Memories from the past .......

Getting ready to go in Dad's boat

   

I loved going camping and my shovel set

Getting to go to the park and have a picnic

Halloween, funny, but I still remember that costume

I loved my Easter outfits

It was snowing that year for Halloween

Hillarious!

Taken 3 days before my Grandfather passed on to God's hands

In the park with our Dad eating A & W .... YUMMY!

I was always smiling :-)

Just posing for the camera

Ahhhh, Big brother on Easter Sunday

Like "really" 

Ahhhhh, my teddy

Xmas night and my favorite bear I had for a very long time

Having to put a wet wash cloth on my head to keep down the "alphalpha"

I am VERY excited!

Every Holiday was important to us as Christians ...... Easter Sunday Cake

OMG my favorite shirt

Christmas

being a "social" rather than a "stoner"

Not a good day ....

How does someone feel so depressed and so enclosed in his own self that he feels trapped by his own emotions.  Emotions of self pity, loneliness, helpless, just completely trapped.  Feeling that the devil is inside and has completely taken control of everything within you.  Life is flashing so violently that there is this uneasy feeling in your stomach that you just want to cut out because there seems to be no other way.  The emptiness inside starts to creep to the surface and then the feeling of self loathing, feeling of being unworthy, unworthy of love, tenderness and compassion.  You try to figure where these feelings are all coming from and just can't figure it out.  They just fester and get much worse, as you start to isolate yourself, from your friends and family and then, even yourself. 

I am so sad.  I am not able to be a part of society and life seems to be very hard and I am playing a victim, but for some reason, playing a victim is all I know how to do at the moment and it is so fucking hard to even get out of my house to be present.  Be present for myself, for friends and definitely for my family.  To be present for life in general.  I feel I have hit a brick wall that is twenty feet thick and the continues to get higher and the light at the end of the tunnel is seems to be disappearing and that brick wall is getting higher and higher and life seems to be becoming more out of reach than ever before.  I used to be so strong and nothing would be too hard for me to overcome, and challenges never to big for me handle and get through.  This is different.  I feel I that I have lost all energy to continue the fight. 

I am so alone.  I am getting older, and feel I am never going to have that relationship that everyone dreams of.  Someone I can love, be loved back.  Grow old together, to be happy.  Have someone hold me and tell me that everything is going to be alright.  I know I need to find that love within myself, but I can't find it.  My heart is so dark.  I wasted my life by partying it away on drugs and alcohol.  Wasting it away by holding onto resentments of hate and bitterness.  I feel that it is too late for me now, and that love is but a flicker of a shooting star in a crystal clear night that quickly vanishes away in a blink of an eye.  A shooting star that I seem to be chasing and reaching for but just can't catch or reach it.  So far out of reach that I am no longer interested in catching it anymore. 

The new chapter ......

I arrived in Los Angeles, California three days after graduation from High School to finally be with my dad.  To be able get to know him and find out if all the things my mom's family and, in the end, my mom was saying all along about my dad, was that he was a piece of shit and did not care an ounce for his children.  My mom was pretty hurt to see me leaving to live with him after everything he did to us as children.  I wanted to find out for myself, give him the benefit of the doubt per say.  To be completely honest, I was very excited to be with him, and also to be in Los Angeles.  A whole new start for me.  Away from all the negativity of living with my step dad and the ongoing challenges that school brought.  I was finally "free".

Well, free was not quite the word.  Although I really appreciated the time my dad and I started to share with each other in the beginning.  I had really hoped that this was going to be a time where we could finally become father and son after all these years.  The only thing about that is he thought he could just jump right in and be the "father" and not just be my friend first.  There is difference between being a father and being a dad.  A father is someone who is always there for you.  Someone who is a role model and takes care of you.  A father who picks you up when you fall down and skin your knee when you are a little boy who would always fall off his bike.  A father is someone who is there to encourage you and to tell you that you are the most beautiful son a father could ask for and say to you that dream big, the world can be yours. A dad is just someone in name only, a man who you share a blood relationship with and that is what I had with my dad, not a father.  

He just thought that he could step back in and play that role as a father and start giving me advice and setting rules on me and at the time I did not understand where he was coming from in trying to get through to me because I did not respect him enough him enough to be giving me fatherly advice.  I understand by living in his house I needed to abide by his rules, but sometimes he was overbearing and demeaning to me and would talk to me as if I was five years old again.  Of course I started to rebel and that is where all the problems began.  I wish I could say that all the problems that came about were all of his doing, but it would be unfair to him and I would be lying.  I was only eighteen when I moved here and as all eighteen year old boys who have  just moved out of his mommy's house, well  I thought I was an adult now and was able to make my own decisions and definitely if you grew up with my step dad, you sure as hell deserved it!

He was still with his third wife at the time and they had a  baby girl.  Which just until recently, I found out that she is not at all my half sister and is not his daughter.  Sounds like a soap opera.  I found that they had separated and she moved back to Spokane, Washington  for awhile and went back to her old boyfriend that is when it happened and she became pregnant.  She and my dad ended up getting back together and my dad excepted the baby girl and raised her as his own.  I really loved her as my own sister, and used to babysit her and take of her.  She was the cutest thing.  I really enjoyed every minute with my little sister and until this day, I still consider her as such. 

Time went on that summer and I got a job around the corner from where we were living at the time in the San Fernando Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles.  My job was at a grocery store bagging groceries.  I actually loved my job.  There was never a dull moment and they loved me there.  I worked very hard and it showed.  It was not long after I got the job I was promoted to the meat department.  Not as glamorous but still I was very proud.  I worked there all summer long until I applied at the bank next door to the grocery store and got the job.  This was my very first professional job and I was only eighteen still.  I was so excited to be able to wear a suit and tie to work.  I fell in love with my job and excelled there as well and was promoted three months after as a supervisor in sales.

