Soul Burn

It's been a while

masterde — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 18:25:12 GMT

Yeah, it's been all sorts of wild and crazy.

This should explain much of it.

Yeah for me!

It Just Keeps Coming

masterde — Sun, 07 Dec 2014 03:09:11 GMT

So another kid (12 years old) killed himself today because of bullying. He was bullied because was a cheerleader. Bullied to death.

We need more straight allies like him.

Actually we need this to end altogether.

One Other Thing

masterde — Sun, 30 Nov 2014 03:13:52 GMT

I am not back down to my high school weight and waste size for the first times since I was 24 any metabolism when on the express train to Hell! It's been 10 years but this year, I went from 220lbs. and size 38" jeans being tight to 179lbs. and 36" jeans falling off my ass because my waist is so small.

For all ya'll hatin' ass bitches out there... you can suck it.

*kiss*

Much Love!

Star Wars

masterde — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 10:02:20 GMT

Why? Because I can and I want to. Plus, it's better than thinking of sad, scary, angsty things as they pertain to my life.

So, how big of a Star Wars nerd are you? Well, I'm more of a Star Trek nerd myself, but I know... far too much about Star Wars, too.

Okay, I'm going to be referencing a lot of different sources. Books, the time of the movies (Episodes I-VI), and SWToR (aka Star Wars: The Old Republic, an MMORPG).

So, let's start off with how the Jedi and Sith even got started. This started tens of thousands of years before the movies. The first people who could sense and control The Force were known as "Force Users." They hadn't ever really gotten together and there weren't a large number of them. They decided to meet on a planet called Tython. Basically, they decided to compare notes on what they had learned. Eventually 2 philosophies emerged. What one would call the Light Side and the Dark Side of The Force. As one would think, their approaches were very different and they conflicted with each other. They fought it out. There were more Light Side Users and Dark Side Users, so naturally, the Light Side Users ended up winning. A few Dark Side Users were able to escape Tython. However, this fight did not start until a Force User taught the others how to make the famous Lightsabers that Jedi and Sith use.

Now, let's define a few things, so that it can be understood what I was talking about:

1. The Force - It's been described many ways by many different characters, but it's basically this energy that flows throughout the universe. Some might call it the energy of Life. Some might call it Spiritual Energy. There are plenty of ways to describe it. However, what is known is that those who can manipulate The Force are beings who's bodies contain a specific living organism in their cells called "Midichlorians." The more Midichlorians a being had, the greater their potential was for being able to manipulate The Force and determined how strongly they could do so in an innate fashion. With training, a being with fewer Midichlorians could learn to manipulate The Force more effectively and efficiently than a being with many more Midichlorians without training.

2. Force Users - Those who could sense and manipulate The Force. This was what they called themselves before they met on Tython, the 2 philosophies were defined, and they became Light Force Users and Dark Force Users.

The Light Force Users philosophy was one of control over one's emotions and the use of these powers to benefit the galaxy. Think about Buddhism and that's pretty close to it. The Dark Force Users philosophy was one of power and domination of those weaker than they were. "Might Is Right" and "The Strong Were Born To Rule The Weak" is a good way to put it.

The Light Force Users eventually became known as the Jedi and settled in with the Galactic Republic as peace keepers, negotiators, and then as Generals during war time.

The Origin of The Sith:

At a certain point, those who were part of the Jedi Order who refused to rely solely on the Light Side of The Force were basically deemed heretics/evil, a war started, the Jedi Order won out, and they exiled these Dark Jedi from known space. Some of these Dark Jedi came upon a planet called Korriban. This is the birthplace of the Sith. Now, the Sith is actually the name of the humanoid race that was native to Korriban that were subjugated and ruled by the Dark Jedi. So, originally, "Sith" was the name of a race of beings, not those who used the Dark Side of The Force. The Dark Jedi were able to hide on Korriban for many hundreds of years. During this time there was, of course, interbreeding of the Dark Jedi and the native Sith. So the Sith started to exhibit the same abilities to sense and use The Force. Eventually, the Sith was no longer how the race referred to itself but instead as a religion, much like the Jedi Order was a religion.

More than once the Sith struck out at the Jedi and many wars were fought. Oddly enough, the Jedi seemed to win the wars and the Sith would retreat and hide. Because, as we all know, the light/good always wins over the dark/evil. There's tens of thousands of years between the meeting on Tython and the time of Star War: The Old Republic and a different set of thousands of years between Star Wars: The Old Republic and the movies. So the collective timeline of these sources spans over 100000 years.

So, we've all seen the movies. Lots going on there. Here are some things that you might not know and might not care about, but if you've read this far then you might as well walk away with some random trivia that will impress no one at a party!

We'll skip past the boring stuff. Lots of things happen, there's fighting, special powerful Jedi and Sith are born with amazing abilities, blah, blah, blah. It is interesting to note that there was a Sith Lord who was so powerful that he was actually able to cause a star to explode and take everything in that solar system with it. Also, Luke Skywalker's name in the original screen play (which was written before all the books and the games) was Luke Starkiller. It was changed by Lucas during the second draft, I think. So that means that Anakin's last name would have been Starkiller, too.

The Order of the Sith & The Rule of Two:

There used to be many Dark Lords of the Sith. In fact, there was the Dark Emperor and the Dark Council. Over time there became the Rule of Two. That's why during the times of the movie and the books after that time, there is a Sith Master and a Sith Apprentice. How the Rule of Two came into existence is something I don't know. The only way for the Sith Apprentice to become a Sith Master is to kill his master. So if you're a Sith Master, why take on an apprentice, when you know that he will eventually become a Sith Master by killing them? Well, the Sith knowledge had to be passed down somehow and without the Dark Side there can be no Light Side. So, it's kinda necessary. Also, a Sith Master wouldn't live forever and would need someone to carry on the knowledge of the Sith. Killing their Master and becoming the new Master was a kind of Graduation Day thing. As a Sith Master, if you're not the stronger of the two of you then you should be killed so that the strongest would also be the Master.

Besides, when there were many Sith Masters (during the time of some of the books and SWToR MMORPG), some of whom had several Sith Apprentices at the same time, who's apprentices would eventually become powerful enough that their Master would either kill them or the Apprentice would run off on their own. That Sith Apprentice might one day become powerful enough to be considered a Sith Master and even possibly become a Dark Lords of the Sith (who were the Dark Council members).

You might even wonder if the Sith had to exist because the Light Side of the Force couldn't exist with the Dark Side of the Force to balance it, who because the Dark Lord of the Sith when Sidious was killed by Vader and Vader died. I'll tell you that at the end.

The Immortal Emperor:

There was a time when the Dark Emperor was immortal. He was known as the Immortal Emperor, a very unoriginal name. From what I have gathered from the books (which I have not read but have heard much about through my brother, who's read them all) the Immortal Emperor gained his immorality through subterfuge and manipulation of others. A Sith who uses other Sith's fears against them for his own gain!? *gasp* No! *eye roll* So, the Dark Emperor gathers up some of the most powerful Sith Masters one at a time. He tells them that there is a ceremony that he wants to do on a planet that is very rich in The Force (aka lots of Midichlorians in the lifeforms on the planet) that will increase the Dark Emperor's power greatly and he promises it will increase their power greatly, too. Also, the Emperor was going to invite a Sith Master who was a rival or outright enemy of the Sith Master he was having the audience with. The Dark Emperor told them that he would tell them what they needed to do in the ceremony and how to, at a specific moment, do something with the shaping of The Force that would allow that Sith Master to weaken their rival/enemy Sith Master so that they could be easily killed. "So you're telling me that I can both get a great increase in power plus the destruction of my enemy!? Where the fuck do I sign up!?" Yeah, that's pretty much how it went every time.

They go to the planet, each Sith Master knows just when and how to use The Force during the ceremony to weaken their enemies so they can be easily killed, and things start. Of course, during the ceremony all is going as it's intended to. Each of the Sith Masters do their parts and greatly weaken each other. This allowed the Dark Emperor to absorb, what amounts to, the life force of all the Sith Masters and all the time life on that Midichlorians rich planet. Thus, he became immortal. Which is why some refer to The Force as the energy of Life that pervades the universe.

Many in the Jedi Order sensed this great disturbance in The Force. The Jedi Council sends a few Jedi Master to investigate this disturbance and to report back. The Jedi Masters who landed on the now lifeless planet could feel just how wrong the balance of The Force was there and it even made them physically ill. Which is what they reported back to the Jedi Council.

The Immortal Emperor was eventually killed. He was immortal, not indestructible. He just wasn't going to age and die. He could get sick and die. He could get injured and die. Which is what happened.

Lightsaber Colors:

You'll notice in the original movies (Episodes IV, V, &, VI) there are only 3 different colors. Blue (Obi-wan and Luke), Green (Yoda), and Red (Darth Vader). So do they have an actual meaning? Yes.

Now, as books were written new special Jedi or Sith would show up a lightsaber of a different color from the original 3. The books explain them all. The evidence of a different color in the movies was in Episode II & III. Mace Wendu (portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson). He had light purple lightsaber blade. Mace saw a vision of himself building a lightsaber that had a purple blade but was never able to do it during training. So, at the age of 14, he asked the Jedi High Council for a true challenge. He was sent him to a planet called Hurikane or Hurrikaine, was chased off by the natives, and destroyed one with Shatterpoint ability (I'll tell you later). He put the native back together (So I guess the natives were made of something that could be broken into pieces? Yeah, I don't know.). So, apparently, because he shattered one of their people and then put the native back together they rewarded him with the purple crystal, which he then used to craft his signature lightsaber.

Now, that's the back story they used to explain why this special colored blade appeared. In reality, Samuel L. Jackson knew that he was leading 112 Jedi at the arena for the Battle of Geonosis scene and he wanted to be able to pick himself out of the sea of other Jedi. So he went to Lucas and said that he wanted a different colored lightsaber blade, like a purple one, so that he could find himself in the battle after the film's post-production work was done and the final film was made. Lucas explained that the 3 colors had always been green, blue, and red. A day or so later Lucas came to Jackson and gave him the purple lightsaber and told him that the controversy already being stirred up on message boards by die hard Star Wars fans was epic, but in the end when Samuel L. Jackson says he wants a purple bladed lightsaber, he gets a purple bladed lightsaber.

The original 3 were red for Sith, green for Jedi who focused on the powers and knowledge of The Force, and blue for Jedi who were guardians/protectors that focused more on lightsaber combat than Force Powers. However, you'll note that Yoda's lightsaber was green and he was considered to be the greatest lightsaber users during his time.

Yoda:

Considered one of the most powerful Jedi ever and the most powerful during the time of the movies, Yoda was exactly 900 years old when he died, so he had several human lifetimes to perfect his sword techniques and the powers of the Light Side of The Force. There are seven different fighting forms recognized by the Jedi Order by the time of the movie. The fighting style you saw Yoda use with his fight with Count Dooku was called Ataru. It was characterized by the use of acrobatics for both attack and defense. (You'll note that Yoda did a lot of flipping around during his fight with Dooku.) It was best used against a single opponent who did not have a blaster or ranged weapon, not in a confined space, and was not good for long fights as the extensive use of The Force to speed up movement and do acrobatics was very draining. Which is probably why he chose that fighting style when he faced Dooku. He also used this style while fighting Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious.

Yoda was known to be pretty much an expert in almost every kind of Light Side Force Power. Great focus is put on his Force Visions and we saw him use Force Telekinesis to lift Luke's fighter out of the swamp.

His species is never actually named. There were only a few that were ever talked about. His entire species is Force-sensitive. Every last one of them. So, while Yoda lived 900 years, it was common for those which a very high Midichlorian count to live very, very long lives given whatever species they were. So The Force seems to extend the natural lifespan of those who's Midichlorian count is high.

Yoda chose Dagoba to exile himself on for a reason. You'll remember that during Luke's training he has a kind of dream like vision of Darth Vader in which Luke cuts Vader's head off and sees his own face under the mask. The reason Yoda chose Dagoba is sometimes used to explain why Luke had that dream like vision. Dagoba was a planet where a very, very powerful Dark Lord of the Sith died a very long time before the time the movies took place. His dark essence kind of lingered there after his death, so Yoda used that dark essence to mask his own essence from Sidious/Vader. Yoda always said that the Dark Side clouds the vision of the future. So the Dark Side was able to make Force Vision useless. This is also used to explain why Yoda felt the presence of the Dark Side but his Force Visions couldn't see that Emperor Palpatine was really the Dark Master of the Sith.

Mace Windu:

He was actually very powerful. Second only to Yoda, really. Why I'm not including Anakin in that list when he was "the chosen one," I'll explain later. Windu created the seventh of the seven recognized fighting styles known as Vaapad. This was a problematic fighting style, but Windu had some ideas about The Dark Side that didn't exactly sit well with the Jedi Order, even though they decided to make him the head of the Jedi High Council. Vaapad required the person using it to enjoy the fight and opened the gates that restrains one's inner darkness. It's basically a fighting form that only Windu ever fully mastered. Windu had an inner darkness and knew it. He created this fighting style so that he could channel his own inner darkness into something positive. The only other 2 Jedi to attempt to use Vaapad ended up being driven insane by it and led the to the Dark Side. Windu actually ended up using Vaapad to kill one of those 2 other Jedi who were driven insane by attempting to practice the fighting style.

Windu also had a very diverse understanding of different Force powers. Some were even considered to be Dark Side Force powers and it wasn't really smiled upon when he used them. He did show a remarkable ability to resist the Dark Side of the Force. His ability to ponder the workings of both the Dark Side and the Light Side of the Force was second only to Yoda.

Windu used the Force to augment his body's abilities. He could leap across enormous distances.

He was able to use a powerful form of Force Push called Force Wave. This was a wave of pure Force energy that erupted from the Force User in all directions. This would send anyone in the blast zone fly away from him. He was so powerful in it's use that he was able to destroy hundreds of drones at once that didn't just get flung backwards away from him. The kinetic energy in the Force Wave was enough to break them apart before they even landed on the ground.

The Dark Side powers of Force Grip and Force Crush were also powers he was able to use. Force Grip would be what Vader used on the military guy who said something about Vader's belief in a "dead religion" during one of the first of the original trilogy movies. Well, the used a more powerful form of Force Grip called Force Choke, but it was still Force Grip. Force Crush would be like using the Force to crush someone's body. Basically crushing them to death with the Force.

He was able to use the Force to enhance his speed so much that he was able to hit an enemy 6 times with light saber before the enemy was able to blink an eye. Needless to say that fight ended quickly.

During one particular battle on Dantooine, he lost his lightsaber and was able to use the Force to increase his strength and resilience so much that he was able to rip through the armor of droids and rip out their circuits with his bare hands.

His mastery of Force Push was such that he was able to push an AT-TE Walker (think those big machine walkers on the ice planet that blew up the reactors, that were so massive and heavily armored that the rebels had to take them out by wrapping a cord around their legs and causing them to trip and fall to the ground) over a cliff without really having to do more than look at it where it was, hold out his hand, and Push it while walking away. No real concentration was needed.

His Force Telekinesis was so fine tuned that during a battle he was able to remove the bolts that held together a super battle droid, which then just fell apart.

He also had a natural affinity for a very rare Force ability called Shatterpoint. It let him see the weak points in everything. So any opponent, any event he saw during a Force Vision, and just pretty much anything in everyday life. It allowed him to shatter otherwise unbreakable objects by channeling the Force into places that bound an object together. It was actually during his use of Shatterpoint that he had the Force Vision of his constructing his lightsaber with the purple crystal. When Windu had a Force Vision it almost always when he used Shatterpoint. This wasn't just physical objects that were otherwise unbreakable. He could walk up to a forcefield, look at it for a moment, tap it with his finger, and it would just fall apart. That was something he could do with Shatterpoint.

How Anakin Fulfilled The Prophecy & Brought "Balance To The Force":

People sometimes get confused by that idea. Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the Force, as foretold by an ancient Jedi Prophecy. He turned to the dark side, so how did that bring balance? Well, think about it. How many thousands of years had the Jedi Order been in a position of power before that? Over 10000 years. So the Light Side reigned for over 10000 years. In that time the Dark Side barely made much of a impact. The Jedi Order took care of any Dark Lord of the Sith or their Dark Apprentice when they showed up. Sure, there might have been a small war that cost a few thousand lives, but that didn't happen very often. Anakin brought balance to the Force by almost completely obliterating the Jedi Order (The Light Side of the Force) when Directive 66 was initiated by Emperor Palpatine. Which, if you recall from Episode III, was when the clone troopers shot all the Jedi who were in the field and Anakin walked into the Jedi Temple and slaughtered every man, woman, and child. Yoda and Obi-wan are the only two that show up in any of the movies. There might have been 1 or 2 other who survived, but I'm sure they would have either gone into seclusion like Yoda and Obi-wan or were hunted down and killed. Balance was restored when Anakin became Vader and brought the Dark Side to power for the first time in over 10000 years.

Sith vs Jedi Philosophy:

Every philosophy has it's pros and cons.

The Light Side -

A peaceful mind, no attachment to people or places, calmness, and inner peace are where the Jedi find their Zen-like center and are able to effectively use the Force without the obstruction of emotions. Which is why when Qui-Gon was killed by Darth Mal, Obi-wan knelt and meditated to regain his calm and let go of the anger and hurt of seeing his Master killed before the forcefields-that-seemed-placed-there-for-no-good-reason re-opened. This calm detachment allowed Obi-wan to defeat Darth Mal. The downside is that when a Jedi becomes attached to someone and is afraid they'll lose that person, that attachment leads them to dark thoughts of doing whatever they have to in order to keep them from dying. This is what we saw happen to Anakin with his vision of Padme dying. He was willing to turn to the Dark Side, slaughter children in the Jedi Temple, and do anything his Master required of him in order to get the secret of keeping someone alive from Darth Sidious, who learned it from his Master, Darth Plagueis, and then killed Plagueis. The fear of losing someone or the anger of having lost someone strips a Jedi of their powers and opens them up to the lure of the Dark Side. The Dark Side promises them that they'll be powerful. So powerful that they'll never lose anyone or anything ever agin. So the more emotional a Jedi becomes, the weaker a Jedi becomes, and the more likely they are to turn to the Dark Side. It's all about detachment from dark emotions.

The Dark Side -

The Dark Side of the Force is the opposite of the Light Side of the Force in how it's accessed and harnessed. Strong emotions are needed in order to draw out a desire strong enough to focus a Sith's mind. Could happiness be used? Possibly... but ask yourself; what's the longest amount of time you've maintained a state of happiness? Now, ask yourself, what's the longest amount of time that you've maintained fear and anger? How many times have you gotten angry about what someone did to you, done something else and calmed down, thought about what that person did to you, and gotten angry at them all over again? Was that resurgence of anger just as powerful, or nearly so, as when that person originally wronged you? Did you not still want justice/revenge? Perhaps you've grown to the point of being able to let things go, but do you let things go immediately? Do you just shrug everything off a few moments or a few minutes afterwords? What about when you're having to deal with the consequences of their actions on your life. Do you get a little flash of anger, however brief it may be? Are you okay with losing everyone and everything, including those you love and yourself? That's the thing about the Sith. They crave power and fear losing what they have. They want everything and when they lose anything, it makes the angry. So that fear of losing something and that anger of having lost something is what fuels a Sith more than anything else. In the days when the Sith Empire was comprised of many, many Sith Masters and Apprentices, they all wanted power and were afraid to lose power. The more a Sith was afraid of losing power, the more powerful they became. The more a Sith lost, the angrier they became, and that made them both more powerful and more desperate. That's a very dangerous combination. However, underlying it all is hope. Hope that they will come out on top. When they lose that hope of winning and give up, the anger and fear leaves them, that makes them weak, and that makes them easy to strike down. It's all about harnessing dark emotions.

The opposite sides of the same coin.

Who Became The New Dark Lord Of The Sith After Sidious and Vader Died?

After the movies, written in the books, Han and Leia got married and had 3 children. Their eldest son, Jacen Solo, was Force-sensitive and became the New Dark Lord of the Sith.

Your Reward:

So, if you've made it this far, I congratulate you. This has been a long read, right? So maybe you want some eye candy? Well take a look at some awesome lightsaber battles that were choreographed, performed, and digitally enhanced by amateurs who are just nerds who wanted to do something cool with lightsabers!

In the first one, you'll notice Brandon (the Sith) and Ryan (the Jedi) do a very good job with the actual battle. There's a surprise with the lightsaber that Brandon does that you won't see coming. You think you will, but you won't. That choreography that goes on just before they finish the fight is just so cool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfa-Pa5IQLg

In the second one, you'll notice that Scott "Dorkman" (the Sith, yellow blade) and Ryan (the Jedi, same guy as in the first one) actually do an awesome job with both the fight and Brandon does amazing things with the digital editing that help you understand why he's a professional post-production special effects editor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RATMJ8JH1qo

Go watch both of them and then come back here and read further.

You'll notice a reoccurring theme with Ryan in both of them. He's the one who loses and dies in both. Did you notice his face in both of them. You could see the anger and, sometimes, arrogance on his face. That's not very Jedi-like, is it? Far too emotional. Plus, in the second one, a Jedi would never torture someone by sticking their lightsaber into their defeated and defenseless enemy's shoulder to watch the agony on their face and hear their screams of pain. So, really, is it any wonder that Brandon lost both lightsaber battles?

Can I Share Something?

masterde — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 03:40:49 GMT

I'm scared.

I'm scared to graduate from college. How long will it take to find a job? What job am I going to find? Where is this job gonna be? How am I going to do when it's just me by myself?

I'm scared that I'll never find love again. I'm scared that I will find love again. I think we can skip over that bit of circular paradoxical logic.

I'd like to think of myself a pretty solid guy. I've been through a lot. I've experienced many things. Things that very few people ever experience. There are so many things that could still happen in my life or happen again and be awesome!

I think I'm more afraid that this is it. I've peaked and all the really awesome stuff that I'll ever experience has already happened. If that's true then part of me wonders why even keep going?

I hate when winter approaches. It's only September and I'm already starting to get depressed and feel like life is an exercise in futility.

Yeah, Justin... sit here and bitch, because that's always fixed things the past! And thus begins the hypocritical, 'It's okay when someone else needs to complain and get something off their chest but it's not okay for you to do it. Grew up and grow a pair, you whiny little bitch!'

*sigh*

Sometimes I'm not very nice to myself. :/

So Very Long Since My Last Post

masterde — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 14:21:34 GMT

Yes, it's been a very long time since I last posted. The last time was... June 4th. So it's been 2 months now.

I'm still alive and doing just fine. There's nothing really of any substance in this post. It's just a conformation that I am still alive and that either I'm a dirty whore or these people are deprived.

So, I was watching a YouTube video by Krishna where he got a group of other YouTubers together and played the game "Never Have I Ever." (The most recent one he's done with YouTubers.) So it was a dirty version of it. It was supposed to be sex questions. As this video started, I though, 'Oh, this isn't going to go well for me.' They make the statement, "Never have I ever..." and then something they've never done. If you have done it then you clap. If you clap 10 times then you're out.

I would have been out at the same time the first player was out. So I don't feel like a complete and total whore. It's just the questions that I had to clap at were numerous. Like, 20 out of 32. That's 62.5% of them. Only about half of them were dirty and I had to clap at all of those. I've just had one or two experiences in my life is all. :)

I can't play the game "Never Have I Ever" in real life. People would know things about me that they can't unknown. Between most of you guys and my ex's... let's just say that I could never run for public office. I will never have a political career. It's just not in the cards for me. lol

Okay, I've got errands to run! I'll try to write something more substantial later. Seeya!

The Sixth Sense

masterde — Fri, 16 May 2014 13:44:46 GMT

No, not the movie. A real, live, actual sixth sense. We all know about the 5 senses. Sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. There are several scientists that are looking at different ways to explain certain things that we just know that we shouldn't have any reason to know. Now, the 5 senses are all conscious senses. We engage them actively. The sixth sense is subconscious. We don't actively engage it. It's just there and giving us information without being conscious of it. I'll talk about these things.

Sight Unseen:

We've all experienced this one. We've been somewhere, minding our own business, and get a strange feeling. We "feel" someone is watching us. We don't have to look in all directions to find out who/what is looking at us. We just look in that direction and catch the person or creature looking at us. But how do we know that? It happens to us all the time! It isn't a random coincidence that we just happen to look in the direction of someone who's starring at us. Explanation... no clue. We just know it happens. Think of it this way: Is it evolutionarily advantageous? Absolutely! Way back in the day when humans were hunters and gatherers, we were exposed to predators all the time. What if while the men were stalking a pig, the men were being stalked by a panther? Wouldn't it be a good thing for them to be able to sense something tracking us? What if while the females are picking berries they're being stalked by a pack of wolves? Wouldn't it be a good thing for them feel like they're being watched, feel uneasy, and retreat to a safe place? Lastly, if someone's attracted to us and is starring at us then wouldn't it be a good thing if feel someone looking at us so that we can look at them and decide if they are an attractive mate? It's about our biological need to survive and our biological need to mate and have children.

The experiment that one scientist does is he puts a person in a chair with a communication device on the opposite side of a glass door with the person in the chair facing away from the scientist. He has a list of a "looking" and "not looking" pattern. If the scientist is "looking" then he is looking at the person and thinking the test subjects name over and over. If the scientist is "not looking" then he looks down at the floor so that he can't see the test subject and thinks about something random. The test subject saying "looking" or "not looking" into the communication device every set number of seconds. Now, there are only 2 possible answers. So if someone is guessing then, statically, their chances are 50/50 of getting it right. However, the test subjects consistently get 66.7% of the answers right. Over and over people beat the odds. That shouldn't happen unless the subject can sense when someone's looking at them.

Which Curtain Is The Picture Behind?:

Another experiment puts a person in front of a computer that has a virtual curtain on the left side and the right side of the screen. They are told that behind one of curtains is a picture and behind the other one is a blank screen. They are to pick the curtain that has the picture behind it. Now, again, there are only 2 choices so the chances are 50/50 if someone's just guessing. Oddly enough, that's exactly what happens. People get about 50% of them right. There is one case in which subjects pick the curtain with the picture behind it 53% of the time. Now, 3% might not seem like much but this is a consistent 3%. It shouldn't be possible to even get a consistent 50.1% of them right. What type of picture do subjects get right 53% of the time? The picture that is of something sexually charged. Not two people having sex but perhaps the chest of a man who works out and a woman who is topless pressed up to his chest while they kiss or something along those lines. Now, it is worth noting that the picture must align with someone's sexual orientation. Straight men and women get 53% of the pictures that show a man and woman together. Gay men get 53% of the pictures that show two men together. Lesbians get 53% of the pictures that show two women together. Bisexual men get 53% of the pictures that show two men or a man and a woman. Bisexual woman get 53% of the pictures that show two woman or a man and a woman. Again, this would be evolutionarily advantageous. It's about finding a mate so that children can be had. Now, the fact that gays/lesbians/bisexuals find two people of their gender together to be stimulating but can't result in more offspring doesn't seem to matter. It's about finding a mate.

Random Number Generator Manipulation & The Collective Human Consciousness:

About 30 years ago a scientist set up a random number generator that would display a digit between 0 and 200 every second. It is equally likely to show any of the numbers. It is random so there is no pattern. Subjects were put in front of the RNG and told to make the number 100 to appear. It was shown that most of the test subjects actually had the number 100 come up more than it, statically, should have. So it seemed that if a person's thoughts can effect the future.

