Friday, October 29, 2010

Life's Curveballs - A Former Classmate's Tragic Loss

His name is Chris Granju. His family went to church at St. John's Episcopal Church in Knoxville, TN, where my family went and where my father's funeral was held. I also remember my grandparents square-dancing with his parents on occasion.

The Granju family was, like so many families in our town, wholesome, kind, delightful. They valued community and education. Good people.

Chris was always so well-mannered. He and I were about the same age. We were in the same Sunday school class at St. John's, and both frequently went to "P.E.P." meetings on Wednesday nights.

I'm sure if you had asked anyone back then, nobody would ever have thought that "little Angie" would ever end up in prison. To be sure, my life has taken many unexpected turns. Add all of them together, however, and the grand sum is nothing compared to what Chris and his family have gone through.

I'd been seeing the promotional teasers for "Henry's Story", and I knew it was about "some kid who died of a prescription drug addiction". I was drawn to the story because it was about a local family and was a local news special. I had hoped to watch it, but hadn't made special plans to do so. Now, however, I'm very glad that I happened to have the television on when it aired.

In all honesty, the reason the television was on is because normally I watch "Wheel of Fortune" at that time. (Ok, so I don't actually watch it. I glance at the puzzle long enough to figure it out, then go back to my six or seven tasks which I am simultaneously attempting to complete.)

"Wheel of Fortune" was pre-empted by "Henry's Story". Somehow I knew this was going to be a powerful story, but I had no idea it would hit so close to home...

The name Granju is not a common name. When I first heard that Henry's last name was Granju I immediately thought of Chris. Moments later, I felt a cold chill run down my spine as I saw Chris Granju appear on my television screen and realized that it was his son that had died at age 18.

I've never had kids. I've instinctively known that even the possibility that something awful might happen to any children I would have would add far too much anxiety to my already anxiety-ridden life. People tell me they think I would have made (or still could possibly make) a great mother, but it's not something I can see myself handling without constant feelings of anxiety and inadequacy getting in the way.

So many seem to think that there is a formula for raising healthy, well-adjusted kids. Take them to church (or not), send them to private school (or home school them), communicate well with them about alcohol, drugs, sex...

Henry Granju went to private (Episcopal) school. He had two parents who, even though they were divorced, loved him very much. He had an extended family who also loved him dearly. Friends. Community.

Henry Granju also had a lot of pain in his heart. This pain could not be lessened simply because he had a loving family, friends, access to a community of people who would do anything they could to help anyone who needed it. Ultimately, this pain led him down a road that ended his life far too soon. Now, his family has pain that surpasses exponentially the pain that any one person could possibly feel.

Losing a child is the worst possible loss. We bring children into the world to nurture them and watch them grow into the future adults who will help make the world a better place where we have failed to do so. We do not expect them to be devoured by that world before our own lives are over. Sadly, it happens far too often.

I don't care whether you are an atheist, a Christian, a Muslim, a Satanist, or a Wiccan, losing your own child will cause you the same unbearable pain. Please, share this video (link below) with anyone you know who has "children", regardless of their age. It may save their lives.



Thursday, October 21, 2010

Emerging From Hell After A Worm In My Apple

Well, it appears that my post about problems I was having with Apple has disappeared. (!?!) So, I will start my update by giving the background story...

First, some crucial info.: I had an Apple iPhone 3Gs 32G. I use it not only as my only telecommunications device, (no land line phone), but also to keep track of my personal life (health/medication for myself and others, apps. for everything from banking to cooking) and I find it CRUCIAL in my business life. (Appointments, database management, writing projects, etc.)

On Saturday, October 16, 2010 at approximately 1:30 p.m. I decided that, since the Apple iPhone iOS 4.1 had been out for several weeks, any bugs it might have initially had would surely have been resolved, and that I should go ahead and update my phone via iTunes.

I connected via U.S.B. to my computer, iTunes popped up, and I proceeded to back up and then update my iPhone. Problem: both the phone and iTunes froze just before the update was finished. Upon control-alt-delete of iTunes and a reboot of the iPhone, I tried again. At that point, I got an error message of "3014" each time I attempted to update, which is supposed to indicate not enough hard drive space or another user-side issue, but in this case it did not.

After doing some troubleshooting on my end (verifying most recent version of iTunes, uninstalling/reinstalling, checking firewall settings, checking port settings, trying different U.S.B. ports and cords,standing on my head, etc.) I realized that there was something going on that I could not address from my end. What was worse, is that the iPhone was stuck in "restore" mode, only it wasn't even an actual functioning "restore mode" because you couldn't restore from backup, even in D.F.U. mode. (D.F.U. mode is Device Firmware Upgrade mode, which requires some programming via holding down the home and power buttons of the phone for different amounts of time in different sequences.)

I got through to Apple's customer care pretty quickly, and was told that their activation/update servers were completely down, that there had been some scheduled maintenance that someone supposedly scheduled during the day instead of at night, like they were supposed to, and that until it went back up, I would not be able to do anything with my phone. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that they also told me they had no estimated time for when the servers might be back up. (They were down from Saturday morning until Sunday morning.)

