So this was to be about me and all the tragedy that is my life and ways not to be like me. But yet it will be those things.
You can't go home again.
It all began on a cold winter morning in March, nineteen hundred and seventy-nine. I was due February fifteenth but knew before my birth what evil that was waiting for me. So I was born three weeks late, and apparently healthy.
My mother, we will call her Chernobyl, for her fiery temper and always knowing what I or my siblings where doing before we did them.
She is the epitome of evil and badness in all its forms, from howling over you to do your chores to denying the simplest gratitude to others or us. This is why I am this way now, because of what I was denied as a child. The nurturing, caring, gratitude,kindness,love where all absent and are even today. But more on Chernobyl later. This is an introduction to me.
When I started writing poetry one of my first poems was stupid, ugly, bastard.
My first venture into poetry the the rhyme yet ill-formed 'a homage to and idea of hope.' It was written my junior year in high school. It portrayed life as its is, filled with all the evil and bullshit that my mother and family had done and not done to have a positive outlook on my life, and to point out that I should be saved by someone. Boy was I wrong but boy was I right.
Growing up, this poem was inspired by the television show Quantum Leap. I shaped me into what I did, what I became and how I acted. Everything from imaging me as Sam and my invisible observer Al, the incident my junior year, inspired by the episode Lee Harvey Oswald[aka Leaping on a string].
I didn't think that I would live past eighteen or as far as I have now. Maybe there is a greater purpose for me, after all. I was never around anyone at all growing up because Chernobyl [mother] denied us friends at school, in the neighborhood at church, everywhere. This is the main reason for my social anxiety disorder. Kindergarten was my first experience with people-other people my age who I had no idea how to talk to or even relate. Even after years with them, I still couldn't. I remember an exercise in English 9, where we had to have a phone conversation. Suffice it to say I failed it.
As bad as things where at school for me, it was worse at home. Hopefully my book will maybe open up my past and shed some light on who and how I am now.
I have burned some bridges in my life because of my upbringing. Some of you who went to school with me knows at least someone who I ruined a perfectly decent friendship with, because of this. You can say it's not Viroqua, it's not the people, it's not my family, it's me.
I am not a people pleaser. I have been referred to as an asshole, weird, shy, a jerk, stand offish, quiet and boring.
I don't know if it was just me or something else but even my cousins I went to school with seemed to not want to be part of my life. Maybe there is some truth to the lie that people liked me. I am not going to sit here and whine and bitch on how I was treated, no. This is to make sure that no one ever has to go through what I had to, ever again. This will be a clear, concise look at my life and the answers to the questions that some or even none of you want or need.
My book will follow my slow path down the dark road to the end and then back up again. Many of those who I went to school with will be able to see how a place or a single name can do to a person, and what could have been prevented and what should have been done in the first place.
Alas, it begins...
Used and Abused
Thoughts and ramblings of traumas and triumphs and tragedy through elementary, middle and high school.
Imagine, Again
Imagine there is a heaven
It's easy but many don't try
The only hell six feet below us
And there's no reason to cry
Imagine all the people
Living forever today
Imagine the countless gone
It's hard for you to do
No killing or dying for
and one religion too
Living life forever in peace
You may say we're all dreamers
But there are other ones
I hope you consider joining us
and the world will be livable and fun
A little addition to John Lennon's song Imagine. It's one of my favorite songs, by the way. Another was also from Quantum Leap from the episode 'To catch a falling star.'It's called 'The Impossible Dream.'
A line from Spacehog's self titled song “I'm not sure where I'm going but have no way of knowing also fits me and my existence.
Many things shape us into what we become and how we live life. Does this mean that since my life has been consumed by the dark side I cannot become a Jedi!? No. I could very easily become a psychopathic killer or poetry writer. There's a very thin line between genius and insanity as well as good and evil.
My first time seeing an act of violence-age 2. My older brother and I where in the bathroom of our trailer house in Readstown. He thought it would be a great idea to urinate on me as I waited for my bath. Chernobyl came in after I started crying, and I said what he did. She then took him and tried to drown him in the bathtub as punishment for what he did.
My first time in a bar. Age 3. We went there occasionally to find my dad or be sociable in a small town of six hundred at the time. That stopped when a guy was stabbed to death and the police found the murder weapon underneath my parents car. And this stuff only happens in big cities!
Kindergarten was odd for me as well as others. I was a loner. I'd play by myself at recess because of not knowing how to talk to other people.
I remember being somewhat attracted to a young blond student in my class. I didn't let my feelings for her show and didn't tell anyone until now about her.
I classes, I was put next to the smartest kid in class. In math tests I would try to cheat of his answers because I didn't know how to add and subtract! I would always answer everything with 2 and fail. I was a middle of the road student. I always looked to others to gain knowledge I didn't have.
One girl was extremely good at art. I couldn't keep between the lines on the simplest things.
Others caught on pretty quick that I was different. How I ever became a speed reader is amazing to this day. But then again my dad is also a speed reader so I guess that is one positive thing.
It was 1984-85 and an afternoon class of Mrs. Opprud. It's an amazing thing, hindsight. When someone could have been left behind, she saw something in me. Too bad my younger brother didn't fair so well two years later with a different teacher in her first year of teaching.
1st grade-
I was still afraid of Chernobyl and had to adjust to full days, not half days we had in Kindergarten. And this was with kids more emotionally and mentally developed than me. I remember having an accident one night and instead of telling Chernobyl I simply kept the same underwear on, knowing what would come about if I told. I went to school hoping and watching no one would notice. They did and I had to get clean clothes and my mother was called in. I knew if I told her she wouldn't let me go to school as punishment. School, I learned was the only safe haven from her. This pattern would come to haunt me for many years to come.
I first learned how to tie my she laces from Mrs. Fauske, because Chernobyl had no intentions nor the goals of teaching me anything.
It was fear, embarrassment and not knowing what people would do or say or do to me. I always expected bad.
Rule # 4-always expect the worst as not to be disappointed in the best. Yes, I have rules to live by inspired by one Leroy Jethro Gibbs. They will come into play, just like rule number one-DON'T TRUST ANYONE!
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