Prayer Works

Dear Diary,

I went from winter coats to camouflage and speaking with the most southern accent in a matter of days. Soon I was living in Algoma, Mississippi and attending South Pontotoc again. It was weird being around all of the people that grew up with my parents and family. People who remembered me in diapers yet I had no clue who these people who smelled like moth balls really were. I fell in love with some of them though. School was tough at the beginning because it was a complete culture shock for me.... I played American Football and Basketball that year and found friends there. At the beginning I felt like the outsider but I was getting good at the whole camilion thing. My friend was still ignoring me at school pretty much but we were hanging out outside of that and I think I hooked up with all of her friends... Not something I am particularly proud of... and when I say hooked up I mean we were "boyfriend-girlfriend" for a day or so. I was involved at the church there and did enjoy hanging with some of the guys who were mainly my relatives but at night I would sit up late on my knees begging God to send me back to Brazil.... It was the most faithful of my praying days. Funny thing is.... I was already sneaking around and "smoking" cigarrettes. Although I didn't inhale I thought I looked pretty cool. The school year flew by and summer was here again. I was in full puberty..... zits, awkward peach fuzz mustache, and the nose of Tucan Sam. I always felt less than others. I made friends with the "cool" kids but I still felt beneath them... like an outsider. I have always been a bit different even when it came to clothes I dress with whatever I like even if it isn't the "style" and back then I loved going through my grandparents closet and finding all of my dad's and his brothers old clothes and I would where them. What has become the vintage fad I guess but I was wearing Nike's that were 15 years old at the time and I liked them but people would talk about me. They were wearing the latest Mosimo shirt that every other guy was wearing and they had the "girl." I was the funny guy who made everybody laugh and who took risks. I was crazy and didn't care about the consequences and was not afraid of getting in to trouble. I was terrified! Mainly of being alone and the only one to hurt so much inside. My grandparents neighbor who I had a crush on and we were BFF's had a crush on every friend that came to visit me and was asking me to hook her up with them. I hooked her up with my friend who I will call Jay. He would come stay the night at my grandparents house and we would sneak out to go see her or she would come see us. I thought I loved her... we had been through alot together... her brother's suicide and her alcoholic father's verbal abuse of her. I was there for her I thought and I would sit there night after night watching them hold each other and listen to them ask me about there problems. She would invite friends over that I really didn't want to hang out with but I would because I didn't want to sit and watch them make out. Music was a big thing for me and always had been. I didn't just listen to songs... I attached myself to songs and they expressed how I felt.... the singer was singing about me...well... in my mind anyway. Aerosmith had just released their album "Get A Grip" and the song of the summer was "Crying" and I was captivated by the video. 1) it was Alicia Friggin Silverstone 2) It was about someone being in the shadows of a love affair... taken for granted....and I could relate. That song would come to mean alot more to me than a preteen crush though. My parents soon informed me that they had been offered a chance to go back to Brazil at which point I became beyond extatic.... they told me it wouldn't be the same city I grew up in but I didn't care!!! I was going home... my prayers were answered.... even this cruel God who sent me to the Ukraine was finally listening and sending me back home! But home is where the heart is....

