Let me bring you back to the 1990’s, an ancient time full of nostalgia. The first memory I can show you is being on the steps of our apartment while eating some tapioca pudding with my mother.

  There’s a picture of this moment out there somewhere, but I don’t know where it is. I was about five at the time, and it blurs together with meeting who I call my Dad to this day.

  I was outside playing with Dawn’s children, who was the downstairs neighbor. It was a sunny day, clear blue skies and a great big oak tree was near the curb. I remember seeing Brett, a young man in his mid twenties at the time, run down our half-broken and rotten steps and out into the yard where I was. He threw a football to me and had a smile on his face. I think he was wearing a New England Patriots jacket, his favorite football team. My mom had told him not to meet me yet, but he didn’t want to wait. He was extremely nice, and I love him.

  Up to this point in my life I had been living with my mom alone in the apartment. She would date random guys and I’m told by family members I would ask them if they were my dad.

  Of note, one was a gang member named “Snake” with face tattoos. I was told one time my mother was invited to his house for dinner, and around that time our two pet rabbits went missing. Turns out, Snake stole her rabbits and his family cooked them for dinner. My mom discovered this and they broke up in dramatic fashion. This is context for the calibur of men my mom typically dated and brought into my life.

  The very same apartment on spear street was broken into when I was a baby, and my mom tells me the burglar had a knife and was in my room. The details on the situation are fuzzy to me but the burglar I’m told was a guy named Warren who had a falling out with a drug addict friend of his. I’m certain one of their friends was murdered and one of them went to prison. Though, I’ll have to clarify this situation if my mom is willing to talk about it. I’m not sure how she was in their circle of friends, but she knew the man.

  Speaking of the same location and Dawn and her children, we used to play together a lot. Dawn would babysit me and my mom would take off. However, her house often had lice and cockroaches. They were nice, but they were dirty. I remember on one occasion I had to shave my head bald to get rid of the lice.

  In short order after my mom mett Brett we moved a block away into a house of our own. I was maybe six at this time. I think in total they were married for about two or three years. He worked at a factory a lot and I think around this time she began working for the local newspaper. She worked in the printing press area, where the newspapers would be printed and packaged into bundles.

  I don’t have a ton of memories from this age, one being that I was given a television with a dial on it. The kind you had to turn the heavy dial to change the channel, and there were only a few channels. This tv was on the back porch, and it was usually freezing cold out there so I had a space heater next to me. I would get scared while watching scooby-doo and run through the house to the living room, to find my family and they would assure me everything was fine.

  Another memory in this house was 1. Making fun of Brett for shaving his legs in the bathtub. Though I don’t know if he actually did this or my mom was just joking with me, and 2. He would take hours in the bathroom and I had to poop one time so I ran outside and pooped next to the front door in the grass. My dad discovered it and thought “Some giant dog” had been taking shits in our yard, not sure if he ever found out I did it.

  I remember playing the original Sega and Nintendo with him. Some of the first games I ever played were Mortal Kombat, and the original Sonic and Mario games. We had good times on there together, and we played outside sometimes too. He worked a lot, but I cherished my time with him.

  Sadly, I remember the breakup. I heard a commotion in the kitchen and I ran in to see what was going on. My mom was trying to attack him, her face was contorted in anger. He had pinned her wrists down, and a cast iron skillet she tried to throw at him was burning a hole through the carpet in the middle of the kitchen right next to their bedroom. He turned back and saw me, and his face was calm, but in pain. He told me to wait in the living room and I think he came and talked to me. The kind of talk a father gives to his son before leaving, and not knowing when he might see you again. It was brief, and I don’t remember what he said.

  A short time later I was causing problems in school and when confronted at home I began to cry and say something about “a part of me was missing”. This was a lie, but it was also true and I didn’t know it. It was this moment when my mom told me that she was divorcing my dad, and that actually… I didn’t have a father, and he was not my father.

  You’d think I would know that, you’d think I’d have remembered when I met him just years ago, but I didn’t. I thought this man was my father. It shook my entire world view, it caused me a lot of pain.

  She told me my real father was a man named Mike and he had left before I was born. They were highschool sweethearts, and he didn’t want anything to do with her bring pregnant or having a child. So, he didn’t.

  The next man in my life was David. David was a tall skinny Caucasian man with curly black hair who worked at the local carwash and his father was a pedophile. Now, David was a nice guy but he was a little strange. My first time meeting him was also strange.

  So after a little while, my grandparents had convinced my mother to let me visit my dad on the weekends and he was still asking to be in my life.

  It’s not a common thing, to know a child for a couple years, divorce the mom, and still want to take up the mantle of being a father. He did, and that is one of the best examples of him being a good human being I could ask for. He never walked out, and he has always been there for me.

  So, on to meeting David. I had been with Dad for a couple days and he was dropping me off back home. He let my mom keep the house, the car, as far as I know, everything. We walked in the back door and I looked into the bedroom with my dad from the kitchen.

  There was David, having sex with my mom. I think he covered my eyes, and I actually blacked this memory out for a few years. I don’t remember my dad doing anything, and that probably took a great deal of strength as they weren’t even officially divorced yet.

  That winter, we were so poor we didn’t have money to heat the house so David got a kerosene heater for the living room. He started taking me with him on “junking” adventures. Which I thought was fascinating at the time. To explain this, junking is where he drives around to find abandoned washers, driers, refrigerators, cans, anything metal. He would get a truck full and take it to the junkyard for money. I would help him load the stuff up and take some things apart.

