The bad, the beautiful,
And the downright insane:

A cursed life of homelessness and Huntingtons disease.
And the  sad and amazing story I lived along the way.

This book is dedicated to my family:

Mumma Bear for the  childhood that made me strong;
My brother for always having my back;
My big sister, for the good times we had as kids;
My little sister Lily;
And my step dad Kelvin,
And last, but by far not the least:

You will, and have always been,
my Hero Dad.

Loving you from afar, always,
S.M

forward 

Coarse language and drug usage.



Where does one begin I wonder? 
In chronicling this strange and accursed life I have lived?

'Call me Ishmael'?
'Once upon a time''?
I think I might just put it down to throwing my fingers at the keyboard and see where they take me.

Today.
A powerful word.
For me anyway.
For it is this potent day, this day of infamy that has been on my mind for what has felt like eternity, ever there, but like graduation or old age; 
Always far away yet, at the same time, always approaching.

Out of reach of time and thought. 
Until Today. The day I write this.

Just a piece of paper.
A piece of paper that changes everything.
A piece of paper I have been thinking about since I was six years old:
The day my results were handed to me.

Allele II: size 51 Affected
My name is Samuel. F. Mogford.
And I have Huntingtons Disease.

If you are expecting the sob story of a broken soul; 
That is not what you will find here.
I'd like to say that's because I was strong. That I never gave up. 
But that's not true; I gave into despair plenty of times.
But I got back up.
I always got back up.

I got stronger.

And I survived.

If you don't like sad tales, don't read this.
But if you can force yourself to brave the dark,
surprisingly, 

There is light at the end of this tunnel. 


If a fucked up life creates fucked up people;
Then what happened to me I wonder? 

My life is a tapestry of hardship after hardship.

Chapter the first:

A Heroes Heart

Ever since I was a kid.

I wanted to be a Hero.

I always wanted to be the good guy in this story.


And yet.
I had thought the opposite of myself for so long..
I felt cursed.
Because of the way my hardships effected the people I cared about.
I began to shun people and relationships.
I still do.
People see the scars on my arms and body.
But they don't see the map of the crippled, broken, life I used to live back then.
To meet me now, you'd think I was the kindest, most up-beat person you'd ever meet.

You'd be right.

I wasn't always.

Beginnings
Six years old. Before it all changed.

The day she told me I might inherit the disease from Dad. 

Most people have heard about cancer.
Nobody knows about Huntington's disease.

Huntington's is a genetic disease where the parent who who carries the gene has a 50% chance of giving it to their kids.

I am the spitting image of my Dad.

Six years old and I thought I was going to die because I looked like my Father.

Huntington's disease is like cancer's meaner older brother.
With cancer your body goes. Then you go.

But with Huntington's you slowly die inside.
Piece by piece.
Bit my bit.
Losing pieces of your mind.

who you are.

Until your body goes too.

I never really cared.
As a kid I hoped I would get it.

I prayed that somehow I could take it all onto me,

So my brother and sister wouldn't get it.


 But now that I feel my brain dying, and as every word I reach for to write this becomes more difficult to reach every day.
As this curse eats up my memories, my soul, and slurs my words.
I cant help but feel  dead inside.
I have been writing my whole life. What am I without pen and prose?
I have always had infinite will when it has come to my dreams of publishing.
But what am now that I feel pieces of memory and words that used to flow so beautifully ebb away from me?

I must write.

Before my worst nightmare comes to be;
And my mind, and my story, 
Vanish forever.

Chapter 1:
Home

I was always a fragile, cursed child, confined to my room and to my books.
I suffered with depression and intense panic attacks for most of my early life.
Home never was really a home for me.
And although I have reconnected with my mother and dont blame her for any of it.
My life was a traumatic life at home.
The first person to ever pull a knife on me was my own mother.
I was twelve.

She wasn't the last.

If this is the kind of thing you cant handle reading.

Don't.

It gets worse.

Much worse.

But there is light, 
at the end of this tunnel, Friend.
Read on and you'll find it.

I remember grabbing the bladed end.
Tears in my eyes.

"why?"

But it wasn't'
'Why the knife in your sons face'
It was a 'why' for all of it

I still am not sure of the answer.
I never got one. 

I was always a good kid. I see that looking back now

Too good. 
I just wanted my parents to love me.

Didn't know why they couldn't.

It was like it became this woman's sole mission in life to convince me and everyone else I was the worst most useless piece of shit in the world.

And it worked.

