Two dumb kids

Keep in mind I’m still the new guy on the block. I’m still investigating. Asking questions. Watching more than socializing. The homeless can tell I’m in between. Not quite one of them, but yet, they can tell I am. It is the same on the other side. They can tell I’m not quite one of them, but they can tell I am. This is precisely where I love to be; no one can pin me down with their thoughts.

Who is that guy? What is he doing?

In my eyes the homeless are moving in around the garden. Over the past couple weeks more and more of them are posting up. Ever since I signed the garden leader papers a couple has been living on the railroad property at the back of the lot. They are always around. For the most part they don’t litter, and haven't messed with the garden, but their actual camp looks like a small landfill.

Change is coming though, and they can all feel it. They know I am not lingering around for nothing. They may not be able to describe it, but their unconscious knows I’m charging the location with my personal power.

I usually roll by the garden early in the morning to check on things. I usually pick up the dangerous trash first; broken glass, needles, metal objects. One never knows what it will be.

I eat a few of the newly ripened black raspberries, check to see if anyone missed a strawberry, then meditate for a few. High harmonize.

Over the past month I’ve been steadily imbuing the garden with my energy. I read there a lot. Reading is a great source of power. I like to go there to take a piss, instead of wasting water at the library.  It’s only a couple of blocks away.

On this particular morning I find someone has set up camp right in the garden lot, behind the mulch piles that have not been leveled yet. I knew this would happen eventually, because the large piles create a haven on the back side. Their shit is everywhere. They even made a little stove out of bricks pulled from the garden bed borders, with a cast iron skillet for cooking. This is cool in itself, but they just leave all the trash laying around.

My issue is, I’m volunteering at a youth center. I am not volunteering to clean up after grown ass adults. I’m doing this to help kids like myself. I’m lingering today to make sure this person cleans up their own mess. I’m going to let them know what I am about, why I am there, and why they can’t trash up the place without some grief from me.

The Rare Breed director was around. We talk for a minute. He’s always busy with meetings and administrative stuff, so he’s never in the back. He likes to hear my stories. I let him know, it seems to be getting worse. He told me that he had to come down on Monday, Memorial Day, and there was a huge party going on, on the deck. I agreed, and told him they’ve been living there. He said he’s been coming in earlier and noticing that sometimes there are almost ten people sleeping on the deck. None of them are youth. None of them are under twenty one.

I finally see someone at the back of the lot. I start walking down the tracks. I’m still wanting to know who posted up in the middle of the lot. As I approach, I realize it’s two kids. They shouldn’t be there. They don’t even give pause at my approach, but continue to go through a backpack lying on the ground, in the middle of what is obviously a homeless camp.

I’m thinking how dumb are these kids? For all they know that backpack is mine, and they didn’t even stop pulling stuff out of the pack.  

I waste no time. “What the hell are you doing?”

One smirks, one looks afraid.

I say, “You are going through someone’s stuff. How old are you?”

They say, in unison, “I’m thirteen.”

They look so young. They didn’t look thirteen to me. The one is so small and thin I could pick him up with one hand by his curly hair. The one smirking, he’s fat, he wouldn’t even be able to run away if he needed to. It’s summer and school's out, but these kids are nowhere near their homes. I start telling them that they are putting themselves in danger, because if the people who live at this camp catch them it isn’t going to go well. I’m telling them they are in danger.

The brave, or dumb, however you think of it, one keeps smirking at me. That never goes well with me. I start heckling them, because they weren’t wanting to leave. They wanted that backpack. I finally see their bikes. I realized they are actually being clever. They hid their bikes, before approaching the camp. This isn’t their first time.

Now, it gets turned up. I’m heckling. They are getting the man voice. I started radiating my energy to get them to flee. I tell them they won’t be the first kids I’ve followed all day, until they go home, so that I can make sure their parents know they are not intelligent enough to be out on their own. They get their bikes, and ride off down the tracks. They must of knew I was bluffing; I didn’t follow them home.

I’m starving. It’s my third day without food.

As they are riding off on the north most set of tracks, I lost sight of them behind rail cars just sitting motionless on the rails.

Coming down the southernmost set of rails, as they are riding off, is a person I’ve seen many times hanging out on the porch of the Breed. I’ve never talked to him directly, but today is the day. This guy is super shy. Introverted like me, so I just go direct. I explained my situation, about the homeless guy setting up shop in the middle of the garden lot, and ask him what he thinks I should do.

This kid is smart. A genius. He says, “They are staying around the Rare Breed because they don’t know where else to go. If you want to solve your problem, solve their problem, and find somewhere else that they can go.” I tell him thanks, and let him know that is exactly what I needed to hear.  Why didn’t I think of that?

We kept walking together. I started asking him personal questions, but the non threatening kind. Where do you eat? Where do you shower? How long you been on the streets? Where else have you been homeless? After all, my real mission is to have first hand experience living on the streets here now. I want to know, not think I know. I’m not going to be the guy helping homeless, when i don’t even have firsthand experience of it myself. I can’t stand being a hypocrite.

He asks me my story, why I’m here. I give him the short of it, and now I’m in. He’s taking me to a place to eat for free. There is a place that serves lunch to the homeless, about six blocks away. He told me he’s been walking for over an hour to get there. I thank him for his kindness. I don’t know his name.

I had to sign my name to get the lunch. My name was 161 on the list that day. More than a few came in after me. It reminded me of prison. Chow line. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference except there were no guards. It was surreal and dreamlike. I was just taking it all in. It’s the same anywhere, everywhere, even among homeless; there is a bit of every kind of human nature.

