This entry I am doing it for me, I need to do this. As I am getting older, I realize I have to change things inside me inorder to more then just survive. Its steps I am taking to cleanse the pain and suffering that is with in me, to accept it more and control it instead of it controlling me. I figure what better place then here to give a run down on my life, a condencesed *but still very long, I'm long winded if you haven't noticed* history of me.

Now, before I move on with my story, I would like to give credit and a thanks to Anenigma for inderectly giving the final push I needed. You see, I was bored and decided to read some of her archives from day one. I read in there a lot personal information in those entry that gave me the final inspiration I needed to do this. Now I don't know if it was because of the courage she showed to put that up on her site for everyone and anyone to read. Or if its because she adviously likes to take life by the balls, leap on its back, and yell YEHAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Any way you look at it, its what finally gave me the final push I needed, so thank you Anenigma.

Now to start off, both my parents where born and raised in Detroit Michigan. My dad the consumet greaser, high school drop out, greased back hair, white t-shirt with a pack of lucky strikes rolled up in the sleave, drove a muscle car. My mother, the huge beatles fan *actually seen them three times in concert, and came within arms reach of touching John Lennon* was born and raised catholic. Her, her sister and her brother all went to a traditional catholic school. I don't know how they got together, but I know my father use to do a lot of shit jobs like factory work and delivery jobs. He tried out the army, but do to an old knee injury getting worse, he was dismissed from boot camp. Which to me is good, cause at his age there was a real good chance he could have been in Veitnam, and I don't want to think what could have happened.

So my parents get married, and they struggle and toyle to try and scrape up a living. I am sure it got worse when my older brother *my one and only sibbling* was born. About six years after he was born, my parents decided to get a fresh start. So they packed up all there shit and moved north to this shitty little back woods town called Manistee, Michigan. There was a lot of factory work, mostly salt minning, and a comunity college near by. My father wanted to get his high school education and a college degree to get a better job for his family. I assuming things got even more complicated, when a roughly a year after arriving there, I popped out of mother,s womb. So there we are, a four memember family. A father struggling to get money in the door, even having to relay on govermental food stamps and the such, trying to get an education. My mother sitting home taking care of two rambuncious boys in a old beat up house they managed to get a lease on. My Father's old beat up muscle car parked in the drive way when it stopped working, and a beat up station wagon parked out front.

It was a start for many rough times for my family. My earliest memory back then is sitting in that comunity college's cafeteria, starring at a push cart filled with little cartons of milk. I remember begging my mom for just one chocolate milk, wanting it more then anything else in my life up tell then. I couldn't have been that old then, two maybe three years old, my father struggling for a better future.

Now, my parents marriage was just destined to end, my parents have to much in conflict to make it last. My mother a free thinking artistic type, always exploring new and different means of expanding her artisitc mind. Joining the old theater that was five blocks from us, and which became her life's passion from then on. My father, oh god my father is a hard, hard man. Emotionally reserved, very cold in many ways, but in his own way very caring. He wasn't an alcholic or physhicaly abusive to me and my brother, sure we used to get spanked. Which didn't deter me and my brother, so my father chose to taking the spankings to newer and newer levels in hopes that he gets his point finally through our thick skulls. From a spanking through our pants, to bare ass naked, to leather belts and hangers, he spanked us any time we fucked up to bad. I learned my lessons of those days quite well, I also learned that our front door in the winter was mighty cooling and refreshing to a raw, well beaten ass.

These days are preaty hazy to me, since I was so young, but I remember there was a lot of fighting back then. From my mother and father fighting all the time to my father yelling at my brother for all the stupid shit he would do. There was a climax to this building that I didn't see until it finally came.

