Literature

Preview of Millie's Book

2008-01-02T12:24:00.000-08:00

Preview of Millie’s Book

Hey all! This is Millie. Thank you for taking interest in reading the preview to my book but I just want to set out a trigger warning here and I write about my previous struggles with self injury, depression, etc... I have to tell you that I no longer think or feel this way about life and if you'd like more information on how I overcame these struggles, please email me at Millie@messiahsmisfits.org. Thanks!

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"You ruined my life, that's right! The three of you ruined my life!"

We seeped back in our chairs as he screamed and pouted about. I didn't dare look at him as he went on these fits of rage. I knew better, as did my brother and sister. I peeked over at my brother as he was just staring at his clasp hands moving his fingers and my sister as her face turned red and her fists were clenched. My father, who had just previously been scolding us stormed out of the room; his voice, repetitively running through my mind.

"You ruined my life." These were words I would never forget. I grew up in the small city of Garfield, New Jersey. It was close to New York City, so close that we saw the smoke from the attacks of 9-11 on a park hill in the city. Before we lived in Garfield we lived in many of the neighboring cities. When my little brother was an infant, about 10 days old and I was 3 we got flooded out of our home in Wayne, New Jersey and were left homeless, staying with anyone who was willing to help. We moved to Garfield when I was about5 years old. In our 11year stay in Garfield we encountered many difficulties. My parents had severe marital problems. My father went in and out of alcoholism and my mother became a workaholic to support this bad habit of his, plus the 3 pack a day smoking habit they had and… oh yeah, feeding the kids. I grew up in a very poverty stricken environment in my childhood. I remember that there was a period of time were we had been eating spaghetti for what seemed like forever, every night because it was one of the cheapest things you could eat. We could not afford spaghetti sauce so most of the time we just ate it with butter. On summers off, we couldn't afford to eat 3 meals a day. So just about every day we went until mom came home from work to eat. During this period of time my father was unemployed (which was quite often) and ordered us to wait. Mom worked everyday until about 9 PM. That's about the time she would come home and cook for us. We were not allowed in the fridge or cabinets to take things. These actions were considered "stealing" and worthy of punishment. I remember opening the refrigerator door and without a doubt my father would yell from the living room "Who's in the fridge? Why are you in there?" Milk was to be used for father's coffee first and foremost. Even if we had cereal in the house, we'd need permission to use the milk.

My father had us trained well. He would call one of us by name and when we got to him he would hold up his cup and didn't need to speak another word. That meant he wanted coffee and we were to get it for him. He didn't like us to look at him too much, we'd get yelled at for that. The worst though, was when he decided to make me "the boss" of the chores. Basically, we had a set amount of chores to do and since I was the boss, if my younger siblings didn't complete their tasks, then everything would fall on me. It's was not a really great system.

Everything in my household depended on this one fact: Success is solely found in your actions. The way you achieved any kind of recognition was by doing things for my father. House chores and serving my father came before schoolwork, and before eating. Sickness and tiredness were not an excuse. Love was based only on what you could do for him. Growing up in this kind of a world, learning and absorbing everything in this atmosphere, I adapted to survive not knowing what it was to live as a kid with any kind of freedom until a little later in life. I decided to make my own freedom, and have my own secrets. In such an uncontrollable life I started to take control in the only way I knew how. I started into a secret life of self-injury. It was a life of escape that neither my father, nor anyone was apart of except me.

On my 13^th birthday I remember writing my first suicide poem, in red crayon. I started to have a love for death and hating myself. Everything my father ever screamed in my face, no matter how much I tried to pretend like it didn't bother me, really started to sink in. When I entered high school, I was 14 years old and I loved school with everything in me. It was my true getaway. It was a world with lots of different kinds of people. There were activities I could join after school so that I didn't have to be home. I got to eat there and I didn't have a real hard time making friends. I joined everything I possibly could so that I didn't have to go home. Trend club, Drama, Softball, Soccer, Band, Chorus, Student Government, Poetry Club, and just about any contract with any club I could sign…I was there. I would wake up and be in school at 6:00 in the morning and I would be home at about 10 or 11 at night. I never wanted to come home. I found my identity in doing anything I could to stay away from my family and my life. Of course there were times that the school would close down for a Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter break for about a week. On my first week break, being home for a week straight, I locked myself in my room and cried. I could hear my father screaming at one of my siblings non-stop or calling for me.

