Cover Story: The Darkness Within

By the time Lewis' family moved to New Hampshire in 1980, Ted and Sondra had separated and reunited more than once. The new surroundings didn't improve the relationship, and the couple split up a couple more times before moving to Springfield, Massachusetts, divorcing for good when Aaron was thirteen. "It was obvious that something between them wasn't right," he says. And then, sighing, he adds, "It almost seems like they never should have been together. My dad is very much like I am: laid back and kind of a procrastinator. I guess I'm a chip off the ol' block. My mom is the complete opposite."

After the divorce, Lewis' mother moved back to New Hampshire and Aaron remained in Massachusetts with Ted, a dental technician, and the younger of his two sisters. "Me and my mom had a big blowout when I was thirteen or fourteen," he says. "At the end, I basically told her not to call me and to stay the f**k out of my life. That lasted for three or four years."

Lewis' relationship with his father was less strained. Both love to fish, and they spent a lot of time on Otter Creek, which bordered his grandpa Corky's Vermont property. Ted and Aaron remain close - recently, Aaron took him on a fishing trip to Miami - and they talk on the phone frequently, even when Staind are on the road. But Ted acknowledges that, even as a child, Aaron must have been sensitive to the tension between his parents. "I felt like I gave him plenty of my time," Ted says. "But I think in the younger days, I'm not so sure we wanted to be married or even have children at that point. And Aaron probably felt that."

"There wasn't much of a safe home atmosphere," Aaron says. "There wasn't the feeling of a tight-knit family. My grandfather died, and his whole side of the family may as well have died with him, because we were basically disowned. To have half of my family disappear left me with a lot of abandonment issues." To compound matters, Lewis' childhood was marred by what he calls "a few bad people in the neighborhood" - older kids who "tended to pick me out. . . . They didn't just beat me up. It was a little more than that." He's cautious about adding more, but it is clear the experience left deep scars. Feelings of alienation, Lewis says, developed early.

It was only a couple of years ago that Aaron told his father about his childhood troubles. "I'm surprised that he didn't come to me when it was happening," Ted says. "I thought we had such a close relationship. But he held it in. That's probably where some of his anger came from."

"I was the sensitive kid," Lewis remembers, his voice tightening. "I was the kid who, if he got picked on, would run home crying. Even my friends - I would be the brunt of their jokes. People liked the reactions they got out of me. And I always gave them a reaction."

High school wasn't much kinder to Lewis. "My focus was complete lack of focus," he says. "Choir was the only thing I got A's in. I even failed gym, because I wouldn't change into gym clothes."