The scars of who we are, part 1.

Intro. Life is often like our dreams, where nothing is ever quite as what it seems.
~J Cooper

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by someone else, I don’t know. All I know for certain is that some will read this thinking I’m just playing the victim, when I’m not, I’m just sharing the truth as I know it.  So if you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were too busy fighting to really take a moment to just stop and get to know me.

But that isn’t how I’ll like to begin, even though if you’re reading this now, I had just finished writing the final installment to this series, about my life, telling it as honestly as I know it. it took me a year to sum up most of my life in 17 chapters. My intention wasn’t to focus on my family, but the struggles of dealing with abuse at home and going to school and facing down the bullies that were there. But as I wrote, I found all these memories and emotions inside of me, with the story of me and my family just wanting to get out of me, so without intending to do so, it all just came pouring out.

It all started in late December of last year, when a friend heard a little of what I went through and she told a friend of her’s Shane Pergrem of True Artist Studios, check them out here http://www.trueartistsstudio.com. Who does  a lot of documentaries and had called me in for an interview. I never realized until I started talking about everything that I went through growing up about how much I needed it, needed to just talk about it. I was always afraid of being a burden, or that I would come off as a whining victim, or risk people accusing me of being a liar. When pressed I would sometimes open up and give people a few snippets of growing up with my bi-polar and my more or less schizophrenic mother. But despite everything I’ve been through, suffered, I’m still alive, I’m still standing, so I’m going to share my story with you, so that you know that things do get better, even when it feels like you’ve hit rock bottom, with no no hope of getting out, because you can. It won’t be easy, it’ll be he hardest, longest and toughest battle you’ll ever face. You may get tired or fall along the way, which we all do, but what’s important is to keep getting back up. No matter what life throws at you, you have to keep pressing forward, never stop reaching out and always, always believe in magic.

Because, that’s what I believe in. I’m a Christian who firmly believes that when God created this world, he did so with a little magic, magic that he placed in you. Because we  all start off knowing magic when we’re young. We’re born with fire, storms and comets inside us. Even when I was a boy, I would step outside myself and see a world of endless possibilities, I believed in magic, heroes, dragons and that all animals secretly had the power to speak and all we had to do was be patient and listen. talk. But not everybody could see it, that web of magic we all lived in, connected my those silver filaments of chance and circumstance, but I knew it all along. The world was my magic lantern and with it  I unlocked the secrets of the past, adventured in the present and explored the far future. When we’re kids, we don’t discriminate, beat ourselves up, or make excuses, we live in the moment, day by day, capable of seeing our destinies on tiny grains of sand and the power to sing to birds.

But as we grow older, we develop fears, doubts and become consumed by the opinions of others, becoming afraid to say what’s on our minds, our heads and in our hearts. We worry about what others might think, or do and we forget the magic that’s been imprinted, like fingerprints onto our very souls. We often take for granted the moment we feel that magic pool residing within our souls, when you finally get the chance to sit and talk to your crush and how you experience this incredible moment where time just stops and it lasts much longer than just moment. We forget to look up and see the world around us and the beauty we once saw in the clouds when we were young, staring up at the sky in awe, wondering what it would be like to fly up and sail through the very clouds we watched from the ground.

Many lose their way, we stumble and fall and forget sometimes the magic within their hearts. But the wonder and the magic of this world can often be found in the silver filaments of our dreams. But like all things,  once you get so far from it, it gradually fades away, like a long forgotten well that eventually dries up, becoming lost in the sands of time. And we fall in line with chance and circumstance, forgetting about the dreams where we can fly, or fearlessly exploring a lost cavern with nothing to light our way but the fading glow from the lantern we carry along in our trembling hands.

But me, I’m a dreamer and as a dreamer I believe  there’s a certain kind of magic locked deep within our souls and its called imagination and imagination is what keeps us young. (Or keeps me young at heart to say the least)

Of course growing up we do tend to get away from it, we stop believing in fairy-tales, the knights in shining armor, and the damsels in distress. Often with it goes our sense of chivalry and honor,  no longer do we believe in the magic of a moment which settles and hovers there in the air, and becomes much more than a moment, once sound stops and movement ceases for much, much more than a moment. Like when your hands brush against that of your one true love right before you share your first kiss and you can actually feel the electricity in the air, as your heart flutters and feels like it’s about to beat right out of your chest, making you feel weak, strong and lighter all at once.

