In Treatment

If it hasn't been mentioned before my book, The Train Runs No More, refers to a reoccurring dream that has awoken me for years; since I was a child.  I understand that with children, most of their dreams involve trains.  I don't know what the association of trains and children are, but children are always drawn to trains.  This dream plagued me for years until one night I thought the train had actually run over me.  I had awoken from my sleep and that time, I decided I would journal it.  After some time of writing it down the dream began to dissipate until it finally went away.  I didn't learn to do that until I was in my late forties.  I was told by other people when I was much younger that I should journal my dreams and then I will be able to sleep better.  Too bad I didn't listen to them earlier.  As a child, since I had little interaction with an older sibling that hated the fact that another child came into his world and subtracted some of the attention that he was receiving, I had to create my own games so that I would have something to do when no one else was around.  When he was just as annoying as he could be, or as mean as he could be, I had to have a "place" to go.  I had to entertain myself.  I didn't understand why I was on the receiving end of all of this until many years later.  Then I deduced that if I were being treated this way by him all of the time, then when only a babe in the crib, why didn't he just simply put a pillow over my head and he would have been rid of all of those problems.  In those days, it would have been determined an accident and nothing would have happened to him.  Instead, I was persecuted by him and to this day, he still does.  When my mother passed away this past May, he never told me that her days were about to end when she was taken to a hospital.  He only called to say that she passed away.  Unbeknownst to him, my mother had contacted my wife to let her know it was time.  By that, I mean I was watching television when my wife announced, "You know?  I don't know why, but I have this feeling you should call your mother today".  Listening to my wife, I turned off the television and went into my office.  I sat down at the desk, looked up her phone number to call her, and the phone rang.  It was my brother calling, announcing that mother had passed away.  It is my feeling that he simply called to say that she died and I wasn't there when she died and he wanted to rub it in my face.  He told me there would be a service for her when her body was cremated.  I didn't know it takes eight months to cremate a body because I am still waiting for that phone call.  To know how he acted at my father's funeral, read, The Train Runs No More. Even my daughter, whom my brother felt it necessary to take over the rearing of her since he chose a wife that either didn't want to have children or couldn't have children, didn't even have the courtesy to call and give me her condolences.  An oh so Christian person that she is, walking in the light of the Lord the way she thinks she does, praising his name, yet defies one of the Ten Commandments.  Do not forsake your mother or your father.  I am now dead to her.  She is so religious that she couldn't say shit even if she had a mouth full of it.  The footsteps that she does follow in is her hateful, vengeful mother's.  Her mother couldn't have in our short history together, all the things that her parents took years to get, so when she left me, she made damned sure that I would never see my children again.  She has held true to her word ever since.  That is the only religious thing she has really done in her gracious walk with GOD.  She is so eaten up with all of that religious shit that she said she is praying for her glorification to become a virgin again so that when she meets with GOD she can have his children, or some ridiculous religious bullshit as that.  When you are that far into religion, it's called a cult.  My daughter with her college education can't even see that she also is absorbed by a cult.  She is lost to me forever, and I will never have the chance to see her ever again.  I could dwell on that and allow them to know how much it hurts, or I could move on with my life, unencumbered by that depression and be happy with the woman, the wife, my best friend that is with me now and  continue to acquire with someone all the things that they are patiently willing to work for.  I have been with this current person for almost twenty years and all the things my ex-wife wanted in the first year of marriage, I now have with this person.  It took years to acquire, it took hard work to acquire, even that area of happiness that few married couples are able to find, we now have.  Others have to seek out some form of religion because of their unhappiness.  Some resort to drugs or alcohol to find that kind of happiness.  We have it because we respect each other and care for and about each other.  It's all in the treatment.  How you treat others, how you expect to get treated, and what you expect from your treatment.  Find me on Twitter @yuhaftarun.