Alcindia represents an era with great overall darkness in my life. I met Alcindia at “Bannisters”, a bar in Beaverton, after Randy and I moved into an apartment near 117th avenue late in the summer of 1984. I danced with her one evening at the bar, then I brought her back home to the apartment that I shared with Randy. She was a cute younger woman, who worked at the Aloha Intel Fab as a chip maker. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, other than I was a lonely man, and Alcindia might be a good short term friend. We hooked up that first night, and there were no strings attached, at least not initially.
I continued to live with Randy, while still working the graveyard shift as a maintenance mechanic. Randy had a live-in girlfriend at the time, by the name of Claudia. Randy thought that she might have psychological issues, noticing that she might be manic/depressive, or something along those lines. She had come from another relationship where she lived with three guys, at least one of who was bi-sexual, and, according to Randy, she may have had relations with all three men over a period of time. I rarely talked with Claudia, not knowing exactly what to think of her, and my schedule kept me away from Randy and her the vast majority of the time.
Oh, those ephemeral loves, I wish we had never started,
Just vacant wayside stops in life, from which I soon departed.
Standing alone, though seemingly surrounded by others,
Desiring just one, wondering who would be my next lover.
Searching for that one, to share in a new life’s dream,
Disgusted by the many, who were not quite what they seemed.
Needing attention, and wanting to share love,
That’s what all of my dreams seemed to be made of.
My life has become quite empty with only darkness looming ahead
Without an inner change of heart, quite soon I will be dead.
Running on life’s mysterious road, one final journey to start,
With no maps to follow, save those presented by my empty heart.
(poem found on a napkin that I had written upon while in the Care Unit)
The week following Alcindia spending the night at our apartment, Claudia became “interested” in me and my life for some reason. I did not think much of it initially. One morning, I came home from work, showered and went to bed at about 8:30. Randy had already left for work, so it was just sleepy me and Claudia. I was just falling asleep when my bed bounced, and a naked Claudia appeared next to me in bed. Not knowing what to think or what to do about it, nature somehow knew what to do, and did so three times, and left me wondering how the hell I was going to explain this one to Randy.
I did not tell Randy right away, feeling shame and remorse. I continued to see Alcindia, who came over on my weekend and spent one more night with me at our apartment. Since we were just “friends” there was no need to tell her about my indiscretions. The next day I was visiting with her and and her friend Baby at their apartment, trying to get to know Alcindia better. Out of the blue, she starts telling a story to Baby about another girlfriend’s boyfriend who slept with his best friends’ girlfriend while his best friend went to work. As she told her story, she repeated back to Baby, and to me, some of the language that was used during my soiree with Claudia, even recalling that there were three sexual interludes. I was to learn, at a much later time, that she had placed a voice activated recorder under my bed. I had my suspicions, but never confronted her about her “story” to Baby.
As fate would have it, Alcindia also had sexual abuse issues in her background, which definitely impacted our 16 month relationship in various ways. But, these issues did not lead her into the psychosis like it probably did with my ex-wife. Unlike my sexually unresponsive first wife Donelle, Alcindia at least found a way to experience an orgasm, and she brought the fruitage of that exploration into our shared sexuality. On a physical level, she was a small step up. On an emotional level, it remained an often times confusing, stimulating, sometimes happy, but mostly challenging relationship.
When we hit an early “rough patch” in our new relationship, In a shameful moment of weakness, I gave to Alcindia a copy of Di Di’s poem. I did not ever tell her that I had not really written the poem for her, and that I did not even love her. I tried to fool myself from the very start that this woman was worth my time and effort, but we were BAD for each other. Have you ever heard of the term “slumming”? It was an unholy match, compounded by my own selfishness, loneliness, lack of integrity and honesty, and drug addiction and alcoholism.
On a spiritual and emotional level, our relationship did nothing to enhance a shared vision of wholeness, instead, gradually becoming a source of pain and suffering for the two of us. How a one night stand turned into a dark 16 month relationship is anybody’s guess, but my poor self-esteem, loneliness and need for female friendship sure played into it. Baby, and her boyfriend, both were to become quite prominent in our shared story, but I will keep their story at a minimum. Suffice it to say that Baby’s boyfriend, who belonged to a motorcycle gang in Hillsboro, had access to pure rock crank/speed, which, at that time, I had never experienced before. This is a very significant event, and I became an immediate, ardent fan of the drug. This “friendship” would later accompany me into my underworld experience.