I immediately had to cancel my plans for the day, as I tried repeatedly in vain to get my phone updated and working. I couldn't make or receive calls, couldn't do anything at all with the phone. It had become a paperweight.

During this time, Apple did NOT put ANY warnings on their web site or on iTunes to let people know there was a server issue. This is unfortunate, because many people update on weekends, when they aren't as busy and have an hour or two they can devote to doing so. This means that many people ended up with dead iPhones unnecessarily, and that really is a shame.

While waiting for the server to go back up, I surfed the net looking for others who had the same problem. There were thousands of posts, most by folks who, like me, had spent hours trying Apple's recommended troubleshooting steps, only many of them still didn't realize that it was an Apple issue and were pulling their hair out (many people actually claimed to be pulling their hair out) trying to figure out what was going wrong.

I shared what I had been told by Apple with as many as I could, but I'm sure there are many people who still don't know what happened. Apple should not be surprised if they start seeing many abandon iPhones and moving to Droid systems, simply because they don't understand what happened to their phone and they now perceive the iPhone to be unreliable, even though it's probably about as reliable as any other phone.

Sunday I called Apple again. This time, they said their servers were back up, yet many of us were experiencing a total freeze of both iTunes and the iPhone at exactly the same spot (2/3 of the way through the update/restore process) and were STILL unable to get our phones working. (What is the point of backing up your phone if you can't restore from backup in a situation like this?)

I made it clear to the representative I was speaking to that not being able to use my phone AT ALL for the past day and 1/2 was NOT acceptable. He understood the seriousness of losing the ability to use the phone and access the data on it, and, since my phone was still under warranty, made an appointment for me to go to the local Apple store and get a replacement phone. (One can not accomplish this at an AT&T store. It must be done at an Apple store.)

Note: Technical support runs out for the iPhone 90 days after purchase unless you purchase an extended technical support package, otherwise you have to pay for technical support after that. However, if it is an issue related to a firmware upgrade problem, that does not seem to apply and they do not require a payment to speak to technical support.

I wonder how many people hung up and didn't bother to wait to speak to anyone at hearing the recording warn them that they might have to pay for technical support on this call? This may be one of the main reasons that Apple is unaware of just how many people were affected by this issue, even though I was told they were receiving many calls.

I went to the Apple store at the appointed time, believing that I would be in and out in a few minutes with a replacement phone that I could restore from backup. (That's what I had been told.) Of course, it actually took more than an hour, because they first wanted to try to get the old phone working. (They couldn't.)

So, they went to the back to get my replacement phone, then called a supervisor back there, stayed gone a long time, and came back to tell me that they did not have any 3Gs 32G models available. I had two options: wait a week (with NO working phone!) for them to order one, or take them up on their offer to give me a new iPhone 4 instead. (Gee, can you guess which option I chose?)

I've never been wild about the ergonomics or the appearance of the iPhone 4, having been very fond of the attractively curved and comfortable models that came before it. It feels "clunky" in my hand, and takes some getting used to. That being said, I must say that the new features have really grown on me.

The dual-cameras that allow for video calling with other iPhone 4 users are really awesome. (Now you can also check to see if you have boogers hanging out of your nose without a mirror!) But, what's even more impressive, is the quality of the cameras themselves!

The iPhone 3Gs was a greatly-improved camera over previous models, but this phone has a camera that truly puts even stand-alone digital cameras and video cameras to shame. Turning the camera on, I can actually see the room through the camera more clearly and seemingly better-lit than in real life, (how is that possible???), and that's without using the built-in flash, which also doubles as a great flashlight in a pinch. (...and this thing which tells time! You'll shoot your eye out, kid!)

The display, while hard to imagine a better, more beautiful display than what Apple has already brought us in previous models, is also super-hero turbo-charged with impossibly vivid and high definition clarity. I. Am. Impressed.

Adding a case to the phone has helped somewhat with the ergonomics issues, and the slightly more narrow size makes it easier for a smaller hand to hold and operate without requiring the other hand. Just for the record though, I'd still like to see a return to the aesthetically and ergonomically-pleasing curves of previous models.

One more worm to go: when I got home and restored from backup, the data from my apps showed up in my phone as "other" in iTunes, but the apps themselves did not load.

Yes, I can re-load them, but it's a major pain for someone like me who does beta-testing for multiple app developers, (I have many jobs - survival requires diversification.), because I had over 300 apps on my phone.

That's why at 1 a.m. several days after getting the new iPhone 4, I'm still in the process of putting everything back in place. Thankfully, all of the data associated with each app. is loading into the app. once the app. is downloaded to the phone, so I guess I should be happy about that. Oh yeah, and the fact that I didn't have to extend my contract with AT&T OR pay the more than $300 with tax for the new iPhone 4 doesn't upset me at all.

:-)

Update: I'm glad I set the phone up as a "new" phone under iTunes before I restored from the backup of my old phone, because I've just learned that the original 4.1 update caused many phones to reboot after just a few minutes on a call. Apparently, you have to go to the Apple store to get a "clean" version of 4.1 - unless they've updated it on their servers. Glad they put the "clean" version on my iPhone 4 before I left. Now I know why they did it there at the store. I've had enough worms in my Apple already. One more and I'm calling it rotten! 

