"Part 40- Escaping To Prison, the beginning of chapter 2, for now" #eharmony

Chapter; Going Home

It might have been a Friday when I boarded the bus. So many emotions were running through me; happiness, relief and nervousness, especially since it was March, cold up in the states. All I had to wear was a pair of sweat pants and some other scraps of northern clothing that I managed to find at the thrift store.

Settling into my seat, I wondered if the drama was over. It made sense to start seeking out, through the people around me, for a traveling partner- someone to bond with on some level. Feeling that I needed someone to be a second pair of eyes to sense danger before it happens, I did a quick profile of the people around me, examining the clothing that they were wearing, their shoes- anything that would tell me something about them.

Picking out a person, I introduced myself. We exchanged short versions of what we had been doing in Florida and where we were off to now. This person was going to Indiana. Perfect, I thought. Since I am going to Michigan, we will be traveling the distance together or at least as far as Indiana. He and I had much in common, making me feel at ease about the trip, for the most part.

It was pretty wild seeing the sights along the way. There were things like wild hogs along the highway, and various stretches of some of the most beautiful mountains I had seen.

Georgia was pretty scary when I got off to transfer. There were cops, DEA agents, and what seemed to be drug pushers. It seemed likely to think they were Narcotics agents who were posing as pushers.

Kentucky was pretty cool also, with the famous Kentucky Derby Horserace Track.

When my traveling partner got off in Indianapolis, there was some downtime before the next departure. He invited me to a sports bar for a drink. It was easy, at this point in my big adventure, to decide that it wasn’t a good idea. All I wanted to do was to get home. Enough had happened to me already, and I was so close that it didn’t make sense to chance another mishap. Amid the baggage and chaotic clusters of citizens, I stayed at the station, waiting patiently.

Chicago… when I got off at the Chicago stop, I wanted a drink. Of all the places to be alone, this was not the one to go exploring in but I decided to anyway. There wasn’t a place in sight that looked like a store or a bar, so I began walking to find one. It was a bad time to explore to, since I was under a time constraint. Feeling like I could manage, I set out to find a place to buy a drink.

After asking around, I found a place, buying myself a twenty-two-ounce bottle of beer. Walking back, I was asked for a cigarette. This person also asked me for a sip off of my drink. Handing him the bottle, while thinking that I couldn’t drink the whole thing without being busted anyway, he slammed down over half of it, asking me if I was from the country or something. It must be that only a fool would give out any handouts in Chicago. It’s a good thing I was there.

Boarding the bus bound for Grand Rapids, I felt a sense of closure on the detachment with my home. By the time I finally got off of the bus in Grand Rapids, it had been almost a full twenty-four hours and I hadn’t had much more than four hours of sleep. Bob picked me up at the station and drove us back to the house he had most recently built, anxious to hear the whole story and to put me to work completing the odds and ends that needed to be done before he and his family could legally take occupancy. I would be staying there for a period of time unknown.

Within the next four days, I had done many of the major tasks that only I could have done with an acceptable level of quality. I was thankful to be back performing my trade, and it showed. He took me to the shop that he had been spending much of his time at, to give me a shot at working there. It was more like dragging in fresh meat to abuse.

The company manufactured, and sold, high-end cabinetry. By the end of the day I had proven myself and was offered a job for very little pay for my skills but I was very pleased to have something to build on, and accepted. When I attempted to ask for a better wage, I was told that I would have a very hard time finding anything better. There was little I could do to argue since I felt an indebtedness to Bob for assisting me with my flee from Key West, and out of my gratitude for that help, I stayed. It didn’t make sense to complain any further. It didn’t matter much either way but I couldn’t just accept the pay without trying to get a better deal negotiated.

Everything was great at the job, especially since it was right on a stream that the salmon ran up to spawn. About a week into it, we were on our way to the “rat-factory”, as Bob called it, when we noticed a brand new Dodge Charger that the Michigan state police were driving on the expressway. It had passed us. My surprise at seeing the State Police using these Dodge Chargers caused me to make a comment to Bob about it, so he sped up a bit to get a better look at it.

