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

to go on. Someone must have said I had to keep on living my life somehow.
But the idea wouldn't connect.
That's where Maureen and I met face to face, if we'd only realized it. She found law school to be too much. I found music school to be too much. She had a big idea about sleeping pills. I had a big idea about razor blades.
The two of us were never close. We were in and out of institutions, psych daycare centers, the whole bit. Our paths would cross from time to time. We had some mutual friends, so there was a little communication to be had about each others well being. There were always more ER visits and hospital stays. But there was no breakthrough for either one of us.
We both stayed sick, hopeless, lost.
I only cut myself once, but I was fighting off starvation, because I simply did not have enough money to get high and have enough to eat at the same time, whenever I was on the outside. I had a real problem with loneliness, or was it a major problem with social skills? My luck getting a girlfriend was about zilch. My way of dealing with that whole issue was to threaten suicide.
Well, it would get me locked up, anyway. It got me three hots and a cot, with people around. It wasn't an entirely useless trick.
I never knew what made Maureen tick, like I did about myself. She was beautiful and brilliant, she had such wonderful insights about life, but I had no clue why she kept OD'ing on sleeping pills.
One day, while we were in the same daycare center, it was raining in the afternoon. I offered her a ride home. We drove down to the fancy, expensive place where she lived. I parked my car.
“Can I talk to you a minute, Maureen?”
She was silent, but she did not get out of the car.
“You know, ah, you and I never talk much, but I just want you to know something.”
Her silence continued.
“I can't say I really know anything about you, Maureen, but I'll offer this, for what it's worth. Whenever I get too lonely, I want to hurt myself, because I think nobody cares. I care about you, and I wish you wouldn't take so many sleeping pills. It frightens me. Please be good to yourself, Maureen. You really are someone special.”
I don't remember that she said anything then. She just opened the car door and stepped out into the rain, went in the building.
Somehow, I lost track of Maureen for a couple of years. I went to a hospital for a long time, and then went home to mother's for a while. I stopped by the daycare center after a long time, and the other George asked me for a ride home.
We were out in my car, going down the same road as Maureen and I had gone down back when. He lived in the same direction into the city.
“Did you hear about Maureen?.”
“No, I didn't.”
I held my breath.
“She's gone, George.”
I had difficulty breathing.
My eyes got hot and wet.
“She died?” I choked.
He was silent.
I dropped him off at the halfway house, flooring the gas peddle at every turn, abusing my old car. Steam rose from under the hood. I found a service station and left the car there to be fixed, took the Greyhound home.
It was a long bus ride out to the country where I lived with my mother.

Sheppard's Blonde
Chapter 9

The Christmas rush at the only flower shop in town was too much for the delivery guy.
Twenty hours a day?
When's a guy supposed to sleep? Driving all over Belair is dangerous enough on a 9 to 5. What about all that overtime? It's all behind the wheel time, ya know. He wasn't quibbling about the money. He was not feeling safe.
The shop had two designers, one driver and the boss. Business boomed.
Normally, holidays were gravy for Stan. You'd get pretty girls at the door, give them flowers or fruit, and you'd get delighted, refreshing smiles in return.
“Thank you,” they'd say.
Besides that, you'd get paid for the privilege. It always seemed to him that he was getting a better deal than the guys ordering the deliveries. They paid for everything and Stan would get all the initial, pleasant responses. How cool was that?
Belair was the county seat. Sooner or later there'd have to be another florist set up shop. Belair was a promising, growing community; the whole county was gaining population and growing in commerce.
As it was, Dale had been advertising for a relief driver since early November. Now it was mid December. Stan was against the wall. He had hallucinations popping out of headlights, streetlights, tree trunks – you name it. The guy wasn't lazy, he was sick.
Stan was a hippie flower child trying to earn a modest living. He was trying to be a composer of music, singer songwriter, trumpeter, guitarist and delivery driver all at the same time. He had surpassed his limit.
“Ah hate to do this to ya, Dale but ah just can't keep this up. I gotta quit.” Stan was so flipped out he could scarcely form the sentence. He needed medical help, bad.
“You sure you don't want a leave of absence, Stan? You've been doing just fine,” Dale insisted. “It's up to you. Think about it.”
Stan stood there looking at Dale, fighting a feeling of panic. It was late in the evening. Stan's breakdown had him way beyond confusion.
He didn't have any idea what to do. He couldn't think.
Stan quit the job. He couldn't formulate another course of action in his mind.
Dale, a young man like Stan, had been brought up in the flower industry from childhood. He knew the nuts and bolts of how to make the business go.
Stan was a music school dropout and a pot head.
Dale liked Stan. Stan worked up his melodies and lyrics for love songs, singing, with the windows of the delivery van wide open, singing his heart out as he memorized his songs.
Flowers by Dale. Love songs by Stan. It was working. That's what Dale liked about it.
But Stan's health was not good. He'd had a nervous breakdown in music school, and smoking pot was not helping. The guy would load up his reefer bowl in the delivery van sometimes. But now his mind was beyond the limit again. He was already breaking down again.
Stan quit.
Thump.
It was over.

