And it’s under construction
Been a bit
But coming
The Water Heater
Alone in silence,
Alone and free,
Here she finds her solace.
The yelling beyond the door:
Not here,
Not yet,
Soon.
Someone will come for her.
Until then,
Here she finds her solace.
Among a spillover over cans,
Food that won’t fit,
Dog biscuits hiding,
The washing machine,
The dryer,
Wedged behind it.
Towers a noisy silence.
Here she finds her solace.
Contorted among the hoses,
The wires,
Her head lay where sounds drown.
Muted by moving gas.
The vibration.
Her ears washing over
Piercing,
Constant,
Cursing,
Penetrating,
Waterfall,
Anger.
Here she finds her solace.
The gas vibrates.
Contained chaos.
Welcoming,
Beckoning,
Comforting,
Painless,
Containment.
The violence breeds,
Just behind the door,
Unchecked,
Uncontrolled.
Here she finds her solace.
Her head drums the beat,
Her mind shakes free.
She drowns in safety.
Alone.
Quiet among noise,
Noise making quiet.
And right now
They don’t know,
That here she finds her solace.
She hears her name,
Winces from penitration.
Closes her eyes,
Willing darkness
To drown.
But she knows.
Here she loses her solace.
Gulping last breaths,
Footsteps near,
Voices nearer,
Louder then the contained silence.
The door opens,
And pulls her out,
From floating water,
To the air that drowns her.
From the darkness of comfort
Into the heavy light of pain.
Here she leaves her solace.
But…
It’s waiting.
Undisturbed,
Unbroken.
Roaring a welcoming.
Beckoning her back,
To come and sit.
Alone in silence.
Alone and free.
For there she finds her solace.
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The Gate
There was a movie when I was a kid that terrified me. It was a kid’s horror movie, and it worked. I had nightmares for years about hands that would pop out from underneath my bed and drag me to the depths of hell. Which is what happened in the movie. I used to check my hands all the time to make sure a demon eye didn’t sporadically grow in one of them. In the movie hundreds of tiny, terrorizing demon creatures would form out of your walls, and like ants, surround you, and tear you apart. Crazy for a kid, right? This was a kid’s movie in the 80s. It was PG. In the end, they must defeat the devil himself, which is a dragon-like monster with tentacles as arms that comes up from your floor. I think it was called, “The Gate.”
The CGI was impressive for its time, which is how it gained popularity in the first place. Of course now it’s a bit laughable to look at. So is the concept. Of course, showing all that monster stuff to children, and the idea of being dragged to hell for an eternity of torture, and marketing it to the 7 and up crowd… yeah, that probably wouldn’t fly today.
By the way, are you noticing a theme here? Because, this is where the movie gets really cringe. And I never caught it until I decided to watch this movie as an adult, to sort of face the cause of abject fear in my childhood. It’s entirely religious propaganda. Not just because of the hell part; Jesus, satanic practicing, evil witchcraft, and all Christian ideology you can throw on a script, is referenced all over the movie.
The kids partake in, essentially, dark arts. That’s what opens the gate. And there is this one kid who is reciting that this is witchcraft, against God, they are sinning. I just want to make a note here, nothing that they did involved witchcraft in any way shape or form. Of course a horror movie is never complete without some one who knows better and does it anyway because of peer pressure. This is why those kids are later being chased by demons, they deserve the consequences of opening this door. Which mister know-it-all brat constantly points out. You can only say, “I told you so,” so many times before your friends start to wonder if sacrificing you is an option. Anyway, how dare they question the all mighty Lord and Savior for a fun night of running away from evil! And while they did do this sinful, anti-god witchcraft, it is noted that it gained so much power so quickly because the older sister, oblivious to what her little brother and his friends were doing, was sinning as well… by taking advantage of the fact her parent’s will be gone during the weekend and throwing a party. How dare she! Her vane in planning this perfect party, failing to pay attention to her little brother, constantly chasing him away. Making him cry a lot because he felt so out of touch with his now teenage sister. Granted, I’ll agree that it’s pretty bad babysitting to completely ignore her little brother like that. So much so that right under her very nose he opened the door to hell, and didn’t even notice until her friends got eaten or dragged off by tiny pitchforked demons coming out of her wall. One might think a good, responsible babysitter might have caught her little brother causing world altering mischief before her friends came over. But, they lost their brother sisterly bond, and she acted like she didn’t like him anymore. This is just adding to her sins: her vanity, disobeying her parents, and being a bad sister. They have a nice talk about it, because I guess the demons took a break from terrorizing so they could bond. Demons really want to ensure a broken relationship gets fixed before the two of them go to hell. Especially since they know that love conquers all, including Satan. So let’s make sure they bond so that later we are defeated. Good plan.
There are various tools they used to defeat Satan, when his Godzilla with tentacles like appearance broke through their house. One of which was the power of God and prayer. A weapon was the crucifix. Oh, and the newfound rebonding between brother and sister. That’s what essentially destroys Satan, loving your siblings. Yup. That’s what did it. It makes no sense, because they are in the middle of suburbia and one might think some one would have seen Godzilla rise out of a house. The sheer fact that the military was not involved in taking this out was absurd. Or at least the police. There was a party where kids died, and those that escaped ran for their lives, and told their parents they were seeing this type of stuff after attending a party without parents home. Wouldn’t you think your very underage child was drunk or given drugs at said party, and would call the police to report it? I mean, yeah, I wouldn’t believe their story was real, but I would certainly be concerned that they were seeing those things. Especially if one of those things included dead kids. You know, the ones that never came home.
