A Grand Canyon, One Man’s Journey through Depression

A Grand Canyon

One Man’s Journey through Depression

Ken La Salle

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 978-0-9797070-8-7

Copyright 2007 Ken La Salle

Discover other titles by Ken La Salle at Smashwords.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

To the innumerable many who have been broken and lost and who are working to find their way back from the edge.

… and to Vicky.

The story you are about to read is entirely true… and boy do I wish that wasn’t the case…

Chapter 1

How Rosa Entered My Life

The first time I wanted to kill myself was NOT in August of 1983. Dramatic structure would seem to make that more meaningful but my problems wouldn’t wait until then. Oh no. My wish to end it all came long before then. My first suicide attempt went as far back as 1974.

I was in the third grade.

I don't remember what trauma had gone on at the time but I remember that I'd had enough. You see, I wasn't the most stable kid and I hadn't been raised in the most stable environment. I was a nerdy kid stuck in a world that didn't seem to care, raised by a pretty unstable, single parent, tormented by equally unstable siblings.

My father had left four years before. I remember the day he pulled his old Ford out of the driveway of our home for the last time. My mother had woken us all up in the middle of the night like a five-alarm fire and we didn't dress before heading outside. This was in a by-gone day when all children wore pajamas - or so it seemed to my five-year-old mind. My mother screamed like a woman having her guts ripped out without the benefit of anesthetic as my dad tried to drive off in his car. I didn't look at the others, my brother Keith or my sister Audrey, because my eyes were riveted on what was going on before me. I knew I couldn't miss a moment of it. Even as my dad slammed the car door and started the engine. Even as my mom continued to scream. When my dad began to back the car out of the driveway, my mom tried for a moment to hold on to the car door. She must have realized what a vain gesture that was because she only did it for a moment before she let go.

My father backed his car out onto the street and drove away.

I don't know how we ever got back inside again.

But we did. And my mom took good care of us, though I can't imagine how. We had nothing to begin with, except the house. My dad let her keep the house. Even that was a struggle; I remember hearing her screaming about how hard it was for her to keep the house going. Whenever we would ask for some luxury or even those necessities that weren't yet a priority, she would scream.

Actually, my mother would scream a lot. She'd scream about how hard her life was and how lonely she was and how awful we kids were and how much of a burden we were and how terribly we treated her and how rotten we were and… well, it just got worse.

But she was the only mom I had and, as much as I hated the screaming, I never hated her.

To be honest, I couldn't. My mother had drilled such a deep sense of guilt so far inside of me, an issue I still live with today, by telling me over and over how much she sacrificed and how I should get down on my knees and thank her and what a louse I was… I just felt sorry. And I felt that way most of the time.

My mom's life was hard and she passed that down to me, to all of us. She couldn't help it. It was practically genetic.

Meanwhile, in the first few years at least, my dad would occasionally pop up from out of the blue. He would show up looking like he was doing pretty well for himself; I wouldn’t know his side of the story for many years. He’d just show up and we three kids would go out with him for the evening. This usually meant a Disney film - there were so many in the early 70's - though he'd always complain about the film as if he hated Disney.

It took years for me to understand that it didn’t matter whether he hated Disney films or not. He was making an attempt to spend time with his kids. And, he was struggling, too. But, while my mom was always blatantly honest with me, sometimes painfully so, my dad was never much of a communicator. He didn't necessarily lie but he did leave a whole lot out of the conversation.

Inevitably, this created a distance between my dad and me. And the distance came with a desire to bond. I never did bond with my father but I worked incredibly hard to that end. My father had once wanted to be an actor so I worked on becoming an actor. My dad played the keyboards… so I became a writer, though that's not quite the same keyboard. Like all children who come from a broken home, I had a need to feel accepted, a deep, empty hole in my gut where most people have love.

So, from my father, I learned a sense of urgency. From my mother, I learned guilt. Together, these were an impossible combination.

In my attempts to interact with others, I found humor and became the class clown. But there was also a temperamental side to me, which caused no end of trouble. To top it off, I was a small child, thin, because we never had a lot of food in the house, and awkward, thanks to misdiagnosed double-vision not dealt with until I was in my late teens.

