Chapter 1
Regrets of being born
I was born Dec 1st, 1966 at 11:00 am 6 pounds 9 ounces, a perfect baby boy
according to my Grandmother and the only one born in the Provo Hospital. The snow was falling just outside the
window I had been told. I had always liked the snow and felt special when it
fell on my birthday. But I soon learned to hate the snow and the cold frigid
air that came with it, as my father Jim. Would toss me into a snow bank, and
rubbed my face hard into it. Leaving bruised hand marks on the back of my neck.
Hoping I would suffocate as I came up gasping for air. Now every time it
snowed, it would always be a reminder, of him and the times of what he did.
Sometimes he would laugh as I lay half-naked, shivering in the snow. I learned
a hard lesson that nobody truly cares or they would have stopped it from
happening as I watched neighbor’s curtains and doors close without any remorse
or willing to help a child in distress.
My mother has always been strong willed and sometimes the very incarnation of
evil itself. A plump woman over 400 pounds with short brown hair so she would
not have to fuss with it like most woman her age do. It always looked choppy
and short like a boy with a bad haircut. Some would say fat and lazy, but she
could move quickly when she wanted to for a woman of her size; just under
five-feet with a nose like a bird of prey. It looked like that ever since she’d
broken it in three places during childhood from fighting with her brothers. For
a woman, she was not considered pretty but average. She had always claimed she
got this way after bearing four kids and that her figure had never returned to
what it used to be when she was younger or before she met my father.
Linda had a strange temper one minute she could be all calm, gentle and
collected and the next wild anger would come out of nowhere. She looked like a
mad bull running through a china shop. Her face would implode with red blotches
as her blood rose to her face. She could be a good mother when she wanted to,
but that was only when she had something to gain by doing so. At least that’s
the way I will always remember her throughout most of my life.
My name was a joke, considering I was named after a doll my mother Linda had
when she was a child called Eric. My middle name James was given to me to
remind me of my father Jim. When I was old enough to read and write I never
used it. When asked I would write the letter J as if it was a scarlet letter. I
hated my name and if I had a way of changing it I would. My Grandmother would
call me EJ knowing how I hated my name and what it represented. It always made
my parents mad, but we didn’t care. For us, it was inside joke and always used
it when I could get away with it.
My Grandmother was a strong-willed woman according to my grandfather who passed
away when I was six. She had served in the war as a nurse and would work
training nurses in the Red Cross under a doctor named Robert Hatfield as they
traveled throughout the states. Her hair had turned silver-white over the years
and had blue eyes like me. While my grandfather’s eyes were brown and warm
whenever I looked into his eyes; I felt at peace and at home. He was my best
friend; I’d always looked up to him. Grandma would always tell me stories about
him when he worked on the Pacific Railroad; seeing the world as a train
engineer that always put a smile on my face when times were hard.
I would always thumb through the photographs and look in the mirror standing
tall on a footstool next to my Grandmother as we would compare my likeness to
him. My mousy brown hair and bright blue eyes with a chiseled chin like my
grandfather and his pudgy straight nose. I was skinny as a rail according to my
Grandmother as she kept trying to feed me when she poked me in the ribs and
feeling my boney body like my brother Aaron which angered her compared to my
sisters.
Grandma too was short like my father Jim barely over five feet, but her
attitude always made up for her size. She seldom talked much about herself, but
when I was down and out with my parents she always made me feel better. She
would listen to my problem and sometimes provide me with good advice. Telling
me every time she saw me I reminded her of my grandfather; being able to think
on my feet by always learning new things and keeping an open mind when it comes
to reasoning. I always knew without a doubt she loved me.
Yet life was hard even harder still since my grandfather died. She seemed to
hold back when it came to interfering with my parent's choices, telling me.
“Things will get better they always do. That I needed to stop running away
every time things got out of hand. And perhaps they will if I would put in just
a little more effort into things that don’t make my parents so angry.”
It was
always the same speech. Why could she not see that it was tearing me apart
inside, as the beatings continued regardless? Yet I loved her very much and
always wondered why she had changed so much after my grandfather died? She’s dead now, like my grandfather; she died
Feb 17th, 2003. I sometimes like to think that she still is watching over me, but when
trouble arises it seems that she must be asleep or too busy to notice me.
My father Jim was drafted into the army the year I was born, but he never
actually fought or carried a gun. He served as a plumber in the Air Force.
Cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors. A nurse typed Bomber by mistake on his
occupation on my original birth certificate and was later changed once he found
out; my Grandmother kept it and I still have it and use that one whenever I
need identification. Just to say my father Jim had an anger problem when came
to me and my brother Aaron (Danny’s character in my series What’s Behind the
Looking Glass,) would not even come close.
Aaron was the spitting image of me born January 17th, 1970, except for my horrid glasses that I had
worn since the age of three. It seems strange as I think about it; that I was
the only one that needed them in my family, besides my grandparents. Aaron has mousy brown hair and bright blue
eyes. He was the cutest younger brother on the planet according to me and my
Grandmother whenever we visited her.
He was short for his age and too skinny unlike most kids his age. He too was
picked on or bullied because of his height and sometimes the clothes he wore
were mostly worn out rags. Being bought from a secondhand clothing store that
had seen better days just like mine, something’s you just got used to. But
we would wonder sometimes if my mother picked them out of the trash after the
hobo was done with them?
Unlike my sister’s nice dresses and well-kept hair and makeup. He did his best
with what he had to work with even though his hair was kept stub short so our
mother wouldn’t have to fuss keeping his hair combed or to humiliate him so the
kids would tease him. Aaron was and is my best friend next to my Grandma. We would always do everything together
through thick or thin, he was always there for me and still is unlike the rest
of them. I would miss him the most whenever I was away.
No. My father Jim literally hated us, why, only he knows. It was worse when he
came home for serving two years in the war, but somehow he came back as a
changed man, according to my Grandmother and a lot meaner. I wouldn’t know
considering I really never saw the good side of him. Plus I was too busy
running from his wicked belt and his fists as I became his new punching bag.
I was never sure of the reason behind it unless it was because he was not as
fit like other men that served. Or it was due to his size being four feet five
inches tall, slightly bald. Brown eyes his jawline pointed as drawn down on his
face. Jim was a muscular man, yet was not a bodybuilder. He had a slow limp in
his left leg from a car accident; Riding in the back of a pickup coming home
from work. The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and drove off into a
ravine. My father had been thrown out on impact. It must have happened before I
was born. His limp mostly showed more
when he was angered, which was more often than not.
He once told me. I too would lose my hair by the time I graduated from High
School. Providing I lived long enough, providing he didn’t kill me first. Yes,
there was no love lost between us. But that never happened; I didn’t start
losing my hair until I turned 25. Ever since then I have always looked for a
cure just so I have wouldn’t have to look like him and I am still looking.
People say we look nothing alike, but just the mere thought of it; gives me the
creeps.
During the time he was in the Air Force we lived with my Grandparents until I
was the age of four when he came home for good. We lived in a small apartment
house in Salem, Utah and it’s torn down now. It had two small rooms and a combined living
room and kitchen on the side. We moved around a lot during the time he was on
base so my mother could be closer which never was more than a month or two or
until my grandfather put his foot down because of their uncontrolled temper.
And her impatience as they tried to raise three children; me being the oldest
having two siblings my younger sisters Susan and younger brother Aaron and she
was pregnant with her 4th child which she named Becky, and would be her last.
My mother could not do it alone as she tried to either sell me or give me away.
By the time I was five my father Jim came home for good, but due to his temper
and uncontrollable rage. I was placed in State Foster Care system for the first
time. Which soon became an excuse to solve their problems; yet I was the only
one placed while my younger siblings stayed and lived at home. Ever since I was
five years old, I was in out foster care so often you would think I was a yoyo.
I was lucky if they found one with good parents, where I would thrive which was
bad. Meaning you are good enough to return home.
Other times I was placed in
homes just as bad as the one I lived in; where I was used as a meal ticket for
an extra income. The average rate per child is $2,000 a month. Yes, it is true
what they say, people really don’t care unless they get paid to and only then
it was on and off again when it comes to buying love.
I vaguely remember a trip to see my Grandmother Southwick, my mother’s mother,
who lived in Lincoln, Nebraska where my father had met my mother on his LDS
mission. She too was a nurse at a local hospital since before and after’ the
war. I remember sitting in the backseat fighting with my sister. Trying to get
her to leave my brother alone as we traveled down the road to her house or
from, I am not sure. In a fit of rage, Susan reached over and opened the car
door and pushed me out of the car into the moving traffic.
