It is exhausting running around circles and accomplishing nothing when shit gets real.
Recently moved from my little apartment to a house. I started out organizing and writing the contents of each box on the top. Very quickly I found myself just throwing random shit into boxes because I was taking too long. My landlord suggested the move because I have 4 kids and I needed more space. He was nice enough to put me in a much bigger place for only 20% more than I was paying.
I was already exhausted when I decided I needed to take my old toilet seat, which has two seats, a little one for little butts, and then lift that for the regular one for regular sized butts. I removed it from the toilet, put the small bits in a ziplock bag, and drove directly to the house. I walked a straight line from the car to the bathroom, took off the other seat, and then I couldn’t find the little square parts that mounted the screws. I didn’t have much backtracking to do. Walked back to the car, couldn’t find them. Searched from the entryway to the bathroom, nowhere to be found. Carefully checked the ground around the sidewalk. Nothing. Drove back to the apartment, nothing. I managed to keep my temper, but I was ready to blow my brains out on the emotional end of things.
After losing 2 hours searching frantically for the parts, I went back in to put the other seat back on and give up. There they were, just laying there beside the toilet in a spot I had checked a thousand fucking times.
And then guess what? Fucking lost the screws to the other seat and repeated the whole goddamn ordeal. Wanna guess where they were? In the SAME FUCKING SPOT as the other pieces I had lost.
I’m so fed up. My doctor won’t treat me because he’s old school and because I have a history of drug abuse (which is how he came to be my doctor in the first place). I can’t move to a new one because I don’t have the time to establish myself in the program. When you start a drug treatment program you begin by going daily, then weekly, then biweekly, and then finally, monthly. They all require you to do AA/NA/CR. It took me years to get out of all of that crap and I do not have the time to do it with all of these kids. I hate going to group, and after enough time passes with no failed drug tests you can get out of it. I haven’t been in 5 years. I don’t want to go now.
I’m going to beg my doctor at my next visit. I am exhausted living like this. I’m tired of being a burden to everyone around me because I can’t hold focus on anything for a minute. Entire days go by and I’m just in some void without even realizing it.
I just had to get it off my chest. I’d give anything to be like the people around me.
Oh boy oh boy. Story time.
So around 2015 I got a call at work from an ex-girlfriend. I was 100% certain that the first time I had sex with her had occurred in 2008.
She informed me that it was actually in 2007 when we got drunk and ended up crashing at a friends place.
The whole point of her call was to tell me that she had a daughter, and that daughter was mine. I watched that baby for her when she was about 6 months old. It never even crossed my mind.
She had me totally convinced. I called my old friend who informed me that we did in fact have sex night and that he heard us and was annoyed by it. The timing was perfect. Uh oh.
Anyway, I always liked her. I didn’t think I had any reason to distrust her. So, like the fool I am, I just went with it.
She said that she didn’t tell me because of my heavy drinking, drug use, and promiscuity. She didn’t think I was cut out to be a dad, but then she seen through social media how good I was with my kids and decided she was wrong, all these years later. Things started seeming off pretty quick. She told me that a friend of hers passed away in a car accident, and she always told the daughter that he was her father.
Deeper than that, though, she told his family he was the father.
She told me that the little girl was that family’s link to him and that she didn’t want to break their hearts. But she wanted me to know, and she wanted me to have a relationship with my daughter. I thought it was fucked up that she had done that, but I certainly didn’t want to crush some mother’s heart who lost her young son in an accident and miraculously found that he had left a child for her to love.
She said that I could come around and that we would let the kid know when she was older.
We first agreed to meet at a park, I went and sat there for two hours and she never showed up. Then she apologized and said something came up, she wanted to meet at the petting zoo that was in town. I went to the petting zoo, sat there for a while, and she never showed up. She told me that she would be in touch with me, that she was sorry things kept coming up.
At that point, I had still refused to get a cell phone because I am so antisocial. I didn’t want to have to talk to people or answer people when I was outside of my home or my job. I didn’t get a cell phone until 2019, I always used an iPod touch with a VOIP app. So whenever I was left hanging, I just had to wait.
I ended up talking with the kid on the phone a few times, she was a very sweet kid, but very troubled. That trouble I knew, had to come from somewhere.
The last time we scheduled to meet, I got a call the day before. It was her sister.
“angryseal, I have always liked you. When I found out my sister was talking to you again, I couldn’t just sit by and let you get scammed. You are not the first long lost father, you’re probably about the 5th. To give you a clue how awful my sister is, she met a lonely older man who has spent his entire life taking care of his sick mother. He never had time to date, and after his mom passed he went out and had the misfortune of meeting my sister. She was at his house one night and noticed a bank statement with a large number. She hatched a plan and called him up a few weeks later. She told him she had cancer and that she couldn’t afford the surgery and was going to die if she didn’t get it. It was early enough that all she needed was a surgery, and that surgery was 40k. This man gave her 40,000 dollars, she called him one more time to say the surgery was successful and then she ghosted him. She blew all of that money vacationing with another man in Florida. They probably spent half of it on cocaine. You tell my sister that you want a DNA test and you will never hear from her again.”
What!? Ok.
So the next time we spoke, I told her that it wasn’t anything personal, I just didn’t want heartbreak on down the line and I told her I’d like to get a DNA test. “How dare you? What, you don’t trust me? I have never been anything but good to you! You know what?! I’ve done just fine raising her without you up to now and I’ll keep doing fine, you asshole!”
I have never heard from her again.
I still think about that pretty often haha. What a world we live in.