It rings in my ears...

I was going to school in Sedalia at the time.  I remember it clearly.  The emotional impact was so significant that I will probably never forget that moment. 

During this time in my life I was often frustrated.  My upbringing has always been a source of great angst in my life.  I was in my thirties and still not where I wanted to be in life.  From my perspective, I was a guy who was still suffering because of how I was raised.  I didn't want to waste the prime of my life suffering because of what someone else did.  I wanted to be living my life.  Looking back I imagine it like I had a big brand on my forehead letting everyone know I was damaged goods, except I was the only one who could see the brand.  I was thirty something years old and was still having to undo what was done to me.  I was fed up.  I had had enough.  All I wanted to was to be healed.   

I was going to college to socialize, to make friends, and to learn about myself and life.  I wanted to get a sense of everyone else in the world.  The life I had lived made me different than everyone else in so many ways, and I finally had enough self-confidence to mingle with the rest.  Going to college was the appropriate thing to do.  I can't remember if I had had the conversation with my biological parents yet.  Wait!  I do remember.  I had already told them off because I had to call my grandmother to find out what time I was born.  I couldn't call my mother.  I was done with them. This was a pivotal time in my life.  I was bitter because they fucked me up so much, and it took so much effort to undo what they did, that they just didn’t deserve to know me any longer.  I felt that deep down, for me to be able to look myself in the mirror and it actually be true that I love myself, I couldn't allow those people in my life any longer.  They simply are not worthy.  We have not talked since.

I had a really close friend at the time.  We would spend hours on the phone together.  She was my girlfriend, you know, the platonic kind.  We talked about everything, and being the serious person I am, we talked a great deal about deep personal things.  She was the first person I called when I discovered this new information.  It was late in the evening.  I was taking a break from studying by reading articles on Facebook like I often do.  I came across a website that gives free birth charts.  I had always found astrology interesting, but too difficult to know which is real and which is not.  Which is crap, and which ones actually know what they are talking about.  Astrology is like all other professions, there are those who suck and those who are really good.  Anyways, I put in my date of birth.  I didn't know the hour I was born, but I found out that it doesn't change anything.  Not on the day I was born anyways.  All my life I had thought something was wrong with me, but nothing was wrong with me.  The planets and stars are to blame.  It is the universes doing. 

Go here to get your profile.  http://alabe.com/freechart/

I was so giddy after reading it that I could not contain myself.  I was dumbfounded.  Years of my life wasted; all that suffering for nothing, all that self-loathing, all that expelled energy, simply because I was ignorant of something so simple, yet so completely complex.  In my profile it says things about me that are so spot on it is disturbing.  The personality issues that I had been dealing with all my life are spelled out perfectly in my profile.  Because I was born Sept. 1st 1975 in Columbia MO.  I am super critical.  All my life I allowed people to make me think that there was something wrong with me, but in reality it is just who I am.  It has to do with the time and place of my birth and nothing else.  I was so relieved.  My outlook on myself, my Selfview, changed forever.   I have not felt negatively about myself for being so critical since that day.

For instance, the following quotes are from my birth chart:

"You are supercritical of yourself and others and, at times, prefer to be alone rather than deal with any imperfections in yourself or in those with whom you might relate."

"Your energies get turned on quickly whenever anything interests you. But you have a very short attention span and it is difficult for you to complete tasks because something else more interesting always seems to be beckoning."

"The way that you grow and develop is by being an uncompromising individualist."

"At times, you are so supercritical that you are merely nit-picky." 

Indeed.  I am supercritical.  Most of my life this super criticalness has been quite a bane.  I cannot turn it off.  It does not go away.  It is me.  I am it.  When you think Benjamin, you should also think supercritical.  We are one in the same.  I am Mercury born.  A Virgo.  All I do is think!  The issue is that super criticalness bugs people.  They find it quite annoying.  I always thought something was wrong with me because of this.  It makes people feel like they are never good enough.

At this same time in my life I was spending a lot of time alone.  I have always spent a lot of time alone.  This always bugged me too.  Our culture makes loneliness out to be a very negative and bad thing.  This culture makes people feel like something is wrong with them if they are lonely.  I kept thinking in my head that if I could remedy the trauma I would have lots of friends like everyone else, and I would never be lonely again.  Unfortunately, my childhood trauma and my loneliness in life had nothing to do with one another.   As my birth chart says, I prefer to be alone, that is, when I am not thinking something is wrong with me because I am alone.  Talk about inner conflict!  This is a perfect example of how culture screws us up.  We are told to be one way, but in reality we are another. 

Then, as I do now, I always pray to just be me, whatever it takes.   I didn't know it then, but my prayers were being answered because it is in my nature to be alone.  A lot actually.  Looking back on my life, I have often been in situations where I had no choice but to be alone, and often times alone for long periods of time.  Life is crazy.  To accept the loneliness, all I had to do was accept myself.  Crazy indeed.

The second example I listed has also been a bane in my life.  According to this American culture, to public schools especially, to all our career choices, we are supposed to pick one thing and stick to it for life.  I find this impossible.  More than anything public schools made me think I was flawed because I cannot stick to things for very long.  I am always eager to move on to the next experience.  Looking back on my life, I can do tons of things well, but none of them really well.  I never stick to things long enough.  There is nothing wrong with me.  It is simply how I am.  It is this culture which is broken.  There is as much gift in being able to do tons of things kind of good as there is in being able to do only one thing really well.  No one way is always better than another.  Fact of life. 

