Happy New Year

I hope you all have a very happy New Year and this is the year we make our dreams come true! Read my blog and sed your friends and maybe some of my dreams can come true! Let's all try to make a difference in someone elses life this year.

Life after school

For several years now I had dreamed of going off to college to make something of myself. It was my one big ticket out. In High School I had done just enough work to make sure I could get in to college and I had researched and researched them to find one I liked. My Aunt Mary even drove me to one about an hour away when my mother wouldn't. Let me say this about my Aunt Mary, she was hateful, but I knew she cared about me and she would try and help me in life. One time I overheard my mother tell her she was going to give me away and I could tell that my Aunt Mary told her she wasn't either that is the kind of thing I mean.I graduated on June 7th, 1991. I had applied to three schools and was accepted, but I had my heart set on going to Lindsey Wilson in Columbia,Kentucky. The only problem was I was supposed to come up with $400.00 that my financial aid package didn't include. I stayed in bed that day sick to my stomach. I was too embarrassed to know I had come so close to my dream only to have the rug pulled out from under me.So instead of going and figting for my dreams I did what I always do which is litterally pull the covers over my head and stay in bed!
I had worked all through High School at the local Hardee's and for a time the paper office too. Still I had been unable to save the money because I had given most of it to my mother who had suddenly developed a taste for antique junk. She used to go into this store and tell the owner I would pay for it and he would come out to the car and tell me how much I owed him! I also didn't save money and still don't to this day because after my first summer working third shift I had saved 500 to get a car with, but my cousin the one that threw me across the room wanted to buy a new vehicle and needed 500 more down payment so my mother gave him my money and then told him not to worry paying it back. Then I wasn't even allowed to get my permit till I was 18! So ever since then I have had a fear that if I have money saved someone else will wind up with it so I spend every penny I get.
I was too stupid that day to drive to the school and explain it to them, and get a job over there to make up the difference, plus I was too scared to try it. I thought what if I failed? I know now I could do it, but back then I had no clue! Man would my life had been different, but for now it was just Hardee's in my future, but God had a big surprise waitng for me!

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year everyone!

What will this year bring? I sincerely hope this is the best year you have ever known, that this is the year those breakthroughs happen for you and your dreams come true! I hope your health is better than ever has been in your life and you are content adn surrounded by love! God Bless you all and as always thank you so much for reading!!

Counter

Please be advised if you are keeping track of how many people are folling this story that my counter only goes to 500 and after just 12 days we are almost there! So I am not sure what happens when it reaches 500 if we start over at 0 or if it freezes. I am thinking of switching over to wordpress.com but it tracks each visitor so I can see what parts of the country are reading the blog. I really like the idea of that but would like to know how you all feel about it. You can leave comments on the blog or email me at nattysdaddy@newwavecomm.net or shoot you can even call me. I am at 606-802-2420.

My First true love

Through watching John Osteen and being inspired by him I began to have more faith. More faith that God was my friend and he was on my side. I began to feel that I really was more than my current circumstances showed, and that I could rise above my lot in life. When I was a junior in high school I met a girl by the name of Jalaine Bray and fell head over heals for her! I was only 16 and I know people say that teenagers are too immature to really feel love, but here I am almost 37 and I still remember those feelings. Now don't misunderstand I loved my wife and in fact still love my wife and I feel as though I always will even though all of the awful things we have done to one another.
Jalaine came from what I thought was a wealthy family but now I know it was a just a middle income family. But they had a brick home and a Cadillac Seville (remember those?) I always thought those cars were so fancy looking! Jalaines father worked in a factory and was a preacher at a church close by to where I lived. Her family knew where I lived but they still treated me like somebody and I really felt Jalaine cared about me too and it all just felt so right that I truly felt we were so right for each other. Could I really be this lucky?
Because I came from a poor family I wanted Jalaine to know I had a better work ethic. So silly me went on and on about how I would work hard to support her and give her what she needed although she had never made me feel like I wouldn't. Jalaine had always showed me respect and love. It was about his time when my mothers boss came to me and offered me a managers job at her restaurant for 200 dollars a week salary. So I quit my job at Hardees and took it. I worked 1 week and she paid me 100.00 so I quit, then and for one reason or another it took me 6 weeks to find another job. I was so embarrassed that I wasn't working I didn't call Jalaine and since we didn't have a phone she didn't call me, but as soon as I got my job at Taco Bell I rushed next door to Aunt Mary's to call her and she said she couldn't live this way, that she had been worried sick about me and she had found someone else. She had found a man that was like 10 years older than us. She ended up marrying that man and they are still together with three daughters! I deeply regret the way things turned out with Jalaine and that I hurt her. But in my heart I know it was the right thing. There are 4 people in the world now who can testify to that. I really didn't have that much time to be love struck anyway cause it was just about time to try and get into college! Would I achieve this impossible dream?