So, the whole town was a bunch of sinners, I guess? Neglectful parents, no 9–1–1 or phone calls to other parents concerned about the fact that their kids didn’t come home? No finding out what happened while their kids babbles out some LSD like tripping, to notice a consistent story among all the kids that returned home from the party? No one wanted to investigate exactly what was going on?
After Satan is destroyed, the kids’ parents call. They are an hour away. Which I think most kids who have just been through that will be thankful, and ready to go to the hospital to ensure their demon friends didn’t cause any internal damage while fighting them. Not to mention needing some therapy because nothing causes PTSD more than fighting Satan himself. But no, their thought is, the house is a wreck, their parents will kill them if they don’t clean it, and also find out there was a party without their permission. That’s definitely more important. And most definitely the worst problem on their list of problems that happened over two days. Que 80s cleaning montage. How they fixed the roof after Satan broke through it and then retreated back down the hole he came from is unknown. He also didn’t damage the wood floor. I didn’t realize how polite the devil is, fixing up their house so it at least there isn’t any structural damage. But he didn’t clean up the party, which according to these kids makes the whole thing more unfair.
Parents come home, don’t notice anything amiss. Their kids are more than happy to see them and can actually convince them that nothing at all was ever wrong. That whole situation behind them, they go back to their normal life with no psychological implications at all. And no legal trouble, considering they do have some dead bodies in the house they never cleaned up. And a bunch of angry parents who sent their kids to a party where they came back hallucinating, and some who never came back at all.
Which is the cringiest part of the whole thing. God saved them, and the hell that was going to be brought on the world was stopped. And since these kids have now learned their lesson, God ensures they get away with everything scotch free.
The moral of the story, therefore, is if you sin by literally opening the gate to hell in your living room, so long as you realize what you did and repent, there is no long term consequences of that. God will even make sure your parents don’t notice you threw a party and ground you by giving you a heads up they are close by and you should really get around to cleaning. I guess that was a bonus reward for their fixed relationship? Just right back to your normal, happy life, as if it never happened.
Quite frankly, I wonder if that whole town was in hell from the very beginning: unchecked psychopathic children destroying mankind, not reporting a fire breathing demon showing up, parents so oblivious they still haven’t noticed their kids never came back, and police too lazy to go and find out exactly what drugs were given away at the party to cause mass hallucination. And no phone calls from these two kids’ parents who went away for a weekend until they were an hour of coming home. Cringe.
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Am I a scammer?
Here’s a paradox for you. I did something really bad, but turned it into something really good. Does that make my action good or bad?
Right, context.
When I first decided to go back to work, I took advantage of a government program offered by my state. This service would help me build my resume, get around the lack of work for the past six years, and also give me a job coach to help me apply and keep on track. My job coach was an idiot.
Her idea of looking for work meant carousing Craig’s List, which is probably the worst place to find legitimate work. Red flags up all the way, I submitted applications to jobs she directed me too, while also applying to other places. I got a call back from a Craig’s Lister, went to this interview, and the guy hired me on the spot. Probably more to do with the fact my job coach happened to be gorgeous, and he was more than happy to have her stop in.
She was excited, and got me excited. I didn’t have a car at the time, and social services was more than happy to shell out the money for a cab back and forth until I got a car. And with the money I would be making, it would be more than enough to help me afford one.
I quickly found out this job was scamming seniors. We sold refurbished medical alert buttons as “brand new,” over the phone. Often, they didn’t even work. We lied constantly, claiming A ratings with the BBB (we had an F), a website (nope), and deception to hide the actual amount of the unit. And God forbid you wanted to return it. You had to pay a “restocking fee” to do so, and that fee was based on my boss’s mood at the moment.
My job coach offered me no direction, or help, in trying to get out of this job. She constantly reminded me, when I finally got the car and wanted out, that they paid for the cab. I owed them. Her excuse was that it was work, and I should do the work. Something tells me her paycheck depended on me having work, and if I lost my job, she would have negative repercussions. My boss, on the other hand, given I had Social Security and needed to report my income, constantly reminded me that he had dirt. Like my social security number, my parent’s address. He apparently stopped by my house once when I had the flu, “to make sure I was really sick.” I felt like I couldn’t even really tell my job coach what was actually happening.
My boss was also, as you can tell, abusive. He would walk in everyday and tell me to kill myself. He would also tell me to do something, then yell at me for it, claiming he didn’t remember telling me to do it so he must not have. Even his partner had it with the abuse he was giving me. All the while this man was holding vital information he could sell to the black market if he wanted too, and vague threats about knowing my mother’s address. It was a shitty situation all around.
And I felt a mix of guilt and pride in everything I did for the company. I was proud of my work, I ran that office. I really wasn’t in sales, and while I was forced on the phones now and again, my job was more back end. I hadn’t worked in six long years, collecting disability for an injury. I was working, I was contributing. From six years of recovering in a bed I built an effective office structure and ran it. There is a passage in Orwell’s, 1984, that talks about this phenomenon. You’re hired to do a job, and most people want to do their job well. So when you do it well it carries pride. Even when you know it’s wrong. Even when it defies your very ethics. Sometimes that pride is all you have, and you cherish it. It makes you feel better as you do something very wrong, because it gives you approval, moral. Something.
And at some point, I lost even that. Doing my job well became more to do with actual fear of my boss than anything pride related. The workplace was violent and unpredictable. Fights broke out, getting physical. No, I was never hit. I think some of the men there would not have allowed that to happen, so I felt safe from a physical altercation. But the verbal abuse didn’t make me feel better about it. Don’t even get me started on the blatant drug abuse happening.
