The War From Within, James Anthony Love [e textbook reader .txt] 📗

that are crippled by your same affliction. So know that I am neither a scholar nor a psychologist. I am not a great theologian nor am I a saint. I am not someone who professes to know all of life’s cures. I am just a broken and lost soul, who is weary.
This is my cry for help.

Though the war continues…. This is my story.


The Battle Commence


I was born desolated
Though I have no memory of it, I have always felt this way. Throughout my youth I felt as if no one knew me and no one wanted to know me. I was abandoned here alone and force to find my own way on my own. No guidance, parental this is, to lead me to the right path. No mother, though she was physically there, no father, though unbeknownst to me He was there as well. I was force to rise myself, teach myself the difference between right and wrong, or better yet I was force to come up with my own definition of right and wrong.
I carried my own load, my heavy burdens rests on my shoulders alone. There was no one there to help lighten the load. This burden rode me and turned me into someone that I was not destined to be. It gave me responsibilities that were suited for someone far beyond my age and yet I had to shoulder them, because I knew that I was alone. It was a question of, if not me, then who?
This is a question that I can remember asking myself at the tender age of six. At six I knew the answer to this question was no one. I was starved for attention, yet I had no one to nurture my hunger pains. I remember going to bed praying for my life to changed, for the better, and when I awoke to the same dreadful life I then realized that I controlled my own destiny. Again, at six I knew, or thought I knew, that I was alone in this world, left to fend for myself.
I digress though, for I am leaving out pieces of the puzzle that makes me who I am. Please I beg your pardon, because I sometimes like to omit the painful and/or regretful memories. However to paint the picture clearer I must start at the beginning.

Grant me the permission to say that most of this, the beginning of my life, will be guesswork. This is because, like most people, I do not have much recognition of my early years. Only flashes go through my mind’s eye when I tried to envision a peaceful time without the reality of strain. So most of this is based on others stories that that were told to me at some point and time, or what I have learned from prying others brains about my own existence.
What I am sure of is that I was born on January 16th 1979. I was born to Miss Emma Watkins, an eighteen year old single mother. No father was there to witness the birth of his son, and I know this is so because on my birth certificate there is a blank line were the father’s name should be.
Despite the fact that she was raised in a strict Christian home, I was born out of wedlock thus making Emma and I immediate outcasts of the family. I guess my grandparents and my aunts and uncles viewed me as a demon spawn, because the only reason that they had to hate me was my birth.
Emma was the youngest of seven children, four boys and three girls. There was a six year gap between her and the next sibling. I often thought, but never asked, if my mother was an accident much like myself.
I am told, from others and from her own mouth, that Emma did not want any kids. She had no intentions of staying in our small town and becoming a house wife. Her aspirations were for bigger and better things. Emma felt that children and a husband, from this town, would only trap her here when she was destined for bigger things. So I can imagine her dismay when she found out that she was pregnant with me.

She yearned to rid herself of me as soon as she realized my existence. She wanted to try a virtually new, at the time, process called abortion. Now this was new because previously this process was only use to save the birth mother’s life or it was illegal and you had to know someone evil enough to do it, and you needed to have some money to get it done. Around my conception abortion had been legal for about nine years and the cost to have the procedure done was reasonable. Thus, allowing more women to rid themselves of their “mistakes” without having to wait nine months. Emma wanted an abortion, but she was under age, she was just seventeen at the time. So she would have had to get my grandparents permission, which she knew that she would not receive. I was told that abortion was the same as murder in my grandparent’s eyes and they would risk the shame of having an unwed teen daughter before committing murder. Though they still later kicked her out and disowned her anyway.
This may sound like nonsense, but I feel that Emma and I lost whatever, if any, connection we had when she was carrying me and thinking about having an abortion. For she was my incubator for my growth between egg to embryo onto fetus, my soul was also inside of her and I had to receive the message that I was not even wanted before I was born. I may be wrong, but because of this fact in my eyes she has always been the woman that gave birth to me, never my mother.
Nevertheless, Emma kept me while she could have given me up for adoption or left me on someone doorstep or in a garbage. Or she have give me to the state leaving me to grow up completely lost and confused in the system. However, I do not store too much stock into this act being an act of love. The Emma I know resented me from birth, so I feel that she keep me to keep me from any hopes of having a prosperous life, since I deprived her of that she figured that she would try and do the same thing to me. Still, even if that was the case, the first twelve years of my life was spent with Emma.
I hated writing such harsh words about the woman who gave me life, but you have to understand this is how I viewed her. I would hope to think that she was a loving parent and care for my every need when I was an infant, but again I have no recognition of these years. I from time to time try to imagine a loving, kindhearted, and unselfish mother but my imagination is clouded by reality. The woman that I know could at time display all or more of those traits, but more times then not she was the exact opposite.


