Three Faces: A Memoir

PROLOGUE

Take a look in the mirror. Tell me what you see. A person, right? A walking, talking, coherent individual, complete with flaws, positive traits, spiritual and physical blemishes, and a hint of the salt of the Earth.

Unless, you’ve visited Hell.

You’re probably envisioning a massive, fiery canyon, scorched black from millenniums of the hottest heat imaginable. The sound of violins screech their despairing cacophony whilst an imposing horned beast sits atop the canyon, a prominent spiked tail glistening with sweat, undulating behind it. Everywhere there are screams.

Torturing, endless wails, painfully extracted from the souls of all those who defied our Creator on high.

Is this the kind of endless labyrinth of a place that comes to mind when you envision the Underworld? If so, then stop, because that place doesn’t exist. At least, not for humans. Our Hell is right here, where what we see isn’t always what it appears to be. Where the line between what is fact and what is fiction was drawn with no hands.

Our Hell is in believing.

The human psyche is such a complex thing. It’s intricate in the way that it can be molded to fit any shape that one desires. It’s viable enough to be bent, broken and repaired, without any real damage. Think about it. Have you ever been in or known anyone with a military background? Ask them about their first six weeks after enlisting. Those six weeks were meant for one thing and one thing only: to systematically destroy the person within. They were meant to reprogram the organic circuitry that makes this person who he is, and in doing so, reconstruct that person into someone else. In no uncertain terms, those six weeks were meant to system restore that person, and in his place, create someone else.

​Ask any veteran what he learned during those six weeks. I bet my bottom dollar he'll tell you he learned to kill.

He learned to value only one thing, and to hold that one thing in the highest regard. He learned to value the preservation of life.

We grow up playing with our toy soldiers, playing our video games, always becoming the hero on our infinite quests to save the same damsel in distress. We wish we were the chosen one, but we never think about what it might really be like to kill someone, until that part of our psyche is reprogrammed to think about it. Until we’re given a rifle, and placed in a situation where it’s us or them. Then, those six weeks of training become a part of us and in one eye blink, it all makes sense.

Careful what you wish for.

___________

What are you doing right now? Are you working? Cooking? Mowing the grass or watching television? Maybe you’re driving, or even across the world participating in whatever business or leisure venture this week decided. You are there and there is in you.

Your body is there, your physical form that occupies Earth; your limbs, your eyes, your heart. But where is your mind?

I learned how to escape this world long ago. And I’ll explain a little bit about my backstory as this continues.

But this isn’t about escaping this world. This is about encroachment, about willfully usurping the part of us that is supposed to be our sanctuary, our place.

Our place. The place we go when we close our eyes to sleep at night, where we pray, meditate, fantasize. Where sometimes we can’t escape, yet we can open the door anytime we want.

When I was a kid I had a fondness for video games. I must have lived a thousand lives through the characters in those games; felt their pain, their happiness, their love, their triumph. It was in those tales that I was able to escape, to cast off the burdens of ridicule I endured at school, and transport myself into a land where I was the hero, I was the important one, the one who mattered. But as I grew up, I learned that they were only that: video games. They weren’t real. They were the inner creations of people like myself, and these people had ventured into their own space and brought these stories and worlds to life inside their minds. Many people working together as a whole had each ventured into our space and envisioned, then created worlds and characters that fought battles, that lived lives, that died and were reborn.

I consider myself very fortunate to have lived the life I lived as a child, that shouldered the pain and carried the burden of mental abuse I did through school. Because those years I used to look back on with loathing, they enabled me to valiantly fight the fight I’m fighting now. The fight that never ends. The war within myself, the questioning of what’s real and what’s an illusion.

I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist; hell, I never even made it to college. I’m a regular person like you. I’m alot of things. I’m a felon. I’m a drug addict. I’m an alcoholic. I’m a loser, in every sense of the word. I’m a father. I’m a whole lot of things, good and bad, all coalesced together to create the unique individual I am. So are you.

If you’re still reading though, I thank you. You're one of the few who thinks for themselves, who believes in something bigger than all of us. I’m talking about an unseen force, a spiritual guidance. An inner voice. We all have one. It tells us what’s right and wrong. It’s the captain of our integrity ship. The one calling the plays on the field. It can advise us but we decide whether or not to heed its advice. It’s more powerful and louder than any other voice you’ll ever hear, yet no one will hear it but you.

If there's one thing that I believe in it’s s a driving force in the universe, that the actions of one person can be felt at the farthest reaches of it, and that we are all bodies of this instrument, each one making up it’s own sound, it’s own voice that resonates throughout the entirety of the instrument. I also believe that even one person, no matter how small and insignificant, can create a sound so powerful that it resonates like a thunderclap within this entire instrument, that's powerful enough to impact the whole world.

I believe that the closest we'll ever get to the space we occupy as that instrument is in our minds. Our space. So back to the point. When you see a person who was diagnosed as clinically insane or schizophrenic, try and ask yourself this: who broke into their place and made them leave?