I see the woman who lives on the corner of the lot. She calls me a cop when she thinks I can’t hear. We’ve had words before, so she does not like me. Once I was taking picture of the lot for Facebook, and she accused me of taking picture of her. She wasn’t even in sight. We had a bit of an argument about it. She’s still bitter over losing that argument. I sit down next to her at the table. Those fold in the middle, white plastic tables. Four topper.

I say, “Can I ask you something? Aren’t you living on the back corner of the Rare Breed lot?”

She says, tentatively, after giving me the stink eye, like why are you sitting next to me, “Ya.”

I say, “I was just down there, and some kids were going through your stuff, so I chased them off.”

She’s alarmed, but says, “Thanks. We got all of our important stuff on us, phones, knives, and stuff, but thanks for letting me know”

I say, “I would want to know.”

She says, “My husband and I got a twelve person tent. We’ve been looking for somewhere to put it because too many people go through our stuff down there.”

I am relieved to hear this. This means it won’t be me evicting them.

She is getting up to leave, “I am going to go check on it now.”

It’s no secret I am a sensitive guy. Having fasted for three days, and staying physically active, my sensitivity was off the charts. The aliveness of this feeling is hard to put to words. One just feels alive. But right there in front of me was reality. All the food stuff I had read about all those years was hitting home. All that preaching about taking care of one’s body was about to be real. Reality in effect. The chow line gave me pizza, and as I ate it, I could feel my body changing.

By the time I finished my two pieces of pizza, I was no longer feeling so alive. I was feeling sick. I felt like shit actually. I wanted to throw it up. I chugged a bunch of water, and decided to walk it off instead. My rationalizing said it wasn’t going to kill me. How many times in life had I scarfed far more than two pieces of pizza?

All the rest of the day I felt bogged down over that food. In my head I’m thinking, these people are already bogged down in life. This food is just sealing the deal. My starving body said to eat, but what I ate was not good for my body. Sad though, because I already know, should I get hungry enough; I’ll eat anything.

Time to head back to the Breed. I needed to find this homeless dude, and put him to task. If I have to clean up his mess, he really isn’t going to like me. It’s the only way it’s going to go well for him; I’ve got to catch him on sight. I’ve got to give him the chance to do the right thing.

I notice the woman, down on the corner. She’s married, and her husbands brother is there. He’s crazy amped up. This is one of those scabbed faced, punk rock looking tweekers. He starts telling me what happened.

Those kids came back and got his pack. He became frantic, and started screaming where did they go? Someone told him which way they went, and he went after them. Now keep in mind, as he is telling me his story, his knife is out, and in hand. He was wild eyed. He had chased after them, and he had pulled his knife on them. The only thing that stopped him was the cop parked down in the industrial flats. It’s just rail tracks and flat abandoned concrete everywhere. All the buildings are gone. If there had been no cop, there would have been no witnesses.

This guys says to me, “If a kid puts himself in a man's shoes, I’m going to treat them like a man.” I told him I wasn’t going to prison for touching a kid. He continued to rage and rant about his plans for such kids.

I don’t know if those kids know it or not, but that cop saved them. If that guy had not noticed the cop parked in the shade, he would have unleashed his rage. That guy is nothing but rage. I don’t even know if the cop knows he saved those kids or not. For all I know he was facebooking in the shade. I wasn’t there. I tried to scare those kids, I tried to warn them. That was all I could do at the time.

They seem lucky from where I am standing. I wonder how many times I got lucky like that and never even noticed it. I did many similar things at that age, riding my bike around during the summer. Did I smirk like that? I can’t remember. I don’t see how I didn’t.

I go back to the little stone table I sit and read at. I’m in the middle of a very important book. One of the staff from the Breed comes out the back door. He’s accessing a bunch of stuff that’s been dropped off at the back of the building. I’m asking him how he would handle these homeless people. As we are talking a cop driving towards us, from under the bridge. Huge bastard. Almost every Springfield cop you will see downtown is a big guy. NFL big. Turns out the dial is being turned up. The cops are being authorized to issue tickets to people lingering on the property. The cop came to get that piece of paper from the boss.

Things are about to get real. 

No end in sight...

I’m writing about this for several reasons, but mainly just because I’m feeling it. The signs are all around me. I’ve been studying myths, and this book about suicide came my way. It’s called the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.  Sisyphus is a man cursed by the gods to forever push a huge boulder up a mountain. Every time he would summit the mountain with the boulder it would simply roll down the other side, and he would be forced to push it back up the mountain again. No end in sight.

Enlightenment is a funny thing. It’s sold as a cure by most guru’s, but it is not a cure. They tend to exclaim, merely learn these truths and forever after your life will be “Insert amazing awesome spiritual adjective here.”  Using the word to the average TV watcher invokes visions of saintliness, or perfection in life. Anyone with any kind of awareness at all knows nothing could be further from the truth.

It doesn’t cure anything in a way that is meaningful regarding one’s past. Sure, finding some new level of awareness will create a wave, and one might ride high, for a while, thinking life is great and wonderful, but all waves eventually crash against the beach. Enlightenment is understanding the dark as much as the light; understanding the high wave as much as the low. More than that, chasing the low wave, chasing the darkness with the same fervor as one chases the high wave, as hard as one chases the light.

