September 29, 2004
Oh, To Grace, How Great a Debtor,
Foggy sunset on the "flats" at Seal Beach. Brown Pelicans and gulls circling in...
"Its so cold, and where did the heavy fog come from?" she thought as she got out of her car and walked toward the pier, just as she did every Thursday. "I called the Harbor Masters office and they said it was beautiful out." She went to therapy on Thursdays. Two hours of group, and a hour of individual, a grueling event for most, but a life line of sanity in a insane life that was imploding around her...
The pier divides the beach into two sides, and the currents in conjunction with the two long breakwaters created two very different topographical areas, the northern half,"The flats" where most swimming and surfing takes place, as well as a windsurfing area off limits to swimmers, and the southern side where huge piles of sand had been heaped against the tide and the rip currents created wonderful waves for more experienced surfers. But it had also created "sinks" depressions that could be quite deep that filled with water. These were also the places where the rip tide could haul the unwary out to sea should you not be careful when swimming there. Beyond the south beak water is the firing range for the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, not a place to be swept into even on a clear day for normally there is a destroyer positioned in the bay...
She is thinking only of the day. Her boss in a rage threw a bundle of drawings at her, the heavy clip holding them together dug a gouge out of the plaster of the wall, where she had ducked to get out of the way...he could have hurt her, Drunk again," she thought "Story of my life"... She needed this job, it paid little, but it provided food and gas for the car, and the five dollars a week token payment that Amy the counselor lady asked for. A very small price for a listening ear. Someone to help her sort out all of the decisions that had to be made. For since both of her men had left, B. in July and J. two weeks prior, all was falling to her and she wasn't sure what to do. How to pay the mortgage when her whole months wages didn't begin to cover the payment. Was J coming back, should she try to list and sell the house and for how much and where would she go as the family made it clear that the things that had gone on in her life and her love for two men were disgusting to them and she was not welcome to come home.
She reached up and scratched her head. The short broken off hair itched... The burnt scalp was peeling. Two weeks ago she had beautiful knee length hair, which she had spiral permed into soft ringlets... When it was time for the touchup no thought was given to it until 5 minutes into the operation when he head felt like fire and the solution was washed out. Three days later, her supervisor, who was a kind old man, and loathed the drunkard that he had to work for, called her into the office and had his secretary cut the remaining hair off, for it was breaking off and leaving a trail wherever she walked, and advised her to "wear a bandanna until it grows out...It will look ok on the dock and I will explain"...She thanked him, and wondered if life was going to continue to go down hill...
"This was just the latest," she thought, as she reached the sand and walked to the southern side of the beach. "First the earthquake that ruined our home, then the accident that crippled J and left him unnerved, then B came back into our lives and we got all caught up in cruising again and I know that messed things up. Why did J let him move in? So I would fall crazy in love again and leave ...I know the answer...Cause he was crazy in love with him and wanted to prove he wasn't...So he'd have reason to dispose of me for that chick that he's hung up on now... What do I do now?..."
She walks slowly, the fog is so think that it swirls around her like a living thing. She hears the cry of the seagull, and the roar of the ocean. She stops then quickly ducks as a Brown Pelican swoops over her missing her by just a few feet. A terror is building inside of her...the fog, the near miss, and the incessant voices in her head, always there, but louder at times like this, they are saying...
"Turn to the right", "Walk to the right"
"I am alone" she thought "for no one in this world wants me, not the way I have lived not the way that I look now...Used up, burnt out, useless, no skills other than those a hooker uses...Yeah that is what J said the other night on the phone when he called to tell me that all financial support was at an end and he wasn't bringing the artwork or any of the valuable stuff back. I could lump it and Id better come up with rent for his house cause he was throwing me out if I didn't come up with the money. Imagine a house with my name on it and he thinks he can throw me out? But what about what else he said, that "Id best be getting out into the street as that was all I was good for and that Id not be keeping this job"..After today maybe hes right...
"turn to the right." "Walk to the right"
Walking again...Better watch out, those sinks are out here could break my neck. She suddenly slid down 10 feet into the first sink. "Whoa, they have piled the berms up for the winter already," as she climbed back up to the top " Id better walk to the left a bit so I dont fall into number two, its usually deeper..."
Its been hard to be alone. For the first time in her life she is living alone. In some ways she was growing to love the new freedom, but at night, She and her cat Creature, lived in a scary house that sustained the heaviest damage in the 1987 Whittier Earthquake, in our city. That was a terrible day. B had just spent the first night with us and was getting up when at 7:42am the shock wave hit our house at the perfect angle. Amplified by our 25000 gal swimming pool that abutted the house it turned the 5.9 quake into an estimated 6.5, shoving the house and garage 3 degrees off center, destroying both fireplaces and damaging the garage so badly it had been redtagged, while the neighbors cleaned up spills, we had contractors out. Only the post office and old brick building, and the 5-605 interchange were in worse shape. "I knew I was going to die if the shaking hadn't stopped, and I knew that I was bound for hell as well for hadn't the Sunday School teachers always said that if you die in your sins unconfessed that you were hell bound?" She thought. Night after night the aftershocks poured in. The master bedroom was on a separate foundation and safer than the rest of the house and the three of us slept together holding hands like children in the dark afraid to sleep. We had all been badly traumatized by it. Now I was alone with it no place to go, not enough money to move out...
"Turn to the right, Walk to the right"
"Id be ok, if someone would love me, if someone would help me"... Another Pelican swooped down and seeing that it was a human quickly veered off, She lost her balance and stumbled, losing track of where she was in relation to the beach. The tears began to come. In the aching emptiness of soul she got up and walked crying furiously, not caring what was ahead. Hands pressed over her ears trying to hold down the incredible inner din of voices shrieking in her head...
Go to the right, walk to the right....
The ocean is roaring to the right. She is too close to the surf line and goes falling, tumbling into the deep gash of the second sink, the huge sand pit near the waterline...She lays there listening to the ocean and the voices and her own breathing and feels something around the edge of her mind. Something dreadful that she doesn't want to remember...
"Get up! Get up! and walk to the right..."
...It was a sunny day and she only meant to go to the pretty sparkling water but the wave came in and grabbed her and she was dragged out to sea in the rip tide. She remembers screaming "Mommy! Mommy!" and seeing her mother on the sands holding her baby brother in her arms. After an eternity the tide suddenly turns and she was brought back to shore and to her mother who scolded her for going out into the water.
"Get up! Walk to the right! You cheated us once but not this time!"
The voices inside of her head screamed in fury as this previously unknown incedent came to mind. She sobbed and in total dispair said "God, if you really are everywhere are you here?..."
Out of the fog came a voice that said "I AM"
