The Miller Miles

The first time I ran away with Byron Miller, he snuck me into his Grandparents house without their knowledge.

Byron Miller went to the "Alternative" school with me. We met one day in our Math class, I think. He was a cowboy, and back then I had a weakness for wranglers and Stetson hats. He was adorable at 5'10 and 175lbs. His dark hair and eyes were a sharp contrast to his fair skin pigment. His ancestry was Scottish, and anyone who's ever known me would know I've had a weakness for the Scottish blood lines and pride my whole life. Even my last name (Blackwood) is a Scottish name, though it's not my actual last name at all.

So few of my friends had cars that when I discovered Byron had his own car, he suddenly became a God in my eyes. He had it all; Wranglers, a Stetson, Scottish blood, a license and a car. He was a dream come true! I flirted mercilessly.

For some odd reason, Byron liked me right off the bat. Perhaps it was because I showed an interest in him while he was still new to Washington High. He was scared, much as I was the first few days I spent there. The school had many suspected Gang members in it, and each looked scarier than the next, but what Byron didn't realize was that we were all equals. Even the gang members were respected and were respectful of others. They even made sure to pay attention in class, lest a teacher get upset with them. They treated everyone like family and were even protective of the kids that would have normally been picked on in any other school. We were the Misfit Toys.

Byron's car was a little 1989 Honda CRX. It was white with black details, and before then I never even noticed them before. After I saw Byron drive into the parking lot one day before school, I noticed them everywhere I went. I even ditched my wonderful English "Business Writing" class one day to sit out in his car, claiming I wasn't feeling well. A few of the kids tried to pressure me into driving it, but I'd never driven a car before. I put the key in and turned it. The car lurched forward and jerked to a stop just before smashing into a light pole. It died instantly. All the kids laughed at me. They chanted something about a stick shift, but I didn't get the joke. I just closed the doors, rolled up the windows and took a nap.

By the time Byron came outside after class, the battery to his car was dead. Since the car had died, I didn't realize I had to turn off the car all the way and pull the keys out. Once more I had to endure an onslaught of laughter. It was a different laughter than I had been used to at Bonneville, though. They weren't laughing at me to be mean, but rather because the whole thing was quite funny. One of the kids with a big truck pulled around to give Byron's battery a jump start, and Byron kissed me on the cheek sweetly, telling me that it was ok. I confessed to him what I had done and why the key was in place to begin with, and he smiled ear to ear.

"You don't know how to drive?"

"No," I said, ashamed of myself. I was 17 years old that past December and I wasn't allowed to learn how to drive due to my grades.

"I'll teach you," he said to me, kissing me on the cheek again. "But in return, you have to promise not to steal my car." The kids around us laughed again and I smiled broadly. Byron held my hand in his, and suddenly I went from being a friend of his to being his girlfriend. That was automatically what it meant when a boy held a girls hand in front of everyone like that.

I got in trouble for skipping that class when I got home that evening. I was yelled at and screamed at. I stood there and took it, never once shedding a tear, never once breaking down or giving in. They had taken away everything but the mattress on the floor - what more could they do to me?

I bottled up my anger and frustration that night and let it all out when I saw Byron the next day. Even then I had very alternative ways of showing anger and frustration, though. Instead of crying or whining, I explained the situation in a matter-of-fact way. I even laughed at the cruelest of details, like the reason I wore the same clothes each day and why I chose to walk 4 miles each day in the snow and rain to reach a bus stop rather than catch the one by my house, because I wanted to get out of the house before my parents woke up. I told him about Tirzah Tolman and Steve; the two times I ran away from home. I laughed when I told him about my parents taking away everything I owned, thinking they could control me that way. What more could they take away from me? They would never control me, I wasn't the kind of person to be controlled by anyone, especially through acts of cruelty. Byron listened. He asked questions. When all was said and done, he asked what I would be leaving behind if I left.

"Only my dog." I didn't want to loose Cookie, but I knew that my mother loved her as much as I did. In the back of my mind, I knew she would never get rid of her just to punish me. Taking away everything I owned was one thing. Gambling with another living thing was something even my parent's wouldn't dare do. Would they?

"You're not going home tonight," he said. "You're coming home with me."