  David was nice to me, but my grandfather did have the tradition of telling every man my mom was with that “If you touch one hair on Izriel’s head, I’ll kill you.” and he meant it.

  David and my mom lasted a couple years, but he was not around the entire time. I don’t think he officially moved in with us. One time at that house, my alcoholic uncle came over and hung a swing up from a tree branch. Another time, I remember being babysat by him at night. We were in an old school cadillac, everyone in the car was drinking except me. I can’t remember why I was there, or what happened after. I vividly remember driving around town in a smoke filled car with a bunch of adults. He died not too long after that day from his drinking.

  On a positive note we did have a cat, my favorite cat. His name was shadow. I wanted him to be named smokey from Mortal Kombat, but my mom didn’t like that so we chose shadow instead. He was a long haired grey cat and he got me through the worst of times. He was the reason I was able to get over my fear of the dark. I would swaddle him up and keep him with me through the evenings. When he ran away at one point I cried my eyes out, we posted fliers and eventually he came back to us.

  This cat actually caused me to have a major surgery, the scar on my left hand extends from the top of my ring finger to the bottom of my palm in large zig zags.

  What happened was, he was trying to escape one day and ran into a deer thorn bush in our back yard. I ran in after him, snatched him up and brought him inside.

  I told my mom my finger felt funny when I bent it, but it looked fine. A week later my hand was blown up like a balloon. The palm of my hand looked like a softball was inside of it. Apparently when I grabbed the cat a thorn had entered my hand and into my vein, traveled to my palm and got stuck there.

  The first time they went to operate on me I had a reaction to their pre surgical anesthesia. I remember the effects. I had a paradoxical reaction, the opposite of the intended effect.

  One minute I was hysterically laughing, the next crying, the next angry, and so forth. The nurse was carting me around in a little red wagon for pediatric patients. Due to this reaction they had to reschedule the surgery. I was in third grade when the surgery took place. The doctors told us if the thorn continued through my vein and into my heart I could have died. He said I was lucky it got caught in my hand instead.

  This was a significant period of remembrance for me, a few memories I can go through before we move forward.

  First, the hand surgery was difficult because I am left handed, and I had to learn how to write right handed. My classwork was already very poor and I was caught squinting all the time. I asked my mom why the lights in the street looked like giant glowing bulbs, and soon after I had glasses.

  I feel like my vision was fine before a particular moment. I thought glasses were cool, and I heard staring too close to the television would make your eyes bad so naturally..I stuck my nose onto the television screen and open eye stared into it for a while. I’m not sure if this really gave me bad vision or even contributed to it, but I do remember it happened around the time of me needing them.

  Backing up slightly, on my transition into third grade I began reading a lot. It started with goosebumps books and books where you could select your own “path” by choosing certain options.

  One particular book was about a scary adventure through a pyramid where if you “choose to go left” turn to page 64, if you chose right, turn to page 85. It allowed you to reread the book with different options and was a fascinating concept.

  I saw the Harry Potter books coming out about this time and was captivated by them. I really wanted to tackle one, to this point all the books I had been reading were under 100 pages and the HP books were massive by comparison. I read what the library had and wanted more, and eagerly awaited the new arrivals.

  Continuing on with my hand, it was particularly difficult because after the splint was off I had 42 stitches in my hand that needed to be removed. My finger looked like an over microwaved breakfast sausage and when I bent it, it bled. It hurt, and I could’t move it. It’s a very weird sensation to be able to look at your hand, and yet it barely moves when you want it to. The therapy they prescribed for rehabilitation was electrode therapy.

  They would attach various electrodes to my hand and turn a machine on, it would shock my hand and cause it to move (closed) on it’s own. It was excruciating and terrifying.

  The shock was scary, but the painful part was just the moving of my finger which had the stitches in it and would bleed upon contraction. I hated the therapy but my mom told me if I didn’t do it, she would kill my cat. She told me she was serious, and she’d take him somewhere to be put down. My love for the cat held no limits, so I agreed to do it. Today I would say it’s a bit extreme to go through these measures with your child but it’s sort of in line with how she treated me anyway. It’s more of an insight into her decision making and parenting style.

  These things all occurred while we were still at the house my dad got us, so before we move to the next location and the next boyfriend there’s a couple memories left to sort through.

  One was the giant bit of wood my mom used to spank me with.

  Another was about yosimete sam.

  So to spank me she used her hand for a while, other forms of punishment would include having me stand in the corner for literal hours. I am not exaggerating, I mean hours. Long enough where my legs would fall asleep, my feet would numb, I would get dizzy, a very long time. Long enough for me to listen to multiple episodes of “Days of our lives” a soap opera she enjoyed.

  The paddle she began to use was about two or three foot long and ? to ? inch thick. It had some godly phrase written on it, and after a while I had enough. I snuck it into the car and when we went to the car wash I threw it out.

  Yosimmete Sam was a looney toons character that used to say something like “Dang varmit!” he was a little midget looking guy with a big cowboy hat and a big red beard and mustache. I was quoting him once, pretending to shoot my imaginary guns and my mom thought I said “God Damnit” so she tried to force a confession from me.

