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October 14 Testing languages in richedit
I walk a fine line in this blog, I think. Microsoft owns much of my work and I have found that life gets easier by making the stuff I do as a "hobby" relate to stuff I do at work. My work lately has been all about testing new vista languages with respect to richedit. The reality is that there is NEVER enough time to test things as I would like to. A word about testing. Some people might think testing is not software development. That seemed to be the prevalent attitude before I was deployed. If that is your attitude or belief, well chances are your testing is very weak and ineffective. To me, testing involves the same or perhaps more complexity than developing a given feature or product itself. Why? Because unless a dev subscribes to some sort of test driven development schema (most MS dev's do to one extent or another) and even if they do, their focus is on produces highly efficient code that solves a specific problem(s). But how does that solution relate to the entire product? When most products involve input spaces that have nearly infinite combinations and even with decent equivalency class analysis the likelihood of problems (fixable, but bugs none the less) is high. This isn't because the dev is stupid or hasn't does his or her job well, it's simple matter of focus. The test engineer must make his or her focus much broader. Now in this day and age, it is simply not practical to be a monkey banging keys and moving a mouse to exercise the code. More over, the vast majority of code isn't accessible via UI. I remember in the mid to late 90's testers had Bug bashes, an evening when the test group would gather anyone and everyone to use a given program and everyone would look for bugs and prizes were given etc. They still happen, of course. The end goal of a products is something a user can use that does the job well and doesn’t break! However, as programs become more complex, the requirements for testing become exponentially more complex. Automation is literally the only workable solution. With regard to testing international input, well, this goes doubly so! The same body of code must be able to process multiple languages, often times mixed languages each with its own layout requirements, it's own directionality, breaking rules, input requirements, etc ad nausea.
Now here is a reality of testing: To accurately test something, you NEED to know what is right and what is wrong. If you don't know this, how can you test? Well, there's way and then there's other ways.
Really these are the only two ways I know of to automate testing. Anyone with a different idea, I'd love to read about it. Most testing is done with an oracle, though most don't think of it that way. Here's an example and we'll use the plain edit control from the windows api as our AUT.
A simple test case for Arabic might be the input string "مشقاشلاش" and inputting in it via EM_SETTEXT message api call. The pseudo code to do the test is as follows: Create a string literal var names szTestString = "مشقاشلاش" ; Create Edit control; Call EM_SETTEXT with the szTestString; Select All Text in the edit control; Get the selected text in a var called szResult; Compare szTestString to szResult; If Match then pass else fail;
Well, in this case szTestString is our Oracle. We know what we inputted and we know that after input that should be the only string in the freshly created control. This is sadly the most common type of oracle used. It has a lot of problems but one advantage. It's NEVER wrong. It knows one and one thing only, ie what string was really input and what was expected to exist in the control once inputted. It's quick and easy to create this kind of test but with few exceptions it doesn't really accomplish much, nor cover much ground without allot more effort. What break points if any exist in the string? What, based on Unicode or some other encoding scheme, should the glyphs for each code point be? What should the string look like when rendered? If I put a cursor at the start of the string and start hitting the left arrow key, what locations (CP's) should the cursor go to for each left arrow hit? The list of questions goes on. Still think an unskilled tester can REALLY test even something as "simple" and an edit control or say something more complicated like an accounting package or contact app? I thought not.
So there is a bunch of stuff to test. And of course since time is of the absolute essence a good test engineer must figure out what is really important test and what is not so important. My own personal priority list looks something like this:
There's other stuff but this list serves well enough. Now, I'm testing 12 new languages. The questions begs how to guarantee I hit enough of each language to ensure that all of the relevant and important code is actually exercised and any existing bugs are found? If I tried to do this all by manual means I'd be quite literally fucked! Richedit, the component I work on is an extremely powerful control and has a truck load of features, most friendly to every language windows can handle.
Well one thing to do is create several RTF doc's in a given language then open those docs and use my eyeballs to ensure all is well.
Since a test engineer doesn't just test 1 version of the control, constant new versions are produced weekly as dev's fix bugs, and add or refine features per client requests, so it's necessary to have a set of tests handy that can quickly tell me if something got broke by these changes (called "code churn"). The doc's help but we have an app that will open the doc with one version of the control, then do the same in another version and compare a picture of both to see if they match or differ. Difference isn't necessarily bad and might even be expected, but it helps narrow things down a bit.
Now here's where we step into John's world o' how it ought to be and how I'm working for it to become. See I think once equivalence classes have been created with as exhaustive a set of cases as possible, then each language requires it's own c++ or c# which can use that set of code points to determine a multitude of things about how the AUT should behave with respect to the string. More over the class should be able to recognize know bugs and not report them, but merely not them and move on.
Each language class is unique as most languages are actually fairly unique. Since it's not only possible but highly like that input will involve more than one language there needs to be a higher level of abstraction to this testing scheme. The concept of a Test string case which is composed of one or more individual Language specific classes and is capable of using the combination of these individual language classes to make wider ranging conclusions about what should and should not be. Now in a very real sense this sounds like rewriting richedit itself and it is to a very small and specific degree. However, we are only interested in certain aspects of validation, not every single state possibility of the AUT.
Here's an interesting thought though. If AUTv.01 is the oracle and AUTv.02 is the test target, the any delta AUTv.02-AUTv.01 is indeed interesting. More over it's trivial to record a given delta so that moving forward delta AUTv.02-AUTv.01 could be compared with AUTv.03-AUTv.02 or ever AUTv.03-AUTv.01. If the delta's are saved with appropriate info, they can be referenced later and used to determine if the delta is really new, and maybe even make some statistical guess as to whether it's truly note worthy or not.
See normally it generally not a great idea to use the AUT as the means of determining what is right or wrong, that's what oracles are for. But how do you validate an oracle? Well, the only way is to either manually check or something similar or you compare what the oracle says with what AUT says. If 90% of the time the oracle is right and matches what AUT says then you take it as red that when the oracle says something wrong its worth spending time looking at it.
The real trick here is timing!!! Testers usually don't get the code until it's been written. And often don't have a sense of what it's supposed to do until it's time to test it and the results are needed now, not 3 weeks from now. How to resolve this timing delemma. If you know what's coming early enough, you can indeed write some cool stuff to ANTICIPATE what's coming and have at least a few tests ready. But if not, how do you cope? How do you get enough test coverage, not code coverage (there different and the first is far more important for ensuring reliable product) and results when they are actually needed?
Ok, I had intended this blog to be about my brilliant scheme for testing multiple languages but it wandered which I suppose is ok for me. It's given me some interesting ideas to consider. Well, internet land, I need to think and do some work, though frankly today and ideed this whole week I've largely been bed bound, it's that whole being blown up and sick thing. I hate it. I'm getting good at faking when it does and does not hurt, but frankly … this week has sucked eggs and then some. Very little sleep and far too many painkillers that do far too little. I hope next week is better but I feel like I expressed some interesting technical thoughts for a change, usually I whine about life in general and I need to stop and get back to being a total geek:) September 12 the latest stuffK, I got to attend a party with some co-workers this last weekend. The party was to kindof celebrate some math display functionality our team has nearly finnished up with and also to spur some discussion and awareness of where we could take this technology. Now I haven't had much to do with math display, but oooooh talk about exiting:) Anyways, met some neat people and I think have talked myself into some side work that might help to contribute alittle bit to this amazing stuff. I'm gunna take a crack at "plugging" in the Mathematica kernal to our display and math entry system. Another engineer has done some work to create a basis for interfacing to the editing and display functionality our team has built. So what I intend is to create a sort of abstraction layer between this intermediat layer, and whatever math engine a user might choose to install on his or her local machine. (Let it be a her, please? Then let her be even just a little interested in me? Pretty please?). Ok, so then I'm thinking I'll need to create a capabilities interface. The intermediat layer queries for what capabilities the engine currently makes available, and the engine (or in this case, my wrapper for the engine) returns an enumeration of what it can do. It'll be a rough draft at first, but I feel that's definately the right idea. Then we'll see. mm what else is big on my list this week? Well, I have to write a test oracle of sorts and do so quickly, to better test the new Vista languages. Now here's the rub. Time is not on my side here. So a true independant Oracle that knows all and happily validates all is just not in the cards. So I have to figure out how to validate only what I need, but try to do so in a way that is hopefully extensible so that as new types of validation are added, the Oracle can grow in some fashion wihtout having to reinvent everything each time. There's some methodes currently avaialbe to me so I have to be smart and check out those first but my gut feeling is most, but not all of what's there currently sucks or is pretty outdated and needs replacing. Can't do it all now, but let's see. School starts soon. That's kind of exciting. I'm not sure what else lay instore for me, but right now seems like a great time to be a geek:) ciao. August 18 Trying to catch up on expressing my tech thoughtsok, I'm taking a short break whilst a billion of my language tests run to express some of the neat things I've been exposed to or have thought about lately. Heh, I even have a little yellow sticky note I scribbled a couple things down on for fear I would forget about them.
First thing I have to say is that testing as an engineering science is starting to seem way way more cool than I had ever relaly considered before. I'm sure that says something about my personality or approach and I'm equally sure I don't really want to know what exactly it says, but could benefit fro the learning:)
k, one practice or flaw that I have often had, and am learning I need to shake is that I'll start on a project at home, get knee deep into design or more likely just implementing code, for the sheer joy of creating on the fly in a very undisciplined manner, and then start thinking how I don't wanna rely on the CRT for stuff like math functions or string functions or templated array classes or whatever. And I start implementing something from scratch. Now what does this yield me? Nadda darn thing! Last week or so ago it was a CString class. Now, maybe something quick and easy that is some how better than using itoa, ok, I'm down with that. But to write an entire CString class, whilst in the midst of something far more menaingfull and interesting? Big mistake and huge waste of time. Same for an array class. I did some reading of a few internet message boards on the subject of STL library's in general. ANd what I read made sense and really made me think about how I approach personal projects. Here are some sumary thoughts on what I think I've learned and am now trying to live by:
1. The performance of STL derived objects is better than good enough, assuming one implements iterators per the guidelines provided.
2. Most especially with <algorithm> but in general as well, the folks that wrote these templates are likely far more smarter than me and have already expended the effort to solve the problem so that yutzes like me can easily use them. And from what I've read, 9.4 times out of 10 the properly implemented STL solution will work better than any hand rolled code to accomplish the same task and will likely take far less time to complete.
3. In the rare (or at least percieed rare) case that an algorithm or other type really does need to be tuned or written from scratch, then at you can focus on just that part that needs to be re-written, rather than re-inventing something already very well done to start with.
now, I have always had an aversion to using the C runtime. AS a dependancy dll, that makes sense. Version hell is no joke for users. But as a static import lib it's just not that bad, in terms of space requirements (I don't think it is) and put simply I doubt I can implement sprintf any faster than the original MS implementers did.
Conclusions I have sort of reached: I do work on solving some problems that already have much better solutions created. I do so for the learning experience and the fundemental knowledge that comes from implementing something from mostly the ground up.
I've written an ASM mouse driver and indeed a graphics lib back in the dos days. I've written many many string and array traversal bits that likely have already been implemented, namely itoa and atoi and so on. Those are common fair for interview quiestions and it's foolish in the extreme to become lax in knowing how to manipulate pointers and work with strings at a base level. This being said, it's also equally foolish to waste time rolling my own object when it has nothing to do with what I'm studying or deving at the time. ANd ends up leading me away from completing what it is that I started out on to start with. BAAADDD john!
ok, so testing. Well, if what comes to mind is someone sitting in front of a computer punking away at some app's UI well, maybe that's some folks but not me. TEsting turns out to be an interesting problem, if examined closely. ANd as I have more recently learned, alot of serious research is being done to figure out how to eliminate the "lowly" tester from the equation of developement alltogether. I guess having the the east asians do most of it still cuts too deeply into most companies profit margin. Anyways, universities are sponsering more and more research into the issue of testing and validating software. I personally think they are aways away from any real solutions that most would actually use, but as I look into it, well, it's getting pretty interesting. Some random observations/learnings:
1. Given an object to test, regardless what it is (researchers like to use a hypothetical coffee machine for some reason??), it's vital to clearly and precisely define and express what the objects Input space is. THere is a whole load of new (to me at least) symbols used to work with input spaces and BNF or Extended BNF is also used somtimes to express the input space/Domain/ whatever. This makes so much sense it almost seems like an axiom. Don't start testing until you know what your testing considers valid and invlid input. You'd think that is easy and done before code is even created, but it taint so. Rare is the developer who recieves a specification from which to create code based off of. What's more likely, is that he (I'm using he because the number of female dev's I've met or seen who actually develop is so minute as to be non-existant. Sad really as I'd really love to be able to meet and have more female friends who enjoyed programming and solving technical problems as much as I do. Saddly, that isn't the world currently. Maybe it'll change soon. That would be cool:) will participate in some discussions about what the app or code should do, in a general sort of way, maybe even get a email or memo sort of wish list and then from there it's up to the dev. From what I've seen, and this is just my own limited perception and is totally anecdotal, pretty much everyone and everything else is mere chaff that should really be seperated from the developer because they certainly don't seem to contribute to anything that approaches help in solving, implementing or otherwise creating a running working blob of code. Supposedly prgram managers produce spec's, but if you were to look at many spec's you'd notice that they are pretty useless if you are looking to figure out what the app or code is supposed to do. Really, it's the dev who makes those decisions, ie can it be done? If so, how long will it take? Or more likely, can he do it in x number of days/hours/ or whatever. And can it be made to look pretty. I guess there are designers who excell at that, but frankly, that sort of window dressing, outside of neatness, is fluff that slows things down more often than not. Heavons, just look at the public version of the Office beta and tell me some desginers didn't go crazy and in the process help screw up a perfectly fine and well accepted user interface!
2. ok, so Having defined an input space as formally as possible and written it down, it's important to look at how to minimize that input space. I work with text stuff. If I left the input space as exhaustive, well, it would be infinite and if I tried to test every combination I'd die an unhappy camper. So that rows in Equivalency Classes. ie one thin is more or less the same as the other, as far as the code is concerned, so just use one thing, and not both in the input space. Comming up with an algorithm to determine Equivalency classes looks to be a wildly cool and very difficult problem. Perhaps unsolveable in the general case, but for constrained cases, like all of the UNICODE code Points or function/interface/entry point parameters like Integers or BOOL's or the like, it's maybe do-able. ANd definately worth researching and exploring more, which I fully intend to do as time and interest permit.
