Taken From Hippie Chick's Life Lessons Learned

THE DOOR OPENS…….

Fall is a lovely time of year in the Midwest with its changing colors and Indian summer breezes. When you live in this part of the country you learn to appreciate a warm breeze on a cold day. You learn to cherish it because tomorrow it could be gone.

It was a sun filled Monday morning in October 1973 in Diamond Lake. It was a day I had waited for and planned for years, playing it out in my head. Instead of the normal concerns of a typical twelve, almost thirteen year old I had other more important issues on my mind on this beautiful, unseasonably warm day. Survival.

It was just about seven thirty in the morning. “Just an hour and a half left until nine o'clock when freedom would arrive and the weather will get even warmer” I told myself.

I would close the door behind me, locking away everything behind it as I escaped. I would open up a million new doors, discover freedom and not have to worry about anger hanging around in the air, stifling me. I was determined to make my fantasy life real. I was set on having a life that wouldn’t hurt so much.

I would leave the seventh grade behind along with my Barbie dolls and my Sweet 16 Magazines and my little girl clothes, pony tails and such, and I would walk out into the fresh air and breath in the excitement of a brand new beginning. I would leave this place forever but not only that. I would leave my old self here as well.

But, for every beginning there is an end and for every end a new beginning. As a pendulum swings equally one way, it must swing equally the opposite way. I was hanging on to that pendulum, swinging back and forth, waiting for the time to pass.

It seemed to last forever at first, that time between now and when Mark would be there to pick me up. Mark was almost 20 years older than me. He wasn’t particularly attractive and there was nothing out of the ordinary or special about him at all. He was just an average guy stuck in his average life. And at the moment, he was letting his heart get him into more trouble than he would probably be able to handle.

Maybe he had some kind of emptiness inside of himself that I fulfilled, a pain or a need that was searching for recognition. Maybe God sent him on this unusual path to save me from myself and my own devices. Whatever the reason he had taken a special interest in me and had done so for a long time before this special day in October of 1973.

At first, his attention had made me agitated and nervous. He would make remarks or touch my hand or my cheek. We connected. I don’t know why or how but there was a definite connection between what each one of us wanted and needed.

I recognized him as my ticket out of hell even though I could not understand why he would even talk to me other than that he felt the connection too. There’s a reason for everything even if we aren’t aware of it at the time.

Mark and I talked about alot of things, but especially music. He knew all about the currently famous and in-style rock groups and all the classic ones too. He seemed an odd sort of person to me but, he was nice enough, a quiet spoken Italian guy and more significantly he seemed concerned and interested.

His focus began to flatter me over time. He actually acknowledged that I existed without putting me down and making me feel lowly and useless. He didn’t make me feel like a child or a victim or remind me what a drag my life was. I thought of him in the beginning as an affectionate big brother and over time I would learn that a man and a woman can never truly just be friends, sometimes neither can a man and a broken child. Sexual undertones are always present no matter what you do or how hard you try to avoid it. And then, as time went on and desperation infested me, his visions of a new life overtook me. Yep…nine o'clock, can’t wait for this to be over.

I wandered back up to my bedroom feeling like I was in a dream-state. Objects that had been on shelves for years took on new meaning as they caught my eye. I wanted to remember my childhood and all the pieces, remember them so that maybe one day I could piece them all together to create a full picture of that life that I was leaving behind. I wanted to remember my childhood so that I would never inflict the same horrible injuries and injustices on my own kids, if I ever had any. It was bewildering to me that I wanted to keep these memories. I didn’t know why in the world I would want to remember my childhood. Maybe I’m just a masochist, fond of the pain and a little afraid to leave it all behind for fear that I will cease to exist without its familiarity.

I marveled at the intricacies of my room and all the child-like things in it. Then John Lennon’s voice invaded my brainwaves with the lyrics of one of my favorite songs. John’s sweet voice was telling me to grab a match. I wanted to set a fire – Norwegian wood – isn’t it good!

I stood in the doorway for a very long time looking at everything around me. These things that surrounded me have enclosed me forever. I have always known them and have never been apart from them. But, now I was leaving them all behind me, saying good-bye to these useless things that represented my childhood, saying good-bye to who I was because I didn’t like that person. The person I was leaving behind was young and helpless and had no control over anything and it made me incredibly, unbearably angry. It was the kind of anger that takes you over, swallowing you up until you actually become a part of it and then it begins to control you.

The girl I was leaving behind was weak and fragile. She was just a stranger who stared back at me from my mirror. I hated her. I hated her life. Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and not quite recognized that person staring back at you? I recognized the features, the long dishwater blonde hair, empty green eyes, emotionless expression, faded blue jeans and peasant shirt. It was all me in the mirror, but it wasn’t really me at all.