  I swore and swore I didn’t cuss, yet she refused to believe me. So she took me to the bathroom and poured orange dial soap in my mouth. I had to wash my mouth out with soap to “cleanse my filthy mouth”. I was crying, swearing I didn’t do it, but there was no changing her mind.

  She was religious to an extent, and on occasion she would take me with her to church. Some woman she worked with was extremely religious and they would talk about it at work and after work four hours. Then she would have Debra come over and talk to me about it. I was never really interested in religion, I believed in the stories for a time but I always had questions about it that my mom couldn’t answer and she would have to hunt down Debra or someone gifted at using words I didn’t understand.

  It was also worth mentioning that about this time in life I started causing mischief at school, because of this my mother was having me start to take ADHD medications.

  Looking back, I always had been getting in bouts of trouble at school.

  For instance, in kindergarden I paid my first visit to the principals office. I was at lunch with my friends and realized if someone spilled milk the janitor would come clean it up. So I spilled a little, he cleaned it up. I spilled a little more, he cleaned it up again, I spilled yet again, and then..then he drug me by my ear to the principal. I totally deserved it. In my head I was just experimenting to see how many times he would do it.

  I also remember making sandwiches in kindergarten, and had a best friend who was a girl. I thought she was cute, and I got to make sandwiches with her. It was a good experience. I also cut my own hair and it looked really bad so my mom had me go bald. I think another occasion I got gum in it, and went bald again. I looked really bad bald, because I’m so pale.

  The next time I remember being in trouble was In first grade. I went to the principals office for stealing a pokemon badge off my friends backpack and putting it on mine. When the teacher came to ask the class if anyone knows who stole Oscar’s pokemon badge I raised my hand and said “I didn’t do it!” and then they looked at my bag and well… they saw the proof.

  Yet again, while in first grade, we were walking around the outside of the school and a friend dared me to open a car door, so I did. Turns out it was the teacher's car and then at the end of the day when she went to leave school her car was dead. I don’t think they caught me for that one though.

  In third grade I got in trouble for a mischievous act us boys were involved in. I was caught smacking the butt of a girl I thought was cute, and got scolded by the teacher.

  Later, I again got scolded because one of the cool kids named Noah taught me a new word. This word was used to call people weak, and it also meant cat. You called cats “pussy cat’s” he said.

  However the teacher didn’t think it was funny when she asked me what we were saying and I stared into her eyes and blurted out “Pussy!”. I think she actually called my mom in over that one.

  It was in third grade that, while at school, the televisions were turned onto the news station and we began watching as airplanes flew into the Twin Towers and world trade center on 9/11. We were sent home early from school, the entire town was full of traffic. Everyone was in a panic about the world ending, I was afraid Osama Bin Laden was going to get me when I was at home, and overall it was a memorable experience.

  So, that brings me to the medication. My mom told me that if she didn’t put me on medication I would be taken away and put in a “boys school”. That she would send me to one, and I wouldn’t be with her anymore. There would be guards there, and that other boys might hurt me or even rape me. Yes, she really said that to me. I didn’t even know what it meant at the time. She said I needed to take the medication or she’d send me away and I’d not see my grandparents, dad, or cat for a long time.

  The doctors I saw, the psychiatrists, were weird. They tried me on a medication called Paxil and I had a bad reaction. After taking it, I was in the car with David and tried to choke him with a seatbelt, wrapping it around his neck. I wanted to kill him. They took me inside and the psychiatrist Dr Hale held me in a leg lock until I was better. Then he made me punch a small punching bag but every time I struck it I was forced to say the name of someone “I hated”.

  Never in my life have I been able to hold hate in my heart, and this statement holds true to this day. So when I struck the bag I needed a name. So I just said the name of Mike, my biological father. Truth is, I didn’t know the guy and I didn’t hate him. I just said what they wanted to hear. It was late outside and I wanted to get home. I was afraid they were going to leave me at this place.

  Before moving from this school and this house, the last thing of note is that I lent my pokemon silver game to a classmate named Kevin and he never gave it back to me. He always put it off, he basically just stole it. It was around this time I began playing pokemon Gold on my gameboy. A truly fascinating invention, mobile games. It was really enjoyable to me, and I spent a lot of time on the gameboy since I couldn’t do much else.

  I don’t know what other kids my age were doing, but I wasn’t allowed over at friend’s houses, sleepovers, or really to go outside anywhere except my own yard.

  When I was outside it was by myself, I never had friends over.

  While I was at that house there’s a couple things I can share with you that stand out. One being, the first girl that liked me. Her name was Carolina and she was a few years older than I was. We had fun playing with toys in the yard and stuff, riding scooters, bikes, playing with sticks and catch from over the fence.

  One day while we were talking through the fence she told me she wanted to show me something and I should look through her washing room window, which I could see from my sidewalk up to the back door. I was standing there as she went inside. Then to my surprise, she got on top of the washer and took her pants off, showing me everything. This freaked me out and I ran indoors and immediately told my mom, who went over and told her grandmother, and then…Carolina and I never spoke again.

  I have no idea why that happened, but I feel like I still had the correct response regardless.

  Our other neighbor to the right of us was an old lady named Fern. Her husband died and she couldn’t tend to her garden anymore. So I would do some gardening for her and she would reward me with a diet rootbeer and some banana bread. I hated the roobeer but the banana bread was my favorite. Now you might think this is a nice arrangement, but one night I asked my mom why she never ate the leftover banana bread and she told me why.

