In some respects they have: I have steady employment -- other than during the Covid Insanity -- and I'm with my "new" girlfriend for 12 years now... and I've learned a lesson: "See things for what they are".
Well, that was a difficult read. I admire your resilience in such difficult matters. My family is boring, Christian, no drugs, no smoking, no drinking, and that is a good thing. I married into dysfunction, but not so much my wife who escaped it....but her family and how they lived was to me culture shock as a young late-20 yo. I had never been exposed to it. My father was a smoker, that much I understand, and he died of lung cancer when I was a mere 3 yo. I almost lost my mom three months later from a brain aneurysm. God saved her. I would have been an orphan. I grew up with good friends who are still my best friends to this day 50 years later. We never did drugs. But I do see the ravages of alcoholism in one of them who had so much potential. May God bless you Capt.
Thank you for taking the time to read it. In retrospect, my older sister, despite all that, was the most brilliant woman I've ever known... my parents reported she could recite "The Night Before Christmas" verbatim -- at the age of two! OTOH the minister of the church I used to attend -- stopped attending due to the Covid Lunacy -- told me they were two of the most dysfunctional people he'd ever known... Well... products of The Great Depression, an oppressive social order -- Annapolis Valley Hard Shell Baptist in my dad's case, growing up in rural England, the daughter of a carpenter in my mother's, then the inferno of the Second World War... And here I am now, the last of them, supporting my wife, my vaccine-injured stepdaughter and our cat -- on a Security Guard's wages. But at least my discharge card from the Military was of far greater value to me in the end than my worthless degree in "Music Performance" ever was... I have my health, I'm on top of the grass, and I'm not an alcoholic...
We are more alike then different Capt Roy. Odd isn't it the rod we travel from where we start and where we finish. I have spent my life working and very little outside of work. Though work was my life I never made any friends while working. I was in the Oil and GAs industry didn't have any friends and did not fuckin want any either, still don't.
I was raised on a poor farm in Saskatchewan with a father who had no business being one. A man with a violent temper and would loose it over absolutely nothing. My older brother could do no wrong and I was the punching bag. Made me damn tough though. My parents had divorced and my twin sister went with mother whom i had never known and would regret meeting. But all that aside what we did do growing up in Someasscratchin was drink, f--k and fight and not necessarily in that order.
At the ripe old age of 16 after my father had taken and swing at me I proceeded to knock him the fuck out pack my bag and left finishing high school off on welfare back in the day when you were considered responsible at the age of 16 not at all now. All evil aside I was very close to my grandmother who regretted ever letting my father have possession of us or me particularly. She knew life was not going to be easy for me being aware of my brutally short attention span. Punched in the head to many times as a small child I am sure did not help the issue what so ever.
Back to when i had left to be on my own I went to school collected the welfare and worked hard, smoked hard and drank hard everyday. I had an acute sense of humor backed by a hair trigger temper and a negative attitude about most everything, thanks to my father. Quick with my mouth and even quicker with the fists with a pain threshold that was unmatched. Year of being the punching bag for dear old dad had some advantages. Once out of school I got a job in the Potash mines as most lost souls did. I probably would have retired there or died there had i not been injured underground. Got a 3 month vacation in hospital in Saskatoon and was off work for almost a year learning how to walk again. Could not work at the mien again and was given the GO F yourself hand shake and off the land the of Black Gold I went.
Probably not the best choice for a fledgling alcoholic weekend drug addict. At the age of 25 for what ever reason and my first and only actual girl friend I realized that the booze was not taking me where I wanted to go and quit. I am 66 now and still panic if i dont have my road mug coffee cup with me and it has to be with me at all times. I worked my way up through the ranks to Superintendent and then onto consultant. The short attention span which was a curse most of my life was now and valuable tool. Over time I got control of my temper. Got ride of the negative attitude and pointed out to assholes over the years that I spent a god part of my life being a hard core asshole and i can go there in a heart beat be careful how far you want to push me. ..lol..