On one of my trips to the bathroom I remember finding a razor. Something possessed me to take it. I wrapped it in toilet paper and carried it through the living room in my pocket, past my father up to my room. Everything negative he ever said about me kept ringing through my head. I couldn't take it being there after having so much freedom at school that when I got back to my room I took the razor and stared at it. I kept feeling such a cutting in my heart for how much I truly hated myself. I hated how I looked. I hated how I acted. I hated who I came from. I hated where I lived. I hated living a false happiness. I hated running away in my mind all the time, but most of all… I hated me. I took the razor and I decided to demonstrate to myself how much I hated myself with it. I placed it on my arm and pressed. I moved it about half a centimeter as I watched blood start streaming from the incision. It felt like a sting that sent a shock through my body. It felt good to finally give myself what I deserved. It felt good that my body was suffering. Adrenaline rushed though me as the blood ran down my arm and dripped off my elbow onto a towel on my lap. I moved the razor another half a centimeter to see the blood pour out a little thicker as I repeated curse words in my head and told myself how much I deserved to die. I fell in love with the idea of the stinging, shocking pain that ran through my body as I slowly sliced my arms. I didn't ever want to do it fast because I wanted to feel every ounce of pain I deserved. Then seeing the bright pink glow around the cuts after I dabbed away the half dried blood with a towel were like trophies to me. Knowing that I was such a disgusting, horrible person and taking punishment I well deserved, all the while being able to hide it from friends and family was the most victorious feeling. This was my world. This was my business. I was in control, finally, of something and I was not about to let anyone take that away from me. It meant more to me than life, and in fact, was my life.

Preview of Rob's book

2008-01-02T12:21:00.000-08:00

My so called childhood

I don't know why, but I've always had the funkiest desire to be different. Through my childhood I can remember I always went to the extremes to be the different one, the one standing out in the crowd. I always had to be getting all of the attention, especially from the girls. As a child, I dreamed of foreign lands and what my life would be like in a foreign land. I dreamed of music and travel, My two biggest desires. I have to admit, I'm not one for organization, so most of my crazy ideas were spur of the moment, "you've got to be kidding me!" kind of things. Only certain people were daring enough to embark on these truly one-of-a-kind quests. Before I was drawn to the dark side, my innocence as a child was truly a care-free, push the boundaries kind of attitude.

I was always searching the deepest edges of the woods near my home in Deltona, Florida for something exciting. I was always sneaking out of the house at night roaming the streets, looking at the stars and wondering what someone in China or Africa was doing at that exact moment. I also always wondered where my true love was, and what she was doing at that moment. Since I always believed I would meet my wife in a foreign country, I was always open to the possibilities and wonders of what awaited me on the other side of what I saw in my world. I couldn't do good in school, because I was constantly day-dreaming. Instead of learning, I lived to play practical jokes on my teachers.

At the young age of 9, I started to practice troublesome activities on the school grounds. I remember I was in a very strict religious school, which twisted the bible with some "prophetess", and they did not believe in dance, rock music, drums, any of that sort of stuff. One day during reading class I grew very bored, and I watched anxiously as my teacher, Ms. Meyers, strolled down the hall to the bathroom. She was the kind of Lady that had glasses as big as tennis balls, and was never married, and always did a funny sort of sideway thing with her lips (I always wondered if she had ever kissed a guy, and could always picture a blue bonnet of some sort on her head).

Anyway, back to the point. As she disappeared out of sight, I ran to my backpack and tore it open to find my favorite tape with a copy of the song "Sweat (everybody dance now)." I eagerly shoved it into the tape player used for science class in the back of the classroom, and jumped on the desk and started to wiggle my hips and pull my zipper down. The Classroom filled with the beloved disco-dance song, and the students were both downright shocked and horrified! Why?

1. Because they had never heard anything like it before

2. Because I was shaking my booty in front of everyone.

The teacher came back just in time to hear the end of the song from down the hall, and just in time to see me scurry away and hide in a cubbyhole. That afternoon, my mother was called in for a conference on the unacceptable and disgusting display of her son's ideas of fun. I was grounded for a while, and almost suspended. As awful as it was, I was always interested in pushing beyond the limits, because it always seemed like there was no one else on the face of the earth that wanted to see things happen.

