Almost Lost (17 page)

“Why couldn't I have remembered that lesson when I needed it? Why didn't I look for support and reinforcement from
someone
? Probably because I didn't know I could or should then.”

“That's too bad, for there are times when all of us, no matter who we are or where we are, need a support system to keep us from getting down below a five-out-of-ten in our lives. All of us should think of someone, while we're feeling good, to whom we could go if something horrific happened to us or even if we had a series of smaller problems, which when added together become a weight too heavy to carry comfortably. I'm sure you can think of someone now.”

“Yeah, now I can think of lots of someones: Mom, or (my new principal,) Dr. Davidson, or Mr. Driggs, my school counselor, or Josh, my old tennis teacher, or Uncle Gordo or Aunt Marian or Grandma Gordon, or the preacher at the church where I used to go, if he's still there, or the new preacher if he isn't! Actually I could even call the help line that's advertised
on our school bulletin board. I never thought I would before, but any of those things could help nip a problem in the bud couldn't they? Or help a person get turned around?”

“They certainly would help if
you
would let them!”

“Yeah, I'll bet any of them could have and would have helped me see that because one apple on the tree goes rotten, it doesn't mean that none of the rest of the apples are fit to eat.”

“Sammy, you ought to write a book with all your profound sayings in it.”

“Oh yeah, about as likely as my laying eggs.”

“Dare I bring up the fact that you have laid a couple?”

We tried to playfully laugh, and he slapped me on the shoulder. “Leave it to you, my mentor and my confidant, to bring
that
up.”

“I couldn't resist.”

We stopped to stretch, then I said seriously, “I can't understand why it's so hard for people, including myself, to say to someone they trust, ‘I am in need of reinforcement
now
, my comfort and self-esteem gauge level is getting close to empty, or please just be there for me till I get things together, or listen to me for a while.' It could be as simple as saying to your mom, ‘I need to talk,' or ‘I need a hug, a big-long-I-love-you hug, a I'm-glad-you're-part-of-me-and-I'm-part-of-you hug.'”

“Even the bad part?”

“Cut that out, kid. If you're willing to sell yourself for a nickel, the world will buy you for a nickel. Putting a five-cent price tag on yourself is as foolish and foolhardy as giving a five-cent problem five-
hundred-dollars' worth of energy and time. Now, tell me honestly how much
are
you worth?”

“A million? A billion? A zillion? My mom used to read me bedtime stories and tell me I was worthless”—he laughed—“I mean priceless.”

“Now tell me another good remembrance, and don't you forget it! That is the PRICELESS part!”

“I remember Dorie once hitting me on the head with the telephone and me running over her new Easter hat with my bicycle and Mom having to come out and make us apologize to each other and kiss and make up. But even stuff like that was kind of a goodness and light thing. We wouldn't have
really
hurt each other for anything in the world.”

“Was it after…Lance…you started
feeding
all the negs in your life, actually encouraging them?”

“Yeah! And I know I did, not just with him, but I started looking for all the faults in everybody else, too.”

“Could we say you stopped altogether trying to make ‘sunshine cake' and started putting together only ingredients which make ‘cow pies'?”

“You could not only say that, you could say that after the ‘Lance thing'
I put into
my life
only
things that made it just one big pile of cow crap.”

“Let's go over that concept one more time. What made the change between the happy times and the miserable times in your life?”

“The ingredients
I put
into it, or allowed others to put into it.”

“Pretend you were making peanut butter cookies and someone dumped in some rat poison by mistake, or on purpose. What would you do?”

“I'd throw out the batter and start over, of course.”

“I wonder why we don't do that with mental poisoning?”

“Maybe because the physical stuff is so much more obvious.”

“Granted. But isn't one poison as potentially dangerous as the other?”

“Yeah, could be
mental poisoning
is even more dangerous than physical poisoning and maybe self-forgiveness is the equivalent of a second chance.”

“You've
put
that thought into your mental computer disk
permanently
, right?”

“Right.”

“Now I know this sounds ‘elementary, my dear Watson,' but just for the fun of it, let's take turns naming some of the ingredients that instead of making cow pies make one of life's sunshine cakes.”

“
Looking
for the good and having a pos 'tude.”

“
Doing
the good.”

“
Looking
for the kind things.”

“Caring how others feel.”

“Being in harmony with people and things.”

“Wanting to
help
not hurt.”

“Knowing that to be happy we have to work at making others happy.”

“Loving and allowing yourself to be loved.”

“Mostly that! Man, I feel so dumb letting one jerk asshole make me think and act like a complete jerk asshole, too.”

“What might have happened if you hadn't
let
him?”

“There's no way I could have stopped him.”

“You probably couldn't have kept him from messing up his own life, but might it have been possible for you to have kept your own intact?”

“Well…maybe if I'd come to see you then.”

“Or maybe talked to your mom, or Mo, or someone else you care about and trust like you said.”

“Maybe? Possibly…”

“If you ever have to live through another traumatic incident, what might you do?”

“For sure, I
wouldn't
allow it to grow until it consumed my life! I'd dump it on somebody! Anybody!”

“Would that be easy?”

“Probably not.”

“No one ever said it would be easy.”

“Actually, once I got started, dumping the ‘Lance thing' was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I'd held that ever-expanding, unspeakable, killer pain and hate for him inside my guts for so long that finally puking it up, even with its nauseating stench and its creeping tissue-disintegrating vileness, was a relief. I feel fifty pounds lighter in weight and a million times lighter in spirit.” Sammy hesitated and quietly sobbed for a long time.

