Hey All

I will update within the next few days. I have been real manic for weeks now. I have also been on vacation for a month now.

Later, Ash out...

YO, YO, YO

I haven’t posted in awhile. I guess it because I am still pretty regulated – on the up side anyways. I will admit that I have been manic though. This last month my mind doesn’t stray far from the poker table. I now have a friend at work that plays online like do and I don’t know how healthy that is for me. You see, now we talk poker hand histories and strategy all the time. He is a new player to the game that I know so well, or think I do anyways. So he is basically my protégé and I am coaching him how to win money as I do. Plus, I have another one who is just starting out online and is depositing this week. They are being lured in by my success at our live games and my online winnings. They see it as a means to make money and ask tons of questions. All this has done is open the Pandora’s box to my love of poker and tilted me towards my manic self. My schoolwork is also suffering from this current enthrallment. I just need to complete 2 essays and I will be done with my current course. I actually competed one yesterday on childhood gender stereotyping, but I have been procrastinating all and all on getting these done. Even though I am manic I’m not too irritable, although loud voices and the children’s roughhousing rakes my nerves. I guess I do get a little agitated at the moment over simple shit, but I am containing my inner rage fairly well. I haven't had any anxiety attacks lately and that makes Ash a happy boy.

I hope everyone had a great holiday season. And don’t get too drunk tonight!!!

Later, Ash out…

How I Lost God – Which Turned Into a Long-Condensed Story of My Dysfunctional Life: Part 11

My dad finished school and they decided to go to Michigan for the summer and do some missionary work at a church. So accentually I became homeless at that point. That scared me so I sobered up and got a hold of Jason and his mom let me move in. My sister stayed with being a nanny to my uncle’s family so she had a place to stay. Jason and I sat around getting high every afternoon and partying out every night and then sleeping all day again and repeated that cycle, while his mom supported us and kept giving him the funds to keep us tweaked. She finally got fed-up and started coming down on us pretty hard about getting jobs and to stop bumming our lives away. One of our party friends got us laborer jobs with a small-time construction crew. This turned out to be worse than not having jobs. You see, the owner was a big-time drug dealer and the whole crew was like us - most worse. We all smoked pot on every break and lunch break. It got so bad that he would front us our weed one week and we would be working off that debt by working the next week. I was depressed that whole summer. My life was going nowhere. My parents called for the only time at the end of that summer and told me that they had taken a pastor job in a very small town in Michigan. They said that they were coming home to get all their belongings and U-hailing it all up north and my sister was going and I needed to decide what I wanted to do. My life was going nowhere and Jason’s mom was at her wit’s-end with us. It was only a matter of time before I ended up in jail or dead with the horrible things that we were doing. I decided to make a new start and said that I would go. I registered for school and went to school the first day. The freshmen all met-up in the gym that first morning for orientation and to meet the teachers. I was 3 years older than those kids and they were running around and playing like the kids that they were. Kids were abhorred seeing me smoking in the boy’s room and I told them all to fuck-off and grow-up. I was surrounded by immature freshmen that whole first day and quit right then and there. My parents were disappointed, but what did I care. My sister found out that there was a community school for dropouts. I signed up and started going there. And of course these were just the kind of kids that I didn’t need to be around. I got right back into the drug and party scene and became a town thug. I met my future wife the first time while going to score some dope from her sister’s boyfriend, which lived at her parents’ house. I talked to her a while my friend was hanging with my future brother-in-law. I thought she was pretty hot but she was only 15 at the time and I was 17 and I didn’t think I’d likely she her again anyways. A few months later I saw her again. 2 guys and I were cursing Main Street and picked up her and her 2 friends. I immediately had my eye on her. It was Devil’s Night, which is the night before Halloween, where local kids would toilet paper and egg peoples’ houses. I had never heard of it, but hey, it was a new state. When they got in they asked what was up with the rifle in the back seat. For some reason my dad had left it the car; I told them to just sit on it. No telling what they were thinking about at that point. I didn’t even get a chance to talk to her because soon after picking them up I was pulled over by the cops. The girls worried about the guy and so was I although I said to just keep sitting on it so the cop wouldn’t see it. I know he pulled me over because we were young and I had out of state plates and it was Devil’s Night. The cop lied and said that he pulled me over because I forgot my blinker at the turn. He was a real dick and made us all get out. He asked if I had any eggs in my car or anything else to hide. I kind’a lied and said no; well I didn’t have any eggs anyways. He quickly saw it and told me he was arresting me. Me, ever the comic for my adoring crowd; I screamed Rodney King over and over as he bent me over the car and cuffed me. He slammed my head off the roof while putting me in the back seat and I shut the hell up. I had been working the last few weeks along with my friends doing phone polls about the upcoming elections. My dad got my money I had saved and bailed me out.

