I found my blog password!

I may not be the Atheist I think I am

Two years ago I started a charity. I did this because my wife and I felt like there was a sense of community we were missing out on, a community normally associated with religion. We're Atheists, and we know a lot of other like minded folks, so we considered starting something along the lines of a church congregation for those people who wouldn't be caught dead in a place of worship. 

We called it The Congregation of Every 1.

Quickly the original intent of this shifted to charity work. The charity work we began was directed at the massive homeless population within the city of Detroit. Once we did this, several of our friends and acquaintances stepped up to help out. The irony? Those people who stepped up to help were Christians. Catholics, Evangelicals, Methodists and others. We resided ourselves to the fact that the Congregation of Every 1 would be just that, a congregation of every denomination or no denomination. We started calling it "a non religious charity organization", I emphasized the fact that the founders were Atheist. We held fast to the concept that our charity would not have "a location", our overhead would be negligible and we were all doing this because we wanted to help other people and NOT for any spiritual reward.

The charity grew. Exponentially. We started making and delivering our Survival Packs for the homeless monthly. We were in non-stop charity drive mode, always soliciting donations, always collecting. Our basement became a warehouse and the location of our "packing parties". We gained our 501c3 rating from the IRS. It became a huge part of our family's lives. 

The four core delivery team members were solidified (along with some rotating members) and we would go out monthly or bi-monthly to seek out the truly homeless wherever they were inside the massive city boundaries of Detroit and give them Survival Packs. We also started taking on the occasional additional efforts, animal rescues, victims of domestic violence shelters, the VA hospital, children homeless shelters, diaper drives, fresh water drives, we were and are constantly trying to help those in need. 

We've come into contact with literally thousands of homeless Americans and countless other people through our efforts. We even started helping some churches with their homeless projects. I've made some friends with pastors and community organizers. I've kept an open mind. Throughout our efforts, I am often told, "Bless you!" I get a lot of, "you're doing God's work" and many, many other positive, supportive thank you type remarks that revolve around Christianity being the cause for my charitable efforts While the Christian members of our group smile and say thank you, I often have to bite my tongue. I appreciate their remarks, I just don't agree with them. I do this because I want to, it literally has nothing to do with God.

I have faith. Faith in Atheism. Faith in reality. Faith in people. Faith in scientific discovery. I do not have any spiritual or religious faith though. I simply cannot, it is not within me. I've come to believe that the same absolute internal knowing that there is no higher power is how others must feel about their faith in God. I just feel it in my bones, there is no God; I don't even need to be able to explain it, which must be exactly how the religiously faithful on the other end of this spectrum feel as well.

That brings me to reason I'm writing this, another compliment/remark/well intentioned condescending lecture I often get is "God is working through you, even if you don't believe it". 

I've heard that enough that I've actually thought about it a lot. The concept that the charity work I now feel compelled to do, that feeling that compels me, THAT, is that "God"? Don't get me wrong, I DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD, I do not believe there is an omnipotent immortal being that created all things and continues to direct every individuals life and will reward or punish us once we die. I still think that's crazy-for-CoCo-Puffs talk; BUT is it possible that the feeling I'm feeling, is that what some people feel and assign to God? Is that what some religious people are talking about? When they say they've "found God" is it this same feeling compelling them to behave or act in a manner that they can somehow connect or reconcile to a specific religious dogma? 

With that in mind, is this sudden attraction to my charity work my "calling"? If it is, does it have to be associated to any spiritual or super natural entity? I don't believe it does, I still feel like it's simply rewarding work that I enjoy doing but I am willing to concede that my feelings and actions may be the same feelings and actions that others assign to believing in God. So...that means that I can conceive of an explanation that includes admitting this thing that is driving me to carry out this charity work, is called "God" by many religious people.  

So do I believe in God?

I do not believe in religion. I do not believe in Churches or Mosques or Synagogues or Temples. I do not believe in Jesus or Allah or Yahweh or Shiva. I do not believe in Heaven or Hell or even Karma.

But do I believe in God?

I can now say for certain, I have no idea. 

Namaste ;) 

The Hocking Block

When my mom left, I was about 8 years old. That would have made her around 25

When my mom left, she stopped raising me.

She worked at the local Farmer Jack. 

She met a young man who worked there as well, he was 18 years old.

I am 44 years old now.

This summer, that young man died. 

He had spent the majority of these last 36 years with my mother and his alcoholism.

They have a 20 year old daughter together, my half sister. 

He divorced my mom about 2 years ago. He wasn't nice about it.

Amazingly, to his parents disappointment, his alcoholism continued on after the marriage ended. They were sure he only drank because of my mom. They were wrong.
My mom didn't want the divorce and hasn't handled it well at all.
At 62 she's basically still a kid who needs constant help with everything , won't ask for help until it's too late and then instantly resents having accept it.

This summer I was sitting at Bran's Steak House with my cousin Mike and my good friend Tom around 9:30 PM when I got a text from my wife. 

"Jeff you need to call you mom NOW. It's Pete"

The moment I read the text, my stomach dropped.

I called my wife, not my mom. My wife told me the news.

My drunken ex-step dad was found dead in his bathroom by a friend.

We'd come to find out later it was a combination of 5 prescription drugs plus a huge amount of alcohol. We'll never know if it was intentional or not.

He was 54 years old. 

The last 5 moths have been me dealing with lawyers and my mother and problems that come about when a man dies with no will, no instructions and 20 year old girl as his sole heir. 

We've been fighting his parents who thought THEY should be the executors of his estate and thought they should be his heir. 

It's cost money and time I don't have.

It's caused stress and tension I don't want.

It's all for a woman and her daughter who don't really like me very much.
It now the holidays.
My mom and half sister are around more now.
It all seems forced. She needs me, but doesn't like it.
I know I have to do what's right, even though it will most likely end badly. Again.
I don't have unlimited money. I can't get unlimited ulcers. I don't have much left in the empathy tank.

It's hard to get all of this from a stone, a cold, emotionless, dumb stone who should know better.

The Freedom of a False Knot

I like to start off every blog entry by saying something along the lines of, "it's been forever since I've written on here", basically because it's always been forever since I've written on here.

So much has gone on since the last time I took the time to sit down and write.