Note to Steve Jobs: REALLY??? You're concerned about stability issues with FLASH??? REALLY??? Isn't that kind of like Osama Bin Laden being concerned about vandalism?

Yes. It's a love-hate relationship I have with Apple.

A.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Dealing With The Sad Casualties Of Delusion

I have a friend whose life seems to parallel my own in many ways, or maybe it's the other way around. In any case, we are both able to relate to one another quite well as a result of our similar experiences.


First, I'll tell you about my friend's recent discovery: A man she works with (who also has a crush on her) started a rumor that she was having an affair, knowing that her girlfriend (yes, she's gay) would hear the rumor and hopefully break up with her. The intended and/or hoped for result was that the woman would then become available, and the man who started the rumor would have a chance with her. Why anyone would think that a break-up with someone would suddenly cause a gay person to become straight is something I don't understand, but that's a topic for another time.


Almost 25 years ago, I had a boyfriend I was crazy about. He seemed like a really nice guy, and we could both see ourselves spending the rest of our lives together, although we both had good enough heads on our shoulders to know that we should give ourselves until at least 25 before we got engaged.


He was a wonderful person to have in my life. My father had just died a year earlier and I found myself living in a new town and going to a new high school. I had dated some jerks at my previous high school, and it was so refreshing to have a boyfriend who truly seemed to care about me as much as I did about him.


One day, he just stopped talking to me. There was no explanation. No break-up. He just stopped talking to me. He didn't return my calls, he wouldn't look at me, it was as though I had dropped off the face of the planet. I never understood what happened, and chalked it up to a guy just not mature enough to be in a relationship, even though I felt as though there must be something I was missing.


Several years later, I was working as a deejay at a radio station and got a call from a friend I hadn't heard from since high school graduation.


His name was Jimmy. We met in homeroom when I first changed schools, mainly because he happened to be sitting in front of me. He was a short little guy whom others called a troll. He was mostly shunned by the other kids, but I thought he was nice and appreciated that I had an instant friend upon going to a new school in a new town.


Jimmy and I talked on the phone often. He brought my books and assignments to the house when I was out of school for several months due to a prolonged illness. He was a good friend.


Jimmy and I never dated. In fact, I had no idea he had any interest in me beyond friendship. Of course, I'm always the last to know.


When Jimmy called me years later, I invited him to the radio station to hang out while I worked the night shift. Between announcements, we drank Slurpees (I know, the story would sound much cooler if I said we drank liquor, but I've never been much into alcohol.) and reminisced about our high school days.


We talked about how, in just a few short years, our lives had changed so much, yet not so much. It was a nice visit, but near the end, things got pretty intense.


Jimmy confessed to me that he had carried a flame for me, and that all through high school he was jealous that I was dating someone else. He also told me that he had lied to my boyfriend and told him that he and I were seeing one another, and that I didn't have the heart to tell him.


It felt like the floor had dropped out from under me. Jimmy? My friend? Lied about me to someone I loved? What's worse, is that my boyfriend apparently believed the lie, and I then realized why he had stopped talking to me.


Jimmy said he had hoped that he and I would get together after the breakup, and that's why he had done what he did. I was flattered, and the fact that I viewed Jimmy as a special person in my life made it easier to forgive him, but it shattered my sense of trust in people in general, what little I had managed to have to start with after some of my childhood experiences.


For a long time, I wondered if I might have ended up marrying and having children and having a very different life than I ended up having if Jimmy hadn't lied. But then, someone pointed out to me that anyone who would believe something about me and then act on it without even discussing it with me first was probably not someone who truly cared about me that much in the first place. Maybe I was just being naive and the romance was just a ruse to get into my pants. I'll never know.


People tell me I'm cute. Truthfully, though, I'm nothing to write home about. I weigh more than someone my height should, and I am, after all, 41.


That's why it is quite shocking to me to learn that something very similar has recently happened with yet another friend I've had for several years. This time I'm not in a romantic relationship that has been destroyed by it, but suffice it to say there has been damage and unnecessary drama, and I SO dislike drama.


Jimmy had some mental health issues, and years later I was devastated to learn that he had killed himself. He was a lost soul, and I have a tendency to attract that kind of person into my life. This most recent situation is also someone who is a lost soul. I try to be a good friend, but sometimes it seems that no good deed goes unpunished.


I'm not sure what is more disturbing:


1) the fact that someone who claims to have romantic feelings for you lies and says awful things about you in the irrational hope that it will somehow increase their chances of developing a relationship with you (Only someone in love could engage in such irrational thinking, eh?)


or


2) a person (or people) you thought loved you and had your back would believe these things, and then totally change their attitude toward you without even telling you why


There are two kinds of people in our lives: the kind who would find anything negative they heard about you to be difficult to believe, even if it was true, and the kind who just really don't think much of you to start with, or harbor resentment towards you, and are therefore all too eager to believe anything negative they hear about you and almost seem to relish spreading the rumors.


I suppose it's better to know how people really feel about you than it is to labor under the delusion that they have your back. I don't have the strength to carry grudges. That is a burden I can't afford to bear. However, I can tell you that there is a great feeling of loss that comes with knowing that you are a fool to think that certain people have your back, or have unconditional love for you. I suppose, at least, we can be happy for those who do.