I GOT PISSED

Some guys from other crews were talking about a resent child custody battle of another employee in the press control where I was standing and was half-ass part of the conversation. We were all happy that the guy got his kid. BUT, during the discussion they were talking about why he got the kid. One guy says that he didn’t understand why it took years to come to a resolution. He said that the judge had an easy decision because she was Bipolar. The other guy says no, she was schizophrenic, but they are basically the same thing. They didn’t take her kid from her because of that; they took her away because she was a bad mother, a drug addict, didn’t comply with the court resolutions over and over, and had already lost her 2 other kids for neglect. But I didn’t mention this because I was fuming at their ignorance. I told the mental illness ignorant bastards that there are huge differences. One guy said that I was the psych major so I should clear it all up for them. They probably were wondering why I was aggravated. I explained it all for them the best I could. What really pisses me off is that the major majority of this wonderful country is totally uninformed and ill informed about our illness. We are portrayed in the media and TV shows as total psychos that will snap at any moment and kill everyone in sight. I’m really getting sick of this shit. Every time someone kills someone or more than one person the “experts” start guessing that they are bipolar before anything is even known about the situation. It irks the shit out of me. The stigma that surrounds us at the mere mention of our illness is totally irrational and negative, degrading, demoralizing, and ultimately discriminating. We are stereotyped horribly in the media. One thing positive that I have noticed lately is a few bipolar meds are being advertised on TV. (Although I don’t agree with med advertisements because they take away form Drs diagnoses and horribly increase health care costs.) Maybe that will open the communication lines to the ignorant. OK, rant over.

How I Lost God – Which Turned Into a Long-Condensed Story of My Dysfunctional Life: Part 10

I moved back home and was allowed to go to that high school again because the expulsion was only for the prior year. I got right back in with my little gang of punks. One guy was a senor and had so many credits that he only had to go to school for 2 morning classes. That quickly became the daily norm to skip the rest of the day after 2nd period. I would always piss off the teachers by showing up in classes on Fridays and Ace the tests that the kids had been studying for all week. The teachers would always say, look who showed up for class again while calling roll, and the kids would laugh at my dumbass. We all had licenses and drank and got high every day. I would show back up at home at all hours of the night, eat, shower, and go listen to tunes in my room until I fell asleep. I can’t even begin to tell you all the dumb shit that I did that year, mostly because it would be incriminating evidence and if you haven’t already left my blog for good, you would. I once again got expelled even though I had basically quit anyways. They just pulled me into the office one day and said that I was a detriment to all the hardworking students and that I just wasn’t allowed on campus any longer. I agreed with them and left, quiting school in the 9th grade. I got a job at the local Burger King and was embarrassed daily as the juniors and seniors came in for lunch every day. So to feel better about myself I chewed on their pickles and spat on their hamburgers daily and ordered them up with a sly knowing smile. Man, was I a piece of shit. I truly don’t know what made me grow the fuck up and turn around my demented, sick, self-destructive, ways – well yes, actually I do – a good woman and needing to be a good father to two wonderful children. But I’ll get to that real soon. I soon got with a very nice looking senior, which was my friend’s girlfriend’s sister that was totally straight-laced, was still a virgin, barely drank, was an A-student, and was deciding which college she wanted to attend. She got with me because she finally decided, I guess, that she wanted to lose he virginity and figured I was the guy for the job. She dumped her current clueless boyfriend and started dating me because I always made her laugh while we were over visiting her sis. I obliged her and stayed with her for a while until I got in real heavy into the party scene. I ended up not visiting her often anymore as I virtually started living at a flophouse in a housing projects. I am truly lucky to be alive with all the violence and shit going on around me. These people were truly the scum of the earth and my 17 year’s old ass was nuts-deep in the lifestyle. I saw everything you could imagine while being there off and on. I had been there for over a week straight on one long bender and my best friend, which I had even isolated myself from because of the drugs, brought her there to talk to me. I was trashed and went out and kind’a sobered up a little so I could have a serious chat. She started crying seeing me that way and told me that she couldn’t stand to see me destroying my life anymore. She gave me an ultimatum, basically asking me to give that shit up and come back to her or stay and continue killing myself. Summer was basically almost there and she would be leaving for college anyways so I told her that she was way to good for me and that I was only holding her back. That she had a whole life of success ahead of her with college and all and that I was going nowhere. She gave me a long hug and wished me the best, she got in her car and left, and I went back in and commenced to get fucked-up for another few days.