The third example I listed is something I found easy to embrace.  Put simply, I cannot be told what to do.  I do not compromise.  I do what I want to do and that is all.  It is a perfect one sentence description of me.  I will not do something just because I was told to do it. 

These few examples I listed are but a few sentences from a full page profile.  I just re-read it while writing this, and sentence after sentence describes me near perfectly.  There are however, some sentences which do not seem to fit.  I have pondered these sentences at great length, searching myself for the answers.  After all, my prayer is to be me, no matter what.

"You have an almost desperate need to be loved and wanted and needed by everyone with whom you come into contact, and you go out of your way to be accommodating to them."

"A born diplomat, you dislike discord so much that you will go out of your way to make others feel comfortable and at ease. You speak softly and pleasantly."

When I was younger my need to be loved caused me more suffering than I can currently understand.  Because I never actually received any love, within me, it turned to hate.  The environment in which I was born was completely against my personality.  I am trying to get back to that point.  It is hard work.  For a long time in my life I worked at not needing anyone.  My goal was to be autonomous.  It was a spiritual quest you could say, and I accomplished my goal.  I overcame this aspect of my personality.  When I was younger this aspect dominated my behavior.

Also I do not speak softly or pleasantly.  I am very direct.  I am actually quite confrontational.  This is the exact opposite of what my birth chart says of me.  Again, my environment played against my personality and environment won.  When I was younger the places I lived did not allow for me to be accommodating, polite and soft spoken.  It was the exact opposite.  I was raised in violence.  My childhood environment was the exact opposite of my personality.   I was hyper masculinized.  Hyper masculinized males are anything but soft spoken.  I cannot help but think that had my parents actually taken care of me that I would be a really nice guy.  Oh well, such is life.  I am taking what was given to me and making the best of it.  Who wouldn't?

As with all things, there are contradictions.  I have known friends who have read their birth charts and commented that they did not match.  I wonder if they are themselves or if environment won out?  Some people live their entire lives never figuring it out.  The fact that I am not soft spoken shows how environment can overcome personality if it is extreme enough.  Think of children born shy but forced on the stage by demanding parents.  Children like me who require security as children but are born in war or violent homes. From my perspective it is simply a matter of knowing one’s self and using whatever one can to understand just what exactly that is.  In my search for myself I came into alignment with my personality.  I found what I was searching for. 

It is not an issue of it needing to be contradiction free to be true, it is a matter of being able to hold contradictions as true.  It is only our labeling system, our language, and method of thought that makes things seem contradictory.  In reality, it is all true.  For instance, needing love and being an uncompromising individualist are completely contradictory, yet they are both true at the same time.  It is a matter of realizing at any given moment we are thousands of things simultaneously.  Our culture causes us to label things as one way or another, but nothing could be further from the truth. 

What if...

I feel like I must mix in some hope.

There is a certain type of sea turtle that comes together in large groups to lay their eggs. When the eggs hatch there are sometimes hundreds of thousands of baby turtles scrambling for their lives. The survivors are rare compared to how many of their siblings and cousins do not make it. There are many other examples of this in nature. Some spiders lay hundreds of eggs each, and true there are hundreds of spiders laying those eggs, few actually survive to adulthood compared to how many eggs are laid. Trees are the same too. Think of all the seeds a single oak tree produces in its lifetime and compare it to how many trees actually make it to full maturity. How many of those seeds take root? How many actually fulfill their potential and become that great tree that produces millions of its own seeds?

What if those of us who were raised by complete idiots, neglected and abused, those of us who share that experience and become aware of it, what if we are that rare tree? To be clear, very few take this step. Society certainly has made us feel worthless, whether intentional or not, but that does not make it true. What if being abused was our trek across the beach? What if our childhood was the same as dodging predators, which we did, often by luck, just to get to the ocean? Getting to the ocean might seem easy compared to growing up, but in the ocean with no friends or family to depend on the experience seems similar. Every one of those little turtles has to figure it out on their own. What if, those of us who survived our pasts, who are no longer caught in society’s lies, are that rare human, who through great suffering has become free?

It matches nature to think this way. It is our perception that labels the turtle’s plight through a land filled with mass murderers as a struggle. Our society has instilled in us a desire for life to be easy. In reality though, our society seems to be mimicking the ways of Mother Nature. Comparing this phenomenon of suffering with nature itself seems to match up. Everywhere there are examples of great hardship before realizing full potential. It is society that teaches us to think in terms of good and bad. Society does not teach us to try and see it for what it really is.

Look at how many do not survive. Whether there were humans on earth or not, the rest of nature would still be doing what it does. I feel pretty confident saying that even without humans on earth the oak would still be producing tons of acorns throughout its life. Does anyone even know how many acorns an oak will produce in its lifetime? Really look at how many do not survive. It changes one's perception of the survivor to see how many do not make it. We have spent our whole lives labeling ourselves negatively, but it simply is not true.

What if our traumatic pasts make us something different than the rest? What if it gives us an ability to see what is really going on? I know for a fact it makes us more sensitive than others. What if this gives us an ability to actually change it? What if, without those experiences, nothing would ever change? Discontent is the source of all change after all. If change is good, then it must follow that discontent is good as well, even though we have been taught to think of it negatively. Suffering is greater than discontent, so suffering is greater change than the change of merely being discontent. This means suffering is even better than discontent. Yet, we all feel it as a bad thing. When we see the baby turtles being consumed in mass by predators we deem it horrible and sad, some even say gross. When we see the whole though, it is one of the most beautiful things on earth.