I protested, but only a little. After all, being the manipulative teen that I was, this was exactly what I wanted. Byron pulled me close and held on to me. I let him think I was in pain and that the hug was helping me, but in the reality of my mind and heart, I was once more getting exactly what I wanted. I found a place to stay other than with my parents. An evil grin spread across my face as I hugged him back gently with a weakening, sad grip.

He smuggled me into his Grandparents house and I stayed there the next several days. It wasn't easy coming and going. They didn't know I was there. I had virtually no freedom, but I was ok with that. Byron brought me food from the kitchen, and I lived the life of luxury, sleeping under a quilt and watching TV in the bedroom. I had soft pillows, there was a computer to play on and I could finally stretch out and touch something with the tips of my fingers no matter where I stood. The room didn't echo like my own did. What a wonderful feeling that was.

Three days went by before my parents showed up at the front door. Since Byron's grandparents didn't know I was there, I watched from the bedroom window as they knocked on the door. Byron's grandmother answered, told my parents that they didn't even know who I was, and watched them walk back down the steps to Mom's car. As they drove away I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I heard the footsteps coming down the hall.

I shimmied under the bed and grabbed my shoes to pull under with me. As I had predicted, they entered the room, looked around, turned off the television and walked back out. Unfortunately, they forgot to close the door behind them. I was trapped under the bed for the rest of the afternoon.

When Byron came back that evening, the look of panic on his face was as broad as a search light. He grabbed the door handle to his room and looked around wildly, obviously wanting to know what happened to me. His grandparents called him to the living room and I could tell he thought the world had just ended. They had surely found me.

They asked Byron who this Amanda girl was, because her parents had come looking for her. He told them that I was his girlfriend and that I hadn't been in school for a few days. He also embellished, and told them that he thought my dad beat me every night. He told them that he was worried about me, that maybe the reason I hadn't been in school was because my dad had beaten me so badly that I couldn't walk. His grandparents gasped in astonishment and told him that if he heard from me to please let them know. I slapped a hand over my mouth and sat there, stunned.

"Did you go in my room," he asked them both.

"Yes, why?"

"I just remember closing the door this morning before I left," he explained. "Did you need something?"

"We were just checking to see if maybe you had smuggled someone into your room. We didn't see anything so we just turned off the TV and left again. We didn't disturb anything else."

Byron came back to his room and closed the door. He sat down on the bed, trying to sort things out in his mind. I reached out and grabbed his ankle - probably not the smartest thing to do if we were trying to be quiet. He yelped.

"Byron? Are you ok?" His grandfather called out to him.

"Yeah," he said, obviously through a smile, "I just," he paused, searching, "stubbed my toe."

He jumped up from the bed and got on his hands and knees to peer under the bed at me.

"I'm so glad you're still here! I thought for sure when I saw the door open..."

"I've been here all day long," I told him. "I heard them coming down the hall and I just found a spot to hide. It was either under here or in the closet, and I thought they might look in the closet."

"That was smart."

"Yeah, but when they left the door open, I knew I'd be here for a while. I probably wont sleep much tonight. I've been sleeping almost all day. There was nothing else to do."

The next day we decided it would be best if I snuck out through the window and we both went to school. We would look around and ask friends throughout the day to see if any of them were willing to take me in for a while. About half way through the day, the Police showed up at the school. All the kids faces were pressed to the windows, wondering what was going on. They came straight into my classroom and asked the teacher which one I was. Then they had me get in the car with them and they took me directly to the Police Station where my parents picked me up. I was humiliated. I felt betrayed. I had trusted Byron to take care of me and yet I was being sent home.

I forgave him the next day.

There really wasn't much my parents could do to me, though they threatened even more. Physical pain only lasted so long. I was numb to it all. They said that they were going to pick me up from school each day and drop me off in the mornings. I scoffed.

"I'll get up before you and be gone. I'll skip my last class of the day and disappear. The only way you'll know where I am at any time is to be handcuffed to me all day." I kept a straight face, numb and devoid of emotion. I spoke calmly and rationally. It infuriated them. The threats and ideas continued, each one a weak attempt of gaining control over me and crushing my spirit. None of it worked.

That was the moment when I discovered that no person of the face of the Earth can force another to do their bidding. The human spirit is too strong for that. Even with a gun to our heads, we still have a choice.

