My Parents.

Personal rant that I've been avoiding posting because of the sensitive nature of the rant. But it needs to come out. Please recognize that this is a part of how I cope with my baggage. I release it for the world to read. Even though I'm not looking for anyone to comment with sympathy, or for anyone to try to help, it is helpful for me to own up to it and put it out there in black and white.

Mom.

She passed away when I was 9. She had Lou Gehrig's Disease. According to my birth father (dad is the man who raised me, father is the man who gave me dna), she showed her first symptoms while I was in the womb. I never knew her when she wasn't bed ridden. I never knew her when she wasn't eating baby food or using a bedpan or having her children help her balance her checkbook because she couldn't write. In many ways I never knew her. I knew who she was after her diagnosis, but she had limited communication skills and could barely talk so I never really got to sit down and have a heart to heart talk with her and get to know who she was as a person.

I remember watching an episode of ALF where there was going to be a new baby in the house who would be growing up with ALF and how ALF being there would always just be normal for that baby because they didn't know any different. I remember identifying with that after mom passed. She was always in that state since I was a very young child, so I never knew any different. In what I can only describe as an act of intended kindness on her part that went horribly wrong for me, she never told me she was sick. That's just how she was. She never told me she was going to die. Everyone else knew, even my sisters. But she couldn't bring herself to inform her youngest son that she would be passing away from a horrible disease that no one could cure. I'm positive her intentions were good. The result was disastrous for me.

Imagine being the only person kept out of the loop on something huge that will inevitably impact your life. It's a betrayal, and an enormous painful lie. I harbored a lot of resentment toward her for a long time over that. Unlike everyone else, who had some time to mentally come to grips with the fact that she was going to be passing away soon, for me it was as though she had passed away in an auto accident unexpectedly. I had no time to come to grips with it, and no time to understand what was going on while I still had her in my life.

One day in April of 1990, she could tell apparently that if she went to sleep she wouldn't wake up. She stayed up for two days, and on April 26th kept my two sisters home. She sent me to school. I was furious. I didn't understand why I had to go to school if they got to stay home.

Around 10:00 that morning, she passed away. My sisters were there. My grandparents were there. I was at school and completely oblivious.

I held on to some resentment toward her for most of the years that followed. About two years ago or so, my fiancé Laura told me that she understood mom's actions from a parental standpoint. How could you look at your child and knowingly rip their heart out? She was trying to protect me because I was her youngest son and unspoiled by all of this so far. That perspective put me at peace with it finally after 22 years. That peace didn't last long.

My father wasn't there to raise me. I was the result of my mother and father being unfaithful to their spouses, and when I was born my father went back to his family and I never saw him. Mom told me a couple of years before she passed that he existed, and that the man I called dad wasn't my biological father. I was still too young to understand this, but maybe I'd have been mentally better off if I'd have not known of him. I don't know.

I made contact with him when I was 15. I met him over pizza and he told me I had siblings. He told me briefly about his life, and then I didn't hear from him for a few years. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was let down.

I met my siblings through an accidental encounter with a musician in town who said that I looked just like them. I was 17. My father still wasn't really a part of things though.

I tried a few times through my 20's to get his attention, but to no avail. Finally, I decided that I was going to move on with my life. I moved to Colorado, and just before my 28th birthday I receive an email from my father. He tells me he doesn't expect me to forgive him, but he wanted to apologize for having never taken the time to get to know me. He recognized that his actions were unforgivable, but if I was willing to try he would like to get to know his son.

I struggled with this for two weeks, trying to decide whether or not there was room for him in my life. I finally decided that if he wasn't going to be a part of my life it wasn't going to be my fault. I called him, and over the next year we spoke on the phone semi regularly.

I went home that christmas. I lied to my job that he had just been found and that I wanted to go and meet him. Truth is that I wanted to go and confront him and get more information about who I was and who he was and why he was never there. This was the only way I could think to get the time off of work to do it, and it worked.

