Part I: My Life's Content, and The Tragedy Within!

It’s only right and will only do my life story justice to start from the beginning. I’m warning the reader right now this story isn’t your normal read. This story is full of heartache (physical, emotional, and spiritual). My story begins before I can even remember with my mother going through what she went through all the way up to giving birth to me. I’m going to alter names, places, things, loose affiliations, as well as everything else I need to alter for the safety of those in this tale of tragic beginnings and hopeful last chapters. Let us begin.....

Once upon a time, what seems to be a lifetime ago, my mother met a boy, and a boy thought he fell in love with a girl. In a traditional Hispanic family, it's not abnormal to hear of a girl who's sixteen get married to an eighteen-year-old man child. Well, she did in fact marry that man-child who would end up being my missing biological father, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. As soon as my mother found out she was pregnant, this man thought it would be a grand idea to enlist in the United States Army. Not only did he join the military, he picked his first duty station to be in Germany, to leave his young pregnant wife all alone behind in the confused state of Colorado. My mother, being the wonderful woman she is, didn't complain. She went out, got a full-time job, and went to work to support herself because her man-child of a husband was living like a newly freed adolescent in Europe drinking, using a plethora of narcotics, and lastly sleeping with other women that weren't my mother obviously. After my mother gave birth to my eldest brother, she joined that guy overseas in Germany where he would find himself resting on his guilt full of debauchery and shame. This would soon cause him to unknowingly start getting paranoid of what my faithful mother was doing at all times growing to be controlling as well as abusive in every way possible. After just a few years of abuse, joy, she was pregnant again. This untimely pregnancy would be with yours truly, ME. I was born in Spring of 1984 in a town called Wiesbaden, Germany. A U.S. citizen born abroad.

Soon after we landed safely on American soil my mother, now almost twenty years of age, fought to break free of that thing that was sadly a marriage. Newly divorced, my mother started going to church meeting new people she thought were good people. It was more or less a cult. Brainwashing all the locals. Now at this point I was three years old, and just starting to develop fond memories of getting spanked by almost every adult in that church mainly because I was a child who had attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and I refused to sit still for anyone. I guess I didn't mind getting beaten as long as I could go back to having fun I could get used to the whooping's. About five months had gone by attending that church when my mother met my stepfather. Since the church was an occult, when they found out that they had started dating they told them that they should either get married or to stop seeing each other. So, they did what every sensible occult member would do and got married! Yes, that's right folks, they up and got hitched! That's not even the worst part! My mother and now stepfather had the great idea to start the adoption process even though me and my older brother had asked her not to let that happen. Do you think she listened to her children at all? Hell no, she went ahead with the adoption anyways. Everything started off okay, it was like nothing at all had changed. Little did I know what was to come in the years to follow.

It's not like my sperm donor was really trying his hardest to stop the process, he had his chances. Yes, I said chances as in multiple! Later in life I found out, to duck being served courthouse documentation he would literally jump out the back window of his mother's house, and yes, I said his mother's house as in he lived with his mother. At this point he was a full-grown man-child in his mid-twenties. Anyways, my stepfather shortly after all this was happening his high school sweetheart was reaching out to him the very first time, and yes i said first time as in there were more to come. No pun intended! With his ex-reaching out he couldn't control his basic instincts as a man to procreate. Luckily, he didn't have a bastard out of wedlock, which is quite surprising considering. Obviously, my mother found out because she learned how to be F.B.I. from her first failed marriage. Lucky for me I had two shitty father figures teaching me how not to be a real man. How would I ever have survived without either of them? Once my mother called him on his carelessness dropping the ball on his newfound family that he wanted just to throw it away. My mother is not a quitter ladies and gentlemen! Do you think she left him? Hell no, she stayed because why would she have two failed marriages. She started with a depression that would carry her through the next four time he cheated on her with the same woman who was also married with children of her own. Can you imagine all that we had gone through as a family, and I was barely six.

