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“Bringing a smile to others is easy for me. Bringing a smile to myself can almost feel impossible.” 

Depression, even in these times, is still somewhat of a taboo topic to discuss. It’s definitely becoming more acceptable to talk about in a public manner; however, there’s still a stigma to it. Even now, I’ve got family and friends who don’t believe in depression. That it’s just all in your head, or you’re being a “sissy” about your feelings. Why can’t you just be happy? These are the kind of responses that I was getting from them whenever I would try and open up to them. I understand it now because I was at that standpoint in my life once upon a time as well. I had family that had these issues and I just always thought, “why don’t you just get over yourself and enjoy life?” I know now, it’s not that simple. Depression is also something that nobody else can truly understand unless they’ve experienced it. Even then, they still don’t have your feelings and your coping skills. They don’t have the same willpower that you have. They can’t process the emotions in how you’re designed to process them. That’s what makes depression a unique issue to try and solve. It’s not like a regular disease where there’s a one in all pill that you can take that makes everything go away. For some, there are medications that help them, but for most, it’s not that simple. There’s so much trial and error with medication, therapy, and self-care that some can’t handle it and end up hurting themselves greatly.

 There are on average 132 suicides per day in the USA according to recent research conducted in 2020. In 2020, 45,979 Americans lost their lives to suicide. Also in that same year, there were 1.2 million suicide attempts that thankfully didn’t result in death. Suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in the United States and the highest suicide rate is in middle-aged white men. That has led to 3.88x men dying to suicide more than women. With those numbers, it’s believed, according to that same recent survey conducted by the Harris Poll, that Americans believe that 93% of suicides could be prevented. All of these, statistics, pertain solely to the United States alone, so one of those 1.20 million suicide attempts that failed, easily could’ve been one of your co-workers, a family member, or even just a neighbor in your community. Trust me, hiding attempts from people is easier than you might think. Again, this is where depression becomes the incognito killer. Sometimes you honestly never know who is battling depression and also how severe it is until something tragic like this is attempted.

 Depression, from my viewpoint, is basically your body telling yourself, I don’t want this anymore. It’s not telling you to end your life, it’s telling you to change the person you are at this time and end that cycle of hurt you’re currently living in. Something has to come to an end, but your life should never be the answer. It’s so hard to look for answers to questions that you haven’t even heard yet. It’s hard to speak out whenever you can’t find the words to say. It feels like you’re just a shadow in the dark. It feels like walls are constantly closing in on you. It feels like the pressure of anxiety could cave your chest in. That’s what getting help with depression is like, and for some, those hurdles seem to make it impossible for them to reach out for that help sadly. Even though it feels like there aren’t any answers in sight, you have to jump those hurdles and start those baby steps. You need to seek those answers in order to get help to prevent you from being just another number, another statistic, another hole in the ground. Statistically, I’m supposed to be just another statistic of this. Actually, I’m supposed to have either already died or been incarcerated just going off of my childhood background and the data that’s been collected in surveys over the years. That’s not bragging, and I’ve still got a lot I want to do to change myself and the lives of people around me, that’s just me stating the facts and also saying that you don’t have to become a number. You don’t have to let your past, illness, status quo, etc define you. You don’t have to live in that darkness and live in that hopeless valley. You truly are given the tools within yourself and have the ability to change things. It just takes some extra help at times to utilize those tools. You can never change your past, but you can work on controlling your future.

 Reaching out for help is the scariest thing you’ll ever tackle whenever you’re battling depression. Something so simple as saying “I need help” is the greatest hurdle you’ll ever face in your life. You think people will think you’re crazy or that you’re not capable of being a productive member of society, you’ll have to be on pills forever, and yeah those thoughts are true and in certain issues are valid but that shouldn’t prevent you from getting on the path to bettering yourself. The first time I reached out for help and began therapy, I felt like a total nut-job to put it lightly. Only “crazy” people have to go to therapy is what I would tell myself, and that’s simply not true. I was young and I was also confused about how to even begin to tackle depression and childhood trauma. In fact, it would probably surprise you more about the kind of people that are engaged with therapy as opposed to those who aren’t. When I got the balls to reach out for help and begin my true journey to bettering myself, there were still a lot of dark times. Getting help and one session doesn’t automatically fix anything. I just know I had all of this repressed trauma built up in me and I needed a healthy way to get it out.  Bringing up some old traumas that you’ve suppressed your entire life and also taking medications that can make you feel numb, or more depressed than when you started them is a reality and it’s usually right at the start of the journey to self-help. But when you do take those steps, and you go through those trials, you’ll notice the progress and change. It doesn’t happen overnight and sometimes takes a while, but eventually, you will discover a better you. I know that I have, and if a knucklehead like me can go through it and come out better, anyone can.

 Now once you get help, that doesn’t mean everything is magically cured and you’ll never face depression again. A seasonal change, a traumatic event, a financial strain, or even your job can land you back into depression. Sometimes it just happens, and that’s okay. There isn’t any way to ever fully rid yourself of depression.  What’s important is when you do fall into depression, you know how to climb out. It might not be instantly getting out of depression, but you’ll be prepared with new tools and coping skills that will allow you to better process the depression. You have to take those coping skills and just simply remind yourself, that depression isn’t forever. In time and with work, it will pass over. I actually think it hits harder after you’ve had so much rejuvenated joy and wonder come back into your life when seeking help, that once that’s tampered with, you mourn the loss of it even more. You miss what you had and also you feel like you’ve let yourself down and that you’ve destroyed all the progress you’ve made, but that’s far from the truth. There are no magical words or crystal balls that will make depression go away, but there are tools to help battle it. The key truly is identifying when you’ve fallen back into that state of depression and working on getting out of it.  It’s tricky to know when you’ve fallen back into it and sometimes it happens without you even noticing. The slow descent becomes the norm and eventually, you’re back to where you were, only worse off sometimes. I at least know that’s the case with me. Then If you aren’t careful, you slowly lose those coping skills and honestly get pushed back down to the start of the self-help journey.

 After I got the help and bettered myself, I felt untouchable. I truly felt like anything was possible, and overall I began to see that life really is beautiful. I gained more self-confidence and I was just killing life to put it simply. Then…BOOM!!! I’m hit with a new traumatic event in my life, and it truly threw me deeper into depression than I’ve ever experienced. I thought at first it was just accepting the loss of something you truly held as your lifeline, but then, that sadness wouldn’t go away. Sadness became my new norm. In time, I realized how long I had been in this funk and had fallen into depression. It had just become the new norm. That darkness of depression was my mood all day every day. No matter how much I laughed, listened to music, or hung out with friends, at the end of the night, there was a little voice in the back of my head that kept casting self-doubt upon me. It kept telling me that I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t deserve happiness, and I was just wasting space. I hadn’t heard that voice of self-doubt in so long, but it was basically shouting at me at this point in my life. That voice began making me lose all of the coping skills I had developed and was utilizing daily. Pretty soon, I quit seeing the sun. I started feeling empty. I started feeling anxious all the time. I just overall felt hopeless and numb. Once you get that low, you start getting closer to rock bottom, and you start tempting yourself more and more with tools of destruction.