It gets stranger. For the past 20 years a scientist set up an RNG in his lab and over the years got more and more colleagues to do the same. There are about 80 RNG worldwide (most in Western Europe) that all feed the number that pops up every second to a server in this scientist's lab (with correction for the small time delay of transmitting the data, processing it, and compiling the results). Now, no one number should come up more often than any other. In fact, there's only about a 2.5% chance of two of the RNGs coming up with the same number at the same time. However, at different times there have been peaks during certain events. By "peaks" I mean that multiple RNGs came up with the same number. The top two times that a large number or RNGs generated the same number at the same time were surrounding major events. It happened with a large gathering of people that is emotionally charged or when some horrific event happens. The 2nd highest peak was in 2008 when President Obama started his presidential victory speech. The highest peak was on September 11th, 2001. At the moment the first airplane struck the first World Trade Center tower around 68% of the RNGs came up with the exact same number. Here's where it gets weirder. Starting on September 10th, 2001 there was a trend of a steady increase in the number of RNGs that were coming up with the same number. It peaked on September 11th, 2001 when the first plane stuck the tower. After that was a steady decrease in the number of RNGs that were coming up with the same number that lasted through part of September 12, 2001. It was back "normal/average" by the 13th. So it would seem that there is a Collective Human Consciousness that can predict when something big is happening. The odds that the RNGs would have such a large increase in the same exact number coming up during those moments (and increase steady leading up to September 11th and steadily decrease after September 11th) are very, very low. It's so unlikely that it is considered to be mathematically impossible to happen.

Deja vu, Mother's Intuition, & Connected Twins:

Deja vu... is the feeling that we've done something before or that we know what's going to happen next (and being correct) being considered a person's sixth sense giving a momentary glimpse of future?

Mother's Intuition... how many times have we heard a woman say that she "knew" something had happened to her child (like being hurt or dying) before she was notified? How many of you on the list who are mothers have had this experience? Are some mother's sixth sense attuned more strongly to their children? Are they keyed to strong pain/strong emotion in their children or sense when their child's presence is gone (died)?

How often have we heard about the same thing happen with twins? Are twins sixth sense's more in tune with each other than non-twin siblings? Is it more common in identical twins?

Synchronized EM Fields Effecting Human Experience:

Our brains are electro-chemical based. So our brains produce a very weak EM (electromagnetic) field. So a scientist wondered if two brains had the same (or very nearly the same) EM field, would that have any effect? This scientist put two test subjects (1 male and 1 female) into different rooms that were completely EM shielded from outside EM fields. The test subjects had a band placed around their heads (like a headband). There were 8 spools of copper wire that were conducting electricity attached at equal distances on the headband. This caused a strong EM field around and through each test subject's brain that were very nearly identical. The lights were turned down in each room. There was a digital clock that started counting the seconds that passed when the test started. The test subjects were told to just relax and just watch the clock so that they could say at what point they experienced anything. 3 minutes into the test a strobe light went off for several seconds in the male test subjects that was visible in the peripheral vision of his left eye. 5 minutes the same thing happened in the male test subjects room but it was in the peripheral vision of his right eye. 2 minutes later the test ended. There was no change in the status of the lights or any change in the room with the female test subject. The test subjects were asked what they experienced. The male test subject reported the 2 strobe light events and what time they happened. The female test subject reported seeing a short-lived flashing light in her left peripheral vision at about 3 minutes into the experiment and the same thing in her right peripheral vision about 4 to 5 minutes after that. So it would seem that our sixth sense is connected to the EM field our brain is emitting.

Conclusion:

While not 100% conclusive, it would seem that there is a weak sixth sense and Collective Human Consciousness that involves the weak EM field that our brains produce and can possibly predict or effect future events. Perhaps this subconscious sixth sense will become a conscious sense as we evolve or we'll be able to be able to detect it with quantitative tools in the future. It would make sense that the more humans that are in proximity to each other (on the planet) the stronger the Collective Human Consciousness would be. 1 computer is weak compared to 7 billion computers. So 1 weak sixth sense multiplied by 7 billion would be more powerful. It could be that the more emotionally charged an event and an event experienced by many people is, or is going to be, a bigger shift in the Collective Human Consciousness. Could it be that if we could get every human being to think solely about 1 thing, that we could make that 1 thing happen? If so, what could we achieve as a species by being able to work together towards the same goal? It seems like it's a little far fetched but beating the odds consistently shouldn't ever happen and a high percentage of RNGs giving the same number at the same time as an emotionally charged event that is experienced by many people (who are thinking the same or very similar things) is just too unlikely to be a coincidence.

Evolution Of The Universe and Human Society

masterde — Mon, 05 May 2014 04:27:48 GMT

I was going to post about the evolution of a human through their life as it pertains to sex with emphasis on different mixes of physical need and emotional needs, but I have decided to take things a little bigger scope on things. I hope that you enjoy it and don't find it pedantic and uninspired. The original thoughts (sex in context) were brought about by an LJ friend who has been talking about their issues surrounding sex/intimacy and their physical and emotional components. It, however, did get me thinking about a slightly different scope of things. Not the evolution of sex/intimacy in the context of physical needs and emotional needs but the evolution of the universe and human society.

How did the universe evolve over time? Well, according to science there was it's creation (The Big Bang), an expansion that spread the matter/energy into a certain area, the expansion stopped and matter/energy condensed into stars/planets/nebula/moons/etc., the composition of matter/energy and types of matter/energy changed (matter/energy and dark matter/dark energy mixtures), and expansion started again. That's how things have gone so far. From order to entropic decay.

How does that compare to the evolution of humans as a society? Well, The Big Bang was "humans" coming into existence (was that homo erectus, homo sapien, neanderthal man... you decide), this pocket of humanity expanded from one group into different areas of the Earth, humans form from tribes into societies, the nature of society changes shapes from city-states to countries, and these countries expanded to the area that it could occupy. That's how things have gone so far.

We've reached a point in which humans don't have more territory to expand into. So we look to the space as a possible answer. Once that happens there will be an expansion and, very likely, a splintering of the one Earth human society and into many different human societies based on various things, like what company funds the colonization, a colony becoming self-sufficient and wanting independence from their home (Earth) (which is just like the American colonists against the British King or India against the British rule, and any other colony of any country that broke away), and even meeting alien life that limits our expansion (or annihilating us altogether).

But human society seems to be headed towards taking down the borders of nations and into a singular human race/society. At the same time we have gone from very rigid rules and control to tolerance of things that are different and ambiguity. (order to entropic decay) Add to that the fact that we are much more aware of the limited resources of this singular planet, our next logical step is towards using less of these resources and recycling but even then, as populations continue to grow, we will find that these limited resources won't be enough. So we will have to seek it from outside of our little planet. A new expansion is really humanity's only chance of survival and continued existence.

Near Earth asteroid mining has been a source of discussion for many years. With the recent talks of the significant drop in the power theorized in creating an engine that takes advantage of the elastic nature of time/space (warp engine) the idea that FTL (Faster Than Light) propulsion has become something being taken more seriously. The energy requirements are still astronomical to current human power generation abilities but it is many, many times less that what was originally theorized. It'd take all the energy we could get from nuclear fission of all the matter that makes up Earth's moon for a single "jump." So warp drive engine propulsion is still outside of our grasp for now. That's not even talking about dealing with stellar debris that a ship would run into in space (microscopic asteroids and not so microscope asteroids traveling at such a high rate of speed that it would easily break through our strongest metals), sensors to catalog the area around the ship so as to avoid interstellar and extrastellar matter that would determine the next "jump" direction and distance, life support systems for long trips, and food supplies for long trips. Then there's issues with colonization of other worlds in introducing non-native flora and fauna, non-native bacteria and viruses mixing with the bacteria and viruses we bring with us mixing and creating something wholly new, and us having no defense against the native bacteria and viruses of alien worlds causing possible irreparable damage to the new world's environment or to us. There are no end to the issues that come into play, but a united human society would need to be had in order to take such an endeavoring step.

Read the whole next paragraph before you click on either of the links. If you're so inclined to see (mostly read the script as it is narrated) a version of events that could splinter humanity into different groups then you can go here for EVE Online's Old Storyline Intro. There is an updated version here for the EVE Online: Origin. That one is only relevant to about 2 minutes in. The rest of it is mostly about the what a playing character is and such. The second one doesn't talk about the 4 different "races" of humanity that rose from the catastrophic event that caused the setback of humanity in the new galaxy, but it's not just still pictures with a narrator and instead shows a full CGI video which is much more visually appealing. Now, it includes the whole "wormhole" concept, which it is generally agreed that could not exist naturally. Of course we didn't think that there could be a naturally occurring naked singularity until Stephen Hawking offered a prize to the first scientist to prove that it was possible. Which one did. The prize... Hawking would pay for a lifetime subscription of Playboy for that scientist. lol Oddly, it's true. Look it up if you don't believe me. In the end, the first one is much more informative about the expansion from Earth until the Milky Galaxy was completely taken, using the stable wormhole to the New Eden galaxy to expand territory, what catastrophic event happened that almost wiped out humanity from New Eden, and how each of the 4 "races" of human's ideology came into existence. The second one is less informative but is simply more ascetically pleasing.

The common thread to all this is simple evolution or change. Whether it's a universal scope or a single species scope the growth, change, or evolution follows the same path, basically. The details of how each old chapter ends and each new chapter begins is unimportant. The EVE Online version is just an example of how things could unfold. (The Laws of Physics that we understand not withstanding.) Creation, slow expansion to fit it's container, change of the nature of the universe/society causing another larger expansion, and how human society changes and grows so that the species can continue.

In either case, things grow until something changes (matter/energy & dark matter/dark energy mixtures) (human society being factions to becoming a single human society to an expansion out into the stars and the eventual break away colonies from Earth). From order to entropy. In the case of human society we go from a single clan that has break-offs but a world largely untouched, then clans becoming cities, cities becoming empires, empires becoming nations, nations expanding to taking up the whole Earth (which is where we are now), nations seeing themselves as a single race of humans and dropping the artificial borders, expanding into the galaxy, possibly past our galaxy into other galaxies, but eventually breaking into factions (entropy) as ideologies clash or some catastrophic event happens that cuts groups of humans off from the other groups of humans.

Now, in the case of human society, both technological advancements and theology have caused growth or stagnation. And it's technology that will allow us to expand to the stars. I'm not saying that theology has no place in an advanced society. Science can be a religion, as far as how the word "religion" can be defined. It's just I think that for our society and race to evolve from this point is get rid of the various ways in which we compartmentalize ourselves and define ourselves as different from each other. We must come together as one force to grow and evolve. Which is where we run into our problems.

My father worked with a M2F transgender woman who went from Bob to Linda. He has come to understand and accepts that a male brain in a female body or female brain in a male body leads to that person feeling the need/drive to have gender reassignment surgery. His sticking point is he doesn't understand that a bio-female who is heterosexual becomes homosexual when he transitions into a male body. He doesn't see how sexual orientation changes. To him, men are attracted to women and women are attracted to men, for the greater part. Which I agree with. But to him if they're born with a female body but have a male brain then they should naturally be attracted to women from the beginning. Males are attracted to females. He just seems to have a block in his brain that refuses to understand that when she goes from female to male (gender reassignment surgery) that she goes from being a lesbian woman to him being a straight man. He doesn't understand how their sexual orientation changes.

Then again he readily admits that he doesn't understand why/how I'm attracted to other men. Which I answered him that I didn't understand how he was attracted to women. However, I could look at a woman and understand why a heterosexual/bisexual man or lesbian woman could find that woman attractive. That I can recognize what physical features men/women find attractive in a woman but it doesn't mean I'm attracted to women. I said he could recognize when a man is attractive. He denied it. I asked him if he knew what physical attributes woman could be attracted to and he said that he could. So I said that if he knows what woman could find attractive then he knew what an attractive man might look like. It doesn't mean that he's personally attracted to men but he can recognize what an attractive male looks like. That indeed, when he was younger, he knew what physical attributes that he had that made him an attractive male mate to straight women and dressed a certain way, wore his hair in a certain style, and acted a certain way to attract that mate. If he didn't know what an attractive male was then he wouldn't have known what to do/say in order to be attractive to women.

I think that when it comes down to it, the idea that his sexual orientation could change is just beyond something he is willing to accept as a possibility. Which, it seems that, most of the time, a person of a certain generation is willing to go so far in the "social change" category and no further. I know people who are my age who would never give up cable/satellite TV for Goggle TV or Apple TV or Roku, etc. So they won't change over to television shows via the internet. Not because they don't have the bandwidth or because it'd be more expensive (it's cheaper actually, and my father is looking to making the switch, which would be awesome!). They're just so used to a television and how it works that they don't want to try something new. It's a whole new system to learn and just too complicated for them. Right now all they have to do is turn on the TV at a certain time or go to the shows they've recorded and start watching. The idea that they'd have to select episodes from a list or menu is just too "out there" for them. So I suppose I can't expect him to go as far as I am with the whole gender/gender identity/sexual orientation differences and understandings.

I'm still using LiveJournal for fuck's sake! So many people have gone to WordPress or DreamWidth (or AO3 if they're just into fandom stuff). I don't even have a Tumblr, a Twitter, or an Instagram account. I don't have LinkedIn or any other social media website accounts other than YouTube (and Google+ because you have to have it in order to post to YouTube, yet I still can't post a comment on YouTube). I have a Facebook account but I never actually use it. I haven't posted anything for over a year on Facebook. I think I actually checked it some time in February. So, really, how far behind am I?

But, yes, the human race has to join into one human society if we're going to keep moving forward. Let go of the old ways of doing things and embracing the new! Letting go of tradition for tradition sake! Which is very common for those who of my generation and the younger generations. Even then it's not like I've embraced everything new to come along. Eh, I could do it and have no problem though.

On The Subject Of "Humanity"

masterde — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 21:31:29 GMT

Now, I've made no secret about the fact that I have a mental illness. It's something I deal with every day and I've talked about before. I've talked about how because the majority of people act a certain way then it is considered "normal" and becomes the "social norm." Anything different is deviant and not always accepted. Let's explore the concept of "humanity" with regards to psychology.

So, if you remember a post of mine from a good while back you'll remember me talking about how people who were gay were considered to have a mental illness listed as "Sexual Deviancy: Homosexuality" in the US DSM-II until it was removed in the DSM-III-R. The DSM is a big book of all mental illnesses and psychotic disorders. Imprisonment with insult therapy, electoconvulsive therapy, castration, and frontal lobotomy were all used.

I'm just going to state the following here for clarification sake: A male who performs sexual acts on a little boy is not homosexual. Likewise, a male who performs sexual acts on little girls is not heterosexual. In both cases that male's sexual orientation is either "pedophilia: male" or "pedophilia: female." They are not gay or straight.

Okay, here's where I question the "humanity" of how society, at large, treats anything that's not "normal." Because someone behaves differently from the majority of people then there's something wrong with them, they need to be studied, and they need to be helped to be like everyone else. The ethical question as been, "Where do we draw the line?" I mean homosexuality didn't hurt anyone and yet, throughout history, it has been a pariah.

My schizoaffective disorder is bad enough that, without medication, there is no way I could take care of myself much less live on my own. I'd have some days that were better than others just like anyone with schizophrenia, schizoaffective, bipolar, mania, depression, OCD, oppositional defiance, anxiety, etc. Just because someone has GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) doesn't mean that they're not able to survive an event without medication. Things could get rough and they might have to go sit alone and shake and cry for a while, but it can be survived. It doesn't mean that they'll have to take a pill every day. I mean, I have to take an anti-psychotic that is for schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders every day just to be able to take care of myself enough to not die. So, in order to actually live, I have to take medication. Which sucks... but it is what it is.

Let's get down to the meat of things. I want to talk about 2 events. One is my brother's stay in "residential treatment facility" for 6 months when I was about 11 or 12 and my stay, a few years ago, in a "mental hospital."

In the case of my brother having to "go away" for 6 months; at the time I didn't know why he had to go away, I didn't know why he had to stay where he was and couldn't leave, and I didn't understand the "family therapy" sessions that happened every Friday after I got out of school. I understand what my brother did now (but not why) and I understand why my parents opted for that course of action. I'll get to that.

In case you don't remember or you weren't reading this blog during that time, I was just tired of having to take medication all the time, feeling like a burden and freak of nature, and just wanted to curl up in bed and disappear. I think we all have those times. Something happens and we just wish that we didn't exist. It's not that we wish we were dead, that we would just die, or that we plan to or want to kill ourselves. We just wish the world would just stop for a while and we could get relief from the overwhelming emotional stress. It's not more than that. I have a social worker assigned to me through the MHMRA, the US governmental agency that helps those with mental illnesses that can't afford treatment because of income level, lack of psychologists/therapists in the area, and those on what we call Disability, which is what the government pays to Americans who can't work because of a physical or mental disability and is funded by taxpayer money that is taken from everyone's paycheck before they even see it. I also have a psychiatrist that I'm assigned to as well. I'm on my 5th psychiatrist since I started going there and my 2nd social worker. My social worker's 2 kids were both taught by my mother, as 2 year olds, at the childcare center she works at. This was long, long ago. The youngest is 19 or 20 years old, I think. So we're talking 18 or 19 years ago. Both my social worker and her 2 kids remember my mother. :) She's a good lady. Sorry, that was a sidebar. I went to this social worker and told her that I was tired of having to take medication every day and wished I could just "not be." I never once said the word "suicide." I even explained to her that it wasn't that I wanted to die but that I was just wished I didn't have to deal with the medication or the world anymore. She asked me if I had "suicidal ideation." That's fancy talk for "thinking about how I'd commit suicide or when I'd commit suicide or both." I told her that I wasn't thinking about it but that she knew my stance on suicide. She asked me if I had thought about how or when I would do it. I told her, "If I decided to do it, then with my knowledge of pharmaceuticals, I would choose to overdose on medication and do it after both my parents had left the house for the day and so that I wouldn't be interrupted, stopped, or saved." Which is all information I she knew about me. She knew my stance on suicide and how/when I'd do it. I'd told her before. None of that was new information. I never said to her that I was actually thinking about doing it now. I just, naturally, plan for possible future events. That's just my personality.

Sidebar about my stance on suicide and why that gets a bit angry: I think that if someone wants to commit suicide then they should be freely allowed to do so. I mean, if someone's quality of life is shitty then I don't see why they should be forced to sit around and suffer. Just because most of society doesn't actually understand what it's like to live with a chronic or terminal illness or disease. If they're terminal then why not let them die with a little dignity and grace, not wither away and die in great pain. Also, they're TERMINAL. They are going to die no matter what anyone does. Why does society force them to stay alive? I think that's exceptionally cruel to do to someone! I actually view it as a Crime Against Humanity. For those like me, they are selfish enough to think 'if that person kills themselves it would be emotionally hard on me, so I'm going to make it so that they can't do it so that I don't suffer.' Fuck you! I'm the one who has this shitty quality of life. Why the fuck are you to tell me that I shouldn't have the right to end something that belongs to me! Not you... me! Oh, so you'd be sad if I killed myself. Well, you know what, someone's death take a few years to get over. Maybe you might think about the person every day and feel a sad that they're not around anymore but what about the person who's actually suffering? Hmm? What about how they will feel every day for the rest of their lives!? Are your feelings and desires more important that mine!? If so, what basis do you have for that? Are you inherently worth more as a human being than I am? What right to do you have to tell me what I can and can not do about my own life? And for those of you out there that think, "Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem," can kiss my ass! You know why? Because what I have to deal with is permanent! It will be with me until the day I die. It is not temporary. So you know what? If I want to end my own life because of a lifelong chronic mental illness then I should have the right to do so. If you think that someone should be in their "right mind" or "sane" in order to make that decision then fine. Get someone to the point where they can make the decision of whether or not life is worth living to them. But don't tell me that you or anyone else has the right to make decisions for another adult. For those of you who think that if someone thinks that suicide is an option is never "in their right mind" or "sane," then you have NO real idea about what that person's life is like. You will not have to carry the burden of living that life, with those problem, with those limitations, with everything that goes with it. You get to be "normal," so you feel that entitles you to your "ignorance." "Everyone has a right to an informed opinion. No one is entitled to ignorance." If you don't have the same problem or one very much like it, then you will never understand what a life like mine is really like. And I'm glad you don't. I wouldn't wish this on my worth enemy. So keep your ignorant opinion to yourself and don't you dare pass judgment on me for my beliefs or on someone who has chosen suicide. Is it more selfish of one person to want to end their suffering and cause temporary pain to many others or is it more selfish of many others to enforce their will on one person who and force them to suffer for their entire life? And for those of you who would use the quote made famous by StarTrek of "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one." I agree with that. If someone chooses to risk their life knowing that they might or will die because of it in order to save the lives of many others then that's fine. That's a personal choice someone can make. Are they "insane" or "out of their minds" because they know that they are going to die if they try to save others? Or do we call that "a noble sacrifice?" It's all about POV. I know what it's like for someone who's "normal." I lived for 17 years before my first symptoms started. I was normal for 17 years. I have been dealing with my mental illness for 17 years. So, I think, given an equal amount of time as "normal" and "abnormal" that I am a much better judge of how a low quality of life is sometimes just not worth living.

*clears throat* Okay, now that we have that settled...

At that point my social worker said that she'd go talk to the doctor (who was my psychiatrist) and see if there was anything that she could do me. Which I assumed was perhaps increasing my anti-depressant or being told to drop out of school and take a vacation. Because if it's doctor's orders, then my father couldn't be angry/pissy/self-righteous about me taking a vacation. What happens instead? My social worker comes back and tells me that the doctor has decided that "it would be best for [me] to go to a mental hospital." I told my social worker that I didn't want to do that. That was the point where the politically correct bullshit talk ended and my social worker told me that my psychiatrist had made the decision that I was a danger to myself (which I knew meant that I no longer had the right to make medical decisions for myself or really any rights as all) so I didn't have a choice. I said to my social worker, "So this is an involuntary committal?" She confirmed that and had the therapist there sit with me while she went and did paper work and tried to find me a bed in Houston, in a good mental hospital, call my parents to tell them so they could bring me clothes, and call the police to "escort" me there. Now, "escort" is the politically correct word for, "put you in the back of a police car, like a criminal, and drive you to the mental hospital." (Something I found both funny and very inappropriate about the ring tone of the police office who "escorted" me to the psych hospital is that it was the theme song from the old TV show M.A.S.H. Which you may or may not know that the theme song is non-vocal track of a song titled, "Suicide is Painless." I couldn't make that shit up if I tried! lmao)

So, when my social worker left me there with the therapist I turned to her (the therapist) and told her that I knew this was an involuntary committal, I knew that they could only force me to stay there for 3 days unless the psychiatrist who was assigned to me in the mental hospital went before a judge and could produce proof that I was still a danger to myself or others and that I would be allowed to speak on my own behalf to the judge, that I would be taking no part in any group or solo therapy while at the mental hospital, that I would be not resist or cause any trouble, that I be the model "inmate" because I know that a mental hospital is just a prison for those with mental illnesses, and that I would provide no staff at the mental hospital with any information that wasn't expressly asked which included me actively using the practice of the "sin of omission." She got what I can only call a "disgusted" look on her face and she asked me what my diagnosis was. I told her that it was schizoaffective and she said out loud to no one in particular, "Of course the diagnosis includes schizophrenia. They're always geniuses and the most intelligent patients we have." Which made me smile and laugh internally.

Ain't no therapist or psychiatrist that can use selectively worded questions that, if you chose between the two options they give you, will always end in you saying something that they'll latch on to as the word you picked out of the two. Then they'll use that to ask further questions that continuously narrow your ability to answer their questions without contradicting yourself. I'm not stupid. I'm actually quite intelligent. I know that you can't ever answer a question with a blanket "yes" or "no" without qualifiers to define the situations in which that would be true and in which they would be false.

My psychiatrist didn't even come and see me before I was "escorted" by the police to the mental hospital in Houston. I sat in my social worker's office for over an hour! She had plenty of opportunity to do so and she didn't. THAT... pisses me off. If you're going to take away all of my rights as a human being, then at least have the common decency to look me in the eye and tell me that you're doing it.

On to the experience with my brother's stay in a residential treatment facility. Which is really a long-term prison for those who have some sort of psychological problem. A mental hospital only keeps people, usually, for a short time. An RTF is a place where they'd send someone who might never actually come out. A mental hospital isn't meant to keep someone long term.

Now, when my brother went into the RTF, I didn't even know it had happened. Like, he was there one night when I went to bed and then the next day he didn't come home from school. My mother didn't say anything about it and waited until I asked where my brother was before saying that he was going to be gone for a while. I asked why and I didn't get an answer other than to not worry about it. My brother was gone for 6 months. I was never told why he was gone. My mother wouldn't tell me when he was going to be coming back. It wasn't until years later that I found out what event happen but never why it happened. The only person who knows why it happened is my brother and he refuses to talk about it. If I asked him today why he did what he did he would tell me that it was in the past, it wasn't important, and that he wasn't going to talk about it.

Now, I was about 11 or 12 years old at the time. I had never been exposed to the idea of someone having a mental illness or a nervous breakdown. Which, is what my brother had. He has bipolar disorder, but wasn't diagnosed until he was in his 30s. I believe that he was putting so much pressure on himself to be perfect (vis a vie our father's lack of praise or telling us that he was ever proud of us) that he had a nervous breakdown. When I was finally told what he did, I was lied to about it. I was probably 14 years old before I got my parents in the same room and asked what my brother had done all those years ago and get an answer. My father answered that my brother got a pizza and beer, climbed the fence into the neighbor's backyard who's house that was 2 doors down, ate the pizza, got drunk, and took off his clothes. That was the lie that they told me.

A few years later, I asked my brother why he did that and he said that he didn't have any pizza or beer but refused to say whether or not he got nude. I told Mom that I knew that she and Dad had lied to me about what my brother did, because I had asked him, and I wanted to know the truth. She told me that he did climb the fence, take off his clothes, and sit in the neighbor's backyard. She said that the neighbor had motion sensor lights and that's what he caught my brother. He had a daughter who was younger than I was by a few years (so 9 or 10 years old) and his daughter could have seen my brother, which I get why a parent would be upset by that. He was also an active duty police man. He's retired now. Well, it was a lucky thing that he was a police man, because he recognized that my brother was a kid that never got in trouble and that meant that he was obviously in mental/emotional distress. He told my parents that he would agree to drop the charges against my brother if my parents would send him away to get him professional help. So, in order to not ruin my brother's chance of getting into a good college and not having a police record that included "public indecency" and "potentially exposing himself to a minor." (Which would have made him a sex offender. Here in the US, sex offenders have to tell the police department who's jurisdiction they live in when they decide to move, where they are going to move to, tell the police department of the city where in that city they're moving, the police have the right to search a registered sex offender's home without needing a search warrant; and according to what is known as "Megan's Law" has to go around their neighborhood, knock on all their neighbor's doors, and tell them that they are a registered sex offender.)

Again, I think that this had to do with the years of anxiety building up to a nervous breakdown due to the pressure he was putting on himself to be the best and perfect. We're talking about a guy who didn't get a grade of B on his report card until his Junior year of high school. Even then, it was an 89.6 that the teacher refused to round up to a 90, which would have made it an A. Otherwise, he never made a grade that was less than an A. The day he came home with that B+ on his report card... he was so upset and angry that he cried.

So, now to my part of the whole RTF experience with my family. After my brother had been gone for about a month, my parents came on a Friday and picked me up after school (I was in Junior High), and drove us to the RTF that was about 45 minutes away. The whole way, they wouldn't tell me where we were going. It wasn't until we got there that my mother finally told me that this was where my brother was. Now, I read the sign for the place and it said, "Orchard Creek Sanitarium." Now, I might not have had any experience with people who had mental illnesses or psychological issues (that I knew of), but I knew what a "Sanitarium" was. I knew it was a place that crazy people got sent to when they caused a problem. Well, for the next 5-ish months, every Friday, my parents would pick me up and take me to this place.