New Christian

Now as a new Christian everything seemed different. I knew I had to make ammends with my mother and father if at all possible so for the next few years I tried my best to at least get along with these two, but to no success. I found a great source of direction watching John Osteen (Joel's father). I learned more from him about God than from any preacher I have ever had. The world though didn't just change now because I got saved in fact in many ways they got worse, but now I had someone to walk with me. Someone I could turn to someone I could count on. I finally had a father a heavenly father who loved me and would take care of me all the days of my life. And he has in so many ways no my life has not been easy as you will find out it has been one tragedy after the other but God has always been there with me and took care of me.
Little did I know I was about to meet someone and fall in love!

The greatest thing ever!

Well, I knew I would never work for my father again, but I still longed to have a relationship with him. He came from a large family he had seven brothers and sisters! They all had several kids each and they all lived with in a mile of each other. They lived in Tateville, Kentucky behind the railroad tracks which at the time was a place that the police didn't even want to go. It was a very poor area full of real hillbilly types. People like you see in those shows that really try to over do the act. Well that is what this was only for real! They all heat with wood stove, burn their garbage, and have junk all in their yards. I heard a girl say one time and it really stuck with me that even the trees don't look healthy.
I kept visitng Bud after school started back because I really loved my grandmother and my uncle Vola (pronounced Volie) and aunt Pam seemed like they cared about me and I loved them and their kids and I swear this is true their son we called Buster and their daughter was called red sis cause their was already big sis and little sis but her real name is Queen Elizabeth! They all have weird nick name like Cooter, Buggy and Punchy. I wonder if they know punchy means stupid? Anyway my grandma her name was Lona (pronounced Lonie) was a real interesting woman. She and my grandpa Ola (you guess it pronounced Olie) married after only 6 weeks of courtship. and was married nearly fifty years until his death. She never dated after his death and she was a good Christian woman.I t killed her the way her kids acted. She couldn't read but she would open her Bible and get a few words together. I loved her I guess more than anybody because she was always nice to me and gave me compliments.
It was in the month of September that I was visiting them when there was a revival going on at Grandma's church which I had thought was actually closed. It was a one room structure that had not been painted in at least twenty years! The front doors were just boards that were nailed together. There were several holes in the floor where you could see the ground beneath you. There was no heat other than a wood stove and of course no bathrooms other than an outhouse. I tell you though it was an amazing place! In Tateville there is every kind of evil you can think of and it's a place where you can just feel the sinister when you go through, but that little church was a beacon of light and hope it was amazing! So on September 18th 1988 my grandma says she is going to go to church and I ask her if I could go with her I liked church but had only ever been to some big Baptist churches that had come and picked us up in the projects. My mother had always told me were holiness people but I had no clue as to what that meant, but I was about to find out! We walked to the little church that night and it was packed with about 30 to 40 people. Kyle and Alicia Shepherd were preaching and they were on fire for the Lord!
I sat there that night being so under conviction for my sins. God was dealing with me! I basically said something like God, don't you see who I am? Don't you know what I come from? You can't use me and I can't be a Christian. I am not good enough. Pick someone else. I can't go up there in front of these people. But by the time the altar call was given I looked up at grandma and I put my eternity in her hands when I asked her to go up there with me. I expected her to say no and that would be the end of it, but to my surprise and my good fortune she said yes. I went up to an old fashioned altar of prayer and I asked Jesus to come into my heart and wash me of my sins. And you know what he did! I knew he did! I felt a burden I didn't even know I had lift off of me and I felt light as a feather! I knew I had escaped Hell! I was so happy and so caught up in it all that when they asked me to testify I basically preached! I finally had a father a heavenly father that was the best father anyone could ever have.Now 21 years later I still have my heavenly father! Thank you Lord! So now that I was saved what new adventures would I face? Would my troubles be over or just beginning?

