A Teenager's Journey (7 page)

Once I reached what I thought was rock bottom, I turned to Judy Prince for help. One of the worst feelings I had was the way I felt when I shared some of my lifestyle and my thoughts with Judy. I had confided most of the experiences I’d had over the last few years and was more than ashamed at the lack of modesty I felt when talking to her about them. Judy had known that what I was doing was out of character, something self-destructive, yet she had no idea of the magnitude of it. I shared with her only a tiny portion of the drug use and the alcohol abuse I had fallen into. I certainly couldn’t bring myself to admit to her that I had the morals of a street dog and was more than comfortable going from one girl to another. I was expecting that in some way she would know and it wouldn’t have to be said.

What hurt me the most was the feeling of mistrust I created between my two halves: the one half of me trying to be a good clean kid, and the other half trying to be more outrageous and dangerous than anyone around me.

I buried the conflict and the damage it was causing me. I buried it all in that place that held my childhood; that place where no one talked back at me, no one lied about me or tried to hurt me—my diaries, and deep in my soul.

All the sleepless nights lying in my bed in a state of pure fear were just some of the memories I now tried to keep in check, to reserve for those tearstained pages. When I reread them and really thought about it, I had to force myself to keep control over my emotions. I knew that the more I thought about it, the more I lost my control.

And it was a battle I could never win. Every time I tried to push those memories out of my mind and into that place in my heart that was now overflowing, I was failing to keep the emotions from surfacing. The more I wrote, the more I recalled. All the memories of crying my heart out in the basement late at night, hiding from Mom in the storage space at the bottom of the basement landing, sleeping in the backyard bushes whenever Mom was even more drunk than usual and needed an outlet and wanted to beat the life out of me—all those horrible, hurtful memories always came back. I tried to convince myself that I was able to keep them in check, but I never actually could. Those memories and emotions always haunted me—in my sleep, all throughout the day, and even when I was stoned out of my mind. I was constantly having to force them away. Sometimes my thoughts came faster than my pen could keep up with.

The one memory that I could never put pen to paper about was of the china cabinet that stood in the front dining room in California. The base was merely five feet wide, and it was a foot and a half tall and separated in the middle by a small supporting piece of wood. The space I would run to and hide in was no more than twelve inches deep and a little more than a couple of feet long. Each time I tried to get the memory out of my head and onto the paper, I would calculate how little I must have been to fit in such a small space—and simply cried again.

The vision of that little boy, that little stuttering boy, hiding like a hunted animal, was too much for me to recall—even as a teen.

My journal had become my only true friend, but it had also become my worst enemy—it had become a true reflection of me.

I had the ability to hide and carefully keep almost anything from anyone. I was so good at hiding the past from everyone that it hurt. I had to remain loyal: loyal to myself, but also to my expectation that the bottom would drop out at any minute and I would be right back in the same old void.

That’s what I really wanted, the bottom to fall out, to find myself in some sort of trouble with the law. Or even better, in a foster home somewhere far away from it all: far away from Mom and my family, far away from the kids at school, and far away from my past. I thought it would be a chance to start over. I was running away from everybody and everything.

I had been able to play the role of the shy one, the awkward, stumbling teenager, for so long that I became a master at it and used it whenever I felt my past coming to the surface.

I had been so successful at masking what was lurking underneath the surface that I was able to keep the secret of my childhood
and
my current lifestyle from the Nichols family and from my new friends. I simply allowed them their ignorance of my horrific past. I had outgrown the stuttering problem that haunted me for all of my childhood, but I couldn’t overcome the shame that followed me around day to day. Simply being taller and heavier didn’t mean that everything had changed. There was a lot more that I wanted just to go away on its own besides my stuttering, but that never did.

With all the care and concern of a true friend, Judy expressed her disappointment when I told her a little about my substance-abuse problems, but also her desire to help me. After several days of talking whenever the opportunity arose, she had voiced her conviction that I needed to understand the crucial importance of “self-worth” and the reason that I was placed on the earth. At this point I was so desperate for an answer that I would have done anything.

Before long I was talking to a couple of young Mormon missionaries, and with the help of the Prince and Nichols families, we scheduled discussions at one or the other of the families’ houses. I began to understand that I wasn’t alone in my struggles.

John and Darlene were supportive of my change in attitude and began to share with me their beliefs and the reasons they seemed to hold it all together. Rob and Judy, like the Nichols family, made sure that I had a place to ask questions and that I felt comfortable in asking. I now began to be able to express gratitude, and even love, to those around me. I began to be at ease when Darlene or John hugged me—I noticed that I didn’t freeze and stop breathing every time they came near me. The occasional smile that leaked out of my face was genuine—frightening, but genuine.

John and Darlene gave me the confidence to speak, the comfort to express my thoughts and not be ashamed of being alive. They never once put me down or reminded me of how pitiful I looked, how bad I smelled, or how stupid I was. With the support and emotional respect they showed me, I was able to slightly loosen that stranglehold I kept on my emotions and feelings.

I had hidden all my feelings so deep and for so long that it was incredible to rediscover them.

Judy had warned me of the challenge it would be to maintain my newfound feeling of security and happiness with myself when I was at home. Constantly, she would remind me that whatever happened between Mom and me, I must bring to mind the answers to my questions about self-worth and self-pride so as to overcome the bombardment of emotional abuse Mom powered out.

Once Mom discovered that I was having discussions with Mormon missionaries, she began to degrade and bad-mouth the Mormon Church as often as she could. Within a few weeks I had learned that she had been raised Mormon and knew all about it. I was surprised to discover that she had full knowledge of the answers that I had sought for so long. She had simply let them evaporate out of her life. I couldn’t understand why and yet I did understand: She was ashamed, like me, of the lifestyle she now lived—the lifestyle I now lived. The self-destruction, the lies, the disconnection from reality. Mom was a mad alcoholic; I was an angry teen on drugs. There really was little difference between us.