The road we travel is a unknown when we head out and as soon as i figure out what I want to do with my life I will get right on that but until then I work and that Girl friend i mentioned before has been with me for 43 years sticking with me through The good and the bad one year I worked 345 days with out a day off and there she was still with me.
Would i do any of it differently if I was given the opportunity to do so. Probably not we are what God intended us to be and family well the only contact i have is with my older brother and youngest sister I made a promise to my Grandmother and my promise is rock solid and my twin sister and other sister they can well they can just stay f--ked off and friends still none but i have 1000s of acquaintances.
My wife and i do enjoy being alone. Last winter was the first time in over 30 years I was actually at home.
Capt Roy you went through some shit you did but you came out of stronger and better then before, yes it sucked at the time but we would not be who we are if life was any other way.
Well Captain, this is a raw and direct post you have written. Thank you for being so real. Life can be so shitty sometimes and then out of nowhere or maybe somewhere, a light can shine and good can happen. Behind every cloud, there is sun, but it is just hidden for awhile. Many of us have family issues. Let's face it we never picked them. But march on. You have your wife and tomorrow is another day. I know it can be hard to forgive and let go but I have done it and so can you. Love and Blessings.
Thank you for taking the time and trouble to read it. I had some trepidation with (re)posting it, it was so unrelentingly bleak... Waking up to reality can be a long-term and brutal process and having woken up.. things are not instantly "all better" and you don't necessarily step into the glorious sunshine of prosperity and joy as a consequence. That incident was the culmination of several experiences with my siblings and assigns before I finally, as rapper 50 Cent put it, "saw things for what they were." I have paid a bitter price for my loyalty to them over the years, and that's all I accomplished. I think of my ex for example, arriving in Canada just after Tiananmen Square, barely any English.. Haven't seen her in nearly 20 years... still, every good thing she has now was because I was in her life. Small thanks I got for it in the end. 'Course I also recall my friend Stefan's comment about his Chinese ex-wife, had reached the point in his relationship he hid the steak knives...😱 Oriental women only SEEM soft and gentle. They're hard as iron.. 🙄
But as Theodore Roosevelt said, "do what you can, where you are, with what you have." And also I suppose... "don't look back."🤔
It is tough to let go of things, resources, possessions. Different circumstances, as I had to give away a lot of things with meaning, when we completed our ex-pat journey to Bulgaria in January. Last year, I was ready to end my life, simply because, like you, all of my shibboleths had been shattered, wife was going through menopause, I was forcibly fired/retired by a number of companies simply because I am a pure-blood who names the jew, and that is verboten in the Silicon Valley.
I kind of thought it was over Brother, and I traveled to my spiritual oasis, to do a final West Texas hike, at Big Bend National Park. Got halfway out there, pictured Wife, Daughter and Best Friends (just 2 of them) at my funeral. Wife's a stoic woman, doubt she would have cried, she would have been mad though. Daughter would be in tears, and I know my best friend Neal is diminished by his two jabs, but he would have had a broken heart, as I would have, at his.
More people like you than you would know, and it need not be the corporeal vessels either.
You are not the first rags to riches to rags story, I have seen many in my slightly fewer days on a Terra Firma that no longer feels very firm.
In all the best ways, I can tell you, in almost May of 2024, my life has changed so dramatically. I owe a lot to my wife, who decided to allow a second wife, who is young and fertile, and might just be gestating the son I always wanted. She also was willing to move, pretty much anywhere I wanted, as long as it wasn't Hell!
I too have no contact with my sister, who is fat, stupid, and Leftist. I think I broke it off with her, when she told me she was jabbing her sons. Left her nearly the entire inheritance too, was easier to walk away, than fight over the carcass of our Mother.
