In the last two days, I have handed $850 in cash to two different women as loans. I have never been romantically active with either of them, and I've never even met one of them. I'm still unemployed, and as of this moment the only income I have is the tax return on my unemployment benefits (which, of course, I cannot collect until 2006) and money owed to me by several people. Now I have to be honest with myself and figure out exactly why I loaned out money despite my situation. Is it true generosity for the sake of helping loved ones? Is it typical male lust, considering these were two attractive women? Would I have loaned this kind of cash to anyone I know with a dick instead of a pussy? I'm afraid I'm not introspective enough to honestly know the answers to these questions. But I will say this: The "Karen" fiasco must have sapped the anger and rage out of me, because I'm imagining scenarios where both of these women wind up telling me that they don't intend to give me my money back ever and then disappearing on me, and I can't imagine getting mad. Some pithy little aphorism about "If they had to lie to get the money from me, they must have needed it more than me" keeps popping up in my head. And also, I just feel so good about helping them right now, and finally having some kind of purpose besides being an example of how not to live, and maybe that good feeling is what's making me unable to even imagine anger right now.
Cassandra let me drive her car again yesterday for about an hour on a quiet side road near Bolingbrook, and I can definitely see improvement, although I'm still confused about simple things like which way to turn the steering wheel when the car is in reverse and I want to maneuver it right or left. She had brought up a $625 car repair bill weeks ago, but didn't press the issue with me, probably because she felt guilty about the $875 she already owed me from Kentucky Derby weekend. I asked her twice about the car repair bill in the last couple of weeks, and she just said that it still had to be paid, but she didn't ask when or if I was going to help her. So we had breakfast after I drove yesterday, then instead of driving more, I told her to go back to the city so that I could go to my bank because it closed at 2P on Saturdays. I made the withdrawal, she hugged and kissed me and told me that I was a blessing, then she told me that starting this month, on the 15th of the next four months, she planned to pay me $375 to erase her debt. More to entertain myself by seeing what her reaction would be than out of need, I reminded her that she borrowed an extra $100 Kentucky Derby weekend as fun money. She said that I told her at the time it was a gift, which I probably did. She said she would give that back too under the condition that I give her "gift" back to her once I'm employed and back on my feet. I agreed to that. Then I let her see my resume, which she thought looked good and couldn't understand why I wasn't getting at least interviews for jobs that I have been applying for, and she left. I'm not worried about the money because I still have enough in my savings account to support myself for at least two months before I have to start considering moving in with family and applying for welfare. (I miss gubment cheese and powdered milk. Not.)
Not long after I came home yesterday, "Laurie" mentioned during our daily online chat that she was being thrown out of the place where she had been staying and she needed $100 immediately as a deposit. She brought this up not as a request, but as a reason why she was feeling anxious, trying to "rack her brain" to come up with the cash. It was me who responded, "If you want me to wire you some money I can do it," to which she responded, "Dre...that's the nicest offer in the universe...really...for someone you don't know." She initially said that she didn't want me to do that right now, but she may change her mind and ask me later, and if she did she would be able to send me the money back on Monday "on my mother's grave." I said ok, then I called her just short of midnight last night because I was worried about her and left a voice mail telling her to please call me if she was still in trouble and needed my help. She called this morning and said she had a plan but didn't have much faith in the person that was to come through for her, then while we were chatting online today, she finally asked me how we would pull off the wire transaction. I told her to go to a nearby currency exchange and give me the address, then I would go to my currency exchange after I went to the ATM and I would Western Union her the money. She asked for $100 but said she actually needed $200 but whatever I could give was fine. Hey, $1500 to Cassandra, what's a couple of hundred to Laurie? She said that she can personally pay me the money back Thursday because the state fair where she works will end then and she was considering coming to see me anyway. It really doesn't matter to me when she pays me back. I want to see her and hold her and make love to her as soon as possible, whether she has the money or not, so I'm much more excited about maybe meeting her for the first time in less than a week. While I was out getting the money and then wiring it, she left an instant message quoting the song "100 Ways," written by Quincy Jones:
In your arms tonight
She'll reflect that she owes you
The sweetest of debts if she wants to pay
Find one hundred ways
Ya gotta believe it whoa
Love her today find one hundred ways
"You've shown me what's in your heart Dre," she then wrote. "I can only prove what's in mine." And boy, am I looking forward to that.
But what does it say about my mindset when I take her gratitude and Cassandra's gratitude with a huge grain of salt? Every time I start anticipating the money from Cassandra or the companionship from Laurie, a little voice in my head says, "What if you don't see the money or either of these chicks again? Remember, every other time you've put trust and faith in a woman, you've been betrayed or abandoned. Why the fuck should this be any different?" Very sobering thoughts to be sure. But at least I realize that it's not because I don't trust these women. It's because I honestly can't remember a time when I trusted a woman and didn't wind up alone in the end. The good news is that I am not obsessing over whether I will ever see the money or these women. If I get screwed again, hey, shit happens, and it's no one's fault but mine. With Cassandra, that's just an insane amount of money to lend to anyone without some sort of written contract recognizing it. And with Laurie, shit, I don't know her at all. Never even met her. Her pimp could be counting that cash right now while she is sucking some guy off behind that currency exchange. Her crack dealer could be counting the cash while she gets high. Do I really think that either of them is lying to me and going to screw me over? No, I don't. Let me make that clear. The thought of being screwed is floating through my head as a little reminder not to get my hopes too high. It is NOT the prevailing attitude in my mind, and I am not sitting here anticipating getting fucked over. I'm simply acknowledging that it could happen, especially with my past history, and that mentally I had better be prepared for it or else get ready to go back to the psych ward at Northwestern. But now, more than ever, I'm okay with it. No one wants to be lied to, but I believe that I helped two good people in tough situations, and that karma will combine with them to repay me greatly, and even if they don't repay me, I still did a few good deeds.
The other side of that is the side "Ronnie" is showing me right now. "Drew" and I went to see the movie "Wedding Crashers" last night (very funny, depraved and perverted in some areas in a psychological way, not necessarily in a totally physical way like a lot of today's comedies, and that was pleasantly surprising), and Drew invited Ronnie along. I actually heard part of a conversation Drew and Ronnie were having when I got into Drew's car after he picked me up at the train station, and Drew asked Ronnie if he, Drew, should pay for my movie ticket with the $11 he owed Ronnie and therefore knock off some of the $36 debt Ronnie has owed me for the past two months, and I could hear Ronnie reply, "I don't care." I couldn't fucking believe that. See, that's why Ronnie is a piece of shit and I don't ever plan on speaking to him again. This is his attitude over the debt he owes me. "I don't care." That's on top of not calling me and informing me of the status of the debt. Hell, I didn't know he was even going to acknowledge the debt, but if that's how he wants to do it, "I don't care," then I don't care either. I told Drew that the debt as far as I'm concerned is over, because I don't even fucking want the money from Ronnie anymore if he's going to neglect it as if it's something he shouldn't have to be bothered with. But unless Drew tells Ronnie I said that, Ronnie isn't going to know that the debt's dropped, because since he hasn't seen fit to speak to me in two months, I don't see fit to tell him shit. And he is still dating a woman in Indiana, so he's got some money, or else he wouldn't be able to drive out there and spend time with her.
Ronnie blew us off, by the way. We got to the theater about 45 minutes before the 8:50P showing, and the theater is somewhat near Ronnie's house (20 to 30 minutes away), but even if the theater was farther away, Ronnie and Drew agreed on this theater. Drew didn't decide that we were going there, that's where they agreed to go before I even got into Drew's car. But the movie began with no word from him, and when Drew missed the opening to step out and call his ass, Ronnie didn't answer the phone. Class act all the way. All I can do is make sure I don't treat people like scum and try to do something with my life to make sure that my mother having me wasn't a waste. Any rewards I get for my deeds (such as a future favor from Cassandra or great sex, marriage and a family from Laurie) will be icing on the proverbial cake.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Friday, August 05, 2005
The Definition Of My Self-Hatred
Stolen from an MSN message board--thanx Foxxi!
Jealousy is simply and clearly the fear that you do not have value. Jealousy scans for evidence to prove the point - that others will be preferred and rewarded more than you. There is only one alternative - self-value. If you cannot love yourself, you will not believe that you are loved. You will always think it's a mistake or luck. Take your eyes off others and turn the scanner within. Find the seeds of your jealousy, clear the old voices and experiences. Put all the energy into building your personal and emotional security. Then you will be the one others envy, and you can remember the pain and reach out to them. ~Jennifer James
Jealousy is simply and clearly the fear that you do not have value. Jealousy scans for evidence to prove the point - that others will be preferred and rewarded more than you. There is only one alternative - self-value. If you cannot love yourself, you will not believe that you are loved. You will always think it's a mistake or luck. Take your eyes off others and turn the scanner within. Find the seeds of your jealousy, clear the old voices and experiences. Put all the energy into building your personal and emotional security. Then you will be the one others envy, and you can remember the pain and reach out to them. ~Jennifer James
It's Over
Where one door closes, I have heard that another one opens. There may be many important doors that open as a result of today's conversation; time will tell.
"Torrie" and I have decided to end our relationship. We had a talk a few nights ago where she basically kept asking me if I wanted to continue our long-distance romance, and I kept saying, "I don't know." I wasn't man enough to straight-up dump her, but I planted seeds in her mind that I wasn't really excited about our relationship. I was hoping that she would take the hint and call me back and tell me that she doesn't want to go on, and today she did exactly that. We agreed to remain friends, but I know that will become a problem when A) she finds a new lover and I become jealous, and B) if we ever were to meet up as "just friends," because we did have a lot of physical chemistry and the urge to have sex would be tremendous. Hooking up and having sex wouldn't be such a bad thing--hell, it's the reason we got together in the first place--but the point of me dumping her is that I want more out of life than meeting a woman and fucking her and leaving. If I didn't make Torrie believe that I wanted out, we could have gone around and around in that circle for an endless amount of time. And it wouldn't be horrible, it would be two adults having great, consensual sex, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that there's a next step after that if one of us wants more out of a relationship than just fucking, and for me to take that next step, Torrie would have to be someone that I would want to potentially be with on a long-term basis, and by that, I mean eventually marriage. And the truth is, I would never want to marry Torrie. There are many reasons, but the most important is that I don't feel like she and I are a lifelong match. We're so different. I feel like she's still a stranger to me in some respects, and that's no surprise considering we've only met three times in our lives. But I have always figured that my future wife would be someone who I felt such a connection to physically, emotionally, and spiritually, that I would feel a magnetic force between us, drawing me towards her no matter how much I want to pull away. I've felt that before, with "Yasmine" and with a girl in eighth grade, although neither of them felt the same about me. I didn't feel that way about Torrie. And after all these years of taking whatever pussy I can get, for the first time ever I feel like I don't want to settle for just any chick that will fuck me. I want more. I want someone who I desire to be with and learn about on a possible lifetime basis, and she would want to be with and learn about me for a lifetime. I don't intend to settle for less ever again.
How much "Laurie" has to do with the way I feel is something that I cannot ignore. I have to be honest. The thought of an attractive, blonde woman insisting that she would be interested in getting together with me and that we could be soulmates makes me feel like the luckiest man in the world. I feel like something is on the horizon when I think about Laurie, something special, something that I've never felt before, something that will finally put an end to my search for someone who understands me and will love me unconditionally. Because as much as we don't want to admit it, we all want to be loved and understood, and I'm neither right now. And even when I was in previous relationships, I didn't feel loved or understood, and that's because I wasn't in those relationships because I was interested in the person, it was because the person indicated that she was desperate enough to fuck me. Now, Laurie has indicated that as well, but unlike my past lovers, she is attractive and could choose anyone to fuck, but she has not had sex in two years because she has been waiting for just the right person to become intimate with again, and she thinks that I might be that person. That makes me feel incredible. I am trying to imagine a life without Laurie simply because I needed to dump Torrie for reasons other than getting together with Laurie, but I can't help it. I want to see Laurie badly. I want to find out if we are what the other has been looking for. But hey, I could have held on to Torrie and lied to Laurie and hooked up with her while keeping Torrie on the side. I did not do that. It's important that I give myself credit for cutting Torrie loose instead of clinging onto her like she's my last hope of ever dating again, like I did when "Sarah" dumped me around this time last year. And Sarah was four million times worse than Torrie as far as qualities that I wouldn't want in a potential wife--both are loose and bisexual, but Sarah was actively fucking other women and not considering it cheating, as well as staying in the houses of "masters" overnight being a BDSM slave and getting off on it. It's unbelievable where I am mentally now compared to where I was just a year ago, or even a few months ago. I'm not all the way confident as far as walking around thinking in my head, "I know I'm going to find the woman I'm looking for because I'm the shit!" But I do not ever intend again to become intimate with a woman who I don't find attractive or morally upstanding simply because she is willing to fuck me. When I think of all the pain I could have avoided in the last couple of years from "Karen," Sarah, "Jane," and the co-worker who shall remain nameless if I would have just been honest with myself and admitted that I didn't want to be with any of them because of their looks or personality but because and only because I flirted with them and they returned the interest and I thought, "Hey! Maybe they're crazy enough to fuck me!!"...well, all I can do is shake my head and move on to the next chapter of my life a little wiser and with higher standards for myself.
Speaking of confidence, I put a beatdown on my fear of rejection and went to two different places to apply for work after Torrie and I broke up today. This is a big step for me because I haven't been on the street looking for work since I became unemployed simply because I always thought to myself, "Why would anyone want to hire me? I'm not college age and I'm uneducated." I'm starting to see things a little differently. Not a lot of confidence still, but enough to know that whatever job I go for I have ten years of work experience to testify on my behalf that I am a hard worker who gets the job done when given the opportunity, and maybe someone will see that, but only if I put my ass out there and apply for jobs. The alternative? These past nine years I've been sitting in my apartment by myself afraid to go out in the world and go for anything. Can't keep doing that. Laurie in her blog said that she tries to find five things to wake up to every day, because the alternative is turning on her car in the garage with the doors closed. That's what I've been doing. I've been sitting here separated from the world, waiting to die slowly. I don't want to die anymore. And for that, even if she and I never get together, I owe Laurie unlimited thanks. But it's up to me to take it from here and live my life without fear. A daunting task for sure, but now more than ever, I feel like I'm ready to give it a shot.
And notice, no updates on Karen. She can be getting gangbanged by 400 niggers right now. I just don't give a fuck anymore. What a great feeling.
"Torrie" and I have decided to end our relationship. We had a talk a few nights ago where she basically kept asking me if I wanted to continue our long-distance romance, and I kept saying, "I don't know." I wasn't man enough to straight-up dump her, but I planted seeds in her mind that I wasn't really excited about our relationship. I was hoping that she would take the hint and call me back and tell me that she doesn't want to go on, and today she did exactly that. We agreed to remain friends, but I know that will become a problem when A) she finds a new lover and I become jealous, and B) if we ever were to meet up as "just friends," because we did have a lot of physical chemistry and the urge to have sex would be tremendous. Hooking up and having sex wouldn't be such a bad thing--hell, it's the reason we got together in the first place--but the point of me dumping her is that I want more out of life than meeting a woman and fucking her and leaving. If I didn't make Torrie believe that I wanted out, we could have gone around and around in that circle for an endless amount of time. And it wouldn't be horrible, it would be two adults having great, consensual sex, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that there's a next step after that if one of us wants more out of a relationship than just fucking, and for me to take that next step, Torrie would have to be someone that I would want to potentially be with on a long-term basis, and by that, I mean eventually marriage. And the truth is, I would never want to marry Torrie. There are many reasons, but the most important is that I don't feel like she and I are a lifelong match. We're so different. I feel like she's still a stranger to me in some respects, and that's no surprise considering we've only met three times in our lives. But I have always figured that my future wife would be someone who I felt such a connection to physically, emotionally, and spiritually, that I would feel a magnetic force between us, drawing me towards her no matter how much I want to pull away. I've felt that before, with "Yasmine" and with a girl in eighth grade, although neither of them felt the same about me. I didn't feel that way about Torrie. And after all these years of taking whatever pussy I can get, for the first time ever I feel like I don't want to settle for just any chick that will fuck me. I want more. I want someone who I desire to be with and learn about on a possible lifetime basis, and she would want to be with and learn about me for a lifetime. I don't intend to settle for less ever again.