3. An interesting learning point. Pair wise combinatorial testing appears to be more than sufficient for finding most serious bugs. A handy thing to know if you need to do some testing.
4. Model's for testing are often hard to create, even when consrained, but one they exist, they can be invaluable for automating all or nearly all aspects of testing. Infact, it's quite do-able to create an app that automates testing and validation, from start to finish, if you dev the model first, at least such that the model can act as an oracle which accepts input (or validly regjects it) and produces the exact output expected. Playing catch and trying to model an existing system is pretty much a not do-able task, at least not do-able in an exhaustive way. Have to give that some more thought.
WEll, I guess I'd better get back to work.
August 14 International Testing and lanaguage specific testingok, so I'm an SDET or Software Developer In Testing. One of my responsibilities currently is to test how my teams control behaves with the new languages when running on windows vista. I've never really done language testing before so I haven't been two certain as to how to approach the issue. Any suggestions?
I did a bit of research from arround the web. One thing to note: It's hard to find documents of any sort in traditional Mongolian. THis I thought would be important. You know?
But since testing in general is a bit of a challenge to me, this seems even more so a challenge. THere are some obvious things to look for:
but the rest is not so obvious and tends to be lanaguage specific. This is black box tesitng for the most part. The code that processes text is terribly complicated and thus doesn't present itself as being "whitebox" testable, at least not to me. I've created seeral documents that use a given language with various features of our control. But as I read more about international testing, even more issues seemed important to test. Special charactor combinations, or risky charactors, that are more likely to cause problems than others. I hope to come up with a solid white paper on the whole subject, based on what I have learned when all is said and done. Well, having described a bit of what I'm currently doing, I'd best stop blogging and get back to it:) a serperation of blogsok, it seems I tend to be splitting my blogs between two places. My myspace page, and my msn spaces page. In fact, months ago I didn't realise that they were two seperate things, LOL you have no idea how much confusion that caused me. But the result was two blogs on more or less the same sort of stuff. My life, what's going on, kind of my online journal. ANd since December last year it's really been rocky at times. But, as things in my life tend to do, life is settling down and my basic interests take hold of me and I start forging ahead yet again. Part of that is persuing a closer relationship with God and make no mistake, it's important to me. But it isn't 100% of my life. I love software engineering and solving tough problems and spend alot of time doing just that. So anways I've begun to realise that I'd kind of like to keep two blogs going. One for what's up in my life and the other to chat and write out thoughts on geek stuff. So This blog is going to become the one about geek stuff, I think, and I'll use my myspace site (http://www.myspace.com/dueham, http://blog.myspace.com/dueham) to blog what's going on in my personal life. I'm sure the two will end up blending together now and then, but still, I'm going to give that a try.
I don't know if many read my blog, most especially when there are so many to choose from these days. But for my friends and the casual reader, please know you are welcome to shoot me an email now and then or comment as you see fit. Most especially if you are a geek and want to discuss an idea. July 28 Steaming along and doing my bestMorning internet world! Well, I'm 40 now. But relaly I'm still 18 and though the world see's me as this kooky 40 year old guy there is still very much an 18 year old inside this tired body.
In truth I've had trouble sleeping lately. Nightmares seem almost always my constant companion. It used to be the same nightmare over and over, waking up in a smoke filled humvee, hanging upside down and grodually reliving that horrible day. Now things are ever so much more different. Now the dreams range to other times and other events that I was as soon forget. Sometiems I can make choices and do and those aren't so bad. And sometimes I am merely aplayer in a grizzly tale I do not always remember.
My roomate Jess tells me I woke her up last night talking an wresttling in my sleep, upset because I couldn't ge all of the blood out of my humvee no matter how much I tried. I don't remember it, thank god, but still it probably explains why I seem to fight sleeping even with strong drugs to make me sleep.
Lately I've been a bit distracted at work, just the last couple days, but it's annoying. I write this in the hopes of banishing the concern and getting back to business.
My brother Luke is getting married this Saterday. and yet another brother, Doc Dale, is getting married on sunday. I'm happy for both of them and hope they will both be successfull in their marriages.
It's also saddening in some ways. nearly 30 men when to Iraq. Many of us married. Since coming home the majority of guys that were married are not now. Have we changed so much? Or is it simly the fear that we have changed? One of the most devout family men I have ever known lost his wife. She left him. I can't imagine why . . .
In other worlds my job has been very cool. The projects I work on incredibably insipiring and fascinating. My latest assignment was testing certain aspects of COM structured storage as related to rtf documents and how Richedit handled intentionaly attacked objdata blobs. it required alot of learning and some pretty intense code. i ended up writing a fairly complicated file fuzzer which I loved. Now is the hard part of my job which is to use the fuzzer, which seems to work wonderfully, to test richedit and report the results. There I don't get quite as enthused butthat is an important aspect of my job that I want to get better at.
Well, Internet land, I guess that's enough of an update for today. Ya'll take care,
John February 05 What we take with us...So this whole divorce process involves taking. She tries to hold on to what she thinks is hers. She also seems to be obsessed with taking what is mine. She's lied, cheated. Certainly wrong, regardless of whether you believe me or not, it's wrong to do those things.
But when all is said and done, when at last we let out our final breath, what do we have to take with us? Our pride? Our memories? Maybe those and our consience. Did we cheat? Did we lie and steal? Do we do what we knew to be wrong? We all have to one extent or another. I believe this. I know I have done things that I think are wrong. But I have done and tried to do things that I think are right. It has nothing to do with the "law". It has nothing to do with any other person than me, really. Because I know, when I die, when at last I get to rest, I am the one that must judge me. Right now I believe this with the full force of my being. Maybe God, in providing us with his word in the form of the Bible was in fact simply trying to give us some healthy clues on how to go about this. The Bible certainly tells of killing, of sex, even incest, of stealing, lies, of all things that a person could conceievably do. They haven't changed. Many of the people who did these things, including bad things, were forgiven, even chosen amungst God's children. So maybe we are really in charge of judging ourselves.
If this is so, then I have done a fair job thus far and of course have more work to do. I have lived. Done great things. Done bad and terrible things. I have experienced and felt the world and will continue to do so. I feel like I am often awake. Which is more than I can say for most I see. It's a rare day I have taken something that is not mine. I avoid lieing as much as possible and continue to pursue living a true and good life.
I have fucked up a time or two, but it seems to me that I have also done what I could to make up for it, been open to acknowldging that I fucked up and tried to make amends where possible. Who can do more? As Jesus said, let the one who has not sinned throw the first stone. Even Jesus did not pick up a rock. And whether that particular tale is true of a simple fiction, it makes such real sense to me. We can't help but make judgements of others. Our thoughts are ours. But what we do with our selves, our actions, they matter a great deal. That is how others know us. Whether they chose to acknowledge that, or us, is not a concern, not in a person's control. But we can do our best to control and direct ourselves and our actions. This is responsibility and maybe when we die it is something that might be important to each of us. I hope so or I have been wasting alot of my time, but I think it is and will be important.
I do not live for the day I will die. I'm not in a hurry most days. But it will come. I don't mind that. having been so close to it, I feel I can face it without too much fear.
I've often beat myself up, being haunted by my experiences in war. And yet i do believe in the cause, as I saw and still see it. That is what matter's. Was I doing what I was supposed to be doing? Did I give it my all?
I did. I threw myself at being a soldier with a will. I think I did a good job. I doubt I was the best scout in the platoon. But I WAS a scout. Fully accepted by my brothers. That cannot be taken away from me. Ever. I do wish that I had done somethings differently. But in the end, when things are happening so fast, somethings don't happen the way you'd later have liked. Reliving it, having doubts about then, maybe that is simply a healthy conscience that someday will help me or us to do better than the last time.
February 02 deeper still part 2ok, I left off talking about the punishment my father tended to give out. Almost always physical, and always anger involved. I'm thinking about that. I guess that is why, in some ways I have always had a hard time with anger. Because if someone else was angry, to me maybe it meant I was in for a beating. Does taht word sound harsh? What do you call it when a guy takes a leather belt, makes you take down your pants, then bend over and then he hit's you hard with the leather belt whilst yelling at the top of his lungs at you? Hit really doesn't touch on the meaning of what my father did to me. Is it ok because it happened at a time when people thought that was ok? Or was it wrong and I'm just fucked because it happened to me and though it was wrong, there will never be any sort of compensation, or validation to that young boy that it was wrong? His mother, my grandmother, seemed to think this was just fine. Likewise, my fathers brothers thought it was just fine too. I had never been exposed to people who didn't think it was ok. My father did not give me money. never, really. I remember talking with other kids in school who thought that was odd. My father was an electronics technician and later an entry level electronics engineer, though non-degreed. So while not a rich man, I would gauge his earning potential at near my own or there about's at the time. And yet, clothes for his children, material possessions, became less and less a priority for him as we grew older. Or at least myself. My sisters often hounded him for clothes and he often would give them moeny for clothes, but I was a young man, or confused boy or idiot, depending on his mood and never found worthy of material things by and large. I think he felt I should be buying my own things, for the most part. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so to sumarize, my father was very much into anger and punishment, most especially towards me. i guess the girls he felt less able to hit without guilt when they were older. Anyways, so renee and I were close, then later drifted appart and still later became bitter enemies. Before this, my mother started sittingus down and talking to us about not being able to put up with my father. Honestly, I don't remember much about these conversations, but I do remember them alittle, and what I most remember was one of the last ones where she said, ok, where do you want to go. I remember telling her ohio or idaho, and was thinking she actually listed to me, lol. I thought she would seriously take us there and I didn't know anything about those places but the words sounded very cool to me. Where we ended up going was viselia california. We had been living in corona california, in a house my father had managed to buy, it was the last place he was able to qualify for a loan for for many many years. My mother packed all of us children up in suit cases and got us to a bus and we bused it to her sisters house for a summer. I remember yeras later my father telling me he had thought something was really wrong that day and had bought flowers for my mother and had come home to an empty house. I remember he seemed sad even in the telling of it years later. In my opnion it was an unfair blow to him. What right did she really have in a moral sense to take us to this new place, with no source of income, no place to go but her sisters house? We stayed there for most of the summer. I had never met her side of the family. I met my cousin Shelly, whome I liked and thought was cool. She had a very oung son as well with some cowboy redneck sort of name but I forget what it was. i remember he used to run arround with his cowboy hat on and his cowboy gun and slam it into peoples faces and say bang bang. he couldn't have been but three or four so didn't know any better, I guess.I think Shelly went on to be a model or something, got married, divorced and I have no idea what else. My mother told me some strainge stories abou twhat they tried to get her to do, but that was like 20 years later and coming from my mother it seems pretty unlikely to be true. i'll talk about that later. So anyways, viselia, where my mother had lived as a child. She had never talked much abou ther family, just vague mentionings of how cruel they were to her, though in retrospect that changed when she took us to my aunt donnie's house that summer. Aunt Donnie, my mothers sister, seemed like a very nice woman. She was married to a guy named jared who drove semi trucks for a living and hauled mostly cattle from one place to another. I remember he took me on an al day cattle run, which I really enjoyed. It was fun and amazing to see how they herded the cattle on to the truck with cattle prods and to ride in the big rig. Donnie had a simming pool and this was what we did almost all of teh time, swim and play. In looking back it was alot of fun. That ended though. I don't really know why my mother moved us back with my father. I think at one point she said something about Aunt Donnie being mean to her or something but I can't really say i know the reason why. But we moved back in with my father. He wasn't happy to see us, it seemed to me, and certainly didn't seem hapy for the time that we lived with him. It happened again. My mother started the secret little meetings again. Again, when it was my turn I told her we should go to idaho or ohio, but this time I wasn't so sure. This time when we left, again by bus, we went to oregan to stay with my aunt Dannel or something like that. I remember it was in seaside oregan, I remember that they had this big sort of carnival thing that we went to and I wanted very baddly to try some of the games and such but my mother said we didn't have any money. I remember taht we spent allot of time at the welfare office and my mother briefly got us into an appartment and registered us for school there, but it only lasted like a week or two and then we headed back to LosAngeles to live with my father for awhile. We moved to this house in LaHabra, california which is kind of in the heart of Los Angeles. A neighborhood with lots of biker gang houses, lots and lots of hispanic homes, and so forth. There we lived for maybe a year or so. During that time, my mother got pregnant with my little sister, who they named heather. Not long after that, my mother and Father got divorced. Initially, all of the children were to live with her. She found a place, maybe two blocks from the house we had lived in priviously. It was a duplex, a small place right next to some railroad tracks. My father moved to an appartment in fullerton, california. Living with my mother quite frankly sucked. Where is the upside of this? There isn't one. I was male. I think in my mothers view this was an unforgivable sin. She had extreme difficulty coping with having an infant to take care of. Renee was now a pre-teen, in puberty. Guess who got stuck with diaper duty, watch heather pretty much all of the time? yep, you guessed it. Me. heather hated me and honestly I hated her. She didn't like having her diaper changed, and I didn't like changing it. My mother, for quite a while, didn't want to cook, nor do much of anything. I think she lived on well fare. She did remain somewhat involed in the morman church and so was on their welfare system as well. They give you clothes for your children and food and such. The clothes for the boys will cover you so you aren't naked, bu tas I discovered are garanteed to make you stick out like a sore thumb at school. I wasn't doing well at school. Later in my adult life I was diagnosed with ADDHD. Not like crippling or anything, but enough to cause me problems. Still, in school, life was hard. i felt like an outcast and this only got worse as things at home got worse. My mother, I remember, did alot of sitting arround, telling me what to do, fetch her this, go do that, and eventually she decided I just didn't fit in her notion of a home. She sent me to live with my father who I think wasn't exactly thrilled to have me either. Writing about this is feeling painful. I was a bright young man. Kind, sincere. Creative and intelligent. I deserved to have good parents that cared about me. But that's not what happened. I was tosssed from place to place. My father wasn't overly interested in my schoolastic progress and so by and large I made no progress. Going from grade to grade in the public school system mostly because he moved so much that they couldn't keep a current set of records on me and thus put me in the grade classes my age indicated I should be in. I had no social abilty at all. I should have been one of those kids who did really well at school, but actually didn't do very well at all. In fact I never raduated from high school. That fact never really concerned my father. Not long after the divorce, he began to drink heavily. It turned into full blown alcholism. he lost jobs as fast as he got them. He decided to go to oklahoma with me. I guess to go back to his roots. What this really meant was sticking me with my aunt neen (I have never known her real name) while he moved to Tulsa, rented a room there and found work as an electronics engineer. He would come to visit once every other weekend and that lasted for most of the summer. My aunt neen was not exactly thrilled to have an 11 year old living in