Ohio School Shooting

This school shooting that happened on February 27 is exactly what this blog, what my book, "The Train Runs No More", refers to.  It refers to children that are so disturbed by something in their life that they strike out with the only thing that comes to mind first without thinking about the consequences.  Some of these children don't have a real positively influential parental figure in their life to start with.  They can only observe what others have, what others do, and wish that they had that in their life.  These kinds of children are nice up front.  They are nice to talk to, some are polite, but rarely do they speak intimately of their life "away" from the everyday norm.  The only parental figures in this poor kid's life committed spousal abuse against each other.  The mother reportedly is a drug addict.  The father, if he wasn't beating up the mother, he was assaulting another woman or a police officer.  He had no close example to follow.  He had been deemed a loner by news reports.  Most likely he was a loner because he was embarrassed by the home life that he had.  In his humiliation he didn't want to express such disappointment to his classmates.  Who wants to hear about such negativity?  He failed to find one true trustworthy person whom he could call a friend.  He lived with his grandparents because he didn't have any place else to go.  Giving them the benefit of the doubt, his grandparents probably did the best they knew how about raising a child again.  At the same time, T J Lane, the kid, had to go to school with classmates that were living with their parents, not people that were much older practicing parenting.  Maybe TJ was bothered by this.  He was "different" from other students.  Having no outlet about the goings on in his life, he expressed his thoughts by writing them down, but he probably didn't re-read them with an unbiased opinion to see what he could have done better or handled the situation better.  Instead of confiding in one tangible person, he confided in a vast number of intangible people from Facebook.  There is no closeness there.  There is no intimacy there.  There are no emotional responses from people that "see" from a different perspective there.  

Some children fall victim to playing morbid video games where they shoot, maim, and kill people.  These games are played so often by children that some fail to find the difference between fiction and reality.  I am not blaming the video game producers.  I play them myself.  I enjoy them to no end, but there is a limit to everything.  When these children are placed in real situations, it becomes hard for them to decipher which is real.  To compound the issue, a high percentage of homes in America have to have a handgun for protection.  Usually this handgun is kept within quick reach and kept loaded.  The people serious about protection keep their handgun locked up somewhere so that when a situation does occur and usually at night, they have to leap from their bed, go unlock the safe, load the weapon, and by the time they have done that, they have been found by the perpetrator and assaulted or killed.  Others just reach in the night stand by their bed, grab the gun and shoot from where they lay, or go find the perp, and when they see something move in the dark they shoot.  More likely they have shot at the wrong person and as luck would have it, they killed the person they were shooting at and it was probably the wife whom heard a noise long before you even woke up and decided to investigate herself.  Getting back to the poor, "disturbed" kid, this is where the gun was ascertained from and then taken to school. 

One thing I have never been able to understand is the satisfaction of physically harming others.  What satisfaction is gained from that kind of action?  That kind of satisfaction is like taking drugs.  It feels good only for the moment, but when the moment is over, you have to do it again.  It doesn't last.  What is gained by taking another innocent victim's life whom had no interaction in the "role" that these kids play?  In my own life and experiences I have been backed into corners with no way out at times, but I have never resorted to taking the life of others.  Maybe my own, but never others.  Only at that last moment did realization take over, and yes, even "the hand of God" reached out and showed me that my life was more precious than I realized.  For not being a "christian" or practicing Christianity, this was an astounding moment in my life.   I have always thought about others before myself.  I have always helped others before I helped myself.  I always care for and about others before myself.  It was at that moment that God reached out and asked me just to think about myself for just one moment and visualize what I was doing.  I stopped in midstream of trying to take my life and I have been the happier for it.  Although I still do not practice Christianity, nor do I even wish to promote it or any other religion, I do not take my life for granted nor anyone else's.   Each life is precious, no matter how small a role in this vast, disappointing world that we live in.  I do not take it for granted.  To the dismay of others whom do not feel that or try as they might to keep me from having any importance in life, my retribution is that I have continued to live on where other classmates have passed away earlier in life from one of life's diseases.  That is my Karma.  That is their Karma and all it requires is just a little time and patience.  For these kids, we must chip away at the ice that contains all that emotion.  We must defuse the bomb that is ticking away inside.  Become these kid's confidant.  Help them.  Invite them into our lives sometime.  Throw water on the fire that is burning inside them and help them discover "things" from another perspective.  As the old saying goes, "Two heads are better than one". 

