shoulders (raw and unedited)

A cold wind blowing…

It’s cold.  I knew it would be.  I lay in bed this morning, with my arms around someone I love.

I thought back to the first night I had slept beside her.  Over four years had passed.  This morning was in all likelihood the last time I would wake beside her.  We both cried.  I would wake up and drive home to a space where just yesterday I was only able to pay half of my rent.  I would drive home with no license in a car with a noisy exhaust.  Today is the first day off I have had in 28 days.  My fridge is full of food I bought with food stamps.  I don’t have any booze, and don’t smoke cigarettes.

I have a hope that my roommate will be able to pay the other half of the rent this Thursday or Friday, returning us to the good graces of our landlord.

I need about 600.00 to have my license back.  I have 21.00 until I get paid Friday, today is Sunday.  I don’t have Cable, I do have internet and the electricity is on, although I’m supposed to pay 200 towards it today, and I don’t have it, so I will need to call them tomorrow and beg for a few more days.  The 200 will come from my roommate.  He has fallen on uncertain times, but will be getting enough financial aid from school later this week to pay both me and the landlord.  So lights and a roof seem close and attainable.

I’m not a real person.  Real people don’t have these problems.  I don’t make much, but my child support is paid.  I have mediocre part time Health insurance that I got through one of my 2 part time jobs…it costs 15 a week, but covers me for 2500 a year in medical expenses.  So I can fuck up once and get most of it paid for.  Anything more than that becomes an unpaid medical bill at a local ER.  Not pride just fact.

My 8 year old glasses have a crack in the passenger side lens.  I need new ones, I do have vision insurance through work, it cost me 1.50 a week.  However I have to buy the glasses and get reimbursed, and like I said I have 21.00 which will go to something at some point this week.

I’m not a real person.  I’m 35.  You wouldn’t know it, but I bought a house when I was 22.  I made payments on in for 8 years without ever missing a mortgage payment.  I had a wife and I have two wonderful children.  They’re pretty fucked up too each in their own way, but I have my hopes for them.  I want them to be normal and happy…I know they probably won’t be.

I’ve been to college…a few times.  I’ve got an Associates Degree to show for it…not that it matters, I owe the college money and don’t have any so I can’t get an official transcript.  That means the 90 some odd credits I earned prior to losing my financial aid and having to pay 900 dollars for that last class are being held hostage even though I paid for all of those.

My kids both need to see me more.  I don’t have the means to be there for them as much as I should.  I work too much, driving is always risky, and it takes a lot mentally to maintain even half-way decent spirits.  At work I smile and greet customers with a smile and witty banter.  I’m good at it…I’ve been working since I was 12.  They don’t know I’m a horrible person with no license, very little hope, and a bleak outlook.  Somewhere I have a shred of hope that I’m going to be able to work myself out of this.  I know in all likelihood I’m probably going to get pulled over and arrested.  That will cost more money that I don’t have and make my life even harder…on some level I’m sure I deserve it.  There is no time limit for my license suspension, I need to pay a fine for not having an inspection sticker, a fine for speeding (I was driving someone else’s car it’s amazing how it doesn’t feel like you’re going very fast when the car doesn’t shake or make loud unpleasant noises) Then I have to pay several reinstatement fees to get reinstated once…like I said 600.00.

I hope some day she’s happy.  She deserves it.  She was nothing but good to me, and would have been there for me, would have supported me while I struggled to live and pay bills.  She told me when I first changed…she only wanted me the way I was, and to Love her and to hear me say I loved her.  I do, and did.  However, I’m not a real person…she is.

I left her, and we continued to spend time together, easing each-other’s troubled and lonely hearts occasionally.  She couldn’t do it anymore…it hurt her too much to need more from me, that I couldn’t give.  She told me she was sorry.  I told her not to be.  I’m the one not functioning.  We said we loved each-other and I went home, alone; where I now sit.  I’m sad, I mourn for these losses deeply.  I know what I have to do, but it costs so much more money that I have.  I need to be a normal person.  Then I can assess what I want from my life.  Needs have to come first, and I NEED to be self-reliant.

I’m a derelict criminal.  I work hard but don’t get very far.  I’m well spoken, and fairly well educated.  All anyone seems to want from me is me.  I’m not me though.  Me is a broken child somewhere inside.  Sculpted from a child hood of moving around, never having roots, working too hard, feeling loss, only knowing what I could get for myself.  Knowing what it’s like to have everything gone, being left only with myself and the ability to work.  All everyone wants is me.  I could have everyone in my life if I gave them me.  My smile, my warmth, the love I know I have to give, my conversation, my insight, the person I am…the person I pretend to be when I’m at work.  The smile is fake.

