FIGHT FOR LIFE

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN   

DEMAS'   INTERVIEW   BY   TYREE.........

    I was the only witness to my mother killing my father when I was 10 years old  Shit, I don't know if that has any place in what I am about to do now, but that is my first real memory,

    I remember thinking about all the people that I loved... people I thought loved me, but they didn't, because none of my family took me in.  I went to state homes and foster care.  I seen it all, but the time I was 14, fighting, killing, rape, those things were the norm.

    But, before that,, I guess it started with the lies.  It is amazing how people think that they can tell a child anything and he will believe it.  Everybody loved and wanted the best for me.... nobody ever asked how I felt seeing my mother blow my dad's head off though.  Nobody ever thought to ask about the dreams that I lived with, that I still live with,  I remember thinking if what I have come to know, to be love, than love is a lie--- A FUCKING LIE !

    I don't know, you do what you can to forget, to fight the demons.  I hated my mother for what she did, but I couldn't tell her,  I wanted her to explain, but she wasn't able to do that either... I wanted my father, but of course, that too was impossible.  I learned about cocain when I was 12, and the rest is history.

    Most of my life, I have fought against the opinions I had of myself more so then I did the opinion's of others  I ran and escaped through drugs and fights.  What I couldn't get from drugs, I got from violence.  I loved the pain of fights, it felt real... for me, it seemed normal and just.

    I know what you are thinking, and hell yeah you are right, life was hurting the hell out of me, but I needed that to stay alive. I can't ever explain, I just know what if felt like.... what if feels like !

    I guess we do what we can to survive, that is the human condition !  I don't know what that means for me, but it must mean something as I am still here.  Perhaps, some things are meant to be survived and told... maybe my foolishness will mean something to someone else.

    Why am I telling you all this ?  Because there is someone who needs to hear it.  Because you have so many people who never quite get up off the ground from the beating life gave them.... sometimes we all need a hand.  Who I am and what I have done to end up on Death Row is of no importance.  What does matter is that you truly know that being strapped to a gurney is no way for a man to die.  I survived that too once.

    I am not a good writer, never will be, but I feel that I have done a good enough job in showing you all who I am.  Don't you want better for those around you... those you love ?  Prison is a lonely place, Death Row is worse, it can produce a monster.... or just make the monster worse.  And that, too, is apart of life.

    Nothing is worse than seeing people around you die--- NOTHING !

Hoping for better days,
Demas,
January 1, 2012

***Author's Note :

Demas and I have spoken many times, but I never asked him about doing an article with me.  He just seemed like the kind of person who wouldn't be interested in something like this.  But one day it happened out of the blue;  he asked me “Ty, do you still do that writing stuff for D/R ?” I said yeah, and he asked if he could write something.

He told me his story and I wrote it word for word.  I felt at the time that he was so much going on inside him, so many things that never even came out in the little writing that he blessed us with, but there is so much said, so much heartache, contradiction, longing, confusion.  It was powerful just sit there and let him talk.

Life can twist you up, beat you up, and throw you away, it's those who get up that I truly respect.... they are the ones who deserve our silence, because there is learning there...there is reason to hope.

Demas still struggles with his self image, but he used that to get his point across.  Real life is not always as beautiful as the poems we read, but sometimes, through tragedy and a willingness to show our scars, we end up making real life ten times more beautiful.

Meet me in the war room or the battlefield !!!

FIGHT FOR LIFE !!!

Con Todo Respecto,
Tyree,
January 3, 2012
19:40