I remember waking up and seeing my Grandmother standing over my bed and my
mother’s angry face. Blaming me for jumping out of the car, even though I tried
to tell her… That it was Susan that pushed me with very little success as she
called me a liar. I was lucky to only end up with a slight crack in my skull
and a few stitches in the back of my head and some new bruises. This was also
the first time I tried my Grandmother’s coffee and one of her cigarettes,
spitting both out as my face turned green. I should mention that she was not of
the LDS faith. One of the many reasons we never visited my mother’s side of the
family.
My grandparents had tried numerous times to keep me in the home and watch over
me and my siblings, but my parents would distance themselves from them. Most
likely because of my grandfather would stop them. He warned them several times
that their children would end up hating them if they did not stop. Sometimes
calling the authorities to step in, but the laws were useless to regards of
children and what parents can and can not do.
It has always amazed me what they got away with, and being so young I didn’t
understand what was going on. My grandfather's prediction was right, but
somehow my sister Susan had the wool pulled over her eyes. Either she was just
plain stupid and in denial or she really wanted to be the only child as she
pushed the others out of the home and out of her way, using the long arm of the
law to get her wish.
I could careless considering I had moved out on my own the
same day as my High School graduation. I wanted nothing more to do with her or
my father and my mother until I was almost 16 when she turned over a new leaf
and became the mother I knew and loved, but my father never did change. My
father hated me more than life itself and would do his best to make sure that
he killed me and Aaron with his bare hands until his dying day. Even today that
hasn’t changed.
Aaron was a whole different matter as he moved in with me soon after I
graduated and had a place of my own; instead of going to Gridley California with the rest of them. To live with Susan
and her recently married husband Shawn Lindsey a week after graduation. Aaron moved in with me as
he waited for his mission call and being forced to go in the first place as my
parents kept putting pressure on him to go.
Aaron was acceptable to the guilt trip they put him on, as they had already
convinced the church to pay for his mission. But most of it was the guilt as
they threw it against me for not going and not following my father’s footsteps.
I couldn’t go due to the fact of my injuries I received from father and my last
foster home. I had severe nerve damage in my legs and arm, bad enough that I
could be paralyzed for the rest of my life. PTSD and night terrors didn’t help
either.
But my parents and the people in the LDS church still hang it over my head to
this very day. That I didn’t go on an LDS mission and not being married by the age
of thirty-quote from at LDS talk. “A man not married by the time he is thirty
is useless in society today. Bear in mind he will never use the priesthood or
procreate, so he may enter the celestial kingdom of God. Family is one of the greatest gifts God has
given us, without these sacred ordinances, man cannot serve him, but spend
eternity in perpetual Hell. Bruce R. McConkie, member of the Twelve Apostles." So it looks like I’m going to hell. For I do not want to be with my family or
have one due to the fear of becoming like my father and becoming the abuser
instead of the victim.
Susan was just a year and a half younger than me born July 13th
, 1968 (character
name Peggy in my series What’s Behind The Looking Glass). Even though she
always liked to claim she was the oldest by default, considering I seldom lived
at home. Therefore I was considered an unwanted visitor, not her actual
brother; neither by blood nor genes had any bearing. She would prefer me
nonexistent, again no love lost there.
She had the same bearing as her mother, except some would say more often than
not; considered her pretty. Unlike her mother, she wore her dark brown hair
long so it hung loosely at her waist. Blue eyed beauty like a porcelain doll.
Four-feet, three inches broad shoulder like her father button-cute nose with
fair complexion. Some would say calculating as a chessboard, mean and spoiled.
Takes after her father, but has her mothers’ disposition when it comes to
getting her way.
My sister Becky (character name Dona in my series What’s Behind The Looking
Glass) was the last to be born and we had wondered if by chance my mother was
stepping out and having an affair, considering she looked so different compared
to the rest of us. But who in their right mind would want my mother when we
could barely stand her as it was?
Being born in the month of May 17th, 1971, had always claimed she is the prettiest due
to her dishwater blond hair. Which came from her mother’s side of the family;
not sure if that was true or not. I had never met them in person except when I
was five, but have seen pictures, most of them in black and white. Unlike her
mother straight hair, Becky’s hair curled as she kept it shoulder length,
blue-eyed dyed blond. Pretty as a picture her mother would always say
“perfection.” One of her fathers favorites just like her sister Susan. She had
the same disposition as her mother when it came to temperament. She could be
playful one minute and mean as a snake in the next second, but dumb as an Ox’s
in regard to intelligence.
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