her house. I spent alot of time outside with not very much to do and no one to do it with because she lived in a nieghbor hood of retired oklahoma retired people. her husband, I think his name was ken drove a truck for a living and was gone the whole time i was there. After summer was over, my father had a falling out with My aunt neen (I guess she was really my great aunt, because she was my grandmothers sister) but anyways, my father found a small appartment in Shawnee, Oklahoma and here we lived for about eight months. I started school again in Shawnee oklahoma. I think 6th or 7th grade, no sure which. Anyways, I reember when school started it was warm, but that chagned. It got very cold. My father bought himself a new coat and gloves and gave me his old coat as I didn't have one. No gloves though. It was about a 3 maybe 4 mile walk to school. Every day. Lunch was kind of a not happening thing. The duplex we lived in had one bed room a living room and a small kitchenett. One bed. Both my father and I slept in it. he left for work at 5 or so in the morning. And didn't come home until 10 or 11 at night, there were some nights were he didn't come home at all. I never knew for sure as we didn't have a phone. During the day I would get very very cold. The rule at school was that during recess you had to stay outside. This was torture, to be honest. I had no gloves and the cold stung my hands very much. I remember how angry and outraged I would feel walking to school and seeing the other children with gloves and hearing my Dad tell me how he had to drive to work and so he needed a pair of gloves and I didn't. You know, it seems to me that so many unfair things have happened to me in my life. i'm not talking about getting blown up. That was war and that's what happens in war. I'm talking about when I was a child. I'm talking about the women I have ended up marrying. I remember back in the early 90's the buz was that women were neccessary for child rearing and men were not. That fathers were essentially just sperm doners and not much else. Where was my mother? She didn't want anything to do with me. She wasn't interested in her son. Just her precious daughters. I guess she was trying to live vicariously through them. Anyways, My father eventually met a woman in Glennpool oklahoma named margret. Margrett was a full blood cherokee woman, I think, who smalled malburow reds like a chiminey, had had a hyserectomy, small tits, and apparently loved my dad. Dad, seemed to love herbecause she was native and I think he felt somehow like that was cool and like at last he'd found a "real" woman. The real woman worked at the same place my dad worked at, doing what machine now do, ie hand soldiering printed circuit boards togother for a company called loran electronics. Yes, the one that makes fish finders. This was back in the day. So again, while they both went to Tulsa to work I went from home to school and home again. Now, Margret lived on native housing. I don't think it was truely a reservation, but was indeed filled with native americans. They don't take very kindly to white kids in their neighborhood. Again, no friends, no one I could safely play with and truthfully, no one in that environment appreciats a kid that talks about suspended animation, rocket ships, and stuff like that. They think people like that are wierd or unrealistic. They think that you should be "grounded" in reality, ie prepare to get a job at the local farm or whatever, marry some woman, raise kids and that is the good life, along with a car to boot. During this time my father and Margrett did a fair amount of drinking and I got to stay in the bedroom next to theirs. Often in the morning I would find margret's cigeretts on the edge of the bed. She'd leave lit cigeretts on the edge of the bed and it would leave little burn spots on the bedblanket. I don't know if she was just drunk and forgot it. I don't know if she meant leave them there or ifmaybe she wanted me to die, by being burned alive in the bed. But I do know she didn't like me at all and often told me so. I had a small black and white tv set in the room and I slowly started skipping school, because hey, whose there to stop me? I watched tv. This is pretty much all I did for about 6 months. Day in day out I didn't want to go anywhere, which is good because there was no where to go, I felt. My dad, got my report card and I guess a visit from the local principle who wanted to know why I wasn't coming to school. This yielded me a pretty sever beating and got the black and white TV set taken away from me. I guess losing the TV set was good. Although I didn't bother with homework, which is what I should have been bothering with. Instead I started going on long walks after school. I didn't dare miss a class after my father finnished with me. margrett swore she'd kill me if I did it again and frankly I believed her. You know, as I describe this it seems horrible. It's all here, in my memory, yet I don't think abou tit all the time. But it's horrible. One question i ask is simply, why didn't I tell anyone? Who does a child tell? Who would I have told? There was a kid that waited for me at the bus stop and would routinely haraass and kick the shit out of me. I think i could have beaten him but honestly he scared me. the other kids say he was in the habit of shooting kids with his air riffle out in the pastures close by where we lived. I remember telling my father abou tthis. First he told me I needed tofight back and not be afriad. I came home with a bloody nose and dark circles under my eyes from getting the shit kicked out of me. The kids had me scared to death. My parents called the local sherif who decided to wait for me by the bus stop. Sure enough my arch nemesis showed up and promptly told the sherif who was some how related to him that I had called him stupid. The Sherif told me and later my father that I should be name calling if I didn't want my ass kicked. After that however, the kid let me alone, I don't know why. I remember feeling horribel because the sherif believed that other kid and not me. And this is why I never told anyone really through out my childhood what was going on in my life. i drifted from school to school, a stranger, quietly failing each class, but getting moved along. Sometimes I did better than others but I doubt I seriously passed any course or grade. Who would believe me? In my opinion then and now, no one. Does that sound like I'm feeling sorry for myself? maybe but it's true none the less. hell, look at what just happened this last december. I saw the police reports. The cop didn't write down everything I said. And wrote everything that Rebecca said as if it were gospal. I told the utter and strait forward truth. he even quoted me, "if it's wrong to defend myself then I'm wrong". I didn't ever deny hitting michael though there was no physical evidence that I had hit him. I was the one injured in the fight. The only person hurt. And disabled to boot. At the time I couldn't even walk without extreme pain. And you know what happened? They through my ass in jail and and are currently trying to get a domestic violence conviction against me. I told the truth and it didn't matter not the least to those who it should ahve mattered most to. So who is going to listen to me? Who is even listening now? No one. i write to get the horrible feelings i have out of me but I have no illusion of anyone actually being interested in what has happened to me. Like putting a message in a bottle. In reality, when people do that, there is maybe a faint glimmer of hope but they know in their heart as I know taht no one is really listening, and no one honestly cares that much about it.
How to cope with it? I wrestle with this often. Sometimes more than others. What should I do to deal with this unfairness. With the knwoledge that my childhood was fucked from the get go and there is never going to be any payback. No way to go back to the beginning and get what most children get right now. Shall I live my childhood throug hmy son? I'm not able to see him without a bitch hounding me for more and still more money. And all the while he wants to do nothing but play video games and watch tv. I tried to study with him but he doesn't want to and he has an easy out. Simply stay home and be with mommy. She doesn't seem to mind he's failing, why should he care. Hell, I didn't care when I was in school, what difference doesit make to him. I told him the truth. 18 comes fast and his mother isn't going to want him at home when he's 18. If he doesn't learn to do well in school now it will only be harder. I told him nicely, sincerely and without anger. It made no difference. He doesn't care. And though I feel like a shit, I don't want any partof that because it feels like a losing battle I cannot win. I pay my child support, will visit with when he wants, but I wont argue with his mother. I've talked aobu thow I feel about her.
My head is killing me today. A migrain I guess. I should sleep but can't. Is the past haunting me, compelling me to do something anything to express it.
My step mother, louis, whome I haven't really talked about yet, she was wife 5 and didn't hit the scene till I was fifteen, used to say, not unkindly, life is a bitch and then you die. This was my expectation for life. There was no illusion of someone paying for my college and helping me to get a start in life. Towards the end of my time living with my father, he repeatedly told me how he wanted me out, to get any job and get the fuck out. As early as fifteen years old. I left home when I was 17. My 18th birthday was prequal day in the marine corps. I didn't think I would live through boot camp and I think at some level I honestly didn't care. I just wanted out.
I came home fromthe marine corps and moved in with a semi-girlfriend named Debbie. I had intended to go to college to be come a scientist. I had no idea what that meant before I started really. I started at Riverside junier college with one course. Living with Debbie was hard and fairly short lived. I was used to marine corps life. I had created a savings account and had put most of my pay in it for most of two years. I bought an apple computer, while on leave, but then left it with her while I went back for my last six months. Prior to leaving my money with Debbie, I had shared an account with my all time best friend Roy. He used some of the money to go to college. I don't really know how much and considering what happened between us years later, I guess I don't really fault him. I guess trusting someone with my money is one of the ways I express love. here is my security, see I trust you with what makes me feel secure. That has always been a huge mistake. Always and without fail. it's probably not all women, I believe that, but the women I have chosen have consistantly used the money I earn for frivality and their own personal benefit and have always rsented not being able to get more of what I earn, regardless how much that might be. I guess I bring some of that on myself though. I can't see how a woman would want to be with me for the simple pleasure of wanting to be with me. So I buy them things. Spend money on them. Often I end up being teh night in shinning armor. And then they get to know me and all of the sudden I'm not so cool anymore. Is it me? Here I have to say I'm not sure. Maybe so. maybe i change. Whichever the case, although the women I have married ahve problems, no doubt about that, so do I. I've pretty continuously pciked losers of one kind or another and told myself that the fact taht they fucked me, or had some qualities I liked made them a good match. But when the puppy love wore off I realised they were clinging to me for my money, or for attention that no one else would give them. So waht was I doing? Clinging for attention I could buy, sex that I could buy. So that's my bad. And though it sucks I need to fix that and no one can fix it for me. I get lonely and think I need someone to be near me, but what good does it do? When I'm fucked in the head like this? When the women I choose to be with I choose because I know they need something I can give. But then I expect them to let me live happily and come and go as I please and they don't like that. they want a relationship and I realise and eventually so do they that I haveno interest in them, there is very little or no basis for a relationship. Rebecca, though a nice person in her own way, was an intelectual turnip compared to me. I don't state this like as if I'm the smartest guy in the world. it's just a fact. Her political notions are as nieve as her understanding of computer science. My interests are way way beyond her capabilities. I watched her struggle with courses that were so trivial and simple to do. Business courses, I'm sorry, there just is no meat to them. memorize and regurgitate. If you find that difficult, well, good luck your not going to do anything interesting in the world of engineering. What does that say about me? I hate that for most of the time I knew Rebecca I would praise her for qualities I knew she didn't possess. Why did I do that? I wanted her to believe that I thought highly of her and I guess I believed if she thought I believed in her that she would do better than if I told her the truth. My intial first impression of Rebecca was straitforward. I told her I tought she was looking for a paycheck. I was right and I hate that I convinced myself that she wasn't. Regardless the gibberish coming out of her I knew what the truth was, saw through her self illusions and knew that neccessity governed what she was saying more than any real emotion for me. She needed someone to support her and her children. I thought if I did that she would love me, let me be me and life would be happy. But she needed more. She wanted to share her life with her man and her life was pathetic to me in the extreme. She wanted to go out on dates but I hated that. We would go out and I would have to prented to be interested in what she was saying. Often it wasjust that. I wished that she would just shut the fuck up and be quiet. In reading that it makes me think I'm just as much an asshole as she is. Given that, why should I be stressed at all over finding a woman? Why, to do that all over again? what a fucked up cycle. I'm lonely and there's no denying that, but I have no idea how to love. I wasn't raised to love. never saw love in action as a child. And now, coming out of a war am even less able to expereince such feelings than I was before. How could I possibly hope to even begin to experience love? When I look at things clearly, as I feel now I am right now, I realise that it's stupid to even consider it and I don't really feel sad about it. It's just a reality I need to deal with. There is no woman that I could have a real relationship with. Becuse maybe to me a relationship is I provide and they take advantage of me and until I change that expectation, or that mmm whatever it is, there is no way I'll have a successfull relationship.
In some way, I should be able to feel content by myself anyways. I really have alot going on. Goals I really want to accomplish. I guess I should go get some lunch. I'm supposed to be eating regularly and I haven't really been doing that.
Deeper stillSleep is wierd for me. It comes and goes. I went to sleep arround 10:30 or somewhere but it takes me quite a while to actually get to sleep. Then I woke up at 2:am, then the at 5:30 am or so. I just got up and started banging on more homework. I feel tired and achey all over. But if I lay back down I'll just lay there like a dumbass, unable to sleep. Ah well.
So, looking back you might wonder a bit about who I am. LOL, I guess I do too, sometimes. ok, well my father's name is Jim and my mother's name was Sandra.
My father's father died when my Dad was 11 or so. he was a farmer in Oklahoma. He never spoke of it much, but I think in many ways it was a defining moment in his life. I can't help but think it affected him alot. Made him much more hesitant and cautious, even paranoid in a mild sort of way, the most owuld consider normal. My Dad was interested in rocketry and electronics. I don't know much about his teenage years save that he had a habit of launching home made rockets from the back yard, which would often catch his step father and mother by suprize. He also liked to make balsa wood U-control aircraft and fly them. Can't blame him there, I enjoy that as a hobby as well.
His mother, my grandmother, a woman named Euleta, moved my dad and his young brother Victor out to California, in LaHabra I guess or somewhere in LosAngeles.
There she married who I knew as my grandfather. Les Glenn. My dad and his brother kept their father's name and Euleta when on to have three more son's, Danial, Skip, and Ken as well as a daughter Bridgett. You know I never thought about it but that's 6 kids total.
My dad joined the airforce at some point and was sent to turkey. he repaired avionics gear on aircraft, though I don't know what type. When he came back, I guess he was heavily involved in the Mormon church and the local bishop thought it would be a great idea for my Dad to marry this crippled gal named Sandra, my mother.
I don't know very much of my mother's family. I thik they are a wierd bunch but honestly I don't know. My mother was hit by a car when she was 3 years old. It left her crippled along her left side and did some brain damage, I think. While not impaired at a learning level, I think she has suffered from personality disorders her entire life, had several mental breakdowns, seizures (grand mal type I think), and she told us her family was incredibly cruel to her. I say it that way because I have learned that often what people say and what actually happened are often two entirely different things. Certainly I never saw her family treat her poorly, and the few sisters of her's that I have met seemed nice enough in thier own way, but I really don't know. I can't really think of anything that distinguishes my mother per se. When I was growing up, she cooked, cleaned, fawned over my sister and later my younger sister. Had many and multiple arguements with my father. I remember those as being very painfull to here and I really don't know why. They weren't yelling at me and often didn't have much to do with me at all, outside of insisting I stay out of the way, etc. My mother did eventually learn to take short hand dictation. For those of you who don't know what short hand is, well, I guess the best way to describe it is that back in the cave man days when men were men and women were something different from what they are today, there weren't hand held recorders and such. So a professional that wanted to be able to dictate something, rather than typing it themselves, would hire a girl who could write and read short hand. A truncated way of writing that allowed the girl to write and keep up, easily, with the person dictating. Back when General Assistants were called secrataries. So anyways, my mother could take short hand, had taught herself how to type fairly quickly, and so forth. Not bad, really, given her handicaps, they used to call them handy cap's and now usually call them disabilities. If that word makes you feel better, go for it.