When the depression kicked in, her self-confidence was shot finding herself asking what is wrong with her? When in fact it wasn't her, it was two piece of shit men not being men! my poor mother. What comes with any kind of adulterous act of betrayal in a marriage? Distrust! When that sets in, like concrete in the middle of summer, here comes along guilt. What did we learn about guilt from the beginning of the story? That the guilty party always assumes the other is doing something wrong as well because why would they be faithful if you're not being faithful right? WRONG! Thats one thing my mother had that I always admired, she never wavered in her loyalty for the one she made those oh so unbreakable vows to. At least one of them took the marriage seriously. My beloved stepfather would get mad at my mother for being so honest so he would start verbally abuse her. He didn't quite have the nerve to strike a woman yet so he would take it out on me. I would get "spanked" with a baseball bat (aluminum and wood), a switch that I would have to go to the tree to get pull the bark off the swish it through the air violently if it didn't make the swoosh sound, I would have to start all over, a leather belt, a handled cutting board, kicking me was another option, and if I moved at all he would then proceed to choke me until my face turned blue. I learned pretty quickly to hide, run away from home, stay in my room, or just do as many chores as I could to try to make them both happy so I wouldn't get beaten all around the house. I think the thing I hated the most is when he'd grab the tip top of my ear and twist it and proceed to lift me off the ground slowly. My wonderful mother would be right next to all this and never interject even though I would look to her pleading with her through my eyes begging her to make it stop, and still, she did nothing. I never knew if it was out of fear, or she could just care less.

Nothing changed throughout the years, it seemed my life was on repeat. I was hopeless by seven years old with a grim outlook on the world. The comical part of this tragedy is that my mother used to call me sunshine because she said " no matter the weather son, you always knew how to light up the room" which will be important foreshadowing in the near future, and everything will come full circle. You, the audience, are going to be blown away by this minor detail maybe. We shall see. Now what I'm about to share is something I've only spoken about to a very select few people, and I can't believe I'm doing this. It wouldn't make as much sense if I didn't share it though. As the audience reading this, you would always wonder how I ended up so angry at such a young age, so let's get to it. The part of the story that sparks the intrigue of the reader but is crippling to such a young boy that used what happens to him, as well as those around him. Forgive me for talking about my younger self in third person, but please bear with me as this part of the story is the hardest for me to write. I was roughly three years old, but extremely "hyper" apparently to those that watched me while my mother went off to work. I was left in care of family. Most people in the world would think this would be ideal, or safe. This is in fact very wrong. Sadly, most of the time it's those closest to you that can do the most harm, and boy oh boy I was surrounded by evil people, sick people. Hurt people. At this time there was a male family member that couldn't stand that I was so energetic and wanted nothing more for me to calm down. It just so happened that this individual was also an alcoholic, so you know what he did? I don't know if you responded or not, I can't quite hear you so I'm going to just tell you. No reason for suspense here folks. It's almost too obvious, right? He would mix in alcoholic beverages with my sippy cup. That alcohol would do its job, and make this energetic little boy Pass out for hours on end. Apparently so abnormal that he had to feed my alcohol at age three just so he didn't have to deal with me at all. Now, at the same time this was all going on My uncle was secretly molesting his sister, she was age 10 at the time, and she was molesting me. This routine carried on for years! My aunt was closer to 15 at this point, and her attacker was no longer in the home. The person that bore the brunt of most of the molestation was my older brother, who was in closer proximity of age as my aunt. This paragraph makes me so sick. It's actually taken me days to write this part just because this sadly is a norm in this world! I would like to take a moment and bring awareness to this sad truth. This is all too common in the world we live in nowadays. You have to be a sick individual to hurt a child. Come to find out later my aunt was being molested by her older brother who molested his nieces as well years later. My niece that passed away, God rest her soul, was the brave one who finally came forward. I tried to bring it to my mothers attention, but she chose to ignore it. At this point of the story I was then 9 years of age with an anger that started to brew. My mother started to snap on me more as if when she looked at me she was disgusted at the very sight of me. Like i was the inflicted one. The one with that darkness inside of me. I was just a child that was hurt by someone else that was hurt. It's a vicious cycle. It didn't end there.

