Dwayne Ackley Stories

It always starts with isolation. You feel there is something different about you that no one understands, but you are not completely sure what it is. You get angry when you notice other people that seem to have it easier. You get frustrated when you try to do things that don’t work. If it continues then you start to withdraw. If the withdrawal takes on a life if it’s own you start trusting the reality in your head more than the actual reality that the world presents you.

The gift and curse of my my life up until I was eleven years old was that I was all too aware of how bad someone could get if they couldn’t get out of their own head.

I would be afraid when she told me to sit away from the air conditioning vents in our apartment because someone might come through and grab me. I would be afraid when she said someone was waiting on the steps outside to grab me before school and that I should stay home. She would warn me about certain people at church and how they would try to take me away from her.

She used to accuse me of letting people into our apartment to steal things. Once she told me she was pregnant and that we should hide from the father. Another time she accused me of being complicit.

One night we slept in her car because she couldn’t pay rent. And one day I came home from school and she wasn’t there seeming to keep her earlier promise to kick me out in the cold. One time the neighbors called the police because she was screaming at me after I endlessly threw crayons at her.

I remember that something always seemed to happen when we were out in public. She would always run afoul of some process that would alert people that she wasn’t quite right. Then they would do everything they could to move us out of range.

If people gave me the same wide berth they gave my mother I don’t remember. I remember being happy in school and having friends. I loved my mother, but I knew when to be careful around her.

Sometimes I would be watching TV and look over and catch her looking at me in a blank stare with her whole face masked in a strict angry concentration as she moved her lips quietly. Her eyes seemed to be focus somewhere in between us and I knew to leave her alone and not say anything.

She was committed to a state hospital when I was in second grade and I was promptly picked up by my Dad and grandfather to start school the next day which happened to be Valentine’s Day.

Over the next two years I learned there was something wrong with my mother. We took trips back to Elizabethtown for court when my Mom pushed first to regain custody then again for visitation.

I learned terms like “Mental Illness” and “Schizophrenia”. I became more aware of my own mannerisms, not allowing myself to stare at anything and trying to make as many friends as possible.

There would be times that I would act ridiculous just to get attention. Then I would wonder if I was acting like my mother and worry about ending up like her.

My mother always struggled in dealing with reality. When she left the hospital she was different. Not quite as scary but more medicated and disconnected.

My mother said she heard voices, but I wonder sometimes if it was actually an audible voice. There were times when I thought she would get lost in a constant running inner dialogue and distrust the reality around her.

The big difference between she and I always came back to Valentine’s Day though. Four years ago I wrote a story about my first day in Harlan, Ky. A day when my nervous isolation slowly started turning into a sense of community. My grandmother became my confidant and the person that always told me she was close if anything happened.

Valentine’s Day was always significant to me in a way that had nothing to do with hearts and flowers. It was a large day when everything changed for good and I started making life long friends that I still have to this day despite the fact that I haven’t lived in Kentucky for twenty years.

When my mother died she was surrounded by family but I stayed away. We had tried numerous times to reconnect but unfortunately there always seemed to be a hiccup. The past would raise it’s head and both of us realized she hadn’t changed at all. In one if our last conversations she asked if she could meet her grandkids and I told her only if I could see her first because it had been fifteen years since we talked at that point and I wanted to be sure of what they were walking into. The next thing she said was, “You are a good Dad Dwayne.”

She never met them but I did visit her. I had the closure I needed when she died to know it was absolutely right to stay away from her so that I could raise my family. There were a lot of bad experiences that needed to end with me.

The reason I didn’t live in isolation was everything that happened the day after Valentine’s Day. When a community made me one of their own and showed me what “safe” actually meant.

I have a feeling that now Valentine’s Day will have a different significance for all of us. But the problems that manifested themselves will not be solved by doing one thing. My life wasn’t better because of one day of kindness when I was eight. It became better because I consistently found friends that cared about me despite my quirky awkwardness.

There is no easy answer to helping those that struggle in isolation. We aren’t going back to the days of committing people for simply being a little odd, and I can tell you that hospitalization and medicine doesn’t come close to helping everyone. I escaped because of family, friends, and (I think) Harlan, Ky, but there have been plenty of others with strong families and tight knit communities that lost themselves in drugs and other things that are far worse. My mother had tons of support, but none of it seemed to ultimately help.

It’s always the little things that happen over time that end up having a bigger impact than the massively large tragedies. That and realizing that when people truly love you, it’s never out of obligation.