None of us think about the seeds that do not make it, but look how beautiful it is to be in the woods. 

My brother read a book about being an adult child of an alcoholic once. We talked about it often while he was reading it. I can't remember the name of it, but it was written by someone who worked with adult children of alcoholics for a long period of time. Something like fifteen years. I have always remembered this; it has always stood out in my mind because what she said perfectly described me. She compiled a list of the things she thought all adult children of alcoholics shared. The thing on the list that stood out the most was the fact that we all feel like no one understands us. Another way to say it is that we feel different from everyone else. Almost all adult children of alcoholics feel like they are different from everyone else. The word feel here is significant. We feel we are different and this feeling causes us great pain. The alcoholism of our parents, the neglect that occurred because of it, makes us feel different than the rest.

You see, at the very base of it all, we are animals. It is so easy to see one's self as a person, a human being, something spiritual, something different than the rest of the animal kingdom, we forget we are actually primates. All our lives our culture has been telling us some god made us, but really we are just evolved animals.  What this means is that we absolutely need social contact and closeness with our own kind on a primal level. It also means over all those millions of years evolution gave us an ability to communicate unconsciously.  It affects our actions way more than we realize. A large part of the unconscious mind is operating on this level of social contact with other humans. It is part of who we are. Our being primates greatly affects how we feel about the thoughts we have about our environment. Removing social contact is the worst thing one can do to another human being, especially a child. This is a sliding scale though. It is not necessarily one or the other, totally alone or not alone at all. One does not have to be totally abandoned to feel abandoned. If a child feels different, more alone than everyone else, this has a profound impact on its development socially.

In the minds of children, all other children have the ideal or "normal" mommy and a daddy. Children are idealistic without realizing it because they receive this information unconsciously. They know it without being told it. Without it having to be explained. Don't you know that all boys and girls have good mommies and daddies? The "norm" projected by this society is that all children should have a mommy and a daddy and that mommy and daddy should be and act some certain way. Every day I deal with a six year old girl who doesn't really have a dad. I mean, there is a guy, he is around, but he is not the ideal. Her interactions with other children make her very aware of this fact. They ask each other about their mommies and daddies. These little children establish pecking order among themselves using familial status. They don't think about doing it, they just do it. Cultural programming on an unconscious level. The kids with mommies and daddies at home are better than the kids who do not. They already have an ideal of how it is supposed to be, which means they know when they do not meet that ideal.

At six she is already self conscious about her familial relations. At six she is already separated from the collective, to some degree, in her own consciousness of Self. She already feels different than the other kids, whether it is true or not, because her daddy does not live at home with her. According to the kids at school something is wrong if one's daddy does not live at home. Every child she encounters faces this same fate; they will all reinforce it, every time they meet. This will affect her for quite some time. It is not that it is bad that her dad does not live with her, but that she sees it as so, that makes it bad. Can you see this in yourself?

Some children want to have that "mommy and daddy" image so badly that they tell themselves what they had as a child was ideal even if it wasn't. Read that again. They lie to themselves their entire lives so they don't have to feel the pain of it not being true. It is extremely painful emotionally to deal with. Such is the life of being a primate.

When we are abused as children, it literally does make us different, whether we know it or not, and whether we want to admit to it or not. The people who have never been abused do not admit to this, they can't. They don't know how. They simply cannot understand. All they know is that they do not want to feel separated from the rest. I have spent most of my adult life knowing I was messed up, but I had no idea how to bridge the gap. I had no idea of how to communicate it so that someone else would understand what I felt. It is easy to say, "I don't want to be messed up anymore." It is another thing all together to undo it; to not be messed up. Those not abused have the same issue though, they don't know, but the difference is they never want to bridge the gap. It generally takes something quite traumatic to wake up the "normal" or "raised appropriately" person up. This makes the gap even bigger. Who would willingly choose to go through that? Certainly not someone who has never actually had to struggle for their life, these people generally make for some of the laziest, spiritually speaking. If one believes they suffered but really didn’t, it is virtually impossible to get them to not be lazy.

Those who don't know always claim that all human experience is equal. They, like us, do not want to feel different somehow, and they will go to great lengths to prevent feeling that way. But that doesn't make their statement completely true. They claim that no one can ever actually know another, it's universal. This again has nothing to do with equality in every sense of the word. That everyone's past experience is unique, and that no one can actually know another; true, but I would like to see someone raised by decent people from where I live, who have never been in a fight stand in front of Alexander the Great, or Adolf Hitler, Marcus Aurelius, or Gandhi, or Christ and then say that we are all equal. If I have experiences and someone else does not, we are not equal. That means, in this sense, no one is equal. I am not saying one is better than another; it simply means we are not equal. A lot of people struggle with this concept. We are the same quality, yes, but we are not the same quantity. Without the experience, one cannot understand, and those without the experience never like hearing that. No one likes to feel excluded.

Having been abused, I can still know what it is like to be loved, to have loving experiences. Maybe not fully, but I have a good idea of what that is. One can say they have seen mountains from afar.  On the other hand, the one who has never known abuse, or even seen from afar, does not know what it is like really at all. Is imagining the mountain and seeing the mountain the same thing? What about climbing the mountain?  If one has never even seen a photo graph of real abuse can they know what it is?  Can real abuse even be captured in such a way?  I do not think so.