That day in the third grade, I remember being in the playground. I'd done something stupid, probably owing to my usual inadequacy at sports. The kids were laughing at me and I remember thinking that I'd had enough. In my young mind, I was done with this shitty life. So, I ran out into the middle of Raitt Street, which John Adams Elementary faced, and awaited my fate.

Now, wait. Let's stop a moment and think about this. What's the worst that could have happened? Death? Hardly! Broken legs - tops! What good would that have done me or my mother, and how would that have stopped anyone from laughing at me? It wouldn't have.

So, I guess I'm lucky a teacher walked out into the street and asked me what I was doing.

I remember looking around… and there was no traffic.

Suicide would have to wait.

* * * * * * * * *

I made it another eight years without trying to kill myself once!

And, in hindsight, that's quite surprising. As an unbalanced child, I turned into an unbalanced teenager. Sure, unbalanced teenager may be redundant but let's just say I was unbalanced even for a teenager. As a teenager, it was no longer enough simply to get my parent's approval by behaving or fighting with my siblings to show how much they didn't. (There was always something unhealthy about the relationship we three children had with each other. We didn't just quarrel - We actively despised each other.) No, as a teenager I had to find something meaningful. This always seemed to lead me to writing and to acting. I was neither encouraged nor discouraged by my parents who had their own lives to consider - the surprising exception being my step-mother, Blanche.

But what no one knew about, and what I kept between myself and only a few close friends, was that I was experiencing what can only be termed severe emotional distress. It was difficult for me, on a daily basis, to deal with the demands high school presented. My response was to miss as many school days as possible - back when ditching school was more of a pastime than an offense. I was fortunate enough to be naturally bright so I could show up on test days without having to study a whole lot. And I squeaked by.

Then, along came Teresa, and when she walked into my life I nearly fell over. I was 17 and she was, well, nearly 14. She was beautiful and funny and, best of all, she liked me from the beginning.

The beginning came one day in April 1983, at the Santa Ana Valley High School auditorium, this enormous cavern of a building, housing the school's theater. The auditorium had been built back in the 1950's, back when they were building such things. I was hanging around at the auditorium with Mike, the stage manager. Mike was one of the few positive, male role models in my life who, coincidentally, also gave me a taste for Camel cigarettes. For the most part, though, he was a positive role model. I was there in the auditorium with a few of my friends, all of us joking around, trying to be as cool and funny as we all thought Mike was, when into the auditorium walked Eugenia. And Eugenia shut down that nonsense right away. She was a Mexican girl in her teens with the body of a young Lauren Bacall; even Mike stopped when she walked in. She was followed in by a younger girl and my eyes went from Eugenia to this other girl and… well, they stopped right there.

Eugenia introduced us all to Teresa, a friend from the other side of Santa Ana. Somehow, within about an hour, the two of us found a connection. When she had to leave, she gave me a hug, which wasn't hard because we were already in the dark of the theater's recesses with our arms around each other. She took a couple steps away and I asked if she'd like to go out sometime. I thought she was my age. Honestly. She said she would and gave me her number. As she looked up at me, I figured I should make a move. I might not get another opportunity for some time. So, I kissed her.

It was only after Teresa left that I found out she was 13. I felt profoundly like a child molester, probably because my friends were calling me one. So, I put away her number but I didn't throw it away. The girl and the kiss and the phone number burned a hole in my mind and my heart and before summer came, we started dating.

It wasn't easy. Santa Ana was by no means a small town and I was a 17 year old without a car. But I found my way to her by bus or by foot, by any means available, and we found ways to go out. Even though my mom didn't approve of my dating a Mexican girl, I was old enough to see such disapproval as laughable.

What my mom wasn’t aware of – what I was painfully aware of – was our age difference. Four years was just about a quarter of my lifetime back then and it served to make things a little strange at times. Added to this, I was cast in a play that summer and had begun a flirtation with the pianist, Cynthia. The show was a musical and Cynthia and I would find a lot of time to rehearse together. The flirtation quickly became something more, which ain’t too hard when you’re 17. I was seeing Cynthia every day while Teresa and I only saw each other about once a week. My friends were all encouraging me to see more of Cynthia. After all, she was my age, a cheerleader, had use of a car, and did I mention that she was also my age?