Nobody hated Sam more than Sam hated Sam.
I felt so cursed. But I didn't hate them.
I loved them.
This was when the burning started.
Cigarettes. Lighters. even a crack bulb once.
Knives Id leave on stoves until they were glowing and then place them across my arms until you could hear the searing of my own flesh.
I couldn't go a day back then without hurting myself in some way shape or form.
i hated myself and the curse i felt like i was on my family back then.
I used to think of little scenarios back then, ways to kill myself without making any trouble for them.
Ways me and my curse could just disappear. 
Like just going out somewhere they'd never find my body.
Somewhere in the woods and just hanging myself.
I always felt like my family would be so much happier if I wasn't there. 


Willpower.

My mother was an absolute force of willpower.
Her influence convinced everyone in our family, I was the reason they were unhappy.

Especially me.

My Step-Dad wasn't always bad to me.
But for instance:
When I was eighteen and got put on the street.
(I lived in a tent and then on a drug dealers couch for about a year and a half)
I think it was for joking about something to do with a friends mother, that my little sister overheard and dobbed me in for.

You never knew what would set them off.
I lived in constant panic and fear.

I was a wreck.

I once got beat over the head with a metal ice cream scoop. 
Not the lighter new ones they make,
The big chunky iron ones. 
More like a steel club. 

I was about 8.
Just for being in her way.
It still has a huge chunk out of it where it hit my head.


I was a panicked, terrified, broken wreck of a child.

I used to stand in the bathroom pretending to be in the bath.
Gripping the sides of the sink paralyzed in pure panicked and terrified despair.

Unable to move for hours. 
Staring into the mirror tears down my face.

But the one person her influence worked the most on was me.

I used to think I was a curse on everyone around me.
I used to think about killing myself everyday.



Hate

People always ask me where all the scars came from.

I brush it under light conversation. 
The truth terrifies even the most well-meaning people genuinely concerned.
I learnt that the hard way.

I used to burn myself all the time.
At first cigarettes.
But after a friends mother once told me it was my fault her daughter had tried to kill herself it escalated.
(Hell for me wasn't just at home. 
The curse was in every aspect of my life.
Everyday something just that little bit worse than yesterdays hell.
After that it was:

Open flames.
Stove heated knives.
Crack pipes.

Like I said, nobody hated Sam,
more than Sam hated Sam.

(I used to smoke crystal Meth. Once you hit rock bottom living on a mattress on a drug dealers floor.
You don't care. Anything that takes the pain away.
Rock bottom and I was barely 18.)

But there was this dark, demoniac part of me, 
that had been growing in me but by bit.

Chained by my willpower. But still there.

That enjoyed the pain.

I'm not afraid of monsters. 

I was one.

Wrath

And then one day.

My will broke. The chains fell.
The demon was free.

The one thing I inherited form my mother.
To say the woman 'got angry' simply does not do justice the utter bestial, fury the woman would display.
I have never seen the like in another my whole life.

Except for myself. 

The world of literature seems to think a character in the throes of madness or insanity can find some kind of 'relief' there.

True torment.

True insanity.

Is eternity in a moment.

A moment when your mind convulses against it's own existence.
True madness is the mind snapping upon itself.
When faced with trauma like no other, 
exhausted beyond its limits to deal with it.

An almost physical pain of the mind.

There is no relief there.
Just a constant unending nightmare that throbs and burns throughout your very being.

The moment your mind finds its limits. 
And they turn upon you.

A tortured moment where you know if you could die right there and then,
you would.

And in that moment . 

For the next six hours at least..

I was rage.
I was fury.

I was wrath.


I bent metal. splintered wood.
I lifted and threw things far beyond human strength.

Hours passed.

It didn't stop.

I broke. I threw.
I raged on.

until.

in the middle of the hell i had created.

I fell

Broken.

And another tiny piece of a dying heart stopped beating for the thousandth time.

If I had known it would be another ten thousand before the end.

I would have killed myself right then and there.


~Little pieces of sunshine~

Sitting here beside the waterfall in a little garden just out of Melbourne CBD,
I have smoked about half a packet cigarettes since I started writing this at least four hours ago. 
And I barely even smoke these days.


Although I have made my peace with my past,
I really feel that I needed this. Even now, my heart feels just that little bit lighter.

But it wasn't all bad.
My life on a timer,
even as a boy I made sure I lived a good childhood.
At school I took my time being a kid.

I have been reading and writing my whole life.
My grade six teacher used to tell me I was the only student she'd ever had to tell off for reading in class: I always had a book hidden between my worksheets.

