I will be using this brilliant Idea to tell my story of a hard luck life with a very happy ending. I will hold nothing back and Its gonna be brutally honest and laid to the bone emotional .

This is my Psychotherapy - Thanks for reading.

Describe your journey from lost to found?

Yea thats the general Idea but I'm kinda scared to let go here for fear of trolls. I had it rough as a kid and didn't always make the right choices.

I figured it would be a growth process for me personally to write it down and I have had ideas to start a blog elsewhere . I seen a tweet about the start of the forum from PP and decided since my whole entire life has had poker and cards in it, why not do it here with my peers .
This isn't the easiest crowd in town to bare your soul to- Its gonna take cajones to do what I'm gonna do but the only way this is gonna work is If I spare no detail unless It can convict me .

First- I don't know 98% of you IRL . We all come from different backgrounds and lifestyles. In our world there is always gonna be that person in a weird situation or with tremendously bad or good luck . For me its a balance and I dont know which one because I'm so lucky to be naturally intelligent but emotionaly I was immature and was really bullied hard in school and abused physically by my drunk stepfather in the same time frame- I have a prehistory to that and an after history that talks about Juvenile hall- wilderness camp - 5 county jails- 9 diff prisons in two states - Its a lot to put down in a blog so it will be a process of time and emotions- I beg that my openness be taken to heart and there be no snideness or trolling from other members.

I want very bad to be rid of this tremendous weight on my heart and to continue evolving towards inner peace and harmony in my life.

I am not perfect - I can only be me and I am doing the best "Me" has ever done in "Real" life.

Tarheelbluez what experience has helped you the most in your journey to coming the best " you " that you can be?

I look forward to reading more about your life, thanks for sharing.

Lets get the happy ending early so I can stop reading at a high point.

Its funny how you can remember certain things from childhood . I can remember sitting in my dads lap in a home poker game 5c/10c/25c and trying to push money in the pot when we didn't have a hand. I can also remember my dad dragging my mom out by here hair in the middle of the night when it was freezing.

I hate that I can remember **** like that because its ****ing real. I hate that on one hand my parents did good things like playing games and beach trips, but then I think about the bad decisions that were made , Like my dad hitting my mom or her marrying that drunk POS stepdad.

It always reaffirms my suspicions that my Mother wasn't great at making life choices...... I was conceived in the back of a van at some county fair in rural NC...

Funny this was exactly my idea of a blog as well. Get stuff off my chest from being a kid that scarred me for life, and shaped the person I am. Figured it would be interesting reading. Yours sounds like it will be. Do it.

I can imagine how hard it is to share this. I can also imagine that it is very important to share it on a forum like this! You write very good to start with. I think that the whole thing here is that you did not have controll as a kid (like no one has) on what ur parents did. The control is in your parents hands. If they don't use it in a smart way that mis-use can follow you your whole life.

Imo 2 things are important:
1) you have controll now! You can break this negative tendency down. Start summing up things u can do to be happy. What aspects are these.. (sports, hobby's, future, work, passion blablah). Translate it into real things. (If u are happy now: forget this)

2) forgive ur parents/steph father. If you are angree or blaming your steph father, than YOU are angree. It is gonna be hard to make it their problem. And if you manage that to be the case, you still have the problem and you don't even achieved what you want in this.. You should be able to go on with your life.

Pff maybe I am concluding too much out of the bit u wrote, but I recognize a little from my own life (like prolly more readers will..). Anyway: keep posting! I'll read.

How old are u btw?

Here is my family tree :

Tony biodad

Rose mom

Chuck stepdad

Justin brother

One set of grandparents - my moms dad Ray and his 4 diff wives-

My Biodad only knew his mom raised by his gma and supposedly his mom was a whore- Dad has a brother Jerry who has a diff father

Some extended family on both sides butnever close and although theyprob know My name, I don't know theirs.

Some other players who had some sort of impact along the way --

Tammy - ex and only gf - 10 years of being with my grade school crush whom I reconnected with again after getting out of SC state pen in 12-99

Chad- her cousin that I met in an insane prison situation in SC -

Nick , Chris , David - 3 brothers That were close childhood friends of mine.

Treefrog - longtime high school friend and confidant


Sheryl- my moms childhood and adult bff that she ended up hating for being a liar and a mooch-
Shes also the stepmother to Nick , Chris, David-

These are almost all of the people that know me closely and ended up being in this story-

I am 36 years old -

I try to claim I'm younger than that sometimes if I start thinking about the years I spent in prison for stupid dumbass bull**** -

When I was born , my dad was a truck driver and my mom wasn't working at the time because we had moved from NC to SC for his work .My dads bro also lived there with his new wife and several cousins that all happened to lay carpet , my dads other profession-

My dad was also a biker-
There I said it-


NOT the rich kind that only rides weekends---- noooooo

My dad was a stinking broke ass wanna be clown that somehow conned my mom out of the pussy -

He was in a biker " Gang" and another of my earliest memories is riding early in the morning with my mom to the gangs clubhouse to find him since he didnt come home-
Ended up catching him with some slut and my life spiraled from there.

