A Brief History of Myself (Part One)

I've gained quite a few readers these past few months.
I know often times we "dehumanize" bloggers. We forget that they are people with names, faces, personalities, and histories.
Let me try to prevent that.
I'm going to be real with everyone, and this post is going to be very personal.

I was conceived out of wedlock. My mom was 18 at the time, and my dad was 23, they struck quite an odd pair. My dad, a 6 foot 2 inch roofer, blonde and stout. My mom, a petite brunette, who even (later) at 25, made more than a few people think she was a teen-mom. After my mom and dad found out they had conceived a child, they got married. There was no wedding, they went to the courthouse, got the paper work done, and that was that.

My birth was as unexpected as the pregnancy. I got off to a rough start, you see. I was born on June 22nd, they were expecting me to be born on August 25th. Even being so pre-mature, my mom still had to have a C-Section. The doctors told my parents that they should be prepared to lose me, and my early birth had more than a few members of my family worried. Apparently, my grandmother prayed incessantly, and my dad was relatively confident that I would survive. Obviously, I did, and I still bare the scars from all the needles they had in me on my hands and feet.

I was born in Fort Worth, Texas. 

I don't remember much from my early-childhood, I recall my brother being born (but not my sister), I recall getting an Etch-A-Sketch and attempting to call my "Pretzels" on the phone, but like I said, I don't remember much. My most fond memories though, are with my mom. She is probably the biggest reason why I love video games so much, she got me started early. I remember playing A Link to the Past with her, Yoshi's Island, various Mario Games, I remember my dad fixing the cartridge when it malfunctioned. I remember when they got me a Nintendo 64 for my fifth birthday (I think it was my 5th). My mom home-schooled me too, for a while anyway.



I didn't have many friends growing up. Just dogs. And stuffed animals.

We traveled with my dad a lot, we lived everywhere. From Georgia, to Rising Star, Texas, to Virginia, to Indiana, to Arizona. We traveled, a lot. It stopped for a time though when we moved to Corisicana, Texas. We stayed in this trailer on some property that my cousin owned, and we had dogs, specifically pit bulls, and we had a lot of them. I got to ride around on a four-wheeler some days and feed them. As a child, it was fun. My dad was into dog fighting though. That, that was not fun. It was terrifying to watch, though my dad eagerly wanted us to go along with him. I recall seeing it once, then never wanting to see it again.

Dad and mom argued, a lot. They yelled at each other, sometimes my mom would wail on my dad, they bickered and fought, and it was terrifying. To this day, yelling gets me pretty distraught. Eventually, it all culminated and came to a head, my mom moved out into a different house, still in Corisicana as far as I know.

It was boring in this house, and sometimes we didn't have much food. I remember eating a lot of pancakes, and my mom tried everything to spice them up. I remember her mixing applesauce in with them once, I don't remember what they taste like. I had my video games, of course, but that is all I had. The only kids around were my siblings and I. We played outside a lot, we'd lie on the ground and see if we could convince vultures we were dead (which to us was when they circled over you in the sky) and I played with bugs. My dad got us on the weekends, life was uneventful.

I got grounded one week, from my Nintendo. Forbidden to play it, my only real source of entertainment, it was, as I recall, from hiding in a clothes rack and getting separated from my mom while in a store. I was very upset about this, especially whenever I understood fully what grounding meant. At any rate, my dad came to pick us up, and I was still pretty mad about the whole getting grounded thing honestly. That weekend visit lasted a lot longer than usual.

That weekend, my mother died.

At the time, rumors were flying, some people had accused my dad of killing her, some people were saying she got stung by bees, some were saying that she fell into a ditch drunk with fire ants and had been eaten alive. The truth is that she had overdosed on methamphetamine while partying at our landlord's house. I didn't find this out until I was 15 and I had stumbled across the death certificate.

My dad broke the news. At the time, I was playing a computer game (we didn't have a computer, I was fascinated by them). I was told my dad needed to tell us something, and he told us "mom died". I thought he was talking about his mom, and at that age, I didn't care much. I didn't cry, then I realized he was talking about my mom, and I did cry. Not a lot, but enough to wet my face.  After, I went back to playing my computer game. It had a bus.

I don't remember much of anything for a while after this.

One of the few pictures I have of my mom.

My first time stepping foot into a public school was 3rd Grade. Castleberry Elementary. My first teacher was Ms. Skilles, and whose name I could not pronounce due to a speech impediment. I called her Ms. Sk-Skittles. At the time, my family (all four of us) was living in a small trailer in a trailer park. It was in River Oaks, if I remember right, pretty close to the levy. I had a hard time fitting in with the other students. I was extremely awkward ( a good student though) and didn't have a lot of social finesse. I made friends, eventually, then around January we moved. To Arlington, to Dunn Elementary. If memory serves correct, our address was 2412 Southcrest.

I had a hard time making friends.

A very hard time, in fact, I had none. 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade I was at this school, and I never made a single friend. I got bullied a lot though, I had a lisp, I stuttered, I was awkward. I was a good student though. I was well-behaved. We had money at this time too, you see, my dad had started working for the cartel. I don't know what he was doing (and I still don't) but I do know he was involved, we had a nice house. He had a nice suburban vehicle with a TV in it. We had nice things, he could afford Chrystal and hookers (and I don't say either of those as a joke.) We didn't have to worry about food. Then one day, the money stopped. I don't know what happened exactly, but I know he stopped working for the guy. A lot of their guys were getting killed, and it scared my dad enough apparently. The guy owed him a nice chunk of money that my dad never got. We wound up eating a lot of rice and beans, my dad ended up defaulting on his mortgage for the house, he wound up totaling his suburban, and he pretty much lost everything. This happened in the 5th grade. We wound up living with my grandparents for a while, then wound up back in River Oaks.

That neighborhood had a lot of drugs.

We lived in duplexes, poor, cheap, and run-down duplexes. Our neighbor was a schizophrenic. A nice man though. My dad had a lot of friends around, and he had started experimenting with some drugs. I don't know what he took one day, but it made him hallucinate. He thought there were snakes everywhere in the  house, he tried killing them. He destroyed a lot of stuff, it was terrifying. None of us really knew what was going on, and after it was all said and done we were a bit more afraid of the house because of it. Eventually my dad lost this duplex as well, he couldn't pay, and we wound up staying with an aunt, than my grandmother, then Hurricane Rita hit and my dad had another storm to chase. 

It went down-hill from there.