I remember this day as if it happened yesterday. I was eight years old, and I had just gotten back from school. I came through my front door and the first thing I noticed was uncontrolable sobbing coming from the kitchen. I aproached aprehensively to find my mom sitting in my fathers kitchen chair, the throne of our house, just under the phone. She was sitting there crying so hard, she just couldn't stop. She saw me and tried desperately to pull herself together, but I could see her frayed at the edges ready to burst into tears again. She then told me that her and my father where through and that they where getting a divorce. I didn't understand what that meant, I was only eight, but my mom was so upset I couldn't help but know that something was wrong, that things would never be the same. We cried and hugged for the longest time that day, the final day of my parents marriage.

To make it easier on both me and my brother, and do to the lack of work history my mom had, my mom made a huge sacrifice for us all. She let my father keep custody of me and my brother, and only asked for some money to get buy on tell she got a job, and no allomony checks. She movied crossed town to a tiny little apartment best suited for hippies and teenagers.

So there I am in a house with only my brother and my father. My father so unused to dealing with children alone, not knowing what to do, one horrible cook. I tell you to this day I can't even look at a breaded pork chop or Kraft's spaghetti in a box without wanting to throw up. My very angry brother, resentfull of me being the baby of the family, hating my father for being so hard and cold, and hating my mom for some reason he thought it was all her fault. And there was me, the smallest, very quiet and reserved, living in fear of my brothers fists and my fathers cold, very intimadating stare.

Now, before my parents divorced, my seven year older brother used to beat the shit out of me on a regular basis. But after the divorce is when it got more violent, more hatefull. He constantly hated my father, always arguing with him everynight, and resenting my mother * I think it was abandoment issues myself* and who was always there to convenently take out on.......me

It started off normal young brothers shit, from wrestling going to far, to my brothers fun being taken to far. I remember dreading him turning to his friends with a certain look in his eyes and say, "Hey, wanna see something funny." Then he would proced to beat the shit out of me in front of his friends. I couldn't take this anymore, so I tried fighting back. I remember long pushing contests in our living room, my brothers friends laughing there heads off as I desperately try and keep my bigger brother from pinning me down.

The peek of our fights, the time when I know it went to far, when it was becoming a blind hatred, I remember to well. It was the same normal bullshit fights between us. I think earlier that day, my brother's girlfriend came over to our house while we where doing a major cleaning of the house. I can't remember what I was watching, but I know I really wanted to see it. When she walked in, she imediately changed the channel to her sopa operas. Well I wasn't having this shit, told her I was watching that and turned the channel back. She slapped me, hard. I remember standing there dazed as she turned the channel back to her soap operas. I got very pissed off and just flipped the channel back to my show and stood there defiant. She slaps me again, even harder, knocking me to the floor. All I remember after that is being so angry, I ran to our kitchen pantry. There sitting in the corner was this old, huge wood chopping axe. It was fucking heavy, but I was determined to grab that thing and smack her with it, even if it meant dropping it on her foot. My brother rushed in after me and forced me to drop the axe, he calmed me down and told me to just let her watch her shows.

Now I don't know if I'm getting my time lines correct, but the culmination of me and my brothers pain I think happened later that day when we where all alone. We got into another argument, but I don't know what made it go as far as it did. I remember being backed up into a corner of the living room, my brother strangling the life out of me. He had both his hands wrapped around my foot, and my feet dangling, desperately trying to reach the floor. I have never been more scared in my life then I was at that point. His face was so red, his eyes so wild, the anger so raw in his face. I thought for sure that day, I was going to die. Just as my vision was getting black and fuzzy, my brother dropped me to the floor. I remember gasping and spluttering, desperately trying to breath. My brother visibly shaken as he leaned against the couch. Finally, he looked at me and told me if I ever said a thing to dad about this, he would kill me. I was so scarred shitless I agreed on the spot. In my heart I would have done everything and anything to never let my dad know about it.

The next day in school, I told a few of my most trusted friends what my brother did to me. I showed them my neck all bruised from his fingers, blood vessels broken all over the place. To this day I have no clue which one of them told her, but my teacher during the day called me up to her desk. She tilted my head back and starred at my throat for the longest time. I knew I was screwed at this point, someone ratted me out. Finally she let go of me and sent me to go and play with my friends.