 For me, my escape was becoming alcohol. I was having to get high, just to feel a little dull. At least I was feeling something whenever I was getting intoxicated. It turned out to be nothing but sadness, but it let me know that I could still feel something. This wasn’t a nightly occurrence, never affected my work life, and never made me not reliable for paying bills and such, but it did start helping me lose touch with people who were close to me. Those people who could actually help me out of this situation, I slowly pushed away and determined that I had a battle of my own. Honestly, when I wanted to reach out, I felt ashamed of myself too much to reach out to them. After I had conquered depression and it had subsided for some time, how could I go back to them and tell them I fell into another situation? I was the happy-go-lucky guy that was good at making others laugh, and now I was a shell of myself.  I also felt ashamed because somewhere along the way, I lost my personal beliefs. I used to think that I was all I ever needed. I was good enough and I could do anything I wanted to. I believed in myself. When the alcohol started making me feel, even just sadness, I began to feel nothing but truly hollow.  I was mourning the loss of something that meant everything to me. My morals and to a degree, my mindset, my lifeline. It’s possible to drink yourself to death, but I never thought of drinking as a means to an end. I almost felt like alcohol was a vitamin I was taking just to get by until the next time I needed another escape from the numbness. I didn’t like facing the demons, but they sickeningly reminded me that I could feel something.

 When the alcohol wasn’t doing it anymore, I needed something else. Something more that would allow me to take control of the situation. That’s where cutting quickly became an issue of mine. It’s still a struggle at times because, with that blade in your hand, you can finally control how much pain you feel. It’s all about being in control when your life is in a whirlwind. You sometimes can’t fully control the situation you’re in currently in life, so if you want that control, it’s easy to resort to cutting. Sometimes I would look forward to it, the rush of controlling the pain. It’s sick to think about now and overall a tragic coping skill for anyone to develop, but here I was with a box cutter slashing away at my body. I was doing something I never thought I was capable of but I also was feeling darkness that I wasn’t ever expecting to hit me the way it did either. I was lost. Sometimes it’s just too hard to remember that it’s always darkest before dawn. After that darkness, the sun will come up and brighten the way. It clears away all of that darkness. It doesn’t work in real-world time and as I mentioned earlier. It can take weeks, months, or even years. But the sun does eventually come out and you’ll be in a full clear view of how beautiful life is and how amazing the future can be.

 Sadly, cutting isn’t as far as the darkness would take me. Eventually, I’d start tempting my life. I’d mix whatever different pills I had, sleep medication, antidepressants, etc with alcohol. HOW FUCKING STUPID IS THAT?! Whenever I was at the point of doing this, life had already almost become meaningless. I was just a hollow shell going through the motions waiting to feel something other than this hollow sadness. I could go out in public, make people laugh and smile, I’d do my work and have my daily routine, but then I’d get home and hear nothing but silence. The silence was deafening. Eventually, this combination of medications and alcohol just didn’t do anything for me anymore, and sometimes, I couldn’t just get these damn wrists to bleed. I’d just keep mixing more and more and no changes would happen. I didn’t feel anything and sadly I didn’t care what I was doing to my body. Eventually, I would get testier with my tools of destruction. The next step after cutting and the alcohol lay in the wake of a weight-lifting device in the home I had. Over time I would begin hanging myself from the weight-lifting device. I knew it could hold well over 200 lbs, so I figured it could surely hold me for long enough to get the job done. The first time I wrapped it around my neck, I got that rush of control that cutting just wasn’t giving me anymore. I had found a new way to control the hurt. I leaned forward and just started choking myself essentially with my body weight with the weight strap tied around my neck. I did that until I got dizzy and hazy. I saw the darkness coming in slowly out of the corner of my eyes. It scared me because I thought I wouldn’t be able to get stable in time to not suffocate myself to death. I remember thanking God and wanting to change my ways and my views of life after I was able to pull myself up away from the machine. That newfound meaning of life for me lasted less than a day and then I was back mixing whatever stimulants I could find and cutting myself.

 Eventually one night, out of nowhere.  I got a feeling. The feeling was overwhelming sadness. Deep primal sadness where you become unable to breathe or function normally. There was that shadow of doubt hanging over my head, telling me I’d be better off dead. I didn’t deserve to live. That shadow of doubt screamed so loud that I couldn’t avoid it any longer.  It honestly felt like my thoughts, movements, and everything was being controlled by something else. When the madness became unbearable, I wrote out a suicide note to a loved one and apologized for everything I had done, and hoped for forgiveness. I still have the note and look at it as a reminder. A reminder of how irrational you can be and within a moment, how that one thought has caused you to take your own life. It’s truly tragic and just horrible people get to that level. To the level, I was sinking deeper and deeper into it.

 That night that I wrote out that suicide letter, I decided it was time. I put the note on the table and began finding a way that I couldn’t back out of it. This was my last night alive as far as I was concerned. I figured out how I was going to accomplish the task. I was going to raise the weight-lifting device a few more notches up than I had ever previously had it sit and wrap it around my neck a few more times than I previously did. Even if I sat down or tried to get the strap unwrapped around my neck, it’d probably be too late. I’d still end up suffocating choking on my own body weight. With a final swig of liquid courage and a few extra anti-depressants, I got the balls to initiate the process. I looked out the window into the black night and I knew that darkness was coming into the house and was coming for me. When I started the process of hanging myself from the weight machine, I just kept looking out the window into the darkness of night. As I kept watching the darkness outside, the world around me grew darker and I slowly felt my body become numb, I could actually feel the life coming out of me. I saw black and then like a bolt of lightning, suddenly I was given a burst of life. Within probably two seconds, I felt so many emotions rush through me. I saw my life just playing so fast right before my eyes. The main thing I thought was life-changing at the moment was I actually could feel again. I wasn’t hollow anymore. I saw the joys of life as they flashed across my eyes. The numbness had gone away and the darkness cleared away and I instantly just had the energy and hindsight to stop what I was doing and realize that I had so much more to give to the universe and I had so much more life to live. It took some time but eventually, I got untangled from the machine with this newfound energy.  After I finally got untangled, I just lay on the cold floor and worked on catching my breath for a few moments. New life had been breathed into me and made it difficult to catch my breath.  After I caught my breath, I just became inconsolable. I cried until it hurt to cry. Just sitting on the floor, bawling, and letting those primal emotions out. I thanked God for the changes in my heart and for filling me up once again. I also thanked myself for having mercy on myself to see that I needed change and from that moment on, I was willing to change. That’s the key when depression hits is having the will to change. Easier said than done, but fully possible.

 We all have a purpose. No matter how small or how grand you feel, everything you do to other people or whatever you put out into the universe causes a chain reaction in not only your life but the lives of others around you as well. Some people think if you’re not rich or famous, you can’t make a difference but that’s so far from the truth. I know I was put here to make others happy and to make others laugh. I just have that ability. For just a few moments out of the day, I have the ability to make people forget their worries, issues, bills, whatever, and just have a laugh. Within that time those people have the chance to forget about their worries. It’s those moments of making people laugh and changing their outlook on things, even a few moments in the day, that can lead to changing their mood for the rest of the day. Who knows, that person you made laugh could’ve cried themselves to sleep the previous night. They could also be going through depression and getting swallowed up in that darkness, but within that moment, maybe you helped change their outlook. Not saying it’s saving lives, or makes you a saint, but I truly believe that what you put out into the universe, can be infectious with the people that you surround yourself with. I know whenever I’ve been caught up in that darkness, sometimes a silly joke just reminds me that there are joys in this life and there is a light that can shine out of the darkness. Even if it is brief, it shows there’s a beacon of hope.