  Apparently if you were tall enough, like an adult was, you could see into the neighbor’s windows and you could see Fern cooking in her kitchen. My mom said she watched her cook all the time and when she cooks she drools. Well I guess Fern just drools into the banana bread and my mom had been letting me eat it all this time. So after I learned this, unfortunately I stopped working for fern and I stopped eating banana bread for a while.

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  Since my only friend in the area was now not able to talk to me anymore, and Fern was out of my good graces, I turned to nature. I used to find a good amount of ants and I would put sticks in their way until they climbed on them, then I would end up making a tower of sorts, and I would call it an ant house. I also would find crickets and keep them in containers and try to see how many days I could keep them alive for. I tried to feed them various things and kept greenery in there but eventually they all died. Once, I had a cricket last a couple weeks and when he died I was heartbroken so I made him a grave and held a funeral for him. Buried the little guy and made him a grave sign with a stick and paper and everything.

  If I wasn’t doing that then I would go into my sandbox which was ruined from rain and add various items to make it soupy. I would add dirt, plants, rocks, stir it, and try to make it a giant potion. That’s how I lost my sandbox.

  I also collected nice rocks from the playground or ones I could find when roaming the yard. I would keep my stash in the corner of my room of my favorite rocks. Sadly, my mom would find them and throw them away.

  In this time period we would go to the local grocery store named Marsh, and I liked that store a lot. I remember two things happening at Marsh. One time I had a cubs hat. My favorite hat, and I was throwing it and catching it and then it got stuck on the top of a shelf. I couldn’t get it. My mom told me she was leaving be behind and if I didn’t hurry up she would leave the store without me. I tried climbing up there but I couldn’t manage it, and as she turned the aisle I panicked and left it behind.

  Some occasions she would leave me inside the car while she went inside for an hour or two, and one time I remember the thought clearly. I wanted the car to explode and kill us both. I poured a whole can of coke into the air vent hoping it would take her out on our drive home, but that didn’t happen. It should speak volumes though, that any 6-9 year old could be driven to the point by his mother that he would want this to happen, and in some way even attempting it.

  One time we were in the store and came out and our car got broken into, and all of her CD’s got stolen including the radio. At the time it was probably a $300 radio and a couple hundred dollars in CD’s. It was a very frightening experience. They never caught the guy who did it.

  I did have a girlfriend around this time before I left my first school (Franklin). Her name was Kirsten, and she was very tall. I had no idea what to do with a girlfriend, but we traded notes sometimes and I would give her cool rocks or coins I found or that my grandpa gave me. Our first date was going with a friend on his birthday.

  I’m sure this was the first time I left my house to hangout with friends. My mom let me go with John Geary because his mom was super religious. The plan was to go see 101 dalmations which was in theatre’s and then she’d drop me off at home.

  While we were in the car, the boys (I think Jared and John) asked if I had kissed her yet and I said no, so they convinced us and I got my first kiss there at 101 dalmations. Unfortunately, then Jared asked her for a kiss and they kept smooching and my heart was broken.

  John was one of those friends you have, but don’t like. At least for me. I didn’t like him because he was always talking about God, and I thought his mom was weird. He was a nice kid though, and I’m fairly certain my mom sent me with him to a bible study thing for kids.

  The other friend I had who I maintained some contact with was Trevor, and his younger sister Tiara. My mom had been friends with their mom, Becky, for a long time. This all came about because my mom was originally friends with their dad, Terry. However Terry died when they were very young, and I don’t remember why. I went over to their house sometimes with my mom and I would play Beyblade’s with Trevor. Other times Trevor would come to my house and we would play with my action figures, but this was a once every three months situation. We were getting kind of close when Becky got caught selling Trevor’s ADHD medication to an undercover cop. She ended up going to prison for a while and the kids had to move to Peru with their grandmother.

  During this time, a couple events occurred.

  I remember being left at home while my mom went out for long periods, sometimes until it got dark. I would use the home phone to call my grandparents and talk to them, and they were always nice. I had bone spurs in my shins so bad that I would cry and my mom would take me over there. Sometime she would drop me off at their house and not come back for a week, which was fine with me.

  My grandparents would cook me good food, take me outside on long walks or mushroom hunting, show me the names of the trees, and tell me stories. They were a saving grace in troubled times, and they helped my mom out when she needed it. I saw my grandpa argue with my grandma about nonsense, she was an angel and he was just a hothead. They would take me with them to different houses they were working on. He was a landlord and bought houses to fix them up and flip them or rent them out, and my grandma was just as good or maybe even better at construction than he was. I learned how to help and swing a hammer from a young age.

  One of these houses there was a specific part of the floor they told me not to walk on, as it had old rotten wooden boards on. Of course I stepped onto it and fell through the first floor and landed in the basement on my back. The wind was knocked out of my lungs but otherwise I was unharmed.

  At this time we’re moving from the main street of my home town out into the far northern side. It was kind of away from everything and anyone I knew. My mom was on government assistance and they helped her get an apartment at Chase Crossing. This started the next crazy chapter of my life. I moved schools from Franklin to Columbia. Started taking the bus to school instead of getting dropped off, and my mom was about to start dating a new guy named John.

  Before she left David she brought me over to his dad’s house, the convicted pedo. I remember them letting me stay there for some hours while he showed me his collection of lighthouses. He never tried anything, but I think my grandfathers everpresent warning had made it to his ears. I can’t remember why she broke up with david, but I remember he would get into arguments with her and then go walking for miles. She would often take the car out and drive in random directions trying to find him.