We had "family therapy." Now, I had never spoken to a therapist or psychiatrist in my life. I had never been to therapy or know what happened during therapy. During these sessions the therapist mostly spoke to my parents about my brother's progress. However, at the time, I wasn't being talked to and the therapist was using fancy words that I didn't know or understand so I just tuned it out and tried to entertain myself until it was over. On several occasions the therapist asked me questions. He never introduced himself. He never said what his name was (when I was paying attention or thought to pay attention), he never said that he was a therapist, and he never used the words "family therapy." It wasn't until years later that I understood that was what that actually was.

Therapist: "How do you feel about your brother?"
Me: "Uh... he's my brother."
Therapist: "Yes, but how to you feel about your brother?"
Me: "Okay, I guess."
Therapist: "How do you feel about your brother being here?"
Me: "I don't even know where 'here' is. All I know is that he can't leave."
Therapist: "And how does that make you feel?"
Me: "Confused and why are you asking me these questions about my brother?"
Therapist: "It's important. How do you feel about what your brother did that got him sent here?"
Me: "I told you, I don't even know where 'here' is and I have no idea what he did get sent here. Mom and Dad won't tell me."
Therapist: "Do you know what this place is?"
Me: "Yeah... a place crazy people get sent."
Therapist: "'Crazy' isn't a word we use here. The people that are here are all minors and have some sort of psychological problems."
Me: "Okay, call it what you want, but I don't know what this is about. I don't know why he's here. I don't know why I'm here. No one will tell me anything about what is going on. So why would I feel anything one way or the other? Well, other than confused. I'm completely in the dark and no one seems to think it's important enough for me to know anything about what's going on, so you're asking the wrong person about this. I don't know anything. I'm not important enough to know anything. This is a waste of my time. I could be at home watching TV or doing homework. At least doing that makes sense to me. Asking me questions that I have no way to answer is pointless. This is all just confusing and frustrating. *turn to parents* Can I just be left home from now on?"
Therapist (to my parents): "Would you mind if Justin stepped outside for a moment?"
My Father: "No, that's fine. *turns to me* Justin, go wait in the hallway for a moment."
Me: "Fine."
*10 minutes pass and the therapist opens the door*
Therapist: "You can come back in now, Justin."
*I come in and sit back down*
Therapist: "Justin, your parents have decided not to tell you what's going on and your brother isn't ready for you to know, yet. Are you okay with that?"
Me: "What does it matter if I'm okay with it or not? The decision has been made already."
Therapist: "I want to know how it makes you feel to be left out of the loop?"
Me: *sigh and slumped shoulders* " It doesn't matter. It never matters. This is about [my brother's name]. It's always about him. Before that it was always about my sister.
Therapist: "So you sister was more important that you or your brother and now your brother is more important than you?"
Me: "Yep."
Therapist: "What do you think about that? What does that make you feel?"
Me: "Huh? I guess I've gotten to the point that I just don't care anymore. This is how things are and have always been. But if my brother is here and no one will tell me what happened or why then it must be something big. So he gets all the attention. Just like always. He makes better grades than I do. I can't make those grades, so why even try?"
Therapist: "So the only thing that's important is grades?"
Me: "To Dad, yeah. Dad works and Mom works. I get home from school and no one's there, my sister has moved out with her boyfriend, my brother doesn't come out of his room unless it's dinner time... I only see all of them when it's dinner time. Otherwise, I'm just doing my own thing."
Therapist: "And what's that? What do you do?"
Me: "Homework... video games... *shrug* I guess that's about it."
Therapist: "Do you do anything as a family other than dinner?"
Me: "Why would we do that?"
Therapist: "Do you have any friends?"
Me: "Yeah... at school."
Therapist: "So at home... you don't interact with your family other than dinner?"
Me: "Well, sometimes my brother and I watch each other play video games."
Therapist: "Do you two talk?"
Me: "Yeah. When we're playing video games he might see something I don't or I might see something he doesn't."
Therapist: "Do you talk about anything else?"
Me: "Not really."

So that's pretty much it. I still had to go to "family therapy" after school every Friday, but other than the odd question or two... I might as well have not been there at all. All this lack of attention just made me into a person who didn't ask for help or to even be noticed and the secrecy just made me feel like I wasn't important to my mom. I didn't expect to ever get Dad's attention except when report cards came in the mail. At which point, he'd pick apart my grades, tell me how many points I went down in a class, and ask me what I was going to do to bring that grade back up, for each class I made a worse grade in. There was never any acknowledgment from him about the classes I did better in. When I would bring that up, he would tell me that he expected me to keep it up. Nothing was ever good enough. I was never praised. I only mattered to my father when grades came out every 6 weeks. Even then it was only for 15 minutes while he made me feel like a failure and feel uncomfortable. But the fact that Mom wouldn't tell me what was going on made me feel like the one person I could count on to be there for me was shutting me out. Thus solidified my thoughts and behaviors about only relying on myself and not expecting anyone to care about me or my life. Still working on that. I write this kind of thing out in text for you guys to read but I don't know how many of you actually read this stuff. Especially when it's all of epic length. So, really, in my mind it's just me typing out my experiences and feelings without thinking that anyone will actually read it. I suppose some part of me hopes that you guys read it but... I don't actually dare to allow myself to believe that anyone actually does. That's not a cry for help/attention, by the way. That just me letting you know how my mind thinks.

Finally, my experiences in a mental hospital for 6 days! Since I was on suicide watch, because my psychiatrist sent me there because I "was having suicide ideation," I was woken up at 2 or 3 AM every night so that one of the night time Psych Techs could take my blood pressure and my temperature. I also couldn't leave the unit to go down to the cafeteria to get food so it was brought to me. When lunch was brought the first day it was mostly meat and I didn't eat meat. So I told the Psych Tech that brought it that I didn't eat meat and he said that he would unlock the patient fridge so I could get cereal and orange juice. There were 3 different sets of Psych Techs every day. Daytime Psych Techs, Evening time Psych Techs, and Overnight Psych Techs. So for the 2 days I was on suicide watch I had a lot of cereal and orange juice. I arrived at 11 PM at night, so I don't count that day, but the next morning, after another set of vitals checking, I was taken to an MD that had a small office/exam room on the floor to be checked out. He was thoroughly unpleasant and questioned everything I told him. Always asking me things more than once, but would word it differently to see if I changed my answer. Questioning the things I told him about my past medical history. He all but accused me of lying about what happened when I was 14... he asked me how I knew it was real and not something my mind had made up. Which, if someone tells you that they've been raped... you don't question the validity of that. That is beyond inappropriate to do. Especially for a doctor to do. He had a reason he did it though. I'll get to that.

Then on the afternoon of the second day, I met the psychiatrist that was assigned to me. He asked me how I was feeling. I told him that I felt fine, other than the fact that I didn't eat meat and that's what they kept brining me to eat for every meal so I was kinda tired of having to eat cereal and orange juice for every meal. He then asked me if I was thinking suicidal thoughts or about committing suicide anymore. Now, being who I am, you guys know I'm not going to answer that question with a "yes" or a "no." I didn't know him. I certainly didn't trust him. So, with a series of qualifications and explanations, I said, "I'm not thinking about suicide... but even if I were, do you really expect me to tell you that I am? That just gives you ammo to use to keep me here longer than the maximum amount of days that you can keep me here. Let me ask you something: If I really wanted to commit suicide, would I have told my social worker? No. I would have just done it. You and I both know that telling someone that you want to or plan on committing suicide is a cry for help or attention and telling someone that you them to give you a reason to live. Do you really think I'm stupid enough to say that I'm suicidal to any professional healthcare worker, police, or firefighter? I'm a Registered Pharmacy Technician that's licensed to work in the state of Texas. It's not like I don't know that anyone who seriously talks about being a danger to themselves or others, to a professional healthcare worker, that we are required by law to call the authorities to report it and do what we can to keep them from doing anything until the authorities arrive so long as we don't feel personally threatened with injury or death. The same goes for firefighters and the police can go pick that person up, take them into custody, put them in jail, and call the MHMRA to do an emergency psych evaluation at the jail. Also that we are required by law to report any observed or suspected child abuse to the authorities. Never once did I tell me social worker or psychiatrist that I was actively thinking about suicide or committing suicide. I my social worker that I was tired and just wanted to put everything and forget it. As in, 'I'm stressed and I'm depressed and just need to tell that to someone so that I'm not just holding it inside and pretending it's not there.' My social worker was the one who brought up the topic of suicide..." At that point I gave him an abbreviated version of how I feel about suicide, that it's a personal choice that everyone should be allowed to make, that this was not new information to my social worker or my psychiatrist; and that my social worker knew that I had long ago decided that if I ever going to do it then I knew how, when, and where it would all happen. Then I told him, "No one actually asked me if I were thinking about committing suicide before you asked. Just because I thought about it years ago and decided how I'd do it didn't mean that I was actually thinking about doing it right then. Of course, I have no idea what my social worker actually said to my psychiatrist that made her decide that I should be involuntarily committed to this psych hospital. Nor did my psychiatrist actually ask me any questions herself or explain why she was doing this. She just left it to my social worker and went home. So you'll forgive me if I'm less than trusting of doctors and nurses and social workers and your psych techs right now. You have my diagnosis right there. You know perfectly well that I won't be a person who easily trusts someone. You also know that neither you nor your staff have a snowballs chance in hell of me actually saying anything other than what will get me out of here fastest. At no point did I actually say that I was suicidal. At no point will I ever say that I am suicidal. If things get bad enough and I need help, then I'll go to my mother, just like I always have. If I decide that I am done with life... then I'm just going to do it. There won't be any preamble or notice. So write down whatever it is that you want to write down. You can write down that you think I'm lying to you and that I am suicidal. You can write down that you think I have an unhealthy attitude and opinion on suicide. Nothing you write down actually matters. I know what the truth is. You can't change that. No one can change that. Every time your nurse has asked me how I feel, I have said I feel fine. Every time your nurse has asked me if I have had any recent thoughts of suicide, I have said that I have not. Those are the only answers that I will give. Those are the only answers I have to give. So the sooner we're done here the less amount of your time I'm wasting and the sooner I can get back to my little mini-vacation here away from stress."

Now, was that smart? Well, I never claimed that I'm perfect. I'm very smart and that can get me into a lot of trouble with certain people. I just thought that the psychiatrist would appreciate me not blowing smoke up his ass or lying to him. Now, as to if he actually believed me, I can say that he did not. He did say that starting the next day I could leave the floor and go to the cafeteria with the rest of the group to eat meals. So, at least he knew that I was smart enough not to try to commit suicide in the psych hospital and if I were really going to do it that I have the patience to wait until I get out and do it when no one would be around to do anything about it.

At least that last part is what the therapist who was assigned to talk to me every day said was in my file. That was after I told her that I didn't want any BS from her, in return I wouldn't give her any BS, and as long as she was willing to agree to that then I would be open and honest with her. But if I caught her using semantic word games or trying to use any other sneaky psychological tricks that they teach, that the deal was off and she would get nothing further from me. That she had no way of knowing what I did and didn't know about psychology and to think about whether it was worth risking trying one I already knew or figuring it out. That if she wanted to know something, then I wanted her to just come out and ask the question and not dance around the topic to try to get me more comfortable about the topic. That I know that trick. That I've used it on others. That I won't insult her intelligence as long as she wouldn't insult mine. That I understand that she has a job to do here and I would respect that. But if she wants me to think about a certain topic or an aspect of a certain topic then just give me the "food for thought" and let me chew on it for a while so I could give her an honest considered answer. That I was willing to have good faith in her agreeing to my terms until she gave me a reason to no longer have that faith, but not to confuse it with me trusting her. That there were certain questions that I wouldn't lie to her about but I wouldn't answer either. Then I asked her if she agreed to those terms. That if she did then we could continue or if not we were done there.

She looked at me for a little bit, probably trying to size up whether or not I was bluffing her. So I said, "Look, I get it. You're not sure I'm telling the truth because of my diagnosis. However, given what you know about people with that diagnosis, is it fair to say that we are usually of well above average intelligence and that given how articulate I am, that I'm either outright lying to you or that I'm outright putting all my cards on the table? You're not gonna get my trust and I don't expect to get your trust. I expect that you'll take everything I say with a grain of salt. That's certainly what your education and training tells you, right? So all you can do is have faith that I'm being truthful to you and will continue to be truthful to you, just as I'm willing to have faith that you will treat me like a human being and not someone who's insane." Then there was a short pause and I added, "I'm well aware of the conditions here. I know that I am essentially a prisoner here. You can call it whatever you want, but I'm sure you can see that, from my point of view, I see myself as a prisoner. There's a locked door, there are guards -which you call Psych Techs and a Nurse-, and I can't go anywhere other than were this psych hospital allows me to go with an guard escort. This can either be pleasant for you and I'll be willing to stay and talk about things or, this being day 3, I know that you can't legally hold me past tomorrow morning without proof that I'm of imminent danger to myself or others. Which, you don't have. Now I'm willing to stay here for a few more days and do therapy with you, because frankly this is the first thing resembling a vacation that I've had in 5 or 6 years and I'm learning quite a bit about drug addiction from one of the women here and the mix of alcoholism and drug abuse from one of the guys here. I'm enjoying learning from someone who is actually living it instead of reading about it, but if we can't agree to be honest and transparent with each other... then I'll cut my vacation here short and leave. I've told you what I'm willing to do. I will choose to stay here and work with you. The question is; will you choose to accept what I'm telling you as truth until I give you reason to believe otherwise?"

She smiled and told me that I would make an interesting and probably very successful negotiator and that she wouldn't play poker with me because she can't tell whether I'm bluffing or not. I smiled and said, "Good. Then I look forward to working together."

So, day 6 comes along and I'm ready to go home. I've learned what I could learn from the two people in the unit who didn't have a mental illness, just an addiction, which some would argue is a type of mental illness, but my opinion is that it's not. The nurse had asked me every day how I felt and if I was suicidal or thinking about suicide. I gave him my stock answers every day that never changed.

My therapist comes in to the main room and asks to speak with me. She taken me to a private conference type room and there is a woman who I've never seen, the psychiatrist who was assigned to me but only saw me once, and the therapist at a square table. I took the last available seat and the therapist introduced the woman I didn't know as my social worker (who I'd never met and who nothing about me, but I know that she was there to make sure that the psychiatrist and therapist didn't put undo pressure on me to agree to anything I wasn't comfortable with or didn't want to do, given that I had been legally able to leave for the past 3 days). Then the therapist talked about what she was concerned about -which was my home environment with my relationship with my father being so adversarial that I might end up suicidal again-, and then the psychiatrist said that I seemed outwardly stable and that he didn't think I needed a change in medication but was also worried about my home environment. They said that they thought I should stay another day. I said that I never said I was suicidal and that, in fact, every time I was asked while there I had always said that I wasn't, that there wasn't anything left for them to teach me there, that at that point I was just taking up a bed that someone who actually needed it should have, that I didn't have a choice but to live with my parents so the adversarial relationship I had with my father was just something I was going to have to deal with better, thanked them for their help and their concern, but that I was choosing to leave today. The therapist said that she would start getting the paperwork done for my discharge but that it would say that I was leaving against my doctor's wishes and my therapist's wishes. I told her that I was comfortable with that, thanked her, asked if there was more, she said no, and I got up and went back into the main room to tell them that I was leaving today. A little bit later, my therapist called me into the hall and said that since I lived 90 miles away that she would have to use her pin number to allow for a long-distance call so that I could call my parents to come get me. She did so and I talked to my mother. She had not heard from me since going into the place so she was surprised to know I was coming home. She even asked if that was wise. I told her that I was never suicidal and that this had just been a nice 6 day vacation but I was ready to come home. She told me that she would call Dad and they'd be on their way.

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, sitting in a chair in the hall outside the main room, my parents show up with my therapist, my therapist asks if my parents and I were willing to sit and talk with her before I left, we all agreed, and went into a small private room. She expressed her concern about my intelligence being something that is as much harmful as helpful, the difficult relationship I have with my father and how that she thought was a major source of stress for me, and my personal view on suicide being worrisome. My mother agreed with all of that. My father denied that he ever got upset at anything, that nothing ever bothered him, and that any problems I had with him were my issues and not his. The therapist nodded to my father while my mother shook her head back and forth, and then the therapist looked at me like 'You weren't kidding about his level of denial, his lack of self-accountability for his actions, and him being distant.' I smiled at her and nodded a 'Yep.' Then I went home.

Now, here's the problems I have with those two experiences:

My brother was saved from having a sex offender record by going to the RTF. I think that he needed to get away from life and have a vacation, he should have been put on anxiety medication; he needed to talk about his issues with perfection, a distant father, and a father who never praised only condemned; and learn coping techniques for dealing with stress. I think that he could only do that if he weren't around Dad. So time away, certainly understandable. The lack of communication to me about what was going on and why was the first time my mother ever shut me out. I had always counted on her to be there and to be honest with me. But her shutting me out left me with very little to no information, I had no one to talk to, I was confused and hurt... and for the first time in my life, I was completely alone. I didn't have anyone but myself. Now, everyone in my family had shut me out of their life at some point before this, except my mother. At this point in my life I didn't know my sister, my father was distant, and my brother was a teenager with his own room that didn't want me around and didn't talk to me. But Mom... she was always there. Until that first family therapy session in which the therapist told me that my parents had agreed that I didn't need to know why my brother was there. That was the exact moment that all those times of not being able to trust someone truly became everyone. So I learned that I could only really count and rely on myself. I withdrew from my bio-family and more into my own world.

My imprisonment, I learned was because a patient my social worker and psychiatrist treated had told both of them 2 weeks previous that he was "going home on Friday." Which, to any average person would be taken as "going to visit family." He meant home home... like Heaven-home, and had killed himself. So my psychiatrist was worried that she'd lose her license to practice psychiatry if another one of her patients killed themselves so close to each other. So where they misread what the other guy meant one direction, they misread what I meant in the opposite direction. I actually lodged a formal complaint with the APA (American Psychological Association) and the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists. No idea what happened with that.

So I was wrongfully imprisoned because my social worker misunderstood me and/or my psychiatrist misunderstood me and committed me to a psych hospital against my will. I didn't get a chance to explain myself to my psychiatrist. I explained myself to the admissions psychiatrist at the psych hospital and he obviously didn't believe me. I told the psychiatrist that was assigned to me on the inside that I never said anything about being suicidal and that I wasn't suicidal and yet he didn't release me. So... at each step, I wasn't actually listened to or believed.

What would happen if you told your doctor that your foot hurt, he told you to go to the hospital he is associated with to check into a room, they explained that your doctor said that it was an infection (without having actually done any tests) that required you to be quarantined from the rest of the world, and held captive with no actual proof that there is any infection from your doctor and the tests run by the hospital showed no infection? How would you feel? Worse, you know something is wrong but every doctor you go to tells you that there is nothing wrong with you?

In both cases no one is listening to you and they have no proof of anything. Yet a psychiatrist can just say that you're not mentally fit to make your own decisions, you're stripped of your rights, and locked away from the 'good citizens of the world.' I did nothing wrong. I said nothing wrong. I expressed feeling emotional fatigue and an opinion about suicide that isn't "accepted" or considered "healthy." There's nothing wrong with expressing an opinion!

The way that I was treated was bad enough. You should have seen how some of the others were treated.

All the Psych Techs sat at a table at the back of the main room and would tell any patient who sat down at the same table that they weren't allowed to sit at the same table as them. I'm sorry are we so dangerous that we can't be sitting at the same table as the Psych Techs? They take us in 2 groups in a crammed elevator and sit at the same table as all of us while both they and we eat. In both of those cases, they are on their own with us. The main room, where we all sat all day and watch TV because there was nothing else to DO, was 10 feet from the nurse's station. If anything the Psych Techs were much safer with us sitting at the the same table in the back of the main room than in a crammed elevator or a large cafeteria!

I'm not saying that I didn't see some people in there who were obviously delusional. There was one guy who, I swear to you, thought the he was some sort of magical chosen person who was born to protect the Earth from invaders from another dimension. That's okay for a sci-fi or fantasy genre book but he actually believed this was the truth. Was he dangerous? No! He probably shouldn't go unsupervised but he wasn't dangerous.

There was another guy who got it into his head that his roommate was evil and needed to be killed. So he went out of a machete to find his roommate, but was able to figure out that his thinking wasn't right, his roommate was in danger from him, called the police to come get him, and waited patiently for 30 minutes on a bench outside a WalMart before the cops showed up! Dangerous? Very much so... to his roommate and only his roommate.

Then, of course, there was the guy who was having a whispering conversation with the voice(s) in his head, he would randomly laugh at whatever the voice(s) in his head, and was constantly reading the Bible. Really... need I say more about that guy? Oh, and no boundaries with this guy! The night shift Psych Techs had to keep going to a specific room, that wasn't his, and guide this guy back to his room and put him in his bed all night long! And, we pretty watched the CW all day long. Like, that was what station was on the TV. We could change it if we wanted to as long as everyone was okay with that. This guy would randomly get up and start changing the channel until he reached some Christian religious channel or someone physically went up to him and told him that he couldn't just change the channel without making sure it was okay with every one else. When we saw him get up and head towards the TV we would call out his name, trying to get his attention, and telling him that he can't change the channel. He did not hear or did not listen to us. Someone had to actually get in his face, tell him to go sit down, and tell him that he couldn't change the channel. He would say that he watched that channel at home and hadn't been able to watch it since he got there. One girl, like, would make a New Yorker proud with her getting in his face. She told him that he couldn't watch that channel while he was in there. He could watch it at home if he wanted to but not while he was there because there are many other people there and none of them wanted to watch that channel.

He was one of the 3 guys who were all heavy into the whole Christian thing and always reading the Bible. Two of them were always going around and asking if they could pray with you. Were they dangerous? Not really. Annoying... but not dangerous. Obviously the one guy who was talking to the voice(s) in his head should be carefully watched in case he became violent. The other two were just guys who thought they were special messengers from God. They were very nice about things when you told them that you didn't want to pray with them. Now, they'd be back later to ask again, but they always walked away without incident when you said no to praying with them. According to the Bible there was a guy who was going around saying that he was the Son of God and had 12 other men with him that were all messengers of God. Jesus was killed, most of the others went back to fishing, and one of them went insane when God's temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and was exiled to an island for many, many years. You might know the last one as St. John. Therein lies the danger of relying too much on religion. Balance in life is the best approach, I think.

Most of the rest were drug and/or alcohol addicts. So they really weren't dangerous while in the psych hospital. Now, in the outside world, they might be dangerous when they need money for their fix and get it by robbing someone at knife/gun point.

There was one guy who was just... angry. He had to be 18 years or older, because there was a separate wing for the minors, and his face always looked angry. He wouldn't look at anyone, he would speak to anyone... all he did all day was brood. During the group therapy session, he refused to even give his name. Apparently he had been there for at least 2 weeks by the time I got there. So by the time I left it was 3 weeks that he was there with no sign of ditching the anti-social behavior.

Now... all us in there were being treated as thought we were dangerous (and I'm not saying everyone was a fluffy kitten) and locked away from the outside world. It was dehumanizing. Like the fact that we had a mental illness and behaved differently from the general public meant that we were locked away. I could have my cell phone. I couldn't have shoes with laces. I couldn't have a belt. None of us could. We were given toothpaste, a disposable toothbrush, a tiny shampoo bottle that made hotel shampoo bottles look giant, and tiny little deodorant sticks.

Just because someone has a mental illness doesn't mean that they should be treated as less of a human being. I don't deserve to be told that I can't sit at the same table as someone else because I have a mental illness that isn't dangerous to them and they have no mental illness. Exchange the idea of mental illness with gender or sexual-orientation or the color of skin or country of origin! Are any of those actually acceptable? No! I have NEVER been violent. I have never slapped anyone. I have never punched anyone. I have never been in a fight. I've been bashed, but I didn't strike back. I have never been a danger to anyone in any way that someone who doesn't have a mental illness could be a danger to anyone else.

Now, if they're being overtly violent, then okay... I can see them needing to be separated from the general populace. Psychopaths and sociopaths... murders. Okay, sure. But they're in a prison, not a psych hospital.

Just to give you an idea of what it feels like; imagine that you're someone who is feared or unwanted by the general public, so they put you all in a special place with people kinda-sorta like you in that you're feared or unwanted. You want a prime example of unwanted people being crammed into one place with the other people that society doesn't want? Two words: Nursing Home.

I'm sorry, I just feel like it's cruel to leave people in a state in which they can't care for themselves and are just pushed into Residential Living Facilities. Now, I'm very lucky that the medication I take works so well. I really am! However, someone who can't live a real life shouldn't be forced to live it. The quality of life is just so low for so many people and we just lock them away where they can't get seen and we can forget them. If I were faced with knowing that the medication I'm taking doesn't work anymore and nothing else does either... kill me. Please, kill me. I do not want to live as, basically, a vegetable. I'm breathing and my heart is beating, but my brain doesn't function right. I am no over-exaggerating when I say that there would be many days where I would be completely unaware of myself and anything around me. I would not be able to eat or drink because I would be unaware of it and couldn't swallow. I would soil myself and wouldn't even be aware of it or that it is even possible. What kind of life does someone have if they're not aware of themselves? Does that qualify them as not being alive. Being self-aware is who we are. If we can't be self-aware then we're not really alive.

It may seem strange to you, but I think that it is more humane to painlessly kill those people who are trapped in psychosis and have little-to-no quality of life. I'm all for figuring out what ones are genetic and which genes or combination of genes causes it and changing the DNA of a fetus so that it isn't born with a crippling deformity or mental illness. Heck, use the gene therapy to change the DNA of a teenager/adult who has a mental illness. In the interim, they should not be forced to live.

Believe me, if you've always been "normal" and all the sudden you're faced with something like Alzheimer's then at some point you'll think about whether or not you'd rather die than degenerate into a being that looks human but doesn't think or act human. If you end up with terminal cancer and you're in constant pain... at some point, you'll seriously think that you want to be dead NOW! You'll rethink your position on assisted suicide if you're against it. Until you're there and you're faced with it... you can't make an informed decision. You have no way to know with 100% certainty that you'd never commit suicide.

Yes, Still Alive

masterde — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 12:57:57 GMT

Oh, so there a few topics tonight. As you should know by now, I'm awake at night and asleep during the day. I'm fine and nothing horrible has happened to me or is an issue, really. But I have found something interesting. One is an observation on TV scheduling and another is an observation of the combined theories from an episode of a TV show. On, the semester ends today (April 16) and then I'm done with class until fall. And I graduate in the fall so, yea!

So first my observation on TV scheduling. Now, I've spent most of my life like the majority of people. As a light-dweller. lol ;) So here's what I've noticed about TV scheduling during the day time. This would be between 6 AM and 10 PM in my time zone (Central Standard Time, aka CST). This schedule is relatively constant. The only time there's a major change to scheduling is when 1) a new show starts, 2) a current show is canceled, and 3) when a show goes into syndication on a new network. Really, #3 is mostly during the later hours of the day.

Why is this? Well, who's at home during these times? Either a non-working people/parents or a child who isn't old enough to go to school. The majority of people are awake during those daytime hours, too. Who has time to go shopping and wants things a lot? Non-working persons/parents and children. So that's a pretty good reason to keep things the same. People don't like change, right? So don't change things unless the network is canceling a show that doesn't bring in enough of an audience, is putting out new episodes of a show, or running a show in syndication.