How much "Laurie" has to do with the way I feel is something that I cannot ignore. I have to be honest. The thought of an attractive, blonde woman insisting that she would be interested in getting together with me and that we could be soulmates makes me feel like the luckiest man in the world. I feel like something is on the horizon when I think about Laurie, something special, something that I've never felt before, something that will finally put an end to my search for someone who understands me and will love me unconditionally. Because as much as we don't want to admit it, we all want to be loved and understood, and I'm neither right now. And even when I was in previous relationships, I didn't feel loved or understood, and that's because I wasn't in those relationships because I was interested in the person, it was because the person indicated that she was desperate enough to fuck me. Now, Laurie has indicated that as well, but unlike my past lovers, she is attractive and could choose anyone to fuck, but she has not had sex in two years because she has been waiting for just the right person to become intimate with again, and she thinks that I might be that person. That makes me feel incredible. I am trying to imagine a life without Laurie simply because I needed to dump Torrie for reasons other than getting together with Laurie, but I can't help it. I want to see Laurie badly. I want to find out if we are what the other has been looking for. But hey, I could have held on to Torrie and lied to Laurie and hooked up with her while keeping Torrie on the side. I did not do that. It's important that I give myself credit for cutting Torrie loose instead of clinging onto her like she's my last hope of ever dating again, like I did when "Sarah" dumped me around this time last year. And Sarah was four million times worse than Torrie as far as qualities that I wouldn't want in a potential wife--both are loose and bisexual, but Sarah was actively fucking other women and not considering it cheating, as well as staying in the houses of "masters" overnight being a BDSM slave and getting off on it. It's unbelievable where I am mentally now compared to where I was just a year ago, or even a few months ago. I'm not all the way confident as far as walking around thinking in my head, "I know I'm going to find the woman I'm looking for because I'm the shit!" But I do not ever intend again to become intimate with a woman who I don't find attractive or morally upstanding simply because she is willing to fuck me. When I think of all the pain I could have avoided in the last couple of years from "Karen," Sarah, "Jane," and the co-worker who shall remain nameless if I would have just been honest with myself and admitted that I didn't want to be with any of them because of their looks or personality but because and only because I flirted with them and they returned the interest and I thought, "Hey! Maybe they're crazy enough to fuck me!!"...well, all I can do is shake my head and move on to the next chapter of my life a little wiser and with higher standards for myself.
Speaking of confidence, I put a beatdown on my fear of rejection and went to two different places to apply for work after Torrie and I broke up today. This is a big step for me because I haven't been on the street looking for work since I became unemployed simply because I always thought to myself, "Why would anyone want to hire me? I'm not college age and I'm uneducated." I'm starting to see things a little differently. Not a lot of confidence still, but enough to know that whatever job I go for I have ten years of work experience to testify on my behalf that I am a hard worker who gets the job done when given the opportunity, and maybe someone will see that, but only if I put my ass out there and apply for jobs. The alternative? These past nine years I've been sitting in my apartment by myself afraid to go out in the world and go for anything. Can't keep doing that. Laurie in her blog said that she tries to find five things to wake up to every day, because the alternative is turning on her car in the garage with the doors closed. That's what I've been doing. I've been sitting here separated from the world, waiting to die slowly. I don't want to die anymore. And for that, even if she and I never get together, I owe Laurie unlimited thanks. But it's up to me to take it from here and live my life without fear. A daunting task for sure, but now more than ever, I feel like I'm ready to give it a shot.
And notice, no updates on Karen. She can be getting gangbanged by 400 niggers right now. I just don't give a fuck anymore. What a great feeling.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Testes, Testes, 1, 2...3!?!
Just a quick entry to mark the end of my summer semester of college with a final exam in humanities tomorrow, and hopefully the beginning of a career with the U.S. Postal Service with a test today. My unemployment has officially run out, so this test is pretty fucking big. I saw someone Sunday who said he just took the postal test a couple of weeks ago, but they told him not to expect to hear anything for three weeks, so he still had not heard from them. Shit. That means that I have to keep looking for work even after I take the test. Them's the breaks, I guess. Oh, and one more small thing: I intentionally erased the URL from my computer's history containing "Karen's" phony Tawanda Yahoo profile, so if I want to keep updating myself on that whore, I would have to punch in the URL again, and I don't plan on doing that. It's one thing for her to hurt me, but for me to keep looking back at how she's carrying on with her life is just hurting myself, and at this moment, I'm fucking through looking back. I may change my mind later on. But I doubt it.
Monday, August 01, 2005
"Big Baby"
I had been planning to go on a daytrip with my family this weekend, but my own laziness almost prevented it from happening, and then circumstances actually did prevent it. In the process I encountered the reactions that can occur when I fuck up and ask someone else to bail me out. And I don't like who I am or what others think of me when I do that. It's comical how immature I am sometimes, but it hurts badly when those I care about get mad at me for it and then make jokes about it. I feel like a big joke.
Here's what happened: My uncle and his wife were going on a one-day trip to Isle of Capri Casino in Bettendorf, IA, this past Saturday, a bus trip being set up by the church that they got married at almost twenty years ago. They asked me if I wanted to go, and I asked my friend Cassandra if she wanted to go. She said sure. So I had known about this trip for three or four weeks. I knew that the bus left early on the morning of Saturday, July 30, and to prevent exactly the kind of shit that wound up happening, I had planned the whole time to go to my uncle's house Friday and spend the night so that we could all get up and out at the same time Saturday morning. A couple of weeks ago my uncle invited Cassandra and me to a dinner the Friday evening before the casino trip. The day before that dinner, last Thursday, Cassandra informed me that she would not be able to make the dinner party, and because it was a couples-themed dinner (despite Cassandra and me not being a couple), I wasn't going to go if I didn't have a date. So my thoughts of getting up early Friday morning and packing my good clothes for Friday evening and my play clothes for Saturday were now reduced to just getting up sometime Friday evening, packing some jeans and a shirt, and going to my uncle's to spend the night. Well, I studied and did some laundry Friday afternoon, and because I'm so out of shape, apparently that sapped all of my energy, and as a result I didn't go to my uncle's Friday night. I stayed home. I knew that I had to get up very early to get over to my uncle's Saturday morning, because his wife told me that they were leaving to go to the church at 8:00A, where they would get on the bus, and that the bus was to leave at 8:30A sharp. I knew all of that when I woke up Saturday morning at a little past 5:30A. I knew I had to hustle and get my ass in gear because I live on the north side, and they live on the south side.
But I didn't get my ass in gear quickly enough, and as a result, I found myself at about 7:15A standing on the platform waiting for the "L" train to come. This was very very bad, because it is absolutely impossible to take the "L" from where I live to the street that my folks live on and then catch the bus to their house in time for me to be there by 8:00A. The train ride would be close to 45 minutes all by itself, and then the bus ride after is about another 20 to 30 minutes. So I called Cassandra, who lives on the south side, and asked her if she could pick me up when I got to the south side on her way to the church bus. At first she misunderstood me and thought that I was asking her to come to the north side and pick me up at home and then drive back to the south side to catch this bus, which not only would not have worked given the time constraints, but on top of that I would never ask someone on the south side to pick me up on the north side so we can drive back to the south side. I always come meet "Ronnie" on the train when we're going to go hang out somewhere in the south suburbs, and it's never a problem for me. Unfortunately, Cassandra was in full rant mode, and she wasn't listening to any request I was making for her to interrupt her plans to accommodate me. "You want me to do what?!? Come on now Dre!" she screamed. I tried to calmly tell her that it would work because the church isn't far from the train stop, but she just fussed and fumed and finally told me that she would call me back once she figured out what to do. At this point I was mad at her for yelling at me. If you don't feel like you can make it work, or even if you just want to say "Fuck you" and you don't want to do it, just say so. But I didn't think my request was unreasonable, especially considering the near $1,000 cash I loaned Cassandra a few months ago. I wanted to scream back, "So a little drive out of your way is inconvenient, but $1,000 isn't? What the fuck is the difference??" Instead, I called my uncle and asked him exactly where the church was, and told him that I would be coming directly there on the bus because I couldn't possibly make it to his house by 8:00A. Cassandra called back soon after that and gave me the suggestion that I ask my uncle to meet me at the last train stop because it's on the street that the church is on and he has to go past there to get to the church. She doesn't know my uncle very well, and the screaming and cursing from him would be worse than what she gave me earlier, so that was not an option.
So I stayed on the phone with Cassandra after I got to the last train stop, and she told me how to get to the church from there. When I stepped off the bus a half-block from the church, it was 8:31A. I figured I had fucked up yet again, but I was somewhat at peace with it. Instead of beating myself up the whole way there, I considered that it wasn't a big deal and that if I missed the church bus, I would just have to go back home and chill, no big deal. The church parking lot was full of people waiting for this bus that was leaving at 8:30A "sharp," and we would be waiting for an hour and a half while those in charge of the trip attempted to find out why the bus won't start before announcing at 10:00A that they can't fix it and they can't find a replacement bus, so the trip was canceled. So it wound up being academic in the end. But the talk between my uncle's wife and Cassandra was my stumbling and bumbling. "I'm already in a hurry rushing around..." says Cassandra to my uncle's wife, to which she continues with a laugh, "...and here comes Big Baby here calling you, 'Come pick me up!'", and Cassandra says, "Yeah! Exactly! I couldn't believe it!" This wasn't an aside that I happened to overhear. This was right in front of my face. I've known my uncle's wife ever since he started dating her in the mid-80s, and she's one of the sweetest, kindest women I have ever known, and she's always been compassionate to me and my many struggles with life. So for her to call me a big baby right in front of me hurt a lot, even though I know she didn't mean to hurt me by saying it. And as far as Cassandra is concerned, I really don't have a lot of good things to say about her right now. How many nights have I stayed up with her on the phone listening to her bitch and moan about her mother and her sister and all these people in her life using her and how sick of it she is and how comfortable she feels having me in her life because she knows that I'm not trying to use her for anything? And for her to yell at me like I'm one of those parasites in her life? Like any of them would loan her $5, much less $1,000?? She can go fuck herself. She had been taking me out and letting me practice driving in her car the last couple of weekends, and she wanted to take the now open Saturday and take me driving again, but I wanted nothing to do with her. She acted like she didn't understand why I didn't want to go, but I think she did. She even asked if I was going back home, which I was because Sunday morning I had to meet "Jacob" up north to drive to a meeting of the members of the big-money fantasy baseball league we're in. But she was offering to drive me home now that time wasn't a problem. And because I didn't want to tell her to her face that I would rather take the bus and train back home than be in the same car with her, I got in my uncle's car and went to their house with them, then hustled to the north side on the train Sunday morning to meet Jacob. I'd rather have done that than deal with Cassandra, because I was going to risk cursing her out if I had to sit in her car alone with her for two seconds, and as much as she pissed me off, I didn't want to do that.
I realize that my anger and hurt at Cassandra and my uncle's wife joking around at my expense is exactly the kind of reaction that one would expect from a "Big Baby." I know, I know. I can't change that sensitive part of me overnight, or maybe ever. I am what I am, and I've always been someone that gets hurt easily when someone scolds me for asking a favor. I already feel like I was a burden on my family when my mom died because they weren't ready to raise a ten-year-old. And ever since then, I've always tried to be independent and do things by myself and not have to ask anyone for help. But transportation is a thorny issue, because I don't have a car. So sometimes I do have to ask for favors from others. I guess I just didn't expect Cassandra to lose her head from this one small favor I was asking, considering what I've done for her and considering all the users she says she has in her life already. I thought I was one of the good guys, but she treated me like a typical horny nigga trying to get something out of her, which I've never done. I still haven't spoken to her about this, but I am not going to let it go and be submissive and let her run me down like I'm some bum. I'm going to tell her how I feel the next time we speak, and if she's upset by it, I don't care.
My plan is to also tell "Torrie" how I feel when I speak to her tonight, and yes, that means ending our relationship. Torrie spent last weekend telling me how she was going to try to get this past Saturday off work and drive to Bettendorf, IA, to see me at the casino. This despite her insisting to me that she doesn't have the time or money to come visit me here in Chicago after I've been to Minneapolis three times to see her, and I'm the unemployed one. Then for the last four days I haven't heard a word form her. She left me an e-mail Sunday saying that she had "lost her cell phone." Nice timing. I had a feeling she wouldn't show. This whole affair between us has been full of me visiting her and giving her what she wants, her promising to come see me and return the favor, then excuse after excuse why she can't do what she said she would. I'm sick of it. She gave me an avenue that I can use to break it off with her gently. She commented in her e-mail that she's afraid to fall in love with me because I have told her that if I get this postal service job that I'm testing for this coming Wednesday that I'm staying in Chicago, and that makes her feel like I've put her "on the back burner." And what the fuck did she expect me to do for her when she's done nothing for me??? So that's going to allow me to tell her that I don't want her to wait on the back burner for me because I may never come up to Minneapolis permanently, and that she was right when she tried to end it a few months ago because we don't have time for each other. It's very important for me to note that I don't have anything set up with any other women, except for "Laurie" still claiming that she's going to spend time with me when she's through with her business up in Detroit, but she says she's not promising me anything. I'm not dumping Torrie in order to get with someone else. I'm doing it because I don't respect her, I don't like her, and I was only with her because she can fuck. And I think I deserve better. If I'm alone for a long time waiting for something better, so be it. That's more time for me to improve some things about myself, like not being such a "Big Baby" and growing up a little. Okay, growing up a lot. I don't have a clue what the next few months are going to be like, but I'm approaching my 30th birthday in December, and dammit, I've got to start doing things differently if I expect my next 30 years to be of a higher quality than this first 30. Someway, somehow, I've got to start living life like a man, and not like a scared little baby looking for someone to protect him. I've got to protect myself.
Here's what happened: My uncle and his wife were going on a one-day trip to Isle of Capri Casino in Bettendorf, IA, this past Saturday, a bus trip being set up by the church that they got married at almost twenty years ago. They asked me if I wanted to go, and I asked my friend Cassandra if she wanted to go. She said sure. So I had known about this trip for three or four weeks. I knew that the bus left early on the morning of Saturday, July 30, and to prevent exactly the kind of shit that wound up happening, I had planned the whole time to go to my uncle's house Friday and spend the night so that we could all get up and out at the same time Saturday morning. A couple of weeks ago my uncle invited Cassandra and me to a dinner the Friday evening before the casino trip. The day before that dinner, last Thursday, Cassandra informed me that she would not be able to make the dinner party, and because it was a couples-themed dinner (despite Cassandra and me not being a couple), I wasn't going to go if I didn't have a date. So my thoughts of getting up early Friday morning and packing my good clothes for Friday evening and my play clothes for Saturday were now reduced to just getting up sometime Friday evening, packing some jeans and a shirt, and going to my uncle's to spend the night. Well, I studied and did some laundry Friday afternoon, and because I'm so out of shape, apparently that sapped all of my energy, and as a result I didn't go to my uncle's Friday night. I stayed home. I knew that I had to get up very early to get over to my uncle's Saturday morning, because his wife told me that they were leaving to go to the church at 8:00A, where they would get on the bus, and that the bus was to leave at 8:30A sharp. I knew all of that when I woke up Saturday morning at a little past 5:30A. I knew I had to hustle and get my ass in gear because I live on the north side, and they live on the south side.
But I didn't get my ass in gear quickly enough, and as a result, I found myself at about 7:15A standing on the platform waiting for the "L" train to come. This was very very bad, because it is absolutely impossible to take the "L" from where I live to the street that my folks live on and then catch the bus to their house in time for me to be there by 8:00A. The train ride would be close to 45 minutes all by itself, and then the bus ride after is about another 20 to 30 minutes. So I called Cassandra, who lives on the south side, and asked her if she could pick me up when I got to the south side on her way to the church bus. At first she misunderstood me and thought that I was asking her to come to the north side and pick me up at home and then drive back to the south side to catch this bus, which not only would not have worked given the time constraints, but on top of that I would never ask someone on the south side to pick me up on the north side so we can drive back to the south side. I always come meet "Ronnie" on the train when we're going to go hang out somewhere in the south suburbs, and it's never a problem for me. Unfortunately, Cassandra was in full rant mode, and she wasn't listening to any request I was making for her to interrupt her plans to accommodate me. "You want me to do what?!? Come on now Dre!" she screamed. I tried to calmly tell her that it would work because the church isn't far from the train stop, but she just fussed and fumed and finally told me that she would call me back once she figured out what to do. At this point I was mad at her for yelling at me. If you don't feel like you can make it work, or even if you just want to say "Fuck you" and you don't want to do it, just say so. But I didn't think my request was unreasonable, especially considering the near $1,000 cash I loaned Cassandra a few months ago. I wanted to scream back, "So a little drive out of your way is inconvenient, but $1,000 isn't? What the fuck is the difference??" Instead, I called my uncle and asked him exactly where the church was, and told him that I would be coming directly there on the bus because I couldn't possibly make it to his house by 8:00A. Cassandra called back soon after that and gave me the suggestion that I ask my uncle to meet me at the last train stop because it's on the street that the church is on and he has to go past there to get to the church. She doesn't know my uncle very well, and the screaming and cursing from him would be worse than what she gave me earlier, so that was not an option.