The worst feeling in the world is when someone literally takes advantage of you to the point where one is completely helpless to do anything about it. I'm yet to experience anything as bad.  Like being a child at the mercy of humans four times your size. Also, the one who has not been abused doesn't have experiences that no one else can understand. They, for the most part, can be understood. All of their experiences are quite imaginable and relatable. This is critical. You see, those raised appropriately are lacking experience, yet still claim they are equal. This is unfair and we sense it as children even if we cannot explain it as such. If someone was raised lovingly, by good parents, we can all empathize with that to some degree, we can all understand that somewhat, even if it did not happen to us directly. The one abused, rarely if ever, has someone to share a sense of belonging with; no one else understands.

The person raised appropriately has a permanent feeling of connection with other people even if they are not aware of it, even if they don’t see it that way, it is still there. That is often the part they don’t understand. Even when they are alone, they don't really know it.  The animal in us knows when we are connected or not. You see, if they didn't have that sense of connection, they would act much more like us. The abused one has very little feeling of connection with anyone. When we do not feel connected self destruction mechanisms engage biologically. Does not matter how old one is, what gender or belief system. When we hate ourselves, when we feel cast out, or that we don't belong our bodies respond by self destructing. The body does what the mind thinks/feels/knows.  This makes the fight to the sea incredibly difficult. It is bad enough mass murderers are running around everywhere, but the human can hate itself; the human can destroy it's self.

Abuse and neglect makes us feel terribly alone. Not only do we feel left out, but we are also very aware of the unfairness of it. It makes us alone. Ultimately though, this is a gift. Becoming aware of this fact within ourselves is part of the journey. The spiritual path requires that this lesson be learned in life. It is not enough to intellectualize that one is alone. It is not enough to think about it. One must do more than ponder how alone they are in the world. The person who has never struggled is stuck pondering. If they think about it enough though, it will come to be. One must actually feel it, know it, deep in their heart; I am alone.

The person raised appropriately was all alone too, in reality, they just never knew it. We were gifted with the experience of being able to realize it fully at a very young age.

There is great freedom in this realization regardless of how painful it is to actually realize it. It is like climbing a mountain just for the view of a lifetime. All the work climbing is worth the timeless moment of being struck with awe because of a view that cannot be communicated. It can only be known by observing personally. One cannot communicate the beauty of standing at the top of a mountain. No one ever has to descend back down this mountain though. It is only this current society, and how it came about, that makes this journey seem so painful. Other cultures have cherished the path to enlightenment. One cannot fulfill potential without this realization. The realization that one is a pure individual is just as important as realizing one is part of the whole. The spiritual path is rife with suffering. Discontent is the source of all change. It sucks really bad to feel like there is no one on the whole planet that understands. When it feels like there is no one to relate to, it is agony. Feeling it for long periods of time changes one’s life.

Despite whatever opinions we may have about it. It seems quite natural that suffering leads to freedom. It is everywhere in nature. It seems to be the way the universe works on a fundamental level. It is our society that taught to us to think in the terms we use now and unfortunately those terms have little to do with reality.

We praise the inventor who gets it right the first time. We say that is genius. In reality though, the inventor who fails fifty times first knows much more about success than the one who got lucky the first time in.

While we may not be able to express what happened to us, this does not mean we are alone. It only feels that way because we have not come together yet.

A special skill

Along the way I developed a special skill of sorts. I always feel like I am in that movie Napoleon Dynamite when I use the word skills.  It's like I am talking with the goofy haired kid discussing what abilities we have to bring to the table.  I may not have good drawing skills, but I can sure peer into someone's soul.  I had no idea when I was younger that I was developing something that was going to give me an ability few others possess.  I was just trying to feel close to other people.  I was simply trying to fill a hole within myself.  I just wanted to not feel alone, to not feel broken, to not hurt anymore.  One of the ways I would ease the pain was by talking about my life, my childhood specifically.  Telling the story helps let it go.  By doing this it opened the door for others so that they could do the same thing.  I have had a great many friends over the years and we have shared our stories together.  We healed each other.  I have always been a great catalyst in this regard.  It made it easier for them to tell their story when they contrasted it with mine.  More often than not my childhood was more traumatic so it alleviated a great deal of self consciousness others had regarding their own story.  It made it easier for them because I would always go first.  I had no shame in mine and that freed them of theirs.

It goes a bit deeper though.  It wasn't always just about healing.  It happens to be something about me that just is.  As they say, if you do something long enough it just becomes who you are.  People feel safe talking to me about certain things.  You see, people tell me their secrets.  Not just regular secrets but the deep down inside dark secrets.  People tell me things they don't tell anyone else.  I have always known the darker side of life because of this.  The average person never sees this side of people, the secret side, for whatever reason, but I have always wanted to know why, so I kept my eye open to the dark. 

All my life people have looked at me crazy because I will say, such and such, about someone, which will completely contradict what they are thinking.  It must be that I am crazy right?  I can’t possibly know what I am talking about.  They will ask me how it is I know that about such and such.  I'll say things like, "that guy beats his kids when no one is around," or something like, "She cheats on her husband whenever she gets the chance."  More often than not, even my personal friends do not believe me at all. I just shrug and go on.  They just think I am being arrogant or something.  For me it is like seeing someone's aura, except it is not visual. It is just a "knowing" I get when I see people do things in a small way.  I am always that guy standing around paying attention to what no one else is paying attention too.  When I see some small happening, for instance, a sharp word spoken to a child in some certain way, it shows me the dark side of that individual.  Not because I am gifted or something, but because I have spent so much time studying people.  This is not something that can be taught to another person either.  One must learn it alone, and it seems to take a long time to refine.

