Persistent

By Peter Skeels

People are affected by the good times and the bad times in their life. This has always been the case. However, when we go through acutely intense emotional experiences, as some people do, are we truly aware of how we’ve been affected? Or do we try to mitigate the effect of the experience? Do we perhaps consciously disassociate from the experience? In this, the second novel in the series, we learn more of the story of Michael’s life as we get to follow him through certain very intense experiences that change him over the course of his life. Most of the time, Michael is not aware of how much he has changed and who he has become. Michael’s life is a fascinating look at how his mind interprets his changes so they are acceptable. Follow along with Michael as he lives his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528993364

Peter Skeels

The author has been a draft dodger, a traveller, a stone mason, a single parent, a teacher, a businessman, a life coach and a storyteller. He has lived and travelled extensively throughout America and Europe. He sought to find his way in life despite not having a handy how-to guide. His two constant guiding principles are his belief in God and to always try to do the next right thing. All the while he has been, more than anything else, a naturally happy survivor.

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About the Author

The author has been a draft dodger, a traveller, a stone mason, a single parent, a teacher, a businessman, a life coach and a story teller. He has lived and travelled extensively throughout America and Europe. He sought to find his way in life despite not having a handy how-to guide. His two constant guiding principles are his belief in God and to always try to do the next right thing. All the while he has been, more than anything else, a naturally happy survivor. He has lived his life by using love as the antidote for hate.

Having fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming an author allowed him to continue writing his stories. Persistent is the second novel of the trilogy about Michael.

Dedication

I want to dedicate this novel to God for giving me my life. My relationship with God has not always been fun, nor has it always been easy, but it has always been right. From the hardest lessons to the purest moments of happiness, from being able to live and thrive on this beautiful planet, and to have been enabled to live such a long and varied life.

I asked God for what I wanted, I believed that God would give me what I asked for, and then I received what I asked God for.

I believe the reverse is true also—God asks of me, God believes in me, and God receives from me that which God asked of me. It’s a relationship.

I believe God asked me to do this. God believed I would do this. God has received my public dedication.

I continue to follow God and I continue to be led by God. No one knows the way through the maze of my life better than we do.

Copyright Information ©

Peter Skeels (2021)

The right of Peter Skeels to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528993357 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528993364 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Synopsis

Persistent is the sequel to the novel A Natural Pause, and it is the third novel in the trilogy.

This novel follows the main character Michael through the next decades of his life. After he becomes a single parent, he realizes he needs to go back to college to update his career choices. Finally, he starts his own business hoping to lower the stress in his life. But the traumas from his early childhood and the subsequent traumas and pressures as an adult cause his personality to split into pieces. Michael doesn’t consciously know this has happened, yet he compensates unconsciously by creating a theatre-of-selves to help him navigate his life.

As the decades pass, the reader gets to know him and his behaviour. They laugh with him and they worry with him. They learn about his God and his dog. Finally, as time passes and he grows older, he rediscovers himself as a writer, and as he writes more and more about his theatre-of-selves, the splits in his personality begin to heal.

Does his out-of-control behaviour, that is far from normal, start to come under control? Or is it his demise?

Chapter 1

Michael’s newly rented home was built over a two-car garage and consisted of three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a very large living room. It was an older home and it was located in the oldest part of the city. The wooden stairs were a little rickety and behind the house was a wonderful city-owned park that was reached by walking down the stairs, alongside the house, and into the park. The beautifully maintained park was now their backyard. One of the bedrooms became Michael’s office, his two young children had a bunk bed in their bedroom, and so the living arrangement never seemed cramped or uncomfortable in any way. There were two doors out of the house both leading to a wonderful deck that overlooked the park. Massive redwood trees lined the back of the house and grew throughout the entire park. Through the park ran a year-round creek, that was crossed by walking over a beautiful stone-arched bridge.