Now, more lives were taken than has been realized.  Not only the injured students, the ones that have been killed, but also the innocent by standers, the witnesses, the survivors, the parents of the attending students, even TJ Lane himself.  He may have been a "good" kid as described by one of his classmates, but now, he will be warehoused as "damaged goods" for the rest of his life.  A kid with good grades in school that will never be able to amount to more than a hill of beans outside the joint.  He will never see the outside again.  So, rather than striking at the desired subject that he wanted to strike at, he misfired and caused more damage than can be realized.  If people could only write down their emotions, put them down and come back and read them again when they reach a better frame of mind.  Or, at least let a trustworthy friend that can be confided in and allow them to read them.  If that could only be done, there is so much "pressure" that could be released, that one cannot realize the relief that can be gained.

Expressions

I have associated with teenagers before whom in conversation have expressed some difficulty in their life.  Because of the direction the conversation would take, they must have been looking for a response, so I responded with my own experiences and how I handled them at the time.  Because of my response to their explanation, and my suggestions of how they might try handling their predicament, they then responded with, "You must be a "preacher".  It's not a matter of preaching.  If they weren't feeling some uncomfortableness in their life, they wouldn't be expressing themselves to me.  If they were expressing themselves to me, then there must have been some sign that their parents weren't interested in their feelings and emotions.  They must have been too caught up in their own lives to pay attention and listen to their children.  Some children act out violently because it is the only reaction they know to respond with.  That isn't the answer either.  The answer isn't to get back at them.  One never wants to get back at another.  They should always get even.  Getting even is a "punishment" that fits the "crime".  A child that gets so harassed, so ridiculed, so persecuted that they feel compelled to take a gun to school to "even" the score is not the answer.  That child is only getting back.  He is not getting even.  That does no good what so ever except to get someone hurt and usually, it is the innocent bystanders that get hurt.  For the child that feels this uncomfortable in life, the answer cannot be found in a day.  It can't be found in a week.  It may not even be found in a month.  It takes a great deal of contemplation.  Even outside intervention may be needed.  An immediate response is only "looking" for trouble and it will be trouble that there will be no turning back on and could even be detrimental not only to the victim, but innocent bystanders.  Patience.  As quoted by Pema Chodron, "Buddhism teaches us that patience is the antidote to anger and aggression."  One needs to stop, wait, and get "smart" about his reaction.  Whatever you do, whatever you say at that moment, it will be wrong.  His blog expresses what I cannot.  He teaches what I cannot put into words.  If everyone were to read his blog, it is my feeling many people would react differently toward one another and the world would be a better place with his teaching.  Soon, everything comes around and falls into place just as you would be hoping for.  It's all about patience.

If parents would take a moment from their busy lives, if they would put down the remote for a moment, if only they would sit with their children and allow conversation to come from them, let it flow like water from a fall; don't force it; observe and listen, then maybe they might discover something about their children.  However, those children that never speak about issues in their life, they are hiding something.  What they are hiding is only destructive to those whom love them the most.  What they don't realize is that when they hide things, they are pushing away the most important people in their life.  When they make an unsatisfactory choice, the reaction they receive may not be the one they are looking for and one of two things will happen.  Either they will lose the one that loves them the most, or the one that loves them the most will be lost forever.  The result will be the same.  For those in an uncomfortable situation, don't be afraid to express yourself.  Just be smart about who you express yourself to.  Above all, don't feed your enemy.  Just be patient.

Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys

There is a song that has some meaning behind this wonderful family of mine.  The song is called, "Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys", written by Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi.  One of the verses is:

If I gave you everything that I owned and asked for nothing in return
Would you do the same for me as I would for you?
Or would you take me for a ride and strip me of everything, including my pride
But spirit is something that no one destroys
And the sound that I'm hearing is only the sound
The low spark of high heeled boys.

Well.  I have been taken for a ride by my brother.  He wasn't able to have children of his own so he "stole" mine.  He interfered with my relationship with my children by providing the things of which I could not provide, so now my selfish, simple, weak minded children will no longer have anything to do with me.  As I explained to them before, I don't pay people to stay away.  If they want to come and visit with me, then we can talk about their needs.  But if they don't want to bother with me, then they needn't bother with asking me for money.  So, the big ol' bro has stripped me of everything that meant a great deal to me and even my pride, but the one thing he can't strip me of is my spirit.  My spirit beckons me to step over the mine field and keep on moving through this war.  Those that drop along the way in battle, I don't even look back and worry about, just like a mercenary soldier.   I can't worry about them.  If I do, then it only brings me down.  The ol' bro and my ex-wife may have crushed my pride, but they have yet to crush my spirit.  His hatred of me has become such that he kept my mother's funeral services from me and I was never allowed to attend.  I was never allowed to say goodbye.  I will continue to rub that in too.  I wouldn't be surprised one day that I be out on the street one day and his only way to shut me up is to shoot me.

But I have digressed quite a bit from the point of this blog.  The point of this blog is for children whom feel they walk in my shoes, or parents who find their children walk in my shoes is to look at the situations that have transpired and try to correct the paths that lie before them and smooth them out.  You have to allow your children to get hurt sometime.  They need to experience disappointment.  You can't protect them all the time.  But, you cannot allow for their self esteem to be crushed like a spider underfoot.  Mine has been at times.  I have been able to recover, but probably not in the manner I should have.  I am not proud of some of the things I describe in The Train Runs No More.  They were a release for me at the time, that provided me satisfaction.  I have been driven to the point of suicide, but to the dismay of others, I managed to pull myself out of that mud.  You cannot allow your children to be so harassed by others that they are simply crushed and find no way to discover satisfaction even if it is only within themselves.  I am appalled by those that feel compelled to humiliate others so much that their victim can only find relief through suicide.  I am appalled by a mother of a boy who cannot bring herself to confront the mother of a girl that likes her son and just make a simple request of the mother to change her daughters mind.  Even closer to home, a teacher that has moved into the neighborhood tries very hard to control the other neighbors around her whom have been in the hood for years.  But because she is a teacher at a local elementary school and I will not succumb to her wishes, she tries to set me up for a malicious crime which she was unsuccessful at pulling off.  The bullying never stops at any age and for of all people, a school teacher to do what she has done, she should know better.  So, after I turned up the fire a little and drew attention to her actions, she had a choice.  Lose her job as a teacher or back the hell off.  It has been approximately three years now since she pulled her little stunt.  She doesn't even look my way anymore.  Even the local police know who I am and they even know I wouldn't attempt what she was trying her damnedest to assert.  So you see?  It never stops.  Some people never grow up, and bullying is at all levels, and in all facets of life.  It all depends on how much energy one wants to give it to keep the action going.  The best approach is just to tell these people to shove it up their ass and keep on moving.  The sound that you hear is only the low spark of high heeled boys.

Bullying Can Take On All Forms

Have you realized that bullying can take on all forms?  No?  Maybe you're fat and there's some skinny people picking on you because your fat.  Maybe you're skinny and people of average weight are picking on you because your skinny.  Maybe you have red hair and people "pick on a ginger"or you speak with some form of accent foreign to the geographical region.  Maybe there is some physical appearance that you have, handicapped or otherwise, that is not the norm of the immediate "community".  Maybe you act differently, or think differently, or maybe you're not the same religious faith as someone else.  Bullying can take many different forms and it spans many different walks of life.  Even into your own family.  One of your children has a problem with the other and they pester the crap out of them until they get what they want.  Maybe a husband isn't getting some form of satisfaction that he needs and it isn't always about sex, so he beats the crap out of his wife on a regular basis.  Or it could be the other way around.  It's been known that the wife will do the same thing.  Maybe, after your children grow up and you don't do what they ask you to do, therefore you don't get to see your grandchildren.  Really?  Seriously?  Bullying can span all walks of life even into religion.  Yes, my faithful, Christian followers!  Even into religion.