So I stayed on the phone with Cassandra after I got to the last train stop, and she told me how to get to the church from there. When I stepped off the bus a half-block from the church, it was 8:31A. I figured I had fucked up yet again, but I was somewhat at peace with it. Instead of beating myself up the whole way there, I considered that it wasn't a big deal and that if I missed the church bus, I would just have to go back home and chill, no big deal. The church parking lot was full of people waiting for this bus that was leaving at 8:30A "sharp," and we would be waiting for an hour and a half while those in charge of the trip attempted to find out why the bus won't start before announcing at 10:00A that they can't fix it and they can't find a replacement bus, so the trip was canceled. So it wound up being academic in the end. But the talk between my uncle's wife and Cassandra was my stumbling and bumbling. "I'm already in a hurry rushing around..." says Cassandra to my uncle's wife, to which she continues with a laugh, "...and here comes Big Baby here calling you, 'Come pick me up!'", and Cassandra says, "Yeah! Exactly! I couldn't believe it!" This wasn't an aside that I happened to overhear. This was right in front of my face. I've known my uncle's wife ever since he started dating her in the mid-80s, and she's one of the sweetest, kindest women I have ever known, and she's always been compassionate to me and my many struggles with life. So for her to call me a big baby right in front of me hurt a lot, even though I know she didn't mean to hurt me by saying it. And as far as Cassandra is concerned, I really don't have a lot of good things to say about her right now. How many nights have I stayed up with her on the phone listening to her bitch and moan about her mother and her sister and all these people in her life using her and how sick of it she is and how comfortable she feels having me in her life because she knows that I'm not trying to use her for anything? And for her to yell at me like I'm one of those parasites in her life? Like any of them would loan her $5, much less $1,000?? She can go fuck herself. She had been taking me out and letting me practice driving in her car the last couple of weekends, and she wanted to take the now open Saturday and take me driving again, but I wanted nothing to do with her. She acted like she didn't understand why I didn't want to go, but I think she did. She even asked if I was going back home, which I was because Sunday morning I had to meet "Jacob" up north to drive to a meeting of the members of the big-money fantasy baseball league we're in. But she was offering to drive me home now that time wasn't a problem. And because I didn't want to tell her to her face that I would rather take the bus and train back home than be in the same car with her, I got in my uncle's car and went to their house with them, then hustled to the north side on the train Sunday morning to meet Jacob. I'd rather have done that than deal with Cassandra, because I was going to risk cursing her out if I had to sit in her car alone with her for two seconds, and as much as she pissed me off, I didn't want to do that.
I realize that my anger and hurt at Cassandra and my uncle's wife joking around at my expense is exactly the kind of reaction that one would expect from a "Big Baby." I know, I know. I can't change that sensitive part of me overnight, or maybe ever. I am what I am, and I've always been someone that gets hurt easily when someone scolds me for asking a favor. I already feel like I was a burden on my family when my mom died because they weren't ready to raise a ten-year-old. And ever since then, I've always tried to be independent and do things by myself and not have to ask anyone for help. But transportation is a thorny issue, because I don't have a car. So sometimes I do have to ask for favors from others. I guess I just didn't expect Cassandra to lose her head from this one small favor I was asking, considering what I've done for her and considering all the users she says she has in her life already. I thought I was one of the good guys, but she treated me like a typical horny nigga trying to get something out of her, which I've never done. I still haven't spoken to her about this, but I am not going to let it go and be submissive and let her run me down like I'm some bum. I'm going to tell her how I feel the next time we speak, and if she's upset by it, I don't care.
My plan is to also tell "Torrie" how I feel when I speak to her tonight, and yes, that means ending our relationship. Torrie spent last weekend telling me how she was going to try to get this past Saturday off work and drive to Bettendorf, IA, to see me at the casino. This despite her insisting to me that she doesn't have the time or money to come visit me here in Chicago after I've been to Minneapolis three times to see her, and I'm the unemployed one. Then for the last four days I haven't heard a word form her. She left me an e-mail Sunday saying that she had "lost her cell phone." Nice timing. I had a feeling she wouldn't show. This whole affair between us has been full of me visiting her and giving her what she wants, her promising to come see me and return the favor, then excuse after excuse why she can't do what she said she would. I'm sick of it. She gave me an avenue that I can use to break it off with her gently. She commented in her e-mail that she's afraid to fall in love with me because I have told her that if I get this postal service job that I'm testing for this coming Wednesday that I'm staying in Chicago, and that makes her feel like I've put her "on the back burner." And what the fuck did she expect me to do for her when she's done nothing for me??? So that's going to allow me to tell her that I don't want her to wait on the back burner for me because I may never come up to Minneapolis permanently, and that she was right when she tried to end it a few months ago because we don't have time for each other. It's very important for me to note that I don't have anything set up with any other women, except for "Laurie" still claiming that she's going to spend time with me when she's through with her business up in Detroit, but she says she's not promising me anything. I'm not dumping Torrie in order to get with someone else. I'm doing it because I don't respect her, I don't like her, and I was only with her because she can fuck. And I think I deserve better. If I'm alone for a long time waiting for something better, so be it. That's more time for me to improve some things about myself, like not being such a "Big Baby" and growing up a little. Okay, growing up a lot. I don't have a clue what the next few months are going to be like, but I'm approaching my 30th birthday in December, and dammit, I've got to start doing things differently if I expect my next 30 years to be of a higher quality than this first 30. Someway, somehow, I've got to start living life like a man, and not like a scared little baby looking for someone to protect him. I've got to protect myself.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
A New Beginning?
I just read my entry from Tuesday, and it's funny how I say that my opportunity with "Laurie" has magically appeared out of nowhere, no thanks to any improvements or efforts I have made recently. Not true. I am starting to get more in touch with my spiritual side, which may have had to happen in order for anything between Laurie and me to work, but the point is, it's happening whether Laurie is part of the picture or not. After all these years of resisting any kind of influence by my God on my life, I am beginning to realize that if I don't let my God into my life, I'm not going to ever have a life. It's been 29 and a half years of resistance on my part to "let go and let God," so to speak. What do I have to show for it? Heartbreak. Bottom-of-the-ocean depths of self-esteem and confidence. No education. The feeling that I'm running in circles and that nothing has improved in my life. And most importantly, every attempt by me to put my trust and love into a person resulting in catastrophe because I didn't have that trust and love for my God or for myself first, which maybe, just maybe, is what "Karen" meant when she said that our relationship was "doomed from the start." Basically, what it comes down to is, when am I going to go a different direction and let spirituality guide me and see what happens? Because all of my resistance to let that into my life has resulted in, all things considered, a pretty fucked-up life thus far. As my aunt has asked me many times, when am I going to try something else, since my way has obviously not been working?
I had a spiritual encounter last night. One of the cassette tapes that the never-to-be-identified burglars stole when I moved into my apartment three years ago was "Real Love," by Lisa Stansfield. For those that don't know, she is a British singer with a powerful voice and old-school R&B flavorings in her singing and music, and I enjoyed listening to her music immensely. The entire second half of the album "Real Love" contains some inspiring singing and songwriting, but there's one song that was always special to me: the last song, "I Will Be Waiting." She doesn't harmonize with any other voices on the song, it's all Lisa, belting out a typical I-understand-that-you-have-to-find-yourself-but-I-will-be-waiting-for-you-when-you're-ready-for-me lyric but doing it in a way that makes your heart ache for her and at the same time makes you pray that you can someday find someone that loves you that much. Well, I ordered the album, on CD this time, from Amazon.com, and I played that song last night for the first time since it was stolen from me years ago. And something in the lyrics made me envision my mother singing to me from heaven, and I don't believe I ever heard the song in that way before. "I will be waiting for you/Waiting for time to heal your wounds/And I will be thinking of you/Knowing love will bring you back to me, cause our love is true," goes the chorus. And I saw clouds and my beautiful mother singing those words to me, telling me that she's waiting in heaven for me to straighten myself up and earn my way up there with her so that we can be reunited. And my eyes teared up and my throat started feeling dry and swollen, and I just buried my hands in my head wondering why I have spent so many years doing things that would make my mom so not proud of me if she were alive. I'm not going to be perfect from here on out, but I have got to make things right between me and my God if I ever hope to spend eternity with my mother. Because the way things stand right now, with some of the things that I have done in my life to other people and to myself, if I died right now, I don't think I would be anywhere near heaven. And I don't even want to think about the physical punishment I have vowed to hand out to any supreme being upon my death. Usually I make those vows after some other incident of bad luck has happened to me, without thinking about what I could have done to not put myself in the position of having that incident happen to me. Yes, I have a lot of anger inside me.
If anyone, Laurie, Karen, anyone were to read this blog and be happy for me that I have finally figured out that I can't ever have the life I want without "letting go and letting God," that's fine, but it is not about other people and how they feel about me. If the day ever came where I joined a church, and boy I didn't think I'd be considering doing that right now, my prejudices about other people and my fear about what others would think of me wouldn't matter either. I have the feeling that so long as the relationship between me and my God is okay, nothing else would matter. I have the feeling that I could walk into a church with someone I hate--Karen, for example--and hold her hand and pray to my God to give me the strength to forgive and let life continue and go along its intended path. I would be able to walk down the street and still assume that no women find me attractive because of my weight and perceived ugliness, but I could be okay with that because the type of woman that would not want me in her life because I'm fat is the type that I wouldn't want in my life because she's ignorant. I could walk into a job interview without fear of rejection because I would have a sense of purpose in my life besides finding a job, and therefore it wouldn't be as big of a deal to me. Mentally, spiritually, maybe even physically, I could find a love for myself that I've never had. It would be a whole new way of living, and then the soulmate that I've been looking for would come into my life, and I would actually be ready for her instead of worrying that it's a mirage and she wouldn't stay with me for the long haul because she can do much better. I'm not there yet, not by a long shot. I'm still weak when it comes to the flesh, and I still don't believe enough in myself to do something radical like dump "Torrie" for no reason other than I don't see her as a future wife. But maybe I'm on my way. And that's better than I was a few weeks ago.
I had a spiritual encounter last night. One of the cassette tapes that the never-to-be-identified burglars stole when I moved into my apartment three years ago was "Real Love," by Lisa Stansfield. For those that don't know, she is a British singer with a powerful voice and old-school R&B flavorings in her singing and music, and I enjoyed listening to her music immensely. The entire second half of the album "Real Love" contains some inspiring singing and songwriting, but there's one song that was always special to me: the last song, "I Will Be Waiting." She doesn't harmonize with any other voices on the song, it's all Lisa, belting out a typical I-understand-that-you-have-to-find-yourself-but-I-will-be-waiting-for-you-when-you're-ready-for-me lyric but doing it in a way that makes your heart ache for her and at the same time makes you pray that you can someday find someone that loves you that much. Well, I ordered the album, on CD this time, from Amazon.com, and I played that song last night for the first time since it was stolen from me years ago. And something in the lyrics made me envision my mother singing to me from heaven, and I don't believe I ever heard the song in that way before. "I will be waiting for you/Waiting for time to heal your wounds/And I will be thinking of you/Knowing love will bring you back to me, cause our love is true," goes the chorus. And I saw clouds and my beautiful mother singing those words to me, telling me that she's waiting in heaven for me to straighten myself up and earn my way up there with her so that we can be reunited. And my eyes teared up and my throat started feeling dry and swollen, and I just buried my hands in my head wondering why I have spent so many years doing things that would make my mom so not proud of me if she were alive. I'm not going to be perfect from here on out, but I have got to make things right between me and my God if I ever hope to spend eternity with my mother. Because the way things stand right now, with some of the things that I have done in my life to other people and to myself, if I died right now, I don't think I would be anywhere near heaven. And I don't even want to think about the physical punishment I have vowed to hand out to any supreme being upon my death. Usually I make those vows after some other incident of bad luck has happened to me, without thinking about what I could have done to not put myself in the position of having that incident happen to me. Yes, I have a lot of anger inside me.
If anyone, Laurie, Karen, anyone were to read this blog and be happy for me that I have finally figured out that I can't ever have the life I want without "letting go and letting God," that's fine, but it is not about other people and how they feel about me. If the day ever came where I joined a church, and boy I didn't think I'd be considering doing that right now, my prejudices about other people and my fear about what others would think of me wouldn't matter either. I have the feeling that so long as the relationship between me and my God is okay, nothing else would matter. I have the feeling that I could walk into a church with someone I hate--Karen, for example--and hold her hand and pray to my God to give me the strength to forgive and let life continue and go along its intended path. I would be able to walk down the street and still assume that no women find me attractive because of my weight and perceived ugliness, but I could be okay with that because the type of woman that would not want me in her life because I'm fat is the type that I wouldn't want in my life because she's ignorant. I could walk into a job interview without fear of rejection because I would have a sense of purpose in my life besides finding a job, and therefore it wouldn't be as big of a deal to me. Mentally, spiritually, maybe even physically, I could find a love for myself that I've never had. It would be a whole new way of living, and then the soulmate that I've been looking for would come into my life, and I would actually be ready for her instead of worrying that it's a mirage and she wouldn't stay with me for the long haul because she can do much better. I'm not there yet, not by a long shot. I'm still weak when it comes to the flesh, and I still don't believe enough in myself to do something radical like dump "Torrie" for no reason other than I don't see her as a future wife. But maybe I'm on my way. And that's better than I was a few weeks ago.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Premonition?
My friend Cassandra tells me that the dream I had last night is a premonition that "Karen's" lifestyle of taking men's hearts and breaking them is about to catch up to her. I don't see how even if Karen is about to go down (not by my hand) I would find out about it, but I guess we'll see. The dream shook me so that I had to call Cassandra when I woke up even though she was in the middle of getting ready to go to work. I had Karen on my mind because Sunday night she updated her Yahoo profile with the notice that she "got a new tattoo...pics to come later in the week." My current dilemma makes it more pathetic than ever that I'm checking up on Karen, but I'll talk about that shortly.
In the dream, I'm still working at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, which gave me the opportunity to read the newspaper every day because I didn't have to pay for it. I don't read the paper now. But I was reading the paper in the dream, and I read one day about a murder in Milwaukee. Didn't think anything of the person arrested for it because I had never heard of her. Then the next day, I read that a second person has been arrested in the murder: Karen. I was shocked. That night, a phone call came at 3A, but it was a co-worker that I had fooled around with before. I figured she maybe wanted to talk about Karen, but true to her real-life nature, the co-worker wanted to talk about herself and some problem she was having. I hung up. The next day I knew I wanted to find Access Hollywood or some tabloid show so that I could make some cash from this. "Yeah, the Milwaukee killers...I know one of them, very intimately. I'll talk for $20,000, take it or leave it." But before I left home, I saw the film of the arrest of Karen on the news. She didn't look like herself. She had lost a considerable amount of weight, and she had straight black hair, which may have been a wig because Karen once told me about getting drunk on a cruise and putting on a wig as part of the drinking. But she was harried and didn't look like the Karen I had been with. I remember getting so close to the TV to check the area codes on the phone numbers on the signs of the surrounding businesses because I couldn't believe they were in Milwaukee arresting Karen because it didn't look like her at all. And then I got too close, and all of a sudden I was part of the arrest. Yes, I became one of the arresting officers. And I got off a zinger worthy of Law & Order before I woke up. I was putting the cuffs on her, and she said that I was hurting her wrists, to which I responded: "Come on baby, you and I both know that this ain't the first time you've been in handcuffs, so just relax like you do with your other niggers, and it won't hurt so much." Then while I read her her Miranda rights, I woke up with chills.
Cassandra says that I became part of the arrest because I was so eager to be a part of the downfall of Karen that I put myself on the scene, "like Fat Albert going into the TV in the movie," she said. I don't know how I'm going to see this supposed fall from grace of Karen, but boy, if it does happen anything like I dreamed, then I will never doubt spirituality or karma again. I hate dreaming about people that I want to see but I can't. And I don't even want to see Karen to be with her again, just to see her, just to see that she's still alive so that I don't happen to miss her eventual demise, which would be one of the best days of my life. Apparently I'll see her new tattoo soon, so that will have to do. When I was dating her, she mentioned wanting to get something Chinese to signify sisterhood as a tribute to her sister. Since I found out about her lies, I've vowed to someday get something in Chinese that says the equivalent of "Karen sucks dick" or, if they don't have a translation of Karen, just "K sucks" or "K is bad." Scar my body with the memory of a whore? Why not? She scarred my heart forever.
