Who I Am

Ten Years later I found myself divorced. I wondered what happened to a girl friend I had not seen since about a year before my marriage. Being a supervisor of the mail forwarding department, I looked on the computer and found the address of my former girl friend’s mother. I sent my girl friend a letter.

I received a call from the postal police, telling me I had a visitor. I came downstairs and there was my long lost girl friend. She jumped into my arms, wrapping her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, and saying, let’s get back together. When I got off work that night, she was waiting on me. That night she stayed with me.

Getting back together with her, I discovered she had a habit, doing something I had quit many years before; smoking crack. Years before when I smoked with her, it was call freebasing. I felt responsible for her behavior since I was older, the one with the job that purchased the cocaine for us to freebase. I helped her to stop smoking crack. She would cook good food for me. We would work out together and I got to know her seven year old son. He was smart. He wanted to grow up, become a prosecuting attorney and send drug dealers to prison. I taught him how to bat and catch a baseball. We wrestle. He had so much energy. He would tire me out especially if he had a coke after five in the evening. I learned not to give him a coke after five. He even became my prayer partner. He was like the son I never had.

My girl friend would be doing fine until she would go to her old neighborhood to get her hair done. Not only would she come home with her hair done, she would come home high, with the urge to smoke crack again. We saw a nice home in Sacramento that an Emeryville fireman wanted to sell. He was willing to rent it to us until we were ready to buy. I rented with the hope that I could get transfer from the Oakland Post Office to Sacramento. The transfer didn’t happen. I stayed in San Francisco with relatives during the week and came home on weekends. Moving to Sacramento was a mistake because it was close to my girl friend’s old neighborhood and I was only home on weekends. My $700 tool set my ex had bought me came up missing. My girl friend’s son told me about a male visitor and I saw a used condom on the floor. Not long afterwards, I decided to quit her. She showed up in San Francisco after catching the last scheduled greyhound bus to San Francisco, knowing I wasn’t going to leave her out on the street. We were back together. She was doing well. She even got a job. We were planning on getting married. Then she had to get her hair done. When she got back I wasn’t home. I had caught the Bart train to Lake Merritt to take a nature walk. When I got back to where we had been staying with relatives, my uncle told me she came back high and he had put her and her son out. I went and found them. We started living in hotels. That addiction had taken hold of her and she wouldn’t let it go. Her son saw what was happening and said I could leave if I wanted to. I had started smoking cigarettes again and I hadn’t smoked in twelve years. Due to the fact I felt acid drop into my stomach because of the stress, I felt it was time to leave before I got in ulcer, so I Ieft and rented a room from the cousin of a girlfriend I had dated shortly before my current girlfriend.

I was disappointed with God because I had wanted to marry my girlfriend. I felt I was living right and God could have blessed things to work out. I was like a kid throwing a tantrum. I started smoking weed and drinking liquor again, partying with the younger generation, putting my moral values to the side, using my old school knowledge with this new generation, knowing exactly what to say to have these young attractive women desiring a sexual experience with me.

One day as I held a marijuana joint in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other, one of the young ladies enter the apartment with her daughter, saying her daughter had a toothache. Even though I was smoking weed and drinking liquor as the hip hop beats were playing, I had compassion on this child. I couldn’t just watch this child suffer because I knew what to do to stop her suffering. I asked the mother of the child, could I see her daughter? She said I could. I placed my hand on the child’s jaw and prayed. The tooth stopped aching. Outwardly, I was being rebellious and living wild, but inwardly, I was still the same compassionate human being. That period of rebellion only lasted a period of three month because that outward expression wasn’t who I had become.