Michael was working a part-time job while just trying to make ends meet. He worked at a liquor store for six dollars an hour and it was his responsibility to open on Sundays at five-thirty in the morning when his children were staying at their mother’s. So today, he got up and showered, made coffee and drank some, and then headed off across the park to the liquor store. Waiting for him were the usual few people who were always there waiting for him when he opened. As he unlocked the door, he reminded them they needed to wait while he did a few chores. Once the chores were done, he turned the ‘Closed’ sign to ‘Open’ and his waiting patrons began entering. The first one bought a pint of vodka; the second a pint of gin; and the third bought cigarettes, a pint of milk, and a pint of vodka. Michael barely spoke to these people. He hated selling them alcohol so early in the morning. It bothered him but there was nothing to be done. Alcohol for breakfast was their decision. People came and went during the day and the day dragged on. Some people were neighbours from the area, Michael would ask how they were doing, and they would ask him the same. Starting late morning, some of the local hookers would come in for cigarettes and condoms, and sometimes they would offer their services for payment. Michael always politely refused and he kept the merchandise they were buying on his side of the counter until he was paid in cash. Michael sold a lot of beer and part of his job was to keep the beer stocked and rotated, to keep the shelves stocked as items were sold, and to keep the store floor clean and keep the place neat and tidy. People came in to buy the pre-made sandwiches, bags of potato chips, pepperoni sticks, and candy bars but mainly it was alcohol they came to buy. Sometimes Michael worked Friday nights too and, on those nights, there were always two people working at the store. The neighbourhood could be a dangerous place and occasionally there were robberies that happened. One of Michael’s co-workers had been stabbed at another liquor store further up the street several weeks earlier over a six-pack of beer. Michael learned—or knew instinctively—not to intimidate the bad guys, the tough guys, the street guys. He could tell who they were by how they carried themselves. He never acted tough with them but he never acted as though they intimidated him either. Therefore, his days and nights working at the liquor store went on with little to no drama ever. Michael’s most important achievement every time he worked there was to return home safe and happy. At 3 o’clock on Sundays, he got off work and went home. His children arrived back around 4 pm from visiting their mother. It was always a very happy time for Michael as he loved being with them and he missed them when they were gone.

He could hear them coming up the stairs with their babbling, happy sounds. In they came and the house changed from calm and quiet to the opposite. Michael loved both his time alone and his time with his children. After hearing their stories of their weekend with mum, it was time to make dinner and get them ready for school the next day. Dinner, baths, brushing his daughter’s long hair, and all the myriad little things that are necessary for getting his children ready for bed and school. At 7 o’clock on Sundays though they all sat down religiously to watch the Simpsons. Or as they all called it the ‘Thompsons’ for a reason no one could remember. They all sang the opening song and laughed through the show. At 8 o’clock, it was bedtime. There were never discussions about bedtime, as it was simply understood that when Dad said it was bedtime, it was bedtime.

Michael, about eighteen months earlier while working as a carpenter, lifted a very heavy wooden beam first thing in the morning and twisted his upper body to place it into a slot in the wall. This was something he’d done many times over the past few weeks. This time though he knew immediately he had hurt himself but he didn’t know how badly. Later, after working the rest of his eight-hour shift, he went home and his wife, despite the obvious pain he was in, went to tend to her horses leaving Michael to look after the children. So, Michael drove to the hospital with his children. Carrying his five-month-old son and with his almost-three-year-old daughter holding his hand, he walked in to meet with the doctor on duty. The first thing the emergency room doctor had him do was sit on a table and he asked Michael to look away and to tell him when he was poking Michael’s bare leg with his index finger and when he was using a pin. Michael said, Finger, finger, finger, finger, and never pin. However, when he looked down, he could see the tiny specks of blood from the pinpricks. Later that week, after an MRI, he learned a disc had literally burst in his lower back and the fluid from the disc was pushing against his spinal cord. This caused him to lose most of the feeling in his legs and the pain was intense. There wasn’t a position Michael could get in that relieved the pain. Standing, sitting, or lying down—all were intensely painful. Michael went to see a surgeon who, after a long consultation and examination and after Michael saying he did not want to continue working as a carpenter, advised him not to opt for surgery. This advice totally surprised Michael. The surgeon told Michael the operation would cause: Severe morbidity and, the surgeon continued, the operation will take at least a year to recover from, and it usually only lasts for about five years, at which time the fused discs will start to degenerate. So, while surgery was the normal course of action, Michael decided against it mainly because he didn’t even want to continue being a carpenter and because he had faith his back would heal in time. He had disliked working as a Union Carpenter, and he found he had little to nothing in common with most of the people he worked with. His recovery, with or without surgery, would be long and slow and several doctors warned him he may never walk properly again or even be able to lift his children again.

After he had moved to this new home, he went out one bright sunny Sunday morning and several houses up the street were gathered about twenty men, women, and children. They were all animated and laughing and so Michael asked them why they were all so happy. A few of them talked with him and Michael learned they belonged to a new-age church, that was located right there. Later Michael investigated this church and found it was a healing church. The church was based on the premise that Jesus was a healer and he used energy to heal a person. The church’s teachings taught that the energy their students and ministers used healed a person’s spirit and then the person’s spirit healed the person. The church was also a place where he could learn energy healing. The cost for taking classes was a little prohibitive but Michael pursued it anyhow, believing the money would somehow come to him. Michael believed God helped him when he needed help.