I came walking in the door some time later that day. The first thing I heard was my dad yelling out my brother's name from the kitchen. He thought it was him until I said its me dad. He called me in the kitchen with that voice that just screamed, "kid, if you don't get in here now, I'll chase you down and give you the whoopin of your life!" So I scurry to the kitchen, scarred shitless once again, thinking I did something wrong. My dad tilted my head back and starred at my throat just like how my teacher did. Only there was a cold, deep anger in his eyes and his hands where very rough on me. Finally he let go of me and told me to go watch some television. I tried watching television, but I couldn't stay focused on it. I knew I had let the cat out of the bag, and not a day later my dad knew it. I was desperately trying to think of ways to tell my brother I didn't mean to, my teacher told him. I was sure I was a dead man.

Later that night my brother came in, the tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. My father rounded on him hard, yelling at the top of his lungs, angrier then hell for what he did to me. The only thing I remember being said that night was my dad screaming, "You broke every blood vessel in his neck!!" Thats about when they started getting real physical with there fighing, worse then before. I don't know exactly what happened, cause I learned earlier with these kind of fights to run and hide from them. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never block out the sounds of there heavy breathing, grunting with exertion, the sound of bodies and furniture being slammed against the walls.

From then on, the decline in the house was getting worse with each passing day. Each day I lived in fear desperately missing my mom, each day my brother and father was fighting. Some time during this, my father managed to get a girlfriend, he is married to her now and lives outside of Manistee with her, still struggling to make a living. My brother absolutely hated and resented her, he still does to this day.

This fighting all ended on one night when my father came home with his girlfriend, and imediately him and my brother started getting in a fight in the kitchen, trying to shove each other through a wall. I remember chasing my father's girlfriend, now wife, out of the house crying her eyes out. She was drunk off her ass and was yelling she couldn't handle this. I could tell she was drunk, even at that age, but little did I know she was an alcholic. That was it, that was all my father could stand anymore. So he kicked my brother out of the house, forced to live with a friend to finish off his senior year in high school. After that he signed up for service in the army. During that time, since it was only me and my father, we had to sell the house and move into a tiny apartment. My father would send checks to the family housing my brother to help out, and spent a lot of time with his girlfriend, leaving me alone in that empty apartment.

I don't remember this time very well at all, it was a small apartment, but I seemed to always be alone there. I was very lonely and very upset during that whole time. I would break down and cry for no reason what so ever, just ball my little head off. I didn't know why I did, I just knew the pain inside was so great, I couldn't stop from crying at times. My father absolutely hated that, he didn't understand why I was crying all the time. He would get angry and ask me why the fuck are you crying now. I would say cause I wanted things back to normal, I want you and mommy to get back together. This was a lie, I really never wanted that, I just knew it wouldn't work. I couldn't explain to him why I was crying cause I didn't even know myself. Finally one day I think it got to be to much for him, so as we where taking a long drive he turned to me and said, "You want to go live with your mom don't you."

And that was it, I was packed up within the week and shipped out to my mother. She lived in a town 30 miles south of Manistee, a town I still live in to this day. My mother lived in this very tiny, upstairs apartment. I remember sleeping on the couch until my mom and her closest friend set up a cot and a privacy screen for me in the living room. That apartment was so crappy, I remember my mom waking me up on freezing winter mornings to a open stove as our only source of heat and cups of hot cocoa. Despite all this, I was a lot more happy there then I was with my father.

Now, before I continue on with the story line, I need to take a leap back in time to something I am reluctant to talk about. The time line in my head is so screwy that this is the only way I can interject it into my story. It was the summer just before my fourth or fifth grade, I can't remember exactly. Me and my father where in K-mart clothes shopping for the new year of school. I told him I had to go to bathroom, and he sent me off alone to take care of it.

This is when I was sexually molested.

I live this day like a horrible dream you keep repeating over and over. Just when I thought I had forgotten all about it, it would all come shooting back right at me.

