Trauma

“Peeping through my Window pt 4”

I’m a boy.

From 2007, I left my group home and aged out of the system as a state ward, graduating high school, going to college, then to jail, then out to fatherhood, then back to college, to imprisonment, to homelessness, then back to prison where I am now.

When I first graduated high school, I was finally free for the first time in my life! I had a car and the world in front of me! I survived! I was like, kiss my ass statistics! No prison, I’m going to college!

I did something most thought I wouldn’t do (I get it though, I was a troubled child with a plethora of complexes). My dark skin, my height, my living situation, I felt I was a mountain of shame. Everything I did, in retrospect, was a cry for attention; I wanted to win affection, from whomever. I wanted that constant validation, someone to say all the time that they get it, despite everything I’ve gone through, they are proud of how I handle it, how I deal. I don’t really believe everyone needs a pat on the back for everything, but a kid can’t decipher what’s too much and not enough when dealing with emotional fractures. Graduating was bitter sweet, leaving the best home environment and family I’d been a part of and separating from my best friend going out of state to college. I was starting my new journey, only to realize how lost I actually was. I wasn’t used to having no worries and just a clear day left to my own devices. I didn’t know how to handle that kind of peace and sunny disposition. For a while, it was good, but stress was pulsating me. That toxic relationship I had with my first son’s mom was the wreck I never saw coming. I may have secretly craved it though, because I knew I should’ve cut ties. I had many signs and opportunities to escape, but I don’t like breaking hearts. And a not so good reason I’ve always kept that had me over staying in relationships was that many gave up on me and I saw the worst relationships that people stayed in. I’m not a quitter; other people can quit, but I won’t. Anyone can change, they just have to feel wanted.

I had a chance to leave, but she sent me a positive pregnancy test on a picture message. I was going to have my own family. I never had one, never had a father but I was going to be a great one! At least in my own mind. I was going be there every step of the way. But before our son came, I went to jail during my second year of college because of that relationship. Once I got out, we moved in together. Parenting and working as kids was doable but we made it harder than it should’ve been because we both had our own things we hadn’t matured from. I tried to run back to college but only lived the party scene instead of going to class. I began drinking and smoking heavy, going from relationship to relationship, my favorite hiding spot. I was miserable inside and I missed my son. Maybe I hadn’t lost him yet but my distance made that a certainty because I felt dirty and guilty after the fall out between me and his mother.

So I ran, too ashamed. That was my excuse. I haven’t seen my son since he was two, he’s 11 now.

I carried my childhood pain and anguish into my adulthood and it sent me from college right to prison of all places. What an irony. So needless to say, I became that statistic. I remember my aunt saying that getting there is half the battle, but staying there and out is the other. Well I didn’t stay out, I became my worst nightmare and proved people right in the worst ways.

My first prison term was short, but it only made me worse,.I was kind of in an aftershock after my world being flipped upside down. Prison was another monster with different implications I’d never faced. So smartly, I dived deep, hiding in yet another relationship that became deep and toxic at times, but pain means love right? If you fight me then you really love me, that’s kind of a mindset of toxic love. It was the only thing I knew, so naturally it gravitated my way. I don’t think misery loves company so much as misery manifests its own company and then says, “what the hell.” Misery settles in its own supply. Needless to say, the mindset and lifestyle in that kind of love guided me straight back to prison.

I had too much pride and fear to ask for help. This time, the gavel was brought down on me harshly. And I’ve had to find myself, and then recreate myself inside these prison walls. It’s been a tough and long journey, but that journey still hasn’t ended yet.

Another time when I’m not still in prison, I can talk about the specifics of my journey inside these walls. One thing I know now which I didn’t back then is that I still don’t have it all figured out, I hope I never do, because that’s a comfort I’m not willing to embrace. Something can always be done to be better. Plus, I like connecting with those still finding themselves. It’s a more authentic intentional WayOfLife. Connecting with people with similar stories manifests depth, and often I’m told I’m too deep…eh, those people just haven’t been through enough yet.

Becoming a Man.

“Peeping thru my Window pt 3”

I’m a boy.

Relationships, where do I even start with that vast term? Do kids even consider family and friends as relationships these days? I don’t remember that being a thing spoke about, I only believed relationships was a girlfriend-boyfriend, husband-wife type thing.