I had saved up enough money to be able to buy a car.  It was not a fancy car, but it was a car and I was so happy to be finally mobile in such a huge city.  I also joined a gym and started to work out.  The gym is where I met a friend, a friend who started taking me out to Hollywood, to West Hollywood to be exact.  My dad did not approve of this, because he thought that people in Hollywood were all weirdo's and were all gay and so he had put a curfew on me and I had to be home by midnight.  I was not very happy about this and of course never followed it.  I continued to go out to West Hollywood.  I would be going over there by myself and found out about all the gay bars.  By this time I had finally come to terms with my sexuality but had not came out to anyone yet at this point.  It was very stressful going over the hill to West Hollywood and not letting my dad find out.

I continued to do this for some time and in the process had met an old boy.  He was in his mid twenties and we started to see each other.  I thought this was my very first boyfriend at the time.  Now that I look back at all of it, it was just experience, that is all.  He was very good looking and it was my first time being with another man.  It was during the summer and we did have a lot fun with each other.  He disappeared all of a sudden and I never saw him again.  I was completely devastated by this and for the first time felt my heart breaking.  I moved on and continued to do my thing and go over the hill to West Hollywood, the Jazmine in the air still sticks with me today. 

I ended up meeting some people that I would catch up with on a continuous basis and have fun with and just hang out.  We all became really good friends.  I was able to get into the bars and was never carded.  So I was able to experience quite a bit at only eighteen years of age.  Being in a city like Los Angeles and coming from a very small town, I fell for a lot of stories, believe me.  My dad and I got into some very heated arguments about me going out and that he did not like me going over there.  It just made it harder to be with him and all the negativity he kept saying about the gay thing, not knowing yet that I was.  I finally moved out and became roommate's with my new friends.  This would be the start of a fast and crazy life in Los Angeles.  I was finally able to be free to be who I wanted to be. 

The Mafia, always a fascination with me .......

Growing up as a child of divorced parents, I did not really get to know my dad's side of the "family" as much as I really wanted to because he was rarely around and my sister and I never were able to go to any of the "family" functions or get together with all my cousin's, second cousin's etc..  When I was old enough to comprehend things, my grandma, dad's mom, showed me a shoe box that she kept hidden in her closet all the time.  This shoe box had letters, newspaper clippings and photo's of one of the most notorious mob bosses of our Nation's history.  I was completely shocked and LOVED it!  I had always been into the lifestyle that these people led and as a child, had always wanted to be a part of it, to be a "runner" and move my way up through the ranks, every boy has his fantasies as they were young to be a police man or a firefighter, well, I wanted to be in the MOB!

Don Vito Genovese was my Great, Great Uncle.  Grandma used to tell me stories of who our family was and the history behind it.  I was always fascinated by all of the intrigue that the mafia brought and all the excitement and power and prestige that came to being a crime boss.  I always listened intently to grandma tell me about the letters she wrote to Uncle Vito and that the reason for the "family", our immediate family, moving to the West Coast of the United States and starting lives out here were because it was getting very dangerous in New York at the height of Uncle Vito's rule and how powerful and feared the Genovese family was becoming.  So some of the family members moved out to California and shortened our name to Genova to try and separate us from the drama unfolding in New York at the time.  The Genova's started a business, a few of them out in California and prospered out here and made a great livings for the family.

Grandma and some of the other family members moved up to Eastern Washington and started a life there.  That is where my grandma met her husband and they got married and started a family and had two children, my dad and my aunt.  Grandma seemed to be keeping in touch with Uncle Vito through letter's etc.  Finally the family found out and warned my grandma that it was way to dangerous and that they were afraid that if she continued to communicate with Uncle Vito that they were afraid that they someday the police will pull her body out of the river and so she stopped the communication between them.  Grandma used to show me the "shoe box" that was hidden in her closet and every time I went to see her, I wanted to see the "box".  Grandma used to tell me as a little boy that if I every "needed" anything, to let her know and "it" would be taken care of.  To this day, there some family members that deny any connection to the relationship between Uncle Vito and the rest of us.  I wonder why that is.

Today, the Genovese family still remains to be one of the largest and most powerful New York "families". I am very proud to be and Italian/American!  We built this country brick by brick! Companies like Bank of America were started by an Italian/American and was previously called the Bank of Italy back in the day and the reason for this is because my people were prejudiced against the fact we were Italian so no other banks would give us loans to start our own  business' so a wealthy Italian started the Bank of Italy and started to loan money to the Italian immigrants exclusively that were in New York, a little burrow called Little Italy, and it prospered and now is called Bank of America, one of the biggest financial institutions in the world.

Starting a new chapter ... Life In Los Angeles, California

I moved to Los Angeles, California right after graduation from High School.  I moved in with my real dad.  All my life I had wanted to be close to him, get to know him better and build a relationship with him.  After all, he was my father and up until moving to California, and moving in with him and my step mother, I really had know idea what kind of man he really was.  He had moved to Los Angeles about ten years prior to find better work and create a better life for him and his wife.  He left all he knew and his family and us two kids behind, my sister and I.  We were very upset about this because I knew that we were not going to see him at all anymore.  He promised that he would come back up for holidays, but that was one of his, or should I say, another one of his broken lies to my sister and I.  There were many broken promises with him and many disappointments that came along as well.  

A little bit of a background with my father I and the relationship that is or is not that makes us father and son.  He married my mother when they were just seventeen and eighteen years old, and my mother was eighteen.  Ironically, the two of them actually grew up within a mile of each other and did not know it until they met after high school.  They fell in love and got married and soon after, had me in 1971 and then my sister a year and a half later in 1972.  My dad had a sister himself and it was only the two of them and my grandparents.  My dad's mother is the niece of one of the most notorious mobsters of our time, Don Vito Genovese.  He was my Great, Great Uncle and head of the Gambino family back in the 1930's and 1950's.  I love my family's history.  It is so fascinating to belong to such a part of our Nation's history.  

