Because We Can

The book 'Because We Can' is an autobiography based around my life, presenting to you, the viewer, how my life was like growing up and what kind of people i was surrounded by. I am twenty four years of age now and feel as if I'm living two lives already, yet i have so much more to say and won't stop here. I've actually finished my book now, and awaiting the day that i manage to save money to publish or have the right publisher to lead the way. This is part of my 1st chapter to my book, please let me know what you think, as there's a comments box at the bottom. I hope you enjoy.

When I think of spring, Easter enters and the idea of colour expands tremendously. The sun rises earlier in the mornings and you begin to hear birds echoing as shades of blue get lighter and lighter. Thousands of golden toned daffodils spread; not only is the scene of it all delightful, but the softness of their aroma is breathless.

The Unpredicted Life

When I began to write notes on writing my own biography, I was going over many concepts on how I would start it off on the right foot to interest you, the reader. I wanted to excite you, really open your eyes up the way that I take notice of what’s around me. I finally got to a clear state of mind of how I would do this, and that is by describing what I love about my life the most…

I can’t tell you the exhilarating feeling I get when it comes to my favourite time of the year, autumn. The changing colours of the leaves, those stimulating tones of red, orange, yellow and brown; I always change my image when it comes to this season. I don’t know why I find the urge to change myself really; I guess it just feels right. Like right now, I’ve recently changed my hair colour, from a deep dark brown to an auburn fair shade. I can’t wait to go out on a typical autumn day where the leaves are floating off the trees from the wind. It truly is exquisite scenery that makes me feel colourful on the inside. I’ll be wearing one of my best-loved styles which is a roll neck jumper, recently bought myself this stunning (leather like feel) skirt for the bargain price of £25.00, warm black tights and trendy black boots. All this accompanied by some ravishing jewellery (best accessory I think) and dash up my hair a bit. I don’t follow anybody, I am my own and I feel fantastic.

Although I have suffered quite a bit in my past, it has made me the appreciative person that I am today. When your young and don’t understand life’s unusual ways and unfairness, for example, why me? It completely becomes clear when you are your own. You eventually surround yourself by the people, the family and friends that you wish to be around. For me, it’s taken a good solid ten years to think clearly on what I truly want and need in my life. I mean, I’m not saying my life is perfect, far from it, because it still isn’t. Right now I’m going through a painful experience of ulcerative colitis (it’s in the same family group as IBS ‘Irritable Bowel Syndrome’ and Crones disease), I received this through stress. It’s an exhausting and hard thing to live with and its more common than I realise. If only I could go back in time and say to myself,

“Whatever happens Sam, don’t worry, it’s not worth it, please, please don’t stress yourself”.

But like I said, the stress, the pain that got in the way has made me the person that I am today.

Its strange, I can’t quite get to grips of remembering where or when things really went off the rails between my father and me. We just genuinely couldn’t stand each other. We would sometimes try to get along but it seemed so much easier to fall out. To me, he wasn’t a father at all; he was more of a heavy, dark cloud that I found impossible to budge. I was a child with a great imagination and this is the only way I can portray him to you through my eyes at the time.

There’s a beast, trapped in a mans body, its pacing the floor, best described as a Dr Jekyll, Mr Hide kind of character. It’s mumbling and bickering; literally having a two-way conversation with itself. Then there’s me, trying not to stare but finding it demanding to hold my breath. This became an awful habit that I created to handle with these experiences. I knew that if I was to move or to say the wrong thing to this creature, it’s going to explode and take all its demon, pessimistic anger out on me. His ways of attacking were more mentally harming than physical but his approach at mum, my brother and myself were terrifying. Everything I did was wrong. The extensive amount of negative energy was draining to force you to look down with guilt and to make you think, what I did in my life was not enough to please this creature. Words cannot explain near enough to allow you to visualise the traumatic encounter we all had with him. Today as I try to remember all of this and that dreadful gut feeling I used to get, is a shock to my system on how bad things used to be. It can bring me out into a cold sweat, and it makes me stop and think so much, sometimes I wish I could erase my memory. I’ve surprisingly blocked out a lot of those hurtful memories away from my mind. Pressure is something that’s hard to forget, I was just discussing with my mum that even with the job that I have now, I feel as if I always have to do more to make sure that that person is satisfied. It’s as if I have to work my bones to the edge to make sure I please that person. It’s an unhealthy lifestyle, but at least I am aware of it.

I think it was at the age of twelve when I started to say a lot of things in my head. Everything and anything that I wanted to say to my father was said in my mind. I got used to doing this as I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, but as you can imagine I kept a lot of things bottled up. I found myself to be quite humorous as the years went on; I used my jokes and witty ways as a defence mechanism. Quite often dad would piss me and my brother off with saying “children should be seen and not heard”,

I would grit my teeth so hard, but think,

‘Then why the fuck were we born?’

I had so much to say but couldn’t because he would make our lives a living hell, moaning about every little thing he lay his eyes on. I thank God, the angels and the stars above that I’m not there now. The biggest question going, even to this day is

‘I wonder what made him the way that he is?’

