A pain in my.....aka quityerbitchin

So, it occurred to me today that I don't really tell people my real problems, I mention petty crap, but most people don't know what's really going on with me, because I don't want to bother them with my problems.  This is a long time response to my life, I mean how many people actually know that my mother, sister and aunt died in a car accident when I was 5.  I don't talk about it unless it comes up, because my grief is long over and I don't want to diminish your grieving.

Today, I decided that some people need to know what's going on because they feel the need to whine about how crappy their life is.  It's not going to change their mind, but it just frustrated me to no end.  My response to your pity party is to overload you with pity party.

My mother died as already stated, but shortly after this my father married a woman who beat me regularly, she abused me emotionally, mentally and physically.  If I upset her I wasn't allowed to call her Mom.  Don't finish eating in 30 minutes, after the beating it was 30 days of grounding to the yard.  She made me wear a skirt for standing on my tiptoes, eat (chew and swallow) soap for cursing and for perceived comments that I might make, eat baby food out of a bowl on the floor like a dog because I ate too sloppily.  Their divorce was my fault, per her comments to me.

No shock that at age 13 I attempted suicide, the one and only time was a failure.  I have thought about suicide several times, just didn't have the courage to do it.  Then in the USMC I found I was severely depressed, mood swings were off the charts.  It took nearly a year to determine I had low testosterone or to be exact hypogonadtropic hypogonadism.  I can take steroids to increase my levels, but there is a chance of prostate cancer, so I don't take it.  This means I can suffer severe depression and anger.

About 2 years ago, I started feeling a tingling in my left leg.  A doctor finally diagnosed the problem as spinal damage.  The leg feels like it's constantly asleep, hypersensitive.  If I step on a stone my leg feels like it's on fire.  Sleeping with the leg has become a constant bother because I have to figure out how to lay my hip and leg just right every night.

At some point during all this, my wife decided she was no longer in love with me, she walked out on 10 years of marriage.  I don't have a home, I live out of my truck. My kids who I love and miss dearly live in Corpus Christi and want me home, but I don't have a home, I have no money for a home.

Here's the most important thing, I'm happy, sure I miss my kids, sure I hurt, sure I want to have a home and a car, but I don't.  I wake up each day happy I'm alive.  My pain is not the worst pain I know of, my mourning not the deepest nor most heart-wrenching, my loss not the largest loss.  I can go on because I know someone out there is in worse pain and could use my support, someone has had a larger loss and could use the $1 I can give them today.  Because I live, I am happy.  Like Andy Dufresne says in Shawshank Redemption "Get busy living or get busy dying."

I'm not saying your pain or depression isn't worse, it's just not the worst.  If you need medication take it, if you need psychiatric or medical care please get it.

Insomnia Sucks

     I have always had trouble with sleeping from time to time.  This never used to be a problem because I could always find a way to make up for the sleep later.  Now that I'm driving trucks this is a real problem because I don't want to be the guy that falls asleep at the wheel.  So, I don't drink caffeinated drinks in the evening, I don't eat sugary food before bed and still I sit here from time to time unable to fall asleep.
       The oddest thing about this is when I can sleep, I can do it at the drop of a hat.  I have absolutely no trouble at all sleeping at any hour of the day or night, I can even sleep in almost any position. I once slept standing up as a matter of fact.
      It was January 23, 1992. I know you're already asking how in the heck does he know the exact date?  Well, if you give me a second I'll explain, quit being so impatient.  I entered Marine Corps bootcamp January 20, 1992. To get to the sleeping standing up part of the story you need to know how I got to that particular day.
      If you've never been to bootcamp, and I'll assume you haven't for the purposes of this story, then you don't know that the first thing you do after getting off the plane is sit on the ground with a bunch of other idiots that signed on the dotted line.  Then a bus pulls up and you get on quickly and quietly, because the first thing you learn is to shut up.  Heads between our legs we were told to get sleep if we could, I could not because my stomach was doing flips and I was freaking out.  The reason they have you put your head between your legs is so you can't figure out how to escape from bootcamp.  Once you arrive a Drill Instructor enters the bus and yells, you run to some yellow footprints, you get yelled at some more.  They take you to a group of rooms where you either strip down and get dressed again in your new clothes, get a brand new haircut or make a phone call home.  Then they take you into a room try to convince you to give up all contraband you might have, admit to any drug use you didn't admit to before and essentially rat yourself out.  The funny thing is some guys actually admitted to stuff, which I was completely shocked by.  At the end of this night of fun you get to go to chow.
      Now we just finished day 1 it's January 21, 1992 and after you've eaten a meal in the proper manner, which of course you have never done in your life up to this point.  It's amazing all the things you haven't ever done properly in your entire life.  From this point you have to learn how to dress, how to march, how to salute, how to brush your teeth, how to address yourself (hint no I's or me's everything is this recruit), how to address Drill Instructors, how to shave, how to pee. What I'm getting at is you don't know how to do anything, every word you ever learned in life is even wrong.  A flashlight? No sir it's a moonbeam.  A pen?  An inkstick.  A door? A hatch. The bathroom? The head.  You know absolutely nothing, actually nothing is too much, you know less than nothing.  After doing all this with two more chow breaks at the chowhall, you might think your day is done but it isn't.  You now have to clean your new home known as the squadbay, which you don't do correctly and have to keep cleaning it all night.
       January 22, 1992 has come and you go to chow again.  You get yelled at some more and attend a class or two, but no sleeping or someone will smack you on the back of your grape or melon and you better not open your suck.  More lessons how stupid you are and a couple more meals and of course you now have to clean the squadbay once again, you don't do it right and spend the night doing it all over again.  Notice I haven't mentioned actual sleep at any point, that's because if you get caught sleeping you get thrashed, which involves pushups, jumping jacks (now known as side straddle hops), running in place and generally exercising until the Drill Instructor tires, which is half past never.  Eventually this day ends too.
       The next day we ate chow again and then it was off to medical (the doctor's) to do some tests, have blood drawn and finally get shots from a gun, not a needle.  They shoot a bunch of medicine into you with this nasty air gun.  It was then on January 23, 1992 that I finally fell asleep standing up, waiting in line to get my shots.  I know I was asleep because my eyes were closed and I was back home when I felt a horrible pain in my arm.  I woke up, looked at my shoulder and found that I was bleeding and that the nurse was now behind me.  That's the story, lovely as it is.
      For those with any interest we were finally granted sleep that night, but were awakened at an ungodly hour by Drill Instructors with trash cans and screaming and the lights coming on.  Guys on top bunks fell to the floor, those on the bottom bunks fell out just before the guy from the top bunk hit the ground which of course softened the top bunk recruit's landing.  Somehow a few recruits actually slept through the noise and lights and Drill Instructor's woke them up by tossing the entire bunk over, top bunk sleeper or bottom bunk sleeper did not matter.  I do miss bootcamp sometimes, I'm not sure why.