We are the accumulation of our past. Nothing can change this. We are living evolution; evolution in effect. Both as individuals, and as a collective. We are the direct result of our experiences. The sum total. No new piece of information will change that. It will only add to what is already there. Most people fear change, they worry about who they will be after the change, especially with ego work. The loss of ego is so scary because it generates a feeling of loss of self. The feeling of “loss of self” is terrifying, but it is also impossible. There is no such thing. Fear of the loss of self is fear of one’s own imagination. It’s just a trick of the ego to perpetuate itself. One cannot lose their sum total self.

If you came over to my house, and spent a week talking about life, deep stuff, metaphysics, and then left with a new worldview on life; you would still be the direct result of all your life experiences. Even if your worldview change was radical. If I put you to talking about all the fucked up things, all the things you’ve avoided, all your fears, and self created mind games. If I picked apart your beliefs and theories on life and showed you your lies nothing would change. Even those memories and experiences we are unaware of, and those forgotten; all of them will still be there, with you, forever. They are you; you are them. In these terms reality doesn’t give a shit what we think.

So there you would be, hypothetically speaking, enlightened after spending a week with a non-thinker, and guess what? You still have your life, you’re still the same monkey, sitting in that monkey suit. You will still have all your memories, all your shitty decisions, regrets, mistakes, it will all still be there. Your shit job, your shit culture. If anything, from this ‘higher’ perspective, enlightenment makes all these things seem even worse, because now one is aware of what it could actually be; a literal garden of eden.

Oh, the loneliness of that. The only thing that has now changed is the story you tell yourself about what it all means. Everything that ever happened, still happened.

I’m also writing this for those like me who’ve spent so much effort wanting to forget. Wishing to forget. Praying to forget. I’ve been dealing with abuse all my life. My own, and friends’ of mine. People I don’t know too. I hear their stories through my friends, through my reading. One doesn’t have to study psychoanalysis for very long to realize most of the children of the world do not reach adulthood without someone raping them. Abused such that it wreaks havoc on their lives forever after. I am forty one now, and the trauma of my life still affects me profoundly. I hear people in their twenties and thirties exclaim, “I just don’t want to deal with it anymore!” I say, “Tough shit.”

It makes one suicidal.

No new found awareness will wipe this away. Spirituality is not a cure for trauma. Spirituality doesn’t fix anything except how one thinks. Unless of course you wish to exchange your intellect for faith. This is a road many take, but if you pay close attention their unconscious mind does not let this go. For the rest of their lives they repeat the same lessons over and over again like a petulant child standing before the universe refusing to grow up. Children in grown up bodies are everywhere.

If anything the opposite is true, enlightenment brings more confusion, uncertainty, and that one merely acquires personal power mastering it. In these terms it could be said that enlightenment is the certainty that one is uncertain. That is, one grows stronger bearing it, and making use of it, instead of being used by it. Taking shit, and turning it into gold. The stamp of shit will always be there. There will never be some happy sunny beautiful day free of the stamp of shit. To believe so is merely idealism; fantasy.  

I’ve not been hiding away long enough to write freely about my experiences yet. Certain people might be able to connect the dots, and determine who I am writing about, and this is something I loathe to do, but in this case I feel safe in that no one here knows of whom I speak. I am purposefully leaving it general.

My friend was terribly abused. You can see the rage in her eyes. They shine from it. Like most people abused in such ways, she has to lie to herself to maintain self image, to stay alive. If she came to terms with the reality of it all at once it would destroy her. She must live a lie. For now at least. Her lies bite her though, at every turn. Her sum total mind does not want to live in lies. She knows this too, can feel it at every turn, but doesn’t have the personal power yet to transcend.

Her significant other does not show love to her child in a way in which she wishes her child to be shown love. She is far from alone in this regard. She is asking me about this, because she knows I have been a part of raising children who are not biologically mine. She is trying to make sense of this man she loves. She knows I was raised jacked and still love children, why can’t her man?

She says her boyfriends claim is that the little boy does not act in way that deserves love. In other words, her boyfriend was saying, if this child is to receive love from me, he must act a certain way. This is probably obvious to us, reading this, imagining this from the outside, “Why must this child do anything to be loved by his caretakers?”, so why isn’t it clear to my friend? She is intelligent. She is highly sensitive. What mother needs a child to act a certain way in order to love it? To probe even deeper, we might ask, if she loves her child so much, why can’t she love herself the same? Or the other angle, why isn’t she protecting her child from this man who does not love him?

Well, the simple answer is, she lives an ideal. She lives a lie. The lie here being that her boyfriend is this great awesome guy she imagines him to be. She does not understand, that because of her past, no guy who loves children naturally would be with her. Her lie is that she is worthy of some great awesome guy just because she is who she is. Most women, abused or not, suffer this fate. They think the perfect guy is just going to come along; just for them, without them having to really do anything at all. Egomaniacal comes to mind. They think they are special just for being, but do not bestow the same sentiment on the male. She cannot see that she does to him, what he does to her child.

Here is the kicker, she has lived with her boyfriends father. They lived together at his father's house for a period of time, to avoid homelessness, so she has first hand experience of what a douche this guy's dad is. She knows what a piece of crap his mother is too. She knows for a fact, witnessed with her own eyes, that her boyfriend was not loved as a child appropriately at all. She has all the proof she needs, so why is she asking me why her boyfriend can’t love her child?

She is doing what everyone has done to her. She is doing so unconsciously because of her self taught lies. She is doing what almost everyone I know is doing. She is taking someone who was raised fucked up, and then expecting them to act like the ideal. This is exactly what happened to her. This is exactly what happens to her every day of her life. It happens to every single one of us. Never not once has she caught a break in life, except maybe through her acquaintance with me. She was completely thrown under the bus, raped, abused, neglected, all of it, and then is being expected to act like the ideal. The ideal mother, the ideal girlfriend, wife, citizen, employee, all of it.