I mean, if I consider the thought of wondering what my life and my brothers life would have turned into without our mum at our side, I couldn’t even begin to imagine where we would of ended up. I am so thankful that I don’t even see him anymore (long story that I’ll explain later). Right now as I type this on my computer, I’m listening to music from the film soundtrack Pleasantville, and I love it. I’m looking at my animals; Fred the long, dark, tabby cat is sitting on the chair beside me. He was a huge recovery on himself after we left, he went so skinny, and it was frightening because we actually thought we were going to lose him. He would sort of keep himself hidden in the corner by the radiator for warmth; it was stress from dad keep shouting and throwing things about that had this affect on him. But I’m happy to say that he is so healthy now, you wouldn’t believe it was the same cat. He’s so beautiful and handsome and I love him so much.

Myself, my family and my friends are cat and dog people; we absolutely adore our animals as if they are our children. I have a total of four cats and one dog living together. They each carry their individual personalities, and they’re all good qualities. At first we had Barney and Fred, named them after ‘The Flintstones’ (as you might of guessed). Barney is a short haired, tabby cat, a real tiger when he walks towards you. I sometimes like to call him Garfield because although he could put up a fight, he’s actually a big softy, as he can’t get any closer to you for a cuddle. His face will be right in front of you when you wake up in the morning, purring away. Fred and Barney are brothers. You can talk to Freddy, he’s got plenty to say, especially when you make a cup of tea, he loves milk and won’t stop meowing until he gets some in his bowl. I find him sneaky but an intelligent cat; sometimes call him Fredinsky (sounds smart to me). After the boys, we adopted Pippy our dog, She’s a whippet. Quite the remarkable dog, an unreal survivor. Growing up through her life she’s successfully got hold of large amounts of chocolate, which we all no is poisonous to dogs, she’s fallen into barb wire, run out in front of a car and was hit, but still running her life everyday as if nothing had happened. I find her amazing, and to top it off, she’s had a whopping amount of nine puppies all in one go. My dad called her Pip, the character out of Great Expectations (film) but I never liked the film, so I call her Pippy/ Pippy long stockings (more fun). I’m sure that my dad knew what he was doing to blackmail us with the animals. You see he knew that part of the reason why we stayed was because of them. At the time that if we left, we would have to have real guts to take them with us. His aggravating and annoying behaviour would boost joy out of him to take the animals away from us. He doesn’t really care or love them like we do, but he would take them off us gladly just to spite us. It may sound ridiculous to some but we can’t just give up on them like that, we love them so much. Anyway, three years before we left my dad, he took me and my mum out one evening, saying that he had a surprise for us. I was a bit confused but thought it might have been an evening out for a nice meal or something like that, how wrong was I. He had stopped at a house and told mum and myself to wait in the car. As we watched him walk up to the door of a house we had never seen before and speak to the owner, mum and I were discussing what he could possibly be up to. Suddenly we saw him wave his hand signalling us to come into the house. As we walked towards the door, I was still thinking what he was up to because we never could trust him. Confusion was upon us until he walked out with a beautiful tortoise shell kitten. When he left us with her, we both looked at each other as if to say

‘Oh no, not another one’,

Fussing at this beautiful little thing, he had said, “remember, she’s my cat”.

See what I mean by blackmailing us? Its not like were going to treat her any different than the others and not cover her with our love. For the time being, we looked on the up side; we had a decision to make on what name to give this precious little girl. She was so in her own world of curiosity mixed with humour. With that I hinted with Bridget (after Bridget Jones’s Diary; got to love that film) and it suited her. What I found funny was that when she’s moving about and seeking the area, I can visualise her being Bridget Jones saying,

“This is Bridget Jones for stand up Britain looking for the tuna”

(From the film when she’s cooking and looking through the fridge). She was particularly funny when she was young, I remember her stealing my brothers socks and running down the stairs to play with them. It was humorous because we’d see her hopping down the steps with these huge socks and her tiny body, but she tried to get away with it bless her. Also I don’t think she knew what to make of Pippy, as every time Pippy would come towards her, she would sort of pounce on her in some sort of bizarre attack and then run off. Pippy would take no notice of this and let her do this, as if to say,

“Funny girl she’ll grow out of it”.

Finally there’s Phoenix, my brother Thomas decided to call him that after one of the X-MEN characters, Gene Grey – The Phoenix. He’s a dusty, shorthaired tabby, a stray. You might of thought that he’d be a fierce and tough feline growing up from the streets, but wouldn’t you believe that he’s the soppiest cat out of the lot. We adopted him from a friend, the question was, how could we not adopt him? He’s got such a (what my mum likes to call) teddy bear face. He’s got an instant habit of flopping his belly all exposed for a fuss. But he’s so cute and he knows it; sometimes like to call him Nermal, if you no the Garfield comic strips, you’ll no what I mean. We all love our animals so much; I don’t think that you could come across a wide group of people that could adore our pets anymore than we do. It’s a tad bit insane, we must kiss our animals about twenty times a day each; cuddles are given separately. If only we got paid for loving our animals so much, never mind the millions, we would be billionaires.