Coming to Life

I learned how to deal with a loss. I didn't know what grief was. I just knew that I wasn't feelin' like myself. It seemed as though no one wanted to verbally say how they felt in my family. Maybe it was implied, and everyone just knew. In my family we spoke volumes with our eyes. I mean, yeah we said I love you to one another, but that was a known thing. I guess I learned what my emotions were by watching how others reacted.

The first emotion I felt that wasn't seen was gettin' my feelins' hurt, and it did not take much for that. I was a happy child, I thought. In reality, I was miserable. I always got picked on by the other kids. Being much smaller that my peers, I became a target for bullies. I remember one day my older sister came home from school crying her eyes out, because she had been jumped on by a gang of girls. They pushed her face in the snow. They contiued to harras her every day.

My mother was becoming very upset, so she called the school to complain. Of course the school didn't do much so my mother told her to defend herself. The gang of girls kept pickin' with her until she fought back. My sister got suspended for beating one of them up, and I was so proud of her. I was so excited that she would not get hurt anymore. I took my cue from her, after that I began to fight myself. Most of the bullies didn't want to pick with me anymore. I've been fightin' evey since.

When I was about 6 years old I saw my father hit my mother for the first time, and it would not be the last. They liked to drink quite a bit, sometimes they'd drink together and other times apart. My father came home drunk late one night. Waking my mother up complainin' about somethin' he all of a sudden started punching her in the face with his fist. I was so scared. I thought he was going to kill here. I have never been so terrified in my life. At that moment, my mother did somethin' I still cannot understand to this day. My father threatened to leave her, and my mother began to beg him not to leave. She cried and pleaded with him not to go. I will mever understand that. That day my mind was made up, at 6 years old I vowed to never let a man or anyone ever hit me like that.

As I got a little older things got a better. My father laid of the beating and the kids at school started to really like me. I was finally fitting in. We constantly moved every year it seems, but we were still in the same neighborhood. My siblings and I had to change schools a few times, in doing so we all had to make new friends. I befriended a girl named Salisha, she was a bit older than me I was 11 and she was 15 or 16. I thought that kids my age or younger were stupid and imature, so I hung with the older crowd. I did what the older kids did at the time.

Salisha and I hung together every single day for a few years. We went to church camp a few times a year with different churches. Most of our other friends went to in the summer, it was the only time we got to hang out with some of them. If we were not at church camp we would go to the Roller Gardens on Friday nights. It was all the rave back in 1985. All the hip kids would show up dressed alike with matching roller skates or t-shirts with their names printed on them. It was really fun, it gave us something to do to stay out of trouble.

In the summer of 1986 I had my first experience with drugs and alcohol. My friend Salisha smoked marijuana. She offered some to me and I had never seen anyone smoking it. I asked what it was and she said " it's a joint". I said "what is a joint", she explained to me what it was and how it made you feel. I can remember always asking questions if I did not understand something, so I asked her about a hundred more questions and finally I took a toke myself. I thought I would feel like I was flying or something but I didn't. It made me feel really relaxed, and sleepy. My hearing was twenty times better, I heard everything so clear. In hinesight I guess that would be paranoia. It felt good and I kept smoking making sure to hide it from my parents.

The following month a friend of ours was driving a car and stopped by to take us for a ride. He was older than Salisha by a couple of years, his name was Travis. Travis was a tall skinny red headed, frecklface white boy who hung with all the black kids. He was real popular with the ladies, and he had his eye out for me. I was way too young for him, but mature for my age. I had a mutual crush on him, but I told him that we could not be together. I was doing drugs but I wasn't sexually active, and I thought that that's all he wanted from me.