So, I scammed seniors. I called elderly people and sold them a completely defective device and lied about it. I convinced them they needed this. I had their insurance information, doctor’s name, their address. I don’t know where my boss got his lists, but they were complete, and the information was more than convincing to most seniors. I stapled all their account information to the front of the file, gave a copy of that to the salesperson for their records (still with the information on it, which they took home), and put it right by the filing bookshelf left at the front door for any person who wandered in to take. Unlocked.
I wanted to walk away. But, my rent and electric bills, any of my bills, they could care less about my ethical feelings about the job. So, I had to keep going until I found another one. But, it was the holiday season. Over-saturation was a problem, I guess. Most legit jobs don’t hire you on the spot either. I sent out resumes hoping.
Finally, I had reached a last straw: my paycheck bounced. Three weeks before Christmas, when I had a deal with the Vet (poor kitty got sick) that I would pay her weekly payments on the bill every Friday (payday). And I couldn’t. She was, thankfully, understanding. Confused, but understanding. I had the check, I showed her the check, it was just worthless. When Monday rolled around, I demanded my check, told them I was going to cash it at their bank, and then once I had the cash in hand, I called them and told them I wasn’t coming back.
The office scrambled because no one else bothered to learn how to run it, even the boss. He couldn’t even get into his email. I got calls all day. Finally I picked up and said, “tell him to pretend I killed myself, like he told me to do everyday.” Then blocked every last one of them. To be honest, I was happy to be gone. I would have just put that blip out of my life forever. I wish I could say I was noble here, but I was scared. I was scared he may show up to my house because I wouldn’t help them in the scramble. For once I was happy to have a neighbor downstairs who called the police for any reason whatsoever. And also spied on anyone entering or exiting the building. And was also racist (since my boss wore a yam-mica, it was easy to tell he was Jewish, and she didn’t like Jews). Thank God for small favors, I guess. One point in favor of racist, paranoid, nosey neighbors.
I was also scared the job coach would come after me to collect the cab money, since I technically had broken the contract with them as well. And, now that I lacked work, had no extra income to pay it back if they did.
He forced my hand.
Social security knew I had the job, and likes to collect certain income back. It bases your correct pay, not just on the paychecks I’d been submitting, but also your IRS tax forms. The ones he never filed. We know what happens when you do that, right? If Al Capone couldn’t get away with it, I don’t know why he, as a small-time crook, thought he could.
I filled out whatever forms the IRS sent me, and called every number the IRS told me to call. It eventually reached the state prosecutor’s office who called me and built their case based on everything I told them. And I held nothing back. I also had a verbal contract on my silence, which is why I never spoke about this before. Five years of unprocessed guilt and fear.
In April of 2018, they settled. Most people will not even get a quarter of what they paid back. Some may not even be alive to. It turns out he had run this same scam three separate times under three separate companies for a number of years. They were looking for him. Anytime they got close, he would close shop and sign up a new partner to hold a new company name. I guess he underestimated how much I would have jumped on any opportunity to report him without fear of repercussion (what was he going to say to me, how dare you for me forgetting you reported your income to Social Security). He was also a convicted felon in New York, for trying to scam the insurance on a jewelry business he co-owned. And he was wanted for failing to pay back a previous civil suit, in which he telemarketed as a debt consolidation company. This fine got added to the new civil suit. Which means he probably won’t pay this one either, given his track record for not paying two other fines he owed on. No one will get their money back, will they?
The above link will take you to the State of NJ’s official statement of the lawsuit and settlement. It’s over.
No, it’s so not over. It reopened under a new name in a different location by their third investor in the business I worked under. I don’t know, nor can I prove, that he is in any way still partnered with that investor. And until people start complaining to the FTC that they have lost money, the prosecutor can’t do anything but keep an eye on them from afar. In this country, you have the benefit of the doubt, even when, logically, we all know what you are doing, Jerry.
To those that stumbled here, and this story sounds uncomfortably familiar to you, or a family member, I am sorry. I don’t know how to forgive me either. I’m hoping that actively following up, speaking out, and agreeing to bring this man down for no benefit and completely terrified, served some penance. If he failed to settle, I was prepared to go to trial for you.
The job coach was fired, as was the boss of the agency. A complete overhaul and retraining was done to prevent other clients from falling into the cracks. I have cut ties with the service entirely.
Then I got a call from the FBI asking me questions about my scammer boss. They didn’t say why, or ask me for silence. They wouldn’t tell me anything. But, I will tell them everything they want to know. As long as they will remain proactive, so will I.
Here we go again…
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When I Swear that I don’t Have a Gun
Did you ever wish you had a gun? I know some of you out there do, and that’s fine. I know how to shoot guns from summer camp. Rifles mostly. We would go hunting for targets printed on trees. If hunting meant you lying on a mat in a fanned area of the facility in the shade.
Or, you could get those crooked casino game guns. You know, that little machine gun tied into a fixed position and you can shoot the star all you want, but one tiny piece is left and you lose.
I’m in a state where gun control is fairly rigid. Not that I think I would own one by choice. I was watching a show out of Texas, some reality bull TV, and the girl had a pink gun. It was the first time I ever wanted a gun. Not for the gun itself, but it was pink. Yes, I went through a pink phase, where everything just had to be pink. Even if I didn’t know how to use the pink thing I had. Like the gun the girl bought.
Lately, due to my mental health issues the question has come up a lot. “Do I own a gun?” Part of me thinks to lie, say yes, just to see what would happen. Part of me wants to start reciting Nirvana’s “Come as you Are.” Either seems a bit nutty so I just say no. I think even if I did own a gun, the, “no” would pop out of my mouth anyway. For fear of some NSA no fly list category gets checked in their papers. Or, maybe say it to just to break out in song during the question and answer period. A mix to the mundane stroll of questions that would probably get me committed.