Take my particular case for instance.  In school, I didn't think like others and I didn't act like others, so I only had a few friends.  I didn't play sports like others, therefore, I was deemed uncoordinated.  Because I was uncoordinated, Guitar Playing Man proceeded to attack me one day while playing basketball.  And we were supposed to be friends.  After that, we were still friends, but the "feeling" just wasn't the same.  The many years difference between me and my brother made life difficult for me as well.  He was older.  His physique was larger, therefore, he was "smarter".  Really?  In what way?  So far, he has been able to destroy the relationship I used to have with my daughter.  He wasn't too compliant at my father's funeral either.  And my mother's funeral services?  He did have the courtesy to tell me she passed, but he never told me she was so ill that she had to be hospitalized.  I never got to speak with my mother before she died, to his satisfaction.  He told me there would be funeral services for her after her body had been cremated.  That was a year ago.  I'm still waiting for those funeral services to happen.  Just how long does it take to cremate a body anyway?  I know with my mother-in-law, it only took about three months.  If I were stopped on the side of the road somewhere and I was on fire, and if my brother were just happening to be driving by, he would only stop long enough to throw gasoline on me just to watch me burn faster. 

I didn't have the same religious faith as others I had gone to school with.  The more I looked at my own faith and began to realize how hypocritical it was, then I began to ask questions.  When I asked questions, I received a brow beating and if it wasn't that, then I was preached to by those of other faiths until I couldn't be preached to anymore, and then they preached to me some more.  When I didn't succumb to believing , then I was ostracized.

I had friend that would treat me a certain way that I felt was against the grain of the way I wanted to be treated or spoken to.  When I confronted them with what they were doing or saying, then they felt as though I were bullying them because I was expressing my feelings to them.  Because most of them were no longer allowed to treat me this way or that, they then became no longer my friends.  As the old saying goes, "if it doesn't feel good, don't do it".  Well, the treatment of me didn't feel good and I didn't like it, so I would no longer allow it to happen.  Since I would not allow it to happen anymore, the friends I do have are few, but at least we care about each other and we care for each other, and we are "there" for each other.

Bullying can take on many different faces, many different places.  Some white people feel that the blacks have to be beat until the color of their skin becomes white.  Jews don't believe that Jesus Christ is the savior that other faiths believe in and other races therefore feel their very existence must be destroyed.  Gay people must be beat until they become straight again.  If you are not a Christian, you are either beat with prayer sessions until you do become a Christian or you're ostracized.  Christians don't believe Catholics are of a christian, believing faith.  Does it really matter so long as they believe?   And if I choose not to believe but still use the bible as a moral guide, which I find some Christians not even doing, all I find is them reciting verses at the appropriate time as a useful, defensive weapon as a demonstration of their faith in God, then that is my choice as long as I treat others as I want to be treated.  But because of my feelings, I must be ostracized.

Seriously?  Is that all you have?  I come home and I close the front door and lock it.  Once I am home, I don't worry about another freaking thing unless I choose a subject that I want to be worried about.  So, ostracize away.  Keep my grandchildren away from me because if you believe that your Christian practicing mother is doing the right thing by inciting you to hate your father so much that you can't even bear to mention my name, then I don't even want to see your children that have been raised by someone with so much hate in their heart.  You continue on practicing your Christianity and your Missions to the Netherlands.  Go save your hookers of another land instead of trying to help people right here at home.  Hypocrites!

Bullying can take on all forms.

