Beyond Bipolar: The Cayce Connors Journals

By Cari Allen

Medicated for bipolar disorder, Cayce Connors attempts to lead an honest and productive life. Unfortunately, she is an intense drama magnet that makes her life a hot mess. She has also failed miserably with love.

Former Bank Executive turned Author, Cayce documents her life daily in journals. She shares the ups, downs and arounds of her crazy existence in Best-Selling novels. Will she ever escape the chaos in her life and change her lonely destiny?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543972344

Book preview

© Cari Allen 2019

Print ISBN: 978-1-54397-233-7

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54397-234-4

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For WallyBear

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

*To my beautiful daughter, Danielle Quinn. We’re getting better at this! Thank you for everything you are. I love you so very much. Time to do #3!

*To a wonderful doctor, Jesus L. Lizarzaburu, MD aka Dr. L. Thank you once again for being a part of my creative process. Your knowledge and expertise is very much appreciated.

*Thanks to BFF Pamela Baxter Denton for your input and taking time to read for me. I love you bunches.

*Once again, to my girl Tina Santos for not only reading for me, but giving me inspiration and ideas for this one. Thanks also to Joanne Sweatt for reading again.

*Lots of love to my friends and family who have supported me in my journey to wherever this takes me. I can’t tell a story if no one will listen.

Contents

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

PREFACE

PART ONE

El Dinero Compra La Gente

Money Buys People

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

PART TWO

Chica Loca

Crazy Girl

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

PART THREE

Mi Amor Por Tí Ha Muerto

My Love For You Has Died

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

PREFACE

This is a 3-part tale. I am telling this story in present day, referring back to my written journals. I actually have journals within journals in some of my writing. I also sprinkle some current thoughts throughout the book. I hope it doesn’t confuse you.

As a young woman, I was heavily influenced by the Hispanic culture; therefore, I wanted the titles and some of the text in Spanish. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be able to speak Spanish to read these journals. I do translate.

PART ONE

El Dinero Compra La Gente

Money Buys People

CHAPTER ONE

This is a time in my life that was not written or recorded as it happened. I had to pull it from the depths of my memory eleven months afterward. The rest of me exists on the pages of my journals written every single day. Most people don’t want to journal because they don’t want to put their lives out there like that. I’m not sure what made me start writing as a child. But when you are 10 years old and writing makes you feel better, you do it. I did not put it together that positive self-talk is therapeutic.

I was tested for IQ and scored 168 as a teen and 175 as an adult. But I did not enjoy school studies. I got excellent grades, but that was due to my photographic memory. I enjoyed sports and socializing. I was popular, Student Council President several years, on the cheerleading squad and lettered in every sport except track. I didn’t go to college at all. I began the Cayce Austin (Connors) Journals in 1971.

It is 1979 in Tucson, Arizona and I have just ended the world’s shortest marriage. Well, not really, but it only lasted seven months. I was very angry that I was back at my parents’ house less than a year from when I got out of there. My Mom and I had, for a lack of better words, a Love-Hate relationship. From the time I was 13 until the time I moved out, I was a bad kid and she was pissed. Had there been such thing as emancipation back then, I would have attempted it. As it was, I graduated a year early from high school. I got married to get out of the house.

My best friend, Selbie Speagle, and I were smoking cigs sitting on the edge of a bunker located on her community golf course. It was 1:30am and we were sharing a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill. I’m really not sure why I still drank that shit. I puked Strawberry Hill so many times I couldn’t even count. Selbie could hold her liquor much better. I’ve never been good at drinking, though it never stopped me. We loved staying out all night. I would tell my Mom I was staying the night with Selbie and she’d tell her Mom she was staying with me and we would just stay out, drink and smoke. A couple of times, we wanted to go home and we couldn’t. We would have to wait until the sun came up.

My black hair was cut short like my Daisy Dukes. We all wanted to look like Catherine Bach. The Dukes of Hazzard had just come out on TV several months earlier. I would have to grow my hair long again if I was going to look like Daisy Duke. I had an athletic build with small breasts, muscular legs and a really nice ass. I had the kind of body that could rock some short shorts. Selbie was a natural strawberry blonde and had the best smile in the world. She had really deep dimples and that always adds to a smile. She was full-figured and pretty. She was always self-conscious about her weight and it fluctuated like crazy from thin to heavy and back again. It’s kind of sad that we were so hung up on weight at such a young age. We were only 18.

We were celebrating my return to town after living 500 miles away for seven months. Selbie had a portable transistor radio that was playing the hits on our favorite AM station. We sang the duets ‘Too much, Too little, Too late ‘. I was the Deniece Williams part ‘Yes it’s over, the chips are down’, she was the Johnny Mathis part ‘WOAH’. It made us laugh so hard, we cried. We were singing loud, too. We also sung ‘You’re The One That I Want’ from the movie ‘Grease’. There was no one in sight.