I’m not a real person…real people have a license, their car runs, they buy their own food, they pay the rent, they don’t ever have to talk to the electric company, and when they smile they mean it.

I haven’t been a real person since I started having to play games to live.  I’ll play them, because I have to, but real people smile…I used to smile and it wasn’t fake or wasn’t a sarcastic remnant of a memory…those smiles sting.  I don’t know who I am anymore…I only know that I need to make my life safe.  I only know that it is going to take more than what I have to get there, and I may fail…in that end I can’t take anyone with me…so they will all miss me, and I will cry for them, wishing I could be what they wanted.   

Solitude continued

Sins of the father...continued.

I've been working on a very expansive theory, that started as a joke, and still is to some extent.

Christian faith is based off the belief that God sent Jesus to come to Earth and die for our sins, thus saving us.
However reading the bible, if we were to believe in Jesus and the stories...It didn't seem, even by our own accounts, like Jesus was in on it.  We talk about this Holy Trinity...that are all the same being.  Just throwing out that recurring Triangle theme again for all you conspiracists.  (that's my word mothertrucker) Anyway....

It doesn't sound like Jesus knew what was going down, which given his membership in the one being club, you'd think he'd know.  See Jesus is down here preaching his father's word.  Performing miracles, championing the poor...born in a stable...you can't buy cliche' like this...SOOOO anyway

My theory...god didn't send Jesus here to die.  Maybe God thought we were all right...and he wanted to hook us up with his son.  He'd send Jesus as a gift, to spread wisdom and perform miracles and make us better beings.  Instead...we killed him.

Not only did we kill him, then we had the nerve and gall to say he died for our behalf.

So here's Jesus on the cross, saying "WTF why have you forsaken me?  Clearly the plan didn't go down as intended, about to get poked by spears, beam me the fuck up!!"  So maybe, at the moment Jesus died on the cross...maybe we weren't all saved.  Maybe at that instant God wrote us off as the assholes we clearly are.  What if at that moment we were all doomed...and now roughly 2000 years later give or take 30 years or so...the world is on the brink of economic, and resource collapse.  Social disparity is rampant, and wars are breaking out all over the place.

Which brings me back to my whole sins of the father context.  There's a recurring trend in life of present father, absent father, attention vs discipline...which I think on some levels plays back to the bible again.

So maybe the answer to it all is wrapped up in this left his son to die at the hands of these degenerate humans.  See the humans struggle to grasp what God the parent was feeling...maybe we aren't supposed to thank God by apologizing on the way through the turn buckle and knowing we're good because his kid died for us...

Maybe we need to apologize for killing his kid, and hoping maybe we get the mercy we probably don't deserve...

Deep thoughts...brought to you by the whateverlution

Solitude

Sins of the father

Life is a constantly shimmering wheel.  It is always turning, with the surface a subtly blending, gently morphing sheen of oil slicked color.

Every point on it is moving.  Yet it comes around again and again in the same fashion.

What makes a certain type of person, a certain type of person?

The case for genetics, I’ve got my father’s frame, certain undeniably personality traits.  I’d like to say I have my father’s temper, but I don’t know that he has one.  I’ve never seen it.  My grandfather was a misogynistic, woman beating, coward.  My father a smooth talking, womanizing, tough guy that never fought.  His game was never physical.  He didn’t let things go, and there was an underlying threat, but thinking back he was never physical.  So my grandfather was a high hatting, melodramatic bully who would only pick on people smaller than himself.  My father a bravado soaked, extravert with a definite physical presence.

What am I?

A hair trigger?  An instrument of rage and indignant fury?  A beast of burden that works tirelessly and emotionlessly to improve his own life and the people he cares for.  In that order…?

An empathetic soul who doesn’t really have his own emotions, but can weep on a dime for the hardships of others.

Obviously there’s more here, because I can comment more on my own workings than I can on observations.

The answer?  I don’t fucking know, but I’ll tell you what I’ve seen.

There are distinctly different types of parents.  I know some parents who daunt and feign with truly devotional love to their children.  They are there working on homework, taking them to sports, and friends houses, and movies, and family games.  They really are out there, I’ve seen them.

There are indifferent parents.  They work hard, their children are in daycare, and after school programs.  They pick them up on the way home from work, and share take out while getting ready for the next day.  They see their children nightly, and exchange the facts of the day.  They love and provide for their children.

There are distant parents.  They wait the whole day to call their kids to say goodnight.  They tell everyone how much they miss them.  They see them whenever they can.  They tell people that they would love to be there every day.

Then there are the parents that just disappear.  They realize at some point that they don’t want to be parents so they don’t.  Sometimes they get guilty and try to make contact, telling themselves that it is something they HAVE to do.  The attempt often unravels because it wasn’t something they ever really wanted….to do.

