I was born in Amory, Mississippi on Sunday, November 19, 1972 just before dark. It was cold and snowing that day, perhaps setting the stage for how my life has played out. My mother was, and still is a strong, protective and very religious person. My father, well he was and still is quite the opposite. At two years of age, my father came home in a drunken rage. He picked me up and slammed me into a wooden table. This caused an abdominal hernia and multiple bruises. My mother took me, left him and never looked back.
I was raised by my grandparents and mother during my preschool years. We lived on a small farm. We weren't poor, but we were not as financially well off as the people I would soon encounter either. My grandmother tended to things around the house, and my grandfather cared for the farm as well as trapped for furs to sell. For the most part, I enjoyed the same things that every other child did. But I did have a most interesting hobby, that I still have to this very day. I searched the rocks on the driveway for something that at the time I didn't understand. Later I would realize it was tiny fossils that I was finding.
Around the age of five, my life began to take shape. I began to see things...know things that were impossible. My grandfather dismissed it as imagination. But I remember my grandmother telling me that I was different, and that I had a very special gift. She told me about two brothers, one lived in Florida and the other in New York. They would hold hour long conversations with only their minds. They'd take notes and then compare them next time they met. The notes always matched. Little did she know how much that story would affect me later in life.
It wasn't long until I started being contacted by what I called my guide. Was it an angel? A demon? I honestly don't know. But it stayed around for many years to come and it guided me through some very tough times in my life. One of the first things I remember this guide doing for me was showing me several future events through a series of dreams. Many of the events have already come to pass including meeting someone much later in life that I saw in my dreams for years. When I saw her for the first time, I was speechless. And the fact that I was told we would have a common interest unique to the two of us (which turned out to be the rock/fossil collecting) was all the proof I needed.
At the age of seven, I started school. My mother dressed me in what she believed was the latest fashion. Sadly for me, it was not. I quickly found my place as an outcast and choose to stay to myself. Unfortunately, there is always that one school bully who has got to prove himself to his friends by picking a fight with the smallest, weakest kid he could find. I was tall, and very skinny, which made me a seemingly easy target. Although small, I was raised on a farm, which made me much tougher than I looked. The bully took a swing, I dodged, and then knocked him to the ground. The very next day, we repeated this. After that, I was left alone for a couple of years.
By the time I was nine, my mother had met a man and remarried. He would raise me as his own, and become the male figure in my life for many years.
In the fourth grade, it was discovered that my vision was bad and I needed glasses. This only added to my torment. Around this same time, my father decided to come back into my life. He had a girlfriend, and claimed he wanted to start over with me. Back then I was trusting and gladly let him in. They took me to McDonald's for lunch, and while we were eating, he put "salt" on my fries. Later that night, I became deathly sick. It turned out that the salt my father was putting on my fries was crystallized strychnine (a concentrated rat poison). This would be his second attempt to kill me. But it would not be his last.
At the age of thirteen, I started middle school, and discovered that I had an interest in girls. But that interested wasn't returned. By now, I wasn't just an outcast. I was the kid that everyone, even the outcasts, made fun of. I had no friends and no social interaction at all. Every day became my worst nightmare repeating itself over and over again.A couple more years went by, and I got my driver's license. I thought that finally, I would get a car and maybe a bit of acceptance. I was wrong. The car my folks picked out for me was the worst possible choice. Again, they had good intentions and thought it was trendy. It was anything but, which caused even more ridicule.
This would be about the time my father once again tried to come back into my life and convince everyone he had changed. A few days went by and he found me driving on a back road near my home. He turned around and tried to force me off the road. For the first time in years, my guide came to me and directed me. I easily outmaneuvered him using drifting and J-turns (things that at the time, I'd never even heard of).
Next came my high school years. They proved to be worse still. Realizing that I'd never had a relationship of any kind outside of my family, depression set in hard. I found many girls that I had an interest in, but I only approached a couple. They just laughed in my face and walked away, so I didn't risk that happening again for quite awhile. Eventually, I came to call several people my friends. We were never really friends though...not the kind of friends you hang out with after school let out or call up on the weekend. They were just the ones who tormented me the least or ignored me altogether. And I was okay with that.
