When the cleaver fell, my tears stopped, my whimpering and pleading stopped. The pain was excruciating. My hand was severed at the wrist. My mom just wanted to scare me at first. Then the adrenaline kicked in. The butcher's knife in her left hand swung up and fell in one fluid motion. From that moment on, I never stole anything from anyone ever again.
What happened next frightened me beyond my wildest dreams. My mother, a Roman Catholic, told me to suck on the bloody stump of my wrist as children of the devil would do to show their belief in the master of sulfur and volcanic ash.
She placed my severed hand in a clean towel in the freezer then called for emergency services to come. The paramedics rushed me to the hospital in an ambulance with sirens wailing. They put my wrist in an ice pack, elevated, and the blood cut off with a tourniquet.
The surgery didn't take long, maybe a few hours. I can't be certain. I went under as soon as they got me inside the operating room. Over the next few years, I regained all feeling in my right hand. I had to learn how to write with my left hand. It was a slow process of recovery but I was able to write with both hands as an adult. Strange.
I never saw my mom again. I became a ward of the state at eight years old. The insanity in my family line could be traced back for generations past. Making sense of madness as a child or as an adult takes time. Other people's actions, their violence, or acts of omission, neglect imbue the mind with a certain je ne sais quoi. I became unbalanced after my first year of college. It took me decades to process the harm done. What I experienced in a dysfunctional home as a small boy set me on a path to do wrong.
I stole. I lied. I drank. I smoked pot and took hallucinogenic drugs. I lost my way.
But now, I look back and realize, it was my own fault, my karma created the conditions for me to enter such a life.
The world is a strange place. Read on.
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