Posted by smokeymadison on December 23, 2004, at 21:14:33
In reply to Re:meant to post above oops (nm), posted by smokeymadison on December 23, 2004, at 21:06:08
Midnight Flight:
As the week wore on, I became more and more impulsive. I bought a three hundred-dollar camera, which I was convinced would cure me by giving me a new view of the world, allowing me to see the Truth behind the façade. After buying the camera my friends and I sat down to watch a movie. But I could not sit down. I twirled around the room, excited and agitated.
By the end of the week, I could not take any more. When Jenny and my friends left to attend a service project in Appalachia and I was shipped to my grandparents, I found a chance to escape. My grandparents had gone to bed, and I was alone downstairs. I felt I had two choices—either to open my wrists again or to run away. I choose to run. First I emptied my pockets of all my money. I wanted to out into the world with nothing. I chose to wear my new jean jacket and new tennis shoes. Walking quickly and quietly down the street I felt a sense of freedom come over me. I passed the noisy bars where shouts and hollers and dirty people kept the night alive with their antics. I left them behind me and followed the railroad tracks into the darkness of the countryside. I knew that the railroad tracks would become a bike path that led out of Celina, through the countryside, and to the neighboring town of Coldwater about 15 miles away. I planned to walk to Coldwater that night. The sky was a brilliant ink wash studded with pointed stars. The fresh country air invigorated me and I found my own darkness to be a mere shadow of the night’s poignant darkness. I found the bike path, a narrow stretch of asphalt bordered on either side by huge bushes and trees. Inside the enclave formed by the foliage, the air on the bike path was still and heavy. The moon and the stars’ light could not reach into the enclave. And so there I walked, in pitch-black darkness, breathing heavily and becoming more and more freaked out by the second.
About a mile and a half down the path, I stopped short and held my breath. Directly in front of me about a yard away there was panting in the bushes. I moved to the other side of the path and to my horror the animal in the bushes rustled through the bushes toward me. I knew that it had to be a wild dog. They had been spotted in this area before. So I slowly turned and crept back the direction I had come. I knew better than to run that to do so would provoke the dog into chasing me down. The rustling in the bushes continued behind me for the next half a mile. And then, suddenly I heard growling in the bushes directly in front of me. Another wild dog.
I ran. I ran as hard as I could off the path and into a field of corn. Once out of the enclave, the light of the moon shined upon my face and guided me to the edge of the field. The wild dogs followed close behind, tearing through the corn in pursuit. After a while I could hear them slow down and then give up on the chase. I, however, kept running as hard as I could to the edge of the field, where I had to jump across a small stream. I managed to get one foot soaked in the stream, stepping directly in it. I continued to run across another field with small soy plants until I reached a road. I collapsed upon the road, my lungs burning and my heart beating ferociously.
As I lay on the road, I thought about what it would have been like to die at their mouths, to be torn apart bit by bit until I bled to death. I found the image terrifying. But I had been so ready to kill myself just a few hours earlier at my grandparent’s house. I realized, lying on the cold asphalt that I did not want to die. My tears flowed for the first time since the date rape.
Pulling myself up off the ground, I continued on my way toward Coldwater. I stuck to the back roads, where small vermin scampered away into the ditches as I passed by. A large badger sat on the opposite side of the road and watched with no little interest as I passed by. I felt light and free, exhilarated to be out on such a beautiful night full of adventure. A large bird of prey swooped down right in front of my face to snatch a small critter at my feet. I reached the outer limits of Coldwater just as the sun was rising, turning the world soft shades of hazy orange. I could hear the bells of the church ringing, calling parishioners to the early morning service. I am sure that I looked quite a sight with my muddy tennis shoes and pants and my disheveled hair. I slipped in the back of the church and sat at a pew at the back.
My body ached, but my mind was on fire. I wanted to attend church because I was grateful I was alive, and I was convinced that there was some higher power responsible for it. Jenny had not planned on coming home the day I swallowed 60 pills, but she had out of a feeling that something was not quite right. Had the Remeron not kicked in just when it did I would have bled myself to death instead of falling asleep a few days earlier. I should not have been able to outrun two wild dogs and for some unknown reason they had lost interest in me. So I was grateful to some higher power that I was alive. But the church service, like any other service, was a ritualized program run by human beings that claim to know God and what God would want of his people. As the service started, past hurts surfaced in my mind and I became resentful of the church and of the parishioners. Anger swelled. The church had taken so much from me. My dad, a pastor, had devoted his life to the church and its people, leaving little time for me. I remembered begging him to spend time with me, to even acknowledge my presence in his home office as he poured over seminary work. So much time and money spent helping others; so much pain caused me by living in the inner city of Fort Wayne.