I wonder if they are asking if I would kill myself, or go all mass murder with it? I almost want to say yes just to see what would happen. I mean, sure, next thing you know the FBI is holding my family, dogs, and cats hostage because some girl in a crisis tells you they had a gun. Can’t be too safe these days. Messing with the FBI is not something on my to do list, mostly because they can mess with me much worse, with greater consequences. But is that what I really expect to happen because I claim to own a gun. And wouldn’t they be kind of silly to listen to a girl who obviously has mental health issues talk about owning a gun?
The truth is, I wouldn’t begin to even know what to do with a gun. My gun knowledge stems from forced summer camp learning, which also required basket-weaving and woodworking (and god knows I didn’t retain much of that information either), followed by a bunch of Bruce Willis and Steven Seagal action flicks, and ends with Grand Theft Auto (cheat codes included). Then sprinkle in a tiny bit of Elmer Fudd, and there-in lies my knowledge of guns.
So why ask me this question? If I say yes, I mean, let’s say, sure, I own a gun. Now what? Oh, you expect me to use the thing? Die Hard didn’t give me training in any of the guns I’d be comfortable owning (you know, not the pink girly ones), and I doubt they sell guns some rabbit can tie in a bow. The ones I see on Instagram seem more fashion then function, which is actually the kind I want. The pink one. Shooting it would make it dirty, no? Or does it make me dangerous?
I suppose with training, sure, I could be as good as anyone else with my pink swaravski crystal gun of Kardashian fame. But let’s face it, this question isn’t going to tell you anything about anyone. It’s not illegal to own a gun, and while I agree that certain guns should be kept out of people’s hands, how is asking me this question tell you whether or not I am going to shoot up a place? Can’t search me for a gun I don’t admit to having, and even if I did, you don’t know what gun I have. More or less if I even have the faintest idea of how to use it.
This isn’t meant to be a pro-gun, or anti-gun. It’s kind of meant to be funny. Like singing, “Come as you Are,” funny when being asked these questions. Which I don’t recommend.
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School Shootings/Bullying
I want to start off my post echoing the sentiments of sorrow for those children in Florida. Not only those dead, but those living through this nightmare.
I understand that this shooting has also sparked conversations about gun control and mental illness. I think enough has been covered on that, and will continue to be covered. I will leave those arguments to the politicians and lobbyists, to the professionals in the field and the students who will now suffer the psychological effects of surviving such a massacre; to the parents who will suffer the grief of losing a child so early.
I am also not here to blame the victims.
One thing I feel fails to be covered in this mess is bullying. I was a junior in high school when two students opened fire on Columbine High School. The interviews that followed talked about troubled children and how much the two boys were bullied by their classmates. Anti-bullying campaigns began to start in schools, and I followed suit, starting The Student/Community Alliance in my high school, to show the psychological effects of bullying and isolation from peers. I was happy bullying was finally brought to the forefront, as bullying can cause consequences such as this to happen.
There is only so long a person can take it before they break. Sometimes the break is into anger, causing backlash, to fight back, sometimes to the extreme, as in the case of Columbine High School. Sometimes students turn that anger inwards, and the break is ending their own lives. This is actually fairly common, but the media likes the sensationalism of a massacre, and the massacre to own’s own self often doesn’t make national news, or if it does, it’s very brief.
This is not talked about in the case of Florida. It’s not mentioned at all. And, while no one wants to blame the victim, and the world is very politically charged right now, sometimes we have to look inward. Sometimes we have to look at ourselves in how this happened. And no one is doing this. I feel that gun control, mental health topics, and simply pushing this guy off as a “monster” is not going to solve this problem. It will happen again, and again, and again. It has. The 90s had many school shootings. I grew up in a time where this was at the forefront of every teacher. When bullying started to become a conversation, because the student shooters that did not kill themselves, like Kipland Kinkel, spoke about the anger of being isolated from bullying peers. We didn’t label these children as monsters and push them out as a fluke. It was too common.
So where is this conversation now?
My thinking sparked from an interview with one of the students that a reporter spoke to the day of the shooting. When they finally found out who the actual shooter was, the reporter went down the line, and one student spoke up.
He spoke about how this child was labeled as “weird” by his classmates. No one spoke to him because he was so dark. His social media sites indicated a child with some severe mental health problems who needed help, which prompted some students even contact the FBI out of concerns. He ate by himself and it was even “joked” that he was voted most likely to shoot up the school. That everyone knew it.
So, here you have a boy who had lost his parents, had no other family, and was adopted by a family, who then died. (This is the latest stories coming out as of today, so this information may change over time). He was staying with a sort of foster family until he turned 18.
Let’s start with this information only. His parents were lost, and he was adopted into, according to latest reports, a fairly loving family. He may have been a bit weird, but tell me what teenager isn’t. The adoptive parents never appeared to have reported any serious problems with him, and the child has a clear legal history.
He lost them, and was invited to live with a local family who took him in. His social media turned very dark, but the “foster” family never noted any dangerous implications from him. The latest interview on today’s morning show, they are quoted, “we never knew we were living with a monster.” That’s very sad to me, and says a lot of how they thought of him while he was living with them. He was just “staying with them,” so they weren’t even an official foster family. Did they check his social media? Did they pay enough attention to a child who had lost the two parents who he had been raised by? The people he considered his mother and father? Are you just two people who “put him up so he could finish high school,” and now want no responsibility in your ignoring warning signs that there was a severe problem? I am aware he was in therapy, but therapists are not those who love you. Did he feel love that he lost?