The most ridiculous yet perfectly expected event that happened is that my mother is no longer speaking to myself or my family. I guess you could say we're not speaking to her either, but it doesn't really matter, the point is we've broken ties.

Over the last decade or so my wife has been the driving force that has maintained amy relationship with my mom and half sister. It could be because my wife lost her own mother to ovarian cancer about 8 years ago, but most likely its because she was raised like most humans were raised, to believe that there's an innate bond between a mother and child.

My mom and I have never had that bond.

To say I am the antithesis of a momma's boy would be an understatement. I so dislike my own mother that it has seeped into every female relationship I've ever had and tainted it with hues of distrust and resentment. I am not one to put a woman on a pedestal, if she'd like to stand next to me, that would fine, but no special treatment simply because of our chromosome differences.

Over the course of the last 10 years or so my wife has tried her best to include my mom and sister in our lives, to make them feel like we're a family. My mom has done so less than enthusiastically, but as its been pointed out, she had made tremendous progress. All the while, my mom was going through a prolonged and emotionally torturous separation and ultimate divorce with my sadly, comically, stereotypically drunken step-father.

During this ridiculous ballet of leaving/not-leaving/leaving/I hate you/We're staying together/we're not staying to together my mother suffered an insanely unexpected health event.

One weekend while her husband was away up north at their cabin,  I was called to my mom's house because she had been lying on the couch in pain all day and my sister thought she was sick and needed to be taken to see a doctor. My mom is not old and not sickly, she's barely 63 years old I write this. When I arrived at their house my mom was doubled over on her couch. She couldn't move and her stomach was killing her. She could only speak enough to tell me all she needed was some milk-of-magnesea. It was clear she needed more than that. I ended up carrying her against her will to my car, lying to her that we were only going to an urgent care facility (it was 7:30 PM on a Friday night). I took her directly to the Emergency Room.

My mom wasn't happy with me. She wasn't happy with the admitting nurse who guessed it was appendicitis. She wasn't happy with the ER doctor who explained, after X-rays, that she had suffered from a perforated diaphragm. She wasn't happy with the surgeon who told her it may be that she had suffered from undiagnosed colon cancer and this was a tumor causing the pain. At 2 AM, after being admitted, my step-father showed up, he had driven all the way down from Alpena. It was soon after that arrival, that the aneurysm on the artery that fed blood to my mom's spleen that everyone had missed that had been slowly leaking for over a week, burst. She bled out internally.

Luckily this happened IN the hospital. Emergency surgery saved her but not her spleen and not half of her pancreas. She lived. During surgery they damaged some nerves in her arm somehow. She would survive the bleeding out but not without losing the use of one of her arms and hands.

Once all of the drama of my moms ordeal and new life situation calmed down, my step-father finally did divorce her, like a true gentleman.

My wife and I, but mainly my wife, stuck by mom throughout the divorce. She was on the phone every day with her, helping her, giving her support, listening to her.

We helped her find a new house. We helped her move. We did everything we could emotionally, financially and physically to help her during this transition and the whole time we were busting our asses to make sure she knew we all loved her and were there for her, all she did was complain and act as though she had no one. Which was ok, we knew this was a difficult time for her.

It never ended though.

Finally, last thanksgiving, at our house, with her, my sister, my cousin, my brother and my brood of 6 all gathered together as a family, my mom's incessant negativity and emotional blackholeness (that's mots likely not a word) became too much to bear.

My wife, alone with my mom and sister in the kitchen, unfortunately addressed the fact that no matter how much we give, how much we help, how much we do for them both, they give nothing back. This was an emotionally one sided relationship. This upset my fragile spoiled 18 year old sister and that in turn upset my mom. When I noticed that my wife was in tears and my mom had that indignant look on her face, I saw no other option.

I walked into the kitchen, told my mom and sister they were two of the most negative people I've ever met and I threw them out of my house. My mom tried to tell me I didn't understand what was going on and I clearly told her I did not care. Goodbye.

That was 4 months ago.

We didn't have Christmas together. She didn't come over for any of the kids birthdays that have happened since. We're done. We're done according to me at least.

This isn't like some huge maternal umbilical cord had finally been cut, it's as if the false one my wife had been desperately trying to tie to my mom and I had finally lost it's knot. It was always a slip knot anyway.

Oh Yea I've nothing to Say

I haven't written in a long time. I feel like I start a lot of these stories like that, it's some sort of an excuse I tell myself, or an apology I issue myself, or it's the ice breaker at the party that is my depression journal.

The highlights, my mom is divorced and miserably living in a co-op retirement community about 5 miles away from us. We don't see her any more often then when she was living 20 miles away in a miserable marriage she hated being in. The moral here is, she hates being in things, I just hope the hate doesn't spill into our house since she's so much closer now, I don't know the contamination radius of hate, I should look it up.

I ran into my dad over the summer, shared a table with him and some new woman he brought to my cousin's high school graduation party. It was odd. Afterwards I felt nothing, I didn't want to know him, I didn't want to reconnect. It was the first time that has happened. He's never met my youngest kids before, and although he was cordial, he didn't make a big deal about meeting them.

Aside from that, I'm depressed. Oh yea, I'm also depressed.

If the Devil is in the details, then I don't have to worry about the Devil

I don't remember where I was coming from. I remember I was in the passenger seat, but I don't know who was driving. I know I was 18-years old. I know I had graduated high school, but can't recall if it was a week after I graduated or two months after. I know it was summer. I know I was being dropped off. I know I was being driven to where I lived, my dad's house...I realize most kids who have yet to leave the nest would refer to that place as "their home", but that's not how I was raised, it wasn't my home, it belonged to Steve.

I know my car wasn't running, it was in the driveway, broken down, I don't know exactly what was wrong with it. I don't know why the person who was driving me dropped me off and left, in hindsight, that was a bad move on my part.

I know that as we drove down my street to the house I began to make out the shapes and forms of items on the lawn, big items, small items, a lot of items. I remember looking out the passenger window as the car slowed in front of the house, I remember Steve, my dad, sitting on the porch.

All of my life my dad told me when I turned 18, I was out. He beat it into my head (literally). My 18th birthday had come and gone in January of that year without any acknowledgement whatsoever by my parents, so although I was a little bothered no one noticed, I was also a little relieved I wouldn't be homeless with 5-months left of high school. When my high school graduation rolled around, and neither of my parents even asked about it or acknowledged that their was a commencement ceremony, I  didn't bring it up, I didn't attend it and they didn't care. Again, I didn't get tossed out of the house, so I counted my blessings.