"So what happened," Byron asked me. I told him everything, not skipping a single detail. I told him about the fresh bruises I expected to see in various places. I explained how they had planned to control my every move even more. I told him everything just as calmly as I had replied to my parents the night before. He hugged me tightly again and I knew I had him where I wanted him. He's surely find me a permanent place to stay now.

"Look," he said, "my Dad lives in Arizona. I wanted to go down there this summer to stay with him. I was going to drive. My little sister lives with her mom over in Clearfield right now. I was going to take her with me. Why don't we go now? We'll plan the whole thing out and I'll take you with us. School is almost out anyway, we'll only miss the last week."

And so it was planned. We would scrape together every cent we could between the three of us, eventually growing the group into four people. We piled up into Byron's two-seater car and we began the long journey to Arizona, three fugitives and a free spirit.

TO BE CONTINUED...

5 Saltine Crackers

Dinner tonight:

1 half sized can of Bushes baked beans, heated for 1 minute

- cost: .89

1 can of Spinach, slightly salted and heated for 1 minute 30 seconds

- cost: .39

1 glass of Skim Milk with an expiration date of 4-26-10

- cost: too long ago to remember.

Total cost: $1.38

Taste: simple, not at all complex.

Nutritional value: Better than my average meals of junk food and hot dogs.

Thing Most Appreciated: No Saltine Crackers in sight.

Why:

As I sit here drinking the rest of my milk before it goes bad, I think back on other times when food was such a rare commodity that I was lucky to get one meal a day that included anything green or that contained protein. Tonight, though I didn't have much to accompany my milk, I had both of those things.

It's no secret, I'm broke. Since I was robbed last year when my uhaul was stolen while I slept in a cosy hotel room, I've been fighting an uphill battle. I had to put gas in my car this morning, and that left me with a total of about $2 in the bank. It will actually get me by until I get paid again in another two weeks, but things are tight for now. I'm saving the freezer burned Lean Pockets and two Lean Cuisines for a special occasion at this point. I've challenged myself to see how long I can make my household items last.

I have plenty of soups, I have a couple of pita breads, a quarter loaf of stale wheat bread in the freezer, a can of chili, some frozen hot dogs, powdered creamer for my coffee (I just polished off the expired milk) and a box of unopened granola. I have plenty here to live off of for the next two weeks, no problem!

I know my cupboards sound a little bare to most of you out there, but at one time I was FAR worse off than I am now. At one time in my life, I lived off of a handful of Saltine crackers at every meal coupled with a glass of water, (if I was lucky) three times a day. That was living the good life!

I was 18 and had just escaped an abusive relationship with a 21 year old alcoholic man who never remembered the night before.

Things got bad... He made me give him every cent I made from work, or so he thought. He wanted me to just sign my checks over to him, but I told him that I could just get them cashed at work. My job actually did that for us. I would get them cashed each week and then take a single $20 out of my pocket. I trudged the stairs in the back hallway to the ladies room on the second floor of the Safeway on Bell Avenue in Scottsdale, AZ, and locked the door behind me when I went in. Then I would take the fake plant off of the top of the hand drier and set it on the bathroom counter. I had one particular spot in the plant I would pull on and Pop! the whole plant came out, attached to a square Styrofoam base. Then I would slide out the stick in the side that held the little trap door on the bottom in place. I stuck the $20 safely up inside the sticks of the fake plants, tucked safely into the hollowed out Styrofoam, placed the trap door back in place with the wicker sticks, put the Styrofoam base back in the pot, and placed the pot back on the hand drier. It took me a total of 4 weeks to find somewhere else to live. Since I got paid weekly, that was a whole $80 I had saved up!

The day I left, I went to work just as I always did, as though nothing in the world was wrong. I had been doing a good job at work and had even earned the right to move into the bakery from the bagging stations while they needed temporary help. I went to the ladies room at the top of the stairs, made a little withdrawal, and went back down to work. About a half an hour later I went on my lunch - and never returned.

They wondered where I had gone. I was always such a loyal and dependable employee. I had done so well, everyone liked me. I was eager to learn, willing to work hard and ready to take on the world. Then, POOF! I vanished. Nobody knew about the $80 I had saved up, even Phillip. It was guessed that I had just decided to quit, so nobody at work bothered to call anyone to ask where I was. When Phillip went to pick me up from work that night, I had a good 4 hour head start on him. There was no way he was ever going to find me... or so I thought. He was eventually my first stalker.

