Chapter 8: summer camp

so after half a year of Wilson, i decided it was time to move on. it's pretty amazing that i could just decide where i wanted to live, and whether or not i wanted to go to school. but because of that freedom i moved back to dancing rabbit. i think i might have gone to a year or two of this summer camp before this time in my life, but i will just talk about all of the years now. the summer camp i attended was Farm and Wilderness, a qaicker based hiking, group building, and acting camp. which i attended for 2 months every summer up in tell last summer. i don't know what about Farm and wilderness kept bringing me back, probably the strong supporting community. the last year i went was the best, i had gotten to know everyone. and mostly my social awkwardness was finely wearing off. but the years before that were not like that in anyway. in my cabin that i was assigned for the summer i was picked on acausonly, and inorder to get out of activities with the people doing that to me, i would fake sick, or try to bang my head on a tree inorder to go to the nurse. i feel bad saying it now, i should have been strong and not cared what they said. but sadly that's not always the case.

    please those of you who went to Farm and Wilderness dont get me wrong, summer camp was great for me. i learned alot about myself and for the most part everyone was nice and loving. it was just a few occasions  where i can't say that was true. and i would totally go back if i could, but sadly i cant, but i will talk about why later.

Chapter 7: Oklahoma

my dad moved to Tahlequah in 2006, mostly due to the fact that it was close to family. all of my dad's side of family live in a small area called Johnsonville (get it?). so living close to Johnsonville meant you lived close to my dad's entire family. my dad soon met my step-mom on myspace, and obviously they hit it off. i don't know how long they lived in Tahlequah because i wasn't there the whole time due to the parent swapping that was taking place. however before i knew it he had moved to Tulsa. my step-mom has two kids from another man named Noah. she and him split up just before she and my dad started seeing each other. and dad if your reading this please excuse my mistakes, i don't know exactly the order of events.

      when my father Tim moved to Tulsa it was first in the mid city. they moved into a two bedroom house. the house had 5 kids one on the way and two adults, so it wasn't the most comfortable size for the group. but i grew up never having my own room, so it wasn't as bad as it might seem. while i was at my dads i was attending a school called Wilson Middle School. the school was huge to what i had to compare it to. there were hundreds of kids, dozens of hallways, and a lot of violence and drug use. just like Scotland county i stuck to myself. and just like in Scotland, people came to meet me. my step brother who is about half a year younger then me also attended the same school, and he unlike me was social and quickly picked up friends. which soon got to know me for i hung out with my step brother Isaac a lot.

      for awhile, not knowing people was fine with me, but soon i wanted more. everyday at recess fights were a sure thing. and whenever one broke out, there was always a large mob of spectators. i think the first fight i got in was a playful one. my friend Robert was messing around and we started to wrestle. however that was not how everyone else took it and before i knew it the whole school, hundreds of kids were just standing there watching. i had never had that much attention before, and i ate it up. fights soon became a weekly activity. i wasn't an angry person like before, i just wanted attention. but its pretty amazing what we will do for it...

     

Chapter 6: First school experience

the first time i ever went to school was summer school, but i guess that doesn't really count. i attended the same school the next year. Scotland County was the first school i ever took part in. i stayed in the school for half a year, but i left after the 1st semester. i don't really know why i left, i guess i just didn't like waking up early and the whole school scene. growing up on a sail boat with only my sister and infant brother to associate with, i never really developed the social skills that most kids my age had already acquired. my hair was parted down the middle and cascaded down my shoulders and back which was considered pretty odd i imagine. i think mostly due to the fact that i hung back and stayed to myself, people started to come over and talk to me. during my stay at Scotland i met quite a few people that i still know today like josh Gerber and Adams, Sebastian (if you go to Scotland and your wondering who that is, i cant tell you he requested i use that name for him), and Jacob Holt that rides my bus. it was nice to meet people while i was at school, i think it might have been different if i didn't. so if your one of those kids thanks.

       my stay at Scotland was mellow and short, but it introduced me to school which probably changed how the stay at my  last two schools went. and those school's play an incredibly important role in of my life.

