The Wheelchair Wars

“We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”~ Winston Churchill

I don’t think that I have ever felt such frustration as I am about to write about in all of my life as an adult. Eventually this will go away, but this blog has always had the original intent to be my therapy so buckle up.

And before you start going on and on about how fighting is never the answer. Yeah, I know that. You just need to keep reading.

I went out the other night and I ran into this woman that I had not seen in a very long time. Someone that I have wanted to see more of but never actually do.

And while she did hang out with me for part of the night, I did notice that she would disappear off and on. I didn’t know if she was going to the restroom, or going to the bar, or going outside to smoke, or anything.

I will spare you the boring and long details of the evening, but I will mention that I was making the moves, and I planned to see just how far it would go and to see where I stand with her.

But during her frequent disappearances I noticed that when I looked around for her that she was standing there talking to another man who also was in a wheelchair. That guy and I would pass by each other a lot and he always was giving me dirty looks. I tried to engage him in conversation but he never said a word to me. I even threw him a compliment and still got nothing.

However after I decided to make a move, I noticed that whenever she was socializing or doing whatever it was with the other guy, he was doing the same stuff I was doing.

What in the world?!?!?!??

The woman is beautiful. She’s going to gain attention, I get that. But I felt like this guy was taking away from me and taking for himself.

This non-verbal, non-physical altercation of an event was happening.

Physically speaking… even though he and I lack severely in that department, he still had a bigger build than I. If he and I were to stand up and face each other, he would in fact be much larger than I in all capacities.

At that point I knew that if something between he and I broke out, he would have the advantage and probably the victory. But as time went on, I realized that he kept drinking and this was actually causing him to become weaker and ultimately a burden for anyone surrounding him.

At times when I would actually go and seek her out and find her with him, he gave even more dirty looks towards my direction. I took it as a non-verbal threat. This shit is not cool!!

Towards the end of the night, this woman did come to me to tell me that she was leaving. I offered to walk her outside so I knew she was safe, but she emphatically refused my offer.

She left, and then shortly after the other guy left. But I cannot definitively tell you that they left together.  I don’t know that.

I realize that I live in a certain corner of society where it is the survival of the fittest. I know that it is winner take all. But what people don’t realize about this kind of world, for who do not live the same as I do that it is an understatement to say that it is brutal.

Two men fighting go at it until there is a clear loser. We always hear about how if two women fight that it is even worse because they never fight fair.. pulling hair, clawing each other and so on. It is not pretty.

So then let me explain that if two disabled people are in a physical fight, it is far worse than you have ever seen!!

Because of the fact that they are disabled to begin with, they fight like they have nothing in the world to lose and everything to gain. They literally fight to the death. The only two ways that a fight between two physically disabled people come to an end is if someone steps in and breaks it up, or the victor realizes that their opponent is near death and they don’t want to go to jail or have that on their minds for the rest of their lives.

Disabled people already are engaged in a fight for their lives because of all that we have to deal with in daily life. Going down in a blaze of glory for something we want to have or to protect is not a second thought. There have been too many times where I have found myself in that situation and I did what I did to make sure that I protected myself.

Now that a few days have passed, I think about how I probably could have taken this other guy down after realizing that he had too much to drink and probably couldn’t fend for himself that much.  But I never went after him for it. I also knew that starting a war with him from the moment that I saw what was going on would have been a personal disaster for me. I am still pissed off about it. And I could probably blame everyone and everything. Him, her, and myself included.

Some of you reading this might say that she’s not worth it. But I think that it is worth something because if I had not done anything I would never find out for sure where she and I stand, or could stand because there is no omelets without breaking any eggs.

Carpe diem, baby!

When Reality Strikes Again

“If you catch me saying ‘I am a serious actor,’ I beg you to slap me.”~ Johnny Depp  

I know that there is a ton of information that a person can find on the Internet if they looked up the phrase “See the forest through the trees” but there’s fewer people who honestly understands that phrase. And still even fewer people who are able to see their own forest through their own trees. 