She holds herself to this ideal, in the same way she holds others to the ideal. This prevents her from loving herself. How can she love herself, if she cannot even face who she is? As I’ve said, she is the sum total of her experience. As I’ve said, her experiences were a living nightmare.

She just wants to forget it all. If she remembers it, it will kill her; she knows that. Her only way out is to live a lie so hard it might possibly becomes true, fake it to make it, but this isn’t the way out. It will never be true. She will, I will, we will, always be the sum total of our experience. The way out is coming to terms with reality. The way out is through the darkness. The way out; is not a way out.

Can you see this? Can you see in her extremeness a reflection in your own life? So what if you were not abused. You then, don’t even have the excuse of abuse for not handling life. Avoiding the truth is living a lie. Living a lie is not forgetting. It is merely perpetuating the bullshit. Enlightenment is sitting in the bullshit. Going through, sifting through; the bullshit. My friends and I, those thrown under the bus, those of us who are aware of it, we are the modern Sisyphus; forever pushing our boulder up the mountain only to watch it roll down the other side. No end in sight. Pushing a rock covered in shit.

He changed my life.

I knew a guy once. He gave me several memorable moments. A few moments that are always in my mind somehow through the spiral of life. This particular memory is one of those that is like a dream; nothing but symbolism.

When I was a kid I looked up to him more than a little. I idealized this kid. He  isn’t around anymore though. He lost the will to live. This is part of his story through my eyes.

High school sucked for me. My childhood forced a certain social ignorance on me, essentially because nothing was ever explained to me by an adult. I’m a legit introvert too, and it’s a well known fact public schools aren’t exactly designed for that personality type. Cool kids aren’t the ones in the back reading a book where I grew up. Matter of fact in every small town I’ve ever lived in I’ve been made fun of for being smart. Like legitimate social ridicule for being intelligent. I did always want to be popular though. Being sensitive I always wanted what the people around me wanted. Nice clothes, cool shoes, who lives where, to be popular etc. I grew up in small midwestern towns surrounded by small minded people. I was powerless in the face of it, it was all I had to go on. I had no self-esteem. I bought it hook line and sinker.

This guy though, he had it all. He was tall, athletic, funny, all adding up to luck with the girls. A most desirous thing to any freshman highschool boy. He lived in a huge nice house. He had the clothes, the shoes. His parents had fancy cars, fancy jobs. He was friends with all the popular kids. He was one of the most popular guys in the high school.

I lived next to the railroad tracks. I was lucky if I got cool shoes. My parents didn’t go to my sporting events, or any of that, and like I said they never explained anything to me. Dude was a factory worker, his wife a secretary. I know now they still don’t know anything, so there was good reason for them not explaining things to me.  

This kid though, he changed my life. I aspired to be like him. His reality was a dream to me. Turns out though, my dream was not his reality. Not even close.

He was the first to knock me out in a fight. Well, really it wasn’t even a fight. We squared off, he knocked me out. That’s not exactly a fight, that’s just a kid getting knocked out in the locker room. We got into it after football practice. I never had a chance, he caught me right in the temple like it was second nature. It seemed as natural for him as wiping his butt. Just something unpleasant that had to be done. He probably didn’t even want to do it, but I just put him to it thinking I was tough. Everyone laughed, I just got my stuff out of my locker after gaining my senses, picking myself up off of the shower floor, and burned out. I was never one to have friends on my side on sports teams.

What I remember most about this guy though, was the shine in his eyes. It has always burned in my mind's eye. HIs eyes always shined. You know how it goes sometimes in high school, after a fight, friendships often result. A fair amount of respect is gained simply by standing one's ground, win or lose.  I wasn’t a terrible athlete either, so the jocks didn’t exactly hate me being on their team.  I was just never in their inner circles. I didn’t get invited to their parties, or to their houses.

Somehow though, I don’t remember how, but I managed to get invited over to his house. In my child mind I was achieving great social success. I was elated actually. I was going to go hang out with one of the most popular kids in the whole high school. As an introvert, who constantly frets and is anxious about social experiences, this was huge. There was no warning for what was to come.

When I got to his house, as I walked in the door, his older brother was beating the shit out of him. Like, not pulling his punches at all. Just completely, wholeheartedly bullying my friend. I was just a freshman, not even finished with puberty, his older brother was a senior. He was also tall and athletic, much bigger than I, and was more than capable of beating both of our asses, so I just watched. I could not afford having beef with this senior at school. I  had enough problems already.

Because of my sudden presence, my friend had to man up. He was probably wishing I had showed up at any other time. He looked me in my eyes as he was escaping his brothers blows, downplaying what was happening, and man did his eyes shine.

I knew then all was not so perfect in my friends life. We were freshman in high school, how long had he been enduring his older brother? All was not as it seemed. Even then, in my ignorant small town mind, I knew firsthand what it takes to create a child who is violent to their younger siblings. I was one myself. Who knows how his parents were behind those closed doors. Rich people are drunks too, they are pill addicts too. Cokeheads.  I learned that day for the first time, with my own eyes, people with nice things are just better at pretending everything's okay when it is not. This is one of the reasons people’s eyes will shine; they are hiding rage.