Once Mom heard that I was serious about the possibility of joining the Church, she confided in me and showed me the years and years of genealogy that she had completed. I was dumbfounded to make the connection and understand that what she had told me as a child was true: Many of my forefathers were among the pioneers that crossed the Great Plains looking for a new home in Salt Lake Valley. She showed me birth and marriage records dating back more than one hundred and fifty years. The Mormon Church had been there throughout our family history. Many of my relatives had organized the groups that made the long trek and had eventually settled throughout Salt Lake Valley. They were the stonecutters that carved the stones for the Salt Lake Temple, the masons that spent their lives building and believing in the teachings of the Church. When Mom showed me the marriage records she told me how I was related to this person and that person.

Like so much else in my life, it was emotionally crushing to learn that Mom had the means to help me with my quest to understand, and had blindly turned away. Her life had evolved so far distant from what she was once familiar with. I knew that alcohol was what had destroyed her ability to believe in herself and help those she loved. I knew that for a long time she had been drained of her mental faculties as well. In short, she was a different person from the person she once had been. Her mental state was deteriorating further, and her actual body was barely hanging on. Her life as an adult was filled with shame and was void of direction and purpose.

I saw that my life was headed in the same direction.

Since I had discovered that Mom was more than familiar with the wealth of knowledge that I had recently been introduced to, I had to find out from Gram just what was true and what wasn’t. For the first time, I actually wanted to find out whether Mom’s bad-mouthing the Mormon Church was just another game she was playing to destroy something I valued.

So I spent time in Holiday, Utah, with Gram and asked all the questions that I feared the answers to.

“What was Mom like as a kid?”

“What were her friends like?”

“Was Mom always in trouble as a kid?”

“How did you discipline her?”

“Did Mom ever go to church as a child?”

I learned that all I’d suspected was true. Mom
had
been raised Mormon and chose to erase all traces of those beliefs. I learned, too, that Gram was well aware of the abusive situation at home when we were growing up in Daly City, and she, like Dad, had felt that there was nothing she could do to stop her own daughter. Gram had developed the same need I now had: the need to find another family and another sense of belonging. And she did. She simply moved on and befriended another family north of Salt Lake, and my brothers and I simply faded out of her life, as far as Gram was concerned.

With this new knowledge came a new conflict between believing what I was now being taught about life to be the truth, and the life experiences I knew to be all too real. And an awareness of just how far apart the two were. I had an overpowering need to make a choice as to which direction I would now follow. I had the chance to socialize with kids my own age and make myself fit in, and no one need ever know about my recent past or my childhood. I had the chance to start life as a teenager.

And yet I couldn’t. I wasn’t about to let it all end as simply as that. I couldn’t simply move on, and allow the years and years of tears and pain to have been for nothing.

I wanted revenge—I wanted Mom to pay for all the hell I was raised in. I had to find some way to make her feel the pain and the shame I knew too well.

The second mistake I made as a teenager was trying to serve two masters at the same time. By not making a conscious choice between my two options I lived a lie, pretending that I understood and believed in what I was being taught while secretly continuing the drugs and booze and the ungratifying and emotionless sex. I chose to hide my destructive behavior as best as I could and continue with the steps needed to become a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

I enjoyed getting high more than I enjoyed the companionship of the other teens I was getting to know. None of them took any drugs or drank; they all lived clean lives. I was living a lie when I socialized with the kids from the local youth group at the Church and at the same time still sticking with my old way of life: staying out all night drinking and getting high, then desperately trying to stay awake during a Sunday service.

This time my life was really spinning out of control. The conflict became so overpowering that I was literally facing a breakdown. I just couldn’t discern who I was supposed to be at any given time, or what I was supposed to be doing.

Before long I didn’t know what day of the week it was, or even how to find out. As I progressed deeper and deeper into my feelings and emotions, I was also going further and further with the self-destruction. I embedded myself in drugs and alcohol to the point that my addict friends were now afraid to be around me. The friends from high school who I used to hang out with behind the gym—the ones that once thought of me as inexperienced—were now afraid of me. They knew just how far I was willing to go. Now they talked behind my back and called
me
a “junkie loser.” It was so odd having once been one of the crowd picking out those older teens and identifying
them
as junkies, and now being the one that the crowd called out to and hassled. Even those few friends that I once shared with stayed away from me.

I used to be considered green, wet behind the ears, the “newbie.” Now I was the one that they called “over the top.”

I was using twice as much cocaine, acid, pot, crystal methamphetamine, and crack as anyone else. I had even started to “chase the dragon”—of all the drugs I tried, heroin was the easiest to get and the cheapest.

And I was showing signs of becoming violent. My previous thoughts and fears of the bottom falling out of my life eventually came to pass. Without actually trying to, I nearly killed myself with an overdose.

After a petty and meaningless argument with Mom, I convinced myself that I had not yet reached the maximum drug dose that I could handle. I wanted more and more. I wanted to get farther and farther away from Mom, from my brothers, and from myself.

One night, I took off to the local elementary school yard. I had never tried to smoke cocaine, DXM (dextromethorphan), and heroin together before but had always heard that it was so much more intense. With no particular reason other than feeling even more exhausted by my family and my life than ever, I collected a few bags of partially used cocaine and heroin and mixed them with crushed DXM pills into one bag. I looked at the gun hidden away in the baseboard and left it where it lay. I didn’t have the guts for that at the moment.