awhile? As soon as I get out of here,” yearning to be part of that real world out there.

The corpsmen (nurses) chuckled, one saying, “He’s messin with you. He doesn’t own anything more than a paternity suit,” more to them than to me. They laughed again, with me joining in. I wasn’t upset, because who was I?

Regarding a scrawl of homemade tattoo on some guys’ thigh that said ACE, I had asked, “What’s that about?”

“I was a crop duster pilot in high school.”

I was so impressed, never having the opportunity to learn something like that, and I’d imagine him a young man swooping his plane back and forth over a Midwestern cornfield, buddies with a dusty crew at the airfield. Other people are so lucky to have that kind of opportunity. I’d feel so jealous of his life, mine being pathetically nothing in comparison. Somehow even imagination had lost its boundary, whimsy being taken seriously.

What kind of world did I arrive in, where I could be so naïve that anything could be possible by just imagining it? The auto insurance company even sent an agent to have me sign away my rights to sue for damages, relinquishing liability from the driver. A considerable amount of money signed away, ok sure, if you say so, that would have kept me from being homeless later on. The world said it was my fault that I was a mess; I believed it.

There were social cues I had to learn, like rules for what to say when meeting someone. “Hi, how are you.” And then I had to teach myself to really listen to their reply. I am still making rude or inappropriate mistakes; not reaching out to shake someone’s hand, reaching out a hand instead of a hug, or hugging when I shouldn’t. Nothing at all would seem stand-off-ish, even though I’d prefer that most times. (I've even said, "Hi, how are you?" to my husband. He still teases me about that. ) The interesting thing is, my physicians and nurses thought I had never known this before.

…

When we were growing up…

Barefoot of course, gingerly, I walk a tightrope; the white-painted line under my feet is cooler than the black asphalt just too burning hot. Scrubby tufts of weedy grass are welcome respites on the way, briefly cooling hurried steps even if they are stickery. When the temperature is over a hundred degrees, the road becomes a genuine game of “lava”, a molten hurdle encouraging jumps to painted tire stops and grass islands. My path is as simple as I can see, as challenging as I can imagine, and stretches out for just one summer day.

School was out, but I’d miss my teacher Mr. A. (the class’ term of endearment) a barrel-chested little person about as tall as his students. He was the first teacher who encouraged me to be myself. I was a little kid, a couple years advanced and bright enough to be skipped again, but that would have been ridiculous since I was already too small. If I got schoolwork done early, he would let me spend class-time doing whatever, encouraging creativity. For a while, I was devoted to making little scale models of parks out of construction paper. Taping together a rectangular tray, I would then glue in ponds, 3-D folded benches, trees, elevated roller-coaster paths for walking fingers, and oval or figure-8 tracks for imaginary bicycles.

In my hand is a puffed grocery bag as light as air. Earlier that morning, a vacant lot had caught my eye, covered by a patch of weeds sprouting globes of delicate fluff. I could finally make Dandelion Soufflé, from a favorite book, Mud Pies and Other Recipes. “Serve the soufflé in a light breeze with Sun-Dried water, and the meal will disappear.” Perhaps I’ve outgrown it a little, but it has taken years for all the right circumstances to align and now here was the entire field miraculous with me free to pick it, a humorous seed planted but appearing late on the stage.

Running home, three small one-story units are on a corner of a sprawled apartment complex. This is the tired, poor side of town; with oil-stains by the sidewalks and a little more gravel on the street. Grass is neglected in places; just like the children but these kids prefer that anyway. Help with homework is Schoolhouse rock on TV and Godzilla supervises on a Saturday afternoon. About the only affection this tomboy received is my older brother picking a fight or Mom’s impatient brushing of my long scruffy hair. In the hand fate dealt, tenderness did not comfort often. I didn’t know anything else though, so I could still laugh with a child’s happiness and love summer days lasting well into the night, until all the other kids were called inside, until after the crickets and toads settled down. The freedom of summertime was my time to be in control of my own heart, just to be.

