Bad Soil Kills the Plant

When I was in high school I had friends that were all similar to myself and my socioeconomic level. At this point I had drifted away from my junior high best friend and the gap grew daily. This also led to that assault during my fawn response text. The friendship likely died many years ago and all that we share is a past.

The reason for the divide was pretty much an issue of high school placement. We ended up in different circles and eventually we really didn’t have much else left. It is rather tragic looking back, knowing how much their family meant to me when I was young and now it just seems like the connection is almost dead.

Part of the issues with this trauma is how much things get etched into your mind. There is this whole, living in three times thing. Time kind of just stops. You think of things that had been so far in the past that you really don’t realize the people that you see as exactly how you last saw them, are going to be vastly different between your last encounter and your latest. I see people as I saw them decades before, and honestly it’s hard for my mind to process the differences in appearance with the today version of the person I last saw in their thirties and now they are inching towards their forties and fifties.

When your mind spends that much time in the past, it is hard to see what is happening now. My high school friend comments from time to time that he can’t believe I remembered this or that. An example. There was a considerable amount of time in my life that I was playing Dungeons and Dragons at the Port Hueneme Taco Bell, in fact that came up just yesterday. We used to play roughly, ten hours a day. We did that for years.

This was a move that I sometimes regret and often love. We had a freaking blast.

I have a fond memory of this little sparrow that would hang out around us while we sat there day after day. I still see that bird getting fatter and fatter everyday in my mind’s eye. We would toss him scraps and he would eventually stop flying over to our table to get those snacks and just hop over to graze. We called him Chubby and sooner or later he stopped coming around. I go there pretty often. A pintos and cheese from Taco Bell and a half bag of fries from the Steak House across the street. I can smell them right now. I remember how the air around the place was moist in the morning as it was just a few blocks from the ocean.

I can step back into the time that I was drawing on my high school crush that I didn’t have the confidence to close the deal. She always asked me to get her a Kamikaze of the fountain drinks and two sugars. She had such an amazing personality. I loved being around her and I really have no idea how I could have been so afraid of that. We drifted apart at some point and then reconnected. I was never really ready to become a partner, I was too afraid and self-conscious. I missed out on so much because of that. I also ended up in relationships where I was essentially just told I was dating them. I wouldn’t argue. When I did start displaying confidence, it was so false that it was laughable. I never really thought of myself as someone that anyone would look up to. My cousin in Hawai’i was talking about when we were kids and he slipped in, “We all looked up to this guy!”

You what?

Me?

Well what the fuck. Why didn’t anyone tell me?

I know that I used my false confidence to get by a lot. My friend once asked me, “How are you not getting your ass kicked constantly?”

I have no idea. Honestly, I have no idea. There were some times where I was screwed with on the street, but those were more just kids being assholes. That ass kicking from the shithead in computer class was kind of my last fight. There was an event where my friends and I got jumped by a gang while walking the railroad tracks by a small RV park, but seeing as I took a board to the head and did absolutely no fighting, I can’t exactly count that. There was the sucker punching asshole, but again, fawning. That isn’t a fight, that was him punching a baby. I couldn’t fight back. There was also a time where my friends got in a fight with a bunch of assholes at Taco Bell. I was actually on roller blades and no one attacked me.

Why do I keep going back to these moments? I don’t want to. I see no value in them anymore.

As I say this a flash of the time my friends were all walking on the trail of Bubbling Springs Park and the burnout of the group was annoying the strong man of the group. Strong man warned the Burnout to stop and the Burnout decided poking the bear was still a good idea. Strongman grabs a shopping cart from the side of the trail and throws it at the Burnout. Burnout figures out he had messed up and bolted.

The times that we took some of our friend’s swords into the park and fought for a time. Then the Short Younin’ of the group hit the Ogre of the group with a claymore that the Ogre blocked into his own calf. There was a lot of laughing but also concern.

That takes me back to playing football in the park. I have a trick-hip and it sometimes makes me limp. I was limping that day and it released sometime during the game, I told my teammates and we used everyone's dismissal of my presence on the field over my limping. I went out for a long pass and scored at the end of the game. That leads to about a year later when we were playing with one of the football team’s actual players for the school. He was dating the girl my friend was working up the nerve to ask out and my friend was stewing about it. During the game I threw myself into his legs and hurt him pretty badly.