We finished the bottle and buried it in the sand of the bunker. We got up and, of course, I was unsteady on my feet. Selbie had to help me walk. Then, true to form, I puked my guts out. I bet the people playing golf the next morning would not be pleased about the vomit that was on their golf green.

I was feeling better after walking a bit. Her subdivision where she lived was upscale (obviously, the golf course and all) and had a median separating the lanes of opposing traffic. We stumbled down the street, laughing and staying in the median. There were no cars on the street at that hour.

We were still singing when a white van rolled around the corner at the end of the street. As it approached us, it slowed down a bit and we could tell they wanted to talk to us. The driver looked like someone we knew, so we started walking towards it as it slowed.

Hey look, I said, slurring my words a bit. There’s someone else out at this late hour! Isn’t that Don? When did he get a van?

As we got up to the van, the driver, passenger and guys from the back jumped out of the vehicle. It all looked like it was in slow motion due to our alcohol consumption. The guys grabbed us, put rags over our noses and mouths, then, everything went dark.

I woke to the sound of mumbling. I was really confused and couldn’t remember what I was doing. I became aware my wrists and ankles were bound and there was duct tape over my mouth. My vision was blurry and I couldn’t make out my surroundings. It was dark. My eyes adjusted to the dark and I was in some sort of big metal container with about twenty others bound like me. Maybe it was a storage container. I saw Selbie trying to scoot her way over to me. She was the one who was mumbling.

Then we heard an engine turn over and the container started to vibrate. We were in a trailer attached to a semi-tractor was my guess. I blinked several times to see if I was having a nightmare. Selbie got to me and we leaned against each other. This was really bad. It was so hot in that trailer and we were sweating bullets. It smelled awful. There were a few boys, but mostly girls. I was guessing at the ages, but they looked to be anywhere from 11 to our age. We were all being held against our will. Like kidnapped for real. I obviously had no idea which direction we were headed, but something told me we were headed south. Hell, Tucson, Arizona is only 60 miles from Nogales, Mexico.

It wasn’t too long before we stopped. I was waiting for something to happen, but it was just quiet. After what I guessed to be about 15 minutes, we heard people moving around outside. As they opened the back of the trailer, I got a look at the guys for the first time. There were three Hispanic guys and one white guy. They were pretty young, I’d guess them to be in their early 20’s. I usually liked the Latin guys, but I didn’t like these guys. I guess being kidnapped didn’t exactly endear me to them. At all. I vaguely remembered the white guy driving the van. One of the Hispanic guys was in charge. He didn’t do anything except give orders. Well, those three years of Spanish I took in high school didn’t help me much trying to understand what they were saying. But the guy in charge was yelling at the other three.

The white guy got up into the trailer and cut the tape off our ankles two at a time. Don’t do anything stupid, he warned us.

They took us two by two to get a drink of water and to pee or whatever in the desert. That would be embarrassing, but I knew I wouldn’t be peeing since I had to have sweat out every bit of liquid in my body. I was also a bit dehydrated because of our heavy drinking and my puking before being abducted. The guy ripped the tape off my mouth and told me to be quiet. I drank as much water as they would let me. Dying from dehydration was a vision creeping into my mind. I tried to get my captors to leave the tape off of my mouth and they threatened to hit me if I didn’t keep quiet. The duct tape went right back on my mouth. I really didn’t want to make them mad…they were packing steel and that would be dumb to upset them. When they reloaded us into the trailer, they taped our ankles again. I’ve seen enough movies to know not to try to get out of the tape. Duct tape was the best thing someone could use to bind a person. I didn’t want those ligature marks on my wrist and ankles.

Panic set in because our parents were going to think me and Selbie just up and left. Oh, Lord. They won’t think we were abducted and they probably won’t even look for us. Plus, we WERE adults. I could tell Selbie was thinking the same thing. No one was coming for us. I had to make myself control the panic, but in doing so, it made me cry instead. We were screwed. I was afraid we could die in this trailer.

QUIT CRYING CAYCE, I said to myself. I needed the water to stay IN my body. Talk about dehydration.

We traveled for a while longer, I had no idea what time it was because I didn’t even know what time they took us. When we stopped, they opened the back of the trailer and cut the tape off our ankles again. The sun was rising and it was very bright compared to the darkness of the trailer. It made me squint and I covered my eyes with my hands bound together. Once my eyes got used to the brightness, I looked around. I had stopped crying, trying to be strong for the young kids. Plus, I was scared I might shrivel up and die.