Lifting Me Up

Coming back to live with my parents was something magical. It was truly the definition of “rich with love.” I only had roughly two weeks before school would start back but those two weeks were like a full summer to me just because I feel like me and my parents lived a lot of life together during those two weeks.  Things were tough for some time due to my parents still having to pay out child support for my sister. It was costing more to pay for her living with her caretakers than it was living with my parents in our home. It didn’t matter because my father truly always found a way during this time to make sure that I had everything that I needed and sometimes the things that I wanted.

When I came back to school, it was weird in some ways because a lot of people questioned why I was gone for so long. Other kids seemed to know just simply through word of mouth. Within no time, things felt back to normal. I rekindled a lot of my old friendships and started making new friends. It was as simple as things should’ve been for a ten-year-old kid. I know during this time there was a time when I was starting to actually become that “problem child” that my social worker had defined me as.  There were a lot of times I had to stay late to speak with the teacher about my progress, my profanity, and also my home lifestyle. It all started coming into question.

I managed to get through 5th grade without any real problems. Moving into 6th grade, I was slowly starting to hang out with older kids in the trailer park and overall just spending time with the wrong crowd. I truly don’t think I knew any better in some ways because the people I started to associate myself with were similar people that my parents were slowly starting to bring into the house. Things started innocently enough such as sneaking around porno magazines but they would start to escalate to damaging property and trying alcohol by the time I had started 7th grade. In my mind, it became fun to try and push the envelope and see how much trouble I could get into without getting caught. I was still such a mama’s boy and any time I would get in trouble in the trailer park or at school and she would find out, it would break my heart. In hindsight, it was just an 11-12-year-old child crying out for some form of attention and acceptance.

I remember teachers around this time really noticing a change in me. One teacher would pull me aside after class and ask “what’s going on.” I literally didn’t know what she meant because so much of the chaos I grew up around was normalized to me. The teacher told me she had seen a difference in me since I had started 6th grade.  She also told me that I was better than acting out in class and always getting into trouble.  There were no rules at my home so that slowly carried over into my school life. I was slowly dropping off of the Honor Roll and moving into just average grades. I was also visiting the principal’s office more and more and actually getting less fearful during each visit.  Even as a kid, I didn’t have motivation because no matter what I did, there weren’t many consequences if any at all when I would get back home. I would literally hand over failing assignments to my parents during this time, and they wouldn’t really say anything.

During this time, we would have more calls on us and DSS would get involved. There were so many days that I would have to hide in my room and not make a sound whenever the social worker would come to the house. My mother would just sit on the couch and not make a sound until she could see the white vehicle pull out of the driveway. Whenever the social workers would catch us at the home or at school, I was trained on exactly what to say and exactly how to act. I was always threatened that if I told any of the truth, I would instantly get taken away as I had previously.

With the changes in myself, I could also see a physical change in my mother. I could tell not six months after getting custody of me, she was back to her old ways. She just seemed so different. She wasn’t the attentive mother she had become, she was becoming the mother who overdosed in front of me only a year and a half earlier. Then I noticed my father started acting differently too. My father was acting exactly like my mother. Then I notice all of these strange people coming into the home and then I notice less attention is being spent on me and more time was being spent in the “back room.” God only knows what truly happened in that backroom. My parents would lock the door and stay in there for hours at a time. Me being eleven years old and weighing 160lbs, I was hungry a lot and wanted to eat. I remember knocking on the door so many times and asking for food and then just getting the classic “in a minute son.” That minute would turn into hours and I would just sit and play video games until they would come out.

One day I would get into the back room when I wasn’t supposed to be in there. I just wanted to watch TV in there and this was the first time that I saw a plate of crushed-up pills and a cut-up McDonald’s straw, I didn’t understand any of it. I remember honestly being puzzled by it and thinking it was a Pixie Stix one of my parents had poured out onto a plate. I didn’t even try to taste it or take it, I just remember the colors looked so pretty on the little white plate that was sitting on a little desk in the “back room.” I remember asking one of my parents about the candy on the plate on the desk and getting chewed out for noticing. Before long, you would find little cut-up McDonald’s straws throughout the house, and not far behind would be a plate that would have crusted leftover pills stuck to it.

This part of my life to me is the hardest to remember. I’m not even sure why, but it just all seems like a blur. Maybe I just blocked a lot of it out. Who knows. I’m not even sure how, or why but all I remember is my parents handed me a hundred dollars on a summer day and instructed me to walk down to a trailer at the bottom of the hill and give this money they just gave me to a man who lived in that trailer. The man will give you some pills and you bring them back here and be sure not to drop anyway. I was sent on to my first “pickup.” I was scared when I got to his trailer. Beer cans littered his yard and he had a flag of a woman’s butt with a rebel flag tattooed on it hanging in his window. I knocked on the door and handed him the money and he gave me the pills. The transaction was quick and he sent me on my way. His dog came out towards the end of the brief encounter and started barking at me. I was terrified but for a guy selling a handful of pills to a ten-year-old, he was as nice as he could be. I guess because my parents just gave him a hundred dollars and he could be able to buy more beer with it. Everyone wins.

When I returned home, my parents were very pleased that I had the pills with me and they sent me on my way. They closed the door and I could hear them crushing up the pills and snorting. As messed up as it sounds, I felt like I had done something good. I was able to “help” my parents out and put a smile on their faces. I would bet money that I ended up walking down to his trailer over a hundred times that summer. Sometimes it would be multiple trips in one day. When my parents didn’t have money, they would send me with pills and they would trade them off with them. I would walk down with yellow pills and come back with blue pills. Somehow, I was never tempted to keep a pill for myself. I always just wanted to help my parents. I truly felt that doing all of these pickups were helping them out.  I remember during one trip my hands got really sweaty and some of the pills started melting in my hands. When I brought them home, my parents fussed at me but still took the pills anyway. From then on I was sent with a little sandwich bag to carry the pills in.

Our visits at DSS had gotten better. It got to the point where we could have some unsupervised time as long as we stayed on the property. Those visits were some of the best times I had growing up. I hated when they would end, but I knew each visit, it would be packed full of fun and love. Things as simple as throwing footballs with my parents meant everything to me. It was just a feeling of love I was finally getting to experience without it being monitored. These visits started in the Spring of 2003 and would last until I was able to return home in July of 2003.

When I was leaving "the system", it was just an ordinary July day in 2003. My sister and I had gone with our caretakers to the mall in Johnson City to begin back to school shopping as summer break was quickly coming to a close. I hadn’t thought much about restarting school and also changing schools again. I was headed to Bowman Middle School, home of the bulldogs. I had made some new friends at my new school and overall, I didn’t mind the school friends I had lost back home because I had so many at my current school.