Well, I was going to create my own destiny now. I felt like a female version of Superman, indestructible but without the cute little tights. I was the hippie chick version. There was nothing to stop me or hold me back. I severed my roots with a profound joy in the cutting of them, the ripping of them. They were ugly roots, skinny and scrawny, barely able to sustain life and void of nourishment. I set sail on a new adventure. It was indeed a “happening.”

Whatever happened to me from this day forward would be my own doing, my own fault. I would have no one to blame but myself for anything and everything. I would allow myself to be a victim no more. It sounded like heaven and I envisioned myself being quite successful, coming back to my past only to flaunt my success and power and to make them sorry. I wanted to make them feel sorry and sad, just as I had felt all my life it seemed. It was a childish thought and was quickly discarded and replaced with the desire to get as far away as possible and to never look back.

It started quite innocently, this new vision and infatuation. How hard could it really be to be an adult? It couldn’t be anymore difficult than the life that I had now and I certainly couldn’t do any worse of a job than the adult role models that were all around me.

I must have stood there for a long time in the doorway of my room because before I knew it, nine o’clock had come and gone and the six extra minutes that had passed were making me very nervous.

“What if he changed his mind and he doesn’t show up?” I asked myself.

A flurry of dread filled my head with a whole bunch of new thoughts entering the arena.

“I’ll have to unpack all this shit I’ve got stacked up by the kitchen door! And I’ve only got 30 minutes or so to do it before my mother comes home! Shit!”

But, just as I had given up my desires and thoughts of immediate freedom and replaced them with frazzled thoughts of how to correct this new problem a car horn beeped and I looked outside through the kitchen window to see Mark’s car in the driveway. My heart raced and I could feel it beating against my chest in an odd rhythm.

I opened the automatic garage door and let him in, parking the car inside the garage so that the neighbors would not see it. Because we knew that the police would be called and an investigation would ensue. We didn’t care. In fact I couldn’t have cared less about anything. This detail was tiny in comparison with the other things on my mind.

I didn’t realize the significance of this decision on Mark’s part to be involved with the disappearance of a 12 year old runaway girl. I didn’t recognize the significance of my own decision to run, at the time.

I was just a stupid kid and like a wounded animal stuck in a trap, I was struggling to just survive, gnawing away at myself to break free of a horrible case of bad luck and misfortune. I wasn’t aware of the actual conditions that I was about to create, that would revolve around this survival, until I was all grown up and a new person. It was a tangled web I was weaving but I kept stitching away at it.

It had only been just a few short weeks ago that I had sat in our upstairs bathroom with a razorblade, practicing the deed. How much would it hurt? How quickly would it happen? Would I see a brilliant beautiful light or a dark tunnel? Would I feel nothing at all in a forever slumber? It didn’t matter. I just didn’t want it to hurt too much.

I carved symbols in my skin at first using shallow, faint strokes but then I graduated to much deeper wounds and I was ready to end it all. No one would be home for hours. I would slit my wrists and lay in the bathtub and it would be done. I opted not to carry through with this plan – too messy. I thought about this as I watched the door of the garage open and then close again in slow motion. Time was slowing down or speeding up, whichever way you want to look at it.

My journey to adulthood happened in about a month, at warp speed. I would reinvent myself and create something from the ashes of this fire that I was about to set in the lives of everyone in my family. I didn’t give a shit. It was a decision that they would have to endure. It was a decision that they somehow deserved. This was a fire that would singe hearts but it would also validate my new existence by making the victim just disappear! This was a necessary day. This was a day of freedom and my ride was here.

The first words out of Mark’s mouth were “Are you ready?” He smiled very slightly and apprehensively and this little smile, this holding-back was recognized as a sign and an acknowledged of the boldness of our actions. This was by far the most important decision I had ever made. I was living a fantasy gone wild and made real, a dream come true.

I smiled back, a full smile, letting him know that I wasn’t about to change my mind but I didn’t say a word. I didn’t have to. He took me in his arms and hugged me and I felt protected for the moment. This was a new feeling and I enjoyed it’s warmth as we stood there in front of the pile of kid stuff packed in plastic garbage bags and duffle bags, in my parent’s kitchen and comforted each other.

We began to pack all of my possessions into the trunk and back seat of his car. This was my get-away car just like Bonnie & Clyde in the movies. I was a runaway. I was becoming a statistic, a face on a police flyer, a case number and a name. I was an outlaw and I loved the very sound of it.

As we pulled out of the garage and drove down the gravel road that lead to my old home, my old life, I felt really good. I felt free. But the uncertainness of tomorrow was a constant little voice in the back of my brain. I would listen to this voice later because right now I just wanted to enjoy this moment.