  The medication she had me taking was Welbutrin, and they were quickly increasing the dose. I guess because I still was “not able to be controlled” by my mom and I was still “backtalking”.

  Eventually it was increased so high my bowels stopped working and I was throwing up feces, had to be hospitalized and had a colonoscopy. They decreased the dose after, but still had me taking it.

  I was still wearing pajamas to bed when this next event took hold. So, for some reason I was being babysit by my aunt from florida who had recently moved up to a trailer park. It was a fun place to hangout in but her kids (my cousins) were a bit scary. David, who later went by the name Potato, would collect spiders from the abandoned fields behind the trailer park and scare me and his sisters with them. They also had an aquarium with some really cool fish, saltwater fish. It was massive. David ate his toothpaste, and he had two sisters. One about the same age, one younger.

  One night when I was with them David brought me into the living room and, well, to describe the situation inside of a book is hard but I’ll say the least possible. He did something to his sister who was asleep on the couch, and wanted me to watch and then do it myself. I refused, and told my mom when she came by. She took me to my grandparents and sat me down. I told them the story and then the cops were called. I’m told that my aunt’s spouse was sexually abusing the children and that’s why my cousin did what he did. CPS took the kids away, and I’m not sure what else played out. Later, one of my uncles was at the trailer and was high and drunk, let some chili spill over and the whole thing caught fire and burned down. Everyone made it out okay, but I never went back there.

  Moving into a new area, a new school, and her getting a new boyfriend was all a bit of an overwhelming experience. When I arrived there I got a room on the second floor, and It overlooked the drainage ditch and I could see the other apartments there. I had an irrational fear of falling through the second floor and into the kitchen. I quickly got over it.

  There were tons of kids outside though, and eventually I got to know them all. One of my first friends was Brian Zimbron. His dad had a used car lot, and we used to play cars together on the hill. All day long we would stay outside and build little dirt tracks and park and race the hotwheels on them. We made sticks into swords, on one occasion I made a tomahawk from a brick and stick. We even made our own functional bow and arrows from sticks and string. With the other neighborhood kids we played cowboys and indians, chasing eachother around with sticks and swordfighting with them.

  I went into Brians house one time and he played Eminem really loud on his speakers. I enjoyed it a lot and we would go up there just to listen to music together and rock out. Another friend I met there was named Blake Gotshall. His step dad’s name was Izzy. Which was my nickname at the time. He told me that my mom and him used to date, and he swears that’s where she got my name from.

  Blake and I had a tough friendship, sometimes we were friends and other times enemies. I remember hating him because he liked a band called “System of a Down” and I thought the name was lame. However, later when I got into middle school I listened to them and they became one of my favorite bands ever.

  One time Blake and his minions had cornered me into a tree and I climbed up it. They were throwing rocks at me and I had enough, so I jumped out of the tree and gave him a flying elbow to the head. It crumpled him to the ground and I ran all the way home.

  On one such occasion a kid named Ethan Hunter moved into the complex on the opposite side. We became friends, and later had a falling out which I’ll get into.

  I’ll mention a neighbor who was a nice girl named Lauren. She had cancer, and was in high school at the time. We had to run over to her house one day because the floor in her shower broke and her leg was dangling into the kitchen below as water poured everywhere. When she started getting chemo I cut all my hair off and went bald for her. Sadly, she did pass from the illness.

  Blake, Brian, and his sisters and I used to cause a bit of mischief around the complex too. We found frogs and launched them into the air using a board balanced on a rock like a teeter totter. When they eventually died we performed surgery on them to see what was inside. Blakes younger sister was about six years old and I was maybe ten at the time. She had a deep voice like an adult who had been smoking for years. Funnily enough, we would walk the sidewalks together and she would pick up used cigarette butts and puff on them (unlit) and said she was getting her smokes in.

  When the drainage ditch would fill up it looked like a pond, and I went swimming in it sometimes. We even used to explore the drainage pipes that went underneath the parking lot, and we would go in there and hangout or explore with flashlights. Some were surprisingly big, others really small.

  When Ethan and his cousins joined us they tried to follow us into one of the “rooms” down there. It was more like a concrete square connecting two or more pipes, but we could sit there and hangout instead of crawl. The younger cousin of his was a really obese kid, had a huge belly and everything. He got stuck in the pipe and couldn’t go forwards or backwards and we couldn’t pull him out so they had to call the fire department. We all got in trouble for going inside the sewage system and couldn’t do that anymore.

  So we decided to light bottle rockets at oncoming cars instead, and then a police officer showed up and we shot at his car long before we realized it was a cop. He came over and stole my backpack full of bottle rockets and gave us a scolding. We stopped doing that too.

  Sometime about a year in, Bryan moved away. His dad got the business going well and they could afford a house. I was really sad to see him go, but I think the dealership is still going to this day and now Bryan runs it.

  Ethan and I had a difficult friendship, he would try to bully me because he was much bigger than I was. He would throw airsoft pellets at me or shoot me with them. His dad was in prison and would get out in a couple years. His dad’s name was “Chi-Town” and he was a gangster who sold drugs.