And yet I am getting better. Doesn't seem like it I know, but I am. For one, I am now about 95% sure that I'm going to be a mouse and never go up to Milwaukee or Brown Deer or Lake Geneva or wherever this bitch lives and get my revenge. I've discovered that most of my hurt from what happened does not come from Karen herself betraying me. It comes from being betrayed by my first white lover, which is what Karen was; I met "Sarah" a few weeks after I first slept with Karen. You see, after not dating at all for six years after breaking up with "Giselle," my high school girlfriend and the first and so far last black woman I've ever had sex with, when I got up the guts to meet Karen I thought that she was the exact woman that I was looking for when I decided to date a white woman. She didn't give me any lip, she didn't have an attitude, she was loving, caring, and she seemed to think that I was the shit. Yes, the lack of communication and sometimes distant behavior from Karen were red flags, as was the DUI. But those I ignored in order to keep my fantasy alive. And when she asked me to move up there with her after I told her that I was soon losing my job, I was in heaven. I thought this woman was going to take care of me, welcome me into her family (she said she was gonig to introduce me to her parents several times, but never did), show me a peaceful, serene way of living, and most of all, would never hurt me or belittle me like Giselle and just about all other black females in my past did. I mean, for God's sakes, I gave Karen a cheesy poem I had written, and she acted like it was the most profound piece of literature she had ever received. She kept telling me every time I did something small, like bring her roses or a birthday present or a poem, that she wasn't used to being treated so well, or that no one had ever done that for her before. So I thought that I was going to be the big black man in her life, her king, not ruling over her but the object of her innermost desires and wishes, and she my white queen, the center of my world. And when I found out that it was all a mirage and everything she had ever told me was a fucking lie, I lost it. Not just my sanity, but my hopes and dreams and, most importantly, my ability to trust. It's not Karen that I miss. It's the first white woman to treat me like a king that I miss. But realizing that made me see that I can't make Karen pay for doing that to me. It's not her fault that I picked her as the first white woman I loved and trusted. It's my fault. Karen is not attractive. Karen does not have a great personality. Losing Karen was not a great loss to me. Losing that dream was.
I said that my relationship issues highlight how little Karen means to me currently, because she has nothing to do with the decisions I am going to have to make. The "white queen" in my life right now is "Torrie." Why? Um, I don't know, because she doesn't go running when I approach like everyone else does? Seriously, I've known for the duration of our "relationship" that Torrie and I aren't very alike. She's a smoking, drinking, bisexual freak who happened to flirt with me in an online group, and after being screwed by "Jane," I called her flirt and, without knowing what her deal was, raised her and dared her to meet me for a weekend of no-strings sex. And because we haven't had any friction between us, despite her attempt to dump me once because she didn't know if she could commit the time to me, we've stayed together, despite never once actually committing ourselves exclusively to each other. I stepped up the intensity by inserting love into the equation, but did I do that because I really felt it for her or because my insecurities made me believe that I had to do so in order to keep her interested? Or maybe it was to keep myself interested? So anyway, that's where I stand, in a long-distance relationship not because I sincerely want forever with Torrie, but because I don't want to be alone, even though I am alone, waiting for her call every other day or so, talking about nothing because we don't have anything to talk about. Even when we talk for two hours like we did Saturday, I come away feeling like she's just trying to justify herself to me so that she doesn't look like the desperate, lonely woman that she is. And still no love back to me, even as a friend.
Enter "Laurie."
Laurie is a lady on the very same site where I met Torrie that I have been chatting with for a few weeks. She has been trying to convince me that I am a "damn good man" and that I should want the world for myself because I deserve it. She also has insisted that she will make the trip to Chicago to spend time with me when she gets the free time and the money. And she thinks I am attractive, and she says that she needs a "teddy bear" to make her feel safe and comfortable, and she wants to get physical with me. I have a hard time believing in her and trusting her. Why? It's simple: She's slender, blonde, and attractive. In what alternative universe would a slender, blonde, attractive woman have any desire to fly to Chicago to meet a fat black dude with no money? But she says that she feels like we could be soulmates, based on our similar histories dealing with the loss of our parents, and our similar histories dealing with lack of self-esteem, and our similar histories dealing with lying, backstabbing ex-lovers. (At least I don't have to work with mine; Laurie had an affair with her married black supervisor, and despite the affair being over she's still at the same job, fueling her desire to go away somewhere when she can afford to, somewhere like Chicago, for instance.) We chat every day, and every time we chat I feel something pulling me toward her, as if she possesses that love and caring and nurturing that I have been looking for all my life. Personality-wise, I can't remember feeling so strongly about someone. She has such a strong spirit, and she's such an optimist. It couldn't help but rub off on me if we were to spend time together, and goodness knows I need a positive person in my life. But it's too much to spend time with her and not become physical; I just can't imagine seeing someone so attractive sitting across from me, and she thinks that I am special, and I can't take it to the next level. I bet we would be great lovers too. My dilemma is that Torrie hasn't done anything to deserve me cheating on her and lying to her, but she hasn't done anything to deserve being dumped either. If I look at the raw situation and take out my feelings of a deeper connection between me and Laurie, what I would be doing is taking what Torrie and I have, a great sex life but a lot of distance, and trading it for what might be a great sex life but might not, and a lot of distance. Doesn't seem to make much sense. My deeper dilemma is that fate has not been on my side for the first 30 years of my life. I haven't been very lucky with my decisions. Simply put, it's a "seems to good to be true" situation. Without doing anything to improve myself, except going to school but I didn't meet Laurie in school, I have met the woman that can take on the task of making me feel good about myself, nurturing me, building me up, making love to me and not just having sex with me, thinks that I will be the man that she wants in her life, and she's attractive, and she's not over 200 lbs, and she's not already married or a parent, and she can actually have kids, which Torrie cannot. Oh, and she loves the same smooth jazz artists that I do, and she wants to start a fantasy football league with me. Come on. If I start seeing Laurie and let Torrie go, all I can see in the future is a line of excuses sometime next year as to why she can't see me, work, money, etc, while she starts spending more and more time up there in Detroit, where she lives, with someone else, someone more like a real man than me, someone actually in shape, someone with, you know, a job. And finally, a big break-up as she explains to me how fate simply said that she and I weren't meant to me, but she just knows I will recover from this to see my real potential and never settle in a relationship again. Meanwhile, she's off to be with her new soulmate, and I'm all alone. Again.
The funny part is, there is nothing she can say to guarantee that it won't shake down that way. All the spiritual feelings she has, all the good feelings she has about me and how I can be the man that I want to be, all of that doesn't guarantee that she won't someday wake up and look at my love handles and my pot belly and my breasts and think, "Wow, I can do much better than this." Hell, she might say that the first time we sleep together. And what I have now with Torrie may not seem like much, but at least she accepts me in her life and in her bed, and that's better than what I have with Laurie right now. I have nothing with Laurie right now. But I do fear that I could be passing up something with Laurie that would be more special than Torrie, or Sarah, or Giselle, or obviously Karen, or anyone else that I could ever hope to convince to be with me romantically. Basically, if I let Torrie go to give Laurie a shot, I will be unleashing the love and trust that I have held back ever since I let it go onto Karen and got burned for it. Can Laurie handle that? What if she can't? Then what do I do? Why do I almost come to tears every time I chat with Laurie, as if I have never chatted with someone who knows me so well? What if I never meet anyone as special as Laurie again? If I stay loyal to Torrie, what if Torrie lets me go after a while because she finds her soulmate? Hell, what if I'm just a man-ho and I get with Laurie and meet someone else that thinks I'm a damn good man? What if I can't trust anyone deep enough to commit to her monogamously? I haven't been sleeping well lately with all these questions swirling in my already mixed-up mind. I'm going to have to step up and be a man and make some hard decisions real soon, and whether they are the right decisions or not I'm afraid I won't know until it's too late to do anything about it.
In the dream, I'm still working at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, which gave me the opportunity to read the newspaper every day because I didn't have to pay for it. I don't read the paper now. But I was reading the paper in the dream, and I read one day about a murder in Milwaukee. Didn't think anything of the person arrested for it because I had never heard of her. Then the next day, I read that a second person has been arrested in the murder: Karen. I was shocked. That night, a phone call came at 3A, but it was a co-worker that I had fooled around with before. I figured she maybe wanted to talk about Karen, but true to her real-life nature, the co-worker wanted to talk about herself and some problem she was having. I hung up. The next day I knew I wanted to find Access Hollywood or some tabloid show so that I could make some cash from this. "Yeah, the Milwaukee killers...I know one of them, very intimately. I'll talk for $20,000, take it or leave it." But before I left home, I saw the film of the arrest of Karen on the news. She didn't look like herself. She had lost a considerable amount of weight, and she had straight black hair, which may have been a wig because Karen once told me about getting drunk on a cruise and putting on a wig as part of the drinking. But she was harried and didn't look like the Karen I had been with. I remember getting so close to the TV to check the area codes on the phone numbers on the signs of the surrounding businesses because I couldn't believe they were in Milwaukee arresting Karen because it didn't look like her at all. And then I got too close, and all of a sudden I was part of the arrest. Yes, I became one of the arresting officers. And I got off a zinger worthy of Law & Order before I woke up. I was putting the cuffs on her, and she said that I was hurting her wrists, to which I responded: "Come on baby, you and I both know that this ain't the first time you've been in handcuffs, so just relax like you do with your other niggers, and it won't hurt so much." Then while I read her her Miranda rights, I woke up with chills.
Cassandra says that I became part of the arrest because I was so eager to be a part of the downfall of Karen that I put myself on the scene, "like Fat Albert going into the TV in the movie," she said. I don't know how I'm going to see this supposed fall from grace of Karen, but boy, if it does happen anything like I dreamed, then I will never doubt spirituality or karma again. I hate dreaming about people that I want to see but I can't. And I don't even want to see Karen to be with her again, just to see her, just to see that she's still alive so that I don't happen to miss her eventual demise, which would be one of the best days of my life. Apparently I'll see her new tattoo soon, so that will have to do. When I was dating her, she mentioned wanting to get something Chinese to signify sisterhood as a tribute to her sister. Since I found out about her lies, I've vowed to someday get something in Chinese that says the equivalent of "Karen sucks dick" or, if they don't have a translation of Karen, just "K sucks" or "K is bad." Scar my body with the memory of a whore? Why not? She scarred my heart forever.
And yet I am getting better. Doesn't seem like it I know, but I am. For one, I am now about 95% sure that I'm going to be a mouse and never go up to Milwaukee or Brown Deer or Lake Geneva or wherever this bitch lives and get my revenge. I've discovered that most of my hurt from what happened does not come from Karen herself betraying me. It comes from being betrayed by my first white lover, which is what Karen was; I met "Sarah" a few weeks after I first slept with Karen. You see, after not dating at all for six years after breaking up with "Giselle," my high school girlfriend and the first and so far last black woman I've ever had sex with, when I got up the guts to meet Karen I thought that she was the exact woman that I was looking for when I decided to date a white woman. She didn't give me any lip, she didn't have an attitude, she was loving, caring, and she seemed to think that I was the shit. Yes, the lack of communication and sometimes distant behavior from Karen were red flags, as was the DUI. But those I ignored in order to keep my fantasy alive. And when she asked me to move up there with her after I told her that I was soon losing my job, I was in heaven. I thought this woman was going to take care of me, welcome me into her family (she said she was gonig to introduce me to her parents several times, but never did), show me a peaceful, serene way of living, and most of all, would never hurt me or belittle me like Giselle and just about all other black females in my past did. I mean, for God's sakes, I gave Karen a cheesy poem I had written, and she acted like it was the most profound piece of literature she had ever received. She kept telling me every time I did something small, like bring her roses or a birthday present or a poem, that she wasn't used to being treated so well, or that no one had ever done that for her before. So I thought that I was going to be the big black man in her life, her king, not ruling over her but the object of her innermost desires and wishes, and she my white queen, the center of my world. And when I found out that it was all a mirage and everything she had ever told me was a fucking lie, I lost it. Not just my sanity, but my hopes and dreams and, most importantly, my ability to trust. It's not Karen that I miss. It's the first white woman to treat me like a king that I miss. But realizing that made me see that I can't make Karen pay for doing that to me. It's not her fault that I picked her as the first white woman I loved and trusted. It's my fault. Karen is not attractive. Karen does not have a great personality. Losing Karen was not a great loss to me. Losing that dream was.
I said that my relationship issues highlight how little Karen means to me currently, because she has nothing to do with the decisions I am going to have to make. The "white queen" in my life right now is "Torrie." Why? Um, I don't know, because she doesn't go running when I approach like everyone else does? Seriously, I've known for the duration of our "relationship" that Torrie and I aren't very alike. She's a smoking, drinking, bisexual freak who happened to flirt with me in an online group, and after being screwed by "Jane," I called her flirt and, without knowing what her deal was, raised her and dared her to meet me for a weekend of no-strings sex. And because we haven't had any friction between us, despite her attempt to dump me once because she didn't know if she could commit the time to me, we've stayed together, despite never once actually committing ourselves exclusively to each other. I stepped up the intensity by inserting love into the equation, but did I do that because I really felt it for her or because my insecurities made me believe that I had to do so in order to keep her interested? Or maybe it was to keep myself interested? So anyway, that's where I stand, in a long-distance relationship not because I sincerely want forever with Torrie, but because I don't want to be alone, even though I am alone, waiting for her call every other day or so, talking about nothing because we don't have anything to talk about. Even when we talk for two hours like we did Saturday, I come away feeling like she's just trying to justify herself to me so that she doesn't look like the desperate, lonely woman that she is. And still no love back to me, even as a friend.
Enter "Laurie."
Laurie is a lady on the very same site where I met Torrie that I have been chatting with for a few weeks. She has been trying to convince me that I am a "damn good man" and that I should want the world for myself because I deserve it. She also has insisted that she will make the trip to Chicago to spend time with me when she gets the free time and the money. And she thinks I am attractive, and she says that she needs a "teddy bear" to make her feel safe and comfortable, and she wants to get physical with me. I have a hard time believing in her and trusting her. Why? It's simple: She's slender, blonde, and attractive. In what alternative universe would a slender, blonde, attractive woman have any desire to fly to Chicago to meet a fat black dude with no money? But she says that she feels like we could be soulmates, based on our similar histories dealing with the loss of our parents, and our similar histories dealing with lack of self-esteem, and our similar histories dealing with lying, backstabbing ex-lovers. (At least I don't have to work with mine; Laurie had an affair with her married black supervisor, and despite the affair being over she's still at the same job, fueling her desire to go away somewhere when she can afford to, somewhere like Chicago, for instance.) We chat every day, and every time we chat I feel something pulling me toward her, as if she possesses that love and caring and nurturing that I have been looking for all my life. Personality-wise, I can't remember feeling so strongly about someone. She has such a strong spirit, and she's such an optimist. It couldn't help but rub off on me if we were to spend time together, and goodness knows I need a positive person in my life. But it's too much to spend time with her and not become physical; I just can't imagine seeing someone so attractive sitting across from me, and she thinks that I am special, and I can't take it to the next level. I bet we would be great lovers too. My dilemma is that Torrie hasn't done anything to deserve me cheating on her and lying to her, but she hasn't done anything to deserve being dumped either. If I look at the raw situation and take out my feelings of a deeper connection between me and Laurie, what I would be doing is taking what Torrie and I have, a great sex life but a lot of distance, and trading it for what might be a great sex life but might not, and a lot of distance. Doesn't seem to make much sense. My deeper dilemma is that fate has not been on my side for the first 30 years of my life. I haven't been very lucky with my decisions. Simply put, it's a "seems to good to be true" situation. Without doing anything to improve myself, except going to school but I didn't meet Laurie in school, I have met the woman that can take on the task of making me feel good about myself, nurturing me, building me up, making love to me and not just having sex with me, thinks that I will be the man that she wants in her life, and she's attractive, and she's not over 200 lbs, and she's not already married or a parent, and she can actually have kids, which Torrie cannot. Oh, and she loves the same smooth jazz artists that I do, and she wants to start a fantasy football league with me. Come on. If I start seeing Laurie and let Torrie go, all I can see in the future is a line of excuses sometime next year as to why she can't see me, work, money, etc, while she starts spending more and more time up there in Detroit, where she lives, with someone else, someone more like a real man than me, someone actually in shape, someone with, you know, a job. And finally, a big break-up as she explains to me how fate simply said that she and I weren't meant to me, but she just knows I will recover from this to see my real potential and never settle in a relationship again. Meanwhile, she's off to be with her new soulmate, and I'm all alone. Again.
The funny part is, there is nothing she can say to guarantee that it won't shake down that way. All the spiritual feelings she has, all the good feelings she has about me and how I can be the man that I want to be, all of that doesn't guarantee that she won't someday wake up and look at my love handles and my pot belly and my breasts and think, "Wow, I can do much better than this." Hell, she might say that the first time we sleep together. And what I have now with Torrie may not seem like much, but at least she accepts me in her life and in her bed, and that's better than what I have with Laurie right now. I have nothing with Laurie right now. But I do fear that I could be passing up something with Laurie that would be more special than Torrie, or Sarah, or Giselle, or obviously Karen, or anyone else that I could ever hope to convince to be with me romantically. Basically, if I let Torrie go to give Laurie a shot, I will be unleashing the love and trust that I have held back ever since I let it go onto Karen and got burned for it. Can Laurie handle that? What if she can't? Then what do I do? Why do I almost come to tears every time I chat with Laurie, as if I have never chatted with someone who knows me so well? What if I never meet anyone as special as Laurie again? If I stay loyal to Torrie, what if Torrie lets me go after a while because she finds her soulmate? Hell, what if I'm just a man-ho and I get with Laurie and meet someone else that thinks I'm a damn good man? What if I can't trust anyone deep enough to commit to her monogamously? I haven't been sleeping well lately with all these questions swirling in my already mixed-up mind. I'm going to have to step up and be a man and make some hard decisions real soon, and whether they are the right decisions or not I'm afraid I won't know until it's too late to do anything about it.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Lost
I'm sitting here at my computer on a day off from school, and I feel completely lost. I'm trying to see a side of my life where things are going okay, and I don't see one. I already know my personal life is shit. "Karen" keeps updating her Yahoo profile with meaningless stuff like "I got extensions...lol," teasing me as if to indicate that I have no business still checking her profile, which I don't. "Torrie" and I are about to have The Talk, because a long-distance relationship where only one person makes the effort to see the other can't continue without The Talk to see where everyone stands exactly. And considering my past luck with dating, I don't expect The Talk to have a happy ending. And where will that leave me? Checking Torrie and Karen's profiles until the day I die?
