On My Way

So I realize this type of story won't interest most, I don't care. This has been a long time coming, and if you care to read, I'm sure it will touch your heart in many different ways.

I was a 14-year-old boy, moved out from the city where a stable life was owned, bouncing around from place to place with my mother and her many boyfriends along the way. I discovered a lot about myself at this point in time and found that I REALLY liked to delve into mischief and certain acts of mayhem. Surrounded by peers of the same nature, of course, who wouldn't want to get and stay involved in such things? Right. So while I wondered around in solace of deadly ventures such as carjackings, breaking and entering into homes and businesses, stealing from peers and, obviously, drinking and drugs of all kinds; I realized that ultimately, I was my own worst enemy.

By the time I was 16, I had acquired 23 misdemeanors, accompanied by 7 felony charges of which, at the time, I was quite proud of in a very strange way. I suppose the pride came from the fact that, no matter how many times I was incarcerated, brought in front of a judge in cuffs and a jumpsuit, I somehow managed to talk my way out of a very long-term sentencing. Overall, I had accumulated roughly $10,000 in court appointed attorney fines, and a whole lot more of time invested behind bars and literal pain and joint damage from being face stomped, maced, and subdued by officers and other persons I had wronged in one way or another. I learned my lessons since then, but in the time I spent following the wrong line, it was worth the issued cards drawn.

Now that you have an idea of who I was, let's get to the development stages of why that was me.

I'm a short guy, at the time I was roughly 4'8"-5'2". Living with my mother and being the baby in the family meant that she just couldn't let me be my own person. Before moving across the state, she decided that even though I passed my 8th grade year that I should repeat it because of the size and stature of myself. Afraid that in the transition from middle to high school I would get ridiculed for my height and that it would be too much to handle. While repeating the 8th grade in a new place did leave a lot to grow on and left me with a mysterious on-look, and a devilish attire in comparison to some of my classmates, a sense of belonging just wasn't there. Who are we kidding here though; I had friends, I got around with a few girls, I did what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted, with who I wanted and nobody could tell me otherwise. Unfortunately, I lived in a small town just outside the boondocks so, EVERYONE knew about my life before I could even tell anyone what happened. This is a good reason I acted out in such ways. I forgot to mention though, I grew up with epilepsy. Having seizures didn't exactly give me a whole lot of place to grow and learn like regular kids, so of course, when handed the opportunity to walk all over someone (my mother) and get to live life the way I wanted, I couldn't refuse.

While bouncing around from place to place with my mom, I met a good few interesting people, one of my favorites was this guy named Joe. I loved dirt bikes and motocross; Basically anything with wheels, that goes fast, and you can do dumb stuff on. He raced dirt bikes, and that in itself was enough to win me over. I remember hanging out in the living room of his trailer while my mom was in the bedroom with this guy, of course, he bribed me with a new dirt bike so I couldn't really talk about it around my dad, who thought that HE bought the dirt bike..(mom liked to spend his money).. One day, she got caught red handed, and this is what kind of set things off. I don't recall all of the events that day, but I remember pulling up to the house we lived in and, Joe's truck was there. I was with my dad and 2 brothers at the time. Dad said "stay here," and walked in the house. All we heard and saw to follow was screaming and breaking inside of the house, and Joe being dragged out by his mullet, kicked in the ass and screeching down the street running from my dad.

That was the event that forced my family into separate sides, us 3 boys were given a choice. Go live with mom, or stay with dad. My brothers didn't want anything to do with me growing up, and looking back I guess I can't really blame them. I was spoiled by my mom, and babied by my father because of it. I remember once when my dad was trying to discipline me for being a dumb ass, he tossed me up in the air and I smacked my head on the ceiling fan running on full speed. I was scared of him for a great while after that. I despised him in many ways growing up, but I only knew what I saw. Late nights when mom and dad were screaming at each other in the kitchen, I would creep out and see what was going on. I caught him smack her, and I didn't know at the time, but she probably deserved what she got. She spent all of his money, put him in debt, and ruined his credit score... all things I didn't find out till later in life. If I had known then what I know now, I would've stayed with my dad, even if it meant I never got to see my brothers again.