Anyway, my father and I have always had a rocky relationship.  It started back when I was a child, when I was old enough to understand when my feelings were being hurt and when I was also old enough to realize when I was being disappointed and let down by the things he would do.  My parents divorced soon after my mother had my sister, maybe a year or so after.  They had been having problems for some time leading up to the divorce, including all the violence and my dad cheating on her.  My dad had a very bad temper that my mother would always blame it on him being Italian, and that all us Italians are hot headed and have bad tempers.  Well, it's not completely true.  Believe it or not, I think I do remember some of my parents fights, and my dad going through the house, kicking holes in the wall's and beating on my mother.  My mother told me later in life that he would hit her while she was pregnant with me and even kicked her in the stomach while being five or six months pregnant with me.  

Time went on and as we got older, my sister and I would spend weekends with my dad and his new wife.  We were still very young, no more than five years old.  I remember dad taking us to the lake with him and his second wife and her kids.  She had been ten years old than he and had already three kids with her prior husband.  All of kids were pretty much around the same age so it was so much to go spend the weekend with my dad them especially during the summer.  My dad had bought a boat and would take all of us camping and I loved going in the boat.  I remember driving in his huge 1967 Chrysler Newport convertible with the huge boat behind it.  I loved that car.  It was so huge and was cherry red and was bigger than some of the biggest Cadillac's back then.  I remember being so proud to be with him.  I really felt that he loved us back then as well.  When I look at the photos of us with him when we were little, it looks like he really cared and we had a lot of fun together.  

My dad and his wife ended up getting divorced too, and the stories my mom would here from her about my dad beating her children because they got bad grades was just horrific to me and at the time I did not believe it.  I had a hard time believing all the stories, or so I thought were stories at the time, until I was old enough to experience his true personality when I moved to Los Angeles and lived with him.  My dad remarried soon after that divorce and started a new job and became restaurant manager of two of the most famous restaurants in Spokane and busiest.  That is where he met his third wife and soon married her.  I really like her and as well as the one before.  They really took to my sister and I.  We were great kids and well behaved and mannered.  My dad started to do very well for himself and bought a new house on the north side of town and it was one of those very old, very large homes that were built in the late 1890's to early 1900's.  He bought a brand new corvette, cherry red again of course and I loved that car and again, use to love to ride in it, especially when the top's were off of it.  I love it when he would come and get my sister and I for the weekend and my cousin's were at my house visiting and I would show off that my dad had this amazing bright red t-top corvette.  He was a fan of the color red, as I am too.

My disappointments started with the marriage of my dad and his third wife.  My sister and I had been so excited to go to the wedding.  My mom even went out and got the both of us new outfit's for the wedding because we were going to be in the wedding.  I was the ring bearer and my sister was the flower girl.  We were all ready to be picked up for the wedding early in the morning, looking so very cute in our clothes.  We waited and we waited all day for him to come and get us.  I was sat on our couch, staring outside of our living room window, hoping that he would be coming up the street anytime.  I sat there on that couch for six hours.  He never showed or called to let us know that he was not coming.  I believe I was only six or seven years of age at the time and I was completely devastated by this.  I was looking forward, not only to be able to see my dad, but to also be a part of his wedding for him and his new wife.  A couple of days later he came over to explain, or make an excuse I now see it as, why he never came.  He told us that he did not want us be upset with him getting married to someone new.  We had know about this wedding for weeks, so for him to say that just pissed me off and my mom was so mad at him for that.  It was one of many times he would do this to us.  He always made promises to me and never kept them at all, any one of them.  My mom felt so bad and tried to keep her opinions to herself so that we would not build up a hatred toward him, and I give my mom so much credit for that, because she could not stand what he was doing to us kids.  

He was always late with the child support and would always complain about it every month when he would send my mom the check, the $250 for the two of us!  He had a lot of money and was doing very well and could not take the extra to spend on his own kids, not for Christmas, or our birthdays.  We were lucky if we got a card.  So many promises, so many opportunities to be with his kids, to enjoy the time with us.  To be able to watch us grow up and just to be a dad, a father.  He was never around in that respect.  I sometimes think he regretted having us by some of his actions toward us.  Even being divorced from my dad for several years at this point, my mom would sometimes be in tears because of the pain she would see us go through.  

The last time I believed in one of his promises was a weekend he wanted to take us horse back riding.  He had promised the weekend before that he would pick us up the following and we would go riding because his boss had a ranch with horses and he said that he could use the ranch anytime my dad wanted.  So, being as young as we were, I could NOT wait to go horse back riding.  Good grief, it was like it was Christmas and I could not wait to open all my presents.  That is how excited I was.  The weekend finally came and I was all ready to go and packed the night before because he had said that he would be picking us up very early on Saturday morning to get us and to go riding.  I don't think I slept the entire night!  I was ready to go ... and once again, as like the wedding incident, I sat in on the couch for a few hours staring outside the front living room window waiting for him.  I finally went out to the sidewalk curb and sat down by the street and waited for the rest of the entire day.  I finally had to go into the house because my mom wanted me to come in.  I got up, turned and walked toward my mom as she was standing on the front porch watching me walk up to her with my head and shoulder's slumped down and I was crying and all she could do was just embrace me tightly and say that she was so sorry, again.  I went up to my room without even eating dinner and cried the rest of the night. 

The school years .......

As my experiences continued with my "friend" that summer, I grew to have feelings for him.  I guess I could now call it my very first crush.  I had know idea how to react to them or if I should even act on them.  I knew he was feeling the same about the situation but it was never discussed.  We went on the entire summer not mentioning a word about our nightly experiences, touches etc.  It was very excited and I began to look forward to seeing him and seeing where our experiences were going to take us this time.  Every time I was over, I did not sleep a wink, as anyone in my situation would, I am sure.