However, at night, things are very different. First, what are "night" hours? Well, they're 11PM to 5 AM CST. But if we translate that in the US, coast to coast, that is as early as 9 PM (on the west coast) and as late as 6 AM (on the east coast). Well, we're night-dwellers. There are fewer of us awake and we are breaking a kind of unwritten rule of society. My father and grandmother keep saying, "You have your days and nights mixed up." That's very telling about their expectations of reality and feeling like they have to conform to societal norms. They assume I'm "mixed up." No, I know exactly what time I'm awake and what time I'm asleep. Did it happen by mistake? Well, it just happened without a conscious choice, so I suppose it could have been a mistake. However, I've had more than enough time to get myself back on an 'acceptable' waking and sleeping hours schedule. I have just chosen not to do so. I like things the way they are. So there's an unwritten rule of society that you should sleep when the sun is down and be awake when the sun is up. There really is no difference (aside from what businesses are open and what businesses are closed). I mean, it's the middle of the night here in the US but it's late afternoon/early evening in Japan. So if I lived in Japan then being on an American CST "normal" sleep schedule and they lived in Japan, too, then according to my father and grandmother, I'd have my days and nights mixed up. So what is time but a system that we arbitrarily set up to match our planet's rotation. What about other planets that might have a 36 hour planetary rotation? It's just different from them, but because I'm not doing what they do I'm the one who's "mixed up." I could easily say the same thing about them. I don't because it's arbitrary. I choose when I'm awake and when I'm asleep, just like they do.

Now that I watch TV every day... er, night... I have noticed that the schedule changes much more often that day time day schedules. I tried to figure out what I'd watch on TV at all the different times of the night. I'd get a pattern set and then some show would switch around time slots with another show or it'd only be on during a specific day(s). There is much more change. But what is this? Well, they don't make as much money at night because most people are asleep. The age demographic and employment demographic are different from the light-dwellers. So commercials are different and they can see how well accepted a show in syndication is with the night-dwellers. We're a kind of test audience before making any real changes to day time TV schedules. Well, other than when the new fall line-up comes out and shows that didn't do well are canceled and new shows to take their place debut. I just find it strange that night time TV schedules change so frequently. Oh! And the commercials are very different from the day time commercials! Virtually no child-focused toys are advertised. Companies that advertise as being advocates for citizens against the government to get Disability payments for those who can't work, advertisements tort lawyers, hook-up chat lines, and adult sexual products abound! (Well, not on the cartoon channels, but other channels.)

Now, I finished watching a show and thought I'd write my thoughts about it. It's a TV show on the Science Channel called "Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman." Basically they take some scientific field of study, look at some part of it, and have different specialists talk about their theories and work in that field of study. It was a show about robotics. This particular episode talked mostly about AI (Artificial Intelligence). There were 3 different theories about what was the "most important thing a machine needs to know in order to gain sentience and what the greatest thing humans had figured out that let us be the dominant species on the planet."

1. Learning how to move: Basically, they said that because we learned how to move so well and our bodies are built like they are that we were able to escape danger, find/hunt food, and make tools. So, 2 scientists wrote a computer modeling program that gave a basic shape and movement points to a computer model. So it might be 2 legs that have 4 points at which they can bend, each are attached at the top. So basically it was a crude version of our own legs but with more points that it could bend the leg. The program would run and try different ways to bend at the points it could bend in order to make it from one side of the screen to the other side without falling over. Any time it did fall over, the computer reset the model, and used what it learned from it's previous attempts to know what did and didn't work well. Sometimes it was successful by walking much like we do and sometimes it learned a different way that worked, such as hopping and using the bending points jump and to absorb the shock of landing. Then they built various designs of actual robots that had different numbers of legs and bending points in it's legs. Then it used similar software to let the robot do trial-and-error to learn how to move. So it was able to learn how to move. A robot that could learn movement on it's own. But is that enough?

2. Emotions and feelings: So the basic idea behind this was a guy who built a robot that he programmed with the ability to recognizes different colors. Then he allowed it to recognize the color and either tap it from behind (which the robot took as bad/pain) or to pet it on a sensor bar (which the robot took as good/positive). He would repeat this with 2 different colors (green/bad and blue/good). Then he sat a green object in front of the robot and it would say "green bad" and back away from the object quickly. Then he sat a blue object in front of the robot and it would say "blue good" and use it's very simple "arms/hands" to pick the blue object up. He claimed that the robot learned that green was something bad and caused it to "feel fear" and that blue was something good and caused it to "feel desire." I'm not so sure it actually felt anything. It just learned positive stimuli from negative stimuli. Plants can do this but they certainly don't have emotions that are comparable to human emotions. So don't really think that the robot that he built felt emotion. I don't think that a robot needs learn how to understand emotion in order to be sentient.

3. Language: This scientist said that when he was 5 years old he wondered how he came to be who he is and why he wasn't his sister or his brother. Now... tell me what child has an existential crisis at age 5?! Okay, not the point... moving on. He created 2 humanoid robots that had legs, hands, arms, and a head. There was single camera eye in the center of it's head so that it could "see." Now, he had each robot programmed with the same series of phonetic sounds that could be used and which phonetic sounds could be before or after each phonetic sound. But the robots would have nothing to talk about with each other. So he programmed them with the same movement abilities, but the robot was unaware of what it looked like and in what ways it could move. So, each robot was put in front of a mirror and used it's camera eye to look at it's reflection and watch how it could move it's hands and arms while the other robot (that looked exactly like it was not in view or turned on). They were only programmed 2 concepts that were movements that they inherently understood. Shaking it's head up and down to signify "correct" and shaking it's head from side to side to signify "incorrect." Then they put in front of each other and "talked" about movement. One would say a word (which it decide on based on the phonetic sounds it was given but chose the order of the phonetic sounds) and then did a movement. The other robot would repeat the word and try to mimic the other robot. If it was successful then the first robot would nod it's head for "correct." If it moved in a different way than the first robot then the first robot would shake it's head for "incorrect," repeat the word and the action. When the second robot was successful then it came up with a different word and then did a different movement than the first robot did. In this way they were building a simple language, of their own design (given the phonetic rules, which all human languages have phonetic rules), and build a joint language that they both used to talk about movement. It was even able to do this with the robot's creator instead of a robot that looked exactly like it and had the exact same voice as it. Which is actually pretty awesome. However, this does mean that, eventually, as autonomous robotics advances, the robots may create their own language for everything that it can understand and not tell the humans what their words means. So robots could start speaking to each other behind our backs, in a language of their own creation that we don't understand. Little scary.

Now, there was a guy who talked about robots moving and having a wireless connection to the members of it's team. So 2 teams were created, programmed with the rules of soccer, and then allowed to play against each other. The 2 teams wireless connection to the members of their team were different. So they couldn't listen in on each other's tactics. However, they knew where every member of their own team was and what each member of their team could see. So they were able to make strategies, get back up if a robot from the other team knocked them down, and were able to dynamically change positions on the field depending on where the ball was. They started to learn each other's tactics and could better defend against each other and had to come up with new tactics to try and score points. Now, these robots were small, humanoid in shape, and very basic. But the fact that they were able to, in essence, read each other's minds and see with each other's eyes, advanced versions of themselves would very easily be able to learn the tactics of human players and would be able to position themselves on the field so that their robotic teammates would be in place to perform the next action that was part of the tactics. Pretty neat if you ask me.

So in each of these scenarios there comes the worry that robots will gain an upper hand and no longer need humans. The ability to learn, create their own language, acquire and create their own tactics, and would simply not need us anymore. That it is possible that humanity's legacy will be sentient robots.

A Japanese inventor has a different view on robotics. Instead of creating a robot that is able to move on it's own, he has created some exoskeleton arms and legs that respond to human brain impulses for movement. Even in someone who has been injured and can't walk anymore still sends a signal down the spine and to the leg, for example. It's just that the nerves in the leg no longer respond. But these electrical impulses can be picked up by the exoskeleton legs through the person's skin and assist the person in moving. There are people who have been unable to walk since birth who are now able to walk using these prototype exoskeleton legs. It's also being tested and used in rehabilitative therapy for people who were bed ridden for months, had their leg muscles atrophy, and are no longer able to stand/walk for very long without assistance. But it only provides them with the dynamic amount of strength to support movement and hold them up that their muscles are unable to provide. It allows for longer therapy sessions and greater mobility. It's helping them rebuild their muscles by "listening" to the electrical impulses and providing them with just enough strength that they lack to move their legs. The leg, shoulder and arm exoskeleton parts (as of 2013) are able to provide a human with the ability to lift 200kg more than they normally would be able to. It's not a full Iron Man exoskeleton frame or anything... yet. However, it is a significant tool for physical healthcare rehabilitation and allowing those who are paralyzed with the ability to walk (and use their arms) again. I could see it being used in construction, too.

This Japanese inventor is working on capturing movements of human beings so that they can be replicated perfectly. Tiger Woods awesome physical ability to play golf could be copied perfectly. When Tiger Woods dies his ability dies with him, but if he wore the exoskeleton, and it was able to record his movements, then it could be stored and reproduced by someone else hundreds of thousands of years later! However, just like the Iron Man exoskeleton frame, I can see this being adapted for military purposes, made into a full body suit that protects the wearer from incoming weapon's fire, provides them with greater physical speed and strengths, and even the ability to analyze what the suit wearer sees to avoid an attack since it can duplicate the actions of others. Hell, combine that technology with the robots that are in constant contact with each other, and it could be programmed to keep track of where the other squad members are, what their exoskeletons see, and, even if the person can't see an incoming attack themselves, the exoskeleton is getting information from the other exoskeletons, so sight-unseen the exoskeleton would be able to warn the wearer of incoming danger or just take action to protect the wearer itself.

Why deal with each person's unique ability to shoot accurately when it can do analysis and aim for the user? Why deal with different people's abilities as a sniper and copy the movements of the best sniper on file that's uploaded to the exoskeleton and compensate for it's user to make them into an equally great sniper? Now, the sniper thing has to deal with the weapon used, ammo used, distance to target, wind speeds, and if the target is moving or stationary. So it's not enough just to copy the best sniper's physical actions. There is some calculations that need to be done. Right now, humans are better able to do that without the bulky equipment it would take for a computer to assist the sniper but if the exoskeleton can be improved upon and modified specifically for military use, then it's certainly possible that the data storage could be small and use very little power. The exoskeleton itself would eventually be able to use less and less power, too, or have a power saving mode for when the wearer isn't in combat. Hell, why not a voice activated distance combat mode for sniper assistance that provides tactical information need to hit the target or a mode for semi-automatic weapons fire assistance that provides tactical information for better accuracy, a close-combat mode for hand to hand combat that increases physical speed and strength, a retreat mode that increases physical speed for running, and a power saving mode that only uses enough power to assist the wearer in regular movement.

Now, this could able to adapted to use no soldier at all. Just a robot army, but having a human that is robot and computer assisted would certainly give an edge on the ground. I think that, in the end, it should be a collaboration between humans and machines. We build the machines to assist us but don't allow them enough autonomy to be a threat. Any advanced AI could become dangerous, but if it's a slave AI that had it's abilities limited, can offer advice, and assistance then it wouldn't be such a big threat of becoming dangerous. Having the slave AI only be able to act independent or contrary to it's wearer if it detects a threat to the wearer then that'd be okay, but there'd have to be someone in the exoskeleton for it to move at all. If we're talking military use here, too, then if it's too damaged or running low on power it could be programmed to eject the wearer and short circuit if it's in the field to keep it out of enemy hands.

There are a lot of possible purposes for an exoskeleton that increases strength, reflexes, speed, and is physical protection... but for every possible great good, there must be a possible great bad. There is nothing that is without an equal opposite. That's just what I've been thinking about for the past few hours as I've written this.

I know this was a random rambling ranty kind of thing and if you've stuck around this long, I thank you. I've have a lot of contemplation time since I stopped trying to keep myself busy all the time. Some of it's been good for be. Some of it... not so much. It's just that we living in an exciting time. If we don't kill ourselves or poison our planet first, we could achieve greater things than I ever hoped were possible.

For the past month and half I've had this big fascination with science/technology, philosophy, and spirituality. I think all those things are important to the success and balanced growth of humanity. Not too much of any one of those things over the other.

I Know Very Little

masterde — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 20:24:24 GMT

There are very few things that I actually know to be true. I'll list them below.

1. Before you embark on a quest for revenge against another person be sure to dig two graves.

2. Pursuant to #1: If the result of any game can only end in annihilation then the only way to win is to not play the game in the first place. This applies just as easily to any life situation.

If you're going to ruin someone's life then they'll have nothing to lose by retaliating. If you're going to dig their grave then you might as well dig one for yourself because the result of ruining someone's life is that they will take you with them if they can. So the only way to ensure that you win is to not play that game in the first place.

3. Perhaps the greatest gift of a mortal life is the belief in the illusion that anything could be "eternal" or "forever."

Only those who live for a finite time can believe that something can last forever. If we were immortal (by that I mean that if we were wouldn't die because of age, we could still die to injury or illness, otherwise we're indestructible not immortal) then we'd know, through experience, that nothing lasts forever. Think of it this way... a pet dog or cat will only live for 10-18 years at the most. You'll live longer than that. So your pet can believe that they'll always love you, but you'll live long after they die. Given enough time, you'll forget about them completely. That being the case, perhaps the greatest gift humanity will ever get is the belief that love can last forever.

4. The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty. It is simple half.

There is no way to answer the question of whether the glass is half-full or half-empty correctly with the options that are given. If you're able to answer "It's half-full," or "It's half-empty," then your mind is very limited. That would imply that one answer is better or more correct than the other to you. You're not seeing reality for what it is. Reality is that it is half. It's not "half-full" or "half-empty," it's "half." To put it more simply; "It is." That can be said about everything. It is what it is. To put a value of more importance on something over another thing is limiting how/what you can understand about it. In trying to categorize everything we place artificial limits on what something could be. If we try to understand something with our limited minds and senses then we're not allowing what it is to be what it really is. Everything is so much more than what we can perceive of it.

If the last statement is true then I don't actually KNOW anything at all. Make of that what you will.

Wherein I've Been Awake At Night

masterde — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 15:31:39 GMT

Since the beginning of the year, I've been awake during the late evening through early morning hours. This has left me with a lot of contemplative time. In fact, I did a kind of therapy technique. I altered it from it's original design and purpose to fit my needs. I've been using it for a while now and it's had an interesting effect.

Okay, since I'm awake when everyone else is asleep, I've not really had anyone to talk to for any length of time. I mean via IM or in real life. My father is my father. So he doesn't really engage me in conversation when he gets up in the morning. Mom only emerges from her bedroom when she's dressed and heading out the door for work during the week. On the weekends she sleeps in, so I go to bed before gets up or just as she is getting up. I've never really gone this long without any meaningful human contact before. So, it's interesting in that I found the need to talk to someone about my thoughts. Since everyone's asleep, I only have me to talk to. Yes, yes... talking to oneself is a sign of craziness. Kinda. That more refers to talking to the voices one hears in their head. Talking to auditory hallucinations that makes it look like a person is talking to oneself. That or taking an inanimate object and giving it "life" and "a voice." So the latter is actually is kinda what I've been doing. Let me explain why it's not a bad thing.

If someone is afraid of public speaking, a therapeutic technique is to make an outline of what the person plans to speak about, take that outline to mirror, look at themselves in the mirror, and giving the talk/speech/presentation to their reflection. This gives someone a faux-audience to talk, but because it's their own reflection, it's a friendly face. Thus it puts the person at ease. This is the first step in dealing with fear of public speaking or extreme shyness. So, in this case, a person is giving an inanimate object (a mirror) a "life" and the ability to "listen." This is the technique I've adapted to fit my need to talk out the things going on in my head. All the things I've learned about myself through self-examination during the quiet of the dead of night. I stand in front of the little mirror in the bathroom or the full length closet sliding doors that are mirrors.

At first I was just talking about the things that I enjoyed and didn't have anyone to share these things with. However, it quickly turned to me explaining my behaviors, how I came upon these behaviors, how it's effected my life, and, in general, a narrative of my life. I would go on for hours and hour talking to my reflection as though it were another person and starting with one subject. But I found that every time I started on one subject I'd end up sidetracking myself with asides and anecdotal para-stories. And these were nested asides and anecdotal para-stories. I'd find myself 7 asides deep from my original topic. I thought that it was keeping me from talking out the narrative of my life at first. However, I found these asides started to yield little nuggets of information on the deeper parts of my psyche. Some of which I had thought of before and other that I hadn't. The ones that I hadn't thought of before started to change the scope/perspective of things I had thought of before. Deeper layers of surface truths that I'd told myself for years. I'd like to share some of these things.

Now, after my relationship with First John ended with him telling me that he never really loved me, I thought that the relationships that I had after that were effected by that relationship in the form of me having a hard time trusting people who showed a romantic interest in me. But I found that it started to extend to people who showed me that they cared about me in any capacity. Whether it was worrying about me, trying to get me to talk about certain topics, etc. I found that I was keeping people I counted as friends at a distance. I didn't trust anyone other than myself. This, as some of you may recognize, manifested in the form of me always being there for my friends and trying to get them to talk to me about what was bothering them or tell me about their troubles/issues while refusing to give any real information about my issues. Sure, I'd bitch about my father being an ass, but that just surface stuff. Perhaps it's more that it was just the tip of the iceberg. You know, you see the top 10% of the total iceberg floating above water but 90% is hidden from view underwater.

I ended up coming up with a hypothesis to test about my difficulty trusting people, being open with people, and expressing my real emotional feelings to the people who matter in my life. At first I thought that the reason that had trouble trusting people was because First John used me for 2.5 years and Chris was verbally and emotionally abusive and cheated on me multiple times for 3 years. That's a part of it. Certainly those two relationships contributed to the extreme to which I distrusted people.

The only person I've actually fully trusted since First John was Second John. And we all know how that turned out. Now, no, I don't blame Second John for leaving me. He was killed in his car when another car slammed into his at a high rate of speed. But I've already talked about the emotional fallout of losing your soul mate. Though, I really honestly can't do it justice with words. The emotions behind it are... so strong and deep that I don't think I can actually fully wrap my mind around it much less come up with words that are adequate enough to explain it in a way that can be understood. The sense of loss is so profound that it makes any other loss I've ever experienced as thought it were a penny that rolled out of my pocket and into the sewers. The emotional pain is sometimes so intense that it is soul crushing to the point of praying for oblivion just to get respite. I've had someone I loved leave me. First John was that person. Now, yes, it was also my first love, so that always has an effect on relationship further down the road. I was pretty much death willing myself for 2.5 months after he said he never really loved me. Every so often I'd feel anger at him for using me and at myself for being used, but the strength of the sense of loss and emotional pain subsided to a dull ache at that point and never got stronger (until that rant where I... uh... kinda lost it). Second John has been gone for almost 5 years now. There are still days that I wake up and it takes every ounce of willpower I have to keep from crying out and wailing in intense emotional pain and loss.

I'm not trying to gloat over anyone who's never had a soul mate as thought I'm somehow superior for having had one. I'm just trying to explain the difference in the level of intensity between being in love with someone and finding your soul mate and having lost that person. When someone you love leaves you then you think, 'I'll never love anyone ever again. I'll never be able to trust anyone ever again. I'll never want to have sex again.' When you lose a soul mate you think, 'I don't need anyone to ever love me again in a romantic fashion. The love I feel from my soul mate who's passed will sustain me for the rest of my life. I might have relationships again, one day. I might even fall in love with someone, in time. Eventually, I'll be open to finding someone who I love who'll love me back. But if that doesn't happen, that's okay. I have all the love I need to last me a lifetime.' One speaks of anger and hopelessness about what is to come. The other speaks of hope and acceptance of what is to come. That's the best I can do to try to explain it. It's still a dramatic simplification of things, but... language is what it is.

But I figured out that it wasn't the relationships after First John that caused the difficulty in trusting. The way First John used me was a catalyst to bring it into romantic and platonic relationships, but it was already there. The relationship with First John was the first time I opened up and really trusted anyone who wasn't a member of my family. It started in the things I experienced in my childhood. How my early childhood through to my teenage years were when things happened that caused me to have problems trusting. Up until the relationship with First John ended the way it did I had hope that I'd meet someone who would actually love me, show me that they loved me, didn't feel an obligation to care about me because of bio-family links, and wouldn't let me down. Well, we all know that no one's perfect and no matter how perfect the relationship might seem (even with a soul mate), the other person will let you down at some point. They might not do it on purpose. They might not ever want to hurt you on purpose. However, they're not in your head and that means they won't fully understand how important some event or thing is to you and will let you down inadvertently without intending to let your down. That's just a natural part of human relationships. We're flawed beings and so everything we do or try to do is flawed in some way, too.

Let's examine my childhood and the people in it, so that you can understand where everything started and ties in:

I didn't realize this part until yesterday so it may seem like I should have already known how it effected me before now. But it's from my early childhood memories that the first part starts and the distrust and fear of being let down began. I hadn't thought of these memories until yesterday and connected it to being my foundation for distrust and fear of being let down.

First, my mother. As people are wont to do, she's not the same person, with the same beliefs, and behaviors now that she had 30-ish years ago when I was only 4 years old. At this point in my life, she cleaned the house (top to bottom) everyday, she cooked dinner, and she did laundry. She was a housewife who kept the house clean, kept the kids fed, and raised the kids. During these earliest of solid memories of being 2-4 years old, my life was very controlled. Very strictly routine. My mother would take me shopping in Lake Jackson (closest big mall) at least once a week, during the week. In order to get me to go along with her, not complain about missing cartoons or my toys, and behave she would tell me that she was just going to 2 stores, she knew what she was looking for, and that we wouldn't be in either store for more than 30 minutes. Now, at this age, I had a very vague understanding of what "minutes" and "hours" meant. If she had told me that we wouldn't be in the store for more than 90 minutes, I would have thought, 'At least it's shorter than an hour.' Because, kid logic, any number of minutes is shorter than 1 whole hour.

So we'd drive there and we'd go to the first place she wanted to go to. We'd spend forever in there and she'd leave without buying anything. Then we'd go to the second store and spend forever in there, too, and, again, wouldn't buy anything.

At this point I'm thinking that we've been to 2 stores so Mom must be done with the shopping trip and we'd be heading home. Then we'd pull into another parking lot. I'd ask Mom why we were stopping at another store and she'd tell me that she wants to just check and see if what she was looking for was in this store, that we'd only be in there for 20 minutes, and then we'd head home after that. She might or might not buy anything but we'd be in there for more than 20 minutes.

Then we'd get in the car and she'd drive to a 4th store. When I would ask her why we were stopping again she'd say that this was the last store she was going to look in, we'd only be there for 20 minutes, and then we'd go home. She might or might not purchase something and we'd get back in the car.

Then she'd stop at a 5th store. By this time we would have been been in stores for at least 4 hours "shopping." She'd get out of the car and I'd follow her out and start whining about the fact that she said the last store was the last store. Again, she'd tell me that she just wanted to check to see if something she was looking for was there or not and it'd be a quick in and out trip. We'd spend a very long time in the store. She might or might not buy something. While in the 5th store I would tell her that my legs were tired and I was really hungry. In order to placate me she'd tell me that once we left the 5th store that we'd get food, eat it, and head home.

So we get back in the car and I'm thinking that we're going to go get food. Nope, she was on her way to stopping at the 6th store. I'd ask her why we were stopping at this store. She would give the same line about seeing if the store had what she was looking for, it would only be for 20 minutes, and then we'd go get food. We'd be in there for more than 20 minutes, again, and then leave, with or without a purchase. By this point I was starving and my legs were really sore from walking to much. I'm thinking that surely now we'll get food, eat it there, and then head home.

Nope, there'd be a 7th store and possibly 8th store with the same routine of telling me she was just going to go in quickly and see if what she was looking for was in that store, we'd only be there for 20 minutes, and then we'd go get something to eat before heading home.

Finally, after the 7th or 8th store, she would tell me that we were done shopping today. I was thinking that we'd finally be getting some food. But she'd start to head out of town. I'd remind her that she said that we'd get food before heading home and she'd tell me that it was close to dinner time and she didn't want to ruin my appetite so we were just going to go home so she could start dinner. By this point my legs would be aching, my stomach would be growling, I'd have a headache (from being so hungry and physical exertion) which would make me feel nauseous on the car trip home, and when we got home I didn't get a snack to tide me over. She'd just put away what she'd bought tell me to go play until dinner. Of course dinner didn't come for another 2-3 hours.

Now, I ask you, how cruel is it to tell a 4 year old that you're only going to 2 store to pick up what she needed, lie continuously about the current store was the last store we were stopping at, that we'd get food, then just keep shopping, and then when it was time to leave town for home to tell the child that is sore, tired, had a headache, was nauseous, tell them that it was too close to dinner so they weren't going to get food, then it be another 3-4 hours until dinner actually happened!?

I learned very quickly that my mother would always lie about the number of places she wanted to go to, she'd lie about how long we'd be in there, she'd lie about getting food, and she'd ignore me when I told her that my legs hurt from walking so much and was really hungry. If I told her that I needed to stop while she was shopping in a store and use the restroom she would get very upset. So the woman that told me that she loved me would lie to my face multiple times a day at least once a week and get angry if I asked for food/drink or to use the restroom. This was the beginning of what blossomed into me not trusting people because she constantly lied to me about the length of the shopping trips, and it also taught me that if I asked for anything that she would get upset at me. I learned that what I wanted or how much I was suffering didn't matter.

As I got older, and I started school, the trip to Lake Jackson's mall happened every weekend. I figured out that she would lie about how many places she was going to in order to get me to go and not make a fuss in the car on the way there. Once we arrived she would tell me what stores we were really going to. I learned, over time, that the list she gave me when we arrived was the order of the stores in which we'd go to. If I suggested going in a different order then she'd ignore me. If I pressed for a change in the order of stores we were going to then she'd get upset at me and told me in no uncertain terms that the order she had decided to go in was exactly how it was going to happen. Still, I was ignored, gotten upset at, and lied to.

As I reached junior high school age, I realized that Mom never knew what she was going to buy on the trips to Lake Jackson. She was just looking for something to buy and find bargains/deals/sales. She only ever bought things for herself or decorations for the house. She never bought me anything or even offered to buy me anything. I had learned when I was 4 that asking for anything meant that Mom would get upset and tell me no, so I didn't ask.

During my senior year of high school, she and I were talking and somehow the topic of me sometimes wanting a toy or new clothes but never asking. She asked why not. I told her that she always told me no when I was a child and I asked for something on a shopping trip. She contended that if I had asked that she would have bought me something. I figured out after the talk that she was upset when I was small child when I asked for food/drink/restroom because it interrupted her shopping trip, she was super anal about keeping to her schedule, and as she aged that she learned to be much less strict and ridged.

Mom took me the mall for Back-To-School clothes and shoe shopping every year. That was when I got 5 new shirts, 3 pairs of blue jeans, and 1 pair of athletic shoes. That was all I got until Christmas. As a child this was when I asked for toys. As I got older, I got new clothes instead, which I was happy to have because I had been wearing the same set of clothes to school for the whole first semester of that school year. The only other time I got clothes or toys was on my birthday (which was right before school let out for the summer). Again, I had it my head the 4 year old kid logic that said that Mom got upset and said no when I asked for something. Every time I asked Dad if he would buy me something he always said no. So I had it in my head that I wouldn't get anything new unless it was Back-To-School shopping, Christmas, or my birthday. For my dad, that was true. For my mom, I could have asked for toys or clothes at any time and she would have probably have got me what I wanted but the kid logic told me that I couldn't ask for anything or Mom got upset and said no.

