A Bit of His History

He'd pulled at my heart strings, giving me an overwhelming amount of details of his childhood. He was very much so an abused, neglected, and brought up just the most despicable of ways, and how he's survived to adulthood is a miracle in itself...But he did, and instead of maturing and getting past his past he took it out on me.

Now, I can only state here what I'd been told my by ex, his family members, and what I've been able to find out through different police reports & newspaper stories. If you want to read about some of my history it can be found here.

He was concieved as a one night stand between his mother and bio-father. His bio-father is a drug addicted, drummer for a band in Tulsa, OK...has roughly 15 kids, that he's aware of, only 3 with his first wife, I think he's on his 3rd wife now...but I don't know of any of his kids that haven't been in and out of prison for one thing or another, even the kids he didn't meet until they were grown have bounced in and out. My ex's mother was married once - the guy got drunk and ran himself off a bridge right after her second child was born, so she had 2 babies under 2, as a widow, met my ex's 'father', had my ex, and continued in her debauched lifestyle.

So, his dad (Tommy) enjoyed chasing women and playing at the bars often, enjoyed doing different drugs, meth and crank being two I heard about most often, and drinking, having babies and not doing anything more for them. Now, my ex did know his dad, and spent quite a bit of time between him and his mother, so he was a 'part' of his life.

His mother (Drucilla) was absolutely no better. I'd hear stories of after she'd hooked up with Tommy decided she didn't want to be with white men any more. Ok, no problem for me, black men are just as human as white men, or any other nationality for that matter. My ex had a HUGE problem with it! I guess these men would get drunk and beat him, beat his mother, beat his brothers, and he just absolutely couldn't stand black men because of that...hmm I guess its different for him, a white man, to do these things, it makes it better, somehow. He'd tell me stories of how his mom would walk into a grocery store, clothing store, you name it, and walk out with numerous articles of clothing, two hundred pounds of meat, you name it, and not pay a dime for it. She kept getting caught and for the longest time every grocery store in Tulsa had her picture in it, for them to be on the look-out for her. She did eventually get charged and served 4 years, supposedly if she gets caught again she goes back for life...she hasn't stopped, even tried to teach my son how to shoplift, but its been 10 years or so since she got out and hasn't been caught yet. She'd then turn around and sell the clothing, meat, whatever for cash to buy booze with and drugs.

I'd never grown up around drugs, I knew of a few classmates who smoked pot, suspected a few teachers of doing the same, just by the rumors, but I'd never so much as even laid a hand or eye on any of it outside of the seminars they'd have at school to show us what this stuff all looked like...

I learned quite a bit.

Crack is not wack... wack is a combination of embalming fluid and jet fuel that folks would dip their cigarette butts in and then smoke - Supposedly one of Drucilla's drugs of choice. Of course my ex started smoking at around 5 years old, and even from a toddler age was eating the ashes out of the ash trays, when they actually used ash trays, for the majority of them they just threw their ashes off into the floors...on purpose, and if you asked for an ask tray they thought you were some sort of nuts and not respecting their 'customs'. I can't tell you how many times I'd thrown them out of my house for ashing into my carpets! Oh, and my ex was actually allowed to eat the cigarette ashes because according to some doctor it meant that he had an iron deficiency and was getting his iron from the ashes.

Crack, cocaine, ice, crank, powder, meth, etc are all different but if you ask me they're all white powder looking and are not things that you should allow 8 year olds to try and then get addicted to. But what are you to expect, these are the folks that allow 5 year olds to start smoking, and 2 year olds to eat ashes out of ash trays. Out of those I've tried meth, didn't see the big deal of it, never did it again.

By the time my ex was 9 he was drinking hard liquors....under 'supervision'.

These are all things this family seemingly is PROUD of. They'd get onto me for pulling things like beer cans, ashtrays, and the like out of the reaches of my son.

When my ex was around 10 years old his mother had had enough of him...or her boyfriend at the moment had, either way, he was shipped off to a Christian Boy's Ranch. They detoxed him, taught him values, used effective punishments, the works. A year or so later they'd deemed he was able to go back home, he went back home.

By this time his oldest brother, Glenn, was around 16 years old, had decided he was gay, was addicted to crank, and moved out of their mother's house and into a house with his 30 year old boyfriend. --All things that that family was okay with.

A year or so later my ex's other brother, Britt, at the age of 15, was cranked out & drunk, stole a car with 4 of his other underage buddies, as none of them had a license to drive in the first place, and when pulled over by a single cop, Britt pulled a gun out on the cop. Natural cop reaction - shoot before being shot. Britt died there at the scene. The family made a HUGE deal out of the whole thing, about how he was only 15, didn't deserve to be shot, the works. They sued the city, the cop was forced into early retirement, and the family actually won the lawsuit. This is an all too reoccurring story that if you're around any of them you have to put up with listening to, all the time. Of course they omit the details of how he was cranked out, drunk, and had pulled a gun out on the cop, the popular abridged story is he was riding with a bunch of friends, he got out of the car when they got pulled over, and the cop just decided to shoot him.

My ex was 13 around this time.

I felt bad for him, was under the blind assumption that if I just showed him that none of his past mattered, what mattered was he moved on from it and didn't hold onto it that he wouldn't be so bitter and depressed about it all. I was 19, of course I thought I could fix all the problems of the world.

According to the stories, when my ex was around 14 years old he'd been over at his dad's and they'd ran out of food, including dog food...yes, they even would eat the dog food when they were high...and he was messed up on the crank. So he went to the police station looking for food. The Lieutenant at the time, Charlie, was also a foster dad for troubled teenage boys. Everyone, my ex, his mother, and father, were willing for Charlie to take in my ex, so he did. Charlie is accredited with my ex actually graduating from high school - the FIRST one of that entire family to do so, of course he was almost 20 when he graduated, but he did graduate.

Ok, I mentioned how my ex has some 15 half-siblings. His mom has 12 siblings. His dad has 4 siblings, but they're actually all decent folks, his dad and siblings on that side are the "black sheep" of that family. Now his mother's side of the family...there is only maybe 6, counting cousins, aunts & uncles that I know of who have actually gone through school and have not been in prison....of those, only one, who's name is also Stephanie, but she's also married into that family, who has always been clean. She was able to get her husband cleaned up and settled down...it took them two divorces and three weddings, but she did it....I suppose. I haven't been around for the last 6+ years, so I couldn't tell you what the story is nowadays.

This all tugged at my young, naive heart strings. But I never saw the drug use, he'd sober up for a few weeks at a time, he had a job, a damn good job, would pay his bills, was very clean, so was under the influence of his public mask that he wore. Again, the HELL broke out while we were in Indiana - 600+ miles from anyone and everyone either of us knew....