My mother had a best friend that was her age that had three children that were around my age. I instantly found my new best friend as well, and to this day we remain close friends even though we hardly get to see each other. He's always traveling, but I get that part of him that still wants to run to keep the horrors out of his mind. So, visiting almost every day unaware, my mother's best friend was married to this man who was a boy scout troop leader. He was also molested by his boy scout leaders growing up. Shortly after they got married, he started to touch his stepchildren along with my older brother who was also molested by our aunt. I know this is a lot so please try to keep up. He, Thank God, was caught red handed eventually and got what he had coming to him. It wasn't what he deserved! He deserved more! He received ten years in prison, and upon his release his wife, my mother's best friend still stayed with him until years later me and my best friend from childhood were hanging out and he wanted to stop by his mother's house, and low and behold there he was. I was already drunk. As soon as I seen him, even though he didn't do anything to me, I saw red it took a turn for the worse. My friend got me to calm down, and as soon as I was calm, we had left his mother's house. A week later my friend's mother, being reminded of the sick acts he committed against her children she couldn't bear seeing his face anymore and left his ass! I wish she would have done that in the beginning! I said all that to say this. My eldest brother was one of my friend's stepdad's victims. My eldest brother, at the age of twelve tried to touch me! When he tried, I blacked out for the first time in my entire life, and when I came to, he was screaming in pain. I had grabbed a small religious statue that was on a shelf in the living room and was continuously hitting him with it trying to stab him. After that My mother and stepfather sent him away to live with my mother's parents in Colorado, where my brother would then live with our abusive biological father.

At this point you'd think I was free from all of that entanglement of molestation, but it wasn't so much the sexual side of things anymore, but the violent side of things now. I knew what I was capable of, and nobody was going to hurt me again. Not without a fight, at the age of nine. This is the point I went from being my mother's sunshine to a child she would let raise himself from that point on. Nobody wanted to deal with me. Nobody really knew how, or why I was even that way. I would punch walls, break things, black out in fits of rage, and isolation. I never had my own room. I would always get sent up to the attic, or if the house had one, a basement. I felt like an outcast that nobody wanted. I felt like everything that had happened up unto this point was somehow my fault. For a while there my parents wouldn't ever be home so I would just wander the city streets hoping to find kids my age. Oh, I forgot to mention that because of my rage issues I was kicked out of a few different schools, so we moved quite a lot. I believe it was ten different schools in thirteen years of school. I was always the new kid, and I definitely never fit in. I was bullied until I started going to the park four blocks from our house. The kids were quite a bit older than me. At the time I didn't care, it was just nice to be noticed. I got my first job at the age of ten running backpacks full of marijuana from one side of town to the other. I felt special. I finally had a purpose. Somone was actually proud of me for accomplishing something so small. So, I started to run those routes every day. They gave me money for doing it too. I never got any money from anyone ever! This was all so new to me. I was then introduced to smoking the product I carried every day. I fell in love with the way it made me feel. I didn't care about nothing else, and the best thing about it there was an endless supply that I had the job where I controlled the traffic at the age of ten. I was then invited to become a part of a brotherhood, a comradery like I never had before. I mean I had a brother, but these guys didn't hurt me. A family is something I always wanted. they surrounded me. With me in the middle they explained to me that if I could be strong for thirty-three seconds, and fight back as hard as I could, if I was still standing, I would always have a family. I found that same rage I felt the first time I blacked out! I fought as hard as I could! I got my ass beat! In the end, bleeding from my face in multiple places, and sore all over. I dusted myself off, and with a smile on my face I was accepted by all of my peers. I'll never forget that day. Up until that point I never felt I belonged anywhere. Finally, I had what I always wanted, and I would do anything for my family! Little did I know what was in store. These were the younger years......