Junior High School finally started and I could choose my classes and wear make-up. Now, I could look like Cleopatra, just like my mother! So, I painted my eyes with a lot of black eyeliner. Nobody seemed to notice, but I persisted. One day a neighbor who was the mother of one of my school mates asked if I would like to go to the VFW Teen dance and Mother let me go. I wore my bell bottom jeans and plenty of make-up. There were boys there that did not know me and I made ‘eyes’ at them and tried to make modeling faces, which I had been practicing in the mirror at home. They responded and came and asked me to dance. I danced with 3 different boys and one asked me to go steady, so he became my boyfriend. I could see the bar at the VFW and the atmosphere was electric with black lights, flickering strobe lights and a live rock and roll band. I fell in love with the night club atmosphere and I won the dance contest!
My new boyfriend’s mother picked me up the next week and we all went to church together with his friends. We thought that church was boring at that time. Dancing was exciting and baseball, which they all played. We broke up because he wanted to go ride go carts instead of coming to see me; so his friend came to see me and we decided to go steady. Before long we had decided to get married. We were only 14 so we would have to wait. Neil Diamond was always singing love songs on the radio and we were madly in love. He was a football player and when he broke up with me for another girl, I ran away from home. I was not very happy at home by that time. I cared for my siblings and did chores and I resented my parents’ drinking. “Why should they have fun?” I thought. I got so mad I started smoking cigarettes and I threw up. My Mother cried about my outing and I felt ashamed that I had hurt her.
It was not long until I ran away for good. The police picked me up and I said I could not live at home anymore. I was taken to juvenile detention and it was cold in the shower and I had to sleep on a mat on the floor. My cell mate was a huge black girl that looked really mean. I was afraid to go to sleep. Afterward, I was sent to the Presbyterian Children’s Home and my life got much better. I was all about ‘me’ and I felt guilty for abandoning my post and my siblings.
At the home we went to church in town every Sunday and had a Wednesday night Vespers at the campus chapel. The campus chapel had some bushes and that is where I stood with the boys and smoked cigarettes. I thought that I was fast and cool. The boys all seemed to like me, so I thought it was great. The cottage parents taught us Christian values and we felt love for God and loved by God. I became a devout Christian and was doing so well that they placed a girl from my home town in the room with me so that I could be a good influence on her. She introduced me to marijuana. We got caught smoking it and I ran away from the home because my reputation was ruined.
After that, I returned to my parents’ home and was not all so welcomed by my siblings who resented me by then. I dropped out of High School and worked as a waitress at the local diner. I made from $6.00 to $8.00 per day and I ran around with the neighborhood boys and learned to drink beer. I went through several boyfriends pretty quickly and I had developed a low self-esteem. The neighborhood boys joined that Navy and when they came home on leave they took me to a topless bar. I tried out and made $16.00 in tips for one dance. I went to work there, after falsifying my birth certificate to say that I was 18 years old.
The money was good at the topless bar, the beer was free and there were plenty of young men. I was an outgoing party girl, but on the inside I was ashamed of my sin. I started taking speed to dance all night and I got high often, but I could not get away from myself. One night I got drunk at the club and my boss said “You need to go to A.A.” He sent me home in a cab and from then on I did not drink until 1.00am. One night a handsome young football player came in and won my heart. We dated a while and quickly decided to move in together. He loved to take speed, smoke marijuana, drink alcohol, and smoke cigarettes. I had found my enabler, ‘Mr. Right!”
‘Mr. Right’ had a crucifix hanging up in his bedroom; it was woven out of basket material. I felt so dirty before the cross that I asked him if I could get rid of it and he said that I could. He worked in the hotel industry and bartended banquets and parties. Our life was all about sex and staying high. We decided to get married and, after a year-and-a-half, I started college. I wanted to be important so I studied Paralegal courses. My Dad was proud of that, but Mother wanted me to go to nursing school like she was doing at the time.
I changed my major and headed into the nursing program in downtown Dallas. It was very difficult and I had to smoke marijuana every day to calm my nerves. I no longer drank except at parties. Just before I graduated from nursing school my teacher made me care for a child who had been intentionally scalded with hot water. He was 3 years old and had skin grafts and a lot of staples in his burn. I was furious about it and I did not believe that I could cope with that assignment. I went out to the lobby and smoked a cigarette almost hoping to get caught and be kicked out of school. I cursed God and said that no excuse should allow something like that to happen to a child. Suddenly, it occurred to me that there must not really even be a God, just like my mother had told me. The door of my heart slammed shut and my heart hardened. I went back and cared for the boy and grated as a Registered Nurse, but God was dead to me indeed.