I was fortunate recently to be able to take a step back outside of myself and look back at my life and all of who and what is in it. 

The results were stunning and shocking. I could not believe the kinds of people that are in my life. I couldn’t believe the kinds of people whom I was blindly calling “a friend”… much less the kinds of people that I was believing that I was close to, and I would tell them all of the time that I loved them. 

Amazing what you miss when you do not stop to actually take a look at your life.

When I turned around and saw what these people have been doing to me all along, and behind my back… I was crushed and my world had crumbled down all around me until I was surrounded by nothing but darkness and fire. 

And yes, I am about to do something about it. And yes, there are going to be people upset. But I would much rather have them upset and then take time to get over it and move on, rather than have ME suffer this needless pain and misery, just so others can be comfortable, happy, and feel like they are in charge. 

Time for Dambreaker to do and live for Dambreaker. And time for Dambreaker to do whatever makes Dambreaker happy. And if  I am happy, then those are the things I should do. And if YOU are one of the beloved people in my life that I have endlessly loved and adored, and you cannot handle that? I’ll show you the door. 

P.S.- Johnny Depp: Your quote for this blog post? I HAVE heard you say this about your career. I am coming for you!!! 

When Reality Strikes

“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Three people were arrested and charged with murder in Alabama in the last week. The tale of the murder is very bloody and horrific.

 

But we hear about these kinds of stories all of the time in the news and on the Internet. So then why am I talking about a crime that happened in a place that I have never been to before? 

 

Reason: One of my friends lives there. It has become personal.

 

We hear about crimes happening all of the time. A murder happening somewhere in the country or something else that was so awful that it spread to nationwide news. Just in the past few days, Virginia Tech had another school shooting. It was not as tragic as the one several years ago, but it was in the news.

 

Still, it surrounds us. But we have become numb to the fact that these crimes are happening. Why? Because it was not something that was personal.

 

But it is personal to those who are involved.

 

This murder in Alabama happened, and three are in jail and awaiting court in the morning as I am told. The person who seems to have been responsible for the crime, is the best friend of someone whom I am friends with.

 

Nobody honestly pays attention, until some how it is related to you personally. Like I said, I wasn’t there. But that’s where my friend lives. And she’s most likely filled with the anguish of confusion, doubt, disbelief, and everything else that you can think of. Yet I don’t want to put words into her mouth or force different emotions upon her. The bottom line is that this cold reality has struck her and she is dealing with it. I wished I could help her.

 

The three who were arrested admitted to the crime. And now my friend believes that the one with whom she was close to, that is involved, won’t becoming back. As she said in her own words on the telephone with me just moments ago, “It’s like a death in the family.”

 

But there’s a lot of people that I am sure that has gone to her and offered their help. Being swarmed by people with promises of “if you ever need anything”, although helpful at times, probably is not what she is going to be needing from me as her friend.

 

Then again, I do not know exactly what she needs from me at this point. But whatever it is, I am confident that she will seek me out for it, and I will be there to the best of my own abilities to be there for her in that time.

 

The person who allegedly committed this crime was someone that she knew most intimately and personally. Spending time together with one another’s families. Being in one another’s homes and everything. I cannot imagine nor would I pretend to imagine just how lost and empty she feels right now. Nor this person’s mother and his family. Nor even the family of the victim. I can’t think of what ALL people involved in this horrible, horrible event are going through at the moment.

 

But my point is this: We tend to not give much of what we hear a second thought. But that all changes when things happen that hit so close to home. Especially if it directly hits home.

 

I find it amazing that’s how life will sometimes work.

 

I’ve not had this kind of life experience before. And even though I am not there, and I am not involved first-hand, it has been something that has struck me as well. Because I know that my friend is hurting badly right now.

 

Yet I hope that soon, I will be able to be there for my friend in the exact and precise way that she needs in order to help her get through this. I do not know what that will be. I will have to cross that bridge when I get to it.

