From Darkness to Light

Nicholas Ray

Description

The past doesn't define you you define you. Life's a journey and through going through hell and back again we have the ability to change lives.
My book is about one man's journey from being in an abusive system and how he grew out of the pain and sorrow he knew throughout his childhood.

Sujets

• Biography
• My Story
• Childhood
• Scream/Childhood
• Journey
• Sorrow
• Autobiography
• Darkness to Light
• True Story
• Nicholas Ray
• Pain

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 10 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798823005999
• Langue: English

Extrait

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT
A Survivor’s Tale
 
 
Nicholas Ray
EDITED BY MISTY DAWN
 
 
 
 
 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
© 2023 Nicholas Ray. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
 
Published by AuthorHouse 04/11/2023
 
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0600-2 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0599-9 (e)
 
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
CONTENTS
A Letter to the Reader
PART 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
PART 2
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
PART 3
Chapter 25
A LETTER TO THE READER
DEAR READER, MUCH LIKE A CHILD CALLED IT BY DAVE PELZER, THIS BOOK CONTAINS INTENSE SCENES OF CHILD ABUSE AND FOUL LANGUAGE BUT IN ORDER TO CHANGE THE WORLD ONE MUST BE HO NEST.
PART 1
IN WHICH I’M HURT MATTHEW 18:6 “BUT WHOSO SHALL OFFEND ONE OF THE LITTLE ONES WHICH BELIEVE IN ME IT WERE BETTER FOR HIM THAT A MILLSTONE BE TIED AROUND HIS NECK AND D ROWN.”
CHAPTER 1
My story is a hard one to tell but in order to understand who I am and how I became the man I am today it has to be told. I don’t remember much about the day I came into the world but the stories I’ve been told about that day are ones I hold dear. To understand how my life came to be, we have to take a trip through time, landing on April 21 1961. In a place called Yreka, California, my father, Jonathan Guy, was born in a mild spring. A third generation child of Yreka. His mother’s name was Phyllis. My grandma from the memories I have of her was a sweet little lady who would do anything for her grandkids and kids. So I’m sure that she was even sweeter then. My grandma, may her soul rest in peace, was one of the greatest women I ever had the pleasure to know. In my opinion, her love for her kids and her grandkids knew no bounds. From what I’ve heard, she was like a mamma bear protecting her cubs. From what I remember of her, nothing could be truer about how she was.
My father was born the middle child of his family, the younger brother of Kristina and Bertha Ann, and a big brother Phil. My aunts were amazing big sisters always protecting their siblings from any harm their father could do to them. My uncle was also great at protecting his siblings I’ve been told. Speaking of their father my grandfather, from what I’ve heard, thankfully I never had the chance to meet him, was an asshole who loved his alcohol as much if not more than the abuse he would perpetrate on his children using them as nothing more than objects to fulfill his sexual desires and his need to be in control of everything. A control I’m sure he didn’t get to have when he was a kid due to the abuse he and his brother’s endured from their mother. As my father grew up he looked for any way he could to escape his family life choosing to become a carney for a while just to escape his life at home. As the saying goes “Hurt people, hurt people” and from every story I’ve heard about my great grandmother it must have been true. Because the story goes that she abused her boys the same way that my grandfather abused his own children. As I’d learned later on in my life, my family, at least on my Grandpa’s side, were all taught that the way to show love was through abuse. A belief I personally don’t have. As you’ll learn from my story. I struggled with it until I realized how wrong that kind of love was. I don’t know much about his school years but as I’m very smart I’d imagine he was as well because my mom sure wasn’t. My dad was my hero for more than one reason and my mother was a royal bitch. My father met my mother when she was fifteen, and he was twenty-two. After choosing to bring her home, to give her a life away from the street, they soon fell in love. Their love bloomed and my father soon realized that he loved her more than anything in the world and eventually when she was nineteen, the two married. Mainly due to them expecting their first child, my sister Dawn. Wanting to give his wife the things that he didn’t receive as a child he soon joined the Navy, planning to use it as his career. To my father, serving his country was a high priority and a way to provide him a much-needed opportunity for change. Just as settling down and having a family was. To my father, not only did his service allow him an escape it also allowed him to provide for his soon to be family. Back at home he was a role model for his little brother and sister and a shining example of positive change for his sisters. Serving in the Navy was an opportunity he’d been given to show that it’s possible to defy what history has in store for you and defy history he did, or at least for a while. And show that change he did. I believe that’s where I get my knack for survival.
Unfortunately however, fate had something else in store for my father, as he was injured and hit in his head by a torpedo falling off the wall cutting his time in the Military short as his injury led to him being dismissed. Upon returning home he learned that his family had gone through a major change. His mother had divorced her husband to allow for her children to be given a possibility of not becoming predators like their low-life father. His mom, my sweet grandma, may she rest in peace, had fallen in love with another military man as my father had been and he was the closest thing I ever knew to a grandpa. My father learned his girlfriend, also known as my mother, though that wouldn’t be for another two years, had had my sister Dawn on March 2, 1987. Knowing he didn’t want my mother raising a child as a teenager he asked her to marry him. Together they felt they could take on the world no matter what the world threw at them. Their marriage in swing, as love continued to blossom, they found happiness between the two of them. With happiness taking hold of them they made the decision to have another two children, not knowing it would actually be four.
To the outside world it appeared they were a man and a woman happily married, while, behind closed doors the relationship grew toxic. My mother chose to pick up drugs and my fathers’ and us kids’ lives began to stink. My father soon chose to drink. With the disease of alcoholism finding him in its grips, he began to change into the man he had hoped he’d never be. As addiction began to run rampant in my parents lives their siblings could see the once true love shared between them unraveling before their eyes. The mere sight of the relationship heading for a fall caused a rift between my mother’s family and my father’s, which only served to cause major strife in the family, that soon led to anger and hate for each other and my parent’s as their relationship began falling apart. At times both sides of the family, when they weren’t at each other’s throats, would remind my parents to think of their daughter and the kids they wanted to bring into the world and what it would mean for us if we were exposed to it, silently hoping that the two would stop fighting. Encouragement for them to seek counseling was tossed about as both sides of their families tried to get my parents to act normal for the sake of us kids and the life we would be born into if my parents didn’t seek counseling. All of my family knew that if their niece/granddaughter was going to have a healthy family my parents would need to pull their heads out of their asses and act like parents. They had made the determination that to help them do so, they were going to do whatever it took to help them. As my family fought for their niece/granddaughter and her soon to be sister, life changed for the better and with that change came my sister Joy on June 21, 1988. Joy’s birth led to my parents to get their act together and for another year things became better for everyone involved. As Joy approached her first birthday the news broke that my mother and father were expecting another child, a boy that would be born on November 10, 1989, not realizing it would actually be two boys.
For a while as the story goes my parents began to treat each other equally, and their love grew stronger. However, as history tends to repeat itself, so did the addiction repeat itself in my family. As the days grew closer to their son’s birth my parents once more began to fight and sink into their alcohol and drugs. My dad would often disappear to work for days on end while my mother sat at home shooting herself up with drugs and selling her oldest child to men to support her habit, or selling herself to men to make sure she’d have money to support her habit as well as pay the bills. Whenever my father came home to his loving wife, they’d pretend life was great between them when in reality my father was growing further away from her little by