A.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Buried Alive: Clawing Our Way Out Of The Abyss

I'm watching the rescue of the Chilean miners. They are discussing the depth at which the Chilean miners were trapped underground. Of course, we all knew they were deep underground. I don't know about you, but I hadn't given much thought to how deep underground they were. I just knew they were deep enough to be trapped and to make it very difficult to get out alive.


It has always been difficult for me to process just how huge the earth really is. Perhaps it goes back to when I was a child and my neighbor, Scotty, warned me that digging in the dirt with my kitchen spoon past the red clay would allow the devil (who, in my mind, looked like Super Nut, the cute little guy with the cape on the package of Goobers, circa 1973) to come out and "get me". That just made me want to dig more, so I could see the cute little devil goober in person!


So, when I heard them say that the miners were at a depth far deeper than the Empire State Building, it really struck me how amazing it is that these guys are surviving the whole ordeal and finally being brought to the surface.


There is so much symbolism for me in the whole scenario of being trapped underground, then brought to the surface. I have always been both fascinated and terrified by the idea of being "buried alive".


The Vanishing, with Jeff Bridges (a favorite) and Sandra Bullock (another favorite), was a haunting tale of a disturbed man who buries a stranger alive. He does this just so he can prove to himself that he is capable of being a good person, since in his mind, only someone capable of evil is also capable of making a choice to be good. (Not sure I understand that logic, but whatever.) Sometimes I think the people who write these things are more disturbed than any psycho killer!


In the movie "Kill Bill 2", Uma Thurman's character is buried alive and, impossibly, manages to escape. It is such a dramatic scene, and she plays the role so well. One can feel the character's terror and panic, the hopelessness, the doom. And yet, she is inspired by her training with Pei Mai to use her skills to defy the odds and, quite literally, arise from the grave.


When KB2 was in theaters in 2004, I must have seen it more than a dozen times in the theater for that scene alone. I was so inspired by it that, for my birthday that year, I got a few friends and co-workers together and had myself buried alive (pine box and all) for 15 minutes. I must say that it was extremely liberating to face such a fear by embracing the object of it in such a way, and then to enjoy the pseudo-rebirth upon resurfacing. (Not even the fact that I ended up fracturing my collarbone and spraining my ankle after tripping afterwards could put a damper on the experience.)


A few weeks later, there was a magazine in the U.K. (Bizarre Magazine) that interviewed me about the experience after reading about it on my blog. The story never made it to print, and I'm guessing it's because, even though she asked me about 20 different ways if I got turned on sexually by the experience, the answer was always "no". It was more of an intellectual thrill for me, which doesn't make for an interesting story to readers of a fetish magazine.


I didn't realize it then, but I can clearly see now that part of my desire to be buried and then brought back to the surface was about wanting to kill my afflictions (O.C.D., anxiety) and reclaim my essence (creativity, expression).


I had lost so much of myself over the past couple of decades that there didn't seem to be much of me left for a while. I sometimes feel as though life has whittled away at me from the beginning, so that I've never actually had the chance to grow upward, always having to grow more substance to replace what was cut away.


I've had a rough summer, and so have many others I know. That being said, few of us have had the kind of harrowing experience that the Chilean miners have had.


When I was in prison, the only way I could think of to adequately explain to someone what it was like to be isolated from the rest of the world for two years was to tell them to "Ponder everything you have done over the past two years. Every meal you have eaten, every night you have slept, everywhere you have gone, all of the people with whom you have interacted. Now, imagine all of that never happened and the whole time you were sitting in jail." It's a huge loss of life. It's not a loss of your entire life, but it is a significant part of your life, and it affects the rest of your life in many ways. The fact that you were put there for allegedly having done something wrong in no way makes the post traumatic stress disorder many people struggle with upon release any easier to deal with. If only that were so!


And yet, as difficult as that was, I can only imagine that it must have been far worse for the miners in Chile. They didn't know for sure that they would make it out alive. They were deep in the bowels of the earth, unable to shower, unable to receive emergency medical care, unable to receive mail or make phone calls...


Think about everything you have done since August 5. Vacations, weddings, work days, weekends, meals, movies, places you've gone, people you've seen. During that time, the miners were trapped underground and unable to do anything but stare at the same underground tomb and the same co-workers. Their world was extremely limited. Their lives were on hold.


The abstract idea of being trapped underground for 69 days is bad enough, but when you put it into real terms of your daily life and then contrast the two, it really puts it all in perspective.


The fact that these people have survived is extremely inspiring to me, as is the outpouring of love and concern on a global level. It's just what I needed to help get me out of my funk.


Thankfully, most of us will never experience something so terrible. However, it is worth noting that many people are experiencing their own difficulties, things which are difficult in their own ways and for which there is no public outpouring of support.


Deaths, debt, depression, divorce, illness, unemployment, even the frustrations of daily life, can weigh us down to the point where we feel overwhelmed and "buried alive". What good is the ability to walk freely on the surface of the earth if we feel as though we are smothering under the overwhelming pressures of daily life?