A child grieving, goes to school and is isolated by his peers. Withdrawn, and therefore called “weird.” Joked about. When he ate lunch alone did you offer to go up and sit with him? How about instead of just being weird, did you consider grieving, especially at a young age, can cause a teenage mind, a still developing brain, to be awkward and reclusive?
Did anyone at that school do anything, instead of laughing about him in the hallways and even telling the cameras that you openly picked on him, joked about him, and didn’t attempt to talk to the kid?
How would you feel? Joked about by everyone in your school, isolated? Did he “not eat lunch with anyone” or did you not eat lunch with him? Was he so sad and isolated, lost his family, and anyone care? Did you go on social media and be excited that he was forced out of the school?
A massacre to one’s peers takes a lot of anger. A lot. This was personal, especially since he had left school. And before you say, “everyone is bullied at some point in their life,” I am not talking about a little bit of schoolyard name-calling here. That doesn’t cause this kind of anger. I know that anger.
I was bullied because of my weight. I had no friends, zero. I was barked at in hallways, and even beaten up by guys. I was always terrified of the last day of school, TERRIFIED, because kids could do what they wanted and they was no recourse. In fourth grade I was sexual assaulted on the last day of school, and the teacher told me there was nothing he could do so to just ignore it. On the bus ride home, in the fifth grade, a kid who had stolen a lighter by his older brother successfully lit my hair on fire. I was able to get it out before serious damage occurred, but I still have nightmares about it. Being surrounded by kids with nowhere to go, and my hair on fire while they laughed at me. Told me I was less then a person. I never took the bus home on the last day of school again.
My first suicide attempt happened in the fourth grade. My mother found me just as I stuck my head through a homemade noose in my closet. I had fashioned it out of a hanger. She saw me jump off a box. Thankfully, a hanger is a terrible thing to try and make a noose out of and jump off. Or maybe it was my weight. Either way it didn’t work, but I will always remember her face. A mix of helplessness and horror. She grabbed me and just cried. We cried together.
In the sixth grade the police had to get involved. We had bus stops where the school buses would pick us up. Our school bus was running late. As usual I was bullied, but that day four out of the boys picked up sticks. They beat me with them. Four boys. I had taken one of those four boys to a baseball game last year. These were kids who, in general, I considered my friends. We hung out after school, played games of manhunt. There weren’t a lot of kids my age, and really no girls, so while they picked on me, we also hung out. At least they were nice to me some of the time.
And now they were beating me up. Sadly, and to this day, one of the boys who was really mean to me, we never hung out, and I didn’t know his name. That’s how much he meant to me. We went to the same bus stop for a year, he was one of five boys, and I, the only girl, so there wasn’t a lot of us, and I never bothered to learn his name. He didn’t even really know mine. But here he was, one of these four boys beating me up, calling me a dog, telling me that no one would care if a dog like me got beat up. I think what hurt the most was that fifth kid. He could have done something about it. His mother was a stay at home mom, and she was a few houses away from the bus stop. I know this was before cell phones, but he sat there and read while I got beat up. He “didn’t want to get involved.” Want to know the sad part? This wasn’t the first time this had happened, it was just the first time the bus was so late that it gave the kids a sense of confidence and they just kept going. The yellow bus didn’t save me until almost 45 minutes after it was scheduled to show up. I was such a bloody, whipped mess that I had no choice but to tell. The bus driver said nothing when I got on the bus, the girl who sat next to me, when she got on and saw my face forced me to say something. This was a girl who picked on me as well, and I asked her why she cared, that she hated me. She said, “I don’t hate you so much that you deserve that.”
The school and police deemed that quiet kid just as responsible and the mother actually confronted me about it. Came up to me and confronted me, alone. I told her that I never said her son was involved, that her son did nothing. She wanted to know why her son, therefore, was in trouble. I told her again, “because your son did NOTHING. Do you get it?” I walked away and told my mom. She was told never to speak to me again.
Sadly, this further isolated me from the kids in my neighborhood. But, because of what the girl on the bus said, I actually got some self-confidence. Maybe they don’t hate me. I thought everyone hated me. It kind of felt good, that even though they barked at me and called me horrible names, that they didn’t “hate” me. Luckily, later that year a girl did move near, and we became fast friends. So I didn’t care about the boys at the bus stop. Two were better than one, and I now had a girl friend to sit with me at the stop.
I shared these stories because bullying is horrible. It’s sad to be isolated and leads to incidents like the above. I share these stories because they spark anger in me even today. Even today I am angry that charges were never pursued. I am afraid of what I will do, almost 20 years later, if I were to meet those kids again. Part of me wants to go on their social media pages and tell their friends how they abused a woman.
That anger doesn’t go away because school is over. And those are just a few of the incidents I suffered and survived from. And I try to put myself in the shoes of a child who is so angry he brought a gun into the school and started firing. What he really went through in his mind. Maybe he isn’t a monster, just a kid who wanted it to stop. Because in your mind it never stops. And don’t tell me that even though he dropped out of school those students didn’t continue to say nasty things on his social media pages, or to each other knowing he could read it.
And that isn’t talked about. Our responsibility in the making of this “monster” isn’t talked about at all. And it needs to be. Because all the gun control and mental health treatment in the world isn’t going to prevent this from happening again if parents continue to wipe their bullying child under the rug. If schools don’t educate, and if kids isolate one another and pick on them until the person can’t take it anymore.
