3/11/03

I woke up at 5 after conking out just past 11:30. I can barely stay awake because sleep is so irrelevant right now. I want enough to function and that is it; I feel like to sleep in these moments is to waste time. I finally went back to sleep for maybe half an hour. Now it is light out and I could finally see out the window. It is all ocean. It is only a few minutes after 6, but I am staying up so I have hours to enjoy all this.

3/10/03

I cannot begin to process this day. It feels a bit like when overwhelming things happen and you just stand still. It is that chasm between reality and dreaming where you know something is, but you cannot fathom the depth that you know is there. The ocean is pretty but you know the levels it goes to even when you cannot grasp them fully.

I would need hours to write everything out and I will not get to enjoy my lovely room if I take hours to write. I am at a Best Western at the beach. It is 9:30 Monday night.

The last time I remember being at this beach, Julie and I took a Greyhound and “ran away” up here. We went to the bowling alley and were planning to see Flashdance. Someone came and picked us up first—a lady from church. We got in a lot of trouble. Of course I was to blame. In many ways I was because I was so strong. “Hey, Julie, let's run away to the beach,” I suggested. I was not an ordinary kid. This time I came to the beach the right way.

I can’t see the ocean well from here because it is dark, but I know where I will see it when I wake. I have a balcony, and I have opened the door so just the screen is open. I could not care less how cold it is. I want the sea breeze to be with me tonight.

Of course the weather is already incredible. One of my friends told me it is unusually nice. I informed her of my prayers! It is gorgeous. Today I spent the morning cruising down Highway 101 along the coast with worship music blaring and windows down. When I began in Santa Clarita the temperature was 75 through the inland areas. As I progressed west on 126 through Fillmore and Santa Paula, I noticed the temperature drop a bit. Suddenly I was just a few miles from the ocean and the temperature in my car had dropped nine degrees. It was all I could do not to speed onto the coastal highway early. By the time I hit the Ventura City Limits, where I entered the 101 I was practically racing toward the water. It was so beautiful. I must admit I never appreciated the immense beauty of the central coast Pacific Ocean, surrounded by the mountains. I grew up here. We went to the beach all the time. I was always on a car or a bus to Santa Barbara or LA; it was nothing to write home about. But now, almost 20 years later, it is something to blog home about.

I had serious God moments simply singing along as I drive down the coast. I could hardly believe where I was going. But before going to Santa Maria, I stopped in Santa Barbara., I needed gas. That was not fun—I paid something like $2.03 a gallon—and I got a deal in that city! But the funny thing is that I took the Bath Street exit. I remembered Bath because Cottage Hospital was on Bath. While I was roaming, I saw the gas station and filled up—and noticed I was right across from the Greyhound bus depot. I whirled the camera around. I lived at that bus depot. I was in and out of it so much. See, I never drove when I lived here so I have been all these places but never alone. Usually I saw the coast from the windows of a Greyhound, maybe a friend’s vehicle or church bus. Today was the first time I took that drive alone—alone with God. The bus depot stood like a Memorial Stone—and so did the hospital. I spent the weekend in ICU at Cottage Hospitals, but not from a disease. I overdosed when I was 14., It was about this time of year, March or April. I took 85 Norpramin that I stole from a person at a shelter where I was staying. I went to the garden benches at the Gottschalks Department Store and took the pills right in front of someone who most likely thought I was eating candy. I then stumbled through the mall sicker than anything and called an ambulance, realizing how scary it was. I remember that day still. And I went to Cottage Hospital on Bath Street in Santa Barbara. I saw that place today—there it was at the end of the road. And it looked small. Everything today looked so small. I taped the hospital and narrated a bit of that. And then as I drove off I just cried. I said, “It seems like I am talking about someone else because I would never on a million years do something like that.” The faithfulness of God is beyond what anyone who knows me now can imagine in my life. If I could show them what has happened and where I have been, if they could truly understand, we would have a revival. I have seen the mighty power of God—and today I saw it more fully. I did not get to see The Salvation Army or Juvenile Hall, but the memories lived. I was utterly amazed by the amount of memories I had in Santa Barbara. I only was there off and on a few months at age 14, but it shaped much of that time.

I called Carolyn as I was leaving. She is, of course, my former juvenile probation officer. We have recently been in touch again and it has been so neat to find that our spiritual places are so common. We met at a neat place at the mall and talked not long enough about our lives. It was so odd, sitting there with her like my buddy, but remembering the times that were not so buddyish. She did not tell me what happened the lat time I saw her but I think it involved me cussing her out before I moved away. Again, that seems like someone else because it is so far removed from me to be real. I have blocked out a lot of my adolescence. I remember big things, shaping incidents, but I have forgotten all these little things until they come back through a reminder by someone else. I think God has done that to help me. I never want to be 50 and have spent 25 years analyzing and rehashing the first 25. God has changed me. I am a new creation. But this week He is letting me view the old not to be sad or condemn myself, but to show His faithfulness. I think Carolyn was one of the main reasons I was supposed to come here, even though when I planned this I was not even in touch with her again. We wandered through the mall. I used to be a Mall Rat. I would spend hours a day hanging out there. It was rather pathetic. Then we went to a really neat dance store and I got to be the current me for a while, trying on dance clothes and exploring things. This was still a retrospective experience because the music in the store was from an oldies station and almost all the songs playing I remembered from growing up in Santa Maria. The owner had just come back from a dancewear show and had these cool new tights and she sold them to me even though they are not on the market—for about half the price of new tights. It was neat learning about the Santa Maria dance scene.

