CHILDERN OF SHELFISHNESS
IGNORANCE BLISS
In the Beginning
The programming started from childbirth just as soon as my Father had created me. My mother, father, grandparents, and other relatives and friends brought gifts of toy cars, toy soldiers, gadgets, and dumahikies. I was brought up poor from the start. My father was a con artist who rarely worked and provided for his family, my mother already had two other children and felt that she had been dealt such a bad life. There was no love to be found in the trailer that was our home. I was too young to remember much but I do remember the time when it came for my parents to divorce. That was no big loss for me being so young, my father leaving and going his own way, my mother keeping her three children and taking another woman’s husband who also had two children of her own. The plot was bad from the start and could only be seen as to get worse. One may say that I was brought up in a Christian home in that my mother was a southern Baptist and as for my stepfather he attended a church rarely. That idea of godliness was not to change much for several years.
The culminating events that led up to the divorce were brought about by the desire for an easy life. A life like everyone had been taught that they should pursue and one-day obtain. My mother started out will nothing but the best intentions for her and her children, but when the desire overcomes honesty and righteousness there is yet another step taken away from God.
In time my mother received her oversized house, overpriced cars, china, nick knacks, cloths and everything else she had ever wanted. She also received a cheating husband who was suicidal, controlling, manic depressant, and prone to fits of rage. In only a short amount of time she cared more for money than she did her husband and her children. She always says, “At least with money you can choose what type of misery to live in.” Now looking back at her in her insecure existence I ask, “Who wants to live in misery?” We have given up all of our father’s creations for our own personal desires, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Growing up in that house, life as I knew it was miserable, just like my mothers who did her share along with my stepfather to make it so. As the years past my anger grew and grew, I cared for no one and not one thing. Feeling alone and isolated I made it through twelve years of school with little to no interaction with people. A few times I tried to join in sports or groups but my parents were always too busy to pick me up afterwards. So those times I did try I ended up after practice waiting and waiting after everyone had gone home and if any money was ever involved there was never any to be had for me. I was in the boy scouts for one day and ran track in Junior High for one meet. I can’t complain because I was clothed, feed and had a roof over my head. After school I would come home and play in the woods or play basketball by myself mostly, I had chores that had to be done instead, they were mine so I could build a good work ethic.
When the time came and the needed age reached, a job was taken after school. With a job there would be my own personal money and I could buy what I wanted and have the means, or so I thought, to hang out with others. I was even able to use the car but only to transport myself to school and to work. The odometer was checked daily before leaving to make sure that I did not go pass the designated number of miles for such a round trip. If there were more miles than there was supposed to be then I could not use the car except to go to work. With everything I was allowed there was a great deal of control held over my head. “Do as I say and not as I do”, my stepfather use to say; what an example to try and live up to.
Women were rare and few in my life, although I lived with my sisters, I did not know them well. They were off doing their own thing, spending time in band or with boyfriends. The few girls I did try to date did not last long because it required sneaking around behind my parent’s back just to see them. When I asked to do something, the answer was mostly no, sometimes maybe, which meant no and rarely yes. So, after only a little bit of time dating, I broke it off with them because it was just not worth the hassle. There were two in high school that I have never forgotten and still think about to this day. One I was to marry if we turned thirty and neither of us had already tied the knot. The other we tried twice and both times I left without much of a clue as to why. There was one that was to rule my life for the next several years even after a two-year break and having moved in with someone which I planned to marry. In the end the one I was to marry cheated on me and I lost all feeling for her moved out and Harem1 came back into my life.
This is where journey starts; a time in my life that I am so wrapped up in “me” and my selfish wants. Nothing else matters. A time where I wish for death and come close to taking my own life because of a space inside of me. Thinking that some woman can feel this void and with me going to college and getting a good job I can afford the big house, nice car, boats, and the white picket fence. With these things of the American dream I can have what I want, be held high in people’s eyes and also feel good about myself for this accomplishment. The present time will be 1991 and I am twenty years old, just out of my teenage years and out of my parent’s house. My life is my own and I control my destiny.