  I used to play a lot of basketball with Ethan and his friend, but one day when I was having a sleepover there…Ethan’s friend was performing an oral massage on him and I woke up. Ethan panicked and asked me to do it, in exchange he would give me an Eminem CD. I declined and sprinted home at midnight, told my mom everything. Well, he denied it and called me a liar. Ethan’s mom didn’t believe the story and we all had a falling out.

  Somewhere in this time period, John started showing up. My moms new boyfriend. He was the manager at her paper factory. He was a short guy with brownish red hair and bald on top, he always wore a hat. He was from Missouri, and though he had his misgivings I think he was a positive influence.

  One of the things he did which I liked the most was he bought me books. When the new Harry Potter book would come out he would buy it for me and he began to read it. He would put a bookmark in where he stopped and when I would wake up I would begin reading and I always tried to beat his mark. It encouraged me to read and it was competitive, it was really the best of both worlds and we bonded through that.

  On the weekends I would still go to my dads house and he would often buy me a new dragon ball Z action figure every weekend, which I grew up watching with him. He would work on his car or truck, and I would help him mow the lawn for some spare change.

  Later, I began mowing his yard and his grandmas yard for money. It’s part of how I saved up to get my first car.

  When we weren’t doing that we would stay up late and watch Adult Swim together. He liked some Anime on there that hold a special place in my heart like Cowboy Beebop and Inuyasha. He also liked beevis and butthead, and some of the other shows on there. We would play Sega Dreamcast games like Virtual-On a robot fighting game. I was so good at it that he would have me beat the final boss for him and play competitively against other people online. I was so good he thought I should go to a tournament. I was gifted at any sort of button mashing game, fighting game, and I didn’t know what I hit but I could get the win. We played metroid prime on the gamecube, and Phantasy Star Online, my all time favorite.

  That game was one that earned me a scar on my head. See, the phone cord from the wall had to be stretched across the doorway to the dreamcast to connect it to the internet. I was ducking under it one time to go to the bathroom and I smacked my head on the doorframe. It split my eyebrow open so wide I had to go to the hospital and get stitches. My Aunt Shelly was working the emergency department and they actually glued it shut first. That game was fun for me because we played it together, and built our characters together and went on missions. I would still play it to this day, and I just might.

  I suppose, Jack, that’s why I play games with you now. My dad and I didn’t go outside a lot but we did bond over video games. I had a lot of fun doing it with my dad, and I can imagine that’s why you’re so excited to do the same with me now.

  So, John, and the apartments. He helped my mom become a better cook, and she began letting me cook some too. The first thing I learned to cook on my own “At any time with no supervision” was a grilled cheese. However, when I was flipping my grilled cheese the pan broke. The handle came clean off, and I burned my hand pretty badly. I also began experimenting with spices and ramen noodles. I did other things too, like spraying axe body spray on the floor and lighting it on fire.

  One time I was taking an old toy outside to smash with a hammer so I could see what was inside of it and my mom called the cops on me for being “incorrigible” . The cops showed up and put me in the back of the squad car and talked to me about it, and let me go back inside. At this point my mom would still try spanking me but she would go until I got blisters and I would still laugh at her through the pain. So instead she would do one of two things based on what I had been doing recently.

  Either she would ground me from going outside, so I couldn’t hangout with friends. Or, she would ground me from being inside, since I was having fun playing games and reading. When I was beginning to do well in school she said “Wow the pills are working, see! Look how good your grades are!” and it is at that point I showed her how wrong she was.

  I brought her upstairs and told her along the way that I hadn’t been taking my pills and I was doing better to prove a point to her. She called me mad, and said she saw me take them every morning.

  I took her to my bed and pulled it away from the wall, revealing hundreds of pills that were on the floor. She was beside herself, learning that I had been keeping them in my cheek and pretending to take them. It’s then that I told her I did well in school to prove a point, and no pill would make me do better or worse if I didn’t want to do so. It’s at that point that she let me stop taking them, and then I let my grades fall because my point was proven anyways.

  On my next birthday my grandparents bought me a computer, a real one. It was a desktop dell computer, windows XP. My favorite operating system to this day. We had no internet, but I played paint, pinball, typed random stuff, and learned how to make .batch programs. I played with command prompt, and tried every button on the keyboard.

  My mom and John were friends with a guy they worked with named Phuc Vo. He was a vietnamese guy who had two children of his own. Nina and a baby but I don’t remember her name. Nina and I would play together for hours, we had the time of our lives. My mom would leave me with Phuc for long periods, and in this time he taught me how to hack.

  First I learned how to use limewire and frostwire to download music from p2p programs, then I learned how to upgrade my computer parts from the inside. I started my own mIRC chat room and began hosting my own radio DJ program through WinAmp. I would broadcast songs and people would tune into it, giving me requests in mIRC, to which I would download and play next. I burned my own CD’s, DVD’s and began experimenting with more and more computer knowledge.

  I could make programs at school that would DDOS the server, I would crack programs like photoshop and various other things. I experimented with cracking different websites by exploiting flaws in their script. I met with other friends online who taught me how to implement keyloggers and trojans, and even experimented with creating a botnet, all types of computer mischief.

  Years later in highschool I was the guy you took your ipod touch to, I would jailbreak it for $20 and then you could download almost anything you wanted onto it. I would fix Xbox Red Rings of death, and could even help generate you a fake report card for your parents. I did this for myself on a couple occasions.