The academic side of my life I suppose is going okay, but it's going very slowly and it has no future for now because I don't have the money to take any classes this fall. My friend Cassandra explained to me how much she's paying in student loans and how long she has to pay it, and fuck, there's no way I'd be able to pay off that kind of money. She tries to make it sound okay by telling me that she would never have her $41,000 per year job if not for her degree, so it's paying for itself. I remind her that this is me we're talking about, so a job paying that much ain't in my future no matter what degree I have. And as further proof, I present my dad, proud owner of a business degree for over 30 years and still living like a homeless person. Success just isn't part of my makeup, unfortunately. That's part of why what Karen did still hurts after 16 months. Stupid me finally thought that I had succeeded in finding a good quality woman that loved me and found me attractive. I should have known better.
My unemployment benefits are about to run out, so I attempted to bring in some income with online gambling. No surprise that didn't turn out well. I deposited $1,000 into my sports betting account from my credit card over the past month, and I won a few bets and built my account up briefly, but soon enough my usual bad luck caught up to me and wiped me out. Even worse was my poker luck. I finished ninth in a 700-person tournament online a few weeks ago, and that turned my $5 entry fee for that tournament into about $110. There's nothing in that account now either. All the tournaments that I've entered since I've been bounced early from them, even the ten-man single table events that theoretically would be much easier to win than a 700-person marathon. I mean I have been knocked out with some great fucking hands too. For instance, and this will sound like a foreign language for non-poker fans, but in one tournament my two down cards were a pair of 7s and of the four community cards out there, one was a 7 and one was an 8, and the other two were lower cards. That means that I have three of a kind. So when I go all-in, putting all 1,200 of my chips on the line, and two different people with more chips than me also go all-in, I figure I'm screwed because to go all-in, these people must have good hands, and if either of them have a pair of 8s, then they have a better hand than me. They both had the same two down cards, a 5 and a 6. That means that they went all-in not because they already had a good hand--they actually had nothing--but because they hoped that the last card in the community would connect their 5 and 6 to the 7 and 8, giving them a straight, which beats my three of a kind. The 4 or the 10 would do it, but if neither came, then they would both have lost all of their chips and been knocked out of the tournament by betting on a straight draw that didn't come. That's insane, to put all your chips on the line even though you don't have so much as a pair! Of course, they were playing against me, so the last card was indeed a 10.
So, here I am, still trudging along but completely lost as to where I'm going to end up. Even those who aren't where they want to be at least have a sense of direction. I feel like I have nothing right now. I spent the last year with a doctor trying to find a way out of the maze that is my mind. The only thing I found was my money missing after every session. So fuck that. But I'm feeling more and more desperate for something to change as I approach 30 years old. I feel like I should have something to show for making it that far. But I won't have a wife, I won't have a family, and unless I knock off a bank, I won't have anything of substance. I might not even have a job or a place of my own. And every night I go to bed, I'm wondering: When does it get better? Or does it ever?
The academic side of my life I suppose is going okay, but it's going very slowly and it has no future for now because I don't have the money to take any classes this fall. My friend Cassandra explained to me how much she's paying in student loans and how long she has to pay it, and fuck, there's no way I'd be able to pay off that kind of money. She tries to make it sound okay by telling me that she would never have her $41,000 per year job if not for her degree, so it's paying for itself. I remind her that this is me we're talking about, so a job paying that much ain't in my future no matter what degree I have. And as further proof, I present my dad, proud owner of a business degree for over 30 years and still living like a homeless person. Success just isn't part of my makeup, unfortunately. That's part of why what Karen did still hurts after 16 months. Stupid me finally thought that I had succeeded in finding a good quality woman that loved me and found me attractive. I should have known better.
My unemployment benefits are about to run out, so I attempted to bring in some income with online gambling. No surprise that didn't turn out well. I deposited $1,000 into my sports betting account from my credit card over the past month, and I won a few bets and built my account up briefly, but soon enough my usual bad luck caught up to me and wiped me out. Even worse was my poker luck. I finished ninth in a 700-person tournament online a few weeks ago, and that turned my $5 entry fee for that tournament into about $110. There's nothing in that account now either. All the tournaments that I've entered since I've been bounced early from them, even the ten-man single table events that theoretically would be much easier to win than a 700-person marathon. I mean I have been knocked out with some great fucking hands too. For instance, and this will sound like a foreign language for non-poker fans, but in one tournament my two down cards were a pair of 7s and of the four community cards out there, one was a 7 and one was an 8, and the other two were lower cards. That means that I have three of a kind. So when I go all-in, putting all 1,200 of my chips on the line, and two different people with more chips than me also go all-in, I figure I'm screwed because to go all-in, these people must have good hands, and if either of them have a pair of 8s, then they have a better hand than me. They both had the same two down cards, a 5 and a 6. That means that they went all-in not because they already had a good hand--they actually had nothing--but because they hoped that the last card in the community would connect their 5 and 6 to the 7 and 8, giving them a straight, which beats my three of a kind. The 4 or the 10 would do it, but if neither came, then they would both have lost all of their chips and been knocked out of the tournament by betting on a straight draw that didn't come. That's insane, to put all your chips on the line even though you don't have so much as a pair! Of course, they were playing against me, so the last card was indeed a 10.
So, here I am, still trudging along but completely lost as to where I'm going to end up. Even those who aren't where they want to be at least have a sense of direction. I feel like I have nothing right now. I spent the last year with a doctor trying to find a way out of the maze that is my mind. The only thing I found was my money missing after every session. So fuck that. But I'm feeling more and more desperate for something to change as I approach 30 years old. I feel like I should have something to show for making it that far. But I won't have a wife, I won't have a family, and unless I knock off a bank, I won't have anything of substance. I might not even have a job or a place of my own. And every night I go to bed, I'm wondering: When does it get better? Or does it ever?
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Always A Sunrise
Taken from an MSN group message board...thanks Foxxi!
ALWAYS A SUNRISE
Look out, look in. Every day has a sunrise.
Wherever you are, like a magic circle, the world is all around you.
Everything has a purpose. Every action a reaction.
All around you there are happenings.
People, places and ideas, all offering you opportunities.
Some to be touched and changed by the very nature of your uniqueness.
Others to be left alone for they are not worthy of you.
Life is a love affair. Love the people around you, love what you do.
Every day dawns with a sunrise. Always, high days and low days.
Blue skies of pleasure, there to enjoy. Celebrate.
Dark clouds of storming hurt, however black, they always pass.
Today was yesterday’s tomorrow; yesterday is gone. History.
And the wonder of yesterday is whatever we didn’t like is behind us.
Make a change. Unlimited you. Greatness from within.
There is no such thing as failure, only learning experiences.
Some things are easy to learn, others hard.
What is easy for one may be hard for another.
Lessons to be learned, not burdens to be carried.
Everyone is different. Everyone is special.
We are all creative. We are all tool makers.
Greatness and humility. Both are you.
Leader and follower. Warrior and water carrier.
Teacher and student. Champion and cheerleader. Who is to say?
One day you are one, the next day you are the other.
Pace setters tread the untrodden path.
Never given away your sunrise day of action to an excuse.
'When the time is right.' 'When I feel like it.' 'When I've enough money.'
Sometimes it’s too easy to justify not taking action.
Sometimes you have to say 'no' to your inner voice ...
when it tries to keep you too comfortably where you're at.
Always a new light. Always a new day. Each day a gift of opportunity.
There is always a sunrise even when it is far from our view.
There is always a door. We simply have to seek.
There is always a key. We simply have to persist.
And, sometimes, we just have to wait a while. Patience does have virtue.
There is always a future. The future is hope and the magic is faith.
It begins with you today. Today a new day. Always.
Today our decision to be the person we really want to be.
Today our choice of courage to accept what we cannot change.
Today our choice to rise to the challenge of changing what we must.
These are the choices of happiness.
Always an answer. You simply have to believe.
The dawn. The magic of a new day given to us.
A love affair. A love affair with today.
Today, a gift of opportunity; to laugh; to learn; to achieve;
to make someone happy, to be happy.
Always a sunrise.
~ By Rex Barker
ALWAYS A SUNRISE
Look out, look in. Every day has a sunrise.
Wherever you are, like a magic circle, the world is all around you.
Everything has a purpose. Every action a reaction.
All around you there are happenings.
People, places and ideas, all offering you opportunities.
Some to be touched and changed by the very nature of your uniqueness.
Others to be left alone for they are not worthy of you.
Life is a love affair. Love the people around you, love what you do.
Every day dawns with a sunrise. Always, high days and low days.
Blue skies of pleasure, there to enjoy. Celebrate.
Dark clouds of storming hurt, however black, they always pass.
Today was yesterday’s tomorrow; yesterday is gone. History.
And the wonder of yesterday is whatever we didn’t like is behind us.
Make a change. Unlimited you. Greatness from within.
There is no such thing as failure, only learning experiences.
Some things are easy to learn, others hard.
What is easy for one may be hard for another.
Lessons to be learned, not burdens to be carried.
Everyone is different. Everyone is special.
We are all creative. We are all tool makers.
Greatness and humility. Both are you.
Leader and follower. Warrior and water carrier.
Teacher and student. Champion and cheerleader. Who is to say?
One day you are one, the next day you are the other.
Pace setters tread the untrodden path.
Never given away your sunrise day of action to an excuse.
'When the time is right.' 'When I feel like it.' 'When I've enough money.'
Sometimes it’s too easy to justify not taking action.
Sometimes you have to say 'no' to your inner voice ...
when it tries to keep you too comfortably where you're at.
Always a new light. Always a new day. Each day a gift of opportunity.
There is always a sunrise even when it is far from our view.
There is always a door. We simply have to seek.
There is always a key. We simply have to persist.
And, sometimes, we just have to wait a while. Patience does have virtue.
There is always a future. The future is hope and the magic is faith.
It begins with you today. Today a new day. Always.
Today our decision to be the person we really want to be.
Today our choice of courage to accept what we cannot change.
Today our choice to rise to the challenge of changing what we must.
These are the choices of happiness.
Always an answer. You simply have to believe.
The dawn. The magic of a new day given to us.
A love affair. A love affair with today.
Today, a gift of opportunity; to laugh; to learn; to achieve;
to make someone happy, to be happy.
Always a sunrise.
~ By Rex Barker
Friday, July 01, 2005
Inspirational Words To Live By
Taken from an MSN group message board...thanks to Trish.
And yes, I realize how ironic it is that I, the ultimate obsessive little boy that won't let past hurt go, am posting this. But something inside of me realizes that this is the way to do things in life, and maybe someday I'll shock myself and everyone else and actually get it right.
Inspirational Words To Live By
Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one so that when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift.
When the door of happiness closes, another opens, but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one which has been opened for us.
The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch and swing with, never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had.
It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives.
Giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they'll love you back! Don't expect love in return; just wait for it to grow in their heart but if it doesn't, be content it grew in yours. It takes only a minute to get a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone, but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.
Don't go for looks; they can deceive. Don't go for wealth; even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright. Find the one that makes your heart smile.
There are moments in life when you miss someone so much that you just want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real!
Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do.
May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to make you happy.
Always put yourself in others' shoes. If you feel that it hurts you, it probably hurts the other person, too.
The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.
Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried, for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives. Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss and ends with a tear. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can't go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.
When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.
And yes, I realize how ironic it is that I, the ultimate obsessive little boy that won't let past hurt go, am posting this. But something inside of me realizes that this is the way to do things in life, and maybe someday I'll shock myself and everyone else and actually get it right.
Inspirational Words To Live By
Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one so that when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift.
When the door of happiness closes, another opens, but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one which has been opened for us.
The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch and swing with, never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had.
It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives.
Giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they'll love you back! Don't expect love in return; just wait for it to grow in their heart but if it doesn't, be content it grew in yours. It takes only a minute to get a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone, but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.
Don't go for looks; they can deceive. Don't go for wealth; even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright. Find the one that makes your heart smile.
There are moments in life when you miss someone so much that you just want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real!
Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do.
May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to make you happy.
Always put yourself in others' shoes. If you feel that it hurts you, it probably hurts the other person, too.
The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.
Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried, for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives. Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss and ends with a tear. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can't go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.
When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
The Saga Continues
Yep, more "Karen" news...
Last week, the day after I wrote to her new fake Tawanda Yahoo account, which said she was single and going to Mexico in September and asked "Wanna come?" to anyone in general, she changed the profile to read that she was in a long-term relationship and removed all references to her new SUV, her new house, and her cruise to Mexico. If she really is in a long-term relationship, then she seduced her latest sucker even quicker than she seduced me, because she just put an ad up on April 23 under her real name on the singles site where I met her. Or, more than likely, she was frightened by the fact that I know her new alias and instead of closing the account like she did when I busted her last year, she decided to try to scare me off by indicating that there is a man with her now, so I better watch my step. Ooh, I'm really scared. Then Sunday night she updated the profile again to say that "we" are all moved into the new house and settling in. She also changed the name of the town she's living in. That's fine. She can create all the stories she wants under whatever profile she wants. It doesn't change anything.
Now for the most unbelievable twist, something I never would have imagined. A few months ago I joined a website called bbwhotornot.com (they recently changed their name to ratingbbw.com due to mean people apparently hacking the previous domain). I don't even remember how I came across the site, but it's just one of those hot-or-not sites where strangers put up their pictures and wait for other strangers to click on a number between 1 and 10 and rate them, except this site is specifically for fat men and women. I already know that I'm not hot, so you can guess why I joined: To see if Karen was on there, since it's a site right up her alley. She can show how big of a whore she is and attract a new clientele that she already knows is attracted to big girls. Well I never found a profile of her on there. But I put a picture up for the hell of it about a month ago, and last night, for the first time since the beginning of the month when my computer crashed, I was looking over the profiles of the women who rated me (you can choose to be put on the list of people who rate someone, whether you rate them good or bad, or you can choose to rate anonymously). Way back on June 7, someone who looked very familiar rated me "average." It wasn't Karen...it was "Rhonda," the ho-bag friend of Karen that went out with us on Valentine's Day last year with a date that wasn't her husband, because the husband kept calling her cell phone wondering where the fuck his wife was on Valentine's Day and she and Karen kept laughing at him. Rhonda is the "official" reason that Karen claims to be promoting lesbian bbw websites, because she's just helping her friend Rhonda after Rhonda helped her out of her "abusive marriage." Rhonda is the person that Karen is sitting next to half-naked on the front of the bisexual bbw website that sent me into the psych ward last March. So you see how big of a role Rhonda played in the history of me and Karen--a very big part. And to know that she already knew that I was on this site, and probably informed Karen, was another big shock in a long line of big shocks. All those anonymous jackasses that have talked shit to me in the comments section of this blog--they may very well be Rhonda and Karen and friends, because there's a link to my Yahoo profile on my ratingbbw.com profile, and in my Yahoo profile, there's a link to this blog. I never intended for Karen to see this blog. I never meant for her to know just how much she hurt me, and I never meant for her to have any kinds of heads-up for when I finally decide to go up there and make her pay for what she did to me. Every time I have ever wrote to Karen, it was using the e-mail address that I initially used when I met her, one that I never update. And it gets worse. The kicker: You can put three or four different pictures under your ratingbbw.com profile. Guess what the third picture under Rhonda's profile is? Yes, that very same picture of her and Karen half-naked and smiling that I saw that fateful Friday, March 19. I never fucking thought I'd see that picture ever again. And now that I have, I can't stop thinking about it.
My mind has been racing ever since last night. How much does Karen actually know and when did she know it? Why did fate make me see that Goddamn picture again after I thought I had purged it from my mind? Did Rhonda even bother to tell Karen about my ratingbbw.com profile? Is it just a private joke between me and Rhonda? Or are they now torturing me through these retarded "anonymous" comments? Why can't I just quit this life and go to another one? Why do I get the feeling that Karen and I will keep finding ways to be intertwined until the day I die? Or the day she dies, whichever comes first?