“But I'm still soooo hurting! I'm punctured and bruised and broken and bleeding in every single part of my body and soul. Not only that, but it's like he rubbed salt and broken glass and acid into each of my gaping wounds, rubbed them in while he was laughing and tearing me down in every way known to man. Now the bastard sees I'm beginning to heal, and he won't let me! He doesn't want me to heal! He enjoys seeing me crying and moaning and groaning and suffering. He viciously intrudes into my dreams to watch me.

“Sometimes when I'm just sitting in school or maybe having fun, beginning to think I'm maybe getting back into a normal life, his gloating face pops up before me, sneering at me, telling me I'm a failure, a
misfit nobody that won't…
can't
ever make it…asking me why I don't just give up and go back to the world of failure where I belong. I see him everywhere. He's always, all the time…goading me to…you know…do it.”

“Whoa, Sammy, slow down. Now could be the time to detach from all your fetid past. Are you ready?”

Sammy shuddered. “I'm ready. At least I think I'm ready.”

“Good. Close your eyes and restfully and slowly take in three big, cleansing, oxygen-filled breaths through your nose, then let go of all the negative toxins in your body as you breathe out through your mouth—cleansing air coming in…negative toxins going out!

“Allow your subconscious to say to your material body, ‘I see a large, sturdy, white plastic sheet on the floor. I feel quite quiet…I feel comfortably relaxed as I start placing all the past negatives of my life in the center of the plastic sheet. IT IS AS THOUGH
SOMEONE ELSE, NOT ME
, IS DOING THE FOLLOWING THINGS.' The detached person hears Lance saying shockingly terrible things about subjects we had always been taught to respect and good things about subjects we had always been taught to disrespect. Don't open your eyes; just see Lance's words and actions as though they were tangible colored blobs being placed in the center of the sheet. What color are they?”

“Red, as red as mixed flames and blood.”

“Next the detached person
sees
the feelings you had when you watched Lance use cocaine. Those tangible blobs are taken and placed on the sheet. What color are they?”

“They're red mixed with black lightning-bolt streaks of shattering electricity.”

“Can the detached person see Lance beating up on his son and screaming at him?”

“Yes. It's unreal though.”

“What color are those sounds and actions?”

“Black…hard…jagged…some have blood dripping from them and orange-and-green slime.”

“What color are the blobs the young innocent boy Sammy sees as he tries to get away?”

“Heavy, heavy, heavy, scared black wiggly lines. Some with scary monster shapes.”

“What color are the blobs at the bus station and on the bus, and transferring from one bus to another?”

“Black as the blackest night and piercing like arrows and bullets and axes and knives.”

“Have they all been dumped on the pile?”

“Yes.”

“What about when the boy Sammy gets home, what colors are there?”

“At first they're almost normal, then blackness begins to filter in from all directions and take over.”

“Can those colors be placed on the pile?”

“Yes.”

“What color are the hostilities at school?”

“They grow from regular to roadkill pizza colors, to black, deep, sucking-down black.”

“Are they dumped?”

“Yes.”

“What about the colors during the school gang period?”

“It got to the point where he”—Sammy had begun to say the word
he
for himself—“could only see colors other than black when he was being physically hurt, or road screeching or tagging.”

“Can he dump those colors?”

“Yes…dumped.”

“What about in Las Vegas when Blunt held up the man?”

“Shades of gray and black. Dumped.”

“We're in East Los Angeles.”

“All black with occasional stabs of red or orange.”

“The drive-bys, the hurting young girl who reminded you of Dorie, the dying pregnant girl who had been stabbed?”

“All black with splashes of blood.”

“The kitten?”

“The kitten was the only
real
experience there.”

“What about being shot and in the Los Angeles General Hospital, the hall, the operating room, being treated disrespectfully, being released?”

“All different shades of black except the long multicolored lines in the halls that even the workers had to use as road maps, the place is so big.” Sammy was quiet for a few minutes. “It's all dumped.”

“The ‘Chicken Hawk' truck driver?”

Sammy took two big, slow, sighing breaths, then the barest smile on his face showed he was thinking of the kind couple in the motor home who had found him at the rest stop. After a minute or two he sighed. “Dumped.”

“We forgot to dump the time you hit Mo.”

“That was a hurtful black, bleeding black blood from every pore of my body time that I'll never be able to dump.”

“You mean you want to carry it around like a sack of bricks for the rest of time?”

“I'm not sure I can do anything else.”

“That's up to you.”

“Do
you
think I can dump it?”

“I
know
you can if you really want to and you honestly think you should.”

“But Mo's the only one I truly love that I actually physically hurt.” Sammy had come out of his self-induced trance and opened his eyes wide.

“That's true. But you've got to dump the incident before you can be well enough to repair the damage both to yourself and to her. What good is it going to do to keep on picking and opening up an old wound that needs to be healed? Dump the old, unclean, toxic, infection-inviting crud and go on to encourage healthy healing for both her and yourself.”

Sammy looked like an innocent five-year-old. “Is it really possible?”

“Yes, It's possible!
If
you wipe the slate clean and start over on building yourself a rewarding, mentally and physically healthy lifestyle.”

“I want to! I do want to, more than anything else in the world!”

“Okay, let's do it! Take three big, deep, slow breaths, taking in positives, releasing toxic negatives. Put yourself back into the control state where your actions are subconscious. Feel your thumbs being totally relaxed…your toes totally relaxed…the muscles in your shoulders and your neck…totally relaxed, like warm wet noodles. Dump all the rest of your pain and guilt and shame and blame, along with the Mo incident. Can you do that?”

“I guess I can. It's all red and black and green and oozie, and I can smell it. The stench is so bad it's almost strangling me.”

“Then relax into an even deeper state and let's pour disinfectant bleach around the edges of the pile. How big is the pile?”