The Green Green Grass of Germany

Dear Diary,

My soul was numb. I stared out of the attic window and watched the kids out in the field playing soccer.... I loved soccer.... but no one would play with the American. We got T.V. of some overdubbed horrible Canadian shows that were dubbed over in German... go figure. I hated the snow, I hated going to the Ballet, I hated the 4 hours of Church, and I definitely hated the friggin' cabbage borscht crap we ate. My mom and I went back to the U.S. at one point in time to visit for a family type of emergency and I remember laying in a bed in Warsaw, Poland knowing that the next day I would be on my way far away from there and I could hardly sleep a wink. I also remember that flying back in I felt like I was going to throw up. At some point in time boarding school came up in conversation and before I knew it my mom and I were on our way to Germany where we checked out the school. I actually liked it. I hung out an entire day at the school and got to play soccer and basketball and talk to guys my age. The idea of not being in the Ukraine was spectacular. All the guys there were in to Butterfly knives and so I got one and the skiing there was amazing. We decided I would attend there the next year. So... sure enough the day came for me to head off and my parents and I went. It took a couple of days to register and unpack and of course my first day of school came. I was ok for a while but then it hit me like a ton of bricks.... that night I said goodbye to my mom and dad and had managed ok until my day hugged me and I broke. I was scared.... This would be the first time I would be alone. I watched my parents drive away and walked back in to the dorm where I began to do my chores for the evening. I got a shower, brushed my teeth and met the other guys from my floor in our head masters room. We had a devotional and I acted like the usual class clown and then off to bed we went. My roommate was weird and didn't really talk. I laid in my bed on the top bunk looking at the ceiling and then I started to sob, I felt so alone and scared. I felt like I was dying. It was my first panic attack. I got up and went down to the bead masters room and told them that I needed to call my parents and they told me that I could in the morning but I said no way that I needed to talk to them before they left down. I kept thinking....they are going to leave me. I also kept going back to when I was in pre-school and my dad would drop me off and have to sneak away before I realized he was gone. I was FREAKING out!!!! I said "Now!" and she called them at midnight and I talked to them. They said they would come see me in the morning before they left. I went back to my room where I began to pray...."please don't let them leave me! Please..." The next day my parents picked me up and I told them I couldn't stay but I couldn't go back to the Ukraine that I wanted to go back to Brazil. After an entire day of begging and them talking to other missionaries and my family back home they decided I didn't have to stay. I was on my way back to the U.S. to live with my grandparents and my sister while they went back to the Ukraine. I still think about that day alot..... I really wish I had stuck in there and pushed through.... I think I would have liked Germany.... They had some beautiful green grass.....

I Hate God

Dear Diary,

We arrived in L'Viv after we slowly cooked on an overnight train from Kiev. It was so hot that I had stripped down to nothing and had thought about stripping my skin off. The windows were sealed and I had no control over the temperature in the cabin. It got way better though.... soon I found out that my parents and I were sharing the same hotel room and I was sleeping on a sofa sleeper. The restaurant at the hotel played "Lady In Red" so many times that I thought I would commit a hate crime before we left. It was so cold!!! I would go outside where the hotel had a park of sorts and write letters to my old neighbor back in the U.S. that I had a crush on and then I would write letters to my friends back in Brazil but I never mailed them. I would also walk around talking to myself and singing alot because I didn't have friends and no one wanted to play with the "American." We met another missionary family and they had 3 girls.... I immediately made a move on the oldest who was 16 and I was 12. After she rejected me I made a move on her sister who was 12 and I guess since I was the only option we became kissing friends. But we didn't hang that much mainly because the parents belonged in an institution somewhere. I played Skip-Bo, Uno, and every card game under the sun with my mom to pass the days. Did I mention the fact that the nights would last for freaking ever!!!! We had to get "Twix" or "Sneaker Bars" from the black market and once in a blue moon I could find a Coca Cola.... Oh yeah!!! I was in the same hotel room with my parents for 6 months!!!!!!!!!! The day came when we moved in to our own apartment and I had my OWN room. I was miserable though. I would stay up all night reading and listening to the only cd I had of Brian Adams. I was being home schooled by my mom which made me extremely happy... yeah right.... I started cheating on my work by looking at the back of the books. I would sit during the day when I was supposed to be doing my school work and stare and dream about being back in Brazil. As the days went on I grew more and more bitter. We did have a pizza place that served American Style pizza and some form of a coke but they had the "Ace of Base" cd on repeat and I would have choked a nun for some earplugs! I was so angry at my parents.... It got to the point that I would go up in the attic and just cry... When my mom would tell me to do something I would do it but cuss her in my head and then I started acting on it. When she would walk out of the room I would throw things. One day when my parents left I threw everything in my room around and grabbed the light hanging from my ceiling and bashed it. I grew up with christian parents and surrounded by the Gospel but I didn't even want to think about God. The day came when I was in my bed and it was close to 3am and I was thinking. I was so angry I couldn't sleep. I wanted out!!! "God can't you hear me?!? Why would you bring my parents here if you knew I would feel this way?!?" Then cam the whopper.... " If God is real and he brought my parents here.... Then I hate God!"

What Happened?

