Me venting...long.

I look back over the course of my life has taken so far, I hope it doesnt consume me.

My memories are fragmented, I've never had a solid grasp on the flow of time so its difficult for me to pin down the whens of most everything that has occured in my life.
The earliest memory I can recall is searching through the back yard of that big, dreary grey house searching for some toy that I had lost and like clockwork a woman comes and tells me
that its nap time, something I always hated. I cannot recall her name but I know she was once a psuedo mother my father had brought home to fill a void.
I wasnt aware of my biological mother at this point, carol. Fast forward a few years and I am in a small town named Kermit, texas located southwest of the panhandle, just outside El Paso.
I remember vividly Lisa. She was a woman my father Larry had met at bar at some point and they both shared a passion for whiskey and coke. I remember how many
fights they always had and just how horrible she was when my father wasnt home. I remember her being horrible to my sisters and my sisters being horrible to me.
They would tell my father, but of course he wouldnt believe them. They used to fight alot, I still remember all the things being thrown around, hot pots of
chilli being dumped over my father's head and Lisa pulling out a shotgun and pulling the trigger, only to find that she had forgot to load it.
I think the thing that stuck with me the most was the cop lights hitting the wall one night, I still remember the red and blue strobes hitting the wall
and how surreal it felt. I went to take a bath as my sisters had told me to do and some time later my aunt judy came in, to reprimand of me about how much shampoo I had put in my hair.
During this 'kermit' phase of my life I also remember a few other things. I remember driving home with my dad in his van and of course he was so drunk
he could hardly drive. I remember him reaching over and gripping my thigh and squeezing it and it was the first time I had ever felt fear for my father
becuase I knew what it meant and I knew that fathers didnt do that. Nothing else came of that, but that incident never left my memories.
I heard some years later from a distant relative that Lisa was under the impression that she was the best thing that ever happened to me and my sisters.

Lisa and my father split up some time later and I ended up living with my aunt louann In Longview, WA becuase my father was homeless at the time. I a

I adored my aunt and I adored her son, my cousin david.
Things were relatively normal for me here except that I never did understood why I lived there until some years later. It was the first taste of a normal life I had ever known,
going to school and hanging out with my freinds, terrorising the neighborhood and just being a normal kid. I learned some years later that my aunt louann
had effectively stolen around 250g's from my father, I used to adore her.


We will call this phase, the 'Montana' phase. My father eventually hooked with a woman named Linda. I guess they had been high school sweet hearts and she still wanted him
They moved in together and started a family the same way all star crossed people do until a few months pass and some glaring issues arise.
For me it was much more simple and painful in the same breath. Linda loved her kids alot, far more than she ever did me and it was obvious.
The birthdays and christmas's always ampflied this becuase they always got really cool stuff and I never got much of anything. Its selfish of me to think and say this
but to a young boy it hurt, becuase it let me know where I always stood, which was 2nd place. I remember me Linda and her two children were driving somewhere. We almost got in to an accident
and Linda through her arms over Megan and Spencer to protect them, but not me. I remember how much that hurt becuase I had grown to love this woman as a boy will love his mom.
Everything in her actions told me that this wasnt reciprocated. Eventually her and my father split up and of course she left without a look back.
Sometime later her and my father hooked up again for sex and she was on the pill or so she told him. Lo and behold 9 months later my father is trapped with child support, which was her intention as she told him
Dust and debris was all that was left of whatever trust and faith I had people and with that dust and debris, I began to build my walls and sow the seeds for darkness.

We stayed in this same house for some time after Linda had left and my father was still heavily in the bottle and my sisters were just as horrible and wretched as they had always been.
During this time, My biological mother Carol had called while my sisters were away and spoke to my father. She had called to talk to my sisters and since they werent home, my dad offered to allow her to speak to me
only she didnt remember who I was. This was a hard thing for me to deal with, I was the boy that was abandoned, I was the boy who came in second place only to be abandoned again. I was the boy who cried during Mothers day
while all the other kids made their card, and at the time, I wasnt even sure why I was crying.

Eventually my father got in contact with a life long freind named Mike Welch and Mike presented him with a job working construction in Vancouver, Wa. We moved over there and he started working that job. I became fast freinds with Mike's son Derek.
Me and Derek were good freinds, played video games and had sleep overs all the time. We could never do too much becuase Mike and Trina, Derek's parents were both extremely paranoid people and wouldnt allow him to live a normal life as a young boy.
Time progressed and I was in middle school at this point. These were some of the worse years of my life becuase other kids can be so cruel.
We didnt have the money so of course I didnt have the name brand clothes and I was socially stunted becuase of everything that had transpired in the past had pretty much prevented me from living a normal life.
I went through this phase of my life with no haven. School was terrible and humiliating everyday and home was no better.

