I was born in February on an Air Force base in Wyoming, we moved quite a few times while I was younger. My mother, father, older brother and I moved across multiple states including Nevada and Michigan.

Some of my earliest memories are of my mom pulling me in a wagon while walking my brother to school, and throwing my toy out the car window and losing it for good. With that being said, a lot of my past I don’t remember, or I have blocked it out mentally. 

When my father left the military we moved to Michigan, where almost all of my family lived. We lived in a small town mobile home park where my brother and I had a few good friends we would hang out with and spend our free time together. This was “back in the day” when you came home when the street lights went off and had dinner. We left the trailer park and my parents bought a house that had a lot of land, it was great growing up and having a large garden and lots of land to play on.

During my younger years there was trauma and abuse, these I believe are the reason for a lot of my repressed and forgotten childhood memories. My parents fought a lot and there was often a lot of tension in the house. They decided to get divorced when I was 8 or 9. I remember when my dad told my brother and I, we were on our way to Bois Blanc Island for Memorial Day weekend. That was one of the last weekends I went to the island that had so many happy memories. I lived with my mom and spent every other weekend with my dad until I was finishing 8th grade.

 After my parents got divorced, I didn’t handle it very well and even though I was seeing a counselor I didn’t cope very well and started smoking cigarettes when I was in 6th grade. I was in the Boys Scouts and tried playing football while I was in middle school, I was always heavy when I was younger, so other kids bullied me and I didn’t want to participate in football anymore and ended up quitting before the season even started

I was selected to go to a summer camp on Beaver Island with my 8th grade science class, but due to my own poor choices; I got caught with cigarettes at school, was expelled and told I couldn’t go on the trip any more. I had what I thought was a pretty serious girlfriend back then and we had split up shortly before the end of 8th grade, so getting expelled was the final pushing point for me. I told my mom I wanted to move in with my dad and step-mom.

That summer I moved in with my dad and would visit my mom every other weekend. Life was going good for me, I was helping my dad and step-mom take care of my step-sister and half brother while in my freshman year of high school. I was enrolled in honors classes and was enjoying my new school (it seemed like there were definitely not as many bullies at this school) I had made a few friends, some of them I am still friends with today, and didn’t have any problems with school or the kids who went there.

My summer before my sophomore year I got a job at a race track working in the concession stand cooking, and even got to go on a ride in a real race car! I started playing football at my new school and loved it! Come to find out I had “athletically induced” asthma… I didn’t know that was a thing, but it turns out when you’re not in shape and try to run in full football gear, it can make it so you can’t breathe. I played right defensive tackle and was pretty good for it being my first year, I got an award for most improved and outstanding rookie. Things were going well in my second year, and I had a lot of friends from all the cliques. Nerds, jocks, stoners, preps and the outcasts; you name it I had friends in every group. 

The teenage brain kicked in and I wanted to party and have fun with my friends; I got invited to a party at one of my friends’ houses. My dad was pretty lenient when it came to me going out with my friends  because I was a good student and thus far had stayed out of trouble while living with him. He knew that I smoked (even though I wasn’t 18) and didn’t try to guilt me into quitting or even punishing me to quit. This is where things took a turn, I had made the decision to go to the party and just let loose; drinking, smoking and not making great decisions. I was only there for 10 minutes before some people started getting loud and rowdy, like loud enough the neighbors could hear (you gotta picture a house out in the middle of the woods with hardly any neighbors, which means it was very loud.) You may ask yourself…how do I know the neighbors heard? 

Well, the host of the party decided to break up a fight by shooting a shotgun into the air. Ten minutes after everything started to calm down, we were surrounded by police officers in full tactical gear; rifles drawn( The neighbors had heard the arguing and then a gunshot and thought that there was some kind of violent crime going on). We were all handcuffed and put outside while the police officers searched the house and contacted our parents (we were all under 17.) The host of the party had decided that the best place to hide his gun was the back of my truck, and that was hard to explain when my dad showed up 30 minutes later to bring me home.

The result of 10 minutes of fun and being handcuffed outside for over an hour – all of us had to go to an AA class, pay a fine and work community service. This was the start to a downhill slide for me. I quit football and started hanging out with the friends who liked to party. I was still doing great in school but my attitude had changed and I didn’t want to be home with my dad and step-mom. 

