Snapshots

On a walk…

I’m leaving home. I grip the cool metal nob and step outside. It’s humid today; the dew point is 38%--high for Reno. To my left, yellow daisies push through dry dirt toward the overcast sky, reaching towards spring, hopeful that the frost is over. It smells crisp, like the dewdrops are little pollution encased bubbles that clean the air as they evaporate.

 I’ve written before that I was six when thoughts of suicide took over my brain. They would come upon me as an obsession, on a loop. How can I get out of here? Other times, the thoughts weren’t top of mind but a consistent back drop that colored the way I viewed my life. My after-school program offered catechism, unbeknownst to my agnostic mother. One day, my catechism teacher told my class that we were going to live forever, in heaven. She said God will replace every hair on our head when we get there. The other kids grinned (such joyful news!), but my stomach dropped. You mean this will never end? And some six-year-old version of why does God care about our hair?

 Around the time my father died, my uncle told me in a hushed voice that if I didn’t go to church, I would go to hell. My mother didn’t believe in church or God and my uncle thought he better warn me to take this task on myself. I wasn’t worried about going to hell—hell never scared me the same way heaven never enticed me. I wanted to know why I was here. What’s the point? Is there a way I can make it stop for good—no heaven, no hell, just an end? I was precocious and determined, so I began my search for the answer. By myself, I tried different churches. Most were pleasant, (except the people at the Mormon Temple), but nothing ever stuck. 

 It’s almost spring in Northern Nevada; wild fires haven’t yet created a ceiling of thick, orange/brown, toxic air. I continue walking up my hill. Wind, cool on my face makes 51° feel like 42°. A rabbit nibbles on green ground cover where the street rounds. 

 The Black church my uncle belonged to was across the street from the fairgrounds and only three blocks away from the apartment I lived in when I began my search for God. My uncle was a minister there, so I had attended a decent amount of times. There was a full band and choir that performed gospel music—live, loud, exciting. The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is fundamentalist; women couldn’t wear pants, so most wore brightly colored dresses and matching hats; when the singing started, the shouting started, and many people got the holy ghost and spoke in tongues. Services were supposed to be from 10am-12pm but often ended as late as 5pm. I loved the music and this part of my culture because it was so different from what my white friends experienced. Sometimes I brought them with me and they loved it, too. But I never felt God there. Elder Len cheated on his wife with many women in the parish and then told us gay people would go to hell. He and some members of the congregation talked about my 7-year-old effeminate half-brother like the devil was in him. I didn’t know my half-brother at this time, (we had different mothers), but I always wondered why God would create him only to hate him. I went to this church only when there was a family function or to listen to the music. Years later, the church was sued because of a botched exorcism. A woman with the sex demon died, and no one called the ambulance for over 12 hours. 

 I continue the 1/4 mile walk to the park. Young children play here and dogs run through the tall grass full of dog shit owners didn’t bother to pick up. I stay on the sidewalk. My favorite bench is gray plastic and looks like something from the Flintstones. My shoulders ease down away from my ears as I breathe in the clean air. Just then a young girl of around three screams a shrill high-pitched cry of glee, again and again and again. I daydream that someone, (but not me, of course), gently and lovingly places a pillow firmly over the child’s mouth and takes her home, where she will sleep a lovely sleep and wake up cozy and loved and far away from me. The thought makes me smile to myself.

 When I was ten years old, my mother almost died of a brain tumor. The doctors removed it, but they took all the stuff in her right ear—her hearing and semi-circular canals that gave her balance. It was the year I started my period, something I had been on the lookout for since I was in second grade and my mother bought me a kit called, “You and Your Body,” which contained a perfunctory booklet and a sample “belted” pad. 

That year, my best friend Michelle convinced me we should lose our virginity NOW so that it wouldn’t hurt with the person we loved. Michelle and I were exactly the same age, born on the same day, same year, only 2.5 hours apart. And to our 10-year-old minds, this made sense. Her 15-year-old boyfriend, Mason, planned the entire thing. One afternoon, when Michelle’s mother wasn’t home, we lost our virginity, side by side in sleeping bags on the floor in her living room. Mason’s friend Trey was my 15-year-old first. 

This same year, between 5th grade and 6th, Michelle and I started drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes and hash. My first drink was a pint of Jack Daniels, straight. I didn’t throw up, but I blacked out. A blackout is when you are walking and talking, but you have no memory of it and blackouts can be a sign of alcoholism. I know I was an alcoholic from that first drink. I drank at least four times per week until I became a daily drinker at 16 years old.