It's Only My Humble Opinion

I want to point out the fact that I am a professor of nothing.  As I have stated before, I have performed no scientific studies.  I have taken no particular surveys.  I have only performed my own personal observations, and have formed my own humble opinion.  I have run into situations, stopped and looked at the situation and have asked myself why.  Then I began to look at others and "watch" for answers.  But, I was trying to compare apples to oranges and the results weren't "true" results.

You have raised a child for years, five years, seven years, nine years.  Both parents "ogled" over their child from birth, celebrating their child's birthdays with their friends, taking their child to Disneyland, Sixflags, Universal Studios, presenting them with toys, and entertainment of all kinds, even being admired and appreciated by the friends and relatives of the parents. The Easter Bunny only has to visit one basket, and Santa Claus only has one choice of a plate of cookies to choose from.  Life is wonderful. Then one find day another child comes along.  The first child has "had it all to himself/herself" all these years.  Now, there's an invasion.  An invasion to the presentation to Santa Claus.  The Easter Bunny has to bring an extra load of eggs.  Half the toys at Christmas now belong to somebody else.  Attention from the parents is now being divided between the older and the younger child.  The older child doesn't get all of the admiration of others that they used to get.  The older child has been to school long enough to "learn reason".  They have been to school long enough to know how to manipulate.  We try to teach acceptance.  They have acquired something that we all try to teach our children not to do-hate.  Few are taught what selfishness is.  Few parents recognize what selfishness is.  In some cases selfishness can coexist with hate.  None of this means that the parents love the older child any less than the "newer" younger child.  It's just different.  It has to be different in order to bring the younger child up in the world.  But in the eyes of the older child, it is not viewed this way.  Their territory has now been invaded by an uninvited guest.  No matter how much time has been spent preparing the older child for a new member to the family, the physical presence is not realized until it happens.

This is something that must be contemplated.  Parents should realize what the results of such a situation might be.  Not that that will be.  Again, this is no scientific study.  This is something that should be discussed between the parents to see if they really want to do this.  This is not about abortion.  That discussion is for another blog and not mine.  Each individual has their own situation and all of America can not decide for an individual what is best for them because they are not in that situation and this is an argument that will go on until the end of time.  This blog is not the place for that.  My discussion is only the results that have occurred in my family and the discoveries that I have made.  One discovery that I have made is that I was a mistake.  It was unfortunate for my parents that they were going to have another child and especially so many years later, but they never thought twice about it.  It happened.  I happened and they made the best of it.  However, I don't think my sibling brother has ever made the best of it.  It has been trying most of my life with my brother.  With my friends and acquaintances that have siblings, there are maybe one or two years apart from each other and life is wonderful for them even into their elder years.  That has not been the case in mine.  I have paid dearly all these years.  Only now am I able to look back at the mine field and decipher where I should have done this or should have done that and maybe life would not have turned out the way it has.  I have also learned that one cannot change the mindset of the other.  Each has to do it on their own, and they have to make their own decisions.  How much pain does one want to endure?  How much conflict does one want to continue with?  Just as my ex-wife has asked me once, "If life is so bad for you, then why don't you just kill yourself?"  Her statement was then followed up with, "At least I will get the insurance money and live better".  She did make me stop and think if I was really "seeing" everything in a negative way.  However, the company I worked for at the time covered their employees with a ten thousand dollar life insurance policy.  Ten thousand dollars.  Is that all it takes for her to live "better"?  Ten thousand dollars"?  Really?  And then insurances don't pay if there is death by suicide.  For that, I should have gotten out a long time ago.  Maybe it would have cost me less after all this time.  She has hoped that I would commit suicide ever since.  And somehow she has also been able to "charm" my older brother as well.  That couldn't have been too hard though since he has hated my very existence from birth.  He has interfered with my relationship with my children ever since the divorce and now my ex-wife has gotten exactly what she had hoped for.  She hoped for the longest time that my children would never see me again.  They haven't.  For minds that weak that they can't see through the smoke and mirrors, I have to let all of that go if I want to have a more satisfying, fulfilling life.  If I have to make sacrifices just for me to go through life without depression, so be it.  There are some lyrics by John Lennon that state:

 "You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're doing what we can
But when you want money
For people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait"

The only time my daughter contacted me was to ask for a contribution to go to Europe so that she could pray for a bunch of hookers in Germany that chose to be in that profession.  She hadn't seen me for two or three years by that time and then she sent me an email asking for a contribution.  No phone call.  Just an email.  She can't visit with her father, but she can go to Europe for the benefit of some hookers?  You must be kidding me.  Needless to say, I did not contribute and she has not spoken to me since, so the Missions to the Netherlands in my humble opinion with have to wait.