How I Lost God – Which Turned Into a Long-Condensed Story of My Dysfunctional Life: Part 9

I went back and lived at home for the summer, fully intent on going back to live with my uncle when school started back up. I met a new kid that was also living on campus and he talked me into going to his youth group. I made fast friends with the kids there and they didn’t need me to corrupt them; they were already there. I got into a small group with 2 others there and one of their friends that was already 21 and the debauchery ensued. We thought we were a gang and did some extremely horrendous things together. Put it this way, I stole my father’s gun and ended up having to throwing it in a river. And no, I didn’t kill anyone. They tried to talk me into staying with my parents and attending school there, but I declined. I was going to get into some bad trouble hanging with them and I knew that it was time for me to get away from them before I ended up in prison. I made some phone calls at the end of summer and decided to live with my best friend Cliff, his older sister, and their single mom instead of my drunken uncle at the beginning of 9th grade. I was going to be good I had decided. We had to commute an hour one-way to get to school, which was a different school that consolidated a lot of smaller middle schools from a few small districts into one large high school. I should have already had my license, because I was already 16, but they didn’t have that program in middle school, obviously because kids aren’t supposed to fail twice. It was kind’a cool, because the driving instructor would pick us up, along with 2 other local kids, in the morning a few days a week, and we would take turns driving to school and back. Cliff got his learner’s permit and I got my real license. His sister was out of school and going-out with a college student and we would spend weekends with them at his apartment instead of me going home on the weekends. They would let us get drunk. It was new for Cliff (other than at the previous summer’s church camp,) but not for me of course. His mom left for work before we left for school and got back late in the afternoon so we began skipping school and drinking liquor that her boyfriend would buy us with money that his mom supplied us for school and odds and ends. We started slow, but got to be 3 or more days a week. Things got bad from there and my friend and I had a falling out, for no other real reason than we were with each other 24/7. Oh yea, plus his mom started getting calls from school. I was only there for the first marking period. I left for home that day. During those few months I had gotten pretty close with his uncle Frank that lived next door and visited him on most days. I had always dropped by and said hi while visiting Cliff the year prior. He had a hair-lip and it was hard to understand him and even worse when drinking. He was a bad drunk and was always very depressed and was always happy to see me and have someone to talk to. The only other people that talked to him were a couple that lived across the street. They were shit and only were nice to him because he would give them money that they would never payback, but he kept giving to them because he thought they were truly his friends. One night he called them at 3am and told them that he left a note in the mailbox. They said whatever and that they were trying to sleep and didn’t find it odd, they told us later. Frank then went out to his shed and hung himself. It had a low ceiling and he actually had to hold his feet up to die or the jump off the chair broke his neck; I’m not positive which way he killed himself. I had bummed 2 cigs off of him the day before, until I got to go to the store and get my own. In the morning while waiting for the driving instructor to show-up, I started towards his house to repay him his 2 smokes and almost made it to his driveway, where I would have walked right by the opened shed and saw him hanging. The student driver car pulled into Cliff’s drive, so I had to turn around and get in the car. We got picked up from school later that morning and were told the bad news. Cliff’s father had just killed himself the Thanksgiving prior. He had recently been diagnosed with MS and took losing his strength and muscle control very hard and had become very depressed and distant with his family. He left the Thanksgiving table and went into the garage, put a 12-gauge in his mouth, and blew his head off. Cliff got anything he wanted because he was traumatized. After Frank died his mom was really worried because she thought the men in his bloodline had a faulty gene, because the last 3 men of his lineage had all committed suicide. First was the grandfather year prior and then both of his only sons. (Cliff’s dad and uncle.) His death bothered me because I had gotten so close to the depressed man. It was the first funeral that I attended. The wake was open-casket. He looked like a hollow husk of a human, like the long dead carapace of an insect. The make-up made him appear an imitation of man, resembling a wax mannequin. I stood staring at his body and found myself compelled to repay my debt to this man. I took out my pack of cigarettes placed 2 of them if his front suit pocket and said goodbye.