Jim and Sandra never ever got along all that well. They both later blaim their marriage on a Morman bishop's bad judgement, though I personally think the choice to get married was there's and thus their responsibility, but that's me her and now, and I'm not in their shoes.I don't think my Dad was ever prone to hitting my mother, but they would constantly argue and yell and scream at each other. I think, but don't know, that my mother was never satisfied with the amount of attention my father gave her and I think she was somewhat jealus of his physical mobility and desire to do things physical. I think at one point he used to play basket ball in a church league, and liked to ride a 10 speed bicycle. Back when that was kind of the state of the art for the common fellow.
I remember we moved arround an awefull lot and were never in one place very long. They would buy a house, then sell it and move on and eventually my father's credit scores became bad, much harder to do in those days, and then they were limited to renting. I really don't know why they moved arround so much. I tried to count how many schools I remembered going to from kindergarden through highschool. 22 was the number I cam up with. My father never thought much of public education, but never put me or any of my brothers and sisters into a private school. I personally think that my mother was actually the one responsible for us moving all the time. That's just my opinion, I don't know, but she never seemed happy with any given place.
Anyone who says that women in that day didn't have much to say about where they lived etc is, in my opinion, a bald faced fucking liar. If my mother didn't happen to like something, she would make everyone arround her absolutely miserable and feel guilty as though they'd gone out and shot somebody for no reason. She was and to my knowledge is an expert at guilt manipulation. Maybe that was one of her survival coping mechanisms, how she learned to live. Like she felt that since she needed people to help her, she'd best create or discribe things so taht she was always a victim and thus needed help and if you didn't give her the help she wanted then you must be a cruel person. It's much worse that that, but I'm not really able to describe it any better than that.
So I was born in july of 1969. About a year later, my sister Renee was born. Renee and I, when we were younger, were the best of friends. It makes sense, really, because when we were younger, we were about the only thing constant in our world. We never stayed very long in one place and so never had much chance at forming external relationships or friends. I remember my sister as someone I could share my ideas with and play with and pal arround with. We did almost everything together.
I didn't understand it then, but along abou tthe time she turned 10, maybe 11 or so, and I turned maybe 12 things changed between us. Renee seemed to become my worst enemy. I had never eally thought of why until writing this but it was most probably puberty. LOl, I think that must ahve been it. Renee became distant and wasn't interested in playing with me like we used to. And I suppose I changed as well and became more distant from her at some point, and treated her less and less like my friend. I know my sister now to be a good and decent person. Someone I miss and wish I knew better.
When I turned 10 my mother decided it would be a really good idea to leave my father. She had several sort of secret talks with us about where we should go. I don't remember her ever telling us that we shouldn't tell me father about these talks, but I do remember feeling like I shouldn't tell him. Talking to him became extremely hard. he always seemed angry with us. With me. I remember once he was working on something in the garage, which he did often, and I wanted to help. I kept asking him to let me help. I remmember at one point he just seemed to snap and through a nail at me and it hit me hard in the shouldure. It left a huge red welt. I remmember yelling at him "that hit me" and he yelled back, "good". I screamed that I hated him and that got him to pull of his belt and wail on me a bit with it.
I should pause a moment to talk about the kind of punishment my father tended to give out. When Renee and I were very little, 5, 6, 7 we were like most kids that age. At bed time were were like little rollee pollee munchkins all giggles and such. Bed time was quite early, genreally arround 6:pm as I recall. Maybe a bit later, but it was definately early. We would troop off to our bed room, we shared a bed room until we were pre-teens, and would then, as soon as mom and Dad left us to go watch the family TV, comence to gigle and play eiterh in our beds or even dare to creep out of our beds and play with our toys. This angered my father terribly. He would come storming in, usually during the comercial, Jim simply wasn't there when his program was on, and yell and scream, and eventually take off his belt and comence to dealing out whooping with it. We would often hide under the bed and I remember him getting so angry swinging the belt blindly under the bed to try and hit us with it. I remember our mom saying, "Jimmy!" in that worried voice, bu this was then, not now. Today, doing this would get you locked up with no questions asked, and I doubt, given the circumstances I described, that what state your in would have any bearing on the matter. That kind of vioence towards young children is wrong and it is now punnished quickly. But then, it was just a father disciplining his children. Spare the rod and spoil the child. I can't tell you how many times I was beaten with his belt, my mother's favorite cooking spoon, any blunt object in easy grasping range, restricted to the house, or my room for the entire weekend, etc.
Ok, I have a doctors appointment. This story hasn't even really begun so at some point I want to continue it. It feels strange describing, as accurately as I can, where I came from, who raised me, and the events I remember. In some way I'm seeing them through my adult eyes and I guess normally i see them through a different pair of eyes. As if it wasn't horrible at all. But I think I'm not such a great guy for hitting a kid who hit me hard in the face, damaging my eye, whilst I did no damage to him. I feel I might have been too hard on him in insisting he not play his game cube for a day or so for refusing to take out the fucking trash. So somewhere, somebody was wrong. Somehow, i'm thinking my childhood was terrible. Not oh, feel sorry for me, I'm talking more to me. Fortunately I'm not even remotely the same man as my father. ok, gotta go, I'll write more later.
February 01 Re-inventing myselfGood afternoon, internet land. Well, the last couple of days have been pretty good in alot of ways. I have begun to think that one of the things I need to do is to Re-invent who I am. I have changed. The war, this divorce, all of the many things that have happened have caused changes in me. I'm not totally certain what those changes are, but it seems to me that I need to respond to those changes, to acknowledge them somehow. This, I think, will help me to seperate the here and now from the then and there.
So what does that mean in real world terms?
Well, though i probably can't afford it, I went to Sports Authority and bought myself what I felt were some slick gym clothes. I've seen quite a few women at the gym wearing these gym pants that were like just strait legged sort of breathable, loose fitting pants. They looked Uni-sex and so I found a brand that sold these for men. I bought two pair and I like the way they look. And they allow very nice free movement when I'm working out.
Also, I bought myself a new black iPod (30gig) with all of the trimmings. I've become addicted to iTunes. It's that simple. I have seen many people at the gym with their iPod or similar mp3 player and I thought, why not me?I bought an arm band and belt clip so that I can work out comfortably and listen to my music. This, in the past has been an issue. Infact what I would often do is guy an inexpensive tape player and it would be broke in 2 to 3 months. It doesn't look like this iPod will have that problem and I'll probably want to upgrade to a new one in a year anyways. That seems to be the trend.
The money it cost to buy these things has left me incredibly broke and likely eating top ramon for the next few weeks, but I'm ok with that. I intend to spend alot more of my free time at the pro-club instead of moping at the appartment doing nothing much.
oh yeah, I also bought myself a new desk and chair. My room, aka my world when not at work, may not be big enough to accomidate my zero grav coch when I get it back, supposedly on the 4th. So i bought a reasonably comfortable office chair that fits nicely in my room. This was a problem for me, I simply couldn't function comfortably and either couldn't study or would fall asleep trying to study. Hopefully having a proper desk and chair will correct that problem.
So as part of re-inventing me, I've gotten myself setup to happily be a geek and a gym rat. For the next couple of months that seems more than fine. We'll see what else comes along. Certainly I'm feeling hopefull and somewhat content for now.
I really look forward to getting my digital camera back. I want to be able to add more pictures to this site. In fact, when I get it, I plan on taking weekend trips to various places, being a shutter bug and writting about what I've photgraphed, what thoughts it brings to mind, and just neat pictures, be they in the city, out in the mountains, where ever. Not like true digital photgraphy or anything, just enjoying being able to take pictures and post them and not having it cost me anything to do it.
heh, I guess another part of the new me is enjoying writting in this blog as opposed to writing in my paper journal. I guess because even though it's likely no one reads this, it still has the possibility of being read by someone else. Why does that appeal to me? I'm not sure. Maybe because I want to be heard, to be understood.
I don't know if your out there beautiful dream girl. A woman whom I have never met, but maybe will some day. Your hair is maybe pale, as is your skin. Your face beautifull and without make up and such non-sense. Or perhaps your hair is raven black and your skin olive or tan tones. Maybe you'll read my blog and not feel sorry but somehow feel a kindred feeling and think, this is someone I would like to get to know better. Now that would be cool, but hopefully you wont for a couple months longer though I hate saying that. But the time is not right yet. When it is, well then I'm going to begin looking, I think, rather seriously. But I guess I need to wait a bit longer and be done with this divorce and to ensure that I have most of the anguish and upset dealt with and expereinced and have emotionally moved on.
That's hard to do, hard to say. Like making the concious choice to sail through a storm rather than turn arround and go back where I came from. But there is why I must. Because I don't want to go back where I came from. I did that in the past and what did it get me? More of the same. I need to change and grow from this or I'll end up just making the same mistakes over and over again, I think. Besides, i'm too tired to be stuffing all the anger inside of myself. It always ends up coming out or breeding resentment where none need be. So this time I've been allowing myself to feel what's going on as best i can. It hurts.
I end up feeling powerless to affect things, but really I'm not. I still have options, still have choices to make. And making the right choices is indeed important to do. And i want to do that.
Alright, interent land, time for me to get back to work. Have a great afternoon. January 27 Another miserable day.My sleep has been consistantly filled with vivid dreams of combat. A new twist includes crap the never happened and incorporates people I know in my dreams. I wake up covered in sweat, strangling on my blanket, sometimes breathing 90 miles an hour with my heart going nuts. Why couldn't I have just died in that fucking humvee? Somedays, like today i just wish it had gone down that way. It would ahve been a good death and maybe Don could have lived and gone on to live his life. Instead I get this half life where the world seems pretty much bent on being out to fuck me over. Poor me, right?
No, I guess I don't like that, just tired, resentful, lonely. I have felt today like it is just the way things are going to be, that I will have to live the rest of my life alone. How could I ever trust anyone again? After Rebecca and Wendy had their turns sucking money out of me, why would I ever trust again?
So if I'm involved with someone, my space, my time and so on become theirs to let me have at their discretion? If that's true then odds are, anything else that I consider mine would likely follow suit not too long after. It always has, why should I ever think it would be different?
How do I break out of this hopeless lonely feeling? How do I become comfortable and happy with just being by myself?
How do i make peace with the past and leave it behind me?
So, I've discovered iTunes. You know, hands down they kick ass. It is truely a nice service and once I tried it, I find I like it alot. A buck a song doesn't seem unreasonable. Now I need to get an iPod to put my music on. They've taken to putting some TV shows on iTunes as well. I downloaded the latest Battlestar Galactica episode, epephany and am looking forward to watching it.
So today, I'm not a happy camper. I feel I will be alone for the rest of my life unless i want to be a slave and pay some woman to say she loves me. Let's face it, I tell myself, there is no such thing as true love. Women want your money, your time, and some demand that you fuck all the time. Failure means your some how not ok. So, I guess I'm not ok. I don't crave constant sex, never have actually. I think what I make is mine and not up for any bitch to grab.
I resent how things have turned out between me and Rebecca. How even now, things I paid for are considered barganing chips. I can maybe have my table saw if I aggree to giving her another hundred per month. How does that work? What does she bring to the table? Nothing but demands.
This is a constant with women. They bring their needs, and little else.
If you don't pay for their dinner, then your cheap, but why is it that instead of fucking you at the evenings end, they say you've had the pleasure of their company. Didn't they get that from me as well?
So my friend from work, Isao, came over to my office and we chatted for an hour or so. I like Isao allot. He's japanese and has many different perspectives on things. We got to talking aobut women and I shared with him how I was kind of feeling sorry for myself and feeling resentfull towards women. Just talking about it with him made me feel a bit better.
One thing that I ended up sharing with him that I hadn't thought about was that there is another person on our team who I have had a crush on for several years. Her name is Mary. She is hands down probably the most beautifull woman I have ever seen. She is also extremely inteligent. She recently divorced and I feel bad that she had to go through that. She has a young son. I remember when she was pregnant and I was congratulating her. I think women like Mary are forever out of my league but who knows. Certainly now is not the time for me to try and get involved.
I guess I have to be honest with myself and remember that I don't know what the future holds for me. I do ne3ed to be way way more picky about who I decide to be involved with. And i need to be in a place where I have room and emotional bandwidth to be involved. It seems reasonable that a life partner would want some of my time and attention on a regular basis. But right now I simply can't provide that to anyone. I am an emotional mud puddle allot of the time. But I know that I wont always be that way.
Also, i don't want to live for the day that I will be "with" another woman, because when i want something I will simply go out and do everything I can to find what I want. I want to be ok with just being me, by myself and not feel like that is the end of the world.
It is lonely. But I have friends and so shouldn't feel like I am cut off. I do have friends that care about me. They can't do everything for me or anything, I wouldn't want them to.
For the next year at least, maybe two, I need to learn to just be me, by myself. Maybe then, I will find myself in a position to really become involved in a healthy way with someone else who is right for me. Or to date and not feel like I'm being ripped off by all women. I'm sure at some level these feelings are unfair. I usually insist on paying for everything. Why? It's not like one or two haven't offered to pay as well. I don't understand my actions, nor my feelings. but I guess I feel a bit better.
My back has been killing me. I started this new drug, neurontin or something like that. It makes me feel sleepy all the time, but it's supposed to help with the nerve related pain as opposed to the deep paint he oxycodone is supposed to help with. The pain specialist I saw is considering switching me to oxycontin. That's kind of scary but I guess I'm already hooked on this oxycodone stuff. I definately know when it's time for another dose.
Whatever comes, I will do my best. Who will I live for? maybe for myself. I'm sure that is what Don would want, even though I didn't know him that well. I'm sure that's what the Sir wants. Maybe I deserve to live a good life. I'm not a bad person. I guess I deserve what it seems everyone else is tryign to achieve. Why should I short myself? Even if there are some bumps in the road, I can still try and do my best and enjoy work and enjoy school. You know?
alright, good night internet land, have a good evening.
January 23 My son Forest and children in generalok, I don't know if I mentioned in any of my blogs, but I have a son of my own. His name is Forest.