I loved exploring the outdoors instead of staying inside, feeling more accomplishment fixing my own flat tires instead of fixing cakes in an Easy-Bake oven. More fascinated by how it worked, (just a light bulb?) I preferred baking my own real cookies in a real oven. Hanging outside with the boys most of the time, building tree forts was more fun than stuffing tiny Barbie feet into tiny weird little high-heeled stripper-shoes. That didn’t matter anymore anyway, ever since I found Barbie shockingly dismembered on the bathroom floor. Who else would do that except my brother, but why?

Two neighbor boys are in the carport stomping aluminum cans flat for the recycling, the air fragrant with stale beer. They would look like twin brothers if they weren’t big and little, sporting matching blonde buzz cuts and cut-off shorts.

“Hey, you gonna get some money?” I ask.

“Yeah, Dad let us have them,” as he steps on another one from a dwindling pile. “What’s in the bag?”

“Dandelion Soufflé,” I reply, tossing it by the door.

Five boys pause. “Soof… what?” the youngest asks.

The older ones are accustomed to my random art projects, like grocery store bag computers, and cardboard pinball machines. After only a quirky glance to each other, they continue their activities. The only requisite for friendship here is vicinity, yet it is still true. The idea of choosing friends is about as odd as the concept that one could chose where one lives. Strengths and shortcomings are teasingly accepted because most everything just is what it is.

My brother sits on a step, attempting to shoot a wandering fly with a home-made rubber band gun; rings cut from a bicycle tube made the best ammo. When they all play war, pretend shooting and dodging each other and debating who got hit where, I would think, at least I won’t get drafted into the military.

Thwack, and he reloads another band.

I call out, “Hey, what do you call a Fly with no wings?” By their slight grimaces, I could tell they were all thinking of the bully down the street who would be cruel enough to find out, but they can’t think of the answer. “A Walk,” I say cheerfully.

The boys roll their eyes, which makes it funny to me, and my brother says “ar, ar.” the sarcasm his way of approving.

Digging out my skateboard from the low bushes by the front door, I wheel lazily around the bags and pile of cans, tick-tacking and leaning the curves through three oil-stained parking stalls. The board’s wheels take an abrupt, scuffing stop on some little thing, sending me running top-heavy for a few steps. Recovering, I go back to the board and find the culprit: a scrap of round cardboard the color of cement. The night before, they all had been playing with a handful fireworks saved from last month. Cutting the plastic base off of Whistling Petes and pinching the end, the small cardboard tubes became screaming missiles, random projectiles. Sometimes the screaming firework chased a cat, or the draft of a running kid. All the noise and gut-busting laughter brought out some adults; they pronounced the fun too much of a fire hazard and confiscated the rest of fireworks.

My slick flat black plastic board is difficult to maneuver, wishing I had some grip tape. Or a kick-tail, and big polyurethane wheels with sealed bearings and adjustable trucks like my brother’s. I know his was expensive, a pretty aluminum one with two kicktails and all that. $85 in a catalog; he wanted it and Mom got it for him. Mine was an afterthought, $20 from Kmart.

“Because you’re a girl.”

Even so, I got the most I could out of it. Removing the bearings, I oiled them regularly and scuffed the top to detail it with black paint.

“Why do I have to clean the tub, and the sink, and dust all the furniture, when all he has to do is whisk out the toilet? He gets to go free an hour before I do and I’m stuck in here all Saturday morning!”

“You don’t want to clean the toilet too, do you?”

“But why does he get 25 cents for allowance and I get only 15?”

“Because he is older than you.”

“Only a year!” But that year never caught up.

God only knows why I was second; the reasons always just appeared. I kept playing by the rules, hoping one day the reasons would justify themselves. One day they would have to come around in her favor, but the rules kept changing. The only thing consistent that makes sense: I was not good enough, no matter how hard I tried to please. By the time a brother shouldn’t share a room with a sister anymore, I didn’t even try to negotiate, assuming I would be the one sleeping on the living room couch.