Last week, the day after I wrote to her new fake Tawanda Yahoo account, which said she was single and going to Mexico in September and asked "Wanna come?" to anyone in general, she changed the profile to read that she was in a long-term relationship and removed all references to her new SUV, her new house, and her cruise to Mexico. If she really is in a long-term relationship, then she seduced her latest sucker even quicker than she seduced me, because she just put an ad up on April 23 under her real name on the singles site where I met her. Or, more than likely, she was frightened by the fact that I know her new alias and instead of closing the account like she did when I busted her last year, she decided to try to scare me off by indicating that there is a man with her now, so I better watch my step. Ooh, I'm really scared. Then Sunday night she updated the profile again to say that "we" are all moved into the new house and settling in. She also changed the name of the town she's living in. That's fine. She can create all the stories she wants under whatever profile she wants. It doesn't change anything.
Now for the most unbelievable twist, something I never would have imagined. A few months ago I joined a website called bbwhotornot.com (they recently changed their name to ratingbbw.com due to mean people apparently hacking the previous domain). I don't even remember how I came across the site, but it's just one of those hot-or-not sites where strangers put up their pictures and wait for other strangers to click on a number between 1 and 10 and rate them, except this site is specifically for fat men and women. I already know that I'm not hot, so you can guess why I joined: To see if Karen was on there, since it's a site right up her alley. She can show how big of a whore she is and attract a new clientele that she already knows is attracted to big girls. Well I never found a profile of her on there. But I put a picture up for the hell of it about a month ago, and last night, for the first time since the beginning of the month when my computer crashed, I was looking over the profiles of the women who rated me (you can choose to be put on the list of people who rate someone, whether you rate them good or bad, or you can choose to rate anonymously). Way back on June 7, someone who looked very familiar rated me "average." It wasn't Karen...it was "Rhonda," the ho-bag friend of Karen that went out with us on Valentine's Day last year with a date that wasn't her husband, because the husband kept calling her cell phone wondering where the fuck his wife was on Valentine's Day and she and Karen kept laughing at him. Rhonda is the "official" reason that Karen claims to be promoting lesbian bbw websites, because she's just helping her friend Rhonda after Rhonda helped her out of her "abusive marriage." Rhonda is the person that Karen is sitting next to half-naked on the front of the bisexual bbw website that sent me into the psych ward last March. So you see how big of a role Rhonda played in the history of me and Karen--a very big part. And to know that she already knew that I was on this site, and probably informed Karen, was another big shock in a long line of big shocks. All those anonymous jackasses that have talked shit to me in the comments section of this blog--they may very well be Rhonda and Karen and friends, because there's a link to my Yahoo profile on my ratingbbw.com profile, and in my Yahoo profile, there's a link to this blog. I never intended for Karen to see this blog. I never meant for her to know just how much she hurt me, and I never meant for her to have any kinds of heads-up for when I finally decide to go up there and make her pay for what she did to me. Every time I have ever wrote to Karen, it was using the e-mail address that I initially used when I met her, one that I never update. And it gets worse. The kicker: You can put three or four different pictures under your ratingbbw.com profile. Guess what the third picture under Rhonda's profile is? Yes, that very same picture of her and Karen half-naked and smiling that I saw that fateful Friday, March 19. I never fucking thought I'd see that picture ever again. And now that I have, I can't stop thinking about it.
My mind has been racing ever since last night. How much does Karen actually know and when did she know it? Why did fate make me see that Goddamn picture again after I thought I had purged it from my mind? Did Rhonda even bother to tell Karen about my ratingbbw.com profile? Is it just a private joke between me and Rhonda? Or are they now torturing me through these retarded "anonymous" comments? Why can't I just quit this life and go to another one? Why do I get the feeling that Karen and I will keep finding ways to be intertwined until the day I die? Or the day she dies, whichever comes first?
Sunday, June 26, 2005
My History (5th In A Series)
These are the memories I have of my dear mother, Brenda (1954-1986). She died of complications from sickle cell anemia, a painful disease that she dealt with her entire life.
My memory is incredibly sharp, or at least other people tell me it has to be, because my mother is still very strong in my mind, even though she died when I was ten years old. Certainly a couple of pictures I've seen over the years keeps the memories of what she looked like sharp, but I've only seen a few pics, and I don't see any pics of her on a regular basis. I have a pic of her helping me open my Christmas presents when I was four, but I don't look at it much. It's safely in my folder next to a note she wrote to my father while she was pregnant with me; my dad sent me the pic and the note about five years ago. It showed how sensitive my mom was. It was actually scary how similar the note was to my own insecurities. I never knew my mom was insecure about herself before reading this note, and it made me wonder how much of my fear of not measuring up like everyone else is in a way hereditary.
"I had a new doctor who...said that my blood hemoglobin was so low that he can't see how I'm still living," she wrote. "He said that most people with blood as low as mine die by the age of 16. Well anyway this cuts the chances of survival for our child. But he said I'll have a better chance at normal delivery because I've (reached) the 4th month of my pregnancy...The reason I'm writing instead of telling you over the telephone or in person is because I can't stop the tears...I'm just drowning in self-pity...I feel that I'm only half a woman and you deserve better. So get yourself a woman you can love and be happy with. Don't think you owe me something just because I'm carrying your child...You know you are the first whole man I ever loved. Yes loved...Oh yes I know I've tried to play a hard person. But the day I found out I was pregnant I loved this child. I told you a number of times that I would like to get rid of him or her but it was a lie right from the beginning. I just didn't want to be hurt anymore."
I was stunned when my dad sent this to me. I knew how difficult it was for my mom to have a child because once I asked her why I didn't have any siblings, and she matter-of-factly said, "Because it would kill me." I was so young, I didn't know she wasn't kidding until much later. But I wasn't aware of all the feelings that surrounded her pregnancy. I didn't know exactly how much danger she and I were in just from her carrying me. I didn't know how close I was to not existing, either due to abortion or from pregnancy complications. And that's why I know today that whatever I am feeling and going through may be rough, and I may feel like doing things that would jeopardize my freedom and my life, but ultimately I can't do that because my mother went through too much to give me life for me to waste it. It's the big overriding motivation for me every day I go to school: I have to try to make something of myself, if not for me then for my mother.
My earliest memories of my mother include how much she cared about her public appearance. Despite being tall, in the neighborhood of six feet by my memory, slender, and beautiful, she would hold up our trips out of the house by twenty or thirty minutes applying makeup and lipstick and fixing her hair. Our trips weren't very frequent because of her health. We lived with her mother, her brother, and her sister in a three-bedroom place on the second floor of a duplex her mother's brother owned. My dad visited but not often. My mom didn't drive, so trips would basically occur when we tagged along when her brother or sister went shopping, and also just me and her shopping on Madison St. on the west side of Chicago, taking the bus on a given day and never staying out until dark. It was in this environment that I learned that drinking and drugs were not a part of our lives, and they have never been a part of mine. Her mother smoked three packs a day, but no one else in the house did. And if my mother did any of those things, I certainly would have wanted to. One thing she did that I wanted to imitate but never did was the practice of taking handfuls of powdered starch and eating them. I never understood why she did that, but I knew not to tell anyone when I saw her do it, because no one wanted her to do it. And she wouldn't let me try to do it; she hid the box high on a shelf in the pantry so that I couldn't imitate her.
My mother was a lot of fun. I recall her huge blowout afro as the first hairdo of hers I ever saw, but once she abandoned that in the '80s, she didn't change styles much. Straight and smooth, no hair coloring ever, plain but beautiful. But her personality wasn't plain. She was very colorful. She read to me. She encouraged any little crazy thing that I said or thought. She would wake me up if a game of Uno or gin rummy or keeno was breaking out because she knew how much I loved to play. She was a romantic; her love of Teddy Pendergrass songs was so strong that I remember not wanting to hear a Teddy song called "Joy" when it came out shortly after her death because it reminded me of her. She was a hell of a woman with many facets. To be honest, she's a hell of an act for anyone to live up to as far as whom I choose to date. Sensitive, tall, slim, naturally beautiful, whipsmart, sober, warm-hearted, with enough love to fill the planet Earth? And would literally die for her loved ones? As far as I'm concerned, no one can possibly measure up.
She and I tried to be a family with my dad for about a half-year while I was in pre-school. We lived on a street called Lakeside near the lake in Chicago. It wasn't a typical rich North Shore neighborhood though. We were in a tiny one-bedroom apartment that wasn't very comfortable, especially for me, since I had to sleep in the living room on a foldout couch. But she woke me up around 5:30A and took me on a nearly two-hour bus ride every morning to the pre-school that I was attending on the west side about a block from her mother's house. The program that I was in was a good program, and she liked the faculty, so nothing was going to stop her from continuing my education there, not even moving so far away. In fact, it was my mom that insisted on getting me into a top-notch classical primary school after a teacher at the pre-school told her that I was "gifted." My dad's temper may have been a big factor in us leaving. I saw him once put his hands around her neck; I had to climb the bed and beat him in the head with the back of a hairbrush in order to show my displeasure, although that happened when he was visiting her mother's house, not when we were living with him. Who knows what other methods of controlling her he tried. I know he beat me like a dog. It wasn't unusual for me to accidentally fall asleep watching The Three Stooges or Benny Hill and be awakened by hard belt lashes because I failed to get up and turn the TV off before I fell asleep, as if I knew exactly when I was going to fall asleep. (I now sleep with either the TV or radio on every night without fail no matter where I am, probably as a sign of rebellion against him after all these years.) I have absolutely no idea if my mother knew this, but once when she was out of the apartment (meaning she was either shopping, at her mother's house, or in the hospital), the bastard brought a blonde hooker there in cutoff blue jean shorts and swore me to secrecy by intimidating me. Then they went in the same bedroom that he and his wife--my mother, the woman he married in front of me and everyone else in 1980--shared, and they didn't come out for a long time. I'm sure whatever else he was fooling around with, she had an idea, and that may be the real reason we moved out and back to her mother's house.
My mom didn't have much of a social life. She had one close friend since childhood, a woman named Barbara who is so kind-hearted that to this day she still calls me on my birthday even though no one in my family does. Around 1985 my mom fell in love again. She met a new man, a guy we called Mac, and I think they were planning on getting married. In fact, my mom and dad were not legally divorced before she died, but I believe she was pushing the proceedings in order to marry Mac. Mac made her happy when he showed up. I'll give him that. He actually seemed to make my mom happy. And he was good to me, letting me hang out with him in his Maywood apartment some weekends and watch sports with him. It was Mac that gave me my first racetrack experience. I think I placed a $2 show bet with him and won back $3 and change, which thrilled me immensely. It was Mac that also gave me my first taste of beer. I was begging to have a sip of his beer, and he and my mom kept telling me that I wouldn't like it, but I insisted, so he let me have a sip, and oh my God was that the nastiest shit I ever tasted. It was out of a 24-oz. Schlitz can. I still have the can because Mac started a penny collection for me in that can. It's been full of pennies for years now. I may cash it in someday, but only if I have to.
My mother was in and out of the hospital all her life. It became routine for her to disappear for several weeks at a time. My grandmother would take care of me when this happened, as well as my uncle and aunt. Once, when I was about eight or nine, my mother tried to discipline me with a belt, but she extended so much energy that right in the middle she passed out. I thought I had killed her. My uncle told me as much when they were taking her to the hospital. He'd probably deny it today, but he did say, "You keep acting the way you act, you're going to kill your mother." She survived that, but she was getting weaker and weaker. She left the house less frequently, and she didn't seem to be as much fun to me. But she, Mac and I were going to spend a weekend as a "family" at a downstate resort, complete with swimming pool, which I had never been in before, so I was really looking forward to it. This was going to happen in late September 1986.
In late August 1986 my mother went into the hospital again. She assured me that we were still going to make our weekend trip, and because she went to the hospital so often, I didn't think anything of her going this time. She slowly descended the steps like she always did, and said goodbye to me after she made it downstairs. I yelled "Bye" and went back to playing pretend baseball in the living room. That was the last time I ever saw my mother. The events of her death are very rapid to me. She had been in the hospital several weeks, as usual, and I was starting to get a little antsy, probably because our trip was upcoming. Then all of a sudden my family, including my grandmother, who didn't speak much, and my play aunt who lived downstairs started gathering around me daily gently asking if I wanted to visit my mother in the hospital. I kept saying no, partly because I didn't like hospitals, and partly because I didn't see the need--after all, she'll he back home shortly like she usually is. This went on for close to a week. Then on September 4, they gathered in my bedroom. All except my uncle were crying. Through the tears, they tried their best to explain to me that my mom was being kept alive by machine, and that with my blessing, they were going to pull the plug. But I actually misunderstood them to mean that they had already pulled the plug and that my mom was already dead. But I was trying to be a big boy and not let anything affect me, so I agreed to whatever they were telling me, and then we all had a long group hug. It wasn't until they came back into my room the next day and told me that my mom was now dead that I realized that she was still alive the day before. They kept asking me if I wanted to come to the hospital to see her one last time, but I thought she was already gone, and I didn't want to see her dead, so I kept saying no. I think I would have gone to see her if I knew that she was still alive. So officially, September 5, 1986, the day before I was to start fifth grade, my mom died, 41 days before her 32nd birthday.
My "be a big boy and be strong" act started almost immediately. I didn't cry when they told me they were pulling the plug, nor when they told me she was finally at rest. I matter-of-factly told everyone when I went to school that my mom just died. These were kids that I had been classmates with since first grade at that same classical school that my mom enrolled me in, so they weren't cold, uncaring strangers. Just the opposite, they expressed remorse and sorrow, along with my teachers. One boy, Parrish, the tough, bully-like kid but someone I never had a beef with, said, "Boy, I don't know what I would do if my mother died." I didn't know how to react to that. I felt like maybe something was wrong because I wasn't feeling as sad as I should. I felt more stunned than anything. I really wasn't expecting her to die. I thought she would live forever. Another exchange that I will never forget highlighted how much I was blocking out anything that would make me feel sad. Timothy, one of my best friends, came to me and said, "I heard about your mother. I'm sorry." To which I responded: "Don't be sorry. You didn't kill her." The standard for nervous laughter was set by Timothy and everyone around us at that moment. But I was determined not to let anything penetrate me. My penchant for keeping my feelings bottled up started with my mother's death. For some reason I would not allow anything to show that I was sad in any way. Not even my mother's funeral. I may have shown sadness or maybe even cried at my mother's funeral, and I wasn't going to let that happen, so I simply didn't go. I would rather remember her the last time I saw her, in pain but upright and still fighting and still alive. No one was going to take that from me. I got the feeling that my family was very disappointed in my decision not to go to the funeral, but they would have had to pick me up and take me there if they wanted me to go. I was not acknowledging the greatest woman in my life in the state she was now in.
All kinds of acting out and attention-grabbing antics by me followed. My grades dropped sharply. I wanted to use my mom's death as an excuse, but I couldn't come up with a good reason why her death would affect my grades. Everyone else knew that had something to do with it, but they didn't know how to deal with it, so eventually they just gave up and started calling me lazy and distracted by my other interests such as sports, music, and pro wrestling and took those things away. My dad threatened to take me away with him for the summer if my final grades for 5th grade contained any Fs, and knowing my history with his brand of discipline, of course that's the last thing I wanted. So why did I fail many subjects anyway? I don't know. My solution to the problem didn't help matters--I tried to white-out the bad grades before taking them home, but my folks found my 5th-grade teacher's grandfather's phone number in the phone book because her last name was rare, and she happened to be at her grandfather's house at that moment and confirmed that she had not whited out my grades. I felt ashamed, mad, afraid. But I wouldn't let go of that lie until it was proven wrong. At that moment I had my mom, my TV, my radio, my wrestling magazines, and now my summer taken away from me in the past year. That lie was all I had left.
But my grades never got better, and my actions continued to worsen, including molesting classmates, writing dirty stories (with my limited knowledge of sex not slowing me down a bit) and flipping off teachers...bascially anything that went against my image of a good guy nerd. Several counselors and psychiatrists came in and out, but when they asked how I felt about my mom, I indicated that I didn't have a problem with my mom, and that was that. It was kinda true though. I didn't think about her because I was so busy running around getting into all kinds of situations that I didn't have time, which I think was the point. When my dad made me stop before walking into the 1990 Chicagoland Spelling Bee and pray that my mom was there with us and would help me to win, it was the longest I had stopped to think about her in a long time. But I felt invincible from that point on, and I won. However, I was still more comfortable avoiding all thoughts about her until my first girlfriend "Giselle" came along and pointed out that maybe I didn't trust her because I was so afraid of her suddenly leaving me, just like my mother did. I told her she was crazy. But from that moment on, I've thought about my mother almost every day and how her loss has impacted me and my actions. And I think Giselle was exactly right.
