As a child, the parents are responsible for your life, but as an adult, the individual becomes responsible. My parents were young and stupid, bless their hearts, and weren't prepared to take on the responsibility of children. Mom was only 15 and Dad was 22 when I was born,(this was the 1960's and statutory rape laws were not even thought of then), what responsibility were they prepared for at that age to raise children. But, God's grace allowed for this to happen and so it was.
I am not going to go on about how bad my childhood was because parents, even step parents were human and no one at any age is prepared to take on the responsibility of children. They made their mistakes as all humans do, they had to learn as well. What I chose to do was take the mistakes that were made and either not make them again or grow from them. But I was still a mess. I needed some sort of guidance to figure out the answers to so many questions that I had as an adult. And sure, as a young adult, I did blame a lot of things on my parents right down to why the hell did they bring me into this miserable world? I hated life.
For so many years I just trudged along doing what I wanted to do and I had many great adventures and I did discover so much about myself and how to live life. Even though I did all of these things there was still something missing. A void as it is referred. This emptiness. There were things missing from my soul that needed to be filled and made whole.
I tried counseling, I tried religion, nothing made that empty feeling go away. Self help books are a big joke to me. I even used to sex to fill that void. Remember, I was raped and as a victim of rape, one of the symptoms of a rape victim are sexual exploits.
In my search to find wholeness, I was discovering the truth about leaders of the community such as counselors and pastors and finding that many of them were suffering from the same quest that I was. They had no idea of how to help me when they had no idea of how to help them selves. They could even be cruel and had negative affects on what I was trying to accomplish for myself.
The void that I was trying to fill was the one of self LOVE. To love oneself is the greatest gift an individual can discover.
Eventually, believe it or not, I turned to the Bible. Coming from an atheist family, it was strange to me to do so. But I was determined to fill this pothole inside me.  The Bible is not a book you sit down and try to read. There are so many things in it that don't make sense. It is a tool that has to be studied intensely to get the message that it has to offer. The Old Testament can be frightening and even turn a person against a "Loving God". I discovered what is called a concordance. It is a sort of dictionary to the Bible in which became a tool to help me study the Bible. I took phrases that I wanted to read about in the Bible such as acceptance, forgiveness, love and so on, found them in the concordance which told me where to find them in the Bible. I would write them down and make them mine. After a year or so, that void was replaced with the beginnings of self love and acceptance. It was revolutionary to my existence.
Some of the scripture that I had used and kept dear to my were these ones:
ACCEPTANCE:
II Samuel 24:23 ......" The Lord your God ACCEPTS you"
Romans 14:3..........." for God has accepted and welcomed him."
FORSAKE:
Deuteronomy 31:6..."for the Lord your God will not fail you nor forsake you."
Joshua 1:5..............."as I was with Moses, so I will not fail you nor forsake you."
Psalms 27:10..........."although my Mother and Father have forsaken me, yet the Lord will not, He we will take me up and adopt me as His own."
The Bible is worth spending time in and getting to know who you are in the eyes of the Beholder. These scriptures that I give here are so few to the many that are written and I leave it up to you to discover the relationship that exists between you and God.
FORGIVENESS is a big one. It is the hardest of human virtues. It's not that we are incapable, its that we do not start with ourselves first. The more that we understand and know deeply that we are forgiven in the eyes of God through the blood of Christ, the more that we begin to forgive ourselves and then the ability to forgive others is just given. Why? Because we now have forgiveness to give to others. We cannot give what we do not have.
If you want to know the reason that Jesus came, died and took away our sin and then was resurrected and ascended into the Heavens to sit at the right hand of God, read and STUDY ROMANS.   After that read and study HEBREWS. It gives a detailed knowledge of what is to come now that Jesus had accomplished His mission here with us.
So, now you know what it was that gave me the spunk and vitality to keep going and be the individual that I am today. I know that God loves me, period!