My luck had run out that day. That day, everything I owned was on the front lawn. My entire life to that point was strewn across the grass as if a micro-tornado hit just my room, just my life.

I had no car to pack it up into and in 1989 I had no cell phone to call anyone. My dad simply said, "I changed the locks" got up, went in the house and shut the door behind him.

I stood there, stunned a bit and turned and walked away...from it all. From my things, my clothes, my life.

I had no siblings out there in the world to call, no friends or relatives to take me in. When I called my estranged mother from a pay phone her response was, "So, wow, where are you going to go?". Exactly what a boy in trouble wants to hear from his mom.

I wasn't a bad kid. I wasn't in trouble. Never got suspended, never got so much as a parking ticket. I just wasn't what my old man thought I should be.

That's the day I learned that no one will ever have my back.

On my way to Waiting

My life is slowly slipping by. I think when you have kids, life moves faster then when you don't have kids and the more kids you have, the faster time flies...because they have so many mile markers along the way to remind you of just how frickin' fast time moves forward, "Oh look she's walking!" "Oh look she's talking!" "Oh look she's in high school!" "Oh look she's picking out our coffins!". Your kids milestones polarize the passage of time. 

I haven't moved to California. I have been convincing myself to be happy with what I have and where I am. I have a lot. I am in a nice place. It's cold as hell, but it's nice.

I still want to be in California. 
I feel like every day that passes, I lose another chance to move there. I lose another day by being here. 

I can't shake it. I can't shake the longing. The wanting. The pangs of regret of not being there.

In a few weeks I'll be in the bay area, like I am every few months, I'll soak it up, I'll take it in and try to savor my time in the sun. I'll dream of living there of staying there of simply being in my Valhalla. I'll wish my wife was with me so I could show her why I love it there, so she could fall in love with the air and sky and ocean and the soul of it all. Then I'll leave. 

I'll get sad. I always get sad. 

Rambling about my own Stupid.

I've never been fatter in my life. Ever. I'm huge. I'm working out and eating better, but still, I'm fat.

My stress levels are through the roof. I'm working on not being so stressed, but still. Stressed.

My mother turned 60 yesterday, my wife planned a surprise birthday party for her. It was wonderful. Just over 2 years ago I was standing in front of a surgeon in a hospital in the middle of the night as he explained my mom had a leaking aneurysm for about a week now, and it had burst without anyone knowing. She was bleeding out...her vitals were almost non-existent...he was very unsure. She survived.

I have 4 children. I have a wife. I've been thinking about dying a lot lately. I really don't want to die, but I know the way I'm going, I'm not going to last as long as I should. It's sad. I'm sad.

Most of my blogs tell a story, this one doesn't. This one is just me thinking. It's not a very good entry.

Money. Responsibility. Family. Work. Friends. Life. I need to be better at all of those things and worry less about some of those things.

I need to figure this out. I'm running out of time.

I love things

I love Neil Youngs music. I have loved it since I was boy. One of the first vinyl records I ever listened to was Harvest by Neil Young, it belonged to my dad. Actually, I'm listening to it now as I type this, tens of thousands of feet up in the air, flying back home from San Jose California. I also love California, specifically, the "silicon valley" area of California, the area I am in the process of flying away from at his very moment back to my heart and soul, my wife and kids and my home back in Detroit.

Whenever I'm in is part of California, which is at least 2 or 3 times a year, more if I can manage it, I make a point to drive up into the mountains that separate silicon valley and all of the technology and the Pacific ocean. Up there on a winding mountain road named Skyline Blvd is a cool little restaurant named Alice's Restaurant after the restaurant from the famous album by Arlo Guthrie. While driving that crazy winding road I take solace in knowing that Neil Young's sometime home, Broken Arrow Ranch is also nestled in up inbetween the redwoods and cypress trees on that very road. I can't see the ranch, I can't get into the ranch, I dont see Neil Young walking around or anything, but somehow I feel like I'm communing with the soul of music that is area has inspired Mr Young to write.

They say that up there in those hills of La Honda, Jack Kerouac sat and wrote, inspired by the same feeling and aura I'm often inspired by when I'm there.

As I said, I'm on my way home now, to the Midwest, to Detroit. Ive spent the better part of my adult life trying to get back out to northern California, through business or by making friends out there could return to visit. I'm drawn to that place like no other place o earth. But it's not home. It's an idea. It's a connection o a part of me I wish I had held onto. It represents my creativity, my dreams, my aspirations that so often get replaced by the realities of adulthood, of parenthood, of mortgages and college funds.

I know I think that if I could just relocate my family to northern calironia, somehow the stresses and pressures of life would be lessened, somehow the same intangible feeling of positivity I get when I visit here would insert itself into our mundane and stressful lives. I also know that's probably just a dream.

Real life  has a tendency o be stronger than ones hopes and aspirations and it usual wins in a fight between it and ones dreams.

I think i need t learn how to bring the peace and inspiration I find in California back with me to Detroit, and not the other way around.

The Forever Liar.

I've always thought of myself as an artist. I am not an artist. I have always, in my mind, thought that I was creative and artistic and yes, smart. Egotistical as it may seem, this is how I've always viewed myself. I've always thought I was different than the average man. Unique. Somehow this has given me comfort and made me feel like making all the choices I've made in my life, normal choices, common choices, those every day choices, were special. I wasn't doing it as a average man, I was doing these things as an outsider secretly posing as an average man. This frame of mind has always allowed me to live the way I've lived without regrets.

It's all another lie.

What isn't a lie, is my depression. My self loathing. My lack of self confidence. The perpetual quiet hum of sadness that murmurs inside my head like a tiny machine that never turns off. Being an "artist" somehow makes that all have purpose, admitting otherwise just means I'm mentally ill. 

So now, at 41, I have to consider how long I allow myself to continue to wrap myself in the warm comforting blanket of this lie I've been telling myself. This self-sustaining fabrication that makes me feel  like I haven't somehow given in to the drudgery of normal life that every other man I know has given in to. 

A trick I like to play on myself is to joke about how average my life is. To offhandedly remark how much I like my Subaru and my Polo shirts and my dinner parties. I'm only doing these things and making these decisions ironically. It's me being sarcastic at my on existence. 