So I believe there is no monster in this. The student’s that talked the media that day spoke about how he smelled, how he dressed. They were still picking on him as their classmates laid dead. Both sides are in the wrong. Did they deserve to die for it? Absolutely not. Is what he did okay, or normal? Absolutely not. Did he have other mental illnesses going on that contributed to this? Probably. Should he have had access to a gun due to that? Well, looks like from what he was suffering from, the answer would be no. Would gun control and mental health reforms be a good thing in preventing this? Yeah. Would having those things in place have prevented this? I don’t think so.
Our conversation should be about bullying. The access to the gun isn’t the problem, he could have done this with a bat, an ax, a knife. This is a kid who was so angry at the world, and the world just ignored him and added fire to it everyday. And instead, the world is turning away from him AGAIN, labeling him as a monster, even by his own friends he was living with. He has no one on his side. He didn’t have anyone on his side in high school, the people he loved are dead, and the world wants to use him for political fodder on gun control.
We are the monsters here. They didn’t deserve to die, no one did. But this kid was failed. Is continuing to be failed before our very eyes. And no one cares, no one will stop it. He is now being bullied by the world.
Does he deserve that?
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Him
So, I decided to be bold. To go where I want this blog to go. Politics and Religion are scary subjects to me. I don’t like to isolate people, and I certainly don’t want to preach. But, that’s what I like to write, or what seems to be writing itself. So, here we go:
Politics. Honestly, Democrat or Republican, I don’t care about the party. It’s him. I don’t like him. Even writing this scares me. Somehow I feel that this will come to bite me later on. I don’t know what he’s going to do with our country, I don’t know where we are going. But I feel it’s bad.
You know, he didn’t even tell us what he was doing? The State of the Union (or, as the tickets reportedly said, “State of the Uniom,” but I don’t know how true that is), but the speech didn’t say… anything.
Sure, I love our soldiers, and whatever he said about God and our country was beautiful. I love how he highlighted our heroes. Well, he did that whenever the clapping stopped. It was actually hard to follow. Too much clapping. But it’s not my main concern. It’s what he didn’t say.
He didn’t say anything about what he was doing this year. And, really, I love our soldiers and God and this country. I love our heroes and the work they do, and I daydream about what heroic things I would do if faced in their situation (even though I’d probably not do anything heroic if such things would happen; just cower in a corner crying). I admire them.
But that’s not what a State of the Union is. And that, honestly, scared me into silence. (see how heroic I am?). Distraction is a wonderful tool. How can you not like what he said? It’s beautifully patriotic. It’s hard to speak of it’s inappropriateness. But it wasn’t the appropriate time. And he knew that. He distracted us. He either has no plan, and is running our country on whatever whim he has at the moment. Or he has a plan he doesn’t want us to know. Though, I fear it’s probably a mix of both, which is scary enough when you consider this isn’t some hotel chain, but a chain of States. This is a country we are talking about. My country.
Part of me feels like, if he continues, I would be jailed for saying any of this. Maybe it’s an irrational fear, a slippery slope fallacy. Maybe I’m too influenced by the media and my father’s obsession with everything WW2 related. Maybe he won’t do anything, or maybe we have opened the door for worse. It’s not so much him, but what he’s setting us up for. For what’s next to come. Germany had a bad, incompetent leader who was destroying an already destroyed country. He opened the door for some one to come in who was better. Russia did the same. From monarchy to Lenin’s revolt, to a “better” Stalin.
It takes people who are fed up and a good guy in sheep’s clothing. But, I don’t think Trump will go down easily. And I do feel like the system is set up to re-balance itself. Whatever is coming will certainly be Trump’s branding. But I do worry it’s going to be Trump himself. Or, if he is actually impeached…. well… impeachment is just charges, remember Nixon resigned before being impeached, and Clinton, our only successfully impeached president, continued until his presidency officially ended. Impeachment is just an investigation, it is not a throw-away. And we need to actually charge him with something. It’s also a violation of the law to investigate some one just to charge them with anything. It would be like an officer following you around, looking at your records, and showing up with a search warrant to look at everything because he want’s to accuse you of something, as soon as he can find out what that is. They can’t do that, even to our president. It does violate his rights as a citizen.
But let’s say we do. We find something. Impeachment isn’t eviction. I highly doubt if charges are filed against him and an official investigation starts, it means he will step down. He’s free to continue to run the country into the ground. The best case scenario is actually the worse case scenario. Pence takes over. I don’t know if he’d be a really good boy, and leave well enough alone to quietly be replaced in the next election, or he’s worse. Which is how these things tend to go. Replacing one incompetent reality TV star leader who has no idea what he’s doing (well, minus the reality TV fame) with something worse. Like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Castro. All revolutionary replacements to what people thought was the worst.
But it could just be irrational. He could just finish his four (long) years, and go quietly (if he keeps to his word about not running again, and as you know his word means sh**.)
It’s not a party issue. It’s him. I can’t believe it happened, but at the same time I can. I watch the news call a home-made ammeter porn actress “American Royalty.” I don’t even watch the show, or follow celebrity news, but everything she touches, her entire family, is followed almost more than actual royalty. I can’t not watch, she’s everywhere. The whole family. I feel like I know more about them and what they are doing then I do about my own family comings and goings.
Who knows, maybe one of them will follow in Trump’s footsteps.
See what we opened the door too? Worse. You, unqualified, non-political, everyday man or woman, you too can become president. Why not?
It’s why I don’t want Oprah. We don’t need another reality TV star actress to run our country. Reagan was a lucky fluke. But he was also really involved in politics. Not business or show business politics, real running the country politics. With a politically motivated wife who wanted both she and her husband to succeed. We can’t just hope some one “outside” will come in with better ideas. No more actors, hotel business owners, reality TV star hosts for me. For us.
