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She informed me of her intentions to remarry & that Tracie was going to be adopted & that they were moving to Texas. She felt it best that I had no further involvement with Tracie, which in my present state I had to agree. Which left me without a reason to care less alone live.
For the next two years I muddled pointlessly through my life. I kept up with group therapy, though I felt it wasn't going anywhere. The doctor was convinced that I was a paranoid & delusional. He felt that I would need to take medicine for the rest of my life. At times I was almost convinced he was correct. But inside myself, I felt like a junkie getting shot up every two weeks. I felt it was time for me to attempt to get off the medicine.
I concluded that I would need to put distance between my current location and my memories. A friend of mine suggested that I come to Maryland with him, where we could stay with some friends of his. Upon our arrival, I started using street drugs with them. I had been lucky enough to find employment four times the first month. But became disinterested with work as my drug abuse escalated. Unfortunately the jobs I had gotten were the only jobs I was qualified for. Now I was without an income and was no longer able to contribute any drugs or money into the household & was asked to leave. So again I found myself homeless, with very little resources.
So I headed for the freeway & back to Chicago. What I hadn't expected and would soon be forced to accept was that doors that were once open to me were now closed. Everyone had tired of my behavior, my attitudes & my drug abuse. So there I was, in Chicago in the middle of winter, with no place to turn. My resources amounted to three dollars & some change. So, I headed for a restaurant that stayed open 24 hours, to take refuge from the cold, there I nursed coffee till the morning light. . During that time I, had made the determination that to survive, I would have to move on. I decided I would hitchhike to California. I could only hope, that the people that picked me up would be generous enough to feed me along the way. Sometimes they were, other times it was days in between meals. Rides sometimes were inconsistent, so during those times it was a matter of putting one foot in front of the other sometimes for miles at a time. Arriving into a new town, I'd search out the location of a mission for a meal & a place to sleep. Often times, only large cities would have a mission, which meant I would have to seek refuge in a clump of bushes or find a door that wasn't locked & slip inside. Other times I'd sleep under an underpass along the freeway. My meals would have to come from where ever I found them. Sometimes I was lucky enough to be near a McDonalds at closing time & discovered by waiting for the last sack to be discarded, I would find the fresh cooked product, to salvage.
During my life as a hitchhiker, I encountered every type of person I'd ever heard about. Sometimes the drivers would have their own agenda, which sometimes meant, the ride would be cut short. Other times it meant putting myself into a compromising situation, with less than a favorable outcome. Compiling guilt & regrets on top of misery. Sometimes, I found walking more enjoyable than having a ride. I never fully realized the harshness of nature's elements, until my whole life was spent outdoors. Having no where to turn, just trying to survive the elements, that nature chose to throw at me, seem to take everything I had.
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