To this day, I regret ever listening to them. In early July, I broke up with Teresa over the phone - a chicken-shit way of doing it. Within hours, Cynthia and I were necking at Sunset Beach.

But Cynthia was no Teresa and, within a couple of months, I was back in front of Teresa’s house on 5th Street in Santa Ana, begging her to take me back.

But she wouldn't take me back. She told me I had tossed her aside like a toy I’d grown bored of. As much as I was hurting at the time, the truth was I had treated her like shit and she was right to refuse me. After all, how was she to know that another Cynthia wouldn't come along?

I didn't bother to think of any of this at the time. In all honesty, I don't know if I thought at all. All I could do was hurt. I walked away from her house and towards downtown Santa Ana in tears. As I neared Main Street, I couldn't imagine how I'd ever be able to live without Teresa. Life had long been hard enough and now, to top it off, I had lost Teresa. Combined perhaps with an upbringing that reinforced my own sense of isolation, I was ready to try killing myself again.

I didn't wait to do it, either. I turned towards the nearest building and saw that it still had an old-fashioned fire escape. Quickly, I climbed up and was soon on the roof's ledge. I said a quiet goodbye, moved forward -

And saw, of all things, a baseball cap caught in a rain gutter. Back then, Keith liked baseball caps and I knew he'd like this one - strange, though, that I'd be thinking of my brother at a time like this. But this distraction did an amazing thing; it provided me with a sense of what was going on, what I was in the midst of doing. I grabbed the cap and stepped off of the ledge.

I was only about four stories up. A fall like that would surely break a few bones but I don't think it would have killed me. I guess that's when I decided that the next time I chose to kill myself it would be irreparable and certain. But, for that day at least, I'd given up on suicide. I took the cap home to Keith who did like it, though it did little to repair our relationship.

And, for the next couple of years, I looked for someone to take Teresa’s place.

* * * * * * * * *

I was in for a lot of surprises after high school and most of them boiled down to one, single point: I wasn't that special.

As it turned out, I'd had it pretty good in high school. I'd found an outlet for my writing as a part of the school newspaper, writing a fairly well-received newspaper column called My Side. I'd even started writing my first novel. On the stage, I was the star of the school. This really wasn't too hard to do; in hindsight, there wasn't a whole lot of competition. So, I went from one leading role to another, both at Valley and in local theater. And even though my emotional problems persisted, I could live with that for the most part.

Then, graduation came.

And everything changed.

My mom wasn't so willing to foot the bill any more. She had her own life to consider and, in all fairness, I was an adult now. Neither Keith nor Audrey had done exceedingly well in adulthood, but I'd always considered myself better than them and thought I could succeed where they'd failed. What I didn’t realize was that I’d fail in my own ways.

Employers wouldn't put up with my emotional problems. Though I'd been accepted at several universities, I couldn't find the money in loans, grants, or handouts to afford school. Community college was my only option and that was not, as far as I was concerned, a good option. But my mom and I had a deal: Go to school or get a job or you're out. I didn’t want to get a job, so I went to school.

I enrolled as a Theater Arts major and prepared to step into another starring role. But I didn't get a starring role. I didn't get any role, in fact. At my first audition, a director took me to one side and said, The problem is you just can't act.

And there went my aspirations as an actor.

I guess I should mention at this point that I'm not particularly good at taking rejection. It's a funny thing for a writer or an actor to say, considering all the rejection waiting in either field. But most rejection is faceless and sometimes even nameless. Rarely do you have someone take you aside and tell you that you're fooling yourself. And I never wanted that to happen again.

So, I changed my major to Journalism. After all, I'd written My Side in high school for the better part of two years and had enjoyed a reasonable success there. It wasn't too hard to drop theater and enroll in journalism. I walked in the first day, prepared with samples of My Side and ready pick up with my column where I’d left off. But the editor-in-chief looked at me and laughed. You don't just walk in as a freshman and write a column, he said. And, so, another aspiration was dashed. And I didn't know what to do.