A Fairy's Tale

Oh, yeah, I was packed and ready to go when graduation came along in what ever year it happened to be. And for God's sake and for the love of classmates, do not remind me of the year or drag out school photos! Jesus.   I went back to Pittsburgh for a short time then I hauled my ass off to NYC for about three years. I had the time of my life.
Let me back up. I DO NOT want to offend any of my classmates, I love you all that have stuck by my side and are still here with me today, but I had to get the f--ck out of Jamestown High School District. I was a gay boy that entered that HELL in the fourth grade. And excuse me for saying this, but when you go from a graduating class that had as many kids as the whole town had people, I knew I was in for it!  Gay Grey, come on!  What the.......
anyway, I just wanted out of there. I eventually ended up in NYC. I loved it there. I was about 19. When I first got there, I had a Chevy Chevette. Haha, remember those, I lived out of it for two weeks until I found a job at Chevy's on 27th Avenue just below the Village. I found an apartment in the obituaries, yeah, the obits, in Jackson Heights. Two bedrooms and  a really cool 1950s style commode. Ya know, it had the really high bowl with the long pull cord to flush!  AWESOME! I loved it. It was pink and gray, the apartment, not the toilet. Perfect colors for a starving Queen.
Chevys was a restaurant that served food until 11pm and then served alcohol until ? I was a bartender until about 3pm and then took a two hour break, worked as a waiter until 11pm, took another break, then came on as a cocktail waiter until?. Made great money. About $700 a day just in tips. Remember that great apartment, it cost me $3000. a month. Utilities not included. 
Who cares, I had fun.
I also had a gorgeous boyfriend. Puerto Rican. Antonio Martinez. WOW! I will never forget him. I remember for my 21st birthday, he called me at work....."Marco".....that's what he called me. Marty means dead in latin. Go figure! " I take you out for you birthday".   He took me to the top of the Mellon Bank building in downtown NYC and romanced me under the moonlight. What a hunk! Then he took me home, and, well you know, got me prego! You know the spaghetti sauce. Haha!
Mellon bank was in Spider Man, the first one. Where Spidey saved MJ after Green Gobby threw that bomb at the balcony and she fell and he swept her up and they went passed St Pauls Cathedral on 5th Ave and ended up on the top of that building with the black marble roof and the park like atmosphere. That's where Antonio took me for my birthday!!
To go on, Antonio was a student at F.I.T in NYC and he graduated. He was a Mommy's boy too and went back to Puerto Rico. I studied cosmetology at a Paul Mitchel salon under an apprenticeship. We were both done with our training and moved on.
How I got to Colorado. I went to Jersey and bought a Ford Mercury Marquis. Hell yeah. A four hundred four barrel carb. I was in Colorado in about five minutes. Anyway, it was cheap and ugly. I loaded it with as much clothes and shoes as any Queen could and headed west. The car through the fan into the radiator on Centro Way in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Right across from where my car broke was a junk yard. I sold the car for $100 and lived in Ft. Collins for 11 years.I had my own salon for most of those years and I taught color corrections for Matrix. I was just about 22 to 24 years old when I  got to Colorado.
Then I moved to Pennsyltucky!

Just the other night, I was at the ocean shore, thinking to myself, I don't want to be here any more.
I have had many times, many moments, when I have thought this, but truly, I will remain.
The world is a cruel and cold place to live and survive. That is just it!, to live and survive. To live this life and survive. To get through it is knowing that all was accomplished with the satisfaction that it was done without inflicting upon another!
To be inflicted upon is life, to inflict upon another is selfish and hateful. To give when there nothing left to give, is LOVE. I chose LOVE!