I was nine or ten, still not sure here on the time lines, but I remember the day to clearly. I walked into that K-mart bathroom alone. There where to urinals in one corner, and next to them where to toilets with screens and doors. There was someone already at one of the urinals, and I didn't want to stand next to some grown up while I was peeing. So I went into one of the toilet stalls. Now this grown up, a mexican who adviously couldn't understand english, noticed me. When I tried closing the door to the urinal, he came around and started pushing on it. I politely told him there was someone in here. He spoke to me in spanish, I couldn't understand, and pushed his way into the stall with me. I stood there scared and confused, what the hell did this guy want?? He kept talking to me in spanish, then he started hugging me. I was so scared, so confused, I didn't know what to do. So I just started hugging back, desperately wishing to escape. Thats when......

sorry....this is tough for me.....but I have to get it out.

This is when he started fondling me down below. I was so shocked I couldn't do anything. All I remember is that he must have been extremely short cause I was a bit taller then him at the age of nine or ten. He wore one of those thick ass winter vests. The kind with the plastic shell and all the stuffing inside. I remember hearing the crisp sound of it rubbing across my chest. I stood there frozen, not knowing what to do as he kept hugging me and fondling me. Some how, some where deep inside me, I finally snapped out of it. I got enough energy and will to push him away and struggle out of the bathroom away from him. I ran, I ran so hard, desperately looking for the security of my father, watching to see if the guy followed me.

The entire time I ran, I knew I was going to tell my father everything, let him fix it for me, make it all better. When I saw him standing there, looking at some clothes for me. I just couldn't get myself to tell him. I felt so dirty, so wrong, like somehow it was my fault. I knew if I told my father, that in some way he could never look at me the same, like I was tainted or something. So I didn't tell him, still haven't told him to this day. I just stood there quietely with him, anxiously watching the store. So afraid he was sitting there somewhere, watching me. I just went along with whatever my father said, tried on clothes, anything to make it go faster and get out of there.

To this day I shiver with revoltion, afraid of what would have happened if I didn't finally get the strength to push him away. Some times, late at night when I'm all alone, and my mind forces me to relive it once again, I cry. I can't help it.........

So, I'm living in a new town with my mother. I'm shy and reserved, I don't like talking to new people. Its the summer when this happens, so I had some free time to try and get used to this new town. I was somewhere around 11 then, and I was getting ready for my first year in a new school with no friends.

Now this town needs a little bit of explaining. I don't know whats wrong with the schools here, but I know I am not alone in this thought. There is something, for lack of a better word, evil about the schools here. The people are so mean, so rude, so cliche. I thought it was just me tell I have talked to enough students, even foreigh exchange students and kids from larger cities even fucking New York City, and they all have said that the school from there old town wasn't any where as bad as this one was. I mean we didn't have gun or weapon problems often, but there was something about the additude of schools and the children that had even people from NYC saying how fucked up it was.

My first year in a new school was my sixth grade year. Imediately everyone hated me for some reason, a trend that would carry through the rest of my teenage years in school. I was picked on a lot, left out of group activities, left for my own accord. I had no friends to hang out with after school, and with my mom working so hard and me having to help out with everything, I was very much alone. I was a latchkey kid, a kid who cooks and does work at home, does the shopping and such. All the things a grown up had to do, but at the age of 11. My mom worked long hours, and she tried being there for me when she could, but working so hard for so little, I was left to fend for myself.

Now, when I lived with my father, he always got me to sign up for all kinds of sports each school year. Football, baseball, soccer I played them all. I was best at football, and I actually liked it. My father would coach my baseball team every year, and being the tough but fair man he is, I got no special attention. Well maybe thats not completely true, cause my father expected more out of me then the rest of the kids. I remember how much he was into this, thinking how it would be my future. One year, when I was still living with him, I remember the first day of practice. He was going down the roster of names of all the kids on the team, he had them call back there names so he could remember who they are. He got to my name and I said, "Oh come on dad, you know who I am."

"Just say it." My father said coldly to me.

