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My name is Christopher. I was born twenty nine years ago in Greenville, Texas. This is my life story. Where should I start? I will begin with my first memory. It is a memory of my dad. I do not have a lot of childhood memories of him. He and my mother were divorced when I was about two years old. Most of my memories are of my mom's second husband, Scott. I will have much to say about him later on. Back to the memory of my dad. It is real sketchy but for some reason it was very dark in the house. I do not recall much furniture in the house but can still see my dad running through the house playing with my mom, sister and me. He had a flashlight shining it on the ceiling as he held his hand over the top of the light making a huge shadow of his hand. It seems as if we played this game for only a few seconds but it was long enough to replay it over and over in my mind as the only real "family" memory I have. As I said before my mother was married to a man by the name of Scott. He was the father figure in my life from the age of three until I was just over eleven. Scott was a very controlling and violent person. He was what I looked up to, what I strived to be and what I patterned most of my life from. My first memory of my life with Scott in it, is a memory of him using ice cream to bribe me into calling him "Daddy". Well, it must have took because I called him "Daddy" from that point on. He had a way of getting his way and keeping it. From the very first memory of Scott my life was full of anger. My heart black, hard and cold from all the beatings, all the name calling and “forging” of me. I use the word “forging” due to the way Scott would beat me until he molded me into a "man”, as he would call it. I was born left-handed and for this he would beat me every time he would catch me using my left hand for anything. That was a hard lesson to learn at three and four years of age. So hard that I actually had thoughts of trying to break and cut off my left fingers. I did not know then why I was doing it but I know now that it was to please Scott. My thoughts were, “If I don't have them, I can't use them. If I can't use them, then Scott won't be mad at me”. I was beaten for no reason at all to any reason you can think of; reasons most people can not even imagine. I have one beating that I want to list just because it sticks out in my mind. Not the beating itself but what was going through my mind while it was happening. I was about five years of age. It was late in the night. I was asleep in my bed. I was wearing my favorite nightclothes, white shirt and pants with blue pin stripes and big buttons on the shirt. Scott came into the room and without saying a word picked me up by my shirt and began to beat me. I was spinning around in the air. As I was spinning I could hear his hand hitting me from my head to my back. Then just as quick as he started he stopped. He threw me back onto the bed. I lay on the bed with my eyes closed tight, crying. Crying not because of the beating but because as he was hitting me I could hear my favorite shirt ripping and I knew that I did not know how to fix it myself. I was told later that I was beat that night because I did not drink all of my milk. I have a story like that for nearly every day of my childhood that Scott was a part of. I need to make it clear that my mom was beat and controlled by Scott also. My Dad never knew about the beatings. My sister was too young to do anything to stop it. All three of them still have problems with feelings of guilt to this day. So before anyone goes to demanding, "Where was his mom and dad?", let us not forget who the monster was in all this! Who were the victims? My mom and Scott split up just after my eleventh birthday. We moved in with my grandmother in another town sixty miles away. That is where my mom met her third husband, Louis. As far as being a bad man, he was not. He had his problems but he never meant to hurt any of us. If anything he was the only person since my dad who actually protected us. So I just want to say, “Thank You, Louis”. So, the finished product was “forged” in steel! It was me! I was full of anger, hurt, hatred, and guilt. I learned well from Scott how to hide any and all feeling with the exception of anger! I hid all other feelings; even from myself. By the age of thirteen my life was consumed with fighting, sex, alcohol and drugs. I was alone; locked up in the shell everyone called Chris. At the end of every fight, every girl or whatever I might be using at the time to make myself feel better, I would be worse than before. It seemed that my shell got emptier with everything I tried to fill it with. It was as if I was a consuming black hole that was never satisfied. By the time I was sixteen I was living over one hundred fifty miles away from any family members. I had my own house, a new truck and plenty of money. So that meant that I had no rules. I could do what I wanted to do. I was my own "boss". I was getting closer to being just like Scott! I was drinking more than anyone, fighting more and being with as many women as I could get to stand still. Now this fully-grown "man" at nineteen was married with a child on the way and only an eighth grade education. You will never guess who I went to work for. You got it; Scott. I had to get in his face and show him that I was not a scared little boy he could push around! So, I did that by going to work for him. I out worked him, out drank and out fought him. After I out did him in all those things he prided himself on, I could see what a weak little "man" he was. And I out grew him. By the time my first child was born I had gotten my G.E.D but I was still stuck with Scott. The only way I could find to better myself was to go to the Police Academy because they did not require that I know much math or science. So by the age of twenty-one I had another child and I was a Deputy Sheriff in an East Texas county. I bought my first house that same year. It seems that life could not get any better. Right? Well, I thought it could. So, I went right back to the Scott logic. Which is destroy everything. I gave my family up and everything I had worked so hard for. By the time I was twenty-four I was that same empty shell again. I would worsen this time to the point of being on the verge of going down a path that led straight to hell at twenty eight years of age; no hope of crawling back up. Just when I was at the lowest, God reached down and picked me up. With a blink of an eye I was forgiven for twenty-eight wasted years. Twenty-eight years that God blessed me with, I chose to use for destruction due to my selfishness. God picked me up and showed me that for twenty-eight years I was wandering lost, looking for some direction. He showed me that all those years I thought that I was alone, He was there all the while, just waiting for me to not just cry out, but to cry out to Him. God did not stop there. He made me promises. Some of these promises were: That I will never be alone because He will never leave me. I will have my family. I will have my health. I will have my heart’s desires. I will have peace and joy. I can always have a place to hide in Him. What I seek shall be found. What I ask will be answered. All things are possible through Him. Even after all I did to disappoint God he still gave His only Son to die for my sins so that I could be saved and the only thing He took from me was that “empty shell”! Thank you, Jesus! 1 Timothy 1:12-17 Click HERE to return to the edited story Click HERE to create a banner that links to this story! Your e-mail address will be kept private!
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