1.5 years Apart

My time away from Rusty would seem like a fast time but really it was a huge mess in my life once he was gone. My roommates changed and the new ones had become liars and thief’s. I reconnected with my older brother who started becoming more and more involved in my life. I even had him and my parents talking again. I then chose to move back into my parents house. I thought maybe I would be do less harm to myself if I was back under the roof. Instead my brother and I started hanging out with his friends. His friends being Gay men in gay bars. It was nice pace of change for me and because of this change, this would lead to new and still longer term friends.

I went back to dating women because I still was not dealing with my own past issues and I was not wanting to get my heart broken again by a guy. So why not hangout with gay people and try to mask my pain by dancing 3 times a week.  I would work, go meet my brother at our friends “Diva” and “Jamie” apartment. Smoke pot, get all dressed up and go to 1 of the 2 gay bars in town. The bartender and the DJ had been friends and were also a couple. So we could get drinks all night free or 80% off and ask for all the music we liked and wanted to dance to. It was actually nice. My brother and I worked at the same place and worked different shifts, but it was there my brother met a lady named “Irene”. She started telling us about all these resorts where you could work and would be free room and board and free meals. It sounded it great.

My brother and Irene left to Mt. Rainier in Washington State a few months before me, I went out that Summer of 1998. First I had to do a few things before I could go out there. One my best friend since I was 8 was graduating High School in New Mexico, so my girlfriend at the time and I drove out there. Watching “Arrow” graduate was a big deal for me. She was my best friend, my sister from another mister and out of all my friends, she was the only person in the world who knew everything about me. Her and Rusty that is. Arrow was an angel from heaven. She was never negative about life, she always listened and not judged. She was a saint compared to me. She always made me feel Like I could say or do anything. Hard to find friends like that. She was excited for me to be away from home and away from mostly family and friends, because that far away from everyone, there was no outside influences and I could really find who I was without people.

Living at a national park and resort was Amazing, it was like nothing else I had ever empierced. I was no longer doing drugs. Pot mostly or just smoking cigarettes. Once and blue moon we would get jug wine from the nearest BMP. I lived with 4 other women in this dorm like setting. We shared 1 bathroom between the 5 of us. All 5 us could not have more different. The farmer/hippie stoner, the California stoner, The jock stoner, the goth stoner and the Prom Queen who never did drugs or drank (by the end she became a pothead). The 5 of us really found who we were without our pasts coming up.

For me I found myself wanting to focus on school once I got back to get more involved with an outside Theatre group that I had worked with while in High School. There they had rules about not being stoned or drunk while working on a show. There I could focus on staying straight. I knew what friends I needed to cut out of my life once I got back, where I needed to be emotionally when I got back. So in order to move forward, I needed to write Rusty. So I sent a post card, I figured his dad could read it too and it wouldn’t  matter.

Now since I no longer have that post card and I wouldn’t see it again until I was in my 30s, I have to do my best to try to recall what I wrote.

You will never guess where I am. I am living on a mountain in Washington. I got out of “Hell” (what I called my home town). I really needed this and finally can say I am happy where my life is heading. I do have to come back home but I can one day see myself living up this way. I miss you and I hope you are well. I hope you are well and I just wanted let you know I did it. I got out like I said I would do one day. 

Pretty much the gist of what I needed to tell him. I was on Mt. Rainier for 6 months. I sent that postcard 2 months in. I never received any mail from Rusty the time I was living there. By Fall I was back home and back in college. I was involved with College Theatre and with the local community theatre group. There I would meet another Jackson and “Mitch”, these 2 guys would be a huge part of life from that point on. They are still very much involved with my life these days.

Jax and Mitch would take me under their wing and introduce me to music and plays and musical plays. I would see so many local band concerts/gigs, and they introduced me to many other local musicians in town. Who I would write lyrics for or would make business cards for. Fall off 1998 was amazing and I stayed clean for the most part. I would drink time to time but really not a lot. Work, hangout with my theatre friends, Diva or Jamie, my brother or his other friends. I stopped hanging out with everyone from my apartment days. I might see Jon if he called or came over. I really tried to change and make my life better.

By Spring of 1999 Mitch was engaged to a lady around my age (mitch was older). He was getting married in April. In March of 1999 I was friends with a lady in one of my college courses and she was telling me that a lot of Grad Students needed patients to work on Therapy in order to Graduate, I thought what a wonderful way to get free counseling/therapy. My first session was long and it was the first time I talked to someone who I didn’t know about being raped. It was also the first time I talked about losing my child to someone.

In therapy I learned that needed to tell Rusty the truth. He needed to be involved with what happened and it was not fair of me to keep that from him. Again I was young and stupid. Believe me I wish I could take it all back and make it better. Maybe things would have landed up differently.

So a month in therapy, my friends was getting married, I was single, I was clean and at the wedding who is Security Guard, my friend Jon. We walk outside while he works, we talk and catch up. Then he asks about Rusty. I told him how the last time I saw him it was just us watching horror movies and how I wrote him last but heard nothing back. Jon gives me this I’m so sorry look and tells me that Rusty is dating Margo last he knew. That he was big into drugs and the Rave scene and was not the same guy I knew.

Our lives had flipped. I was clean and mostly sober. He was into drugs. I was single and he was dating a girl I once was friends with but stopped because she was a whore who slept with every guy I liked. So no big surprise she would be with Rusty!! I only had myself to blame. I left wedding and thought I should be happy for him moving on and finding someone else. Inside I was like, anyone he could be with and he chooses that bitch! What do I do? Leave it alone, move on, forget what I learned? Nope not me. I slept on it and went to school and prepped for finals and then I called him.

So still no real cell phones and internet was  around but still not everyone had it, so it went calling from a landline to his parents number because that’s the only number I knew and knew from memory. Nobody answered. I left a message. I told him I was back in town and would be nice to catch up. 9 days later it was the night before my last final and I was at home studying. It was early in the evening and when the phone rang I didn’t pick up. I heard my mom say the phone was for me.

“HI”