I have learned that, much like Uma Thurman's character in KB2, if we are to survive we must draw on whatever resources we have at our disposal and summon the courage and determination to use them in whatever way necessary to climb out of our (often self-imposed) tombs.


For me, I find strength in discovering what inspires others. Their words and actions can move me to believe that I can, once again, overcome life's assaults.


On some level, I believe that we all dwell within the confines of our own inner abyss. The key is finding ways to rise out of that abyss, using its dark energy to propel us towards the light of determination and accomplishment.


Recently, I read a couple of quotes from Twitter buddies that made me feel as though someone had inserted oxygen directly into my lungs.


The first I found under @WordWhispers: "Take your tears of grief outside, where the sun will paint wee rainbows between each drop."


Wow.


@NatashaBadhwar is one of the godesses of Twitter. Anything she writes is profound in one way or another and I have been honored (!) to have her read and comment on my blog posts in the past. I recently discovered at one of her links the following:


"As you find the courage to name what you may have lost on the way, you also find a way to reclaim it."


Regardless of whether these quotes are original to these two, or whether they found them inspiring and quoted them, the fact that they share them says much about who they are.


I highly recommend checking out their Tweets, and welcome any comments from you, dear readers, about what inspires you to keep breathing each day. After all, everyone can use some "mind-oxygen" on occasion.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some things I've lost on the way to name and reclaim.


A.



Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Falling Back - Dogs To The Rescue

Fall is here. I'm happy about that. Unfortunately, it seems that many of my friends are having a difficult time, as am I.

My friend Julie, whom I blogged about over the summer, and whose mother died just a few months ago, is now going through a divorce. She discovered that her husband of five + years has been cheating on her while she's been caring for her family.

What's worse, is that before she discovered he had a girlfriend, when she told him she wanted to go on a trip with me this month, he told her no, she couldn't, because she has a family to take care of. WHAT A DOUCHE!!! He's telling HER she has a family to take care of, even though her mother is gone and now it's just her and her 4-year-old adopted daughter, while HE is out screwing around. That's a DOUBLE DOUCHE!!!

This has all happened so fast that it's making MY head spin, so I can only imagine how Julie feels. Last week she found an apartment and I have been helping her with her move and trying to find new homes for her pets that she can't take with her to the new apartment.

Other friends are losing loved ones right and left, people they've known for ages who seem to be falling like leaves in the wind.

I don't like to blog about negative things, but sometimes it's good to get these things off of one's chest to make room for optimism and motivation.

I've been sick for a couple of days and am feeling so overwhelmed by everything I need to get done. I keep hoping for a major surge of energy to rush through me and help me get things done more quickly, but my concentration hasn't been good at all. I find it very difficult to focus lately.

I'm angry and frustrated, disappointed, stressed, and just plain blah.

I've got to go now (it's almost 5 a.m.) and pick up a small dog of Julie's that she can't find a home for. She's an adorable doggie, about three years old, tiny, and Julie named her "Big Mama", of course.



She will stay with us until I can find her a good home. It will be interesting to see how she and Booger interact. Mutt and Jeff?

Meanwhile, Booger is the SWEETEST dog ever. He's nice and big and solid so I can grab him and hug him and squeeeeeeeeeeze him when I'm having a rough day. He makes me happy. He's so pretty and adorable and his fur is so soft and shiny. I really can't imagine life without him.

Dogs. In the end, it's all about the dogs.


Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Disaster Has Struck

I'll start this post out by expressing gratitude that I am not in nearly as bad a crisis as I have been other times of my life... my house didn't burn down like before, I'm not in jail and/or prison, (One day I'll explain the difference for those of you who don't know.), and nobody that I know personally has died recently.


Having said that, I have nonetheless been dealing with a form of devastation that makes it feel as though all three things have happened. To fully understand, I will need to bore you with the details of my daily struggle with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Anxiety Disorder (which are Siamese twins in the mental health world, joined at the hip, heart, and brain).


My father was a severe obsessive-compulsive, and anyone who knew him well can verify that. However, those who know me well and have observed my struggle will tell you (as they have me) that mine is worse than my father's.


In many ways, I hide it well. It's my instinct to hide my weaknesses, so most do not realize that I have such a severe case unless they spend a lot of time with me. Otherwise, they may simply think that I am "fussy" and/or a "control freak".


I've had this problem since I was a child, the need to start over when making a spelling list if even the first stroke of the letter "A" in spelling my name was microscopically crooked. I would go through 20 sheets of paper to make a ten word spelling list, and it took me forever. Perhaps that is why my grades did not always reflect my true mastery of any subject - getting my work done on time - or at all - was very difficult for me.


I wasn't always as afflicted as I am now. It has gotten worse over the years with each passing trauma, including the illness and subsequent death of my father when I was 15, witnessing something terrible in my early 20's, a near-deadly house fire that destroyed everything merely hours after I had moved to a new city (no insurance) when I was 26, the untimely deaths of several co-workers I became close to over a ten-year span, the VERY stressful failure of my business more than five years ago, and the subsequent imprisonment for same.


Since then there have been some other, minor things that have aggravated the problem... my roommate almost dying of a subdural hematoma and reliving my father's illness while trying to save my roommate's life, getting robbed at gunpoint on Valentine's Day while delivering pizza, things like that.