When I started 1st grade, my mother decided to go to work for the first time in her life. She told me that I'd be taking the bus to school because she wouldn't be able to take me to school or pick me up from school. I asked her why and she told me that she was going to work and that she was going to be working at a daycare center teaching a classroom of twelve 2 year old during the morning. Now, tell this to a child who's 5 or 6 years old, who's been lied to constantly, felt they couldn't ask for the things they wanted except at special times of the year, their wants ignored, and had been shown a general disregard for how they felt. Different children react differently but to me it said that I did make my mom happy enough and I wasn't good enough for her to take care of anymore, so she was sending me off to school while she took care of a group of other children. I felt abandoned. That's where the beginning of why I felt/sometimes still feel like I couldn't rely upon anyone else.

My mom wasn't the only factor in the distrusting of people and feeling like I couldn't rely upon anyone else, but she was the biggest factor. I'll go over some of the other things.

My brother is 4 years older than I am. As a child he was a perfectionist. He didn't be a B on his report card until his freshman year of high school (it was an 89 and the teacher wouldn't bump it up to a 90). He absolutely flipped the fuck out! He was angry and crying. This is the event that triggered him ending up having a nervous breakdown his freshman year of high school. To him, he could only make A's. Getting a B was unacceptable. Getting a B meant that he was a failure. Not just in that class but in everything he had every done in his life. He put so much pressure on himself (with the help of our father) that he just snapped. He ended up in a long-term residential treatment center. He was gone for 4 months. I didn't find out until years later why he had flipped out. I have no idea what he actually did to end up getting the neighbor's, who was a cop, backyard. To this day my brother won't talk to me, or anyone else, about what he did in that backyard. I know it was more than just trespassing. But the cop said that he wouldn't press charges if my parents got him the help he needed. So to keep my brother from having a juvenile record, they sent him away. I remember being picked up from school for every Friday and driving an hour away, where my brother was at and wasn't allowed to leave for; to be part of "family therapy" with a therapist who asked me questions about how I felt about my brother, how I felt about him being where he was, and what he did to be there without telling me anything about what was going on or why. All it did was confuse me and showed me that I wasn't important enough to be told what was going on. It wasn't until about 4 years later that I was told what had happened to my brother, but as I said, I have no idea what he actually did that warranted being locked away in a residential psychiatric treatment facility for 4 months.

Part of my brother's perfectionism was that he was very competitive in games. So, when I was young, before he reached junior high school age, we shared a room. Mom would make him play with me. Which what kid wants their sibling who's 4 years younger than they are tagging along everywhere and be forced to include the younger sibling in what they were doing?! At first it was board games that he played with me. Then the original NES came out and we got that right away and the games became digital. However, his competitive streak was very hard on me. If I lost the game, he would call me a loser, tell me that I was stupid, and that I was worthless along with other taunts about winning. If HE lost... it was much worse. He wouldn't just be verbally abusive but would also accuse me of cheating and be physically violent with me. He never broke the skin or left a mark or a bruise on me that showed up right away. He'd be inflicting the physical pain and I'd be calling out for Mom and crying. He always stopped actively hurting me and wasn't near me when Mom got to our bedroom. I'd be lying on the floor in pain and crying and she'd ask what happened. I would tell her that my brother had beat me up because I won at a game. Now, I was on the ground crying and my brother was acting like he didn't notice that I had been screaming and shouting, but Mom didn't catch him in the act very often so Mom just told my brother to be nicer to me, not to touch me, and that she didn't want to have to come back. He made sure that whatever pain he did inflict lasted long after Mom left. After a few years, I figured out that being called names was better than being called names AND being physically hurt, so I would purposefully let him win. He caught on pretty quickly. He told me that if he caught me not trying my hardest or doing my best to beat him that it'd be worse on me. So I tried to make it look like I was trying my hardest/best to beat him but holding back just enough so that he's win, but when he kept winning all the time he figured that I was throwing the game at least sometimes and he made good on his promise. So no matter what I did I was screwed. My options where 1) I win legitimately, accused of cheating, be called names, and have pain inflicted on me until I cried tears and screamed out in pain, 2) I lose legitimately and be called names, or 3) Throw the game so that he would win so that he'd just call me names and leave me alone but risk him catching me or accusing me of throwing the game and it was even worse on me than if I won legitimately. Yeah, I don't like competitions to this day. Well, not in games where the person can physically get to me. Mind games or strategy exercises where I confuse the other(s) and win the competition without them understanding how they lost or what happened I enjoy. Which is why I'm going into a field that you have to be very cunning in order to rise to the top. Sure, I want to help people succeed in their assigned projects, but I know that there will always be competition for who's group does best or who owes who a favor. Physical power will never be a factor... but mental abilities will show who's the superior mind and political game player and/or the best strategist.

My sister isn't worth mentioning, really. She was always grounded. My earliest memories that involve her are of her coming out of her room to the dinner table, eating dinner with the family, and then going back to her room and closing her door. I distinctly remember thinking she was just some random older girl who lived in my parent's house. So, growing up, she wasn't really an issue.

Finally, my father. Well, I've been over that cluster fuck of a non-relationship more than once on this blog. He just never showed that he love me, cared for me, or was interested in me. I was only ever made to feel like a disappointment and a failure because I was not as smart as my brother. I'm just as smart as my brother if not smarter. He had to study very hard to get A's. I've never taken notes to study for a test, exam, mid-term, or final. In junior high and high school I did all my homework, of course. In college there's not much in the way of homework. Sometimes there's a quiz over the material you just learned or you take notes for 3 weeks and then take a test. Not that I have ever taken notes or studied anyone else's notes. My college/university GPA is 3.65 (4.0 is if you make all As) and that includes an F and a C-. So had I made B's in those two classes, then I would probably have a GPA of >3.70.

And fuck my father and my brother! My brother did better than I did in junior high and high school because he studied all the time. I never studied and where his average at the end of high school as 96.x%, mine was 93.x%. He spent so many hours studying and not having a social life and only beat my cumulative high school average by ~3%. We know where I was after school hours most days during my Freshman year. Just more evidence to me that I was meant to hurt, abused, uncared for, and unloved. I started smoking as a Freshman. From my Sophomore year on I was always out of the house. I had friends who were Juniors, could drive, and would come pick me up. I was able to drive during their Senior year so I was able to go where they went.

I started drinking my Junior year. During my Junior year, when I left campus for lunch, sometimes I would go to Sonic and get a 44oz. Sprite drink or a vanilla milkshake and put alcohol in it to school with me so that I was nice and buzzed for the second half of the day. My Senior year, since I didn't have band first thing in the morning anymore, I started going to Sonic before school and getting a drink or milkshake and put in alcohol and be buzzed from the time the first class started that almost lasted until lunch. Then I'd go get a new drink or milkshake and add alcohol so that I was buzzed for the second half of the day. My Senior year I spent the second half of the year sneaking out every night to go drinking, partying, and/or have sex with the only other guy who was out of the closet at my high school. I was still home every night before either of my parents were awake.

I was sneaking out every night. Either to drink/smoke/party and go have sex with other guy who was out around midnight or just go have sex with the other guy who was out around midnight. And either way, I would stay with him in his bed until 5 AM, I think, when his first alarm clock went off, so that I could go back home, crawl back in the window that I jumped out of to sneak out in the first place, and get undressed and go back to sleep for a few hours before my alarm clock went off and I had to get up for school. My brother never sneaked out of the house, drank, smoked (I'm only talking about cigarettes here, I never did pot), went to party, or had sex during high school. I was buzzed, for half or the whole school day for the last 2 years of high school and my last year of high school I was out drink/smoking/partying and/or having sex every night. The second half of my Senior year the most sleep I go in a night would be, like, 6 hours. I was drunk half of the time, never took notes, never read the chapters assigned from the book, never studied, while my brother was the complete opposite and he still only beat me by ~3% over all 4 years of grades in high school.

My Sophomore year, my Biology I teacher told me that I was wasting my talent and wasn't living up to my potential. He told me that if I actually tried instead of just breezing through that I could be in the top 10% of my graduating class. I didn't understand what he was telling me at the time. I certainly do now. If he only knew about what I did the 2 years of high school after his class. lol Had I actually applied myself, like I do now... I would have easily beat out my brother.

He thinks he's so smart. He teaches high school math at a junior college to kids who were too stupid to understand it when they took the class in high school or people who've been out of school for so long that they've forgotten high school level math! His Masters degree is a Masters of Arts in Math. It's not even a Masters of Science in Math. He took the easy and cheap route to get a Masters degree! (Arts degree is much easier to get that a Science degree.)

At this point I could beat him in any strategy game. I have studied things that are so complex that most people can't grasp the scope of it that humans are able to observe, measure, or theorize is true because of math (even abstractly)... and I do it for fun! Do you know how many dimensions that they think exist in our universe? More than 20! In fact, in the last year a physicist had to add 3 new dimensions to make his math equation balance out! Heard of the Higgs-Boson? Well, they think they created one at the CERN supercollider. Only 1 in every 100000000 times they slam two protons together at 99.9999999% the speed of light lines up perfectly to create a Higgs-Boson. And the Higgs-Boson doesn't last long enough for our most sensitive sensors to measure it. They took the particles that the Higgs-Boson breaks into when it falls apart and looked for them. They found them and could trace the course of where they must have come from (ran the sensor data backwards to reconstruct the collision) and they meet up at a point that, when brought together would combine to create what they believe the Higgs-Boson to be made of and would have the mass of Higgs-Boson. And another theoretical physicist has put forth a theory that says that there isn't just 1 type of Higgs-Boson, but 5.

What was the ultimate lesson growing up? The person who was my mother, the person who's supposed to love you more than anyone else does, lied to me, denied me things I wanted (not that I asked because I thought she'd get upset and say no), and couldn't be relied upon. My father didn't love me and was never proud of me. I was only ever a disappointment to him. I wouldn't play anything competitive (games or sports) because if I lost then the other person would verbally abuse me and if I beat the other person then I'd get verbally and physically abused.

I was not loved, supported, trusted, given attention, cared about, told the truth, or had anyone that I could rely on. Is it any wonder I left Bay City and moved to Los Angeles a few months after I graduated from high school!? I didn't think that my bio-family loved me, cared about me, approved of me, and I had to know what it was like to be with other gay people. I thought that bio-family just used you and abused you and lied to you. I was raised to crave love and attention from someone and feel like I had to be provider and take care of myself and whoever I got love and attention from. Once First John showed me that "love" and attention, I was around other gay people on a daily basis, and I took part in furthering the cause of equal rights for LGBT people, I felt like I had found a place where I finally belonged!

Which was why, even though First John said he never really loved me and left me, I stayed in Los Angeles. I wasn't ready to go back to Texas and lose touch with people like me! With the help of the fellow stripper that I ended up having a pseudo-relationship with (it was a relationship but we just didn't call it that) and Pup Tim, I knew I had to go back home to Texas. I needed to properly lick my wounds and figure out what to do with my life so that I would be able to support myself. (The whole never feeling like I can rely upon others thing. Logically I know that I'm a person who would do whatever it takes to provide for myself and my significant other, work on myself to get to the point where I am able to express my feelings for them verbally and physically; and provide physical/sexual needs, emotional needs, always support them not matter what they choose to do, be there to help them pick up the pieces if their life starts to crack or shatter, give them the space they need, and respect and accept them for being who they are, then there have to be others out there like me. I found one and lost him to a car wreak. I hope that I find someone who can feel safe enough and trust me enough to lean on me, I can grow to trust and feel safe enough for me to lean on them, and that I can share my life with fully without hesitation.)

So It's Been, Like, Forever...

masterde — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 17:19:02 GMT

Yeah, I've been all silent for a while now. I've been busy and all sorts of abnormal and shit. Longness to come... get a cup of tea or coffee.

So, I'll start off with something a little sad. I was watching TV this morning, around 3-ish AM. It was an old TV show called Talk Radio. It was basically a show about the office of a talk radio station. Several wonderful characters and running jokes, some of which were fun and others.... not so much. Now, this show had a character that was snobbish, rude, and full of himself. Think Fraiser except Fraiser was a person of intelligence and some refinement, if not a big overly narcissistic. Well, this character on Talk Radio was like that only he wasn't really smart enough to be an intellectual. He was more of just an ass. However, the character wasn't an insufferable ass. It's more that he knew he was an ass, everyone knew he was an ass, and while he was frustration, you were meant to laugh him off. The character's name was Bill. The actor who played this character of Bill was an American actor named Phil Hartman. For those who are international or too young to know him, Phil Hartman gained fame as a cast member on a show called Saturday Night Live. It's been a very long running show. Well, this morning I watched the episode of Talk Radio in which the character of Bill had died and the cast was saying goodbye without breaking the 4th wall. You see, Phil Hartman's real life wife had been physically abusing him for many, many years. Eventually, she killed him one night. It wasn't released to the news about the physical abuse that he suffered at the hands of his wife until after he was dead. I'm glad that there is a greater awareness of violent crimes against men that is done to them by their male or female significant other these days. I'm just sad that this awareness didn't come soon enough to keep Phil Hartman, myself, and so many others. Now, I wasn't killed by my abusers, like Mr. Hartman was... I've been sitting here for a few minutes trying to figure out if Mr. Hartman is lucky that he's dead because he can't be hurt anymore and I'm unlucky because I have something that'll follow me for my entire life OR if Mr. Hartman is unlucky because he must have been so frightened for so many years and knew that eventually that she was going to kill him knowing that he wouldn't be listened to if he said anything and I'm the lucky one because I survived sexual abuse at the hands of those who were older than me and various other types of mental and emotional abusive relationships with people who said they loved me and I, at least, have a chance to deal with it and live a full life. I honestly can't say which would be the worse position to be in. So that made me cry this morning. Which I needed because I've been harboring a lot of anger recently, which I shall go into shortly.

Now, my sleep schedule, as some of you know, is... abnormal. There were 5 different occasions that I didn't sleep for about 40 hours straight during January. When my parents went to visit my brother, his wife, and their infant February 3-9 I didn't go to sleep on the 2nd and was up until the early evening of the 6th. All told, I was awake for about 74 hours straight with no sleep. Never got tired. Never took a nap. I didn't have a nervous breakdown. My mind was just full and processing my life and my biological family's lives and didn't shut down for that time. But in that time I came to a certain understanding of reality that I had been keep from myself. First, a little background.

As you should all know by now, my father has only ever been a sperm donor and money to live on. He never showed an interest in any of his children's lives. He didn't really talk to us unless we broke a rule in the house or if we'd done something wrong and he was telling us what our punishment was. This was all he was during our childhoods. He ruled the house through fear and intimidation. There was never any love from him. My mother was strictly non-openly-confrontational. That doesn't mean that she and my father didn't have arguments, but they went into their bedroom and talked in non-shouting tones about whatever my mother was putting her foot down about. Growing up, I never saw my parents fight, show affection to each other, or interact very much at all really. My mother showed us kids affection but none of us got attention, love, respect, or anything remotely emotionally positive from our father. Now, no child escapes childhood without being damaged in some way by their parents. No parent is perfect. They're just human, of course.

Now, for us kids: my sister (half-sister, we share a common mother but not father, biologically speaking), brother, and myself... My sister moved out the house at 18 and in with her high school boyfriend because our father basically refused to let her make her own life choices while she was living under 'his roof.' So she moved out when I was 9 years old. At that time, I really didn't know her very well because she spent every hour that she was home, except 30 minutes for dinner, in her room, and I didn't know why she had moved out. Of course, her boyfriend was very manipulative, controlling, and abusive. This is the ex-husband that I'm mentioned before. Honestly, she didn't see a way to make it on her own (she was never an academic and never went to college) and our father was always distant and controlling, too. So why should she have thought it was anything out the ordinary in her boyfriend? Now, they, of course, got married, had 2 kids with him, and he filed for divorce 2 weeks after she had filed for divorce but he begged her not to do it and that he'd change and things would be better. He emptied out the joint bank accounts and took her off as an authorized user of the joint credit cards before she was served. He bullied her into giving him anything he wanted just to get out of the divorce. Which has caused no end to issues. He still calls her to 'see how she's doing' and asks her questions about her life that are none of his business anymore. He created a fake Facebook profile and posed as an old high school friend of hers in order to get access to what she posted on her wall. He still tries to control her and intimidate her... sound much like our father, doesn't it?

Now, since she's been divorced, she hasn't spent more than a 4 month stretch without a boyfriend. She even ended up married to one by a Common Law Marriage. There have been 3 men so far. 1 didn't have a steady job. He was a pipeline inspector but this was during the whole Bush Era fuckery when he cut funds to thinks like highway extensions and repairs and bridge repair. This meant that the government wasn't running pipelines down highways from town to town. He eventually went to jail for 3 years for 5 DWI (Driving with Intoxicated, aka drunk driving). My sister divorced him and sold off everything of his that she could, let his truck get repossessed (hurting his credit rating), and gave the rest of his stuff away.

The 2nd one was a janitor at the chemical plant that our father worked at before he retired. He had 5 kids (4 girls and 1 boy), with 3 different baby mommas. He was married to the last baby momma after they found out she got pregnant. But, smart woman that she was, she divorced his sorry ass. When my sister got with him and moved him in with her (*sigh*) he had his youngest, the boy, who was 7 or 8 years old, had ADHD. This guy couldn't afford his son's medication all the time, so the son learned that he could act out and not listen to anyone and he'd never get in any real trouble. I can remember one birthday for my niece that he keep filling up a water balloon with the intention of throwing it at... someone... and my mother told him 5 times in half an hour to empty out the water balloon, that he wasn't to fill it up again, and that there would be no throwing the water balloon at anyone. Every time my mother told him this he just had a goofy smile on his face, emptied the balloon, and ran off, eventually attempting to do whatever it was he wanted to do because he knew he had a free pass. Now, how much was ADHD and how much just him knowing that because of this that he could act out any way he wanted to and never have any consequences because it's a mental illness, I don't know. Well, this guy had his son but when his ex-wife divorced him there was no custody settlement reached. She didn't want to reminded of him and didn't want to be tired down with a kid so she just never tried to get him. All those years later, this guy was supposedly trying to get his ex-wife to sign over full custody of their son officially. My sister read the emails he was sending to his ex-wife and it was more about trying to get back with her than it was about get custody of their kid. Now, he had 4 daughters that he was paying child support on and the expenses of his son.

He was living with my sister without paying any bills, expecting her to have dinner on the table every night, for her to pay the Boys & Girls Club to watch his kid while he was at work, and then go and pick his son up after she got off work and watch his son. He was your typical macho Latino male who had a sense of entitlement. He was over $20k behind on child support on his 4 daughters and his wages were being garnished by the government to pay the child support plus a little extra each month to pay down the back child support he owed. He only brought home about $350/month after all that was taken out. He was into MMA (Mixed Martial Arts, the extreme "sport" where people beat the shit out of each other using a mix of different martial arts disciplines). Every week there was a match on the weekend. But it cost $50 per fight to be able to watch it at home. So $200 of the $350 went to watching 4 fights every month. Leaving him with only $150... which did not cover the price of his son's medication every month. My sister's kids didn't like him. They liked his son even less. He destroyed the Lego sets that my nephew had built and then lied about having broken them. They'd be fine when my sister's kids went to their father's house and the next day one or more would be broken. At one point, he was lying on my nephew's bedroom floor watching my nephew play one of the Call of Duty games and just rolled over 10 or so not-small Lego models. When my nephew yelled at him, he just said, "I didn't know they were there." None of us liked this guy. When my sister finally kicked him out, he came over after work a few days later all in a panic asking my sister had picked up his son. She told him that she was through with him and his son and had no reason to pick up someone she never wanted to take care of in the first place. Turns out that his ex-wife had found out, through their emailing, that their son went to the Boys & Girls Club after school. She decided that she was going to pick him up from there and take her home with her. She lived about a 3 hours drive away. Since not custody agreement had been reached, the boy was just as much his father's as his mother's. She had remarried and had a couple of kids with her husband. She took him to court and, of course, won full custody of their son because she and her husband had a much more stable home environment and could afford to pay for his medication every month. So, at that point, he was having to pay child support for 5 kids.

Now, her current boyfriend is a guy who lives in the apartment complex that she's the assistant manager of. Guess how she met him and guess what he does for a living... yep, just like the last guy, she met him because she's the one who processed all the housing/apartments payments and he's a janitor. Now, he's a janitor at the nuclear power plant, which means that he's much better paid than your average janitor (as are all the employees there) as a deterrent against being paid enough money to do something illegal, steal stuff, or sneak something (like a bomb). He has his own apartment and lives alone. He's never been married. He has no kids. Sounds so much better than any of the others, right!? Well... my sister is 42 years old. Her boyfriend, who she swears isn't her boyfriend but she brought him over for her daughter's birthday party, Thanksgiving dinner, and Christmas dinner at my parent's house, (like we're stupid and don't know who he really is, like her kids don't talk) well, he's 21 years old. Yep... my sister's a cougar (slang for an older woman who is into young men). He's exactly 1/2 her age. Her boyfriend is 6 years older than her oldest, teenage, child. So yeah, the guys legal and all, it's her life and she can do whatever she wants to with it, but I just don't see how she could see a future with this guy.

So because our father withheld any love and affection, my sister seeks out a boyfriend to give her those things as a surrogate for her own father not giving her those things. She's been through bad relationship after bad relationship and been dragging her kids through all of it.

My brother dated one girl in high school (for years) and one girl in college (for a few weeks) until he was 34 years old. He only had sex with the one in college. So... in 34 years of life he'd slept with only one woman and they'd slept together only a handful of times during those few weeks. He was on eHarmony for 3 years and everyone they matched him up with had something seriously wrong with them. One wanted to go on a date with him after they had emailed back and forth for a few weeks. He had to drive about 2 hours to get to her and after about 30 minutes she was talking about moving in with him, getting married as soon as possible, how many kids they were going to have, and that she wanted him to have no contact with his family or any friends because she was all he needed and he was all she needed. Another straight up just said that she wanted to move out of her father's house and be taken care of. However, he did his wife on eHarmony. He'd been on there for 3 years (and that ain't cheap) and she had been on it for 3 weeks before they were matched up and started talking. He had to drive about 6 hours to go on dates with her. She was 26 and hadn't lived anywhere but with her parents. However, like my brother, she is a teacher. She teaches junior high math and he was teaching high school math and science at the time. Now he is a professor at a college and they have a baby girl. She's a bit controlling for my tastes, but she is a pleasant person none-the-less. She'd only dated a few guys before my brother. So neither of them have much experience with dating and the dynamics of people when it comes to romantic relationships. She's 28 now and she's at that stage in life/relationship experience where she thinks that you can change your significant other. You take them however they come to you and you accept every part of them or they're not the right person for you. There is no changing someone. If you want someone to change to fit you then you don't really want that person. If you try to change to be what the other person wants you to be then you're not being your authentic self. (At least in vanilla relationship. Even in kinky power exchange dynamic relationships, the submissive shouldn't be a blank slate just waiting to be molded into whom the Dominant wants the submissive to be. Because otherwise, it's not the submissive person that I care about. I'm just building someone into being who I want them to be. That's not how things really work. Someone may be submissive to one Dominant, but that doesn't mean that they're submissive to everyone. I want someone who fits me and compliments me, not someone completely dependent on me to know how to act and what to do.)

Our brother has spent the most time not living in the same town as our parents. He's had the least exposure to our father's behavior. He's done that by choice, too. He didn't want to listen to our father tell him how to live his life, so he's stayed away.

Now, me... well, I don't think that a person can be completely objective about themselves. We're all bias about ourselves: our behaviors, our thoughts, our reasons for why we do certain things, etc. I can tell you that because I never had a male who showed me or told me that they loved me that I have a hard time expressing my feelings. That because I was expected to just know what is right and do what needs to be done in order to make that happen, without ever being encouraged to do so, that I'm very big on doing things myself, without help, without outside input, without caring what others think, etc. This makes me come off as a cold and emotionally distant person. I'm actually a very loving person. I just don't know what the appropriate time is to express my pride in someone or my love for someone (platonic to romantic). In the past, it has lead me to not taking anyone else's opinion into account. So people felt like I don't listen to them or trust them, which they have every reason to think that. I certainly acted like that's the case.

It also lends me to being super hard on myself when I don't succeed to the extent that I feel like I should. It's not a matter of being a perfectionist. I care about functionality not ascetics, or more simply put, I only care if something yields the results that I want, not what it looks like/have to have things follow the exact steps I want them to. I don't care how you get from one point to another... I just want you to get the destination point. However you do it, whatever steps or detours you take to get there don't matter to me. However, if I do the same thing as someone else and it doesn't yield the results that I find acceptable and someone else gets the same results... I am very hard on myself and see myself as a failure, while at the same time feeling that the other person should be proud of whatever progress that they have made. So, if I and another person start at Point A and the acceptable end result is to be at Point D and we both end up at Point C, then I tell myself that I'm a miserable failure and worthless while telling the other person that they should proud of the progress they've made toward reaching Point D.

Those are the things I have done in the past, and sometimes still find myself doing in the present, because of my father's lack of caring and showing of emotion. They only reason I express any emotion at all is because my mother showed me how to do so. I still struggle with figuring out how to express my emotions in the way I intend them to be understood and when the right time is for me to do it. I am more of a person who shows through my actions that care and love someone. I'll be honest... I'm afraid of trusting my heart to anyone again. I'm afraid to put all my hopes, my dreams, my passions, my interests, my love, my insecurities, and my vulnerabilities in someone else's hands and saying, "This is me. All of me. I trust you with it. I trust that you know what to do with it. I trust that you will treat it with kindness and love." I'm more afraid that someone will give me themselves in the same way, because I'm afraid that I'll hurt them because I'm unsure of how to care for something so precious and that I'm not worthy of being entrusted with such a wondrous thing.

Now, that's all the background you need, and then some, in order to understand more comprehensively the following...

Classwork has become much more labor intensive, time consuming, and voluminous. It's senior level courses, so it's really to be expected. One assignment from the first class of the semester (I'm in week 2 of the second class) took me 9.5 straight hours of research and work to do the assignment, and it wasn't even the mid-term project or the final project. So, really, this was the original source of staying up later and later and going to bed later and later in the early to mid morning hours. Well, now I'm at the point of going to bed between 8 AM - 12 PM (noon) and sleeping until 6 PM - 8 PM. I'd still be going to bed at about 4 AM if I hadn't figured something out. I found that since my mother goes to bed at 8 PM - 10 PM and my father goes to bed at 11:30 PM, that I only leave my room when I get up is to pee and get water, then head straight back to my room, and do the classwork that needs doing for that time. So I don't really come out of my room until everyone is in bed. I have found this advantageous in many ways.

See, before, by the time I gotten my classwork done, checked and responded to email, and caught up on the YouTube channels that I am subscribed to my parents would be in front of the TV for the evening until it was past my bedtime. So I had many hours of many shows backed up on the DVR that I never got to watch because my parents were in front of the TV. Now, my father is on his iPad Mini and my mother is on her iPad 2 and paying no attention to the TV but my father goes absolutely ape shit if I take the remote and change the channel because he and my mother are "watching that show." Which is complete and utter bullshit. When I was on their sleep schedule, I would go in to the living room on Thursday nights and watch The Big Bang Theory, and my father had gotten into the habit of watching YouTube videos on his iPad Mini with the sound up loud enough so that he could hear it over the TV and Mom not noticing because she's busy trying to put together a puzzle with an app on her iPad 2. So, in the middle of watching TBBT, all the sudden my father would start playing a video with the sound up loud so that it was hard to filter it out from the sounds coming from the TV. So there was just no use in trying to watch it anymore. So I spent my whole day in my room. Other than using the restroom and getting water (and sometimes food) I didn't leave my room from the time I woke up until the time I went to bed. But since I don't leave my room until after Mom and Dad have gone to bed, that means that TV with the DVR wasn't being used. I could catch up on my shows! At first, it took a week of staying up until 8 AM to catch up on my TV shows. Then I realized that I didn't have to deal with Dad anymore. More than that, with my new sleep schedule, I was asleep while my parents were out for the day and awake when they were in the house. Yes, they are asleep, but if something happens, they're there while I'm awake. Before I was just left alone all day. I had no backup if something happened. I'd have to think to call Mom and wait for her to get home, all the while I'm having some crisis and alone. So there was the added bonus of being unconscious when they we're gone and awake when they're home. Even if they're asleep, they're right there! All I have to do is wake one of them up! Which is just a comforting thing to me, as odd as it may sound.

