I am drowning in my own tears.
I stumble wearily through the blur of days while dreading nights
I am a captive of my nightmares and the darkness.
Dusk is the daily reminder that the nightmare is alive and well.
There is no escape for me.
My heart screams in agony.
There is no reprieve, no help for me.
There is no balm for my wounds because they are so deep.
I am writing and my search for safety is fruitless.
Everywhere I look I see others grieving you. They are thrashing.
You were my sunshine, my carefree abandon.
Your smile was my hope.
I do not know how to live without you.
I am 30 but feel the burden of someone a hundred.
My soul is old.
I scurry about frantically because the alternative is so tempting.
I fear the indulgence of staying in my bed, my cocoon.
In the dream I pleaded with you to stay.
Your eyes danced, your smile embraced me.
I begged for the mercy of getting you back.
Your words “you know” echoed each time I asked.
“You know” meant “I can’t stay.”
I struggled to keep the grip on your hand, your smell, your touch.
The notion of waking up without you on Christmas is devastating.
There is no Santa Claus.
I rise early each day to walk off the demons.
Instead of peace, I have cried through many miles in many cities.
I am so tired and this journey seems endless.
I am trying to no avail.
Struggling is not familiar to me.
You have left an abyss and I am hanging by a thread.
I am curious, so I peer over the edge.
I take nothing for granted.
Even breathing is a challenge.
Asthma is a frequent dictator.
Often I hear my jagged breaths before I feel them.
The harsh sound pierces through the music of my Walkman.
My anguish breaks out.
I have a rock in my throat.
I wheeze. Being still offers no comfort.
I feel awkward and uncomfortable in my own skin.
I am a snail without a shell.
I try to retreat into the safety of hiding.
Nick also had a strong tie to Trevor and Todd, his older brothers. They are John’s two sons, but our plan to bring the children up as one family had been successful and taken hold from the first. Nick never felt less than a full brother to Trevor and Todd, nor did they. Other than Beatie, Trevor is probably the most “respectable” member of the family, a serious citizen, young businessman, conservative by nature, though well able to enjoy a good laugh and full of fun. Nick always said he was “perfect,” so “cool” (the ultimate compliment from Nick), and so “totally decent and nice.” He loved and respected Trevor, enjoyed spending time with him, and they went to movies and shows together. But seeing them together always made me smile. One couldn’t have found two men on earth who looked less alike. The one in all his rad, mod, funky, punky, earring, nose ring gear, the other looking like a Ralph Lauren ad. They are both handsome boys, but with ten years between them and different interests and passions, they existed in different worlds. Trevor designed a Web site for Nick and his band, which, sadly, never had time to see the light of day before Nick left us.
Nick had more in common with Todd, though he loved them equally. But Todd was outwardly “cooler,” lived in L.A., and as a struggling young movie producer was more familiar with the vagaries of Nick’s music world. For years, they had shared similar taste in bands, laughed at the same things, and Todd was outrageous enough, although nine years older than Nick, to play the same pranks with him. They both had the same fondness for whoopee cushions I did, laughed at the same jokes, and whenever Nick could get away with it under Todd’s nose, and he tried hard, liked the same girls. They were soul mates of sorts. And like the rest of us, when Todd lost Nick, he felt as though he had lost a piece of his heart and himself.
Todd and Nick admired each other, understood each other, and were close to each other. Nick’s favorite thing in the world, and the ultimate treat for him, was visiting Todd in L.A. Todd even let the entire band stay with him on some of their brief tours to L.A. He was proud of Nick, as we all were, and his eulogy to Nick said it all when he said, “I am proud to say that Nick became the person he wanted to be. He did tell us all how much he loved us. Nick was a strong person. Nick was a loving, caring, talented, truthful, fully functioning, fully realized person who turned his life around on his own accord. He became the person he wanted to be. He was a success. I’d have to say that Nick Traina was one of the greatest successes I have ever known.”
And on his monument, he put something that touched my heart and soul, and surely Nick’s, and said it all:
“Dear Nick, You were my shadow. You were my buddy. You became an inspiration. I am so happy for the times we shared. You will always be my bro. I will miss you so much. Love, Todd.”
When Todd was nineteen, he got a tiny purple fox tattooed on his hip, which no one knew about. It was in a spot none of us was likely to see. But Nick saw it, thought it was the “coolest” thing he’d ever seen, and vowed to do the same one day. But in usual Nick fashion, of course, he took the ball (or the tattoo in this case) and ran with it—all the way. Nick didn’t do things in half measures, or subtly. When he did things, you knew about them. They were painted in bold, neon colors, and way beyond life-sized. Nick went “all the way” with his tattoos. No tiny little barely visible fox for him! (Todd’s now-famous tattoo is still legend in the family. I’ve heard a lot about it, but have never seen it, and doubt that I ever will!)