Things got pretty nasty between my step-mom and I, verbally and physically we both made some terrible choices. The last time was when she was being rude to me and I called her a not-so-kind name then she slapped me so hard my neck cracked. I saw red, picked her up against the wall by her shirt, and told her she could never touch me again. When my dad got home I was outside smoking a cigarette and trying to calm down. The window was open and I heard my dad tell her that he would have me move out because he would always choose her over me.

That was one of the last weekend’s I stayed at my dad’s. I packed a bag and moved in with some friends. My mom wasn’t very pleased with this decision but she allowed it, because I was still in school and doing my work. I ended up staying with friends until the beginning of my senior year, when I got a girlfriend who had a house! I moved in with her and things were slowly getting better, I felt like I was in a good place. I was working seasonally on a cucumber farm but it just wasn’t enough to support me, so I fell back into my old ways. Then I started stealing, and selling what I stole to try to make some cash.

One time while I was trying to get into a phone package the knife I was using slipped off the package and sliced the artery in my wrist. If you have never sliced an artery, to explain; it is by far the most terrible feeling. Not pain-wise, but like you can feel your body getting weaker because you are losing so much blood, very quickly. I was wandering around this store covered in my own blood, not knowing what to do. I thank God every day that the stranger who saw me kept his cool and knew what to do. He took his belt off and put it on my arm, as a tourniquet, and called 911. After a 10 minute ambulance ride and getting my artery sewn up and my wrist stitched, I laid there waiting for my girlfriend to come get me. She never showed up. I’m not sure if it was my mom who told her not to, or if she decided she didn’t need the crap; but I’ll tell you who did show up; always has and always will, my mom.

She drove an hour and a half, helped me get my things from my girlfriends house, and pulled me out of school to move back in with her to finish my senior year. I am still sad to this day that I didn’t get to say goodbye to all of my friends, but I am able to stay connected even though I’m out in Arizona. 

I was depressed and felt abandoned, but even worse; I was thrown back into school with classmates who treated me like garbage for 4 years of my life before I went to live with my dad (who after I moved out, left for Arizona with my step-mom, half brother and step-sister.) I did have a few good friends still from 8th grade. We hung out, skipped school and basically barely scraped by for graduation. We did graduate though! After my graduation I decided I needed something new, somewhere new. The only jobs to work in the small town I grew up in were at grocery stores, fast food joints or one or two manufacturing plants. I called my dad and said I wanted to come out there and get a job and do something different. I took my graduation money, bought a plane ticket and moved to Arizona in the summer of 2005.

My dad had a babysitter for my step-sister and half brother; I started dating her and things got pretty serious. After 4 months, she got pregnant. I was scared, I’m not sure which 18 year old wouldn’t be at least slightly worried. We got married and I kept working different call center and data entry jobs while going to school for CAD design, Animation and a few other majors. I hadn’t sat down and decided what I wanted to do with my life, so I changed majors quite a few times. My daughter (Sassafras) was born when I was 19 and she was perfect! I was able to stay at the hospital and bond with her for a couple of days.

I loved her more than anything I had ever known, which is a strange feeling for a 19 year old; however, things with my daughter’s mother took a turn and we started to have a lot of relationship and trust issues; and other issues in general. We tried to make it work, on and off, for several years which in the end didn’t work out. Today we are great friends and we both have a greater respect for each other than we did back then.

Deciding what I wanted and who I wanted to be after our split up/divorce was a challenge, I always thought that I wanted to be an architect or get into something tech support related. I ended up signing up at a local college for their web development degree (a passion I have had since middle school) The only problem…the recruiter lied about what type of degree I would be getting. I’m not going to complain though now, because I met the love of my life and the mother of my son. I was officially enrolled full-time for my degree in graphic design. The first class I took, I met momma gnome. There was instant chemistry, an invisible string that kept us intrigued and eventually brought us back to where we are today.

I was in a relationship when we first met, so we were just very close friends. As the months went on, I was working full time and going to school full time so I wasn’t at home as much as I or my then girlfriend would have liked. I came home early from class one day to find her laptop open and seeing messages of how much she loved someone else and wanted to be with them.

 I couldn’t believe it, this was probably the 4th time in my life that I had been cheated on (verbally or physically). I lost it, I was done and I didn’t want anything to do with her as it had apparently been going on for awhile. I bought her a bus ticket, and she was gone. I was sad and depressed because of the situation and it brought up memories and thoughts of me not being good enough.Thankfully, I had my family and friends to help me. I stayed in school and kept pushing forward to better myself. Over the months, momma gnome and I started getting closer in our friendship and that eventually evolved into us starting a relationship, this was the start to our blended family. I had my daughter and she had her daughter and son from a previous marriage. Our relationship felt smooth, natural and right; which was a catalyst for us to both move too fast into our relationship after dealing with different traumas, abuses and mental insecurities. I was still having nightmares and reliving my past in dreams I just couldn’t shake.

