Descent into Darkness

From the time I was eight years old, when I came down with polio, I began to believe that I was abnormal. In addition to the polio, I had severe childhood pattern asthma. There are times when I believe that it was a miracle that I managed to grow up at all.

Will power alone was often the key to functioning. I developed an odd dichotomy. I was utterly fearless in physical situations, but increasingly shy in social ones.

I considered myself to be an abnormal person passing for normal. It worsened. I had a home teacher sent out by the school system from the time I was eight until I was 16.

I would go to school for a few months, and then have a bad asthma attack (possibly with an emotional trigger) and I would beg Mama to let me study at home.

This was before the home-schooling movement caught on.

Mama would take me to Dr. Woods, and he would order home study for me. Bingo! I did not have to deal with other children.  The social gap widened and widened as I grew older and I realized it.  I felt that if I did not go back to high school and stay there I was on a collision course with reality.

Papa had just retired and they were discussing moving back to Texas again.  I saw Texas as a wonderful place filled with cousins that i always visited with during the summers.  I also knew that the school system in Texas would force me to continue in school or dropout.  I wanted to put myself in a situation where I could not evade school.  That october I turned 17 and we moved to Fort Worth.

From October to December, I struggled to fit in and was soundly rejected.  When Christmas vacation arrived, I was so exhausted, both emotionally and physically, that I slept day and night for the better part of a week.

Once I was rested enough to think straight, I declared war on the school, but that’s a subject for another post.

A year after I graduated from Riverside High School, we returned to California.  Mickey was sick and wanted them to come back and help her.

I attended college at Mt. San Antonio Junior College and saved up to buy my first car, a  1965 Ford Falcon.

I was very lonely, but too defiant to give in.  While I was there, I encountered members of the Bahai faith and that’s where everything went wrong and my descent into darkness began.