How I Lost God – Which Turned Into a Long-Condensed Story of My Dysfunctional Life: Part 8

I had made up with my alcoholic uncle by this time via phone and he was willing to take me back again so I could attend school. I had to meet with the Principle again and she said that if I promised to be a good kid, she would rescind her previous threat and let me back in. She stated that other than that one major incident I wasn’t too bad the last year. I had gotten caught fingering a cheerleader on the school bus on an away baseball game at the end of the year. She still was extremely pissed about that and told me that she wouldn’t even tolerate seeing me kissing on campus, but let me stay, because she said that I was an A-student and that all the kids missed me. I was really worried that she wouldn’t forgive that transgression, but for some reason she did. I was once again back with teens that legitimately cared for me. It was really worth the squalor in which I lived, to be with that group of friends. There was never anything in the fridge but condiments and only sugar, flour, and sometime crackers in the cabinets. Roaches everywhere, and when you turned on the lights at night myriad roaches would flee the scene. I wonder how many I swallowed in my sleep? He lived day-to-day. He bought just enough 40-ounce bottles of cheap beer, generic smokes, gas, and food to make it until the very next day. You see, he didn’t want to mess up and accidentally spend too much on food and gas by buying more than a day’s worth, because when it got towards the end of the week he might not have enough money before his check for smokes and his almighty beer, because it could be sitting in his tank or fridge. That was a no-no. One thing I can say is that he always made it to work; I guess you would call him a functioning alcoholic. Every morning I would hear him in the bathroom puking up the last of his bile and then loudly brushing his teeth. I had to wash every day with dish soap. We almost always ate chicken because it was cheap. Thank God for school lunches - and there aren’t too many kids that would say that. They were the happiest times of growing years though. Everyone liked me and I was the most popular kid in our small school. It was a great place. There were only two classes in that small rural school. It was about 50/50 white and black, but for some odd reason there was absolutely no racial division and everyone hung out with everyone. Well, there was this one Goth kid, back when they just called them headbangers, but he got the shit kicked out of him about once a week, and for some reason still couldn’t stop saying hateful, racist things. After a few months of that, I got tired of seeing my friends get suspended for fighting and seeing him always by himself, so I finally called a meeting in the schoolyard, and talked everyone into a truce. Eventually he even became a semi-welcome part of our large clique, although he was always considered weird because he liked to cut himself. I loved it there. I was the worst kid in school and I was actually on my best behavior. I never got suspended the rest of that year. All the teachers knew that I smoked and turned a blind-eye because I was the unnamed leader of the kids and I never encouraged the other kids to smoke or do the things that I was known for, to all the faculty that read my ever-thickening file. I actually used to get out of class in one period to get coffee for that teacher in the janitor’s room and would sit for 10 mins or so and smoke with the janitor and lunch ladies. I also was an A-student again and the one teacher that I used to give shit the year before was a youth group leader at the church right beside our roach-infested trailer park. We became to understand each other and she let me get away with a lot that other teachers wouldn’t have after I started. The kids talked me into going and although I corrupted them somewhat, I purposely never tried to get them to do anything I was known for, other than having sex with a few of them. I never drank or did drugs that year. I actually went to bible camp for the first two weeks after school got out for the summer. I wasn’t real good there I will admit. I had reunited with my childhood friend whom stole the cigarettes, because my uncle lived close to my original NC hometown. I talked Jason into going to my youth group towards the end of the year and we both went to camp together. We smuggled in a lot of booze and had a party with all my normally good-mannered friends. We didn’t get caught, but I always did feel bad about pushing them towards their repressed inherent experimental teenaged nature.