When I remember back to what you might call my childhood, the memory that comes to mind isn’t one that you might suspect. I remember the warm sun, and the feeling of hot cement under myself. The summer I was seven years old was perhaps the summer that I began walking on this road that I have been on for so very long. The smell of too much chlorine still stings my throat, and I can still feel the thin plastic of that self set up pool. It was a summer that I was used, broken, and then cast off into a world that was too full of words I didn’t know; the summer second hand smoke was my best friend. I found that the boy I had been was lost, and what was left wasn’t man and wasn’t child. I was the true E.T. An alien in the world of human likenesses, I think back to my youth, and how many wrong turns I had made without choosing to go in any real direction.

“What are you doing” I asked in my small, high voice. My thin frame was racked with shivers and the ice cold pool water was dripping onto the sidewalk.
“I’m keeping warm, lay down it will help” Timothy said, He patted the spot next to him on the driveway, and I slowly lowered myself down onto the sun warmed cement. The heat that I felt was right on the bridge between perfect and painful. I looked into the blazing sun, and let my vision spot. Who knew, maybe I would get glasses? I sighed to myself, and looked away from the floating inferno. The sun began its slow creep into the clouds. I sat up quickly, scraping my back on the crumbling drive. Timothy’s lanky, fourteen year-old body was still, with his eyes closed, and for a moment I wondered if he was dead, I had seen a few dead people on TV, and this seemed like the likeliest answer.
“Are you alive” I asked, my voice strong and fearless, as most children’s are.
“Yeah, why you keep getting up?” He asked, not wanting to be bothered by me. But I couldn’t find peace lying in the sun, I had energy. I wanted to explore and find adventure, isn’t that what every child wants? Just to explore the world, even if it’s only one of their making. Picture a small house, with fading and chipping white paint, the cheep dark green shutters are on the front windows, a huge fan blowing cool are into the dining room window. This was my home. And while timothy basked in the rays of the sun, I stood and gazed in wonder at the place I called home.
“You are crazy, kid” Timothy said, placing his hand on my tiny freckled shoulder.
“Am not!” I replied back.

It was always so bright on those days; the bright summer afternoons that seem to last forever in my memory. Timothy was one of many people that changed me, from a simple seven year old to the boy-man I became by the time I reached the fall of that year. When I look back and remember the simple happiness I had as a child, it was something so thin, a clear cut crystal vase that held my too mortal soul. What began the tearing apart of the small short puzzle of my life, was my mother’s marriage to my step-father. They had met through his ex-wife, while my mother waited out a driving ticket. After a few weeks of untraditional courting, they moved in together. We had lived in my grandmother’s house then, but after much complaint on her part, my mother moved, taking me with her. My grandmother moved to Florida, and this being the only time in my life I had been without her, I didn’t quite know what to do. We moved into a small house in a shabby side of town, and I found that the dust began to settle. I’m not sure of the proposal, but the reception was grade A county court house, with cheap wine and semi cold beer, with grape juice for the small kids (me and my step brother Jacob, who was at least four years my junior). We stayed with my mother’s friend, better known as Anna, while they spent the rest of the weekend driving to a motel someplace that I knew was far away from me. When they returned after half a week of honeymooning, they brought back more than just a post marriage glow; but Israel (My step father) brought his mother and father with him. I sacrificed my bedroom to them and moved into the small twin bed in my (new!) brother’s room. This wasn’t much of a sacrifice, considering that I didn’t mind him all that much, and we generally avoid each other. There was me, outside on the small porch with my dollar general version of Barbies, whose heads frequently fell off (much to my dismay that I continually told my mother they had cancer, even though I had no idea what cancer was). He would stay inside and play with his trucks, while I spend hours in my own worlds. This was the pattern my life held, and for some odd reason, I miss that pattern. I miss the simplicity the most, but there are times when I awake now covered in sweat, my covers mused and wrapped around me in a vice like grip, and all I can think of is this over whelming want for things to go back to when I was a child.

