Happy Birthday to my first wife, Donelle Mae Flick Paullin, who is 63 years old today. This story is not a happy message, and I have really edited it down to keep it a short, painful, disjointed story. I have not heard from Donelle for over 20 years now, since the death of her father, Don Flick, in 1996. She may be dead, or she may be institutionalized yet again, or she may still be living in a halfway house for the mentally ill attempting to make a transition back into the community. If she is still alive, she remains irreparably damaged psychologically, and that condition will not be changing, regardless of the outer circumstances of her life, outside of some sort of “miraculous intervention”.
Phase 1:
She cannot speak out against the abuse that she experienced throughout her life. Being born into a socially diseased family, where the mother’s narcissism and selfishness, and neglect of her young children, and the mother’s poor relationship choices that resulted from her own brokenness, led to the conditions of sexual abuse and assault against Donelle when she was but 6 years old. Marlene was a young bride, who married Donald Flick, in 1954 Don owned 2 sections of land in North Dakota, which he managed, as well as being a full-time worker at the Camas Crown Zellerbach paper mill. Don would work so much at the mill, that time at home was quite limited. Marlene would have parties at their home while he was away, and she would invite single men. There was always alcohol being served, and Marlene tended to promiscuity during that period of time. While she would be taking leave to the back bedroom with her latest “friend”, she would leave her young children vulnerable to whoever was left without a partner. Donelle, being about 6 years old during this difficult period of time, was selected and abused by Bud Barr, who was a child predator, heavy drinker, and all around bad attitude man. Bud would repeatedly abuse Donelle, and it was also later learned that he abused his other daughter from his previous marriage.
Marlene and Don’s marriage collapsed, and they were divorced. But Marlene married the abuser Bud, and they moved in together near Five Corners in Vancouver, Washington. Donelle lived with her mother the majority of the time, due to the conditions of the divorce decree. Donelle had to face the threat of sexual attack from this criminal for the next ten years of her life, though her brothers told me that Bud was not allowed to be alone with Donelle, after Marlene and Bud moved in with each other. Yet, the damage was already done, and the little girl knew trauma intimately.
Phase 2:
Donelle and I got married in September of 1979, and she was doing quite well at the time. Her mental illness was being well-managed by the latest anti-psychotic ‘miracle drugs’ by all appearances, and she was studying to be a Sous Chef at PCC Sylvania campus.. She was getting good reviews and grades there, and because she had stabilized so well, I finally felt comfortable enough to marry her, having delayed marriage since 1973 because of our tumultuous experiences around her variable mental health.
By April of 1980, she collapsed once again into another ‘nervous breakdown’ which included “hearing voices”, talking to herself, and generally experiencing the ravages of her paranoid schizophrenia. I moved out of our shared apartment on Harrison St in Milwaukie, and moved across the street into another apartment, so that I could stay in close contact with her. I needed to stay in other quarters because she was so disruptive because of her horrible disease. She would not sleep at night many times, and she would hear screams from the basement of the Milwaukie Police department, where she claimed they were torturing civilians, and she would cry out in anguish because of what she was “hearing”..
Dan Dietz was my best friend up to that point in time, and he was also the co-best man at our wedding. Dan had known Donelle almost as long as I did, and he knew all too well her limitations while she was in her “breakdown mode”. Dan was quite the drinker and party animal still, and Donelle, even in her diseased state, still liked to go out and listen to live music, and drink liberally. I demanded that Dan stay away from Donelle while she was in her breakdown phase, but he instead took her out one night, and they both drank to extreme drunkenness together. When I came over to Donelle’s place the next morning, I noted that her panties were on the floor, and that she was partially dressed, and still woozy on the couch. She told me that she awoke to Dan raping her after she had passed out. When I confronted Dan about it, He said that he did not remember anything, but I went ahead and broke my hand on a door that he stood in. I told him to leave, and i never saw Dan alive again.