A classic example is the story of the promiscuous girl.  If you didn't know, all girls are promiscuous just like boys are.  Girls are just taught to be ashamed of it, so they hide it much better than boys do.  Honestly, for me now, this is the easiest to realize simply because I have seen it so much.  Imagine a social gathering.  You know the typical setting.  Ten to fifteen people, everyone knows everyone to some degree or another.  People are gossiping like they do.  Maybe someone isn't at the party and usually is, so people are talking about the person who is gone.  Maybe the person gone is having problems with her boyfriend cheating so she couldn't make it because they are breaking up or are at home fighting. Cheaters always try to keep each other locked down at home.

 Surely we have all witnessed this before?  Or at least know the couple of which I speak.  Peggy, a girl at the party, is saying that she would never cheat on her husband like such and such does.  Or she is saying she would never stay with a man who cheats on her.  She gives her emotional reasons like most females do.  It is wrong, it would hurt him, they have a kid and it might split up the nuclear family bleh bleh bleh.  In our setting, everyone knows Peggy, and they all agree with her.  Peggy is a nice person, she would never cheat, and no one is even questioning this.  If you would pay attention like I do, you can see me though, as I often am, standing in the circle, acting uninterested yet coyly watching it all go down.  We all know a Peggy or two don't we?

What you don't know is that Peggy cheats.  The problem I have though is that no one seems to know this but me.  What you don't know is that in this situation I can get at this Peggy girl any time I choose.  I say this because I have known a few people just like Peggy in my day.  They create this huge façade about how moral and great they are, but in reality she is a cheater just like the rest.  I will never forget the first time a heard a girl convince everyone of how good she was.  They were friends of mine, friends of hers too.  They all believed her.  I just stood and watched it all go down.  The very first time I met a Peggy was in high school.  I really crashed and burned too because I let her secret out.  Shouldn't she have been the one that crashed and burned?  Nope.  No one believed me!  She made me out to be the bad guy and everyone helped her do it. 

I learned my lesson that day.  I don't let out the secrets anymore.  I was young then, and we all have to touch the flame once in awhile to learn our lessons don't we?  The whole social scene turned against me because I was lying about Peggy.  Lying?  I wasn't lying.  I slept with Peggy!  It turned into such a mess.  I lost friends.  I lost social standing.  I made enemies.  You see I learned that day that when you let someone's secret out they turn on you with a vengeance.  They turn mean and nasty.  They, themselves, do not wish to admit to reality.  It engages their ego, and as they say, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  I was just being idealistic.  I was doing the right thing whether I liked it or not.  To me the right thing was acknowledging the truth.  She was lying to everyone and I thought they should know. 

I'm getting on forty years old now.  I am no longer some naive high school punk.  I have lost count of the Peggy's I have known.  I am not saying I slept with them all.  Honestly I avoid them.  I am just saying I know who they really are.  In my life now I have held so many secrets, for so many people, it has created pessimism in my life.  I should say, it seems like pessimism to others.  I don’t live my life thinking it should be some picturesque thing.  People will often call me negative or say I am just tainted or something because of my past.  This is not true.  I am simply a realist.  I see what is really going on.  Seeing the dark side is a double edged sword; I get to know the truth, but I never get to share it.

Being abused as a child is another way one can see what I mean.  The woman who raised me always tried to hide the truth.  I though, always wanted to know the truth.   Growing up I got to see both sides simultaneously.  It was a perpetual state of affairs.  I got to see her façade and reality at the same time.  The darkness within our home and the façade that they all created to hide it simply couldn't be hidden from me.  I was in both places at the same time.  I saw it all.  It taught me to see through the lies people create about themselves.  It taught me to see the mask that people wear, and to know it for what it is.  I've spent my whole life living those lies for other people. I spent my whole life living in the darkness they created.  When I see parents act like mine did, and I see how their kids act too, I know what is really going on. 

You see, everyone will say Peggy is a good parent.  They will say, "Look, she has a job, she goes to church, she does this and that for her children.  I see something different though.  I see what is really going on.  One of the greatest works of literature is The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli.  He successfully compiled his understanding of human nature.  In it he says, "Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are."  When I read this for the first time it gave me chills.  It made me realize I am not one who judges by the cover.  It made me realize how my childhood forced me to see what was really going on. 

I could list examples for weeks.  I could write a book alone on the lies that people live. I have friends who have burned me really badly and I still keep their secrets.  If knowledge is Power, then the secret of others is True Power.  That was what I ultimately learned.  Keeping those secrets gave me a certain power in and of itself.    

Don't believe me?  Start paying attention to what people actually do instead of what they say they do, and you will soon learn that the world you live in is dark indeed.  Be warned though, to do it well, you must first learn to see it in yourself. 

They let me out

I was only in that juvenile center for about five months. She had to throw a fit to get me out though. They did not want to let me out at all. They wanted to send me to one of those boy homes. I don't remember what they called them, they had catchy names, but all the kids in juvy said they were bad places to go. I took their word for it. They didn't want to let me out of that detention center because they knew what I was to some degree. They knew I was only going to fuck something else up. They knew it was only a matter of time. They knew what my parents were. The lack of remorse really bugged them, and it should have. I really didn't feel bad about anything I had done, or did, or was going to do. For her, it was one of those things she did to seem like a good mother. She didn't want to be the woman whose kid was locked up. I know the truth though. For her it was a victory of sorts because she could say, "See, he went to his dad's and look what happened," as if it was his fault entirely or something. It was like she was in a competition or something with him about who was the better parent. What a joke.

