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hooray_for_dead_cops OP wrote (edited )

Hey thanks for responding. Obviously I probably won't be able to offer much helpful advice as per your situation but if you feel like sharing, I'm up for listening (or reading I guess).

I used to feel like I was oh so resilient but these days, I dunno. I feel like most of the time, I've just kinda scraped by. Like life throws me all these curve balls or whatever and I just roll with the punches. I feel like as shitty as my life has been, I've just been kinda lucky throughout. Shit could have been a lot worse and while I've made some positive moves with the right timing, sometimes shit just fell into place I guess. Depending on the time of day, maybe I'll feel like I'm not giving myself enough credit or maybe I'll feel like I'm giving myself too much, you know?

About finding a job out of town, I don't know if I can do that. Probably a mental hurdle. I hate living in NYC and I've wanted to leave for a long time but thinking about leaving kinda fills me with dread a little. Like leaving would have its benefits--slower pace of living, liberal corporate America might not be so in my face all the damn time (though maybe it would be cause it's not like there aren't a million fucking billboards cluttering up all the streets and highways all across this shitty country and it isn't like human resource manager [the scum of the earth] isn't a job title outside of NYC), more nature, less concrete and steel, cheaper cost of living, people could be a little nicer/more cordial, etc. But at the same time, I'd lose all the conveniences I've come to take for granted living here, I'd have to get a driver's license again (and I hate driving), and even though I've kinda fallen off the map, if I ever get the courage to start getting back into the world, pretty much everybody I know is here or nearby.

Like I said previously, my uncle's been pressing me to move out to NC where he lives but I'm not trying to be dependent on him, even short term, and the whole thing with what he said about my dad last year just really unsettles me. If I could work shit out with my girlfriend, moving wouldn't be such a scary prospect, but thinking about leaving alone is just kinda frightening. And then there's the question of how I'll afford it, cause I'm just about running on empty right now. I still pay for food a lot but my girlfriend's been covering all other expenses pretty much for the past couple months and pretty soon, unless I could land a better job, she'll be covering food too. And probably my cigarettes too, which makes me feel real shitty. At least I know where to get em on the cheap though.

I've tried quitting a bunch of times in the past couple years but I keep coming back. Quitting cigarettes is mad harder than quitting dope. And right now, with all the stress and everything and the fact that I don't even get high anymore, I don't even wanna think about trying to quit smoking again.

I've given my girlfriend so much money in the past 2 years alone, part of me feels like she owes it to me to carry the load for a while but then there's the part of me that feels like a heel, like an entitled asshole. And I mean, she makes money, but she's not as well off as she was a year ago and that makes me feel kinda guilty. But then at the same time, I've given here a lot of money and though I can't prove it, I feel like a few of those times that she needed it was predicated on a lie. That's a whole nother can of worms though. But it still boils back down to the fact that I don't feel I can trust her. Either way though, she's had my back in the past so in the end, I guess it all kinda evens out more or less. I just feel really conflicted now that I'm starting to have to rely on her. And if I leave, then I'm just assed out. And I mean, we've been together 10 years so the thought of leaving, even considering everything, is just so daunting. And she used to have a real bad attitude--like somebody pissed her off 10 hours ago and now she's taking it out on me--but in the past year, she's lightened up a lot and that just makes it even harder to leave. I mean, she used to be such a bummer to be around and now, if I can forget all the bullshit long enough, she's kinda pleasant most of the time. I know I probably should dip but I dunno man. These days, everything just scares the crap out of me.

I really feel like these last few years have broken me down a lot and a lot of the strengths I once had have kind of evaporated. Like I've seen an experienced a lot of fucked up shit and it all just kinda rolled off my shoulder. Since being shit-canned 5 years ago, and especially since my mom died, I think about some things and I dunno, it feels more traumatic than it did at the time.