I searched and searched for work and couldn't find anything. I spent most of my money on interview clothes instead of wearing my shabby t-shirt and wranglers. The rest of it went towards food and my roommate for giving me a place to crash. I was staying with a Cerebral Palsy girl who needed help taking care of her companion dog, Scooter. I got to know the neighbors around us in the Superstition Apartments there in Tempe Arizona, and one of the guys in particular was a Supervisor at a place called QSM. Another neighbor who was looking for work decided that he would give me a ride down there as long as we could interview together. Away we went. My roommate had gone to visit her ailing father and there was no food left in the house. I needed money!

I didn't know what to think of Dan at first, but quickly grew to love him dearly. He and I were both hired right away, we didn't even care what the job was. We turned out to be telemarketers. What's the one thing people hate more than telemarketers? How about Door-to-door salesmen? I did that for a while a few years ago - but I digress.

I was young and eager, not yet jaded to the world. I attacked everything I did with fervor; a sense of urgency and purpose, constantly eager to do more. It just so happened that QSM didn't care how many hours an employee worked, just so long as they worked a minimum of 40 a week. I would OFTEN work 16 hour days, 7 days a week. At QSM we got paid twice a month, and when I was hired, a pay period had ended the day before. I was going to have a long wait for my first check.

Dan had borrowed the car from his girlfriend the day we went to interview. It wouldn't have done us any good to show up at the interview covered in sweat and red faced from heat exhaustion. QSM was only about 6 miles from the apartments, but in the Arizona summertime, that might as well have been 100 miles if a person were on foot. There were days it felt like that exact thing. Other than the interview, any time we traveled to QSM it was always on foot.

Dan, knowing how broke I was, sold plasma one day in order to buy me a box of Saltine crackers for the apartment and a bottle of Iced Tea to drink on the long, hot walk home. The sun was blazing overhead like a lighted torch, burning and scorching my flesh until each step would jar my skin into feeling like it would split open as a ripe melon would when struck with a hammer. I nursed that tea the entire 6 miles. By the time we got to the apartments, the tiny bit left was so hot I couldn't drink it anymore. I put the bottle in the fridge, waited for it to cool just enough, and finished the last 17 drops, one at a time.

I filled the glass bottle with horrible Phoenix tap water and popped that in the fridge. Then I opened my box of Saltines, took out about 10, and wolfed them down like I hadn't eaten in weeks. I grabbed 10 more and did the same with those. I picked the crumbs off of my shirt and licked them from my fingers. Anyone watching from the outside would have thought me to be a starved prisoner of war. Truly I had never known such hunger before that period of time in my life or since.

Smartly, I folded the cracker package and slid them back into the box. I stored the box in an empty desk drawer where I knew nobody would look. I resisted the temptation to eat more. I knew I had to make these last for another 3 weeks before I got paid. It wasn't going to be easy, but I knew I could do it.

I took a small sandwich bag of 10 crackers with me to work each day, tucked safely in my pocket. I ate 5 when I got there to keep up my strength and another 5 for lunch. Then I would walk home the 6 miles and eat the last 5 of the day. All day long I would drink water to give myself the false feeling of being full. Most of the time it worked, but sometimes I could feel the water slide all the way down my heated neck and make a massive knot when reaching my stomach. I learned in those few weeks not to drink cold water. Even now I'll ask for my water with no ice. The cold water not only hurts my teeth, but reminds me of the starvation I had to endure and the hard lumps that would take far too long to go away in the pit of my intestines.

Each day I walked that 6 miles to work, and each day I walked the 6 miles home. Each day I ate a total of 15 crackers (with a couple of exceptions on the days I would eat 20 or more) and drank close to two gallons of water. I went from being an already skinny 115 lbs to being a mere 88 lbs. Undressed, my ribs poked out, my knees wouldn't touch, my face looked tight and hollow, my fingers looked long and bony and my hair started to fall out in small putrid chunks. Sores began to develop on my scalp from malnourishment. My skin dried up, my freckles grew dark in contrast to my sunburned, scorched skin. Still I made that daily trek. Sometimes I would work 18 hour shifts just so I wouldn't have to walk home while the sun was still up. It didn't leave me much time to sleep, but back then I could survive on a little less than an hour, and often I did. Once in a while, on my days off, I would resist the driving force to walk to work anyway. I took two days off for that entire month.