Anyway, the summer came to an end and we both went back to school and went about our business.  He was Senior now and I a Junior.  We both were from different groups, he was the popular, jock, stud, and I was a again, a no body and as we passed each other in the hall ways, it was always a brief nod or a quick hello, because he would not want anyone to notice we were friends.  Sad, really, but after he graduated, I no longer saw him.  We went our own ways.  To be honest, I always wondered what happened to him.  I have tried to find him and now with Facebook, I did and sent him a message and friend requested him, he accepted but again, I never mentioned anything, and he now un-friended me.  He now has a child and not sure if he is married today or not.

With him gone and graduated, I began my ascension into my Senior year in High School.  It was quite a year and have to say the most memorable time of that year was Homecoming week.  I love the activities that go on during that week all leading up to the football game on Friday and the dance afterward.  I did hide my sexuality quite well from all the others.  I ended up having a girlfriend all through my Junior year and part of my Senior year as well in the beginning. The break up was very dramatic.  I was very upset and I guess in part, because I still was not sure where I was going or who I was at the time.  I remember my mom being very sympathetic for me and I was completely heart broken.  It was for the better anyway.  I am so glad that it ended and as I look back on it now, am sure happy I did not end up like so many other men who are trapped inside their own horror of being who they really are, who GOD made them to be.  In my opinion, and ONLY in my opinion, it  is so unfair to the woman to be put through the agony of such a falsehood and in the end getting hurt.  I am so happy that I found out a such a young age and came to terms with it and moved on with my life.  I am not saying that it has been easy in ANY way, but I would not have done it any other way, well maybe a little.

I finally graduated from High School in 1989.  It was such a proud moment for both myself and my family.  I feel like it was just yesterday all of us were sitting on the football field listening to our names be called up to the podium to retrieve our diploma and to be finally on our way to greatness.  Well, so I thought.  It was such a beautiful day and all my relatives came and I could hear parents crying in the stands as they read our names off, one by one.  I just can't believe that it has been over twenty years now and to look back at how fast life has gone by and remembering back then how much I wanted to be an adult and finally be on my own.  I would give anything to have life slow down JUST a little bit now that I am getting older.

After graduation, I quickly packed my things, well actually had been packed for three weeks prior, to move down to Los Angeles and start a whole new journey.  I moved in with my real father who had been in Los Angeles for over ten years already with his new family, his third with and new daughter, well, my sister and I thought it was his, but it wasn't.  So, I left Clarkston, Washington and too never look back.  I left three days after graduation, that is how much I needed to get out of there.  I was so excited to be able to start fresh and finally try to become the man I wanted to be.  It was all a dream.

My years in school ...... Clarkston High School

Remember all the memories I have as I went through High School and until I left for Los Angeles, California to live with my real father after graduation, they were full of up and downs, trials and tribulations.  Relationships, well, they came and went.  I want to share an experience of one teenager who was not only fighting back inner feelings of sexual identity but also fighting loneliness and depression.  Someone who was abused, physically and mentally by his step father.  Someone who just wanted to be liked and did anything to just be able to fit in. 

I was that teenager.  High School was pretty tough for me in regards to building friendships etc.  I was a new student just a year prior to being a freshman and that was all the time I had to be able to meet and build new relationships in this new town we had moved to.  It was not as easy as I thought it was going to be.  Since the town of Clarkston only had a population of less than thirty thousand at the time, one would think that it would be quite simple to meet friends and quality people in a city of that size. Well, it was much more difficult than coming from a city of over four hundred thousand.  I did meet some really nice and fun people, don't get me wrong, but still it was very difficult for an outsider to come into a community of people who have known each other since they were kids, and their parents as well had grown up together. I was always being made fun of what I was wearing, I guess if I wasn't wearing parachute pants or some sort of rock band t-shirt, then I was not cool enough.  My parents, mainly my step dad, convinced me that I should get involved with sports or something so I did.  I joined the football team and ran track. It helped a little, but not much.  I always excelled in regards to my grades and always had a above average grade point average and was diligent about doing my homework after school.  

High School was a whole different ball game.  I was so scared of being a freshman and all the horror stories that went along with it.  Stories of Freshman being put in dumpsters, being rolled up in the carpet that was on the Senior ramp. If was insecure in Junior high, well this was no comparison at all.  Everyone seemed so much bigger to me there, with all the different cliques and groups, etc.  Just became more stressful for me.  I continued to play sports, football and track.  I participated in both those sports up until my Senior year.  I wanted to be able to enjoy, or at least try to enjoy my last year of High School.  Anyway, during my JV run in football, I never played one game.  I went to every single practice, in sometimes 100+ degree temperature and the coach still never put my in any of the games, so I decided to say adios to sports after that season!

 I mentioned struggling with my sexual identity earlier, well, it was a struggle to deal with it and finally accept who I was.  I guess I always knew that I was "different" from all the other guys.  They all had girlfriends or talked about their experiences with girls and I had nothing to tell.  I pretended sure, but they were just tales to tale.  I really came into my feelings during the summer of my Sophomore year before going into my Junior year.  I guy, a year older than me, had befriended me in my Sophomore year during track and we became close through out the end of that school year and began to hang out for the summer.  He was your typical jock.  Very popular and very good looking.  I was surprised he wanted to hang out with me, but we started to do things together that summer.  Going to down to the river to swim, he would try and teach me how to work out at his house with his machines.  It was a lot of fun, I finally felt like someone really was being a friend to me. 

The summer went on and we were inseparable.  I would stay over at his house on the weekends and sometimes during the week and as well, he would at my house too.  I guess I started feelings for him for him and they were exciting and scary at the same time, but being so young and not really knowing what those feelings were about, I kept them to myself because I thought that if he really knew how I felt, it would all end and we might not hang out any more and those late night experiences would go away.  We had gone out all day on a Saturday and we worked out, went to the beach and just had a great time.  That night, I stayed over, and we were asleep and sometime in the middle of the night I was sort of asleep, I really could not with him laying next to me, we both only slept in our underwear.  All of a sudden I felt a brush of my hair and I was freaked out.  I was laying close to him and facing him, close enough to be able to feel his breath on my face.  I opened my eyes just enough to see that it was him caressing my hair and staring at me in a tender way..  I froze and nothing came of it.  Of course, the rest of that night, I could not sleep and was completely caught of guard by the incredible moment that happened that night.  We continued to have episodes like that the entire summer.  I could not wait to spend the night at his place again. 