I now live every day knowing that part of the reason my relationships with women are so dysfunctional is because I'm looking for someone to replace my mother. When I give my love to a woman that I'm with, which I do often even if I don't fully trust her, I do it looking to be loved back because I don't care who it is, I just want someone to love me unconditionally like my mother did. Yes, I date fat women mostly because they give up the pussy easily, but it's also because any thin, tall, attractive woman has to be at a certain level as far as her personality for me to even consider her. She has to be a saintly woman with a heart of gold, a total sweetheart, a smart cookie, confident in herself, really and truly believes in me, and I have to feel like someday she could love me with every fiber of her being, just like I would love her. But I project those expectations upon the fat women that I'm dating because I'm looking for that from whomever I'm with, and so far I haven't met one that measures up yet. The reason that I have such hatred for "Karen" is because I had such love for her because she exhibited those characteristics to me. When I gave her my love, she gave it back. When I invited her to meet my family Christmas Day 2003, she accepted and we welcomed her in and we all, not just me, gave her our love and she returned it, or so I thought. We stopped just short of giving her that group hug that they gave me when my mom died. I explained all of this to her, and she said that she understood. And when Karen refused to explain herself to me after I found out about her skanky side, it was like she spit in the face of me, my family, and my mother, and I can take being insulted--I'm insulted every fucking day by somebody--but I can't take insulting my family or especially my mother. It has created a very confusing next step for me as far as relationships go. I wanted to jump into something immediately after Karen so that I could be loved by someone, anyone, and "Sarah" was the next one. But at the same time, I felt like a part of me will never trust someone again the way I trusted Karen, and sure enough, I didn't trust Sarah. Sure, I told her about my mother, and she met my family, but there was a bit of a wedge between us, and I made sure of it. Then I thought that "Jane" was that woman with the ability to love me like that, then she canceled meeting me after I already booked the trip. That was like what Karen did to me--took my love, found out how deep it was, then abandoned me. Now I'm dealing with "Torrie," who plays that cool role of hearing about all I've been through and what I'm looking for and doesn't indicate where she stands as far as being the type of woman I want. She's fine just the way things are. And why not? I fly to Minnesota, fuck her, and leave. But now after I gave her my love the last time I saw her and got no response, I'm starting to get the wandering eye again because inside I feel that it's either find it somewhere else or settle for what I'm getting now, which is not what I'm looking for. But at least I've now put out the story of me and my mother, so that those still reading can get a better sense of why I am the way I am. On my left biceps is a rose and below it "R.I.P. BRENDA ROSS 1954-1986" in permanent ink. On my wall is a portrait of her in pencil that's very similar to how she really looked. Every woman in my life has to live up to her. I don't know if I ever will find the one that does, but if I do, I've been storing up love inside since September 5, 1986, and she will receive all of it. And if she really is deserving, then I have no doubt that she'll be able to handle it and give it back to me.
My memory is incredibly sharp, or at least other people tell me it has to be, because my mother is still very strong in my mind, even though she died when I was ten years old. Certainly a couple of pictures I've seen over the years keeps the memories of what she looked like sharp, but I've only seen a few pics, and I don't see any pics of her on a regular basis. I have a pic of her helping me open my Christmas presents when I was four, but I don't look at it much. It's safely in my folder next to a note she wrote to my father while she was pregnant with me; my dad sent me the pic and the note about five years ago. It showed how sensitive my mom was. It was actually scary how similar the note was to my own insecurities. I never knew my mom was insecure about herself before reading this note, and it made me wonder how much of my fear of not measuring up like everyone else is in a way hereditary.
"I had a new doctor who...said that my blood hemoglobin was so low that he can't see how I'm still living," she wrote. "He said that most people with blood as low as mine die by the age of 16. Well anyway this cuts the chances of survival for our child. But he said I'll have a better chance at normal delivery because I've (reached) the 4th month of my pregnancy...The reason I'm writing instead of telling you over the telephone or in person is because I can't stop the tears...I'm just drowning in self-pity...I feel that I'm only half a woman and you deserve better. So get yourself a woman you can love and be happy with. Don't think you owe me something just because I'm carrying your child...You know you are the first whole man I ever loved. Yes loved...Oh yes I know I've tried to play a hard person. But the day I found out I was pregnant I loved this child. I told you a number of times that I would like to get rid of him or her but it was a lie right from the beginning. I just didn't want to be hurt anymore."
I was stunned when my dad sent this to me. I knew how difficult it was for my mom to have a child because once I asked her why I didn't have any siblings, and she matter-of-factly said, "Because it would kill me." I was so young, I didn't know she wasn't kidding until much later. But I wasn't aware of all the feelings that surrounded her pregnancy. I didn't know exactly how much danger she and I were in just from her carrying me. I didn't know how close I was to not existing, either due to abortion or from pregnancy complications. And that's why I know today that whatever I am feeling and going through may be rough, and I may feel like doing things that would jeopardize my freedom and my life, but ultimately I can't do that because my mother went through too much to give me life for me to waste it. It's the big overriding motivation for me every day I go to school: I have to try to make something of myself, if not for me then for my mother.
My earliest memories of my mother include how much she cared about her public appearance. Despite being tall, in the neighborhood of six feet by my memory, slender, and beautiful, she would hold up our trips out of the house by twenty or thirty minutes applying makeup and lipstick and fixing her hair. Our trips weren't very frequent because of her health. We lived with her mother, her brother, and her sister in a three-bedroom place on the second floor of a duplex her mother's brother owned. My dad visited but not often. My mom didn't drive, so trips would basically occur when we tagged along when her brother or sister went shopping, and also just me and her shopping on Madison St. on the west side of Chicago, taking the bus on a given day and never staying out until dark. It was in this environment that I learned that drinking and drugs were not a part of our lives, and they have never been a part of mine. Her mother smoked three packs a day, but no one else in the house did. And if my mother did any of those things, I certainly would have wanted to. One thing she did that I wanted to imitate but never did was the practice of taking handfuls of powdered starch and eating them. I never understood why she did that, but I knew not to tell anyone when I saw her do it, because no one wanted her to do it. And she wouldn't let me try to do it; she hid the box high on a shelf in the pantry so that I couldn't imitate her.
My mother was a lot of fun. I recall her huge blowout afro as the first hairdo of hers I ever saw, but once she abandoned that in the '80s, she didn't change styles much. Straight and smooth, no hair coloring ever, plain but beautiful. But her personality wasn't plain. She was very colorful. She read to me. She encouraged any little crazy thing that I said or thought. She would wake me up if a game of Uno or gin rummy or keeno was breaking out because she knew how much I loved to play. She was a romantic; her love of Teddy Pendergrass songs was so strong that I remember not wanting to hear a Teddy song called "Joy" when it came out shortly after her death because it reminded me of her. She was a hell of a woman with many facets. To be honest, she's a hell of an act for anyone to live up to as far as whom I choose to date. Sensitive, tall, slim, naturally beautiful, whipsmart, sober, warm-hearted, with enough love to fill the planet Earth? And would literally die for her loved ones? As far as I'm concerned, no one can possibly measure up.
She and I tried to be a family with my dad for about a half-year while I was in pre-school. We lived on a street called Lakeside near the lake in Chicago. It wasn't a typical rich North Shore neighborhood though. We were in a tiny one-bedroom apartment that wasn't very comfortable, especially for me, since I had to sleep in the living room on a foldout couch. But she woke me up around 5:30A and took me on a nearly two-hour bus ride every morning to the pre-school that I was attending on the west side about a block from her mother's house. The program that I was in was a good program, and she liked the faculty, so nothing was going to stop her from continuing my education there, not even moving so far away. In fact, it was my mom that insisted on getting me into a top-notch classical primary school after a teacher at the pre-school told her that I was "gifted." My dad's temper may have been a big factor in us leaving. I saw him once put his hands around her neck; I had to climb the bed and beat him in the head with the back of a hairbrush in order to show my displeasure, although that happened when he was visiting her mother's house, not when we were living with him. Who knows what other methods of controlling her he tried. I know he beat me like a dog. It wasn't unusual for me to accidentally fall asleep watching The Three Stooges or Benny Hill and be awakened by hard belt lashes because I failed to get up and turn the TV off before I fell asleep, as if I knew exactly when I was going to fall asleep. (I now sleep with either the TV or radio on every night without fail no matter where I am, probably as a sign of rebellion against him after all these years.) I have absolutely no idea if my mother knew this, but once when she was out of the apartment (meaning she was either shopping, at her mother's house, or in the hospital), the bastard brought a blonde hooker there in cutoff blue jean shorts and swore me to secrecy by intimidating me. Then they went in the same bedroom that he and his wife--my mother, the woman he married in front of me and everyone else in 1980--shared, and they didn't come out for a long time. I'm sure whatever else he was fooling around with, she had an idea, and that may be the real reason we moved out and back to her mother's house.
My mom didn't have much of a social life. She had one close friend since childhood, a woman named Barbara who is so kind-hearted that to this day she still calls me on my birthday even though no one in my family does. Around 1985 my mom fell in love again. She met a new man, a guy we called Mac, and I think they were planning on getting married. In fact, my mom and dad were not legally divorced before she died, but I believe she was pushing the proceedings in order to marry Mac. Mac made her happy when he showed up. I'll give him that. He actually seemed to make my mom happy. And he was good to me, letting me hang out with him in his Maywood apartment some weekends and watch sports with him. It was Mac that gave me my first racetrack experience. I think I placed a $2 show bet with him and won back $3 and change, which thrilled me immensely. It was Mac that also gave me my first taste of beer. I was begging to have a sip of his beer, and he and my mom kept telling me that I wouldn't like it, but I insisted, so he let me have a sip, and oh my God was that the nastiest shit I ever tasted. It was out of a 24-oz. Schlitz can. I still have the can because Mac started a penny collection for me in that can. It's been full of pennies for years now. I may cash it in someday, but only if I have to.
My mother was in and out of the hospital all her life. It became routine for her to disappear for several weeks at a time. My grandmother would take care of me when this happened, as well as my uncle and aunt. Once, when I was about eight or nine, my mother tried to discipline me with a belt, but she extended so much energy that right in the middle she passed out. I thought I had killed her. My uncle told me as much when they were taking her to the hospital. He'd probably deny it today, but he did say, "You keep acting the way you act, you're going to kill your mother." She survived that, but she was getting weaker and weaker. She left the house less frequently, and she didn't seem to be as much fun to me. But she, Mac and I were going to spend a weekend as a "family" at a downstate resort, complete with swimming pool, which I had never been in before, so I was really looking forward to it. This was going to happen in late September 1986.
In late August 1986 my mother went into the hospital again. She assured me that we were still going to make our weekend trip, and because she went to the hospital so often, I didn't think anything of her going this time. She slowly descended the steps like she always did, and said goodbye to me after she made it downstairs. I yelled "Bye" and went back to playing pretend baseball in the living room. That was the last time I ever saw my mother. The events of her death are very rapid to me. She had been in the hospital several weeks, as usual, and I was starting to get a little antsy, probably because our trip was upcoming. Then all of a sudden my family, including my grandmother, who didn't speak much, and my play aunt who lived downstairs started gathering around me daily gently asking if I wanted to visit my mother in the hospital. I kept saying no, partly because I didn't like hospitals, and partly because I didn't see the need--after all, she'll he back home shortly like she usually is. This went on for close to a week. Then on September 4, they gathered in my bedroom. All except my uncle were crying. Through the tears, they tried their best to explain to me that my mom was being kept alive by machine, and that with my blessing, they were going to pull the plug. But I actually misunderstood them to mean that they had already pulled the plug and that my mom was already dead. But I was trying to be a big boy and not let anything affect me, so I agreed to whatever they were telling me, and then we all had a long group hug. It wasn't until they came back into my room the next day and told me that my mom was now dead that I realized that she was still alive the day before. They kept asking me if I wanted to come to the hospital to see her one last time, but I thought she was already gone, and I didn't want to see her dead, so I kept saying no. I think I would have gone to see her if I knew that she was still alive. So officially, September 5, 1986, the day before I was to start fifth grade, my mom died, 41 days before her 32nd birthday.
My "be a big boy and be strong" act started almost immediately. I didn't cry when they told me they were pulling the plug, nor when they told me she was finally at rest. I matter-of-factly told everyone when I went to school that my mom just died. These were kids that I had been classmates with since first grade at that same classical school that my mom enrolled me in, so they weren't cold, uncaring strangers. Just the opposite, they expressed remorse and sorrow, along with my teachers. One boy, Parrish, the tough, bully-like kid but someone I never had a beef with, said, "Boy, I don't know what I would do if my mother died." I didn't know how to react to that. I felt like maybe something was wrong because I wasn't feeling as sad as I should. I felt more stunned than anything. I really wasn't expecting her to die. I thought she would live forever. Another exchange that I will never forget highlighted how much I was blocking out anything that would make me feel sad. Timothy, one of my best friends, came to me and said, "I heard about your mother. I'm sorry." To which I responded: "Don't be sorry. You didn't kill her." The standard for nervous laughter was set by Timothy and everyone around us at that moment. But I was determined not to let anything penetrate me. My penchant for keeping my feelings bottled up started with my mother's death. For some reason I would not allow anything to show that I was sad in any way. Not even my mother's funeral. I may have shown sadness or maybe even cried at my mother's funeral, and I wasn't going to let that happen, so I simply didn't go. I would rather remember her the last time I saw her, in pain but upright and still fighting and still alive. No one was going to take that from me. I got the feeling that my family was very disappointed in my decision not to go to the funeral, but they would have had to pick me up and take me there if they wanted me to go. I was not acknowledging the greatest woman in my life in the state she was now in.
All kinds of acting out and attention-grabbing antics by me followed. My grades dropped sharply. I wanted to use my mom's death as an excuse, but I couldn't come up with a good reason why her death would affect my grades. Everyone else knew that had something to do with it, but they didn't know how to deal with it, so eventually they just gave up and started calling me lazy and distracted by my other interests such as sports, music, and pro wrestling and took those things away. My dad threatened to take me away with him for the summer if my final grades for 5th grade contained any Fs, and knowing my history with his brand of discipline, of course that's the last thing I wanted. So why did I fail many subjects anyway? I don't know. My solution to the problem didn't help matters--I tried to white-out the bad grades before taking them home, but my folks found my 5th-grade teacher's grandfather's phone number in the phone book because her last name was rare, and she happened to be at her grandfather's house at that moment and confirmed that she had not whited out my grades. I felt ashamed, mad, afraid. But I wouldn't let go of that lie until it was proven wrong. At that moment I had my mom, my TV, my radio, my wrestling magazines, and now my summer taken away from me in the past year. That lie was all I had left.
But my grades never got better, and my actions continued to worsen, including molesting classmates, writing dirty stories (with my limited knowledge of sex not slowing me down a bit) and flipping off teachers...bascially anything that went against my image of a good guy nerd. Several counselors and psychiatrists came in and out, but when they asked how I felt about my mom, I indicated that I didn't have a problem with my mom, and that was that. It was kinda true though. I didn't think about her because I was so busy running around getting into all kinds of situations that I didn't have time, which I think was the point. When my dad made me stop before walking into the 1990 Chicagoland Spelling Bee and pray that my mom was there with us and would help me to win, it was the longest I had stopped to think about her in a long time. But I felt invincible from that point on, and I won. However, I was still more comfortable avoiding all thoughts about her until my first girlfriend "Giselle" came along and pointed out that maybe I didn't trust her because I was so afraid of her suddenly leaving me, just like my mother did. I told her she was crazy. But from that moment on, I've thought about my mother almost every day and how her loss has impacted me and my actions. And I think Giselle was exactly right.
I now live every day knowing that part of the reason my relationships with women are so dysfunctional is because I'm looking for someone to replace my mother. When I give my love to a woman that I'm with, which I do often even if I don't fully trust her, I do it looking to be loved back because I don't care who it is, I just want someone to love me unconditionally like my mother did. Yes, I date fat women mostly because they give up the pussy easily, but it's also because any thin, tall, attractive woman has to be at a certain level as far as her personality for me to even consider her. She has to be a saintly woman with a heart of gold, a total sweetheart, a smart cookie, confident in herself, really and truly believes in me, and I have to feel like someday she could love me with every fiber of her being, just like I would love her. But I project those expectations upon the fat women that I'm dating because I'm looking for that from whomever I'm with, and so far I haven't met one that measures up yet. The reason that I have such hatred for "Karen" is because I had such love for her because she exhibited those characteristics to me. When I gave her my love, she gave it back. When I invited her to meet my family Christmas Day 2003, she accepted and we welcomed her in and we all, not just me, gave her our love and she returned it, or so I thought. We stopped just short of giving her that group hug that they gave me when my mom died. I explained all of this to her, and she said that she understood. And when Karen refused to explain herself to me after I found out about her skanky side, it was like she spit in the face of me, my family, and my mother, and I can take being insulted--I'm insulted every fucking day by somebody--but I can't take insulting my family or especially my mother. It has created a very confusing next step for me as far as relationships go. I wanted to jump into something immediately after Karen so that I could be loved by someone, anyone, and "Sarah" was the next one. But at the same time, I felt like a part of me will never trust someone again the way I trusted Karen, and sure enough, I didn't trust Sarah. Sure, I told her about my mother, and she met my family, but there was a bit of a wedge between us, and I made sure of it. Then I thought that "Jane" was that woman with the ability to love me like that, then she canceled meeting me after I already booked the trip. That was like what Karen did to me--took my love, found out how deep it was, then abandoned me. Now I'm dealing with "Torrie," who plays that cool role of hearing about all I've been through and what I'm looking for and doesn't indicate where she stands as far as being the type of woman I want. She's fine just the way things are. And why not? I fly to Minnesota, fuck her, and leave. But now after I gave her my love the last time I saw her and got no response, I'm starting to get the wandering eye again because inside I feel that it's either find it somewhere else or settle for what I'm getting now, which is not what I'm looking for. But at least I've now put out the story of me and my mother, so that those still reading can get a better sense of why I am the way I am. On my left biceps is a rose and below it "R.I.P. BRENDA ROSS 1954-1986" in permanent ink. On my wall is a portrait of her in pencil that's very similar to how she really looked. Every woman in my life has to live up to her. I don't know if I ever will find the one that does, but if I do, I've been storing up love inside since September 5, 1986, and she will receive all of it. And if she really is deserving, then I have no doubt that she'll be able to handle it and give it back to me.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
A (Long) Saturday Stroll
PREFACE: To those "anonymous" readers sick and tired of hearing about my obsession with "Karen," I will talk more about her later in this post. If you're not interested, don't read. There's millions more interesting blogs online. You don't have to trash mine if it's really that bad.