Love is... A Brother's Hand (poem)

On the Clearance back shelf of the Dollar Store stand rows of sloppily painted Santa's-Elf-Gnomes,
Palm-Tree-Snowglobes, Pink-Plastic-Cowboy-Guns with a Rhinestone-Deputy-Badge, and other What-Were-They-Thinking wastes of under-appreciated labor. Rows of “Love Is....” paperweights. Treacle blobs of mushiness, melty children with huge dewey raindrop eyes, clinging to each other. People just don't buy that cheap sentiment anymore, so these dusty blocks of vapid mass production stare out neglected like a pathetic Easter Bunny Island, Xmas Island, land of misfit corporate mistakes.

Love Is.... A Brother's Hand.

How noble, this bigger blobby cartoon hero holding the smaller blob's vulnerable hand. I search for one I could give my own brother, so he could smile and say, You remembered....

Where's the one with hands around the little one's throat, choking, until he senses when she begins to fear suffocation, only then letting go? There's gotta be one with a board game, where he quits if she starts to win, so she learns to lose if she wants to play. The boy's affection is wrestling, twisting the weaker arm around to her back, only relenting if she gives up saying the magic word uncle, like you mean it UNCLE.

The poor boy could be no hero, no comrade. Unwilling to stand up for her, instead saying quit your whining. Only one year older but acting so much more, just as lost as the younger but finding some sense of control by overpowering the weaker. Or perhaps it’s simple Darwinian competition kicking her out of the nest.

Where’s the one where the sister stands hiding behind the corner at the end of the hall, wondering what a friend meant when she said, you could kick him right there, and just when he is even with the hallway's end, obliviously unaware of the awesome amount of pain he is about to experience, she springs from the corner and Ninja levitates her leg around in the air, karma giving back everything she’s gone through into her foot contacting
--------->;; X!
and he clutches himself, gasping once, then breathless, turns gray, then green,
then slow motion keels over...
YYYYES! she exclaims and pumps her fists in victory. Gets grounded for two weeks because how dare you hurt your brother but so worth the sentence.
Where is that one?

Love Isn't..... here.

Love is ...... a Rescuing Pegasus
....... a Terrible Avenging Angel
....... an Armored Knight

Love is ....... a Myth.

...

Chapter 4- Home is a Hospital

On the ward, at least they gave me my own room apart from the seriously crazy sailors who came and went.  One guy came in crisis, dragged in through the doors and held down.  He spent a couple days in the quiet room, then was stabilized enough to hang out in the tv room.  Watching the news with him one evening, I asked, “Hey, what’s going on in your head? Why are you here?” 

He replied matter-of-fact, “Everyone’s an alien.”

Accustomed to throwing the lifeline to my mother, one foot in my world and one in hers, I said sympathetically, “They might as well be,” and he pondered that a while.  I had honestly listened to him.  His loneliness was perhaps interrupted, and I became a person instead of one more alien.   I used to think my mom’s problem was her ego seeking to ward off loneliness by thinking herself so special, then getting lost in her own story disconnected from everyone else's.  As if it was a choice she could make in her behavior.   I eventually came to understand that with with some people, their mind is just broken and lost, assembling their own world of reasons.  If I had realized that sooner with Mom, perhaps I wouldn’t have been so angry, and been able to forgive her sooner.  

Home was a twin bed with sterile sheets and the scent of clinical shampoo.  Everything little thing I did was noted somewhere on someone’s daily chart, usually negative.  My file grew fat, the Permanent Record of everything wrong with me.   “Let me see it,” I would ask the corpsman at the desk. 

“No, it would make you paranoid.”

In other words, they kept telling me how messed-up I was until I believed it, then they diagnosed me with Low Self Esteem.  I remember asking for a waste-can for my bathroom sink, and just threw the paper towels there in the corner, accumulating since they didn’t give me one.  (diagnosis:  Passive-Aggressive Behavior.)  I would complain about the lithium drying up my skin like an alligator, and the window light was so bright I had to squint from the glare, even though I just started taking it and overdosing on baby amounts.  (diagnosis: Hypochondria.)   My veins collapsed during the blood level draws, ow ow OW!  and the nurse hmphed with impatience, trying several more veins.  But that didn’t make sense, the core of my essence felt like a tough person, solid…

…

The recycling cans in the carport are all flattened and bagged, so we all collected our bikes from the pile, a squad of scrappy machines gathered from the Salvation Army and police auctions.  We headed off, each riding with one hand or occasionally no hands, precariously holding a bag. 