At the end of three weeks, on the day the checks were supposed to arrive, I was a hollow shell of the person I had been when I arrived there a month before. They passed out the paychecks to everyone at work - except for me.

I welled up in tears. I had run out of Saltines the day before. I had nothing left to eat. I had carelessly dropped my iced tea bottle on my way to work, smashing the glass all over the road and loosing the precious water into the street. Without a check, there would be no replacement! There would be no rent or food. My roommate still wasn't back and Scooter was almost out of dog food. I went to the supervisors office and asked what had happened to my money.

"Are you on drugs," he asked me.

"What?! No!"

"I couldn't help but notice you've lost a lot of weight and you haven't been working here for very long. Are you in trouble?"

"No," I replied, "but I will be if I don't get paid!"

"Oh?" He asked, arching an eyebrow at me. "What kind of trouble are you in? Do you owe someone money?"

"I'm broke and I have no food. Please, I just need to get paid."

Seeing the desperation in my eyes, he pulled one last paycheck out of his desk drawer and held it across his desk, smiling with yellow jags that reminded me of a dirty picket fence. I reached for it and he yanked it back over his shoulder.

"How about this," he smiled a sinister grin, "I'll take you out for a good dinner and then I'll give you your paycheck."

"That's illegal" I said without hesitation. I knew exactly what he was doing, this 56 year old man... I wasn't going to have anything to do with it. I wasn't about to sacrifice my morals and my dignity for a quick meal and a one night stand. Instantly panic set in, though. What if he didn't care that it was illegal? What if my check 'accidentally' fell out of his hand and directly into the paper shredder behind him? What if I couldn't eat for another 3 weeks? I knew I would survive somehow, so I didn't bend. I took a breath and let my patience and clear mind kick in. I settled back in my chair, calling his bluff.

"I was just kiddin' Honey," he said in a snide, sarcastic manner. He held out the check again, I snatched it from his hand and walked out of his office.

"Hey," he called from behind me, "can I at least give you a lift?"

I liked him even less than I liked Saltines after that. Both had a way of leaving me with a dry mouth.

Sioux City Sarsaparilla

While living on George Air Force Base in Victorville CA between 1988 and 1992 I made some of the greatest friends I'd ever known. I had a chance to grow up in one place for nearly six years and the stability was something I very much needed. I didn't realize that until many years later looking back on that time in my life. It was a heart breaker when I had to leave it all behind to move to Utah, but the years in California were vital at that time.

My sixth grade year was the best year I ever had in school. I had many friends, which was actually a first for me. People liked me for who I was and my crazy, wacky energy drew people to me like flies to honey. My teacher would spend hours with me after class, helping me to study if there was ever a fear of me falling behind. My parents were proud of me finally. My brother and I were getting along again after several years of not. I had my first boyfriend, with whom I had my first kiss. I still have his old address memorized. I also had my first best friend.

Jodie was an interesting girl. We were "on again off again" friends and she had the wild attitude of a girl we all knew would end up getting into a lot of trouble. That dangerous side of her was exactly what drew people to her. She was a year ahead of me in school, but she lived just up the lane from me and we would often go for walks together. Back then, seventh graders were too "cool" to play with dolls and plastic ponies. Yet, she had dolls in her bedroom that I was fairly certain she would play with when nobody was looking.

She was English and I was obsessed with her accent, as were most of the boys her age in the neighborhood. Her mother, Julie, had married an American man stationed in England and the three children came over when he was restationed in California just up the street from us. Her older brothers, Jason and Justin, were rather tall, handsome young men the girls would swoon over due to their dashing looks and English charm. I was no exception. Secretly I harbored a crush on Justin for many, many years. I finally got a chance to act on in many years later, but that's another story I've never told to another living soul. Maybe someday it will grace the pages of my blog, but for now I'll skip over that one. This is the story of the Sioux City Sasparilla and will remain G-rated, not delve into the darker side of my "bad girl" days of being a teen run away.

