A Teenager's Journey

by Richard B. Pelzer

  I didn’t want to think about it or wonder about it anymore. I just wanted to be able to actually do it. I closed my eyes—and froze. For a moment I wanted to hold on and see if this last chance at being heard by God might come to something. Secretly, I wanted God to send an angel down to stop me—some kind of intervention, anything. I kept my eyes closed and listened to the silence that filled the backyard.

  Within a moment I knew that I wasn’t going to get any response.

  I quickly pulled the pistol out of my pocket and put the barrel to my temple. I recalled the many hours I’d spent debating with myself how the shot would sound, the impact of the bullet, and whether the possibility that I would screw it up and live was worth the risk.

  When I’d finally decided that it was more than worth it, I felt at ease with myself. It was almost as if I had control over the situation and no one else could change it or take it away from me.

  I tried not to pause as I put my finger through the trigger guard and felt the cold metal. I closed my eyes tighter and squeezed. I started to shake.

  In that moment I experienced an understanding of time itself. In what took only a fragment of a moment, I experienced the passing of time like I never had before. After what seemed like minutes, I wondered if I had done it and it was already over. Perhaps I was already dead and I just didn’t realize it.

  My hope that it was much easier than I had imagined was a warm and welcome thought. Slowly, I opened my eyes, fearful of what I was about to see and experience, knowing I was dead.

  In an instant I realized I was still right where I was a moment ago and that the safety guard had not been removed when I squeezed the trigger.

  Damn it!

  “God damn it!” I said.

  I had to do it all again—and quickly, before I lost the courage. Then it happened . . .

  . . . “Richard, get up here, there’s someone here to see you,” Mom called down to me as I sat on the bench.

  For a moment I held on to the darkness that filled my eyes, then closed them again. I lowered the gun from my head and felt the back of my hand hit the wood railing of the bench. Every ounce of energy I had was gone; every spark of life inside me was gone. In that moment I felt I had lost what little I had left of myself. I was truly empty—absent of any emotion, feeling, concern, or fear.

  I sat for another moment, absorbing the fact that I couldn’t even take my own life—not with a gun. The only emotion I could feel surfacing was shame.

  I stood up and went quickly up the back steps. A neighbor had come down the street from her house to welcome us into the neighborhood.

  As I listened to her and Mom talk about where we came from and what ages we boys were, I faded in and out of listening. I looked down over the rail of the porch at the bench I had been sitting on only a few moments before.

  Now the woman came over to me and introduced herself as Darlene Nichols. She lived up the street with her husband John and their children Wendy, Steve, Heidi, and Heather. By now Mom and Scott had disappeared into the kitchen. Within a few minutes Darlene had managed to capture my attention and was talking to me on the back deck.

  Her demeanor was so sincere and her voice was so genuine that I was absolutely captured by her presence. She told me of several teenagers in the neighborhood about my age who would be happy to show me around and invite me to outings and sports events, if I was interested. Darlene looked at her watch, saw that it was getting late, and asked if I wanted to meet her husband the next morning. We had been talking for well over an hour.

  I was so overcome that someone so kind and polite would take such an interest in me, I forgot about the earlier moments in the backyard sitting on the bench around the tree with the gun in my pocket. All I could do was respond: “Sure!”

  I had found in my heart something I had never felt before. It was a quiet calmness—almost as if I was asleep. I found that I was contemplating “tomorrow.” If I would just make the short walk up the street to their house, perhaps I could postpone my plans for a while. I was confused—I didn’t really know what to do. Moments before Darlene had introduced herself to me I was that close to suicide, and now I was looking forward to being introduced to the rest of the Nichols family. It was hopeful in the sense that I had a chance to find teens my own age, and yet it was annoying that something else had interrupted my plan to take my own life.

  I walked Darlene to the front door, thanked her, and said good night. I paused as I closed the door, then went down to my room, unnoticed.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, I felt the gun in my pocket and pulled it out.

  Maybe this can wait for another day, I said to myself.

  I placed the gun back into its hiding place behind the baseboard and went to bed. As I drifted off to sleep I wrestled with the idea that perhaps, I had received my answer.

  It can’t be that it’s that simple. There’s no way that I was that close and all it took was someone new showing up at the house.

  As I closed my eyes I felt a sense of gratitude and said softly: “Thank you. Thank you.”

  4

  SPEAK NO EVIL

  John and Darlene were real. The way they lived, loved, and honored life was so foreign to me. The distance between what they knew about me and the secrets I kept inside was infinite. I knew they would never believe a word of it. I thought about it a few times and what, if anything, I could say to John and Darlene or even if I could ask for their help. It didn’t take me long to realize that they would not want me around them or their children if they knew I was as angry at the world as I was. There was just no way I could expect them to understand or believe that I was living with one of the most abusive parents—if not the most—in the state of California’s history.

  It was hard to accept the fact that they wouldn’t have believed any of it.

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Saturday, I got dressed and made my way up the street looking for the house number that Darlene had given me. When I found it, I walked around to the side door. A crowd of people were in the backyard, working. I made my way in, and Darlene noticed my arrival straightaway, and welcomed me.