Losing people you love, and money you need, hurts. I understand, and nobody can type those pains away. Still, I always liked hearing from people who had traveled through the eye of their storm, and found tranquility. It is still possible, despite the late hour. Hail Victory Capt. \o
So sorry for you. My family kind of feels that way about me, not really though it sometimes feels like that. Why you ask? Because I'm voting for DJT. They all took the shots/boosters, which also could be a part of it. Oh and by the way, tell your friend from the school substack (yesterday's essay, that Tom Hanks is not Jewish and also related very distantly to Abe Lincoln. I looked it up on Wikipedia.
"Life is tough and frequently unpleasant. Our prayers therefore should not be for ease, but for the courage to face difficulty."
-- Garth Woods, MD
I'm a lot stronger now than I was, and I've been disabused of a lot of wishful thinking... Sean Brooks is not my friend, I've never met the man, I suppose I shouldn't have re-posted that, most people would find it entirely inflammatory and completely miss the point...
Great writing of stories/accounts. The truth shall set you free!
All is not lost, Roy - You have a lasting relationship in the works. Love is the answer, yet it seems, few are interested, or even have the heart to produce friendships and love. I have been thru some serious HorseShite, since the death of my beloved husband, 15 years past. Spend much of my time alone (solitary confinement), with only my animals to console me. Do not have much interest in men who are married, single, too young, too old, who are interested in a date, only to have dessert at the end of the time spent together (a few hours). WTF! Women fear me, are jealous and have no need of my friendship or what they deem as a threat. Needless to say, unfortunately it is a safer bet to be a lonesome, aging and loving on my animals, type person. Something I had not considered for my life or myself. Alas, here I am, all of those things.
"Banjo Strumming Lakefield" as my Brother-in-Law aptly described it. At this point, I guess it's the only thing we concur on.. 'course, the last time I saw him was some time in February, 2013... 🤔
Come to think of it, haven't spoken to him since either... 🙄
Tacit emotion here. It is a tough read for anyone with empathy. Hope things sincerely improve. x
In some respects they have: I have steady employment -- other than during the Covid Insanity -- and I'm with my "new" girlfriend for 12 years now... and I've learned a lesson: "See things for what they are".
Sorry you went thru all that, if it helps, my sister couldn't care less about me either, she's always been jealous.
Well, that was a difficult read. I admire your resilience in such difficult matters. My family is boring, Christian, no drugs, no smoking, no drinking, and that is a good thing. I married into dysfunction, but not so much my wife who escaped it....but her family and how they lived was to me culture shock as a young late-20 yo. I had never been exposed to it. My father was a smoker, that much I understand, and he died of lung cancer when I was a mere 3 yo. I almost lost my mom three months later from a brain aneurysm. God saved her. I would have been an orphan. I grew up with good friends who are still my best friends to this day 50 years later. We never did drugs. But I do see the ravages of alcoholism in one of them who had so much potential. May God bless you Capt.
Thank you for taking the time to read it. In retrospect, my older sister, despite all that, was the most brilliant woman I've ever known... my parents reported she could recite "The Night Before Christmas" verbatim -- at the age of two! OTOH the minister of the church I used to attend -- stopped attending due to the Covid Lunacy -- told me they were two of the most dysfunctional people he'd ever known... Well... products of The Great Depression, an oppressive social order -- Annapolis Valley Hard Shell Baptist in my dad's case, growing up in rural England, the daughter of a carpenter in my mother's, then the inferno of the Second World War... And here I am now, the last of them, supporting my wife, my vaccine-injured stepdaughter and our cat -- on a Security Guard's wages. But at least my discharge card from the Military was of far greater value to me in the end than my worthless degree in "Music Performance" ever was... I have my health, I'm on top of the grass, and I'm not an alcoholic...
We are more alike then different Capt Roy. Odd isn't it the rod we travel from where we start and where we finish. I have spent my life working and very little outside of work. Though work was my life I never made any friends while working. I was in the Oil and GAs industry didn't have any friends and did not fuckin want any either, still don't.
