Free Forever the Fat Kid: How I Survived Dysfunction, Depression and Life in the Theater by Michael Boyd Page B

second scene, a man in a tuxedo finds a little boy who has been separated from his mother. They’re seen a number of times in the final minutes of the movie, but it was the last shot of the two of them that burned itself in my mind. In that final scene, the man is holding the little boy close to him as the ship sinks into the ocean. He tells the little boy, who is still crying for his mommy, “Don’t worry, we’ll find her soon.” All of this was swirling around in my head as I fell asleep that night. Lying in bed, the last thing I remember is being completely overcome by a feeling of sadness.
    Sometime around two or three in the morning my father woke me from a deep sleep saying, “Michael, get up, we have to go to Philly.” Still groggy, I attempted to do as I was told. I sat up on the edge of the bed for a minute to get myself together and that’s when I heard it. Such a strange sound it was coming from the next room. I had never heard this particular sound before–ever. It took a moment, but when I did comprehend what it was, I became instantly afraid, more afraid than I could ever remember feeling. The sound was that of my mother crying hysterically and uncontrollably.
    TIME HEALS EVERYTHING?
    What exactly happened after Annette got home that night? Nobody really knows. I do know that she fed and put her children to bed. I do know that she spent some time on the telephone talking with a friend of hers who lived a few blocks away. I do know that her husband returned home from work somewhere around midnight. And I do know that by one o’clock that morning she was dead.
    As the days and weeks passed, and I began sorting out the feelings and emotions that had been thrust upon me over the past nine months, I realized that I now knew, firsthand, what growing up felt like. It became clear to me that life, as I had known it up to this point, no longer existed; nothing was ever going to be the same again. There was no question that I was a different person now. And so were my parents. It seemed that the entire world had somehow been transformed. I could only hope that, in the end, all of this change would be for the best.
    Perhaps it was a reaction to the drastic loss I’d just experienced, or maybe I just needed some way of marking the end of my childhood, my innocence; a way to rebel against that over which I had no control. Anyway, soon after Annette died I started calling my parents by their first names, just as she had. “Mommy” and “Daddy” were now “Ruthie” and “Jamesie.” And no one ever questioned me about it.
     
     

CRAZY ADOLESCENCE
    We are multi-faceted beings …
    … who, too often, label ourselves based solely on one aspect of who we are.
     

 
    Adolescence. For me, this is where the majority of my traumatic and/or life-altering experiences happened. If we’re formed by the cumulative experiences of our childhood, then adolescence takes that form and squeezes, bangs, hammers, and otherwise forcibly manipulates it into its final version. Many people claim to have been traumatized by events in their childhood. I was too naïve, too unaware, to realize the level of devastation possible from all that happened during my childhood, ergo, I don’t believe that I was too seriously affected by any of it. However, the events of my adolescence are quite another story. I’d have to say that most of my real scarring happened during those manic teenage years.
    WELCOME TO THE SEVENTIES
    As we left the 1960s behind and moved into a new decade, each of us–Ruthie, Jamesie and me–was still burdened with the huge void left by Annette’s death. Ruthie, who was probably most strongly affected, reacted by turning into a nurturing Mother Earth type for the ages. Not only to us, but to everyone she came in contact with. “Random acts of kindness” became her mantra. On the one hand, this was a positive thing but, conversely, it often made people (a) question her motives; and (b) take advantage of her