Journal, June 23, 1992…

“Do you feel it when I hold you? -Me
“Sometimes.” -GF

In October 1992, I drove to New Mexico to be with a woman who claimed she’d been sexually abused as a child and as a result was spending a month at a treatment center. We begin with my drive to the Cottonwood Treatment Center in the Las Lunas, New Mexico area.

Journal, Sunday, October 4, 1992:

6:35 a.m. The letter she read to my answering machine came in the mail yesterday. I haven’t opened it and don’t know if I will. Thinking about it, I feel so angry I am suddenly wide awake.

7:29 a.m. “Batesville Casket Company. Drive Safely.” Ha, ha.

11:00 a.m. Dangerously close to her.

Afternoon: we are together again, looking into each other’s eyes. She had doubts of me even coming to see her. But there I was, suddenly holding her close.

“I’m moving to Arkansas,” she said.

After a long silence, she said, “Say something.”

“I have nothing rational to say,” I replied.

“They say something irrational,” she told me.

“Marry me,” I answered.

Journal, Monday, October 5, 1992:

I feel sad this morning, waking from nightmares about her. Her voice plays over and over in my head: “I need you in my life and I love you,” and, “I am moving away as soon as I get home.”

What will become of us? I can’t ask her to stay, and I won’t go with her. {Sidebar: this became a recurring theme in my love life until I got married.} We’ll have no time to discover who we are together. All I can do is let her go.

I came to the airport, bought a sectional (a type of aeronautical chart), sat on the hood of my car and watched the jets fly, listening to them on the scanner. When I can’t fly, being near aviation soothes me.

Blue notebook, Monday, October 5, 1992:

Worst case scenario: she will go insane and kill herself.

At this treatment center, which is a cluster of residential houses, I am joined by about ten “family program” participants here to visit patients. We sit in a living room, in a large circle of couches. A counsellor places a box of tissue between each participant, presumably expecting us all to cry. Most of us are husbands and boyfriends, referred to as “S. O.” for significant other. There are also a couple of parents.

Two of our group claim to have been sexually abused.

“My father sexually abused me for 10 years.” -Charlie

Journal, Tuesday, October 6, 1992:

I’ve come to one of my favorite places, Sandia Peak, to see what nature has to offer my situation. I was given the sound of winter-like wind in the trees and the auburn sky turning dark.

Blue notebook, Tuesday, October 6, 1992:

“None of us are going to see things the same way after this,” someone says. I don’t exactly believe that.

“It becomes a swirling toilet of despair.” -recovering heroin addict

Five basic freedoms: perceptions, feelings, thoughts, desires, fantasies.

Journal, Wednesday, October 7, 1992:

Our tearful eyes as she told me she had to go away; I told her I would let her go. So many tears and it’s only 11 a.m.

Blue notebook, Wednesday, October 7, 1992:

Nightmare last night: she and I were forced to sleep in a graveyard.

One family member, a mom felt convinced that if she told her daughter the truth about what went on in their family, her daughter would kill herself. I sort of talked her down, and she hugged me afterwards.

This program is not very polished.

That night, freaked out and disappeared into the desert. We searched. Four hours later, she returned, shivering and muttering incoherently.

Thursday, October 8, 1992:

Some part of me never really believed she loved me in the first place.

I drove eight hours home listening to baseball playoffs on the radio.

* * *

Years went by, and the moral panic of systemic and ritualized sexual abuse subsided.

She met someone and married not long after leaving me, and he was a bad choice. They divorced, and she married a woman in 2002-ish, only to divorce again in about 2008.

Toward the end of her life, she began to claim that she finally realized that she should have stayed with me.

In the end, I felt the entire “sexual abuse treatment center” experience was suspect, and history has adjudicated that conclusion.