The days of Emily Rodda, Tamora Pierce, Eddings, JK Rowling, Garth Nix and so many adventures I lived through my books.


I remember being so proud when the same teacher sponsored me for an award I won for a story I wrote.

She was the greatest.

Throughout high-school I made many friends.
(Most of whom are now my ex girlfriend's, friend's but i'll get to that later.) But even so my time at that school was blessed and fun.
I stayed a kid as long as I could.
I still am sometimes.


It was there I met Shelby.
I don't care how far we drift apart,
I will always think of our friendship with the fondest of sentiments.
(silly reasons adults find, can drive even the best of friends apart.)

I hope she reads this someday.

Nobody understood what I was going through at home.
My mother taught at that school.
To know her outside is to know a kind and capable teacher.
Nobody could have ever imagined what she was like behind closed doors.

First Love

For now I had some amazing times with that girl.

Lets call her 'Anna'.

We traveled the world together when I got my dad's inheritance. 
People say it was a waste of money.
People say lots of silly things.

I think I had a greater capacity to love than other people.
It was joy for me to make her happy.

I used to give her days where I would set about trying to make her feel more loved and special than anyone had ever been.

For instance.

Our first Valentines day:

I'd gotten a part-time job to make the money I needed and had been planning this for weeks.
I had a horse and carriage pick us up from the station at southern cross;
(wearing a tasteful black and red suit, matching the single red rose I carried.)
The freindly carriage driver drove us through melbourne to the Botanic gardens where I had a beautiful picnic set out.
Wines. Champagne. Cheeses.
We talked the morning away lying on that blanket.
No time limit. 
No rush. 
I wanted her to be able to relax.

Then a cozy bar for cocktails,
Gold class cinemas, 
And then Nobu Japanese restaurant in Crown Plaza for a late dinner.

I was the happiest man in the world just making her happy.

Every now and then I stalk her face-book photos.
It hurts a little less every time.

I don't think I have it in me to love again.

Once was enough...

My writing is my love now.


Cursed

I can feel it, eating away at my mind. The disease.
Each word as I type harder to reach for than the last.
I hope I can finish this tale before it eats away the last of my memories.
What will I be once I cannot write?

A nothing?
Will I cease to be me?
To truly exist?

If someday I don't remember who I was?

I can no longer type like i used to... 
I can feel it all slipping away from me. 
My hands are clumsy, fingers struggling across the keyboard like the shaking leaves of a dying tree.
where will I be when the last of my soul, my ability to write, drains away?

I don't dare contemplate...


~Alice of Avalon~

I met Alice online; 
She was the sweetest most mysterious girl I have ever known.

Alice was from an old German-American family and was wheelchair bound after an accident that had crippled her and killed her best friend.
But online in the little cafe room we used to wait tables together in; Alice could walk and interact with others like she couldnt in real life.

I was smitten. We dated for a while online.
But then I lost her.

The site we had been using was taken down suddenly.
I searched for her across the net.
But I never found her.
All I had was her screen name: 
Alice of Avalon

I still think about her now and then...

Clowning around

Over the years I have worked so many jobs.
Bakeries, corner shops, overnight shifts at restaurants, an abattoir in Cobram and contract work on skyscrapers in the inner city of Melbourne.

The last thing anyone ever expects me to add to that list is that I
 used to do children's parties as a clown.

I still remember the very first balloon animal I made.
My grandparents had given me a little 'how to' book on how to make them.
I remember sitting in a park with my family, I must have been about six at the time, I made a dog and gave it to another kid who was crying.
His parents insisted I take a couple of dollars for it.
I can still see how happy that other little boy was when I passed  him the balloon.
The way his whole face just lit up.
After a few years I met Crackles the clown,
(a lady who used to do clowning work around the little town I grew up in) who taught me how to face-paint and make ray-guns and swans and the like.

Not a well paid job but tremendous fun!

Ben the sparrow
I was late to school that day.
It wasn't a rare occurrence as I was your standard apathetic and lethargic teen and took as long as I could on the way to school.
Two magpies.One sparrow.
I scared them away and picked up the poor little guy in my jumper.
He couldn't fly.
He was hurt.
I knew from experience that the vet wouldn't take sparrows.
I looked at the poor little guy and he looked at me.
And even if it might have been my imagination; but his face looked like he knew it too;
He wasn't going to make it.
I tried. Ben survived in a little box by my bed for about three days.
I loved him dearly.
I'll never forget you Ben.