My sisters were still horrible but Jessica had pretty much let me alone but Paula still decided it was fair to vent all her troubles on me physically.
She was wailing on me one day becuase I wouldnt do her dishes for her. She was literally whooping my ass when I finally had enough and broke her nose. She stopped all her shit after that.
After splitting my chin open on a table and beating my ass countless times, she quit. Her freinds didnt however. Her boyfreind hung me by my foot over 35ft balcony in our apartments and they thought it was funny.
I should mention that Jessica and Paula were both heavily into drugs at this point and had both dropped out of High School. They used to take me over to their tweak pads where their freinds stayed
and they would all start dropping acid and swear up and down that I was a cop...pretty hostile situation for my 13 year old self.
We still lived in these same apartments when my father met Richelle and she was a very good thing for him. She had just left a bad relationship with a man named Shannon when they met.
A few months later Shannon went back to Hawaii and they moved in together. Me and Richelle's son Devin got along ok and me and Richelle got along ok.
Things progressed along but I never let my walls down during this time, I knew better by this time. I do remember at some point she had decided to leave and whatever my father had said, didnt work. In desperation he sent me in to talk to her and
whatever I had said, convinced her to stay. It took me a few years to regard her as my mother but me and Devin had grew into best freinds.

Fast forward into High School. I had freinds now, I had found my clique and I lived a relatively normal life at home. I was also chronically depressed. I took a large amount of Pain pills, but I knew it wasnt enough to kill me, I just remembering being lost
in darkness and trying to find help, I was out of options at this point and I really did feel like dying. The police had pulled me out of class halfway through and escorted me to an ambulance. They took me to the hospital and took away
everything, My shoes, my pants, everything. I was strapped down to a bed, in a room with no sharp objects and I remember hearing these girls in two rooms adjacent to mine. One of crying hard and the other one was singing to herself.
I laid there for sometime scared to death of what my father was going to do until he walked in and I could see he had been crying and it was the first time I eve

ever felt like he cared about me
The night before all this transpired, Richelle and my father had pulled me out of bed at 3am and blamed their failing marriage on me and that was literally the catalyst for me.
I was eventually released from the hospital but I was confined to my room for days with nothing but a pen, a notebook and a John Mayer cd who I hated.
I went back to school and it became so clear who my true freinds were, and it wasnt many. During this same 'phase' of my life. My father
was moving a bed and slipped a disc in his back and hurt himself, this began a severe downward spiral for him

I graduated High School and left for the Army. I went through basic and ait just fine and eventually came back home on leave and found everything in pieces.
My father had slipped back into alcoholism and was so addicted to painkillers becuase of his back injury that he was calling the ambulance just for morphine.
Richelle had enlisted in the national guard and came home changed. I dont think she loved him anymore at this point and Im pretty sure he knew it.
She had been sleeping in the armorey at the guard center. He killed himself the day before I was scheduled to go back. I was sitting with my sister in the morning talking about something and just 5 minutes earlier, I remember walking outside onto the porch and watching the
rain drops hit the floor and I knew something bad was going to happen, it was in the air. I went back in and dismissed that thought and talked to my sister. A few minutes later my dad received a phone call from his doctor to remind him of an appointment so I went to the door
to tell him and he told me to get the fuck away. At the time I was thinking he was just embarrassed that he had slipped back into the bottle and went back to the living room. A few minutes later we hear a crash coming from my father's room and the door was locked.
I could hear thing crashing around in there and getting knocked over so I broke the door down. The first thing I saw was blood everywhere.

The bed and the blankets were soaked and he was on the ground naked flailing around. My sister Jessica
was already screaming at this point so I told her to go call 911. She left the room to do that I had grabbed a few shirts to wrap around my fathers arms to stop any bleeding and to hold him in place. He wasnt even bleeding anymore so I dont know why I did it.
My sister was still gone calling the police and my dad just kept telling me over and over how much of a fuck up he was and he kept begging me over and over to kill him.
I didnt know what else to say, other than shut the fuck up. I remember looking him in the eyes and it was like those rooms with the lightswitch that you can turn to ajust the brightness,
I could see his life dimming in his eyes like someone was turning that switch. The paramedics arrived and took him to the local hospital.
The doctor gave us the option to stay with him in his last minutes or to try and life flight him to oregon, to the big hospital for better treatment. My sisters and richelle all turned to me for the answer and I chose to have
flown to Oregon. He died on the way there. I never did feel bad for this part, becuase they said he had a chance so I told them to do it.
Im not sure what is all boxed up in my mind but I remember wanting my father to die, I didnt want him to live through this.

I Know Im a horrible person for thinking that, I've never mentioned this part before. It makes me wonder just how twisted up in the head I've become over there years.
They laid him out in the hospital for everyone to say there good byes, all my family was there crying and doing whatever. I took one look at him and it was enough.
He was all pale and I could see where all the blood had pooled in the back of his head becuase they laid him down on his back. I was disgusted with the whole scene.

My family literally ripped itself apart after all this happened. Everyone played the 'bloods thicker than water' card and blamed Richelle for it. I stayed loyal to her becuase I thought what I knew at the time was the truth and Wrote my entire family off to include my sisters.
I stopped communicating with all of them except Richelle and when I would go home on leave, her house was where I stayed. She started dating so soon after he died. I thought at first that she was trying to get over him
and continue leaving but boyfreind after boyfreind and something told me that a few of them, something had been started before my father had passsed becuase things had just progressed too fast
for a new relationship. It also came to my knowledge that he had tryed to kill himself once before and she belittled him for it, his plea for help.

