My mom and uncle never, ever hear anything he does framed negatively.

They spin it all day, every day.

My uncle has at least been trying to vary where he gets his news, but Facebook makes sure to enrage him with something about condoms for Gaza or some equally stupid shit.

I’ve been shooting since I was about 5 too.

I haven’t in many years, but I think I was 10 or 11 when my dad got me a 20 gauge.

I did some reading. It would be spot on if he wasn’t convinced that he was perfect and everyone else wasn’t.

No one is smarter than him. No one does it better than him. No one could even come close to comprehending his work. When he dies he feels sorry for anyone who has to work behind him and it will take teams of people to understand the genius of his work. Anyone who has a slightly different worldview than him is “thinking wrong”.

He isn’t obsessed with perfection. He is perfection. No lover could please a woman like him. No one is stronger or more capable. He has done the work of 500 men in one lifetime.

He prides himself on being the best, but not because he has anything to prove to anyone. He knows he’s the best. No one is better.

His father’s dying words were, “Please God. Let my son find some humility. Please. He’ll have no peace until he finds it.”

His father was a great man. An activist. A man who actually worked to change the world.

He wasn’t always that guy though. He had to learn some hard lessons to get there and his son suffered while he learned those lessons. He knew that. He took accountability for it.

I don’t know. I wouldn’t have made it without him in this life, but it was always a transaction. He doesn’t know how to do anything without it being a transaction. I’ve been trying to show him that it isn’t always about that. Every job we do, he tells me to keep track of my hours so he can pay me. I don’t want him to pay me. I want him to see that life can be something we experience and enjoy without it being a transaction.

I’m probably wasting my time, but I love my uncle irrationally and I don’t know why.

My body aches right now as I type this from driving a pick into slate to find some wires for him. It’s probably stupid, but a year from now when I still haven’t asked for a dime, maybe he’ll think about it. Or maybe he is who he is and he’ll think I’m an idiot.

What ended up happening to him? Was it drugs that stopped him from being successful enough to really hurt people?

Sorry to say it like that. That’s just been my experience.

I have spent most of my life dealing with a successful sociopath. Thing is, at times it really looks like he means well.

It’s a constant battle in my head. Is it just his belief system? Is it just that he views everyone else as incompetent?

I constantly find myself making excuses for him because I love him. I get angry and I’m able to really look at everything sometimes, or he does something really shitty to someone else. Like recently, he wanted to buy tires for his son. Great, right? But he had to find a way to make it a tax write off or he didn’t want to do it. He got his daughter a car, but with the condition that her mother couldn’t drive it under any circumstances. And it had to be a flood damaged car. Good deals with the salvage titles and all.

He finally caved and sent his son money when I guilt tripped him, but he was mad for weeks about it. He’s probably still fuming. Mom ended up buying his daughter a car she couldn’t afford on credit and he gave the one he bought her to his girlfriend.

He ended up buying his son used tires because he couldn’t work it out to get the write off without sending a check and he didn’t trust him with it (with no reason to feel that way).

He built a cabin with his step brother in the 80s. They both poured blood, sweat, and tears into it. He had the money so he technically owned it, but it was understood that it was theirs with no strings attached.

When it was completed he informed him that he was welcome to use it any time he wanted, so long as his mother never stepped foot through the door. Naturally his step brother said “fuck that”, took the L and never went back.

I don’t know I’m doing dealing with it. Emotions are weird.

You have to be willing to exploit your fellow humans to get where he is. Either you don’t have a soul to start with or it gets torn to bits every step you take up the ladder.

I’ve known people like that. I’ve been very close to people like that. It’s crazy, everywhere they look they’re looking for some win/something they can take. They never feel guilty. Honestly, the only thing they feel is betrayal when someone won’t bend the knee.

That’s my little observation.

Sad thing is, they still have people who love them but they aren’t truly capable of reciprocating. Everything is transactional and they always expect it to be profitable for them. The only thing that truly hurts them is when it isn’t profitable. It sucks being caught in their orbit too. Believe me.

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I took care of one of the best friends I ever had at the end of his life, right when Covid hit and all that. He was a tough dude to handle on a good day, and I once told him in a fight (long before his illness knocked him down) that if I were catholic and could convince folks that I had performed a miracle, they’d make me a saint when I died for the patience required to be his friend. Any time he’d get angry at me he’d bring it up too haha. “Old saint angryeal the patient over here!” :p

It was tough. There were times when I thought things that I’d have to feel guilty about for weeks. I don’t anymore, because we talked and he acknowledged that he was a nightmare. He said, “I’ve ran everyone that ever loved me right out the door. I grew up hard and I guess I learned that if you always strike first no one could catch you off guard. You’re my best friend and I love you. I know you’ve wanted to kill me at times, but without you I wouldn’t have made it this far and I want you to know that I appreciate it more than I’ve appreciated anything in my life.”

There were times when I’d grit my teeth and it took everything in me to keep from losing it. Especially when he’d go to the hospital and then lie about his alcohol addiction, become delirious and demand to be released, I’d go get him, he’d regain his sanity and then cry. Finally, he decided to be honest and they medicated him. In his last days they even brought some of his favorite beer for him. He’d say, “I’ll be dead soon.” I’d remind him that he was too mean to die, the devil didn’t want him haha.

