Chapter 7

"Some people say it's a long way down before you hit rock bottom, in some peoples opinion this is where it started for me...

Two weeks after Hope had returned I finally got the courage to ask her on a date. Her reply was a very large ... YES.

We planned to go to the movies on Friday of that week and met at the mall. Though I was very nervous, I reached for her hand. The second our hands touched a 'spark' of sorts shot between us, all the sudden I felt a tidal wave of emotion hit me. Love, hate, self-loathing, anger, happiness, childlike joy, bashfulness and any other emotion you can name, I felt it. I tried to ignore it though out the movie but it just got worse. I could feel the emotions of every one in the mall and the theater, even the couples quietly making out in the back row. As we were leaving the mall the tidal wave calmed down slightly and I was able to walk with Hope, hold her hand, and mostly just enjoy the rest of the evening with her.

As I walked her home many things were going through my head but not the things you would expect after a first date. Instead of worrying about kissing at her door, I seriously thought I was going insane. We made it to her front porch then sat and talked for an hour before I realized it was late and I had to get home. Finally letting go of Hope's hand I noticed that some of the emotional waves were gone, not totally absent but allot less.

I was confused. I was in love. I was desperate for answerers.

When I got home from my date I sat down and had my first really serious heart to heart with my mom. I told her about everything that happened that day and explained things the best way I could. I think instantly my mom thought I needed mental help because of the way I explained the feelings and thoughts I was getting from others but I can't prove it. I heard her crying later that night and I swear ... I honestly FELT her crying.

Every day for the next two weeks Hope and I did everything we could to be together. There were times I went to her house and sat on her porch swing holding hands and talking and other days we went out to eat. There would also be days where Hope would come to my house and play my Atari system or mess around with Basic programming on my Tandy color computer 2 (that's a really old computer that didn't even have a hard drive, instead it used a cassette tape player to store data and had 8 MBs of ram which was HUGE for it's day).

On November 28th 1986 I finally told Hope that I loved her. She didn't say a word. She just threw her arms around me and we finally kissed, lips to lips. The sparks from holding hands was nothing to what I felt then and there. Everything grew really calm and my mind was at total peace for the first time. Then the kiss ended and my mind exploded with millions of thoughts (most of them were not my own but this I didn't know). Hope said 'I love you' back to me and I faked a smile and told her I had to go. I think she understood because she never questioned it and later told me that she knew I always loved her.

By December 2nd the voices were getting so bad ( they were other people's thoughts but I thought I was hearing voices) that I wouldn't even come out of my room for two days before my birthday. I didn't want to see any one. I guess my mom and dad were worried about me because the next morning I had a really long Psychologist appointment. I was put through 10 grueling hours of mental evaluations before mom and dad came back to picked me up. No one said anything about where we were going or what we were doing but I was exhausted and strung-out and just fell over sound asleep. On my birthday, December 4th, I woke up in a place I didn't recognize, with people I didn't know and restrained to a bed. I was in a psychiatric hospital..."