Yet another lie.

It's safe to say we all thought we would be someone when we grew up, we had an idea in our minds of how our lives would wind and turn and where they'd end up. It's also safe to say that aside from the very few, lucky individuals, no one gets to be exactly who they thought they'd be. Often, Life takes over as we slide over into the passenger seat and stare out the window at the view.

I have this theory. You know how sometimes when someone suffers a traumatic physical event, a horrible accident or something and their friends and family ask them what they remember and they respond with, "I remember getting into the car, turning onto the road...and then...waking up here in the hospital". Our brains remove that tremendously stressful memory from our heads and simply skip ahead. What if that's what happens when we die? What if our all powerful mind simply erases our memory of dying and our sub-conscience just caries on with life, creating our future based on our life before dying? We just continue to live, forever, within our own consciousness. 

One final lie, to last throughout eternity.
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my dad

Growing up my dad made me believe my mom was drug addict, my uncles and aunts were alcoholics and losers and my grandparents wanted to turn me into a girl. He used lies and manipulation to dismantle my tenuous relationship with my mother and simply did not allow me to see my mom's side of the family. Ever. I was convinced that everyone was out to get my dad and he was the only one on earth who truly loved me or knew what my best interests were. Secluded. Segregated. Isolated. Family I thought loved me did not, they were liars trying to take me from him. Friends I thought liked me, did not, they were using me.

All the while this was happening, he was also making me sure I knew what a failure I was. How stupid I was. How I was embarrassing. How much better he was than me. What a total failure I was. I was bound to end up in prison or dead in a ditch. I was just like his brother Gary, that was one of his favorite lines. According to my dad his brother Gary was an abusive drunken loser ex-convict and I was exactly like him. Now, I doubt any of my dad's descriptions of my uncle Gary were true, but as a kid, I believed my dad always.

When I would get home from school I just prayed I could make it from the front door to my bedroom without being stopped in the hallway by my dad for giving him "a look". He didn't like the way I looked at him often, and the wrong look could end up badly for me. Apparently some of my looks meant I thought I was tough. I wasn't.

When he wasn't emotionally, verbally or physically abusing me, he simply wasn't there. Girlfriends and step moms were always more present than he was. He always had something else to do or somewhere else to be.

Once I became a teen, he added saboteur to the list of my horrible, horrible traits and I was clearly trying to destroy his family, which now didn't include me. At 13 I had joined the list of the others out to get him, my little brother and his wife/girlfriend of the moment.

Luckily, at 18 years old, he threw me out of the house, and we were done. There have been brief periods of time in my adult life where he has been present, but all ended poorly and I refuse to give him another chance.

My dad never did anything an actual father would do aside from teach me by example of what NOT to do.

He only gained custody of my brother and I to "win". He didn't want us, and once he had us, we were an annoyance to him, his life and most of all to his wives.

I am constantly putting out in public forums statements about how much I hate him so that there's no chance he'll decide to come back around and if I ever am stupid enough to seek him out, he won't talk to me because he's seen my public declarations of hatred towards him. I have built in my own failsafes against my possible future sentimentalities.

Father's Day always reminds me, I didn't have a dad, I had a captor.

My Big Fancy Leaking Problems

It's been a long time since I last wrote here, or anywhere. A lot has happened.

My 5-year old daughter was found to have a large mass inside of her skull. She underwent extensive inter-cranial surgery, survived, and is now 100% deaf in her left ear. THAT is for another post though.

My lifelong best friend is here visiting from California (where he's lived the last 15 years) and when he's here, I always see a lot of people I knew when I was growing up. In addition I'm making some changes with my company and career. Unrelated events, but combined together, even the issue with my daughter, they polarize something for me, something that as usual, depresses me.

I've been spending my life crying and trying to clean up spilled milk, and ignored the continually leaking milk bottle. I've been trying to put out all of these little fires that always reignite and never been very successful at permanently snuffing them out. I think a lot of people do this, seeing people I've known since I was 5 (I'm 41 now) and seeing how their lives have gone solidifies this belief and makes me really look at all of this bullshit.

I, we all, have one or two real problems. Just a couple issues, personality/character flaws, emotional/mental issues and those one or two real problems are the mother of all of the other little bullshit problems that I (we) spend most of each day trying to fix. Trying to solve. Trying to move on from only to see them reappear in some other vaguely similar form because we never really ever try to fix the leaking milk bottle.

I know that accepting and acknowledging what these issues are and realizing where they were born is important, but not as important as actually coming up with a plan to solve them, and thereby, hopefully, solving A LOT of the day-to-day bullshit problems that spin out of the original big bad mother-fucker problem.

I'm realizing what my real problems are. I think number one is I'm scared shitless. I know I speak my mind probably more than anyone you've met. I realize I act like I don't care about upsetting people or ruining relationships and usually come across as not being very afraid of the consequences of my verbal explosions. What I'm scared shitless of is being a disappointment. I don't even know for sure of who I'm afraid of disappointing. My kids? My wife? Me? I don't know. But that fear of fucking up and letting "whoever" down keeps me paralyzed to some degree. I don't act. I talk. A LOT. I talk a good game then do nothing then I talk some more. I've really become excellent at talking BECAUSE it has kept me from having to actually take a risk and take a leap. 

I used to think my inaction was born out of my fear of losing everything and everyone around me. I used to think since my dad and mom split up virtually the moment I was born and  my mom left me at 12 year old and my dad threw me out at 18 and because he went through a parade of step-mom's who all left, that I had some abandonment issues that spilled over into my psyche and created this huge fear of loss inside of me. But I was wrong. Although all of that could have contributed to my problems, the reality is that my psycho father also taught, maybe "trained" me is a better word choice, "trained me" to be alone and be ok being alone. He trained me that no matter what happens, I can walk away and be ok. I don't like knowing I have that ability inside of me, but I know I have it. I know tomorrow if it all went sideways, I could survive with nothing and with no one. Deep down inside of me, in an old, old portion of my brain, I know I'm not even afraid of it. In fact, I expect that to happen someday. Which leads me to me other BIG problem.