Dear Diary,

Days went by and life had changed. I wasn't even hitting puberty yet and I was all messed up inside. The trauma of abuse and then my friend killing himself!!! That was alot to take in.... On top of that it was time to go to the Ukraine. It was a long journey to Kiev. I should have known it was going to be bad when we boarded a prop plane that looked like it had been built by the wright brothers! We landed in Kiev and my gut hurt.... Going to our apartment I noticed it was nothing like the pictures my parents had shown me. There was no real sunshine and I didn't see the cheerful kids skipping in the streets. All of the buildings looked the same and they looked dark. I found out real quick that finding a coke was impossible and we were lucky to find some diet pepsi. Our apartment was really not livable. The bathroom was... I won't even mention. We had to boil water 3 or 4 times to even get it close to drinking it. My parents and I basicly shared a bedroom and they had to sleep on a futon while we were there. I HATED IT!!!!!!!!! I realized that it wasn't a vacation anymore.... I was homesick... not for the U.S. but for my home in Brazil. I really had no friends in Kiev. The other missionaries that lived there drove me insane!!! It's amazing how much my heart aches just remembering that place. I just sat for about 5 minutes staring at these screen trying to remember all that happened while we were in Kiev and it was a battle because I really wanted to block it out. There was a missionary there with his mother who I really liked but I didn't get to hang out with him that much but he seemed like a cool guy. I cried alot.... my parents and I cried alot. I begged God to let me go back to Brazil. I begged my parents to go back to Brazil. I ended up in the futon with them on several occasions. We were in Kiev for training and we were supposed to live in L'viv. The came when we boarded the train to head to L'viv. Just as the plane warned me the train was not a good sign of things to come. As the train rolled on I felt as if I were on a one way track and with every mile another part of my soul was dying. What happened?

Living Out A Beatles Song

Dear Diary,

Wow.... I am really sorry for not writing for a while but life has been a little crazy lately... A good crazy... God is showing up in ways I can't begin to describe right now. Besides, this is the sad part of my history blog things. Where was why? Oh yeah, I left my home in Brazil and spent time in the U.S. with my sister and grandparents before my parents and other sister would arrive and then we would continue to the Ukraine. My grandparents neighbor and I became really good friends. It was that summer when my Uncle took my friend and I out to hang out in Oklahoma. When we landed and my dad picked me up he informed me that my friend had committed suicide. It was my first run in with suicide. I remember that "Fields Of Gold" was huge at that time and the video made me sick for some reason. At the funeral home I stared at his face for what seemed like hours and there was a shiny glitter like think under his eye which I kept thinking was a tear. I kept waiting for him to breathe. He was my friend and the brother of my grandparents neighbor who had become one of my best friends. Actually, she was a crush of sorts and here she was in shock. I walked around outside talking to her but what do you say? I was pissed! I was sad! I can't explain what I felt inside really. I kept getting flashback's of when he was alive and he came around. He had a tough life. His mom and dad had divorced so he and his sister had a piece of crap stepfather who loved to get drunk and then beat the crap out of him. When he was 13 they sent him away to a boys farm facility kind of thing because he was "unruly." YA THINK?!? I would be unruly to if my sister and mom were getting the crap beat out of them. I used to ride my grandpa's four-wheeler down behind there house and one day I saw my friend who I will call Nathan come running up our back yard. He threw up all over the back patio and asked for a phone so he could call his grandmother. He said his stepdad had just punched him in the stomach. I ran inside and grabbed the phone and gave it to him. I could here his stepdad yelling from the back porch of his house. I ran back inside our place looking for my grandpa and when he wasn't there I looked for his gun. Right about that time my granddad pulled up and told us both to get in the house and we waited inside until Nathan's grandmother picked him up. That was the last time I saw him alive. He took his entire bottle of anti-depressant's one night while he was at the farm. He told another boy he was going to take the pills that night and then he wrote a note. He expected the boy to tell on him and then maybe his mom would rescue him and leave her deadbeat husband and life would be good again. But help never came and he is gone forever.... As I type this I still feel the sting of hurt that I felt that day. I still go to his grave almost every time I go back to Mississippi to visit family. I found a picture his mom gave me just the other day and I could hear that haunting song begin

" Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold
You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in the fields of gold
When we walked in the fields of gold
When we walked in the fields of gold " - Sting

Vacation?