I'm probably gonna be hating on Tony quiet a bit.

I have anger issues guys- not as much now but its there lingering and will come out in the right situations. I hate it . Its like my cognitive mind shuts off and my mouth opens and I spew venemous hatred on unsuspecting people. Its a damn curse.
I want to say I'm predisposed to an angry temperment because my father has anger issues - I was a desk thrower in kindergarten when I got upset-

If I was predisposed then all the BS I've endured magnified my dosage by a million- I'm one angry dude -

I have put forth a lot of effort in the last two years into my anger and I manage it much better- still needs improvement but at least I have been able to hold a job down for the first time in my life!

I think a lot about all the humans that have lived and died over the thousands of years or more and one thing comes to me more than any other-

Civilizations advancement and education is always evolving how we deal with our psychological issues- so now since I am expieriencing the future daily, There is no right or wrong way to deal with this .

I will say its feeling right so far !

Thanks for the encouragement!

Subbed, looking forward to reading your story.

Sent from my PC36100 using 2+2 Forums

Seems interesting, can't wait for it... also good luck in writing it, i get how it can be hard to actually let things like this go. especially when it's for someone else to hear.

It has been hard to come back here and face what is coming. I want to somehow get it all out at one time but its just too much to think about. I have ****ing walked around for a week just thinking about this thread. All that I am ashamed to admit to myself, I have to face it , one by one -





I did feel loved. When My parents were still together, I felt loved . It was real. we were poor, and I didn't know it or care.

I had a 2 grandpas and two grandmas both on my moms side. Her dad and step mom lived in our county and her mom and stepdad lived in Hampton , VA and there were trips up there to see my grandpa Phil who died when I was 7 - step grandpa but my Mom said he was the nest man she had ever known... Navy guy. I loved him. I was named after him - they had two mean ass Chihuahuas . They lived in low income housing and at night Phil would go out and get all the toys left in the yards and put them in the attic for me when I came to visit at Christmas. I was living in single wide trailer on hwy 96 called Sauls mobile home park in 1983 0r 84 when he died. I didn't have a long time with him but I sure wish I did--

My moms dad Ray- he was a hard worker all his life , working in the fields from a young age . He met my grandma in Florida and They had my mom and uncle. then split up - she moved to VA - Then he married a woman Camille who was a very bad alcoholic. She had a really fat daughter the same age as my mom. They were 15/16 or so...Ray somehow started ****ing the fat stepdaughter and got caught by wife Camille. to make everything hush - hush all Ray had to do was send fatty to NC State which he did. My mom was devastated and wanted to go to college so bad. There was always this underlying tension my whole entire life when we were at Rays and he lived 3 miles from me and at one point I lived at his house or behind it in a trailer. he divorced Camille then met Alice who had 3 kids almost grown . That was at the height of the tv show Dallas. It was cool but my parents were starting to have issues then and had just bought some land and a doublewide on 5 acres sitting near the Neuse river.

It was a little dirt road subdivision and our lot was in the back down a very long road . Some other families had bought land and had either built or had a mobile home. redneck as hell. This is when the poker started.

Until I moved to "Hidden Valley " as a kid , the dirt roaf neighborhood, I moved around quite a bit . I also done some crazy stuff as a 2-3-5 year old kid- the first instance was when I was supposed to be taking a nap in the afternoon one weekend . I kicked the screen out of my bedroom window and jumped out . I walked 4 blocks in my diaper to " T-mart" and walked in and filled my diaper with peppermint patties , left and walked back home- upon getting to my house I find my parents and their friends sitting on a curb crying because I was gone- yea kinda nutty that I had absolutely no fear -

Or how about being in Hampton with Grandpa Phil and us going to the store and me getting in somwone elses car when he left me to go into the store- luckily those people were good because they helped me find my people while poor Phil cried and cried thinking someone had kidnapped me-

Or the time when I was in that same trailer park and my longtime babysitter had friends over and I pulled a sword on them and made them leave- this was before I started 1st grade -

So many crazy fearless things I done not realizing how it would affect me later in life -

I stole A LOT as a child- never really stole from a person until I started having family issues - It was always kmart or some other store that I would steal from- The first time I was caught by my mom was in that same trailer park - we went to "sky city" basically a old school Wal-mart -
I stole a transformer- the original joint ! It was the yellow bulldozer guy and I was at home playing with it later that day when my mom noticed and put 2+2 together- she made me go back into the store and give it back - I was so young they must of laughed it off because I cant remember their reaction - needless to say it didnt deter me-

The next thing I can remember stealing is a " Fat Boys" cassette tape from K-mart. I had this vest with a lot of pockets so I filled em up!!

