The Broken Home

Years ago, my aunty passed away from Lupis, the disease of a thousand faces. It weakens your immune system so you can't fight off illnesses or viruses very well. I was really close to her; she was like a second mother who would listen to me when I was a troubled teen.

At the age of 20, I took off to BC. I was working construction on Victoria island and one day I got a phone call. It was my father who explained that my aunt was not doing so well. Immediately I told my supervisor at work, and I got enough money to fly back to Manitoba. The whole family stood around the hospital bed holding hands and talking to her calmly while she passed away peacefully. She looked right into my eyes and then she was gone.

For years I worked a few different jobs and isolated myself and played video games with very little social interaction. I heard two voices over that time, one was demonic that always said, "End it all." The other voice was angelic that said, "There's something left to be said." Then I met a family man named Dan who listened to me as I vented out all the things from my childhood that were bothering me.

I was five years old when I watched my mother drive away after a domestic dispute. I always felt like I was in the middle of everything which made me a great mediator. In that moment I knew she wasn't coming back. My father thought that my mother was cheating on him and that my younger brother wasn't his.

One day my father and my brother and I were playing floor hockey in the basement. My brother was acting up so my father picked him up and put him up against the wall and yelled, "You're not my son."

I was deprived of rock n roll even though I loved the music. I remember listening to Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell album under the deck of my country home for hours one day.

In grade seven I moved in with my mother, her husband with all my siblings including a half brother and sister in a strange town. This town was very racist and discriminating toward natives. I grew up Christian, my father is half French/Black Foot native and English. My Grandma was an English war-bride. My grandfather was a truck driver in world war two. My Mother has Dutch and German blood. I was born with a small blue hand print on my lower back above my buttocks. I was the only one out of all my siblings that was born with a native marking. My mother's sisters all thought she was hitting me.

I was racially bullied in school when I lived with my mother. I just ignored it all because I was better than that. One day I was walking by the hall to get my touque out of the gym and this big guy said some smart ass remark. I simply ignored and walked right passed him.

I retrieved my touque and when I returned he said another racial slur as my older sister was walking up the stairs to her class. She stuck up for me and told him off. Then he said, "Your sister's a slut." I snapped and Thai clinched him and kneed him in the chin. He dropped to the ground as I punched the crap out of him until the math teacher pulled me off him.

My father always said, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

He said a lot of wise quotes that came from my grandfather. When I was down from a rough day, he always said, "Look at the bright side my son, life's not as bad as it seems." He was right because no matter what we're going through in life it always gets better and nothing is ever as bad as it seems.

I moved back with my father after I started getting into trouble with the law and rebelling against my mother. I yelled at a bully and became a guy that bullied the bully. My mother always said, "Two wrongs don't make a right." She was right because his friend came running out of the cafeteria from behind me. He gave me a Superman right hook and knocked me out. The only time anyone has ever knocked me out was from a cheap shot. This guy had two twin brothers that would badger me when I wasn't allowed to say anything to them. One day I had enough and said something to them and got charged. I was doing community service sweeping leaves from the curbs of the hospital parking lot and this guy Ben ended up running into me and we went and got my best friend who was also named Ben. We ended up smoking a pack of cigarettes and drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels.

We went to my place and we harrassed my mother and she called the cops. We took off then a cop pulled up beside me and started hitting me with his Billy club. Before the cops even arrived my best friend Ben took off home. The other Ben started hitting the cop in the back of the head than he took off with the cop car. He rolled it in the ditch somewhere by Morris with the sirens on and the lights flashing. This cop was a real loser, he'd always show off his gun in the restaurant and he thought he was all that because he had s gun.

My father sold the country home near Miami MB and lived in town. One day I was heating up oil for french fries, the phone rang and it was one of my best friends. We started talking about girls like normal teenage boys and I forgot about the oil. All of a sudden I smelt smoke, I put the phone down and ran into the kitchen and the oil was on fire. I picked it up and was going to throw it out on the snow bank but it slipped out of my hand and dropped on the floor and the fire immediately spread across the floor and went up the cupboards. I ran out the front door and went across to my aunt's place. She called the fire department and my father, he came home and was just happy that I didn't get burnt. After that, we moved to Carman, MB with my grandparents until we got a small house.

Back in Miami, MB we went to a house party and this guy Danny, the drummer, was playing along to Metallica. I looked at the posters on the wall of Iron Maiden and other great metal bands. That was the day I fell in love with metal.

After that, in Carman, in that small house, I started writing lyrics like crazy and I would sing my lyrics in my room. I had a high school sweet heart Amanda, and I'd sing to her at school. We were virgins and it was innocent. One day I came home from school and did my routine thing and went to go get my lyrics out of my closet. They were mysteriously gone, I had pieces of phrases I wrote in school. I'd always work on lyrics after school and sing. When they went missing I went into shock, forgot everything I wrote and broke up with my girlfriend. I was lost for years and didn't date aside from one native woman for a short while until she cheated.

I quit school and got a job working part time at the graveyard until I got something full time at a pea and bean plant. I worked there for three years and ended up running the pea plant. I got let go because I was very accident prone and I left a bud of weed behind the scale. After that I went from job to job, never asked out the right women. I always went for the wrong connections and always got hurt in the end.

For the most part my parents were great people with imperfections like everyone else in this broken world. Suffering in something that, is just a part of growing up. I forgive my parents, I'm grateful to be alive and well.