I feel like I have had an amazing life.
For an artist who hasn’t gotten fame or fortune, I have been incredibly lucky being able to play lots of music for a long, long time.
For an emotionally troubled child, I have found personal peace and have been able to spread that peace.
I have stayed away from writing about the bad, unhappy part of my life because past is just that and I don’t live there in my soul.
When I was born there was a very good chance that I might die due to a massive hernia at 2 weeks old. (read “Born Lucky….sort of” entry)
My sister and I were raised by a single mother, who could be physically and emotionally abusive. She raised to kids, alone, and was pretty poor, so, I know she did her best and I love her.
We lived with my grandparents. My Grandmother who was exceptionally abusive, on all levels. Psycho.
When I was 3 my mother claimed that I insisted that my name be changed from James Hanley Carter III to Stevenson Hooper Carter…the last….a name I have never liked.
I was sent to a Military School in the first grade, I guess because my Mom thought it would be best. It wasn’t. They made me switch from being left handed to right. Anyway, it was just one year until they kicked me out with the most demerits in the history of the Academy…
I was so unhappy, as a child, that I don’t remember it. It’s totally gone, blacked out. We lived with my Grandparents. When I see childhood photos, I just see an unhappy little kid. Things I do recall are getting back-handed by my mother, for squirming in church, and getting a bloody nose and being dragged out of church because I embarrassed her. I also recall scrubbing my grandmother’s floor, on my hands and knees while she lashed me up and down my legs and as she screamed “Not you mother’s way….MY WAY!!!!” I had welts all over my back and legs. When my mother came home and saw her work, she threatened to kill my grandmother. That was when we finally moved out.
I was a hyper-active kid. My grandfather made a stool, with my name on it, that I would have to sit on when I came home from school, with my face in the corner, until my mother got home from work. This went on for one to two years…..every day, Therapy would come years later.
My best friend and I met at 8 years old. Mike Fitchett, was also from an abusive family and we helped each other survive. Rest his soul. He was wonderful and the best friend I could have ever wished for. He was the funniest human I have ever known. He died alone because he didn’t want to “Come Out” as gay. I wish he could have had someone to love and to love him besides me and my sister, but we loved and cherished him.
At 16 my sister spent 9 months in lock-down at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington. D.C.. I mean “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest shit…Horrific. My mother had sent her to a shrink who declared her schizophrenic, which she is not and never has been, because she smoked pot. After she came home quit school and still smoked pot, so my mother kicked kicked out of our apartment and changed the locks. She was alone and on the street at 16. I used to have to sneak her in and feed her when mu mother was at work. To be fair, our mother realized that this was horrible mistake on her part….eventually.
It wasn’t until I followed my sister into hippie-dom that I start having a life I can recall. She ended up in the most amazing part of Baltimore, at that time….Joh Waters, Divine, Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pierce….DIVINE…all living in that block. I would go down there and hang and was starting to play guitar, Cat Stevens, Beatles, Crosby, Stills etc. THAT IS WHERE MY MEMORIES COME BACK.
As a teen I focused on music..I love music. It saved my life, along with the love of and for my sister. I’ve always felt she had it much worse than me. After my mom had gone through Margaret’s evolution, she just kind of said “Fuck it!’ with me. I quit school and didn’t get kicked out. She gave up and let me have friends smoke pot win my room. Yeah, I was THAT kids…The one you could smoke pot in their house and not even have to hide it.
So, for most of my life I was a heavy drinker, for as long as I can remember. I didn’t see alcohol as a problem and I surely used it to medicate. In my teens, 20’s.30’s I just did it, never questioned it. For 11 years, in my 40’s I quit but I don’t think I really understood why. After 15 more years of drinking, I quit again. I do understand why, now. I am relieved that I see it as a burden that I don’t have to carry around anymore. One day at a time, as they say. 7 clean years and damn happy about it.
I also had sex issues. What seemed like a really great and open time, in the past, now, makes me feel like I used women to validate myself. Conquest. Luckily, I have also had some very good, sincere relationships, but being a 30 something musician on the road took it’s toll on my first marriage. My second wife suffered, too, not in the same way, but still suffered. I think it took me a long time to see how I treated other people. While being a “nice guy” on the face of it, I abused other people through selfishness. I do my best not to disrespect people anymore.
There was a time when I looked at myself in the mirror, literally, and didn’t like what I saw. I just couldn’t look into my own eyes without looking away. Part of it was my past. I was ashamed of myself on certain levels. I also, wasn’t able to look at and care for that little unhappy kid in there. I did a lot of therapy. Linzy Messerly, my friend, really did it for me. I talked and talked and cried and cried and he listened. He really helped me find someone inside that I could like and care about. That turned me around and let me start caring more for others.
Well, life goes on, workin’ it out…not sure why this came out but here it is…..
My Entertaining Life-Steve Carter 