When I was 19 or 20, I watched 2 acquaintances stab the shit out of somebody in the street and then we went to Popeye's like it was nothing. I always knew that was fucked up, even when it happened. Don't think I was just like cool with what they did or anything. But like, for a year after my mom died, I started having flashbacks of a lot of shit and that popped up quite a few times and it would fill me with panic even though it was so long ago. And I mean I guess it should but now it's like, all these things happened throughout my life and I dunno if I boxed them up or what but now that I'm breaking down, just everything is coming out and that makes everything even more overwhelming, you know? I mean it's not so bad as it was 2 years ago, but still, things happen and it's not so easy to just let it roll off my shoulders anymore.

I tried therapy 2 years or so ago. General therapy. That didn't help though. Before the gender therapist and a few months before I started snorting heroin. Didn't really work out though. I had one therapist for one or two sessions and then I had a few with another one and I just felt like she didn't really listen to a word I said. I told her from the jump that I was still recovering from a pill addiction and I just wanted someone to talk shit out with and didn't wanna be put on medication but every session, she's like "well you need to stop smoking weed so I can put you on medication." Not too many options for help when all you got is Medicaid though so I just stopped going after a while.

That whole stabbing thing I mentioned, I mentioned that to the therapist and I also brought it up to the gender therapist and I've mentioned it to people here and there and their reactions just make me so fucking mad. It's not my fucking fault that I was forced into this violent fucking world and I'm hurting inside and I just want a shoulder to cry on and people think I'm making shit up or bragging or something. I've personally witnessed countless acts of excessive force by police or abuse of power committed by police, both as a civilian and as an EMT, and people think I'm just making shit up. The (unarmed) brother of a good friend of mine was murdered by police in front of his grandmother's house when I was 15 or 16 but sure, I'm just making that up.

I had this username on Reddit and got banned for "inciting/encouraging violence" and that's whatever but I got a lot of PMs from people telling me to kill myself or that I was scum or whatever and I even got the rare PM from someone admiring the name, but you know what? Not once did anyone ever ask me about my experiences with the police that made me feel the need to create this username. And I mean, it wasn't even my experiences with the police that made me create this name. I saw an upvoted comment on an article about, I think, Walter Scott, that said "hooray for dead thugs" so this name was mostly reactionary. But nobody ever bothered to ask. And on the rare occasion that I offered up a small bit of my experiences, oh, I'm making it up.

I got into an argument with my grandmother a year or so ago when I said something about the police that wasn't exactly praising them. She got mad and I just went off and told her about a bunch of personal experiences, just as an EMT, not even counting the shit I've experienced as a civilian. My old partner and I tried to take a stand against the cops after one particular incident and nothing got done and we became targets whenever we had a job in that precinct. But oh, I'm making it up. And I mean, yeah, sure, that's grandmom-moms. She's old and set in her ways. But nah man, that's fucking everybody. Everybody's willfully blind and they just wanna live in their fucking bubbles and they don't wanna hear about any of the horrid shit other people have had to deal with if it conflicts with their insulated, backward world view.

I'm sorry man. I'm going off on a tangent. I just got a lot of shit to unload. Just so much of this shitty world makes me so fucking mad and I feel so goddamn helpless against all of it.

I've been studying programming recently and hopefully something can come out of that. I have an idea for a project I want to undertake in the hopes that it might help some folks out so hopefully I can get there at some point but programming can be kind of intimidating at times. I have a basic understanding of a bunch of languages--took a C++ class in college, learned the basics of a handful of other languages on my own--nothing I can put to practical use at the moment though. Right now, I guess I'm intermediate level with JavaScript, which is what I've been focusing on recently. Hopefully soon enough I could get to work on my project and maybe at some point, I'll be at a level where maybe I could make some money with the knowledge I have. I don't really see myself making money with the project I have in mind though and I don't even know how helpful it would even really be but I'll give it a shot.

Again, thanks for replying and sorry for bumming you out with all this shit. Like I said, if you want someone to unload your frustrations on, I'm all ears.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Hey, sorry I haven't managed to reply again here. I haven't forgotten about you or ignored it, I just have a bit too much on my plate at the moment and it takes a lot of emotional energy for me to respond to this. If I get a chance, I will read it again and respond. Good luck over there. As tough as things are there, I think you're doing less bad than you think sometimes.

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