When the family moved to Arizona due to Mike being restationed (Yes, everyone else had J names, but Mike was their step-dad, so he married into this) my family decided to help. We loaded up in a uhaul truck and my Dad drove one with Jodie and I in the seat beside him. Being the smallest, I was stuck in the middle with the gear shifter vibrating up against my knee cap. It was a long, long drive.

We stayed for a week or more when we got there. The new house was large and spacious, though the weather was far too hot to go outside anyway. The neighbors had a swimming pool that was rarely used by the elderly couple unless their grand kids were visiting, so Jodie and I made it a priority to meet these people as soon as possible.

Jodie had a "trundle bed" under her bed that pulled out like a drawer. It wasn't the most comfortable bed in the world, but it worked for me. It wasn't all THAT bad. She had a TV in her room, which in those days was unheard of. We had a grand time, she and I. It didn't take long to figure out where the nearest store was and we would take daily walks down to the grocers and never buy anything. One day we walked down there with nothing but pockets full of change to use a brand new "Coin Star" machine we saw advertised to turn the coins into paper money. It was an amazing invention!

One of the nights we were there, all of us bundled up into a couple of cars and drove to an old fort. Inside the massive wooden walls, we wandered from shop to shop while waiting our turn to get into a steak restaurant. No expense was to be spared. I had my very own Prime Rib that night, the first I believe I was ever allowed to order off of a menu. I was after all only 12 years old.

Mike asked me if I would like a Sarsaparilla. I had no idea what that was, so I said I would love one, pretending inteligence. When they brought it out, I couldn't pretend any longer. What was this brown bottle before me with a picture of a cowboy standing between swinging doors? Had he ordered me something I was too young to drink? Was this a real beer sitting in front of me? When I asked, he laughed a deep, gutoral laugh that made me blush.

"It's like Root Beer" he explained. "Try it, I think you'll like it." I took a tiny, timid sip, agreed that it was very much like Root Beer, and continued until the entire thing was gone. It was delicious! I wasn't allowed to have sodas very often as a kid. They had too much sugar in them for us kids my parents would say. As soon as I polished off the one, I asked if it was ok if I got another. Within minutes, a second Sarsaparilla was brough to the table. This one I poured into the chilled glass they brought out with it. I loved the little ice crystals that formed around the top of the soda inside the glass. The pieces of frozen soda made my mouth very cold and I loved every second of it.

It wasn't long after that trip that my mom's brother, also named Mike, came to visit us while picking up a load of stuff somewhere in California. When I told him about my story, he told me one of his own that to this day I think of each time I see a Sioux City Sarsaparilla.

"The mountains near by are called the Superstition Mountains. Do you remember seeing them?"

"Yes," I replied, remembering clearly that the wooden fort we had visited actually seemed to be nestled into the base of some rather oddly shaped mountains.

"The legend of the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine comes from the Superstition Mountains, which is why the mountains got their name. Did you know that?"

"A gold mine?" I breathed.

"People say that a German man hid a lot of gold in the mountains. Some people say that the gold were bars to pay the Calvary that was stolen from a train. Other people say it was a cave that he found belonging to an indian tribe. People think they had used the cave for a sacred place of prayer and had some of their dead burried there, so the Apache Indians were angry about his intruding.

"The story goes that when he was dying in 1891, a woman by the name of Julia Thomas was taking care of him and he told her where he had hidden the gold. A lot of people claim they found the gold, but none were proven. People have been looking for the Lost Dutchman's Mine since 1892, only a year after it's said he told the woman where it was located.

"It's estimated that 8,000 people every year make some sort of effort to find the mine. I've done my own research and learned how to look for gold. A lot of people have gone out there and gotten lost, though. They end up either missing forever or someone finds them dead out in the middle of nowhere. People fall off the mountain, get lost and starve to death, and sometimes people can't figure out what killed them. They say the Apache's put a curse on the gold so that anyone who finds it will die a horrible death.


"The Dutchman was supposed to have a secret way of finding the cave. If you stand on one mountain peak and look through an opening in the rocks called 'The Eye of the Needle' you can see the exact location of where he hid the entrance to the cave. I look for it each time I go through Arizona, but I've never found it. Maybe someday I'll be rich, and you will be the only person who knows why..."