  In the yard, a man was laying out pieces of sod. Even though he was kneeling down and facing the opposite direction, I could tell that he was very tall. When Darlene introduced me to John, her husband, he stood up, put his hand out, and welcomed me to the neighborhood. As he stood up, as if in slow motion, I was intimidated to see the sheer size of the man. He seemed larger than life—he was well over six feet tall. I expected a loud and commanding voice, but he was just as gentle as Darlene, and carried himself much the same. His demeanor was sincere and made me feel welcome.

  Working with John was a young couple that I was also introduced to, named Kevin and Sandy. They, too, radiated the same sincere and positive outlook. As if all of them together shared some secret to life that made them happy and content—they overwhelmed me.

  During the next few weeks, John and Darlene made me feel as if I was a part of their family. I often spent time watching movies with them and the kids; we shared in activities as a group—as a family.

  When they asked me to babysit the kids and again share time with them, I was excited by this show of confidence in me. As the summer went on and school returned, I spent more and more of my time after school at the Nichols family home. Mostly, I would hurry home off the school bus and spend as little time there as possible before heading up to their house.

  I was secretly comparing myself to Wendy and Steve—the oldest of the Nichols children. I knew that they would never experience an ounce of what I had been through, and what I was hiding. Even though I knew it was almost futile to compare myself to them—I was nearly sixteen and Wendy and Steve were ten and nine years old, respectively—I wanted to understand how they interacted with each other so well.

  I recalled myself at nine years old: when I was in the ambulance being rushed to the hospital after one of Mom’s explosive beatings, and the times I had spent hiding like an ani
mal in the basement of the house in Daly City.

  Neither of them stuttered like I had, and they both enjoyed being around their parents. In fact, Wendy and Steve were so foreign to what I was at that age I just couldn’t relate to their outward personalities. They unintentionally intimidated me.

  It soon became all too apparent that Mom was getting upset with me as I found happiness with the Nichols family. And it didn’t take long before she found a way to intervene. Up till now, Mom had always been very careful to limit interactions between her and me when we were outside the secrecy of the house. But now she knew I was spending as much time away from our house as possible, and she didn’t have as much of an opportunity to abuse me, mentally or emotionally.

  I had created a sort of routine with John and Darlene. On Friday nights I would make a pizza and bring it over so we all could share and watch a movie. Initially I was stunned by their commitment to their family in only showing appropriate-rated movies for the kids. But as time went on I learned that they had expectations of themselves as well as of their children. I quickly came around and was comfortable with the selections they made—“G” movies, although often boring, were welcome.

  On one such Friday, right after I came home from school, Mom made it a point to ensure that I knew she had called the Nichols family. I was “not going to get away with the way I was acting around her home and then prance off to the Nichols house and hide!” she had informed them.

  I was crushed to learn that she had called Darlene, my Darlene, and embarrassed me. I wasn’t sure what she had really said and was hesitant to ask.

  As soon as I got to their house, Darlene said: “Cathy called and told us that your behavior with her is terrible.” After a moment or two, she asked if Cathy, my mother, drank. She had noticed that during the conversation Mom had sounded as if she had been drinking, but since it was still only early morning, Darlene wasn’t sure if it was true.

  “She does drink. She drinks a lot,” I said.

  I felt sure that they would look on Mom’s drinking as a reflection on me, and hold me in a different light. But to my amazement and delight both John and Darlene indicated that they’d suspected Mom drank and that there was an “issue” between her and me.

  Careful not to interfere, they each tried to deal with Mom and her lifestyle as best they could. Had they known about Mom’s schizophrenic behavior, I was sure they would have kept their distance from both her and me.

  I knew there was nothing I could ever say that would help them understand. They were safe in their ignorance—ignorant of the facts and the reality of what I was living through. By no means were they lacking intelligence or personality: They were simply so unfamiliar with the physical abuse I had endured as a child and the mental and emotional abuse I was now so used to.

  It wasn’t long before Mom formed the habit of letting John and Darlene know about every move I made. When I talked back or stood my ground, or when I went and did things that “the Nichols family wouldn’t approve of,” she made sure they knew about it. She was trying her hardest to place a wedge between me and the family that I had come to respect and love. Eventually, I became embarrassed that she was always calling Darlene, trying her patience. But Darlene was always careful to let Mom know that the Richard she portrayed was not the one that she, Darlene, knew. “I just don’t see that behavior in him when he’s here,” she told Mom.

  John and Darlene provided more support and comfort for me in the few short weeks that it took to know them than Mom had done in my whole life. Now, finding little success in her attempts to make me as miserable as she was when I wasn’t around her, she started down a new path.

  I was well aware of what she had been telling them, but I couldn’t believe the tricks she would stoop to. At one point she started to make up stories about these huge verbal fights, and eventually physical fights, we were supposed to be having, and about how abusive I was to her. She also fabricated stories to do with my morality, about the sexual antics I was getting up to. Not that I hadn’t spent time with girls in secret—and I’d been sneaking them into my room at night—but she wasn’t even getting the stories right. That’s what pissed me off—she wasn’t even lying truthfully.