This is How my Day Goes

I live in three times, the past, the present, and in the future, just as Kurt Vonnegut. Those memories intrude on my day, each day, every day.

My memory is tied to my trauma in some way and I really want to break the threads that bind them together. There really isn’t anything about it that is too appealing.

I recall each of the times that I was an asshole everyday day. Without marjuana, I would dream about them all night too. I remember each time someone wronged me. I remember my worst days in detail and thankfully know the good days are in there too. When it was my eighth birthday my mom got me the cowboy boots that I wanted. I also got a Mickey Mouse watch that I likely lost in the move when I was evicted. I remember the day I turned eight, my younger brother walked to my school shouting, “Jossy, Jossy,” in my classroom. I stayed home that day, and he had escaped the house when my mom and I were in the back house where our renter was residing. She was a nice old woman. My brother woke up and went to find me.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Then there is the number 1492, which was the gate code of my crush’s building. I remember my childhood telephone number. I recall parts of my first time in Mexico with my “aunt and uncle” from across the street. I was two. I got two maracas and I broke one once I got home. I kept that toy for years afterward and only lost it because my mom went into my room and threw away a bunch of my toys while I had been at school, including my Star Wars Rancor action figure.

I don’t want to be in the past, it just happens. Nothing I do keeps it out completely.

Further Reflection of the Past and the Present

When I was four a doctor thought I was faking being since. My appendix nearly burst because they sent me home and that likely could have killed me. Now I'm in my '40s and once again, I'm being told I'm faking my issues, or at least I am being told that I am not as bad as my therapists and doctors say that I am.

I just received permission for an extension of my disability appeal. They are once more short changing me on time, they have extended my deadline for the appeal by 30 days. No lawyer will touch my case with that small a window and my 766 page case file cannot be read through and understood by me in the time they have allotted me. They say that they are giving me 30 days from March the 27th and it is April 4th today, giving me 22 days to figure out how to make a reasonable appeal to my case. My therapist tells me that I should be grateful and less negative that they gave me an extension at all. I suppose there is truth to that, but it feels like a gut punch that I asked for 60-90 days that I was given all of 22 days all said and done.

I find little to be appreciative of. Why is it that year after year a doctor has admitted that I am unfit to work at the moment, but a judge can tell me that none of that matters and continue to deny me the funds that I paid into the system in case something like this happens?

My normal reaction is, “Are you fucking kidding me? The government can hand little Donnie Trump $73.5 million as a tax cheat over 4 years, obviously not earning that money, and they are trying, tooth and nail, to keep $2,500 a month from me?”

Well hopefully today that part of this issue may start to change. Today, Donnie Tinyhands has been arraigned on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cheat the system out of millions of dollars.

Toxic Masculinity is Starting to Get Checked

Until this day, Donald Trump has had absolutely no accountability for his lifetime of crimes. The men and women that have supported him, had all their darkest impulses validated and they have been exploring the limits of those dark impulses. Today, their idolized “strong man” has been held to some account. I have been waiting for years for this moment.

I spoke to my therapist in detail about why this man had decimated my mental health and there are a lot of parallels with my abuser and Ding Dong Donnie. We have covered that my mental health decline began in 2016, everything went wrong that year and I have been struggling to figure out why I am not functioning correctly since. My stepdad is an idiot criminal that also has never been held truly accountable.

Things are slowly changing and the difference in my mental health is noticeable, according to my therapist. That Dipshit Don finally being called on his crimes is without a doubt a big part of that, but also, I am seeing changes in my own family after dealing with me in this state for the last year around them. Last night I was speaking with my mom about some of the issues she is dealing with and she told me that one of my brothers had been yelling at her (through text) and she eventually just ignored his messages. After everything went quiet for a time, she received a message wherein my brother apologized for his blowup.

This is huge for someone within my family and I know that is a sad thing to say, but it is the truth. No one takes responsibility for their actions within the family, or it is extremely rare when they do. The normal reaction for such a thing is just going quiet for a time and then coming back to the person you had verbally attacked after a short time and acting like nothing happened. This has been the playbook since I was very young. For my brother to apologize is a major change in the mentality of how to handle being wrong. This line of thought is the polar opposite of D. Trump’s policy never to admit he is wrong, which is the mantra of toxic men across this country and throughout the world.