I hear someone knocking on the door to my place. They’re trying to get in. I’ve been fighting them but they’re trying valiantly to get in and I’ve about exhausted all of my energy. I see people who have allowed them to come in, and these people I see, they’re not the same as us. These people are what you and I know as schizophrenic, clinically insane, or mentally ill.

Inside our place there are weapons we can equip ourselves with, tools we can utilize to keep them at bay, and a comforting reminder that they can only enter Our space if we invite them in. However, once they’ve chosen Our space as their destination they'll never stop knocking. They’ve been knocking at my door for almost seven

​months. I feel like if I don’t invite them in soon they’ll break in somehow, unpack their bags, serve me an eviction notice, and unceremoniously toss my ass on out.

Locking the door to our consciousness is simple. Did you ever visit the dentist as a child? I’m sure we all did growing up. And I bet if you close your eyes you can hear the footsteps that imminently approach. It’s every child’s worst nightmare. If you’re anything like me you were able to survive that terrifying experience by going somewhere else in your mind.

What we did was lock the door to that particular room in our consciousness by going somewhere else, because as most humans do, we lock our doors when we make a departure. Only these doors house a gift more precious than anything on the face of this Earth. A gift that cannot be bought or sold. It can only be given away. It’s up to us to hold on to it. We have to secure each room when we leave.

If you’ve ever noticed the eyes of a military veteran when they talk about what they experienced, you’ll see everything that they’re explaining. My stepdad didn’t talk much about his days in the Navy, but on occasion he would relive some of the more pertinent moments, and when he did I always saw it in his eyes. They took on a different shape, and like windows, they would open up where I could look inside them and feel his fear.

Genuine fear. I also had the privilege of meeting another man, [renting from him, actually] recently who delved lightly into his own experience in Desert Storm. His eyes bore the same shade of sadness that I can only imagine one would feel when faced with making the decision between dying and killing the person in front of you.

It makes me cringe just thinking about it.

My point is that our consciousness is an unexplained phenomena, very complex in it’s own right. It tells us when to stay, when to run, when to fight, when to love, when to show remorse or compassion. It alerts us to unforeseen danger. It’s responsible for all the joy, pain, sadness, hope, and pride that we feel. And to survive, these are all things that are needed.

______________

That’s a nasty mother fucker right there.

He’s writing a damn book, ain’t he?

He don’t know what the hell he’s writing! He thinks he’s a damn music producer too! Snickers.

I always said that if I could change one aspect of my life it’d be the day I became a convicted felon. And I say that for many reasons, one of which being this: America is a country founded on our freedoms and rights as a human being, and through the blood of our ancestors who fought and died to protect those rights. One of those rights is the right to own and operate a firearm.

Ever since the day I stood in that courtroom and accepted that plea, I’ve regretted it, because I didn’t quite realize then that legally owning a firearm for the protection of yourself and your family is a privilege, not a right. And contrary to what our forefathers would have us believe, we’re not legally entitled to that right, although we’re morally obligated to bear fucking arms and stand our ground should an enemy threaten our lives or put our families in danger. Call me old fashioned, but I was raised in the way that if you pointed a gun at someone, you fired the damn thing. No ifs, ands or buts. If you raised the business end of it, you made it talk!

…and boy, does she talk business!

Over the years as more effort was placed into reforming them, I started wishing more and more that I still had my God given privilege as an American to own one. Not because I think they’re cool or anything, but because when I became a dad----

…it’s just my head is always crowded with thoughts of me and you when I was little and I wish we were that close like we used to be. I really do… I’m getting older and I just want to tell you that I love you and you will forever be my best friend…

…‘H is for my little Hayes_Baby’.

----I knew there would be one day when I’d be very thankful I did. And not just for her, but for my own protection. I'd have kept it in a locked safe, and I'd have known exactly where the key to the safe or the combination to the lock was. Because believe me, if it ever came time to take it out of that safe, I was definitely going to use it.

____________________________________________________

​PART ONE

Laying The Foundation

_____________________________________________________

CHAPTER ONE

After reading and studying, gathering knowledge and intelligence over the last two days, it's apparent that I'm some sort of guinea pig.

My brother tells me not to talk about it, so I jokingly laugh it off in front of the few people I do talk to. But everything I read, every point nailed home was a direct reciprocation of the last eight months and the mental torture that has, and is continuing to be inflicted upon me.

Yesterday was another day free of observation. Today makes four days. However, there was a hurricane and the weather was nasty outside. If there are machines or radio frequencies, if what I read is true, then inclement weather would harm or interfere with those radio waves wouldn’t it?

Also what are the odds of someone, who could be in direct contact with whoever’s orchestrating this, moving into the RV beside me? Where my every word can be heard. Also this guy is extremely intelligent. I’ve talked with him a few times since we moved here. I like the guy. But since he first made his knowledge of radio components known to me, I’ve been wary. That was the first day or two my wife and I arrived here. I don’t know if he realized it at the time, when he was outlining