Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

New Year's 1995

I was born the year the Beatles broke up, but that takes us back a bit too far. We'll fast-forward past my small town childhood. We'll fast-forward past my geeky adolescence, a high school experience overloaded with activity, from high school marching band to yearbook to the school paper.

We'll fast-forward past my years as a Penn State undergrad, much of which you can read about in Dedicated Idiocy, as seen through the prism of my involvement with the Penn State Monty Python Society. You can also read about my college radio experiences in something I wrote called Radio Days.

Let's pick it up right after college, because what I was really interested in doing was writing a summary I could point my friends to if I hadn't seen them in more than a decade.

Reviewing my life for the past 13 years or so, you have to include several failed relationships which, unpleasant though they were, helped make me the person I am today. First was Leechboy, who the name implies was not exactly my knight in shining armor. The year after college, 1992, I was trying to support both of us and needed some direction.

Part of me wanted to go into public broadcasting, but I would have had to move to a city. I was still too much of a country mouse to attempt that.

Like the groundhog who sees his shadow and runs back underground for six more weeks, I chose to go to graduate school. I was accepted at Penn State in the English Department, studying for an MFA in poetry.

About a year or so into the MFA program, I got up the nerve to leave Leechboy, dyed my hair black and moved out into a small room, where I never bothered to unpack my boxes. There, I helped a roommate perform an exorcism on the house, only to discover, after everyone else had moved out, that the presence had reentered through a basement door we hadn't blessed! Fortunately, it stayed in the basement, thumping around, until I got my boxes moved.

From there, I went to a place dubbed the Hippie House, a sort of sanctuary for hippie types. My brother sublet me his room out of kindness and slept in his VW bus in the back yard for the summer.

New Year's 1996

One day, a skinny guy with long dark hair and a dreamy look in his eyes crashed on the couch. He and I got to talking, he followed me downtown while I ran errands and before I knew it, he had moved into my room.

There were plenty of signals it wouldn't work with The Druid, one of the biggest being his schizophrenia. But I was young and foolish, and he was cute, so I kept thinking things would get better. The year I got my MFA in Poetry, The Druid and I married.

Me in my wedding dress, 1996

Our honeymoon was an aimless road trip that started at the National Rainbow Gathering in Missouri and all the way up the Mississippi to Canada, where a bear broke into our truck and took all our food. Running low on money and ideas, I suggested driving back to my hometown and staying with family until we could figure things out.

My mom let us stay in my old room until we found a place. I scoured the classifieds and found us a little apartment across the river. While I took a job as a pizza delivery driver, The Druid took a job as a dishwasher in a bar. But The Druid had a lot of trouble focusing, and when he lost that job, I got him one in the kitchen of the pizza place. There, I could see what a scattered sort of employee he was, so I wasn't surprised when they let him go.

Pizza delivery demanded its own sort of grace and inspired me to write a novel I hope to finish in the near future.

The pivotal moment for The Druid and I came on a vacation we took to New England, where we stopped in Salem and The Druid really lost his stuff. On the way back, in tears, I begged him to seek counseling. But when we spoke to the county to find out about free services, they would only interview him, not me. He must have been having a coherent day, because they had no recommendations for treatment.

Just before Christmas, 1997, he went to State College to visit friends. When he returned, he told me it was over. Part of me knew he was right, but part of me couldn't face it. I slept on a pullout couch at Mom's, since she'd turned my old room into a studio/storage space.

I was deep in depression, getting to sleep at night by listening to John Lennon and swigging from a bottle of Jaegermeister I kept hidden.

Ironically, things had just been beginning to look up. I'd begun to lose some of the weight that had plagued me for years; I was down to about 175 from a high of 200. I'd taken a job at a local newspaper as a reporter/assistant editor, which was much more in line with my talents and even had a health plan.

My newspaper file photo, 1997

Perhaps that's why The Druid knew it was time to go. After all, he was a drifter at heart, and I was finding stability. Part of me could also say he chose his psychosis over me, since I was determined that he seek help. Either way, he was gone and I had to move on.

After a short while, when I could face it, I went back to the apartment and packed up all his stuff for him to pick up. For Valentine's Day that year, I threw a Lonely Hearts Club Party for my friends in the area, buying myself roses. When he came to pick up his stuff, he asked me who gave me the flowers. "It's none of your business," I told him.

Of course, I developed a fruitless crush on a friend of mine who was gay, although I was hoping he was at least bisexual. It was only because he was so sweet to me when The Druid left, and tried to get me to cheer up by telling me how attractive I was. Fortunately, I got over that, soon enough.

I began spending a lot of time with my sister and her friends, who was living in State College as an undergrad, going through her own hippie stage. There were lots of colorful people, great conversations, colorful parties. Lots of food. At least it was better than a bottle of Jaeger.

Me and my sister, circa 1998

The rest of the story:

November 9, 2005 - My Life So Far, Part Two

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

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