In my young mind I knew court was taking place during this date of shopping. I was very worried and also hopeful because I had told my social worker I wanted to go to a group home. My social worker talked to me about Crossnore and they tried to sell it to me as a bad place, but honestly it sounded better than my current setup. I told them that I wanted to be moved there as soon as possible. I wanted to get far away from my current placement. I will never fully understand why I was treated so much more differently than my sister at our placement. I think it was because I had hope of being back with my mother and father soon. My sister wasn’t as excitable at the prospect.

I wanted to go into the Foster Home because it felt like an escape. There was so much negative energy at my placement and I was blamed for it. I was considered a “problem child” by my social worker and caretakers because I would cry wanting to go home. I was hysterical at times, but it was also because I wasn’t being heard. I would tell my parents and the social worker about the bad things happening and it was brushed off as just me simply being a problem child. I needed an advocate. I also couldn’t handle the negative conversations in regard to my parents anymore. A kid can only hear “your parents are going to hell” for so long before it scares the shit out of you. 

The day in the mall is really a blur to me. I remember getting an Aeropostale shirt and a Sprite Remix (how summer of 2003 is that combo?) and I just remember being out until around 4 or 5pm. When we got back to the house, there were a few voicemails on the answering machine. I don’t remember exactly what they all said, I just remember one part telling my current caretakers I was coming home to my parents and they needed to have me at the courthouse as soon as possible. I was excitable and neither one of my caretakers were. They viewed the whole ordeal as an inconvenience. I was young, but I wasn’t done and it really showed in their actions.

Once I knew I was going home, I rushed to start packing up my wrestling figures that were tucked away underneath the bed. I remember the sun setting and the whole house had a certain glow to it. Like bad times and bad thoughts were finally getting washed away. My mind could finally be at peace and not have to constantly hear “your parents are drug users and are going to hell.” I was ready to be anywhere but there and my wish was coming true. As I was getting my bags packed, one of my caretakers came and hugged me crying. I remember thinking, “why couldn’t you have done this to me months ago?” I just remember having no emotion toward them during the moment but faking my way through until I could get to my parents. That’s what I needed and wanted.

I remember the social worker for the case appeared at the home at some point with a disappointed look on her face. Why was it such a bad thing I was going home? It didn’t make sense to me. I wish I would’ve known this would be the last time I would be seeing my sister for close to three years. I think I would’ve spent more of the day with her and just appreciate her more. We only packed for roughly an hour; however, it felt like we were packing for half the day. Everything was going back into trash bags. I didn’t care at this point though. I knew I wouldn’t have to deal with putting my things in trash bags anymore. As we finished loading up the car we would get on the road and were followed by the social worker in her car to the Mitchell County Courthouse. 

The car ride seemed quiet to me. I feel like nobody said anything during it. My caretaker’s home was roughly 10-15 minutes away from the DSS office, but the drive felt longer than the drive to Johnson City. I just remember the sun. The sun was glowing and there honestly felt like hope. I had lived the past 7 months in a home that was toxic to put it nicely. I would never say I didn’t have some good times there, but the bad far outweighs them. I felt like everyone’s punching bag at my caretaker’s home. It led me to bashing my head into a concrete wall because I just wanted everything to go away. I was so miserable in my placement, I wanted to kill myself and talked about it quite often. 

Eventually we made it to the courthouse. I saw my parent’s blue Ford truck and I ran to them. Finally, love and a warm embrace. Finally, I was safe with my parents again. I headed back home. Somewhere I hadn’t seen or felt in over seven months. Upon arriving at the house, I just remember how small the living room felt. I have no idea why the living room felt so small to me, probably because I was pushing 155 lbs at the ripe age of 10, but I felt like I could jump across the living room. I remember telling my father how much smaller the living room felt and he got upset over the comment. Looking back at it now, I understand why he got upset over the comment.  I remember after entering the trailer and hitting the couch going over to my best friend's house and him just busting through the door and hugging me. I wasn't at their home long at all. It almost seems like I was just there for the hug and then left. Maybe it's because I was so anxious to hookup my new PS2 my parents had just gotten me.

Things in the house weren’t perfect but it didn’t matter to me. I was glad to be back home. At the trailer, the floor was starting to sink in even more and actually where our water heater was, the floor was so bad that it was falling through. We couldn’t take baths in our bathtub because the floor was rotted out. When sitting on the toilet, you could actually see where the front end of the bath tub was starting to sink in. I got in one time to take a cold shower and my parents flipped out because they kept telling me I could’ve fallen through the floor. The way we took baths was my heating up water in an empty butter tub in the microwave along with a washcloth. The goal was to get as clean as fast as possible. We took baths like this for years before the flooring would get fixed. In the winter time we would have to do this style of bath in front of the monitor so there was very limited privacy because the monitor was the only source of heat in the trailer so everyone was always in the living room. I remember during this time; I wasn’t allowed to have friends stay over because of the conditions of our trailer. I remember even hiding not being able to take a bath to my best friend, who was also my neighbor, for years. Anytime he asked to spend the night, my parents would simply say “no.” It wasn’t mean, it was protecting the family. We didn’t even have hot water until the flooring would get fixed because our old water heater leaked so bad that if it was cut on, it would flood the bedroom. My parents still took care of me though.

The night of my mother’s overdose ended up with me and my sister being removed from the home. It was a late Saturday night, probably 10 or 11 pm. I remember being so confused by everything that was going on. The lights from the police car, the ambulance sirens going off, and a social worker in the safe place going over things with me that I didn’t understand. The social worker just kept repeating that my mother and father weren’t safe and I was going somewhere to stay. The worker was cold with their delivery. I remember sitting with them in some awkward silence for some time with the occasional other occupants from the Safe Place coming upstairs to see what was going on. After some time, my chariot arrived and I was whisked away. I didn’t know what happened with my mother or father for the rest of the night. I just remember arriving at my new home and getting to watch the last few minutes of WWE Confidential. It was roughly 11:30 pm on a Saturday night. That was the last time I would get to watch wrestling for almost a year.

I honestly don’t remember much about my placement during this time. I think it was such a traumatic time for me, I blocked a lot of it out. It wasn’t all bad. I would be lying to act like I didn’t have a single ounce of enjoyment during my time. It just wasn’t an ideal placement for me that I still don’t like to talk that much about. I do remember almost every time I saw my parents during this time of me being removed from my mother and father’s care. The first time I saw my mother after the incident was around Christmas. I remember she brought my presents and my father couldn’t visit with me. I remember plain as day watching my father drive up the driveway with my mother in his blue Ford truck and just dropping her off. I remember when my mother came into the home, I just ran and hugged her. I remember so vividly that I could smell my father’s cologne on her jacket and it just made me miss him so much.

My mother had brought my gifts and my sister’s gifts in a big black trash bag. The gifts were neatly wrapped. My parent’s presents were everything I had hoped for and wanted that year. A WWE toy wrestling ring, a Jeff Hardy figure, and an unexpected Mick Foley figure. Strangely, the Mick Foley figure always looked like my dad. The day was going great for me. I remember my parents got my sister a set of Nsync dolls and a few other things. Before too long, the Nsync dolls ended up in my toy box. Even as a kid it always made me sad that my sister just kind of threw down her Nsync dolls and even her Pokémon cards that my parents had brought to her. It always felt like to me it hurt her to do it, but due to our current placement, she felt forced to do it. Somehow during the visit, a less than pleasant exchange happened between my mother and the rest of the family that was present for the Christmas gathering. Again, it’s somewhat of a blur, I just remember my mother leaving the home after crying and calling my father to come to pick her up. I also remember me getting yelled at for trying to wave at my father out the window who was picking my mother back up.