To keep this post from being too awfully long, I will discuss some things in other posts that have occurred. Anyone in the mental health field would probably find this all very interesting. The rest of you may be bored by it, so I don't expect everyone to read all of this.


Anyway, keeping in mind the aforementioned things: a couple of weeks ago, after returning from Atlanta, I was updating some software for a database that I have been working on for a client for the past year. I had my data backed up, of course, so when the entire database got wiped out by a glitch in the software, I thought I was okay.


Unfortunately, the same glitch that wiped out the original database, corrupting the files beyond repair, also wiped out the backup. It is a very unusual situation, and the developer and I spent the entire day trying to get it back. He apologized to me profusely as I sat in tears on the phone. I know he felt awful, and I almost felt bad for him for feeling so terrible, but mainly I was just trying to keep on breathing.


A situation like this is bad if it happens to anyone. For me, it is $3,000 in bonus money that I won't get because I won't have the project finished on time, money I was counting on. What's worse, I have to start over COMPLETELY from scratch (which I already have), and work my way back up to the almost-completed stage before I can continue and finish the project and get even my basic completion fee for the project, which I have only half-collected. It will take me until the end of the year to finish.


What's worse, the feeling of shock and devastation brought a flood of feelings and memories into my mind of past disasters. I actually had the same feeling of panic for about a week after this happened that I had after almost dying in a house fire. The feeling of total devastation and losing everything was right there with me again, as though I had just lost everything I owned, even though I haven't.


I cried for two days, didn't go anywhere, didn't eat, didn't sleep, just felt sick. I didn't Tweet much or do much of anything. I was despondent and just felt dead inside.


I still find myself not believing that I really have to start all over and do this again, this year's worth of work. However, I found myself in a conversation with a Walmart clerk who said something to me that brightened my outlook: "Well, hopefully, in the process of doing all of that work this year, you've learned some things that may help you do things more efficiently this time around. Maybe it won't take you nearly as long to re-do it as it did to do it the first time around."


You know, she's right. What took nine months to do the first time will only take about three months to re-do. What amazed me, though, is to have such insight from such a random stranger, a Walmart employee no less! Most people paint Walmart employees as caricatures of southern, uneducated dingbats. I have found that, like most stereotypes, NOT to be the case, especially after that comment that was made to me a couple of weeks ago.


In fact, after doing most of my shopping at Walmart over the years, I can say that the Walmart employees around here are some of the most helpful, intelligent folks I've ever met. (Yes, I know many who think it is politically incorrect to shop at Walmart, but I don't have the financial luxury of being politically correct when it comes to my shopping habits, so there will be no boycotts of Walmart in my household.)


Still, it's been a terrible thing to deal with, and I'm still struggling  to stay out of a major depressive funk. I don't get this depressed often - it takes something major, like a house fire or a death or incarceration - to get me like this, and this feels worse than many other things that have happened that were far worse than just losing a database. Maybe it's because I'm older at 41 and feel that I don't have time to waste. Maybe it's because I'm tired of having to start over all the time. Maybe it's because I am disgusted by the fact that I can drop my iPhone into the toilet and have it survive, only to lose an entire year's worth of work due to a software upgrade.


Oy, vey. And I'm not even Jewish.


A. 

Catching Up...

I'm going to try to summarize the past few weeks before I talk about what has put me into a seriously deep depression. My birthday was last month, and I went to Atlanta to see my mother a couple of days later. I hadn't spent more than a few hours with her in about 15 years, so we had a lot of catching up to do. Somehow, though, it seemed as though we hadn't had a long space at all between visits, as is usually the case with both her and my brother and most other family members whenever we do manage to get together.

I think part of it is that, when you go through horrendous things together, you develop a bond that transcends most things, including long spaces of time between being physically in one another's presence and/or even speaking.

It was a nice visit, and we went through some old boxes of mementos that I didn't even know my mother still had! One of them was a box that I only vaguely remember sending her back around 1993 for safekeeping. Some of the things it contained I don't even remember why I wanted to keep them or where they came from, but there were some things in there that I didn't realize still existed. I thought they had burned in the fire from the mid-90's when I lost everything I owned at the time.. I'm so glad they didn't! I guess it was a good thing I forgot about them for a while so they could stay safely where they were.

One of the items was a sugar egg my father bought for me in Nashville, TN when we visited there just a couple of years before he died. I couldn't believe that thing had been sitting in a box at the bottom of a closet, still wrapped in plastic, all those years. It is even more amazing to me that it is still in great shape!

Another item was a stuffed animal - a mouse - that my father had kissed and held when tucking me into bed one night. Yet another stuffed animal was a rabbit that my father had been given while in the hospital dying of brain cancer. There was a small wooden box that had belonged to him, along with a mint that was still in the package that had been placed on his pillow at a hotel where he had stayed at some point. Little things here and there, bits and pieces of the past that make me feel closer to him.

There was a box full of hundreds of slides, perhaps a thousand or so, that had belonged to Daddy, and I didn't think I would ever be able to see them since I don't know anyone who has a projector. Amazingly, a week later I was at Walmart cruising through the clearance aisle and found a machine that will convert slides to digital images on your computer. It had been $89 and was on clearance for $15! Of course, I bought it.