Needless to say, my brothers stayed with dad, and I went with mom. All I really wanted to do was grow up with them, but they wanted nothing to do with it so they kind of swindled me into going with mom. Telling me I could do whatever I wanted, that I didn't have to go to school, that I could smoke cigarettes and drink all I wanted. That I could do all of the things that I couldn't do while I was living with dad. I visited from time to time, dad starting working nights and that left me with my brothers to do all kinds of dumb shit. I remember one time I got a phone call from an anonymous caller, it turned out to be this girl I was crushing on and her sister who was crushing on my brother. After the roundabout nonsense on the phone, which lead to me running out of the house with an assortment of kitchen knives, phone in hand ready to kill whatever was posing a threat to me and my brother. They both came back to the house, I got my first kiss that night, it was sloppy and slutty and I loved it. I wasn't that interested in messing around with this girl though, I figured it wasn't really right, and although she was developed physically, mentally neither of us were ready for what we were getting into. So we popped in on my brother and found her sister riding him on his water bed. They screamed at us, and we turned tail and went back to the couch.

I have 2 sisters as well, pretty sure I hadn't mentioned that. I'm the youngest of 5 in this picture, and it's been a hell of a ride so far. I don't have a ton of memories of my sisters, just knew that neither of them were to be fucked with. My oldest sister would beat you sideways with a wooden spoon and/or anything that she could get her hands on if you crossed her or were just plain being stupid. My other sister, just a few years younger than the oldest, could and would mentally fuck your life up if she wanted. Both brave, fearless women. Stephanie, the oldest, was a very tall, slender type with a bad attitude and a low tolerance for nonsense. Danielle grew up kind of chunky, but soon worked off that baby fat and stopped giving a fuck about what people said and did. Being ridiculed as a child kind of gave her the upper hand when it came to quick wit and comebacks. Both of them can be a bit clueless from time to time, but they are by far, the most level headed of all of us.

There were more fond memories with them than that of with my brothers honestly. For instance, my sisters were involved in color-guard (Flag twirling) and marching band. Dani was the band geek, and Stephanie was the Flag coach. Both Alec and Colin were in band too, Colin also played football for JV and V teams. While I was growing up, with mom helping my sisters in band camp and at the games, I was given the privilege of changing flags during the routines at all the football games. Which gathered me a lot of attention from the high school girls. Anyway, I turned I was getting love from them, it was great. However, seeing that I was also epileptic, I understand now that a lot of that wasn't just "Oh how cute, you're helping your big sister with the games," it was also very sympathetic and fueled by empathy. Which isn't really a bad thing, but it was all fake love.

Growing up with mom wasn't all that bad though, I made plenty of memories with people I became very fond of in a very short period of time. One being with my buddy Alex. His parents owned a large lot of land on a private road down the street from my moms boyfriends trailer. We would go walking through the woods almost on a constant, otherwise, we were skipping school, and really just doing whatever we wanted. My mom allowed it because, I was the baby. I was also a very violent child when I didn't get what I wanted... One day, Alex and I decided to skip school together, and mom had brought home a massive bag of Habanero peppers. Alex and I sat in my room, which at the time was just a closed off corner walled in by a bed sheet hanging from the ceiling. Anywho, Alex and I sat in that room, playing PS2, munching on that bag of peppers, and smoking cigarettes that my mom would buy us from the gas station. I had no idea pooping could hurt so much. It was totally worth it though, see, the cigarettes would kind of drown out the burn from the peppers, and the video games kept our mind off the school day. Eventually, we ended up splitting ways as peers, for unrelated reasons. In the meantime though, we had a blast together.

As you can tell, school was not my strong suit when it came to a place of giving a damn about anything. I ended up in court for truancy a lot. Mom began to look as an unfit for children as it came. I didn't care though, I did what I wanted, no matter how it looked from the outside looking in. I spent a lot of time getting to know the wrong kind of people, and I'm sure that played a big part in my downfall. I had been expelled from a few different schools for misconduct of multitudes. Weapons, Drugs, missing too many days was a big one. I did try sometimes though, in fact, on one of my trips switching between parents, I was in 9th or 10th grade at this point... I was getting back on a schedule where school was an everyday ordeal. I still didn't like it, but I knew I had to go. Well, I woke up after falling back asleep when my dad woke me up before he left for work. I knew I missed the bus and was frantic over it. I rushed out the door, grabbed my bike and rode as fast as I could to get there. Zooming through the subdivision we lived in, out onto the main roads impeding through traffic as fast as I could pedal. While I was crossing over the main bridge headed into the city area, I got clipped by a driver and dumped my bike skidding for roughly 6ft on solid concrete that was covered in pebbles and loose gravel. I got up, and I still went the rest of the way to school. I didn't arrive until the end of the day, but in my mind, I still went. I collected all the homework I had missed, and I gathered my things then left campus.

