That night, I was reading a comic book while laying on my bed in my tiny room...
I could hear everything that was going on in my parents’ room as though they were right next to me…
Like most nights, both my stepfather and mother had been drinking heavily…
And soon enough, like always, an argument breaks out…
I was too young to understand what it was about…
But I knew how the arguments always ended…
Not before long, their exchange gets heated…
Screaming and shouting ensues...
My heart begins to race...
Fear and anxiety sets in…
I knew what was about to happen next…
I covered my head with my pillow…
Hoping to drown out the noise…
It never worked…
I started hearing the blows and the beatings…
The whimpering…
The pleading and begging…
But something was different that night...
My mother did something she had never done before…
I started to hear my mom call out...
“Mike! MIKE! MIKEEE!!!”
She was calling out to me…
For help!
A 10-year-old boy!
I desperately wanted to do something...
But I was completely paralyzed by fear…
So I laid in bed…
Face down, pillow over my head...
Unable to even move a muscle…
Never have I felt more helpless in my entire life…
That overwhelming sense of helplessness stuck to me like glue…
And my childhood became ruled by fear…
As I grew older, the violence got worse…
One night, after having her head viciously beaten against the living room wall...
My mother went to the hospital…
A brain tumor was discovered…
After a year of treatment…
My mother died…
I was only 15…
My life became a mess as I descended into drugs and alcohol…
As much and as often as I possibly could…