I asked her to marry me and she said yes! We bought a fixer-upper trailer that had 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms that was perfect for our small but soon to be growing family. Shortly after we bought the house I ended up losing my job which caused a lot of stress and frustration between us but we were still happy so we were making it through. Then we found out that momma was pregnant with our boy Squizzle, we were so excited and ready to bring our baby into this world and raise him how God would want us to.

I was raised in the church and enjoyed going when I was younger. When my mom and dad got divorced, my dad didn’t go so I went whenever I could with my mom. When I turned 18 and moved out to Arizona I had stopped going to church and started questioning my faith. Momma gnome invited me to her church one time, and I loved it. It was nice seeing the community and I just missed praising God and living a better life on his path. I remember getting baptized: it was one of those impromptu baptisms and I just felt that I needed to be born again, there was no planning, no preparation. I was sitting there watching my fellow church goers stand and praise God and give thanks and felt the pull to stand up, walk down front, and get baptised.

Being fully invested in our faith we started going to pre-marital classes offered through our church, trying to invest in our relationship. I was still unemployed at the time and the stress of running out of money and not being able to afford our bills was mounting. We got into a huge fight and a lot of hurtful and cruel things were said to one another, the type of things that will dig up anything and everything in your past and just sink you into the pit of despair. The wedding was off, I was told not to contact her again and that I would never meet my child and I told her that she didn’t need to be in my house then! (like I said…hurtful and cruel, not just from her but me as well) We can’t take back what we say and I have since tried to remember that before speaking.

She moved out and I was left with an empty house that once had so much potential to be a home. I was still going to school full time and trying to find another job. I did find one that I was good at doing; phone technical support. The problem was; I was miserable, I was depressed and I didn’t feel like doing anything, much less get out of bed. I drank more than I should and I was smoking more than anyone should. 

I lost my job a month before graduation and couldn’t afford my utilities or lot rent – I had failed and I was angry. I started to question my faith again and didn’t look back this time until many years later, after I was able to heal and resolve my past. 

I graduated that summer with my degree in graphic design, with honors! I was so excited and ready to keep moving forward. I did try to get a hold of momma gnome several times and eventually, when it wasn’t a situation I could change, I quit. I couldn’t keep hoping for something that wasn’t there for me at the time.I moved in with a couple of friends and they helped me until I was able to get a job and start saving up to get an apartment. Me and my ex (Sassafras’ mom) tried making it work one more time but things weren’t any different. It was hard being the only one working a minimum wage job and trying to keep our heads above water. We ended up splitting up, she and our baby girl moved in with her mom.

I rekindled a friendship I had when I first moved out to Arizona, which eventually turned into a relationship that lasted 6 years; dating for 3 and married for 3. It was a good marriage, we went on vacations together, saw bands and supported one another. The one and only problem with our marriage was that she wanted kids and I did not (already having Sassafras and Squizzle). I didn’t want any more children, especially seeing as I was not involved in my son’s life at the time. This was the only cause of fights in our house but in the end it became a road block we couldn’t pass. I felt pulled to become a part of my son’s life and she wanted a family of her own, it was not something I could budge on. I know what a lot of people might think: “You should have talked about that before you got married”. I know! And we did; but everytime the conversation came up, she would get emotional. With everything in my past, I would shut down and just go with it, to avoid an argument or to upset her further. In the end, not communicating about our wants and don’t wants in the relationship hurt both of us more than just ripping the bandaid off at the beginning of our relationship would have.

I received a letter from DCS saying there were issues with my son and his mom and I needed to show up to court. I reached out and asked questions to try to get filled in on what I had missed, let me tell you it was a lot. We may post more on the on-goings; the court system and DCS can be a nightmare with hoops inside of hoops and doors that lead to more doors. I was; however, glad that my invisible string brought me back to the love of my life and to my Squizzle. We rejoined our blended family of 7: Momma Gnome, Poppa Gnome, Sassafras, BooButt, Buddy, Squizzle and WallyBingBong and we are moving onward and upward together.

If you stuck it out, thank you! My wife is a much better writer than me, but I wanted our friends, family and the community we are growing to know that we have a past. It is not who we are, but it is what has helped to shape and mold us into the people we are today.