The last time I was expelled from school was pure bullshit. I had spent the night at my buddy Austins house, he gave me this really cool handmade hunting knife. I was so pumped to take it home, but we had school immediately following so, instead of bringing the knife into the school, I stuffed it in the bottom of my bag and hid my backpack in the bushes out front. I thought I was doing the right thing by not bringing it in... apparently that didn't matter though cause, at the end of the day, when I went to retrieve my bag, I got called down to the office with Alex, who was walking with me. Somebody had seen me pull the knife from my bag and called it into the office. Alex almost got expelled that day because of me and I felt terrible for it. In the end, I paid the price though and took the rap for it all. Got kicked out of school and shipped off to the alternative school after another while of not giving a damn about anything.

I had also been institutionalized over going to school; that was a funny kind of fucked up day. This was in another one of those times where I knew I had to go, but I wasn't to keen about it. I was on probation, and they enrolled me into a school specifically designated to "troubled" kids. I later met a lot of the kids I was in class within Juvie out in Jackson county. Well, I was ready to change my life, no matter the cost of self at this point. Sick of being the bad guy when it came to troubled outcomes in my life. My mom was dropping me off in the morning when her car died on the freeway. I knew that I had to get to school, and I knew where it was from the spot we were in. So I got out, and I walked. My mom was yelling for me to stop, but all I could think was, "If I'm late, or I miss, I'm screwed all over again." So I kept going, I was running at this point, when a big white truck pulled up next to me. 2 Gentleman offered me a ride to class as I was explaining my situation. I knew stranger danger, but I was desperate. I got in and directed them to the school. They continued to drive PAST the school and had me call my mom. I then found out that they were from the University of Michigan and were taking me there to be admitted to the psych ward. 6-8 months of my life was taken away from me. FOR TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING. I ended up all kinds of doped up on stupid amounts of medication, looking like a crack head coming off his ride. I lost a shit ton of weight and probably would've died in there had it not been for the ONE visit where my dad stepped into the mix and saw how bad I had become health wise while I was stuck in that place.

So at this point, school isn't my favorite thing, but I knew what I needed and was willing to do what I had to do to get back on top of the game. I still liked to cause trouble though, and that always ended with my being arrested and put away for at LEAST 3-5 sometimes 6-10 months at a time. In the time I was incarcerated, I developed a few nicknames. Just a few of which were Jailbird, Lebron, Bruce Lee, Jet Lee ect. I was in and out almost on a constant, basketball was my game in there, and my last name's Lee. One day during a basketball game in our free time, I accidentally broke my hand after running up a layup shot and then slamming into the wall behind the net. I had to get my arm cast, didn't like the cast though; at all. Eventually, I got sick of the whole routine and I spent the whole night picking off my cast. First, I broke it on the steel bed frame that I was sleeping on, and once I had a good enough crack, I slowly picked off all of the cast material. The next day, and for the following 3 months of my sentence, They took away my mattress, which was really only a thin piece of 2x6 cotton strip sewed up by a plastic layer of material to hold it in place. It took some time and, a few nights in solitary to get things straight in my head but, I finally figured it out and started in on a better path in there.

At 16 years old, I was given a choice. I could either stay on meds, and hope that one day my seizures would fade out OR, I could take the risk of a 60% chance of me dying on the operating table so that the surgeons could cut me open and try and take out whatever it was that was causing me to have seizures. At first, I didn't want anything to do with the idea. 40% chance at living just doesn't seem like enough. I recall this one faint memory in the hospital though, the moment that made me go for it. I saw my mom, and my dad, huddled up in the corner of the room, my mom was crying immensely, and my dad was holding her. I knew, at that moment, I had to try. Even if it cost me my life, I knew I had to go through with it. For them. I soon ended up with 3 weeks in the hospital, undergoing a surgery each week. The process of a craniotomy is astounding, to say the least. First, they cut my head open and placed wires inside of my brain to monitor all of my brain activity. The second surgery was to take the wires out and collect all of the data needed to further decide what they could do, given that they found the probable cause of my seizures, they moved onto the third and final surgery. Where they removed a very much DEAD piece of brain matter that was causing a misfire in the synapses in my brain. I can explain it like this. Think of your brain as a mail room, you have your sorting station and all of the mailboxes. This is your synapses. Well, as it seemed that one of the sorting persons had become very angry with the way his job was going and, whenever told to put an assortment of mail into a specific area of mail slots, he would throw it as wildly as he could and that would mess up the whole system. The mail room would Spaatz out, and shut down entirely, right before rebooting after a sometimes very lengthy period of time being passed.