I was so embaressed that he made me do that.

So, my first year in this new town, my father kept pushing for me to join one of the teams. I said I would, but I never did it. I just couldn't do that anymore, to much pain from the past, to many memories.

I just stuck it out alone, suffered through the year, and hoped that when I hit Junior High School, everything would be different....better.

I was so wrong.

Now, in this town there are several schools all over the place, but when you hit Junior high there is only one school. So when you hit Junior high, you were not only going to school with everyone you did in sixth grade, but also with six other schools worth of kids in the same grade. When the year started, I had myself convinced things would be better, different. Me and my mom had moved into a family apartment complex, very nice, very clean.

I was really shy and quiet back then, which I'm sure didn't help my case at all. All the kids from the school I went to the year before just picked up on messing with me at the begining of the year. The difference is, this time they got everyone from the other schools to join in. Now I listened to all the teachers and parents when they said, "Just ignore it and it will go away. If you don't do anything, they will get bored and tire of it."

Two things made this impossible to completely do, no matter how hard I tried. One, I have a wierd last name that is so easy to make up so many insulting varieties of nick names out of them. The favorite of to the nicks was by far calling me Ox. I hated that name with a passion, I didn't want to be called that. Two, despite trying to ignore it, my anger and pain was advious in my face. I was a very emotional child, so I couldn't hide my strong feelings at all. It just egged them on even more, it kept getting worse and worse.

I aint kidding about this, this was some serious shit. By time the eigth grade came about, it was a fucking fad in my school. EVERYONE taunted me, everyone took joy in doing it.

Ok thats not fair to say that everyone did, cause some people didn't particapate in it, but it sure as shit felt like everyone to me.

There was graffitti on school walls and bathrooms about it, when winter hit everyone wrote tons of shit on the frosted over glass in the halls. There was t-shirts made on it.......FUCKING T-SHIRTS!!! People spent there free time making make up video games about it, posters, so many things done about it. It was way out of hand. I couldn't do anything about it. I was helpless, no one to back me up, no friends, the teachers and staff where fucking clueless. They tried to help, banned all t-shirts and posters and the such on the matter, but it really in the end didn't help, just made it even worse.

The closest I had to a friend was two grades ahead of me, the only reason I even knew him was cause my mother and his mother's sister knew each other. We lived like a block from each other. He played Dungeon's and Dragons, and I didn't know this. I just knew I wanted to play it, found a old box set in my brother's bedroom when I was real young. I remember it distinctly, cause the dice where all over the floor and I stepped on the d4. A die that looks like a tiny pyrimad, and back then the edges where sharp and you had to fill in the numbers with a little white crayon that came with it. That fucking hurt I'll tell yeah, tought me to not go bare foot in my brother's bedroom ever again.

I told my mother about this some years later, and how intersted I was in playing it. Well, she found out that my now friend played it, and called up his mother and worked out a deal to make him let me play with him. My mother was adviouisly worried about how I didn't have friends, and was trying to make me one for me. Well we did become friends, but we didn't hang out much. Mostly he hung out with other people who didn't like me that much so I never could go along.

So my only true friend back then was my television. I hated the outside, to many people out there who wanted to hurt me. I remember watching old re-runs of Rowin and Martin's Laugh in, Honey Mooners, Monkeys, and the Dick Van Dyke Show. The Dick Van Dyke show was my ultimate form of escapism in tv. It was so clean and polite, so perfect, I let the warmth of its wholesomeness wrap around me for that fleeting half hour everynight. I wanted to live in that house, be in that world, Dick Van Dyke my father Mary Tyler Moore to be my mother. Now don't get me wrong, I love my mother dearly, but it was my fantasy home I am talking about here. Some time later I added a show on the Arts and Entertainment channel called Evening at the Improv. From the first night I watched it, I was hooked. I watched it religiously everynight at 11 PM. I couldn't go to sleep tell I had seen that hour of stand up comedy. I knew I wanted to be one of them, to make people laugh at my jokes not laugh at me cause I was a joke.