In the end, I did what I was most comfortable doing. I missed a lot of school but kept my grades up enough to appear as though I was still going. After all, I needed a roof over my head. I got drunk with my friends. I had some meaningless jobs and equally meaningless relationships. Most of all, however, I pined for my days at Valley.

I would go there quite often, living across the street from the school, and think about those good old days. They weren't so good when I was there but now they seemed like dreams of heaven. I'd sit on the bleachers with my friends, all of us shocked by real life, and we would smoke and talk. I'd pace the campus and wonder. But walking there reminded me too painfully of all those who had told me I had talent. Now, I was a nobody doing menial work in the journalism room of a community college newspaper.

Eventually, though, things began to change. A new journalism advisor came in with the hope of some new opportunities. He liked my writing and My Side was reborn anew. This gave me a little more confidence, though hanging around writing columns wasn't helping my grades any, and I stopped spending so much time at the old high school.

But I didn't stop entirely.

In early February, 1985, I stopped by the Valley High School library and caught my first glimpse of Rosa. She was a small girl, not slight but with a certain magnetism. I noticed her right away. And, within a week, I was madly in love.

* * * * * * * * *

Rosa dumped me almost immediately, one week after. And I found myself devastated, with no idea how to move on. In just a week, I had been sure she was the one. Back then, though, moving on didn’t mean a whole lot. Drinking with friends, writing my newspaper column, and missing school was business as usual.

And there were things happening in the background that I was unaware of at the time. It turned out that Rosa’s English teacher at Valley liked My Side. He liked it so much that he'd save every column and post it on the board in his classroom for all to see. And Rosa saw it. In her teacher’s eyes, I was larger than life. And when he discussed my columns with his class, I must have seemed to Rosa like someone she could feel romantic about.

Through some stroke of luck, good or bad, Rosa began having doubts about dumping me.

By late April, she started writing me love letters and enlisted Tim as an accessory. Tim and I had met in high school theater and he was a writer as well. To have Tim deliver these letters from Rosa meant a lot to me. I suppose that was her intention. I sent my replies back through Tim and he served as a pipeline, connecting the two of us, for about a month.

I was so thrilled by this seemingly clandestine love that I broke up with the girl I was seeing before I knew if things were certain, before I knew if Rosa and I would ever really get back together again.

But we did. Our second first date was at the Disneyland Hotel. We didn't stay at the hotel; it wasn’t like that. We spent the evening walking the gardens and paths around the buildings, looking at the koi fish in the many pools, talking about what had happened to bring us back together. Then, towards the end of the night, we had our first kiss. I had intended it to be a soft, romantic kiss but Rosa charged onto me, her lips like hammers, with a passion and intent that blind-sided me.

I was equally blind-sided when she dumped me again. And again. And again. She dumped me so many times in the next year that I, quite literally, lost count. But I always took her back. Took her back? I often begged her to come back! I needed her like an addict needs his needle. I couldn't bear to have her out of my life. She must have known this and I think it made breaking up with me… very fulfilling.

Already, you can probably see that marriage was a bad idea, that I should never have attempted it. But I didn't know better. My only consideration was my blinding passion for Rosa. I always believed that our love was all that mattered.

Now, don't get the wrong idea. I wasn't the model boyfriend, just as I wouldn't be the model husband. While we were dating, I made the same, stupid mistakes most men my age made. I was too controlling, too insistent upon having my way, too critical of her tastes, too brooding, too superior. I was certainly no great catch. For Rosa’s part, she was too stubborn, too materialistic (and, considering my income, she was with the wrong guy), too insensitive, too manipulative. Worst of all, however, was something I did not realize until many years later: I needed her far more than she needed me.

When I did propose, it came as a complete surprise us both. It was such a surprise that it came out haphazard, shoddy, almost joking. I was walking her home one night in the fall and I was seized by such a feeling of love, I immediately dropped to one knee and asked her if she would marry me.