I knew nothing of relationships, believing that I could have them by just being the best version of myself while hiding my worst, clueless of the inevitable implosion. There was a rage that I had no clue had festered so deeply becoming something so void, dark and wounded, that would expose itself at unexpected times, mirroring those very people and things I deep down hated, wanting to be nothing like.

I blurted this out one day to my best friend on the phone, maybe because I had never said it out loud, but I told her about one of my foster homes. How I used to get tormented in that home. I was punished with crazy labor when I got in trouble. I had to carry a wheel barrel, digging dirt and dumping dirt for hours, or walking stairs for hours. If not just beat before or after (sidenote, it helped me become a pretty physically strong kid!).

I remember one day, I needed to use the bathroom while we were at the park. My foster brother and sisters wouldn’t take me back, so I defacated myself. They rode me on the bike with me sitting close to the tire ripping at my shorts and smashing it all over me. Once we got home, I got beat for shitting myself and for my foster mom having to clean it. I walked stairs on my toes up and down from the dark basement for hours where I was told werewolves were,(my worst fear) and that staying on my toes would keep them away since I’m walking like them. (upside is that I’ve been fast with big calf’s and quads since a kid) I still walk on my toes to this day, ha.

My foster brother would tie my socks together at the toes and spin me around upside down on his shoulder as I cry out upside down. Then he’d put me down and make me walk, laughing as I fell. One day I busted my chin real bad and got stitches, obviously the why was lied about. To make it worse, it was Christmas Day, where they gave me diapers as a present, get the joke?

At that same home, the foster brother had me have sex with his two sisters, (my foster sisters) while he watched and kept an eye out for his parents outside. They were years older than me and I was told to go from bed to bed. At that age, I began to think that this was the thing to do, they liked me when I did it and I didn’t get messed with as much when I did. So I liked making them feel good because it made them like me. Obviously, I became hypersexual before fourth grade. I started seeing women and sex as things to make people feel good and like you.

So I looked for sex in all my relationships, even when I was too young still. It wasn’t for myself, but for them in my head. As I got older I noticed sex didn’t solve life stresses, it was just another mask. I had so many by then, I could find more.

But then that inner rage came bubbling up when things got too overwhelming. And those angry outbursts turned to verbal onslaughts, and later on, physical abuse. It wasn’t that I took to hitting women, that was isolated occurrences, I never desired to hurt anyone, especially women. But it was a respect thing. It didn’t matter who it was, once I’d had enough, I blew! Because I never handled my disagreements assertively, I was a passive people pleaser. I just agreed, stuffed it, and got past it, not realizing that I was just stacking it all up. That rage was colorless and sexless, I saw nothing but searing white light. Scars from being made fun of when I was little made me self-conscious and real sensitive to certain words and actions. That led to abuse with my first son’s mother.

I’ve been apologizing for those days since it happened in every relationship and interaction with a woman. To this day I’m so disconnected in relationships, scared and passive because I face those ghosts of what I went through with her and never want to do that again, knowing that I may never be forgiven nor deserve to be. The only time I’m not sensitive in my relationships is when I’m actively sabotaging them, pushing them away because after so long, I feel too dirty and unworthy of having someone. You know when someone’s so far out of your life but still control it in a way and don’t even know it, they may still be wounded by you but your shame from them rules your life? Yea, that’s me. So I emotionally detach at random. I’ve always feared hurting women because what my mom went through just to get me in this life and the abuse I witnessed her go through as well. Aand I ended up doing the same thing.

One day I’ll have to tell my son what I did, because that accountability is mine alone, though it affected his life. My distance from him was a result of my own guilt and emotional turmoil, how selfish we parents can be. He has barely had a father because I ran away from my mistake. Me and his mother, we were both kids with a kid and being kids when we had to be adults. I was older, I was the man, I should’ve been one, but I wasn’t, see why I said I’m a boy?

How can I even be a father when I had no real understanding of family and parenthood. Most examples were of crippled and fractured love, foster families getting divorced, fighting each other, or getting rid of me. I believed nothing lasted; everything eventually would fall apart.

This is just a little peak at what formed me, I don’t know if I properly correlated how former traumas became emotional with relationship identity. I’m not really trying to prescribe a definite reason or way in any of this. It’s still a blur to me. Putting these pieces together while imprisoned just seemed like a logical thing to do, though what I feel I am is illogical because I think and see things too different from most. But given my life, embracing the dark times is as stress-less as walking in the sun with a cool breeze.