Research before bringing another child into the "world" so far apart from the next oldest child.  Find out what the repercussions are of having children so far apart.  Are you willing to endure the headaches and tolerances they you will have to go through or present you with?  Are you so special that you will be able to make smooth the paths between the two?  Are you willing to do this until the day you die?  My mother had to die with me being prevented from hearing her last words or even being allowed to attend her funeral services.  She had to die with her family in shambles.  It's only my humble opinion.

Making Sacrifices

Once I was out of high school, that was the time to become an "adult".  You don't have to go to college if you don't want to.  It's a smarter road to take, but you don't have to if you don't want to.  It takes money to go.  If you don't have it, you need to get it.  You need to apply for loans.  You need to have all the right answers on the applications.  You need to present all the right "papers".  My father on the other hand, felt the need to remain as "private" as possible.  That meant that as few people as possible needed to know what he did with his money or where it came from and that included colleges, universities, and the IRS.  Since he would not allow copies of his tax returns to be presented to the colleges and universities for application, that meant I was stopped dead in the water.  I tried to apply for government loans.  At that time, a government quota had to be met.  They wanted diversity in their school.  Upon application to a Houston university I was stopped because I wasn't a member of a minority that there was a quota for.  Much as the case of Allen Bakke vs The Regents of University of California , I didn't have the money to fight the issue and my parents didn't want to go to the trouble.  I kept trying to figure out how I could live on my own and go to school.  Sacrifices.  It's all about sacrifices and facing those fears.  Earlier in high school, I had injured my back working at a local grocery store.  I injured it in such a manner that the pain would not allow me to move my legs and for a short while I could not work.  It took me a year to recover.  Afterwards, trying to find a job was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.  Since I injured my back, almost no where could I find a job.  Talk about having adversity in life.  I grew up with a shithead brother that really didn't want a brother to start with.  I had to go to school where I got picked on since I didn't "fit in".  I tried fighting back, but that didn't work because all I got was in trouble.  Now, that I had become an "adult", I couldn't seem to support myself.  If I couldn't support myself, how was I ever going to support a girlfriend that someday I had hoped to marry.  My doctor sat me down in his office one day after examining my back x-rays and explained to me that with my particular injury, I would not be able to do this kind of work or that kind of work.  More than likely I would be living with my parents for quite a very long time.  Really doc?  Would you just like to pull the trigger now and spare me the pain and humiliation of being a weakling in adulthood also?  Really?  Reflecting on all of this, I did have it pretty good at home.  My clothing was paid for.  My food was paid for.  My electricity, gas, water, rent, everything was paid for.  My parents didn't believe in giving me an allowance.  "Allowance"?  Allowance for what?  I never did understand that.  If I needed money, I just asked and told them what I needed it for.  I was honest with them and they were honest with me.  So, I asked and I received.  If I were to move out into my own apartment, having trouble trying to find a job and wanting to go to school at the same time, there would have to be an awful lot of sacrifices that I would have to make of which I was not willing to.  So, I stayed home and went to a local community college paying for it myself with what measly little part-time job I could locate until I couldn't afford it anymore.  Also, looking at the future with my current girlfriend, as attractive as she was, I let her go and sent her on her way because I just knew I would not be able to support her.  I also went and bought a bicycle.  I didn't like being told "I can't".  I bought a bike and began riding long distances and eventually riding up to a hundred miles in a day.   After a time of riding like that, I built my back muscles up and I was able to find work of any kind.  I even did some construction work for a while when I was told I wasn't supposed to.  I was not going to be kept down.  But, by that time, I had lost my girlfriend, and I had to move on.  I made sacrifices after all and I had to keep my chin up while doing it.  I had made sacrifices after all.

