This Tuesday, September 29th marks 43 years since my brother David died from a self inflicted gunshot wound. September 29, 1983. I was fifteen. Suicide affects the living family members forever. The pain and questions dull over the years, but the scar leaves a mark for all eternity.
That anniversary, plus a rough week, has me thinking about why I am the way I am. I’m direct. I don’t beat around the bush, I don’t play games, and I don’t do drama. I say what I mean and I mean what I say. The ten years I spent in the military honed this attribute!
I know that can rub some people the wrong way. Some folks hear “straightforward” and think “harsh.” So I want to tell you where it comes from. This is a much harder post than my usual canoe, camping, kayaking and hiking stories, and I’ve shared most of this publicly before. I believe the stories that wound us are often the ones someone else needs to hear. It is okay to be true to yourself! None of us is perfect and we all have scars that have shaped who we are.
I grew up in what I can only describe as the pit of hell. Both of my parents were alcoholics, and they were verbally abusive. My brothers were abusive drug addicts. Lying was normal in our house. Drugs were normal in our house. The police came to our house so often that it stopped being surprising to me.
Recently, I came across a very big lie that was verified via newspaper articles. It was a life changing truth! I was always told that Velma, the mother to Mike and David, had committed suicide in jail. I came across the lie this year — she killed herself in my childhood home! All of my brothers are half siblings. Steve and I share the same mother. Mike, David and I share the same father. Richelle, the sister who found me several years go, and I share the same father. As a child, I always thought there was something creepy about our house. This explains it. The same garage where Velma hung herself is the same garage where my oldest brother “accidentally” shot at our own mother. So close that it put a hole into her nightgown. This is the story of my life – lies to the police that is was an accident not intentional.
I was the anxious kid who threw up at school. My teachers sent notes home saying I was unsure of myself. Of course I was. At home, both of my parents told me they hated me and that I would never amount to anything. It took me many years of therapy to overcome my insecurities. Sometimes, they do rear their ugly head, though — but a lot less frequently than as a young adult. If you met my parents, you would think they were normal and loving. In public they were different people. My dad was a U.S. Marshal and my mom, an accountant.
My brothers Mike and David got kicked out of public school and were sent to Hanna Boys Center when we lived in California. It’s a boarding school for boys who cannot function normally in society. When I was ten, we moved to Louisiana, and my parents brought Mike and David with us. They left me alone with my brothers while they worked. My brothers chased me around the house with nail guns, threatened me, and physically abused me. Once, when I ran to hide in the bathroom for safety, Mike punched a hole in the bathroom door. When my parents arrived hime from work, I was the one who got in trouble– because I MUST have provoked him.
David set the sofa on fire one day. David molested me when I was ten. When I told my parents, they ignored it. They also ignored the drugs in the house. When I was growing up, my mother would tell me that my oldest brother hd the flu. I knew, even at a young age, that it was impossible to have the flu so frequently. I would wake up finding strange men in our house – and even sleeping in the driveway. To say it was a tumultuous, abusive childhood is an understatement. My brothers were arrested for armed robbery and a multitude of other crimes.
David was twenty when he died. He had gone AWOL from the Marines, and his girlfriend had just broken up with him. He took his own life with a military shotgun. Ten years later, in October 1993, Steve died of a drug overdose. He was 33. Mike has been addicted to heroin for years and has been in and out of the state pen three times. The last time I saw him was at David’s funeral. I honestly don’t know if Mike is still alive.
Here’s the part I want you to hear. I was told over and over that I would never amount to anything. I joined the Army National Guard in 1986, right after I graduated high school. The military and hard work saved me. I became the only person in my family to graduate from college. Then I went to Officer Candidate School. My dad told me I wouldn’t make it through. But I did. I became an officer. His words only fueled my will to survive OCS.
When you grow up in a house where words are weapons and nobody tells the truth, you learn to value honesty more than almost anything. As a kid I never knew what was real, who was lying, or who was going to explode next. So as an adult, I made a choice. I would be the person who tells you the truth. If I have something to say, I’ll say it to you, plainly. I won’t talk about you behind your back, and I won’t pretend. There’s no hidden meaning to decode. What I say is what I mean.
Drama feels like home used to feel: confusing, manipulative, and unsafe. I lived in enough of it to last a lifetime. So I don’t allow it in my personal life, and I step away from it at work. (That’s not always easy. Sighs.) Anywhere you have contact with people, there will be drama, that is a fact of life. But each of us has a choice — we do NOT have to participate. Step back. Walk away. Refuse to participate or escalate it.
I know directness isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I’m still learning that some people hear hurt where I intend none, and I try to meet them where they are. But I won’t apologize for being honest. It’s how I survived, and it’s how I build trust with the people I love.
I don’t share this for sympathy. I share it because God didn’t waste one bit of it. He carried me through every one of those years, and today I’m living the best life I’ve ever had, married to my best friend and chasing adventures I never dreamed I’d get to have. If you grew up in chaos too, please hear me. You are not what they said you were. You can break the cycle. You can LIVE.
Never stop exploring and never give up hope. Life is good.
There is a lot more to this story and many of my readers, friends and family who have urged me to write a book will be glad to know that the book is in the works. I truly feel that my life journey can be an inspiration to others – it is also part of the reason I seek to do the hard things in life – climb Katahdin, canoe 230 miles in the Yukon. I like to prove to myself that I am NOT what many people in my life have told me that I am. I CAN do the hard things.