We were at a large stucco house with a tiled roof that looked to be in the middle of a cattle ranch, and other than cows, there was nothing else anywhere in sight. Judging from the length of the trip, we were deep into Mexico somewhere. The next thing I noticed were the other kids. I had only seen them in the dark. They looked so young. A couple of the girls had been crying off and on since we were taken. If only I could hug them and tell them it would be alright. I wish.

The young men stood us in a line and the one in charge went up to the front door of the big house and rang the bell. A woman answered the door. They spoke Spanish for a few minutes and then the guy motioned to the others to bring us into the house. The house was beautiful. There was Mexican tile throughout, lovely plants everywhere and Spanish flair to the décor. We seemed very out of place with our wrists and mouths taped. We were all filthy dirty. Our clothes were tattooed to our bodies with sweat.

We were led down into a basement and I seriously expected to see cages. There were no cages, but there were shackles spaced evenly apart connected to a lead pipe that was attached to the baseboards. The boys were led to another room. This was getting worse by the second. I imagined getting tortured by sadistic, evil people. The shackles went on one ankle, then they cut the tape on our wrists and ripped it off our mouths.

Oh my GOD, I breathed in air through my mouth. It had been hours since I’d been able to breathe deeply. The crying had made it worse.

¡Cállense! said one of the guys as he held up a threatening finger. I think that meant ‘shut up’.

All the other girls were relieved to be able to breathe, too. We were all taking deep breaths. Fifteen people breathing loud makes a lot of noise.

¡Cállense! he yelled again, then left us.

I started to talk to the others. Where are you girls from? I asked them. Most of them were from Tucson, a couple girls were from Marana.

What are we going to do, Cayce? Selbie was freaking out.

God, Selbie, I said. I’m freaking out, too. I don’t have a fucking clue what to do!

Two women came down into the basement. One was older and the other looked to be closer to my age. They were speaking Spanish to each other and approached me since I was the first in line of all the girls. One of the ladies handed me the key to the ankle shackle.

Unlock yourself, the older woman said to me. She had an accent, but spoke English. She was attractive, yet she dressed very frumpy and wore no makeup. I bet she was gorgeous made up right.

The younger girl spoke only Spanish. She couldn’t have been much older than me. She was very pretty, but again, she wore no makeup and dressed like the older woman.

I was confused as to why they had me unlock myself. They led me to a bathroom that was actually very nice. It had a dressing table with a big makeup mirror surrounded with light bulbs. Like a movie star’s dressing room. The shower and toilet were in a separate area. The dressing table had hair and makeup products on it. There was also a tall chest with drawers in the room. I was really confused.

Take off your clothes and get into the shower, said the one who spoke English. She led me to the shower and turned on the water. Wash your hair and body quickly, she ordered.

That shower felt so good, I moaned. I was so dirty. It felt good to be clean again. After I was done, I was handed a towel and a wrap and told to put the wrap on and sit at the dressing table. This was very weird. This whole set-up.

What is this? I asked the older woman. I was afraid, but trying to act like I wasn’t.

I must make you beautiful, she answered me. You must be desired by the customers.

You’re kidding, right? I was sarcastic. I was still confused. Customers?

No, she was very serious.

So, we were kidnapped and now forced into prostitution? I asked. I was half kidding.

Yes, the woman said.

And what if I refuse? I said defiantly. I wanted to challenge her.

She looked at me seriously and said, They will hurt you and if you still don’t, they will kill you. She looked very sad. There was something gentle about this woman.

Holy shit! ‘They’. ‘They’ were killers. I got tears in my eyes. I was scared, but I got the nerve to ask the woman about herself.

Were you kidnapped, too? I went out on a limb.

Many years ago, she said sadly. You become a worker when you are no longer beautiful. Wow. That was really sad. Many years ago. And they told her she was no longer beautiful. That was criminal.

I did not resist as they made up my face and hair. Then they opened a drawer of the chest and picked out some really pretty lingerie. They opened a closet and pulled out a pair of high heels. I actually did look really pretty. I asked the woman why they made us unlock ourselves.

It is harder for someone to overtake two people while they are unlocking themselves, she explained.

And what if someone did escape? I needed to know.

She looked at me and said, If they don’t shoot you first, there is nothing for many miles except desert. You die from exposure. We have had several who have died in the desert after attempting escape.

When I was done at the dressing table, I was not taken back to the shackle room. Instead, I was taken upstairs into the main house. I was taken to a large sitting room of sorts. It was lavishly decorated. I was asked to sit down. I felt really strange sitting there in just lingerie and heels. There were guards with guns at the two archways that led out of the room. They were staring. I guess I couldn’t blame them. There were cameras positioned all over the room. They were streaming somewhere for someone, but it didn’t look like they were on. It was obvious what was going to happen as one by one, the women fixed up the abductees and brought them to