Forest reminds me of me in many ways when i was his age which is 12. He's very inteligent, bery sensitive, and has problems . . .
He's not doing well at all in school.
He's not making friends at all in school.
And he's still wetting his bed at night.
My involvement in Forest's life hasn't been all that much or all that great in my opinion. He is not the problem. His mother is. And I am. She has custody of him. And Forest likes it that way. I've asked him and he has said he'd rather not live with me. But he does want to see me, to spend time with me.
It tears me up, quite often, to see the problems that he faces. I'd like to say that I had all of the answers for him, but that would be a lie. I tell him he should listen to his mother but what am I saying when I say this. That he should listen to a worthless slime ball who can't support herself much less him? His mother is such a waste of space. She's incapable of handling even a minor things like simply getting him showered and out the door to school.
ok, what set off this topic? Forest got into a fist fight today at school and ended up belting the crap out of some kid he claims pushed him. It's a big deal these days, I suppose, though in my elementary school, it likely wouldn't have been somethign that would have gotten him suspended. But what ever, that was then, this is now. So I spoke to his teacher, then spoke with his mother regarding this. Turns out he's failing language arts and his mother hasn't contacted his teacher to find out why. She was waiting for them to contact her, becuase she figures that's the way it works.
So her philosophy seems to be that the world contacts her when things go wrong, rather than her being proactive and ensuring that Forest is doing well in school. The report card, I thought, was a clear signal (especially failing grades) that something is wrong and should get her attention. Apparently not. I have no idea what is demanding so much of her time that, since she insisted on having custody of him, she isn't very involved with him at all that I can see.
I don't understand that.
I don't get involved because I can't stand having any contact with his mother. The bitch gets under my skin by her mere existance. Talking with her is like running your nails on a blackboard. I tried very hard, after our divorce, to remain involed in Forest's life, but after awhile I just couldn't deal with it, meaning her. It's easy to say, oh, I'll do anything for my kid, but how many do? I really don't know. I pay my child support. Visit with him now and then. And each time I see him, it's more depressing than the last.
He has 6 years until he's 18.
I figure I need to look out for myself. After all, she insisted she could do a better job of raising him. Actually, the reason she gave for insisting on custody is that she couldn't bare to be without it. So from my perspective, it wasn't about her being a better parent, it was about her emotional needs and in my opinion she desperately wanted as much of a slice of my income as she could get her slimey hands on.
So this divorce with Rebecca came up. And suddenly, I feel like maybe it's time to try and get more involved in Forest's life, most especially since he's having what seems like allot of difficulty in his life. But am I really helping or even capable of helping? I'm often in my own little hell. I have no idea when I will have bandwidth to be in a relationship in the future.
Rebecca is a caring mother. As best she knows how to be. I don't think she's the best mom arround, but who the hell am I to say that really? Fact is, she does care abouther children, spends huge huge amounts of time with them. Puts them before herself always. Is involved with their lives. Tries in some way to be a good influence on them.
I think she has made some really trully stupid life choices, but I'm not exactly an angel there myself. I may have personal issues with Rebecca, but in terms of parenting, she's the best person I've ever known. Hell, in a lot of ways, she's awesome. I'd never want to try and take that from her. What's happening in the divorce isn't, I think, because she's evil. If someone says, "hey, since your divorcing this guy, sign here and you can maybe get some of his cash" it's kind of a no brainer to do that. So i can't honestly say she's fucked for doing what I would probably do. I should have thought about that before marrying someone who couldn't support themselves becausethey had too many children. If she didn't have any kids, well, she'd probably be just fine.
Wendy, my first wife, on the other hand, was a yutz from nearly the beginning.
So Forest. He's failing several classes in school. He tells me he thinks he knows more than his science teacher, but can't seem to pass his math or language arts classes. He tells me all of his firends, when he bothers with playing with other children, are nearly half his age so 5 and 6 year olds.
I asked him how I could help him. I explained to him that the choices he makes now are going to have lasting effect on his life when he's older. THat if he isn't in the habbit of doing homework now, it's going to be even harder to do well when he's in high school andin highschool, fucking up means difficulty going to college. No college, no job worth having. No opportunities at all.
He says he wants to be a physisist or maybe a weapons designer. I told him about what it would take to do that kind of work. He didn't seem to understand. I think he felt I was telling him his ideas were wrong. Or in some way trashing his dreams. I don't wan tto do that, except maybe the weapons designer part. The last thing this world needs is someone else creating new weapons. We have too many right now and they work all too well. I'm sure he thinks of weapons as something cool. I doubt he really even understands what real weapons are like. What a real explosion is like. What real weapons do to a target. Maybe if he did, he wouldn't be so keen to design weapons. But exposing him to that kind of knowledge would give him nightmares for the rest of his life. Hell, I was an adult when I was exposed to that sort of thing and I have nightmares about them and wont have anything to do with firearms.
Life is so very very precious.
I want to help my son to succede in life. But the only way I know how to do things is to take control, insist he do things and keep on him till he does it. The military way. That wont work. And maybe, for children, it's not right.
I had the same problems he is having. I turned out ok, I think. I have problems, but who doesn't. Am I over worrying the situation? Maybe so. I can't force him to change. And any attempt to do so is just going to end up resulting in cruelty to him, intended or not. Even if I hate his mother, she is probalby trying her best.
This is what comes of my mistake, ie screwing someone just because she was the only thing willing and available to me at the time. Granted I learned not to do that, but a child resulted. he really is a pretty good guy. I hopehe will turn out well, but I guess I have to come to understand emotionally, it's not up to me at this point. It's more up to him.
I don't know if I would ever want to have another child. If I did, I know I would do things much differently. I wonder if I would be able to. I would want to be in a situation where I can devote myself to the child and not have so many pressing needs for myself. Because a child deserves that. And I think few actually get it.
Alright, enough of this, good night internet land. January 19 So who the heck is this John guy anyways?Well? I'm waiting? Who am I? Just writing and not thinking I'm someone in recovery. From alot of things. I'm also a student. And artist. A self improvement fanatic. A diet coke-aholic. I like copenhagen. Yes it's gross and yes I really enjoy it.
Not thinking about the past, nor the future, who am I right now? A quiet, semi-reclusive person. A thoughtful self-involved person. A creative person-
 I wrote my first successful perl script today! I rock! It works and parses through log files and reduces the results to something useful, for each file, in a flash! I then pushed the results into excell and walla! A chart that tells an interesting story about the progress of the component I'm working on. Very cool.I have a quiz due this Sunday in web publishing. I'm excited to be doing it. I feel some anxiety about web programming and script languges. Am I betraying my roots? I have always been a hard core c/assembly programmer. I love to bang on the metal. But the truth is, i don't get much done because I'm constantly re-inventing the wheel or spending huge amoutns of time coming up with a way to do something that C# can do easily and with few hassels. The trade off? Control. Efficiency. I tell myself that every tool has it's uses. Right now I'm having to do a fair amount of work in c#. I like it. But I miss working in c where I can easily peek at the registers when debugging and stack traces were more strait forward.
So I'm a geek too. I like being a geek. I bought 2 new books tonight. A perl programming book (I'd been borrowing my managers and I felt like I needed a reference of my own) and a regular expression primer/mini-reference. Regex engines are amazing. For parsing log files, which is something I have to do quite often, being able to use a regex is soemthign I can't imagine trying without these days. The old manual method's I had been using for so long just aren't fast enough, not by a long sight. The time I have invested in learning a bit about regular expressions and the time in learning perl (it's not as easy as Visual basic, but not terribly hard so far) is starting to bear fruit and I like it! Something else I can plop into my resume and also use to my little hearts delight.
That's one thing I like about this business. To some extent any job, and endeaver will involve networking and who you know. But in this business, at some point, somewhere along the line, it comes down to what you know, how creative you are, what can you actually accomplish. So many jobs seem to revolve way more arround people skills. It shouldn't be that way (or maybe it should and I don't wanna admit it) but there it is. Certainly to get in the door, you gotta have the presentation down and then some. But once past that, this business demands results. And it requires talent. And constant self-improvement and skill development. In one area or another. You can be the greatest people person on the planet, but if you can't produce code that accomplishes the task - well, I'd say you better start looking for another job, you wont last. Talk only goes so far.
What do I think about myself? I think I'm an interesting person with a very real and sincere story. I think I'm an intelligent person. Very intelligent in fact. I think that soon I'll be getting into better physical shape than I currently am and what I am now isn't really al that bad. How many can boast an resting heart rate of 65? At nearly 40?
oh God, did I really just say that? I'm almost 40!? How to tell the world, hey! Hang on a minute! There's a twenty something guy trapped in this 39 year old guy's body? Heh, I can't complain actually. I go to the gym fairly regularly. I see a fairly wide cross section of guys. I'd put myself on the upper end of average. Even very handsome at times.
I'm nice. Maybe too nice. I can be a good listener. And I can sometimes talk your ears off.
What things matter most to me right now? Work. School. recovering lost income from a failed marriage. Re-establishing who I am to myself. Getting a good night's sleep without taking medication.
Heh, I got my rating from the VA today. Initially I thought it was 120%. But it was really only 80%. So I'm 80% disabled. But what does that mean? Nothing. It does mean I'm going to be getting some tax free money that can't be touched by anyone but me
. Beyond that, I guess I get a card that says I'm disabled and so will get to park in the handicapped parking spot of my choice. Suits me. Otherwise it means nothing. It wont do my work for me and I wouldn't want it to as I like to my work. It won't get me love or rather the kind of women who'd be attracted to me because I get disability checks makes me sick to me stomach. She could look like helen of troy and I'd still want to throw up on her.
Still, when it comes to money, more is better than less. Don't ever let anyone convince you otherwise. But it does count, i think, in how you get it. Honestly or dishonsetly, regardless of what the "Law" says the universe does tend to resent dishonest people in the long run and equally seems to resent saviors. The middle road that doesn't involve swindling folks regardless of how legal it might be is probably the wisest choice.
Me, personally, I like to earn my living as much as possible. This doesn't mean I'm not suseptable to what I think of as questionable exchanges. If I can get someone else to pay me to learn something to accomplish something for them, I will and in fact consider that the optimum. I fI can get someone else to buy me a tool that I then use to help them, or at least get them to believe it's in their best interest, well I'm likely to go with that as well. But I wont steal from my friend nor family to nor some bloke I met down the street. I don't date my friends girl friends, ever.
Loyalty is important to me. Something I pride myself on. I am very loyal to my friends. And when things roll, I roll with my own, sometimes even blindly, because I trust them first unless my own eyes give me reason to do otherwise.
Heh, ... hunh, so that's me right here right now, eh? That's not such a bad thing now is it? In fact, I kind of like that.yeah, that's cool. Alright, internet land, I'm cool and so are you, have a great night. January 18 A homebody with no homeSo, in looking at other blogs, I get the sense that a really good blog entry is like the mini commentary Carie does in Sex and the city.
What is a home? What are the things that make up a home? Is it the place we sleep? Where we work? Out backpack or suitcase? Our car?
I mentioned a while back that I felt I would never come home. In talking it through a bit with Jess, I recall her saying, no matter where you leave the river, you can not ever get back in into the same water again. I have thought about this and it is maybe the most true thing I've heard in a long time. Something I have been whining on and on about, and boom there it is: a simple truth that cannot be avoided.
Life changes us. Events have impact when they are significant. There is no going back. Be it war, a dramatic sailing voyage, sometimes even a really good book. We experience things, and in doing so are changed by them.
So how has the war changed me?
Well, there's the physical side of things. But long term, I hoep that will be not so grievus and even if it is, I'm not so disabled as to be unable to experience life as I see it. I will be able to hike. I'm comfident I'll be able to do boating should I make it to that.
But what about my personality? What things happened to me that were significant enough to cause changes to me?
So what hasn't changed? Work. Work hasn't changed one bit. It's always here, as I am write now. Why not go home? I've been here for 12 plus hours. What home? Work sometimes seems the only safe thing to do. I can never go wrong in working hard. No one tells me I'm wrong. No one be littles me or tells me I'm crazy here. No one threatens me or has me carted off to jail. I feel safe here. It's weird too because upstairs and all arround are a boat load of arabs and Moslims. They don't bug me in the least and are in fact quite friendly for the most part. I'm a homebody. I always have been. Where ever I felt most comfortable, most safe, that is where i wanted to stay. Work feels like the only place thatis truely safe anymore. Not from bullets, but from people. I have things to occupy my mind. Friends to chat with now and then. A very comfortable seat no one seems inclined to try and take away from me. No one yells at or arround me here. It's safe. It's also lonely. AS is writting in this blog sometimes. I know I write allot and it must get boring. But I guess it's not for you, internet land, it's for me. Somehow, I don't know how, but somehow in writing I can somehow feel the pain and loss and it gets a little bit better each time I write. Each time I mention the things that hurt and hurt and hurt. I often wonder if I'm just an over dramatic cry baby. Feeling sorry for myself and over inflating things that I see and hear and experience. But I don't think so right now. I know that life can be very unfair. Most especially if I'm not willing to go for the throat right off the bat. But if I was like that, i wouldn't be me. And believe me, you don't want me to not care or feel. Becuase then I'd be a very very dangerous person. Someone capable of doing extreme violence and trained to do it, lived a long life of learning how to do it. But I'm not like that. I do feel. I remember in the hospital wondering what it would have been like if I had been an insurgent similarly injured. It make me cry to think oftheir suffering. I don't think their right, but their God's children just as much as I am. And in truth I would just as soon no one had to suffer, or that it could just be me that suffered. But only Jesus was ever so lucky as to be able to take on something for everyone and all who would ever be. Does that sound strange to hear me speak of my creator? So anyways, i'm a homebody and I guess work is what I call home righ tnow. It sure as hell isn't the appartment I've been renting since the incident (read a few blogs back if you wantto know about that). What will become of me? Do I even want to consider that right now? I have some immediat goals that will get me out to about two years. Finnish college. Become a certified interpeter. Become an SDE, instead of a developer larva. Will I be alone? I get upset and feel completely lost and have no explanation as to why. I can't sleep most nights for no apparent reason. Some night I don't even bother and hate that I have to lie to get people off my back about it. I have no appetite more often than not. I've been eating a bit more but it's not because i'm hungry. It's because I hate what happens when i don't eat more than I hate having to shovel food down my gullet. What I really want is calm. Is peace. Is quiet without explosions and gun shots and screaming and hittng and all of the horrible things I've lived with for what seems like forever. No person can give that to me. Not even I can give that to me. It will take time. And lots of writing I guess. So home is work. And little else seems desirable to me right now, quite honestly. I want to stay at home and be safe and not have to stress about anything save what I'm doing right here right now. And while I am here that is almost always true. Out there it is not so true. How will I learn to live in this world again? Or will I become oneof those bushy eyebrowed hermity type guys that works until he can no longer work any more, then die alone on my toilet or some equally embarassing spot? Well, I hope not. But for at least two years, I guess i really need to focus on me. My work. My education. My body. That really doesn't feel like there's room for much else. Time will tell. ok, I want to do some more work (no really?). Good night internet land. January 17 Cruising right alongok, so per my previous logs the world has it's up's and downs and I do to. The world is inconsistant as hell and I think I am to, sometimes.
however, I'm not the kind of person to stay down for long, nor dwell over what I can't or have no driving interest in changing. So I wont. But I wanted to blog some of the things I do intend to do.