It’s not possible to be physically abused by an older sibling and not feel rage. It’s not possible to be physically abused by anyone and not feel rage. If my friend could have found it in himself to be honest about his life he would not be stifling rage. When one is stifling rage, with no outside source to direct it at, it gets directed inward. One's self destruction switch gets flipped, and down the dark spiral one goes. 

Looking at it from the outside, he completed the circle. He believed the lie. He measured his self value by cultural standards, material success. When he lost everything due to economics, he never got back up. He used up all his life energy telling a lie, pretending he was okay when he was not. Even when he had all his material possessions he was not okay; he was just filling the hole.

I’m sure all manner of opinions can be made about the choices he made. The truth is he was in the weeds from the get. I wish I could have helped him, but like so many the truth seems too painful. It’s a phenomenon I see everywhere I look. People are raised terribly, and then are expected to be competent capable adults. And even worse they will judge themselves quite harshly for being unable to do so. Even worse still, they will expect it of others.

Most people I know spend the bulk of their energy thinking of ways to not deal with their issues. That is like being at work expending energy on ways to be lazy. They can’t see that either way, they’re going to suffer. Either way, they are going to expend the energy.  One can face the rage, or die alone in an apartment. Either way it’s going to suck. It doesn’t seem to make sense, unless you add to the equation that a lot of people simply don’t want to be well. If I ever make that choice, there won’t be anything anyone else can do about it. It’s best to just nod, say farewell, and say thanks for those lessons learned. He changed my life like no one else could of at that moment in our lives. I’ll never forget those moments, or that shine in his eyes.

Grandpa

Life is definitely crazy.  Especially in comparison to how we are told life should be by institutions, organized religions, and public schools.   Real life cannot be communicated even though I feel compelled to attempt it.  

My writing has come to a stop recently for this reason.  It's not enough to read and study, it must be applied; lived.  I've been busy doing that living.  Swimming in the dark.  Blind.  Groping for something solid.  Praying for a ray of light.  Wrapping my mind around what has been done, so that it can be undone.

Something happened to me a long time ago that happens to almost everyone.  The hardest part is getting a person to realize it.  Even if it is not to the same degree; it did happen to you too. 

The woman who gave birth to me was abused too, but as a child I obviously had no awareness of this.  To my child eyes that woman was my everything.  She was god.  She knew everything and I knew nothing.  She could send me to hell, or place me in heaven at her whim.  My life was in her hands.  She was my everything.  Her everything was her father.

It can be easily labeled and classified using classic psychology.  I've never read about it and it not be mentioned.  A parent abuses a child, that child grows up, has its own children and abuses them in turn.  Classic.  It is as predictable as gravity.

But a child has no awareness of this.  So blame plays no part in this.  The way things were, is how I believed things were.  Who doesn't do this?  Blame means nothing.  The name of the game is to see it for what it was. Cause and effect have no value here.  

That man though, he was only a man after all, her father, in my own life was the very source of all my childhood nightmares.  I was merely taught to idealize him.  Because I was a child, force would be a better word.  In my specific life, judging by those that I physically knew; he was the literal source of my abuse.  I did not know his parents.  He threw his daughter under the bus, and she basically had little choice but to do the same.  She didn't know any other way supposedly.  Perhaps the same can be said of him.  What seventeen year old girl with an abusive father is going to be able to raise a child correctly?  The bus was driving fast. 

Where I stand today.  I step out of this situation emotional situation.  I look at it from as many perspectives as I can muster.  The one I take here is that of a counselor or mentor.  That is to say, I am using my thinking, to mentor my inner self, because at the time of this abuse the child in me could not understand nor deal with what was happening.  My opinion of its causes and effects mean nothing when attempting to simply regard what did in fact happen. 

What was happening?  I was loving the man who abused my mother.  As a child I was loving the abuser of the god of my life.  That man was the only man that was ever nice to me, yet he is the one who brought into being my suffering.  He was the sole source of my plight in life.  He was the reason I was being beat.  He was the reason I lived in fear.  He was the reason my mother did not love me, yet he was the only man who was nice to me? 

He died when I was eleven or twelve.  I cried for weeks.  There was no one to replace him.  No one to help me with his loss.  I without even knowing it loved the person who caused my abuse.  Can you believe that I felt safe when I was around him?

Don't you know?  Church says you must love your parents no matter what; even if they abuse you.  Don't you know?  Public schools say you must love your family even if they throw you under the bus.  This is a terrible paradox for a child because a child has absolutely no way to wrap its mind around such things.  We are taught all manner of ways to justify it, explain it, and rationalize it as adults so that we don't actually have to deal with it.  That one should love their family no matter what is a devastating blow to the psyche of a child whose parents do not know what love is.  I could fill a book with heart felt poetic sayings that cause one to feel love for their abusers.  That is just advertising propaganda for dysfunction.

It simply is not true.  One does not have to love someone simply because they share genetics; that is racism defined.  Try explaining that to a child though.  It's a truth very few wish to face.  Do you know why?  Because it requires seeing the abuser in one's self.  If you are merely doing what was done to you, because that is how you learned it, and you didn’t learn any other ways; more than likely you are neglecting and/or mistreating your children.  More than likely you were neglected and mistreated and just think that is how it is.  Because it wasn’t straight up abuse you don’t really have to think about it because you can still survive in society without doing so.  Meanwhile the girls down the street in the corner house are being raped every night.  This is what the woman who gave birth to me is unable to do.  She doesn’t want to own up to all that.  She is unable to come to terms with it.  It is too painful for her.  

