Despite all that I had experienced from a very young age that had adversely affected me, even while still very young, I never lost hope that someday, I would overcome all of this. The course of my life had already been radically altered by the time that I began school in the late 1970’s. My parents apparently believed that my capacity to quickly learn and acquire new skills was an indication that somehow, I had been born with a mental condition of some kind that was permanently disabling. The family photographs show several examples of the types of things that I was doing during my childhood, that are part of the typical development of most children.

I am now aware that my mother did not have the capacity to understand that, and she had already been convinced by my paternal grandmother apparently, that such things were not acceptable behavior by a child. My mother still mistakenly believes that I was misbehaving when I was young, especially for doing things such as catching insects while outdoors. I could not understand, as a child, why I was being punished for the kinds of things I often observed my father doing. What I did not realize then though, or until recently, was that both my parents were so severely dysfunctional due to the gaslighting abuse that my paternal grandmother had inflicted upon them both, separately and before they were married, that they could not adequately care for their own needs, and certainly not for the needs of a young child.

Despite all that I experienced, and the struggles I endured, I never lost hope, as I realized, even by the time I began school when I was five years old, that it was what I was experiencing and the manner in which my parents were treating me, that was abnormal. While my mother could not understand that a child would, as part of typical child development, do such things as standing on chairs to reach items left within reach, or catching insects, or wanting to leave the yard by a certain age, my father, who worked and spent much less time with me, could not understand why it seemed as though I was not developing as I should have been.

My mother would not allow me to do many things that were part of typical child development, and my father apparently had no idea why, for example, by the time I was four years old, I had not yet learned how to swim, despite my mother spending hours with me on summer afternoons in our backyard swimming pool. My father became convinced that something was indeed wrong with my development, but that was the result of my mother’s actions to impede my development. By the time I began school, they had already collectively destroyed my future.

But there was more at work than just these elements, and my understanding of myself is something that I have never questioned. I am now aware that I was much more functional than both my parents, and much more responsible as well, by the time that I was just a few years old. The family photographs show some indications of that. I had learned to help my mother with housework chores almost immediately after I learned to walk. Beginning when I was about three years old, my father would take me to work with him, where I quickly learned and mastered some of the skills that he used each day in his job in the construction field.

While I had learned to read from a very young age, I unfortunately had a limited supply of books to read, and so I had to improvise as best I could. Being a highly visual learner and knowing that I could easily learn how to do something I had never done before by observing someone else, the television became my tutor before I began school, and I would often reproduce things that I saw on television using materials in my home, as best I could.

My mother, lost in her own struggles of having lost her self-identity to the gaslighting abuse inflicted upon her by my paternal grandmother, rarely took me beyond the confines of our yard. Even when other children who lived nearby began approaching me, wanting to play, they could not understand why I had to tell them that I could not leave my yard and I ran out of excuses to provide to them. It all left me extremely isolated, but my parents still could not understand why, or that they were the cause of the issues that they were citing with me. All that they were capable of perceiving was that I had been somehow born with a disability of some kind, because I was always looking for some new activity, or something new to learn, especially once I began school. By that point, I realized that there was much more to life than the extremely limited range of activities available to me at home.

By the time that I had reached the second grade, academic testing confirmed that I was operating significantly above grade level and above my chronological age, but my parents never understood, and therefore never revealed, that their odd behavior was the underlying issue of what they were claiming was some type of mental disorder in me. I am now aware, since my father’s passing, and the new information that my mother provided me, that both my parents were so functionally compensated by the time that I was just a few years old, that they had convinced themselves that I was the source of all the family issues that would ensue through the years. I became the family scapegoat for anything that happened, either in my home, or beyond it, that my parents did not find to their liking. My father though, was much more functional than my mother, whom I spent most of my time with while at home.

Despite all that I endured as a child, I managed to repeatedly hold on to my hope for the future. I never lost my determination to overcome what I was experiencing, even though I realized by the time that I was about seven years old that eventually overcoming all this might be far in my future. For the young boy with a bright future, it would take extreme courage in the face of great adversity to eventually escape the grasp of my family’s insanity. Realizing that, I resolved to do what I could along the way, to never lose sight of my goal to convey what happened to me, and to my family, to others.

I never lost hope though, that someday, I would overcome it all, because I was determined to hold on to reality, so no one else would ever need to endure what I have …