I wonder until this day if he ever came out of the closet.

Domestic Violence of any KIND!

My painful memories of a childhood that was riddled with abuse against my mother and against us, my two sisters and myself, both physical and mental. The mental abuse is just the same as the physical, if not worse.  I understand now how a woman can get to a point of low self esteem, feeling trapped and feeling as if she can "change" her husband and also making excuses for the ill behavior. There is NO excuse for a man to put their hands on their wives or even on their children in an abusive manner and if there is ANYONE out there living in an abusive relationship and you feel beaten down physically and emotionally and don't feel like you have the strength to get out, PLEASE find that inner strength inside you and rely on your family and friends to guide you and help you through it and just "GET OUT" before it is too late. Do it, not only for you but most of all, do it for your children.  I have been scarred by the images of my mother being beaten with clenched fists and even myself with bruised and cracked ribs, scratches all over my face and having to tell the police that I am "ok" ... I still have pain, emotional pain from that, it has been a very, very long process to get over, I was the only one to shelter my sisters from the brunt of it all. I love my mother with every last breath in me and I tried to protect her the best I could and new how ........ 

Women, PLEASE be STRONG!  Do the right thing before it is too late!

Growing up ... (continued)

 “There is an ache in my heart for the imagined beauty of a life I haven't had, from which I had been locked out, and it never goes away.”
― Robert Goolrick, The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life

... After that awful, and traumatic event of that night, my mom got us together the following day, we packed a bag and went back to Spokane for a couple of days to be with family, and people who cares.  Before we went, we had to go to school and get our homework for the week and when I showed up to some my classes, my teacher's were very concerned because of what my face looked like especially my health teacher.  Some of the student's saw me as I was at the front door of the classroom and were shocked to see my face all scratched and swollen.

We drove up to Spokane and the whole two hour drive up there, we did nothing but talk about the incident and how mom was going to have to make some tough choices in the coming days.  Whether she was going to leave him and move us back to Spokane or stay with him.  It was leaning more towards leaving and we were so excited to be finally getting out of his grip on us and most of all my mom.  Once we got to my grandparents house, my grandfather was so mad that he threatened to kill him! I guess deep down I wanted him to so bad!  He was going to get my uncle's, my mom's brother's, and go down to Clarkston and beat the living shit out of him, then hill him.  I have never seen them so mad like this before.  And I also have never seen my mom so upset, sad and just feeling lost and like she had let us children down.  I was so sad for her.

I started talking to my grandparents about possibly staying up in Spokane with them and my cousin's.  But in the end, mom decided that it was best that we go back to Clarkston and work it out.  Once my step dad got out of jail, he started calling my mom and pleading with her to come home and that he promised something like that will ever happen again and that he will stop drinking and that the drinking was the reason why things got out of control.  BULL SHIT! was my thought!, but mom fell into the trap and we ended up going back to that.  He had her so convinced that she didn't even turn in the police report from us children detailing the events of that horrific evening.  I was devastated and felt completely betrayed by her and so did my sisters.  We could not figure out how this event would be able to be forgotten like it was being and that he was being given another chance.

So we went back to the nightmare.  Sure the drinking stopped for awhile, until the both of them started back up again.  How we knew is we would always hear the bottle being opened and ice hitting the bottom of a glass as we were downstairs like we always were.  He used to hide the bottles in a corner cabinet we used to have, a lazy Susan is what it was called, so was easy to hide the bottles back in the corner of it.  As time went on, things just got worse and my years in High School were very hard to deal with, not only was I not popular at school or had many friends, and the majority of my friends were those of my sisters that it made me become more depressed and lonely.  I did everything I could to fit in at that school, but nothing helped.  Since my parents were always drinking, I started to drink myself, and I think it was more to fit in than anything else.  I didn't really start drinking until my Junior year of school, in the summer time.  My drinking progressed from there, always getting drunk and always on a mission to do so.  I was able to buy alcohol way out at the edge of town at this tiny gas station.  So I would buy for anyone, as long as I was included, I didn't care.

Anyway, life after that horrific night during the holidays went on and like I said, did not get any better, just continued to get worse.  My mom's family lost all respect for the man after that incident and never trusted him again.  I remember mom would make me go hunting with this ass hole and fishing with him to try to rebuild a relationship with him, but I NEVER had one to begin with, but my mom was so blindly in love with this man, that she could not see the pain I was in or any of my sisters as well.  I think toward the end, she just could not leave him because she was afraid to be alone.  He had kicked her self esteem down so low that she didn't have the nerve to leave him.  But after fifteen years, and all of her children moving miles away, she finally left him and saw him for the prick he was.

Before all of that, we would continue to go up to see our family and we had a place on the Ponderay river and we would spend weekends up there.  I had a motorcycle up there, so it kept me busy, and by that I mean, out of the place so I did not have to be around all the bull shit.  One winter we had invited all of our family up for the weekend, and my grandparent's brought out their snowmobiles and everything.  All my uncle's came etc.  Well, I believe it was Saturday night, they all decided to go into town and have dinner and have a little fun.  I was left with my sisters and cousins to babysit.  Us kids were all sitting around watching TV when all of a sudden we heard that cars pull in and all of a sudden we heard screaming and yelling, so we all went to the door and opened it to find my step dad punching on my grandfather and uncle's.  It was huge mess.  What brought all this on, they all were drunk, my step dad was driving with my mom in the big four wheel drive we had at the time and he was wasted and speeding down the road and unfortunately the road was icy, with an abundance of black ice because we had between three to four feet of snow on the ground and it had begun to snow again.  He had lost control of the vehicle and went down into a ditch about twenty feet below.  They were all right, thank God, but when everyone else came driving around the corner and had seen what had happened and that they had gone off the road.  This set off the chain of events that followed soon after at the cabin.  They had to be pulled out by a passing semi truck because of the snow was so deep and was so cold.  When they came up on the vehicle, everyone thought that they were dead!  So I do not blame my grandfather and my uncle's for charging after my step dad once they all got back to the cabin especially since he literally beat the shit out of me not too long before all of this had even occurred. 

