Excerpt from Power of the Pen

Rico Lamoureux is a young American author living in the Philippines. Power of the Pen is his autobiography. For a full interview with Rico, click here.

Ten years ago Rico Lamoureux left behind everything he ever knew and headed for the other side of the world in the name of love. Never could he have imagined what lay ahead.

Faced with overwhelming obstacles under Third World conditions, he refused to return home without his soul mate and therefore remains among the harsh environment he describes as “the complete opposite of the Land of Opportunity.”

With so many years having passed, Rico’s unwavering American spirit has kept him going strong, now using his passion for storytelling to pave the way towards a better future.

“I’m writing my way back home, one pen stroke at a time.”

And now, an excerpt from Rico's Power of the Pen:

Mom’s belt was becoming more and more frequent, especially since Child Protective Services were no longer checking in on us. And not just our bare butts, but sometimes our arms and legs too. She was heavy set, and didn’t really control her strikes since they came out of anger. So they were much too hard. Add to that hard slaps to the face and the barrage of verbal abuse and it gets to the point where hate is truly developed. You feel so helpless because there’s nothing you can really do, or at least that’s what we thought. It’s an unbearable feeling of being trapped. You’re completely under this person’s control, with no physical chance of being able to defend yourself. You feel so lost because you know there’s no way to avoid it. It’s coming and there’s nothing you can do about it. Then after the physical pain, you feel so frustrated. Wishing you could somehow get back at them. Who knows what the source of the poison was going off inside that brain of hers!

She’s always been the type of person where when she gets mad at one person, or thing, she gets mad at everybody around her. Such a trait truly disgusts me and shows nothing more than extreme lazy and weak mindedness. There’s no excuse for it, and to this day I refuse to tolerate it.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a choice back then. There’s nothing more I wanted in this world at the time than to defend myself against her. To somehow return the pain. Well, as I said, you’re pretty much stuck with no options. So I did the only thing I could think of…

While I was still in her womb, my mother started a baby book for me. A collection of poems, letters to me, and song lyrics, including that oldie but goodie, Angel Baby. A song she said always reminded her of me.

One night I was lying in bed drenched in tears after receiving her wrath. I devised a plan to get back at her...

The next morning I left my backpack open. Right before I left for school I quickly put that baby book in my bag, zipped it up, and headed out the door. My heart was beating a mile a minute!

A few blocks from the apartment complex I saw the trash can that was pictured in my mind the night before. I took out my baby book and as I walked past the trash I tossed it inside.

Half of me felt guilt, the other half, redemption. It was an act done out of desperation more than anything else. I was only nine and a half years old, yet part of my innocence was lost with that baby book.

Mom never did find out what happened to it.

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