Chapter 3: Fast Forward

It was my first year at a new school, I was entering first grade, the pivotal first step into educational matriculation. I had managed to block out most of what had perspired just months ago. I was an awkward child after what had occurred my natural curiosity for things turned sour, and I found it hard to make friends. From a young age I knew I was different from other boys and after the abuse that had been to me I had been hypersexualized. I had complex emotions that a six-year-old should not have been having. Unlucky was my lot in life that after I was not believed by my mother, I turned to trouble making to get attention from them. I felt that the only way I could be seen or heard was to act out and it work, all be it bad, but it was attention none the less. My best friend who would grow to be more than that in time never asked anything of me and simply let me be a kid. Growing up in Maryland from the first grade until we moved to Kansas I would spend nearly literally very weekend at my best friend’s house. His name was Conner, I loved going over to his house because he helped me forget about the hollowness that I felt whenever at my home. One weekend day around the time I was 7, I believe it was the summer before second grade. My family was invited over to another family’s house for dinner, they had three children. One a boy who was around 15 would become my next abuser. I remember he took me up to his room after dinner, which apparently to my parents was not odd. I remember him asking me to take off my clothes and I was brought back to that dark horrible place. After this second abuse occurred I thought so little of myself that in the years to follow I would be repeatedly sexually abused by this horrid person and would say nothing for fear of repercussions. I was an extremely emotionally tortured young boy, my parents who both worked full time and had three other children to care for simply thought my acting out was due to me being a rotten child and not something deeper. I grew to tell grander and grander lies more intricate than the last about things that were so trivial just so as to give the illusion of blatant innocence. I had a very warped sense of how the world worked, and I did not have the knowledge at the time to discern everything in my mind what was happening. And it took me even longer to admit that it wasn’t my fault what was happening to me. When we moved to Kansas I was heartbroken, more so than I had been with any move so far in my life. We had been living in Maryland since I was 5 years old and it was 8 and half years later and we were a thousand miles away in a strange and boring place. I cannot stress enough the hatred I have for the state of Kansas, it has been the bane of my existence for the last 7 and half years, but we will get more into that later. When we first moved to Kansas it was the summer before my 8^th grad year, this summer was particularly short because east coast schools let out later in June as opposed to the Midwest that got out mid-May. School started up around the second week of august and I was as awkward as ever. I had gone to a private school the seven years prior and this was my first year at a public school, well if you don’t count kindergarten which I don’t. toward the end of the school year I had failed miserably at making friends. So in a last chance before high school came I tried to make some friends all bite in a very stupid way. I had procured certain pain killers and gave them out to several kids at school so they would be friends with me. In the short the kids got sick and I was suspended, they wanted to expel me but I had not even had a tardy to that point. In the long I had to endure some legal fees and legal obligations, but in the end it remained off my record and stayed with me as a lesson well learned. Right before freshman year started a most indecent event occurred. I had recently discovered the wonders of gay porn online and used my camera to record a particularly steamy 5-minute video that I used for personal reasons on several occasions. On this unfortunate day I decided to have some me time in the afternoon around 4, my mother who I did not hear and would come to regret. Opened my door which I had stupidly forgotten to lock. Unlike most mothers who would have been petrified and slammed the door, decided to run in and take the camera out of my hand and then turn to run and close the door. I was frozen in terror that my parents had just discovered at then what I believed to be my biggest secret. My parents later that night confronted me about the incident that had occurred. My mother was terrified being raised as a devout catholic that things like I was doing were very grotesque. My father on the other hand was just more concerned that it was gay porn rather than regular porn. At the time I was not ready to deal with my extremely complex sexual feelings, and told them that I was simply curious and that ended that for the time being. It would be another year before a revelation would come that would begin to eat away at the ties that bound us as family started to reveal themselves in their true form.