... another night that was filled with horror and bad memories ...... nothing with this man was ever calm, I was always on edge around him.  My grandparent's were so afraid after that incident that they remember a news report about a young boy who was always physically abused and one night he just could not take it anymore and shot his dad with a shotgun and killed him in his sleep right next to his mother.  They were so afraid that I might crack and do the same, because we always had six or seven very powerful rifles in the house and they were always loaded, something my step dad said that needed to be.  Looking back, and knowing now what I know, would I have done such a thing ...... I really could not say.

Growing up ... (continued)

... As all families, we had our problems.  There was a lot alcohol and fighting as we got older and the alcohol took more of a hold on my mom and the rest of our family.  I want to first say that my sisters and I never went without and we had much more than a lot of other children did materially, such as a pool, very nice house etc., and lucky to have a mom that worked out of the house and was there when we got home from school, which was nice, and I will never doubt the love our mother had for my sisters and I, but alcohol did cause a lot problems within our inner family and relatives.  It started to create problems, people started fighting etc., but the problems did not really start until my mom divorced her second husband and met and married her third.

This is when things started to go insane.  Well, not at first, but in time, within a couple of years into the marriage, he started showing his real self.  He was true "redneck" through and through.  He was racist and made it well known that he did not like anyone who was not of his color.  He was very controlling of my mother, of what she did and who she was.  It was slow at first, but as time went on, it became much worse.  We started to see signs of that, my sisters and I, and as a matter of fact, the rest of our family as well.  My grandparents, her mother and father, who both were re-married and had families of their own as well, but they could see the manipulation that was going on and was afraid for my mom and us children.   They really did not want to come around as much any more to visit us unless it was absolutely necessary and only did it for my mom.  As the years went on, a total of fifteen, my mom began to drink more and more, and I could tell that she was very unhappy at times and my heart broke for you.  I know now all the drinking on a nightly basis was to numb the pain and thought that she was stuck and unable to get out of the relationship.

The end of my seventh grade year in Junior High, my mom and he, and I believe he convinced her, decided to move over one hundred miles south of our home town, the town where we all grew up.  Where my grandparents were and all my aunts, uncles and cousins.  My mom left a wonderful business that she had built up all behind just for him, to make him happy because she loved him so much and thought he would be able to take care of us.  Until now, she was the bread winner of the family and made a lot of money with her business.  He knew that if we were that far away, that it would make it much harder for my mom to see her family and likewise with them to come and see us.  We were to move by the end of the summer so that we children could get settled in before the new school year began.  As I mentioned above regarding the control issue, well, I believe this was another tactic used by him to get us as far away from my our family and their influence on my mom as possible.  He began to poison my mother's head and feeding her all sort of lies about her family and how they want to come between the two of them and make their lives hell.

The new home is where he really took the abuse to a whole new level with me and my mom, both physically and mentally!  As young kids, we were finally at the point where we were so afraid of him, afraid of being yelled at, ridiculed or made fun of, that we finally just started to "hide" out in our basement.  As soon as we got home from school, sure we would watch TV on the main floor until he got home and then we would rush downstairs for the rest of the night because we were that afraid of him. If anyone has seen the movie "Mommy Dearest", well, this is the same scenario.  When we came home from school, we had a list of chores, which is fine and all kids have chores, but it was the way he went about it that made it so difficult to deal with.  He would leave a list of things to do for us to have completed before they got home from work, again no big deal, but when he got home, and he always got home first, he would inspect our job and always would make a big deal about it not being done correctly, and make us all do it over again.  For example, the bathroom was always my job, fine, no problem, but he would do the "white glove" inspection every time and every time, I would have to do it over again.  It's like when Joan Crawford through comet all over Christine's bathroom and then made her clean it up!, same GOD DAMN thing!

My mom worked very hard to provide for us and to make all of us happy, but nothing was ever good enough for him.  One year during Christmas, about a week or so before, my mom had her holiday party for work and she went a bought a brand new beautiful expensive sequence dress for the party, she was so beautiful that night, they came home and we hear them come in.  We had a split level house at the time, where you come through the front door and either go up stairs to the main floor and where my half sister and parents slept or downstairs to the family room and where my real sister and I slept.  Well, my real sister and I heard them come in and stumble upstairs and heard some scuffle so I got up and went to the bottom of the stairs outside my real sister's bedroom and found her standing there as well.  We were listening to the scuffle, mom telling him to stop, he was wanted to be "with" her, and she did not want to and kept pushing him away, so all of a sudden we heard a drawer open and all I heard was a scream and what sounded like a knife being pulled out and then sequence fall all over the floor of the kitchen.  That is when I ran upstairs yelling at him to "stop, leave my mom alone you fucking ass hole!"  All of a sudden he came around the corner out of the kitchen and I ducked and tried to protect myself, but it was not enough.  He grabbed my face and clawed into it and turned me around and through me down on the ground and started kicking me in the ribs with his steel toe cowboy boots.  My mom came running out of the kitchen screaming at him to stop and through herself down on top of me so that he could kick me anymore, but by that time he had kicked me at least ten to twenty times and enough to crack my ribs in three places and my face was all bloody from the scratches he had made by digging his fingers into it. 

