“Tragedy, sadness, loneliness and despair taught me that life is really a beautiful thing; if it wasn’t I wouldn’t be able to recognize that anything was wrong” Greg Evans Suspense Novelist
If you ever met me, you would probably think here is guy that had everything handed to him. Great childhood, his parents love him, sent to a great college or university, and everything set up. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When I was much smaller, my parents drank a lot. My mom was drunk a lot of the time and fought with my father. These would be knock down – drag out fights. In the early days, sometimes my mom won’t even come home. She had found someone else to sleep with.
If you read previous blogs, you know my parents verbally and physically abused me. My father smacked me around often, one right across my head to keep in line. He used to smoke cigars and to make a particular point with me, he would get the cigar end red hot and glowing and then apply it to my hands, burning me. My mom had a quick and ready hand for slapping me when I wasn’t moving fast enough to her liking.
As I got older and went to school, my parents never really found the time to go to concerts or plays. In the beginning I would look out at the audience for them, they were never there, so I stopped looking.
By the time I was in Grade 7, I had learned to be self-sufficient. My parents had stopped looking at my report cards or caring whether I passed a grade or not. My older brother quit school in grade 7, my 2nd youngest brother and older sister didn’t finish school but got their GED’s later in life.
So I had decided when I was 12 I didn’t like this life and I would pursue something more for myself. I didn’t know why I made this decision at the time but I knew I wanted something more. What was worse was I was totally unequipped to pursue anything better.
My success at life today is a matter of simply not wanting a life my parents had. I was just smart enough to realize there had to something more. They would spend their evenings in front of the television, smoking and eating. It was my job to roll them more cigarettes and get them candy. Funny, they never offered a chocolate bar to me. I remember this clearly.
I left the day after I graduated high school, to never return. Most people leaving home get home sick. I never suffered from that. Of course, being unprepared for the larger world, I made huge mistakes, like my marriage and other things.
I still wonder even today how I made it out of there. I had everything against me. Looking at my past you probably wouldn’t believe me – the stories I could tell you of abuse and neglect as a 5-year old child. The number of times I went without lunch at school or the beatings at home. I do believe we are the sum of our experiences and we can be better than what we are taught.
rainMaker 