We made due with our small three bedroom rental. It was far from beautiful, but It was a roof over our heads, and my mother’s small income covered the rent. She was on disability, and there were times when we didn’t have much of anything. We once had four children living with us. My mother had a friend that had gotten in some trouble, so she offered for too watch her kids while she spent some time in jail. This was one of our hardest times, trying to provide for six kids all on one small check. I don’t regret that we took them in, but I do wonder at times if life would have been better for my mother if she had never offered, you see taking care of that many kids was hard on her, and at times I can remember her doing dishes or cleaning up after us, when all the sudden she would stop what she was doing, and look out blankly at nothing. Perhaps she was dreaming of a better life, or maybe she was just…resting. They stayed with us for a few weeks, but by the time I was starting first grade, they were gone. I came home one day to an empty house. I cried for hours and hours, knowing that the small addition to my family had left without saying goodbye. But after that, things got better. We had more money, and my mother didn’t always look tired. I remember my mother doing her makeup, and fixing her hair before we went out to shop. It was always a fascinating experience for me, watching my mother transform herself. I would sit on the edge of her bed and watcher her slowly change from the woman I knew to do the Landry and clean the bathroom, to a beautiful and elegant lady. She was my idol, with her ever changing hair color, and the way she always had time to hug me, or when she was at her worst, pat my head lovingly. But my mother struggled. She struggled with addictions, and a freighting low self confidence level. She would change from a sweet and loving woman into a shrieking stranger after she had started drinking. The yelling between her and my stepfather kept me awake, listening into the night. My tiny hands often clasped over my ears, trying to filter the loud hateful words that they threw at each other like knifes on those nights that seem to last forever in my memory. Those worlds embedded themselves inside me. I wasn’t any longer a child that believed in the happily ever after. The world wasn’t a nice place, and I stopped expecting it to be. One of the worst of those nights happened in the as the summer was reaching its my mother was upset with my stepfather, for one of the any reasons she had. Soon, my aunt arrived, her flaming red hair swept up, and her face determined. Before I knew it I was in a sisterly game of tug-a-war, my aunt with one arm and my mother in another.
“Becky, let him go” My aunt said, her strong voice edged with steel
“REGINA! He’s my son” my mother would yell, slurring her words.
I was caught up in that moment of wanting to help my mother, and yearning with all my small might to leave, to escape into any realm that was quiet and peaceful. I shook from their grip and into the yard, hiding behind the small fence, clutching a doll in my arms. You may think this different, for a seven year old boy to play with dolls, but it was what I knew, and in times like these, I would hold it to my bony chest and comfort it. Protect it, because who was going to if I did not? It was the only thing in the world that I had that didn’t change on a whim, that didn’t yell or scream and was always there. It was my stable ground on an world filled with quakes. I spent that night at my aunt’s house, but even with the calls to CPS, I came home. I walked back into that small, cheap home not understanding the misfortune that I was to have to overcome.

Perhaps everyone has a moment in time when they reflect on their life, and find themselves angry for what they missed out on, or what they had to overcome. But this is a world filled with hurt people, whose lives are the exciting showcase of any lifetime movie, or Oprah TV show. I have reflected; perhaps more than the average person, on each and every even of my short sixteen years of life, and found that I have many regrets. But also that in a way I am glad that I have had my life. In the bible, Jesus speaks of the potter and the clay, and that seems like a very likely metaphor of my being. I was shaped and molded by my life. You can call it God, or you can call it chance, but we are changed and shaped by our choices and the choices of others.
I have asked myself countless times why my mother chose to leave me alone with Israel’s father that day. Perhaps she trusted too much, or maybe she just didn’t see what could happen. The memory of that day is always one I try to avoid, but it seems to sneaks up on me when I least expect it and I find myself once again that small child, scared and confused, not knowing what damage that was being done. After my mother had left, I sat on the floor of my room, playing house with my toy, she had gone shopping and had told me she would be back in a while, leaving me alone with Him to watch me. My dolls were spread out, and my imagination was churning when he came in. The tone of his voice still haunts my nightmares, and I awake full of regret and fear.
“You know how people really play house” He asked, sitting down on my bed. I looked up from my toys and he smiled at me. Often times when I see someone smile; I look into their eyes and wonder if they know my comparison. The taking of my innocents wasn’t a kicking and screaming event, I gave it away willingly, unknowingly. After which I was left perfectly intact on the outside, but on the inside I was torn, tarnished and confused. I had yearned for arms to hold me and protect me, but not ones tinged with sickness. I often regret that the most that I never said no, but let things go forth as they did. Each and every time He came to me, I found myself confused, because I wanted him to love me, I so very much craved the father figure that everyone else I knew had. But his love and the love that I knew to be wholesome were vastly different, and this left me with an aching hole burning in me always.
The people that change you tend to fit into two categories. The first, are people who are so good, so generally bright; that they shine into your life. Letting you know that there is a sun, even if you can’t see it. And the second are those so dark that they make you find your own light. These people are the ones who affect you more than the first, because there are more of them, and they tend to be more determined. If your reading this right now, and your world is dark, then know that you can be the light that will brighten it up, And if your world is bright, then thank those who shine into it, because they are far and few in between. The days of my childhood are my darkest, they are my lowest lows. In sixteen years I have seen more hate, and more love than any other I know. You have to see the worst of people to appreciate the best of them.
As I had said before, my mother struggled. She wanted to be beautiful and smart (though she was both of these things). She had trouble with her liver, and I can remember days when I would wait after school to be picked up, and no one would come. My teacher would look from her watch to the road and then to me a million times. We would play a game of who to call, and when to call them. Was twenty minutes too early or too late? I remember at the very worst of times, I would come home to the house in chaos, with the sink full of dirty dishes with and food on the stove from days ago, and the laundry room filled with huge piles of clothes that I would play in, pretending that I was a mountain climber or on some adventure. But my mother was the only one willing to clean up after seven people. There were days when all she had the energy to do was lay on the couch. The medications she took would often take more of her than they gave. But she also toyed with drugs. My step father was a heavy pot smoker (to use layman’s terms), but also he would sell it. You see my whole life I have been around drugs. Both of my parents were and are alcoholics and drug addicts. My biological father, who I had only seen if he chose to stop by at my grandmother’s house (his mother), and I happened to be there, was not in the picture. My mother fought her addictions, but often she would cave in.