The Do Gooder

So, my ex-wife left.  She left taking the children without my permission.  She left playing on my ignorance and fear of the law.  I was trying to be nice throughout the whole ordeal.  Nice.  In a divorce, one cannot be "nice".  Your being "nice" will be taken advantage of every time.  I certainly didn't find the proper attorney either.  I did a little research and found that mostly, the men that had male attorneys did not gain as much as the ones whom had female attorneys.  I relied upon a female attorney.  I also did not read the "signs".  You know.  What I had discussed earlier in this blog.  When I walked into her office, there were books all over the floor and papers every where, all in disarray.  With an office such as this I was wondering how her practice was.  I sat and talked with her and she talked a good game.  After spending my money with her, it turned out she couldn't do a thing for me anyway because my wife had run back to her home state which she had not been in for eight months.  My ignorance of the law.  During the process, my brother played on my emotions and ignorance.  After a life time with the bastard treating me as though I was the gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe, I still played into his hands.  He was the information gatherer for my wife and she used it all against me.  As she professed, she made sure that the children would never see me again.  Only, that was after my daughter would turn eighteen.  Remember, my son had ADHD and he would listen to no one.  He stayed in touch as long as he was able to get financial help from me.  But, if the help was not there, I would not hear from him.  The good ol' bro was explaining how I should be and how I should react and what I should do for the children, all the while, he was giving my soon to be ex-wife money and food to support the children.  Falling back to the definition of bully.  I didn't realize it until too late and I was still trying to be nice so that I could still see my children.  After it was all said and done, the children also became the information gatherers and when there was no more information to gather, there were no more visits from them.  And the daughter also turned eighteen.  Even so, she made another attempt of getting money from me.  She told me, "God needed money so that she could go to Germany and pray for some hookers".  Sounded to me like Oral Roberts was on the attack again.  First, if God needed the money, why didn't he contact me himself?  Second, if some hookers in Germany needed her prayers to help them leave the business, why couldn't she pray for them right here at home just like we do for our soldiers off in another land fighting a foreign war?  Third, by this time, she was now into her college years of religious indoctrination and she didn't feel the need to visit with me any longer.  If someone needed money, I would give it to those that come and visit with me.  I was not going to pay someone to stay away from me.  I'm quite sure she could do that on her own.  Instead, she turned to the good ol' bro and he supplied her the money.  The good ol' bro.  The "do gooder".  It seems to me if he wanted to do some good, he would have encouraged the ex to get the son on medication so he could be closer to "normal" whatever normal is.  And if he was any kind of brother at all, he would have stayed the fuck out of my affairs rather than fuck up the relationship I had with my daughter.  Instead, since he was married to a bitter, selfish, dyke-like woman that was just like him, he encouraged my daughter just to stay away.  Hell!  He already hated my guts for coming into the picture at birth and infiltrating in territory.  Now, he had to bust up everything that meant anything to me.

Finally realizing all of this, still having the dream that has plagued me for so long, I decided to follow the suggestions of professional psychologists and start a journal.  Writing a journal of all of my emotions was actually a release of my contained emotions.  It began to flow out like Niagara Falls and I began to let go.  Once I began to let go, all things began to fall in place.  Once they started to fall in place, I began to step over the debris and find my way.  I found my way to satisfaction and happiness.  And no more dreams However, the ones trying to make me feel bad as a person, still make their attempt at trying to make me feel bad.  What pisses them off the most is the fact that I have found my satisfaction and happiness and they obviously have not.  The things that they attempt to do to me just runs off like water on a ducks back and it pisses them off even more because they don't know what to do now except just to keep me ostracized.  Really?  Is that all that you have?  Really?  I am still alive and well.  I haven't committed suicide at your behest.  Is that really all that you have?