I did not want to go live with her at all, but I had no choice. They refused to let me go back with him because he was an alcoholic. Because I committed so many crimes both parents had to undergo some counseling too. My juvenile officer put me on house arrest, and she, the woman I lived with, would literally call the cops on me when I did not behave. She finally had a bit of control over me because my probation officer was helping her keep me reigned in. She still couldn't stop me though. By this time nothing could stop me. I still did what I wanted. She only made me craftier about it. I hated her guts, and every time she called the cops, or called my probation officer on me, I just hated her even more. How proud I was, I had a mother that called the cops on me if I didn't behave. How awesome is that? I hated the town I lived in too. None of the kids liked me. All the moving around always made me the new kid in town. I was constantly bullied and made fun of. I was so fucked up, why would they like me? It is never good to be the new kid in town when you attract attention like I do.

She was on her third marriage by this time. Actually her third marriage was one of the reasons I had wanted to go live with him so badly. I have to give that guy some credit though; he never laid a hand on me, never not once. He actually only ever yelled at me one time. Me and her were going at it pretty good one day and he slammed his hand down on the dresser and shouted that he had had enough. I just stood and looked at him. Of course the hair on the back of my neck was raised. For what had been done to me anytime a male raises his voice towards me I am ready to go instantly. He left the house for awhile.

The third husband had two boys of his own from a previous marriage. That meant sometimes there would be six boys in the house. Those two boys had issues just like I did. Their mother was just as crazy as mine. This was one of the reasons why I fought so hard to go live with the biological sperm donor. Being in poverty as she always was we never lived in nice houses. We lived in a house in Tebbetts, MO once. I went back to this house as an adult once. I couldn't believe how small it was. I can't believe eight of us lived in it. It only had one bedroom. Her and Bob made the living room their bedroom. When she lived with Bob, the third husband, she was just as messed up as before, I just wasn't being out right physically abused. The mental abuse never ceased. Each time she remarried, the guy was a little bit better than the previous one, I'll give her that. Not smarter, just a little more nice than the previous one.

The house she was living in when I got out of juvy was the nicest house she had ever lived in. It had enough bedrooms for my brothers and me. I actually had my own bedroom down in the basement. It was on a nice street in Fulton. We could no longer be immediately identified as dirt poor just by looking at the house we lived in. We had moved up in the world a bit I guess.

Within a year of being in Fulton I was somewhat established with my fellow dysfunctional hyper masculinized drunk drug using friends. These people were not really my friends we just shared some common themes. We were fucked up, our parents fucked us up, our parents were fucked up. We just wanted to party, to be cool, and to do what kids do in small towns where there is nothing else to do; get fucked up. As always, I had to take it a step further than the rest.

My first arrest

I can’t call him dad. He wasn’t a dad. I definitely can’t call him father; it’s obvious he was not a father. It is too wordy and awkward to call him the biological sperm donator every time I refer to him. His real name is irrelevant. It doesn’t come across correctly in all sentences to just refer to him as him. As old as I am now, one would think I would know the way to handle it, but I do not.   To me he's just another douche bag.

Anyways.

I just sat there smiling. I think it confused them or something. The officer was explaining to us, him and I, that they could not keep me in the jail because I was only thirteen. It was illegal or something for me to be in a real jail at that age. The police were quite shocked when I just showed up at the door to their station by the way.  I just didn't have anywhere else to go.  They called the juvenile detention center in Columbia and those people were on their way to pick me up. I was going to be staying there until the courts decided what to do with me. My future was now in the hands of a judge. I had turned myself in at the police station so that my father wouldn't put it to me again. There was no reason to take another beating and go to jail, so I just skipped the beating and went straight to jail.

I had finally snapped inside. I did not care anymore. I didn't care, so much so, that I was actually proud of what I had done. Fuck every one. Fuck you. Fuck them. Fuck the whole world. All anyone had ever done was shit on me. I had decided to do a little shitting myself. It was time to return the favor. The animal in me was now in charge. They raised me like an animal, so an animal is what they got.

I had gone on my first crime spree. I was only charged with a couple of felonies, the rest were all misdemeanors. For each crime that I was charged with an alphabetical letter was attached to it. My list of charges went into the double letters. Double g or something. I used to brag about how many charges I had racked up. They didn't get me for everything either. It was mostly vandalism. I mean I was only thirteen and pretty naive at that because of how she had raised me. I wasn't out trying to rob people, or get rich or something. I was out to make people suffer like I suffered. I wanted others to hurt like me. I didn't master mind some great crime spree. I simply went around town and the surrounding country side destroying shit. Destroying anything I could. People's property, their cars, their mailboxes, whatever I could get my hands on. If you didn’t know, it hurts like hell to hit a mail box with an aluminum bat when the car you are in is going 30 mph. The first time I did it I thought it broke my arms or something. I was pouring paint on people’s cars.  Just doing random and mean things. I salted a yard or two. The worst of it was when I went around knocking over tomb stones in grave yards. This was the worst of my actions. The only thing going on in my mind was fuck those people. I had a serious chip on my shoulder. Worse yet, I felt no remorse whatsoever. This caused a great deal of concern for those working in that juvenile detention center.

