Band of Brothers

              I struggle to recall at what point I met Tyler, but it must have been sometime after first grade. There were other neighborhood children I tried to befriend, but I recall most of these friendships being arranged by my grandparents through the local ward (that’s a church for those not in the know).  I may have played He-man, Go-bots, Transformers or Star Wars with these acquaintances, but as soon as another neighborhood child entered in the play time, I was quickly the butt of the joke. But with Tyler and his family, I felt more accepted.

                Perhaps it was due to him being one of the few non-Mormon kids in the neighborhood, but we seemed to click fairly quickly. Our shared social deformities brought kinship, either through hours of play focused on Construx building sets, GI Joe adventures or our obsession with monsters of all kinds. We created entire worlds we played in using snippets of Captain Power, Greek mythology and the Monster Manual from his older brother’s Advanced Dungeon and Dragons Books. While we didn't always get along, I placed him among one of my best friends.

                I was better suited to weather the onslaught of criticism, teasing and loneliness with him on my side. We fought neighborhood bullies together, mocked the popular kids, and haphazardly damaged his parent’s home during sleepovers. His older brother introduced us to role-playing at the ages of eight and seven. Soon we were telling elaborate back stories of our characters, either through repeated play-throughs of Castlevania or sketched murals on sheets of butcher paper.

                Unfortunately, I still struggled with any sense of rejection. Sometimes I would storm home due to feeling taunted regardless of reality. I would vow to never spend time with him if I felt I was competing for his attention with other neighborhood kids.

In other words, I was a jealous, whiny little bitch.

Due to the year difference in our ages, I eventually reached out and began to befriend another boy. Taylor was also a social outcast of sorts. Initially, I had vowed to fight him after an altercation during a basketball game. After some cooling off, I realized I had been the instigator and the bully in the situation and apologized when he arrived to defend his honor after school. In a show of humility, I apologized and asked if he would rather hang out at a later time. He agreed and thirty years later, he remains my closet friend.

Through our shared interest in video games, role playing games and our jealousy of the popular kids, Taylor, Tyler and I banded together.  These friends were my brothers and through them, other brothers joined my family. Had I not found these two, I fear how I would have turned out with my intense feelings of rejection and anger. Whether they are aware of it or not, these men saved not just my sanity but likely my life.  

Odd Child Out

                When I was three years of age, I was dropped off at my grandparents’ home along with my mother by a father who I would not see for the next decade. He soon would become a ghost who haunted my upbringing through photographs, rare Christmas gifts and postcards showing the landmarks of Sacramento. Usually when I was playing an imaginative game involving my Star Wars figures or watching a fantasy movie, my mother would comment that my father enjoyed science fiction and fantasy. Soon it became a conduit for trying to understand a man I never knew.

               

 My grandfather did the best he could having an energetic motor-mouthed child in his home. He had survived World War II and survived four children who questionably became adults that likely tested his sanity. He had little tolerance for my wiggling when at the dinner table and did not want to see evidence of my playtime. He no doubt loved me though but he struggled to connect with a child and see the world through my eyes. He taught me to ride a bike in a single day and refused to use training wheels. He was no nonsense but full of love. He just scared the hell out of me.

                My grandmother took on the primary role of my upbringing even though my mother resided in the same home. She was the typical product of a post WWII America which a strong Latter-Day Saint background. Many early mornings were spent lying in the bed next to my “granny” watching Robotech, Transformers or GI Joe after my grandfather had left for work. She fostered my imagination and encouraged me to enjoy my early childhood.

This environment was a bedrock for a child who could not understand why his parents were separated and did not understand why he did not have the same family make-up as his best friend a few houses down. Unfortunately, this bedrock was repeatedly disrupted every Sunday when my grandparents to me to church.

My mother had stopped attending LDS services long before I was born. She had been a hard partying teen and struggled to let go of that aspect of her during her twenties. Part of me wonders if that my attendance in church activities was the payment for allowing her and myself to live with my grandparents. Once I was left in the “primary school,” I was separated from the few friends I had in the neighborhood and was left in a class with vicious children who wanted nothing more than to exert their dominance on a younger child.

          I need to step back for a brief moment to explain the setup of the “classes” of the primary school. The children were separated by groups based on the calander year they were born in. So all the children who were born in 1977 were in the same class and all of the children born in 1978 were in a different class. My best friend was born in 1978 and due to this he was in a separate class. I doubt in any other situation it would have been an issue for me except that my birthday is December  31^st. It was a guarantee I would always be the youngest child in any church activity separated by age groups.

          I’m not sure when the teasing began, but it must have been fairly early. I was reminded frequently that my mother did not attend church like their mothers. I was reminded she was a smoker and smoking was bad. I was reminded that I did not have a father like they had. Finally, I was reminded constantly that I was the youngest in my group and I did not have a single person who liked me. These same children were also in my preschool class and the same diatribes were handed to me so regularly that I had most of their taunts memorized before the alphabet.

