How did I get here. Part one
I have been reading one of my friends books and he was talking about looking back on your life so you can get your shit together now. Well that is at least how it effected me. If that isn't what he was really saying well that is what I took away from it. So where do I think my shit started? Most of my early life I don't really remember, there are highlights of some happy times, but they seem to be out shadowed by pain. Let see my first happy memory playing in the sand of the driveway outside our trailer. Yes I spent the first two years of my life in a trailer.. don't judge! I don't really know if this is a memory or just a memory of looking at a picture of me playing in the sand. I remember road trips to Colorado in the back of a burnt orange and white suburban, with my dog Abby (the wonder dog) and a mattress to sleep on if I got tired, which I never did because I was always so excited to get there and couldn't sleep. I remember riding the horse that would be mine one day, Jud. The picture my parents took of all of us on a little blue sled that is still one of my favorite pictures, or the picture of me in a small el cove that my dad thought would be a great place to place me for a picture. Or the story he told about a hawk taking a nut from his hand while i was feeding a chipmunk. I would always call him on his stories and ask "are you tricking me Dad?" I remember a stupid dog we had named Rusty that ran away on the coldest night of the year and never came back. I also remember my dad telling that story over and over again. I remember when I was little and the ceiling in the living room collapsed when a pipe burst, and then it happened again when I think I was in Jr. High but on a smaller scale and my mom fell through it and got tennis elbow. I always thought that was an odd diagnosis for someone who fell through a ceiling and ended up landing in a galvanized tub, but hey I'm not a doctor. I remember being hit by a motorcycle the first day I rode my bike without training wheels and hitting my mailbox, and how the bruises between my legs changed color and how I had no idea what power between my legs would become some day. I remember getting my front tooth knocked out by a golf ball and trying to run towards home and passing out in the middle of a field because of the blood loss,and the relationship I would have with dentist and orthodontist, or the time in 5th grade when I broke my foot playing football with the guys in the neighborhood and riding my bike home one footed. If there was nothing more to say it would seem like a pretty decent childhood, but there is the other side. The pain. My first painful memory was seeing my mother in the hospital after she had had a nervous breakdown. This is the reason that it took me so long to take meds for my depression, and why I fought so hard to get off them. To see your mother all doped up is never a good thing. Yes there were many advances in medicine since the seventies, but that memory of her like that made it really hard for me to do what needed to be done so I wouldn't hurt myself. The second was when my Dad moved out after my Mom divorce him, after she said he didn't respect her anymore because she locked herself up. I was sitting on the stairs by the door and I don't remember what he said because my crying was all I could hear. I remember him kissing me on the forehead and hugging me. I don't think I moved from that spot for an hour after he had gone. When I did finally move it was to my room which would be my haven for my teen years and most of my twenties.