  By now, Mom knew that I was drinking, smoking cigarettes, and using drugs. So she would try and make up stories about that, too. But when she exaggerated my drunkenness or the number of times I was strung out, she never got the details quite right. She never got any of it right. Yes, I was using, and found comfort in it. My few friends at the high school were users, and it kept us together as a clique.

  At first it was simple, it was easy to obtain. The occasional joint between classes would seldom lead to anything else during the school day. As time went on, and Mom became more than an annoyance to the Nichols family, she started to reach out to other neighbors. And the harder she tried to tear my world—such as it was—apart, the bigger and better the drugs I began to find. The more Mom lied about my drug use the more I was determined to prove her right.

  Again, what really got to me was her ignorance on the subject. She could never get the story right. When I was using cocaine she would say it was pot. When I went drinking with the few girls I knew in school, she would say that I was stealing her vodka and drinking it myself. Before long, I gave up on explaining to John and Darlene that Mom had no idea what she was talking about. I saw that they were able to figure that out for themselves.

  Mom had long ago mastered the ability to make my life miserable and useless. Now my new world had become fragile, translucent. Nothing was kept private. Everything I did was reported and exaggerated. At one point John and Darlene decided that they wouldn’t listen to her any longer, but simply allow me to be the person I was now becoming. Since I kept my drinking and drug use to myself, never admitting it to anyone, the Nichols family had no idea that Mom was in some ways right.

  I was learning to share in the lives of their kids and see them grow and develop as they went through school and the daily routines of a large family. I learned firsthand about siblings, and the routines they shared. I was learning what “normal” was.

  Just before my sixteenth birthday John and Darlene inquired whether I was thinking of getting my driver’s license, not knowing that the subject was at the core of many nights of argument between Mom and me. Since I was not yet eighteen, I needed her to sign for a minor’s license and, of course, she refused.

  Darlene wanted to know why Mom wouldn’t allow me to get one. Having no idea that she was falling right into the trap Mom was so used to setting, Darlene called her on the phone to convince her I should have a license. I knew Mom would paint the blackest picture of me possible. And of course I couldn’t tell Darlene that even though Mom had the names of the drugs wrong and the brand of liquor wrong, I was very deeply involved in both. I played ignorant and hoped Mom would eventually disgrace herself.

  When I walked into the house one afternoon, I heard Mom on the phone talking. I wondered if she was calling the Nichols family again and making me look as bad as usual. Once she noticed I was in the room, she turned abruptly in the other direction and continued: “You just don’t know how violent he can be. Putting him behind the wheel of a car is too dangerous. He’s always high on something.”

  I knew who she was talking to, and what she had planned.

  This went on for several months. I started to withdraw from the Nichols family, embarrassed over the way Mom was treating them. It came to the point where she would call them more often than she would argue with me. Since I found myself once again caught in one of her devices for keeping me down and depressed, I began to look for another outlet, another way of passing time.

  Some of the students at the high school I attended had similar issues at home, and I found a sort of comfort in knowing that I was not the only one in Sandy City, Utah, who lived like this. Many of them looked as if they lived the way I did, surviving from one day to the next. The way they looked, dressed, and spoke, they—like me—stood o
ut from the normal teens chatting and laughing in the hallways.

  Other teens in the school knew that the “stoners” were different from the rest of the various cliques. Everyone assumed that all we did was hang out—skip class and drink and use drugs during school. They weren’t exactly wrong—they just didn’t understand the whys of our situation. I guess each clique made assumptions about what it would be like to be in a different one, but no one ever bothered to ask. Both the students and the staff simply labeled us as “trouble.” None of us were real trouble; we just had issues that we didn’t understand or know how to deal with. We were all just like each other, really. Whether we were “jocks,” “geeks,” or popular, we were all often confused and insecure—all of us.

  Once I started to associate with more of the students, I found myself under difficult social pressures. Before long I was skipping all the classes and going to parties during the day, returning to school just in time to catch the bus home. Several times I tried new drugs and found that I had no idea how to hide what I was doing, or how other teenagers got away with hiding it. Up till then I had thought I knew exactly what I was doing when it came to girls, drugs, and alcohol, but I soon realized I had no idea.

  I spent less and less time with the Nichols family, and after a while joined a particular small group of students. One of them, Nathan Bennett, took me under his wing. His father had long since taken off. His mother had become an alcoholic and was barely able to keep the two of them together. Within a few weeks I was familiar with his lifestyle, and more specifically with the effects of various hallucinogenic drugs. I experimented with far more drugs than I had ever done before.

  I always had a liking for the combination of cocaine and alcohol. Many times during school I was so tired and so sick that the only way I could function at all was to keep the high going. Thus I was feeding a vicious circle of destruction that would eventually come to a head.

  My schoolwork was long past the point of recovery, and this soon became apparent to the school’s vice principal. When it became obvious that I was not going to earn enough credits to graduate to my sophomore year, the vice principal called home and informed Mom that I had missed over half of the school year in partial absences. He also told her that I had been sent home several times for smoking behind the gym.