Kindergarten

I started kindergarten a year younger than the rest. I passed their screening tests and my birthday was near the cutoff date or some such. The truth is she wanted me out of the house. At the time she was an at home baby sitter and having me in kindergarten meant one less kid in the house. No one was paying her to babysit me. I was a wild child after all. On the one hand she can't be completely to blame, but the issue then was the same it has always been; she wasn't making decisions in my best interest; she only ever made decisions that were for her own benefit.

As my brother will tell you, we were raised like animals; we were like livestock that had to be taken care of.  We were treated like burdens because to them that is exactly what we were; a burden on their life. They did not take care of us because they loved us, but because other people would shun them if they didn't, so they went to great lengths to cover up their bullshit. I cannot ever remember a single time when a decision was made that was actually in my best interest.   My mother was so good at covering up the bullshit she could even convince counselors that there was nothing wrong with her.  She would tell people was doing everything she could but no matter what she did I was still that wild child. 

You see, she was a high school dropout. She became pregnant with me when she was 16. My dad was 18 at the time, a drug addict and a drunk. She was barely 21 when I started kindergarten. My brother is three years younger than I, so she had a baby in the house too. I am sure she was quite excited to send me off to school, but boy was she ever wrong.

By the time I started kindergarten she was already living with the second husband. He was worse than my actual father because he was fully aware that my brother and I were not his children and he did not like me at all. They, just like me, did not understand the consequences of what was being done to me. You cannot beat a two year old and then expect that child to act like a ‘normal’ kid by the age of five, especially when the child is still being beat and ridiculed.

I was sent to the principal’s office the first day of school. I don't remember the exact details now. As I have said before I have spent a great deal of energy forgetting those early years, so my memory is limited. That is a peculiar characteristic of memory though. Our memory is never what actually happened, but because our memory is all we have, to us, it is what actually happened, because we base our understanding on that memory and not reality. Being in the past with no way to know what really did happen, our memory is the final say. What I do remember is that for some reason the teacher left the class room and when she returned I was on top of a table dancing away. Needless to say I was punished for this when I got home.

School only further reinforced that something was wrong with me; they actually made it much much worse. My young mind was not capable of understanding. I was already locked into an extremely dysfunctional state of being. I was like all the other children in that I thought the way my family was at home was the way everyone's family was, so I did not understand why when I would just be myself, like I thought everyone else was doing, it was a problem when I did it. The only answer I could come up with was the answer everyone gave me; there is something wrong with Ben. It took me a really long time to realize just how differently I had been raised than most. Like all children, deep in my heart, I just wanted to be loved; I just wanted people to like me.

You see, I know now what was up. When you are only two years old and a drunk man is already beating you, by the time you are five you are not like children who have not had the same experience. The school was not capable of dealing with a wild child as it was much less one who was raised in violence. My mother would bend over backwards to cover up the home life. Even to this day I cannot be made to do things just because someone tells me to. Matter of fact, just by being told to do something, I will not do it. As you will probably come to see I have a personality much like a cat. Have you ever spanked or tried to punish a cat? Speaking from personal experience, it does not go well.

Punishing me for being who I was, who I am now, only gets one that squinty eyed look, like I am going to get you, just like a cat does. Punishing me for being who I was only further deepened within me the belief that I was flawed and something was wrong, that somehow I was not like the rest. From my perspective it didn’t matter what I did, or how hard I might try, I was always wrong, always made to feel not good enough. My mother had her own issues, obviously, and one of them was projecting onto me that no matter what I did it was not good enough. No matter how hard I tried, she would not love me. This caused the deepest scar of all. Because of this belief holding true for so long in my life, it actually became true; I am not like the rest. My child mind was not aware of this fact about life, we become what we think, and we are what we believe.

If you were to take some time and watch the movie Zeitgeist: Moving Forward you would have a better understanding of what it means to be raised violently. If you do not wish to watch the whole movie you can fast forward to the thirteen minute mark and watch till the researchers stop talking about children who were raised violently.  They will explain that while a child is in the womb and the mother is stressed it causes children to have addictive personality traits.  They will explain how exposing children to violence changes their DNA. They will explain to you that if you go to a prison with a death row ward, that all of those people in there were treated extremely violently as children.

People have always asked me; what made you so different? Whenever someone takes the time to get to know me, they actually realize what I have been through. Surviving it was a miracle. There is no one answer, but I hope through these writings that I can express it. Maybe someone like me will read it someday and realize that they too can make it. Whenever I watch that part of the Zeitgeist movie I cannot keep from crying. It is one of the main reasons I have put off writing my story; it is painful to deal with. The types of wounds I received as a child heal of course, but the scars are forever.