As hard as it was, I wouldn’t trade the time I got to spend with him for anything.

When I was young and I got strung out on heroin, he took care of me and kept me out of a lot of trouble. I owed him more than I could ever give.

Years before that, I took care of my ex’s father as he died from ALS and Parkinson’s. That was seriously, seriously hard to do. He couldn’t care for himself at all. He was so sad about being an inconvenience to anyone. “I’m so sorry you have to do this. I’m so so sorry.” That was the hardest part in that. I told him to think of my body as an extension of his own, but I know he never could.

He also took care of me when I was younger. I was homeless as a teenager and he took me in. He took in a lot of people. When I walked into his tiny little house to sleep, there were so many people there it was unreal. I slept on the floor in the living room with four other dudes he was looking out for. Some of them showed up to beg him for his medication while he was dying. It was insane. I hid his painkillers in my wood stove under some ash in the back. My house was broken into at least 6 different times by people looking for those pills. I hated them so much, then became an addict myself just around the corner and understood at least why they were all such monsters. Didn’t excuse them of course, but understood them.

I know I just said a whole lot of nothing. I guess I just wanted to say that I’m on the other side of twice being a caretaker. I’m sure I’ll have to do it again eventually. I’m very close with my uncle and he has a lot of money so I’m sure I’ll be fighting off parasites with him one day and dealing with all of that. Anyway, when I’m on my deathbed, regardless of the circumstances, I will die proud for having cared for the people I cared for no matter how hard it was or is in a moment. I won’t let myself sit and regret that I’m nobody, because at least twice in my life I have actually mattered and provided honest to god comfort to someone in this world that we all suffer in.

I have nothing but respect for people who do that day in and day out.

Sorry for this useless book. Y’all be good.

Yeah only a handful of folks in professional sports end up being celebrities. Most of them just collect their check and live it up quietly, doing the occasional interview that gets watched by 20 people or so. :p

I’d love that life.

Buddy of mine is in the nfl. He’s been recognized like twice in 4ish years.

Oh and the one guy got the team wrong so I’m half thinking someone else recognized him first and just didn’t say anything.

I meant as game really, kind of like deer. Permits and such for hunting. But I appreciate your comment as I did not know any of this.

My god that is disturbing.

Would have been a very awesome source of beef if properly sustained.

This is almost identical to what I said to my kid. I explained that it would be a process for both of us and he would need to be as patient with me as I was with him.

My kid has not spoken to me in 4 years. Two slip ups (said she or her twice accidentally) and me saying I was just going to avoid pronouns until it sunk in. Nope. “Fuck you dad. You’ll never see me again.”

His mother messed him all up though. We were very young when she got pregnant (I was 15) and naturally we didn’t make it as a couple.

He was allowed to eat family packs of Reece’s multiple times a day until he was so overweight it was ungodly. I was the bad guy for trying to do anything about it. He had to have a meal separate from everyone his entire life. If the family was having baked chicken and vegetables, my son was having ramen noodles or chicken nuggets. The body issues started there. When I refused and said, “Eat with the rest of us and eat healthy or I can’t help you. I can’t in good conscience feed you pop tarts and ramen for dinner.” Mom used this to paint me as some kind of monster who was starving my kid.

When the kid got to middle school those kids ate him alive. He ended up developing an eating disorder and starving/surviving on lettuce. Mom finally decided it was time to do therapy and blamed me for it. “You just had to make a big deal about what he ate!”

My kid has been spoiled and turned into a self obsessed person who I don’t recognize and I’d cut a foot off to just have my kid back. He’s an adult though, and I can’t change any of it.

All I can do at this point is hope that he regrets this one day but I don’t have much hope. That kid could have a best friend and love them with everything, and then just cut it off like it was nothing over some small thing and never speak to that person again, so my hope is very small.

Sorry to spill all that here. This just made me spin when I read it.

All I can do to show my love is keep paying for the services. (Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, etc.) And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’s laughing at me for it, but I’m happy to be doing something, anything. As silly and small as it is, it’s all I have left.

Y’all take care and if a trans kid reads this and can relate to this story, please don’t skip on your family because things aren’t going the speed you like. My kid stopped talking to everyone in my family overnight and never had a conversation with anyone but me. I get that it can be hard and I’m certain there are people who you will have to leave behind, but don’t cut your lifeline/support network and burn bridges unnecessarily. You could end up regretting it and causing yourself and everyone else a lot of unnecessary pain.

Bedbug bus? :p

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Awwww you should’ve left the comment alone.

I love you!

His hugs can be attractive I guess.

I heard he was actually a descendent of Jafar.

Did u not no he wuz muslin anticrist? Borned in kinya? Hoosain? Do u forgot?

Do ur gramma not send u this?

Duh!

Wut bout not my present shirt? U not get 1?

Man I wish we could go back and get Bernie. :(

Damn. I haven’t built a new computer in 10 years.

Are we seriously here now? DAAAAAAMN

I got old.