Meeting my father Chapter 2

I ended up spending two weeks with my father during the month of July, 1988. I was 15at the time and had never done any kind of real work. He had a car crushing business at the time along with a trucking company. I imagined he had those businesses by not paying the 20 dollar a week child support that the court had ordered. I had never been around my father until the trip to Chattanooga and when we arrived back in Kentucky he asked me to stay with him for a while and help him with his car hauler business. He paid me 20 dollars for that first trip and so I eagerly agreed. I thought I was rich after all, at that time mom brought home 75 dollars a week so I was making more then her per day!

The work was unbearable we were going through a drought and every day was over 100 degrees. There I was in the middle of a big junk yard tearing off gas tanks before he crushed them. It was horrible! Gas would come out of those tanks some times and it burned something awful if it got on me. My feet were on fire but he didn't care he just told me to walk it off. He had another guy my aunt's husband working with us and he was a real smart alec. They thought it was hilarious that I was having so much trouble. At lunch one day Bud (my father) told Johnny that this one is slow but little Bud was going to be a fast worker (as I write this little Bud sits in Jail!) I felt like crap when he said this, here I was working my heart out for this guy and he bad mouths me like this to that jerk.

One day when we are on our way back to his place sitting up there in that big semi and the heat of the day I was falling asleep. My head was nodding off he stops on the train tracks and screams train to which I nearly came unglued, I am terrified of trains, in school they had showed us a movie of train hitting people and peoples heads actually flying out the windows! Now this big bully was pulling this trick. I nearly peed my pants! He just laughed and laughed the big jerk! When the end of the week came he gave me fifty dollars. I was still well pleased. I went home for the weekend and came back Sunday night to go to work again. Of course I gave my mother the fifty bucks.
One evening when we finished working he was out mowing the yard my little brother thought it was o.k. to be hitting me with some rope. I would walk away and tell him to leave me alone. I made no attempt to hit the little brat back but I wasn't going to stand there and take his crap. Bud (he's no father to me) got off the mower and grabbed me by the arm and said why are you walking away from him he's just trying to play if you want to be around me then you have to be good to him. Like it was such a privilege to be around this man. At the end of the second week I only got 20 bucks his woman (they never married) said it was because I had given the 50 to my mother. Well of course I did she raised me and she has it really hard. I called my mother and had her to come and get me. I was ticked off. But I still was determined to try and have a relationship with him. I just wasn't going to work for him any more. The first thing I did was take a bath. At Bud's they actually all used the same bath water even though Bud was filthy from working it was so gross you can't even imagine! Still I would go back to Bud's trying to have a father and though unsuccessful it would lead to the greatest event in my whole life and I would have a Father the best father anyone could ever have and I would have an uncle that was kind of like a father to me.

Meeting my father

Needless to say if I haven't already, I hated Eubank I hated that trailor, I hated my mother and I just basically hated my life in general. I was completely miserable. My life was over or so I thought. I don't know how it came about but somehow my father came in to the picture for the first time in my life when I was 15 I had never been around my father for more than a few minutes at a time when we saw him out in public. I knew very little about my father other than he used to drink and hit my mother, he was illiterate, he lived in Tateville (which is like all the things you have heard about Eastern Kentucky), he was trash according to my mother, he left with the babysitter when I was 3 and I knew what he looked like and that was pretty much it. Oh yeah I knew no matter what my mother said she was still crazy about him. I knew this because she not only talked about him daily but heaven forbid she see him on the highway cause this woman who drove between 30 and 40 mile an hour would go 60 or 70 to just see him closer. And I also knew I was to blame for him leaving.
Again I don't know how it came about probably just a chance meeting of some kind in public. but at 15 I went to stay with my father for a couple of weeks in the summer. He was a truck driver and the first night we drove to Chattanooga with a load of saw dust. We drove all through the night to arrive about 5 in the morning. Now you must remember I had never worked before other than in the little restaurant where my mother worked. Well he worked me that day like a dog! I was told to get up on top of that trailor he had hauled that stuff in and take this big pole and start working the pole back and forth because that stuff had become stuck together so tightly that it wouldn't fall out. It took me till about noon and I thought several times I was going to fall down the hole and get killed because I really had no clue as to what I was doing. I must have done something right though becasue my father asked me to stay and help with his car hauler business. I was so proud that he wanted me around and that he had his own business so I eagerly agreed. But what I had gotten my self into would be both one of the greatest and one of the worst experiences in my life.