I'm going to fuck it all up. I'm tempting the fates every day to see if I can bring on the big fall, I'm doing it intentionally. Again, I think I know why I do a lot of it, I learned it from watching my con-man dad. I don't think I could exist without secrets in my life. I don't think I could exist being honest. I don't think I could exist without the potential for all of it to possibly come to light and pull the world down crashing around me. The shit I do, the problems I volunteer to bring into my life, they're ridiculous. The stuff I get myself into knowing it would be harmful to me if ever it was exposed, they're pointless. They really don't benefit me and only really stand to harm me and my way of life. I don't need to have the secrets I keep. I intentionally do this. I do this because I'm  a nutjob who needs these problems. I don't need problems. 

So. I'm scared and yet I'm constantly creating potential problems that I know if  ever got out, would maybe possibly ruin me. I think EVERY other problem I have in my life comes out of these two issues. I think I've identified my base, root of the problem shit. So what? 

I don't know how to stop doing either of those things. I mean, I "know how" but for whatever reason, can't. I see my friends, my wife, people around me, I know they all have their one or two problems too that literally control their lives. In some instances that ruin their lives. I know all of our complicated and messy lives would be better without these core problems leaving their crumbs all over. I want to stop. I want to change. I want to...poop. Sorry I gotta run....

35 Minutes and a Car Ride.

My oldest daughter is a good kid. She has not given us very much of the teenage angst we were expecting to get from our teenage kids, but I guess there's still time, she's only on her way to 15. 

She get's A's and B's although last marking period she did get a C. We actually really came down hard on her because of it, and not because she got a C really, but because it coincided with a trend of  general "I don't really give a fuck" we had noticed. Honestly though, she's a wonderful daughter, sister and person.

This weekend she had one of her life long friends stay the night, another girl who my daughter has known since they were both in preschool. Where my daughter doesn't wear make up regularly, has never dyed her hair and prefers jeans and t-shirts this girl's face is thick with make up, she wears flowing dresses, often with skulls on them and currently her hair color of choice is lime green. All of which is fine. I dyed my hair when I was a teen and wore skulls and all of that, we're ok with artistic punk rock kids, we can relate. Her friend also doesn't have a lot of parental supervision. Her dad always seems to be away on business and from what I can tell her mom works a day job AND is in a wedding band on weekends. The girl has a 3 brothers, 2 younger one older, but she often seems to be "on her own", which again, both my wife and I can relate to.

So I was in the breakfast nook area and my daughter and her friend were in the kitchen, I won't get into all the details, but at one point I heard my daughter's friend say, "that would make an AWESOME drinking game, could you imagine?". The good news is my daughter's only response was to laugh nervously, and NOT to respond with a wholehearted, "HOLY SHIT LET'S GO INTO THE BASEMENT AND PLAY RIGHT NOW!". Either she knew I was right around the corner and realized her friend's slip up, or she was genuinely uncomfortable with the comment but didn't know what to say.

I didn't say anything. I didn't burst into the room and scream, "AH HA!", I just filed it away and went about my day with the intent of bringing it up when my daughter and I were alone.

So last night my daughter needed to return some stuff her friend had left over our house. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to have some alone time with her and bring up the topic. It went great. I had her crying, or more accurately sobbing, within minutes of broaching the topic.

She didn't drink. She didn't know if her friend drank. She wouldn't drink. She doesn't want to drink. No drinking whatsoever is going on. So I pressed further. Pot? Cocaine? Prescription meds? No. No and no. But she kept on falling onto the fact that she didn't know if her friends were doing these things. She didn't BELIEVE they were, but if they were, they weren't telling her they were or doing it in front of her.

Now, I didn't attack her, I talked. I tried the "I know what it's like" angle, but she instantly burst into waterworks. So then I took her own words and used them as the basis for my next approach. She's too nice for her own good. If her friends aren't telling her they're smoking pot or drinking beer, or popping pills, THAT in itself was bad enough to get her into trouble. If she's in the car with someone who has a dime bag on them and they get pulled over, guess which one is going to the police station in hand cuffs? ALL OF THEM. It didn't even need to be her, it just needed to be in the same car and if she didn't know if her friends were holding, she better damned find out.

I let her know that if she tells us she's staying the night at her friend's house, but they secretly sneak out, get in a car and drive 20 miles away to Westland to see a boy and then it turns out the rest of the kids are also going to get high while they're their...she needs to feel comfortable calling me. Waking me up at 2:30 AM to have me come pick her up from god knows where even though she knows I think she's at her girlfriend's house 2 blocks over. 

I told her tales of me getting arrested for trying to be the sensible kid who would go with my friends on their errand just to make sure they don't get themselves into trouble, but then ended up ALSO getting into trouble just being there. Being the nice friend doesn't always work out. She cried a lot on this car ride. I must have said, "pot, beer, blow job, cocaine, prescription meds, sex and fuck, fucking and fucker" about 3-dozen times each. I most definitely raised my voice. I told her I KNOW all of those things are going on all around her, I'm just hoping my daughter is smart enough and self confidant enough to not make bad decisions. 

I didn't outwardly accuse her of anything aside from being too nice and being afraid to stand up to her friends. I let her know that unfortunately tears no longer convince me she's being honest. This was a big event to me as a parent. I hope it was for her too. I hope she was scared shitless a little bit, her hyperventilating / sobbing / crying would suggest she was. 

About 35 minutes. That's how long this lasted. I love my kids more than life, but at the end of the day, this is really all I have, 35 minutes and a car ride to protect them from the outside world.

random.

This is going to be a very disparate entry.

I am always unsettled. Always. I have a great life. I have a marriage that is more honest than anyone's I've ever known and I don't think there's anything I could do or say that would end it, I have 4 very well adjusted, smart and confident daughters, my wife is supportive, gorgeous and smart. I've been running the same business for 15 years now, make a great living and have 180% job security. There should be no problems, I should be doing nothing but stopping and smelling the overabundance of roses that surround me....and yet, I am unsettled.

I am not good at letting well enough alone or letting sleeping dogs lie. I am the consummate squeaky wheel. I also don't forget anything, ever, especially problems. I am so antsy right now my skin is crawling.

In addition, I think I want to run away. Not from my family, with them, but still...far away. I know there's no way to escape my feeling of being unsettled, because I know it's inside me, but I'm still on the verge of running.