I tried to stop short of saying good or bad.  It was very deliberate.  My thought is everyone is who they are.  Circumstance notwithstanding generally speaking people do what they want to do.  There are times when the choice might not have been there’s, but generally speaking even then, the result is a culmination of events coming together to form an outcome.  Every person at some point made a choice, that choice grew into an event, those events become a life.

It’s lonely and quiet right now.

Self actualization

Even if it actually sucks

Dark ages

The fridge is decidedly empty.  I don’t eat take-out this is my food.  Some of it is actually my roommates.  There are a few side dishes, lots of Ramen noodles, and some peanut butter in the cupboard.  This life is not for me.  I am without a doubt poor.  I turn the word on my tongue.  My jaw hardens at the prospect.  This is not the life for me.  I don’t want to accept it.  I refuse its implications.  Part of me cries out…I’m two hundred pounds of muscle.  I can run for miles, I can lift hundreds of pounds, I don’t get tired.  I’ve been in the Army, I’ve worn a badge and spent years working in a jail.  I hit hard, I don’t hesitate, I’m calm when really bad shit’s happening.  How can I accept this miserable life when there are evil, fucked up, dirt bag people living well?  Child molesters, rapists, callous and cruel people who look down on their fellow humans…shouldn’t it be ok to take what’s theirs?  It isn’t.  It’s an illusion they occupy the same coin I do…shouldn’t it be ok for them to take me out before I can get to them?  I like to live my life as a dangerous victim…waiting for someone to try to take away my freedom and happiness…these are the only people that it’s ok to hurt, but it is ok.  When someone invades another person’s safety they forgo their own…at that moment they have chosen to make another human a victim, at that moment there is nothing too cruel for them, to call them a predator isn’t right.  Predators are noble.  They hunt for survival in a land where natural selection rules.  Human predators don’t fall into this class, because the human world has ousted natural selection in exchange for mutual good.  A human that preys on weaker humans is not a predator, because in order for there to be human predators there would have to be chaos and the rules of the jungle would have to prevail…no a human who hurts, steals from, or rapes his fellow man is a narcissistic scrap of life that puts their own wants ahead of their fellow man.  They deserve to be shown why that isn’t ok.  Society can’t and won’t tolerate it…if they don’t learn the lesson easily it should be reinforced…

Then I turn the page, I’m educated.  I’ve been to college.  I’ve passed college classes without buying text books.  I learn things quickly and well.  I tend to get things on many levels, and am insightful.  Why am I stuck in this quagmire?  What am I willing to accept?  Is poor my destiny?  Is the fact that I can claw out an existence on scraps and a few hundred dollars a month my fate?  I’m not scared.  The situation is desperate and the stakes are high, homelessness and the prospect of being in a shelter are legitimate, I am a short fall away from this level of desperation, I have no protection from it.  Yet I am not scared.  I would die tomorrow if my only other option were carrying an armload of belongings into a shelter.  Yet I don’t intend to die.  I intend to stand, regardless of the amount of weight placed on my shoulders.  I intent to shrug off the burdens of desperation.  I intend to forge security.  I will have a well appointed fridge, and money waiting for bills instead of the other way around.

The problem is I keep finding roadblocks.  I keep hitting things that are slowing me down.  They are rules, they are fees, and fines, and the tools that citizens have, but once they’re lost they are fucking impossible to get back.  Things like a checking account, a god damn license, a reliable car, these things are SO goddamn essential, they are taken for granted during times of deluded prosperity.  Yet the world can make them seem like the greatest luxuries known to man when times get hard.  So to them I say…

Fuck you world.  I’m smarter than 90% of the American Population (based on IQ tests and conversations with real people) I’m stronger than 90% of the country. (based on obesity rates, many hours at the gym, and consistent statistical observation, in varied environments out of 20 people I am consistently in better shape than all but one or two.)

Fuck you world.  I’m angry, indignant, and willing to do things that would make most people throw up.  Almost six years in a jail…how many fights?  How many shit covered crazy people?(2-3)  How many hangers (3)? How much blood spilled in fights, walking down the hall with disinfectant looking for droplets after dragging someone to Max or Medical.

Fuck you world.  I have spent years studying Psychology.  I have an Associates degree, and 90 credits towards my BS in the mind.  I’m intuitive and because of the jail, growing up in different places, and working countless different jobs, I am a good reader of people.  That doesn’t count the articles, the random reference books, the case studies, the trade publications, and medical journals I’ve read because psychology interests me.  That goddamn degree is an expensive façade.  Most of my fellow college students smiled and nodded their way through classes.  I applied every scrap of new information to what I already knew and moved on.  The further I got the less new information there was.  It got to the point where I wasn’t learning enough from a college class to justify my interest or continuing.

