I was diagnosed years ago. I want to say in the 90s, but it’s been so long I can’t remember. The last “shrink” I saw regularly was early 2000, I think. It’s funny, she has a 1-star rating on most of the review sites, but as far as I recall she was fine. I just got tired of being doped up on everything. I was on Xanax, because I also get panic attacks, Adderall for my ADHD, which I still can’t spell (Used spell-check), Lithium, something called Lexapro, and a few other things. I’m not good with daily medications. I have one of those 30-day things to the left of me right now filled with other kinds of pills, vitamins, statin, and regular supplements because my diet sucks and I rarely exercise, and even with that I can’t seem to remember to stick with it for more than a few days. Anyway, it’s 4:30 am and I am just FLYING all over the internet, so you can just guess my mood. One of the things I was on was supposed to help with my OCD. And I’m severely arachnophobic, acrophobic with a smidge of vertigo just to make it fun, and mildly agoraphobic. I have some other health issues like Low testosterone, high cholesterol, asthma, ringing in my ears that won’t go away (appointment with ENT tomorrow), and dental issues that are entirely my fault. But I tell people I’m good if they ask. I feel like a nihilist existentialist, but I try to look on the bight side when I have to talk to other people. If I never had to go out, I probably never would except for those times when all I want to do is go out, but even in a manic phase, I still don’t like being around people. I’ve also been diagnosed with being antisocial, but I’m guessing they meant the kind where you just don’t like socializing, not the kind where you manipulate everyone. Although if I’m being perfectly honest, I have done that, too. My life has kind of been a mess, as you can imagine. Issue with the law years ago, drugs, alcohol, and I was never treated for those issues other than when the courts made me go. In this one regard I am not like other people, I did have my rock bottom and quit on my own after that. I still drink very rarely. Never to get drunk. New Year’s I had a glass of champagne. I haven’t used hard drugs in 29 years. My rock bottom scarred me. I’ve been married now for 9 years. No kids, but we live with my wife’s sister-in-law who’s 23, so it’s kind of like having a kid? And of all the jobs I could have picked I do rideshare. Mostly because I can pick my hours or if I even work at all. I tell people they don’t know how hard it is to stuff it all down and pretend for the time people are in the car. Sometimes I feel like throwing up after. Sometimes I feel like crying. Other times I can’t wait to play a first-person shooter on my computer and work it out that way. I have had “real jobs” over the years, briefly. I worked in IT for about a year and change. I also owned a pizza place for two years, but it didn’t work out. I blame myself for that, too. It didn’t help that I found out a few years ago one of my best friend that I had stopped talking to because he was spiraling and there was a straw that finally broke the camel’s back killed himself two years after. e had been like brothers, and sometimes family fights. I thought there was time. And now it haunts me. I can’t get out my my own head. I have good days, but most of the time I’m hiding what’s going on, or lashing out, and in my manic phases, I’m up all night, and spending money I don’t have on stuff I don’t need. But my depression scares me more than anything else. Sometimes it’s really dark. I would never go the route my friend did, probably simply because I feel like life is pain and pain is better than nothing. Sounds dumb, right? So the meds all played havoc with me and no combination ever felt right. I saw someone last year who prescribed something that had a black label warning even after I told him I didn’t want those kinds of meds. I said, “Look, if the possible side-effects are some sort of horrible death down the road, I am not interested.” He literally said, “But wouldn’t you rather feel better now?” Umm, NO, not if that’s the price I pay for it. It’s like telling someone with a broken leg you can make the pain go away if you amputate the leg. There have only been two kinds of time where I felt as close to “normal” as I suppose I can get: years ago I worked 70 hours a week and was going to college full-time, something about that killer schedule kept me so busy I didn’t have as much time for me to get in my own way, and last year when I was riding my mountain bike every day. I’d go out to the trails and ride 15 miles a day every day before work. It helped. Then my bike broke, and I wound up getting a different car that I need to get a tow-hitch and bike rack for since it’s tiny (Kona), and a new bike since my Walmart bike isn’t worth fixing. I plan to get a Trek this time around. But between the bike and car stuff it’s a thousand dollars I don’t have right now and I have other issues. Like the dental stuff. Upper denture at 50, so I have to get extractions done. LOVING that I have to go do that. I’d get implants if I had the money, but that will have to wait I guess. So how many of you are med-free and surviving? And have any of you found safe meds that work well?