I was raised on a poor farm in Saskatchewan with a father who had no business being one. A man with a violent temper and would loose it over absolutely nothing. My older brother could do no wrong and I was the punching bag. Made me damn tough though. My parents had divorced and my twin sister went with mother whom i had never known and would regret meeting. But all that aside what we did do growing up in Someasscratchin was drink, f--k and fight and not necessarily in that order.
At the ripe old age of 16 after my father had taken and swing at me I proceeded to knock him the fuck out pack my bag and left finishing high school off on welfare back in the day when you were considered responsible at the age of 16 not at all now. All evil aside I was very close to my grandmother who regretted ever letting my father have possession of us or me particularly. She knew life was not going to be easy for me being aware of my brutally short attention span. Punched in the head to many times as a small child I am sure did not help the issue what so ever.
Back to when i had left to be on my own I went to school collected the welfare and worked hard, smoked hard and drank hard everyday. I had an acute sense of humor backed by a hair trigger temper and a negative attitude about most everything, thanks to my father. Quick with my mouth and even quicker with the fists with a pain threshold that was unmatched. Year of being the punching bag for dear old dad had some advantages. Once out of school I got a job in the Potash mines as most lost souls did. I probably would have retired there or died there had i not been injured underground. Got a 3 month vacation in hospital in Saskatoon and was off work for almost a year learning how to walk again. Could not work at the mien again and was given the GO F yourself hand shake and off the land the of Black Gold I went.
Probably not the best choice for a fledgling alcoholic weekend drug addict. At the age of 25 for what ever reason and my first and only actual girl friend I realized that the booze was not taking me where I wanted to go and quit. I am 66 now and still panic if i dont have my road mug coffee cup with me and it has to be with me at all times. I worked my way up through the ranks to Superintendent and then onto consultant. The short attention span which was a curse most of my life was now and valuable tool. Over time I got control of my temper. Got ride of the negative attitude and pointed out to assholes over the years that I spent a god part of my life being a hard core asshole and i can go there in a heart beat be careful how far you want to push me. ..lol..
The road we travel is a unknown when we head out and as soon as i figure out what I want to do with my life I will get right on that but until then I work and that Girl friend i mentioned before has been with me for 43 years sticking with me through The good and the bad one year I worked 345 days with out a day off and there she was still with me.
Would i do any of it differently if I was given the opportunity to do so. Probably not we are what God intended us to be and family well the only contact i have is with my older brother and youngest sister I made a promise to my Grandmother and my promise is rock solid and my twin sister and other sister they can well they can just stay f--ked off and friends still none but i have 1000s of acquaintances.
My wife and i do enjoy being alone. Last winter was the first time in over 30 years I was actually at home.
Capt Roy you went through some shit you did but you came out of stronger and better then before, yes it sucked at the time but we would not be who we are if life was any other way.
What a story! ... You should create a Substack of your own and post it!
I suppose I should One day, that was a very condensed review of life.
have a great day
Well Captain, this is a raw and direct post you have written. Thank you for being so real. Life can be so shitty sometimes and then out of nowhere or maybe somewhere, a light can shine and good can happen. Behind every cloud, there is sun, but it is just hidden for awhile. Many of us have family issues. Let's face it we never picked them. But march on. You have your wife and tomorrow is another day. I know it can be hard to forgive and let go but I have done it and so can you. Love and Blessings.
Thank you for taking the time and trouble to read it. I had some trepidation with (re)posting it, it was so unrelentingly bleak... Waking up to reality can be a long-term and brutal process and having woken up.. things are not instantly "all better" and you don't necessarily step into the glorious sunshine of prosperity and joy as a consequence. That incident was the culmination of several experiences with my siblings and assigns before I finally, as rapper 50 Cent put it, "saw things for what they were." I have paid a bitter price for my loyalty to them over the years, and that's all I accomplished. I think of my ex for example, arriving in Canada just after Tiananmen Square, barely any English.. Haven't seen her in nearly 20 years... still, every good thing she has now was because I was in her life. Small thanks I got for it in the end. 'Course I also recall my friend Stefan's comment about his Chinese ex-wife, had reached the point in his relationship he hid the steak knives...😱 Oriental women only SEEM soft and gentle. They're hard as iron.. 🙄
But as Theodore Roosevelt said, "do what you can, where you are, with what you have." And also I suppose... "don't look back."🤔
Healing can take a lifetime. I like the quote you have used here by Roosevelt.