Fuck you world.  I don’t want the middle class dream anymore.  I tasted it…I bought my house at 22 years old.  I lost it in the divorce.  I don’t want your simplistic drone, your mortgages and credit cards, and vacations to beaches…no my security will be mine.  There will be no mortgage, the next space I own will be mine.  It will be Spartan in its essential simplicity.  Then I will fill it with the simple things that make me comfortable and happy.  And god help the motherfucker that messes with my sovereignty. 

Organ grinding

It is here in the dead of night, that the manic thoughts and twisted delusions merge into a synchronous homage to oneself.  If you get yourself to an exhausted state and the refuse to sleep, insisting that you haven't been productive and are now ready to conquer the world you reach a truly delusional grandeur.  Now with my mind in a fragile and weary state...now tired and should be sound asleep, I find myself knowing that I don't have to get up for anything tomorrow.  So why not try to move forward something of vested personal interest.  Your funds are down to 6.00 until Friday.  Payday this week is not going to be stellar thanks to hours getting cut.  You need to buy food again, and it's gotta be under 30.00 to get through in all likelihood 2 weeks.  There's no doubt that before the next payday unless you hold some bills back and are very frugal with gas, you will need an influx of funds.  Will it be legit and soul enriching...perhaps a day of labor for extra pocket money?  Will it be a shamefully asked nod back to one's parents...hey, I know I'm 35...but I'm just about out of food...a 20 would go a long way.  Gotta try to maximize every shift at the retail chain I work at part time.  Why don't I get a better job?  Jesus I've got 90 credits towards a BA, and my Associates.  Is it because your car is kind of a POS, you don't have much gas money for interviews, the whole uncomfortable new item of scorn, a Civil Contempt conviction.  Perhaps it's because your license is actually under suspension, for not paying the fine associated with driving a vehicle without an inspection sticker.  Driving poor means driving shit boxes, often shit boxes can no longer pass a state inspection, but they run enough to make life a little easier.  The fine for not being able to afford an inspectable car is 135.00...If you ask for 6 months to pay and you only get 3...because let's face it if you had an extra 135 bucks you could have bought an inspection sticker from an unscrupulous  service station.  So they revoke your license, and you have to beg for the right to have your license while trying to pay the fine so you can get to work.  Fine they say you can get it but you still have to pay the 50.00 reinstatement fee....so now the fine is still hanging and you've got to pay a reinstatement that will make it harder to pay the 135.00.  For those of you that don't think 135.00 is a big fine.  Imagine that your paycheck won't quite cover gas, rent, and food...so you have to skimp on food or a bill every pay check.  Trying to get as many hours as possible while working part time is scary and daunting.  At least you're not seasonal and you know you will always have a FEW hours...while working hard to show your eagerness for an upcoming full time position.  Trying hard to get 30 hours in, when you're used to working 50+.  Making 8.00 an hour less than you used to.  Paying child support of over 100.00 a week while working part time.  Having the state Automatically take it from your pay check so you can't feel weak and lapse...then have the state charge you a 2.00 service fee every paycheck for the privilege of having your wage garnished.  Trying to ration enough gas that you can see the kids once or twice a week.  Despite being well educated, you missed the last bus and you're not quite eligible for a lot of them.  Also you're competing against a work force where there are a glut of overqualified fellow jobless people willing to step DOWN into most of the jobs you are qualified for.  After all in this market you've stepped down to part time entry level...haven't you?
This is a rant, and as such it is unedited and in this case extremely run on.  Enjoy it.  Or not, I really don't care, I just want to speak and vent...We are never here to judge...only jury and execute. 

The fear is real

I don’t know if anyone is following this.  It’s funny.  In 3 days I will be completely alone.  It’s true I have a hazy plan, and am working to stay afloat.  However there are so many precarious variables.  I am so scared.  I don’t want to die.  I know that sounds crazy, but if this doesn’t come together, if I can’t pay the rent…I cannot, will not be homeless…So what then…sleep in my car, with no license, shower at the Y, eat fast food take-out…How long can that last?  Can I adequately save up for a small apartment?  How long?  Bi weekly paychecks…assuming I can keep the job, or maybe jobs.  If I pick up this second job will I have enough to make it?  Not for a few weeks, that I won’t have…

I am scared to death my room mate won’t come through with the money.  Then I won’t have the rent…then what.  I don’t have a back up plan, one check won’t touch the rent.  3 days.  I won’t live homeless.  I don’t know what I’ll do.  I really don’t know.  It has to work…I close my eyes.  3 days, possibly a second job tomorrow…still not enough money, still not enough time…everything in 3 days, still not lined up…