  Moving onward, Phuc taught me how to use chopsticks, and the customs of his country. I ate squid cooked over a toaster, and learned how to make homemade spring rolls. I used to get him beer from the fridge, and generally had a good time at his house. This too, ended poorly. Phuc had a cocaine addiction and somehow his baby ended up dying under his watch, and he and his wife got a divorce. I never saw him or Nina again.

  John had me introduced me to his own children at some point. Jeanie, a tall skinny redhead with tattoos and interesting hair color, Kaylee (a girl I met once), and his son Jake.

  Jake was an absolute unit, somewhere around 400 pounds and over 6 foot tall. One time at Johns apartment we were playing darts together and I was really good at hitting the bullseye. Well, Jake had a mental problem and he snapped. He put one hand around my throat and lifted me up into the air saying “YOU LITTLE SHIT” , and John came in to save the day. I never remember seeing Jake again after that.

  John taught me how to make coffee for him, and I saw him handle my mom’s arguments very well. She was the type who loved to scream, and instead of screaming back he would often take off walking. Sometimes we didn’t see him for days, but he never let her push him too far. They broke up and got together numerous times, one of the last incidents I remember was the time I barricaded myself in my bedroom.

  Now to say their relationship was better than the others would be a stretch. Many of days I would hide in my room because they were shouting at eachother, or come out crying and ask them to stop. But this one time in particular, something bad happened.

  John grabbed me, had ahold of my wrist, and I escaped to run upstairs. I locked my door and shoved my bed in front of it, the dresser too. I had a hidden phone at the time I earned from babysitting my Aunt Kary’s children. It was a flip phone, a Boost Mobile phone. I told her I was afraid, and what happened. She brought a horde over.

  My Aunt Kary and Aunt Jesse came, and their boyfriends. One was Shane, a big truck driver, and the other was Jesse’s boyfriend who was a cage fighter. My grandpa and grandma were on their way and if you remember, he told every guy my mom was with the same threat. Needless to say I think John was out of there either right as they arrived or right before.

  Some time after that, they split. Then Dustin came into the picture. There’s a bit we need to catch up on before getting into the whole situation.

  So at this time we are speaking about the period where I am at fifth grade moving into the middle school which was just paces away from my Columbia Elementary school.

  All of middle school life was at the apartments. So anything in this time period is worth discussing now.

  My next girlfriend was Amber, she had really crazy hair shaped like a triangle. I remember she was crazy about me, but I broke it off with her when she said “Noone will ever love you as much as I do.” for some reason that reminded me of Mike, my biological father, and I can’t say why, but we split up because of it.

  I used to play quarters with my friends at school, we would have our knuckles down and flip quarters at eachothers knuckles. Whoever bled first, lost. My grandpa would bring in cupcakes, cake and ice cream for the whole class every birthday. I had some friends come and go, but none by name until later into middle school.

  In middle school, I joined Band to impress a girl I started to like. An Asian girl who also knew Phuc, her dad worked at the paper office as well. Her name was Angelina, and at some point I scratched her initials into my leg. Weird, right?

  I got upset at the band instructor one day. I used to play saxophone with Angelina, and then I decided to throw it at the teacher. He kicked me out of band and told me he would call the high school to make sure I couldn’t join theirs either. I was totally fine with it.

  Angelina was a heartbreaker, we were always exchanging notes in different classes and in the hall. Nobody really had phones, so everyone passed notes. One time in reading class the teacher saw me pass one to her and read it aloud, she got so embarrassed that she broke up with me.

  On Valentines day I brought her in roses and a teddy bear and it was so embarrassing. The entire school seemed to be staring at me, my face was red and I gave it to her in the hall, hoping we would get back together but we never did.

  I also got into my first fight in middle school. I was playing basketball and this kid named Brady kept shoving me. I had enough so I chased him down in the hall. We squared up and he had no fight in him, he didn’t want to. So I started to walk away. However there was already a circle of people around us and one of them shoved me really hard, as I was falling he hit me in the back of the head and I was on the ground. Then the teacher came to break it up. Next thing I knew everyone was saying Brady knocked me out, made me furious.

  It’s about this time that I met with Kristian Grandstaff and Sevenz Hannah, two friends that stuck around for a long time. Kristian was actually my cousin in some distantly related way, and Sevenz I still stay in touch sometimes.

  We were three pea’s in a pod on most occasions, played online games together, wandered around town together, and so forth. More on them later and their individually crazy stories.

  Almost immediately I realized this middle school was no place for a skinny weakling like myself, and I saw a really popular and oddly huge kid named Bernard get into a fight with three people. They were mexicans, and my school had been known for a large population of them. I had mexican friends, thought nothing of it. But I saw him fight, and win, against three of them. He was the biggest and toughest kid in all three grades. Somehow I met up with Bernard and we became good friends.

  I hangout with him and met his brothers, his mom, and stayed at their house sometimes. I also met Cornell Eisenbise around this time. He’s a crazy lad who now has a pink mohawk and head tattoos.

  Bernard kept me safe from danger, and being friends with him raised my status a little bit to where nobody would pick on me. I was extremely skinny and pale, and I had glasses. I was an easy target.

  In sixth grade I remember reading a lot, I probably read every book in the library. All the Harry potters, goosebumps, nearly every fiction book they had. I got an award for it at some point actually, you got points for every book you turned in. I was focusing on art, and reading books about real life ghosts. I wanted to communicate with them, so I tried opening my mind and doing various other things but nothing ever worked.