Hilariously I'm always too nervous and too pragmatic to ACTUALLY rock the boat so hard it falls off of the cliff...and yet I'm always wanting to do just that, so it's this perpetual state of uncertainty.

As of today I told my wife we're done talking to or helping my mom. She only hurts me and never helps me. I'm done.

fuck.

I don't talk to my dad. It's only been a few years (this time) but I don't believe I'll ever speak to him again unless we accidentally run into each other. I do speak to my mom, but infrequently, she prefers the conversation of my wife, less baggage I suppose. They were kids when they had me, that's what I've always been told and what I've always told myself. She was 17 and he was 18. They didn't know how to handle life itself at that age let alone being a parent. No coping skills, no life skills, for my mom no parental support, nothing. Kids having a kid. I have always been told that when my mom told her Catholic parents she was pregnant her dad threw her out of the house. She had to move in with my dad and his folks. I've never really asked her if this was true or not but I do know I came home from the hospital to my dad's parents house and that's where I lived until I was about 3 years old. 

I had my first child when I was 27 years old, 10 years older than my mom was when she had me, and I admit it scared the shit out of me. 14 years later and I have 4 children now, still married to the mother of all of my kids. My folks split up immediately after I was born, then did a good 10-years of on again off again, my little brother was born out of this craziness, then by the time I was 11 years old they had divorced for good, soon after my dad remarried and my brother and I were awarded to him, full-custody, her with visitation rights only. 

When my parents were becoming parents, my dad's parents stepped up and took us all in. Paid for us, helped us, supported us. We eventually moved into a house my great grandparents had lived in because my grandpa let us move in for free. They gave us furniture, they gave us food and they watched my brother and I all the time for free. They were totally there to help my parents, ALWAYS.

My little brother and I went from the insanity of living through an unstable marriage filled with violence and absentee parents in their 20s to living with a violent, angry, bitter sociopath. He always used to say he couldn't wait until I had kids of my own, then I'd understand, then I'd know he wasn't crazy, then I'd appreciate everything he'd "done for me". He was wrong.

Whenever I am going through something with one of my four kids, I think back to how I was raised, or not raised, I am dumbfounded. We have a teenager, a middle schooler, a kindergartner and a baby...we know stress, we know frustration, we know kids. What we don't know is how anyone could beat one, could tell them they'll murder them, tell them they're less than worthless and will amount to nothing but filler for state prison. In addition, I don't know how my mom could take the abuse from my dad like she did for all of those years and then eventually give up and leave us to him and his anger. I was 11, my brother was 7, she knew who my dad was, she knew what he'd do. She had every excuse in the book why she couldn't fight it, couldn't win. I have kids of my own now and I don't get either of their behaviors at all. By the time they were in their 30s they weren't kids anymore, that tried and tested excuse had run it's course. 

I don't know what having supportive parents (or now grandparents) would be like, so I don't know what I'm missing. I don't know what kind of hole in my kids lives exists because there is not doting grandpa or grandma. I'm not complaining, I simply have no idea. 

Right now I am dealing with a health issue with my 4 year old, not life or death, but life altering none the less. The stress this event is exerting on our family is immense, yet it's making us all be more supportive of each other, not more angry with each other, and I certainly am not taking out my stress on my kids. 

I'm pretty sure the next time I see my dad and utter a word to him he'll be laying motionless on his back in a suit in a fancy box I'll be getting the bill for. As a parent, I can't believe this is how a parent would want his or her relationship with their child to be.  

Y You're Nothing Special.

So my mom.

I realize so many of my blogs are about her effect on my life, and no shock, so is this one, but in a different manner. It is because of my mom, my lack of relationship with her as a child and her total coldness and lack of emotional attachment that I have developed the way I have in regards to how I feel about women. I think that's fair to say about all men, we learn how to treat women and what to expect from women from our primary female role model that we had while we were growing up. In my case, that means women have a lot to prove.

First let me say I love women. Women are my best friends and the sexiest creatures on earth. I relate, for the most part, more with women than men on almost every level.

Secondly let me say that I was raised by a man who told me daily that I was a worthless piece of shit who would 100% end up in prison or in the military if I was lucky. He did nothing but beat down my self esteem and my body continuously. I was stupid and worthless and a failure, he literally told me this from the time I was 8 or 9 until the day he kicked me out of his house at 18. I am saying this here because I was not raised to think I was god's gift to women, I was raised to think I was a stain on the fabric of life in general and should be discarded.

Now, I need to say I get very frustrated with women who think they deserve a man's love, who deserve to be treated like princesses, who think they're a prize to be won and right all of the time and shouldn't be contested. I don't like women who think that men should come to them.

I feel as though anyone is lucky to find and have anyone else, I am just as much a prize to my wife as my wife is to me. She is sure as hell is lucky to have me and to keep me. I don't really care what women reading this may think, good PEOPLE are hard to find, not good men or good women. 

 

I also think that women lie, cheat and are all around untrustworthy just as much as men. There is no difference. People are people and a soft and pretty doesn't equal unquestioned faith and honesty. The moment I hear a woman say anything along the lines of, "but I'm a woman" or worse, "I'm a girl" I cringe. You're an adult human like me, we are equals. 

I do not think women get taken advantage of more in relationships, I do not think they're helpless and I think any problems they've faced with men are of their own makings. "Men" aren't out to get them, we don't have meetings and come to a consensus to ruin the self confidence of carefully chosen targets. You make the bed you lie in, as with anyone, most of the time if you're experiencing reoccurring issues, take a look at the one constant, usually that constant is found in the mirror.

I do not treat women special, I treat them exactly the same as I treat my male friends. Women get my honest opinion on everything, they're not emotionally retarded or incapable of hearing the truth any more a man is, people just act like they are. I don't. Some women don't like this approach because they're used to being treated with kid gloves, usually for some very negative reasons; either people actually treat them differently because they're a woman after all or men treat them differently because they're trying to get into their pants.

Some people are stupid, some are mean, some are insane, some are unlikable and some are insufferable. These are human traits that apply to women and men and should be acknowledged whether it's a woman or man, you shouldn't get a break on being a demanding entitled asshole because "she's my princess", that's bullshit, she's an arrogant douche, and should be treated as such, who gives a shit about her nice tits, there are other nice tits out there and if you're going to put up with her shit because you think those are the nicest tits you'll ever get to touch, then you're an idiot as well.