I crept out of the church. I was so hungry. I walked around the parking lot in a daze and leaned against the side of a car for support. Opening my eyes, I saw change in a cup between the seats inside of the car. I yanked open the car door and grabbed the change. Holding it in my hand, an idea was born. These people owed me. I spent the next half an hour rummaging through the vehicles in the church parking lot. In one car I found a twenty-dollar bill tucked in an envelope in the glove compartment. In another I found several dollars worth of quarters. At the end of my rampage, I had about 32 dollars heavy in my pockets. I ran out of the parking lot, guilt seizing me. I walked to a nearby Subway and ordered food. My stomach could only hold a little; so I saved the rest in the plastic bag it had come in and headed to Dollar General. Ideas were stirring in my mind. I wanted to spend a few days in the local park, before heading out of town. I could hitchhike across the state, avoiding the cops who would surely be looking for me once my grandparents filed a missing person report. I was free. I could go anywhere I chose. I could start over and leave all the terrible events of the past behind me.
I bought a colorful kite and a notebook and a pen. I would record my journeys. I bought a travel size shampoo and conditioner and soap. Checking out, I anxiously watched the cashier’s face for signs that she would suspect something. She gave me a quizzical look, and I quickly left the store with my bounty. I walked to the park, a sprawling landscape of playgrounds, baseball fields, and a neighborhood pool. Feeling tired, I lay under a tree with my jacket under my head. The day was growing warm, and the sound of a mower grew louder and louder. Suddenly it stopped, and I opened my eyes to find a large man in overalls walking towards me. I jerked awake and jumped up from the ground. He asked me if I was all right. I responded that I was fine, that I was just out for a walk in the park. Looking at my bag on the ground next to me, he asked if I had any place to go. I said that I was staying with a friend a few blocks away from the park, and had just brought some art supplies with me. He told me that I would not be allowed to stay in the park after dark and asked if I was sure that I was all right. I assured him that I was fine, and grabbed my bag and walked away. He returned to his mower after a few moments and I found another place in the park to sleep.
Hours later I awoke and wrote and drew in my notebook. The day grew hotter and hotter and the park filled with people. The baseball fields filled with little league players and screaming parents. The pool crowded with swimmers and the playgrounds with toddlers climbing polka-a-dotted dinosaurs and jungle gyms. The smell of cooking food drifted from a picnic house overrun with a family reunion. I retreated to a shelter house to wash my face and hair. Shutting myself in a bathroom stall, I curled in a corner in terror. The cement floor and walls cool to the touch, felt comforting against my hot skin. Someone banged on the stall door, asking if I was all right, and I yelled back that I was fine. Finally, feeling dopey from whatever chemicals are released in the brain during a panic attack, I stumbled out of the shelter house, The sun was low in the sky. I wanted nothing but to go home, to curl up in my cool sheets and go to sleep. But I was scared of being caught out on the bike path after dark. I judged that I would have just enough time to make it home if I hurried.
I was worried that the police, having been notified of the theft of money from vehicles in the church parking lot, would be looking for someone with a lot of change in his or her pockets, so I dumped a bag full of change in a trashcan at the edge of the park. On the bike path I passed bikers and runners, all apparently oblivious to the dangers of the path after dark. As I hurried home, my head cleared and my thoughts became dense. I spun elaborate theories of wild dog behavior as compared to tame dog behavior. I reasoned that wild dogs are really better to encounter than domesticated dogs, because they have not been exposed to human cruelty. You know what to expect with a wild dog. You follow their rules, spelled out by eons of evolution, and you make it out of the encounter alive. On the other hand, domesticated dogs have lost their sense of dignity and may have been mistreated at the hand of humans. They may attack for no apparent reason. As I walked, I talked out loud in a rushed voice. People running down the path turned to stare at me as they passed.
I reached Celina as the sun brilliantly faded beyond the horizon. I circled the lake on my way to the apartment Jenny and I shared. The lighthouses around the lake lit up as the sky darkened, casting their beacons across the calm waters. Specks of white, seagulls, fluttered across the sky. By the time I reached the island, and walked across the bridge, the night had taken hold. The first thing I did when I got to the apartment was fix a big plate of steaming Alfredo pasta. Then I called my dad. I could hear the panic in his voice, even though, like always, he tried to appear nonchalant. He informed me that the sheriff had been called, that my grandparents were sick with worry, and that my therapist wanted me to call her immediately. And of course, he asked me where the hell I had been. Obviously nobody had thought to look in Coldwater. I passed out that night and slept until the next afternoon, when I had an emergency appointment with my therapist, at her demand.
poster:smokeymadison
thread:433477
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20041210/msgs/433593.html