Chapter 03: After the Earthquake

Linda after the Loma Prieta Earthquake

On October 17th, 1989 it was a hot day in San Francisco and Linda was riding the bus to work. The talk around her was all about the World Series. Linda was thinking about the things she had to do that night. The only strange thing was that at one point during the ride Linda noticed that the bus seemed like it was hopping up and down, also the people outside suddenly seemed to have problems standing. This lasted only a moment and Linda did not think much of it at the time. When the bus got to her stop she got off and walked the remaining distance to her office. There she found her coworkers standing around outside the office. She had missed almost completely the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

So much for Linda’s night of work. She was sent home. When she got there, there was no power and she spent the evening walking around talking to people and hearing the stories of what they experienced during the quake. She also listened to the stories of all the death that now was lying around her. Everywhere she looked she could see smoke from all of the fires.

After a night of aftershocks and not much sleep, Linda was downstairs talking to some of her neighbors when her roommate called down to her, “Linda, you’ve got a phone call. Your brother’s dead!” Linda ran upstairs and found that this was not some kind of sick joke. Many times during the time I knew Linda, she told me that her brother had been killed in a motorcycle accident driving in the rain. After I started writing this her sister Sarah told me that in fact he was killed in a car accident in Missouri, and the two passengers in the van he hit, a married couple, had died. Linda loved him so much she could not face his killing someone else.

Something inside of Linda snapped. A lifetime of guilt hit her like a freight train. She felt guilty for all the times she had been jealous of her brother and resented him. She felt guilty for her mother’s dying; for all the people she had used; for not being able to take care of the baby to whom she had given birth and the four others she had aborted. Now her brother, whom she loved dearly, who was better and more deserving of life than she was, was dead. Worst of all, she felt it was her fault.

She had done nothing that could have caused his death. Mental illness is not based on reason. Everywhere Linda looked, she saw smoke and destruction and she knew many people had died. She had been spared; she had not even felt it. The next day her brother died. She always felt as though it should have been her instead. He was wonderful. Everyone loved him. She loved him. While she was worthless. She believed that this was some kind of mistake and she should be the one who was dead.

Linda’s decline started at this point. She still did her best at work and was doing very well, but she became much more dependent on pot.

It was about this time that she started trying to kill herself. She made several attempts, took overdoses and threw them back up. Tried to use a gun that her father had given her, but was too afraid she would miss and end up disabled instead of dead. Finally, she did dream up a reason to live. As I said, mental illness is not reasonable. She wanted to live, because she wanted to know whether or not Elizabeth Taylor would get married again. She told me many times that this “thought kept me alive for many years.”

In 1990, she moved to Florida to be closer to her mother’s grave, I think. Her mother was buried in Florida’s panhandle. Linda was moving to Miami, where she had a job lined up. She lived there with her live-in lover who also was heavy into pot. She used to go for long walks on the beach collecting shells and slipping deeper into depression.

At some point around this time Linda visited her sister Sarah. Linda never had much respect for people’s privacy. Somehow, Linda managed to find Sarah’s diary and read it. She found a passage that stuck with her for the rest of her life and made her hate herself even more. Apparently, Sarah had written that Linda’s weight gain was the biggest disgrace in her family.

While living in Miami Linda was in a serious car accident. That may have caused brain damage and many other problems, like headaches, back pain, and problems sitting for a long time. While she was in the hospital, she was unconscious for more than 10 hours.

In 1992, Linda’s roommate moved to New York City and Linda went with him. By now they were no longer lovers; he, according to Linda, had lost interest in sex in favor of pot.

Linda loved being in New York. The people, the food, the pace. She loved it all. She hated only herself. She was working for Sloan-KetBettyng Cancer Center. She loved working there, and made good money. But more important to her was the fact that she was helping people with cancer, like her mother had had. That was what mattered to her.

By the summer of 1993, Linda’s condition was getting worse. Between physical problems caused by the car accident and Linda’s depression she may have already lost her job at Sloan-KetBettyng.