While in the suburbs of Atlanta where my mother lives, we drove around, running errands and shopping for groceries and supplies. The place doesn't even resemble what it was when my mother moved there 22 years ago. It has turned into another Mexican-American city. On every corner is a 24-hour check cashing joint, stores I used to recognize are now stores with Spanish names catering to the Mexican folks who have taken over the entire area. I have nothing against the fact that these people have come here in order to work and earn a living and support their families, but there truly is a lot more crime there now, and the majority of them throw trash in my mother's yard as they walk through it to go to the convenience store down the road. That is trashy, and it breeds resentment against them as a people. Even though I'm sure there are white people who do the same thing, that's not the kind of people who used to live in the subdivision.

There are many Spanish-speaking folks in this country who come here and conduct their lives with decency and common courtesy. Those are not the kind of people who have taken over my mother's neighborhood.

One night, we went to Steak and Shake and went through the drive -through, which is spelled "drive-thru" most places it seems. As we pulled forward to wait for our order, we witnessed a huge group of drunk folks who had convened in the parking lot. There was a Mexican couple getting physical in an argument on the sidewalk at the entrance, and a black dude vomiting to the side. Then, a couldn't-be-more-white girl came out and said to the fighting Mexicans "Take your shit home. This is the SUBURBS! We don't do this here!" It couldn't have been more stereotypical in all the negative ways. That's just how reality is sometimes.

Shortly after all of this began, about 7-10 cop cars showed up. Funny, "Cops" just came on television as I began this paragraph, and it was like watching an episode of "Cops" as we sat there at the Steak and Shake. We felt as though we had a ringside seat at a circus while we waited for our food, and that was our entertainment for the evening.

While in Atlanta, I managed to drop my iPhone in the toilet (after flushing, thankfully) and my life flashed before my eyes as I began to wonder if I had killed it. I did all of the things everyone told me not to do after I had already done them, but somehow it survived.

It was a somewhat depressing trip, seeing that the area is pretty trashed when it used to be so nice. I had a nasty slip and fall at a Walmart, and was very sore for a few days, but thankfully I wasn't hurt badly and didn't even bruise as badly as I thought I would.

Several witnesses to the incident encouraged me to tell customer service what had happened, because there was water on the floor that caused the fall, but there was no way anyone could have seen it - including any employees - with the new brighter-than-the sun lighting in the renovated store and the whiter-than-snow floor. An employee wiped up the water immediately after this happened, and seemed concerned - kept asking if I was okay.

It was clear that a couple of people thought I was throwing away an opportunity to rake in some dough by not making a big deal about my "injury", but when you've been TRULY injured in the past and deal with constant, chronic pain as I do, you're just really fucking grateful that you aren't seriously hurt and you don't try to exploit a nuisance injury. Yeah, I know, it's rare.

So that's what went on before something much worse happened the day after I returned home. More on that later.

A.

Friday, October 1, 2010

And another bomb of disillusionment hits its target...

I haven't written much lately. There has been much to write about, but I simply haven't had the emotional energy to do so. I'll discuss some of what has caused this in another post, but what I'm about to share with you now is so much more interesting to me that it just can't wait.

Now that I'm blogging this, I realize that it is this kind of disgust that I needed, perhaps, to get me back to my blog. Still, I wish there had been something different that had catapulted me into my desk chair. I guess I should just be glad something did.

First, I'll tell you the background story:

Years ago, I had a very interesting career as a research analyst and think-tanker. I was in demand partially because of my I.Q. test scores, (between 155 and 180, depending on the test) but mainly because the Meyers-Briggs personality test results show that I am an I.N.F.J. Less than 1 percent of the population is an I.N.F.J. and we tend to be quite useful in evaluating and analyzing situations and coming up with realistic solutions. (Except, in my case, I am not so good at coming up with solutions to my own problems. How ironic.)


Anyway, throughout my career in this field, I rubbed elbows with many interesting people. Some of these people I really looked up to, and some became very good friends. Over the past several months, I have begun to reconnect with some of these people with whom I lost touch over the course of my imprisonment and subsequent period of supervised release. Altogether, that's five years.


Five years is a long time for people to wonder what happened to you. Those who know me well know that I have always had a habit of disappearing for extended periods. Sometimes that's just what I have to do in order to get to a place where I can focus on whatever project I'm working on. Think tanks are very mentally taxing, and for me, it became a need to isolate myself from everything other than the project to which I was assigned, and I would actually become immersed in the project to the exclusion of everything else.


Those whom I consider to be true friends have expressed complete shock after learning what happened over the past 5 1/2 years of my life. They had assumed I was deeply immersed in several projects or had perhaps lost my mind and become a hermit living in a cave somewhere, writing theories on the walls, growing a beard and talking to soccer balls with seaweed for hair. Oops, never-mind. That was Tom Hanks in Cast Away...