It is tough to let go of things, resources, possessions. Different circumstances, as I had to give away a lot of things with meaning, when we completed our ex-pat journey to Bulgaria in January. Last year, I was ready to end my life, simply because, like you, all of my shibboleths had been shattered, wife was going through menopause, I was forcibly fired/retired by a number of companies simply because I am a pure-blood who names the jew, and that is verboten in the Silicon Valley.
I kind of thought it was over Brother, and I traveled to my spiritual oasis, to do a final West Texas hike, at Big Bend National Park. Got halfway out there, pictured Wife, Daughter and Best Friends (just 2 of them) at my funeral. Wife's a stoic woman, doubt she would have cried, she would have been mad though. Daughter would be in tears, and I know my best friend Neal is diminished by his two jabs, but he would have had a broken heart, as I would have, at his.
More people like you than you would know, and it need not be the corporeal vessels either.
You are not the first rags to riches to rags story, I have seen many in my slightly fewer days on a Terra Firma that no longer feels very firm.
In all the best ways, I can tell you, in almost May of 2024, my life has changed so dramatically. I owe a lot to my wife, who decided to allow a second wife, who is young and fertile, and might just be gestating the son I always wanted. She also was willing to move, pretty much anywhere I wanted, as long as it wasn't Hell!
I too have no contact with my sister, who is fat, stupid, and Leftist. I think I broke it off with her, when she told me she was jabbing her sons. Left her nearly the entire inheritance too, was easier to walk away, than fight over the carcass of our Mother.
Losing people you love, and money you need, hurts. I understand, and nobody can type those pains away. Still, I always liked hearing from people who had traveled through the eye of their storm, and found tranquility. It is still possible, despite the late hour. Hail Victory Capt. \o
So sorry for you. My family kind of feels that way about me, not really though it sometimes feels like that. Why you ask? Because I'm voting for DJT. They all took the shots/boosters, which also could be a part of it. Oh and by the way, tell your friend from the school substack (yesterday's essay, that Tom Hanks is not Jewish and also related very distantly to Abe Lincoln. I looked it up on Wikipedia.
There's no need to feel sorry for me...
"Life is tough and frequently unpleasant. Our prayers therefore should not be for ease, but for the courage to face difficulty."
-- Garth Woods, MD
I'm a lot stronger now than I was, and I've been disabused of a lot of wishful thinking... Sean Brooks is not my friend, I've never met the man, I suppose I shouldn't have re-posted that, most people would find it entirely inflammatory and completely miss the point...
Great writing of stories/accounts. The truth shall set you free!
All is not lost, Roy - You have a lasting relationship in the works. Love is the answer, yet it seems, few are interested, or even have the heart to produce friendships and love. I have been thru some serious HorseShite, since the death of my beloved husband, 15 years past. Spend much of my time alone (solitary confinement), with only my animals to console me. Do not have much interest in men who are married, single, too young, too old, who are interested in a date, only to have dessert at the end of the time spent together (a few hours). WTF! Women fear me, are jealous and have no need of my friendship or what they deem as a threat. Needless to say, unfortunately it is a safer bet to be a lonesome, aging and loving on my animals, type person. Something I had not considered for my life or myself. Alas, here I am, all of those things.
Blessings ~
By the way, I live close to Lakefield.
"Banjo Strumming Lakefield" as my Brother-in-Law aptly described it. At this point, I guess it's the only thing we concur on.. 'course, the last time I saw him was some time in February, 2013... 🤔
Come to think of it, haven't spoken to him since either... 🙄