I’m scared of him. I’m poor, I’m hurt. I worry about the people I represent, or used to represent (working with the developmentally disabled). I worry that I can’t work for a little while and what that means for me. I worry about what that means for clients like the ones I worked with. I’m worried that by typing this he will mark me as some kind of terrorist. He doesn’t take criticism very well, and he fired his own family. His wife can’t stand him and he says creepy things about his daughters. The man is paranoid and a bit insane. I personally think he’s a psychopath. He could take this country for everything we got, break us for his wallet, and flee. And not care about the damage one bit.
I don’t want a president who doesn’t care. Whose interests appear to be expanding a business empire on our dime. He can walk away after and not give a damn about what happens to us. Not feel bad. Not feel anything. He’s practically begging a crazy man to throw a nuke at us just so he can play general in a war. He wants our country to be bombed. It’s a game of dare only thousands of innocent people will be killed, and many more sick. Of OUR people. The people he’s been hired to care for and protect. And he’s daring a man crazier then him to bomb us! He’s openly saying we are commodities.
I’m not expendable so a man who has never served any military position can play war with nuclear bombs. Yeah, North Korea is bad. But there are things we can do besides taunting him to throw a missile so we have a reason to invade. How about just leaving him alone? If Trump wanted a war he can convince the UN to allow us to go in for crimes against humanity. “Peace mission” or whatever you want to call it, you know, that’s a thing. (Yeah, I know China is really the issue with that). But he’d rather nuke his own people. He WANTS the man to throw the nuke to bypass China.
And I wonder if that somehow makes him worse then the man he’s taunting.
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Blase
I hate being up on a Saturday morning. It’s as if I somehow revert to childhood. I get to sleep in, but for some reason I’m awake, and the television only caters to the elderly or the young. I guess I used to imagine, in my youth, that at one point the adult shows would be relevant to me on a Saturday morning. Well, okay, they are… if you consider solving a murder, profiling a serial killer, or taking a stroll down Washington politics as a wonderful way of waking up.
I suppose there is the news. But, really, with the Internet, 24/7 broadcasts, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and the thousands of other apps and social connections out there I think I get enough news. News gets thrown at you whether you want it or not. I’m certainly not going to actively try to seek it. Hmm, I wonder if I just predicted that news shows will not exist in the future. No more “Nightly News” or “6:00” whatever. Actually… is there still nightly news and 6:00 whatever???
Well, this started with me landing aimlessly on a channel that had cute little animals on it. I’m fairly certain this show is catering to children. I am watching an overgrown bearded man-boy play ice hockey with a grizzly bear in an attempt to teach me about polar bears. Yeah, I fail to see the connection either. But it’s the scene before that actually prompted this post.
Man-boy was in Alaska speaking to the Eskimos. I guess since we are learning about polar bears we were focusing on their food source, which would be the whales. And we had to drag this poor guy out on the, he’s not even pretending to be on the water, let’s face it. He gets this Eskimo out there on his truck to show him how one heats his big metal pot on the truck bed (ahem) ground and steams some whale meat. Man-boy talks about the whaling culture and how the ice caps used to float the bears around to pick up the scraps of the meat left behind from both Eskimos and industry alike.
Did you catch it? I didn’t at first.
Used to.
The ice caps used to be there.
They aren’t there anymore.
And, actually, I’m totally surprised that I did not know this. Man-boy playing ice hockey with the wrong species of bear we are learning about just passed by it as quickly as I did.
I knew they were melting. I didn’t know they were gone.
They aren’t there anymore. They are a “was”. A “used to be”. And apparently so blase it barely gets a sentence before our man-boy pans to him in Canada playing hockey with a grizzly bear.
This is why I hate being up on Saturday mornings as an adult. I can’t even look at something cute!
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Fear
I’m writing this here. Because I don’t know any other way to ensure my rights. I understand I am in crisis, and I may not be able to verbalize that to you. I won’t, actually. I’ll be scared and confused. When I write I’m different. I’m confident.
Listen, I’m not going to hurt anyone or kill anyone, or hurt or kill myself. I believe everyone has to have their own journey to God, and you can read My Wish later if you want to see that journey. I bring this up because I made a pact to whatever this “god” thing is that I won’t purposely and intentionally hurt myself to the point of death. That if I feel it reaches some kind of physical or mental crisis point I will find help. However that help may come. And that this “god” thing guides me to the help. So, I promise not to end my life or purposely and intentionally injure myself. In return, I get…
Well, I don’t know. There is the answer right? I trust. There is a reason. And so far the return that this thing has given me is great. I mean, I had it great. Then lost it. All of it. I feel. An injury that threw me. I don’t need anymore injuries. There is a reason and I trust that and I am telling you that. I trust that there is a reason, a purpose, something I can’t see, something better (hopefully!) But I threw my trust into that something and it worked. So, I’m going with what works. You are looking at some one who is fighting to live.
So, we got that out of the way. Now, condition two. I am Sicilian. Putzo really nailed the family thing. He was really right in that. No, really right. You want to ask me the one thing I won’t do? Leave the family. My father needs help. My mother needs help. My sister needs help. Now, I understand I can’t help anyone else while I am sinking, but I need a closer lifeboat then the one I have. And there is the problem right there. I am fighting for an apartment I don’t want in an attempt to gain a better apartment in a better place.