A few years later my Uncle Mike taught me how to go gold panning, but no, he's not rich quite yet. I hold out hope.


.

Mistakes

We all make mistakes from time to time. Sometimes they are astronomical, sometimes they're so small nobody really notices. Sometimes they hurt nobody, sometimes they hurt everyone, and the ones that seem to do the most damage are the ones that hurt someone special.

I've never been an INCREDIBLY needy person but I've been ignored and abandoned in the past. There is nothing in the world that will make me jump to conclusions faster than the feeling of abandonment. It's a scary idea to me, to have so many hopes and dreams wrapped up in someone I trust with my heart only to be betrayed in the end, left hopeless at the end of a dark road, alone and scared.

When I was only 18 years old and living in Arizona, I fell head over heels for an Italian man named Mike Cerillo (Sir-ill-o). He was good to me, treated me fairly well, and didn't get as violent when he drank as many of the other people I knew at that time. He only punched me in the nose once and that was when he was trying to teach me self defense. We were in a swimming pool and he had too much to drink and he lost his footing... so on and so forth.

Mike had me move in with him when my other living situation had soured. I had nowhere to go and he was crazy about me. I packed up what few belongings I had - it amounted to two trash bags full really. It wasn't much.

I had been living there for a couple of months when everything happened all at once. Mike had a friend moving to New Jersey and he was going to help Cappy with the move. They loaded up a truck and drove away after Mike kissed me goodbye. I didn't know at the time that I would never see him again. Had I known, I don't know what I would have done differently.

The trip was supposed to be for a week. Mike would be coming back and we would resume life as normal. I went to work at the 7-11 each day and came home each night. I would eat and go to bed, then wake up and shower only to do it all again. The whole time, I kept thinking that Mike would come back.

When the phone call came in, it devastated me. I heard Mike's voice on the other end.

"I'm going to stay in New Jersey," he said. "I found out that some of my family is in the Italian Mafia out here and I've decided I'm going to stay with them. I can make better money out here. I want you to come out, too."

I knew then that I wouldn't ever see Mike again. It broke my heart. I had been abandoned for the Italian Mafia.

Until tonight I've never told that story to another living soul - and yet here I am putting it on public display for all to see. This story took place in 1998 - and in 1999 I was already living in Arkansas, married. One night the phone rang and my exhusband answered the phone.

"It's for you," he said.

"Yeah?" I wasn't expecting a call. "Who is it?"

He asked and I heard a voice mumble on the other end.

"He says his name is Mike Chirolo." People often mispronounced Mike Cirillo's last name, but I never had. I didn't recognize the name and so I took the phone.

"Who is it?" I asked.

The unmistakable voice came across the other end of the phone. "You know who it is," he said.

Immediately I hung up. I'm not sure why I did - other than it scared the Hell out of me that this guy who left me for the Italian Mafia had tracked me down when nobody else in the world had been able to - including my own family.

The phone rang.

I picked it up and hung it up again without hesitation.

The phone rang again.

Again I picked it up and hung it up right away.

The phone rang again. And again. And again. I ignored it.

Scared out of my mind, I explained to my exhusband that this was a dangerous man and that I couldn't talk to him He shouldn't have even know where I was.

To this day I don't answer calls from a number I don't know.

It could be Mike Cirillo - the man who abandoned me for the Italian Mafia.

I've been abandoned a few times in my life. I've been left behind locked doors for 23 hours with no food or drink. I've been lied to, made to believe that I was loved, and told more times than I can count by someone I cared about that they would always be there.

Abandonment scares me. Being alone is fine if it's a choice. Trusting someone to be there and then feeling like it might have been misplaced is incredibly painful.

Tonight I made a very serious mistake. Someone I care very much for hasn't been speaking with me very much lately and I felt abandoned - so I erased contact. Without warning, without explanation, I erased contact. I ran in fear, thinking that if I didn't run, I would be sucked back down into that tornado of waiting and hoping, only to be let down in the end by someone telling me they would never be back. Mike Cirillo wasn't the first, and I can almost guarantee he won't be the last - but I shouldn't let the fear make me run or act on impulse. If it's worth fighting for, I must stand and fight.

The person I ran from tonight is certainly worth the fight.

I'm hoping for a White Lotus - a symbol that I've been forgiven for my fear.