What I CAN see is the end. There is a place in the road that
does not have a guardrail and I can drive off the road and make it look like an
accident. They may not find me right away, but I don't want to think about
that. I am almost there.
Today my friend Jennifer came over to my apartment with
canned food from her mother’s pantry for me because I have no money to pay for
food for myself. I am too ashamed to ask my parents for help, even though they
live only 20 minutes away. They don't know I can’t afford food and soon, I won't
be able to afford my rent. It is 1992 and we are in a recession and I feel like
I am the only one suffering. I have a college education, I have work experience
and I can't find a job. Jennifer came over today because I could not get up to
get dressed to go find a temporary job at ManPower. She called to say hi and
knew that I needed help. I am sure, beyond the canned soup and vegetables, she
offered words of encouragement and hope, but I can not hear those words, I am
in a black hole.
Yesterday, my ex-boyfriend, who tortures me by alternatingly
acting like he is my best friend, then not calling me for days and then showing
up at my apartment drunk to sleep with me at two am, said he wanted to finally
call it quits because I had started sounding too needy. Although he was
breaking my heart, I knew he loved me, I told myself, he just did not know it.
He would realize how much he loved me when I lost a bit more weight, had blonde
highlights in my hair and grew four inches. I knew it.
The pain from sobbing since I hung up is too much to bear; I
am broken. I am on my knees in despair. I don't seem to have anyone to reach
out to for help. I don't want to burden Jennifer, who I feel I am leaning on
too hard right now. I am not one to lean anyway. My parents were not leaners,
either. I never once heard my parents ask anyone for help. They believed that
you soldiered through the hard times and kept your nose down and just kept
going. God knows they had had their share of hard times with my step father
being shot in the throat in a hold up when I was five, losing their home in
Houston when the oil market crashed after my half brother and sister were born
within 11 months of one another, and living in a cheap rental near San
Francisco where my brothers and sister and I would watch cockroaches run around
in the stove clock. My mom was trying to figure out how she was going to cook
chicken gizzards again for us while waiting for that glass of Jack with my dad
when he got home. Fun times. But no leaning.
My parents had turned it all around and were living in a
nice home in San Jose after all the kids had left to go to school or the armed
forces. I tried to move back a year ago when the recession first started. I
remember watching the Oakland Hills fire burning that fall while sitting in
their plush living room. That was when my step-father started to charge me rent
which escalated every month by a hundred dollars to make a point that I was not
welcome there and that there would be no leaning in his house.
So, there I was, trying to find a job, running out of money
to pay for food and rent, living in an affluent city in Silicon Valley where no
one could see that I was drowning. The thought to end it occurred the moment when
my ex hung up the phone. The lifeline was cut. I was pushed the rest of the way
down into that dark tunnel of despair. I was done.
I drank a half bottle of white wine before I left so it
would not hurt so bad; my life and the ending. I slid into my used 1979 brown
and gold Corolla, which my father had given to me as a gift to replace paying
back child support to my mom. What would he do or think when he found out I had
been found dead in a ravine in his ill-fated gift? He had not wanted me to
begin with, asking my mother, in a note I found when I was 10, to end her
pregnancy with me. But she, although knowing the decision could cost her marriage,
was a good Catholic had allowed me to live.
Buzzing, I drove with more determination towards the
entrance to the mountain highway than I had displayed in the weeks leading up
to this dark depression. My self worth, always shaky to begin with, was falling
away in layers as more things kept happening to me. I was alone. Or so I
thought.
When the true reality of what I was about to do hit me, the
sobbing began. I was sorry already for what I was about to do to my mom. She
did not even know what was going on with me. She would wonder why I had not
reached out and told her what had happened to get to this point. But she had
let my step father harass me and push me out of their house a few months prior
to that, so there was no hero to save me there.
How had I gotten to this point? All I really knew was I
could not see and that actually was going to make it easier to just turn the
wheel hard and let it happen. I anticipated the floating feeling as my car
caught air.
I approached the ravine and saw the forest of redwood trees
in the distance and the drifting fog. I would miss that view after years of
driving up this mountain road in happier days on my way to Santa Cruz. I think
it had been raining because it was grey and wet or maybe that was just the mist
of the fog obscuring the sun, but I remember seeing a hint of sunlight. I remember
that because it was then I heard a voice.
The voice said, “Don’t do this”. Where was THAT coming from?
Before I really knew what I was hearing, the voice continued, “If you do this
now, you will never know how amazing your life is going to be”. It was like a
thunderclap in the car. And I stopped crying. I had about a minute to think
about what I would do with this “voice out of nowhere” message and I saw a
vision of a husband, and children and happiness. It was like someone waving a
hot apple cobbler with vanilla ice cream in front of me and saying, “Try this
instead.”
I changed my mind. Not only did I change my mind, I sobered
up pretty quick and realized that I had to drive another few miles up the
mountain before I could turn around. It would be so ironic that I would try to take
my life, decide I wanted to live and then wind up dying in an unintended car
crash. Knowing the kind of luck I was having at that point, I would probably
end up being a quadriplegic for the rest of my life.
I kept asking myself if I had actually heard that voice in
my head or in the car. Many years later, I would have a similar voice talking
to me in my car, but that time it was yelling at me as an 18 wheeler was
hurdling down a hill with his brakes failing and coming straight for me and my two
toddlers in my van at a stop light right after I moved to Kona. That voice
yelled twice “Move the car! Move the car NOW!” I asked the voice quickly, Where should I go?”
and it showed me to sidle the van up to the stop light post. We missed being
hit by inches. I saw the look of relief in the truck driver’s eyes in my rear
view mirror. I then drove to an empty parking lot and cried.
I did not fully realize it then, but I know it in my heart
now. I was not alone. I have never been alone. That voice, whom I believe was
my guardian angel, was right. My life has turned out to be pretty amazing. I
survived that terrible day over 20 years ago, with the knowledge that I had
been divinely touched. I think I knew after that experience, I had better get
my act together if I was to see this amazing life that I was supposed to have.
When I got home from
my almost fatal mountain drive, I told no one what I had almost done. But I
knew I had to do something to change my path.
I ended up asking for help to try to find a job from my
friends, whom I was too embarrassed to ask beforehand. Although difficult, it
paid off. My friend Sandra got me into a public relations agency she was
working at and taught me basic computer skills. Within a few months, I was
planning the opening of the brand new San Jose Arena and proudly driving my new
Ford Escort to my 10th high school reunion. Funny, my high school
was a Catholic high school and I grew up going to church on Sundays, but I have
never gotten as close to God or angels as I got that day moments away from a
ravine. It would still take me a few years to understand the power of loving
myself enough not to let things like men and money pull me down so deep I could
not see the light. And it took a few more years after that to begin to believe
that there are guardian angels protecting me, and when I don't hear their
whispers through intuition, they have to yell sometimes. That is fine by me,
because I am here for my husband and two kids because of that voice, and for that I am thankful.
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