In December of 1996, during the
first week of that month, my mind and spirit, my body and soul were both tested
and blessed with so many changes, I could hardly handle it all. If not for the
strength, the pure belief in Love from Kelly, my Life would be over by now. If
not for her, I could not be here to write this now. She Loves Me that Well. After rescuing me, day after day, for the
next five days, we drove back and forth to the hospital. Kelly had preliminary
contractions until on Thursday, the 5th of December, my wife gave birth to our
first child, my second son, Julian. I was given the honor of cutting the cord
and at that moment, I felt my fore ordination being met. I was supposed to be a father, this was who I
was in my core, I believed I was always supposed be a father. We gave Julian a
middle name of Destiny, for the reason that he showed me a tangible path in my
life, in our life. Kelly’s father is
the last living male who carries their German family name and Kelly is his only
biological child. He adopted two older boys, Kelly's half-brothers, they have
his family name too but Kelly is his only child of blood. Because Julian
Destiny is the only one who can truly carry the family blood line, out of
respect for her father, a man we both deeply love and adore, we gave our son a
hyphenated last name, which is uniquely his own. Kelly and I stayed together in
the hospital for a couple of days, camping in her posh room like John and Yoko.
On Saturday, when we checked out
on the 7th of December, Pearl Harbor Day and my 35th birthday, we
got a hotel room in Rolling Meadows. I remember that night, I laid in one bed
alone while Kelly and the baby slept in the other bed. The television was
glowing with bright images of holiday cheer, an abundance of indulgence and
joy, the consumer frenzy of prepackaged happiness and I just started crying. It
wasn't because of the false hopes of the commercials and other media minutia
that seemed to contrast with my reality. I wept hardest because there I was, on
my 35th birthday in about the same place I was when I was on my 21st birthday.
I had to make changes to move forward in this life. Over the rest of the month,
as the holidays loomed and then gloomed past, Kelly, Julian and I found shelter
sleeping on the floor of a kind man’s apartment. Living like Mary, Jesus and
Joseph, we were homeless, jobless, penniless and in my state of depression I
was hopeless and useless.
 |
| Julian with dad, February 1997 |
In February, with the help of her
father and the kindness of her brother, Kelly got a job and we got a tiny
apartment in a dangerous part of Evanston. I wanted to be close to Cassidy but
I was drifting further from the shore, I was getting deeper into a depression
and I was getting really crazy under this pressure. One day I started
considering how exactly I could rob a bank and get away with it; for a serious
48 hours I made very real plans to commit this crime. I “staked out” different
locations, made notes of escape routes, picking alternative routes for the
fastest get-away. I got rubber gloves and made a toy pistol look very real with
a fresh coat of black spray paint. I thought about how I could get away with
it, if I only did it once, I was going to wear a ball cap, shave my beard off
because I look very different, but wear dark shades and scarf like a real
outlaw. I would never get caught. The night before I was going to pull the
trigger, so to speak, I had bad racing thoughts and I drank very heavily until
I passed out. I woke late, with a hangover so bad I was puking for the first
hour I was awake. It was almost noon, past my target time and then I just lost
the nerve or perhaps I knew I wasn’t that stupid, but either way I didn’t do it
and never thought about doing that (or anything like that) again. I was over
whelmed by the guilt of thinking it out, planning it so seriously, I never told
anyone about it either, so I felt ashamed only in the mirror or under the covers,
alone with God at night.
During this time I started to
reconnect with my family, one by one, I reached out to each of my family. It
started when I randomly saw my mother one night in late March. Kelly and I,
along with baby Julian, had to drop Cassidy off at Susan’s house and my mom was
waiting there to see us all. Mom had retired and was moving to Arkansas later
that week, it was the last time she could see Cassidy, or any of us, before she
left. It was the first time mom and Kelly ever met, they seemed to make a
connection immediately. Then mom picked up baby Julian (her third grandchild by
me), she cradled him so close and tenderly then, when mom looked up at me, she
was crying. I hugged mom and the baby, we instantly broke down the wall, both
of us felt a lot better, I felt Love again, my mother's Love and there are few
feelings in Life as pure and good. It's the kind of Love that heals, seeing my
mother again gave me both strength and hope. In the following weeks I reached
out to my brother and eventually my father until, by the time spring came
around, I was putting forth the effort to rebuild my foundations and I started
to feel a little better again. Yet, and by this time in my life I knew this,
this was all part of the cycle. I get bummed and blue in the short days of the
cold winters, I get bright and creative with the full energy of the warm
summers. I knew it, but I didn't care because we needed me to do something, so
I did.