By now my real sister had ran out of the house and down the street to her friends house to call the police and this was all at two or three in the morning.  Her friends parents were mortified and so scared for me and mom and as well as my younger half sister.  I had finally gotten loose of my mom and he had stopped kicking me and also my mother, I ran downstairs and they started to yell and scream at each other.  I am not aware if he had hit my mom at this point because I was in my room in so much pain and in shock and very scared he was going to come down and continue to beat on me.  Finally, the police had arrived at our house and by this time, my step father was down in my room trying to make nice with me and apologize because he saw the police, with their lights and sirens on, come up to our house.  I had know idea at this point until they were in my room and the son of bitch was trying to put his arm around me and pretend that nothing was wrong.  The police officer asked if I was ok, I had my face in my hands and slumped over on the side of my bed, crying and in so much pain because of my ribs, I finally took a deep breath and looked up at the officer and said no, I am not ok.  This was enough for the office to take my step father into custody at this point.  He was taken off to jail that early morning.  What was supposed to be an enjoyable evening at my mom's holiday work party, turned out to one of the worst nights of my life and is still so very fresh to this day. 

.... I have to stop for now, I didn't realize the feelings were still so fresh and this was over twenty five years ago!

Growing up ... (continued)

... Another reason for me loving the holidays is that I am a New Years baby born on January 1, 1971!  I love the fact that I am born on that day.  My birthday was always a big deal to my mom and my family.  Mom would always have the best parties for me, BUT the only thing I did not like was that I had to share that special day with two of my grandma's.  Now when you are a little boy and it comes time to celebrate your special day, well, let's just say, I wanted ALL the attention!  It was fun though with my grandma's I do have to admit, who we all celebrated within a day apart from each other. 

Growing up wasn't all fun and games though.  All through Elementary and Junior High School, I was always teased and made fun of.  See, I was a very fat child growing up, well maybe not "really" fat, but kids can be so cruel at that young age and let me tell you, I did suffer a lot.  I didn't have any friends during elementary and I remember during recess, I would always just hang out with the playground teacher and visit with her.  I remember a saying that I still use today, which is also know as the Golden Rule:

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

She was so sweet and kind.   I had a friend I grew up with who my mom would babysit.  We were the same age and both Italian, and hung out all the time when we were not at school, but when we were at school, he would always make fun of me and follow the popular kids and tease me, but always so different when we were just us and the other kids in the neighborhood.  As I moved onto Junior High, it was no different.  It was also the first time I was with other kids who did not look like me, and I mean who were black or Hispanic.  I was the minority and anything I did, for example I LOVED Michael Jackson, and I was a good drawer, I would always draw portraits of him and I remember their was an artist contest in school and they hung our stuff in the hallways and I put one of my pieces of Micheal Jackson in the contest and was teased for trying to be a part of the "black kids".  Someone ended up ruining my portrait of him, which broke my heart.  I could not believe how people could be so cruel when I was not raised to be racist at all and just put me in tears. I hated school! Trying to fit in or to be liked by people was not my intention, I just wanted to be myself and just be liked, and just get through school and that seemed too impossible and I became even more shy and more of an introvert, sometimes coming home crying.  I believe I suffer from some of that today, especially now living in Los Angeles.  People here are so fake and given the chance, they will tear you down behind your back but come and be your best friend to your face. 

Growing up ... (continued)

...  Holidays were always at our house because we had the biggest house that able to accommodate all of our relatives and their families, all our cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.  I would be soooo excited for that special morning, not only to open all our gifts and to see what Santa brought us, but because I loved it when all of us would get together and spend time the way we did when I was a little boy.  All the laughter that was shared by all of us.  It took forever for all us to open all of our gifts because we would go around in a circle and one by one open the presents, good grief, the thrill killed me, because as kids, you just want to be able to rip open all at once because of the anticipation of it all has built up for sooo long!  There was always around 50-60 people at our house on Christmas morning and mom would always get us cinnamen rolls for the morning and as we were eating those, waiting for all our relatives to get to our house, mom would start on the huge Christmas dinner that would await us that night, turkey, ham and all the trimmings that goes with it.  Mom would always make comments about it, but deep down, I know she loved doing it and that we were all together as a family on that special day, and as soon as my aunts and grandma's arrived at the house, they would all be in the kitchen cooking and she loved being with them, gossiping and laughing as they always did.  Family is very important to her, Mom is so much like her dad, my grandfather, in that way .  I believe I have taken on that trait as well.  I really do miss all of the family events we used to do.  Times are much more different now as we have all gotten older and no longer have those times together I long for and miss so terribly.  I believe that is why I have become so depressed lately and have wanted to start writing this all down, so that I can remember all the wonderful times we all shared together as a family.  It is so very important to me to remember all the good times. 

 Not only did Christmas bring all of us together on that day for food, gifts etc. we also tons of snow and we lived on a hill, above the city, and we would all go sledding after unwrapping our presents, all of us cousins, which where soooo many of us at the time.  The neighborhood where we grew up in also had so many other children our age, my sister and cousins, that we would all meet and trudge to the park in our snowsuits and huge moon boots, we could barely move in them, bundled up to so that the only part showing was our eyes, but mom did not want us catching a cold, and with our inner tubes, sleds and anything else that we could slide down the mountain on that could catch enough speed to give us a thrill ride down that beast of a hill.  Some of the old kids in the neighborhood would create this huge jump in the middle of that giant hill and poor water on it so that it would be ice and hard as a rock.  Sometimes, we would tie all the inner tubes together and go down all at once, good times!  It was so cold, we could only stay for a few hours, and then head back home, all drenched and frozen by that time, sitting by the huge fireplace was the only thing we could do to get warm.  By the time we had gotten back home, all the men were playing cards, or watching football and the tables had been set up by this time for dinner, and if anyone can relate, then you know that the kids sat at the "kiddy" tables which in our case, were three little card tables, because we were not able to sit with the "adults".  For me, dinner was just as exciting as was opening presents on that morning, I loved to eat and the house was full of all different kinds of yummy smells, mainly the turkey and of the ham.  My grandma's would always make their homemade pies and bring them as well.  We always had so much food.  When dinner was over, I remember all of playing this game that my mom's dad, my grandpa loved, which was a dice game called 4-5-6.  I LOVED that game! It was only game I knew how to play and was easy enough for me to understand at my age. 