By “some” people, I’m referring to myself as the fully-recovered. In high school I wasn’t interested in drugs, and only had alcohol a few times over friend’s houses, and to be honest, being 13 and drunk on whatever was laying around and trying to hide it from your parents when you get home is no fun. Literally only happened like twice before I turned 18. In college, I went the other way. I actually wound up in the hospital from alcohol poisoning my first semester of college. 1.75 liters of Vodka. The doctor at the time said I shouldn’t be alive. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that, all the barfing, or the guy next to me, also strapped down saying, “Nurse, can I get a glass of water?” all night. My BAC was .8 Yeah, no zero next to that: point eight. Anyway, it was a few months before I could drink again, and 30+ years later the smell of Vodka still makes me sick. A few years later, around 94, my friends were determined to get me to try weed, but I was never interested. Till a friend of mine that had been away a few months came back. I finally said yes. Once I did that, I was like, “May as well try it all”. Next was LSD, and shrooms, weed with crystal on it, Special K, Ecstasy, Opium, Coke, and pretty much every pill anyone ever passed to me. I did it all. Except needles. I never got hooked, until a guy a roommate and I knew came over with a bundle of rocks. A bundle then was like 30 or so. What started out as a fun night wound up being a $30,000 a month habit for several months where we stole everything we could get out hands on, ultimately leading to my winding up incarcerated for two years for larceny. The roommate I had at the time never got in trouble for that, but his life spiraled and he killed himself in 2013. I didn’t even know, I had stopped talking to him in 2011 after he said something rude about a girl I was dating. I felt terrible when I heard the news, I’m pretty sure I could’ve helped him. I have to live with that. On the fully-recovered part: crack was all I thought about for years. To this very day I still remember the sweet smell and the rush and euphoria from using it. I liked Opium, but I loved crack. Strangely, the soap Lever 2000 smells like Crack to me so I avoid using that soap. It has been 28 years since I touched Cocaine in any form. It just scares me that much. And for court at the time I had to do NA or AA, and while “inside” , of course. I just never felt like what they were saying applied to me. I was addicted to one thing, not everything. Like if you’re hooked on donuts, do you give up pizza? Over the years after I got out in 97, I still had run-ins with the law, I still abused drugs and alcohol, but it eventually got old. I started caring about showing up at work sober and not having to deal with hangovers, I didn’t want to have to deal with getting sick, scoring, or the people associated with any of it. Bars became an empty experience for me: I was just done. It’s now 2022, almost 2023, and I’ve been married for 9 years—No kids yet, although at my age I feel like I missed out, and my 35 year old wife does want them. I still drink, but very rarely. And I have expensive taste now like Macallan 18 for liquor. Too expensive to drink like a kid. I quit smoking cigarettes 3 years ago thanks to my wife constantly bugging me about it. I haven’t smoked weed in like 15 years, and the only time I take any pills now is if they’re prescribed. And I prefer not to. I’ve had my dentist give me Percocet a few times when I had dental work done and I just tossed it in the medicine cabinet. If I needed something I opted for Naproxen. I used to have a friend who was in AA, still is as far as I know, but we’d hang out at a local coffee shop and his AA friends would always assume I’m in AA, and then ask why if I wasn’t I was at a coffee house. It would make my friend laugh, and he’d tell them, “See, that thinking is why you are in AA and he isn’t.” I think AA is good for most of the people in it, but I don’t think everyone is always an addict. I think some people, like myself, were an addict, but time healed us.
— I feel like giving up on politics sometimes. The rhetoric from the Right is overwhelming at times, and other times overwhelmingly stupid. Like the kitty-litter issue that’s a non-issue that’s all over the internet right now. Or politicians saying they will only accept winning as a fair election. What’s the point in engaging? Both sides are set in their ways, there’s zero room for compromise, so there doesn’t seem to be any point in having discussions in the public forum. It’s also why more and more I think the Blue states should just become their own country, and let the Red states do the same. With a giant wall between the two. Even if we did that I have a theory how that would work out: without Blue state taxes, or Blue state common sense, it wouldn’t be long till the Red states were trying to invade to take over. The only difference is it’d be a conflict like India vs Pakistan, two nuclear powers.
