A Teenager's Journey (14 page)
By 1986 I was more than aware that I wasn’t cut out to be a soldier. Having served less than the standard three years, and with nowhere else to go, I returned home to Salt Lake City.
The people were different; the kids that once were everywhere to be seen in the neighborhood were now young adults. Fewer and fewer bicycles scattered the lawns. In just a few short years, the places and people I once knew had changed.
But it seemed as if, whereas everyone around me was different now, I was still the same.
I was devastated to learn that John, Darlene, and the kids had moved from Salt Lake and were now living in Richmond, Virginia. Judy Prince had given me their address and phone number when she told me about their move. It seemed that John had been offered a much better job in Richmond, and he took it.
The days passed by without much to report; Mom and Scott left me to my own devices and I could come and go as I wished.
I had thought about writing to John and Darlene and asking if I could move out there and start over, but it was hard to admit that I was getting nowhere and afraid to be on my own. By all appearances I was a twenty-one-year-old adult, but on the inside I was still that rebellious teenager struggling to find myself.
With all the courage I could muster I sent a letter to Darlene, asking if they would consider allowing me to move out there temporarily until I was able to make it on my own. It was my last hope.
As day followed day I became increasingly depressed. I knew that either they never got the letter, or they did and wanted no part of me—just like everyone and everything else in my life. I’d messed up the chances I’d had to open up to John and Darlene. I was done—I was beaten.
In a matter of weeks I was back to my old self, strung out worse than I had ever been. I was beyond reckless. I was more dangerous to myself than ever.
I was an angry and suicidal young man.
I chased that smoking dragon, heroin, and I grew to hate it. I now faced the biggest conflict I had ever faced or have faced since. I just didn’t care about me, or anyone else.
If John and Darlene didn’t want me around and had somehow found out from Mom what my life was really like, it was over. I couldn’t live with the knowledge that John and Darlene and the kids knew about my lifestyle
and
that they had been kept out of it deliberately.
I was just too ashamed to think about what Mom might have told them before they left the neighborhood.
Thankfully I found my youngest brother Keith untouched by the disease that plagued our family. He was now sixteen and struggling with Mom to get his driver’s license, just as I had struggled. I knew Mom had backed off as far as her abusive drunken tendencies. She was getting just too old for it now—she was nearly fifty-eight.
Her mind had slipped even farther away than when I had last been there. She was almost a different person in the same skin. She looked the same—facial expressions, clothes, hair, drinking habits—only now she’d completely forgotten the last ten years or so.
Here I was once again back at the very place I’d grown to hate, in that house and with the people that I just couldn’t relate to, and the Nichols family had moved. Rob and Judy Prince were still there, but Rob had become very involved in his legal career and didn’t seem to want me around as much. Judy was always just as helpful and down to earth as I knew her to be. The last thing I wanted was to cause any issues between Rob and Judy, so I distanced myself from them as well.
The weeks passed, and I found that my first impression had been right—most of the friends I had in high school had disappeared. One of the girls I used to hook up with had a daughter and was working to support the two of them. The carefree party environment I had left behind was gone.
Life had really changed. It was becoming real, and it scared me. I had no career and no real family—in fact, I was left living with the remnants of a real-life Addams family.
I had to get out, and fast. I didn’t know how or where to, only that if I didn’t I would end up a junkie, in jail, or as a father living in some white-trash trailer park.
I took another meaningless job at Ryan Steakhouse and worked as much as I could just to be out of the house. I would occasionally score some drug or drink myself stupid or find a girl I used to know and have some emotionless sex. I had no direction: no support, no desire to get ahead, and no one to share anything with. I was completely alone. Life could not have seemed more pointless.
Eventually I snapped. And I made a decision: at least I wanted Darlene to know what I was going through. I sat in my bedroom one evening and wrote the letter. I was just the same, and my life was going nowhere, I told her. I was just spinning wheels and not getting anywhere. I had no reason or desire to do anything. I felt so alone. Again, I danced around the possibility of me moving to Richmond to be with them.