Now, I've been sleeping from 8 AM - noon until 6 PM - 8 PM for two weeks before my parents went to see... well, really they went to see their newest grandchild. My brother and sister-in-law just so happen to be there, too. About the same time (two weeks before my parents left) my mother told me that she and my father were going up to Abilene for a week. After the last time they left and I wrote Mom that whole 6 page long letter about how she doesn't see or understand how not having anyone around and being responsible for my niece, nephew, sister, and Grandma as well as Dakota and myself was just something I couldn't keep doing anymore. I couldn't take care of myself very well without my main support structure (my mother) and to be responsible for so many others, too was just too much. I'm supposed to check up on everyone else but no one checks up on me. That the last time they left it was for just shy of a month. They never called to tell me that they'd arrived at their destination, any of the time they were gone, or even when they were heading back. For all I knew, they could have died during that time, and I was so scared that was the case that I became too anxious and scared to pick up the phone to call her to see if they were alive or not because I couldn't handle it if they weren't alive.

So this last time they left, Mom called every morning or evening, when she knew I'd be winding down my morning before bed or would have been awake for at least an hour that evening. Now, my mother's boss (who she worked with when they were both teachers at the child care center they both work at now, but in the office instead of the classroom) called me once to check on me because Mom asked her to. I've known her boss since I was a small child, too, so I know she cares about me and worried about me once Mom showed her the 6 page letter I wrote last time. Of course, that was the first day they were gone. She didn't call any of the following days to see how I was because she had talked to my sister and my sister lied (as my sister does about so many things) and told my mom's boss that she (my sister) was calling me every day and checking up on me. She never called once. Not that we can expect her to do anything but lie, say what will make her look best, and then when she gets caught it does no good to confront her because she'll just stick to her lie no matter how much evidence is put in front of her.

Now, 2 weeks before they left, both Mom and Dad knew what my sleeping/waking hours were. So Mom asked her boss to pick up the niece and nephew from school and drop them off at their mother's apartment. I walk out into the living room at 7:30 PM, just after I've woken up, after having peed and was on my way to the kitchen to get water and my father stops me and says, "You know your mother and I leave tomorrow for your brother's, right?" I told him that I did know because Mom told me 2 weeks ago. He then said, "The kids need to be picked up from school, taken to their mothers, then Khole (the nephew) needs to be taken to Driver's Ed at 5 PM, his mom will be off work and pick him up from Driver's Ed, and Grandma has her Thursday afternoon lunch out and hair appointment." This is his way of letting me know what he expects me to do. It didn't matter that I have more classwork to do every day. It didn't matter that I have a life of my own that I'm living. He felt completely justified in living his life any way he wanted to and leaving his responsibilities behind, expecting me to do those things for him. He didn't even ask if I would mind or if I could do it. He can live his life any way he wants but I am not afforded that same courtesy. As far as he's concerned, I'm here for/at his convenience. He didn't even tell me about this planned trip when he knew about it 2 weeks previous to the day they were leaving, which was the next morning, so that I could juggle my schedule to take on his responsibilities, because he just expects that I'll do it because it's what he wants.

So I said, "Uh, Dad... you do realize that I'm asleep during those hours, right?" He responded with getting an angry look on his face and raising his voice (his usual fear and intimidation tactics) and says, "So does that mean that you're saying that you won't do those things." I replied with, "I'm not saying anything to you if you're going to get angry and pissy at me." His response was, "Well, when you spring something like this on me the night before the day your mother and I are leaving, I'm sure you can understand why I'm going to be angry and pissy." I said, "I'm springing this on you!? Dad, you've known for at least 2 weeks about this trip and you know that I'm asleep during those hours. This is not new information to you. You waited until the night before you're going to leave to tell me about all the things you just expect me to do because it's convenient for you to have me do those things. You're springing this on me, not the other way around." He got even louder, "So what's supposed to happen then!? Because it's not convenient for you, what... your mother and I have to cancel our trip?" I said, "You're confused. This has nothing to do with inconveniencing me. You wouldn't expect anyone else to completely flip their sleep schedule, on 12 hours notice, unless it's me. I don't know what makes you think that you have the right to live your life any way you want and pretend that I don't have a life of my own or that you expect me to do whatever you want, whenever you want like you are entitled to run my life. And just so you know, when Mom told me, 2 weeks ago, that you two were going up to Abilene and made arrangements with her boss to get the kids after school. The fact that you didn't have the foresight to make other arrangements for Grandma, because of some misappropriated sense of entitlement and privilege, is not my fault. That's all on you. Have you even thought about what you're going to have to do once I graduate, find a job, and move away? What the hell are you going to do about Grandma then!? There won't be any family members around who don't have their own lives and shit to do that will be able to take over with just a moment's notice. And speaking to that; I do have my own life and shit to do. I've done this shit for you in the past because I didn't want to listen to you yell and it's not the kids or Grandma's fault that you feel like you can drop off your responsibilities on me anytime you want to, so I saw no reason to punish them for your arrogance."

Then he started yelling for Mom to wake up because, "We have a problem. It's too inconvenient for Justin to get the kids and Grandma so we're going to have to figure something out." And he said "inconvenient" in that tone that expresses 'that word is such a false burden to him but a real burden to me and I'm saying it like I'm a spoiled child because that's how I perceive him and am trying to shame him and make him feel bad' instead of admitting that he's treated me like a robot that he can activate when he needs it and then put it away when he comes back or that he did something wrong at all. Never in his life has he ever admitted that he's been wrong without insinuating that it's because he thought he could count on that person to do something and they couldn't or wouldn't do it. You know... "I thought you weren't so immature and that I could count on you. I guess I was wrong about that." Never admitting any fault in his actions. He tried to intimidate and bully me into doing what he wanted, again, when he saw me head into the bathroom to brush my teeth and pee before bed.

We haven't really spoken since they left and have come back. Which is just fine with me. I'm not here for his convenience. I never have been. I'd just been conditioned to give in to whatever Dad wants because Mom was almost completely non-confrontational with him the entire time I was growing up. When she was confrontational, which was rare, it was behind the closed door of their bedroom where I couldn't hear it. I was just so galled at his nerve to expect me to not just juggle around the time I did classwork but to also expect me to just wake up after a few hours of sleep or not go to sleep until 6 hours after my bedtime, too.

Here's what I figured out about his actions throughout my life and the effects it's had on his family and others. He never admits that he's wrong. He never takes responsibility for taking a joke too far or saying something that he knows will hurt someone else's feelings. To him, "It was just a joke./I can't help the way they took what I said. That's their problem, not mine."

He's never had anything to do with his children on a personal level. By that I mean that he doesn't know any of us in a meaningful way. Everything that he knows about my sister is because of what my sister tells Mom and Mom tells him. He's never called my sister, even though she's never lived more than 20 miles away from him in her whole life, to chat with her and get to know about her.

In the 4 years that my brother was at UT Austin, Dad went up to see my brother graduate, otherwise Dad never saw or spoke to my brother. My brother didn't come back home during the summers. He talked Mom into forcing Dad to co-sign a lease and pay for an apartment. Since my brother has graduated, he has not lived in the same small town as Dad, except for the first year after he got married, because my brother got a job at a nearby high school, while going to Grad school to be his Masters in Math, and Bay City was the closest city with apartment complexes to that out-of-town high school. My brother has spent his entire adult life avoiding being anywhere near our father, except on holidays, and then that's just for Mom's benefit, not for Dad's. Not once in all the time since my brother graduated from UT Austin has my father picked up the phone to talk to my brother about my brother's life. The few times Dad called was when Dad needed to know something that my brother knew.

Dad's done this my entire life, but it has become so blatantly clear in the past 5 years that I've lived here. He has never asked me how my day is. He's never asked what I was up to. He's never expressed any interest in my life. There are 3 instances in which he gets off the couch and comes to my room to see me. 1) To tell me that the dog wants to go potty, 2) to tell me what responsibilities he's dropping in my lap when he and Mom want to leave town, and 3) to ask me how school's going but no matter what my response he immediately follows up with, "So, how many classes do you have left until you graduate?" (For those of you who need that last question translated, it's him saying, "I want to know how many classes you have left so that I know how long it will be until you graduate, so you can find a job, and move out of my house.")

I understand what I'd been trying to do for the last 6 months of last year. I would read something in the newspaper, online, watch a YouTube video, or share with him a TV show that I like. I realize now why I was doing it. I thought it was because I had no friends to talk about these things with and he's the only one in the house who has a chance of understanding most of my technological interests. What I was really doing was telling him about something I enjoy in the hopes that he'd enjoy it as well and we'd have something in common OR that he'd share something that he enjoys with me. I was hoping that after learning about some of my hobbies and interests that if he saw something that he thinks I might like to read or see that he'd come share that with me. It's like we're on two opposite sides of a fast moving river. I keep building half a bridge out towards him in the hopes that he'll build the other half of the bridge and connection the two pieces into a whole bridge. But every time I build my half, he shows no interest, doesn't even pretend to make an attempt to start building his half of the bridge, and without the support of his half of the bridge, my half of the bridge falls into the river and is swept away. And how many times do I have to be shown that he doesn't care before I stop trying? He's never going to be the kind of dad that I wish he were. It's just not who he is. What's the definition of "crazy?" That's when you repeat the same action over and over again but expect a different result. I've tried. I really have. It's just not going to happen.

In fact, he's never shown any interest in getting to know any of his children, ever. My sister is 42 years old and he still sometimes calls her, after Mom has told him about my sister's situation, to tell her exactly how to handle the situation. When she doesn't do what he said to do and does whatever she decided to do, he still gets mad because, to him, she's not doing the right thing. When she lived next door to my parents, the were one time that he went over to tell her what to do in a very aggressive way and when my sister didn't say that she would do what he expected her to do he got extremely angry, started yelling at her, and she said, "Dad, I'm 40 years old. I can make my own decisions. Get out and until you can treat me respect in my own house, don't come back." He was mad for a good solid week after that. Any little thing that wasn't in the place he thought it should be in the house, he'd fly off the handle and yell at Mom that whatever the object was it was in his way and she needed to put it away. Then at one point I was at my Mom's place of work, which is part of a church where he volunteered to be the interim-maintenance man until they found someone to take the job permanently. Mom and I would go out to eat for lunch a couple of time a week. We had just gotten back and he comes storming into my mother's office and asks where we went to eat. We told him and he demanded to know why we didn't invite him. I told him that every time we invite him to go with us to that place that he always says no and goes to the same hamburger restaurant for lunch that he always does. Just piddly little things pissed him off. He tried to tell one of my old therapists that he never gets upset about anything. Which, I called him on in front of the therapist and cited several examples. At which point he got upset and said, "This isn't about me. This is about you." (Redirection/Deflection)

I realized that, to Dad, we're not adults. No matter what life experiences we have or how old we get, we'll always be children who need him to tell them what to do. It's because he doesn't know anything of any depth about any of us. He has no clue what our lives have been like or what things we've experienced and understand because he's never gotten to know us. He knows little to nothing about our pasts. So he can't help but see us as naive children who need his guidance. And what's more; that's never going to change. He's never going to want to get to know any us. He doesn't see anything wrong with what he's done or what he's doing. To him, he's got life figured out and he couldn't possibly learn anything from his children. I mean, to him, his children are silly and make mistakes all the time. The things he doesn't know about or doesn't want to know about, he'll just stick his head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. The ways in which the world is changing scare him because he doesn't understand them, and instead of trying to understand them, he pretends that it has nothing to do with him and will never have any effect on his life.

And really, he oozes privilege. He's in the generation that is the highest population in the US ("The Baby Boomers"; those who were born after WWII ended and the men returned home to their wives and had many many children), he's Caucasian, he's male, he worked at the same job his entire post-graduation career (which has always been a male dominated field), he's middle class, he's Christian, and he's a cis heterosexual who's married with children. He has no clue what it's like to be a part of a minority and he doesn't want to. He doesn't know anything but privilege. As long as the status quo is kept, he's got no reason to learn anything about any minority or their struggles to be treated as equals and human. He doesn't know what it's like to have something about him that someone hates just because it's a part of who he is that he has no choice about. Yes, there are Muslim extremists who would like nothing more than to see him and everyone like him dead, but he's never actually been assaulted, attacked, beaten up, almost blown up, or almost killed. He has no frame of reference to minorities. He can just pretend they don't exist because, by and large, they have no effect on his life. It's not like he votes Democrat because he has a gay son and wants for him to be treated as an equal and be able to marry the person that he loves. He's always voted Democrat. If his gay son can get married, it doesn't change anything for him. If his gay son can't get married, it doesn't change anything for him. He's never had to fight to be considered a human being that's worthy of respect or equal treatment.

He honestly expects one of us to take him into our home when he get old and too weak to take care of himself. And none of us are going to. We all know that he's just going to become more belligerent, rude, and demanding as he gets older. My sister doesn't want to take care of her (step-)father who needs the attention of a child once her children leave the house. My brother (and sister-in-law) doesn't want him in their house. By the time Dad's can't take care of himself alone, their child will be in high school or college. It'll finally be time for them to be alone with each other again without having to keep a constant eye on their child. Neither of them want to put up with Dad's behavior or to have to take care of their father-who-is-now-a-child.

As far as me... HA! If he calls and tells me that he at the point in his life where he needs me to take him in and take care of him (because I'll be the child who makes and has the most money, assuming I don't get married and have/adopt a child with my future husband) I'll tell him to call one of his other two children and see if one of them will take him in. He'll have already called them because he knows that I want nothing to do with him. He'll tell me that I'm his last resort, that he knows we haven't always gotten along, but he's my father. To which I'll tell him that he's been a virtual stranger my entire life, he's never tried to get to know the real me, we have nothing in common but a few shared genetic markers which does not make us family, that when Mom died (which she's got so many health problems that, unless Dad's killed in an accident, she'll die first) the last remaining thing we had in common was gone, I'm not even willing to help him and my siblings pick out a nursing home for him, and not to call back again even when he's on his death bed because I have nothing more to say to him. Harsh? Sure. But he's toxic and poisonous to me. I refuse to subject myself to that kind of thing willingly if I don't absolutely have to. I've tried over and over and over again to have a meaningful relationship with him. Every time I've tried, he's made no effort to make the connection.

I'm done trying. It's never going to change and that's his loss. Unfortunately, that's also a loss for his wife and grandchildren. Hell, both of his biological parents are still alive! He's never known death to touch him (or, actually, someone he was intimately close to). His ignorance is staggering. I pity him. He's lost so much that he's never even had because he never tried in the first place.

Cleaning House (Childhood Through High School)

masterde — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 06:08:00 GMT

So, the details of my life before I was 18 (other than when I was 14) is mostly a mystery to all of you. You may know little bits of stuff but I'm doing a whole house cleaning thing with my life. The things I felt and did and why. This'll probably be a series of posts. There's too much to write in one post and I'm sure I'll run out of emotional steam well before then.

I was born on May 22nd, 1980 in Wharton, TX at a hospital that is now a mental health facility. The same group of 6 counties who've banded together that is government funded that I get my mental healthcare from. When I was a kid, I had a best friend named Meg. She was the only other kid in the neighborhood and her father and my father worked at the same chemical plant. Not that they had any reason or ever did interact with each other at work or in their private life. Meg was a tomboy through and through. We spent most of our lives outdoors playing on a trampoline or hide and go seek or what have you. We stayed friends until we started school. She went to the Catholic run school in Bay City and I went to public school. We just drifted apart.

That's when I started to play by myself in the house. I played with Transformers and Legos mostly. I watched cartoons on TV. I can remember one cartoon that was a Tom & Jerry cartoon that would illicit a different response from me than any other cartoon. Every day, from the ages of 3-10, I would hope that it would be on TV. Long story short, it was first indication that I was different from others but I didn't know why. It was a sexually arousing cartoon episode to me. Now, I also liked to play a lot like I was a dog. Which, isn't uncommon for kids to pretend to be an animal that they really like. I knew I took it further than other kids did but I was too embarrassed to talk about it. So between the cartoon foreshadowing that I am gay and kinky and the puppy play foreshadowing my puppy play (kinky version) as an adult, I just knew I wasn't like other kids.

I never asked for toys unless my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday or Christmas. I thought that if I asked for something at any other time of the year that I wouldn't get it. We went school shopping a few weeks before school and whatever shirts my mom picked out and shoes I picked out was all I got for the year. I thought if I asked if anything more that Mom or Dad would get mad at me and think I was selfish. So instead of be disappointed because they thought less of me, I chose instead to be disappointed because I didn't ask for things I would have really liked to have had. I just thought I wasn't worth spending money on because I was stupid and worthless and useless and a disappointment.

My father, as many of you know, wasn't a great parent. He was an excellent provider but that's all he's ever been to me. Someone who pays for things. He never played with my siblings or myself. As a child, he would go to work before I got up for the day or for school, he'd get home in the evening, go sit in his chair, turn on the TV, fall asleep very quickly, Mom would wake him for dinner, we'd eat as a family at the dinner table, he'd go back to his chair and fall back asleep, then Mom would wake him up to go to bed. Stellar father, right? As I said, he was just someone who paid for things. He has never been special to me in my life. He's always been a supporting character in the play that is my life. He's never been a leading character. We're distant and don't speak to each other very often, even now. Now, when I got older, he ended up traveling every week for work. He never missed a band or choir concert and he was at every football game that my brother and then I performed at as part of the marching band. He said "I love you" once in my life before I graduated from high school. He said "I'm proud of you" on the day that I graduated from high school. That's been it. That's been the extent of his showing affection to me. Whenever I brought home a report card in junior high or high school my father would ask why I went down 1 point in a specific class and what I was going to do to bring that grade up. Nevermind that I'd gone up 3+ points in my other classes. That didn't matter to him. So this just reinforced that I was a failure and worthless and a disappointment. So, by my Sophomore year of high school I stopped bringing my report card to my Dad and he stopped asking after the first few times I gave him an excuse.

My mom has always been part of the foundation of my life (except for the 3 years I was in LA). She cleaned the house, top to bottom, every day. Before I started to go to school, she made me take a nap after lunch. This was when she watched soap operas on TV. I'd often get out of bed and sneak across the hallway, where part of it was exposed to the living room where Mom was watching TV but she'd also be cross-stitching so she didn't often see me cross the gap that led from the living room to the hallway between my brother and my shared bedroom and my sister's bedroom. I was fascinated by her panties. (Foreshadowing anyone?) I liked how they felt on my skin and how they were, and I didn't know this is what I thought at the time but I figured it out around puberty, sexy. Sure, sometimes Mom caught me in my sister's room, going through her underwear drawer, but she just told me not to do it again and to go back and take my nap. My Mom tried to make me think it was wrong of me to do, and I did feel wrong doing it, but at the same time, it felt right to me. When I was in, probably 2nd or 3rd grade, my Mom made the choice to go to work at childcare center she still works at. At the time she was doing half-day (mornings) 2 year old classes as a teacher. She went all out, too. There have been many teenagers who were about to go off to college who've contacted her to tell her that she was the reason they had a solid foundation for school and was their favorite teacher. She even taught both of the children of my social worker. Now, this next part is child logic so keep that in mind, but when she told me that she was going to start working and that she'd be teaching 2 year olds I felt so betrayed and hurt and sad. She had been a stay at home mom my whole life. She had been for my sister's childhood. She had been for my brother's childhood (well, he was 11 so he was still pretty young). I felt like I wasn't good enough of a child and so she felt like she needed to take care of other people's children. (Thus began the lifelong battle I've had with feelings of worthlessness and being a disappointment.) Now, she was home every day and had a snack ready for me before I got home. So it's not like I saw less of her, I just felt like I wasn't enough for her. As I got older, around 11, she would work at the childcare center in the morning and at the Hallmark store during the afternoons/evenings. By this time, my sister had moved out and my brother had taken up residence in her old bedroom so I had a room to myself.

My sister is 9 years older than me. She and I didn't have anything in common growing up. There was a rule in our house; if you failed even one class, you were grounded for the next 6 weeks (Our public school have six 6 week periods. You've given a grade every 6 weeks that's the average what you got on your classwork and quizzes and exams. Then at the end of the year, all 6 of those averages are averaged together and you get your final grade. So you can fail a 6 weeks and still pass the class.) and you're ungrounded only if you're passing ALL your classes, not just the one you failed the last 6 weeks. Well, my sister didn't care about school. So she failed at least one class every 6 weeks for years. I'll be honest, I didn't really think about the fact that I had a sister or even remember that I have a sister most of the time. I saw her for 20-30 minutes a day at the dinner table. That was it. My sister got married when I was 13 or 14, I think. She's divorced with 2 kids now. I refer to her as The Queen of Poor Life Choices. She hasn't been single in all the years since the divorce for more than a few months at a time. She's just a mess and needs to stop chasing down a man and getting into relationships. Not long ago, she embezzled $18000 and my parents paid $32000 back in what she took plus interest and penalties to keep her from going to prison for 4+ years. Hell, she's 42 now and her boyfriend is 21. Now, you tell me exactly what in the hell they have in common and how my sister thinks this is a relationship that's going anywhere or going to last!? He's 21. There's no way he's done sowing his wild oats (partying and sleeping around). But she's an adult and so is he. So if they want to do whatever it is that they're doing, that's their business. My sister has always been someone who's not thought about the future, consequences, and always just done whatever she wants. It's never mattered to her how it effects others. And she is a pathological liar. It's one of the top 5 bad behaviors of someone from a broken/dysfunctional home. She lies about shit that doesn't even matter. She lies about little shit, like that she went to the grocery store, left her phone in her purse, left her purse in her car, and just took her wallet in, and that's why she didn't answer her phone over a 4 hour period. She was with her boyfriend and probably drinking, which... it's her life and she can do whatever the hell she wants... why lie? She could just say she was busy. But no, she has to make up an elaborate story about things. She tells us all these wild stories about her boss and what she's doing (which are against labor laws). And every day it's something new. She can't live without being a drama queen. We've all just learned that we have to take everything she says to us with a grain of salt (be skeptical or non-trusting).

My brother has always been a very difficult person to deal with. When we were kids, he'd always want me to play with him and, being that he's 4 years older, he was always smarter and physically bigger than me. So I'd lose a lot. At which point he'd tell me how stupid I was and how much of a loser I was (And this is part of the continuation of the lifelong battle I've had with feelings of worthlessness and being a disappointment.) Now, in the cases where I learned how the game worked and was able to win, he'd get very angry. So angry that he'd beat me up... and then tell me what a stupid I was and how much of a loser I was. Bruises were common. Bleeding happened from time to time. So he wasn't a good winner or a good loser. So I starting to stop trying and just let him win because if he won, he'd still make me feel bad, but at least he wouldn't beat me up. Then he caught on to the fact that I wasn't trying my hardest to beat him. Then he told me that if he ever caught me letting him win that he'd beat the shit out of me. So I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't.

Now, he always anxiety issues, not that we knew what anxiety issues were or any other psychological issues were. All during elementary school, when Mom would let him out at school he started crying. One year, he got so emotionally upset and hysterical that Mom had to take up to school and go to the office and get a copy of his locker combination, before school started back up after Winter Break, because he was afraid he'd have forgotten his locker combination and then he wouldn't be able to get his books and then he'd get in trouble for not bringing his books to class and he wouldn't be able to do his homework. Now, could he have just gone up to the office and gotten a copy of the combination himself? Yes. But he didn't want to disappoint anyone. Another of the top 5 bad behaviors of a child of a broken/dysfunctional family is that we are very understanding when someone else does something bad or that hurts us but if we do the same thing then we ruthlessly judge ourselves as a horrible, bad person who doesn't deserve to exist and we punish ourselves in ways that we know will make us feel the worst. He still does this. I still do this.

Then he went off to university at UT Austin for Chemical Engineering (which is what our father is, which is why my brother chose that major, trying to make Dad proud of him.) He didn't go to class as often as he should have. (anxiety) He went more than half the time but there were some classes that he showed up on the day of the review for a test and then for the day of the test. He'd make a 40 on the test and he didn't make his first B until his Junior year of high school. Why is that relevant? Well, he almost had a nervous breakdown when he got a B on his report card in high school. He'd already had one nervous breakdown and had to be institutionalized. Seriously. But at university level, in some majors or just in certain classes, they grade on a curve. So if he made a 40 on the test and the person who made the highest grade made a 46 then that 46 became a 100 and my brother's 40 became a 94. And this would happen on every test. Which, they're passing people who don't know the material and sending them out into the world to jobs where they're working with dangerous chemicals? Really!?

Now, after his 2nd year of university, Mom and Dad got him his own apartment off campus and gave him Dad's old pick-up truck to drive to and from campus in. My brother made no friends at university in 4 years. None. He never went to social events. He was never involved in student activities on campus. He began to eat nothing but cheap frozen pizzas and pizza pockets and burritos. So he gained a lot of weight, which he still has, only he has more now than back then. He also spent the majority of his time playing his Playstation. Thus began his major coping technique when it comes to dealing with stress, anxiety, feelings, etc. He just escaped into a fantasy world where he was a very important person who could do amazing things and shaped events of the world single-handedly. Basically, the person he really wished he could be. He still does this. He had 1 girlfriend in high school, Lark, who was a Mormon and broke up with him near the end of their Senior year because she thought that someone only ever falls in love once and since my brother wasn't a Mormon that she couldn't really be in love with him and couldn't let herself develop stronger feelings for him. Broke his heart. He saw one girl at University. I say saw, not girlfriend, because it didn't last very long and she was... well, crazy. I only know her as Psycho Hose Beast. That's all he's ever called her. She was one of those who wanted to make her entire life about him and for him to make his entire life about her. She didn't want him to meet her sister because she thought that her sister was so beautiful that my brother would leave her for her sister if he saw her. This girl had issues.

Then from the ages of 22 until 36, he didn't date. Not even once. He worked, came home, made unhealthy food, watched TV, played games on a console or computer, went to bed, got up the next morning, and started that cycle. Now, he ended up working for a company that made software for chemical plants. Then, when the tech bubble burst, he lost that job. He decided to get his Alternative Teacher's Training Certificate. Which would allow him to teach. So he ended up getting a job a smaller town than Bay City at their high school as a math, physics, and chemistry AP. But he let himself get too close to the lives of his students. So he ended up leaving there after 7 years because he couldn't deal with it anymore. During this time he was finally diagnosed as Bipolar and got on meds. He ended up moving back to Bay City and going to work for a high school in a city not far away. Basically teaching the same things. He had been on E-Harmony for 2 years and had met someone who lived about 5 hours away but he went on dates with her and stayed at her parent's house on their couch. They got married after about a year.