From that moment on, my current caretakers never said a positive word about my parents. The caretakers, the people who were there to protect me from the abuse only escalated at times. Too many times I would get off the phone from talking with my parents, only for my caretakers to come up to me and call them “nothing but dope heads.” It was carried out even throughout the rest of my family did as well.  One of the most traumatic incidents like this was one of my caretakers at my new placement telling me my parents were “going to hell.” I remember so vividly having to cry myself to sleep that night because this was said right before bedtime. Almost like a sick bedtime story. I had a nightmare that night of my parents walking through my 9-year-old vision of hell looking for me. My caretakers were also verbally abusive toward me and would also constantly do petty things to hurt me. Again, maybe for another time.

One of the hardest parts about the move was changing schools. I changed schools officially at the start of the spring semester of my 4th-grade year. I was scared shitless as a kid to put it nicely. All through school, since kindergarten, I had kept the same friends. Now, I was somewhere different. Somewhere foreign. Somewhere I didn’t understand. As I walked through the halls of Gouge Elementary and entered Mrs. Cox’s 4th-grade class, I was nervous, but in no time, I made some friends and had classmates to talk about WWE and Dragon Ball Z with. I survived the trial by fire somehow. I was ready to take on the rest of the school year in this foreign land.

One day when arriving at the new school, I got called to the library. As a kid in a new school, again, this scared the shit out of me. I was new. What could I have done to be getting called to the library? As I walked to the library, I was greeted by my new social worker who was belated I had finally shown up. I had gotten lost trying to find the library going to this meeting.  The library floor was full of different kids and I remember having a hard time finding a place to sit. Every kid seemed to have a somewhat confused look on their face. There was a mix of kids on the library floor. Nerds, jocks, rich kids, and even bullies. As I found a place to sit, I remember seeing my social worker standing next to some teachers. It was a moment of hysteria in a lot of ways, especially for a nine-year-old kid still trying to fully adapt to a new school and a new home.

I don’t remember much about the presentation. I just remember that the social worker said something to the effect of “you all have had DSS involvement, and it’s important for you to know, you can speak up about what goes on in your home.” I remember thinking it was so bizarre, even as a kid, that some of the popular kids were going through some of the same things I was. It was kind in a way, but also a total violation of confidential information as well. The social worker did some presentations and the principal also offered to listen to any concerns any student might want to present to him about their current living situation. Ah, the day came and went fairly uneventful after the presentations. 

It didn’t matter how uneventful the school days were because on Wednesday evenings, I got to visit with my parents at the Mitchell DSS office. I remember the room so vividly. A plain white room, with a one-way mirror and an old couch that had to have been from the 70s. The mirror was so terrible that if you sat on the couch, you would actually just see the workers watching you through the glass. Muck and crud were all over everything in the visitation room and old used-up coloring books filled up the toy area. Thankfully, my parents would bring me wrestling magazines, toys, and food to pass the time. One of the fondest things I can think of about my parents was them actually watching Monday Night RAW and Thursday Night SmackDown! every week so they could tell me everything that happened since I wasn’t allowed to watch it at my new placement. My father would carry in his little notebook and it would just be full of notes and he would try and explain everything to me.  

Times like these were good, great even, but there were also times of pure outrage on my part. I hated everything. I was tired of people telling me my parents were bad people and they were going to hell. I was tired of having nightmares of parents being in hell looking for me. I was tired of the workers constantly asking me questions and not listening about what my current caretakers would do to hurt me. I hated the stupid white room. I was tired of everything. I remember one time, in particular, I was in visitation with my parents, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I just remember I started hitting my head on the wall and screaming “I want to die!” I just kept on and on. Eventually, a worker and my parents calmed me down, but I do remember having to watch the footage at a later time with the social worker and explain why I was acting that way. I simply told them I wanted to go somewhere else and the worker talked to me about going to Crossnore School. My social worker warned me that I wouldn’t know anyone at the placement and I remember telling them anything was better than where I was.

Night of the Zombie

After the incident with my parents and the awkward breakfast with my grandparents and mother about us not returning home due to my father "not being safe" on a chilly Saturday morning, we arrived at the Safe Place in Spruce Pine. When we arrived at the Safe Place it seemed like it was built like a prison. The home had locks, cameras, and a big wooden fence around the facility blocking any kind of view to the outside world. To a kid who wanted nothing more than spending the weekend playing his Nintendo 64, it felt like I was being punished for something I had nothing really to do with. Why couldn’t I just be in my home with my own space? Why did we have to share a room with a family whose mother believed the basement where we stayed to be haunted by some little girl. Oh great, five minutes being in the place and I was already afraid to take a pee because I knew the ghost of a girl who had died in the bathroom would come after me. This place was different....very different. Trailer park rules or logic didn’t apply here.

When we entered the living area of the Safe Place I remember seeing a few of the “problem children” from my school being in the house. It was so weird being in that living room with them. I knew them from school but I was almost certain they didn’t know who I was. The kids were nice and introduced themselves to me and my sister. My sister was cool enough in school to where she didn’t have to worry about being bullied. I, on the other hand, felt like I was prime rib for these kids. There was this one girl in the Safe House who was older than me who I was always happy to see. I was just a nine-year-old boy, so girls weren’t anything interesting to me, well besides this one. To this day I don’t remember the girl's name, I just remember when living in this screwed-up place she always made me smile. She was a slight fan of WWE and Our Lady Peace, so things seemed pretty good with me. 

On a chilly fall day, probably in my first week of being at the facility, one of the kids invited me outside to "hang out." Woah, maybe I was going to make a friend after all. I mean ten minutes in this place and I went from being terrified of some ghost girl in the basement to making a new friend and meeting a girl. I felt like Nature Boy Ric Flair at this moment. Next to the safe place was an abandoned building that seemed to be a good hiding spot when the older kids wanted to smoke. My new friend took me over to the building and started lighting up a cigarette. He offered me a puff and I politely declined. After he finished puffing on his cigarette he started poking fun of my weight. This was the first time anytime anyone had ever truly made fun of me to my face. His insults continued for what seemed like hours before they ended. After his rant on my weight, the kid proceeded to pull down his pants and take a dump in front of me (he didn't even wipe; shew.) After taking a dump in front of me, the kid pretends to fake punch me a few times. After this, the kid walked off and I was left in a state of shock and disbelief. What did I just encounter?

Television time was something that seemed impossible to get at the Safe Place. All of the kids and even the parents seemed to fight for their rights to watch their favorite TV shows. I would always request to watch WWE and would always get denied. One night I remember I was able to get the TV to myself and I started watching Monday Night Raw. While sitting there and watching, the girl I mentioned earlier came down and started watching it with me. We both shared a love for Jeff Hardy. After drooling over the fact that this girl was kind and sweet; she also loved Jeff Hardy. I thought I was ready to marry her. I didn’t need to know a name, but she had made me so happy and gave me more attention than anyone had in so long I felt like I was “in love.” Now I know I was just in love with the feeling of having someone, not particularly her. I remember sitting there and watching Raw with her and she got called away by her mother. That seemed to be the last time I ever saw her this “dream girl.”