So I drove to his apartment in Marietta Ohio. I sat outside his apartment for what seemed like an eternity, but was likely only 5 minutes. Then I asked myself what the fuck I was afraid of and went inside.

We talked for about 5 hours. We talked about his life, as well as my own. He explained to me some of the circumstances surrounding my birth, and how he never believed that I was in fact his until he had seen me when I was 17 and I looked just like his son Ryan. He said he realized then that he'd made a big mistake, and that he didn't know how to fix it so he just stayed away.

I left somewhat satisfied. I called him a day later after reflecting on it at mom's gravesite. I told him that I was forgiving him. I meant it. I've forgiven him for not being there when I was a child. The wounds don't go away when someone is forgiven though. You just realize that you can't stay mad forever, and it's a part of the process of moving on. I was initiating that process.

When I moved back to Ohio in 2010, he was living in the Columbus area. I stopped by to see him now and then. When things went south for him in his relationship, I spoke to him and worked out a plan for him to stay with me for a while. He agreed to it, and I started prepping a spare bedroom. The time came, and he stopped answering his phone. Two days later, I see a status on Facebook about him moving back to Marietta. Everything came flooding back to the front. All the resentment and mistrust that I'd tried to squash came flooding back like a tidal wave, and I lost any respect I had gained from him. Was it too hard to just pick up his phone and call me to tell me he'd changed his mind about moving in? Why did he need to keep that from me?

I decided he was a coward. I stopped contacting him. He'd email me and the other siblings now and then to tell us about his life in general terms, but he made no efforts to reach out to me either.

Then I got a call in July. It was 1 day after hearing that my friend Joseph Moore had passed away, and I was coming to grips with that. He told me that the doctors had found a small cancer that he was going to be treated for, but it was likely nothing to worry about and that he'd keep me posted. I didn't hear his voice again.

In october, my sister Laura was going through some of his pictures and ran across one he had of my mother. She sent it to me asking if it was her, and we got to talking. I realized that if she was going through his old pictures, then things must've taken a turn for the worst. I asked her to level with me, and she told me that she thought I knew. According to the information I received from her that night, they had given him 12-15 months and there were about 12 tumors. He'd lost a lot of weight and was in a decent amount of pain. The official diagnosis wasn't given to me that night.

Thinking I had 12-15 months to make peace with this and try to make one last attempt to get to know my father, I decided to take two weeks to think things over and sort out my feelings just like I had done when I turned 28. I wrote to him and told him that I had heard of his diagnosis, and he gave me his new phone number and told me to call him when I got the chance. I held off on doing that til I had sorted things out.

A few days later, I get messages from my brother Mike and my sister Laura that they'd just moved him to hospice and things weren't looking good, and that they were calling the family in. I had received a call exactly like this one month earlier when my grandmother Jackie passed away, but I couldn't make it as I was out of town and she passed before I got back in. Getting a second call of that nature in the span of a month is hard enough. When it's involving someone who is associated with so much personal baggage within you, it's even worse. So I get in the car and drive to Marietta. I'm numb the entire trip there. I'm not sure what I'll find, and I'm not sure what I'll say to him. I did expect him to be coherent when I arrived. He was not. He was in a great deal of pain and had been given a healthy dose of morphine.

I asked my brother to leave the room, and I told him that I wasn't mad at him and that I loved him. That may be the first time I ever told him that. I told him about my beautiful children, and I told him that I was going to do ok. I was preparing myself for his passing, and saying goodbye.

When my sister and my other two brothers showed up, we were all hanging out in the room with him. I was trying to keep calm and just sort through the oncoming loss, when I heard Laura asking the nurse what had happened. She mentioned that she knew it was stage 4 lung cancer…and the rest of the sentence she said is lost in my memory. Those words hung around in my head echoing a painful reminder to my past.

I was not told this. It's hard not to make comparisons to my childhood, when yet again I'm the only one in the room who didn't know what was going on. At least this time I was given a heads up that he was dying, but it was too late for me to have had time to come to grips with it in any way. And now I'm the last to know the specifics surrounding what he has that was taking his life.

