U2 - With Or Without You

Guns N' Roses - Patience

Staind - Outside

The Notorious B.I.G. - Suicidal Thoughts

Smokey Robinson - One Heartbeat

Tony! Toni! Toné! - Whatever You Want

Wayback Wednesday - Hall & Oates - She's Gone

Fugazi - I'm So Tired

Liam Gallagher - For What It's Worth

Joyner Lucas - I'm Sorry

The Notorious B.I.G. - Suicidal Thoughts

Holiday depression is real

 This will be the third year that I have gone without family, traditions and joy at the holiday season.  In 2018 right before the holidays I was given notice by my now ex wife that she was kicking me to the curb.  You see I had suffered sever head injuries in a motorcycle accident and then became partially blind due to cancer and was trying to pull myself together and regain focus.  Well, as a narcissist, she was incapable of seeing that I MIGHT be going through a rough patch, dealing with a scrambled brain, depression from finding out I had a rare and fatal form of cancer and losing an eye.  Instead of standing by 23 years of marriage, I got the added crap storm of a divorce issued the week of Thanksgiving.  

Keep in mind, I loved my ex and kids more than life itself and they were my motivation to stay alive and try to get better.  I tried my best to make this as easy as I could on them financially but it didn't matter.  The treatments, scans, followups and procedures that would have cost an arm and a leg were put off to ensure that we remained as "close to normal" as we could as I tried to recover.  It didn't matter and now I am seeing that I should have listened to others and put my health first because the end result was me being abandoned and my health worst off.  But I loved my ex and love my kids and I saw this as a grand gesture on my part to demonstrate my love for them as I tried to become once again who I was.

Now at the holidays I find it the most painful time of the year (fuck the happiest bullshit).  Do you know how painful it is to have every part of a holiday that the rest of the world find such joy in, absolutely destroy you inside?  Christmas movies, lights, presents, parties etc.. all remind me of a time that I will never in my life see again and that sucks.  I use to go all out for Christmas and take 2 weeks off during the holidays to ensure that I could get as much time with my family in as I could.  I would shower my ex and kids with gifts and ensure that there was never a time that they felt like the holidays weren't special.  

Holiday meals were always held at my parents house and we would go over on Christmas morning to open gifts with the rest of my family.  From what I have learned, the kids don't even participate in that anymore which I am sure is hard on my folks despite their attempts to cover it up.  I can't bring myself to drive back up because the memories would be too much.

Who knows, this year I could become just another holiday statistic.  Terrible thoughts run through my head and yeah it is scary at times but I try to push through.  To be honest, ever since I was kicked to the curb, my life has had no meaning or purpose.  The relationships, traditions, goals and future I use to have are all gone and at my age it is too late to start over.  This means to move forward in life that I have to learn to live with this pain on top of all of the other issues that I have to deal with and worry about.  I am tired of people telling me that I am strong and that you were a Marine, you can overcome anything.  The Marines teach you that in order to survive you need others and that you need to trust the people on your team.  What do you do when your team is gone?  

Anyways, happy holidays.....

Chris Cornell - "Nothing Compares 2 U" (Prince Cover)

The Jompson Brothers "Barely Alive" - My Divorce after life

Narcissist - JOCO's claim to fame

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine last night regarding JOCO and how it makes people soft as pudding and incapable of handling adversity once it appears. 

 To many JOCO

residents, adversity is when the Starbucks drive-thru is moving slow, the cleaning lady is on vacation, or the most shocking of all, snow is in the 7 day outlook.  So why is it that we are surprised when they let us down when the shit hits the fan?  We shouldn't be.  

As for loyalty, forget it. There is no such thing as ride or die in the burbs.  It is a culture of use and abuse.  Men trade in their wives for newer models the first sign of wear and tear and women, they tend to be loyal to the dollar.  The minute that cash has a hiccup they are looking to trade out of that relationship or fleece the man they are with for as much cash as possible.  Don't believe me, just look and see how many cosmetic surgery options and divorce attorneys there are in the JOCO area compared to the rest of the metro or even the Midwest.  The numbers are shocking.  

The identity of JOCO residents has gone beyond the stereotype and morphed into the status quo.  You may want to break the cycle but good luck.  It doesn't matter how well you screen for character or how long you have been together, the minute adversity hits. the true colors of the individual will appear.  What we are dealing with is a culture of narcissist.  Good luck with that. 

Narcissist destroy every relationship around them unless they can benefit.  Check out their relationships with their families, coworkers, "friends", neighbors etc.. I guarantee that most of those are nonexistent or strained.  Narcissist aren't capable of anything more than self preservation and once you are used up.  They are incapable of overcoming adversity without damaging those around them.  This has made JOCO soft.

So is JOCO now full of narcissist?  Not the stereotype, the actual clinical diagnosis. 

The Civil Wars - The One That Got Away

What I Miss Wednesdays - Love Edition

Whiskey Myers - "Stone" Acoustic - Damn!

If you are part of Divorce Courts- This is what you stand for

5 year choroidal melanoma anniversary - The clock starts ticking now

Ok, I am finally willing to discuss this

It was 5 years ago that my life began the countdown towards the early end. 
Choroidal melanoma is a rare form of cancer that forms behind the eye and is for lack of a better word "lethal".  This isn't exactly one of those well-known cancers and there isn't anything that you can do to prevent it. 

After my diagnosis, I told my ex-wife the news and instead of support and comfort she was actually mad at ME and got in her car without a word and drove off.  That might have been even worst than receiving the bad news a few hours earlier.  I was left speechless and confused by what had just happened and knew that I would be facing this alone.  

I would also be facing the permanent loss of vision in one of my eyes.  This took away my motorcycle riding, balance, depth perception, and new meaning to the phrase blind spot.  It took me 2 years to be able to fully function without destroying everything around me when I walked etc.

In my mind, the shot clock was ticking on my life and the person who I had at that point spent close to 20 years of marriage and raised 2 kids with decided that I would be isolated and the trauma that I was dealing with would be kept from the family.  This meant that the emotional issues that I was dealing with went without explanation to my teenage daughters.  My ex decided that we should keep it from them until June ( I was diagnosed the previous October) when school was out.  Even then she didn't want to tell them.  It was my problem after all and not anybody else's.  To her/them my cancer wasn't serious...  I had just a year earlier recovered from a major motorcycle accident that destroyed my knee, gave me head trauma that I am still dealing with(headaches, memory loss, night vertigo, etc.).  That is another story altogether.

I received radiation therapy 5 weeks after my diagnosis to slow the spread.  This meant checking in on a Monday and having radiation inserted through the eye and removed the following Friday.  Radiation levels were too high for visitors and medical staff could only be in the room for 5 minutes before having to leave.  It didn't much matter because I knew that I was on my own.  The tumor was shrunk to a size that they were happy with and the shot clock began.  This wonderful little thing doesn't go away, instead, most patients have it spread to the liver or the brain, depending on how it feels.  

As you can imagine, this story doesn't presently have a happy ending.  It wasn't long after my diagnosis that my ex decided to file for divorce.  I missed 6 months of work when the company I was working for split up while recovering and finding a new job when you are wearing an eye patch and still trying to cope with things wasn't easy.  Despite my best efforts, the 20 prior years apparently didn't amount to shit.  

So now I start my march to the unknown 5+ year mark hoping that I am one of the lucky ones to survive.