Our relationship of 14 months cemented my unconscious determination to self-destruct through continued drug abuse. After becoming sober yet again in January of 1985, after having a toxic event around drinking and using anti-anxiety medication prescribed for help with depression, I was yet again hospitalized, this time at the Cedar Hills Hospital, for recovery from mental illness and alcoholism. I profoundly disliked the atmosphere in this place. I witnessed the abuse of mentally ill people, and it was disturbing and heartbreaking. I watched three male attendants rough up a woman about my age who did not immediately respond positively to one of the attendants requests. The three of them ganged up on the unfortunate women, and proceeded to forcefully remove her from the room, and attempt to tie her down unto a bed. She screamed and cried, and was subjected to quite a beating. The only way they would later release her from her bondage was by getting her to apologize for her “indiscretion” to the attendants and the other witnessing patients. The victim was apologizing for having to get beat, and this is how it really was.
Cedar Hills did have a recovery team on site for treatment of substance abuse issues, and they treated me with respect while I was there. I was expelled after only three days because my health insurance had run out, and I did not want to pay close to $1000 a day out of my empty pockets, Dr. Beavers prescribed me a high-powered antidepressant called Nortriptyline, which suddenly turned my whole understanding around. It was like a light went on in my mind, and for the first time in my life I was happy. I happily stayed clean and sober for over six months, and found a renewed passion for life, my job at the US Postal Service, and even for the highly dysfunctional girlfriend that I had in Alcindia.
I began to work out in our local fitness center where we lived, and I started developing some serious leg muscles. I also gained about thirty pounds, ballooning up to 208 pounds, from eating a half gallon of ice cream almost daily. Food in general tasted almost too good, while taking this wonder medication. But, I did not feel comfortable attending AA meetings, because my integrity misinformed me that taking this anti-depressant was somehow part of a relapse process, and that by being on medication that made me feel that good I could not honestly practice the program, and I felt some shame around that. During this period of time, Alcindia’s mother moved in with us. She suffered from severe depression, and psychosomatic ailments, and she became a disruptive, though friendly, presence in our apartment for the rest of our relationship.
Things went well until Alcindia and I took a week-long vacation around the July 4th holiday in Bend. In the middle of the week, I happened to see a partially smoked marijuana joint spill out of Alcindia’s purse. Rather than replacing it, I somehow justified in my mind that it would be better to smoke pot and get high than take anti-depressants. This messed up reasoning caused me to experience extreme shame, guilt, and self-consciousness, to the point that I would not return to work after our vacation. I called in sick for several weeks afterward, and I never returned to my “lifetime guaranteed job” of working for the US Postal Service. After ten years, I sacrificed that career so that I could smoke a joint. It was a fast downhill slide into depression, alcohol and further drug abuse.
By November of 1985, which also corresponded to when I finally was terminated from the Post Office for failure to appear back at work, I also abandoned my now nightmare relationship with Alcindia, and left her for good.
It remains no mystery to me as to why some people choose suicide over recovery. I was starting to see the end of my own road, with the dead-end sign fast approaching my out-of-control- car of life.
PAIN (more post-Care Unit poetry, circa 1985)
Dark clouds looming on the horizon
Waiting,
Advancing
Hovering,
Thundering,
Misting,
Then breaking into torrential downpours
Eroding,
Stripping back,
Layer,
Upon Layer,
Upon Layer
Of consciousness.
Exposing
Long forgotten mental relics
Dangerous old memories
Self-destructive habits
And tendencies
Stinging,
Hurting,
Piercing to my core
Obscuring visions of glorious futures
With the suffering spawned from the
Darkest past
Washing away
Tenuously held possessions of
Sanity and hope
Uprooting new foundations of a life
Desperately
But futilely
Trying to reconstruct itself
Carrying a
Helpless,
Hopeless,
Powerless soul
Into a chemical valley
Amid a swirling depression
Ravaging,
Drowning,
Decaying
Pain,
Why?
Part II
Growing without roots, with a will that won’t bend,
Weathering life’s storms, which never seem to end.
No longer waiting for the sun that was once promised to arise,
How could truth’s light possibly shine in dimmed eyes?
Having reached with futility for all the high goals of life,
With no spiritual growth, while consumed by inner strife.
Devoid of healing affection, and a stranger to real love,
Unrealistic hope was what my failed dreams were all made of.