The last time I had tried to steer with one hand, following my brother and some older boys home, I had been coasting pretty fast down a hill, holding a box of licorice in my steering hand.  With the other, I overconfidently reached across to dig out one piece out.  The handlebars gave an uncontrollable wobble, jolted to 90 degrees, and over the bars I went.  Landing hard on my chin and knees, the impact rang my ears.  I rolled over to just sit there on the shoulder of the highway, looking at my pile of a bike and scattered licorice.  In too much pain to jump back up like I usually would, I sat and pressed my bleeding chin with a graveled palm.  Refusing tears, I just closed my eyes and waited for the pain to subside like it always would, eventually.  A car actually stopped and a lady jumped out.

“Are you alright?!”

Surprised by the stranger I said, “Yeah, I’m ok.”

“Are you sure? You’re bleeding…” .

Confused and embarrassed by the concern, I replied, “I’m fine.  I’m ok.”

No, I didn’t need any help, I really didn’t.  And no, I didn’t need a ride home.  Yes, I was sure.  I could stand, there’s not too much blood on my leg; I would just walk it off home with the bike.   I didn’t know what to do with this concern.   Where is my brother and the rest of them?   Long gone down the street, but in my world this is as it should be; I had fallen behind.   The situation gave the lady pause, so she stayed until I could limp slowly across the street and into the subdivision, one hand on the bike and the other on my chin.  At the edge of the poor side of town, two different worlds intersected but couldn’t mix.  Each lived in their opposite shelters of rules, one where nurturing is a given, and the other is without.  The woman understood so she had to let me limp home alone.

It took a while, knee hurting with each mincing step.  It took longer to walk it off than I thought.  At home, I found a few band-aids.  At least the cut lined up with the bottom of my chin.  I prided myself that I never even had small pox or measles.  Health was willpower, learning to manage pain with a blend of acceptance and denial.  It is what it is.  Pride had convinced me I didn’t need anything. 

So now I was extra careful riding my bike at the back of the group, steering with one hand and balancing a bag with the other.  On bicycles, distance is measured by time.  Five minutes is the end of the street past the cracked basketball court in the church parking lot.  Ten minutes and the lawns end at the edge of the sub-division.  Half-built homes rising from bare dirt and scattered foundations offer treasures of construction scraps when the workers were gone, where I suspect their friend’s stack of plywood for the fort came from.  Fifteen minutes is where industry had scraped away nature, and railroad tracks formed an elevated levee to contain the poor side of town.  This is where the world starts to feel big.  The recycling yard gives us a few quarters each.

Time is meaningless if there’s a wealth of it, so there’s no going further until an informal ritual is completed.  We wheel our bikes to a stop at the tracks and let them fall over, somewhat carelessly.   Digging around pockets for change, we count out a few pennies.  Each of us carefully arranges our own in a row on the rail, and settle in for the wait.  It could be five minutes or it could be thirty, a crap-shoot of patience waiting for the next train. 

The youngest boy gripes, “I don’t wanna hang around.”

“Then I keep your money,” his twin older brother replies.

Not an option, so he starts throwing rocks.  His brother throws at a passing bird.

Heat presses down and the breezeless air smells like telephone-pole creosote from the dark baked beams holding the rails.  I sit in a dusty patch of shade next to an overgrown weed.  Recognizing the ferny leaves, I break off a stem to chew. 

“Whatcha eatin?” my brother asks.

“I dunno, tastes like licorice.”

I finally stand up to join throwing rocks, tempted by the challenge of flight and distance.  Perhaps my willpower could match their stronger arms, someday, so I keep trying.  Standing in the center of the tracks, looking one way then the other, I search for the first random distant flash of an engine’s light at the horizon.   A glimmer, then another flash, so I place my ear to the metal Indian-style, hoping to confirm its imminent approach. 