The next part of the story almost seems textbook. My grandparents arrived at the Safe Place and whisked my sister away again by herself. I remember begging them to take me. All I needed was a break from everyone and everything. I needed out of this prison.  I just ended up with the classic line “maybe next weekend.” As my grandparents took my sister away, I was stuck alone with my mother in the home. My mother asked me if I wanted to go on a walk with her and eagerly replied with a “yes.” As we got ready and started on our adventure I became very excited. I wondered where she was taking me, or what we were going to see. Little did I know it was just across the road to meet with my father at the post office. I remember being very excited to see my dad. He seemed excited to see me but seemed quick to brush me off and told me to sit in the backseat. As I sat there I remember him handing my mother the biggest damn bottle of pills I’d ever seen. My dad looked back and me and promised me not to tell anyone what I saw and my mother also turned around and told me “I need these. They help me feel better.” I thought I was so special that my family trusted me with such a big secret. I quickly swore myself into their oath and me and my mother exited my father’s old Ford truck and started heading up the hill.

My mother seemed to skip all the way the hill and I was just happy to see my mother happy. It was rare to see her smile so when it happened, it was nice. Me and mother sat in the room that night and talked. My mother talked to me about how special I was and how I didn’t my grandparents to have fun. This was the first “heart-to-heart” we had ever had and it was nice to be cheered up. I went to bed with confidence that night. I felt on top of the world and even the haunted bathroom didn't scare me too much at all either. 

The next day was normal. Nothing interesting happened, it was just a normal nice autumn day. Me and my mother spent the day watching TV and talking. My mother did slip off and call my dad. I didn’t speak with him and didn’t know I wouldn’t get to for a long time otherwise I probably would have talked with him. My mother treated me to a nice day and I felt special. Forget the kids at the Safe Place, I had my mom and that’s all I needed. Then the darkness happened. Bedtime was near and I was downstairs looking through a WWE magazine and I came across the same Metroid Prime advertisement that I had painted on the window only a month ago at our trailer on that fateful night. I showed my mother and she didn’t seem to care. She seemed tired and sleepy. I stared at the advertisement and then that seemed to be it. I went upstairs to sneak a piece of banana bread from the refrigerator and when I came back, my mother didn’t look like my mother. She had split milk and banana bread all over herself and was laying in the bed lifeless with her mouth open and white foam coming from her mouth. She was also a sick grey-looking color. I screamed. I cried. I kicked. I screamed. I was truly afraid. Who was this monster and where was my mother? This didn’t look like my mother at all.

I remember the entire scene being in slow-motion almost. As I laid there shaking my mother begging her to wake up, the neighbor rushed into our room and dragged me away, and the neighbor started calling 911. They made me sit in the haunted bathroom until 911 came and took her away. I later found out that she had overdosed on the bottle of pills my father had given her. I didn’t have my sister at this time, so I had no one with me. I was alone and confused. Was my mother dead? Where was my father? Why did I have to find her like that? 

Something in the Air Tonight

Throughout my childhood, things would weave in and out of different levels of sanity. Too many times I would remember coming home and either things were in chaos, or my parents were normal and asking me how my day had gone after a long day of school. When things were “normal”, I was always unsettled. Even as a kid, the Psycho Circus that I had become accustomed to, felt “normal” to me. If my parents weren’t arguing or fighting, something always felt off. It’s such a bizarre concept to look back on, but it’s the thing I knew so when it wasn’t present, it felt like something was missing.  

My parents always argued. It’s not speaking negatively of them, it’s just the truth. They constantly argued and if they weren’t arguing, they would just start fighting. It was heavy as a kid to watch because my mother was the one that always started the physical confrontations with my father. If something didn’t go her way, or she didn’t get what she wanted, she became aggressive. Too many times I would watch my mother smack my dad and belittle him. I will always say this, my father always tried to avoid confrontations, but at times, they could be too much to avoid. Something had to come to a breaking point. Sadly, this breaking point had more server consequences than just an awkward dinner with the family.  

The day was simple and short for any ordinary fourth-grade student in a rural school setting. A good lunch and a long talk with a couple of friends about various secrets in the “Zelda: Ocarina of Time” on the playground. The ordinary autumn Friday school day was near completion. Towards the end of this simple school day, I was deemed “student of the week” in my class and got to choose a prize out of the gift box Mrs. Collins had prepared for us. Out of the gift box I chose was a window paint set that I planned to create a masterpiece with later in the evening with my family. As I got on the school bus and waited for the arrival at the trailer park, I was a particularly proud trailer park kid. Here I was coming home as “student of the week.” I hoped that once I got home and my parents saw my achievement; we could all paint on the windows and then head out to Wal*Mart where I could try and bribe my parents into buying me a pack of Pokémon cards.  

When I arrived home my sister was gearing up to go stay with my grandparents at their home. I wasn’t even bothered by the fact that I wasn’t going down there to stay this weekend because I was “student of the week.” On this day I was better than my sister and I wanted a celebration with or without her. As I came home to my parents with the exciting news, I could already tell that mom wasn’t “super mom” today. I showed her my paint set and she quickly gave me a shallow promise of painting with me later in the evening. I could tell that she had business to attend to. I would later find out that this business consisted of her wanting some more pain pills from my father. As I sat in the back junk room alone with my toys, I began looking for pictures to paint. I eventually discovered a picture advertising the latest “Metroid” game. In a WWE magazine. I thought this was perfect and something my mother would love to paint with me since she loved playing Super Metroid on our Super Nintendo. I thought my father could help us out as well since he was actually a very talented drawer.  

As my sister finished packing up her things for the weekend and my grandfather came and whisked my sister away to the magical land of Bandanna without a proper goodbye to me; the trailer got awful quiet without my sister’s music blaring in the background. As I sat in the back room still planning the painting with my mother, my father arrived, and my excitement kicked back in. This man would have to be proud of me tonight I thought to myself. I was “student of the week” for goodness' sake. I pictured him automatically giving me a hug and congratulating me on a job well done once he found out the news. Did that happen? No. Instead, he went straight into his bedroom and sat quietly. My mother charged into his room, and I knew that everything would be okay once she got her pills and would become the mom who enjoyed hanging out with her son. I thought we could all just start painting this Metroid masterpiece I had envisioned in my mind. That didn’t exactly go as planned though.  

As my mother raced into my father’s room; the two started yelling at each other like they were two professional wrestlers getting ready to square off for the World Heavyweight Championship. I heard so many cuss words come between the two. Words that I hadn’t even heard of at this point in my life. I was honestly scared of these two people who were my parents and not the professional wrestlers they were acting like as the argument was getting pretty heated at this point. I didn’t have my sister to talk to during this situation, so I ran into the back room where I had planned my events for the evening once getting home and I began to paint the Metroid picture on my own. I thought maybe if I painted this picture, both of my parents would be so damn proud of me, they would forget about the arguing and the pills altogether. As I finished the painting on the old dirty cracked trailer window, I waited for it to dry. Once it was done drying, I ran back to my parent’s bedroom and what I saw has never left my mind.  