Despair meets each day, summer has now changed into fall,
Looking at life, I am totally disgusted by it all.
Dying of loneliness, and holding life by only a thread,
With me rotting inside, hopefully, I soon will be dead.
Pain,
Why?
Alcindia represents an era with great overall darkness in my life. I met Alcindia at “Bannisters”, a bar in Beaverton, after Randy and I moved into an apartment near 117th avenue late in the summer of 1984. I danced with her one evening at the bar, then I brought her back home to the apartment that I shared with Randy. She was a cute younger woman, who worked at the Aloha Intel Fab as a chip maker. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, other than I was a lonely man, and Alcindia might be a good short term friend. We hooked up that first night, and there were no strings attached, at least not initially.
Just vacant wayside stops in life, from which I soon departed.
Standing alone, though seemingly surrounded by others,
Desiring just one, wondering who would be my next lover.
Searching for that one, to share in a new life’s dream,
Disgusted by the many, who were not quite what they seemed.
Needing attention, and wanting to share love,
That’s what all of my dreams seemed to be made of.
My life has become quite empty with only darkness looming ahead
Without an inner change of heart, quite soon I will be dead.
Running on life’s mysterious road, one final journey to start,
With no maps to follow, save those presented by my empty heart.
(poem found on a napkin that I had written upon while in the Care Unit)
The week following Alcindia spending the night at our apartment, Claudia became “interested” in me and my life for some reason. I did not think much of it initially. One morning, I came home from work, showered and went to bed at about 8:30. Randy had already left for work, so it was just sleepy me and Claudia. I was just falling asleep when my bed bounced, and a naked Claudia appeared next to me in bed. Not knowing what to think or what to do about it, nature somehow knew what to do, and did so three times, and left me wondering how the hell I was going to explain this one to Randy.
I did not tell Randy right away, feeling shame and remorse. I continued to see Alcindia, who came over on my weekend and spent one more night with me at our apartment. Since we were just “friends” there was no need to tell her about my indiscretions. The next day I was visiting with her and and her friend Baby at their apartment, trying to get to know Alcindia better. Out of the blue, she starts telling a story to Baby about another girlfriend’s boyfriend who slept with his best friends’ girlfriend while his best friend went to work. As she told her story, she repeated back to Baby, and to me, some of the language that was used during my soiree with Claudia, even recalling that there were three sexual interludes. I was to learn, at a much later time, that she had placed a voice activated recorder under my bed. I had my suspicions, but never confronted her about her “story” to Baby.
As fate would have it, Alcindia also had sexual abuse issues in her background, which definitely impacted our 16 month relationship in various ways. But, these issues did not lead her into the psychosis like it probably did with my ex-wife. Unlike my sexually unresponsive first wife Donelle, Alcindia at least found a way to experience an orgasm, and she brought the fruitage of that exploration into our shared sexuality. On a physical level, she was a small step up. On an emotional level, it remained an often times confusing, stimulating, sometimes happy, but mostly challenging relationship.
When we hit an early “rough patch” in our new relationship, In a shameful moment of weakness, I gave to Alcindia a copy of Di Di’s poem. I did not ever tell her that I had not really written the poem for her, and that I did not even love her. I tried to fool myself from the very start that this woman was worth my time and effort, but we were BAD for each other. Have you ever heard of the term “slumming”? It was an unholy match, compounded by my own selfishness, loneliness, lack of integrity and honesty, and drug addiction and alcoholism.
On a spiritual and emotional level, our relationship did nothing to enhance a shared vision of wholeness, instead, gradually becoming a source of pain and suffering for the two of us. How a one night stand turned into a dark 16 month relationship is anybody’s guess, but my poor self-esteem, loneliness and need for female friendship sure played into it. Baby, and her boyfriend, both were to become quite prominent in our shared story, but I will keep their story at a minimum. Suffice it to say that Baby’s boyfriend, who belonged to a motorcycle gang in Hillsboro, had access to pure rock crank/speed, which, at that time, I had never experienced before. This is a very significant event, and I became an immediate, ardent fan of the drug. This “friendship” would later accompany me into my underworld experience.