Next Carolyn drove me around Santa Maria and I taped my past. The runaway shelter, the high school, the probation/reform school, the awful apartments I lived in, the roads I walked miles on each week, the store I became a Pac Man champion at, the church that dismissed me and the one that accepted me, the falafel place—even some places she did not know I was taking in. The Holiday Motel was one. Some stories are too personal for blogs even, but my mom and I had a chapter there, too.

Eventually she had to pick up her daughter and I had to change and meet Jill at the Santa Maria Inn for dinner. I had wonderful friends who took me out to eat today! She dropped me at my car and I drove to an apartment I had not yet seen. 1007 West Orange. I was amazed at how awful it all looked. Then I went to Julie’s. I think her parents still live in the house on West Agnes. That house was the worst on the block. It was truly disgusting, and I wondered if it really could be theirs. The neighborhood was not like that, only their house. It was tragic if it was. The myriad of feelings inundating me, I realized I needed to find a place to change because I did not have time to drive up to the beach and check into my hotel. I remembered a great place to change: the college. Allan Hancock College was where I took my first college classes. I went straight to the music department where I spent a lot of time and changed in the restroom. More memories.

I knew Santa Maria had grown a lot, but the fact is, inside the town itself it hasn’t. Most of the growth is out by the freeway. Other than the work on the mall, which I had seen, it looked a lot like its old self—with some surprises. I mentioned it was small. Gasp. The town’s population is now just a few thousand short of Santa Barbara’s. I always saw Santa Barbara as the big city and us as the smaller one. My two great surprises were that neither is big. But everything looks large when you are a scared kid with no security or safety. My attitude was my protection. Everything was big because everything was an enemy.

So much about Santa Maria is like it was years ago. I realized that Tyler is actually prettier. I think I thought it was opposite. Also, Tyler is bigger even though the populations are about the same. It did not make me crazy or take me hours to drive across town here. And so far no traffic is more frustrating than Tyler! Wednesday when I do the Hollywood/San Fernando Valley trips we will reevaluate traffic.

Jill and I had a nice dinner. I forgot that tri-tip in a Santa Maria specialty. I asked the waiter about it and he commented that I was not from California was I? Marked already. It has been nice haring the accents. My speech is better of course because I pick up whatever I am around so I sound more Californian.

There is a lot of emotional and personal stuff I do not wish to share in a public blog. I don’t mean bad stuff, but just stirrings of my heart. Most are actually good. I am seeing so much, but it just doesn’t seem real yet. Did I really grow up here? Is the same person who did all that stuff living in my body now? But I think she is not. The into to my blog asks it a butterfly can return to its previous state as a caterpillar and maybe appreciate its transformed state more. I think the answer is yes. I think I know why the Bible says new creation and we always see butterflies as a symbol of that. See, it is not just some makeover that can be washed off with Noxzema at night. It is a truly new thing He does. If I have memories of these things, being in these places, then it must have been me. I know how to get everywhere in this town. I know the college and house numbers. I remember the police officer I kept encountering. So it was me. But it wasn’t. I lived in her body but I don’t know that girl I was because Jesus changed it all. I am hope that lives. If you knew all about me and could not see God, you would need scales removed from your eyes. People now cannot imagine me smoking, cussing, stealing from the mall, running away and rebelling. They cannot see me hating rules and lying to people. So they think I was always “good”—their teacher who is a prude. But I wasn’t. I saw the old house today too—another awful story—I am not a prude. I am a new creation who sees the value of purity. And that is a great difference.

Wow! God is awesome. I am loving this. I don’t want to leave tomorrow. I will be here all day but then I head back to LA. I want to stay in Santa Barbara suddenly, but it is monstrously expensive everywhere there. Wednesday night I am going to my old church and I wanted to stay overnight down south by the beach there because that is where David is. But I have two more hotels Thursday and Friday night too, so I better not. I love this room I am in now. It is an ANTI-dive. It is gorgeous. I asked for a late checkout. I love it. I want to stay a few days. I need to come back, but I wonder if I will.

Tomorrow is more adventure. I have another of my apartment to see. I have to have at least a taste of falafel. And I have a lunch date with at least one of the counselors from the runaway shelter. What reunions I am having. Thus far my attempts to reach Diane have been unsuccessful and I am greatly disappointed. To leave without seeing her will be a huge sadness in this trip. I might try her again in the morning. But I might give up. I might have to say good bye to Diane. She and Ron were so important to me. She was moreso then; I did not appreciate Ron as I do now. I hold them in such high esteem and respect. I want so much to see them. I did leave my cell number on their machine, but I said she did not have to call back long distance. I tried again. No fortune with it yet. Alas! A grief in the midst of the celebration.

Tomorrow I will have dinner with Carolyn again, and her husband. I will probably leave from there. The drive back to LA is not long but at night it will not be nearly as pretty, and in the dark it will be hard because that drive is pitch black. Who knows, I might give in and stay.

Well, this is my longest blog yet, but I knew it would be. You can’t relive your growing up years in half a page. Thank God I finally grew up. Oh, how I thank Him!