Chapter 5: Downfall

my acting out didn't occurr  in tell after my dad had left to Oklahoma. it all started one evening when someone that lived here named Liat had a family member come visit. the family member was her brother Avi. we were having a potluck at the village, however soon i grew bored of my plain food and went to run around. i don't know how it started, but for some reason Avi was play fighting with us (showing off his skills at martial arts). i would run at him trying to hit him and he would always just side step me, and i would run and fall. now me not to happy with my unsuccessful streak tried something new. i honestly don't remember what i exactly did, but it was obviously to much cause, Nathan another person that lives at dancing rabbit came and took me away from him and held me down for awhile in tell me mother came. she took me home immediately and grounded me, i believe for my fist time. i didn't think i did anything wrong, but i probably did especially cause these acts of violence occurred several other times.

          now nothing i say from this point on in the blog in tell i start to talk about my change am i proud of. in fact I'm gonna hate to admit to most of it, but i did promise you i would share openly, and i am trying to break my lying habit. when i think of the name sierra radford i think of two things, one is violence and the other is affection. you know how some people say "oh he is just mean to you cause he likes you"? well i took that a little too far, i don't even know if i liked her when i was mean to her but either way i was. she was a few years older then me so i don't think i hurt her to bad, but i would fight her when ever i saw her (for the most part). it got to the point where my mom wouldn't let me be around her, and i believe her mom might have even moved because of our interactions, but i don't know if that's accurate. but either way they don't live here anymore and they don't visit either. except one time after they left but i will talk about that later don't worry.

          so i guess i have changed myself around two times so far in my life. the first was right after all this happened. my mom had me talk to the police officer about juvy, she did counseling with me as well as having me do it with other people, and she had me talk to people that lived at dancing rabbit. but instead of using those resources i pulled knifes on them, i threatened them, yelled at them, cussed at them, ect... but finally after a few months of this foolishness my mom took me and maybe some other people in my family to South Carolina where my moms step mom lives. and when i came back it all stopped. all the acting out was gone and i stopped getting in trouble it was awesome! for awhile...

Chapter 4: The divorce

i have now lived at dancing rabbit for 7 years ever sense 2005. after being at dancing rabbit for less then a year my parents got a divorce. i remember them sitting all the kids down and telling us. to be honest it was a complete shock i never saw it coming. my parents keep telling me that there relationship was already falling apart, but i guess they hid it from us, cause i thought we were the perfect family. and after that every thing started to slip down hill. but first my dad moved to another community called red earth farms which had just been founded just a mile away from dancing rabbit. the cool thing about that was i could go visit him whenever and just hang out and sleep over. but he soon grew tired of red earth farms, and moved closer to his parents. which placed him in talakque Oklahoma just 40 miles away from where he lives now, which is Tulsa. and after that point i went back and forth from mom to dad. which was pretty hard for me at the time. now i know i said that things started to slip down hill and oh believe me they did. but that's another post full just to get into the beginning so stay tuned.

Chapter 3: Dancing Rabbit-

growing up i was a bit socially awkward. after the homeschooling group in still water i only had my sister and my infant brother for company. so i never really got that social connection that i think i needed. but because of that i never really hung out with kids that i met along the road, and still once i moved to my current home ( dancing rabbit) i still didn't. especially because there weren't any kids there at the time i first moved there. speaking of dancing rabbit that's what i am going to talk about now. we moved to dancing rabbit, because me and my dad wanted to settle down. however my sister and my mother didn't, and my brother to young to decide just sat there and was still. now why an ecovillage i have no idea. i mean obviously my parents liked the idea of an ecovillage, but how they found out about such a thing i have no clue. we toured and visited several communities all over America, but in the long run we settled down at dancing rabbit. i like to think that i was the reason, even though i probably was not. see there was and still is this guy at the community named Thomas and when i first visited dancing rabbit i fell in love with him. he was about 25 and was a super fun loving fellow. and immediately i latched onto him, and when i say latched i really mean that. my dad had bought a dog Collier in case he ever needed to find us if he knew we were leaving his site for awhile. so i took the device and put it around thomas' neck so that i could hunt him down.

      so like i said me and my dad both decided we wanted to settle down. and in case you are wondering if i regret that or not, i don't and i do. i really miss sailing around and swimming in oceans and picking up sea shells and making sand castles, but i am also happy we moved to dancing rabbit, because lord knows i would be a completely different person. and perhaps that wouldn't be to bad but i am pretty happy with myself now.