When I'm watching a TV show or a movie and I see an older couple and the man is kowtowing to his long time spouse by saying the equivalent of, "yes dear" to everything she says,  it just reinforces my frustrations with how our society has presented "the battle of the sexes", someone wins and someone loses. That's bullshit. If you have a partner, you're equal or it's not going to work, "battles" don't lend themselves to long term relationships, "battles" end and someone loses. Always.

I will never treat a grown woman differently simply because she is a woman. I will never pull a punch with my observations because you're a lady. I will never treat you any different than I treat anyone else, everyone is equal. Women should get no special treatment because of a chromosomal difference determined during gestation, just because you don't have the Y.

The Unsympathetic Man

I am an unsympathetic man.

Chalk it up to whatever you want, my parents, my upbringing, my life in general. I am unaffected by your dilemma, by your situation, by your trials and your problems.

We all have problems. We have all had tragedies in our lives. All of us. We have all faced adversity. Some of us have let it stop our lives in their tracks. Some of us have let our experiences stop us from experiencing more. Some of us pull up our pants and get on with it.

I guess you'd call me cold. I'm too direct. I'm an asshole. I don't know when not to say something. I always have to say something. 

Even though this in itself is me bitching, I can't stand you whining about your life. Set aside the blatant triviality of your complaints, set aside the amazing self gratification that comes along with your squeals of just how unfair the world is, focus in on the pure ego it takes to howl to the world of your misfortunes while your friends struggle with Herculean trials you've never had to deal with. 

If you are an adult, over the age of 18, I am going to scrutinize you and your decisions if you so chose to put them in front of me. If you're over 18, you're an adult, on your own, 100%, how you deal with your problems is your own fault and the consequences of your actions is your own fault, period.

I know it seems much easier for me to judge you than it is for me to judge me, but believe me when I tell you I am 10,000 times harder on myself than I am on you.

Excuses mean very little to me, your excuses me virtually nothing. Seriously. We are all adults here. You get what you deserve, so do I. 

I don't need friends, I don't need fans, I don't need sympathizers.

I jokingly complain about everything I can. I bitch and moan about the most mundane things, the every day things. This, is called, "mockery". I am mocking those you out there who truly take your bullshit "problems" so seriously that you paralyze yourself and you convince yourself your issues are real, they're valid.

I don't know what to tell you, life isn't that bad. Life is an experience that everyone should be fucking amazed with, everyone, always, until they die.

Sticks & Stones May Break My Bones but Whips & Chains are Old News (Part 2)

So my new routine was pretty awesome; I would work in the daytime, go to Community College in the afternoon, then a few times a week after 6 PM, I'd become a chauffeur. 

The arrangement was simple; she'd page me and say she had an appointment, I'd pick her up and drive her to the location, she'd go in and I'd find someplace close by to either eat or sit and study for school, in an hour I'd come back. She would either come back out and we'd leave or she'd come back out and say she'll be another hour. She never worked more than 3 days a week and never more than 3 hours a night, but I was getting paid $75 an hour cash, under the table, so best case I was puling in $675 a week, or $35,100.00 a year in 1989 and her? She was making triple that.

We never talked about what would happen if she had a problem, we never talked about what I would do if there was a problem. Occasionally she'd say, "In an hour I need you to come knock on the door and get me", and I would. I'm not a big man, and back then I was probably 135 lbs and 5'8", but it was my job, so I did it. 

In addition to all of this, there was her and I. I don't think we were ever boyfriend and girlfriend. We never held hands, we never acted like anything more than best friends aside from the random sex acts. Sometimes, after the appointments for the night were over, she'd have me reach over and masturbate her until she came while I drove home. Sometimes, she'd blow me while I drove her home, one time, we tried to fuck in the car...but I don't think we actually accomplished our goal. 

While this was going on, she lived in her house in Detroit with her roommate. Her male roommate. Her male roommate who practiced nude yoga, shot up heroin and was always in the house. They had been friends since high school apparently, and although she said there nothing more than friendship between them, I don't think he felt the same way, and boy did he not like me. IN addition to him not liking me, there was her ex-girlfriend who also DID NOT LIKE ME, in fact she wanted me dead. There was a lot of hate going around for someone who wasn't even dating the girl.

I, was still dating my high school sweetheart all this time, she was away at college and non-the-wiser. I was pretty sure she was getting her rocks off with some college boy up at school all the while so I didn't feel too bad not telling her, we both had our secrets.

The Girl and I kept this arrangement going on for a year, I even took on other girls (just the driving, not the masturbating) at the agency that set up the calls. I was making good money, I was falling in love with the girl, everything was going great. That's always a bad sign.

In the summer of 1990 I got accepted to the University my girlfriend was attending. Suddenly, I was moving away to college. My band mates didn't take it well, my friends didn't take it well and the girl? If I said she didn't take it well, that would be an understatement. She left over 100 messages on my answering machine describing how she was going to kill me and mutilate my corpse if I left her, every call not returned angrier than the last, every threat more detailed, every gory scene more psychotic. Until, they stopped. They stopped, I moved, and that was that. 

I didn't talk to her again. We were over on every level. That is, until 1997.

In 1997 I was flipping through a coffee table book of fetish girls, I drew fetish girls, and I loved these bog glossy photo books. In this particular book, deep within its pages, I found a memory. There, in her dreads, with her piercings, posing with a man in bondage, was The Girl. I was literally dumbfounded. It had been nearly a decade and here she was, right in front of me.

This was before we all had cell phones, before there was Facebook and email, so I made a decision to draw The Girl from the book and mail her the drawing with a letter to the address of the house she lived at when I knew her all those years ago. I included my phone number. I didn't speak of the past.

About 2 months later, she called me. She called me, and when I heard her voice I was so happy I laughed and she in turn giggled. I had an art exhibit coming up and she agreed to come to it. I was so happy. She was so happy. This was all so fucking bizarre.

The night of the show I was nervous as hell. She showed up. I didn't even recognize her. She had short pixie like hair, she was thin and tone and not at all the vampire she used to be. She explained that her roommate, her best friend from high school had died of a heroin overdose, lots of her friends had died. Now, her body was a temple. She was a personal trainer. She was happy. 