I've taken my time reconnecting with people, because it's very emotionally taxing to relive everything by explaining where I've been and how I got there, why I wasn't able to communicate, etc. Regardless of whether one believes a convict deserved to be incarcerated or not, or whether or not it was "their own fault" for making the mistakes that put them there, the experience is no different to the person experiencing it than that of being kidnapped and isolated from the world for an extended period of time. The fear of being judged as a result of someone else thinking they have some moral high ground over you because you've been to prison and they haven't, and the fact that most people suffer from the delusion that you wouldn't have been sent to prison unless what you did was far worse than anything they have ever done, requires much courage to reintroduce yourself into their lives and "come out" to them.


So, it was with great disappointment that I learned recently about some things that went down with a group I was once loosely associated with. I say "loosely" associated with, because I never really cared for the nucleus of this group as much as I did the outer circle of the group. I considered these to be very cool people, misfits much like myself just trying to survive with whatever burdens had attached themselves to their backs, be it physical disability, mental or emotional idiosyncrasies, or whatever.


The nucleus of this group consists of a small handful of what could be considered B-list (or C or D-list) celebrities. (No, Kathy Griffin is NOT one of them. She's actually A-List in my book.) Those B-D-listers are not nearly as interesting as the people on the outer edges of their group, but they apparently hold themselves in very high esteem, as I have experienced first-hand the consequences of their over-inflated sense of self-importance.


It all started when I received a letter from a friend while I was in jail awaiting a court date. This friend was letting me know that there were some folks within our circle who had decided that I was someone to be ostracized and shunned, and that perhaps it was because they knew that I was aware of some things about their lives that they would rather not become public knowledge.


My response was that it made no sense for them to shun me out of fear or for any other reason, specifically because they were not perfect themselves, and I pointed out that the people in question had actually done things that, while perhaps devoid of ill-intent, could very well land them in prison if they were discovered.


I was making a point, not a threat. Yet somehow, my letter became the catalyst for a series of events that leaves me shaking my head in both disappointment and disgust. 


When I was released more than 3 1/2 years ago, I paid a visit to the federal building, where not only was I required to visit periodically throughout my period of supervised release, but where I also enjoyed speaking with some people who work there who were sympathetic to what they considered to be an overly-harsh sentence as they watched what took place with my case. (No doubt, these would be considered infidels to others who work with them.)


It was then that I learned that, while I was "locked up", there had been phone calls made to the prosecutor's office and/or probation office (which are essentially the same thing) by people claiming that I had "made threats" to "write nasty things about them in my blog". REALLY???


After I shared a good laugh with the person who told me this, my response was "Wow! That's awesome! Somebody really thinks my blog is extremely important and very powerful! Wish I had known!"


It was then made clear to me that even the folks receiving these calls at the federal building thought it was ridiculous. "Who cares? It's the internet! So what if someone writes mean things about you?" I suppose the idea that there were people campaigning to silence my freedom of speech at a time when I didn't even have access to a computer only made some of these federal employees even more sympathetic to my plight. They had seen me betrayed and badmouthed by people who had previously been close to me, and now they were listening to them attack my right to express myself by lying about me (which is itself, a crime, when lying to a federal officer of the court) and some imaginary threat to talk about their secrets on my blog. (Again, I'm flattered that my blog is perceived by my enemies/friend-emies as being so important, so influential and powerful as to even matter who or what I discuss.)


To make this even more absurd, many of the people in this "group" (for lack of a better term) are people who claim libertarian views, some of whom have been quoted as saying that nobody should go to prison for anything unless it involves physical harm or death, (I agree), all who claim to value freedom of speech and the Bill of Rights, (except for other people's rights when it inconveniences them, clearly), and at least one of whom used to keep a blog and was, herself, bullied into "not discussing anything to do with" the all-important nucleus of "the group". Oh, and let's not forget that one of these people was once heavily into recreational drugs.


Ok. So that was bad enough. But wait! There's more!


Last night, someone I hadn't spoken to in years contacted me and filled my ears with interesting tidbits, or rather, huge bombs of information so disturbing I couldn't believe it, even in light of what I already knew they had done several years ago by calling the feds about my alleged plan to take over the world with my blog.


Apparently, he had been paid/requested/strongly encouraged to insert himself into the personal lives of several people perceived to be "threats" to the nucleus of this group and their lifestyle and the secrecy of it all, posing as a friend while actually there to "keep tabs" on these people. Can you say CREEPY boys and girls?


Why he decided to tell me this, I'm not sure. Perhaps he's as fed up with their delusional sense of self-importance as others apparently have become. Maybe he feels guilty. He certainly has reason to be ashamed of feeding such a despicable group of hypocrites with such trust-betraying information. (Sorry, but you know you do.)


Just for the record, I'll be taking so many secrets I've kept for so many people to the grave with me that there won't be room for me in the casket. I'll have to be cremated. And, if I ever found myself in a position where I felt compelled to reveal a confidence with which I have been trusted, to a certainty it would have to be something of monumental importance. Sorry, but the insignificant details of your personal lives, your "secret activities", and indeed, you yourselves as human beings, just aren't important enough for this blogger to bother with.


Fortunately, in ironing out details of some upcoming public speaking and broadcasting endeavors, I've met some far more respectable people whom I'm sure are worthy of the upward-gaze they receive from someone of such insignificant stature as myself. Let's just hope I never end up in jail again, lest I discover that they too, have secrets of which they are afraid I'll blog about.


A.