No one else noticing the sunglasses on the presidents? lol What about George and Abe’s smiles?

I felt compelled to read it too. Haha.

Was not disappointed!

Oh yooooou! I love this comment!

My ex. Jesus Christ man.

She moved in and adopted my whole personality. Naturally, her own personality was fighting to surface and a person can’t bury who they are forever.

After more than a decade, she just lost it. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced, and you’re spot on about it fucking up trust in other people. It doesn’t have to, but it does take work.

In the middle of the chaos that was the collapse of my entire life, I remember one line from a letter she wrote me. “I feel more like myself than I have in a very long time. I know that’s probably hard for you to read.”

She had BPD too, so for three years, one moment I was god, the next she was sitting up in the bed at the end of an overall great day and saying, “I’m sorry. I just don’t love you anymore.”

She wanted nothing to do with me until I found someone else. She lost her damn mind, tried to kill herself, ended up hospitalized for mental health. That got her family involved and we had to fight them for our kid in court. It’s crazy how easy it is for a family member to kidnap your child. They told the magistrate that I held my family hostage with a knife, got a restraining order, and I just had to wait until court knowing that our daughter was scared to death and living through a nightmare on top of a nightmare.

Somehow, the woman I’m with survived all of that chaos with me. I figured she’d get tired of me driving out in the middle of the night over and over again to make sure my ex didn’t actually hurt herself.

Once she got to be herself though, she was alright. She met someone more like her. She went from laying in bed all the time hating herself and her life to taking care of things that she couldn’t before. She never got a drivers license and she was finally able to do that. She never cleaned and when I worked a lot our place was trashed, but her last place was immaculate. Poor girl died of breast cancer 4 years after we split. I wish she had left me years before honestly, so she’d have had a chance to really live.

Life is a mess. Some people do make it hard to trust other people, but we have to carry on and do our best. We’ve gotta work so that problem isn’t everyone else’s problem.

I have done my best to keep from carrying all that baggage into the relationship I’m in. I do my best to encourage her to just be herself. We get one short life, and I don’t want to have a hand in ruining it for anyone. Go see your friends, go be with your family. Don’t sit here alone because I do. Keep building your life outside of me. Maintain something of the world you lived in before you moved to ours.

Sorry for the book. I guess I needed to spit it out of my head again. I could write on this topic for several years straight and I still wouldn’t run out of shit to say about it. :p

A friend of mine had a small daughter who died choking on a grape. I mean, it’s not exactly relevant here, it just made me think of him. I hope he’s doing alright these days.

I loved going to my grandfather’s house as a kid. It wasn’t mine, but it felt like it belonged to all of us. He built it with his own hands. I put my little handprints in the basement. My aunt inherited it when he died. I can go there today and look in the closet where I wrote all of my relative’s phone numbers on the wall for emergencies when I was 5 years old. Every one of his grandkids can go to that house and see their life everywhere. They can feel connected to their family and their memories.

My aunt’s kids have grown up there now, her daughter graduates this year. She’ll be able to have that same experience.

If I ever have grandkids, they’ll have to drive by the shit apartments that I’m stuck in and feel nothing.

Millennials existed in a world where they seen ownership, experienced ownership. Our movies belonged to us. Our games belonged to us. Everything is a service or something we can’t afford.

I love my Steam Deck, but nothing on it belongs to me. That is the world I live in from the top to the bottom.

If I want to remove the ugly 1970s wood paneling and paint my living space to match me as a person, nope. Gotta ask my fucking owner and he’ll say no. He could sell it tomorrow or die, and if they tell me to get lost, I gotta get lost.

I took over payments on my childhood home when I was 21. The roof hadn’t been repaired in my lifetime. When I was a kid I put a tarp over my desk to keep the rain from destroying my computer. When I was 23 I fell through the floor in the bathroom.

If I had known just how hard it would be to obtain a place of my own, I wouldn’t have let that place go. I would have lived in it until it collapsed. If I could go back in time I’d tell younger me to suck whatever dick I had to suck to keep it, right there in that terrible poverty stricken hellhole of an Appalachian neighborhood.

My mom bought that place for 40k. 5 bedrooms. A huge house. We were poor so we couldn’t keep with repairs, but it was ours.

I don’t know. Bums me the fuck out. I’d love to have a home for my children.