Our relationship of 14 months cemented my unconscious determination to self-destruct through continued drug abuse. After becoming sober yet again in January of 1985, after having a toxic event around drinking and using anti-anxiety medication prescribed for help with depression, I was yet again hospitalized, this time at the Cedar Hills Hospital, for recovery from mental illness and alcoholism. I profoundly disliked the atmosphere in this place. I witnessed the abuse of mentally ill people, and it was disturbing and heartbreaking. I watched three male attendants rough up a woman about my age who did not immediately respond positively to one of the attendants requests. The three of them ganged up on the unfortunate women, and proceeded to forcefully remove her from the room, and attempt to tie her down unto a bed. She screamed and cried, and was subjected to quite a beating. The only way they would later release her from her bondage was by getting her to apologize for her “indiscretion” to the attendants and the other witnessing patients. The victim was apologizing for having to get beat, and this is how it really was.
Cedar Hills did have a recovery team on site for treatment of substance abuse issues, and they treated me with respect while I was there. I was expelled after only three days because my health insurance had run out, and I did not want to pay close to $1000 a day out of my empty pockets, Dr. Beavers prescribed me a high-powered antidepressant called Nortriptyline, which suddenly turned my whole understanding around. It was like a light went on in my mind, and for the first time in my life I was happy. I happily stayed clean and sober for over six months, and found a renewed passion for life, my job at the US Postal Service, and even for the highly dysfunctional girlfriend that I had in Alcindia.
I began to work out in our local fitness center where we lived, and I started developing some serious leg muscles. I also gained about thirty pounds, ballooning up to 208 pounds, from eating a half gallon of ice cream almost daily. Food in general tasted almost too good, while taking this wonder medication. But, I did not feel comfortable attending AA meetings, because my integrity misinformed me that taking this anti-depressant was somehow part of a relapse process, and that by being on medication that made me feel that good I could not honestly practice the program, and I felt some shame around that. During this period of time, Alcindia’s mother moved in with us. She suffered from severe depression, and psychosomatic ailments, and she became a disruptive, though friendly, presence in our apartment for the rest of our relationship.
Things went well until Alcindia and I took a week-long vacation around the July 4th holiday in Bend. In the middle of the week, I happened to see a partially smoked marijuana joint spill out of Alcindia’s purse. Rather than replacing it, I somehow justified in my mind that it would be better to smoke pot and get high than take anti-depressants. This messed up reasoning caused me to experience extreme shame, guilt, and self-consciousness, to the point that I would not return to work after our vacation. I called in sick for several weeks afterward, and I never returned to my “lifetime guaranteed job” of working for the US Postal Service. After ten years, I sacrificed that career so that I could smoke a joint. It was a fast downhill slide into depression, alcohol and further drug abuse.
By November of 1985, which also corresponded to when I finally was terminated from the Post Office for failure to appear back at work, I also abandoned my now nightmare relationship with Alcindia, and left her for good.
It remains no mystery to me as to why some people choose suicide over recovery. I was starting to see the end of my own road, with the dead-end sign fast approaching my out-of-control- car of life.
PAIN (more post-Care Unit poetry, circa 1985)
Dark clouds looming on the horizon
Waiting,
Advancing
Hovering,
Thundering,
Misting,
Then breaking into torrential downpours
Eroding,
Stripping back,
Layer,
Upon Layer,
Upon Layer
Of consciousness.
Exposing
Long forgotten mental relics
Dangerous old memories
Self-destructive habits
And tendencies
Stinging,
Hurting,
Piercing to my core
Obscuring visions of glorious futures
With the suffering spawned from the
Darkest past
Washing away
Tenuously held possessions of
Sanity and hope
Uprooting new foundations of a life
Desperately
But futilely
Trying to reconstruct itself
Carrying a
Helpless,
Hopeless,
Powerless soul
Into a chemical valley
Amid a swirling depression
Ravaging,
Drowning,
Decaying
Pain,
Why?
Part II
Growing without roots, with a will that won’t bend,
Weathering life’s storms, which never seem to end.
No longer waiting for the sun that was once promised to arise,
How could truth’s light possibly shine in dimmed eyes?
Having reached with futility for all the high goals of life,
With no spiritual growth, while consumed by inner strife.
Devoid of healing affection, and a stranger to real love,
Unrealistic hope was what my failed dreams were all made of.
Despair meets each day, summer has now changed into fall,
Looking at life, I am totally disgusted by it all.
Dying of loneliness, and holding life by only a thread,
With me rotting inside, hopefully, I soon will be dead.
Pain,
Why?
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