Phase 3:
I visited Donelle several times at Ft. Steilacoom mental hospital near Tacoma, Washington over the years that she was committed to that horrible place (1988-1992). Donelle would tell me stories about the male attendants raping the patients, and the necessity of locking her door at night to prevent both the patients, and attendants, from raping or assaulting her during the night. I have written before about my visits here, and I will not comment further in this piece. (end)
Note: In 1987, I visited Donelle at her apartment near Camas Washington. We had been divorced since 1984, but I still kept in touch with her on occasion, because of my concern for her. I had just gotten sober, and I wanted to make amends to her, as part of the program of working the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (total sobriety was to last for me for over 20 years, until I developed a pain-killer addiction in 2007). This time, she was in the middle of a complete MPD (multiple personality disorder) type of nervous breakdown. She had candles lit throughout her apartment, and the setting was quite eerie. I sat down with her to talk, and I noted that she looked so young and innocent, and I was struck by the change in her appearance and countenance. As she spoke to me, I felt like I was witnessing a 6 or 7-year-old girl. I witnessed the new persona that was now speaking through her, as she talked about her life. For some reason, I was inspired to give her feedback about her “six-year-old self” that I was witnessing. I told her that she was not responsible for the sexual abuse that she experienced from Bud (and perhaps one or two unnamed others during Marlene’s drunken soirees). I tried to be as forgiving and compassionate as my heart would allow to the naive, innocent child making its presentation before me. We both cried together, and my heart was broken, and I hurt like I had never before hurt as a human being. I can only imagine her own terror and fear around her own abuse at the hands of her elders. Later in this visit, another “personality” appeared. A calm, composed mature person “incarnated” in Donelle. I asked who I was talking with. She told me that she was “God”, and proceeded to give me the wisest, most loving feedback that I had ever received as a human being up to that point in my life.
Who can say with certainty what reality truly is?
Donelle’s reality was a most challenging one. I am distressed by the abuse that men over the course of her life heaped upon her. She was the most loving, kind person that I had every known, and she got bulldozed by our culture and community, and her diseased response to it. Nature, or nurture? Had Donelle been lovingly nurtured since birth through her adulthood, I would only hope that the disease would not have erupted. Traumatization of our most innocent cannot lead to happy outcomes.
Over the many years that i knew her, i tried to be the best support person that I could be, but I was damaged goods, as well, so I failed in my mission, too. She deserved better that what I could give her, because I suffered under my own limitations of selfishness, addiction, and sense of personal powerlessness. With mental illness, we all tend to fail together as a family, as a culture, and as a human race. Those who can bring forgiveness, insight, compassion, and a sense of the Spirit are the true blessings for the sick within our society. I am not so sure about the ones who distribute the medications, however. They may help in the short-term, but they tend to deliver a mixed bag of goods, that is for sure. The great gift we can give is a non-judgemental listening ear, and to keep our hearts open to the stories that are told.
Many days, I am not a proud member of the human race. Sometimes, I am appalled and disgusted by my male peers, and most times I want nothing to do with over sexed and over aggressive men. Men are the serial killers, they are the rapists, they are the ones wielding assault rifles, they are the ones terrorizing innocent people.
There was a time when I would have lifted my fists against the aggressors, but a broken hand proved to me that my structure could not support the war on Patriarchy and its ugly spawn, the damaged male ego. I continue to write about the vile, damaged consciousness of parts of the American male, much to the distress and consternation of some of my readers, past and present. I also know that there is a tender, loving, compassionate component to the male consciousness, and that is the part the I celebrate with all people seeking healing from our sometimes evil world, the world created by dark men and their twisted fantasies of domination and control.
I will no longer remain silent. I confront darkness wherever it lies, even if it is within my own soul. For men, the big problem us not that we get erections, it is that we unskillfully manage ourselves in self-destructive and other destructive manners. Too many men live in a dark world dominated by their own genitals, and their own unskilled relationship to their own sexuality.