Linda told me that one day she came home and her roommate was not there. In her depression Linda just sat at home and did nothing. The next day her roommate did not come back. Linda managed to perform some of the activities of daily living, but there was something very wrong. At some point, the lights in her apartment burned out. When Linda got home, she just sat in the dark, wondering when her roommate would get back. She did not even have the sense to ask the super to replace the light bulb.

After a month in the dark, her roommate returned. Linda flew into a rage.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Out of town?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

“I did.”

“No, you didn’t. I have just been sitting here in the dark waiting for you!”

This argument just got hotter and hotter until the roommate grabbed Linda by the throat and tried to strangle her.

Finally, Linda’s roommate released her and Linda called the police.

When the police got there, instead of arresting the roommate, they called for an ambulance and had Linda taken to the psychiatric ward at Bellevue.

I think I should say that what I have just described is what Linda told me happened. The boyfriend told Sarah, her sister, that she was out of control and he was trying to subdue her.

I have no way to know if any of it is what really happened or just what Linda believed. I can confirm that Linda was admitted to Bellevue.

She spent the night at Bellevue. In the morning, they released her to her roommate.

This brought an end to Linda’s time in New York. She visited Sarah and her new niece Kim in Los Angeles. Then Linda decided to return to San Francisco. She left for San Francisco on New Year’s Day 1995. Before leaving Linda had asked her half sister Carol to pick her up at the airport and drive her to “The City”. But Sarah had warned Carol that Linda was not stable and had acted obnoxiously in LA.

When Linda arrived in San Francisco, Carol was not there to greet her. Linda was devastated, feeling that she had been abandoned, but Linda managed to get herself together and downtown.

Linda had used the last of her money to pay for the plane ticket and did not have any money for a hotel. She went to a homeless shelter tired, hungry, and cold and asked if she could stay the night. She was told, “No. We do not have any place for luggage and we cannot admit you if you have medications with you.”

Linda went outside and sat on the curb just crying. A couple of guys saw her.

“Hey, can we give you a hand. We know a place where you can stay. Put your stuff in the back of our truck we’ll drive you there.”

Linda put her bags in their truck, but before she could get in, they drove away, leaving her with nothing but her purse.

She walked around for a few hours crying, when someone asked her if she would like half a sandwich. Starving, Linda accepted the sandwich.

The next thing she knew she was hanging on a wall naked. Some guy was forcing drugs, booze into her and raping her. Linda had no idea how long she was there, days or hours. She only knew that somehow she managed to escape. She remembered all the rest of her life the look on the guy’s face as she ran from the building and he stood in the doorway naked watching her run. She also remembered for the rest of her life that if she had not escaped, he would most likely have killed her. Oddly, she said she never felt anger towards him.

Linda was naked when she escaped but managed to grab something as she ran away and covered up the best she could. Once she was outside she found some police and told them her story but they refused to believe her. Then she met a prostitute. The prostitute gave her a wrap and helped her get to the hospital.

That is the story as Linda told it to me. Linda’s father tells a slightly different story. This is from documents he filed to help her get disability.

“New Year’s Day 1995 Linda attempted to visit friends and relatives in San Francisco CA, upon observing her pathetic condition, the friends and relatives refused to permit Linda into their house, even for one day. Linda survived as a street person for one week (1–8 Jan 1995) during which time she was raped and beaten seven times. January 9th, 1995 she was arrested by police and taken to SF General Hospital mental ward”

Sarah, her husband, and their baby drove from LA to San Francisco and along with Carol persuaded the doctors at San Francisco General to admit her. These were the events that led to her first long-term stay in a psychiatric hospital. She was an inpatient from January 9th till January 21st. I do not know whether this was the first nervous breakdown but it was not the last. She was hospitalized because of psychotic breaks at least three times during her life and had many others that did not result in hospitalization.

When she was released, she was sent back to Texas to live with her parents. She was extremely paranoid and anxious. When driving in a car, she could not go for more than five minutes before she had to get out and walk around until she was calm enough to proceed.

She would wander through her parents’ house sobbing uncontrollably, saying she wanted to commit suicide and asking her father to lock up his guns.

