This is who I am, This is me, This is who I will be, For all eternity...
I first saw the light of day on December 22nd, 1988, in the Children’s Hospital of Karlsruhe, in Germany, two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the time my parents had decided it would be too overwhelming for any child to be born on Christmas day, and so they lastly decided to bring me into the world a few days earlier.
They had figured that I was a child who was special enough, because I was the only boy out of five children.
And so you may imagine how difficult it have been like for four girls and one boy to get along, but in truth, there really never was a time when we didn’t hold very closely together in those days.
I remember the first home I grew up in, a small apartment complex at Douglass Strasse 12, near the town square, a place usually bustling with activity and where shops, theatres, and stores sat inside ancient buildings.
Our home stood over an underpass which lead into an alley, it was a strange existence in city life, and after almost 18 years in that place became a little too much for us.
Imagine that our balcony and the apartment complex in general both went up in flames on two separate occasions, and that there where certain gang activities often taking place.
I could actually recall an instant in which a rival gang had thrown a Molotov cocktail against a nearby wall, and almost caused that building to burn down.
Yet all that certain unrest meant nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the chaos that was about to tear our family completely apart…
Near the end of 1995, my parents had become unhappy with their lives and with each other, and it would eventually lead to my mother’s affair with another man.
Yet what seemed the least understood was how close we as a family had been to God, my father having been and still being a resilient Christian.
And so she did not only turn her back against my dad, and us; but she had also decided to turn her back against God.
The divorce and the legal proceedings such as the custody battles had raged so furiously that there had seemed to be no end, yet what I remembered the most from those days where certain events that would likely haunt me for the rest of my life.
I remember sitting there in the living room, trying to construct house out of Lego blocks, silently and to myself as angry voices shattered the air around me, and things that had been otherwise orderly where tossed about.
I had never seen my parents lay a single violent finger upon one another, but if their words had been daggers, then I may likely have been crucified against the neared wall..
It all seemed to have ended there for me, my childhood..
Because a part within me began to die, rott, and fade away that should never have been lost in the first place..
No soul could describe what it feels like to lose a parent through death, yet to slowly watch them walk away into the distance with the unforgiving feelings of betrayal..
I suppose it ought not to be related to anything short of the cataclysm that brings your world, the very way you think, feel and behave into a downward spiral.
I recall having been a part of normal elementary school before the day my parent divorced, yet afterward I would spiral down into such mental and emotional instability that I had ended up in the school for the learning disabled.
I was given a faint glimmer of hope to continue my normal education if I passed, yet the struggles I would continue to face held me at such a loss that I was almost moved into classes for the Mentally Disabled.
And the only outlet for me slowly became eating, which with almost 200lbs at the time of my arrival to the United States became an exceeding problem.
I was not the only one who suffered immensely, my sister Miriam begun to develop the first onsets of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), my oldest sister Damaris, who has had a life long hearing disability eventually quit her education and married a deadbeat (Whom she divorced after she realized him to be nothing but an abusive, dumb, a**hole), my younger sister Eva for whom I will not speak short of the very fact that she had stopped speaking with God..
And then finally there is Sarah, who may have suffered the most out of all of us.
She had decided to run away at age 15 and become impregnated by a man so screwed up that only a year after she left him reinvented himself as a Gay Prostitute named, “Mandyâ€.
Our father, who fought like a lion, eventually managed to get the rights to have us all stay with him, but nothing would ever be the same, and one after the other our family eventually broke apart completely..
Me and my sister where eventually taken out of School against the laws of the German state (Which made public education compulsory, there is no such thing as home schooling.) due to the horrific fashion in which such schools where conducted in the day, and likely almost 5 incidences when I was harassed and mobbed.
Having been insulted, pushed, and shoved because I was the social outcast, the misfit that they did not like or liked to pick on.
And thus my father began a long and hard battle against the German educational system, home schooling us regardless and being prepared to the leave the country if otherwise.
Yet God would soon give us that opportunity through an email discussion group my father attended online for Single Christian parents, marking it as “No romance intendedâ€.
Her name was Kristina Woessner, daughter of two German immigrants from the municipality of Plankstadt, now living in Streamwood, Illinois.
My father found love once more, and we soon decided to leave Germany to found a newer and brighter future in America, the land where we truly could finally achieve our dreams.
Yet even this wonderful lady was struck by certain horrible fates. Having lost both her former husband and mother to cancer, she had become a widow struck by unending grief.
Having no other comfort than he two sons and all the things that one could buy to try and drown out the merciless sorrow, what we became to each other was like a ray of shining hope, yet her two sons however, Michael and Steven where individuals whose presence had begun to be an unyielding struggle and torment in many ways.
Having been born with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), AS (Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism.) and eventually Bipolar Disorder, Steven was not a child of normal standard in any sense. Yet it quickly became evident that his behavior, which was brought down to be normal, still reflected the very mannerisms of a rotten individual with poor character qualities.
I shall not mention the episodes of violent threats and manipulative behaviors in full detail, but he had exhumed for years his manipulative control over his mother and younger brother.
It was something that my father was ready to put an end to, beginning with the marriage to my new step mom in The Little Chapel Of The Flowers, in Las Vegas.
And so me, my dad, and my younger sister Eva begun a new and sometimes chaotic life in the United States, branching our own turf in the downstairs part of my step moms raised ranch home, and seeking to find a normal life in this chaotic world.
I would eventually reenter public school and become incorporated into a school system, which put the student first, and the educational system around them so they can achieve their maximum potential.
It was however a foreign world for me at first, a place so big that one had to have a car to get anywhere; a concept, which did not exist in the small reaches of Germany.
As a matter of fact everything seemed bigger in America, which for good or bad gave me a new and unique view of life.
I had learned English in almost a year’s time; perhaps largely due to the fact my father already knew fluent English and would almost help me comprehend what each and every word meant in German.
I had gone through middle school and eventually managed to overcome my learning disabilities in math, soon enough making the first permanent friends of my life at Streamwood High School.
A school which though humble in its construction houses a rich number of wonderful and caring individuals, and for it I shall never regret telling unto others that I had been a part of it.
I had lost so much, gained so much, and learned so much that it seems that I had ended up seeing the world in ways too few individuals can.
The world in which we live in shapes us all differently, yet it is determined through our own eyes if we wish to keep them open, perhaps open enough to see that God is real.
And that a man named Jesus truly died for all of us almost 10,000 years ago.
There are things in this world that I have yet to find, yet to ponder the ultimate questions in life seemed to verge from the earth the very wisdom that answers them.
My love for writing had begun to flourish since an early age, since having seen my sister Miriam create loving poems, it is the imagery and emotions in them that drew me to do the same, to become and individual of artistic expressions and creativity.
I have also been involved in Shotokan Karate for almost eight years, arts and graphic designs for almost 4 years, and music for perhaps the majority of my life, and of course, Anime, and all of its manifestations, which unlike newer American cartoons still seems to stay true to the original magic of honest story telling.
Yet if I could ever name any one a hobby, I would have to name almost all the things I commit my life to a hobby, for I found a passion and gift that God gave me, that I intend to use to open up the eyes of the world, and perhaps show them the very things I see as well..
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