Most of what I read from republicans I just don’t agree with. Their obsession with Trans athletes and bathrooms, banning books, banning Black history, banning abortion, banning sex education and birth control, their war on education, especially science, their idea of continually cutting taxes at the very top, outspending Democrats every single time they’re in office, especially deficit-spending, which they love, their war against minorities, against women, against Jews and Muslims, against the LGBTQ community, trying to force Christianity on everyone; they’re even against the police except on those rare occasions they’re attacking unarmed minorities. I just don’t see the point. Democrats and Republicans have two entirely different worldviews. We want the U.S. to ideally wind up looking like Japan, while keeping our military, of course. Republicans seem to want us to look like Greece. We want to evolve past things like the gun obsession, the war on drugs, and the prison industry, while Republicans want to grow all those things. Even the moderates can’t get anything done because the base of both parties won’t allow it.
So why bother engaging at all? Maybe it’s time to step back, and just say, “Screw it. Let it all burn if it has to.” And, yes, that’s really cynical, but I’m not going to change my views and I doubt they will, either, so what’s left? I really don’t see any point in engaging with them any more. I honestly think a lot of them are stupid. Which I suppose is a good thing because you can cure stupid with education, but a significant portion of them are dumb, and there’s no cure for that. Those people are terminal. We don’t look down on you just to be assholes, we look down on you when we hear you say things like you reject the science of a vaccine because you heard it causes Autism or makes you drop dead later on, but then you want US to put OUR faith in some fucking imaginary sky person you say is controlling the universe.
And the thing that really pisses us off about that is YOU don’t know your own religion. I’m not going to rattle off a bunch of scripture, but notice how Republicans, who are allegedly Christian, only quote from the Old Testament. That is the God they follow, not the New Testament God that Jesus allegedly came to bring the good news about. And WHY? Because New Testament God preached things like compassion, charity, forgiveness, LOVE, all things Republicans have no time for. Not once does it say abortion is illegal in the Bible. It does however mention giving women accused of adultery “bitter waters” to induce abortion in the Old Testament. Yet they use the Bible to claim abortion is against God’s will.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say being Trans is in any way wrong. Not even in the Old Testament. The problem here being most Republicans don’t even know what Trans is. They’re assuming it means cross-dressing, not that the Bible has any problem with that, either. And they assume it means Men will become Trans to have sex with little kids. Again, it doesn’t, but your Old Testament did allow for the marriage of girls as young as age three, so you might want to ban that book. Just like the Bible gave the green light for slavery and rape. Republicans seem to think they meant Black slaves, but the Bible doesn’t make that distinction. And on the subject of Rape, it’s clearly frowned-upon by the Bible, but could be overcome if you paid your victim’s father 50 silver pieces and forced her to marry you. Then all is forgiven. Your book, not mine. But by all means, ban Catcher In the Rye for being obscene. Idiots.
The New Testament even has Jesus hanging out with young naked boys it says he “knew“, which in that language means he had carnal knowledge of them, but no one talks about that. And they should. If Jesus was Gay it should be celebrated, not shunned. His second-most important Commandment was love your neighbor as yourself, which again, most Republicans wouldn’t know, because they didn’t read it. They skimmed. They just cherry-picked the Old Testament for passages to justify being complete assholes to other people, and fixated on the “Judge not” part of the New Testament for when they themselves fuck up. The Bible doesn’t work that way. It’s not pick and choose, and you can’t ignore 95% of it and think by asking forgiveness your fairy tale deity will grant it. Assuming for half a minute your God is real, it says right in it God knows what’s in your heart and however you judge others YOU will be judge by God.
We, being curious, and open-minded often read religious texts to broaden our horizons, and so we know what we’re talking about when the subject comes up. Personally, I have read every single word in the Bible three times in my life. Three times I read it front to back. My Bible is full of notes, things I looked up. I even had companion texts like the Angel Scrolls, which I’m betting most of you have never even heard of, and are now googling it.
So Republicans use stuff like this to oppress other people, like they use rhetoric about Marx, and Hitler as if that’s what Democrats want. If anything, Republicans are more like Nazis than we are. Pretty much everything the Nazis believed in, so do Republicans. The Nazis hated women’s rights, they hated equal rights, they hated worker’s rights, they favored the corporations, oligarchs, and the military. They hated other religions, they hated free speech, they banned and burned books, they especially hated Jews, and their party color was Red. Be honest: that sounds like Republicans, right? Just because the word Socialist is in the name “Nazi” doesn’t make them Democrats any more than North Korea is Democratic. It’s just a name.