The Perpetrater is the true victim

This post is for anyone that has experienced abandonment,abuse, molestation, rape, stalkers, stabbings,stigmatized  and the like. Been mugged? I have. And all of the above,(except for molestation). But do you understand that you are not the victim of these crimes?
People that inflict pain on another are are their own victim.
Having been raped, stalked, stabbed and beaten so bad that I had to loose everything do to this person or persons doing, is not my fault! I do not blame myself for these things. Even the court system chose to try and make it my fault because it did not want to deal with same sex issues.
CHOICE!
I did not chose this, it was given to me. My choice was to be the best. To be better than the circumstance that was handed to me. 
KEY POINT: BE BETTER THAN THE CHOICES YOU MAKE. BE BETTER THAN THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT ARE GIVEN TO YOU!

" I cry for the Love of Marshall"

I have so much that I want to say and yet when I sit down to put it into words, I am not able. So, I am going to attempt to do so  in this blog.
Hi, my name is Marshall Lee Grey, better known to friends and family as Marty. I have a story to tell and I am going to do so right here.
I was born at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C although I am originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The reason why is that Mom was on her way to Maryland to visit her Mother and went into labor on the flight down. My Father was in the Army at the time. Leave it to me to do the unexpected, right! Like I always say, " I came into this world kicking and screaming and I will go out kicking and screaming!"
Just so that you know, I will refer to my "Father", the sperm donor as "Frog".
I could chose to say that my life was horrible, but I don't want to just for the fact that I have learned that all things have to have a balance. There cannot be good without bad or light without dark. It is way to easy to feel sorry for myself when things are bad and do not go the way that I have planned. And to sit around pondering "why", is human, but a waist of valuable time. Rather I chose to find something constructive to do. Many times it is just complimenting someone on something. Many times the compliment is toward someone that I don't know.
It took me a long time to learn how to do this. As with all things in life, I had to learn how. It takes practice and the willingness to sacrifice things about ones self. Such as, life isn't always about me. Having the strength to put another human's needs before my own at any given time is having a deep knowing one self.
It is the negative things in life that create character in a person. If life were chocolates and roses everyday, I would be a lost soul that has no appreciation. Let alone a fatty with all the chocolate.
Am I perfect, definitely NOT! Am I better than anyone else, CERTAINLY NOT!. I just wanted to be someone different in a world that just doesn't seem to want to grasp the meaning behind real living.
Everybody has a history with evil, negativity, bad places, and so on. But it is what we chose to do with all of that yuk that can make us unique in the heavens and in the world alike. As I said earlier, I chose to let those the hateful actions of others make me stronger. I chose to rise above and make a difference in a positive manner. I chose to be constructive rather than destructive.
Religion is a BIG no no in my perspectives of positive and constructive endeavors. I have found that religion is a human way of oppressing its followers. It keeps the congregation feeling guilty about themselves for the purpose of collections. I think the greatest sin of all is to use God's word for the sole purpose of money. If money is the church's first obligation to God above saving a life, then shame on them! That's why there are so many churches and not one of them have any foundation of truth.
Studying the Bible and developing a relationship with God, is where I have discovered the truth behind why I am here and what my purpose is in this lifetime.
I have come a long way from self destruction and have moved forward into self love. But life is a journey worth taking and learning to be thankful for every moment that I am given to breath. I have a long way to go yet. I have yet a lot to learn. I chose to do so.
I have come to understand that the things in life that have hurt us individually are not the responsibility of others to carry. I can empathize with another person and listen to them but I am not responsible for fixing the problem. The other thing that I have learned is to change my wording and view, "problems", as merely circumstances.  And many things in life are just that, circumstances. Never forget however, I too am a long term student in the teachings of life. I forget my own practices and tend to get caught up in the negatives and get an attitude toward them as well. I do get mad. But it's a constant reminder that I am human and I still need practice and knowledge.
Mom, bless her heart, passed away from a long struggle with cancer. It was in her dying that showed me that we as individuals and humans take to much for granted everyday. It was also in her death that helped me to understand that people can be very selfish and petty. Myself included. No pointing fingers. To this day I still find myself getting angry, feeling alone, not wanting to be here anymore, and so on. Life can really suck at times, we can loose everything before the heart beats on more time, but the one thing that will always remain is the choice in what to do with what just happened and the motivation to carry on.