Calling out, “its here!” I double-check my row of pennies, fine tune the alignment.  Heads up or tails, but placed so the building might be stretched tall or wide, or Lincoln’s face squished broad or thin.  It happened only rarely, since the coin would have to be rolled by only one wheel then bounce off.  If it stuck longer, the next wheels would surely smash it into a thin, smooth disc of shiny copper.  Its only value becomes validation of a hint of delinquency, Destroying-Government-Property.  Once I splurged with a quarter, which smashed to just a gleaming silver, bent, elliptical wafer discolored at the edge.  I discovered money isn’t what it appeared to be, a cheaper metal inside.  Another illusion.  Bored curiosity isn’t worth more than 25 cents, so I had only one of those in my shoebox collection of miscellaneous trinkets, junk to everyone but me.

The approaching engine silently builds impending size and power, so I dash back down the rocky embankment to safety instead of tempting fate with stupid danger. I knew a couple fools who waited till the very end, feeling the rush close to their faces, but I found no thrill from foolishness tempting pain and was not impressed by recklessness either.  Suddenly the train is here, generating astounding noise and wind, and occasional wheels approach loudly and scream by in protest on their axels.  I intently watched exactly where I placed my coins, hoping to see the moment they flew off the rails, rhythmically bending under the weight rolling by.  It becomes another game of patience, with such a long line of cars, and I give up counting them at 80-ish.  Then suddenly it is done and quickly the noise recedes back to heat and cicadas.  The are rails too hot to touch; diligently we searched for the shiny wafers, slowly pacing each wood beam. The discs could have landed in the gravel, or pressed against the rail, or even lodged straight up against the square black wood yards down the tracks.  We find most of them, give up on the rest, then continue on.  Not far from the river, perhaps we will go swimming there later, jumping into the greenish water in our cut-off jeans.

At last we reach the afternoon’s destination, the mini-mart.  Automatic doors swoosh open to air conditioning.  Turning past the Coke-icey machine, I rarely having enough for that; I look for the bottom shelf candy, a nickel or a couple pennies each.  Odd brands but sweet enough.   I remembered when my brother was passing out penny candy from lunchbags to the neighborhood kids, for free, practically littering the cul-de-sac.  I had wondered where he got enough money for all that popularity, or could he have saved that much from trick-or-treat?  I wondered until he got busted shoplifting at the big grocery store.  The security guard decreed that he was never allowed in there again, forever, and the disgrace of sitting on the curb waiting for the mortified ride home was enough to keep him from doing it again.  Shoplifting, a foray into true delinquency where I knew I would never go.  Catholic authority had soaked into my essence, influencing my world from all sides: Mom, God, school, Creation…  Raised so Catholic, I even had a hard time cussing.  If I practiced to myself, f-k, the sound of my own voice paired with the wrongness gave me vertigo, like the time I decided not to wear a shirt since I was as flat as a boy anyway.  I wanted so much to be an altar boy.  Year after year I demanded like a squeaky wheel, what is the logical reason why I couldn’t be up there like my brother.  God wouldn’t be so unfair too?

Today I pick out a freeze pop, a few root beer barrels, Tootsie-rolls (the smaller ones), Necco wafers, and with the last pennies, some tiny wax pop bottles.   Sitting on the parking curb, I bite off small pieces of the freeze pop, careful not to get tooth-freeze or brain-freeze until the last melty chunk is squeezed from the top of the thin plastic tube.

“What do you want to do now?”

”I dunno, what do you want to do?”