This is when he went back to university, The University of Houston or U of H, and got his Masters of Arts in Math. Now, his job paid for the degree and he wouldn't have to pay them back if he worked there for at least 2 years after he got his Masters. Which he did, but for those 2 years, he taught 2 AP (Advanced Placement) classes of his own, and then spent his time at the Alternative School (for kids who have behavioral problems, got caught with drugs or alcohol on the regular school campus, and people who just weren't good at school and needed to know just the basics to take care of themselves in the real world but weren't going to do anything but work fast food or retail). Which, why they had someone with a Masters in Math teaching the kids who were problems or dumb seemed like a waste of his degree. He should have been teaching more math classes. But whatever. Right about then the woman that he had been dating for a few years and he got married and moved in together. All she could find was a long-term substitute teaching position (she's a math teacher, but for junior high school, not high school). So they moved about 45 minutes away to a bigger city where they both found jobs. He took over teaching a few overflow classes at the local college. They were math classes that are called "Developmental Math" classes. These are classes that teach students who didn't pay attention in high school or had been out of school for so long that they'd forgotten a lot of the math that wasn't your basic, everyday math. So he was teaching high school math to adults at a college.

Then last year he decided that he wanted to teach at the college level and leave high school teaching behind. He wasn't happy with having to deal with Helicopter Parents (parents who were too involved in their kids lives and hovered around them like a helicopter and if their child didn't get a good grade then the parent would descend upon him and ask why he wasn't teaching his class in a way that their child could understand and thought their child was just so intelligent and could do no wrong and basically robbed their child of any chance to learn to be responsible for themselves and their actions). They moved from SE Texas to N Texas and now have a 2 month old child. He's teaching developmental math at a college and she's been on maternity leave since the beginning of school and will start back in when the next 6 weeks starts. Now, he has Bipolar Disorder. Which explains his mood swings as a kid and the high levels of anxiety (along with the child of a dysfunctional home issues).

To continue with me. I reached high school and that 8 months happened when I was 14-15 years old. Which really fucked me up, but I repressed it very quickly. I couldn't deal with the reality of it so my mind did the only thing it could do, which was block access to those memories and give me some vague false memories of that time. I never really took school very seriously. I mean, my brother was just this super smart person and I would never be able to do as well as him so I didn't even try. Besides, I was damaged, I was "different," worthless, and such. So I never tried in school to excel. I did what I needed to in order to pass. I never studied. I still got A's and B's, but I never thought of myself as anything special. Quite to the contrary. I was ordinary and nerdy and into computers. I didn't want to be noticed but I found it very easy to manipulate my friends.

I got away with saying horrible things to them because they didn't know how to respond to someone who would say something like that to them. One of my friends was in the dance corp at our high school. She was 4'10", if that. She had stubby little fingers. She had very strong and pronounced thigh muscles from dancing. She was very beautiful. She said one day, to me, that she was fat. She was anything but fat. She was very fit. So I said, "Yes. Yes, you are," and then mooed at her like a cow. Every time after that I wouldn't say "Hi" or "Hello" to her when I greeted her. I would moo at her. What an asshole thing to do, right!? She had a boyfriend our senior year who was a year younger than us and he was very tall and lanky and his ears kinda had a slightly elven point to them. I was in pre-calculus with him and he sat in front of me. I gave him the nickname of "Keebler" as in the cartoon Keebler Elves who live in a tree and make delicious cookies that you can buy at the grocery store. I thought it was cleaver and it was meant to be something affectionate. I never gave anyone a nickname before then! I found out years later, that he really hated that nickname and was very upset and unhappy with me for it. He never gave me any indication that he didn't like it. But again, I was being an asshole. Unintentionally, but still an asshole.

I started smoking when I was 14. That didn't stop until I was 24. I started out with just having one on the weekends when I was hanging around friends, when I wasn't being tortured by those senior boys. Then, when I hit 18, and was legally able to smoke and buy cigarettes, it was one of the first things I did on my 18th birthday. That's part of how I dealt with my anxiety.

Sidebar: About this time, (age 12-16) two things happened at once.

Star Trek: The Next Generation first appeared on TV and I just happened to be watching the right channel at the right time to catch it. I loved it! I didn't like the original Star Trek. But ST: TNG... that was a whole different creature. I became a Trekkie at that moment. I watched all the ones to follow from Deep Space 9 (ST: DS9) to Voyager (ST: V). I even started watching Enterprise, the one where they took it back to before the time of the original Star Trek. It flagged early on and while it did rally and end up being a rather good, if not mostly overlooked and dismissed. I stopped watching it part way the first season but I did just happen to be watching during the last season of it and it was really good. Star Trek: TNG was set in a time where poverty and hunger and homelessness and money had been eliminated on Earth and many of the inhabited worlds in The United Federation of Planets, started and based in San Francisco, Earth. There were other empires and such that were just as big or bigger but they pretty much contained only species of people. In the Federation, anyone who was born on a member world or in a member world's ship in space could apply to be in Star Fleet and was made up of hundreds of different races. Do you know what that said to me? That said to me that the future will be better, everyone will be included no matter where you're from or your differences, and there will be fighting and war between nations/empires but there will be a place where everyone belongs. This was around the time that I was hitting puberty, perhaps a bit before, but I knew I was different and I wanted to belong and be normal just like everyone else. These people told me that no matter what or who you are, you will find acceptance. I needed to hear that message and understand it as it pertained to me being gay as the series progressed.

The second thing that happened was that my father cheated on my mom with a co-worker during a business trip. What could be more awkward? My parents and woman and her husband all go to the same church and had known each other for over a decade. What could be even more awkward? The husband of the woman my father cheated with... he was the Sunday School teacher that told me that if you're gay that you're an abomination and that you are going Hell. Want even more awkward? I was in High School with both of their daughters. The crowing moment? My mom kicked my dad out and he came back to the house when she was at work and asked me if I would support him in reconsiling. I was still young and he used me as leverage against my mother.

One daughter was one year older than me and a Senior when I was a Freshman. She was in the dance corp and popular. It's not like we were in the same circles but I felt like I had to say something to her. So I caught her coming out of the one class I knew she had and when and asked if I could talk to her privately for a moment. Now, I had a bad haircut and big glasses and had not come into my looks. There was no reason for her talk to me or even acknowledge me. But she told her friends to go on without her and that she'd catch up with them. I thanked her for taking the time to listen and said, "I know that there's bad things and weird things going on between our parents. I don't know what's going on in your house but my mother has kicked my father out. This isn't our mistake but it does effect us both because it's our parents that did something they shouldn't have. I just don't want you think I condone what my father did. You can judge your mother however you want, I don't know enough about that end of the situation to judge her. I don't want us to pass each other in the halls and do our best to avoid each other's eyes or get a bad feeling our stomach when we see each other because of our parents mistakes. I'm sorry this happened... to all of us... and I hope that you can move past whatever bad feelings you have because it wasn't our faults." She agreed and said thank you for being brave enough to approach her and then she hugged me and walked away.

The younger daughter I was in band with for my last two year of band. By the time I had met her, it had been 2 or 3 years since our parents cheated with each other. I just walked up to her and asked her if she knew who I was. She nodded her head, but like me, she had a guarded expression. I said, "What happened in the past between our two families is in the past. Neither of us had anything to do with what our parents did. I don't expect us to become friends or anything like that. I just want you to know I don't hold any grudges against any of us and I hope you can do the same." She said that she understood and thanked me.

Main Story: I played off being very confident. And in certain arenas of my life I was very confident. Band and Choir were where I shined. I started band in junior high school and I continued on through high school. We had the best band director ever. She was a hard ass, Jewish, Lesbian, and didn't take shit from anyone. As one would imagine, she didn't play political games very well. So the band budget was never what it should have been for the awards and contests we won and the places around the country that we were invited to perform. But my Junior year, she was replaced. I decided to give the new guy a chance. Well, he sucked. So I didn't do band my Senior year. When I was a Freshman, the band director came in one morning (band was always the first class of the day) about 2 weeks into the school year and pointed at 4 of us males and said, "You're in choir, too now. They need more men. They do an after school practice every Wednesday at 5 PM. You'll show up to those practices. Do ya'll understand?" She was intimidating and respected by those who had been in band with her for more than a year so we all agreed to do it. My Senior year, since I wasn't in band, I took up choir as a class, which was the last class of the day. So when I got my Letterman's Jacket I double lettered in Band and Choir. All I needed was to have lettered in drama and I would have had the gay triad!

After my Freshman year, I drifted away from the friends I had made my Freshman year and started hanging out with 1 Senior bisexual girl and 2 Junior straight girls. It wasn't until my Senior year that I got reacquainted with my Freshmen year friends. Now, I had mood swings, but it was just chalked up to teenage hormones. I also had a few visual hallucinations. I kept that to myself. My Junior year, I was in my room, the one my sister used to have and the one my brother moved to during high school and then I moved to during high school, my parents called it "The Room That Eats Children." None of us really came out of that room, except for dinner or to go to school or, once we were of driving age, to go hang out with friends. So our parents saw very little of us. Tangent, sorry.

Junior year and Senior year, I had gotten into the habit of taking my dinner into my bedroom and waiting until my parents had gone to bed and then dump the food in the big garbage bin in the garage, where it would be so little compared to the size of bin that it wouldn't be noticed. My Junior year, I ate off campus with my 2 remaining female Senior friends. My Senior year, I would go home for lunch and eat a hand full of doritos and drink a glass of water and that's all I'd have all day long. Certainly not enough to keep a growing teenager going. That went on for about 3 months. I became anorexic.

I was in my bedroom one evening, as usual, and I took off my shirt because I was going to change into a nicer one because I was going out and my mom walked into my room without knocking. She took one look at my chest and gasped. She said, "Justin! I can see every one of your ribs!" Then she came up and started to feel on my upper torso. She said, "I can feel every one of your ribs! You have no fat on you at all! What's wrong?! Are you sick?!" I said I was fine but she insisted that I go to my pediatrician. My mother made an appointment for me on that Friday after school and she, my father, and I were sitting in an exam room with my pediatrician. He was probably a 70 year old man. He said I was dangerously underweight and he thought that if I had gone any more than 2 more weeks like I had been going that I would have collapsed at school. He prescribed me an anti-depressant, Wellbutrin (which was brand new then), something for the acid reflux, Prevacid (which was also brand new then and only available by prescription), told my mother to start making me drink a protein shake for breakfast (you know the kind with, like, 3000 calories in them and taste horrible), and told me that he wanted to see me again in 3 days.

It was during the middle of the school day, so I left school without signing myself out because I wasn't old enough to sign myself out anyway, and went to my pediatricians office. When he got me into an exam room he said that he knew that I was a teenager and that there were some things that I might not want my parents to know so he had scheduled this appointment when he knew my mother and father wouldn't be able to be there. He said that he knew that there was something wrong and that I could tell him because he couldn't help me unless I talked to him. After crying for a few minutes I dried my eyes and told him that I was gay. He let out a big breath and said the almost absolute worst things he could have said. Which was, "Well, you're going to graduate from high school this year and you'll go off to college. Focus on getting your degree and once you've got a job then you can explore whether or not you really are gay." WFT!? Obviously it was killing me now! How on Earth he thought I could go another 4-5 years living like that without committing suicide by starvation or more immediate means is beyond me!

A few weeks later I went around to each of my friends separately and told them. I started with the 2 female friends I had gotten to know again since dropping them after Freshman year. One said that she wasn't surprised but that she didn't have a problem with it. The other one said that they all knew and had discussed it. I asked her, if they had known, why didn't they tell me, because that would have saved me a lot of pain and suffering. She just said they were waiting for me to come to them and tell them.

Sidebar: Now, one friend I'd had for a very long time. He and his parents when to my parent's church. I did at the time I met him. I met him in Sunday School but we never became friends in the years we had seen each other. Then his mother died suddenly from a blood clot getting into her brain while he was in the living room with her. She was alive and then the next moment she was dead. We were about 8 years old and my parents told me that I was going to invite him over to play. I didn't want to because I didn't know him and he was weird. I had no idea it was because his mom had died and my parents were trying to make sure he had a friend to talk to. He didn't tell what had happened until we were about 11. Then, after I had hit puberty I knew I was gay but I wasn't ready to admit it to myself. That year at church the Sunday School teacher, for the time, brought up the topic of homosexuality. It was a short, "Homosexuality is an abomination unto God and they're going to Hell." That's when I decided that Christianity wasn't for me. This male friend from church and I didn't talk after that, until Freshman year.

Back to the main story: I went to the male friend that I had made Freshman year and told him and he took it pretty well. He said that he wasn't comfortable with the idea but he wasn't going to treat me differently. Finally I had just my one last male friend, the friend I'd known the longest, to tell. I went over to his house and his dad was still at work. His dad was a hardcore Right-wing Republican Christian. I knew that my friend had a very strong faith and I was afraid of how it was going to go. I sat down with him and told him that I was gay and he looked at me and said, "I'm mad at you." I immediately went to get up because I thought that it was just going to go downhill from there and that was a train wreak that I'd just as soon avoid. He got up and grabbed me by the shoulder and jerked me around and said, "I'm mad at you, but not because you're gay and didn't tell me the moment that you knew. I'm mad at you because I'm the last one you told. We've known each other for 10 years. I told you all about my mom dying and how that made me feel and you wait until you've told all our other friends before you tell me!" I was floored. This was not what I had expected. I said, "So you're okay with me being gay?" He said, "Well, I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it. I know what I was brought up to believe but I also know that I've known you for a long time, and you've been gay the whole time, so why should I think you're different now when it's been the same you this whole time. Give me some time but it'll be okay." I only talked to him one other time. That was to use him as an alibi for when I spent the night with my boyfriend.

Then I went to tell my Mom. I knew that this wasn't going to go well. So I told I was bisexual because that way she could still think that I could meet a nice girl would I'd marry. But you she asked me point blank, "Are you just saying your bisexual to spare my feelings or are you really gay?" I told her I was really gay. She cried. She told me she was afraid of the world I was stepping into. There were people who would kill me rather than let someone gay live. Now, she had never had any interaction with anyone who was gay, that she knew of. She thought it was all queeny young men who slept around or older gay men who had bushy mustaches and who tricked young men into their beds or who wore leather and beat young men that they confused into taking their abuse and certainly that men couldn't fall in love like straight people did and she was sad that I'd never know what love was like.

I told her that I didn't want her to tell Dad. I wasn't ready for him to know. In fact my father and I were in an epic battle of wills. He had been telling me since I was 16 and could drive to go and do this or go and get this. I finally told him, "If you'd like me to do something then you ask me to do it. I may or may not do it but I will not take orders anymore." He, of course, didn't listen and it took him 5 times in a row of telling me to go do/get something and me telling him no before he started yelling at me. At that point I said, "I know you're trying to intimidate me into doing what you want by yelling at me but I'm not getting into yelling matches with you. In fact, any time you start yelling, I'm going to walk away from you and go into my bedroom and don't follow me because the conversation is over." I'm surprised the top of his head didn't come off. His face was redder than I'd ever seen it. After a few moments he got his feet back under him and started yelling again. I said, "What did I say would happen if you started yelling at me? I'm out." I walked into my bedroom and shut the door. Now, any rational parent would understand that their child just asserted their individuality and that their relationship needed to change. He did start asking me if I'd do things and when he did I'd smile and say, "Sure." That didn't last too long and he reverted back to telling me what he wanted me to do/get. I started telling him "no" again. Made him mad every time. Made him start yelling every time. And I walked away from him while he ranted and would go into my room every time.

My father did change tactics. He started telling other people that I would do things for them. This was his way of getting me to do what he said to do without it being said by him. So people would call up, adult people, and say, "Your father said that you'd be willing to help me do some roof repair. I need to get it done this weekend. My address is [insert address here]. How about you be here at 7 AM?" I was honestly stumped because here were people who were strangers that were expecting and relying on my help. I felt like I couldn't tell them no. I would have felt like a heel. I told him that he needed to stop volunteering me for things. He did not stop. Eventually I put a stop to that one summer.

One year he signed me up to work at the county museum with kids during the summer. He had told me that he had volunteered me and that I was to be there at 7 AM and it would go on for 2 weeks. I just said, "Okay." So, the next day came and I was getting dressed to go visit with my friends and the phone rings. My parents were at work so I pick up the phone. A woman on the other end of the line said, "Umm, this is [insert name here] from the Matagorda County Museum. Your father said that you'd be helping us with the child's program this summer." I said very calmly and smoothly, "Yeah, my dad keeps volunteering me for things and I told him that he needed to stop doing that. I'm sorry that my dad doesn't listen and made you think that I had consented to offer my help this summer but he didn't. I'm sure this puts you in a bind and I'm sorry about that but my dad has to learn that he can't keep doing things like this. Good luck with your summer program." And I hung up the phone.

Then I left to go hang out with friends and when I got home my dad was there all red and angry and shouting about how I made him look bad and like a liar. I just calmly said, "No, dad. You made yourself look bad and like a liar. I told you to stop volunteering me for things without asking if it's something I'm willing to do. You have no one to blame but yourself." I then walked past him and into my bedroom and closed the door. Within 15 seconds the door flew open and slammed against the wall beside it and dad came in and grabbed my shirt collar and started poking me, repeated, in the chest ranting about being lazy and ungrateful, and how I was going to do what he said from now on. I smiled at him and said, "I hope that you've left a bruise with that finger poking because then I'll have something to show CPS (Children's Protective Services) when they show up." His mouth dropped open, looked like a deer in the headlights, and he almost ran out of my room.

Funny sidebar: About 10 minutes later Mom came into my room and told me that Dad was upset and she wanted me to come with her so she could understand what was going on and talk about what needed to be done. I was 16 or 17 years old and this was the first time my mother had ever gotten in the middle of anything. So I follow her into my parent's bedroom and perch my ass up against her dresser and mirror thingy and crossed my arms and looked disinterested. She looked at Dad and said, "Now what happened?" I shit you not, funniest thing I've EVER seen in my life, my dad stomped his foot and whined, like a 5 year old, "Janet, he told me 'no.'" I just started laughing. I said, "Are you serious with this? Who's the adult here? Because you're behaving like a child who isn't getting his way. You want me to take you seriously but you whine and pout when things don't go exactly the way you want them to. I'm going to give you the same advice you've given me all my life: 'Suck it up. Be a man.'" And then I walked out and went back into my bedroom.

So, that's why I didn't want her to tell Dad. We didn't have a good relationship and I could only see him using it as ammo against me. But, of course, she did tell him. Now, by this point I had moved back into my childhood bedroom because my Senior year, I had talked my parents into buying me a computer and getting dial-up internet. You know, to help me do homework. *eyeroll* The computer didn't fit in the room I was in so I moved back into the old bedroom. I got into IM'ing on ICQ and made gay friends. He came into the room and he sat on my bed while I was chatting with a few people and cleared his throat and when I didn't look at him he decided to go ahead and say his peace anyway. He said, "You're mom told me that you're gay. I want you to know that it doesn't change anything. You're still my son. I still love you."

I stopped typing and turned around in my chair and looked at him considering things for a few moments and said, "You know what Dad, I wasn't ready to tell you. Mom decided to ignore my wishes. So, this is all I can think to say to you now. You don't know me. You don't know anything about me. You've never taken an interest in my life. You bark orders at me like I'm a child and I should just get up and do whatever it is your whim tells you that you want done. When that stopped working, you started volunteering me without asking so that I couldn't say no without looking like I'm an asshole. Never once have you asked me how my day is going. You only criticize my grades or my life. You never give any praise. You've never once said that are proud of me. You've only said that you love me twice, including just now. That's not love. You've never shown me that you love me. But you want to come in here and sit down and tell me that it's okay with you that I'm gay, like I need your permission for anything. No. I'm not having it. I can honestly say, Dad, I don't love you."

This is the one time I've seen my father show an extreme emotion other than anger. I watched coldly as he curled up on my bed, in the fetal position, and he started whaling and sobbing. After a few minutes, he crawled off my bed and left my bedroom still crying. A few moments later Mom walked into the room and said, "What happened? What did you say? You're dad's crying so hard that he can't tell me what's going on." I looked at her, shrugged my shoulders, and told her, "I told him the truth." Then I turned back around and continued chatting. Years later I told Mom what I said.

During the latter half of my Senior year, I had a "boyfriend." I only put that in quotes because, really, it was sex. He was the only other person out of the closet at the high school. He happened to be a Freshmen. He was 14 and I was 17. Which means that the sex was legal because I wasn't 18+ years old. It would have been illegal, with me be 17 and him being 14, if I had been in a position of authority (his work boss) or had any control over his life. But I didn't so it was all kosher. I had seen him during the first half of my Senior year in SAC (no idea what it stands for but it's where they send the kids who misbehave or are a disruption in the classroom for the day or a few days). I thought he was was very cute but I wasn't out yet and I didn't know exactly how to talk to him when he was in trouble. I was in SAC as the SAC Student Aid. Which, really, the job consisted of me sitting at a small desk with a big dot matrix printout of all the info of every in the high school. What I did with this big ass binder was to use it to look up student's name and their address, hand address an envelope for each person who was in SAC that day, that I got from a list from the SAC Monitor/Teacher, and put a piece of paper in the envelope that had the student's name on it and said that they were in SAC that day, for what reason, and what day they would return to their normal classes. That would take, maybe, 15 minutes. Then I'd put my head down on the desk and rest until the bell rang for me to go to my next class.

Once I hit the second half of my Senior year, I talked the Choir teacher into letting me be her Student Aid. So I was there for the shitty choir practice (next to last class period) and run off copies of sheet music and sit around doing a lot of nothing and then stay there for the good choir practice (last class period). So that was kinda nice. The latter half of my school day was English IV and then goofing off. Pretty sweet deal. It was about a month or so into the second semester and one of the girls in the crappy choir class, who was so white trash that it was just sad had taken to making friends with me. She just thought it was so cool that a Senior guy would talk to her. She flirted, which I didn't encourage. One day I was sitting in the middle of the choir room and I looked up when I heard the door open and people coming in and I saw this white trash girl walk in and then someone grab her arm. Then that kid from SAC walked in and looked at me briefly and passed the white trash girl a folded piece of paper. You know how you folded things in high school. All pretty and shit. She walked up to me and she looked nervous and then all at once she thrust the folded paper at me and said, "I'm so sorry that I'm giving this but my friend asked me to and I totally don't think you are but please don't be mad at me or my friend." I just took the paper and smiled at her and said, "Okay," and put the paper in my back pocket. Then class started so I sang the bass or baritone part of the music so that the class (nothing but girls) would know what the song would sound like if there were guys singing. I went home and I had totally forgotten about the folded piece of paper until I took my wallet out of my back pocket to set on my dresser. When I did, I saw something white drop to the floor. I picked it up. I told myself that he could have no idea that I was gay, too, and even if he did, he couldn't do anything to my reputation. He was a known troublemaker and I had never once been to the office ever in my school career.

I opened it and it told me that that he'd seen me in the SAC room before and when I wasn't there for the second semester he wondered what had happened to me. Then his friend (white trash girl) had been talking about this dreamy Senior guy who was the Choir Aid and he realized that she was describing me to him. That he had wondered for a few days if he should take a chance and get a note to me. He said that he didn't want me to be offended but he thought I was really attractive and I had never given him a dirty look or a look that made him feel like he was worthless or bad and he appreciated it. That if I treated white trash girl even half as nicely as she claimed that I did that she was lucky to know me and he wished that he did, too. I had to figure out how to talk to him without being overt at school. What if I didn't approach him at school? I made my plan and set it into motion.

I told the choir teacher the next day that if she didn't have anything important for me to do that I'd like and go spend the day as the SAC Student Aid because I knew that I had left the SAC Monitor/Teacher with only one SAC Aid and they didn't always have time to get all the envelopes addressed. I knew this because the SAC Monitor/Teacher had seen me and told me that he missed having me around because I was so efficient and easy to work with So the choir teacher said that was fine. I went to the SAC room and asked if the SAC Monitor/Teacher if he could use my help for the day. He smiled and said that he did and that they were at least one day behind on sending letters to parents. So I sat down and started working on the envelopes. I remembered his name because he had signed the bottom of the letter and I'd seen his name often enough to have remembered it anyway. While I was writing address on envelopes I took a moment to take a piece of paper out of my backpack, look up his address, put the paper away in my backpack, and checked to make sure I wasn't seen.

So after school, I went home and stayed around until after dinner. Then I got into The Vampiric Mini-Van of Undeath (my name for my van) and drove over to his place and knocked on the door that was closest to the dirt and gravel driveway. I didn't know what I was going to say to his parents if they answered the door but I hoped that he'd open it... and he did. He had a look of shock and utter disbelief on his face. I gave him an award winning smile and said, "Mind if I come in?" He backed up and didn't speak. The door lead into his bedroom where he had a water bed and a computer and not much else. A door led from that room into another bedroom which was his grandmother's. On another wall there was another wall that led into the house proper. That's where his great-grandparents lived. So for his grandmother to get from her bedroom to the main house she had to go thought his room. Not perfect but I could work with that. I said, "I'd noticed you, too, and had been wondering how I was going to get to know you better if I had no way of getting you in private. It's not like we hang in the same social circles or are in the same class, so we wouldn't have any classes in common or even typically be in the same part of the building as each other while at school. So I decided that I'd go into the SAC room and look up your address and I'm come here in person." He said, "Yo... you noticed me!?" I said, "Sure I did. You're really cute! How could I not notice?" He blushed such a pretty pink/red color. That just made me smile. Which in turn flustered him even more and he didn't know what to do or say. I asked him if he minded if I sat on the edge of his bed. He didn't say anything so I smiled at him and sat down. He made a face like he was having an inner monologue where he was telling himself that he was being such a little kid and he needed to snap out of it. I laughed and patted the bed next to me and he sat down.

I put my hand on top of his and he looked up at me with a goofy, sweet smile. I started talking about random shit and trying to put him at ease. What I really wanted to do was kiss him but I had never kissed another guy before and only kissed one girl before that! So finally I said, "You know, I'm pretty smart. I could help you with your homework if you need it." He didn't say anything and I took my hand off of his and he said, "Yea! I'm not so good at math! You could help me with that." I was feeling very bold. I told him that was my specialty. He got his textbook and homework out and I moved to the center of his bed. When he turned around and saw where I was sitting his eyes got bigger but he didn't show any other sign of anxiousness or surprise. He joined me and he sat down very close to me. The water bed moved in such a way as to knock us into each other. I was 6'0" tall and he was probably 5'6"-5'7". He was very slim and I wasn't exactly muscular, but I let my body go a little loose and let gravity do it's work. I "accidentally" fell onto him. I leaned down and kissed him. I told you I was feeling very bold. And I was so excited because he kissed me back! It was a nice tender first kiss. When I pulled back he was smiling and so was I. I gave him a quick peck on the lips and sat myself up and said, "Okay, so what about this math don't you understand?" He sat up and I saw him adjust himself and then look at the paper and start to explain what confused him.

I helped him with his math and then we talked a little while longer. Then I told him that it was getting late and I had to get back home. He looked sad and said, very dejectedly, "Okay." I smiled at him and said, "I'll be back tomorrow... if you want?" He perked up and bounced in place a moment and told that that would be great and he looked forward to it and... could he have another kiss? I rolled my eyes and grinned. I put my hands on his waist and he put his hands on my shoulders and I leaned down and kissed him again. When I pulled away he followed for a moment and then opened his eyes. I told him not to be greedy, that there were plenty more where that came from, and that I'd see him tomorrow at the same time. He said okay. I left, got in my van, drove home, and was just so very entirely too pleased with myself!

