I took last week off from writing. Writing truly helps process things. Sometimes I need a bit of time to work through things before I am ready to continue on. Part three is going to be heavy and take a few twist and turns. I have things to share that I have not thought about in a very long time.
I also made friends with Ron Benway Jr. This was a poor choice on my part. He was at this point probably in his late 30s and kind of nut job. Me being a people pleaser and lacking boundaries stuck around with him for a while. At one point, we had not heard from his dad in about a week. After much convincing, we headed to his dads home, a mobile home. His truck parked where it had been for a week and no answer at the door, we contacted the state police. A smaller officer was able to enter the house through a window. Ron Benway Sr had passed away in bed. It was either very late in the morning or early by the time the coroner had arrived. He had been unable to get an assistant to come out with him, and I was asked to help bag the body. I being a people pleaser and lacking boundaries, said yes.
Ron had been dead for probably a week. He was very stiff and very dead. Let me tell you, moving the body of someone you knew and at 18 years old will leave an impact. Ron was as stiff as a sheet of plywood. I picked him up by the feet and the coroner took the head. We navigated his stiff, lifeless remains out of the bed and slid him into the body bag. Then navigated him down the narrow halfway and out of that home for the last time. As one of the local PD liked to remind me, I could have said no. But I was not good at no. Link to the obituary.
I talked to my mom about this shortly after it happened, and she told me rather coldly, if that bothered me, I should probably get out of the fire service. So talking about feelings was out I guess? This is where I turned into a situational alcoholic. Not to say I had not been drinking before this, but I got to the point where I could chug Bacardi 151 from the bottle without a chaser. Benway JR and I parted ways. While I was bad at no and lacked boundaries, I did eventually get tired of bullshit. About the point where he said we should switch identities, I was out. I don't know what became of Benway, but when googling him, I found a police report of him being arrested for stealing a license plate off a car in Old Lyme back in 2013. So if I had to guess life did not improve much for him.
The drinking turned into house parties. A three bedroom, two bath with a teenager in Old Lyme left unattended by adult supervision was not a smart plan for me or my parents. We filled that house many a time. Kids came from all over the state to join us. It was a wild time to say the least. I look fairly out of it in that picture.
Around this time, my parents decided it was time to sell the family property. They encouraged me to move to Pennsylvania with them. They had a job and a place to stay all lined up for me. I honestly can't say if it was a good choice or not to take them up on it. Life would have been different. But it is what it is, and I declined the offer. Josh found me a place to stay. I became the proud renter on a weekly basis of an air stream camper trailer.
I was depressed I was drinking heavily, and my money went to rent, smokes and booze. I would stop in most mornings at the local coffee shop that Deb Rutty worked at. She normally gave me coffee and my breakfast sandwich for free. I would go out to my car and ad some Irish to my coffee and go about my day. All of us worked hard, and our nightly ritual was to gather at Josh's house. One fateful week night, I had an 18 rack of Bud Light and an empty stomach.
I was sitting on the recliner in his living room when my assistant chief came and found me. Apparently, all the local officers and the resident state trooper were off that night. Another trooper was covering the town and was pissed I was not at the scene of the accident. EMS was on scene and was worried that I hit my head on the window due to the head shaped damage to the front window of my vehicle. I had flown across the car when I hit the tree. I took out the rearview mirror, broke the center cupholder with my ankle, and impacted the passenger side of the windshield with my head before the airbag went off.
My boss had shown up at this time, and somehow he and the assistant chief convinced the officer that I was a good kid who was going through some shit. Valid. I got a ticket for driving too fast for conditions. He advised me not to fight the ticket and just pay it. I took his advice. I was loaded up in the ambulance and taken to the hospital. Brian, Joe, and possibly some other Church members met me in the hospital. Joe gave me a blessing that I really can't remember.
Now we have caught up to this picture in my poor life choices timeline. One of our friend group was older and recently gotten out of jail. He of course picked up tattooing while incarcerated. While hard to see, that tattoo is the angle of death. I at 18 felt like I had cheated death, and probably rightfully so. If I never tried to power slide that car, I most likely would have been worse off after that accident. My ankle still bothers me to this day. In the next part of the story, we will go over the post accident fallout.
Now for the modern day perspective. I was a fairly good kid in my younger days. I was hell in my late teens. If I had stayed a good little Mormon boy, I would have had a different life. However, the lack of choice in my younger years led to some pretty fucking heavy rebellion in my later teens. Smoking, drinking and poor life choices were my weapon of choice in this rebellion.
Are you a parent? Are you a strict parent? Take note of this story. I had few chances to make mistakes as a kid. So I made them when I was in my late teens. I am not saying let them get away with anything they want. But some exploration and opportunity to chose will go a long way. I never had a safe space to express my self or ask questions outside our religious norms. I had to be the good little Mormon boy with my parents. This meant that figuring out life outside our religion required sourcing info from the internet or other local hoodlums. It did not always turn out well. This will play into part four of my saga.
My people pleasing nature, trusting nature and having a hard time with the word no led me down a wild road. If I knew more of the world, I feel like I would have been able to make better choices. If I had access to therapy as a teenager, I would have processed things differently. I probably would not have ended up at the duck river cemetery planning to off myself. Depression among other things seems to run in my family, but we never dealt with it. Repressed emotions, trauma and the inability to process them from childhood follow us into our adult life. Go ahead, ask me how I know.
As adults, we still need to deal with the traumas of youth. We call this breaking the cycle. Just because it as the norm in our house growing up in our families does not mean you have to continue it. No parent is perfect, and your kids will have a bone to pick with you about something. I highly recommend reading Grow Up by Gary John Bishop. We are only as stuck with these demons of the past as we allow our selves to be. Kids all grown? Cool, DO THE FUCKING WORK. It is never too late to be a better parent or grandparent, as the case might be. We all have issues, buy only some of us are brave enough to confront them. That is correct, I said brave. Dealing with mental health is not easy. If anyone pokes fun at you for trying to heal and be better, it is time to reconsider if they deserve a seat at your table.
Bishop :(:
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