Sick Day

Hey everyone, today I am feeling under the weather and hopefully I will make a post later today, just wanted to keep you informed so you wouldn't think I had quit. I will try to make a new post daily. But I need to be able to think clearly and right now I am hopped up on cold medicine and I am more than a little goofy! Thank you all so much for reading my blog and be sure to check out the daily bible verse link.

Soon I will be adding pictures and videos and hopefull starting a new youtube channel!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone, I will be posting a new entry later possibly tomorrow, today is a little rough for me, you see my mother actually passed away 5 years ago today at 9:38 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. As you already know we were never close and you will soon learn some new tragic details to our relationship. Still she was my mother and while there wasn't any real healing to our relationship you still can't bear to lose a mother especially when you have no one else but your child.

I truly hope thought this is the best Christmas you and your loved ones have ever known!


Remember Jesus is the reason for the season

The next chapter

So at age 14 we moved again. I had just started 9th grade and my town had just built 2 new Junior High schools, Southern and Northern. All the cool kids went to Southern because in my town that is where all the subdivisions, stores and restaurants were. All the farmers kids went to Northern. I got to go to Southern for five days until I had to go to Northern, which I dreaded with a passion I had nothing in common with farm kids. even though I lived in a rural town my whole life I had never seen a pig or a goat or any thing other than cows when we drove by. It also didn't help matters that I thought I was smarter than all those dumb hick kids. But I made the best of it and all in all that part wasn't so bad.
The worst part was we now lived in Eubank right next to my aunt in another box! This trailor was a little better than the first at least it was a 12 foot wide home and we did get a window air unit so it wan't so hot in the summer, but in the winter I could actually see frost build up on the inside of the walls. I hated it I thought I was at the end of the world. I was treated worse than a dog now for sure because my aunt would just come over and they could both double team me. My mother was paying me back for standing up to her at the apartment. I really did begin to hate her.She took every oppurtunity to be cruel she could find. Daily she cursed me told me she hated me and that she wished I was never born and when I said anything back in response I was being unruly and here would come my aunt with an iron fist. Looking back I wonder if they were trying to punish me for what my father did?
There are two memories that stick out the most in my mind and that is once when my aunt came home from work and seen I had not gone to school she went out into the yard and got a 2 by 4 and whacked me across the back with it. Another time my mother and I was into it about something and her sister's son was there and he just picked me up and threw me across the room. It knocked the wind out of me and like always when she thought she would get in trouble for abuse she would scream oh oh and blow in my face, till I caught my breath.I just kept thinking to my self I will get a job and save up for college and when I graduate I would get out and never look back. But so many things were about to happen to me would I ever make it to college?

Back to a box

Yes, even though it was the projects and I was embarrassed by that because I went to school with what I called rich kids. I loved it, I had a decent home for the first time in my life, even if the neighborhood wasn't. We moved in the summer of my tenth year and as time went on my mother and I fought more and more. Mostly it was about me going outside to play. She would say I wasn't and I would say I was and away I would go. Of course I had to come back some time, that is if she didn't come and get me first, but either way when I did get back it was beating time. Well that went on for a little while but as I got bigger and my mother didn't (she was only 4 foot 11 inches) I decided I wasn't going to take it anymore, so I started fighting back, which at first shocked my mother but she quickly got over it. If things got real bad she would call in her sister who was meaner than she was. I could never stand up to her though because even though she was mean and cussed me black and blue she had bought me some of the nicest things I ever had and truth be told I respected her. She had raised my mother and she worked at the hospital and she had a new car and she had bought a new trailor and she paid her own way. My mother worked in a little dive making ice cream and sponged off everyone she could, so I really ddin't respect my mother and I couldn't stand to be around my aunt.
As the fighting grew worse my mother decided we had to move. My aunt had just bought some property way up in a little community called Eubank and moved her trailor up there. Eubank I thought was horrible. It is so far away from anything, at the apartment we were just minutes away from the mall and the skating rink and the swimming pool all the things I loved to do. Eubank had nothing and I knew my fun times were over if we moved up there. Not to mention living by my aunt ugh!Please God I prayed don't let this happen! I cried I pleaded I said everything I could. I told my mother if she cared anything for me at all she would not do this. I told her I would never speak to her again. Nothing mattered though she was determined to move. my aunt and uncle had bought her a little trailor a 12 by 48 and that's where we were headed back to a box. but what would be waiting for us when we got there?