I know what its like to want to stop living, but what my father did. Nobody got a better look than me at what he had done to himself with that box cutter.
He had cut himself on arm from the crook of his arm to wrist straight down to the done, and the other one half that length. I cant begin to imagine what was going through his head when he ran a hot bath and did that to himself.
There were chunks of meat I pulled out of the drain. What was once my family remains fractured to this day, I've excommunicated everone of my family members. I did this for what they had done to Richelle and I did this becuase what
some of them did to my father while he still alive, alot of this contributed to the choice that he made and for that, there is no forgiveness in my heart. Forgiveness is something
I forsake long ago and Im sure eventually it will consume me, but I cant let go. I find myself today completely alone. I havent had any contact with anyone in so long now, I no longer care for them.
I speak to Richelle off and on, but the more I think about what happened during those few months, the more I grow to hate her, becuase Im not so sure she is as innocent as she played herself out to be.

I have alot of questions about what happened and Im not sure Im right, but to ask would be just as damaging and irrepairable as knowing the truth. I am now contemplating severing all communication with her, just as I have
done with everyone else. I dont know the truth, but my gut tells me she didnt do the right thing and Im sick of living in doubt, these questions I have will forever go unanswered. I can condemn now or I can doubt infinite.
I wont miss her if I do, I've been abandoned and hurt by so many people I've found that its easy for me to severe ties with anyone and everyone and lose no sleep over it.
During all this time of doubt and reflection I've been with a girl for around a year now. We are done now, that girl really was poison. I've also slipped into alcoholism over these last few years but I've broken myself of it.
It did make me think of how easy it is to follow in our parents foot steps, the same way my father was an alcoholic. It just served to further scare me
that someday as my father and all his brothers did, lose the will to live and end it. I sit here now saying that I am fine, but I know deep down just
how scarred and dark the inside of me is and how quicly I can delve into all of it. Each day for me is a struggle to maintain that balance and not allow myself to slip in to it.
I've spoken to counselors and people, none of it helps. Its called scar tissue and it doesnt go away. My only struggle now is to keep moving forward and to figure life out it seems.
I look at other people and I dont have a clue where they come from, it all seems alien to me.

I didnt write any of this for pity of sympathy, in fact save that for someone that needs it. Writing to me is a way to bleed out the poison my mind creates, the same way a leech feeds
off the blood of an infected wound. I catch myself wondering if Im just a sorry dude, becuase I know other people go through problems and they seem fine, so I dont get it, probably never will.
I stand here at this very moment, proclaiming the weight of the world has yet, and will never claim me.

Thank you for your response Rumi. Once again, this is just a forum for me to vent, I assure you Im not some guy locked in a dark room wearing black finger nail paint. This was just a written reflection of what I remember. As far as your comment is concerned, those people do have it much worse than I do, but once again that derails from the original intent. I would ask you to consider this, I've talked to alot of people and heard alot of problems from people and some of it seemed almost silly to me, but you never can tell about things like this. What may seem silly to you or me, could be something world shattering for the person dealing with it.

"I look at other people and I dont have a clue where they come from, it all seems alien to me."



I can relate to that. Even when they speak of thier life, I'm still left with no clue as to where they come from ... because their persepective has been altered because of these very life events, and so how they view thier life is askewed from how the actual events occured.

People are fractured .. all of them .. and so they know not why they do what they do.

"I sit here now saying that I am fine, but I know deep down just how scarred and dark the inside of me is and how quicly I can delve into all of it. Each day for me is a struggle to maintain that balance and not allow myself to slip in to it."


You won't slip into it, Sleeper, no matter how much you fear that you might .... and you want to know why? Because you are aware this darkness exists. People around you, around all of us .. don't know the darkness is there, Sleeper, this is why they fall into it head first.

Just like with all the people you remember in your life who took your heart and soul for granted ... they thought they were in the light, they thought they were doing right .. they didn't know they were in shadow.

I find this to be true everyday of my life ... people will say and do the most horrid things, and have no clue that it is wrong.

But you ... you do know, you can see it, feel it, you know that this darkness resides inside of you, you know it resides in all of us ... and so you have the ability to walk around it, rather than plunging through it, completely oblivious of how it can twist you.

In fact, maybe you should try to look at another side of this ...... what happed to you in your life can be viewed as a blessing .... because now you are aware of the real life, that others are ignorant of. If this didn't happen to you, you might be one of them, Sleeper, you walks all over the ones they are suppose to love, and have no clue.




"I've spoken to counselors and people, none of it helps. Its called scar tissue and it doesnt go away. My only struggle now is to keep moving forward and to figure life out it seems."


You don't need a counselor. Because counselors are one of "them" .... they probably go home everyday themselves, and tear someone apart because they don't know, like you know ..... and you do know ..... because you can feel the vibes, the undercurrents .. no matter how sweetly the mouth smiles, or the eyes twinkle, no matter how much the tongue conveys loving words ..... you can feel the energy that is being emitted, and you know they this person is in darkness, while thinking they are in light.

You already have everything you need, Sleeper, you don't need a counselor ..... you have awarness of truth, and that is all you need.