The car was sweet. And then this sweet looking Michigan State Police cruiser slowed down and got behind us. His bubbles went up a minute later, while Bob was asking me if I had anything on me. The cop came to the window and told Bob that he was in violation with his window tinting, and that he had a tail light out. That’s when the officer asked me for my I.D. The officer went back to his car and ran our information, came back and handed Bob his license, telling us that he had to take me in on a child support warrant. Great. Here I was again- lucky enough to get back home in time to get a job somewhere. Now, I was probably going to lose it because I was going to jail for Child Support, AGAIN.

My court day rolled around the next day or so, where I told them that I had gone to Florida to work but failed, explaining how I was waiting for my disability insurance to go through. The judge said that when I got it, I should bring it in to them framed, as the prize that it would be. After proclaiming to them that I would, she handed down a sentence of ninety days. Bob had been in contact with the court to verify that I did, in fact, have a job, earning me the work release program. They moved me into the old Animal Control complex, once a residential mental hospital. How fitting. Within a day or so, I resumed working and saving my money up.

On the weekdays I worked at the rat-factory, and on the weekends, Bob sprang me out to work on his house in the cornfield. It worked out very well for me because all I had to do was sleep in the work-release program and bring them my rent, saving the rest of my money for something useful. That something ended up being a brand new laptop computer that I intended to use in order to fulfill my promise to publish the music that Danny and I had created.

Now, the problem I had was in the factory setting. Adam and Bob taunted each other with their seemingly friendly badgering of one another. It was part of the “fun” they had at work. Keeping as busy as I could, while refraining from being a part of it was nothing new to me, at all. Trying to ignore them, I couldn’t help but understand that Bob was finally getting a taste of his own medicine.

At some point in their head games, Adam must have said something along the lines of replacing Bob with me. Bob began trying me at my abilities to decipher how to use and understand machinery in the shop. He normally took it upon himself to belittle me by giving me extensive instructions, as if I was lacking experience with woodworking machinery. This also gave him an excuse to be doing very little.

Bob had tried to make me look incompetent by sending me to change shaper bits, set the machine’s equipment up to do the machining, and run the cabinetry parts on that piece of machinery- machinery that I had never, ever, seen before. It really displeased him that he didn’t have an example of incompetence to give to Adam.

Bob was becoming more nervous about me replacing him, and doing what was within his power at making things worse for me. Because Bob was my ride, I absorbed the impact on the ride home with the head games that would accumulate, having a destructive affect on my psyche. My stress level was going through the roof, triggering my Paranoia, which caused a lot of disturbance for me. Things compounded until I began to make a lot of mistakes on the job. My first instinct was to think that someone had moved my parts that were stacked in a certain way, in order to be cut or shaped properly. And maybe they had been.

On another occasion I was working materials through a machine fed overhead belt sander that always accumulated a large pile of sawdust beneath it despite the dust collection system. Deciding I had to sneak a cigarette, thinking that my nerves would calm down, I used the vacuum of the system to evacuate the cigarette smoke from the area. Since I was at the other end of the shop, they wouldn’t be able to see me smoking, and since they frowned on my taking a cigarette break I would be able to conceal it with the help of the vacuum.

Well, I had set the cigarette down and the cherry fell off into the pile of sawdust. The smoke started to come from underneath the unit, filling the area. They thought I had burned the belt but it was the sawdust pile smoldering. I panicked, trying to find the fire before they came over. It was now a glowing spot of ember about eight inches around. Luckily I managed to take care of it before it could be a serious problem but part of me thought it would really be something they deserved for the dangerous games they were playing with my head. It was well known by all involved, that I had been coping with psychological issues as a result of my automobile accident. Fortunately, my Social Security claim was finally granted to me- a full award of benefits.

A very short time after that, I quit and moved in with my sister, Amanda. The house was the one in Conklin, where I had been helping my mother before the Julie fiasco. It didn’t feel safe in Bob’s company any longer, and having my disability award gave me the independence needed to get away from him once again. Although we have had our many differences, I would continue to think of him and his wife. And although he may never know or accept it, I understand why he has issues enough to see past his Ego, and care for him as a friend, though scarred as we both are.   

