Category : Books-Non-Fiction

Sub Category : Biography

 The first clear memory i have is of my brother and I and a couple kids from our apartment building playing ring around the Rosie in the parking lot, and I remember falling to the ground and in that moment being totally content, the way only  children can be.

  And anytime I find myself reflecting on that moment the irony of the game we were playing strikes me, round and round we'd go till we'd all fall down. Wich has been how my life seems to go. A revolving door I can never seem to exit. No matter what I try to do to not be myself, no version of me is good enough. Id like to think I'm one of Hunter S. Thompson's "prototypes" but it's more likely I'm one of my generations status quo, too smart for my own good and too fucked up to put my untapped potential to good use. Between book smarts I don't apply to anything legal and street smarts I doubt I'll have any use for out of my mid 30s I'm quite well educated in how to waste a life.

 Once upon a time......that's how all the good stories started back in the days of games in the parking lot and adventures in the dank basement that smelled  of mold and mothballs. I wish they'd end those stories in the real world though. So children didn't get quite so disillusioned when the king and queen don't work out and the prince's white stead is just a broke down Ford on balding tires. We raise our children to be dreamers and reach for the stars, but are we setting them up for lifelong disappointment?

  Maybe if I hadn't been so difficult, or maybe if you hadn't been so absent, maybe we'd be talking over a beer reeling in our lines and making up our epic "one that got away" story to save face rather than admit we struck out at the river. Maybe if you knew me youd know that I'm not a disappointment, I'm just unsure what my purpose is. I thought I knew but when I lost it and day by day life still went on I found I've become more and more like you. I don't care for close relationships, birthdays come and go, holidays are a joke to me and family is something to avoid.

You might not see it when you look at me but I'm just like you. I'm angry and upset and I've tried to leave the world behind me, more than anyone even knows, I've written the same letters you did, and I've built walls so high dragons can't get in. But I feel as if the biggest of my deamons is  behind the wall already, my biggest deamon is me. My mind tends to betray me every chance it gets, and idle hands will follow a destructive mind, so I stay high to keep myself from feeling all the things I've worked so hard to  banish from my life. 

 I work everyday to keep the people away for fear they'll see the chaos behind my eyes, or the cryptic tone to my thoughts.I learned young to filter myself, if I didn't mom would find new and worse ways to make me pay for it. When the corner no longer proved effective (i still remember how many awful flowers and leaves were i  each row of ugly wallpaper you let her put up) and id laugh at every spoon, wooden or plastic shed break over my ass,  she found the dried peas under my knees on the kitchen floor with my arms in the air for hours trick. That only worked as long as you weren't home, I used to wish you had a 9-5 like other dad's. When you'd come home id be grounded to copy the encyclopedia, little did she realize I enjoyed that, finishing quickly so shed flip to a new page id have to copy perfectly or it'd be thrown out and redone. I learned more in  a summer than I think I did my whole childhood. 

 Your "legal obligation to provide a stable home" was achieved, I just wish you'd picked a woman who wasn't still wet behind the ears. One who hadn't been abused and therefore hadn't thought mental and physical punishment was normal. When I was ten I set out to play every mind game, every dirty trick I could on  her. And then one day when I was 12, my brother and I came home from grandpys and she was gone. Just like that. And I remember how strange it was to see you so upset over her leaving, and briefly I felt as if id taken it all too far, especially when you held my brother by the neck off the ground against a wall and only let go when I started screaming at you, as if you'd forgotten where you were or what was happening around you you let him drop to the ground and I saw in his eyes the flame of hatred light. He never looked at you the same after that day. 

   When I was 13 I came home to an empty house, with a stack of cash and a note left on top of the hydro and mortgage paperwork. If id been smart I would have taken the cash and packed a bag, left myself behind and found the person I'm afraid it's too late now to be. Hindsights an amazing thing I suppose, knowing what you should have done and thinking you'd have done it just the same even if you'd known then what you know now. Destined to repeat the same mistakes because the lessons we learned as a result are worth the trouble it took to learn them. 

   But that's also the same year I realized how alone id always felt. And  as I pushed through my 13th year more alone than ever, I became very quiet. I retreated into myself and rarely spoke unless spoken to. I didn't realize at the time that I was developing another personality within myself, I didn't see the conversations between myself and this new person carry on in the letters they wrote to each other in my diary. I wouldn't come to recognize the two people inside my  mind as two separate people until my twenties. Until then id continue to hide every part of myself I could. I'm still not sure that I wasn't simply denying that anything was wrong with me. I always wonder though if you saw the changes and that's why you sent me away. I was an obstanant child at home with you, when you graced our home with your presence. When you were away I began to drink, everyday I bothered to go to school I took a water bottle of booze from your cupboard In the pantry. Didn't you ever see the bottles slowly draining? 

  I hate spaghetti now, ever since that night. Hate the smell of it, the look of it the taste. I remember smiling and laughing as I out ran your plate sailing down the hallway behind me. What i did to cause it to fly i cant for the life of me remember, but i honestly was so beside myself i was hysterical. That was the night i knew in  my heart beyond a doubt no-one would ever want me around forever, since even my father didn't. My mother never wanted me, my step mother and brother left me alone with you....But you were never there to be a father to me, to be who I needed. I still feel as if I'm never enough for people, I choose to leave them before they can leave me. I hurt people that try to get close because I distrust their intentions. Because I've never been close to anyone. Because I was never taught how to be close to anyone, our home was so detached, so cold towards one another. As if 4 strangers shared a home for all those years and thought they knew each other until the veil lifted and they all saw the error I  their thinking.

  April 20th the year I was 14, I came back to my foster home and was told to phone you, I was in no shape to do it but I did anyways. I wish I hadn't. Wish id stayed up the street smoking meth with Vanessa, wish id never gone home to hear Cliff was gone. I remember his funeral, I remember bugging travis, and him and Lucas smoking weed at the wake before they left and I remember wishing I could go with them. Wishing I could unheard the message travis left on his dad's voicemail, wishing I could trade places with cliff, Cassidy was too young to lose him. She hadn't even heard the story of her first words. I doubt she's heard it to this day. It took months for it to really hit me that death is final. I was sitting at my friends house and ghetto superstar came on the radio, and suddenly I started crying and couldn't stop for what seemed like hours I just cried and I could hardly get out the words to explain  to my friend why I was such a mess so suddenly. I still sing that song the way we did on our last trip to Pitt lake and smile now, still with tears in my eyes.