| This is a true story about a defining moment in my life--a Joyce epiphany of sorts.?I learned the hard way that certain individuals should not be talked out of committing suicide.??I want to tell my story but I may digress and then decide to go to bed.?There is a lot to tell and I'll try to be brief.?Here is my story:
?????In 1986, the bottom fell out of the oil industry in Midland, TX.?Both Jerry and I lost our jobs.?I was lucky because I made $10,000 in severance pay when my company was bought out.?Not only that, but when I was pregnant with Joe I developed placenta previa and was on bed rest for the last two months.?Every two weeks I went to Southland Royalty Co. and picked up a full paycheck.?After?Joe was born I continued picking up a full paycheck?while on maternity leave until the company was bought out and then I accepted the severance package.?It was great except that?Jerry also?was laid off and all the sudden?our income was 1/4th of what we had had.In September 1986,?I went back to college to get a degree in psychology.?I?took out all the?school loans I could get just to have money for school clothes?and living expenses for 3 kids.?I take umbrage at the vilification of oil companies even now because of those days.?(I know it's misplaced so shut up.)??I was fortunate to get a job with Project ADAM while a student at UTPB.?This was a United Way-sponsored agency associated with the battered womens' shelter in Midland in which we conducted individual and group counselling for wife abusers and had anger management classes.?I got to use my job as an internship and got credits for it.?It was my first exposure to?the world of spousal abuse.My first client was Gilbert Rivera, a 26-year-old Midland College student who was on probation for?something else had a protective order brought against him by Angela Frescez, 20.??They had a baby son, Bradley, and Angela divorced him after he had used a tazer on her and other crazy shit.?Gilbert insinuated himself right back into Angela's life, like any?good sociopath does, and she became pregnant again.?Gilbert came to all our sessions and said everything a counselor wants to hear and was very likable.?That's how I learned that the sociopaths are the ones you LIKE because they say just what you want to hear.?He finished his required anger management course and got a certificate and everything.A?couple months later he called me on the Friday after Thanksgiving out of nowhere.?He was 'suicidal' because Angela had left him.?Angela had not told him she was pregnant?so that wasn't part of the equation.?I was irritated because I was using that day at the office to finish a paper I was writing for some class.?I knew he was full of shit but was required by law and 'ethics' to do all I could to talk him out of suicide.?After several hours he decided to wait til Monday to commit suicide because he wanted to talk to his lawyer first.?That was the last I heard of Gilbert Rivera until the following February.In February of 1992, Gilbert Rivera followed Angela Frescz from Midland Park Mall where she worked at Eye Masters to the Safeway parking.?She went to the Safeway parking lot because that is what she had been to told to do--go to a public place.?In broad daylight, Gilbert walked over to her car with a sawed-off shotgun and blew her away point-blank.?He blew her ear off and her knee?among other things and then took off in his pickup WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND DRIVING.?Yes, Gilbert brought his girlfriend with him to kill his ex-wife, the mother of his son.Angela Frescez [remember that name--she deserves remembering] lived for about 3 days.?She woke up from her coma long enough to hear on the TV someone had left on in her hospital room that her leg?had been?blown off at the knee and that she had lost the baby.?There was?a huge manhunt in Midland for Gilbert and they arrested him after a police standoff at his girl friend's apartment.When he was in jail he called us at Project ADAM.?He apologized to us and told us he never would have shot Angela if he had known she was pregnant.?That is what he most regretted.?It turned out that he had known that she was pregnant.?Angela had called his bluff and lost.?She told him she had an abortion because she was desperate to get away from him.?It enraged him.?At his murder trial he testified that he and Angela liked to video themselves having sex, which had nothing to do with anything except that Angela's parents and brothers were there to hear that shit.?She had three brothers and a father who couldn't save her from this vile piece of filth.?You know it must still be with them 15 years later.Gilbert was convicted of murder.?While he was in county?waiting?to go to Huntsville, my younger brother Mark was sitting out a DWI one weekend.?Gilbert proceeded to take Mark's pillow and so Mark, 6'5 and 220 lbs, beat the living shit out of him.?As a result, Mark was the hero for that weekend in lock-up and all the girls wanted him!This is my epiphany:?if I hadn't talked Gilbert out of suicide that day, then Angela and her baby would be alive.?I have lived with this for 15 years.?Gilbert is already out of prison. |
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