It wasn't always as crazy as that sounded, the seizures kind of fluxed between what would be considered casual or mild, into more serious outbursts. There were times where I would kind of just uncontrollably laugh and spin in circles until I lost my equilibrium and fell to the ground. Still laughing it off every step of the way. In fact, those were a favorite if I had to name one. Then there were times where I would fall, HARD. Once, I remember working on a bunch of bikes out behind my mom's boyfriend's trailer. It was late, like midnight or later, and there was 5 of us out back putting together bmx bikes using an industrial spotlight. We were all gathered around the hauling trailer that my grandpa made when I was a baby, and then it hit. Everything just became... surreal. I got really light headed and before I could tell anyone what was happening, I dropped to the ground, smashing my head on a trailer hitch on the way down. I woke up on the couch inside with my pants down around my ankles. IMMEDIATELY in a panic yelling at everyone surrounding me like some weird shit just went down. I was told after I dropped, I started shaking uncontrollably, and took my pants down myself. Rolling around on the ground until my mom's boyfriend's son Brian swooped me up and put me on the couch inside. I didn't know what to make of the situation, I just knew I was half naked in front of a bunch of people that had no business seeing me this way. That was the day that mom decided to bring me to the doctors to find out what our options were.

By the time I hit 17, I was ready to go. I moved out of my mom's house and down the road to my friend Damian's place. He lived with his mom, younger brother and sister Courtney. I had straightened up a lot since then and was ready to move forward with my life. However, still a rebellious little fuck, I had the tendency to do whatever I wanted in the context of any given situation. Damian's mom was an ex-stripper, who loved to party. Damian was a troubled youth such as myself, so we got along quite fairly. I had been released from my probation and finally felt a sense of freedom. So, I did whatever any other 17-year-old would've done given my line. I went on a binge of drinking, muscle relaxers, Vicodin, Percs, smoking hella amounts of weed, tons of sex, and in the down time, taking care of the messes we made prior to partying our asses off. I stopped going to school, and that caused an issue again, so I had to talk my way out of another sentencing. I ended up being forced to move back in with my father by court order. I was ok with it at that point. Besides, I had been stolen from and found myself in a place of distrusting everything about this small town life.

I want to rewind a bit though and make it clearly known that it wasn't all bad. Regardless of the epilepsy, I did whatever I could to try and fit in as a normal child would. I played ice hockey, raced BMX, rode dirt bikes on a rare occasion, skateboarded... you name it. I just had a lot higher of a risk that any of the other kids I knew, considering that if my head took a hard enough blow, I was warned very early on that it could cause me to have a grand maul seizure and die. It was worth it to me, just to feel in the slightest bit normal. I had a lot of great times, with some very great people growing up, unfortunately, we don't so much know each other anymore but it was nothing more than for fact that; We all grew up, went different directions. While they were all out exploring the world in their earlier stages, I was in the hospital hooked up to brain monitors and having to go through full body scans. It's ok though, I'm not exactly happy with the way my life turned out so far... but I'm still young at this point, I can do whatever I put my mind to and then some. Sometimes there are "glitches" in the process, but as long as I never stop trying..even if it costs me a lot more than I've bargained for..I'll make it work in my own way.

Just to spat off a few of the memories that had the GREATEST impact in positive motions in my life. I was 8 years old when the epilepsy started, my parents bought me my first dirt bike that same year. My mom had Joe around by this point (I think I was like 9-10) and he brought all of us boys out to an old practice track that he liked to go out on himself. We got the bikes warmed up and started riding. My brothers knew how to ride a manual shift bike, I did not. Now, this was a frighteningly awesome day all in one. We went to sleeping bear dunes, and we ripped all over this little race track. My bike started to stick a little bit, the throttle was extremely responsive, and didn't like to unroll the cable when it was twisted back. As I was ripping through the tightest corners, I fell on my side, bike still under me. Everyone came rushing over to help me up but, the throttle was stuck and there was nothing stopping it. So as soon as we picked the bike up, I SHOT OFF like a rocket! Holding on for dear life, I had no idea what else I was going to do so I just started screaming as I was hurdling toward this MASSIVE 10ft table top jump that had a 6ft topside. I shot up the front end in the Superman pose, flew cleanly over the top and landed SO smoothly down the other side of the jump. As soon as that landing came, I wasn't ready for the rocky, uneven ground that followed. I thrashed with all my might and found myself coated in a thick layer of mud from a nice half foot deep puddle of yuck. It. Was. Awesome.