At this point most people will have already had an emotional surge.  I can hear it now, "Did he just say I neglect and mistreat my child?"  Such an individual is afraid to face the facts.  Such an individual, like the woman who gave birth to me, places their emotional feeling of the moment above all other information.  Selfishness defined. 

It’s easy to say.  It’s another thing to live.

If you are like me, the first thing that pops into your head regarding this chain of blame is that he must have been abused as well, to have been able to abuse her.  Without a doubt this is true.  This phenomenon goes very deep in our culture.  This is just another reason to disregard the blame game.  Cause and effect is of no use.  For thousands of years this culture has been abusing children in mass.  The blame game would never end.  Child abuse is so rampant; the majority grow up accepting it.  Making statements like, "that is just how it is."  Yet, nothing could be further from the truth.  The correct way to say it would be, "that is just how everyone makes it."

So where does it stop?  In my family; it stops with me.  In many ways I am thankful that he died when I was so young.  I am glad he died before I realized the truth.  Before I realized what he really was.  Of course I idealized him; I was a child.  Had the thirteen year old me been aware of what he had done to the god of my life he would have had to pay.  Had the thirteen year old me been made aware that he was the source of all that had happened to me and he still been alive; it would have gotten ugly.  A new focus for my rage would have materialized instantly.  And that he was male meant I would have dealt with him. He would have had to answer to me. 

Someone will say, but he was abused to.  So what of it?  I was abused as well.  Where are my abused children?  Where is my daughter who longs for my love?  You see, this is where it stops.  This is how it stops.  The line in the sand is that he never tried.  She never tried either; still is not trying.  She like him blames others for her woes.  She takes no responsibility.  Yes it is true, that he was abused.  It is also true that he abused.  He must be held accountable for both.  They are individual things that must be handled individually at the same time keeping in mind the whole.  She must be held accountable for both.  Else the cycle merely continues.

Accountability is the line in the sand. 

What gets covered up in all this labeling is the reality of the situation.  The only man who patiently taught me anything at all was the very reason I was being choked out.  He was the very reason I was being ridiculed and demeaned.  How does one express that?  How does one remedy that?  Is it any different with her?  I loved the source of my suffering just because he had the label "grandpa."  Because she had the label "mother" she was able to turn the abuse against me, by blaming it on me.  Not only did I love her because I came from her, but also because everyone said I must.  I would be beat for not loving her.  Shamed.  What is wrong with you they say, that you hate your mother.  All the while it was blamed on me.  I was told it was my fault I was being abused more times than I can count. 

It simply is not possible to articulate that feeling.  Language does not suffice.  What word is there for the precise amount of hate and love at the same time?  What description is there for the energy that entails?  Her I have always hated, but he was someone I didn't hate until I was old enough to be told stories of her growing up.  The part had already been played.  I was played a fool.  I was tricked into loving the source of my abuse. They tricked me in every way imaginable.

I've learned though my feelings about this only affect me.  In my daily life I know no one who even knows this about me.  It's a torment of the soul.  It's my own journey.  Everyone else is the same, but on their own journey.  Their emotions about their journey have no real effect on me.  Because of this the way in which this matter is dealt with emotionally is individual. 

How it is handled outwardly though, in action, is another story altogether.  The only way to remedy the situation outwardly is through responsibility; accountability.  When one is being accountable emotions have little value.  I know this, because that is what I applied to myself.  I took responsibility for my own actions, and the bullshit stopped.  The very moment I made that decision my entire life was forever after altered.  The moment I blame someone else for what I do, I am justifying what I do, which means I will continue to do it.  I decided to hold myself accountable for what I do, regardless of what others have done to me.  In that same way I hold them accountable.  They are responsible for what they did to me, regardless of what was done to them.

It cannot be true to love one’s self and at the same time willingly allow one’s self to be abused, or to abuse another. 

If this accountability doesn't happen, the abuse keeps on happening.  The way in which one takes on accountability does not matter, but that one does is all that matters.  Even the saying of it can be said in a myriad of ways.  Without realizing it in one's self one cannot do it to another.  Like love.  One cannot truly love someone else if they cannot love their own self first.  One cannot hold another truly accountable, if they cannot hold their own self accountable.  It's up to me, the same as it is up to you, to do this work.  To handle this task.

It is not our fault this society is whack.  It’s not our fault that it literally tricks people into believing it is okay to abuse children.  It does this by never actually doing anything about it.  It tricks us into thinking so many things that are not true by teaching the lies before we are old enough to question.  It is directly our fault if we continue to pass it on.  We all have the ability to step out of this cycle.  

If I can do it, so can she, so can he, and so can you.  

I am lucky.  Very very lucky.  My personality is such that it is nearly impossible for me to not stick up for myself.  I literally cannot rest if it is not happening.  So naturally that is what I did.  I stood up for myself and told those people to fuck off.  Most though do not have this backbone.  Most people cannot bear the idea of not having a family.  Of not having a mother or father.  They don't want to look an abuser in the eye and reconcile the truth regardless of consequence.  

I have no choice though, but to ask, “How can this person actually love me if they are abusing me?”  I'm sure somewhere you will find a psychologist that says that's true, that she did love me, but I don't buy that.  The truth is available to all.  What love really is, is free for all to know.  The truth is if you honestly love someone, you do not abuse them, because when you really love someone you find out what love is first.  Real love requires effort.  Attaining the knowledge of what real love is requires effort.  Anyone can say the words, “I love you.”  The people who raised me merely did what was done to them.  Apathy defined. 