 

 

Goals

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.”~ Hannah Moore

When I was a young child, I remember crying because my parents were leaving the house for the night and my siblings and I were in the house alone with a babysitter. My parents were going out to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

And then I remember finding out that my father had married my mother at the age of 26. From that point, I knew that I wanted to be married at that age too. But it didn’t happen. The goal that I had set for myself was a goal that was unrealistic because it was bound to change as I grew older. People still today make goals in their life that are unrealistic. And those are the ones that are bound for failure from the start.

The goals that we set often are unrealistic. For one reason or another. They are too high or too low, or not right at all. We all have dreams of what we want to do. We fantasize about what we’d want to be doing by a certain point. Not just a few of us- we ALL do it!! Some of us succeed while most of us fail. And its all in the process of deciding what we want and how we plan to make sure that we are able to reach that point.

Often goals are set too high. You don’t hear a lot about setting them too low, but it happens. But usually they are too high. And when we do set them too high, it no longer becomes something that is plausible, but rather we’ve aimed too far and we’ll never hit the bullseye and then it seems in the end that it has been an impossibility.

If our goals are set too high, the inevitable disaster will strike. And unfortunately, it becomes more than something that we bargained for in the first place. When are our goals are too high, and we’ve seem to come closer and closer to the end timing of that goal and we are nowhere near reaching it… we often find ourselves throwing away common sense as well as common courtesy. We begin to step on those around us and damage our personal relationships because in our minds, we find them to be obstacles in the way of us reaching those goals. The very sad part about it, is that we don’t realize that is what we are doing to our personal relationships with others- until it is too late.

The goals are unrealistic and we say “Damn the Torpedoes!”, in an all-out effort to prove to the world (and ourselves) that we are right and they are wrong. This begins the whole process of the damage that I just mentioned.

Depending on what we were doing and what we have done, there is a chance that those damaged relationships can become salvaged and mended together. The problem is that nobody is thinking about it as it bursts into flames while we sprinkle fuel all around us because our focus is on one thing and one thing only- REACH THE GOAL.

So then we don’t reach our goals. They never happen. Now what?? Well, usually a few things go on when we’ve realized that we have failed. Usually we go through a lot of different emotions. Mainly depression, stress, and anxiety. We are crushed because we didn’t make it and we become very sad. The stress levels begin to rise because we begin to internally beat ourselves up for what we have done (or in this case, have not done). And then we go and allow our flawed human nature to take over and we assign the blame on others when we should be looking in the mirror. Our anxiety levels as well as our stress goes through the roof when our goals are just so far out of reach and we’re running out of time.

By the time I was twenty years old, I still wasn’t married. Not that I thought I’d be married while in high school, but still there weren’t any even any prospects of marriage at that point. I had only six years left to make that goal that I made as a child. And I placed all of the blame on all of the women that I thought at the time, were the ideal person to make for me a wife. And when nothing happened with them, I blamed them. I blamed all of the women in the world for a lot of things. I destroyed relationships with females during high school because that’s all that I thought about. And when things were not going as planned, I made them worse and ultimately killing any chance of any kind of relationship- friend or more- with any of them. Which is partly why I no longer have any communication with them today.

I should have been looking at myself in the mirror and thought things over and realized that my goal was not going to be something that would be attained. Mainly because the goal was never really defined or planned. It just was “a goal”.

When we make our goals, we have to actually stop and think about whether or not these things are attainable. Most of us will have to admit defeat a lot of the times because the things that we want, probably just won’t ever happen. If we can work on separating what is attainable and what is just ‘a fantasy’, and acknowledge the two then I think we have a better chance of setting better goals for our lives.

If we don’t, then we are going to end up living a life that is miserable and full of depression. Our relationships will begin to fail, and our overall physical as well as our mental health will soon fade into those dark and creepy places that we never want to be in the first place.

I would love to travel to Utah, and all states westward. But I would also like to travel to Denmark, Germany, France, and Romania. There would be nothing wrong with making these a goal in life. Except for the fact that they would be unrealistic goals. Why?? Because I do not have the money, or the means to make them happen. I might be able to visit a few of the states but going to Europe is something that really isn’t something that is plausible at this time.