I don’t know exactly how the events happened because they just seemed to happen so fast and it’s a lot for a nine-year-old kid to take in. As I arrived in my parent’s bedroom, I was treated to the sight of my mother taking down one of my dad’s shotguns from his gun rack and pointing it at his chest. I’ll never forget hearing the words “go ahead Terri and blow me to hell.” I screamed as loud as I could and begged my mother to put the gun away. She didn’t seem to care I was witnessing this act; she was on a mission to get her pills. I didn’t want super-mom anymore, I didn’t want Pokémon cards, and I didn’t want to paint anymore. I just wanted all of this to end. I wanted away. I wanted my escape. I wanted my parents to see what they were doing to me.  

The showdown continued for a few more minutes with my mother splashing coffee on my dad from his prized Pizza Hut mug (yes those were a thing) and later hitting him with it, to just straight up punches to his face. My mother was fired up. I’m not sure what her agenda was now at this point since my father had refused to give her the pain pills several times. I’m not sure why my dad put up with it as long as he did or even why two adults would let their child witness these acts. I had seen my mom hit my dad before and even try to cut him with a butcher knife. Me and my sister witnessed these events almost weekly. The violence between my father and my mother was almost normal. I’m not sure why this time was so different to me. Maybe it was because I didn’t have my sister there with me. Maybe because it was the first time, I had seen a gun up close. Maybe it’s because these people didn’t seem like my parents anymore. I don’t remember how long this moment lasted. All I know is it all ended with my dad shoving my mom out of the way and heading for the door. My mother chased after him and I sat in the hallway of the trailer so lifeless. I was frozen in time after witnessing everything my parents had just done. I didn’t know more was to come.  

My mother decided that instead of pain pills she would really like a milkshake from Burger King. Somehow it went from my mother pulling a gun on my father to all of us in the vehicle heading towards Burger King in the span of about thirty minutes. The night seemed so dark as I sat in the backseat of the car. I couldn’t see a moon or any stars in the sky. I just saw black. As my mother got her prized milkshake from Burger King, she begged my father to take her to Western Sizzlin. This wasn’t for a nice family meal to celebrate me being “student of the week” but to just stop by and say “hello” to my grandmother who was working there. My father was hesitant but eventually gave in to the request. As we arrived at the restaurant, I was ordered to stay in the car as my mother hurried into the restaurant. Me and my father sat in some awkward silence that I could even pick up at my young age. Looking back now I guess he was either too embarrassed to try and explain to his nine-year-old son what happened, or he had too much pride and didn’t deem it necessary to apologize for something that my mother had started in his eyes. I never doubt either of my parents loved me. They did try and shelter me from some of their evil, however, my father knew that I knew everything that had happened this night.  

While me and my father continued to sit in the car not speaking and me occasionally taking some sips from my mother’s precious Burger King milkshake, my mother and what seemed like half the waiters at Western Sizzlin were coming outside and headed towards the vehicle. In my naïve young mind, I thought they might be coming to congratulate me on being “student of the week”, however, my father knew better than this and as I heard an “oh, shit” muttered under his breath I assumed something not so good was about to happen. My grandmother quickly came up to my window and started cussing at my father. This was the last thing I wanted was for all of this to continue. My mother had gone into the restaurant and accused my father of hitting her in the face. I never saw the faithful blow to the cheek that my mother had told everyone about, but then again, I was a kid so who would listen. Later, my father would tell me that my mother faked a hit to the face and made a bruise out of makeup under her eye.  

The shouting match between my father and grandmother continued for some time. With all of the waitresses cheering on my grandmother she did the unthinkable and slapped my father. My father instantly started the vehicle up and started backing out with my grandmother still in the window cursing at him. My father did start rolling up the window and before he could get the window all the way up, my grandmother gave him one final smack in the back of the head before my father could drive off. The car ride home was short but very quiet. My father I don’t think spoke a word the whole ride home. It was late in the night before we got home. I do remember my father letting me in his bedroom to watch Cartoon Network. I’ll never forget him telling me not to be afraid if he wasn’t here in the morning, he would be back home soon. I didn’t know what he meant at the time but as I laid in the bed and watched an episode of “Courage the Cowardly Dog” I drifted off. I remember waking up later in the night and Dragon Ball Z was on the TV and there were strangers in the living room. I could hear my father’s voice, so I didn’t think too much of the situation. I would later find out; this was the cops and a social worker coming to the home to have my father removed from the home.  

Growing Up: The Early Years  

The earliest memory I have of growing up is being in the back of my dad’s white GMC truck and hearing the opening guitar riff of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” being blared on the cheap speakers that were in the back seat with me and my sister. I’ll never forget just looking out the window and being “happy” when hearing the music and not having to care about what was going on in my family. In this memory I have, I vividly remember my father driving down the mountain heading towards Marion NC. In my eyes, the window was the perfect frame for a stage and every blade of grass that was outside the window were dying fans wanting to meet me. It’s odd that I’ve recently just started thinking about this memory lately, however it seems to be one of the few memories I can think of from my childhood that actually aren’t filled with some kind of dread. Whether that’s good or bad, it’s honest. There’s a certain innocence behind the memory and I think that’s why I cherish it so dearly. Within the innocence is something magical and I think I’ve always carried that feeling with me throughout my life.  

Growing up, my family was poor. We lived in an old run-down trailer that had holes in the floors and busted-out windows that had plastic put over them to makeshift a window. We never had money, sometimes no food and sometimes no love. I know my parents tried their hardest and I’m just grateful that they provided a roof over our heads. The trailer would decline in shape over the years, but growing up in it, I never noticed how poor we were at certain times. I had toys, I had video games, but sometimes I wouldn’t have food. The necessity that any child shouldn’t have to worry about; however, one thing that I had was music. Music would become, and still is, the foundation of how I view the world in many different ways. One of my fondest memories was when my mother surprised my sister one Christmas with a CD/Cassette player. The CD player was the nicest thing in our trailer for the longest time. Along with the CD player, my mother bought her a bunch of CDs from one of those weird subscription services that were in the back of magazines in the late 90s. My mother and dad had picked out a bunch of 80s hair -metal CDs from the 20 something CDs you got from this subscription service. After seeing all of the Def Leppard, ZZ Top, and Guns N Roses CDs that were littered through the box, my sister came across her portion of the CDs. My sister’s portion of the CDs consisted of Spice Girls, NSYNC, Jordan Knight, Britney Spears, and a CD that she quickly tossed away that would later become one of my most prized possessions which was a Backstreet Boys CD.  

