The beginning

Well, when a man loves a woman...

Just kidding.

My story begins just shy of 33 years ago in a small town in upstate New York called Goshen. I was a well behaved baby, according to my mother. I didn't cry much, I went to sleep and slept through the night fairly quickly. My mother and father doted on me, I had a puppy Siberian Husky named Meesha who was born only weeks before me, and life was good, for now. Very soon we began moving around a bit, then a lot. We started moving at least once a year, by the time I was 5, I had been to three kindergartens. This was also the point where I was introduced to my first video game system, the NES! I spent a lot of time playing games on it.

School to school, apartment to apartment, and to me it seemed mostly normal. I hadn't grown very attached to people because inevitably I'd be moving away anyway. We moved mostly around that upstate area known as Orange County, but my grandparents and aunts and uncles all lived in Virginia. So at times we'd even move down to them when we needed help. My father and I bonded by occasionally playing the NES together, one particular game being an army game where you both ride jeeps beating up bad guys with mounted guns called "Jackal."

By age 8 I had officially moved every single year. I hadn't stayed in a place long enough to meet any of the kids I knew in the next grade. By this point I had developed a bit of an introverted attitude. Not being attached to people meant having to find ways to be happy not involving other people. I began playing more games, having the new SNES and Sega Genesis at this point. My game collections increased as my detachment from people did as well.

As my gaming habits picked up, my anti-social tendencies did as well, and I found myself acting different and strange around people. I only ever had an interest in games and talking about games. Everything I had an interest with revolved around them. I didn't play or like sports. We didn't have much money so school trips were normally not an option for me as well, so I'd spend all that time... what else? Playing more games.

As it turned out, and I found this out many years later, the reason for our constant moving was because my father was not able to hold a job. He had a problem with drugs alcohol and stealing.

As an 8 year old child I had little idea of what was happening around me, but as I got a little older I started remembering things here and there that, at the time, were perfectly normal for me. My mother worked nights at a rental agency in an airport while my father worked days at whatever job he had at the time. They'd trade off so I had a parent home at all times, since daycare was far too expensive. On nights when my father wasn't drunk on the couch watching Hockey, he'd sometimes take a trip to the "store" in which I was not allowed to answer the phone at all, even for my mother. Sometimes he'd even bring home a "friend," typically a woman, and disappear for a while.

On one night, and this night will forever be ingrained in my mind, my father left for about an hour at this point or so, and the phone rang. I had been quietly playing games as always, so without thinking I walked over and answered it. The phone was my mother calling to ask my father a question. She asked where he was and I simply told her I didn't know. She came racing home, and arrived before he did. I can recall him pulling in and sitting in his car for a bit. A silver Z28 Camaro, black leather interior, and what I thought at the time was the coolest car ever.

Once he came in, I remember them fighting, arguing, calling each other horrible names and screaming. When my father was really really angry he wouldn't hurt me or my mother, but he did take it out on Meesha. I remember her yelping as he chased her down the stairs throwing a bucket at her.

The next few nights were awkward. And tense. And I knew it. The last night of this tension that I truly remember was my mother having made dinner. I can't recall what was said, but it set off my father who slammed the plate of food against the wall. Fighting started again.

A lot of my childhood I have blocked out. I can't recall much of what happened when I was younger, it comes in spurts of important events. The next one I recall was moving day. I hadn't been told much of anything that was going on. We were packing as usual, and packed up a moving truck, as usual. Only this time My mother was driving the truck and I was going to join her. My father stayed at the front door with Meesha. He gave me a hug and a kiss goodbye. And we were off. I didn't know that my mother and father were getting a divorce. I also didn't know I was moving to Virginia again, an 8 hour trip from my father. I also didn't know why.

But here I was, an 8 year old boy, a little weird, a little anti-social, being led around, not sure of myself or what was happening, but being so desensitized to it all that I didn't have much of a feeling towards anything. Or at least that's what it seemed like at the time.

I'll end this fragment here, and continue down the line. I have many thoughts on the times ahead for me.