It was easy to do . It felt natural.

My parents were really having problems at this time-

Our new double wide wasnt enought to save them so my Mom made my dad leave- he decided another state was good so he left- and took almost everything in the house with him-

So Me , my baby brother Justin and my mom were left to fend for ourselves with hardly no furnishings and her working a factory job at Champion making sweat suits.

This was a ****ed up part of my life and makes me want to bash a couple skulls thinking about it-

hahaha, to good

One thing that I liked about my parents was that they liked animals and we always had dogs my whole life. I also had the occassional turtle/ cat / wild lizard/ snake / guinea pig / fish x 50 but the main stay were dogs . I love dogs tremendously now and am grateful that I do . I could'nt imagine not having my chihuahua Peewee now. He is almost 7 . He has been through a lot of BS with me the first 5 years but I've done right by him the last 2 here in Vegas. Funny story how I got him but thats later-

My familys first dogs when I was born were my dads female Doberman Gypsy and my moms male Doberman Damon - They both died before I had any attachment . Gypsy had a litter of pups when I was barely walking and I messed with her and she bit my face- I never remembered it until my Mom told me about it later - I asked about a small scar on my face- I still have it today. I Can't believe I have never really been scared of dogs after that.

I want to have a pack like Cesar milan haha . Hell why not , they could be my surrogate family .

As unlucky as I have been with Family and relationships , I am always grateful to have been born in the now- I would have loved to been an outlaw gambler in the old west . That would mean I am dead and gone now , but just imagine how easy it was to " come up" back then. There was no 911 !!

I don't remember much about the first time I lived in S.C. . The times I do, are my earliest memories. I lived on Lizzie street in Rock Hill which is just down I-77 from Charlotte . Winthrop University is there and they have a decent basketball squad. I think I was there for about a year before my Mom took us back to NC . It was late one night and the three of us were on the couch watching tv. all of a sudden my Mom and Dad start wrestling and at first I thought it was just play. Then my Dad is dragging my Mom towards the door and she's kicking him and screaming but he's still pulling her. Then I just remember him shutting the door and making me go to bed.
I don't know if he was drunk . I never really talked to my Mom about it in depth. The next day we drove to his brothers house and she was there . That was the only time I think I seen him do that to her. I was 3 maybe 4.

Another memory on that street is during the summer right after my birthday and I was playing in my yard with all my new hotwheels . I set them down to play with something else and when I came back to them , all my cars and the classic blue with white tray flap case was missing.

It ended up being the ******* neighbors across the street and my Dad confronted them . There were blows and the cops were called but before that I have this image of being at the front door and my dad kneeling beside me with a shotgun in his hand waiting for it to kick off. I didn't get the hotwheels back.

So My Grandpa Ray came and got us from Rock Hill , then let my mom and me live in one of two singlewide trailers he had behind his house. Our trailer was really old, but solid and my mom kept it clean.
Around this time Ray met his 3rd wife Alice and her 3 almost grown kids. Also my mom's brother Davy lived in the 2nd trailer behind the house with his wife Beth.

There was a weird dynamic between Ray, Davy and my mom Rose. Ray raised them from a young age because my Grandma left him and married Phil whom I am named after. Ray worked the **** out of my mom and uncle. Barning tobacco during the summers and firewood and other **** during the year. Plus my mom made good grades all through school. Davy ended up learning how to lay carpet and vinyl from my dad and still does it today.

My mom worked a lot of sewing jobs when I was between 1-7 yo. She was working one of those when her and my dad got back together. He said he had changed and gotten a good gig laying carpet in Raleigh . He moved us from behind Rays to a little trailer park about 4 miles away. Things were good here and I remember baller Christmas's with lots of He-man and Transformers. Also my brother is born during this time . Things felt good and even though we were poor , I was happy.


But that doesn't mean that I was a good boy. I don't know why but I always seemed to do the opposite of behaving . I tried to be sneaky with it and I guess that's how I got so good as an adult. I don't recall school trouble , but I certainly did some things at home that I luckboxed my way into not getting found out.