Now that I had a job, and a goal, I decided to try, one last time, to find someone special to share my time with. Having heard the many commercials for eHarmony for a few years, along with many other dating sites, even though I scoffed at them, I decided to start looking into the idea.

EHarmony’s site was the most logical to me. I mean, if you’re going to try it, you need to be logical. Things began with trying the offers to check out these places for free, and then I figured that the eighty or ninety dollars it cost was a glass ceiling- a way of grading the prospects. If a person wasn’t concerned with the fee, they were probably worth my time, even if I wasn’t what they were generally looking for in life but then again, I was looking for a particular person myself. It was all fair play.

Never breathing a word to anyone about my plans, I set up a free account to browse with. Using the photo that Yoa had taken of me in Key West, I filled out my profile information, went through all of the protocol for getting my matches from the database, and started surfing for potential women to interact with.

When I knew I was onto something that looked meaningful I bought a money order, mailed it to them, and waited for the notification that I was able to start the process. That’s when I met Jenny.

Jennifer was not the first girl I tried to start interaction with. There were several women that I had screened, all rejecting me for something I had written in my profile. The question of what that was got me to wonder if I had said something wrong, so I inspected it, deciding that I had said nothing wrong at all. Something I said might have sounded strange to them but I wasn’t going to go in and change it to improve my chances. If they didn’t like what I stated in my profile, then it was only because they weren’t worth my time. It was only a matter of time before I would meet the person who could appreciate what was there to move on with, which is exactly what happened.   

Jennifer had posted a photo that was taken by Siena, her four year-old little girl. It wasn’t a flattering photo but I instantly knew when I saw it, that she had used it for a reason. The photo, for the sake of what she looked like was unimportant. It was what that photo said to me that was important, and it spoke volumes. We started out by picking the questions that were prewritten, the ones that help you get to know something more but providing a buffer from the rejection a person might feel if it goes wrong somehow. We read each others answers, continuing the process until she decided that she was interested in taking it to the next level, which was direct chat communication over the computer.

Our cerebral connection grew until we decided that it was time to meet and see if there was more, even though her friends told her that I was probably bald because of the hat I was wearing in my photo. That was in September of 2008.

My mother insisted on driving me to Jenny’s apartment instead of me taking the bus, so she could lay eyes on her, determining if she was a good idea for me to be dabbling with. Knowing my history with all the wrong women, it was possibly the most loving thing my mother could have offered me in our relationship at the time.

By November we knew we were compatible. She liked how I got along with her two children, and I liked being with them. By Christmas we were comparing notes to be certain that we had something that was real. Before the winter had begun, we knew that we wanted to end our search, and before winter was over we knew that we had finally found what we both searched for and wanted to keep.

This new birth between Jenny and I led me to move to Lansing with her. There were a few inconveniences with re-establishing my medical care but I didn’t care. Certainly, I am not about to say that life has been a bed of roses. Anyone who thinks it is, clearly, hasn’t actually had to do anything for them self, and will find that they are helpless when they are forced to have to carve an existence out of the Earth on their own.

Roses need tending to and only become as beautiful as you care for them to be. Ours were growing just wonderfully where we were in Mesick, Michigan. She and I had not been happier in life despite the wolves that always seemed to be at our door. Without those wolves, we wouldn’t have been able to fully love and appreciate each other as much as we did in 2011 despite the probationary period before my sentencing for the dui stemming from my nervous breakdown in Traverse City. I could only hope for the rest of the world to one day have the same sense of well being for their own. 

(Authors note- this was then. Now is now. Chapter 41 reveals  a severe failure, and the destruction of my "happy" home due to a severe gambling problem.  Just in case you are confused. The recent change of events have not been reflected upon yet. It takes a while to get over the sting in order to revisit them to share. This ended my sobriety and the story is yet to be completed. Hopefully it ends with my escaping the despondent sea, thus encouraging and supporting others. If I write it too soon, my attitude may come through and destroy the integrity of what the story is supposed to be. Part 41 is in pieces so far, and can be found in the list. I hope you can understand. Thank you).

Not having found what you do not want in life, how will you know what you do want? Joy, Love and Pain go together. Life is Good when you let Love Win. Don’t go through life without feeling it.