I am in physical pain. I had back surgery. Emergency back surgery. I have a doctor’s note that says I can’t live in my apartment. And the landlord is doing everything she can to evict me right now. Everything she can. And I want to leave, I need to leave. But, I need the Affordable Housing Alliance. Because Section 8 fell through and went to shit and I fell through that crack. And I need rental property under Affordable Housing to afford an apartment. Because now I don’t have a job anymore. I can’t live with my family but I can’t live too far away because we need each other. I cannot navigate the stairs to my current apartment and quite frankly the only thing I’m using it for is storage currently. And having an eviction on my record sucks but… I mean come on what would you like me to do right now? I am IN PAIN.
Yeah, in pain. I wasn’t supposed to even clean the damn apartment. But I did. I did it. MYSELF. AFTER SURGERY. ON MY BACK. THAT WE AREN’T SURE ISN’T AN INFECTION. Oh, yeah, and that surgery didn’t fix the actual problem. It just made the traumatizing pain I was in before less traumatizing. So, if you are talking about a hospital here, I need PHYSICAL help. I need doctors to look at my spine and manage my pain. I need the tests to get done quicker then they are getting done and running between doctors to fix this and get out of pain. Because there is a problem with my spine that needs to be fixed but everyone is on this “addict” kick that I just get thrown in with psych. Yeah, I was. I had a herniated bulging disc the size of a softball sitting on my sciatic nerve telling this doctor to look at the MRI and she… actually… put… me.. in.. a.. psych.. hold.
Because I was complaining of back pain. Two days later I went to the Pain management doctor, and when she looked at the MRI she freaked out and found a doctor who would do something to alleviate the pain right then and there. And that doctor told me this was not a fix. I would not be out of pain. I needed to do more surgery. This was to stop the current problem of pain. It was not a fix.
So my back is screwed up. I don’t feel I’m necessarily in psychological crisis of mental illness because who the hell would not be in some kind of crisis seeking help with what’s going on.
- I just had back surgery
- I will need more back surgery and possibly have an infection
- I am being evicted from my apartment.
- I cannot move the stuff out of my apartment because of back surgery.
- Social Security is telling me I owe them money. Even though I sent the paperwork now. Twice. And they are simultaneously paying me more while also cutting my check. So, yeah. I don’t know either.
- So on top of being evicted, Social Security is trying to sue me for money I was told by the office I don’t owe. But that office didn’t talk to the other office… I guess… So… tackle another $5,000 on top of the rent landlord wants to sue me for.
- So, I am being evicted from an apartment I can’t move out of, for not maintaining an apartment I have a doctor’s note that says I cannot maintain. And she wants to take me to court over the recycling bin…
- And my father needs my help. He is sick. He raised me. The man raised me. With my mother. My sister has always been my sister when I needed her to be. And these people need my help now. And I will help them too.
Sigh, so, in conclusion: Social Security is suing me for money they told me I don’t owe them, I am being evicted for failing to maintaining an apartment I have a doctor’s note that says I cannot maintain. I can barely move myself, and am further injuring myself every time I force myself to maintain an apartment my doctor says will kill me if I try to maintain. But I can’t hire a maid because it’s expensive and I have a goddamned crazy woman who lives downstairs that throws a temper-tantrum in front of a 9 year old chasing my maid away, as well as any future potential maids or townspeople. I already paid one who ran off. We aren’t doing this again. I gave my father paperwork to put in his mailbox to go to social security, and he came back with the mail I gave him, telling me he didn’t know what it was, and why Social Security is sending him stuff. And the actual mail he left in the mailbox, thinking that’s what I gave him to send. And I sort of laughed. And he looked so hurt. He cried. I need to be closer to him. My mother is older than my father, she can’t take care of him alone, on top of my sister. If I have to be a full time caretaker I want to be paid for it. And I need a place of my own to go to when it gets to hard to be with them constantly.
Where do I go? What do I need to do?
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HELP
So we have to do this. So many things to work out. Bad insurance equals bad medical care. The doctor did something wrong, won’t admit to it. The landlord wants me out because I don’t sit and play quiet poor girl. Where do I go? I wish there was a place that had a hospital setting to take care of the physical stuff.and someone to help with the mental stuff. It’s too much. It’s way too much. I wond
I don’t know where to go. Can some one help me? I do not want to die. I will not die. I will survive this. I am meant for something, but I don’t know what. I’m thinking I may have different personalities that come out sometimes. I’m different. I’m always different. Always on the outside looking in. I can read people so well. I know I have a friend who is a killer. I have a friend who is so complex that it is too simple. Sometimes I do wonder if I am some sort of figure.
I just know I need help here. I do need help. And I have no idea how to get the help I need.
You’re doing this journey with me damn it. I said help I meant it!! A nice social worker gave me a place I can just show up and go. So I will do that. In the mean time you are stuck with me. I know I complain a lot, I just think it’s funny. You think I’m complaining, but I’m laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Because life is absurd. It’s funny. The situation that we are in. I am in. I can’t help but laugh.
The alternative is to dwell in misery. Who wants that? Maybe that’s what makes me weird. That I try to find something, one thing, that makes the situation absurd. And I laugh. I laugh at it. Laughing eases tension. It processes better. And positively.
Something tells me I am going to war here. I don’t know why. I think it’s my mental illness at this point. But I am fighting for… an apartment I don’t want? And the doctor tells me is bad for my back? See? Absurd, right? I need to fight for an apartment I don’t want because later down the road it will help me get an apartment I do want. I think. That’s the plan.
It’s complicated. But doable. It is too much to explain here. I just wanted to note one of the absurdities that comes up. So I can laugh. Because misery is horrific. I don’t want to be in misery. We can laugh, center ourselves, and go forth. When I make a plan, I do it.
Unfortunately, time is an absurdity in of itself. There isn’t much I can do at 3:26am I just have to wait.
Normal Nobody 