I had a friend as a kid who made straight A’s the first semester in school every year, then straight F’s to the last semester where he’d pick it up just enough to pass. I remember a teacher laughing at him because his cousin blacked his eye while he was fighting his mother, “Oh, you mean a girl did that?”

Once he got to high school he couldn’t pass the 9th grade because the strategy of passing the first and last semester didn’t work anymore. He dropped out and got his GED. He took the test one time, scored 90% higher than average.

He slept in class every day because he spent his nights prepared to fight his dad when his dad attacked his mom.

I remember in middle school when the regular teacher was out long term for surgery, he handed a test to the substitute and she cried and apologized for not paying closer attention to him. She worked with him after that and he passed her class.

The last time I seen him, he was strung out on heroin and doing nothing. We went to school together from the 3rd grade until he dropped out and I only ever seen two teachers really try to help him. Police came to the school one time to photograph his bruise covered body and nothing ever came of it.

He used to write stories and give them to me on the bus. I asked him if he kept writing. He told me he hadn’t since his early 20s.

I can’t stand to think about how many kids out there have so much potential, only they’re stranded on an island with nowhere to put it.

I actually met a man from Kazakhstan in my store the other day. He gestured to me that he’d like to sleep in the parking lot and pointed, “in truck. In truck. No English.” Imagine my surprise when I said, “what language?” and this very Asian looking fellow said, “Russian. But not me Russian. Me Kazakhstan”.

I got to use the translate app on my phone for the first time and when I said, “Ah, I’ve heard of Kazakhstan. I seen Borat.” He said, “No no no, uh, he is from London. He is not really from Kazakhstan. We hate him. We’re so tired of him. That is not what we are really like.” I said, “Oh I know that Kazakhstan is a former Soviet country and you guys are nothing like that. Borat is a man from England. He’s a comedian. I know it’s a joke.” “Oh it makes me so happy you know about the real Kazakhstan.” He said.

Then I ordered him a pizza to be delivered to his truck.

It was a fun experience meeting him. He was a great guy.

We talked for hours using the Google translate app.

There were a couple of gaffs. I realized after he left when I said “nice to meet you.” It heard, “it was nice to me too.” But otherwise it worked pretty well. It amazes me that we can do that nowadays.

A dude comes in my store every day to get gas and beer. On the weekends he pulls up in his giant RV. If I don’t see him for a week (pretty regular thing), when he does come back he’s been on vacation in that RV. His happy, healthy kids come in and get their drinks.

Recently he asked me if I knew anyone who could drive a medical taxi. He has a company which takes people to doctors visits. Insurance pays for it.

“I can’t find anyone to work. No one wants to work anymore. I have 10 vehicles parked right now.”

“What’s the pay? Do you do drug tests?”

MINIMUM FUCKING WAGE. DRUG TESTS.

I just told him, “dude, McDonald’s is paying $14.50 right now, starting wage. Paying people the bare damn minimum, you’ll either get them fresh out of prison or jacked up on meth. Like, holy shit man. Minimum wage? For a job that requires drug testing? You aren’t suffering. I see you taking your RV on vacation constantly. Fucking pay your employees bro. Those parked cars could be bringing in free money but rather than look at the problem, you think people don’t want to work. Pay 50 cents more than McDonalds and I’ll come work tomorrow.”

Nope. Stubborn, greedy bastard would rather have 10 cars parked.

Fuck that whole class of people.

I’ve had this happen.

I was dreaming there were all of these people in my living room. It was some kind apocalyptic scene that brought them there.

I was standing in my living room, suddenly found myself in my bed in a sleep paralysis like state. I was confused, colors were swirling on the ceiling.

I heard the voices in the living room and I made my way in there. I had that physical feeling that comes with sleep paralysis.

The people were all around the room staring. I screamed “Leaaaave!!!” A woman who looked a lot like my mom said to me, “There’s nothing left out there. There’s nowhere to go.”

It was like I was instantly punched back to reality with this extreme feeling of fear and anxiety.

It took me about 20 minutes to get ahold of myself and awhile longer to even come close to believing I wasn’t completely insane.

I used to deal with sleep paralysis pretty often when under a lot of stress and I could tell it came from a similar place. It was a wild and terrifying experience.

At one time I had sleep paralysis so often that I learned to ride the wave kind of like a psychedelic drug. Not perfectly, but I had some success.