I thrived on attention, so for a while I just resorted to chasing girls all over the school and pinning them down and kissing them. I had quite the reputation for a little scrawny white boy in a religious school. At one particular moment in time, me and my friends would sneak down the hall while our teachers were out of the room and throw paper airplanes in the other classrooms. Usually, Mr. Fisher's bald head was our target, and usually, we hit it. Me and my friends would get on the desk and dance with our shirts off and our pants down. One time, we even threw a ball around the room and accidentally hit the clock, which loosened it from the wall. I heard my teacher coming, so we scurried back to our places, and sat down in all of our innocence. To my surprise, when Mr. Anderson came back to the room, He pulled his desk over into the middle of the classroom for the next social studies lesson - right below the clock!!!! About 5 min. into the lesson, we heard a few creaks.... and

CCRRAASSSSHHHH!!!

The Clock came down on his head and shattered into pieces! It was the funniest thing the class had ever seen, and I got lots of props for it. My friend Scott and I were the masters of the happenings around the school. Scott was the kind of person that also has glasses as big as tenn.... Well, more like as big as melons on his face, and the kind of kid that laughed if you made a fart sound in the middle of class. One day, we were sitting in the hallway when a lovely little bee landed on the window. Now the windows in the hallway were about 7 feet high and 4 feet long, keep in mind. He was allergic to bees, so the closest thing he could find was a tennis racket.

I couldn't utter a word before the entire whopping 7 feet of glass shattered all over me and Scott. As I pulled pieces of glass out of my skin and his neck, he sat there cracking up at what he had just done. Apparently, he thought it was funny, until he had to pay his parents a few hundred dollars to buy the school a new window.

My fellow classmates where always on the edge of their seats as to what type of fearless feat I would accomplish next.

Then there was the more serious side of things, like, when the devil attempted to destroy me at a young age multiple times through my childhood. I remember one instance when I was at the park with my parents at age 7 or so, I walked to and fro in front of the bathroom for a while, trying to decide if I should go in alone or not.

My parents had taught me not to leave their side, yet my father was always playing tricks on me. Like, for instance, at sea world one year, when he disappeared on me for a whole five minutes, yet was watching me the whole time freaking out and making a scene that I was lost. He thought it was hilarious. Anyway, about the bathroom, I felt that it was against my better judgment to go in alone, but the problem with me is that I always go against my better judgment. Just as I walked towards the door, a group of police came shooting by me into the door that my little hand was just about to push open, and they came walking out with a wanted handcuffed-child rapist who was hiding behind the door. God was surely with me during my childhood! Another incident during my childhood that caused both my fear of and interest in death when I got older was with my school principal in fourth grade.

I was taking a test along with the other classmates quietly one morning in Mr. Feist's class, when suddenly for an instant, I heard a low rumbling noise outside and my desk shook, as well as the principles. He and I were the only ones who noticed it and we were the only ones to look up. Everyone else was steadfastly taking their tests. I began to fear that it was an earthquake, and that thought sent shivers down my spine. I started to feel very weird inside, like, kind of morbid.

It was like the spirit of death had just entered the room....

Just then Mr. Feist arose to go to the bathroom, so I continued taking my test.

After about 20 minutes or so, I had to use the bathroom myself. Without realizing that the principal had been gone near a half hour, I made my way to the bathroom. I went directly to the middle stall because I had some weird phobia of the side stalls for some reason. Was that about to change....

As I opened the stall door, I smelled a weird smell, and observing what was in front of me, I screamed in sheer horror. The principal was curled in an inhuman position, half on the toilet, and half on the floor, his eyes wide open, and he was as white as a ghost.

I noticed bile and vomit mixed with other bodily fluids on the ground. I was so frightened; I booked to the nearest classroom and screamed "The principal's dead in the bathroom!!" I watched in horrified disappointment as every child in the room started to crack up, assuming it was a joke or prank, which is what Robs' do best. I suppose it was what I deserved for "crying wolf" so many times.

The ambulances arrived and he was pronounced dead on the scene. It was the first time that I had come face to face with death (besides at a funeral), and it seemed that from this day forward, death began to follow me.