Growing up in the projects

So at ten years old we moved into the projects, before that we had lived in a 500 square foot metal box,also known as a trailor. Where the pipes, and you froze in the winter, and the candles, and you melted in the summer. That old trailor was also at the end of a country road and there were no other children around it was so lonely for me. In the projects there were kids everywhere, of all ages. Since my mother was about the only person that worked in the whole place I was considered the rich kid even though I am sure my mother made less than many of those people drew each month. I loved the apartement it seemed so luxurious to me it was so much nicer than anything I had ever dreamed I could live in. I didn't really understand all the stigma of living in the projects, but I knew it was for poor people, but I didn't care I was living large.
Of course never getting to be around other children and now having all these kids around I wanted to make friends, my mother wouldn't hear of it though. She wanted me to have nothing to do with any of them. Looking back now I understand because they were all the products of dope fiends and harlots but I had no one else. Children need friends, for that matter grown ups need friends too. Everyone needs someone. For me that has been elusive my whole life so maybe that is why I understand the need for it more. Now of course not all the kids were gang members or strung out. There was some fairly decent kids and those were the ones that I wanted to hang out with I had no desire to hang out with the rough kids. Truth was I was scared of the rough kids. There was one guy in particular I was terrified of His name was well, I don't know what his real name was we all just called him Bubba. His family was the worst in the projects they were always fighting and drinking but everyone was too afraid to report them cause they had a lot of family there. Bubba was mean, he carried a knife with him everywhere he went and we all knew it.He scared us kids half to death. I was friends with his little cousin Jason who wasn't a bad kid he was like me too scared to do much. So Bubba kind of left me alone because of my friendship with his cousin, but that also meant if me and Jason was playing he would but in if he saw us. I hated when that happened because Bubba was a pervert, he would tell us all about his sexual encounters with the neighborhood skanks and he was always pulling his pants down and showing himself off which was very intimidating for kid under twelve!
All in all though I loved, absolutely loved living there. I was beginning to have somewhat of a life. I started getting to go to the pool and skating. I had some girlfriends and mom started buying me some nice clothes and I was becoming a teenager it seemed as though my life had finally turned a corner. I was happy for the first time in my young life. Even though me and mom fought on a daily basis and I was daily cussed and had begun to yell back and even grab my mother and push her to keep her from hitting me (I had just made up my mind that I wasn't going to take it anymore) I was still happy because after you go through that so much you just don't let it bother you anymore you just go numb to it all I guess. Little did I know though that my world was about to crash all around me.

The big move

So I quickly learned that no matter what I did I was never going to earn or have my mother's respect or love no matter what I did. I mean sometimes she might say the words I love you, but her actions spoke louder than her words. Parents listen up if you scream at your child, smack your child across the face, pull your childs hair or abuse your children in anyway while they will probably still love you, but they will feel as though you don't love them. Don't do it and if you have done it ask your child to forgive you and never do it again or else your child will pay for your mistake for the rest of their life by searching for love from people who will not give it. Anyway from that point on in school I would work just hard enough to prove to myself I could do it and then as soon as I knew I was capable of it I would back off never to achieve a level of success again. I guess I still do that today, it's usually not important to me to actually achieve something just important to me to know I could if I wanted to.
When I was 10 years old something miraculous happened at least it was miraculous to me. We moved to the projects, now I don't care if you are in a city of a million people or a city of 10,000 people like I was the projects are still the projects. Full of drugs and alcohol and loose women. Of course, I didn't know anything about that back then I just new I was going to have a brick apartment with an upstairs and my own big bedroom with a bath and a half but most of all I was going to have air conditioning! No longer would I get out of the tub and be wet with sweat almost immediately or come home and see the candles melted from the heat. I would also be warm in the winter for the first time in my life. But what was life going to really be like in the projects? Stay tuned to find out!