So I finally make it thorugh Junior High and make it to High School. My freshmen year and nothing changes, well one thing changes, I have had enough. So the shit starts pilling up badly on me, people messing with me all the time. Finally I explode and get into several fights, three in less then three weeks. The third fight, we where hauled into the office. The vice principal was sick of seeing me in the office for this, and told me if I get into one more fight, he would permanently suspend me.

This was the straw that broke the camels back. I had my first complete mental and emotional break down right there in the office. The kid I fought that day thought I was crying cause of him, he was fucking clueless. I realized how wrong everyting had gone. I knew how mad this would make my father, how disapointed he would be with me. I couldn't take the preasure anymore, I was busted. And I think everyone knew that and was truelly scarred of what I would do. I was sent to my first psychologist shortly after that, my mom's sister and husband desperately tried to help me. The weekend after the fight they picked me up and took me to there cabin in the woods. I had a lot of fun, I remember that very well, I loved them dearly and they carred for me so much. My father was mad, oh was he every mad, but not at me. He was so angry at the school for letting this happen to me, he drove down to the school and directly talked to them, I feel sorry for that staff cause my dad is one intimadating mofo.

Any of you remember during that whole Columbian tragedy how the news was reporting the seven signs to most watch out in a child who is like this. Well, I looked at this list and realized I fit into the criteria of five out of seven of them. The only two things I didnt' do was give away all my shit and say my goodbyes to all my loved ones. I was that fucked up then, people thought I was either going to kill someone or kill myself back then, and I nearly did. But I could never bring myself to such extremes, was so wrong for me to do it and I knew that.

So I go and see the psychologist with my mom a few times, but then they let me go to the meetins alone. Well I REALLY didn't want to to talk to some stranger about all my shit, it was to fucking creepy. So sometime later as things got worse, and I had a few more mental and emotional break downs, they tried sending me to another psychologist, but same results.

I was so stressed out in Junior High and High School , so afraid, so angry, so alone. I tried desperately to keep with myself but no one would stop fucking with me. So I skipped school often, so often I nearly got kicked out of school. I made up missed days with after school detention and saturday school detention. I let all my school work get severely neglected, only did homework on a rare ocasion, I was to depressed and lost in my little world to think of it. But I passed all my classes with a C average, never failing a one no matter how little work I did or how little I showed up. I was so burnt out, I felt so old and I wasn't even out of my teenage years yet. The stress was killing me, my stomach acids where churning so bad each day with the stress I was eating rolaids like fucking candy everyday. I was the outsider of my school, the loner, but not in that cool James Dean loner kinda way.

I struggle through my years and finally graduated. I am stuck with so much emotional baggage from my past that sometimes it overwhelms me. I didn't fully understand how bad I had gotten until about three years out of high school. I was walking to this store, passing the same road I had passed for so many years. I have this tednacy to be lost in thought and have my head tilt up everytime I am walking anywhere. I stopped and looked at this one evergreen branch over head. I remembered how many times I had seen that in the past, so miserable and in such a deep, dark depression. By then my depression wasn't nearly as bad, very mild in comparison. Now here is the truelly fucked up thing about this. I no longer had to deal with all those assholes anymore, I wasn't so depressed I wanted to die every second of my existence........and as I stood there and stared at that branch.......I truelly and desperately missed that feeling......like I wasn't complete anymore.....like I couldn't feel as strongly as I did back then......I was truelly numb.

So this is my story, very choppy and jumps around a lot. I know I have forgotten a quite a few things, and there is a lot of things I didn't mention.

hope I didn't bore the piss out of you. I promise I'll come back and write a regular, somewhat funny entry in the future, but tell then.........

LATER

It's about time - Wednesday, Jul. 07, 2004
An Honor for Chrome - Friday, Feb. 20, 2004
A great loss - Monday, Oct. 20, 2003
a terrible announcement. - Tuesday, Sept. 09, 2003
Chrome speaks: - Friday, Sept. 05, 2003