Inmate
Voices.
Voices and demons.
I miss my freedom.
I want my life back.
I want normal back.
I'd do anything to get rid of this torment.

lately...

Lately my life has taken a turn for the worse.
where does it go.
what do I do.
Where is that light i used to see at the end of the tunnel?

I just dont see it anymore
Hospital
Went to the royal Melbourne to talk about the voices and my huntingtons,
just prescribed me some more medication that wont work.
I can barely read now.
It really kills me.
Prose and the written word have been my life for so long.

Happy first one thousand views!
I just reached a thousand views! thank you everyone whose been following my work!
The staff here are so nice and happy.
I wish I could get my happy back.
I saw a lady today with advanced symptoms.
Poor thing had to be dressed by her daughter and walked like she didn't know where she was.
Sorry if my writing has been getting worse.

It gets harder to type day by day...

One of the ladies from Huntingtons Victoria I met today told me they're going to start advertising my blog on their website!

I just signed up with adsense.
A bit of money from advertising would be nice.
Maybe I could buy a nice house someday.
Someplace I can call home.
A place I can have pets.
I've always been an animal person.

Monster Inside

I really don't know what happened to me today.
One minute I'm sneaking in cigarettes for a friend and they take my cigarette leave away;
Then I'm hitting things begging the to let me outside so I can hit the punching bag instead of someone; breaking windows and headbutting stuff.

I'm fine, my leg hurts but I've always had an extremely high pain Threshold


The sky falls in midnight patterns upon darkened streets. Walking through the shadows of this moonless world I tilt my head back with a serene smile and let the cool droplets wash away my past. Rain. My one and only release from the dark of the vault.

 Locked in constant battle with my thoughts; the rain the only remedy to my torture. 
The eyes of twilight, lights on high flicker in electric sockets as i stare back into their depths. 
A breath of cigarette like sweet heaven to my troubled mental state. 

The rain became my true friend. Every drop, a story to tell. Exciting and inspiring, I find true peace when I wander this watery landscape. I feel the skies cleansing my being, my aching soul soaring through cloudless night. 

It is only now, in this blissful paradise of mental strength. I feel, like my precious raindrops, like I finally have a story to tell. 
And can bear to tell it. My heart gingerly opens the vast steel door to the vault, 
seething darkness writhing like a snake within. I was once a normal kid I suppose. 
But this world changed me. As it will to all. 
I find myself feeling angry at a generation that tries to grow up to fast. 
Not really understanding the freedom they hold. Living a half life like mine, an early death to the genetic brain-degenerative disease that took my father hovering over my shoulder like the skeletal reaper, 
his cold hand at my neck. You stop taking life for granted. I still don't know which might be worse. Losing who I am, or death. 
The disease is a manageable part of my life. 
The very least of what turned me into what I am today. 
At the age of 21 and a few days. 
I have seen the very gates of hell in this world, 
the fire burned into my retina, 
never forgotten. 
Thrust into a cruel and cold world on the streets. 
A part of me died.
 Prelude to Purgatory High-school. 
The war between good and evil raged within me. 
I could hardly bear it. 
Before long I segregated my conscience into two halves. 
I could no longer bear the pain I was putting upon the people I cared about. 
Good prevailed and I shut my anger and pain from the world. 
Locked it within my vault. 
But not before it was already much too late. 
I fucked up. 
I hurt a friend. 
And what I did almost killed her. 
Her suicide attempt broke my heart. 
What I did, even with the animosity of these pages, I can never say. 
What truly broke me was her mothers words. 
I’ll never forget them, to this day, 
they are etched in my heart like a rotted scar. 

“You drove her to this. Its your fault she tried to kill herself. 
And If she ever succeeds, I will never forgive you” This is what started my self harm. 
The cigarette burns still pepper my arms and hands.

My self loathing was an endless sea of hate. 
I felt like I deserved what I was doing to myself and became addicted to the pain. 
I couldn't sit through a social gathering without having to go off and apply new burns atop still fresh ones. 

Even at work I used a burning stove-top to heat a knife, howling mentally as it seared my flesh, the burn almost an inch deep.

Nobody hated Sam more than Sam hated Sam.

Daniel Love 

I met Daniel at a hostel,
Just a 30 dollar a day run of the mill hostel.
We became fast friends, As we had a lot in common. 

I remember he used to say that epiphany was sudden realization
Of great truth. 

Daniel was a good friend who understood you can have fun no matter how old you are.