They nights that I made my own dinner began to happen more and more, and I still to this day can’t eat easy-mac (some times when I open krafts Mac’n Cheese I shudder to myself when I see the powdered cheese). But that was my life. that was the only world I knew and I understood it well. The fighting, the screaming, the weird people who just happen to be sitting in my living room when I came home, all of it was normal to me.

The night my world changed was one that in the beginning seemed like any other. I went to school, and came home. I ate dinner and played alone. My stepfather’s parents had moved out, but had soon been replaced with two of my mother’s friends (who were avid drug users and had their children taken away by CPS because of it). As the story goes, my stepfather had stolen some furniture (That was now in our living room) from a man who had allegedly stolen drugs from him. That night, as I lay in bed I heard a loud bang. When I went to see what the noise was, my mother was franticly calling someone, and my stepfather was sitting on our front porch, wallet in mouth; while blood pooled onto the concrete. Me and my stepbrother were sent off to the neighbor’s, but we were soon retrieved and I went to my Mema’s (my mother’s mother, of whom I was extremely close to); Jacob went to Israel’s mother and father’s. I spent that night in a small house with my grandmother, my mother spent that night driving to Amarillo, then back to Borger, then back to Amarillo. She had been on so many different medications, and with the little sleep she had gotten, plus the sleep-inducing meds she had taken, she fell asleep. Her small black car sped off of the road and flipped over, killing her instantly.
She had spent the last hours of her life in frantic motion, planning and plotting how we were going to handle this latest tragedy. After, when we were going through everything, we (my mother’s side of the family) found a notebook. Now, this wasn’t a diary, but a to-do list, and on the latest page, she had been planning what we were going to do; right down to how we were going to pay for everything. That was my mother, she was always the one with the plan, and the way to get out of whatever hole that she, or anyone else was in. My mother loved with every ounce of heart she had, and the only problem with that was you can’t love everyone.
I was with my grandmother when she opened up the door to the DPS officers that night. They said she had passed away at around six o’clock that evening. My mother passed away at six O’clock at night on April first, leaving a wounded husband, and me. My family slowly collected at my grandmother’s house, carrying their grief like cinderblocks tied to their backs. I found myself lost in this short gathering of people, walking to each person. I was in a sea of crying, frantic chaos. I walked around, catering to each of my family members, a pillar of strength wrapped up into a small, frail seven year old body. I comforted each person in the room, and whispered in soft words that everything was going to be okay. The full impact of that night never fully hit me. I never had a moment when I just realized that my mother was gone. It was as if I ripped every emotional tie I had with her in order to survive, that was all I knew how to do.
The days that crept by slowly afterward are a blur, and the years since then have been a struggle, but I always seem to find myself back in those days. I am now an almost grown, sixteen year old. But deeper into me, I am still that seven year old boy. There will always be the imprint of those years inside me, yearning to pop out at any chance. At those moments I find comfort in my family, my close friends, and the fact that I am not alone on this wild ride. I have many people strapped in beside me that at any time I can reach out and grab their hand. This story may not ever reach the best seller list, and I have no need for it to. This is my life, the story of my lows. I find that I am stronger than I have ever thought capable, and through the knowledge of that strength I have begun to fight. I fight for freedom, for peace, and out of all things I fight for love. If you find me in the hallway on any given day, I will have a smile on my face. This world is one so full of reasons to frown, and I will take all of those reasons and cast them off and smile anyway. You see, my rollercoaster was one that had a bumpy start, but I will soon reach the clouds as I climb higher into the sky.