Following My Heart Almost Got Me Killed
By the end of my journey, I wanted to die anyway
In May of 1971, I was a college freshman at Raymond College, a tiny experimental school within the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. I had just fallen hopelessly in love with an almost unimaginably beautiful girl named Debbie. She looked like Joni Mitchell, only prettier, if that’s possible. Debbie had been my best friend’s girlfriend, and the relationship had run its course. This romance only happened because we already knew each other…I didn’t have nearly enough self-confidence to approach a girl of such unearthly beauty.
Our time together was short…we started seeing each other about two weeks before school let out for the summer. We tried to stuff a lifetime into those two weeks. When I wasn’t in class, I was in her dorm room. She was smart, funny and a wonderful athlete. I took her to a pickup softball game and they could not get her out. She played tennis with what looked to me like professional grace. I was still a virgin at this point, otherwise we surely would have gotten intimate. We got pretty close anyway, and pledged to keep our flame alive over the summer.
Once back home in Colorado, we wrote back and forth. As the fall term approached, my parents told me that they could not afford another year of what was pretty…
