Inaniel
Active member
I feel melancholic today; or is it nostalgic? The two are intertwined in my mind.
I often think about how I got where I am today. And how my life would look if I made slightly better decisions, or slightly worse decisions, if I were a little luckier, or a little less…
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t. You’re right.”
I wrote that on the edge of a bookshelf above my desk when I was 20 years old. It is a quote from Henry Ford; a man I had never sought inspiration from before. However, when I reflect on my life, that moment in my life, when I wanted so much for that quote to be true; it changed my life.
At 18 I found myself a highschool drop-out of two years. I was emotionally erratic, insecure, and volatile. Jigi witnessed it, my downward spiral into depression, sex addiction, and drugs… I smoked marijuana for the first time at 14, lost my at virginity at 15, dropped acid for the first time at 16, I was violent, and self-mutilating… I bear scars on my arms 20 years later, and they still look like it happened a month ago. Skin has a long memory, self-harm is so brutal.
I grew up in a southwestern town in New Mexico, a border town. In the late 90s Mexican pharmacies didn’t know the gold mine they sat upon. Blister packs of xanax for a few dollars, large vials of ketamine for $15. It was like the dollar store for drugs. At the border crossing they never searched Jigi, however the drugs were safely stowed in a vibrator inserted into her vagina, just in case…
The name of this forum is “Life stories and blogs”; right about now I am thinking this is not the type of story they had in mind… I usually lean-in to this feeling and avoid sharing my life with people, but I am trying something different today.
I grew up in a Christian family, Nazarene… My father is an orphan and was sexually abused, my mother also came from an abusive household but never talks about it. One of my earliest memories was at 4yrs of age, my cousin and I were playing with matches and burnt the rug in the laundry room. My father taught us a lesson by lighting a match and burning it out on each of our arms. It was painful and we still have matching scars… Huh.. “matching” scars.. heh.
I spent summers on my grandparents’ farm. They were simple people, biblical. I was always at odds with their ideology. But I loved the farm. Fields as far as you could see. I could walk out to utter and complete solitude, I might be obliged to say hi to a cow, If I felt like it.. My imagination ran wild on the farm, always playing, and climbing, and riding. I also got into a lot of trouble, and the beatings at the hand of my grandfather were much more severe than what I got at home. I did not care though, he could beat me with his belt until he was blue in the face, I still was not buying what he was selling.
As a kid I had a love for animals, but I always felt like they hated animals at the farm. The echoing pain of a calf crying out as its branded, decapitating chickens... As a child I found these things disturbing. The first time my grandfather killed a rattlesnake in front of me I told him it was wrong to do that. To which he replied “serpents are the root of all evil and god expects us to kill them”… I loved snakes, and lizards, and spiders... Like I said, I was never buying what he was selling.
I think I was around 10 yrs old, my cousin and I liked to scare the sheep off the feed trailer. The feed trailer was a large dual axle unit with rebar welded on each of the sides forming a V shape in the middle, this cradled the round baled hay. Sheep would climb up on top of the hay to feed, and we thought it funny to watch them scatter in every direction as we snuck up to scare them. This exercise didn’t end well, a sheep caught a piece of sharp rebar after leaping off the top of a hay bale, ripping the belly open end to end and spilling the organs. The poor thing was not dead, and the cry was dreadful. We could hear it echoing throughout the whole farm as we walked back to the house to tell my grandfather what we had done…
I didn’t get a beating that day. Instead, my grandfather placed a pistol in my hand and told me to clean up my mess… Perhaps he thought that was worse than a beating, perhaps it was. I stared down at the pistol in my hands the entire journey back to the pasture. I remember it vividly, so well I can identify the firearm from memory, a 1960s vintage Colt Trooper 357 revolver, first generation. What a fitting place to encounter such a firearm… It took two shots because I closed my eyes. It remains one of the most vivid lessons about consequences that I carry from childhood...
I often think about how I got where I am today. And how my life would look if I made slightly better decisions, or slightly worse decisions, if I were a little luckier, or a little less…
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t. You’re right.”
I wrote that on the edge of a bookshelf above my desk when I was 20 years old. It is a quote from Henry Ford; a man I had never sought inspiration from before. However, when I reflect on my life, that moment in my life, when I wanted so much for that quote to be true; it changed my life.
At 18 I found myself a highschool drop-out of two years. I was emotionally erratic, insecure, and volatile. Jigi witnessed it, my downward spiral into depression, sex addiction, and drugs… I smoked marijuana for the first time at 14, lost my at virginity at 15, dropped acid for the first time at 16, I was violent, and self-mutilating… I bear scars on my arms 20 years later, and they still look like it happened a month ago. Skin has a long memory, self-harm is so brutal.
I grew up in a southwestern town in New Mexico, a border town. In the late 90s Mexican pharmacies didn’t know the gold mine they sat upon. Blister packs of xanax for a few dollars, large vials of ketamine for $15. It was like the dollar store for drugs. At the border crossing they never searched Jigi, however the drugs were safely stowed in a vibrator inserted into her vagina, just in case…
The name of this forum is “Life stories and blogs”; right about now I am thinking this is not the type of story they had in mind… I usually lean-in to this feeling and avoid sharing my life with people, but I am trying something different today.
I grew up in a Christian family, Nazarene… My father is an orphan and was sexually abused, my mother also came from an abusive household but never talks about it. One of my earliest memories was at 4yrs of age, my cousin and I were playing with matches and burnt the rug in the laundry room. My father taught us a lesson by lighting a match and burning it out on each of our arms. It was painful and we still have matching scars… Huh.. “matching” scars.. heh.
I spent summers on my grandparents’ farm. They were simple people, biblical. I was always at odds with their ideology. But I loved the farm. Fields as far as you could see. I could walk out to utter and complete solitude, I might be obliged to say hi to a cow, If I felt like it.. My imagination ran wild on the farm, always playing, and climbing, and riding. I also got into a lot of trouble, and the beatings at the hand of my grandfather were much more severe than what I got at home. I did not care though, he could beat me with his belt until he was blue in the face, I still was not buying what he was selling.
As a kid I had a love for animals, but I always felt like they hated animals at the farm. The echoing pain of a calf crying out as its branded, decapitating chickens... As a child I found these things disturbing. The first time my grandfather killed a rattlesnake in front of me I told him it was wrong to do that. To which he replied “serpents are the root of all evil and god expects us to kill them”… I loved snakes, and lizards, and spiders... Like I said, I was never buying what he was selling.
I think I was around 10 yrs old, my cousin and I liked to scare the sheep off the feed trailer. The feed trailer was a large dual axle unit with rebar welded on each of the sides forming a V shape in the middle, this cradled the round baled hay. Sheep would climb up on top of the hay to feed, and we thought it funny to watch them scatter in every direction as we snuck up to scare them. This exercise didn’t end well, a sheep caught a piece of sharp rebar after leaping off the top of a hay bale, ripping the belly open end to end and spilling the organs. The poor thing was not dead, and the cry was dreadful. We could hear it echoing throughout the whole farm as we walked back to the house to tell my grandfather what we had done…
I didn’t get a beating that day. Instead, my grandfather placed a pistol in my hand and told me to clean up my mess… Perhaps he thought that was worse than a beating, perhaps it was. I stared down at the pistol in my hands the entire journey back to the pasture. I remember it vividly, so well I can identify the firearm from memory, a 1960s vintage Colt Trooper 357 revolver, first generation. What a fitting place to encounter such a firearm… It took two shots because I closed my eyes. It remains one of the most vivid lessons about consequences that I carry from childhood...