…

I began to want out of the crazy ward, finally deciding AWOL.  One morning, Dr. Rogers strode in with his routine arrival, as I timed it to walk blithely past through the open doors.  Meeting my gaze briefly, he recognized my intention and called for corpsmen to catch me.   A couple minutes of drama, with them literally dragging me screaming, “NO, God-dammit NO,” to the quiet room, giving me the choice to calm down or get a shot of Mellaril.  Sitting on the floor, I shook my head at the approaching hypodermic, choosing no meds.  Alone on the soft floor, gazing out the small window of blue sky couched in upholstered walls, I thought, Well, hey, what an accomplishment, I actually made it to the padded cell.   I wondered what my foster parents would think of me now, with plenty of time to reminisce…

…

Two hours after going to the school counselor when I had refused to go home, I was in Juvenile Hall.   Sitting by myself in a plastic chair, this end of the hall was bright with evening sun glaring on polished linoleum.  I waited, for who knew what, thinking, hey, I made it to Juvie.   A kindly lady appeared through the sun’s glare from the glass doors, greeted me like Mrs Santa Claus, and escorted me to her car.   The radio was tuned to country music and I mumbled, “this song is stupid.” 

Completely un-phased by sullen teenaged rudeness, Mrs. Santa Claus cheerfully countered, “Not stupid. Simple,” and smiled. 

Driving out past the city limits, we pulled up to a country ranch, as opposite an environment from what I had ever known as can be imagined.  I was introduced to their daughter, a cowgirl who lived on the ranch next door, married to a ferrier.   That first night I was expected to set the table, but then they realized they had to show me how, and the five of us ate dinner together.   It seemed so structured, with salad, entrees, and desert, seconds and leftovers.  (Not like at home when Mom would make dinner and my brother and I would eat quickly in practical competition.  She had been raising us on survivor benefits cooking just enough but certainly not enough for seconds.)  After dinner they asked, “What did you think of the steak?”  Since they brought it up, I did realize it was kind of a pale color, and small.  “That was goat,” my foster dad said, tickled at the look on my face.

I settled into dawn farm chores, especially liking to take care of the rabbits, grateful for responsibility and trust.   I was unfamiliar with the lack of fighting.  At first I thought they were just pretending to be nice to each other, keeping their criticisms to their own thoughts.  I noticed how my foster mom made a particular ranch dressing for her husband every night, just because he liked it, and finally realized what a loving family looks like.  After a couple months there, I complimented her, saying,  “You make the best fried chicken I’ve ever had.” 

She replied, “Have you ever noticed they don’t have wings?  Our chickens are only for eggs; that’s rabbit!”  The look on my face with that story was high entertainment value for family gatherings after that.

Every morning my foster dad drove me to the bus stop, making sure I couldn’t skip school, but I was touched he cared.   They included me in their life of horseshoeing jobs and Elks Club country dances, learning what silver collar tips were and how to saddle a horse.  My foster mom drove me to college courses at night school where I learned computer science, the gifted program in addition to high school.  The state required a check-up with a psychologist, and he said I was fine. 

After becoming a National Merit Scholar, I received recruiting letters from MIT and Ivy league colleges.  The shiny brochures of happy students grouped around impeccable lawns in a stately campus seemed a cruel reminder of a world I could not afford.  But what does one do with a college-prep education, if not continuing school?

“Would you like a past-participle with that burger?  Some iambic-pentameter on the side?”   

My foster dad found an opportunity of an apprenticeship at a bronze sculptor’s studio, but I felt so insecure of any talent.  I turned it down.  Looking back, that is about the only “what if…” I have ever wondered, a particularly divergent fork in the road.  Instead, after graduating, I worked at a strawberry processing farm, counting and bundling plants, all that physics and chemistry worthless.   Standing in the earthy warehouse misty with morning chill, I tried to stave off the boredom of having to count bundles of ten plants all day; sometimes counting backwards, counting in Spanish, counting in Spanish backwards. 

I had to leave the foster home since their responsibility was to make sure I graduated, but I was still under 18.  Two friends I had from high school, sisters, let me stay with them.  Fun and intelligent, they adopted me like a project, trying to teach make-up and dating.  Their dad taught me how to shoot a gun and how to drive a 57 GMC pick-up, all the while holding his constant can of Coors in his hand.  When I got good enough with the clutch, I teased his patience, jerking it a little just at the point he took a sip, with me smiling to say, gotcha.   One night I borrowed the family station wagon and pulled over for coasting through a turn.  The cop approached from the rear of faux-wood paneled side of the car, beaming his flashlight into the spacious back seats, pausing at the sight of so many beer cans tossed back there.   Arriving at the tiny, anxious, teenaged driver, he finally said, “are you even aware of the open-container law?”  