I became flooded with anger. He didn't bother to pick up the phone. I became enraged and extremely emotional. I had just been hit by a truck that dug into an old wound with a rusty ice pick.

I said my goodbyes to him again and left. If I stayed, I was going to turn it into me processing my wounds in front of everyone, and that moment needed to be about them saying goodbye to our father. I couldn't be there, so I said goodbye and walked away. To walk away from someone who is alive and know that you will never lay eyes on them again for the rest of your days is a very surreal thing.

I drove home slowly, and just thought. I was again rather numb.

The next night, I was told that he was given only another 3 hours or so. I hopped in my car and went for a midnight meal at Steak And Shake while watching my phone for updates. While I was eating, I got a message that his vitals were slipping. I wrapped up my meal, and started to drive. I drove through the streets of Columbus that night while staring at my phone for any word. At one point, thinking that it had likely happened and that they were too emotional to call me (which would be understandable), I call the hospice and got an update that he was in fact still alive. So I decided to go home.I tried to get some sleep, and had just fallen asleep when my brother Ryan called with a choked up voice to tell me that he had just passed away.

It was 3:20am.

Numb. I went back to sleep and tried to ignore all of this for a few days. I went about my normal life and routines, while not letting my brain go anywhere near the subject of my now deceased father unless it had to. Finally, I broke down. I was angry. I was furiously pissed off.

How could two parents deny their child the knowledge that they were going to leave this earth, while making sure that everyone else was informed? How could two parents die of terminal illnesses and purposefully not brace me for impact? How could they both have done this?

I broke down crying in my fiancé's arms that night. It wasn't a mournful cry, it was a rage filled cry.

To feel lied to and cheated when it comes to someone's death is the hardest betrayal feeling I've ever had to come to terms with. And I've failed so far.

But now all that is left is me and my emotional wounds yet again. So over the next 48 hours, I'll begin the processes of analyzing my anger at both of my parents so that I don't bring any extra baggage to the funeral of the father I never really had a chance to share my life with.

Red Bull Does NOT owe you money!

Why Red Bull may not owe you money.

A few days ago I saw links on Facebook to the class action lawsuit against Red Bull that has gone into settlement negotiations. A lot of people were talking about how Red Bull owed them $10. But they don't. At least not yet. They may not ever. Let me explain.

1. Saying that they owe you $10 implies a guarantee of payment. But if you go to http://evergydrinksettlement.com/faq#Q7 it says in plain english that the court has not yet approved this settlement. That hearing won't even happen til May, so even if they do approve it you likely won't get anything out of it for another year.

2. Saying that they owe you $10 implies guilt on Red Bull's part, when no litigation against them has brought forth a ruling or judgement against them. This is a settlement, not a court ruling. Red bull didn't lose a court case against them, they decided to settle out of court. That is not an implication of guilt. It outlines that pretty clearly here - http://evergydrinksettlement.com/faq#Q3

The articles circulating around Facebook with headlines like "Red Bull Owes You Money! Here's How To Claim it!" are written as click bait. They are written in a misleading fashion that is designed to get people to click their links and drive traffic to their own web pages where they discuss the settlement. Those links go largely unread by many, who merely share the link and it's misleading headline. Then mass misinformation spreads about the nature of this case.

At that point, if the court decides not to approve the settlement and nothing happens, people will think Red Bull are being dicks. But it is not their fault that misleading information was perpetrated by click bait headlines trying to get a share on Facebook.

If you want to know the facts, go to http://energydrinksettlement.com/faq

One final note, I titled this blog post with a definitive on purpose. I said that "Red Bull Does NOT owe you money." That was designed to grab your attention with a definitive counter point so you'd pay attention. The same tactic is being used by these click bait articles to say "Red Bull OWES you money!" This is why you shouldn't believe everything you read online. Someone is distorting the initial message for some benefit to them, be it web traffic or otherwise. I did this on purpose so that I could drive the point home. But every article out there is sharing the same misinformed headline and people are falling for it left and right. This clickbait "journalism" is dangerous at best, as it completely distorts perceptions of the facts.