Dear Diary,

Life continued along and I kept the dreams to myself. My cousin suffered no consequences and I did not tell my parents about all that had happened after that. During that time my oldest sister came to visit and when she left I realized how much she meant to me. I was sad for a while and I remember that she made us watch the Bodyguard... yeah... the chick flick with Kevin and Whitney. After that every time I heard that song I thought about my sister and it made me really sad. I didn't want to study anymore. I hated school. I couldn't focus on the work and would just not do it. I didn't mind my teacher very well and finally one day she confronted me about it and I broke down and told her about the dreams and what happened when I was younger. She told my parents and we talked again. Once again after tears and apologies I didn't feel any different. I had resigned to the fact that this was life and to just deal with it. I was very bitter towards the world. On the outside I didn't show it but inside I was coming apart. I was easily irritated by my friends and others and very emotional. One night my parents took me out to eat and it was just them and myself.... I should have known something was up because my sister wasn't there. They asked me what I would think about going to the Ukraine....umm..... and they showed me some brochures of children running in school uniforms through the sunny streets and I said " Sure, looks fun." I didn't put it together that this was a permanent move. I thought it was going to be a cool vacation but that we would be back in Brazil again. I was 12 years old. The day came when I had to leave. I left before the rest of my family because I was going to spend some extra time with my sister back in the U.S. and start school there while we waited to go to the Ukraine. I remember waking up that morning and going to the church. I sat near the back with my parents and then the church called me to the front. My "Tio" which means "Uncle" because that's what we call our friends dads there and aunts are "Tia's" prayed for me and talked about how I was a part of their family and they gave me a shirt. He hugged me as he was crying and I started crying. I stood at the door while everyone walked out and hugged me and said goodbye. Everyone except for my best friend who remained at a distance. I thought he was mad at me.... We were almost to my car when I looked back towards the church one last time and then saw my best friend come charging across the street and he hugged me and cried and we said goodbye. My stomach sank as we pulled away. We stopped off at my "girlfriends" house because she couldn't make it to church. I said goodby and started to walk away after she handed me a note but then I got the courage and turned around and kissed her...yeah!!! I thought I was the man like Kevin in The Bodyguard. We drove to Sao Paulo where I caught my flight to the U.S. As the plane took off I cried.... I cried... and I cried some more. It wasn't until I met my sister in Miami that I stopped crying. That wouldn't be the last time though....

Same Song Different Dance

Dear Diary,

Sorry for missing a couple of days but had guests in town from Brazil keeping me pretty busy. So where did I leave off? We arrived back in Brazil and we went to the church first thing to reunite with friends but I noticed my best friend wasn't there so I asked my parents if I could run to his house, literally, because he lived only a few blocks from the church and they said yes. My heart was about to explode as I was running because I love to surprise people and I really missed him and his family. I got to his apartment building and ran up the stairs and pounded on the door but there was no answer. I stood there for a few minutes in disbelief because it was kind of late. I finally gave up and started walking down the stairs when I heard someone running up the stairs and there he was. They had just left to go to the church when I was running that way and now he was running to meet me. We went out to eat about 9 o'clock because that's when alot of us went in Brazil. We had a new journeymen fly in to teach my sister and I and you guessed it... I was in love again. The church was growing alot and I was growing up and started to feel the pressure of the preteen phase. I missed my oldest sister alot and I didn't get to see her as much anymore. The nightmares of MS were constant now and I could feel a difference inside of me. My best friend and I tried smoking... we actually went to a news stand and bought a pack of cigarrettes and smoked one a piece. I felt horrible because I knew we were doing something wrong. I pushed down the bad feelings. One evening my parents and I went over to a church families house and while the adults were drinking coffee and talking I was in the back room with the oldest of their family checking out the musical instruments because music was already my passion. I have said it before but I will say it again because each time it hurts more and more.... When those you trust and look up to hurt you it crushes so much more. I remember the excuses as to why I shouldn't say anything.... "This is normal" "Don't you do this at your other friends houses" "It's a game that we play among friends but we don't tell the adults because they don't understand and we might get in trouble." If my spirit hadn't been severally hurt before now it was critically injured. I didn't say anything though. I would lie awake at night trying not to fall asleep in fear of the dreams that would visit. I felt disgusting and disconnected. One day I got my old arm leash that my parents used when we would go in to crowded places so I wouldn't wander off and get lost or kidnapped and decided I had had enough. I think I was 11 at this time. I tied it around my neck and pulled as hard as I could... I could feel the blood rushing to my head and everything going black but then when my hands started to collapse the pressure let off and I was back again. So I tied it to the back of my bad and leaned forward and this time it was working..... Right as I could feel the blood pumping in my head my sister opened the door and screamed and then went and told my parents. My parents sat me in the living room.... they asked what was going on and I told them about MS when I was 4. They were shocked. I can't remember exactly what was said but I know that they said they were sorry and they wish they had known. Nothing happened though.... That I was aware of anyway.... I still hurt.... I changed after that. I still loved my parents but something definately had changed and my behavior was an example of that. The snowball had begun to roll.....