I participated in a walk-a-thon for sickle cell anemia on Saturday, June 11. Sickle cell anemia is what killed my mother, and I have sickle cell trait, meaning if I created a child with someone else with the trait, that child would be at risk for the disease. It's a very painful disease; my mother was in a tremendous amount of pain all her life. I wonder how she ever went through childbirth, especially my big ass. But anyhow, I never participated in the fundraiser because I didn't want to be so close to something associated with the death of my mom. But last year, when Karen did what she did to me, I decided to go just to hang out with my family, since it became obvious family was the only group of people I could trust, and also to introduce them to "Sarah," who was at the time my girlfriend. I didn't participate, but this year I signed up for the walk, and I can't see a good reason why I wouldn't do at least that much every year from this point on. (There are jog and bike portions as well, but I'm not in shape to jog, and I can't ride a bike.) Now, I didn't come close to walking to the end of the path--this thing started at 35th on the lake and extended down the lakeshore to 69th, and in the heat of the noon sun, I managed to get to 47th and back--but at least I did something. I've realized over the last few years, even before I met that whore Karen, that a lot of my fears about dating and marriage and relationships stem from the simple fact that I'm scared to death to give my love to a woman only to watch her abandon me, which is how I felt when my mom died in 1986, when I was ten years old. And now, walking in this fundraiser, in a way I acknowledged her death, which is something I've always been loathe to do, and I felt like maybe I was on my way to properly grieving her loss and moving on, which is something I feel like I've never done. I "talked" with my mom throughout the walk, and she encouraged me to keep going, even though on the walk back I had to stop several times just because the benches looked SO enticing. But I kept going, and despite how tired I felt throughout the walk, one of the first thoughts I had once I made it back was that I expect to go farther next year now that I've had a little taste of what I have to do. I'll discuss everything to do with my mother in my next post. Maybe it will help explain why mentally I am in the place that I am.
I think my uncle, my mom's brother, was extremely pleased to see me participate, since he organizes part of the fundraiser and never saw me be a part of it in the years past. On the drive back afterwards, he said something that almost made me choke up. He told me that I remind him of my mom in that we were both very sensitive to how others perceived us, me because of my weight and her because of her delicate condition. We both were self-conscious about relationships. I found that hard to believe because my mom was such a beautiful and intelligent woman. My uncle told me that she settled for my dad, an overweight, sloppy man by anyone's standards, because she was afraid that she would be alone, just as I have settled for evey woman I've ever dated because I am afraid of being alone. But, he said, he hoped I would be patient and do what my mom didn't have a chance to do--find a person with as big a heart as me, because, just like my mom, I have a very big heart and I deserve someone who matches it. I think that's one of the things that's keeping me from jumping off a bridge right now. Somewhere deep down in my heart, I still hold out hope that someone will come into my life that realizes that I am a good man, while being a good woman in her own right, a good woman that's not living an alternative life and not lying to me or herself. My mom went through hell to give me life. I'm hoping to do what she wanted, which is to be in a partnership with someone who values me and herself. It ain't looking good right now, but I guess I'm still holding out some hope.
My father and I, speaking of my sloppy dad, had banana splits on Father's Day this past Sunday. Because he beat me as a kid, and because he can be rather embarrassing sometimes, I've always hated every second I've spent with him. But we had a long chat about my situation with Karen, and he gave me some advice beyond the "Women are crazy" spiel he usually gives. I told him that I'm having a very hard time with the fact that I don't have the balls to go up to Wisconsin with a bottle of bleach and a funnel because it means that it's okay for Karen to do what she did to me because she got away with it without any retribution from me. I feel that it means that anyone can fuck me up the ass and it's all good because I'm going to let them. He pointed out that it doesn't mean anyone can do that to me, just one person, and no matter how unfair it is, it's better to let her get away with it because the alternative is showering with a bunch of horny men in the federal prison before they stick a needle in my vein. My dad has a way with words. I told him that I had already considered all the ramifications of going up there and killing Karen, and that I'm close to accepting them if it means that at least she didn't get away with screwing me. He said that I can't do that, because then she'd really be screwing me. I was trying to install my printer back on my computer all day Sunday, and because I had two papers due Monday morning, I had to get it done, but the installation disk simply wouldn't cooperate. Yet I stepped out of the apartment to spend a couple of hours with my dad, and if I hadn't, then he wouldn't have called his brother in Florida, his brother the computer whiz, and his brother the computer whiz wouldn't have told me, the computer boob, that I can go to the website of my printer's maker and download the drivers onto my computer, therefore installing the printer without having to beg and plead with the installation disk, and I wouldn't have done those two papers by pulling an all-nighter and finishing my work around 5:30A Monday. So, and I never thought I'd be saying this, thanks dad. My father, actually good for something. Go figure.
And now for the latest Karen news: I e-mailed her new phony Tawanda account Monday morning "congratulating" her on the good news about her new house and car that she wrote on that account. She replied to me that evening. She continued to insist that I misunderstand everything, that her appearing on a bisexual BBW website half-naked next to her best friend wasn't what it looked like, she was just helping her friend promote the website, but she's not into that at all. Oh, okay. She told me that she still thinks about me, but that we were "doomed from the beginning," whatever the fuck that means, and that my angry letter to her the morning after I found out about her destroyed any future between us, but that "I wish you well." I know exactly what she's doing. She's trying to make me pause and think that she really is a misunderstood woman who just wants to help promote her friend's wild lifestyle but isn't really involved with it. Every second that I pause and wonder if she's really not the bitch that deceived me and ruined my life is another second that she has bought herself to keep deceiving and living the life she wants to live, breaking hearts and destroying anyone stupid enough to love her along the way. That's why I feel like a decision has to come from me very soon, a decision on which direction I am going to choose--to let her go and let her get away with what she did, attempting to move past her and ignoring the fact that she's going to keep on truckin' as if what I felt and what my family felt when we found out about her doesn't mean shit, or to go up there and defend myself and my family against this human waste and let her and every other woman know that you can go around fucking with other guys and getting off scott-free, but I cannot allow you to do that to me and get away with it. I have to choose which way to go now. I can't keep going the way I'm going, saying I'm going to get past her but knowing that all I think about when I am awake is wondering what guys or girls she's persuading to think that she's a sweet, innocent girl and if she feels any remorse for crushing another person's heart, and all I think about when I'm trying to sleep is how good it would feel to hear her last breath before I break her neck or choke her out. It's time for me to decide, for good, for once and for all, finally, will I be a man or a mouse?
I participated in a walk-a-thon for sickle cell anemia on Saturday, June 11. Sickle cell anemia is what killed my mother, and I have sickle cell trait, meaning if I created a child with someone else with the trait, that child would be at risk for the disease. It's a very painful disease; my mother was in a tremendous amount of pain all her life. I wonder how she ever went through childbirth, especially my big ass. But anyhow, I never participated in the fundraiser because I didn't want to be so close to something associated with the death of my mom. But last year, when Karen did what she did to me, I decided to go just to hang out with my family, since it became obvious family was the only group of people I could trust, and also to introduce them to "Sarah," who was at the time my girlfriend. I didn't participate, but this year I signed up for the walk, and I can't see a good reason why I wouldn't do at least that much every year from this point on. (There are jog and bike portions as well, but I'm not in shape to jog, and I can't ride a bike.) Now, I didn't come close to walking to the end of the path--this thing started at 35th on the lake and extended down the lakeshore to 69th, and in the heat of the noon sun, I managed to get to 47th and back--but at least I did something. I've realized over the last few years, even before I met that whore Karen, that a lot of my fears about dating and marriage and relationships stem from the simple fact that I'm scared to death to give my love to a woman only to watch her abandon me, which is how I felt when my mom died in 1986, when I was ten years old. And now, walking in this fundraiser, in a way I acknowledged her death, which is something I've always been loathe to do, and I felt like maybe I was on my way to properly grieving her loss and moving on, which is something I feel like I've never done. I "talked" with my mom throughout the walk, and she encouraged me to keep going, even though on the walk back I had to stop several times just because the benches looked SO enticing. But I kept going, and despite how tired I felt throughout the walk, one of the first thoughts I had once I made it back was that I expect to go farther next year now that I've had a little taste of what I have to do. I'll discuss everything to do with my mother in my next post. Maybe it will help explain why mentally I am in the place that I am.
I think my uncle, my mom's brother, was extremely pleased to see me participate, since he organizes part of the fundraiser and never saw me be a part of it in the years past. On the drive back afterwards, he said something that almost made me choke up. He told me that I remind him of my mom in that we were both very sensitive to how others perceived us, me because of my weight and her because of her delicate condition. We both were self-conscious about relationships. I found that hard to believe because my mom was such a beautiful and intelligent woman. My uncle told me that she settled for my dad, an overweight, sloppy man by anyone's standards, because she was afraid that she would be alone, just as I have settled for evey woman I've ever dated because I am afraid of being alone. But, he said, he hoped I would be patient and do what my mom didn't have a chance to do--find a person with as big a heart as me, because, just like my mom, I have a very big heart and I deserve someone who matches it. I think that's one of the things that's keeping me from jumping off a bridge right now. Somewhere deep down in my heart, I still hold out hope that someone will come into my life that realizes that I am a good man, while being a good woman in her own right, a good woman that's not living an alternative life and not lying to me or herself. My mom went through hell to give me life. I'm hoping to do what she wanted, which is to be in a partnership with someone who values me and herself. It ain't looking good right now, but I guess I'm still holding out some hope.
My father and I, speaking of my sloppy dad, had banana splits on Father's Day this past Sunday. Because he beat me as a kid, and because he can be rather embarrassing sometimes, I've always hated every second I've spent with him. But we had a long chat about my situation with Karen, and he gave me some advice beyond the "Women are crazy" spiel he usually gives. I told him that I'm having a very hard time with the fact that I don't have the balls to go up to Wisconsin with a bottle of bleach and a funnel because it means that it's okay for Karen to do what she did to me because she got away with it without any retribution from me. I feel that it means that anyone can fuck me up the ass and it's all good because I'm going to let them. He pointed out that it doesn't mean anyone can do that to me, just one person, and no matter how unfair it is, it's better to let her get away with it because the alternative is showering with a bunch of horny men in the federal prison before they stick a needle in my vein. My dad has a way with words. I told him that I had already considered all the ramifications of going up there and killing Karen, and that I'm close to accepting them if it means that at least she didn't get away with screwing me. He said that I can't do that, because then she'd really be screwing me. I was trying to install my printer back on my computer all day Sunday, and because I had two papers due Monday morning, I had to get it done, but the installation disk simply wouldn't cooperate. Yet I stepped out of the apartment to spend a couple of hours with my dad, and if I hadn't, then he wouldn't have called his brother in Florida, his brother the computer whiz, and his brother the computer whiz wouldn't have told me, the computer boob, that I can go to the website of my printer's maker and download the drivers onto my computer, therefore installing the printer without having to beg and plead with the installation disk, and I wouldn't have done those two papers by pulling an all-nighter and finishing my work around 5:30A Monday. So, and I never thought I'd be saying this, thanks dad. My father, actually good for something. Go figure.
And now for the latest Karen news: I e-mailed her new phony Tawanda account Monday morning "congratulating" her on the good news about her new house and car that she wrote on that account. She replied to me that evening. She continued to insist that I misunderstand everything, that her appearing on a bisexual BBW website half-naked next to her best friend wasn't what it looked like, she was just helping her friend promote the website, but she's not into that at all. Oh, okay. She told me that she still thinks about me, but that we were "doomed from the beginning," whatever the fuck that means, and that my angry letter to her the morning after I found out about her destroyed any future between us, but that "I wish you well." I know exactly what she's doing. She's trying to make me pause and think that she really is a misunderstood woman who just wants to help promote her friend's wild lifestyle but isn't really involved with it. Every second that I pause and wonder if she's really not the bitch that deceived me and ruined my life is another second that she has bought herself to keep deceiving and living the life she wants to live, breaking hearts and destroying anyone stupid enough to love her along the way. That's why I feel like a decision has to come from me very soon, a decision on which direction I am going to choose--to let her go and let her get away with what she did, attempting to move past her and ignoring the fact that she's going to keep on truckin' as if what I felt and what my family felt when we found out about her doesn't mean shit, or to go up there and defend myself and my family against this human waste and let her and every other woman know that you can go around fucking with other guys and getting off scott-free, but I cannot allow you to do that to me and get away with it. I have to choose which way to go now. I can't keep going the way I'm going, saying I'm going to get past her but knowing that all I think about when I am awake is wondering what guys or girls she's persuading to think that she's a sweet, innocent girl and if she feels any remorse for crushing another person's heart, and all I think about when I'm trying to sleep is how good it would feel to hear her last breath before I break her neck or choke her out. It's time for me to decide, for good, for once and for all, finally, will I be a man or a mouse?
Sunday, June 19, 2005
The Return Of Tawanda
My computer is fixed, apparently virus-free and complete with an upgrade to Windows XP, thanks to my buddy "Drew." I'm afraid to reinstall my printer because it took forever to install it right the first time, but everything else seems to be working properly. So what was the first thing I did once I got back online? I noticed that I still had that site saved under my old profile where I first met "Karen," and remembering that the last time I went to that site she had posted a new personal ad, I gave in to my curiosity and went to see if she had posted anything else since. She certainly has. She did the exact same thing she did when we were dating--she created a new profile under the name Tawanda and posted a different ad under the alternative section advertising a Wisconsin bisexual BBW Yahoo group. The bitch just won't quit, and of course she shouldn't quit since it's her life and she can do what she wants with it. That don't mean I have to be happy with it. Under her new Tawanda Yahoo profile, she says she just bought a new house and SUV (she told me her next car would be an SUV when we were dating) and that she's headed on a cruise to Mexico in September, and she asks, "Wanna go?" as if anyone out there can join her if they accept her and her dirty, slutty ways. I think I'm gonna be sick. I've got schoolwork to do, so I'll come back some other time and talk about my attempt to participate in a walk-a-thon, and I'll try to talk about stuff other than what my cumsponge of an ex-girlfriend is doing. But right now, my hands are shaking and I want to cry, if you'll excuse me.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Puter Problems
My 5-year-old Dell finally went kaplowie. I was getting tired of pop-ups coming even when I wasn't online, so I tried to remove some programs that I didn't recognize thinking they were spyware. But once I rebooted, my computer went all the way back to its infancy, asking me to reinstall Windows and whatnot. I don't have that software, so right now "Drew" is looking at it and trying to figure out if it's something he can fix or do I need to rush it to the hospital. So I'm on a public computer right now, meaning this won't be a long post. My trip to Minneapolis went fine, with one exception. I really do feel love towards "Torrie" and I didn't think anything bad would come to me by telling her this, so I did as we were getting ready to check out of the hotel. Her response: "I suck at goodbyes, so let's just get going." Thanks honey. I thought we had progressed to this natural point where I could tell her that I loved her as I explained that if there was anything she needed I would be there for her. You know, kinda wrap it in friendship so that it's not so hard to accept and give back. Wrong again, Dre. Oh well. At least that helped me realize that I need to keep my ass in Chicago for the time being no matter how much I hate this city. Going to Minnesota, even if Torrie and I don't live together initially, is not something I should be doing until I get a clearer picture of exactly where I stand in Torrie's mind. Am I a genuine boyfriend and someone she really cares for and values? Or am I a fuckbuddy that's starting to get too creepy with this love and caring shit? If only I were a mindreader. Well, enough blabbering from me, as "Karen" used to tell me at the end of her e-mails. Time to get some all you can eat crab legs with "Ronnie" and another friend. When people fail me, as they always do, food is always there for me. Sad but true.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
