So I’m currently in something called LPH (Limited Privilege Housing) for being a bad boy. Been here since March 30th of this year. During this time, I’ve had ample opportunity to get in my head, which I’ve done with a purpose. I’ve moped over wrongs done to me in the past by this person or that going back 30+ years. These are the sort of endeavors one engages in when they are doing life and don’t really have anything on their mind and find themselves without a TV or radio to destract them.
Well, by chance, I started dwelling on an old hurt from about 31 years ago.
Now, before I go any further, let me warn you: this is a white-boy story. Also, I am mentally ill, which should be clearly apparent.
So, looking for lod hurts to gripe about, I landed right square on this particularly painful episode I had with this girl Melanie. Melanie was a waitress that worked at a Denny’s in Wickliffe, Ohio (Lake County). She was a very pretty girl and she was a head-banger and for some reason she liked me (She liked guys with long hair and I had long hair at the time.).
Perfect. I was taken with this girl the first time I layed eyes on her but I didn’t learn she liked me until later. there was just something about her – a gleam in her eye. She was just amazing. I KNEW I wanted this girl. I’d have been willing to sell my soul (for real) for her. Besides being a completely lovesick, naive fool, there was just something inside her that my heart recognized but I’d be hard pressed to put my finger on it to this day.
Well, one day me and my buddy go up to this Denny’s to get some coffee and thiw waitress goes out of her way to make sure she serves us. We get talkin’, she gives me her phone number, and a few days later we go on a date. This date ended with me never going back home again (I had lived with my grandmother at the time. What a catch, huh?). So we come to the agreement that I’d move in with her in her apartment. Literally, the only thing I owned were my own personal clothes and a few odds and ends. I didn’t have a car, I didn’t have a job – I didn’t have shit! I was a 20 year old boy with grandiowe dreams and no practical plan to realize those dreams, ot ANY practical plan for that matter. what possessed her to take me in this way I’ll never know.
That should have been my first warning.
So, charging on ahead single-mindedly and blindly I set out to lock this girl all the was in, completely investing myself into her (You mean it don’t work that way?). worse, there was actually something genuine there which made my feelings go much deeper than I had even realized. I got locked in. Soon problems started developing as it started becoming apparent that Melanie liked hot guys with long hair and hot cars, certainly a concern for a skinny guy like me with not even a pot to piss in. To make matters worse, I was very immature and this girl was nearly 8 years older than me with much more life experience. She started walking all over me, and I found myself trapped by my own feelings and an inability to assert myself in any meaningful adult way.
Disaster.
As I began to feel more and more powerless and desparate, I began doing what any immature, spoiled psycho would do: I began abusing her. In my childish, terrified panick I resorted to the only means I had at my disposal to get control of the situation: fear and intimidation. I really didn’t want to hurt her but she was wounding me mortally and I had to do SOMETHING! I will not burden with tie despicable acts of drunken violence that followed. It’s enough to say that I did things that I hate myself for bitterly to this day.
This all finally come to a head when, after a night of drunken violence, I awoke the next day to see a different Melanie. The “gleam” that had always been in her eyes was gone, not just toward me but altogether. This hurt me all the way to my soul and smacked sense back into me (And all that had to happen to bring about this great awakening was Melanie nearly getting her spirit beat out of her at my hand.). I was killing the very thing that made her so special and the thing that made me love her.
From this day on I never said a harsh word to her or raised my voice (Might have tried this in the first place). I was completely patient and I did whatever I could think of to bring that light back into her eyes, if it wasn’t already dead. And I sweated it. I PRAYED to God that that spark would return no matter what. For the fitst time in my life I placed someone else before myself. And, thank God, That “something” returned. Not toward me at first, but I didn’t care. I needed her to be her again no matter what. That’s all that mattered. I had to try to repair the damage I had done.
Now during all of this I was also awaiting trial on my first adult case. In the event that I was found guilty, I was hoping to get probation. Didn’t work out this way. I ended up getting 2 years flat (16 months under the old law), no probation, no shock probation (Judicial release). Melanie hung in there with me for a while writing letters everyday. But the she started meeting guys, hot guys with long hair and hot cars. About 6 months in I got a “Dear John” and it was over.
Now it had occurred to me, gien the past, that she might very well leave me before I got out. Cerainly couldn’t blame her. But when it happened, it absolutely ripped my heart out. I have never hurt so bad before or since then (I am talking about it 30 years later). It changed me. As it turned out, it wasn’t second thoughts garnered from our previous experiences, she met a hot guy with long hair and a hot car. She had dreams of being Bobby Blitz’s (a rock star) girlfriend.

Richard Moore
DOC #a470020
Toledo C.I.