Thanks for reading. I'm going to file, and if in 2 years I get a check for $10 I'll put it in my savings account.

Don't Stop Me Now

Hello blog, my long lost friend. You've helped me through some very tough times in my life, and always been there to allow me to explore myself when I've needed to. On this morning, as I sip my daily breakfast smoothie and listen to Fiona Apple, I call on you again to help me sort out a new thought pattern circulating in my mind.

I'm a stay at home dad. This means that my life revolves around the care of my girls, who have autism and are both teenagers, and that I have little time for going out to hang with friends or seek mental stimulation. I have very little interest in going out to do most things these days, truth be told, so this suits me fine. But I would still seek certain things to stimulate the mind and rejuvenate the body and soul. These things included spending time outdoors, as that remains one of my favorite ways to get the stimulation I seek. This would usually be a quest for solitude, intending to place me in an environment without the challenges of kids on the spectrum, but also getting me away from people who mostly can't relate with a double-minority like myself (stay at home dad to two teens on the spectrum…how many of those do you know?). Honestly, I have other interests that are relatable to people, but most people are unable to see my side of life because they don't live it. I'm always feeling like they don't fully understand or comprehend unless they are somehow in the same boat. So this makes me feel less and less relatable to other human beings.

The natural consequence of this, of course, is that I've become pretty socially awkward. I never was a social butterfly. However, if you put me in a room with a stranger I get uncomfortable. It's not a setting I find myself in often these days, and I have no idea what to talk about, so I begin babbling. That never ends well, at least from my perspective.

There are a few adults in my life consistently. Laura, my ever loving and ever patient fiancé. The other caregivers in the house, whom I spend more time with these days than I do with Laura due to her busy work schedule. The faculty and staff at the girls' school, with whom I keep an open line of communication to make sure home and school are a unified front for the girls. A small handful of music friends, as well as my partner in crime in Project DIVIDE…other than that, I'm pretty much by myself most of the time. There's my sister, who adopted a special needs daughter over a year ago, and since we both took on roles in special needs families we've attained a new level of understanding and camaraderie with and for each other. However, outside of my own household and the adults surrounding the lives of the girls, she's one of the very VERY few that really get the challenges I face.

And so I'm mostly alone. I'm mostly at home. Over the last 6 months or so I've had the overbearing feeling that something was wrong. I'm mostly these days very bored. I've blamed many things, unable to see what I see today. I've blamed my recent ADHD treatment regiment of Strattera. I've blamed the weather. I've blamed not being able to go out hiking. I've blamed depression. I've blamed stress. But this morning, I'm seeing things differently. I have always had a little trouble seeing things within myself for what they truly are, and have always overanalyzed my life (usually to a negative result because I've overblown a situation and worked myself up). But this morning it seems clear. I'm bored. I'm a bit lonely because of it. And I need to find some new ways of stimulating my brain. The old ways are unproductive and lead to laziness, and the newer interests I've explored over the last few months always seem to wane in and out of my focus. I look forward to my Saturdays, which are my once per week reprieve away from home to focus on my musical endeavors. But lately, as a happenstance, other people have been requesting my production abilities on that day. Who am I to say no? But this makes down time wait for yet another week, and then another artist calls, and so it waits for another week, and the cycle continues. The work with clients is mentally stimulating, and always fun. I'm by no means complaining. I am however thinking that, since this pattern is in place, I may need to focus yet another day for Me-stuff. Either that, or I just need to start saying no to new projects. That's hard to do though. I know that I need Me-space though.

So perhaps the reason I've had so much trouble coming to grips with myself over this past super-long-super-cold winter is because I've become bored with little outlet for stimulation. Maybe it's time to change that up a bit. Don't stop me now!