I needed to realize this, and because I had then I was able to breathe a little better. Sure it was sad, but life is not always going to give you what you want.

Instead, we all should strive for goals that are within our means. Goals that we are certain we can achieve. There is nothing wrong with setting goals, in fact it is a wonderful idea. Setting the wrong goals however, will always be a burden.

There’s Nothing On

“Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.”~ Ann Landers

 

I probably have my television set turned off more than I have it on. It used to be white noise but then again, that got dull and boring. There’s nothing ever on any more.

 

I do have my favorite shows that I like to watch each week, but now with it being summer and all they are doing is showing repeats, the television stays off most of the time, unless I am using my DVD player as a stereo to listen to my music or watching movies from my very meager DVD collection.

 

All of that aside, there’s still nothing on television that captures my full attention day after day, night after night.

 

Television has really hit bottom. Especially now since anything that is new, is all “reality shows”. It is terrible.

 

We watch these ordinary people who dare to sign a contact saying that they give up their privacy rights to be filmed and then broadcast to millions of people around the world. And we do it, because it makes us feel better about our own lives when we see these people acting like complete and total morons before our very eyes. There’s never any plot, there’s no story, there’s no direction. Just mindless, feculent filth that goes on and on.

 

Gone are the days of sitcoms it seems. Some networks will attempt to make new shows but in the end they get cancelled. It seems as if we are more interested in the fact that strange people who we don’t know, are becoming more and more of a fixture in our homes. All because of two things that are still hand in hand. Which actually is an extension of my previous blog post.

 

#1- Television networks do NOT want to pay the absorbment & greedy amount of money to actors in order to make a decent television program.

 

#2- Actors/actresses do NOT want to do any work for less than millions and millions and millions of dollars for EACH episode.

 

So then televison networks tried their hand on these so-called “reality shows” where they specifically state in their contracts… “We ain’t paying you a single dime!”. And people are dumb enough to sign them, just because they wanna be on television.

 

When I was growing up, my parents loathed the television set. As maturing children, we were only allowed to watch a certain amount of ‘the idiot box’ on any given night. Those were the rules of the house. Naturally, that was something that I thought was bogus. So when I was out on my own for the first time, I watched as much of it as I could. Totally wasting life away, because the amount of television that I was consuming was far too much.

 

As an adult now, I can pick and choose whatever I want to watch, whenever I want to watch it. I just choose NOT to because there’s nothing there that interests me. So to my own father I say, “Yeah. You were right.”

 

I really could care less about some woman from New Jersey who has more tits than brains. And I could not care any more about any socialite who wants to sit at home and whine that life isn’t fair, all the while having sex with someone and recording it and selling it.

 

I think that television networks AND the list of actors/actresses need to pull their greedy heads out from their secure-locked butts and come up for air. Find that middle ground and make good quality entertainment. Then television wouldn’t have this stigmata over it. It is in fact, plenty ridiculous.

 

I find it totally laughable at what is considered to be popular any more. Some of these people come out of nowhere and they show themselves on televison and then become so extremely popular that they don’t know what to do with themselves. But then, the next “reality show” gets created and they’ve been bumped out of the spotlight because the next person has acted even more ridiculous and stupid on the air than they had.

 

I speak for myself when I say that every time I go NEAR my television set, I cringe. Because as soon as I turn it on, I know that within minutes I will turn it back off again. The only reason why I have one in the first place (other than the reasons listed above) is because I bought it for $100 to help a woman who we all had thought was trying to get back on her feet and live a life of the straightened path because she had previously had been a stripper. It was a television combo with DVD & VCR. And of course, there was no remote control with it and the DVD & VCR parts to it, don’t even work.

 

And now I find that she fell back into her ways, got married, had a baby, and then divorced. Now she’s back to where she started. And that is probably the REAL reason why I hate my own television set.

 

Honestly though, there’s nothing on!

 

Time to start looking for some hobbies.