Republicans only seem to care about guns, money, and power. And making everyone else as miserable as they can. Seeing other people suffer, seeing other people lose rights makes them happy. And I just don’ see how we can ever work with people like that.
When I first started this blog back in 2009, I think, it was just a way for me to get my book ideas on “paper” for me to see and read. Then I started blogging about everything. I had quite a bit of traffic at one point, I had over 20,000 unique visitors a month. Now it’s way lower because I post like once every few months. And I have thousands of spam messages on my blog and I’ve tried a few scripts to remove them, but short of deleting all my comments at once, I don’t know how to take care of that.
So, I’ve been kind of depressed lately, I should be working all day, but I’ve been gaming instead. It’s not fair to my wife, and I feel like shit because of it, which makes me more depressed.
Anyway, I will try to post more soon.
Someone on FB mentioned bulletproof cars to stop carjackers. I said I’d just run them over and got reported and a 3 day ban from FB and a 6 day ban from groups. Previously I had reported someone twice that threatened to kill the President and Facebook said it’s not a violation. Twice. Twice they said that isn’t a violation, but me saying I’d run over a guy aiming a gun at me is inciting violence. WTF.
August. A lot has happened since then. Not really life-changing, I’ve just been busy with work, and life in general. I’m still working, but I have stopped riding. Back in October my derailleur on my mountain bike broke. It now only shifts between 1-7 and clicks like crazy. If I had a bike stand I could probably fix it, but I don’t want to. I got this bike just to get around when my car got repossessed a few years back. I plan to buy a Trek in the near future and get back out there. The problem now is last time I rode it was kind of warm, October, and now it’s crazy cold in the mornings. It’s not my favorite weather, but I want to get in shape and that means committing to riding in most conditions. Maybe snow days I’ll take off.
In later news, we’re suing our former landlord. We left the place looking nice and in good condition. We had plenty of issues there we didn’t create, but left it looking nice. We asked for the security back sending the letter after we moved, certified and regular mail, it got signed for, and nothing came. We paid rent on time every month for 5 1/2 years, even during the rent moratorium during the pandemic to the tune of almost $115,000. Our security was $1700, but even though she’s the one that didn’t renew our lease, she felt entitled to it. So we’re suing. Wouldn’t you know it, she counter-sues claiming $5,000 in damages when we moved out. So now she’s going to look like a bully in court when she can’t prove any such claim. People suck.
It was someone that was my best friend for many years. We met in 1992, hung out almost daily, lived together twice, but eventually grew apart around 2009. I reached out, and we started hanging out again, but he was bad news. We both had a troubled past, but where I grew and changed, he got worse. More into drugs, more into negative thoughts, and he wound up jealous of the girl I was dating. I had been with her for 6 years when in 2011 he said something that was the final straw.
Over the years my few other good friends asked why I was still friends with him. This was a guy who had burned me many times over the years, but I always made up with him. He didn’t deserve it for the things he did (like getting a different girl I was dating high then hooking up with her while I was sleeping), he was just not the kind of person you would want as a close friend. I can’t explain why, but we were anyway. We just “clicked”. Anyway, that last straw in 2011 he said, literally, “Maybe if you spent less time with your bitch, you’d have more time to hang out with me”. He meant it to be disrespectful. I don’t talk about women like that, and this was a girl I was deeply committed to. So I cut him off. I told him it was the last straw, and that I was done.
3 years ago, after my cat of 14 years died and I was feeling particularly devastated, I decided to do some digging on FB to see what he was up to. I had planned to reach out. The last posts I saw from him were from 2013. As soon as I saw that I got that feeling in my stomach. So I googled his name hoping I wasn’t right. But I was. I contacted his father who he wasn’t close to, but he told me on FB that my friend was very depressed, and they were all sad about it, etc. He was kind of dismissive, so I’m not sure. He also told me a year after my friend killed himself his son killed himself, and his former girlfriend. I guess bad things really do travel in threes.