Another one of my favorites is from when I played ice hockey. It was a HUGE moment for my dad, and a very emotional one for my team. See, I played all positions in hockey, but mainly was fond of goaltending; and I was damn good at it too. Anyway, it was in one of our bigger tournaments, we all fought perilously through the ranks and by the end of the run, we were invited to play a game at the Michigan State University hockey arena. I somehow managed to get sick the night before the game, wasn't terrible, but I was utterly exhausted about 3/4's way through the final period. It was a long, rough game. I wasn't letting anything past though. We'd come too far to let anything get in the way of our victory. In the final moments of the 3rd, we got a penalty shot against us right as the final few seconds were ticking down. I probably lost 5lb in sweat alone that night. Drained, physically and mentally, my vision was blurring as the forward approached the blue line to start his shot. I skated forward to keep a lock on him, still with extremely blurry vision, serious fatigue settled in as he began his shot. We weaved, and swayed with each other as he stick-handled the puck fiercely trying to deek me out. I saw him wind up and slip the wrist shot down. I closed my eyes and threw my glove out, hoping I was going to make the save, as we were so far out of the net that if it missed, there was nothing I could do. The rink went silent. Still, breathing heavy, fades of hard cheers started to pour in my ears. I looked into my glove, and found the puck. SCREAMING my lungs out as soon as I realized what was happening, I dropped to the ice, as my teammates piled on top of me in celebration. It was a good day. Not only did we win the tournament, but the final game was won in my dad's FAVORITE schools arena, and I MADE THE GAME WINING SAVE!

Another great hockey one was at the Joe Louis Arena. All same circumstances, minus the slight change in time and place. It was during the Lockout back when all the hockey teams were going on strike. Another tournament was in play and we all pushed our hardest to get there. It wasn't easy, but we made it. I'd taken more shots that night than I ever had before. I was worn down to the core, but I had to keep fighting. We killed it through the game, everyone was tired, anxious to get this game over, but unwilling to just let go and run the clock out. By the end of the game, I had successfully SHUT OUT the other team. I was so proud of what we accomplished I literally cried my eyes out. as I dropped to the ice, watching my team scream and cry just the same. All the greats played in the Joe, it was where all the big boys played REAL hockey. Having my dad in the stands screaming and cheering us on was a bonus at that point, but I knew inside of my soul, he was crying just as hard as we were.

Of course, I was young then, and if you haven't been able to tell by now, life only gets harder as we grow... and for the most part, all of the fun that I had, that wasn't done in illegal and/or endangering ways, ended a lot sooner than it should've. I digress though and keep solace in being able to look back on the times where I could laugh and play, and love without fear. Like this one time, following the Christmas where all 3 of us boys got paintball guns. We went out to our grandmas for a little fun in the forest. There was a lot of snow, and it was really cold (obviously). So my brothers and I all went out into the woods for a round of paintball; a funny thing happened though, see my brother had the "better" guns, BUT THEIR GUNS FROZE! I had a solid 10 minutes of chasing them down for a bit of retaliation for all the years they had tormented me. I must have blown through at LEAST 200 paintballs that day. We all went back inside afterward and had hot cocoa and hung out around the fire laughing the day off into the night.

It's moments like those that I can really appreciate, however, they are very hard to come by in the real world. People are so vain, so greedy, intensely manipulative, overbearingly obliviously ignorant, arrogant as fuck, and they literally have no sense of common decency and/or common sense of any kind. It's depressing to see how my life has changed because of my empathetic personality and living in a world full those kinds of people. I don't want to make this a nothing but depressive story, but this is the life I stuck myself with. I've had great times, and I've had horrendous ones to match. That's the balance though, isn't it? We run through the line of fire and find ourselves completely lost in ourselves and our way of living. Just to find that one thing that could potentially change our lives forever. I'm still burning in my own ways, saving everyone who doesn't deserve my graces, and hoping that the one's who do, will come back to me one day. The point of this piece of writing is to acknowledge the bad times that I've played in, and recognize that life isn't all bad..there's always a light in the dark, just depends on what angle you're looking from.

The reality of this is, there is a lot more story to tell... literally books of story in the short amount of time I've been alive... all building off of points that I have attempted to make here in this short read. I would be more than willing to continue feeding into the plots from here, but I would like to know that anyone is listening all in the same. If you have any interest in reading further into my life, and maybe even finding a bit of yourself in these pages, feel free to leave me some commentary, maybe we could turn this into something for the masses... I don't know, but I honestly hope that's the route that gets laid on. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed what's here, and are hopeful of what's to come.

Written and lived by Zachery Brice Lee