LOOK OVER THERE

The first night my father took me with him on the streets, I was in 3rd grade. I was laying upstairs with my cousin Scott in his twin size bed and we could hear my dad and my Unce K downstairs screaming at one another. He was yelling at my dad for stealing some of his tools, and selling them for “drug money”.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my dad had been on crack for about a year and a half. On again, off again, for his whole life, really. But, this time, it had started toward the beginning of my 2nd grade school year. He started just using it occasionally, but eventually it was every day. Every night. The gradual decline of having a home, though not in a good neighborhood, to having nothing, and moving in with my Uncle and two of my cousins, was a part of it that I wasn’t old enough to see at the time. I didn’t understand the struggle we were going through, or why.

My dad was so good at pretending that everything was okay. A trait I later picked up, and would pick up and throw away; on and off again, for the rest of my life. Everythings fine. Everythings okay.

LOOK OVER THERE.

He became so good at hiding his struggle, that it taught me to hide mine. Not even necessarily to hide it, but to disguise it.

We weren’t living with my uncle because my dad was a crackhead. We were living with my uncle so that I could be closer to my school.We didn’t only shop for clothes at the Salvation Army because he was on drugs and didn’t have the money left to buy things that I needed. All my clothes were from the Salvation Army because that’s the BEST store for cool T shirts. The BEST, he said. It wasn’t that my dad didn’t have friends because he was never taught how to, or because he was ashamed of the life he’d built for us. It was because he didn’t have time. He was just that busy.

I learned how to do this too.

I don’t push people away because I’ve never really had a real relationship with anyone in my whole childhood. I push them away cuz I just don’t like them. Or I just don’t like people getting too close.

I don’t struggle with making friends because I never had a stable enough life to have friends, but because I dont like bothering people. Or I just dont mesh well with them. It’s not me. It’s them. It’s not.

IT is.

I learned how to make excuses for my mistakes and my shortcomings. How to use them as a crutch to KEEP using them. It’s probably the only lesson he ever really taught me. How to be anything but yourself. Or myself, anyway.

As my cousin and I laid upstairs listening to my uncle tell him he had to leave, we found ways to drown the argument out. Mostly just by asking each other questions. I asked my cousin who he’d rather die first, my grandma or my grandpa. We both agreed grandpa. (and 4 years later, my grandma died first) and he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

He wanted to be a professional football player, and I said, I want to be alive. He said, you will be.And I said, I don’t think so. If I live to be 30, I’ll be happy.

I was nine.

My dad didn’t encourage me to be anyone. Or anything. Not anything substantial. My dad didn’t really encourage me, period. Not because he didnt want me to be rich, or successful, or married to a nice woman. But, because he was always told he was a failure growing up. That’s all he ever expected to be. And, that’s all he knew how to be. At least for most of his life. And he didn’t know how to teach me to be anything else. He didn’t really know how to teach me anything.

I grew up not wanting to be anything, but knowing what I DIDNT want to be. Like him. Like anyone in my family. I didn’t have anyone to look up to, or model myself after, just relatives to hope I didn’t turn out like. How to model myself NOT to be like someone. Uncle D talks to himself. DONT wanna be like him. Aunt B can’t live without someone to support her, DONT wanna be like her. Uncle T is abusive, nope. Not him either.

My dad came upstairs, interupting our conversation and asked me if I wanted to stay at my uncles house, or come with him. But that if I stayed, He didn’t know how long it would be til I saw him again. As a nine year old, the choice was easy.

Sometime after 11pm, in late June, we left. We didn’t have a car. We didn’t have anywhere to go. And I didn’t ask as we were walking, where we were going, or how far away it was. Even then, I knew that he didn’t know.

We walked in the dark for what felt like hours, but I know it wasn’t.

I remember being so scared that I reached for his hand to hold onto, and instead he pulled it away. And moved ahead of me by about 8 feet. So I lurked behind him, in the darkness, trying to catch up, trying to feel safe, trying to stop crying.

I walked too slow, he’d later say during our time on the streets. I still walk too slow. And I absolutely hate it when someone I’m with walks ahead of me. But, I’ll do it to them without even noticing.

We eventually stopped at a park. It’s actually near where I live now. We slept on a bench there for a bit. Then we moved to the top level of this jungle gym type wooden structure, that had one open end of different sized logs made of wood that were used to climb to the top if you were a kid that liked climbing. In the middle of the night or very verye arly morning, I rolled off it in my sleep, hitting my back on every damn log on the way down. I was in pain for days. My back bruised terribly. But, I’d be alright he said. I needed to toughen up anyway.