So he had been dead for 5 years when I found out, and to this very day, to this very minute, I am convinced had I not written him off he’d still be here. He didn’t have any other good friends, just acquaintances. Or dealers, etc. He rarely saw his mother, and in the entire time I knew him saw his father once. To top all that off, most of my best memories are also with him. My early 20s were a blast. Even my early 30s when we hung out all the time were pretty amazing. And we both lived in what used to be my favorite city. And now it’s just his ghost shrouding it when I go there. Everything reminds me of him. I cried more for my cat because my cat didn’t choose to die and was there for me every single day: I know it’s weird to some to be that attached to a pet, but I did cry for my friend, too when I found out. I kind of felt like an idiot crying about something that happened 5 years prior, but I had just found out about it. So for me it happened then. I just really miss him.
If one good thing came out of it, I started reaching out to some people who were less than popular I used to see around town to check up on them, even though it’d been years (they’re on my FB friends list). I even started hanging out with one of them. We get coffee on occasion. Because of the pandemic and his kidney problems (he gets dialysis, not idea why specifically, didn’t ask), we haven’t in the last year, but we talk online frequently. I’m determined to try to pay attention going forward, just in case there is anything I can do. I guess I just wanted to know if it’s weird to feel this way years later.
Isn’t it possible that some White people just accept anyone that’s interesting to them regardless of the color of their skin? I feel like I’m being put into a box suggesting I should maybe stick to my own race. OBVIOUSLY, you can see the color of the person you’re with, but if you’re not a racist, and it’s not a fetish, and you see no more value in a White person than anyone else, why limit yourself to your own race? My wife likes White guys. I like Hispanic women. We’re really hap together and race has never been an issue in the 8 years we’ve been married. I’ve dated Black girls, Asian girls, Middle Eastern girls: yes, Muslims included, Jewish girls, Native American women, and, obviously, Hispanic women. The majority of the women I have dated were White. But the longest relationships I had were with Hispanic women. It wasn’t by design, it just worked out that way. I was as happy with the White girls as anyone else: at the time. I am attracted to the Latin culture and I make no apologies for that. It’s not a feti9sh. I’ve always just been really into their music, their art, their theater, their architecture, and everything else. Yes, I think the women are exotic. So? I’ve always like brunettes whether they’re White, Hispanic, whatever race. I like darker skin, dark eyes, dark hair. It’s just a look that I really like. If I were single, I wouldn’t be looking for someone Hispanic, Black, Asian, or whatever, I’d be looking for someone with the characteristics that appeal to me AND who is interesting and kind. The packaging doesn’t matter if the inside is rotten. I think sometimes people read too much into these things. People like who they like.
That being said, I have dated girls over the years that were White that said I was the first White guy they’d been with, that they only date Black guys. And I’m like, “How is that possible?” How can you exclude every other race? That I have a problem with. I’ve been with Black girls who said the same thing: they only like White guys. Again, how is that possible? You have no basis of comparison. How do you know you only like White or Black if you’ve only been with one group? THAT seems racist. Even if it’s your own race, because I know people like that, too, that think the races shouldn’t mix. It’s just strange thinking to me. And I was raised in a conservative household with a moderately racist father that I still don’t think gets how what he says is racist. I spent most of my life living in the inner city, New Haven, CT for 20 years, and Bridgeport for 7. But I grew up in the burbs. I just moved back to the city as soon as high school was over because I hate homogenous. It makes me really uncomfortable. And I in no way feel guilty for what the other guy did, I’m not trying to make up for the past that I didn’t live, I just do my best to not be part of the problem, and to be an active part of the solution. Not by dating, in daily life, I mean. Simple things like treating everyone with the same amount of respect, lobbying my representatives for change, taking part in the discussions, and so forth.
As for dating, I haven’t found any explicit advantage to dating anyone of any race, my own included. I don’t think Black girls or Hispanic girls or anyone else are better in bed, or anything like that. I don’t feel like it gives me access to anything I didn’t have access to before. I just like who I like. My wife, on the other hand, would say there are advantages to being with me, but she’s being more tongue-in-cheek when she says it than being serious. I’m sure there are some advantages, and I’m fine with that, although it’s sad commentary on the world we live in. Everyone should be the same. And eventually we will be. Race is disappearing in this country, and eventually it will in the whole world. Wouldn’t that be nice, to all just be: people?
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