I had made up my mind about the path I was to travel on the day I spoke with Candy. If you recall that conversation I narrated in the last chapter, you may wonder what sort of person I am. In one moment, I was indulging in a love driven fantasy, and in the next moment, I was free of the ill effects of not knowing the reasons it died when everything was going well as per plans we made. Most individuals of 17 tears of age would have gone to pieces, but not me. I not only did not allow it to damage my mind, and also protected my determination of going forward in the world alone, succumb to mom's pressure on me to go home with her.
Today, at a lot more mature state of mind, I can look back on that day and do some psychological analysis of my idiosyncrasy that was controlling me then. I am aware that a trained psychologist of my high school had opined that I maybe having what then was called, 'Multiple Personality Disorder Syndrome'.

However, I do not consider that diagnosis as an abnormal condition. I believe every thinking being has many personalities and like cloths we use for different occasions vary, we adorn various masks of personalities that are appropriate for the situation at hand. The aging and changes that it brings in us perhaps changes our inventory of the masks to fit those changes automatically.

Over the years, I read many books in the discipline of Clinical Psychology. I was driven to knowing myself. While growing up these questions rose often in my mind:
What makes me to think in certain ways that an average person my age doesn't? Why my choices of clothing, books, entertainments etc., and behavior do not follow that of the gender I am born in? Then I had no access to professional psychologist and no one to be my mentor. I then had to turn to the self-help and acquiring knowledge of humans. we the Homo sapient species. When I look around, and see what humans have done to each other and to our planet, I wonder if we really are sapient?

Development of my personality Itself puzzles me; even today I sometime wonder who I am today, and how I become different in certain situations! In high school, I had so much compassion for animals and could not think of hurting a wasp. I had refused to take Biology to avoid dissecting a frog, and yet, I did beat Walter mercilessly. At 17, I fell in love and I have no doubt about loving Candy deeply and spiritually. It was not just a hormone driven feeling of sexuality; it was something so special that during that ephemeral episode of loving Candy, I experienced a life that many fiction writers and poets have described it as being in a Shangri-La. My life was in a paradise like setting that I dreamt every night with her. There were times, when we would together sprawl on the floor of a meadow, behind our house, hidden in the tall grass, experiencing a body-less union while just holding each other in a naked embrace. A gentle force enwrapping us, would immerse our souls in a primordial pool of tranquility. The rapture of bodies merging to form a single entity, is beyond the conception of any sage of Biblical literature, but I found it described in the Eastern philosophical writing I read here in Hollywood, some forty years later. The incarnation of Shiva in a form of an assimilated man and a woman in a cosmic dance. That sense of equality between the sexes sadly did not materialized in the land of its origin.

I am telling you this part of history now because the story of me at the age of 17, I had written in my journal then and my decision to leave everything that would have protected and comforted me, behind, I believe, may be understood today better. Then I was at the thrush hold of stepping out in the world. I do not want readers to have a distorted view of me as a loser who walked away from the sublime love for Candy without a fight. I love her even today in the same spiritual uplifting way and will continue doing so. I do not regret my decision of letting her go because I loved her so much that making her life as hard as mine was sure to be. A paradise or the hell, after all are conceptual places from where no one has returned to give a factual account, therefore it is better to leave them in the fictitious world of writers and poets; in this reason, logic and practicality supported world of humans, myths are taken with a large dose of grounded reality; the present is all that matters. This subconscious mind probably was behind my decision to take chance with the fate and move on.

Let me take you back to Meeker, Colorado and describe what happened to me on that fateful day:
You may remember that mom and Mr. Roy, my stepfather, had decided to return to their homestead on the Taylor Mountain, West Virginia and I had refused to go with them. I am not sure why but somewhere in my bosom a tiny speck of hope was holding me back. I in my stoic personality, had walked away from Candy. I took what happened between was as an opportunistic endeavor which Candy ended when a better one came up. I had faced similar situations during the final examination period of my school years. Young women and few male students would approach me with a friendly attitude. Because of my top grades in math and science courses, I was placed in the Gifted and Talented Student class; GTS for short. They would smile and dish out greetings whenever we would meet in a face-to-face encounter. Then invite me for small get to know sort of bash. All to learn from me how to do Algebra and Geometry problems. After exams, all that bon homie stuff would dry up. I caught on it much later, but it prepared me for life, how not to let anyone use me.

Candy's relationship with me was not based on any petty gaining plan; I felt her love like you feel falling snow on your face. That feeling for her, somehow did not die and I unconsciously hopped that she would break all the barriers and shackles and be back in my arms. I had to stay back for that moment and nothing, not even thoughts of my safety entered in my decision making the. Anton's rape of me should have put fear of living alone in the same place; it did not.

I lied to mom and Mr. Roy that Candy was moving with me and we will have all protection a policewoman brings home with her. Reluctantly and after a promise of returning to her, if arrangement did not work out in a month, she relented. Two days later, I stood on the porch and watched the U-Haul truck pulling out and with that, she went out of my life for good. I sat on a wicker chair on the veranda for a longtime, not thinking of future, past and unaware of the present.

Aloneness is an emotion that is hard to describe, and more difficult to justify. However, if one learns to be alone, and not become lonely, then it is an unusual gift. What I read in Carl W. Jung's books, which I read most, is this, which I am quoting here from, "The Undiscovered Self", Chapter 4. THE INDIVIDUAL'S UNDERSTANDING OF HIMSELF:

"He knows how to distinguish himself from the other animals in point of anatomy and physiology, but as a conscious, reflecting being, gifted with speech, he lacks all criteria for self-judgement. He is on this planet a unique phenomenon which he cannot compare with anyone else."

At that moment on the porch, I am sure, my subconscious psyche was searching for that illusive Self. Many evenings before Candy came in my life in a serious way, I used to go in the neighboring cornfields and just lay on the ground facing the vast blue yonder above. Just watching birds returning home after feeding some faraway places. In the setting sun of fall, they used to acquire various colors and you couldn't tell what they were.I used to think they are coming from some mysterious island and bring magic that creates unusual creatures like me: a woman-baby in a man's body and psyche. Like many others, same old questions as: 'who am I' and 'where I am going', did not rise in my mind. I somehow always knew who I am, from the age I began thinking beyond the daily needs.

When darkness covered the landscape and a solitary streetlight on distant road came on, I got up and went inside. The bare living and dining room made me realize how empty my life had become in an instant. I pushed that thought aside and went to the refrigerator and pulled out a pot of pasta that mom had left for me. I ate what I could and went to my bedroom. All my stuff was there neatly arranged. All my Journals kept in a lock box were there. I finished my toiletry routine and went to bed without knowing what time it was. In that remote part of the state, there was no TV cable service and antenna had been dislodged from its base. Other than reading and writing I had no other way to keep my mind occupied. At Candy's we had everything but now that all was over.

Mr. Roy had written down instructions about what to do if the lawyers arrive for inspection of property and stuff like that. He also had left a note stating that the Utilities were cut off at the end of the month and if we decide to live then Candy has to get it transferred on her name. Leaving the plans of what to do tomorrow, to the day when it arrives, I went to sleep with a Smith and Wesson 38 service issue revolver that belonged to Pappy. Fear had no place in the minds of folks like me then and it is so even today.