 In junior high, at lunch time, my friends and I sat on cement bleachers smoking cigarettes and passing around a mason jar filled with various mixtures of hard booze. One of us, never me, would raid her parents’ liquor cabinet and pour a little out of each bottle so that it wasn’t noticeable. My mom didn’t drink hard liquor, but I would never have taken that risk, anyway. My mother was strict, and I knew I had to be very careful to not get caught. Other times when we needed alcohol, someone older bought it for us. Many parents buy their young children alcohol and cigarettes because they would rather they do it under our roof than out on the streets. These were some of my friend’s parents and we NEVER told my mother. Cigarettes cost .55 cents out of a cigarette machine, so getting them was never a problem. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Reno, NV, where drugs and alcohol are ubiquitous, but in my memory all the kids drank. I think what is more likely is that my sole focus on getting fucked up at every opportunity filtered out anyone who didn’t party. 

 On my 13th birthday party, my mother dropped me off at Chuck E. Cheese. My tight group of five friends waited for me under the red neon light of the restaurant. Luisa, Amy’s older sister, stayed in her car and blinked her headlights on and off when she saw my mom drive away. She had already bought pints of liquor for each of us. In the backseat, I opened my bottle of JD and took a big gulp. We headed to an apartment to drink and smoke pot. The guys that lived in the apartment bought us alcohol and drugs—whatever we wanted. My friend Kim considered one of them her boyfriend because she lost her virginity with him. He was 35, and she was 12. We teased her about his age and pock-marked face. I remember the evening like it’s a slide show where most of the slides are black:

Everyone is laughing. 

Kathy is throwing up all over herself. 

Javier, age 23, is kissing me. 

Kathy is in the shower with her clothes on. 

Javier is taking me into the bedroom.

Javier is pulling down my pants.

I’m screaming, STOP! 

It hurts down there.

My friends are opening the bedroom door and then leaving abruptly. 

Javier is finishing. 

We’re all in a casino bathroom and Kathy is still puking. 

I’m at the hospital with my mom and they’re taking my blood. 

I’m crying uncontrollably.

The doctor is telling my mother that I’m drunk. 

Then I’m lying in my bed the next morning.

 A dog, three feet tall at his shoulder, with chestnut hair and red rope collar sniffles by, pulling a college aged woman in red tattered sweats and a heavy white sweatshirt. I wonder about her and every one else in this small park; wonder how they will fill the rest of the afternoon—it’s 2:30pm. And how they feel their lives are going. You never know what someone is coping with, even on a clear blue, peaceful day in the park. 

 I was 39 when my best friend and favorite person committed suicide. We had moved to NYC, (our big dream!), and she took a plane to Fort Worth, TX, bought a gun, rented a cheap hotel and shot herself in the mouth. If I could wrap all the bad things that have ever happened to me, multiply them by 100, it wouldn’t come close to the pain I felt. I could have walked through fire with less pain. I was the one who always talked about suicide, but she beat me to it. It was like our personalities: Youngie was a go-getter, a shit or get off the pot person. It wasn’t in her to obsess for years and not follow through.

 My life in NYC unraveled after Youngie’s death. I had some successes in the years since her death. There were some high paying, well-respected jobs and some great apartments. I got sober; but my nervous system took time to heal. I never felt I could get up off of the ground and stay standing for long enough to build a life in New York. My final apartment was a windowless room in a basement, with three roommates and a job in retail. My mom pleaded with me to come home and I gave in; I had lost everything and my mom was the only thing I wanted. On December 16, 2019, I moved back into my childhood bedroom. Then, in March 2020, Covid happened. Covid was a precious relief to me. My insides matched the world’s outsides—everyone’s life was upside down. Most people assumed it was because of Covid that I moved home at 50 years old. I didn’t have to tell anyone that my life had fallen apart long before. 

 A funny thing happened when I lost everything and became unrecognizable to myself. The hard shell that kept me safe and alone dissolved, along with all the big plans I had for my life. I hung out with my mom and step father and their love healed me. For the first time, I wasn’t grasping at what to do next—I just surrendered to whatever was or was not happening. And I stopped trying to escape or get out of here. For two years, I was an empty vessel waiting to be filled by something that I knew I would call God. The still small voice that has been whispering to me my whole life became a working, vibrant friendship. 

Here’s what I now know. I’m on the planet to give love and receive love. Happiness is a birthright and is only a paradigm shift away. That’s kind of it.

 A fluorescent yellow tennis ball rolls to my feet. To my right is a young boy staring at me and a yellow Labrador jumping in the grass. Saliva and grass clippings cover the ball. When I throw it back to the kid, I raise my face toward the sky. It’s beautiful today. The air feels like a sweet libation in my lungs. God is here, deep inside of me, in a place cozy, safe and quiet. Thank you for my life I say out loud and start the walk back home.