I have been apologizing to my family, my friends, and even to my exes that likely have forgotten much about me. My memories are largely locked into place as things that I regret or have caused me great pain. It is how the trauma programmed me to be. Each time I apologized, it wasn’t for them, it was for me. I feel like, when my brother apologized, he finally started to see what it is that I am doing. Owning up to your shit is extremely important. You did it, you know you did it, it had a negative impact on another, and you have been holding onto that for long enough.

I feel horrible about the Social Security issue. I feel like my country hates me and wants me to die. There is no real way to not take that personally. The world is still in a lot of hurt and there is still madness that is at an alltime high within my years on this planet. Even with all of that, there are good things happening and even if it is hard to see, if you look it is there. My brother taking a stance of responsibility for lashing out at our mother, is a big thing to acknowledge. The fact that Dildo Drumpf has been arraigned is a huge thing, white collar crime is so often ignored in this country, this makes his being held accountable a much bigger thing than just having his criminal ass in court.

Wee Donnie’s Crowd of Supporters

The crowd is getting tired of 45’s bullshit. They are exhausted with defending this goddamn drama queen. When it comes down to it, who isn’t tired of this crybaby? He whines and cries calling himself a victim and telling his supporters that this can happen to them. Really? You see them inflating and deflating their assets to a degree that $73.5 million dollars ends up in their pocket? You see them spending $130,000 dollars to hush a pornstar from telling everyone what a piece of shit they are? You see them losing their personal jet? You see them having their massive resort raided by the police after they hold on to a pile of top secret files?

What are you fucking stupid?

Today there were some people out front of the courthouse protesting, but they were far away from the crowd on January 6th, 2020. There has been no real violence to speak of, just people holding signs and protesting obnoxiously, not violently. There is solace in that. There is hope. When the crowd was being whipped up by Marjorie Taylor Greene, she was met with people telling her to shut up. She very quickly left when someone pointed out that she has a district of people she should be looking after as her job, there is no reason for her to be in New York. It is almost like sanity is returning to my country.

I am hopeful that this rationality to hold a criminal responsible for his actions will turn around my mental health, it is outright embarrassing that this has affected me so much. I will not get those years back wherein my breakdown held me hostage or imprisoned, but I can look at the progress I have made, the issues that I have confronted, the people who have helped me, the lives that I have touched in a positive way during this time and through this work as well. I have been thanked for being so honest and forthright about what I am going through. There is a lot of shame in this country about mental health and if I have pulled back the curtain even for just a few, there is something for me to feel accomplished about.

It is so hard turning around the damage that has been done and struggling to let those things go. They have been so much of who I am that it is hard to see who I really am. I am starting to acknowledge my strengths and not just put up a facade of what I believe people think my strengths are. My therapist tells me that I am intelligent, creative, and talented in a lot of areas. They have told me that my mental health challenges have always been something that has shaped me. I have trouble seeing anything good having come from those years.

If I were to admit the good that came about, it kind of feels like fruit from a poisoned tree. What good can something like what I went through be? I suppose, the fact that I was mistreated did eventually come to make me a much kinder and more even-minded person. Because I went through those issues, I may have hurt people in my youth, but now I am seeing what harm I did, admitting it was hard created by a damaged person and I can start forgiving myself those harms I committed and apologize to those that I hurt wherever I can. My change in personality through the years of work that I have been through, is starting to show in those around me. I am the oldest child in the family, and my siblings have taken some of my actions as a role model, so now they are falling into my new role of healing and that should make their lives better in the long run.

I am not sure what the future holds for me. I know what I want it to be, but that is something I can build on. I am no longer the angry, mean, creature that has lashed out at others when my anxiety spikes. I am more grounded in the moment and I am learning to be okay with who I am and proud of what it is that I can do. My body may have been damaged through this, my mind may have been as well, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be fixed and that I cannot heal. If things don’t work out with my disability, I am hoping that I can move on and get my feet under me without the support of my government. I will never look at my country the same way again, but maybe I can be part of the change that needs to happen, even if this book is all that I am able to do for now.