Michael had a deep feeling that he had caused the injury to his back so he could change his life. Michael had felt he was stuck running on the treadmill of life as he called it, just constantly trying and trying to get ahead but never getting past where he was or to where he wanted to go. And no matter how fast he ran or how hard he tried, he never got further than he was. Michael believed that if he had indeed caused his injury then surely, he could also heal the injury and that is precisely what he wanted to find out and do.

Michael learned many different practices and techniques as he took his healing classes. The first techniques he learned were how to own his space, grounding, running his energy, protection roses, blowing roses, and suns of healing for replenishing his energy. Michael wanted to learn these things and so he did them willingly. Owning his space consisted of learning how to bring his aura in closer to his own body, within arm’s length, and when he learned how to do this, he felt better and different. He felt much like he did when he pulled a light sweater on during a chilly day. Grounding was learning to attach an energy cord, like a garbage chute, to his body and then letting everything that was bothering him fall into it. The other end was then planted deep into the earth where the stuff he didn’t want was deposited. All of this was done using energy and visualisation, and he found he was good at that. Running energy was a combination of letting the earth’s energy come up through the chakra’s in his feet and then to flow through the energy channels in his body, and to allow cosmic energy to come down into his body through the crown of his head. The two energies would mix and then heal and cleanse his body as they flowed. Protection roses Michael learned to really like. He would visualise a rose and let it catch energy directed at him. He wasn’t very good at it at first and he often forgot to make them, but when he did remember to make them, he found he was more relaxed around people. Michael also learned how to put problems and situations beyond his control into roses he had visualised and to then blow them up. The energy would simply find its way back to the person or persons it belonged to but more importantly, the problems and situations beyond his control weren’t in his space any longer. Finally, Michael learned to bring in huge suns to just above his head and then fill them with whatever energy he wanted that day whether that was happiness, or healing, or simply more of his own energy, and then to let the filled-up sun slowly sink down through his entire body, filling each and every one of his cells. While these techniques sounded simple to Michael, he was astonished at how good they made him feel and he was happy for the peace they brought him. Being a single parent made it difficult to practice these techniques as much as he would have liked but he did the best he could.

Along with learning how to heal using energy, Michael was also going to another school. A school where he was learning computer software programmes, which was being paid for by his Workers Compensation insurance. The programme was called ‘Career Transitions’ and while he was a student there, he also began helping the other students who weren’t learning quite as quickly. Michael was typically finished much sooner with the projects given to them than the others because he found these software programmes easy to learn and quite intuitive. The other students began to ask him questions, and he loved to answer their questions. Michael believed that the best way to learn something was to teach it. His teacher, who was also the co-owner of the business, began taking notice and as his training was coming to an end, she asked him if he’d like to work there. Michael was very happy with the offer and even more so when he learned he would be paid twenty-five dollars an hour and he only needed to work from 9 am until 1 pm for five days a week.

Michael needed to get his children’s needs taken care of before he could accept the job offer, so the first thing he found was his next-door neighbour provided childcare for a very reasonable rate. Also, two doors up and next door to his new church was a private school that his children could attend. The private school agreed to take his son despite the fact that he was too young. Michael did the math and found he could afford this new arrangement so he took the job. Michael gave the notice to quit his job at the liquor store.

So now that his son and daughter were taken care of, he could concentrate on his new job. Michael would soon qualify for and get certification from the State of California which allowed him to teach English and Math to vocational rehabilitation students from the local junior college and Michael’s new certification allowed the students to receive their college credits for his courses.

After his children were in bed, Michael would retreat to his office and start working on his teaching programme for the following day. Michael was also learning computers, how the hardware worked, how to install programmes, and the ins-and-outs of the computer programmes he taught. There was much to learn and Michael devoted himself to being the best teacher he could be.

Michael had a terrible fear of failure, which was sometimes paralysing, and a deep troubling fear of being caught not knowing something. It was as if he thought he was a fraud and he was terrified of being exposed. Once during a class, a student asked him how to do something. Michael didn’t know the answer but he said to the student, Look, I’m not always going to be here to answer all your questions so let me show you and the others how to find the answer using the Help option.

The student, in a very confrontational voice, asked: You don’t know the answer, do you?

Michael replied: This class isn’t about what I know. It’s about what you know when you leave and are out in the workplace. So please, don’t fight me here. Just learn what I have to teach you.

Again, the student said, in an even more challenging tone, You don’t know the answer! and he glared at Michael. But Michael let the comment go and with that, the class continued. Michael hated the confrontation and again it gnawed on his fear of not being perfect. Michael believed he should know everything. The encounter bothered him for the next several days.

This fear was so great there were times when he would tremble, physically tremble, from the fear he felt. During an energy healing class, his teacher asked the students to raise their hands if they were meditating one hour every day as was directed by the curriculum and mandated by this teacher. Everyone raised their hand except Michael.