          I attempted to be kind to these children and play with them even when their taunting left me crying in my grandmother’s arms for hours after she took me home. I was an outgoing child who just wanted to have fun with as many people as possible and I could not understand why I wasn't being accepted as readily as I was willing to accept. This early pain slowly began to change from feeling the part of the victim to evolving into anger. When the verbal taunts started to transition to shows of physical dominance, the anger increased steadily. In a place that constantly preached the love of a higher power, I felt abandoned and powerless. When all I wanted to feel was accepted, I was frequently ostracized.

          As an adult in my mid thirties, I no longer feel that I am the victim of my upbringing and would change none of it, but as it was occurring I sooner began to empathize with Darth Vader than with the band of Rebels that stood up to the tyranny of the Empire. I wanted to crush my enemies and make them experience the pain I was enduring. Luckily, when I entered into kindergarten, I finally found a core group of friends who in their own ways had experienced similar difficulties with the mainstream kids.

Photocopied Memories

When looking back, my first memory is that of fear.

My second memory is that of abandonment.

                Being that both of these memories are heightened by an extreme emotional distress they remained clear for most of my years. Now, they are more akin to memories of memories. They no longer have their clarity and remain with me like a childhood drawing that has been photocopied too many times.  Regardless, I cannot deny their oily influence on my life.

                The first memory is that of me and my cousin sitting at the top of the stairs leading to the basement of the rundown house my parents were renting. Lying at the bottom of the stairs is my Little People Ferry Boat. The reason for the disastrous journey down the rickety stairs is long gone but we were frozen in terror. There was a beast waiting downstairs to eat us.

Not metaphorically, but literally.

             Some days prior, my father’s boa constrictor, Ziggy, had escaped his cage. My parents were aware he was lost somewhere in the house and were waiting for him to begin to hunt for food in order to find him. I recall having seen the snake consume the mice that were bred in the small glass cube next to Ziggy’s tank. The blind newborns squirming restlessly as their naked forms searched for their mother’s teats. I knew that they were living only to be consumed whole at a later time and I had been told not to grow attached to the creatures. My mind told me that I would face a similar fate if I dared to go down the stairs. My cousin was not convinced my desperate attempts to convince her to sacrifice her life in the name of Fisher Price so we sat there staring at the shipwreck.

                The second memory was not initially one of abandonment. It was one of a precocious four year old version of me sitting in between my parents in our truck as it idled in front of my grandparents’ home. My mother and father speak in quiet tones as I wait for my mother to exit the vehicle. I hear my father mention his plan to fill the tires with air after he drops my mother and me off. Sensing an opportunity to finally contribute to the conversation, I spill out the beginning of a knock-knock joke.

                The pivotal moment of the door greeting arrives and I announce that the person behind the knocking is “Aaron.” The punch line arrives with “Air in the tire!” and the tension is lifted in the vehicle for a brief moment. My parents coldly say their goodbyes and we head into the house where I would be living for the next four years.

                The joke becomes a frequent story between my mother, me and anyone willing to listen to the story of when a four year old formed his first joke. As time passed, I gained more awareness of the situation that had bred the joke and for the next decade, it was the final memory of seeing my father in person. In attempt to clean himself of the methamphetamine, cocaine, alcohol and other substances that had led to my parents’ divorce, he had escaped to California to live with a brother. In the intervening years, a small pittance of a check would arrive for my mother from him. The weekends following these rare events led to ordering pizza and renting a VHS player and a few movies from the gas station near our apartment. Never a phone call. Never a picture.

Just ham and pineapple pizza to remind me that I was the only boy in the neighborhood that did not have a father.

Preface

Where to begin?

                My name is Aaron and I am a geek in recovery. Is it from drugs, alcohol, sex or gambling you might ask? That would simple to address were it the case. Sadly, those elements of human existence are but symptoms of a disease, and those are not my symptoms.  In the course of my writing, I hope to expose and explore some of the symptoms of my illness which led to my self-definition of being an angry geek.

               

  This has been a journey I have long hoped to take but have been crippled by fear and ego from beginning. Much of the pain I have put myself through has been of my own making but equal parts are rooted in early developmental stages.  In my career, I am a mental health counselor and I have felt for some time that I cannot truly help my clients if I am not truthful myself.

                This blog is not just for me to exorcise my own demons. I hope that some of my writings may be able to shine clarity in other people’s lives. It’s a lofty and egotistical goal but I feel my genetic makeup and childhood shaped me in such a way that I want to help people, especially those who have lost their way in life. I know much of it comes from what I experienced through my parents’ actions and it is my way of trying to heal them through proxy.

                I won’t be posting with any sense of urgency unless I am of the mindset to write regularly for a period of time. I’ll steer clear of specifics about my work and will refer to people in my writing using fake names unless given permission to use their real names. Let the pain begin!