  It’s around this time that Cornell and I became best friends, and we would also go hangout with Bernard. It’s also the time my mom started being gone all the time. I barely remember her being home actually. I would just leave the house which was essentially a mile or two away from town, and I would ride my bike into town to meet up with my friends.

  My mom told me she got a new job as a waitress, and was making good money. However Cornell told me the truth. His mom was a stripper, and she went with my mom who was also a stripper. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was true. Soon enough, the entire school knew, and that made bullying even easier. Once we went on a field trip to Chicago and my mom sent me with $100 but it was all in ones. God only knows what she did to get that money, and I still want to wash my hands thinking about it.

  Cornell and Bernard were not the best influence, but they were good friends. We drank their mom’s liquor, Bernard gave us marijuana, we stole bike’s, we pooped in plastic cups and threw them at cars. We spraypainted garages and houses, we did all types of things you shouldn’t be doing. I didn’t care though, I was having fun. I would stay with them for days, and I don’t really think my mom knew where I was but she never seemed too care much.

  There was however, one positive influence. In the mix of all these guys, was a family friend named Bill. He was my moms childhood friend, and his actual name was Cody William Norman.

  Bill would come over and we would go walking into town (or my mom would drop me off with him) and basically I remember that we would put our money together to buy some fountain pops and snacks from the gas station or hotdog stand. We would just visit the river, or hangout at his house. He was just a nice guy who liked spending time with me, or babysitting when my mom needed it. It was a breath of fresh air to have a guy who wasn’t always just yelling with my mom.

  Well, one day I was playing runescape in sixth or seventh grade at my grandparents house. To back up a bit, I was first at the public library with my mom and some random guy was there. He was talking to me while I was messing around on the computer, and he showed me this game he was playing called Runescape. I thought it looked cool so I made an account and he showed me the ropes.

  So, I was at my grandpas back bedroom having a time on there, mining away when there came a knock at the door.

  Now I said I really wanted to communicate with ghosts, but I gave up. I never had any success with the supernatural, and I don’t really believe in ghosts to this day. However what occurred to me really happened and I still cannot explain it.

  My best idea is that I had an episode of thought transference. Where someone is thinking something so strongly, and that I received that thought.

  Thoughts are energy within your brain, energy that has a frequency. We have machines that can detect and translate your thoughts, so it’s not too far fetched to believe that humans have an ability to detect these thoughts on occasion.

  Think about mothers intuition, or when you feel someone staring at you, or when you sense a situation isn’t quite right. You could be picking up on subtle intentions of those unseen forces.

  There I were, sitting at the computer when I heard the knock. Instantly, out of my mouth come the words “Bill is dead.” .

  I felt a specific way, a state of being where one second I was thinking of absolutely nothing but runescape, and the next I had a giant wave of grief and understanding wash over me. A sinking pit in my heart, and I stood up and went to the door.

  It’s a strange thing, Bill’s mom was a person I had never remembered seeing before in my life. I never saw her at my grandparents house. There, I open the door and she’s standing outside crying. She comes in and talks with us all and explains that Bill’s been murdered. He was laid on the railroad tracks and the train ran him over.

  My mom heard the news and picked me up. For some reason, she brought me to the scene of the crime. Cops were still about, and some yellow crime scene tape was up. We walked passed it all and I was brought to the spot where it happened. When I got there all that was left was a giant red stain on the tracks and I picked up a piece about as big as a quarter of what used to be Bill’s skull.

  This was a pivotal time for me. It was a very hard realization that occurred to me. It was that one moment someone you know and love can be here, and the next moment they can be gone forever.

  ...That’s where we’ll end this letter, my son. Cherish your moments with your loved ones, the lesson I learned is one I wish upon no one. Take the moment to reflect and appreciate your own life, and those closest to you.

  [As he sets down his pen, Izriel feels the weight of his past settle around him like an old, heavy cloak. The room is silent except for the soft, rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock, each second echoing the passage of time and the memories he's just poured onto the page. He exhales a cloud of cigar smoke, watching it rise and dissipate, a fleeting reminder of the ephemeral nature of life itself.

  He re-reads the last lines, his fingers tracing over the ink, as if by touch he could convey the depth of his feelings. The letter, he knows, is both a map and a warning, a guide through the labyrinth of his life he hopes Jack will navigate with wisdom and caution.

  With a resolve hardened by years of introspection, Izriel picks up the wax seal. The flame from the candle flickers, casting shadows that dance across the room, much like his thoughts. He presses the seal into the warm wax, leaving an imprint not just on the paper but on this chapter of their shared history.]

  Yours in truth,

  Izriel

  [He places the letter into an envelope, addressing it with care, his handwriting betraying the slight tremble of emotion. He writes instructions for its delivery, years into the future, ensuring this part of his story reaches Jack at the right time. As he stands, his gaze lingers on the sealed letter, the embodiment of his love, his fears, and his hopes.

  Moving to the window, he looks out into the night, the stars a silent witness to his solitude. The darkness outside seems to mirror the unknown path ahead for Jack. But in this moment, with the letter sealed, Izriel feels a bittersweet peace; he's done what he can to arm his son with knowledge, to arm him against the world's harsh realities.

  He returns to his desk, the next letter already forming in his mind, knowing each word he writes is a step further into the labyrinth, but also a potential light for Jack to follow.]