In my journeys in life most people I have met were neglected and mistreated as children and do not realize it at all.  My grandfather was in his fifties when he died and he was still an ignorant man.  He died clueless to the ramifications of his actions.  He died in a hospital without ever reconciling with his daughter at all.  He discovered no real truths about life, or love.  He was a cruel and mean man.  His children did the same thing in turn and have been cruel and mean to their sons and daughters.  If you talked to her today, she would tell you that she loves me and that she did her best.  I promise you there was no love in that house.

There is no rule book you know.  No guide.  There is no judge either.  How one handles this matter is about as individual as it gets, but if it isn’t handled the cycle continues.  To break the cycle though certain things do need to happen.  The pain has to be faced down.  It has to be gone through.  Fully experienced. They story has to be told.  Getting a grip on my emotions I had to look at things for what they are free of my emotional opinion.  Just because I was tricked into feeling love for her doesn’t mean I am not going to acknowledge what happened.  

For instance, using the label abuse.  That the title mom is involved does not magically mean abuse is suddenly acceptable.  Because she gave birth to me does not mean it wasn’t abuse.  Our society tolerates abuse if it is done by someone in the family.  Plain and simple.  Just saying that out loud is pretty messed up.  Say it with me, “If it is a family member who abuses the child we don’t do anything about it.”  What is even more messed up is that after saying it, people will still go home and do it. The easiest thing to do is point the finger at someone who abuses their child even more, so that one may justify/continue their own abuse. 

The mirror is a sketchy place.  No one likes to look there. 

Why doesn’t the title mother mean that one goes above and beyond figuring out what it means to handle such situations, what it means to love, to raise children appropriately?  That is too ideal right?  Those expectations are too high right?  Why was my grandfather going to church, going to work, then going home and abusing his daughter?  Why was he respected?  Why did people love him?  Some still do.  From my perspective the belief that one love their family no matter what is so ingrained from such an early age that people will literally suffer their entire lives and still love that person, never realizing their false love is the very source of their suffering.  Society has robbed children of the ability to stick up for themselves because the parents themselves don’t know how to do it. 

The only positive male role model I had as a child was a perpetuator of child abuse.  The only thing the woman who gave birth to me wanted was for her father to love her.  She passed that on to me.  She made me long for her love like her father made her do so.  She did unhealthy things seeking that love in other men.  Men as disgusting as my grandfather was.  She drug me through it all.  All the while telling me she loved me. 

Everywhere I look I see it happening to other children.  Everywhere I look I see it in the adults I know.  Every day I walk home from school and I see it in their eyes.  It just isn’t something I can ignore.  It’s right in front of my face. 

I need to take a shower now.  

The memories of my grandfather are like a dream.  I had a dream of a good grandfather.  One who loved me and taught me things.  The child I was was a dreamer.  I'm an adult now.  I have to face the truth whether I like what I see or not.  These memories of mine are not real, thus the dream.  

Power Failure

Missouri has some powerful storms sometimes.  Living anywhere in central Missouri there is always a chance of some terrific weather regardless of season.  It's only a matter of time.  Booneville was directly hit by a big storm one night.  Luckily for me I was on work release already.  I wasn’t in the ghetto anymore.  It was pitch black outside except for when lightening flashed.  When the power went out it stayed out.  The backup generators didn't work.  The entire prison was suddenly without electricity, and it didn't come back on for hours.

Luckily for the guard in our house he wasn't in the ghetto either.  He was an older guy, and small too.  I think his name was Browning or something like that.  He walked like Fred Flintstone.  Talked funny too.  He wasn't a mean guy, but he could be cranky.  I didn't know it at the time, but the battery went dead on his radio.  He was locked in a room, with no lights, with over eighty inmates, and no one to communicate with the outside world.  He sat at his desk the whole time and never said a word.  He had to of been terrified.  The cacophony was in full effect.  Remember, if a civilian didn't see it, it didn't happen.  Even though I was in work release it was still pretty intense.  A lot of those gangsters didn't like me at all, and I'm not being racist, but in the dark I couldn't see them at all.  

Of course cats were having sex.  Of course there was a white guy getting sexed in the wreck room.  He wasn't being raped either, but had agreed to it.  It was weird figuring that out.  That's kind of how it works with cocaine.  If you don't do it with people they attempt to hide it from you.  Prison really opened my eyes to just how much and how many males sex each other.  More than a few times I was shocked to see who was into that.  There are a lot of married men who still like other men I can tell you that for sure.  They called it the down low.  There weren't many gangsters who didn't have some sugar in their tank.

Shit went crazy in the other houses.  Bunks were thrown down the stairs at the guards in 6 House.  5 House was a circus with the lights on.  They just locked the bay doors in 5 House.  The hole filled completely up in one night.  I felt bad for those guys in the ghetto that night.  There weren't enough guards for all of that.  Gangland went bananas. 

Roaches.

Prison really was a disgusting place.  It would probably be safe to say that it still is.  After I got out I showered several times a day, every day, for months.  I couldn't get the disgusting off of me.  Any time any dirt got on me at all; I took a shower.  Taking a shower all alone is a glorious freedom.  It's a luxury unlike any other. 

Roaches are a real thing.  Roaches live up to their reputation.  Roaches were everywhere.  They fly.  They had a city under the prison.  Their headquarters was under the chow hall.  The prison had a tunnel system under it for the plumbing.  These tunnels weren't tall enough to stand up in.  The kind where all the pipes ran along one side near the top.  The top of it was arched, so it had that really creepy feel, made of bricks and was really old by my standards.  The plumbing crew guys were the only inmates that went in those tunnels.  No one really anyone wanted that job either because of the roaches.  Near the chow hall the walls would be alive with them.