1. Finnish my four year degree. In progress. After a fourteen year break I'm back at it and workin hard. You'd probably not guess that from reading my blog:)
2, Working hard on trying to competantly learn Russian and Arabic. Why those two? Why not? One is not too hard, though other very tough. I intend to pass the court cert's for both languages in < two years. WE'll see.
3. Learning to play guitar. I am practicing regularly. I intend to be able to play competantly in the not so distant future. Not to be a rock star or any nonsense like that. But to be able to produce music all by my lonesome that I can enjoy. Maybe even be able to compose a song or two as I see fit. The ultimate would be for me to feel good enough to play at a coffee house or some such. Maybe head up to Seattle and play outside for the fun of it. To "be cool" :)
4. Get myself slowly and safely back into some sort of physical shape. THis one I doubt I could avoid doing. I simply can't stand myself not being in decent shape. I've never nor will I ever be a super jock. Nor even really a super handsome over muscled fitness guy or anything. But I've almost always been able to do pretty much what ever I want to in my life, physically speaking. If I want to run a marathon, I just start running. If I want to climb a mountain, I commence to climbing. These injuries have put some hefty road blocks in the way of that. They can't be ignored. However, what can't be overcome can be gotten arround. So I just need to figure a way arround it.
5. I signed up for a saterday morning TaiChi Course. For years I've wanted to do that. Now I'm going to. This saterday is going to be packed. I am picking up my son to spend the day with him and doing this class for the first time. But, steady and I'll get through it.
6. Improve my coding skill and speed. I am taking way too long to code decent solutions. It needs to speed up!
7. Sailing. This is more for myself than for you internet land. I'm going to buy a boat. Wont be for a couple of years. But I'm going to either buy one or perhaps build it. If I build the thing, I'm going to have to hire help to build it. It's going to be a deep water boat, capable of crossing the atlantic and back. A minimum of 40 feet long, maybe longer. I saw one once that I loved. A deep water boat that had a huge huge captain's cabin, two showers,two resterrooms, galley, nice central space with a table etc, a nice enclosed cockpit and an extern one as well. For now it's a dream, but I think over the next two years I need to learn alot more about the technology of boats so that I can dream a bit more realisticly. I don't want to sail to europe by my lonesome. We'll see. Also, I think it would be cool to live on my boat. I've seen others doing that. The only bummer about that is not having a work shop. I don't require much living space over all, but having a workshop has always been important to me. We'll see. Where there is a will there is a way :)
So I road the seated cycle again tonight for a break from work. 20 minutes didn't phaze me as it used to. I kicked back in the Jacuzi for a few minutes to let the jets massage my back and hip. It doesn't help as much as I had hoped it would, but I think the cycling and stretching will in the long run. Just takes time. Alright, have a good night, internet land. January 15 Support Our TroopsI often hear the cry, see the little stickers and the little magnets on cars (Even had one stolen off my mini-van once, believe it or not) but I really wonder if anyone seriously considers "Supporting" our troops.
At this time, 2006, and for my past experience leading up to it, I disaggree with how most of the well protected citizenry of this country "Support" their troops. They fly flags, but have little or no understanding of the meaning of that great and noble symbol. The place a token sticker on thier car to show their support. To me it comes out as a very bland and weak, "yeah team. You go, boys."
Some send care packages to soldiers while they are in the sand pit. Fewer are there to visit those whove been wounded (mostly politicians looking for photo op's), and fewer still who seem sincere in helping the young men and women who've been devistated by doing their duty as they saw it, in the service of this once great nation.
I don't think this is a new phenomina. I just finnished reading some words by another vet. One who didn't serve in combat, but who none the less had great respect for the men and women who put themselves vulutarily in harms way at the bidding of our elected government. He didn't think, as far back as the nineteen fifteies, that veterans recieved the respect and devotion they deserved from those they served.
Let's clarify my thoughts, shall we? By veteran, I refer to those who have served in the military. They chose to. knew there were some or more risks. They served, did as they were told and at some point recieved an honorable discharge.
Do your support our troops? If so, how? If your not sure, go get a dictionary and look up the various meanings for the word support, at least what they mean accoding to Mr. Webster and company, then think abou tanswering the question. Do you support our troops?
Yes? I'm absolutely delited to hear this. They need you and always have. No? Thank you for being honest. I don't think much of those who don't support our troops but you know what? It's a free country, sort of, and at the minimum you are being honest. I can respect that much at least. ok, go away, I wish to talk to those who do support our troops.k?
So howdy fella's. ladies. So you support our troops. Great, so how to do you support those who serve our country and if our public education be true, the people as well? Do you send care packages? Do you watch your nieghbors children, you know, the one who's husband is currently over in the sand pit? Do you send a letter now and then to some lonely PFC who doesn't seem to be getting much mail from home? Note: None of these things are terribly expensive, just decent by most folks standar. Well. I'm glad to hear you do all of these things. I wouldn't want to be arround people who's notion of supporting the troops meant that you were only going to put a sticker on your car or worse, put some cheap Chinese made US flag out in front of your house and leave it out there for months at a pop without the due respect it deserves (like taking it down at night). That's great. So how many injured troops have you visited at Madigan or better yet, the soon to be gone Walter Reed hospital? mmm none, eh. Well, maybe some other time. ok. well have you ever contributed to the wounded warior program? ah, now were getting somewhere. Yes, money does talk. So you sent them a cool 50.00 last year. Brother or sister, thanks. I know when I was there, the clothes and back pack and comfort kit (they wont give injured troops a pair of toe nail clippers ya know, there is no such thing as a free lunch!) meant allot to me. They also sponsor visitors to the hospitals which for soldiers fresh in from the battle field is very very welcome, believe me, I know.
Well, cool, so you have definately supported our troops while they were in combat. So how many letters have you written to soldiers stuck in far away places that weren't fighting? Or don't you think they are serving as well? You have, hey that's great. I am really starting to like you.I mean that.
So I'm curious, how many homeless Vet's have you let live with you for a short while to get them back on a good path? How much time have you spent helping soldiers that have been honorably discharged from service to start living the american dream that they helped to preserve? oh, you want to kow how many I have helped? I'm in the process of helping a brother right now!
ok, sarcasm aside here's my thoughts. So often I hear noise about support for the troops. The men and women who serve tirelessly.But, at best it seems that support is limited. Mostly to saying the words and little else. Less so, but still their, are those who really try and do things for our troops in combat. But when a military person is honorably discharged, they aren't a troop anymore. And there is precious little support for them. I state this as a fact. It is. Sorry if that bugs you, but it should. I know because I live it every day and see it more than I care to.
Support our troops. Do we do better than other countries that support our their troops. I dunno and I couldn't care less. We aren't other countries. We are America. Are we to make a survey of how other countries support their troops before and after they serve, then should to be in the top 75% of that list? Bullshit!Because I'd bet you'll find that list has very very low standards.
Serving in the military changes people. It does. I have recently been forced to see this, not unknindly, but I had been telling myself I hadn't been changed, but I had been as have everyone else that has served. That goes times 100 for thos who have been in combat, which I've only had what I would call mild exposure to. So how does it change us? I wish I could qualify that. But I can't. Maybe it's a case of not seeing the forest for the trees in my way. But I can't really say. What I can say is what a dear friend and former platoon sargent told me. Our platton came back and the sweet life they had planned to start or continue enjoying was no longer so sweet. Many of us have one way or the other lost touch with out marital partners or girlfriend. And most of all, we are all more or less stumbling through life in an extremely confused state.
We go through horrible emotional storms that manefest themselves in odd ways. Maybe temper, maybe by isolating ourselves. Most drink far too much. Some of us can't figure out what we want to do in life anymore. Others, over time, don't want to live any more at all. It hurts to write this. But I believe it to be utterly and terribly true.
We are trained for war. Taught a standard that is hard to match by civilian terms. Then, when our service is done, with very few perks, we are shown the door.
Have you any idea how many military people end up rejoining again? Especially if they enlisted originally when they were young? Everyone I know has. Or they simply stayed in till retirement.
From my perspective the world I live in simply no longer makes sense to me.
So back to teh support issue. Do we, you, me, we really support our troops? Do we support them in their struggle to have a life for themselves once they have done outstanding and un-imaginable work in serving us?
I don't do enough to serve my brothers and sisters. And I try very hard. I need to do more. Writting a letter isn't expensive. But I haven't done that. I'm a shit for not doing that. Letters are gold to deployed troops. They are and I know it first hand.
Ladies: yeah, you single ladies. you know, if a guy writes a guy a letter, it's good to that troop. If a woman, one that he can at least dream of someday meeting, writes him, well the clouds will be his carpet for quite some time. You don't gotta fuck him, ok? But you could at least say, hi, my name is suzy, I'm single and I know you are in a lonely place. Tell me about yourself and I'll tell you alittle about who I am. Friends, Suzy Jones.
That's a decent and sincere thing. It doesn't mean I'm soliciting all single women to fuck a soldier (the female soldiers would mostly find that discusting if a woman offered to fuck them, but then again, they have their pick of military men and I think that's great). I guess what I'm trying to say is we as a nation really need to be reachingout to our military, be they in combat or not because they deserve it and no soldier, sailor, airman or marine should feel lonely and bereft of at least one person who cares about them enough to send them a sincere and interesting fucking letter!
Their home and then their out of the military, and I gotta tell you, most haven't a fucking clue what to do with themselves.Some get that way and stay that way. You know some of those old beat up looking men who have a sign that says Vietnam Vet homeless and needing help, some of them mean it. The least we could do, the least I could do, is look them in the eye and not avoid them as if they are scum. They served us!!!!!! They fucking risked all for us!!!!!They came home, were minimalized, and mostly forgotten while they dealt with the harsh realities of war, something most of the American population will never understand anything about. No, fucking saving Private Ryan is not the last word on what it is like to experience combat. If your that fucking curious then enlist and find out for real what it's like, except most or you don't.
Most of us who say we support the troops don't even come close to any concious effort to Supporting anyone save yourself. And it sickens me to think maybe my not so rightious ass is no better than you.
I let Ken share an appartment with me, but he is the first, maybe the only one I will. I need to change that. I can't change you lot, but I can change myself.
Money money money.What kinds of things can I do for my brothers and sister that don't cost an arm and a leg. I can write letter. I can send care packages. What about those who've gotten out and are now having a hard time. Well, I can join and serve with the DAV, the VFW. It seems for the most part, not all and for that minority my eternal gratitude, you are honorary brothers and sisters, that no one but vets will give vets help. Maybe I can start looking for Vets and talking with them. The homeless ones who are struggling. How can I help them? It seems unreasonable to invite every homeless vet in the country to come crash at my place. What about giving one a lift and letting him at least shower the fuck off and help him get a hair cut. Is that too much to do now and then? What if I tried that, then challenged my fellow Microsoft vets to do the same?What if I gave them my phone number and said, hey, bri, if you need a ride, call me and if I can, I will give you a ride to where you need to go. What if I said, hey, use my phone number and answering machine as your message center so you can hopefully find a job and help yourself out of the pit your in.
Maybe tonight, since I am going to not be able to sleep because of these fucking nightmares maybe I could do some searching on the web and try to see what otehrs are or are not doing for vets. That's a start. I'll try to blog what I find, ok? oh, and for the rest of you people who "Support our Troops" Why not be hoenst, why not say, your ok with others serving you by placing their lives on the line, but beyond that, their on their own, you self deluded fucks! January 10 Rollin rollin - Raw hide!!Well, even though the universe seems to be out to get me, life moves on. Whether it is a direction I have sole control over, or merely the whim of fate. I prefer to choose my directions whenever possible. Granted I don't always choose my course wisely, none the less, I don't consider myself a leaf in the wind.
I'm having lunch just now. I rather enjoy buying my lunch at work and suprizingly it is rather cheap and they offer extremely healthy choices. I couldn't likely eat this cheaply at home.
So, what is on my agenda for the week? Tommorrow I go to court for the DV charge. A non-issue, hopefully.
Have to get together some info for the upcoming divorce procedings, again, no big deal.
THe important stuff: lots of work to do and seemingly never enough time to get through it all, School work.
Now school isn't really tough. But I'm trying to actually get something out of it as opposed to simply getting an A (which is maybe trivial with just a little bit of effort) so I'm putting some time into it at home. I'm doing a professional writting course and I hope that will help me to get rid of some of my chatty-ness in professional communications (me? Chatty, never!). I've been putting in some time into my Russian each day before I leave work. MY friend Sasha brought me yet another russian book to study from. I need to step it up on arabic. By the end of this year I'd like to have active pen pals in both Russian and Arabic. You know what's cool about htese endeavers? None of them really cost money. So that means I can be paying off what Rebecca should have paid and saving money. Who has time for much else?
ok, time to get back to it, my lunch is done. Have a wonderful day internet land. January 08 Coming HomeSo I was driving home to my new home from Bellingham this evening. I had a nice weekend. I don't know why but I started asking myself why Rebecca's Mother and Father and even our mutual paster would think the worst of me. It occured to me that what they see in me is no longer john the person. It's John the soldier. The killer. Reality has little to do with perception. If anyone knows this it should be me. And humans are quite often ruled by what they percieve, not reality.
This thought sickened me inside. If it's true, and I can't help but think it is, it is so very discusting. And cruel. I left home thinking all I want to do is stay home, but someone has to do this job. If not me then who? Rebecca's children? My own son. No! I didn't and don't want that for them. So I stood up and did the job. All the while I kept telling myself, just keep going, just make it home if you can. Then all will be well. That, I admit, was silly on my part. But all I thought about was the day when violence and death were not something I had to be intimately familiar with.
