When I was a teenager, I lived in an abusive home. My mother thought that she wasn't abusive because she didn't hit me or my brother, but what she did to us was worse. She pulled us out of school after I finished kindergarten and he finished first grade, and she paid tuition at an accredited home school so she would have paperwork proving that we were in school if anyone ever called protective services on her, which happened from ti.e to time, but she didn't teach us. I had to smuggle a textbook into my room when I was 10 years old and teach myself to read and write, because I knew if I ever could escape from my home life, I wouldn't survive in the world unless I knew how to read and write. Reading also helped me escape the crushing confines of my home life. I soon discovered that reading about people fighting fake monsters helped me survive the real monsters all around me, and I became a die hard horror fan who devoured Stephen King books as fast as he could write them. He soon became my favorite author, because he has a gift of saying things I've felt for years but couldn't put into words. Over the years reading his books, I saw him dedicate books to his three children, Naomi, Joe, and Owen. As years passed the kids grew up, and Joe and Owen started their own writing careers. Now, I love a good horror story no matter who writes it, and I loved Joe Hill's book "Horns," and I've heard great things about his other books, so I know he's a good author. But when Stephen King said in an interview once that Joe writes just like him, I disagreed with that statement. I mean, come on, Joe Hill is good, but he's never written anything that literally saved my life, and Stephen King has. In Stephen King's book "Rose Madder," he said something that stuck in my head and wouldn'teave, and it echoed within me until I finally did what it said, and because of that, I'm alive today.
In "Rose Madder," a woman is being abused by her husband, and she realizes one day after one beating (that isn't even as bad as some of the others) that if she stays in this relationship, she's going to die, because he's going to kill her, and if she wants to survive, she has to run away. So she does, and the book unfolds from there. But that passage wouldn't leave my head. You see, my brother was always the favored child. When we fought, if he ran to my mother crying, she would hug him and punish me. This worked from a very young age. He would sit for hours on the couch with his head in my mother's lap and she would stroke his hair, and they would talk, and she loved him and despised me. This went on for years, and while I was trying to learn to read and write, my brother was busy bonding with the enemy. Which meant they had a very special relationship, but it also meant he couldn't take out his anger on her because he would lose his favored position, but he had to put that anger somewhere, so he took it out on me. He beat me, choked me, stabbed knives into the wall next to my head, threatened to slit my throat and leave me bleeding in the bathtub. He would unlock the door while I was showering and whisper that he could get to me anytime. So I lived in fear, and I dreamed most every night that one day, he would snap and kill me. And then he'd go crying to my mother, and she would hug him and cry, and help him cover it up, and I would disappear and no one would ever know my story. I knew in my soul that this would happen. It was only a matter of time. So I lived, and I didn't fight back because he was so much bigger and stronger than me, and I knew one day I would have to do something, but I was terrified of leaving the only home I'd ever known, then one day he hit me, just a slap, didn't even leave a mark, and he told me he'd never given me "permission to speak" so he didn't want to hear a word out of me all day, or what I'd get would be ten times worse. And that made my blood run cold. Because my mother was standing right next to him when he did it, and I knew she wouldn't stop him. I had to stop him. I had to get away if I wanted to live. So I ran to a payphone outside a local store (we didn't have a phone in my home) and I called a hotline and got connected with an emergency foster care organization, and they got me out of the home that night.
Everything I've been able to do in my life is a result of that act, and I wouldn't have been able to do it without Stephen King and his book. Every time I wanted to give up in the years following that act, I would repeat the story to myself, and tell myself it was time to get busy living or get busy dying. And I wanted to give up a LOT. I encountered a lot of struggles, and I handled some of them very badly. I managed to get my GED and pass my ACT with the ambient knowledge I had obtained and soaked up in my two years in high school in emergency foster care, and I went to college and graduated with a 4.0
I've struggled a lot over the years, mostly due to undiagnosed mental health issues, but I've always clawed my way back and fought to survive, and Stephen King's words helped make it all possible. So when I say I wouldn't be alive today without his books, I really mean that. And I have a hard time being objective about his books and his writing, because he saved my life. So I really liked Joe Hill's book "Horns," but I didn't think he could write like Stephen King. Until I read "Black Phone." That's the one that gave me pause, because it's soul-ztirring in the best ways. Well done, Joe Hill. Maybe someday someone will tell you a story about how you saved their life. Great writing can do that.
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