I spent the first 13 years of my life in an extremely abusive household.  Abuse has many forms.  But for me it was gaslighting, narcissism and physical.  My mom left the house in my thirteenth year.  She told my step-dad she wasn’t coming back until I was gone.  When this happened I was serving the third month of grounded to my room life sentence.  This was in 1989 before the amenities that exist now.  There were no cell phones, computers, internet, and televisions.  The Super Nintendo was the newest thing on the but not in the Hill household where frugality was king.  I had a bed in my room and nada things to entertain myself.  It wasn’t until my brother, Larry, started smuggling me books I couldn’t really do anything but stare, and think.

Ronald James Hill was my stepfather.  I don’t know if it was his arrest a year previous for putting Larry and I in the hospital that made him so hateful toward us.  But the hate was real.  Ronald wasn’t allowed to hit us any more.  But he found other ways to make our lives a nightmare.  And he did just that.

On January 13, 1989, he entered my room informing I would be placed into Foster Care the next day.  Looking back I don’t know what my face showed but I was exalted on the inside.  That would be the end of my sentence.  I would be set free.  The day before I had seen a movie in my extra-curricular Friendship Group about a kid who had to find meaning in life after losing his father.  I personally envied the kid.

That being said, my eyes must have showed a gleam of satisfaction because Ronald shook his head and told me he hoped I was happy before slamming my door whilst storming out.

I didn’t mind much that my mom couldn’t put up with my behaviour anymore.  There was literally no way to explain my irrational psychology with rational words.  I’d accepted that I was the problem.  I accepted my sensory issues and abject paranoia as normalcy and a cross I had to bear for bad behaviour.

I was in Foster Care a year before I ended up in a Mental Health Facility for adolescents called B’Nai B’rith Cottage.   Two years later I was in jail.  After three years in jail at the tender age of 19 I was out.  Only I wasn’t free.  Thankfully a group home geared for teenagers too old for Children’s Aid opened up coinciding with my release.  I was going to be a guinea pig.

I stayed in Brennan House until I was 21.  I got kicked out for refusing to go to school.  School was pointless.  I already got my real education growing up in the system.  Nonetheless, I was out on my ear with precisely zero fucking life skills.  These days I’m thinking I should have opted for school.

Growing up the way I did, taught me how to manipulate the system in the most destructive self-serving way possible.  It made me a psychological chess player.  It was about fucking survival, not living.  I did what the fuck ever I had to do to survive.  There were casualties.  There was trauma.  Romantically I jumped from sinking ship to sinking ship.  Love lasted forever in theory, but not application.

Only love did last.  It just evolves sometimes.  And it makes me sad.

The saddest thing was thinking my mother left home because I was driving her insane.  But I realize today she wanted me gone for my protection.  This was a time that a mother with give kids couldn’t survive on their own.  And I’m not noble.  This wasn’t something that dawned on me one day.  It was something she explained to me on the phone before she died.  It was our last conversation.

My little brother Larry died a year before her on the exact day.  I don’t believe in fate.  I don’t believe in psychics.  I don’t believe in astrology or anything that I can’t see and touch.  I don’t believe in the laws of attraction or the other things weak-minded people believe because reality is just too damn terrifying.

I believe in mental illness.  I don’t ever admonish people who want to decide for themselves what the lights in the sky are.  People are allowed to have their own faith and interpretations of the fascinating fucking thing called life.

But I believe this.  Even with all the stupid bullshit I went through, I believe in mental illness.  I believe in autism.  I believe that the only reason I see and hear things, is because they’re things only I was meant to see and hear.

I believe that the shit in my life I went through is all on me.  Decisions were made by me.  But I also believe that you can decide you want to do better.  It’s not in my nature to be kind, or compassionate.  It’s something I literally choose.  And I don’t do it because everything will work out better for me.  I do it because I’ve seen the divine results of the majesty you feel when employing it.   Being a deplorable self-serving cumstain for 40 years was not because I was mentally ill, or abused.  It was me dealing with a terrifying world I thought was normal.  And at 50, I see that being a good person isn’t something you are, it’s something you do.  We all have a fucking choice to make.

I believe these words also help people, or at the very least entertain them.

I’m about five minutes from living on the street.  But I’ll do it.  There is nowhere for me in the world.  I’m broken.  I’m making good decisions now but I’m still paying for a lifetime of obnoxious behaviour.  I know damn fucking well people out there have it worse than me that can keep it together to be a good parent, friend, or whatever the fuck else.  Those people inspire me.  Those are the noble ones, not the person who lived a vile life and decided to make a creative writing project about it.

The world didn’t make me a bastard.  I chose to be a bastard to deal with a world full of beauty and opportunity.  I took the easy way out.  One could argue I wasn’t shown a better way.  I didn’t get opportunities but I didn’t pave a way to create them either.  The notion of leaving my dark hole to  deal with life scares the absolute shit out of me.  I don’t want to be in love.  I don’t want to spend time with people.  I just really want to die alone.  It’s literally what I deserve.  I don’t deserve sympathy or compassion but you best believe I’m fucking thankful for it.  I’m not a liar either and I’m thankful for that.

Another thing I believe in?  I believe in humanity.  I believe in good and that good will always prevail.  I’ve bore witness to it.

Going forward I’m going to be as good as I can.  There are ways I can be the absolute best version of myself by not being destructive.  I really need to believe that.  Accountability is only a launching pad.  I rant because I love to write.  But it’s not something I can just sit down and do.  It has to be organic.

Every single one of us have the power to build better community.  I believe that from the bottom of my heart and darkest ethereal of my soul.

I believe.