Linda could not deal with living with her parents. She loved spending time with her father. She used to tell me how they would go to McDonald’s each morning for breakfast. But she and her stepmother did not get along and so Linda moved out.

She tried to work at several different jobs. She worked at the local hospital and got fired for hitting a coworker. She worked in various stores but could not hold a job. She shared a house with a woman who needed care occasionally but could not stay because the woman could not depend on her.

Linda’s father did all he could for her, but there are limits. He turned to the government for help and got Linda declared disabled by the Social Security Administration. SSDI declared that the date of her disability was July 3rd, 1993. I assume that date would have been the day she was taken to Bellevue. She was given a back dated check from that day, more than $5,000.00 after paying for her lawyer, and she spent it frivolously.

The SSDI payments were not enough to live on let alone get the kind of care that Linda needed or in fact the kind of care any disabled person needs. SSDI is a terrible program, as addictive as any drug and much more dehumanizing.

She did find other programs that were underfunded and overloaded. She did not find any real help.

Worst of all, she found a man. A man who would take care of her and who liked having her around. A man who would get her hooked on cocaine. This guy was a jerk and I will not use his name here. He liked Linda and they lived together, but he was not interested in sex and, following the rape(s), neither was she. His big thing was intravenous (IV) cocaine and he and Linda used to do it all the time.

The problem with jerks like this that have inherited money and spend their time shooting up is that they do not care about anyone. This guy was on parole for assault. He used to beat Linda. He threatened to kill Linda’s cats, the things in this world she loved the most. He even tried to run her down with his truck. Linda filed a complaint and his parole was revoked. But this jerk was also a fool. He and Linda made up while he was in jail and he gave her a power of attorney. She was supposed to set up a new home for them to live in.

She told him that they needed a new start somewhere else. So she bought a new car, furniture, jewelry and took out some cash, a lot, and moved to Astoria, Oregon. Somehow she forgot to tell him where she had moved, and when Linda got to Astoria, she had her name legally changed to Madeline.

All of Linda’s adult life, except for the time in Texas, she had lived near the ocean and she wanted to be somewhere near the ocean now. Astoria is a small town at the mouth of the Columbia River, quaint but decaying. Its biggest claim to fame is that they shot Kindergarten Cop there. Many of the stores on Main Street are closed. A large part of the population is out of work. Linda thought the town was small but it was near a big city, Portland. She soon learned that near is a relative term and she realized ninety minutes away was not near.

When Linda got to Astoria, she moved into a two bedroom apartment outside of town. Frankly, it was a dump, old base housing that had not been kept up. There was no water pressure and the neighbors were less than quiet. But when you are living on an inadequate fixed income, what can you ask for?

One of the first things Linda had to do when she got there was find a mental health clinic so she could get her meds. She also got involved with their program for battered women. They told her about various twelve step groups meeting in the area including one called Codependents Anonymous. Linda started going to these meetings, and there she met Betty and Wilma.

Betty and Wilma were two biker chicks who quickly became Linda’s best friends. Linda would go out with them or hang out at their houses. She would go to AA meetings with them, they were both recovering alcoholics. Linda came to love them both.

Linda tried to go back to work while living in Astoria but still could not hold a job. The best job she had was working for a video store but, she said, the manager fired her because “You are too friendly with the customers, always talking to them.”

The rest of the time Linda was alone with nothing to do. She had the money she brought with her and her SSDI checks. She moved into her apartment, but she never unpacked. It was not much of a life. Linda said she tried to return to drugs but found that no one was willing to sell to her and she did not care enough about them to pursue it.

One day Betty approached Linda. Betty was interested in something called the internet. Linda did not know much about that as it was 1999. Betty wanted to join a dating service, but could not afford the fee. She wanted to know whether Linda would pay half. Linda told her that she was not interested in dating. But Betty said it would be fun. They would meet some guys in Portland and have them take them out to dinner. So she and Linda signed up.

Linda and Betty checked out the ads. Betty found lots of guys all over the world, and Linda found one that interested her.

Next: Chapter 04 - Linda and Odell at First

Previous: Chapter 02 - Young Adulthood

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