There is great freedom in not caring anymore. It is intoxicating. When one decides in their heart that they do not care what the consequences are there is no greater freedom. I didn't know it then, but this principle saved my life, but not at this juncture in the story. Or maybe it did.

Some friends helped me accomplish all this. I didn’t have a car so they were helping me get around. Because I am so passionate about the way I do things I have always been able to get people to tag along. No matter what I am doing I can always find someone to join in. Running away was a felony charge back then and they were accessories to it. I think I was gone for about a week before I turned myself in. I had no money, no food, no family, no nothing. The last couple of days I was staying in the ghetto in Mexico, MO. I know now that it wasn't a real ghetto, but if you’re a small town kid, it was a ghetto. Kids would run around at night with golf clubs and whatnot looking for trouble. They were just like me. The cops didn't go there unless they just absolutely had too.

My friends were having trouble covering for me though; their parents wanted me to go away. They didn't want another kid to feed, to house, to take care of. Their parents were probably more like mine than I realized; their kids were a burden to them too. Their parents didn't know yet that I was a criminal on the loose. I told all my friends to just blame it all on me. They were very worried about getting into trouble too. They were not like me and they were not looking forward to going to jail. They didn’t think it was nearly as cool as I did. So they did exactly what I said and blamed it all on me. It was my doing after all. I didn't have a problem taking the fall. For some reason I was proud of what I had done.  I think they just got some community service. 

I know now why I was so proud, even though the realization of it hadn’t happened yet in my mind. It will be a few years yet before I figure it out. Her second husband did a certain thing to my mind that plagued me for a long time. He hyper masculinized me. I had become proud of being violent and destructive. All that being called a pussy really took a toll on my psyche. All that verbal abuse infused in my mind that to be a man I must be tough, violent, aggressive, strong, and most importantly not a pussy. Not ever having a father figure made it even worse. I had to be my own male role model, which meant I had to be even tougher. The only typical hyper masculine trait I did not exhibit was in regards to women. I just wanted a woman to love me and I would do anything a woman said to get that love. Being quite feminine myself, but not realizing it, kept me from outright abusing women like the men in my life always had. I unlike those men could identify with women on a different level.

When I got to the juvenile detention center I still had the smile on my face. They were greatly troubled by this. I was interviewed by the staff to access my mental state and then placed in a room with another kid. What I did not know was that they recorded everything said in those rooms. They had microphones and speakers in the ceilings of the rooms so they could listen and then chime in whenever they wanted. They always made sure to listen in on the new kids. The kid in the room with me got into trouble for letting me talk about why I was in there. It was written in the rules handbook not to do this, which they made us memorize.  I just hadn't read it yet, so I was bragging about what I had done, literally.

It was cool to me being locked up. I was proud to be locked up. I knew right then they were just going to love me. I knew right then, these people played head games. I knew this because they didn’t stop the conversation until after it happened. You see, I was smart enough to know that if we weren’t supposed to do it they should have stopped us before it happened. But they let it happen and then handed out the consequence. This is very typical behavior in the justice system. I knew these people couldn't lay a hand on me though. The worst they could do was confine me to a room and lock the door. That was laughable to me. I didn’t give a fuck.

I wasn't bitter about being in there. I was bitter about my life. It was fun in a certain way.  It was something from my hyper masculinized perspective that I was going to get to brag about to other kids once I got out. I was going to be the kid in school that went to juvy.

I had some life changing moment in there though.

I remember a counseling session. The counselor said something to me that left me stunned. She said, “Ben, just because you think something, doesn’t mean you have to do it.” I was pole axed. Dumbfounded. That had never occurred to me before. I think my mind deepened instantly. I have always remembered that moment.

I remember taking my first IQ test while be mentally evaluated.  They do all kinds of tests to make their college degrees worthwhile.  There was never any real help in there.  The staff there had no idea what it was like to have parents like we did.  The guy giving the test was as shocked as I. I had just learned that I was not stupid. Being called stupid all my life I just assumed it was true. It was not true! I couldn't believe it.  I felt giddy.  I was elated. I was told only a small portion of the population had a higher IQ. How could this be I thought. I am a loser. How can a loser have a high IQ? Just goes to show, intelligence and wisdom are two very different things. Very different indeed. My intelligence could get me into trouble quicker than you could blink an eye. It always has. Having a high IQ does not make life easier.  Actually it is the opposite.  It didn’t mean I was actually smart. Give me a puzzle and I can figure it out quicker than most, but being able to figure out a geometric puzzle helped me not one bit in life. So naturally, when I got into trouble, I did it better than most. Trouble is trouble though, whether done well or poorly. I knew it then, and I didn’t care.

The craziest thing was the kid in the padded room. He was deathly pale. He was never allowed out of his room if others were out of their room. All of our doors had to be locked before his could be unlocked. They waited until night time when we would all be locked in before letting him shower. He would only get to go outside, the real outside that is, maybe once a week. If he was allowed out of his room he was always fully shackled. He had been in that room for over a year by the time I got there. He stayed in that room the entire time I was there.