... more to come ...

Growing up ...

I grew up in Spokane, Washington ... I spent my childhood there.  Going through Elementary and Junior High School there until I, or we moved to Clarkston, Washington.   Let's just say that it is the "armpit" of the State.  Growing up in Spokane was very nice.  I am the oldest of three kids, and the only boy mom had.  Mom was, or has been married four times, on her fourth husband now.  I love my Mom, and you might say I am a "momma's boy".  Looking back now, I know she did the best she knew how and actually, she did an amazing job.  My parents very young when they had me and my sister, and then they divorced and my mom moved onto her second husband, had another and last child, another sister for me.  I am close or never have been close to my half sister ... I can't tell you why either, it just never culminated into a relationship that my full sister and I have today and always have had, I mean, I am not going to tell you we had a "blissful" relationship, her and I, but we were very young and as brother's can be, let's just say, I was always teasing, fighting with her.  Poor thing, I remember one day after school, in elementary, I came home and she had to get glasses, and oh brother, I started to poke fun at her, well, wrong thing, she started crying and ran to her bedroom and did not come out for awhile.  Now it has come full circle and I am going blind ... (not really).

I want to expand a little on my step father, my mom's second husband.  He was a very good man, and treated my sister and I like we were his very own children.  Then he had his own child with my mom and we were so excited to have another baby sister or brother, well I was hoping for a boy.  Needless to say, it was a girl.  We had a lot of fun with her when we were little.  She used to do this hilarious laugh and she would get her face all crinkled up and start snorting so hard, I could not stop laughing myself!  I would like to say that our time when mom was married to him, was very happy.  We never went without, our holidays were so much fun, they got us so many presents, we believed in Santa for longest time.  Those days were just amazing!  I miss them so much, all the laughter, family events, all my uncles and summertime ... we had pool growing up, so it was a lot of fun during the summer time.  Mom, still being in her 20's, would always have parties on Saturday nights in our backyard by the pool.  I remember watching her get ready and put her makeup on, I would sit on edge of the bathtub and just be so in awww with my mom's beauty.  She was always very cheerful, full of energy and just had a heart of gold, she still does, but I remember always helping out her brother's in time of need or if they needed a place to stay.  Ohhh, my uncle's, well, they were always having fun with me, and I mean, they thought it was fun LOL ... I remember one weekend when my mom's youngest brother grabbed me, fully dressed and through me into the pool.  Mom was soooooo mad because she had just bought me brand new tennis shoes. Other times, all three of them would pin me down, tickle me until I wet myself and they just got a huge kick out all of it.  I look back at all that now, and, ok, I do miss all of it, not wetting myself of course from laughing so hard and not being able to move, but the relationship I had with my uncle's, they loved me and was always doing things with us, my sisters and I.

Love God ...

My sister gave me this some time ago ...

Everyone longs to give themselves completely to someone; to have a deep, full relationship with another; to be loved thoroughly and exclusively.  But God says,

 "No, not until you are satisfied, fulfilled and content with being loved by Me alone; with giving yourself totally and unreservedly to Me; to have an intensely personal and unique relationship wit Me alone. I love you my child.  Until you discover that only in Me is your satisfaction to be found.  You will not be capable of the perfect human relationship that I have planned for you.  You will never be united with Me.  Exclusive of anyone or anything else; exclusive of any desires or longings.  I want you to stop planning and stop wishing.  Allow Me to bring that person to you.  You just keep watching Me, expecting the greatest thing.  Keep listening and learning the things I tell you.  You just wait, that's all.

 Don't be anxious.  Don't worry.  Don't look around at the things others have or what I have given them.  Don't look at the things you think you want.  You just keep looking up to Me, or you will miss what I want to show you.  When you are ready, I'll surprise you with a love more wonderful than you would ever have dreamed of.  You see, until you are ready and until the one I have for you is ready ... I am working even this minute to have you both ready at the same time ... until you are both satisfied exclusively with Me and the life I have prepared for you, you will not be able to experience the love that exemplifies your relationship with Me.  This is perfect love.

And dear one, I want you to have this wonderful love.  I want you to see in the flesh a picture of your relationship with Me and enjoy materially and concretely the everlasting union of beauty, perfection and love that I offer you Myself.  Please know that I love you utterly and believe it and be satisfied !!! "

Remembering ..........

Sunday morning, feeling a bit better than yesterday .......

sitting here having my coffee, thinking of when I was a baby, well with what I remember anyway, my childhood was wonderful.  I didn't have a care in the world or any worries.  I was always a happy baby, smiling, giggling all the time.

As our parents always do, they take us to get our baby pictures done at an early age, well, when I was just about 6- months to a year old, mom and dad took my to K-mart, yes K-mart, to get my pictures taken.  My mom told me that it was an all day affair, in a good way.  As the photographer started to give me my "props" i.e. teddy bear, telephone etc, I started to giggle in only a way a baby giggles ...... that uncontrollable giggle that makes you, yourself, start to laugh so hard, giggle if you will, until tears start running down your face kind of giggle.  Even the photographer had to stop and gather his composer because of the laughter he was engaged in himself.  My mom said that a crowd began to form around the photo booth and enjoy the show in a good way.  Everyone told my mom what a beautiful baby I was and how is that he is so happy all time? My mom just told the crowd that she could not be any happier to have me as her son, brings her so much joy.

As I think about these memories and look back at how my life has been and where I am now, I ask myself, WTF!? I love to play the victim in all of this, but I am getting too old and I just don't care anymore ........ Where has my life gone, drugs, partying and wasting away the last twenty years of my life!  With the introduction of Facebook into our lives and other social media outlets, I see my old high school friends ..... they all have families, great jobs and homes and most of all a life I wish I had.

Anyway I will continue this later on ....... I am not wanting to "feel" right now .........