Respectability

So at the tender age of 6 I had a major awakening, and it was one that would leave me torn throughout my childhood. When you look around you, and poverty and ignorance is all you really see, it is an amazing thing to know or even think you are more than that, and so I would always struggle with that, that feeling of being less. I always felt I wasn't as good as others becaues they had more,or because their family acted better than mine did. It was like I wasn't as important as they were because of it. You know people do a real good job of bringing that home to you. Back then, people would treat you differently if you were poor. I think it was more prevalent back then, but I know it still exists today. People would look down, demean and just give no respect whatsoever to me because my parents were who they were. Of course my father didn't care, he wasn't even around, my mother she didn't care either. She let her family, or her people as she called them cuss and hit me and never once did she stand up for me. Strangers would make rude comments about and to me or scream for me to shut up or sit down and that was all somehow all o.k. when those same people would never dream of doing someone else's kid that way. No one that I can remember as a child ever showed me any respect. Not even teachers it's like because my parents weren't respectable in their eyes neither was I. This to though had some benefit to me because even at a young age I determined in my heart and spirit to always behave and act in a manner to gain respect and to this day I think I have done this so at least there's one thing I have followed through on in life.

What shapes us

You may wonder why I am including on this blog all these details about my childhood. I think it's impossible for you to understand the gravity of the current events without knowing the previous experiences. You see it's all the previous experiences combined in a person's life that shapes that person. It is all the events every one of them no matter how small or seemingly unimportant that mold you and make you into the person you have become today. Haven't ever had just those moments that you knew your life had been changed forever? Where in just the blink of an eye your whole world just completely changed. It is rare but it does happen. It could be something as simple as a just missed accident where you knew you were almost done for, or that moment when you realize you have been betrayed by a loved one, it could even be the moment you realize that you're stronger, smarter, better than people thought you were or even better still than you thought you were. That is why to grasp today you must always first grasp yesterday.

The inner me

The circumstances in my life all told me that I was to forever be trapped in this world of Hillbilly redneck stereotype but I knew better. When I first started school my mother told me I was going to have a hard time, that school would be too hard for me becaues my father was dumb and I was dumb to. She said he couldn't even read his own name and so I would never learn to read as well. That made me determined I had to learn to read! Then my mother would be proud of me if she only knew I was not like my father then and only then could she love me. When I started school I had no idea of how to count past 12 I didn't know a single letter of the alphabet or anything else for that matter. I couldn't tie my shoes or even and this is so embarassing but it's important for you to realize just how little anyone had paid any attetnion to me, you see I didn't even, oh goodness, I couldn't well let's just say I needed help when I used the bathroom. Back then I thought I was just stupid, now I know it's because no one took the time to show me or teach me anything. So when I got to school I was determined to do good and show her, but most importantly myself that I was somebody.
Back in those days kindergarten was really just babysitting but I did almost learn the whole alphabet. I remember though sitting in my desk yes a real desk in first grade thinking I had made it I was such a big boy now! The teacher told us there was some cards on a table over by the window that would help us to learn to read and that in our spare time we could work on them. That was it I just knew those cards would be the key to my learning to read. She said at the end of the year the top 3 people that had worked through the cards would get an award! Well I knew I would be one of the three. I was a man on a mission well at least a boy on a mission. By the end of the year I was on a third grade reading level and came in 2nd in the class. A boy named Mickey was first he beat me by just two cards I was so mad at him, didn't he know I was supposed to be first? Maybe though mom would still be proud and love me after all I was bringing home my ribbon and that proved I wasn't like my father right? But, when I got home nothing was different. In fact I was told something along the lines of if you so smart why are you so stupid. But it didn't matter, for the first time it didn't matter, because now I knew that her and her people as she called her family were wrong. I was somebody, I beat out all of those kids in my room and I was smarter than them. This is when I first started realizing that I was neither my mother or my father but that I was different and that I needed to be and could be and in fact was better than them.