Nick got his first tattoo when he was seventeen, and it was a trauma for both of us. I hated it, and so did Nick after he got it. He agreed to have it removed, and he did, though the process must have been painful. He got a second one, and had it removed as well, to humor me. But on his third one, I gave up. Eventually his arms were covered with them. That last summer, he had ‘Traina’ in large Gothic letters blazoned across his shoulder blades. And at the very least, he added another one to his chest which said prophetically ‘Only God Can Judge Me.’ I hate tattoos generally, but somehow on Nick they looked all right. He was so good-looking and they somehow fit with his persona on stage. The last performances I saw of him, he sang with his shirt off, as his tattoos danced, his muscles rippled and his body glistened. What he did was exhausting, but he never seemed tired when he did it. He looked as though he could have gone on forever.
At seventeen, Nick put out two single records, and he was eighteen when his first CD was released. And I was so proud of him. He made several, and was also asked to sing at other people’s recordings. He was good, very good, and the other musicians and performers he worked with knew it. And the lyrics he wrote always had a message that his audiences liked. There were songs about Brotherhood, Unity, against violence and racism, about young people rising up to outshine the old, and even some about me, and his father. Kids loved his songs, and although I couldn’t always decipher them, they seemed to know all the words when he sang them:
Time
I spend all my time hoping
That you’re going to find another way
And yer not gonna shut me up
Cuz I’ve got too much to say.
If you live to be happy all the time
Then you overlook what’s there.
And I wish I had more time
Cuz life’s too short not to care.
Wasting away on detachment
You think it doesn’t apply.
But only when you apply yourself
Will you be able to see the lies.
Everybody will tell you something
And who knows who makes sense
But to actually admit
You don’t know
shit
Takes an awful lot of strength
Keep your life focused
And always do what’s right….
And cherish every minute God gives you
Don’t go without a fight.
Used To
There’s no point in fighting me
Cuz I’ve already lost
This life is but a battle
That I’ve already fought.
Every day I bow my head
Surrender to myself.
I used to be so strong
I used to not need help
I used to be a boy
I grew into a man
But I’m not even living
I don’t know what I am.
A life that’s just spent dying
Is not a life at all.
Walking through this life
And through this living hell
It really can’t last much
longer I’ve lost all I once had.
I know it could be worse.
But still it’s pretty bad.
from “Spacey”
… I’d like to stay a secret,
Like walking in the dark,
If no one knows you, no one cares
So no one breaks your heart.
In half-closed dreams I see myself
And I’m standing on my feet
But all my time’s spent sitting down
I’m always half asleep.
This world has nothing left in it
It died when I was born.
I used to have a purpose
But there is none to have one for…
from “Ha Ha Ha”
… this world is in such disarray
It’s pathetic and it’s sad
So while I’m doing good
And I should be happy now
I can’t seem to figure what happiness is about.
And so everything will end
The same way it begins
I will die with nothing.
I will never win.
Julie said once that his songs were his suicide note, and many of them poured out his sorrows. But there were a lot of more upbeat ones, and angry ones, and rebellious ones. He wrote a lot of songs, and later on, he did happier, more positive ones with his new band, Knowledge.
He loved touring, too. It was an adventure to him. He loved the people he met, the clubs where he played. He loved everything about the music scene. It was as though he had grown up to be exactly who he wanted. And I loved seeing that in him, that raucous pleasure and sheer glee that came from doing something he loved. He could play, jump, dance, scream, shout, and sing for hours. I feel just like that as I pound away on my typewriter through the night. No day or night is too long, or too tiring, as long as I can keep writing. And Nick felt exactly the same way as long as he could keep singing.
I was impressed by the fact that he managed not to let it interfere with school. And he did fairly well at the school he had gone to since he was a sophomore. But I also think that he was relieved when the school put him on “independent study” when he was a senior. It gave him more time to practice and rehearse, book tours for the weekends, and from time to time, do his homework.
Nick viewed his transition to independent study as a blessing, but it actually came about for a variety of reasons. For one thing, he stayed up late at night and was tired in the morning when he came in. They had a couch in the front of the school, and he was never embarrassed about just crashing there, and snoring loudly. It didn’t exactly impress his teachers with his enthusiasm about their subjects. But when forced to, he could also sleep in their classrooms. The headmaster called me from time to time to discuss it. Nick was outspoken, but well liked, and he did reasonably well, but he was still Nick. A lot of the time he did what he wanted, and as much as they could, they let him.
The final incident that led them to release him from classes was a little more delicate, but I think convinced them that he was just too independent and eccentric to have in the classroom. He disagreed with something someone said, and in a spirit of fun, dropped his pants in front of everyone. They called me immediately, and later that day, I discussed it with Nicky. And I looked serious when I did it. He on the other hand looked vastly amused and told me to “chill out, Mom.” No. This time I wasn’t “chilling,” I told him. I was unhappy about it, and told him it was inappropriate behavior.