It's just like the movies they said.  The entire surface would be crawling with cockroaches.  A moving wall of scuttling, clicking, sometimes three inch long cockroaches doing what they do.  I saw some huge cockroaches outside of that chow hall flying around.  It was like there was a war going on.  The prison was being invaded from the inside and was moving out. 

They really were everywhere.  The civilians who worked the kitchen were big women except for the head guy who was a weird looking white guy.  I never saw him really, except for across the yard.  The women though were walk funny big.  Scary looking big.  They couldn't have run if they had to.  They had terrible attitudes. How could they not hate their lives? Who as a kid, was like, "I want to work in a prison kitchen when I grow up." No one.

The food was as gross as the roaches.  I had to be really careful about what I ate.  I would always investigate, hitting up other guys who were already eating trying to figure out if it was safe or not. I couldn't starve, but there was a limit to what I would willingly eat. 

I saw it with my own eyes one day working for maintenance.  We were going around cleaning out all the AC units.  Most of the time no one was ever behind the chow hall; it was off limits to general population.   Lying on the ground getting ready to go in the back of the kitchen managers personal truck were boxes labeled not for human consumption.  I always wondered why that guy was allowed to bring his personal vehicle into the prison itself.  No one else ever did that.  He was probably just fattening his paycheck. 

There was meatloaf one time that had a glossy shine to it where it was sliced.  Chicken bone casserole was a no go.  I almost broke a tooth once biting into a bone. I was starving that day, but never again. There were beans on the plate every single meal except breakfast.  One of my favorite meals was hard boiled eggs.  How could they fuck that up? I would always trade commissary items or something from a future meal for the extra unadulterated protein.   

I knew people in 4 House.  All the inmate kitchen workers were in the same housing unit. Word on the street was that cats sometimes poked a hole in the meat and sexed it.  They would have someone watch out for them while in the cooler alone.  There were some nasty freaks in that house.  Word on the street was that 4 House was where the freaks went because they always had plenty of opportunity to do their thing.  At work and in the house itself there were lots of opportunities to be alone.  There was always at least one bay in that house that had its lights out because they all worked different shifts.

I had to be really careful about what I ate.  I doubt very much I made it out of there without eating something disgusting.  I doubt anyone did.  When people who obviously do not care about themselves are preparing food it's never going to be good food, and it never was.  Never not once.

In the corner of the chow hall where the trays are picked up there is a long narrow window that runs horizontally at about waist level.  One of the kitchen managers is always sitting right at the window on the other side of the wall to make sure no shenanigans are occurring.  Running along the kitchen side of the wall was a counter with big long food pans in heat sinks.  There was an inmate at each pan, and they would fill the trays military style.  The whole prison ate in less than an hour and half.  One day as I was walking up to get my tray a roach was just running around on this ladies arm.  She never even moved to shake it off or nothing.  It was just running around doing its thing easily crawling over the fat folds in her arm.  I didn't eat much.

The only reason I was eating at all was because I was lifting weights so much.  I played a lot of hand ball too.  That is a very active sport, and we were quite competitive.  I can’t stand for people to be better than me.  If I had extra money on my commissary I would buy protein powders.  They had a meal replacement powder too.  The only other thing to eat was ramen.  I still love ramen, but ramen is not nutritional at all and it does not sustain a person.  Compared to prison food ramen is absolutely delicious.  I had to go into that disgusting chow hall though.  It was that or starve.  I couldn't afford to lose any size.  So much of my power in there depended on my size and strength.  I got to where I was benching over 300 lbs. and could squat 450. I simply couldn't do that starving all the time. 

When I tell people this part of the story they always ask me, "but why?  Why was it that way? With all those inmates why wasn't it cleaner?  Why wasn't the food better?"  To me it is pretty simple.  When there is only one guard, who doesn't have a real weapon other than a radio and some mace, per hundred inmates, that guard couldn't really make us do much of anything.  Those guards were always walking a fine line and they knew it.  They were quick to call for help when it got sketchy.  They didn't have what it took to make us do much of anything other than obey the rules. No one in Booneville wanted more time. 

There are so many fixes to this problem it's not even funny, yet it still persists to this day.  It is the case even outside of prison. The people in charge are always changing the rules inside the prison, but never changing the reasons for which a prison is even needed in the first place.  They never change the culture.  Cats could have been learning to legitimately cook in there, but instead it was a circus.  They could have been leaving prison with a way to provide for themselves.  The people in charge didn't care about them any more than they did me.  That's really what it all comes down to; if the people in charge don't even care about themselves, how can they care about others?  They didn’t care about us at all.  That means they didn’t care about you either. 

Using those civilian women in that chow hall as an example, they brought the entire prison's food quality down to their level in life.  Through their actions they ruined it for us all.  Their lives were in a state of ruin and they reflected it out into the universe accordingly.  I'm sure they had their reasons in life for being what and who they were, but I don't really like making excuses for apathy.  They obviously didn't care about me.  They didn't care about me at all or they would never have put that shit on my tray. 

I still have this thought to this day; if I could at nineteen be at least trying to get my head out of my ass, what was stopping them?  They were much older than I.  They had their freedom, couldn't they at least try?  It is the golden rule after all; do unto others.  I prefer saying the golden rule another way; thou art thou brother’s keeper.  I wouldn't have served that disgustingness to anyone.