I think a nearby neighbor must have heard me screaming from the pain, because a while later the cops came through the park with flashlights. My dad and I literally hid inside a random big bush to avoid being seen. And he hushed me repeatedly, demanding that I not make any noise, even though my back felt like it was broken.

And later, after the police search ended and they left, my dad told me no matter what I did, do not come out of that bush. If the cops found me in there, we’d go to jail. And he left me there.

I don’t know where he went for sure. I have no idea how long he was gone. But I cried the fear right out of myself.

Eventually he came back. Got me out of the bushes, and we walked further and further to an apartment complex off Alexis Road. It was on this walk that I noticed his demeanor was much different. Much more talkative. Much more paranoid. He was sweaty, and he stunk. He smelled like melted plastic mixed with burnt hair and car exhaust. A smell I’d grow quite used to. His eyes were wide as a motherfucker. And bloodshot. But, I didn’t really understand it all at the time. I could tell by the way he drug his tongue across his gumline over and over and over again, that he wanted something. Badly. But I was just too young to understand that he was craving another hit of his addiction.

We slept inside of an unlocked utility closet the rest of the wee hours. We shared space with a vacuum, a broom and dustpan, an old mop, and one of those industrial looking mop buckets on wheels that has that extra space for you to place the mop in, to squeeze the water out of it before using it. It was green. Maybe it was yellow. I’m colorblind. Fuck it.

We got busted in the early hours of the morning by the cleaning person, I think. Maybe it was a tenant. I’m not sure. They shoo’d us out of the closet, and if that isn’t a metaphor, or some foreshadowing for later in life, I don’t know what is.

That began our several days of homelessness, and several weeks of living with random people, in random places. Many things happened to me, and around me in this time. It truly changed my life. And not for the good.

It was a few years later, when I was finally able to answer the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up”.

I wanted to be a writer. Not because I read alot, or because I had a vivid imagination. But because I grew up knowing I was never going to be anyone. I was never going to go anywhere. So, if I could create my own world, I could be whatever I wanted. I could build a home for me and my father.

I could create a world where we had a perfect relationship. A perfect life. One where I didn’t have to wonder if I was loved, or even liked. One where we didn’t have to share a floor, let alone a bedroom, let alone a bed. One where we were safe. And happy. And most of all, where we didn’t have to pretend anymore. I could just make it up. And we could live there.

I could come up with it all, in my own little head, and help in my own little way. I could escape the nightmare I lived in, to a place where all my fears and all my issues that were popping up left and right, simply…did. not. exist.

It didn’t even have to be luxurious or lavish. Literally I just wanted to come up with a home. A place of ours. A place to belong to.

And sometimes looking back, I realize…

I spent too much time trying to create it in my head, that as an adult, I forgot to create it in real life. I grew up so used to trying to escape the terrible or traumatic things I was faced with, that I lived in whatever world I created for myself in my own mind.

I pretended, just like my dad pretended that things were better than they were. And I’ve been juggling that scenario of real life versus some sort of fantasy inspired safety net for my entire life since.

I look back at my life right now. And I wonder how much better off I’d have been if I’d have just stayed there, that first night. That first night that was the beginning of alot of the most traumatizing experiences in my life. (but, not all, or the worst!) And if I’d only been less afraid to be without my father, in that moment..It all might have been different.

I wonder if I’d not have wasted so much of my life trying to fix something inside myself, that I’m not responsible for breaking in the first place if maybe I wouldn’t feel like I’m 22. Maybe my mindset would be that of my actual age. Not the kid, just trying to find a make believe world to fit into.

Looking for someone to shelter my fears. Extinguish my insecurities. Calm my hysterics.

I search for that in every friendship and relationship that I value.

To trust in me, and understand why it’s so hard for me to trust in them. Because trust is a bridge that you build, to get you from one place to the next with another person. But, for so long I wasn’t in a place long enough to build anything. And when you’re only used to tearing down the remnants of an unfinished bridge as you move along, you never really get great building them in the first place, let alone maintaining them.

And now, in my adult life, I only gravitate towards those relationships (friend and otherwise) that can grab my hand, and lead me through the darkness.

To just.. walk with me, not ahead of me.