As the days turned to weeks I began to lose hope. I believed that it just wasn’t going to happen. I became yet more depressed and found myself at the bottom of many of the same old highs. I was spiraling downward fast.
Then it happened: a letter arrived. I knew it was Darlene—her handwriting was unique. I took the letter out of the mailbox and sat on my bed for a half hour before I opened it. I just couldn’t take the rejection, if that was what was in there. With both reluctance and anticipation I opened the letter—and found the same old Darlene that I knew before. They’d had a family meeting with all of the kids. John and Darlene had agreed to have me come out and live with them until I got on my feet, both emotionally and financially.
I was about to leave it all behind.
I was convinced that I could now open my heart. I was sure that John and Darlene would understand now. Maybe they could even look past it all and see me for what I wanted to be—
normal
.
I made the arrangements to fly out with just the few things I had. The airfare fit right into my budget: less than a few hundred dollars—it was all I had left. I didn’t have much that reminded me of my childhood, after what I had sold for drugs or tossed out. I had one small suitcase, one small box of keepsakes, and the clothes on my back. I purchased the ticket and announced that I was going to Virginia.
Surprisingly, Mom was actually hopeful for me. “I hope you do get your life in order, Richard. I hope you find what you’ve been looking for,” she said.
That was the only conversation I had with Mom that I really believed she was sincere about and able to fully comprehend. It was the time I most felt it might be possible to begin repairing our relationship and finally overcome the hate, the fear, and the regret. It was also the last time I would see her alive.
Had I known this during that moment I had with Mom that
didn’t
end with me being hurt, demoralized, or degraded, I would have said so much more to her. Looking back, though, I know that neither of us would have been able to say what was really on our minds—Mom because she didn’t recall much of the last decade, me because I wasn’t ready to actually let her go once and for all.
When the plane landed just outside Richmond, I was anxious and nervous. Once I got off the plane and saw the two of them waiting for me at the end of the ramp, I could barely contain myself. I was happy to see John. I’d always had respect for him and his commitment to himself and his family. He was always kind and gentle toward me. I’m sure that most people were intimidated by his size when they first saw him. At well over six feet tall and over two hundred and fifty pounds, he carried himself well, but all the same his size made me feel slightly afraid.
But it was Darlene who was my real savior. From the first day I met her she had never been anything but sincere and so easy to talk to. She always made me feel like I was one of her sons. I never told her that in many ways I considered her my mommy.
Now I had another chance to share my feelings and open up to not only John and Darlene, but also Wendy who was now fifteen, Steve (fourteen), Heidi (twelve), Heather (eight), and Adam and Amy who were now five. It was the perfect family setting. I had the chance to be a big brother and make sure that Steve didn’t make the same mistakes I’d made, and to have sisters that I had never had. After twenty-one years I had finally found my place. What I didn’t expect was to find that in many ways I was far behind Wendy and Steve emotionally.
I settled in with Steve—we were sharing a room together. Neither of us had much stuff to call our own, but we had all we needed. The first few days were the hardest for me. I quickly found out that my body had to adjust more than I did. The weeks before I moved out I had spent what little money I had on crack cocaine or heroin. I hadn’t heard from Darlene yet, and I was sure at the time that she had written me off just like I thought everyone else had. I was depressed and exhausted. The few days I had to clean up my act really didn’t catch up with me until I arrived in Richmond.
And the first few nights were incredibly hard. It got so bad that at one point I lay in bed awake and shook. I couldn’t eat. But I wasn’t about to tell either John or Darlene what the real issue was. I was so embarrassed about it that I sweated it out rather than reveal just how self-destructive I had been.
Not long after this, John made it clear to Steve and me that the bedroom window was to remain closed at night, as he didn’t want to heat all of Richmond. I tried my best to keep the window closed, but I convinced Steve to open it after we were in bed. It was the only way I could both cool off and breathe. During the day I would lie low and simply say I was tired. No one must know that in reality I was withdrawing from the weeks of day-after-day drug abuse. At one point, just before Darlene’s letter arrived, I had kept the same high going for several days, happy with being comfortably numb.