After graduation, I hit the road on a trip to the coast. I'd never seen the ocean and felt it was a chance for a new beginning. I was gaining weight, had a different car, and changed my style a lot. Half way to the coast, I stopped at a rest area. It was just some picnic tables and lots of trees. Soon a van drove up, and a rather large man got out. He approached me insisting that I follow him into the woods. He said that there was something really neat a few yards in. But something just wasn't right. Having heard stories of the dangers of traveling alone, I concealed a small gun in my waistband. I pulled it out and told the guy to leave. He left and no more was thought about it until much later. The man turned out to be Donald Leroy Evans, one of Mississippi's only serial killers. I once again escaped death, but this time at the hands of a stranger.
Another year went by, and I started college. I actually made a couple of friends...real friends who wanted me around. But I was still at a total loss with girls. The patterns from high school soon followed me to college, and depression got the best of me. A suicide attempt landed me into mental health for a few weeks. I dropped out of college and moved on with my life.
I got a job in construction that lasted a year, followed by another job at a factory. It would be the factory job that turned my life around and put me on a completely different path. But sadly, my grandmother also passed away during that year.
While at the factory, I met some really close friends as well as a girl that asked me out. It turned into a five year relationship that in some ways was the best and worst thing that ever happened to me. I won't go into details about that or any other event that follows as too many of you will find personal connection with it, but I hope to touch on all my life's events to some point.
After leaving the factory, I started my job at a sawmill , which is where I still work now twenty years later.
Four more years pass and I find myself single once again. The internet comes online to the public for the first time, and now I have unlimited access to people everywhere. Even better, I can be whoever and whatever I choose to be without anyone judging me on first appearance. I soon met someone, and even ended
up getting married. It was another big turning point in my life. Sadly though, my grandfather
passed away that year. But I was growing in confidence for the first time in my life.
Unfortunately, the relationship wasn't meant to be and it ended a year later. I soon returned to the internet and while on a chat site, I meet a girl from New Orleans. Talking to her, I start to remember the stories my grandmother had told me years before about the two brothers who visited each other with their minds. I asked this girl to try something with me, and she agreed. I won't go into details on how we did it, but I will say it worked. I soon found myself in her room but only briefly. When it was over, I called her and we were both able to describe what the other was wearing and give details that could not have been known by any normal means. We never spoke to each other again after that.
Within a few weeks of this event, I was visited in my sleep. This time it wasn't my guide. It was what I can only describe as the spirit of a neighbor's 15 year old niece whom I'd met only a couple of times. She came to me crying and begging for my help. She told me that she was scared and in a place she didn't want to be. I woke up the next day with a very sick, uncomfortable feeling. I couldn't shake the feeling or stop thinking about the girl. So I made the decision to talk to the neighbor about it. He began to turn pale as I told him what I saw. He then explained that she was in the hospital in critical condition. The doctors said she had anorexia and probably wouldn't live through the week. I asked to see her. I explained the vision to her and let her know that she had gotten through to me. The very next day, she began to eat again, and three days later she was released from the hospital.
It wasn't long until I met my current wife of 14 years and her daughter that I've proudly raised as my own. During this time, a lot has happened. Thanks to my wife, I got into martial arts several years ago and began working out. We have traveled to many new places that I'd never seen before, like California, Florida, and New Orleans. And thanks to my cousin, and best friend, I got into hunting for artifacts and large scale fossils which landed me an immature mastodon fossil (one of the only found in the state) a few years back.
Sadly though, the man who raised me as his own, passed away a few years ago. My home place growing up is totally changed, and largely gone. I've met several friends along the way, and lost a few as well. And I discovered that there is far more in this world than what you'll ever read about in a book or could even imagine. But with all the bad I've been through in the past, I can honestly say, for once I'm happy and at peace.