Another night, my Friday night Dungeons and Dragons hang-out somehow turned into a drinking party out in a farm-field.  I had no idea how half a bottle of Black Velvet would eventually mess a person up, so I had to find a ride home.  Worshipping the porcelain god a couple times, I was still laying on the bed late morning, one foot on the floor to stop the room from spinning.  My exasperated foster dad stormed into the room and demanded, “Where’s the car!” 

So … loud. 

Placing my arm over my eyes, I replied hoarsely, “I was too drunk to drive home.” 

Something about what I said paused his eminent tirade, so he turned and stormed back out.  An hour later he came back in. “Who do you think you are!”  and I had no answer.

Continuing in half controlled anger, “You did the right thing by not driving, so I’m not going to kick you out, but I am going to make you walk back to the car, wherever you left it.”  

Sunglasses do nothing for that kind of headache in mid-day summer heat. I walked five miles in misery learning all kinds of lessons.  No More Black Velvet, Ever.  I also learned I could be loved enough to be forgiven.

One day, he pointed at the front yard where some tall grass hid an old ugly white car and said, “If you fix it, you can drive it.”

That 64 Falcon Straight-6, with three-speeds on the column of a huge turquoise steering wheel would be a gem now.  He taught me how to change the plugs and rotor, showing me the gauging tool. “See this?” fanning out the thin metal slivers of varying precise thickness.  “The spark plugs need to have a precise gap,” and he slid one easily through the spark plug.  “So if it’s too loose, it’s a delicate operation.  Now carefully,” then holding the plug up to show the end, he quickly turned it over and slammed it on the edge of the engine block.

“That outta do it.” Checking it again, the metal sliver fit snug.  

He sent me to buy parts at the auto parts store so I could get accustomed to the respect they showed me, changing belts and water pump with a crowbar, replacing the solenoid and rebuilt alternator, bringing in brakes to the shop to get them turned.  When I could finally drive it off the grass, the tired struts drove like a boat around the turns, but what a feeling of accomplishment.

He worked at the FAA, maintaining a long distance radar facility, and introduced me to the idea of Air Traffic Control.  “You would be good at it,” he said.  I was drawn to idea, with its necessity of quick-thinking to keep track of so many moving directions, so similar to the computer games I liked. The precise language stated only exactly what needed to be said, and the respectable salary was appealing too; perhaps I could afford my own fun little red convertible.  He even arranged a tour of a control tower, giving me tutorial books, and I started learning the codes.  I didn’t miss any questions on the military ASVAB aptitude test; my score was high enough they said I could be anything I wanted.  Still 17, I signed up for the Delayed Entry Program, took the oath.  Waiting a year to ship out for school, I checked in with her recruiters every month.  The least likely of all my graduating class, I had joined the Navy.

…

The day passed very quietly in the padded cell, only me and my defeated thoughts, the tiny change of color in the window was the only indication that time had not stopped.  That evening the doctor and I had a calm conversation.  I was not mature enough to make it out there; I would stay on the ward while the doctor petitioned for a medical pension.  He realized I had not been bipolar before; the military had caused it.   He admitted, “I think we’ve done more harm than good.”

After a few months, I was allowed to leave for a few hours at a time, then most of the day.  I found something to do at the bases’ horse stable; the riding trails were a rec activity for the sailors.  I helped brush them and clean the stalls.  Only thing is, they stocked it with the cheapest horses from the auction, knowing the sailors might treat them roughly anyway.  Velvet would take off as soon as he felt a boot in the stirrup, requiring the rider to mount up facing backwards, swinging the leg over the saddle as he was already taking off.  Ice Cream would find low branches to try to scrape the riders off.  When the trail turned back, all of them were barely controllable, perfect examples of “took off like a horse to the barn.”  After the day, I would return home to the hospital, dig the hospital ID band out of my pocket, and reluctantly put it back on.

