The other day I was checking my Facebook ads, making sure nobody had posted some absurd comment telling me why I was a total piece of shit and how “they were expecting so much more” from me, and how my books read “like they were for an adolescent but with such filthy language, not even adults should read it” as this one woman felt the need to DM me… But while checking her bullshit message, I came across another DM above the disgruntled customer. This was a woman I had never met. Her name was Peggy. And she asked me if I was available to speak at their next Indiana Department of Child Services all-staff convention.
I had never thought of speaking before. Wait. I lied. I thought of it constantly. I’ve wanted to do public speaking my entire life. When I read that message, it was like a bolt of joy pulsing through my writing bone. Sure, writing is great, and I’m addicted to it, and I can be whoever I want behind the word document… but in person, I can show the words and paint them all over my face. I can display my emotions without barriers, and do perfectly what I’m trying to convey in these posts. I immediately replied to her “I would love to.” But now a brand-new fear came about…
How do I tell the real story without mentioning the ONE thing I’m extremely self-conscious about? I can’t talk about how I was kicked out of school in ninth grade, then my parents’ house when I was fourteen without telling the truth about why I did what I did. And the reason can’t be: I was angry. So is everyone. Everyone is angry. But why was I so angry that I dismantled my life? The answer is because I felt like a freak, and so ending my freak life was the only option.
Let me explain…
I was on a cruise ship when I was somewhere between two and four years old, and I know I was that young cause I was still in a stroller… On that day something life-altering happened, an incident that would shape my life all the way into my thirties: my head began convulsing back and forth like I was some demon, possessed with some malignant omen.
When I saw the look of horror on my parents’ faces, a look that said: MY GOD! OUR CHILD IS DYING! SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG WITH HIM!, when I saw that look there was no un-seeing that. My very own parents thought I was broken; a freak. And look, they were scared. Any parent would be. How could they not when one day your baby begins shaking uncontrollably like a broken toy? They told me to stop (or did they?) but I couldn’t stop. And it was the lack of communication about that one day that led me to believe it was not okay to talk about it, not okay to twitch, and not okay to ever let anyone of the face of the Earth find out about who I truly was: gross. And so I kept it bottled up tightly my entire life and this humungous part of my existence was kept hidden, except for in my head, which it swirled around in, day after day, night after night.
Why had I been institutionalized my entire childhood? Because I had no friends and was forced to get attention elsewhere. Life wasn’t worth living. Everyone should feel the pain I felt, at least that’s what I thought when I was younger. Fuck the world. I never had friends because I knew I was not worth friends. Not to mention the more friends I acquired, the more likely one of them would see my tics. And if they saw one of my tics, what would I say? And so that is why I kept to myself. But there are only so many years one can keep to themselves before you just break down into a monster. And so when I showed up to middle school without any friends, keeping this big secret, knowing I was damaged, I was immediately labeled a loser with bad breath who smelled bad and was a faggot who needed to be beaten up.
At that point, my tics were no longer visible, but it didn’t matter, they were tattooed into my memory.
And so that’s why when I took that sweet sip of Manischewitz wine at Passover when I was like ten years old or however old I was in sixth grade, I felt relief for the first time in my life. That’s why I began drinking all the time, every weekend, then every day, alone. Then something unexpected happened…
One day all the girls decided I was handsome and the most popular girl in school (second-to-most-popular) asked me to be her boyfriend. I went from freak to overnight success within a matter of hours. For the first time, I thought there was a chance I could live a normal life. But when she broke up with me, glimpses of life as a disgusting child with problems beyond repaid slammed me in the chest. No. Fuck no. I was determined to never go back to a life of being some demented piece of garbage.
So, I did whatever it took to steer my life narrative in the direction I wanted it to go. I don’t need friends, I don’t need popularity if people fear me, so I’ll become unstable and form a reputation for being the bad boy piece of shit all the parents hate. Yeah, that’ll keep everyone far enough away so they’ll never know the real me, yet close enough to remember my name and respect my position in society.
I began robbing houses and ordering hookers (in eighth grade) and taking many hits of ecstasy, cooking special K in my room with strangers by the time I made it to ninth grade, my last grade, and hanging out in the projects. Eventually, I had dropped out of school but still showed up so people knew I had not disappeared. That is how my tale of juvenile institutionalization began, and to share my story openly and honestly, I’d have to reveal my secret to 500 staff members in Indiana. Any gaps in truth become fiction quite fast, and if I wanted to help these people and give back what I now have, I had to be thoroughly raw with why I did what I did as a child.
I was panicking as the virtual conference began and I was being introduced by the regional director. I had to pee and the bullet points I had written down beforehand all of a sudden became useless. The only way to do the job I was paid to do was to tell my story, the whole story, exactly as it happened. If I do that, likely it will help at least one person.
And so that’s why it’s so hard to tell the truth: because inside the truth lives the darkest characteristics we believe make us the fraud we truly are… And until recently, I had not even been able to spell the neurological disorder I was born with: Tourette Syndrome, the reason my head convulsed so vigorously in my childhood.
And so for the first time, I said it out loud in front of a large group of people because that is where it truly all started. I was very nervous, but a funny thing happened after that speech: nobody brought up the Tourettes. For one hour I spoke, and for every minute I was on camera, there were 3 – 10 comments asking questions, thanking me, and overall emotions ran high–that much was clear.
It was the most honest I have ever been, and it was the happiest moment of my life. And because of that, a few things came outa my mouth while speaking that I never knew were important, and one of those things was the three people who changed my life; three people I hadn’t thought were important at all; three people I hadn’t thought of for twenty years. One of them was Tommy Behr, and without Tommy Behr, the pseudo-English teacher at the juvie I was at for two years in Georgia, without this one sentence he said to me, a sentence he probably doesn’t remember, my life might have been completely different.
In the next post, I’ll tell you about Tommy Behr, and the significance his one sentence had on my life, which utterly morphed the adulthood I now live.