A Real Earthquake Was Nothing Compared to the Tremors of My Sanity
I fled to California, changed my name, and discovered who I was meant to be
On October 17, 1989, I was traveling south on US-101 toward the Golden Gate Bridge when an earthquake devastated the San Francisco Bay area. It happened during the third game of the World Series between the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants. I was determined to get into the city to attend a recovery meeting for trauma survivors and, as the ground shook beneath my car, was clueless as to what was happening.
Not being a California native, an earthquake was not on my radar.
I glanced around at other cars driving by as the ground rolled like a gigantic wave pool at a waterpark. The drivers didn’t seem to be reacting to the disturbance that I was witnessing, and not being proficient in trusting my instincts, I assumed I was imagining things. So, as the ground swayed beneath me, I pushed aside my reality and kept driving.
My escape to California began with a movie
As a child, I once saw a movie that was filmed in one of the most beautiful, nature-ridden places I’d ever seen. I don’t remember the name of the movie, but I remember seeing “Marin County Police” on the side of one of the cop cars, and I cemented that town in my mind.
“I’m gonna live there someday,” I thought, gazing at the towering eucalyptus trees and losing myself in the vast, deep blue ocean that stretched below the mountaintop where these majestic trees soared.
I was about eight or nine years old, and even then, my tenacious spirit was not easily swayed. A lone wolf always on the outskirts of activity, I watched the world go by with an ache in my heart and regularly escaped into the fantasy world of television and movies, always dreaming there was something magical waiting for me on the horizon. With an unyielding determination bordering on stubbornness, I set out to accomplish whatever I set my mind to do, and living in Marin County was in my future.
— until the day I tried to kill myself and almost missed my opportunity.
I had my first suicide attempt at age ten. It turns out I didn’t take enough pills to do any damage, but dying was the plan.
I recalled from past experience that when I was sick, my mom gave me aspirin every four hours. The medication I tried to overdose on said, “Take one pill every 12 hours.”
“It must be a strong medication if you have to wait 12 hours before taking the next dose,” I reasoned as I poured pills into my hand.
Surely, it would do the job.
I was scared to take them but more afraid to keep living. I just didn’t have the strength to stay alive in the fabricated world my parents created. I was being hurt. My stepfather hated me and did things to me that made me hate myself.
And no one believed me.
“Nothing is happening to you, Alex*,” my mom would say when I tried to tell her what he was doing.
So, if nothing is happening, something must be wrong with me, I concluded.
After downing the pills with a half glass of water, I stood in the kitchen by the counter and waited. The second hand on the clock ticked in slow motion as time appeared to stand still.
Nothing was happening.
I started to panic.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have done this!” I thought.
Having no other choice, I told my mother.
“What did you do now, Alex!” my mom screamed as she raced to the kitchen and grabbed the bottle, reading it to see what I had taken.
“Jeez, you’re always doing something!”
I don’t remember if she actually said the last part out loud, but her stance seemed to convey that message. You know, leaning on one leg, hip jutted out to the side with a hand placed sternly in the middle, elbow bent in the shape of an “L,” and the head cocked, pupils tightly constricted into dark slits as her eyes bore into mine with disgust. Her eyes held the kind of grimace the Grinch had in the holiday classic, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” as he tried to steal Little Cindy Who’s Christmas tree by shoving it up the chimney while she slept.
She crossed the room in two steps and snatched the phone from its cradle on the wall as I pulled myself up onto the counter and listened while she talked to my pediatrician.
My pediatrician — who was also my best friend’s father.
My pediatrician — who also became my mother’s lover.
My pediatrician — who liked to check under my panties and shirt during doctor’s visits to see how I was progressing.
“Mm-hmm, I see you’re coming along nicely, dear,” he snickered in his Bajan accent. I could almost see the insatiable desire spilling from his pours as he greedily devoured my child’s body with his eyes.
His touch made my skin crawl.
While I lay on the examining table in his office, my mom sat in the chair across the room, giggling as if she were one of my tween friends who was both embarrassed and elated that a schoolboy was paying attention to me.
Mom’s smiling, I thought, but she doesn’t seem concerned. So, nothing terrible must be happening.
At that moment, my parents’ narrative became etched in my mind.