He had a twin brother in a different detention center. They had killed someone and neither would confess. There was an older brother involved too, but he was old enough to be in a real jail. Since they couldn’t prove who pulled the trigger the court process took a long time I guess. None of the brothers were willing to sentence the brother who pulled the trigger to a life sentence. I wouldn’t do that to my brother either. They shot a guy in the face at point blank range with a hunting rifle. That was all I knew. He never got to talk to anyone really. He never talked to me. He just sat in that padded room all day and all night. He was just a kid like me. I have never forgotten that look in his eyes when we would look at each other as I passed his room.

Let me back up a bit

I missed a critical situation or two. Everything's so complex, so complicated, it's tough to manage it all, and some I am saving to tell when I am older in this story. I can't spill all the beans right away. We have a long ways to go yet.

Upon moving to his house I began drinking. I also started smoking cigarettes. I also started a life of crime, but I didn't see it that way yet. These are very typical things for one who hates himself. It doesn't matter if you’re a kid or an adult, if you hate yourself, you self destruct. I was an angry pissed off kid with a huge chip on my shoulder. With the freedom, because he did not keep me locked down at home 24/7, the downward spiral was growing tighter and tighter. Because I was so dysfunctional I attracted dysfunction. Some kids thought I was cool because I was so fearless. It was cool to do what we were not supposed to do.

  

This stuff all happened before the prom.

I remember once when I came home so drunk I literally passed out sitting at the kitchen table. I was too drunk to walk up the stairs to my room so I just sat at the table. I woke up in the morning super hung over and because his empty drink was on the counter still smelling of Kessler I had no choice but to vomit in the sink. I was only thirteen and they never said anything to me. This was a common occurrence with my dad and step-mom. Not the passing out at the table, but them not ever saying much about a lot of the stuff I did. Maybe they too were afraid to make me even angrier about my life. Maybe they were just too ignorant to know what to do. I don’t think they had any clue at all as to what was going on with me.

I came home once from a party with my chin split wide open. I had accidentally walked into the wrong room at this house party. I thought it was the bathroom, but I opened the door to two people having sex. I said something about it to other people at the party. To me it was funny. I guess the guy didn't want people to know so he came after me because I said something. I didn't get much warning. The guy came storming out of the house and threw a beer bottle at my face before I even knew what was going on. I managed to turn my head a bit before it struck me, but it still shattered across my chin. I had to walk over 8 miles to get home that night because they kept driving up and down the gravel road looking for me. Needless to say I was covered in blood again when I got home. Man did those high school guys hate my guts.

I remember getting blacked out drunk at a different party once. I got so drunk I couldn’t function. I was lying on the ground unable to do anything while a bunch of guys just stood around me laughing at me talking shit, all the while kicking me. Those bruises too were nothing compared to what I knew. Eventually some girls stopped them. I didn't care. I was getting that drunk because deep down I really just wanted to die.

I remember having beef with a town bully. He vandalized my house once. My dad was really pissed off about that one. This particular guy though was as crazy as me. He was twice my size so I couldn't confront him face to face. I had to use other tactics to make his life more like mine. I know all the good ways to get at a bully.

I had been busted in the previous months for partying more than a few times. He knew I was getting into fights, the busted chin, the busted nose, and other guys coming to my house looking for me. One party though was actually in my house. I got busted because I forgot to run the dishwasher, so when they got home and opened it up it smelled like a brewery. He was pissed off about that one too. They made the mistake of leaving for a night or two. Who doesn't throw a party when their parents leave? What was really funny to me was that a girl got so drunk she pissed in their closet all over their shoes thinking it was the bathroom somehow. I never even tried to clean that up. That is still funny to me. Who does that?

They were beginning to catch on to my antics. They were beginning to see that they did not have the control over me that they thought they had. They were beginning to see that I was not some good little boy who did what they thought I was supposed to be doing. But you see, when drunks lose control they rage.

When I went to live with him he never touched me really. The worst he would ever do was yell at me or some say something mean. I would get grounded or get extra chores, but he never touched me. Until that day anyways.

I didn't come home one night. Or maybe it is better to say he realized I was not home for once. I was chasing a girl so I took some extra risk. She had a friend with a car so I just never asked them to take me home. We stayed out all night. Of course we were drinking. I would drink whenever I could get the stuff. I got blacked out drunk the first time I ever drank. I was reckless and suicidal, but was managing to hide it as best as I could. No one had a clue as to what was going on inside my head. No one, not my parents, not the people who worked at the schools, not the people in the churches, no one, was capable, or knew what to do regarding me.

When I got home he was furious. I really am like a cat in so many ways. It was one of the reasons I got into so much trouble as a kid. If I wanted to do something, I did it. It was that simple. It still is that simple. As the pain inside of me grew the care of consequences lessened. He and I were arguing. It never mattered what I said, they always thought I was lying, and to them, I generally was. I didn't want to get my friends into trouble so I couldn't tell him what we were doing. I couldn't tell him we were just driving around in a car drinking trying not to care about this fucked up world. We were just being kids.

He grabbed a fly swatter. It was one of those kinds with the metal wire for a handle with the plastic swatter part on the top. It only took two swings for the plastic part to fly off. He didn't care, he was in a rage. He just kept lashing me with the wire. He just kept swinging. Every time he hit me with it I would turn my back towards him then immediately and defiantly turn back towards him and just look him in the eye. I refused to cry. Didn't he know I could take a beating? I knew I wasn't strong enough yet to take him. I wasn't strong enough yet to beat his ass like he deserved it to be beat.

I just held it in. What I did not know is that one cannot hold it all in. It just doesn't work that way. One way or another it has to come out.