Altogether, I lived in the hospital for eight months.  I had been a guinea pig for their entire psychiatric prescriptive arsenal but nothing had worked. I was sick of the psyche ward; how could I learn about the real world in there?   The scale of my immaturity was dangerous in the real world, a young attractive naive woman learning reality and social norms from mistakes day by day.  But what choice did I have?  Against the doctor’s advice, I wanted to be discharged, out of that crazy place.  It was the ultimate irony to re-establish a personality with a paradigm that I still struggle with today, my foundational world-view that I am crazy, unfit, and unworthy, while others tell me, why do you think that, you’re not.  Well, most of the time.

All of their treatment options had left me with none, and the end, the military beast could not be relied on for charity.   I mean realistically, what it the military all about?  As much as their propaganda portrays protection and service, their stereotypes are just two-dimensional.  Plastic green army men form ranks on the edge of a kids bookshelf.  Magazines ply images of bulky desert-dusty uniforms and helmets milling around the beast of a tank.   Army-of-One TV commercial posters glorify larger than life heroics.  In these notions, privileged civilization can stay sheltered behind a wall, the wilderness of barbaric violence is kept elsewhere in the distance.  Civilians have decided to be comfortable with this arrangement; the military façade up close is proper while the viciousness of avarice is unseen at a distance.  After all, what is the military but dark humanity run amok?   Aggression takes with a greedy hand and defense is enflamed without sympathy to tamp the fires.   The instrument of might is missing compassion.  War is the raw force of metal against flesh, insanity against spirit, destructive Shiva set loose on the world without divine intervention.  Who would conscript to participate on this senselessly wasteful stage of sacrifice except the young, or naïve, or the mean?   From whom in that environment could I expect compassion?

I can't begin to describe the disdain on the faces of the three battle hardened officers reviewing my case, sitting across from me during the hearing, me a stuttering girl.   They ruled 0%.  In other words, they knew I was messed-up but took no responsibility and I was thrown out like yesterday's trash.   Discharged with a piece of paper certifying me disabled but with no pension, I had no health care since it was my fault. I was not eligible for veterans college benefits or a VA home loan since I had served less than two years.   I couldn’t even join VFW since I never served on foreign soil.   I didn’t belong anywhere.

A sane world teaches young people common sense to think for oneself.  Boot camp is designed to break down the individual, mostly, and replace it with pride in a uniform.  Ego must be torn down just enough so the soldier can follow orders instantly, in circumstance that could very well be hellish insanity.  It’s a fraternity that thrives on group-think, operating as a whole and taking care of brothers.  Newbies fresh out of boot camp don’t even look both ways at a curb, the habit of continuously marching in a squarely massed company so ingrained.   Pluck one away, dropped back into society to fend for oneself, and the disconnect leaves one lost.

Everything I owned was crammed into a green military duffel bag, pressing shame in with everything else.  I didn't consider myself homeless, quite, finding a place to camp on a southern California beach.  A tent was cozy enough.   Summer days were spent wondering what I could make of myself, jogging in the morning, reading classic literature in the sun.  Far from the Madding Crowd.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  From one book I learned that the meaning of life is, “if its messy, eat it over the kitchen sink.”

It should have been vacation considering where I had just been for a year, but the warmth was marred by an ever-present percolating fear.  Feeling worthless and peculiar, being 19 with few friends, no job, no skills, and trying to get my head together, I existed on pennies a day with my small savings-running-out approaching like a cliff.  I knew peace would end and I belonged nowhere.  If only I could melt into the sand, become the story in the books.  After three months I learned that there is rarely a windless day on the beach, and one or two tiny grains of sand inevitably accumulate between each page at the binding.  Hard as one may try to shield it or brush errant sand out with thick fingers, the book will become all fanned out, impossible to close by the time the book is done.  Splayed out 180 degrees, the volume is visibly used up, worthless just like me.

Next Chapter: Dante's Epiphanies