“Everyone does that at school, Mom!” he insisted with that big, goofy grin of his, which was different from the seductive grin, or the dazzling smile of the performer. But I argued with him, “everyone” did not do that, which was why the school had called me.
They felt that he was a little beyond what they wanted to deal with in class. But they were willing to keep him as part of the student body, as long as he came in for tests, and sent in his assignments. Nick was enchanted with the arrangement. He never dropped his pants anywhere else that I knew of, except once, at a freshman high school dance he played at Samantha’s school when he was eighteen. And I was mad as hell about it, and he must have mortified Samantha. But she loved him so much, and was such a fan of his, that she brushed it off and said everyone thought it was funny. It was Nick’s old battle with impulse control again. Now and then, he’d lose it. And other than that, he never dropped his pants onstage. But I’m sure his fans, particularly the groupies who followed him everywhere, would have loved it!
Nick did fantastic jumps and hops onstage. These at about seventeen. (photo credit 1.24)
Nick’s career was something I was very proud of him for. He did a great job in a short time, and Link 80 did extraordinarily well considering how young they all were, and how little experience they had when they got together. And I was particularly proud when I went to Europe when Nick was on his big tour, walked into a music store in London and saw Nick’s CD’s … that’s my boy, I wanted to tell everyone in the store … look, he’s a star! That’s my baby! What a good job he did. He was a shooting star. A bright, brief flash across the Heavens of the music world. A comet. Would that he could have stayed there, high in the sky, singing his heart out forever.
16
Two warning shots
rang out in the silence
John and I shocked the family to its core when we separated in the summer of 1995. Nick was seventeen. And we actually separated in August, but didn’t tell the children till September. We were trying to find the right time to break the news to them. But as with any bad news, there is none.
The children were particularly shaken by it, because we had been fairly discreet about our disagreements. Things had been strained and often chilly between us for three years, and maybe it was just that the children were so used to it, they thought we’d live that way forever. At times, even I did.
And I thought the day we broke the news to them was the worst day of my life. But much to my chagrin, we’ve had worse since then.
We told the kids over Labor Day weekend that we were getting separated, which was all we were doing, for the moment. We were all devastated. It was the end of a dream for me, and John, the end of a safe, magical time for the children. And it took a lot for us to get there. John and I had not made the decision lightly.
And when we told Nick, he hardly seemed to notice. He was perfectly cool, and seemed totally unaffected, unlike all the others. But he began acting out two days later and continued to do so for weeks until we put him in the hospital for two weeks in October. He didn’t have the stability to cope with it. But the rest of us weren’t coping with it that well either. It was a tough winter, a hard year. But eventually, to the best of our abilities, we all adjusted. John and I still made an effort to keep up communication, and even spend time together with the children, particularly over the holidays. But it was a hard time for everyone, Nick no more than the others. Once he settled down with it, he handled it as well as everyone else did.
The only landmark I remember that year was in December when I actually said out loud to a group
of friends at a dinnertable that Nick was manic-depressive. They weren’t close friends, and it was the first time I had admitted it in public. It felt like an important moment, and said to me, and to them, that I loved him the way he was, was proud of him anyway, and accepted the hand fate had dealt us. The people I said it to were quiet at first, and then asked some questions about it. I remember that my voice was shaking when I answered. But it was a first step for me. It was the beginning of being open about Nick’s problems, and not hiding them. And it gave me an opportunity to say how proud I was of him. He was working hard on his music then, and doing wonderfully on the lithium. I still considered it the miracle drug that had saved him. And even today, wouldn’t say anything different.
He turned eighteen in May of ’96, and it was an important event to him. Perhaps too much so. It symbolized freedom to him, and adulthood. It was as though he expected cannons to go off on the first of May, and everyone to see him differently all of a sudden. But of course, they didn’t. He still had to have attendants with him, and Julie to monitor him, still had to see his psychiatrist constantly, and take medication. I think somewhere in a secret place he had hoped that the problems would all disappear like magic on his birthday along with his illness. But even once he’d turned eighteen, he was still stuck with the same limitations, and he was unhappy about it.
He started threatening to move out of Julie’s house, where he’d been for nearly two years, and suddenly refused to do things he was expected to do, or knew he had to. “I’m eighteen now, you can’t make me!” He sounded five when he said it. And there were a lot of arguments from the moment he turned eighteen. He wanted everything to be different for him, and it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. He was still emotionally young for his age, and had the same lousy impulse control, which was only slightly held in check by his medications. But he was still just as liable to do something wonky. And even for a kid without the problems he had, eighteen is not usually synonymous with total autonomy. But Nick was tired of other people making rules for him, and having to live by them.
Thanksgiving, 1995 (photo credit 1.25)
Nick on Mother’s Day, 1996
His Bright Light Page 21