My life changed so much, it is hard to pinpoint any one thing that made it so much better.
One of those things was that I made friends and for the first time in my life I felt loved. Never in my life did I feel that kind of love from my family. It was one of the first times that I felt unconditional love. People loved me as I was. What a shocker. My family was always telling me what was wrong with me while the people I met in Texas accepted me as I was.
Love healed me but I also started to make changes of my own. I had been writing poetry since I was in high school and I wrote a short little song that I used to sing to myself after I had been in Texas for about a year. The title was “I’m Going to Be Happy No Matter What the World Does.” Writing that song was my first glimpse in how we can shape our world with our attitude. Happiness is a choice.
When I was in high school, I also found a passion for learning new things. My main passion was studying religion and philosophy. I found a used bookstore and spent hours in the religion, philosophy and self-help sections. I can’t remember all the books I read, but it helped to shape me into the person that I was becoming; a person that I liked to be with.
I was raised a Christian but we stopped going to church when I was very young. I went to different churches through the years with friends and family, but there was something nagging at me. I kept asking God, “What is the truth.”
I spent many years studying there. I couldn’t seem to get enough information. It was like I was starving. I also felt like it was the first time that I felt God was leading me in a direction that wasn’t on the beaten path.
I finally got frustrated with all the claims of absolute truth but I found that the main and most important truth that I found in each religion is that we should love one another and we should help those who can’t help themselves.
Another thing I started doing while I was in Texas was to start collecting heroes that I wanted to make my life after. Jesus was one of the first. Some of my other heroes were Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and Mahatma Gandhi.
I still had moments of sadness. I felt a lot of guilt about my sister’s death and it seemed at times that my happiness wasn’t right if she wasn’t here. It took me years to let go of that guilt.
One of the funny things I found while I was making changes to my life and myself was that sometimes people, who think they really know us, don’t like to see these changes. I had an accident one night and I was laughing about it. My brother was upset because I wasn’t “upset enough” about what had happened. What? So he not only wanted to tell me how I should live my life, but he also wanted to tell me how I should feel and react to the things that happened in my life.
Life was going great. I had a great apartment. I had a great car. I had a great job. Then life stepped in and decided to throw me a curve.
One day, I wrecked my car. I was upset, but I was okay physically and my friends helped me out.
I called in to work the next morning and told them that I wouldn’t be in because I had had a car accident the night before. I was told that if I didn’t go to work, I wouldn’t have a job. I didn’t go to work. So, there goes the job.
I was looking for a job, but at that time the economy in Texas wasn’t like it had been when I had first arrived.
A friend of mine owned a bar and she asked me to work for her part-time. It was a fun job, but it wasn’t enough to pay all my bills. I barely made enough to keep myself fed.
I couldn’t pay my rent, so one day I arrived at my apartment and found an eviction notice. My sister-in-law came over and helped me move some of my stuff out and I stayed with my brother and his wife for a few weeks. That didn’t work out very well. My brother wasn’t very hospitable with me this time around. So, I moved in with the daughter of my friend who owned the bar.
While all this was going on, I didn’t feel upset. I think that also drove my brother crazy. I just went with the flow of things.
While I was working at the bar, I met another guy who I thought was Mr. Wonderful. He was from New York City. The first time I met him, I asked him where he was from. He told me that he was from New York and I told him that I wouldn’t be caught dead in that place. So far that statement is still true, thank God. I still haven't been "caught dead."
Well, I was talking to my friends about Mr. Wonderful and the possibility of my moving to New York. For years I had fantasized about living in New York, but I never thought it would happen. My friends were all for it. One of my friends in particular kept telling me that I should go and that I would love it.
Mr. Wonderful was working at a job in Texas that ended a few weeks after we had met. We talked constantly on the phone and we kept talking about my plans.
I was trying to put together the money that I needed to move to New York. That wasn’t going very well. The bar that I was working in had been busy almost every night when I first started working there. When everyone found out that I was thinking about moving to New York, the crowd disappeared quickly. There was one guy who kept coming by though and he spoke some magic words to me one night. He told me, “You’ll never go to New York and if you do go, you will never stay.”
I still didn’t have much money. I talked to Mr. Wonderful and he told me not to wait, to just come. So I sold the car that I had bought with money my mother had loaned me. I think I got about $150 for it. It wasn’t much of a car.
I was trying to sell whatever I could. The friend of mine who owned the bar gave me another $100 and her daughter bought my vacuum cleaner for about $20.
I found an ad for something called “drive away” in the paper. There was a couple who needed someone to drive their van to Ventnor City, New Jersey. I had to pay a $150 deposit which would be returned when I arrived in New Jersey and delivered the van. All I had to do was pay for the gas.
So, two weeks after the magic words were spoken by my customer in the bar. I was on the road again. I had $120 cash and a heart full of dreams.
(To be continued....)
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