Mark was so sweet “Are you feeling alright about this?” he asked as we drove down the road to freedom. Mark had a deep, quiet voice that was very soothing.

“Yes…absolutely” was my reply to him in a voice that came out very small and timid. I heard it as the words exited my lips and I recognized this voice. It was the voice of a child who would blossom today. Like a flower that had been hidden underneath a cold shadow and without sunlight, could never bloom, reaching for the sun but could only catch a glimpse of it. Poor flower, so tired of her struggle and so desperate for just a little light. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to let the flower bloom or to re-seed, hoping for a better variety, more confident and heartier, without being afraid of shadows and the color red and a raised voice or a shattering glass. All of these things could send the child in me running for cover, back into the shadows where no one could see me wither and die.

There was this new voice inside my head that was strong and happy. The voice of a very strong woman that, with Mark’s help, would soon be born and held under the light and like a female version of Frankenstein I became Joanne Johnson, 22 years old born in Winona, Minnesota.

With Mark’s help I molded her, made her out of no more than a few bits of information. I shaped her and then I made her real. I made her better than real. Maybe she soaked up too much of the light. Like an angel tossed from heaven as Lucifer was thinking that he was better than God or at least as good, Joanne had a flaw, she had a God-Complex. Sometimes I think to myself that I did way too good of a job at this task of making Joanne real and I almost lost myself inside of her. I made her way too strong.


NEW BEGINNINGS

Less than an hour later we arrived at my destination, a one-bedroom apartment not far from where Mark lived with his wife. The walls had just been painted a stark white. It was bleak and bright all at the same time and I liked the feel of this space as soon as I walked in. The carpet was a tan color shag. Remember shag carpeting? Horrible stuff!

Mark had found a place close to his home so he could visit as often as possible, you know, go out for milk, stop over and see me, run to the market, and stop over and see me. Convenience was the key. This is a common practice for a man cheating on his wife. As a matter of fact, I could have walked the distance between where I was to live my new life and where Mark lived his normal life with his real family. What a bitch I was, an incredibly selfish little bitch of a person. I didn’t like myself at all and I was sure that no one could either.

In retrospect, I’m not quite sure why I eventually gave up this new identity that I was working so hard to create and had sacrificed so much of myself for. Joanne was a strong willed, emotional rock and not easily wounded, a survivor. She was everything that I wasn’t and could never be. I would venture to say that I had to eventually abandon this new identity simply because of her tremendously overpowering strength. She didn’t like to share and wanted to take over completely. The more I learned about her the more I feared this new person that I was about to give birth to because she was strong but she could also be very dark and it seemed sometimes that she was without a soul, without a conscience, without any regrets.

It was a hard life being Joanne Johnson, but certainly easier than being the old me–the helpless victim. But it still would have been much easier to live this lie forever than to go back and face the truth. But, necessity is the mother of invention and necessities change as do the people requiring them. Change can be a great thing or it can be an ironic, awkward and irritating twist of fate. I wouldn’t know until after the changes were complete that this particular change was not as beneficial and beautiful as I had originally imagined and actually, was not how I wanted to live my life at all – not even close.

The apartment was in a large apartment community of maybe fifteen or so large brown brick buildings housing 6 apartments in each building. It was a nice sized one bedroom apartment on the second floor overlooking a beautiful park with lots of large, mature, billowing oak trees and weeping willows with picnic tables scattered here and there. The complex was on a 75th Street which was a busy four lane highway in a fairly newly developed city about a half hour outside of Chicago’s city limits called Woodridge. Nothing ever happened here, very boring and a perfect place to hide out. It was so close that no one would ever think to look here in their own backyard.

The wind soon changed as those first days of freedom and bitterness now corrupted the breeze that touched my cheek as I walked for hours in the woods that were next to the property. Walking and thinking as the world blew past me along with the brown and yellow leaves and a past that felt way too close, still felt too close even though I was physically removed from who I was.

I had to change who I was not just in paperwork, not just environment, not just in name and identity but from the inside out. I contemplated this for a long time and for many days. The plan had to be carefully thought out and meticulously done.

I needed to eradicate the parts of myself that were unacceptable and feed the parts that needed to take over. I had to create adult emotions, intelligence, responsibilities and interests. I had to become Joanne, no pretending. It had to be real. I had to do, feel, think and act the way a twenty-two year old woman would – read the newspaper, know current affairs, ride the bus, pay taxes, fall in love, get a job, buy a car and then try to learn how to drive it.

Mark had collected all the necessary information from a friend of his. His friend’s sister was twenty-two years old. Her name was Joanne Johnson. We had her date of birth, place of birth and her mother’s maiden name. With this information we requested a birth certificate from the State of Illinois. Once the birth certificate arrived from there we obtained a new social security number. Once I had a birth certificate and a new social security card I was able to go and get a driver’s license. I had created a whole, fresh, new person!