Have you ever seen a person die? Or seen someone shot to death? It's not pretty. It's haunting. Hollywood will never touch the reality of it in my opinion. It's so real it cannot be denied. I have nightmares about it. I probably always will to one extent or another. But all through it, I just wanted away from it. Who wants to be arround such horriblness. Not me. I wanted to go home. I felt bad, when I got blwn up and realised I was going to live. I felt bad because I knew i was going home. I felt guilty because I wouldn't be there for the platoon. Someone else would have to do my job. That was and is a horrible thing to deal with. Maybe I didn't have a choice, but the feelings are there just the same.
I thought I was going home. But home was no longer there. Rebecca felt I was no irrevocably changed. She told me she hated being near me in the hospital. That I stank of death. When she brought the children to see me when i was finally transfered to madigan Hospital at Ft. Lewis, they shied away from me. As if they didn't know who I was. After, if I became upset they acted as if at any moment I might erupt in violence. Despite the very clear evidence infront of them that I walk with difficulty. I am not even remotely as strong, physically, as I once was. They saw a killer. A soldier. They have no understanding of what a soldier is and they read sensationalist news reports of some fuckup killing his wife after coming home from war and to them that's all of us.
I wil never come home. Ever ever ever. It hurts deeply. It's not that home was all that great, but it was mine.
This country trains soldiers. Tries to train them well. Sends us into the meat grinder. If we survive, we come home or to the geographical place where we left. But no one will accept us again. All the friends we left to protect and serve are now afraid of us. Terrified at what they created, if only by proxy. That hurts.
In protecting our country, we create a gap between us and those we protect and serve. There is no reasoning with it and I believe it must always be in the back of their minds. When is he going to snap.
All I wanted was to come home. And now I never will.
But you know what? I'm a scout. I don't quit. Even when it seems there's no reason to go on, it isn't a choice. I pick up my pack. I pick up my weapon. I put one foot in front of the other. I wish the road would end. That somewhere some how I could really go home. In the end, the only home I'm ever likely to know, is when God welcomes me back to His house. Maybe that notion will change. I dunno. But sometimes that's the only thing that keeps me going. knowing that God is really there for me. My scout brotehrs are too and I guess that's good as wel. They'd never tolerate me killing myself. Only to leave the party ahead of time? Not this scout.
So no home and I'm sure in time I'll learn to live with that.
But I tell you, if you are bothering to read this. Sometimes it makes me wonder if it was worth it. heh, funny thing is, if called I'd do it again. I don't think I'd feel there was any choice. So what's that? Brain washing? I don't think so. It's something deeper. Sometimes I wish I'd never been born with it. But wishing ain't gunna change it. So if your young, or old, and your thinking about joining the military. Think carefully. Then think again. because it's not how you will change, really. It's how others will think you've changed. And there's a very high risk that in stepping into those yellow foot prints, you'll never be able to go back home again. January 06 Outrage, Anger, and resentmentWhat has happened to people that they sometimes or often feel that they have no responsibility to those they effect. The current belief is that something happens, maybe bad, maybe neutral, and it happened to others and that they had no responsibility for the own actions. Adults, children, it seems there is no difference that I can see.
All right. The war has it's effects on me. That's because I signed up to go to war. I knew what I was doing so it is hard for me to feel too very sorry for myself because I did infact understand what it was I was signing up for to begin with. I felt our country was right and needed help and thinking this means doing my part to help. Did I want to kill people? If neccessary to get them to stop what they were doing, you bet. Did I want to go to war? You bet! A Terrorist Group hijack's four air craft and used them as missiles to strike at my country. My people. People who had no or little knowledge of why they died, or who killed them. Yep, I was looking for a a fight. Uncle Sam called and I have never not answered his call. I can also, in mitigation say that I went with the hope and intent to fight the right people and not hurt the innocent. I went to prosecute the war in a civilised and law abiding manner. That might sound silly until you've faught a war against insurgents and gurilla types. Then maybe you'd think differently. Treat the wounded of children and by standers the insurgents hurt in an effort to hurt anyone opposing them and you do want to hurt them. But not the civilians. Never them.
ok, so I have a part in my own pain wrapped up in the war. I acknowledge this. I can't lie about it. Say, oh those dirty Terrorists nailed me and I wans't doin nuthin. The people who died in the twin towers can arguably claim that. Not me.
So I come back home. The only bill that was mostly paid on time was the mortgage. My wife didn't pay anything else. I had told her I wouldn't come home and jump her shit if some weren't paid, that I knew she would do her best. I supported her moving to part time so she could be with her children. I asked for a lock of her hair to keep me safe whilst I went to a foriegn country to fight for my country. Not sit behind a fence and play cards all day, to actually go out on a dialy basis and hunt the bad guys as my country directed. To die doing that if it was neccessary. I didn't expect to come home, honestly.
I get blown up. Crippled. I come home. Every bit of money she could spend, she had. She saved nothing, she paid very little. But hey, I guess I opened the door for that one. My bad. But wait, there's more.
Her oldest son has gone into puberty. As far as he's concerned he doesn't need to listen to anyone. That doesn't fly with me. It didn't before, it doesn't now. I called him on it several times. I was told by Rebecca repeatedly that I shouldn't be telling Michael this. That I was too hard on him. That I hated him. He's a 12 year old boy. Maybe big for his age. Bright. A smart aleck likehis mother. Not a likely target of hate. The children spent the vast majority of their time with their grandparents before I met rebecca. And continued to after I met her.
During the time I lived with Rebecca we argued and fought on an almost dialy basis. Repeatedly she would shut me in our room and hold the door closed so I couldn't get out. If I had gone out the back, she'd have locked me out of the house. She would become dissatisfied with me and then we'd argue. She'd slame doors then I'd get mad at that and commence breaking down the door. In fact, I broke our bedroom door twice. Both times using my cane, both times leaving me feeling really stupid because now I had to fix a door I broke down. I didn't do it to get at her to hurt her, I realy don't do that, but I was definately pissed. Definately wanting to break something. Since the door was getting slammed in my face, I broke it. And for quite a wile refused to replace it because if there's no door there, it can't be slammed. She could go down stairs and slam a different door, but not hte door to our room. That's a common area and I wont be told I can't lay down in our bed, nor get at my close, etc. Most especially not by a spoiled girl who thinks she can tell me what to do and how to do it. So obviously I have my childish tantrums as well.
I'm not perfect. Not even a little bit. But I am not the sole contributor to anything. And still there's more.
So today, Rebecca's mother shows up at my place of work to serve me. Well, fair's fair. I filed for divorce, she can too I guess. It wasn't her filing for divorce that angered me. IT was what she asked for, what she said in the dissolution papers that fried me.
According to her, I'm soley responsible for supporting her children. She expects the house I bought, and for me to pay for it. She does in fact want money and wants it now. She also claims I started an arguement with her son, then beat the crap out of him. Then stole 5000.00 out of our bank account, leaving her penniless, etc.
No mention of her responsibility in the event. Just that I am the bad guy and thus owe her money. She is one of the people I fought for. hell I paid her whilst getting my ass shot at and eventually blown up. I came home and told her frankly that I needed some time to simply be me. To not be constantly told what I haven't done, nor what I should do, but to simply be accepted so I could figure out who the fuck I am now that I can't walk correctly, and must live in physical painthe rest of my life. Not that it's her fault I needed those things, just that that is what I needed. Apparently that was too much.
I detest lie's. I detest saying someone else is always to blame. It doesn't work that way in life. I'm not looking for aggreement here, I'm furiously stating a fact. There is no getting arround the fact that when two people get married, if it doesn't work, it's both their faults. Period. End of story. I thik it was more her fault than mine, but I kind of knew that from the start and just didn't want to deal with it. So again, that sort of even's up the blame game.
My fear is that she'll get away with it. My sense of reality says she'll get some but likely not alot. I had accepted that would happen. Perhaps this is how lawyers acocmplish that. Asking for something unreasonable in the hopes that it will get trimmed down to what they want.
It also angers me that there's no Rebecca should give me anything. Far far from it. This whole divorce, like the last one, isn't about what we must give each other. The whole crux of the matter is simply how much of what I make is she going to get.
Now, I have never married a woman who makes close to what I make a year. So, should I make the assumption that if a woman doesn't make what I make, or very fucking near it, that she is poisen? Why should I care what a person make in terms of money? It's none of my damn business. I care about how they treat me. Do I like the person. Do I find them attractive. That kind of stuff, not what their net worth is. But the fact that a lawyer would cooperate with such a proposal as my soon to be x has suggested (or she conjured it herself) makes me think that at least in this state, that is deemed acceptable. Fairness is strange. My sense of fairness, of equality is obviously out of whack with current society. It makes me not want to deal with people at all. If I am such a foreigner, if my believes and values are so out of tune that I can be jailed, blamed, harrassed, and put into financial bondage for the foolish decision to get involved with a woman who has three children and doesn't make the same amount of money that I do, well, maybe I should be getting involved with anyone at all.
Reality check: This is where the divorce starts fucking with my mind. Where what will be is not knwon and not entirely up to me. I'm going to fight this. Legally and fairly, without lying, without dirty dealing. I'm not interested in stalking anyone. Maybe I'll have to pay through the fucking nose to get rid of this bitch. If so, well, maybe I wont be here too long to do that. We'll see. I fought to prevent the slavery and oppression of one people. I wont become a different kind of slave in my home country. heh, I guess, though I already am. I pay 630 dollars a month in child support for my own son. I never had a grip with that because I did help make a baby. he's my son and thus it's my responsiblity.
I hate this. So very very much. This world and yes this country, allot of people in it really really resent anyone who tries to do whats right. The simple truth. If you value money. Don't get married. You'll lose it. That's how I feel right now. No matter what they say in the beginning, or during the marriage, at some point she's going to figure out she has the legal edge and she'll exploit it. A prenump is no garantee a judge will respect it. A prenump is an aggreement between you and your spouse, not between you and the judge. Scary, very scary, but also very true.
If you don't value money all that much, or don't think you'll ever make a decent living, well, maybe it wont matter, I dunno.
This just sucks. January 04 Divorce and lifeso, writting about something entirely different, as I mentioned in my post on dec 18th, 2005, I'm getting divorced. Things happened so suddenly. I had actually thought that things were calming down and settling down between myself and Rebecca and the children. I wasn't happy. Niether was she, I think. but life is like that. You get used to things, regardless of wether you like them or not.
Rebecca wanted more attention and resented my past. Or maybe just how she percieved my past, I don't really know. She was a very demanding person. Her son Michael, heh, I guess the best I can say about him is that he has problems. He is a very bright young man. Sometiems I liked him very much. But he has alot of his mother in him. He has a nasty temper and has no problem with being an asshole. Heh, this coming from the king of assholes(don't doubt for a second that I can be a total selfish prick, I can be and often am).
One saterday morning, I woke up to him and his mother shouting at each other over the computer being on. Rebecca was yelling at Michael to turn it off and stop playing games on it. Michael was yelling back that no he wasn't going to. I find that intolerable. Unacceptable in the extreme. Children should never be yelling at their parents like that. Most especially when their parents try to give them their every hearts desire. I think we spoiled Michael more than a little.
So anyways, I listened for a couple minutes, trying to wake up and trying not to hear the disdain and ugliness in Michael's yelling. But it wasn't stopping. So I got up and walked into the living room to shut off the computer. I think Michael saw me coming and tried to block the computer by moving the chair infront of the cabinet where the cpu was kept. Or maybe his chair was just there. Regardless, I reached down, passed him, to shut the damn thing off and he nailed me in the face pretty hard. It wasn't a kid hit, I felt it hard. I reacted without even thinking. Just instinct. I think I got a couple swings in on him before his mother was on top of me, essentially beating the crap out of me. Just leaning on me is enough to knowck me over, but she had jumped on me andwas pounding me as hard as she could. It didn't stop very quickly and so I just lay there, on top of michael getitng hit. The she got up off me and commenced to calling the police. I didn't try to stop her. I'm notthat kind of person. And I didn't hit her back. I was in shock, I think. Angry, and very very upset. I managed to get to one of the living room chairs and sat in it. I tried to take stock of the situation. I realised I was probably going to jail. Now, to my mind, common sense would indicate that Michael in fact should be being arrested for striking his step father. But I also know this isn't a world where what makes sense to me is what happens. I got up and went into the bedroom to put on my shoes. I figured if I was going to jail I might as well have shoes o, rather than go barefooted. I was still in my pajamas.
WEll, I was right. The police that came didn't even think the matter through. According to them, i was the aggresser. How they figured that is still a mystery to me and not a small source of resentment. While in the bedroom, I took a glance in the mirror. I my was pretty goobered up. I came back into the living room and shouted to the phone and Becca and anyone else interested to look at my eye. Michael meanwhile was shouting at me that I had been choking him.
You know, it amazes me. Michael lies about most anything Michael wants to. He'll smack his brother then look you in the eye and tell you he didn't do that. He says he's got all his homework done, then in a month or so his teaher is failing him and wants to know why he hasn't turned in any of his home work. But, all of the sudden, everyone is sure that he is telling the truth. I guess I personally think that if I had actually went into the living room to hurt Michael, I'd have been successfull, being as I'm a fairly well trained, if severely disabled soldier. But his mother (who was in the kitchen and didn't see either of us until Michael had already hit me and I had tried to hit him a couple times) has no doubt what so ever that Michael, for the first time, is really telling the truth. His grandmother, who has always insisted that Michael "has a heart of gold", doesn't doubt he's telling the truth. Our paster didn't doubt that Michael was telling the truth. Instantly, the guy everyone was praising as being such a hero and a "good man" for trying to support Rebecca and her children, the guy Michael's Grandmother had once said, Thank God for John. That guy, well he was instantly a liar and child beater. Are younoticing some resentment here? If not, your stupid, cause this blog should be screaming resentment. You don't have to aggree with my "version" of the events, heh you weren't there, I know what happened. But you should aggree I am am definately feeling some resentment.
So I went to jail. I wasn't allowed any of my meds for over 18 hours. I take Oxycodone for pain. It's pretty powerfull stuff, so I'm told, but it mostly just keeps the pain to a dull roar, insead of me feeling like someone is shovign an ice pick in my hip and lower back.
