Memoirs of a Flower Child - George S Geisinger (the best books to read txt) 📗

to figure out the whole scam. I finally did figure it out, though. I'm not stupid, just slow on the uptake. People know it, too.
But it's not fair to simply call Kim a scam artist. That's not the only thing that happened. She came to me when mother died and wanted a friendship with an older gentleman. She wanted a father figure in her life. That's what she said. She was curious about me as a person, and visa verse. We developed a friendship and a relationship with each other, and I was really very surprised that we became as close as we did. There was daily, glad contact between us. We shared many of our inner most feelings and experiences; we had a second sense about each other, and when there was something wrong with one of us, the other knew it without being told. She wanted a father. I wanted a daughter. We got what we wanted. We were that close. It wasn't a falsehood. It was a reality.
I'm a really vulnerable person. I can't see a dangerous situation very readily at all. Trouble comes raining down all over me before I can see it coming. It's been happening all my life.
When I jumped into alcohol, feet first, willingly, I was just a kid. I didn't know anything about the negative power of what I was getting myself into. I just wanted to have fun, be a part of what was happening with my generation, get away from the old fogies for a while and forget all the troubles I'd been through. There were so many abuses I went through growing up, like getting beaten up a lot and all that.
I don't understand why people can't be trusted, why they have to be so nasty and hurtful. I never could understand why people want to do other people harm. It was never something I wanted to do myself, or thought about doing, except once or twice when I felt really slighted by someone. People can be awfully hurtful, and it always comes as a surprise to me. I never expect it unless I get paranoid, and then it doesn't make sense to anyone else.
I just wanted to forget all the abuses I went through and start over in life, but I didn't know how. That's why I got loaded with so much enthusiasm. It made me forget. I couldn't ever find my car, I couldn't find anything to eat because I couldn't hold on to any money, I couldn't find where I lived. I got really lost in a big way. I couldn't remember things, and that's what I thought I wanted. I wanted to forget the abuses I went through in life. But that meant that I lost touch with an awful lot of other things, like losing control of my affairs. I thought forgetting was what starting over was.
Well, I'd have never guessed it, but getting sober and staying sober is all the forgetting of anything and all the starting over I'm ever going to need. It works better that way than the other way – one heck of a lot better.
Now I can face life and have some control over my affairs. I'm finally catching on. Being in assisted living helps, because the people here have distorted problems. I can see the problems coming, like in an institution, because the problems are more obvious. They're easier to spot.
Now I've moved to a whole new place, six hours away from everything I ever knew. That's starting over. Kim's too far away to worry about anymore. She can't hurt me now. I don't have to deal with all her tricks. I'm finally free of her. We've both moved on.
I've been so close to death so many times in my life, I wonder what God is keeping me alive for. He's got to be keeping me around for some reason. I could make a list of things that should have killed me. It would be a really long list, too. But if I did that, I'd just get awful darned depressed, and I don't want to go there. I owe myself better.
Being around my brother and his wife is the only set up I could think of that makes for a safe environment. Everyone needs someone, and Kim was doing too much manipulating. It would have been one thing if she was on the level about caring about me. I believed the lies she told me about how she loved me, trusted me, and wanted to be in my life, how she and her family loved me, wanted to help me and be there for me. I believed her when everyone else was telling me she was just trying to get my money. Now I can see how right they all were. I feel like such a fool.
Well, I mentioned the idea of decency. Charley wouldn't let me loose about smoking weed with him when I was at university, so I finally sent him to jail with the help of some undercover cops. Why shouldn't I send the guy to jail? He broke the law, and had me doing it too. We spent the time it took to smoke two joints, standing right out in the open, in one corner of the busy quad on campus, on a bright, sunny, late afternoon, at the beginning of a weekend. I had been turning him down for months, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. He just waited for the time I would give in. He ruined my whole life. He ought to have gone to jail for that. That's a crime alright.
Taking drugs was exactly contrary to everything I was ever brought up to believe in. I have always been a law abiding citizen, except for that drug habit Charley got me started on. That one incident in my youth held me back from having a marriage, a career, self esteem and a positive attitude for an awful lot of years. Sure, I turned the guy in. He had it coming. He spent a year behind bars, and I spent a lifetime with a chemical imbalance in my brain so bad I still lose my mind every six months whether I need to or not, and I'm living about as healthy as I can muster.
Oh yes, I get lonely. I really wish I had a wife and family sometimes, but I did Mary a favor. Instead of marrying her, I set her free. She didn't get a whole house full of mentally ill children and a sick husband to take care of, living barefoot and pregnant for her entire youth while I floundered with a drug problem, couldn't hold down a job, and all the rest of it. I spent all those years starving, between trips to the dope man and trips to the state hospital. She might have gone with me through the whole ordeal. She was acting like she would do everything I was doing in order to be a partner with me, but I wouldn't let her do it. I knew what was what. I've always loved her too much to do that to her. Sure I miss her. Mary was the one of nicest girls I ever met. I realized she was special, and that's precisely why I had to let her go. It was the only decent thing to do.
But a guy has to move on eventually. Mary happened a long time ago. All the other nice girls I ever met are just fine, too. It isn't as though Mary was the only nice girl I ever met. It's that I've had trouble trusting people. I've been trying to let myself open my heart up a little bit easier. I'm not good at trusting people. I keep getting screwed up again. I don't feel so lonely here at assisted living. There are always people around. And I'm finding a friend or two here and there. It feels good sometimes.
I looked at whether to prosecute Kim for fraud or not. I do think she has it coming, at least in some sense. She dragged my emotions through the ringer so bad, crying over my telephone in the middle of the night, night after night for well over a year, churning up my heart strings in my ear all night long on the phone, apparently over mother's and auntie's money, as if it were her personal entitlement. She spent two and a half years working on my emotions, digging deeper and deeper into my feelings until I had her in my will – and told her so, besides. Just so she would try to set me up to die the first time I needed major surgery. It looks like it was just as much a crime as what Charley did. She ought to go to jail if that was the only reality of our friendship. If it's true, it's where she belongs.
I just don't think I want to give her the free rent in my head anymore. She's too far away to hurt me now, so I guess that solves the problem. I don't have a clear understanding of what happened or what she was doing. I only know how much I miss her affection.
I don't know. I endorsed her at that hospital. I told the RN's on more than one occasion that she was to be accepted as if she were my daughter, that she should have full privileges to know the full extent of my physical and mental health, as if our DNA matched and as if she were, in every sense, as much my blood kin as any natural offspring. I opened the door. For all I know, the night before surgery, I could have told her that I was just going where God was taking me, and that there should be nothing standing in His way if He wanted to take me home in the midst of the surgery.
I was thinking of my own mother, the way she was finally free to die that last night of her life, and that there was nothing I could do or say to stop her from going. I love Kim, and I'll never try to prosecute her for anything. Yes, I've lost all my possessions, and I have no idea how much of my stuff Kim took and sold for her own purposes. She is the only girl who ever had the audacity to tell people she was my daughter, and I let her do it. I've been friends with young ladies over the years, but never like that. She's a beautiful, confusing, lovely, glorious, frustrating young creature. Apparently, she has decided to move on, and so have I.
I've hurt long enough. I'll let her go. She deserves the right to move on in her life as much as anyone does.


Solitary Man
Chapter 14

The day gets long when I can't hang out with her as much as I'd like. It's the woman's company I thrive on. It seems like