The system was so flawed that it was so easy I wondered why people didn’t do it more often and then later discovered that they did only no one knows about it. No one seemed to care – pay the fee, fill out the form, go away, next. That’s government workers for you, the establishment. They don’t pay attention to the details and the cracks get bigger and bigger. I lived in those cracks.

I was a very mature twelve year-old in my old life but in this new life I was an incredibly immature twenty-two year-old out to have an enormous amount of fun and live not just a little. I needed to live LARGE! I was loose upon the world with no one to bark out any rules, restrictions or injustices. My reaction was to let the party begin!

I felt like I had just been released from prison after a long incarceration only I had never known this kind of freedom before and I was very excited. I felt like all the pieces were falling into place and that it would all work out.

Mark was paying all the bills. He had been stealing cash from his job for quite a while and had used this money to set up the apartment – rented some cheap furniture, televisions, bedroom set, dishes and silverware, a stereo, ordered telephone and electric services in my new name, my new identity.

The first night, after we had unpacked my stuff and spent a few brief minutes together, he had to leave. But, I wasn’t lonely at all. I wasn’t happy or unhappy. I knew that the times they were a-changin and I guess I didn’t really know what exactly to feel – so for quite a while, in the beginning I felt very positive and that was all I allowed myself to experience. Although there were times I didn’t want to feel anything at all.

“I’ll call you in the morning. Are you sure you’re alright, Reanne? He asked, his hand on the doorknob, standing there, my knight in greasy work clothes.

“I’m fine. I’m really fine, Mark. You’d better get goin. I’ll talk to ya in the morning, okay. I’m fine.” I said as I put my hand on his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. He smiled as he walked out of the door.

I had my music. CCR, The Beatles and the Stones, T. Rex, Argent, The Edgar Winter Group, John Lennon, Pink Floyd and the Who and my own six-string Gibson acoustic guitar, they kept me company. I had brought these treasures with me and they comforted me, as they always had done before. I had my freedom and I had no one to live with but myself. It was absolutely, incredibly and undeniably marvelous!

I woke up early from a wonderfully dreamless, quiet night to the bright morning sunshine coming through the window and falling all over the room. I relished this new sound of silence and then, gradually, the small sounds of birds chirping, water running, people in the apartment above me walking. These wonderful sounds floated into my ears. They were soothing and I remember how incredibly alive I felt, lying there alone in my new world.

I could feel the coolness of the new sheets and softness of the pillow. I was in tune, in harmony with my surroundings which consisted of boxes and bags at the moment. I didn’t have to worry about voices being raised, objects becoming projectiles, threats of physical and emotional torment, pain or the ugly color red. I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. Being alone was incredibly and whole heartedly a welcomed condition. I liked being alone. I was finally pretty comfortable with myself even though this new person I was becoming was kind of a stranger.

I switched on the radio. Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens was playing sweetly and my heart was happy and strong as the music poured into me and out again. How appropriate for the moment. It was meant to be. It was a sign. I felt renewed and rejuvenated, reborn again as I wandered thru my new environment singing along with Mr. Stevens’ song.

And then the phone rang and I almost jumped out of my skin, my privacy was penetrated by the sound of it. Who would be calling me? There was only one person who knew this number. It must be Mark. I ran to the phone and answered it “Hello?”

“Hi baby, it’s me. How’d you do last night? Did you sleep okay?” he asked. I said that I was doing great, slept better than I had in as long as I can remember. There was a silence on the line that lasted longer than it should have and then Mark said in a low voice, “I love you, you know.” I made the usual “I love you too” reply.

Mark was just calling on one of his breaks at work. This was 1973, we didn’t have cell phones so he had to stop at a pay phone to call me, the noise of traffic in the background, horns beeping. I must have realized it before but now it was very plain to identify. I was not only grateful to Mark but I had feelings for him. He was my first adult love affair and I lost my virginity to him. I actually lost more than just my virginity - my purity, my faith, my ethics, my morals – all were compromised and sacrificed. Survival is a hell of a thing sometimes. You’re human instincts, if you let them, will carry you through the most difficult of times and the most hurtful of situations but your instincts can never protect you as long as you offer your heart to others. This was the very first piece of my heart that I ever gave away.

Joanne had a philosophy that evolved from this experience in this area of human emotion – if you don’t have a heart then it can never be broken. This philosophy makes more sense as we journey farther down the road that is my past. It’s very clever of me not to have given in to this philosophy as it does make perfect sense. But I remembered that all you need is love….and I, along with the rest of the world, would forever be in search and in awe of it.