I used to come home from school and be the first one there . I would go through my parents **** , mostly my dad's because he had tattoos and cussed and I knew there were weapons . I went in the closet and got out his pump 12 gauge and had hip held against my hip with the barrel pointed upwards . I was just holding it and looking at it when I pulled the trigger. I didn't expect it to go off but it did and it scared me soooo bad and the peppered mark it left on the ceiling, I knew for sure I was cooked because my dad whipped my ass frequently with his belt.
I put the gun back and never said a word. Neither did my parents so I got away with that one.

The second time I got away with it also , but this is more severe damage. The trailer next to us was furnished but the owners didn't live there all the time. Well one summer day I happened to walk by the door and turned the knob and it opened! They left it unlocked!! So I went right in and started going through everything. I found matches and wondered since it was so hot inside would it catch fire quicker . I struck a match and was standing beside the curtain and poof! It engulfed the whole wall and I almost got burnt up in that place because I lit the curtain beside the door. scared me bad so I ran home.

I got scared it might burn our trailer too so I acted like I was thirsty and stood at our front screen door for like two minutes drinking my koolaid watching the trailer next to us burn . I all of a sudden screamed hey its on fire!! just like I stumbled onto some clue! anyway, the FD put it out but I basically gutted those peoples trailer. To cover my tracks, I said that I seen a kid who lived on the other side of the park nearby before the fire.....I never was asked about it again thank god. I was like 6,7 but who knows how it would have turned out.


I didn't live there much longer because my mom had just passed her NC real estate exam and the carpet business was good . They found a good piece of land and we were gonna be a family there.

I can't say that I am "found" at this moment.


I probably won't ever be truly " found" , considering I'm 36 and It took so long to get here, psychologically , that learning to maintain this will be a job in itself. It is very hard for me to %100 stay positive and not let the slightest idiocy send me into a mini-depression where I do dumb stuff and torpedo **** I've worked for.

It's another way that my ****ed up past robs me . It's another reminder that the person I am is because of my experiences up until this point.

It's like I live in a glass house and the slightest jiggle or falling pine cone will shatter everything. I would love to call up my make believe huge loving family and all my fears evaporate . No, that's not an option and even if it was , you wouldn't know what to say since you never had that option before.


I have got to stop letting negative emotions control me and causing me to make bad decisions. I have done a great job , but not the BEST job that I strive for .

I can't even remember exactly how old I was when my parents finally called it quits. I wanna guess 9-10 . My brother is six years younger than me so he had to be 3 or 4 .

The new place they had bought and financed couldn't save their marriage. It was just two people who didn't fit together but stayed for the kids and in the end ****ed them up.

Whenever my Mom was depressed, she would sleep. When my dad left with almost everything in the house , My mom slept a lot.
I remember it being tough . I try and remember it now and it feels like quicksand in my mind. slow motion death.
We had a 3 bedroom doublewide on 5 acres . It was in a cul de sac down a long dirt road with other streets. The school bus wouldn't come all the way down the road because it was kinda treacherous . All the neighborhood kids would meet at one spot and get picked up there.
Over the years from my moving there and then turning 16, 18 different kids lived in Hidden Valley with me.

Whenever my mom had troubles she always got help from Ray. During this time, we had a ****ty little car and we couldn't afford to live in the double wide so we moved into Rays house instead of behind it in a trailer. Mom had started working for a realty company called , Southern Partners. It was the most prestigious job she had had up to this point and she was working hard. I was going to school and my brother in daycare.
we still had the doublewide but since it was easier to live with Ray .

One of my craziest childhood memories happened during this time.

You see , my Mom was a smoker. So was my Dad. But, for my Mom it was like crack. She would drive around with her two boys smoking away, taking big drags , holding it for a couple seconds, then exhaling dramatically.With the windows rolled UP! She had awful smokers etiquette . One thing she was ignorant of was second hand smoke.

It sent me and my baby brother at the same time, to the ear, nose and throat specialist .

We both had horrible ear infections and had to be treated right away. They wanted to slowly shoot air up my nose to pop my infection naturally but I freaked out and wouldn't let them do it. Then the DR. tried to use a scalpel and when he got close to my ear I started screaming. I ran out into the waiting room trying to get away and he drug me back into the examining room , held me down and shot a sedative into my buttcheek . Then he pierced my eardrum with that scalpel. It freaked me out. He was weird as hell, and I was sick and it freaked me out.

Ray beat my ass when I got home because I had acted crazy at the doctors office.

how was I supposed to act?


That doctor who happened to be my grade school PE teachers dad, Shot himself not long after this. It makes me wonder who was crazy ~

I have to say you have just inspired me so much. I think I'm going to start one of these 2 + 2 blogs myself, and also do a poker goals, and challenges thread as well.

Thank you, and good luck in your quest for inner peace.