Getting into trouble started with small things – getting caught smoking cigarettes, stealing cigarettes from my parents. Soon stealing became a recreational activity: A group of friends and I would have competitions to see who could steal the most chocolate bars from the corner store, for example. We all had the liners inside our coats ripped so we could fill the inside with stuff and not have it fall out as it sometimes would if you simply shoved in inside your zipped up jacket. The liner became one big pocket and we would ram as much into it as we could. I was always scared to death and my nervousness was hard to mask while my heart was pounding and adrenaline was coursing through me. I was not afraid of police or what the store owner may do it he caught me. Hell no – that was small stuff. It was what my father would do if I got caught that I feared. But the adrenaline became my early drug – and I couldn’t get enough of it.

But I said I would try to stay on track here… so let’s step back a little to one of my earliest memories.

I woke in the middle of the night to hear my mother screaming and calling my name. I sat up in bed, instantly shaking and my pulse racing. I jumped out of bed and ran into my parents bedroom, my fear hitting new levels as I saw what was happening; My father with his hands around my mother’s throat, screaming like an enraged animal as he sat astride her, choking her with both hands. Terrified as I had never been before in my short life, I ran into the room and jumped on my father’s back, hitting him as hard as  I could with my small fists, hammering on his back and his head, pulling his hair, screaming at him to stop but to no avail. He continued shrieking at my mother, thrashing her up and down on the bed, both hands locked around her throat, lost in the fuery that I had seen him in so many times before and I thought that I was watching my mother die. I screamed and hit him again and again, like a mosquito on the back of a bear. Tears streamed down my face, partially blinding me. I felt powerless, terrified, angry.

“Call the police!” my mother screamed. I ran to the phone in the kitchen but in my hysteria I couldn’t think, didn’t know how to find the number, didn’t think to call the operator. All I could think of was that my mother was going to be killed.

I ran back to the bedroom blinded by tears and screamed “I can’t find the number!” My mother responded “Call someone, call anyone!” I raced back to the kitchen and called my uncle who lived just up the road. By the time he arrived my mother had managed to get away from my father and had run out of the house. I don’t remember what exactly happened next, what went on when my uncle arrived, but I remember the fear. Mom got out – that was good – but I was still there…

I don’t know how old I was when this took place. I want to say ten years old, and that may be correct, but my childhood is a blur that I can’t seem to look at long enough to sort out. When I try I get a large blank, with flashes on incidents such as this one. I know there were also good times, but my memory seems to have chosen to disregard them, to delete them along with much of my childhood, leaving only bits and pieces of the terror that I grew up in.

I always carried a ball of confusion and fear around inside me. Over the years that ball has changed it’s shape but something quite similar is still there. Nervous tension or anxiety maybe. Whatever it is I have always felt it, except for one brief period of time that comes later. Much later.

I  was always in trouble. In school I had detentions on a regular basis, then went on to “The Strap” and suspensions and special programs of disciplinary measures that were dreamt up by guidance counsellors and principles when their normal approach failed to bring any improvement in my behavior. Apparently when I was in kindergarten or grade one it was suggested that I be medicated, which my mother vehemently refused to consider. She tells me I nearly failed grade one and complained that I was bored.

When in conflict with a teacher I had to take it to the limit. If a teacher warned “If I see you do that again you’ll be going to the principle’s office”, then I would have to do it again. I hated being told what to do, hated authority, and would do exactly opposite of what I was supposed to do. Even at times when I wanted to keep my mouth shut before I got kicked out of class, suspended, or whatever, I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it. I could not back down even when it made no sense not to. I had to fight authority. Hell, I sure couldn’t fight it at home!

Homework was hell. I simply didn’t want to do it, ever. My parents would find out that I hadn’t been doing it and of course I would get in trouble for it. I remember my father taking on the job of tutor – making me do questions and math problems with such force that I was left unable to think. I would begin crying as he screamed “Use your head! Think!” He would poke my head with his big fingers saying “That’s your problem, you just don’t think!” He screamed this line often when he was ‘helping’ me do my homework and also when I got into trouble.

I developed the ability to blank out – totally drift off and escape the situation I was in. I would not do it on purpose – it would just happen and it would throw my father into a rage. He would be yelling at me and I would just drift off, my eyes going out of focus, becoming totally oblivious to what was being said, no matter if they words were being screamed into my face or not. I think sometimes I just went fishing…

The principle once asked me “Where do you go when you drift off like that?” How could I explain something that I didn’t understand myself? It just happened. I’d be thinking about a dozen things or seemingly nothing. I was remembering the past or daydreaming of the future. I wasn’t quite sure myself. Definitely couldn’t explain it to someone else. One thing I surely wasn’t thinking about was the situation I was presently in.

Whenever I was asked about it I would just shrug or say ‘I don’t know.’ When my father was involved it would get intense with him screaming at me to “Snap out of it!” and listen to him. I couldn’t help it – I would drift away again without even realizing it.