The Prodigal/1991-1992

I was so far gone. Cuttings were frequent and intense. I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 1989 by Dr. Awar. He told momma and daddy that they should have me hospitalized. But, they didn’t. After Valencia, I had cut my wrist for the first time, not deep, but I was still hospitalized in the Pact unit on a 51/50 for 3 days.

The second time I was hospitalized was in 1991 on another 51/50 after I cut my right wrist again the same familiar black stitches decorated my wrist. I was fed up with life Mia was the only person I could really communicate with.

When Mia started school I was the one responsible for getting her to school on time on the city bus, Bus 22. I still went to Fresno State, and took two buses to get there. I was practically a mother to Mia. People used to think she was my child, and I let them believe she was. Especially people I had gone to school with.

No more joy riding in momma’s candy red Mitsubishi with Moe down Blackstone listening to M.C. Hammer at night. We were restless. Moe began to drink heavily as well. She used to hide in the closet as a child. Moe’s relationships with men were just as empty as mine. She was beautiful, a petite young woman, she was always skinny, with shiny red voluptuous lips, very sweet and soft spoken, except when she drank, she used to want to rush out of the door, just like momma, there was no stopping her. But I want to write, even then, Moe was always the best of us, momma used to say she was special, she was always momma’s favorite as a child.

In the fall of 1991 I met a man in my History of Spain class named Douglas Sherfy. He was a graduate student already, 35 years old and single. I used to look at him in class, he was always raising his hand and talking, I thought he was extremely intelligent, and that fascinated me.

One day, while I was sitting in the back of the class, as was my usual custom, he came back I thought he wanted to talk to the man sitting next to me. But the man next to me tapped me on the shoulder as I was too self conscious to look at Doug. “He wants to talk to you.”

Doug was tall, “6,2” had blue eyes, was a Christian, and very intelligent. He played the trombone and wore spectacles and was kind of awkward. He still lived with his mother and father, which I thought was strange, what was even more strange he was already 35 and still had a strong attachment to his mother.

When we began to date, he had to be home by 11:30, inside his house. Doug preached Christ to me, and gave me a copy of the New Testament. Every time we made out Doug would stop me, saying he could go no further as he was a Christian and the Lord could strike him down in his car on the way home. Really, I thought? He told me he loved me and wanted to marry me, but was always at home by 11:30. Everything revolved around his mother. Even on my birthday, he left early, my brother Boi who was engaged at the time to an Austrian woman named Elizabeth said, I could do better than Doug. My daddy used to call him “Goofy” which hurt my feelings.

One day out of the blue, Doug broke up with me. I told him we didn’t have to get married even though he never bought me an engagement ring. “Don’t put pressure on yourself” I told him. But he was determined to leave. Even though I wrote to him many times, he never wrote back. God had used this insecure man to bring me back, as the prodigal, as I was so far from home. I devoured the bible he bought me, and marked it all up, until it ripped.

I began attending the Worldwide Church of God in the fall of 1992, the church that the late Herbert Armstrong of The World Tomorrow had founded. I used to receive free literature from his program years ago, and the magazine The Plain Truth, which I still had copies of. They worshiped on the Sabbath, on Saturday.

Herbert Armstrong preached a lot about prophecy, but after his death Joseph Tkach Sr. who took over, brought the emphasis of the Church back to Jesus where it belonged.

I was baptized as a born again believer on December 27, 1992.

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“I will arise and go to my father, and will say to Him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before You.

And I am no longer worthy to be called Your son, Make me like one of Your hired servants.

And he arose and came to his Father. But when he was still a great way off, his Father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

(Luke 15:18-20)