John reminded me a few times that he’d asked that the windows remain closed, but I kept on opening them anyway.
Then one night he came into the room with a hammer and a few nails in his hands. My first reaction when I saw the hammer was pure flashback. Many times, Mom had come into my room as I slept and struck out at me with whatever she had in her hand at the time. I was paralyzed with fear.
As if in slow motion, John was coming farther into the room. It seemed like it took forever for him to pass the foot of my bed and continue over to the window. John’s size, him being annoyed at me, and the flashes from my past combined to convince me that I was right back in Daly City, in my bed, as Mom walked in the room.
He wasn’t going to ask again, John said. Since neither Steve nor I would listen, he was going to take care of it himself. He simply nailed the window shut, and walked out.
I looked at Steve and he looked at me. I could tell that he was shocked, though for a different reason than I was. Steve was shocked that his father had reacted that way. I was shocked that he’d reacted
only
that way. All I could think about as he walked across the floor to the window was the sort of sudden unpredictable reactions I’d been so accustomed to from Mom, that usually ended up in me getting badly hurt. I should have known that John would never have been able to hurt his kids in any way like Mom did. I should have known that he would never have harmed me, either.
For the first time since I was that little redheaded freckle-faced boy, in the days when my brother David, not me, was the target of Mom’s vicious outbursts, I felt like I was home. I felt like I
had
a home. This was the first of the thousands of lessons I learned as the seventh son.
T
ROOP
N
ICHOLS
The opportunity to see and experience a family as they went about their day-to-day lives was incredible. Not many twenty-two-year-olds have the chance, let alone the desire, to be around a family of kids ranging from six to sixteen years old. I loved it.
I also learned fast that jealousy is very hard to overcome. Up to now I had been angry, in many ways fearless, ignorant, and self-serving. I had never had any reason to be jealous, anyone to be jealous of. It was devastating to accept that I was now jealous of a handsome, popular, outgoing teenager who was seven years my junior. Steve Nichols taught me a great deal about confidence, pride, and humor. Despite our age difference, we enjoyed each other’s company. Not only did he help me as a friend, he also helped me as a brother—a real brother.
S
TEVE WAS DIFFERENT.
Not
only was he confident like his sister Wendy, he was also cool and collected. He had the looks, the personality, and the charm. He had everything I ever wanted, yet I felt I had nothing I could offer
him
.
Once I settled in and became comfortable with being in a busy household full of kids, I grew to like Steve even more. Between Scouts, music, dances, soccer, band, school, and a social life that I always wished I had, the kids were busier than time allowed for.
Steve always made me feel like a big brother; of course, having a driver’s license made it a little easier for a fifteen-year-old to like me.
It was Steve who started me off on a love of music. He was my introduction to some of the many different bands I grew to like. And for the first time I was becoming aware of my appearance, because Steve’s appearance was very important to him—as you’d expect in any normal young man. I was becoming concerned over hygiene, my hair, my use of current slang, and of course, my clothes.
In 1987, and at the age of twenty-two, this was all new to me. But before long I was spending my time, and what little money I had from my job at a local restaurant, on records (LPs) and parachute pants. Whenever I was able, I bought gifts for Steve: clothes, burgers, records, concert tickets. I loved sharing with him. In many ways he was my unspoken hero. I could never say that to him. I couldn’t let him or anyone know that I was that self-conscious.
One of the few times I was ever really mad at Steve was right after I had worked many extra hours to acquire some much coveted Depeche Mode tickets. It was one of the bands Steve and I really liked and both wanted to see. For weeks we wondered if we would get to go to the concert, how we would ever afford the eighty dollars. Little did he know that I had planned on taking him and was already working hard to afford the tickets. Eventually, the day came and I had them in my hand. We marveled at the chance to see the band. We spent most of the next few days talking about what they would be like and what songs they would open with; sleep meant little to us.