With that being said, one could say that Emma and I had a very complex relationship. While she was my guardian, she was not my parent. Other than her so-called discipline, she gave no other form of guidance. I viewed our relationship based on the Emma I would see that day. The sober, drug free, Emma was a joy to be around and while again we were never close like mother and son, we were at the least friends. It would be about her and me, nobody else. She would be attentive to me letting me talk to her like a person not a child. Though she never answered none of my hard questions, she would at least listen, I would cherish these moments with Emma, because even if I said that I did not want anyone to be there, I needed her to be there. However, it was hard for me to fully enjoy these moments because in the back of my mind I knew that the other side of Emma was coming out soon.
This Emma was abusive, both physically and verbally, loud, irate, and even to a child, like myself at the time, she was sad. She was short and curt with me, wanting nothing to do with me. The only time that she would interact with me was when she was chastising me, or if the conversation somehow benefited her. As in if I was making a run for her because she was to tired, or to inebriated to move. Other than that I was nothing more than a thorn that continuously stuck her in her side. Now that I look back she was not half has bad during this times, it was when she put the alcohol down, to move on to bigger and better things, did she really show her hatred for me.
Shortly after I was old enough to look after myself, wanting to live life to the fullest and enjoy every minute, Emma tried a new drug that had just hit the street called Crack. This is basically powder cocaine cook to a form of rock. Then it is smoked, rather than snorted, through a glass pipe. Now this crack was cheaper than its brother cocaine, because it is cheaper to make and more product could be distributed faster. So this became the drug of choice for most poor people trying to escape the harshest of reality. Sadly, Emma fell into this class of people. Crack started in the bigger city and just like an uncontrollable wildfire it spread nationwide.
Crack destroyed Emma’s mind, body, and spirit, I remember wanting to kill the inventor of it. What mind was capable of such evil? I despised anything or anyone who had anything to do with crack. I was not going to allow myself to have anything to do with any drug even alcohol, because I saw what both did to Emma and I did not want anything controlling my brain. It’s sad that only example that Emma ever gave me was one of what not to do, though it was a strong one because it has stuck with me to this very day.
I can remember seeing her one day, crying while looking at herself in the mirror. When I asked her what was wrong, she did not reply. Instead she cried harder while beckoning me to her. She hugged me and cried while she continued to look in the mirror. In my young mind I thought that she was crying because she thought that she was ugly.
“Don’t cry mama, you are very pretty.” I told her as her tears hit my face.
My statement was true, my mother was very beautiful.
She smiled at my attempt to comfort her and kissed me on my forehead.
“You know you are doing the wrong things when you look in the mirror and you don’t recognize the person staring back at you.” She simply replied.
I was to young to understand the power in her words, but in time I would come to realize the truth of her words.
With that she told me that she had some errands to run and that she would be back later. She kissed me again and told me that she loved me, that is the last time that I can remember her saying those words
Later that same day I cried as tried to wake her from some Drug induce stupor, something I wouldn’t wish this on my worst