After my sister neglected the CD for some time, I would slowly start listening to it and getting that feeling I had looking out the window of my dad’s truck and pretending there was an arena of people out there waiting for me. When I would hear songs like “As Long As You Love Me” or “Quit Playing Games with my Heart” I would dance and sing in my home and people would notice me. I never had that much attention growing up, so imagine what was going through the mind of a six-year-old performing in front of his family and them actually noticing. It was an escape and one that I was proud of. If I got sad (which happened a lot during my childhood) I would put on songs like “All I Have to Give” or “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” and just sit back and think about how it felt like I lost something. I was a six-year-old kid at the time who couldn’t have lost too much besides a Power Rangers toy or a Pokémon card, however, I remember hearing these ballads and becoming sad. I knew there was some emotion of love coming from the songs, but I didn’t know what it meant to me. I’m not even sure how to describe the feeling now, I just knew if things were bad in the home; I could put on the slow songs and hideaway crying while singing the chorus and if things were good, I could put on the “funky” songs and dance and be the center of attention. It was the music that helped me escape the chaos of everyday life. Even at this young age, I was ready to “woo” the girl of my dreams into  

My mother was always my biggest fan. When she was in her right mind, there was no one else in the world that could make me feel as special as she could make me feel. I loved more than my mother, but when she was on one of her binges, she quickly became my biggest enemy. I can remember so many nights watching my mom pass out on the floor, in a restaurant, or even falling asleep standing upright while cooking for me and my sister. I would find out later in my life that my mother used substances to keep her away from her past. Thankfully instead of turning to substances like my mother to hide from the ugly past, I turned to music and that helped keep me straight through a lot of rough times in my life. My mother did love me with everything she had in her. I have no doubts about that. I just wish that I could’ve had the mother I knew she could be all the time. She was someone who is special. I believe that if she didn’t have an addiction that she would’ve turned out to be someone who could’ve made a difference in the world. She was kind, beautiful, intelligent, and everything that I strive to be to this day still, however, she carried around a burden that never got any easier to carry.  

Even as a child, I wanted to help my mom carry that burden, no matter the cost. I remember being young and my mother asking me to help her look for my father’s pain pills. I knew that if I found them and she took some of them, she would play with me and be the “super-mom” I knew she was capable of being. Needless to say, many days when my dad was at work and my sister was at my grandparent’s home, me and my mother would spend the entire day tearing up our small little trailer apart looking for that magical little orange bottle of pills. I knew every time she would find them. You would hear a little giggle that was followed by the sounds of pills shaking back and forth in the bottle. I’ll always remember those giggles and the little smiles. I knew my mother was happy finding the pills and I was just happy that she was happy. I wanted a playmate during this time. I never had friends over because even at the age of 6ish I was embarrassed by our house and the conditions we lived in, so I needed a playmate and someone to watch me sing and dance for them.

I was always afraid of my dad. I’m not sure exactly why. He never was intentionally mean to me or my sister, he was just never really involved either. My father would come home from work and go straight to his bedroom and shut the door. It seemed like the only time he was up; he was fussing with my mother about the pills she had found and taken. I never appreciated that from my father in the younger part of childhood. I thought he was trying to make my mother not love me any more by not letting her have the pills that transformed her into “super-mom.” I really wish I had more to say about my father during this part of my childhood, however, it just seems like he wasn’t involved with me or my sister until a little later in our lives. I just know that if you made him mad and he came at you with the belt, he would be the s#!t out of you (there’s no nicer way to put it.) If that ever happened, it was time to cuddle up to the speaker of my sister’s CD player and cut on a ballad by Backstreet Boys. I used music to self-heal myself even back then. By the time we would get our whippings from our father, my mother could be found passed out somewhere. No one was there for us.  

My sister was gone a lot during this time. She spent a lot of time with my grandparents during the summer days and almost every weekend with them during school time. I always loved my sister. I still love her and miss her like crazy. I know that with all of my heart. I’m just not sure how I felt about her growing up during this part of my childhood. My sister was made out to be a “golden child” of the entire family. She was pretty, nice, very smart, and she could actually sing too. She even had her own glamour shots done during this time and was deemed to be “destined for greatness” according to our peers. This left me estranged. How could I have any attention on me when she was that damn good? It wasn’t fair. She was better than me on all levels. I just felt like a forgotten puppy that someone left behind because they couldn’t care for it anymore. All I needed now was for someone to throw me in a van and take me away from my home and put me in a strange place (that would happen a little later.) I honestly don’t know if my sister ever knew how I felt about her growing up around this time. She would later protect me from a lot of evil caused by my parents, but during this time period of my childhood, she was my biggest enemy.  

That never seemed to deter me from finding new ways to find attention. I know it sounds selfish, but as a kid, I craved love and affection. I needed it so I could build a solid foundation for my future self. I remember being younger and drawing a cartoon. I’m honestly not sure what the cartoon was but my mother was blown away by the ability I had to draw at a young age. After I amazed her with one of my cartoons, I just kept drawing. I remember vividly drawing pictures of Pokémon, SpongeBob, and even members of Backstreet Boys just hoping for her approval. I would spend hours on these drawings and once I completed them, I would rush to my parents to show them off. Years later when going through their things after a move, I would find where they saved some pictures I drew of Link from Legend of Zelda and that’s always meant a lot to me. They were quick to dismiss them, but they never threw them away to my knowledge. It was a weird dynamic, getting behind the scenes love, just give it to me now like they were with my sister damn it.  I needed it to be stable because all around there were constant moments of doubt.  

Within times of doubt, there was always something that kept me going. Just the tiniest little thing that would make me feel an endless amount of love. One night I remember vividly was my mother driving me around looking for Pokémon cards. She didn’t have a license and didn’t really drive often, but she knew how much I wanted them after getting my first Arcanine card from a girl in 1st grade and she took the risk to drive me around Spruce Pine looking for them. I was scared because looking now it’s questionable whether she was even sober when driving around with me in the front seat, but I just remember so vividly using passing lights from the neighborhood and town to light the card up so I could continue to look at the card. The card is long gone in my collection, but that memory is priceless because it just reminds me that my mother and father did have pure hearts despite the substance abuse issues.  

There substance abuse issues would later lead to domestic discord and violence. One of the earliest encounters I remember from this time in my youth was when me and my father went to a yard sale. At the yard sale, I found some Mario Kart toys. The toys were of Bowser and Yoshi inside their karts if you were wondering. I was just in awe because Mario Kart 64 was a game my family always played together and to have toys based on the game, seemed like a foreign concept to me for some reason. I was eager to get back home to show my mother the toys, and when me and my father arrived home, I ran in to show off the toys. My mother acted like she cared but as soon as my father walked in, they started arguing. The arguing went on for some time, but I didn’t pay attention to it. I took my toys in the hallway and began playing with them. The stretch of hallway connecting my parent’s room to the living room was Rainbow Road and I was insisting on playing on this makeshift track for as long as possible.  

After some time of arguing in the living room, my father decided he had enough and took off to his bedroom. Within moments my mother was chasing behind him and berating him to the fullest of her lung capacity. After my father slammed the door in my mother’s face, my mother went off and ran and got a butcher’s knife out of the kitchen and started charging at the door. My father had opened the door to see what my mother was doing and the next thing I know; she’s charging at him yelling “I’m going to slit your goddamn throat Pat.” I feared for my father and began screaming and crying. My father shut the door and locked it and after minutes of my mother kicking at the door, then finally she started stabbing the door with the knife. This was after my father had put his body up against the door to hold it shut so my mother couldn’t get into the room. I was crying and running away leaving my precious Mario Kart toys in the floor and after some time my mother quit stabbing the door and left the area. I don’t remember anything after that hardly other than my father putting up stickers and Pokémon poster on the bedroom door so DSS wouldn’t see the stab marks on the door. It’s so bizarre how you can remember the confrontation but can’t remember hardly anything about the cool-down period.