At one piint in the initial holding cell they had me in, I told the cop that had arrested me that he should take out his weapon and shoot me. Two in the head. I told him he owed it to me. I told him, I'd done my job for the country, I'd done more than my part. I told him I'd do it for him if our places were swapped. I meant it. I wanted it to be done with. It was too much. Sometimes it still is too much. He of course told me I had to stop saying stuff like that. So I started bashing my head into the brick wall behind me. Christ that hurt. I was crying and screaming at them. To just doing, that I wanted to die. I should have died then and now was a really good time to set thins right. A bunch more cops came to the front of the holding cell. I think they were getting ready to subdu me or whatever they do with someone who has lost it. One of the cops said, "Hey, you were a marine, right?" I said"yes, VMAQ-2, then i was a scout for the army, and Now I want to die!" He looked at me, not in a cruel way, but in an understanding way. The way a brother looks at his brother. he said, "I was too. Forth infantry, You've handled worse than this, You can handle this." I can't help but think he was a messanger from God. Because in what that man said, i found the strength to calm down and deal with things. Yet again, a vet was there to help me through a tough time. It was enough. Because he was right. Not a free ride. Just enough to get me by till I can mentally fend for myself. They sent me to a very small jail in Fife. They kept us in lock down roughly 18 hours out of the day. When they did let me have two of my pain pills I could hardly stand. By now the pain was so intense it was all I could think about. A world of Ice picks reaptedly shoved into my hip and back and heel. At one point I couldn't do anything but through up, much to the amuzement of my fellow in mates.
I stayed in teh jail for the weekend because there is no judge to handle things, which they felt certain needed to be handled, until monday. On Monday, they gathered us up and packed us tightly into a small van and drove us back to federal way. After what seemed like forever, I got to meet my public defender who took a brief look at the charges and said, you need to plead not guilty to this, you wont have any trouble winning. So the Judge made this No Contact order and explained to me that I was to have no contact with Michael or Rebecca. I'm not exactly sure why he would think that I wanted any contact with Michael or Rebecca. Given that the last contact I had had with either of them had been their fists hitting my head. So they drove us back to the fife jail and after about five more hours they processed me out. Now, I don't know if you knew this or not but I'm actually really disabled. I was in a humvee and it got blown all to hell by four anti tank mines. I have this huge long list of shit that is broken or don't work on me any more. It's not a debatable list, it just is. I'd love to debat it, but I can't stand on my feet long enough to argue the point. I can't walk much more than a mile before my legs litterally give out from under me. My most recent and rather courageous accomplishment is to walk from my office to the resteroom on the other side ofthe building without my cane. Pretty nifty, eh?
So, I'm getting out of jail. I get my pajama's back. I get a little plastic baggy with all my fuckin meds that I hate and a bill for one hundred dollars that I have to pay in 30 days. It's more or less non refundable.
Again I was in tears. I didn't know where in fife I was. I didn't know where to go. I had no phone numbers with me. I had no ID, no money at all. Not even a coat. And guess what. It's December. Know what December is like in Washington state? Maybe it gets colder in other places but it was below freezing. Know what cold does to people with severe injuries to the back and spine? It makes whatever they are feeling get worse times 10. I cried as the cop shoved me litterally out the door of the police station. I said, where am I to go? And how will I get there. He looked coldly at me and said, What do you want me to do about it? Then turned and walked back inside his jail. How had things come to this point. That the country I had given life and limb for should turn so cold a shouldure to me. I really didn't know what to do. I've always been someone who prefers to rely on myself. To take care of things myself. I've never been one to call on someone else to help me, I just did things myself. And now I was in a situation where I needed help and had no idea who to help.
Call this a testimony of faith. While in the jail, I asked for and they eventually gave me a bible. I read it. And prayed. Because I knew they wouldn;t let me go to the home I had bought and paid for. I knew they would leave me in the cold and that regardless of how I might "win" the case against me, I would soon die in the cold, alone on the side of the road. I prayed, not to be saved really, but just asking God to take me gently and to take away my worries. All the while I was in that awefull jail I prayed and read the bible as best I could. I couldn't eat the food, it made me throw up. I've had pretty severe Gall Bladder surgery (have a huge scar accrossed my stomach from it) and I've had to be much more careful what I eat. Greasy foods make me sick as a dog. Stress makes it times ten worse and I guess I was definately stressed.
Well, while on the way to the court house, I had noticed that one of the other prisoners was a man named Ken Williams. I knew him. Never really thought much of him. He was in the 81st brigade. He was an ok sort of person, just not a scout, and I didn't know much more about him.
Well, I guess he was there on some ancient shop lifting charge. They tossed him out at the same time they tossed me out. I'm not joking when i say I was in tears. Ken Asked where I was going. I told him I didn't know. Didn't know where to go, didn't know what to do. I told him I couldn't go home, because of the no contact order and didn't have anyplace else to go. I said if I could make it to Bellevue, I could stay in my office until I could afford to buy a place and so on. But I had no idea how I was going to get there. Ken said, well, you look cold. He said he knew the bus system pretty well and they would probably give us a ride for free. I said I could maybe pawn my wedding ring to get enough money to maybe get to bellevue or a motel for the night. I didn't think i'd get more than 20 bucks for it. Ken pointed me towards the bus stop and told me what bus to get on to. I felt so unsure I am certain it showed. Ken Suggested he could call rebecca and ask her if she'd give me my car, livense and some clothes. He then hand walked me onto the bus and helped me find a pawn shop (I really doubt I'd have found one if he hadn't helped me out) and then called Rebecca. She told him, I guess, that she would give him my things if he showed up at her door step. So we again got on the bus and rode it to near by my house. I had taken another dose of pain pills so I was doing alittle better, but now just sheer physical limits were imposing themselves on me. It was getting very hard to walk and with no coat I was starting to feel extreme pain. Under Ken's coat he had on just a simple cotton short sleeve T-shirt. Even so, as we trudged the three miles or so to get to the corner of my house, he took off his coat and made me put it on. "You need this more than I do right now". He noticed I was having extremely trouble walking, my legs weren't cooperating and wouldn't move right. He ducked down and forced one of my arms over his shouldure and kept walking with me, now more carrying me than I myself was. WE were passed by several cars. honked at. One lady stopped and yelled that we should be ashamed of ourselves. I'm not sure what we should ahve been ashamed of, maybe for trying to do our part in the first place? I'm confident if I hadn't, I wouldn't ahve been in the predicament I was in, though perhapse that's wishfull thinking. Anyways, we made it to the corner near my house. I didn't want to go anywhere near the house for fear I would get arrested again. I pointed it out to Ken and he went up there.
Rebecca gave him the key's to the plymouth, my cell phone and charger, and my wounded warrior back pack I'd been given at walter read hospital which she had filled with sex toys and one pair of pants. I guess I didn't get the joke, but I'm told I can be pretty crabby when i'm in pain.
She also gave him one of my flanel shirts, but no coat (the temperature was easily 30 or below). Ken drove the car back down to me and I got in. He wanted to know if it was ok for him to drive over to his girlfriends to see if he could stay the night there. I said of course. oh, yeah, Rebecca had also given Ken my Drivers license and Microsoft ID but not my money card. Apparently I didn't need money in her opinion. I just needed to be able to make money. Anyways, so we drove over to Ken's girlfriends house. She yelled and screamed at him and told him he was a hardened criminal and that he could no longer stay with her, despite him paying her rent. So he walked back t the car and said he didn't know what he was going to do. She'd tossed him some of his belonging. Blankets and pillows and a few clothes. He didn't get any sex toys. I don't think he was disappointed. I told him I didn't know eitehr but maybe we should stick together.
Later that week, Ken and I rented an apparetment together. He's not such a bad sort and we both try to be helpfull to each other.
I talked ot my boss about the why I wasn't in to work on Monday. He ahd thought maybe I'd had some problems and had to go to the hospital again. I told him what had happened. He didn't want to know too much about it, but said not too worry and my job was safe.
Late monday night I had tried to access my bank account online to determin what funds were in the account (I'm the only one who adds funds to the accoutn since Rebecca quit her joba couple months ago to finnish school and spend more time with her children and - so she said- to take care of me). Rebecca had changed the password to the account so I couldn't access anything. I was, however, able to use the phone to get my account information. Saterday there had been roughly 1400.00 dollars in teh account (I'd just gotten paid). Now the main checking account was empty. There was however, 630.00 in the bill paying checking account. I'm guessing she planed to make half a mortgage payment and pocketed the remainder of the money. There was also 300.00 in the savings accoutn I had thrown a fit and insisted she leave in the savings account. I took out about 800.00 dollars from the bill paying checking an the savings. That left her with about 100.00 to last her until my next payday. I had no idea how much I would be able to give her, but at the time my intention was to ensure she had at least some money to live off of until we had decided whathte next steps were to be. How we would do that I had no idea, as I was legally forbidden from talking or having any contact with her.
I wrote to Rebecca's parents via email telling them I was terribly sorry I had hit Michael. I was and am. I said that it was entirely my fault and I shouldn't have hit him regardless the provocation. They wrote back and assured me that everything was indeed my fault, and that I had left Rebecca penniless. I asked them what about the money I had left in the checking account? They said they didn't know about that, but I had left her penniless and I was "legally and morally" bound to give her whatever money I currently had. Because the children looked to me as a father. Tehre was no, are you ok? No, do you have a place to stay, food to eat. There was only, Rebecca needs moneya nd you shouldn't ahve choked Michael.
I suppose if I had choked Micahel they'd be right htat I shouldn't have done that. Again, your reader must choose who your going to believe there, I've said my bit on the matter and it's ok if you don't believe me. They also said Rebecca didn't have anything against me. More of this, it's all in your head stuff. Well, the next day, Rebecca called my work and began ranting to my former manager that I had beat Michael and had left her penniless, etc. So I wrote to Rebecca's parents one last time and said, well, for someone that doesn't have anything against me she is certainly behaving kind of strange. Rebecca's mother Shirley called me that evening. She said Rebecca had cried real tears over that, but she was following "Someone's" advice. I asked her, who in their right mind would advice her to try and get their husband fired from work if they want to get money from that same husband? Shirly didn't know. She said all she knew was that Rebecca was crying over having to call my work and tell them everything and she was just doing what the courts and whoever had advised her to do. I'm guessing the courts didn't advise her to call my work and I told shirly this. I also told her that I was feeling a bit resentfull because at no time has anyone been even remotely concerned for my well being at all. Given that I was the one hurt most seriously, also the weekest one in the incident. And also the one everyone expected to continue to pay for Rebecca and her children's wellfare.
It was that conversation, that I think brought things in to their currently perspective for me. I saw then, that the only thing they wanted out of me was money. And they really didn't care even alittle bit about the right or wrong of the situation, nor the fact that I had told them and Rebecca repeatedly that Michael had serious problems and that it was a big problem for me. They just wanted money from me. My initial, half joking impression of what Rebecca was after, turned out in fact to be true. She was simply after a paycheck. he actions, viewed through that admitedly synical lense, make perfect sense. There really was no other reason for her to show any interest in me. I'm not a particularly handsome man. I prefer my own company more often than not. I like to work very long hours. I can be gruff and grouchy at times. The nice side of me was merely a perk to her. No wonder she was pissed that I didn't and couldn't have sex with her anymore. It was probably her hoped for control on me. In anycase, i know people will always try to do what they can to survive and don't always tink of the consequences. She's not an evil person. Just helpless in many ways and looking for an easy way to get money.
I talked with my counceler a couple weeks ago, trying to describe what happened. I asked him if it was wrongof me to feel so good at not living with Rebecca anymore. He said that no, that was not a bad thing. That people who experience constant trauma tend to get numb to the little pressures, worrying instead about just staying alive. But htat doesn't mean that removing the little pressures (like having to live in that horrible environment with Rebecca and Michael) wont make things better. As I had discussed problems with Rebecca and Michael with him before, he knew a bit about the situation.
I miss them of course. Even Michael. More so I miss sweet little Iris. It hurts to even think of what she might feel right now. She is five and I doubt I will ever again see her. Or Darien, such an intelligent and creative young boy and constantly being trashed by his brother. Even Michael with his ready wit. I miss Rebecca as well. Even though we had serious, now unsolveable problems, she was special to me. I think I maybe did love her truthfully though it's hard to look at those feelings right now.
But when I reallised where things were headed, I lost what little hope I had of ever getting back with her. Like a light switch being shut off, so too is any desire to have anything to do with her or her children. I feel, in most ways, as cold as the arctic ocean towards her. Angry, resentfull. The worst that I can do to her is to divorce her and let her struggle on her own and that is excatly what I am doing. That and succede at my own personal plans. I've started back to school. Work is right back on track and I'm doing well. My divorce lawyer tells me that since we hav eno children between us, and because all of her children have fathers with current childsupport orders, she's basicly fucked. At first I had thought to give her money, help her out. But now I see that really isn't my responsibility, nor is she deserving of my help. She ignored me, trivialized my feelings and dreams, told me repeatedly how fucked up she felt I was. Since this is so, she can now sleep in the bed she has made. And I in mine. My new bed arrives next monday.
My other lawyer, the one I have to handle the domestic violence case says that it's likely a non-issue. I can probably win the case and likely the prosecuting attorny (a prissy whinnee looking little fuck) will offer some option that has me going to counceling for a few months and then will drop the charges. While that is happening I wont be able to own any fire arms. Personally, if I never hold a gun in my hand again, that's going to be just fine by me. I've had far too much to do with weaponry in the past to want to have anything to do with weapons now. Oh I know why they do that, but I guess I enjoy that really I have my own reasons for not wanting a gun and they have nothing to do with Rebecca or Michael.
Rebecca always told me that her x's stalked her an hassled her and so forth. I'm sure she must find this quite acceptable. I haven't tried to contct her in anyway, nor will I ever again, save through an attorny.
I did get one civil visit. That is, a police escorted visit to my house that I pay for, to pick up some clothes and a few essentials. What I found there helped make my feelings cold and hard. She had tried to ruin the new computerthe VA had bought me. Had tried to scratch the new monitor surface. She had crushed two of my balsa wood model airplanes I'd put litterally hundreds of hours into making. Yeah, she doesn't have anything against me and sure isn't out to get me hunh?!
You know, I don't hate women. I don't particularly trust most of them, but I don't hate them. I do think i have made some pretty crappy choices as to who I will get involved with though. Or maybe I'm just not suited to be involved with anyone.
When I was young I had no problem screwing everything that walked and was female. Not so much anymore. I guess at some point I started wanting something more than just sex.
I know there's more emotinal storms ahead for me. Maybe, writing in this sort of web log thingy will help some, who knows. It's probably boring as hell to read, from a strangers point of view. That's ok. Anyways, you all have a great mmm it's mornign now so have a great morning in internet land:)
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