In May I took a job with Kelly’s
brother as a door-to-door Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman. I caught on really
quick, it was a very easy role for me to play when I turned on my more manic
but positive qualities. I perfected my performance of the sales script, I
dressed casually cool, business slick and smiled even when I felt like shit. I
took on every challenge, I went for broke on every sales call and before too
long there was nothing to stop me, I became the top salesman in my first month!
I won all kinds of prizes, made all sorts of cash, I put in 16 hours a day, I
worked 7 days a week. I was a machine, a vacuum cleaner selling machine.
Kelly’s mother, who did not like me up until this time, made a big effort to
help. She let us live in an empty house in Chicago's unique Shoresch Village
neighborhood, it's where Kelly’s grandparents had lived. Grandfather passed
away in the house in 1982 but her grandmother was ill and living with Kelly’s
mother. We felt stable, we felt grounded, but it was all built upon a lie, a
lie I was telling everyone around me and even myself. I told myself this lie
when I cashed those big paychecks, I told it when I won the set of luggage or
the color TV, even as I won a trip for the family in June, I lied, I was not
happy.
Everything seemed to be going
very well, I wore the mask very well and everyone around us joined in the good
times but they were doomed to be short lived. In July I felt this intense
stress to repeat my incredible performance. I buckled and caved, no longer able
to play the game. I started to act out in strange, bizarre ways. Getting angry
with myself, I again hated what I had become, it was the lie crumbling under
the pressure of the reality. Then one day, simply because I didn’t care, I
wrote up a false deal to my father. I pulled a random old contract from the
business files, scammed on somebody’s credit card number and then used it as if
it was my father’s card to put a “hold” on this sale. I put the “sold” machine
in the office for safe keeping. I had every intention of covering my tracks by
actually getting my dad to buy the Kirby when he came to visit the next week
but it didn’t work out that way…instead the Kirby company ran the credit card,
it went through and a few days later, when the person who owned the credit card
called to dispute the charge, all the shit hit the fan and I was busted.
I was fired and told there would
be criminal charges filed against me soon. I left the office in Arlington
Heights, got on the toll way back to Chicago and I was an emotional wreck, my
head about to burst from the inside out. I was trembling, my heart was beating
hard, I couldn't catch my breath. I was
streaming tears, not thinking clearly as I gripped the wheel of that ’89 Dodge
van, I pressed the pedal hard, speeding along at better than 75 miles an hour.
I had a sudden urge, almost irresistible feeling of making a hard right turn
right there on the freeway, in front of this semi-truck that was riding close
in the lane next to me; when I checked the rear view mirror to see how far in
front of the suicide machine I was, I caught a glimpse of Julian’s car seat in
the back seat. I burst out, crying harder, tears turning into a flood obscuring
my vision, I took my foot off the pedal, pulled into the left shoulder
emergency lane. A state trooper came to help me get back on the road. I got
home to Kelly, immediately breaking down and telling her about everything I
could until, somehow, some time that night, she checked me into Sparrowood
Hospital because of my suicidal tendencies, and then I don’t remember too much
more than that for several more weeks.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
 |
| Julian, March of 2014, after saving us from a lethal house fire! |
This excerpt from Chapter 4 of “My
BiPolar Reality; How Life Goes On…” is significant to me this week because that
child who is born, Julian Destiny, celebrates his 18th birthday this
Friday, 5 December 2014! I cannot believe how quickly time has passed with this
child of ours, he is an amazing, artistic and gifted individual (his IQ was
tested at 143) and we could not be more proud of this boy. When he was born I
was already 35 years old and it was because of him, that I didn’t try to commit
suicide back in ’97; this child would go on to save our entire family’s life
when we almost had a house fire earlier this year, before we relocated from
Illinois. He has become one of my most trusted friends too, in a way no other
child of mine has bonded with me, Julian has a unique understanding of me as I
do of him too. It’s weird, a bit curious really, but there’s a connection
between us, Julian and I, that resonates in my hidden halls of past lives, as
if, somehow, Julian and I know one another from the past too. I know, call me
crazy (and I have papers to prove I am), but there’s a special bond with this
child I cannot otherwise describe. In the very least, at my most basic human
level and in my heart of hearts, I don’t care if we knew one another before or
not; I’m just very Grateful we have this life, this time and space together
now. This boy, this child of my destiny, is now come of legal age so although
he’ll be my son until the end of time, he is no longer my legal responsibility.
That’s a really weird feeling too, as a parent, it’s even a little frightening
(for me, I admit) that he is now responsible for his own actions, whatever they
might be…it’s Julian’s life, although it always has been, it’s now his time to
start shining in his own right/rite…our little squirt is now an adult man!
“My BiPolar Reality; How Life Goes On…” used by permission of The Intrepid Editor
Press Ltd. and is available (LIMITED autographed first edition) at dphilipchalmers.net OR at your favorite purveyor of books,
magazines and gifts everywhere.