We are still friends to this day. Not hang out kind of friends, but friends still. We run into each other at local art events occasionally, we're keep track of each other on FB (she is blocked from all of this) and we've both moved on and grown up. She is still amazing, she is still awesome, and she was part of one of the most memorable periods of my life. 

PS: She never actually dominated me :) 

.

Sticks & Stones May Break My Bones but Whips & Chains are Old News (Part 1)

I've written about this before, but not on this blog and I'm feeling nostalgic today, so here goes.

In the fall of 1989 I began my illustrious collegiate journey at the prestigious Henry Ford Community College.  Being of the scholarly mind set, among my plethora of intellectual challenging course studies, was Art 101. I needed an easy A. 

I attended class with my closest and dearest friend, let's call him "Bob". The class was filled with a wide array of people, lots of very run of the mill normal looking folks of all ages, Bob and I were of the "everything we wear is stone washed denim and hey look at our mullets" school of fashion and then there was "the girl".

The Girl was something I had never witnessed before. She was petite, no taller than 5'4", very thin, pale white skin, with very long black dread locks. Her clothes were all black and either skin tight (like her tights) or too big (like her black leather biker jacket and army boots that made it look like she got into her dad's clothing, and her dad was Andre the Giant). She was gorgeous, seriously, simply beautiful. 

All of these features though was not what made her stand out, no, she had something else that I had not seen before in person, it was 1989, so I don't think many people had seen it in person; she had piercings...everywhere. Each ear had a half dozen or so rings plus ones through parts of her ears I didn't realize you could pierce and her nose was pierced, which, back then, was not common. This was so exotic and so beyond the norm for me I had no choice, I didn't know her, and she wasn't exactly exuding the "hey I want to make friends with you people" vibe, but I had to talk to her. So I did.

She was amazing. She was friendly and warm and most of all she was giggly. She had a Bettie Rubble style laugh that I shockingly didn't annoy me, but just added to her charm. Within a day she had invited Bob and I stop by her home in Detroit to "check out her beat off mags". Yes, you read that right. I was in heaven.

The day we supposed to stop by the girl's house, Bob had something come up, so I went alone. I was nervous. I was 18 and from Redford which meant "suburbs". My self image as a long haired guitar player in a rock and roll band meant nothing here, I was so blatantly NOT cool or cutting edge it was laughable. She was the real deal. I knocked on her door, she opened it, smiled and let me in. The smell of incense filled her house, it decorated in gothic horror which again, in 1989 wasn't in the media, wasn't on MTV and wasn't seen ANYWHERE. There was a nice naked man practicing yoga in the living room, we walked right by him, I wasn't introduced and his presence wasn't commented on. She took me right up to the attack and we sorted through an old box of Cherry and Hustler magazines as we talked and I tried harder than ever before to make her giggle, we were just getting to know each other and hanging out over some nice beaver shots. Suddenly my life seemed beyond perfect.

Over the the next few weeks the girl and I hung out more and more, we became really good friends. One day she called me and asked if I could come over and drive her somewhere, I asked if her car was broken, she said no, she just needed to be dropped off somewhere I said, "of course". 

When I got to her house she was waiting, she came out and got into my big old blue Buick looking more bad ass vampire chick from hell than ever before. She had black thigh high lace up boots on with what looked like 17" heels, she had make up to rival Elvira, a tight, tight, tight, tight latex corset on and was carrying a large black purse/sack/body bag. We hugged, I smiled, she giggled, we drove off. She pulled out paper with directions on it.

When we arrived, she casually, without looking at me, asked if I could come get her in an hour. One hour exactly. I said sure, but what are you doing? She smiled, leaned in and kissed me, just a peck, but a kiss still, smirked and got out of the car without answering. One hour later I was back in the exact same spot, she got back in the car, fumbled around a bit, then handed me $75 cash and said we could go back "home" now. 


So began my year-long adventure as a driver (and  occasional lover) for a professional dominatrix.

More to come in part 2 of the series, "I've Done Every Job on Earth Except Worked in Fast Food Because I have Standards" 

Stress Just ripped Me in Half.

So I've actually managed to keep to my new year's resolution and have been exercising every day, quit drinking pop all together and been eating healthy. I feel better and sleep better and all around CAN see and feel the improvement. 

I still would like to loose another 35 lbs but I think with this regiment it's possible by summer. 

Aside from losing weight (about 15 lbs so far) and maybe stopping myself from having a heart attack, the other goal of this lifestyle change was to reduce stress. I am a stress monster, I worry about everything always. I worry about things that are happening this very moment, I worry about things that just happened, about things just about to happen, about things that will happen and about all the things in the world that MAY happen possibly maybe at some point. I always worry, I am always stressed and I'm sure it's slowly killing me and that in itself worries me and stresses me the fuck out. Fuck.

I realize I need to calm down. I realize I need to not stress myself out or I'm going to stroke out. I realize I need to learn to just accept things and live my life. I am trying, but the world is working against me, my entire life up until this point is working against me. The reason I am who I am, I believe, is because I've worried about every possible situation and because of that I've been able to have a plan in place to handle nearly any situation that presents itself. It SEEMS like a successful approach to life, "hope for the best but plan for the worst". So I plan for the worst case scenario in every situation I can imagine, and I have a vivid imagination. 

I feel like people rely on me to be prepared to deal with every problem, I feel like it's my job as a boss and I feel like it's my job as a dad and as a husband. I have to be able to solve problems QUICKLY and without panicking. When people come to me with an issue or a problem and are upset or freaked out if I simply responded with, "Sorry, I can't help you, I don't know what to do here and am not going to worry about it" I feel like my family and my business would fall apart around me and it would be my fault. I can't just not know how to handle problems, I simply can't.

Right now I know my mother's situation is going to have an atom bomb effect on my life within the next 2-months or so, I know it's coming and I'm worried about it because I don't think I have a viable solution. I'm not just the "what do we do now?" solution guy, I'm the money guy, if I don't make enough money, everyone suffers because no one else makes any money. I'm not complaining, I'm just stating a fact. Eventually, very soon, yet not at any specific time frame, my mom will be homeless with no income and that means I need to have a solution and I need to have enough money to implement that solution. I know this will absolutely happen and I can't stop stressing about it. No amount of exercising or healthy lifestyle has been able to stop the worrying either. This is real and I don't know how I'm supposed to not stress out about it. 

So how do I stop the stress associated with that?