Like I said, it came as such a surprise to both of us it was almost like a joke. Rosa said, Sure, or something and no more was mentioned about it for a long time.

In early 1986, though, we were watching St. Elmo's Fire on the living room floor of my mom's house. My mom had gone out for something or other and had made the mistake of trusting us in the house alone. The two of us had just made love between a couple of blankets. I said, We really should get married, you know? This proposal seemed real and, as it turned out, was the one Rosa always remembered.

But what a way to propose! During St Elmo's Fire? During the Brat Pack? With Judd Nelson's immense nostrils flaring as big as the TV screen? I don't know which proposal was worse or which I would rather have had her remember.

We went right out and bought her an engagement ring. For my salary, a nearly flawless, quarter-carat diamond wasn’t too bad. The ring was beautiful on her. But she’d still dump me now and again and now had the added ammunition of throwing the ring at me when she did it.

So, no wedding plans were made.

Instead, we moved in together. This was easier on both of us. Rosa had no interest in marriage and I was too busy ostracizing the rest of my family from my life. I dropped out of college, found a couple of jobs to help with the rent, and decided to leave my past behind.

After all, all I needed was Rosa.

Chapter 2

Ken & Rosa’s Place

My first apartment with Rosa was a small, one-bedroom place on the fourth floor of a rather new multi-unit building in an old neighborhood in a ratty part of Santa Ana. We were right next to the corner of 17th Street and Main, across from a car wash where we never had our car washed. That was back when we only had one car.

The day we moved in, there wasn’t much to move. We moved my old, twin bed and a dresser I’d used since I was five. We also took my desk and a couple bookcases to house my many books. Rosa had been buying things for the place for well over a month before we moved: kitchen appliances, towels, plates, and silverware. We moved all of it in the trunk of our car and a shuttle van that I sometimes drove for a local motel. Most of the work was done in short order and Rosa made Hamburger Helper that first night, fully domesticated.

A year later, wedding plans remained unmade. I’d talked to her about it in the evenings or some mornings as we readied ourselves for work. But Rosa didn't like the idea of marriage, she would have much rather we just lived together for the rest of our lives. Now, for someone as liberal and untraditional as I considered myself to be, this should have come as no problem. But I loved Rosa so powerfully, I ached to be her husband. She was everything I'd ever wanted in a woman and I knew I'd never want anything more and, so, marriage seemed not just a good choice but a necessary one. I wanted to be bound to her, tied to her, shackled to her - and these things were as negative to her as you can imagine. To be bound and tied and shackled? Why didn't I just duct tape her to the floor for safe keeping?

And she wasn't the only problem.

Her family was far from in love with me. To this Mexican family seeing this white young man, they had the same kind of reaction my mom had towards Teresa years before. The first time I ate dinner with Rosa’s family, they served steak and salad and gave me no utensils with which to eat it. When I asked for some, they pretended not to understand English - and Rosa was either too caught up in another conversation or playing along. Either way, she didn't help. When someone finally did get me a fork and knife, I was so nervous I could barely eat. Her mother had found out we had been sexually active for years. Rosa, in an act I was never sure was sabotage or high drama, had told her. Her mother's response was threefold: 1) I could never see her daughter again, 2) I had to marry her daughter, and 3) She would put a contract out on me through the Mexican Mafia. How I was to marry her daughter while never seeing her again was never explained but Rosa’s mother insisted the wedding had to be in a Catholic church, despite the fact that Rosa wasn't Catholic, not that Rosa was arguing. Her two brothers didn't like me because I was an egghead. Her father never really said anything to me; his voice never rose above a mumble. Her two sisters saw me as part bank-account, part annoyance. I found it best to stay far away from them all.

I was also staying far away from my own family at this time so any discussion of marriage with Rosa was a familial minefield.

What to do?

Elope.

But as with all things related to Rosa, this simple seed of an idea germinated into a monster. First, we decided to elope in Vegas. This changed to an elopement in Lake Tahoe and Reno. By late summer, she'd convinced me to take it a step further. I had found my dad after nearly seven years without contact. He was in Redmond, Washington and it would be to there