snapshots. click.



April 25, 1987. Sophomore year high school. went out that night. got trashed. this was a repeating pattern. came home that night. i remember praying to God asking not to wake ever again. i was tired of my life, tired of living. was not going to commit suicide, but i would have been happy if i were to have died. what pain i create. i have been nothing but pain to my parents, to myself. started when i was young.



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1979. I was living in Waltham, Massachusetts. Used to shoplift baseball cards. I was eight. Got caught for the first time that same year. Mom slapped me in the face right in the middle of the store. I stole one of those triple packs, two of them. I gave up one. They never saw the other. Dad read me the ten commandments later that night. He didn't beat me with a belt or fist that time. I thought I got off scotch free. After the 10 commandments, I went to my room and opened up the undiscovered pack.



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1981-1984. Bellingham, Mass. Mike Burke. My best friend. Dangerous. A year older, same grade. Lost his virginity when he was 10 to a girl who was 13. Taught me about girls. Wanted to be like him. One day he asks, "what's your favorite song?" At the time it was Amazing Grace. I told him that and he told me that I didn't know any Rock 'n' Roll and my breath stunk. Two things happened that day. I promised myself that no one would ever tell me that I didn't know music, and no one would ever tell me that my breath stunk. I became obsessive about both.



My parents bought me a total of 8 cassette tapes, and within a year I had accumalated over 150. Stole every one of them. Got busted again. Was supposed to go to juvy, but my mom told the store owner that she would get down on her hands and knees and beg in front of him for the entire store. The store owner said that was unnecessary. He would let me off the hook, if I promised never to return to the store. I still remember her crying. I cry sometimes over that whole incident. The love of my mother . . .



There were other things too. Almost burnt down my house and my parents car. Shot a bottle rocket at a cop car. Lit many fires. Tasted my first beer: age 11. Bunny told me he would beat me up if he ever heard that I was drinking. Scared me. So, I snuck it. Tortured girls. Stole money from people. So much pain. Looked at those magazines with Brett Mulvey. We learned a lot from each other. And then there was Dan R. That was different. He was strange, like so many of my friends, but something was off . . . He was 17, I was 11. I think he might be a child molester today. I forgot for a long time. Then I remembered . . .



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Spring 1993. Then I remembered Dan R. I thought I had forgotten. Took a psychology class at Evangel. Talked about a lot of abuse related material. Physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. I wasn't sure what the teacher was talking about. She kept saying that if you've been hit by belts or fists it was abuse. If you've been sexually taken advantage of against your will, it was abuse. If you've been verbally demeaned, constantly screamed at, made to feel frightened or intimidated, that was abuse. She made me laugh because she was wrong. Those things couldn't be abuse, because they happened to me . . .



Felt on the edge. Wanted to jump from this train of Life. Randy Stonehill sang the words screaming from my soul.



"Lost and drifting on this river of longing. Bowed and bloody from the weight of the sky. Longing to call out for someone's forgiveness, but we're not sure who or why. Maybe we're frightened like children in the darkness, chasing shadows in the strangest dreams. Sometimes living feels harder than dying. Sometimes it feels like we're trapped in between."





Tried to talk to my mom. Wasn't working out. Reminded me of another song,



"I can't talk to my mom, I sure wish I could

Can't say what I'm thinking though, 'cause she still thinks I'm good

She'd just start crying, and I'd just feel dumb

So let her think that I'm O.K.

I can't talk to my mom" -- Jim Weber



Charlie was there. I called him up one day at college and told him everything. He didn't judge me. He told me that it was not my fault. I cried for the first time about this. I always thought it was my fault. Sometimes i still think it is. Sometimes I still cry . . . like now.



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April 26, 1987. It was God for me. That's what saved me. I woke up on that Sunday morning and I remember praying, "All of You or none of You." Became a Jesus freak in high school. I was scary. Had no balance -- extremist. Told people that they needed to be like me or they were going to hell. Left Christian leaflets in the boy's bathroom. Scared my sister Michele away. Needed to be that extreme, I guess. I needed to be as far away from the other life I had. I learned more balance along the way, and by the time I hit my senior year in college, I realized that everything was not hunky dorey. Funny, it would be my Christian college that would later temper my extremist attitudes. I saw the "truth," and decided to question all of it until I found some truth.



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December 4th, 2004. Here in Austin, Texas. Met this guy who is in the Army. Was stationed in Iraq for a time. On one excursion, there were four guys in Humvee, two of the guys literally lost their heads, and he was paralyzed with fear. He had never seen someone's head be ripped away from their body. I couldn't help but to think, why them? not him? so close, yet he survived. The inches that save us. It made me think about my own life. why those others? not me? I survived. I never had to go to jail nor abuse others nor wind up dead from my own hands. There were inches for me as well. The inches that saved me.



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December 6, 2004. I feel so thankful!