Things went on like that for a while and I got to know more about him and meet his grandmother. Turns out his grandmother was his legal guardian. His mother and father had both been drug addicts and his father had left his mother when she got pregnant with him and she got clean while she was pregnant with him, but not too long after he was 1 year old, his mother was using again. He talked about how there were times that his mother and his new boyfriend would leave for weeks at a time and they wouldn't leave behind any food in the fridge. So his sister would have to go out to the barn to get horse oats to feed herself, him, and their younger step-brother. He told me about the time where the left during the winter months and a blizzard had hit and his parents hadn't paid the electricity bill so they didn't have any heat. So his sister turned the oven on, taped a blanket to the oven, and they all curled up under it, only leaving to use the restroom or to get more horse oats to eat. He told me that his sister and he had both gotten into drug use, that his sister still used, but she was an adult so she could do whatever she wanted. He told me that he didn't use drugs anymore. Not since CPS had taken him and his sister from her mother and boyfriend's home and his grandmother had taken them both in but when his sister wouldn't quit using, his grandmother had thrown her out.

Eventually I told my parents that I was staying at the old church friend's house for the night, I went to the friend's house, told him what I told my parents, told him that if my parents called to tell them I was in the shower, then I gave him a phone number to call if they did call so that I could call them back, and I went to my "boyfriends" house. We slept in the water bed together and his grandmother said she was fine with me sleeping over but that wasn't an open invitation to be fooling around. So that time we just talked late into the night, made out, and went to sleep. I went home the next morning and my parents were none the wiser.

His grandmother had convinced him to move into the spare bedroom in the house proper and turn the room he was using now as a place to hang out with his friends. He had to get rid of his water bed and he didn't like that but he agreed to it. He said he would have more privacy.

Then he was supposed to have a sleep over at white trash girl's house. Her parents knew he was gay and were okay with him staying in the same room with their daughter. I was at white trash girl's house once. Very white trash. Disgusting. Her parent's dog had just had puppies a few weeks ago and they just let the puppies poop wherever they wanted to in the house and didn't try to keep it in any one room or clean it up. They just said that their momma-dog would eat it, sniff her puppies butts, and that's how she'd know if her and which ones of her puppies were healthy or sick. Well, I drove him over there late one night and all the lights were off in her house. I took him back to his place but he'd forgotten his keys inside and the door was locked. He said that his grandmother slept like the dead and his great-grandparents were bedridden so he had no way to get back in. So I did the only thing I could. I took him home with me. We slept in the same bed but I set an alarm for 5 AM so that he'd be able to move to the floor with a pillow and my comforter, so that if my parents walked into my room before we woke up and found him that I could claim that he'd slept on the floor all night and that I didn't have any other choice but to bring him home with me. So we did that and around 6AM my father came into my dark bedroom and shined a flashlight onto where my "boyfriend" was sleeping. He had the comforter over his head so I'm not sure if my dad made out body shape under the comforter or not. He never said anything to me about it one way or the other in all these years. So I still have no idea. When I heard my mom leave for work (dad would have left before her), I got us up. It was a little earlier than I would normally get up for school but I told him that we could go get the spare key from white trash girl's house, take him home, he could shower and change, and I'd take him to school.

Then a few days later I found I couldn't sleep without him. I had gotten a taste of someone sleeping in bed with me and I wanted more. I told him that one afternoon, at his house. And he said he'd been having the same problem. He hadn't slept well since that night. So I told him I'd be spending part of my nights with him, every night. He asked me how I planned on doing that. I told him to leave that to me but to be ready to show up at 11 PM that night. He said he'd be waiting and to just knock on the door. I went home and got a box cutter. When my father finally went to bed at 10:30 PM (predictably, as Mom had gone to be at 8:00 PM), I waited another 5 minutes. Now this was still when I lived in The Room That Eats Children. I hadn't come out to anyone, yet. In fact, I didn't move back into my childhood bedroom until after I graduated High School. So The Room has a big short ledge bay window. I took a page from my sister's old sneaking out playbook. I cut two side of the mesh screen open so that I could easily hop out the window. It's a little bit of a drop but I was young and my knees could easily absorb shock. lol I got into my van and put it in neutral and pushed it to the end of the road and then got in and started it up away from the house, so even if my father did hear a car engine start, he wouldn't hear it start in front of the house.

I go to my "boyfriend's" place and I knocked on the door and he opened up and he was just standing in his underwear. Which, I'd seen him in before, when I had slept at his place that one night and when he had slept in my room that one night but... he was showing off and I knew it. He closes the door and starts to make out with me, hot and heavy. I'm still a virgin at this point, in every sense of the word, and I knew that he wasn't a virgin. He told me to wait in the bedroom and left for a minute and when he returned he had a package of condoms and a small tub of Vaseline Jelly I knew I was about to be a virgin no more. He and I got undressed and into bed. I told him that I didn't know what I was doing so he'd have to tell me what to do. So he handed me the condom and I put it on, which was fitting a bit too snuggly (now, I'd heard that they made things feel less sensitive, I assumed that's how it worked, it wasn't until after First John that I learned that regular size condoms are... too small. NOW YOU KNOW IT! YOU CAN'T UNKNOW IT!). So he prepared himself and then reached back for me. He just said, "Whoa... okay... hmm... just go slow." So I go slowly but soon he told me to go faster. When I was in, it was... well, you've all had sex at this point. It was awesome! Never in all the times that we had sex did he ever get off. It bothered me but he told that he really enjoyed it so not to worry. So I quit worrying about it, mostly.

Then we went to sleep and we both slept so well! He had a CD Player alarm clock that would play some song to wake him up every morning. He set it to go off at 4 AM every morning. We would wake up and I would get up and get dressed and go home. I turned off the lights to the van before I pulled it up to the curb at home, parked it in the same spot, went to the side of the house where the bay window was closed but unlocked, I opened the window, put one foot on top of the outside portion of the Central A/C unit (which was a bit offset from the window opening), then did a pull up and got my waist onto the ledge, and then I rolled through window and straight down onto my bed. This is what I did every day up until May 21, 1998.

Here comes the douche bag move: I told him that I couldn't see with him anymore before I was turning 18 tomorrow and then it'd be statutory rape. Nevermind that we could have remained friends. No; I couldn't have sex with him anymore so he wasn't worth messing with. I dropped him like a hot potato and I never spoke to him again.

7 days later I graduated from High School. I had eaten food that I had left in a hot car for 2 hours before putting it in the fridge. So, it was none so fresh. It didn't smell bad on Graduation Day, so I ate some of it. Sick from food poisoning and I'm sitting in the hot weather, in a hot ass cap and gown, in the middle of the football field, hoping that I don't throw up. So I finally am able to walk across the stage and take my fake diploma (just a rolled up piece of blank paper, you had to wait until it was over and go into the school and pick up your actual diploma). This was told to us as we were waiting to start our procession out of the school and onto the football field but there was a donation being taken up.

Earlier that year 2 of the girls in my class were in the back seat of a car, with 2 boys who didn't go to our high school in the front seats. Well, there had been drinking, the one guy driving was going too fast, it was the dead of night on a FM (Farm to Market) road so there's no lights out there but the headlights of cars. Well, he comes up upon a curve in the road and was going to fast and he lost control of the car. The two guys escaped with minor injuries. One of the girls in the back ended up in traction for a while, then a month later was able to come back to school (I had one class with her) but she still had both legs and one arm in a cast and was in a wheelchair, then a few months later she was out of casts, but she had to still use crutches because he muscles had atrophied since she hadn't used them in so long. Her legs were too weak to hold her up on their own. The other girl did not survive the crash. The only fatality. Now both of these girls I went to school with were in the preppy crowd. That was not my crowd. So I didn't know the girl who died personally. I'd had a couple of classes with her over the years and I knew her name (I still remember it) and what she looked like but I didn't really know her.

The impromptu collection that was being taken up was to go fund a non-profit group that talked in high schools about drinking and driving and high school kids. So one of the teachers (gay guy) was waiting off stage, (he was very, very well liked) where you had to pass to get back to the rows of chairs to sit back down and wait for every one else to go through the motions of graduation (and my last name starts with "H"... it took forever!), he shook everyone's hand and congratulated them. That was the point at which you palmed money from your hand into his and he put it in his other hand and waited for the next person shake hands with. We raised a decent amount of money that night just from us graduating teenagers.

Not Much Of An Update

masterde — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 08:46:32 GMT

I'm so cold. Ya know what I mean? Nothing to do with the temperature outside, but I can't stop from feeling physically cold and shaking from memories and the sense of loss. It's been 4.5 years and it's almost just as fresh as if it happened yesterday. I don't know how... or what to do... or for how much longer I can... It's like living in hell. My Light/Fire has been taken from me. I can almost feel him sometimes. Not in the physical sense, more in the spiritual sense. Even then... it's so... hollow and... distant. The only reason I didn't die was because I found Ryan the day after Second John's death. I know... some of you may think that the bed wasn't even cold yet and I was bringing someone else in... but without that someone else, I wouldn't be typing this now. It gave me time to process things in short spurts instead of it hitting me all at once.

It is supremely difficult to be attached to anyone or anything here. I've described it to some of you. It's like our souls became one soul. When he died, he took half of it with him. I'm left with a torn, half-soul that makes me feel, and I know this is going to sound odd but just trust me, like I'm not really fully here anymore. I'm not dead but I'm not alive. lol I'm undead! I made myself laugh with that one. Seriously though... part of me is just not here anymore. I'm don't feel like I belong here anymore. Well, that's not entirely true. I feel like I partially belong here. At the same time I feel like I partially should have crossed over. Or rather, that part of me has already crossed over and it's just waiting for the rest of me to catch up. I'm just going through the motions and waiting out the clock until it's my time to go.

I realize it's, in great part, due to the Seasonal Affect Disorder that I'm feeling so acutely shitty. The only real drive I have is to get my degree so that I can get a job and move away from my biological family. I can go somewhere and just do what needs doing to live, hermit myself so hard, and just wait for fate to make me whole again. However that happens. I won't deny that I could meet someone and they are able to rekindle the Light/Fire in me and be this wonderful, loving, and understanding man in my life (maybe even another soul mate, though I'm not actually holding out hope that I'll find another one). That I may find a way to detach from the part of me that's dead or, perhaps, join with another soul and have the resources of a full soul again. I don't see it happening but, as I am utterly practical, I can't dismiss, out of hand, the possibility that it could happen.

There is no word in English to describe the emotion... soul-sick is as close as I can come to it. And time and the world marches on. In the grand scheme of things, I won't make any impact on the world or be noted by history. I won't be missed. Not really. I may have touched a few lives along the way but I'm not so egotistical as to think that I'll stop anyone's world from turning if I weren't here. If I'm supposed to do something important and I die and it's not me making an impact on history, then someone else will do it in the fullness of time. No one is the center of any world but their own.

There is a meaning to life. There's a reason we're here. To learn. I've learned a Truth that not everyone gets to learn (in this lifetime, at least, if reincarnation is what happens). For that I'm grateful and utterly, completely bitter.

Overload!

masterde — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 22:17:00 GMT

So I haven't posted in a while and that's mostly been because of Seasonal Affect. It's sapped my energy and my desire to do much. I'll just do bullet points.

- My ex, Steve, the one who's an alcoholic, has been somewhat insistent that he thinks I am an alcoholic, too, and that he can help me.
- Steve has also admitted that he still loves me and wants to try again with me.
- Steve wants me to come and spend Christmas with him in Dallas.

I'll admit that I'm fucked up but not that I'm an alcoholic. I'm still mourning Second John, especially around this time of year, so I'm just not able to try to be with anyone. It wouldn't be fair to Steve or to me. It would be very easy for me to go up to Dallas and transfer all my feelings for Second John into Steve and use him to make myself feel better but not because he's Steve but because he would represent Second John to me. So very wrong and not fair.

- I started talking to a pup named corvus.
- he's been interesting to talk to.
- he needs quite a bit of micromanagement.

I'm good at leading people and it makes me feel a sense of purpose and like I'm making someone's life better.

- Jared just told me some things about his life that I know weren't easy for him to tell me. He's been avoiding them for a while now.
- He also said that once he finishes his Masters degree that, if his life is still crap in NYC, that he'll move to where ever I am.

What? WHAT!? Is he just stringing me along and trying to keep me as his backup in case he doesn't find something better in the mean time? I just... it's... yeah, that.

Quick Update

masterde — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 02:26:42 GMT

I've gotten about 10 calls today. Anyone checking on me? Sure... they wanted me to pick up the niece and nephew from school today (and probably tomorrow). I didn't answer the house phone or my cell phone even once. I only know that the niece and nephew needed picking up is because my nephew called me from his phone. I feel badly for my niece and nephew. They're innocent here. I just... can't do it anymore. I can't take care of myself alone well much less put myself aside to take care of others, too. All my Dad said in his two messages on the answering machine was to call him back. No care how I'm doing. Only what I can do for him. I don't plan on being here when they get here tomorrow. I've left something for Mom read from me. I'll just be gone for a few hours after they get home. I don't plan on answering calls from either of them. Let her digest what she's read. That's assuming they come home tomorrow. In case I'm not talking to any of them until they've gotten a good fright out of it. I think scaring them is the only way they can see what's really going on. Then again they might just get mad. Who knows what'll really happen.

I Finally Feel Something Other Than Sad

masterde — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 01:27:28 GMT

Right now I'm just stewing in my own angry juices because at least it's a fucking feeling other than being sad and crying. Do you know why? Because my father put me behind schedule on Monday because Mom wanted to go up to Abilene to see the new grandchild... after she and her parents had been here from Wednesday on until Sunday. How did it fucking put me behind schedule do you ask? Good question. Both Mom and Dad's mom had eye surgery within a week of each other. And he scheduled the appointments on the same day, when he knew that the doctor they needed to see was going to be in Houston. 3 appoints. 2 for Mom and 1 for Grandma. Well, because Mom wanted to go to Abilene right after the grandchild fucking left and is going to be back in 4 weeks, Dad ranted and raged at me because I didn't want to follow him to Houston at 8 AM so I could take Grandma home. So, because he was so angry, I did what Mom taught me to do and just gave in to his anger and said I'd pick her up at 1 PM, when Grandma had her eye appointment.

That was the end of week 4 where I had a discussion question and a paper to write. Week 5 started on Thursday and there's a paper due Saturday and a discussion question due on Sunday. So it's a double full week. I wrote a shitty paper, that's worth 30% of my grade, because I'm so far down in Seasonal Affect that I couldn't work up the energy to really care.

The last time I ate was Monday at noon. Then it was just a small chocolate shake because my father couldn't be bothered to go to a place where he could buy food I could eat on his way to Mom's second appointment and Grandma's appointment (same office and doctor). I haven't been hungry or felt the need to eat at all since then.

He threw me off my school schedule to pick up his mother in Houston so that he could drive my Mom to Abilene without having to drive his mother back to Bay City. Then threw me further off by me having to take Grandma out to eat lunch and get her hair done on Thursday. 2 papers, 1 of them the final for the class, and 2 discussion questions, 1 of which I still have to answer. Does he care that it throws me off? Fuck no! Does Mom care that it throws me off? Fuck no! There's a new fucking grandchild to follow after.

I might as well have "DOORMAT" written on my forehead. They just drop their lives and responsibilities off on me and run off. Do you want to know the worst part? Huh? Do you?

No fucking call on Monday to tell me that they'd arrived safely. No fucking call ALL WEEK LONG to check and see how I'm doing! Not a spare thought for me. Or for their daughter. Or for his mother. Fuck all of us, there's a new baby to hold!!!

I shouldn't even fucking care. I shouldn't expect better from them. When have they ever treated me any differently!? I'm convenient! I'm disposable! I have no idea what the fuck they're gonna do when I graduate. I don't think they even care to think about it and make other plans ahead of the time where I won't be here because I am here to just drop everything on and run off to do whatever the fuck they want to do.

I feel badly that I can't afford a place on my own and take care of myself and have to live with them. Do they feel bad about running off? Do they feel bad about leaving a son, who at the very least, is Bipolar and suffering from seasonal depression all because there's a cute baby to play with? Fuck no... they feel justified in doing it. My sister and I are supposed to bend over backwards to take care of them but they just get to drop everything in my lap and run off on a whim? Yep. That's what they expect us to do.

Mom wants something and Dad bullies anyone he has to into doing what he wants them to do so that Mom or him get what they want.

Fuck it! I'm drinking tonight. I know, Sparky, drinking is not a good coping method but it's all I have other than abusing prescription drugs, at this point. I totally get where the need to drink comes from. Please don't rub it in my face the next time you do it and I say something stupid about drinking not being a good coping mechanism. Biological family makes you drink. They'll be lucky if I even acknowledge their existence once I leave here. There's a reason I moved to Los Angeles when I was manic. I had to get away from THIS! I need alcohol... now!

It's Cold

masterde — Sun, 24 Nov 2013 01:03:55 GMT

It's been in the 50s all day long. I've been cold all day long. I miss LA weather!

That is all.

To Every Thing, There Is A Season

masterde — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 02:30:39 GMT

So, no post about the weekend. Simple reason. I broke things off with Dmitri.

As much as I care for him, there's no future there. I can't fully trust him because of certain life choices of his. While the sex was really good... I can take care of that desire by hand, no pun intended, whenever it arises. "I love you" can be said about food, to a friend, all sorts of situations come that fit under the umbrella of "love." The words "I trust you" are much more profound to me. So, while it wasn't an easy choice to make, it needed to be made. I mean... we were just in a holding pattern anyway. We both knew it was going to end when I graduated. I just ended it sooner than that. I think he deserves to find someone who can trust him and love him the way he should be trusted and loved. I'm not in a place where I can give anything long-term. It's just not fair to him or to me. So I ended that. I think that it could make the Seasonal Affect harder on me, but I'm willing to risk that.

Oh, and one should not listen to country music after they break up. Especially one called Come Over. Just sayin'. A small excerpt:

We don't have to miss each other. Come over.
We don't have to fix each other. Come over.
We don't have to say "forever." Come over.
We don't have to stay forever. Come over.

My Feelings and Rants

masterde — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 00:51:39 GMT

I wish I knew how to express how powerful and intense and overwhelming my emotions were this morning. I know that's not possible. I'm going to try to explain it but I feel like I will fail to make you understand and that is comforting. I write it out and I'll understand because I am reliving, in a dull fashion, the emotions I felt this morning. I know that when I write it out that no one else can really truly understand it because they lack the ability to feel what I felt.

The feelings of hatred that I had this morning were... the most intense thing I have ever felt in my life. It now seems impossible that I had no room for anything in my mind but hatred so intense that I wanted someone to die. I really and truly felt like, if I could have put my hands on him, I would have killed him. I wanted to kill him. I now find myself with the understanding, in a certainty that before this morning I was only ever able to intellectually imagine possible, but I now know with a certainty that it is not just possible to kill him but I wanted to do it. With every fiber of my being and soul, I killed someone. Not literally but in my head. I could see it in my mind. I felt like I was actually killing him. I was willing him to never have existed. It's one thing to kill someone. It's another feeling entirely to want to erase them from reality. To make them never born. To not just feel like I had the power to kill him but to be able to control the Universe and reality to make it so that he never lived in the first place. That I willed him to be nothing. That kind of control is... not possible but I felt like I really truly had that power. I felt that my words were able to dictate reality to the point of causing nothingness. Nothingness isn't truly understandable or possible either... but I felt like I was actually causing it to happen. I think I felt, as much as a human can comprehend, that I was God. That nothing was impossible for me.

At that time I had no fear in me. It wasn't possible for me to have felt scared of how much hatred I had and what I felt I like I could and was able to do in reality, in my head. No fear of being able to cause nothingness to be something that was real. Nothing could touch me but pure, absolute hatred.

That's... scary to think about now that I have room in my mind to see and feel just how powerful I felt this morning and what I did in my mind to First John. It's also scary to think I might feel that way again. That feeling of absolute power is heady, and I know I felt it just as surely as I know I am able to breath. It felt good to feel like I had that kind of power. I felt like I could do anything and that I would have no consequences to my actions. I felt like I was in control of fate, the Universe, life, death, and had absolute power.

That's, like, serial killer thinking. In my mind, I killed him over and over and over again with no remorse or fear. In my mind, he had no value. In my mind, he wasn't a human being with any right to exist. I don't like the idea that I think I know what it's like to be a serial killer. That's not an understanding I want to have. I know I have that understanding now and I can't make myself not understand it. I can't bring myself to feel regret for what I did to him or how insignificant he was to me, in my mind. I hope I never feel that way again because that kind of thinking is an evil I didn't think I would ever understand or even think was possible before this morning.

All this understanding I feel I have about what I felt this morning has slowly filtered into my mind over the course of this post. A gradual understanding of one impossible thing to another impossible thing over and over again. I think that I felt impossible things because I lost my sanity and grip on reality. I have real concern that it is possible that it could happen again. If I am not sane and have no grip on reality... I would be able to cause, not just imaginary harm, but real harm. That is a thing I never thought I'd ever really understand or be capable of. Intellectually, I could imagine the possibility but not understand it emotionally. It was ephemeral and I thought to be impossible for me to feel. I'm not a serial killer in reality, but I believe I now know what it's like to be one. I feel like that should cause more fear in me than it does. What I feel now is an understanding of being numb about the value of human life. I know I felt this feeling this morning, too. I'm just now coming to an understanding of how far gone I truly was. In my mind, I crossed a line that I never want to cross again, in my mind or in reality. I want this to be a dream that I will wake up from and forget what I feel and what I understand. It's a nightmare scenario. I want to forget but I know I never will.

The idea of posting this for everyone to see makes me scared. I don't want anyone to feel like I'm a real danger or that I understand what it's like to be a real danger. I want everyone to feel like what I've said I understand is a lie. I'm scared of how you will judge me and view me. But here goes.

Changed Mood

masterde — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 19:46:51 GMT

The hate I felt this morning has subsided, for now, without the aid of medication. I'm not fool enough to believe that there's no way I'll ever feel that feeling again about that person. Bottled up emotions due to belief that the emotion I was feeling is wrong and because of years of suppression due to medication likely caused anger intensify and become hatred. I must say, that wasn't pretty. Felt right at the time, and I'm not going to tell myself that it was wrong to feel it or that I can't/won't feel it again. We'll just have to wait and see. Gave me a monster headache though. That's the only part that felt bad about it. And that's physical bad not emotional bad. But I think that was a physical reaction to the stress brought on by the emotion itself and the intensity of the emotion. But I survived it with my sanity intact. Not that I'm sure I was entirely sane during the episode of hate. I know that sanity is deemed healthy. I'm just questioning the notion that the lack of sanity is a bad thing. I'm trying not to view what I felt as good or bad, per say, but how I was feeling at the time. Accepting what is/was and living in the moment.

Though I do realize my posts have been more ranty/stream of consciousness as of late as opposed to well thought out and orderly. It is what it is, though. And fear not. No humans or animals were harmed during the earlier post. :)

IT IS ALL I KNOW!

masterde — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 14:01:25 GMT

This is all I feel for First John. I dreamed about this and woke up to it continuing fully in my mind and every breath. It is just as strong now that I'm awake as it was when I was dreaming about it before I woke up with it.

I told myself that I'd let me feel this emotion for you now because you robbed me of the chance to feel it when I was grieving you leaving me. I know that it is so far beyond everything I stand for. My religion tells me I shouldn't feel this. I may feel something other than this emotion I have for you later on. I know I will never regret feeling it. It is the TRUTH of what I feel. I deserve the TRUTH no matter what it may be and no one can tell me otherwise. I have never been so certain of anything in my life.

I want everyone to know. I want everyone to see. I want everyone to understand. It suffused my body all the way to the core. It is all I feel. It is all I know. It is everything I have. It's capacity knows NO limit.

I dreamed I was in a car with someone and I told them to drive to the apartment. They said they couldn't because they'd get towed. They'd seen it happen to others. I told them drive there and then to park the car. They said, "What are you going to do? Tell him how much you love him and want him back?" I see you in the window of the apartment and you see me standing outside. I go to the door and you are there waiting. This is what there is...

I hate you. With every fiber of my being and with every thought and my every feeling. I hate you. I think you're worthless. I take that back. I don't think you're worthless. Because to say you're worthless would imply that you had value. Negative value. But you don't even have that. You are NOTHING. I have NOTHING for you but hate, disdain, and disgust for you. You don't deserve that. You deserve NOTHING because you are NOTHING. The only thing you can do for me is to crawl into a hole, stop breathing my air, stop existing in my world, and DIE. Like so much dust in the wind... you are NOTHING. I hate. I hate. I hate. It is all I know and all I feel. That is all I have for you. Go back to every point in time that you ever existed and stop existing. Be the NOTHING you are. You never deserved my love. You don't deserve my hate. You don't deserve to exist. But with everything I am, down to my core, I hate. I hate you. You don't deserve to get even my hate. That's giving you something and you are NOTHING. You don't deserve to have EVER existed in any shape or form. You don't deserve to get my hate because that's giving you something of me. You don't deserve to get that. You are NOTHING. I know nothing and feel nothing but hate and exist for no other reason than to hate your existence. DIE! In every moment of your retched existence, DIE! Stop disgracing my world with your NOTHING. Crawl into a hole, stop breathing my air, stop existing in my world, and DIE! Even when you don't exist I will hate you. I have nothing to give but hate. My misplaced and misbegotten love for you stopped me from hating you. Now... you deserve NOTHING of me. You are NOTHING. I hate you. I have purposefully not taken Klonopin this morning so that I don't stop feeling hate. It is all I have for you and all I know of myself. You are NOTHING. I hate the NOTHING that you are. I thought it impossible to hate NOTHING because there is NOTHING there to hate. I hate all the same. NOTHING is all there is of you. I hate that NOTHING like I have never hated anything in my entire life. I don't feel anger. I don't feel loss. I feel nothing but hate. It seethes in my body. It exists in every moment I have ever been in or will ever be in, for no purpose other than to hate the NOTHING you are. You are NOTHING and all there is in your NOTHING is my hate. I can't describe, even a tiny iota how, much I hate your NOTHING. Hate fills me more than everything I am capable of with the sole purpose to hate you. I have no desire to feel any other emotion that hate for your NOTHING for the rest of my days. I will feel other things because you don't deserve to partake in my hate for you because YOU. ARE. NOTHING! Stop existing and DIE! You can do NOTHING else for me but to stop existing in any and every moment of all of time. I hate you more than is even possible. DIE!

Guess Who!?

masterde — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 08:48:58 GMT

I laid down at 2245 hours. It is not 0250 hours. No sleep in that time.

Late Night Gift

masterde — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 07:29:03 GMT

I gave someone that I do not personally know and who doesn't personally know me a gift tonight. It is the only thing I have to give that is of any real value.

I gave my unconditional love. It is not romantic love, brotherly love, or friendship love. It is unconditional love. It doesn't need to know anything about him to be his. It doesn't require him to want it or accept it or feel he deserves it. It is boundless, unconditional, and will always be his. It can not be taken back. It doesn't need to know any condition to exist. It is as real as he allows it to be. It is not unique because I can give it to anyone. What is unique is him. There is no one else like him.

I do not require him to acknowledge that I have given him my unconditional love. It does not require him to acknowledge it for it to be his. There is no condition upon which it is given. It doesn't know worthiness or unworthiness because those are conditions and it is unconditional.

Even if he chooses not to accept it, it is still unconditionally his. It will always be with him unconditionally. He doesn't even need to look for it for it to be there waiting for him unconditionally, forever. He does not even need to choose to see it for it to be there waiting for him unconditionally.

I don't require him to give me his unconditional love or to ever acknowledge that I have given him my unconditional love. There is no condition upon which he must do anything for it to be his.

My only hope is that he can find it within himself to accept that it is already unconditionally his. Even if he doesn't, it's still already unconditionally his.