My reality isn’t real.
What they do to me feels wrong, but it’s actually okay.
I cannot trust my instincts.
So, when the ground shook beneath me the day the earthquake hit, and people kept driving, I thought, “I must be imagining this. Everything is fine.”
All the while, in the distance, fires broke out, the Bay Bridge collapsed, and people were buried alive under piles of rubble. Yet, I continued to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge as if nothing was wrong.
There was a reason I was attending a support group for trauma survivors.
I needed to be taught how to believe in myself.
Back on the other side of the country
While I was in California, doubting my reality, my mother was trying to find out if I was alive. I had moved to California two years before that fateful day in an effort to save myself. I felt crazy living the narrative my parents created, and suicide seemed to be my only escape. Yet, I knew there had to be a better life, and living in the same state as my parents would not make the “better life” happen.
So, one day, I packed up a stranger’s car from a “drive-away” service and took off. With a “drive-away” service, you drive a car for someone who needs their automobile relocated to another area of the country. With $300 in my pocket and my dogs Bobby and Oliver in the back seat, I set out in search of my true destiny.
Though I had no idea where I would stay once I got there, I didn’t care. I just had to escape the lies I’d lived my entire life.
My existence depended on it.
Right before I left, I sent one last letter home explaining that I was leaving for good. I told my mother that everything I had said that happened to me as a child was true, and I couldn’t live in her denial anymore.
Escaping was my only chance to grow up and take charge of my life.
She managed to get a response to me through an old job I had in D.C. before I dropped off the face of the earth and included one last message:
“Nothing happened to you, Alex! And if it did, you deserved everything you got.”
Though that statement sent me reeling, as it seemed to validate everything I believed about myself, I quickly erased it from my mind and zoomed off on a spectacular adventure across the United States in a car I didn’t own with my two dogs in the back. We hiked the Grand Canyon in Arizona, spent lazy evenings with college friends in New Mexico, and camped out under the stars on the cliffs of Big Sur, waking up to a glorious sunrise over the Pacific Ocean.
Once I arrived in Marin County, I called a person I had met at an animal rights rally in Washington D.C., and she found a place for me to stay and gave me a job where she worked in Corte Madera. I then set out to reinvent my identity.
I went to the library and found a book titled “How to Legally Change Your Name in California” and took the steps to complete the task.
I picked the name of a character from a made-up story I once wrote — Alexandra.
In the story, Alexandra was everything I dreamed of being but was not.
Her name sounded regal, like royalty, yet she went by the nickname Alex. She was confident, self-assured, and down to earth. And most important, she had a name that could be mistaken for a boy.
For some reason, I felt that having a boy’s name made one stronger — more self-assured.
After I changed my name, I got my social security card, bank account, and driver’s license updated and sealed in my new identity.
My mom couldn’t find me.
It wasn’t until I returned home eight years and two moves later that I discovered my mom had been looking for me. She wanted to know if I survived, yet her concern was never assuaged back then because the old me had disappeared.
The present
Now, some 28 years later, my new name and identity live on. I’ve slowly and painstakingly become the person God created me to be. God says in the Bible that everything He created is good and that truth has taken a long time to sink in.
Whether willingly or unwillingly, my parents set out to destroy the beautiful little girl God made me to be. Now, I am spending the rest of my life discovering who that little girl is and fulfilling the destiny that God planned for her before the creation of the world.
It is not easy, and I often fall back into the trap of believing the lie. But though I fall, I always look up to my Creator, take His hand, and allow Him to guide me back on course.
As I delve into the mystery of who I am, a legacy of children follows close behind. My kids, whom I adopted from foster care, are discovering early on who they are in Christ and are pursuing their destiny — the path God has set before them.
The Christensens are going to be world changers!
I can feel it!
*Note: The name “Alex” at the beginning of the story was really a different name; the name I was born with. I chose not to include the name I grew up with. I didn’t officially become “Alex” until I changed my name legally.
If you like what you read here, follow me on my journey through life raising two special needs children that I adopted from foster care. The road can be challenging, but I’ve found that nothing is impossible with God.
What an incredible story, Alex. And such an empowering thing to have done!
This is such an amazing story, Alexandra! What an experience you've been through. I admire the strong woman you are today!