Next stop was a private psychiatric hospital for Stan. Mom's Major Medical got the best hospital money could buy. Semi-private rooms, plenty of therapy, good food, burnouts galore. It was the beginning of the 70's. All the young people, seemed like, were taking drugs and drinking. Drugs were everywhere. Plenty of drug addicts were right there in the hospital. Some of them were offspring of celebrities, too. You never knew who's son or daughter you were partying with.
That place was a haven for rich hippies.
But all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Stan back together again. He had some serious desperation and extremely deep. depression. The guy was beating himself up about everything. He could not see anything good about himself.
He broke up with his girl when music school went sour. He quit his job when the hours went sour. Lost his chance for the degree, the girl, and an ordinary job – he was overly impressed with his own incapacity.
He couldn't do squat.
Stan told those people at that fancy crazy house about what had happened. They didn't get it. They didn't seem to be listening. What did he have to say to get his point across?
His life was over. There wasn't anything left to do but die. Nobody was listening to him. He screamed a lot. They'd put him in isolation sometimes.
Then he just stopped talking.
He was 23.

The bedrooms were always unlocked. Couches were everywhere.
Stan laid down to die.
Anyone who wanted to talk to Stan got a vulgar greeting. “@#$%&*. Leave me alone.” He was usually screaming, if he said anything at all.
He buried himself in self-pity and despair. No one could help him. He refused to talk or listen. He simply laid down wherever he could find a place to stretch out, and he tried to sleep 24/7. He was certain nobody could understand. His depression was complete.
Maybe he'd doze off, forget he was alive for a while... Maybe someone would come along with some drugs... Maybe there'd be a girl... Maybe he'd die if he just kept his eyes shut long enough.
There wasn't any point to anything anymore...

Six months went by like that. Somebody on staff finally got Stan a position walking the interdepartmental mail around the hospital. The job felt good to him. It was delivery work. Stan called Dale about his old job, but Dale said that he had another man. He might have been able to help if Stan had taken the leave of absence, but he hadn't. That's the way it was.
Stan was damaged goods. The agony of defeat. He had no contact with any of his talents, abilities, former successes, nothing.
He'd been diagnosed with a chemical imbalance in his brain. The doctor might just as well as said leprosy. The young man took the diagnosis like a branding iron and burned his whole life with it down to his bones.
No one could have guessed why he was so rough on himself. There was no need for it.
But he was.
He wasted ten years of his life with that attitude, and it only got worse for a long time to come.

Taking the mail around helped Stan. He got some confidence back, and he could see that people were nice to him.
Time went by in that place, and after a while, it was no longer a prison to Stan. It was a refuge. The anorexic girl touched his heart. The drug addict runaway girl made sense to him. He understood those people. The most revolting humor about suicide was funny to him. He enjoyed the people and the food.
If Stan was crazy, he no longer cared. He was comfortable in his refuge. Unlike the university, the campus of the refuge had a curriculum he could cope with. He was at home with the place.
Stan was never articulate in those days. He would blurt out sick jokes or vulgar sayings, but the doctors were at a loss to help him deal with whatever issues were behind his depression. He was disaster waiting to happen.

Somewhere along the way, there was a charming girl on a nearby ward. She took an interest in Stan, and he sensed it. Susan