The teacher asked the class to look at Michael as he was the only one not raising his hand. The teacher said in a sarcastic voice, See? Michael is the only one not spending an hour every day meditating.

Michael was so anxious by the confrontation that he began to literally and physically tremble. He didn’t like her comment and he didn’t like being singled out. Later he would wonder why he didn’t just tell them all he didn’t always have time to meditate because he was a single parent. He was the only single parent in the class too. But Michael was sometimes paralysed by confrontation and it was only afterwards he would figure out how he could have dealt with it better but, of course, by then it was too late. He felt scared and he felt like running out of the room.

Michael, however, just kept sitting there putting his feelings into the roses he had learned to make and then blow up, and eventually, the confrontation stopped and he was able to reclaim his composure. He made a mental note, however, that this teacher was not his friend nor was she to be trusted.

As the healing classes went on and as Michael learned more and more about energy healings, and as he learned how to use them on himself, his back started to get better. He could now sit down without pain. He could stand without pain. In fact, the near-constant pain he had been in was gone for the first time since his accident. Michael still moved very carefully for fear of hurting himself again but he found he was able to start working out and he started to attend a place called The Back Works, which was also paid for by his insurance. There he could work out using non-impact equipment. Michael settled on using one device and got so good at it and it made him feel so strong that he purchased a lightly-used model for his home and began working out at home. This was better for him because it cut down on travel and childcare costs, and gave him more time that he needed.

Along with his fear of failure was his need for perfection so Michael would prepare and then prepare again. His notes were meticulously laid out for when he taught class, and his computers were configured as perfectly as possible. Michael would configure a server, have it all working properly, and then reset it to factory defaults so he needed to completely reconfigure it again. He did this many times until he completely understood what the steps were for and why they were necessary. He became an expert in everything related to his work and the driving force for his learning was his deep-rooted fear of failure and his fear of being caught not knowing an answer to a question by any of his peers. He literally wanted to know everything so no one would be able to ridicule, demean, or embarrass him.

Michael’s weekly morning routine consisted of getting his children ready for school, packing their lunches, and dropping them off at childcare by 8:30. Michael would then get on his motorcycle and head down the freeway to where he taught. The childcare person, Martha, would walk his children the few doors along the street to school at 9 am. At 1 o’clock Michael would finish his class and head back up the freeway, and Martha would go get his children and keep them until Michael returned home about 1:30 pm.

Michael’s mode of transport during all this was a motorcycle but he had purchased an old Scout that needed rebuilding so, as his back grew stronger and stronger, he began work on that too.

One morning after several months of rebuilding the Scout, Michael decided to take the Scout out for a test drive. This Scout was a major project when he bought it for five hundred dollars. The previous owner had taken it all apart to rebuild it but then never got around to working on it. When Michael bought the Scout there was no front end installed, the engine was dismantled, and there were boxes and boxes of parts. There were no front tyres installed either. He needed to pay to have a tow truck bring it to his house. Michael worked on the Scout all winter in his garage and now it was time to see if his hard work had been done correctly.

It was a sunny, spring day, the air was warm, and Michael felt good. His health was good, and his body had gotten stronger over the winter. The debilitating effects of his accident had left him needing many months of rehabilitation, but now, finally, he was getting back to tip-top health.

He got into the Scout and started the engine. He put the Scout into gear and rolled slowly along his driveway and onto the main road. Driving the Scout felt good. The Scout was a very strongly built vehicle. It was four-wheel drive, had front and rear locking hubs, and a big powerful V8 engine, so it was a very sturdy off-road vehicle that could go almost anywhere.

As Michael drove down the road, he was watching the truck’s gauges, and paying close attention to the mechanics of the vehicle. As the light changed to red ahead of him, he applied the brakes and paid extra attention to how well they worked. The vehicle did not pull in either direction and came to a halt in a nice straight line. His attention turned to his right where a very pretty woman stood with her thumb out as if she was hitchhiking. The Scout had its roof off, and she asked if she could get a ride and Michael said sure. The woman got in, the light turned green, and off they went.

As they travelled along, the woman told Michael she was a working girl, and Michael asked her what she was working at? She laughed and said she was a hooker. Michael, though he had met many hookers especially when he lived in the red-light district of Amsterdam and while working at the liquor store, had never had sex with a hooker nor had he ever paid anyone for sex. The hooker said she charged forty dollars ‘for head’ or a hundred dollars for ‘half and half’. Michael needed to ask what half and half was and she replied, Head plus fucking. Michael was a little embarrassed by her bluntness but he had been without sex for many weeks and the thought of having sex was wonderful. So, he said: Okay, let’s do head.

As