Vaughn

Vaughn C. Hardacker here: Sixty-three years ago, I was sixteen and confused (but then weren’t all teenage boys- having never been a girl, I can’t speak for you, ladies). One foot was still a kid (although I wouldn’t admit it), and the other was staring adulthood square in the eye. Truthfully, I stayed that way until I turned twenty-one while serving in Vietnam, which pulled me screaming and rebelling into the adult world. (One of the first lessons I learned was that it is easy to be a hero when you’ve read the script and know the outcome. I’ve come to believe that John Wayne and all my movie and TV heroes are truly wimps. It’s amazing how fast you become wise when there are thousands of people who don’t know you running around trying to kill you…) I confess that even now I look back on some of my behavior and actions in my late thirties and early forties and shudder at how immature I acted.

This year, two things happened that have made me stop, pause, and realize I’ve let myself become enmeshed in a state that I call stinkin’ thinkin’. Those of you who have read some of my posts over the years know my background. If you don’t, here’s my elevator speech. I grew up in an alcoholic home, my father’s second child, but my mother’s first. My father was a merchant seaman, and his first wife passed away with tuberculosis shortly after giving birth to my older brother, Norman. My grandmother raised Norman and eventually adopted him. My father married my mother two weeks after he met her in Cardiff, Wales, UK. At this point, all I can say is that until I was four, I didn’t know who he was. He’d come home about once every six months, usually after I was asleep, and leave early the next morning for another six months. We were living in beautiful Hoboken, NJ at that time, and my mother found solace in the corner bar (by now you have probably gotten the point). In fact, if you asked me to draw the floor plan of the basement apartment we lived in, I couldn’t. However, if you wanna see the floor plan of Bea & Steve’s Bar, I can still draw that.

When I was four, my father gave up the sea. We stayed in NJ until I was seven; I believe that by the time I was six, I was playing on the street while holding a long shoreman’s hook. I didn’t adjust well to life in my father’s hometown of Caribou. I was a city kid, stuck in the boonies of hicktown America. I was used to an environment where, if you wanted to survive, you learned two things: one, learn how to fight; and two, if you don’t want to fight, build a reputation that you’re no one to be messed with. In Caribou, I did both.

Now I’ll go back to what I was going to say.

My father quit drinking. Anyone who has lived in an alcoholic environment knows that drinking or drugging (the only difference between an alcoholic and a drug addict is their drug of choice) is the same illness. My father quit drinking; however, he never sought help for the underlying issues. Drinking and drug abuse are symptoms, not the problem. My mother drank until the day she lapsed into a coma and died of kidney failure, at the ripe old age of sixty.

I am what is called the Adult Child of an Alcoholic. The primary symptom of our disease is a burning internal rage. We are angry at the world, angry with our parents, and angry at ourselves most of all. Other symptoms include a hidden inferiority complex, a desire to succeed or be #1 (although we have no idea how to do either), and the most damning one — we are two different people. The external hero and the internal child who is lost in an eternal quest for acceptance and love- again, we were never given the tools to obtain either.

In 1989, my marriage was falling apart, and I didn’t care. We were living in the Chicago suburbs, and I worked as a service manager for a leading computer company (a job I hated, but as stated above, I had to be in charge so people would respect me … another misconception … ). My wife finally became fed up with my womanizing and excessive drinking and said she was taking my daughter and leaving. My reaction? I bought two one-way plane tickets and sent them back to Maine.

After several weeks, I drove straight through from Chicago to Caribou to bring them back. After a 23-hour drive, I got a door slammed in my face. A day later, I returned to Illinois alone. During that drive back, I hit bottom. The next day I found help. The local Adult Children of Alcoholics group. The first lesson I learned was to shed my grandiosity–I was not the only person dealing with this. After I spoke about my background, someone suggested, “Wow, you should write a book about this!”

The next day I started writing The War Within. One of the first things I was told about writing was to write what you know. I knew about dysfunctional people; I knew about being an angry teen staying one step ahead of jail time; I knew about fighting a war within me; I knew the USMC, and I’d been to war. I finished the book, entered it in the International Literary Awards, and won the $1,500 second prize. I also learned that I had some talent, but needed to learn the craft. Little did I know that the book would be a healing process. It helped me realize that I had been wrong about one thing–Vietnam did affect me one hell of a lot more than I thought. In time, my wife and I reunited and stayed together until cancer took her from me in 2006. A great deal of Vaughn Hardacker is in Connor Quinn. Quinn is possibly the most unlikeable protagonist I’ve ever written, but he’s also the nearest and dearest to my heart. He and I walked the same walk (although his journey was more about what I could have been than what I have been), and we shared the same convoluted thought processes. When people thank me for my service, I would ignore them, thinking: “Yeah … where were you fifty-eight years ago?” Now I can finally say, “You’re welcome,” without getting angry. BTW, that’s another ACOA trait: I can hold a grudge forever. Possibly because that’s easier than apologizing for my idiotic behavior.

In 1997, we left the Midwest and returned to New England, settling in southern New Hampshire. I got involved with MWA and met several Boston writers, two of whom were terrific influences on me: Kate Flora and Paula Munier. Their support and guidance made me the writer I am today. (However, if you were to ask both about our relationship and they answered truthfully, they would tell you that there have been times when the angry, rebellious, immature kid showed up.) Another lesson I’ve learned is that everyone is as sick as their secrets. This lesson has helped me reveal character defects that still plague me from time to time. I also think it’s why people often say I write great villains, but my heroes aren’t so good.

In 2006, my wife, Connie, was taken from me by cancer, and shortly thereafter, I was laid off from my current job. I told myself that all my life I’d let circumstances rule me; now I had a chance to do what I wanted. No longer responsible for a family, I returned to Maine (which has been a mixed blessing) and began writing full-time. I fully rewrote The War Within and self-published it via Digital2Draft.com. Thus far, the feedback has been good. Even more importantly, one of my beta readers was my PTSD counselor at the VA clinic in Caribou, who spent the better part of two years trying to get me to open up (sometimes I wonder now that I have opened up if she regrets the monster she has released). She finally convinced me that I’m not an ass; I suffer from PTSD. She has also made me realize that I suffered from a form of it before Vietnam.

Now I’m more than halfway through my eightieth trip around the sun (aka 79 years old). I’m once again lapsing into those old thought processes. Kate can tell you we’ve had a number of discussions where I tell her to remove me from the blog schedule. In fact, we had one of those discussions a couple of weeks ago. She asked if I was going to just ride off into the sunset (a lifetime behavior for me) or do a farewell post.

So, once again I’m eating crow: Kate, forget what I said…keep me on the schedule. Goes to show yuh, just because I’m now officially an old fart, doesn’t mean I know what I want to do. If you don’t believe it, contact my significant other, Jane Hartley. She’ll tell you: “He’s like New England weather. If you don’t like his attitude, wait a minute, and he’ll come around. Finally, I have a favorite T-shirt. It’s black, and in large white letters it says: You never fully appreciate what you have until it’s gone, Centered above an empty toilet paper holder.

What’s really scary is that I still have a lot to learn!!!