But we often drift away from this feeling of magic, wonder and the daring to wish and hope upon a star, and every day thereafter it becomes that much harder to believe in both magic and the dreams that guide us. Which is odd to me, since we spend almost as much time dreaming as we do being awake.

But even if you lose that spark, all is not lost, believe me. Loss sometimes marks a larger return, being a writer I often lose several pages or entire chapters that I had spent half the night working on, or maybe an entire month of writing, honing, editing making it perfect, just to lose it. ( which tends to make you want to throw said computer out the window.)  Then after I finish shouting to the heavens and bashing my head against my desk and pacing the floors, I take a breath and mutter a few swears and other nonsense, before taking a another breath. Then I crack my knuckles and sit back down and start all over again, much like life. Sometimes you may lose a job, or a spouse, a save file, flash drive, or a loved one. No matter what it is you’ve lost, you eventually have to pull yourself back together and start over. Which can be daunting I know, I had to start over and rebuild my own life a few times over and it’s something that never gets any easier and it was never easy to begin with. But you do it, because you have too, because quitting and giving up isn’t an option, I survived and been through too much to have it kill me right there at the end. Besides, if you quit, I’ll never know how close I’ve came to achieving everything I set out to do.

With that said and remembering all those things I’ve said so long ago, many may call me a failure. But to me, failing is something that only happens once you’ve given up. I may not have achieved much of what I set out to do and had hoped to have done at this point in my life. But I’ve gained more than I could have have ever hoped for, I discovered that family is what you say it is, not what it should be. A stranger can become a friend, that friend can later become like a brother, who then becomes family.

I do all this because I have all these stories inside of me, characters who long to live, waiting patiently for me to tell their story. I learned a long time ago that you can never let little setbacks derail you, or become a roadblock. It happens, even to the best of us and with that I say, never lose that spark, that so irreplaceable spark, that animates and connects us all to everything. Remember your dreams, remember the simply joys you had as a child, when you were jumping from one couch to another to avoid the lava.

Even when we get so far away from the magic and the songs within us, I believe that whenever a song stirs a memory, or when you’re sitting in a darkened theater watching a moving that stirs your feelings, or moves you in a particular way.  For people like me, the people who have picked up a book and decided to just read again, this happens whenever you nose is buried in a book and you feel your heart racing as you immerse yourself in the world the author had created and you’re living the story as much as you are reading it, watching it all unfold before you as if you were there.

It is within these rare moments that you become connected with the swirling pool of magic residing in your very own heart. When you’re accompanying these characters on their journey, with your heart racing as you inch ever closer to the climax, just to breathe a sigh of relief as you reach the conclusion, for whatever it may be. Leaving you with the resolution, which sometimes brings closure, or contempt, sometimes great sadness or joy, even on the rare occasion it brings great displeasure. Because for a few minutes, these characters, these words written on a page have become real.

For better or for worse, I grew up in a magic time, in a magic world which helped save me from the darker side of life, which is why I decided to write this. The few people who have heard about my life and my childhood tell me how inspirational my life is, because I didn’t let the darkness encroach around my heart and soul, didn’t let it define me. Even in the times when it threatened to swallow me whole.

Now this may sound clique, but my story is my own. It may not be for everyone and I may be writing for you, just you, because this isn’t going to be a story all about sunshine and rainbows. It’s about my life and my struggles with growing up in a broken home, with an abusive mother and only being able to see my father every other weekend, which became the only thing for me to look forward too. My father saved my life and helped salvaged what little childhood I had and made it worth living. I love my father, despite his flaws and short comings. I know he did his best and he still tries to always be there and support me when he can. It’s not possible to admire someone more than I do my own father.
Now I ran a bit long here so, you’ll have to wait until The Scars of who we are Part II, where I’ll actually dive into my childhood and how I actually survived my own abortion or so speak. But before I go, I would just like to inform my readers, that despite everything I been through, I survived. Even my suicide attempt I survived (obviously) but more than that, I persevered and overcame my demons and all my troubles. I’m fairly well-adjusted and my life has greatly improved and my only complaint is that there isn’t enough time in the day to do everything I want to do. But I look forward to each new day with enthusiasm, curiously, wonder, and grace. So keep reading and keep living.