being poor as a child

When you are poor as a child, man that's really hard. I can remember feeling so inferior as a child and thinking I wasn't even normal because of how poor we were. We were almost something like out of Coal Miners Daughter. I mean we didn't have a house or nothing it was strictly a trailor for us, until I turned 10 and we moved into the projects. No I grew up in a little 10 by 50 trailor that used fuel oil to heat with. That trailor was so cold we used to live in the front room and hang blankets over doorways. God help you if you had to go to the bathroom! The stigma and the shame of growing up poor isn't something you easily shake off when your grown. The embarrasment of free luches, food stamps, second hand clothes and just the knowledge of the fact that you have less than everyone else is enough to make it stick with you. I think that's why wealthy people who grew up poor flaunt their wealth so much. That leaves a hurt a hurt so deep you do what you can in a vain attempt to forget it. While it is a curse a part of it though is also a blessing because being poor makes you strong and it makes you smart cause you can't afford weakness and stupidity. Those two things really are a luxury and it's a luxury poor people long to have. Think about it we couldn't go out and get drunk and act foolish cause there was no money for such things. One of the biggest accomplishments a real poor person can make is to have the ability to be able to do a few stupid things.

tips on reading the blog

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childhood continued

That feeling of not being loved would follow me to this day. To give you some undrstanding of the current situations in my life I feel it necessary to include some things from my childhood, so that you know where I am coming from so to speak. My mother raised me by herself and except for the occasional odd boyfriend and they were odd it was just me and her. My mother worked in a small ice cream restaurant for a woman who had been her friend in their younger days. My mother only went ot the 8th grade but she could take any order and add it in her head figure the tax and give the customer the total. Of course she could then figure the change back also without the use of the register. Still because she didn't have a high school diploma she felt unworthy or incapable of getting a good job even many people in this area (Kentucky) bornin the 1940's got married young and didn't finish school. My mother thanks to my father I am sure had no self esteem. Well I am sure it wasn't all his fault I'm sure her mother didn't help much as she once had her committed. Mom worked hard in that little restaurant for even though she never made more thn 2.60 hour which menat she brought home 75 a week and this was in the 1980's you know prices were much the same now as they were then in fact many things are cheaper. So to say I grew up poor would be an understatement. Iknow what poverty feels like and when you experience poverty as a child it defines you. It says this is who you are. And you think you are doomed to be linked to it through life.

My childhood

As you can imagine a start like that is not something I am proud of. Since my father has had nothing (almost)to do with me I am estranged from that side of the family and growing up I was acutely aware of my mother's family hatred of my father for things he had done to my mother. He had not only physically, sexually and verbally abused her but had drunk up the rent money more than once, cheated on her, cut the vinyl top on her car and refused to contribute to the family income.In short he was trash and I was his son, so what did that make me? So as you can see I really didn't have anyone in my extended family. I certainly didn't have my father and even though he was so mean to my mother she loved him and blamed me for them not being together so she determined to make me pay for her disappointment. I guess she thought if she couldn't be happy then I shouldn't. Her abuse of me extreme and odd to say the least. While she didn't beat me black and blue I have had teeth knocked out of my head, hair pulled, cussed told she wished I would die and once she showed me her hemmoroids and told me I had caused them. So I was very aware of the fact that I was unloved during my childhood.

The beginning

Even though I was born in 1973 in the old Somerset hospital, my life truly began in early October 1994. That is when I first laid eyes and fell in love with the lady who would become my life I mean my wife well I guess I was somwhat right to begin with. Either way both births were full of trouble. In 1973 as it was told to me by mother who often told me she wished I had never been born I was brought into this world by a 30 year old woman who was not supposed to be able to have kids so the pain and trauma for her was not only heightened from a difficult childbirth but also by the fact that my drunk father didn't show up till the next day when he took one look at me and said that little sob is not mine. And so began my life and it set the course for a life full of not being wanted or loved by the people who were supposed to the most. This theme has continued my whole life. Not to say I have never known joy I have but those moments have been few and far between not to mention precious. So let the story begin.

Introduction

December,19th 2009
As I sit here on a Saturday night contemplating the events of my life. I am fearful. I am afraid to begin this journey. Most of my life has been disappointing to say the least. Nothing has ever came easy for me. My few accomplishments have been a fight and a struggle to achieve. Still I am optimistic for the first time in years. I have lost 35 pounds this year and even though I am still morbidly obese I have turned a corner in my soul and I am beginning to get some of me back along with my dreams. So here goes I really don't know how to get this blog going and getting read but I would appreciate any comments you the readers might bring and I thank you for reading this. I am hoping to someday get this story published I think as it unfolds you will see it truly is an amazing journey