The longest damn post I have every put on the net...
Life, if nothing else, is a roller coaster: One long track of ups and downs and pains and loves and smiles and tears. While I can honestly say that when I was maybe 15 or so, if I had a chance to guess where I would be in life today, it would be nothing like it is now, not even close. But, there has always been one thing I have noticed. If you look around hard enough, you can always find someone else’s life that is far worse than yours. It seems that now matter how bad things get for me, someone around me or close to be is worse off. Sometimes people are so messed up from their situation that it leaves them so warped, so disconnected, so just pain messed up that even they don’t know how bad their won life is. Case and point:
There’s this guy, let’s call him Mike. To even get close to fully understand his situation, we need rewind a few years of his life. He enlisted into the Navy just a few years after High School. He met his wife in California, a California-Mexican, average education, kind of mellow and down to earth. She would soon find God and become a deeply religious person. Although Mike was a bit wild, a partier at heart, he obviously felt something for her. They got married and had two children. The first, a girl we’ll call Daughter, ended up with the same sense of humor, attitude and a little bit of looks as her father. The second, let’s call him Son, ended up not even seeing his father until he was almost a year old. Duty had kept Mike away from his family during and after his son’s birth. Through the years, Daughter was always closer to her father than Son was. Living a long life of partying and fun loving freedom, while his wife cared for the kids, Daughter seen her father’s point of view, through her own eyes, while Son turned to his mother. Son looked at his father as a drunk, a person who he could never relate to.
Mike retires from the Navy, moves his family back to his own roots here on the east coast and gets a job doing what he was trained as in the military. By this time, Mike owns a Harley, belongs to a motorcycle club as Vice-President, often attends functions with at the club and stays overnight without calling home and just lives his life for himself, hardly every making it home in time to eat dinner with his family. It’s fairly obvious to the people around him that he just doesn’t want to be a home. His wife, on the other hand, still has no job, takes care of the kids alone, hands her husband beer on demand and does everything she can to make her family be happy and healthy, including her now sometimes violent husband. As time progresses, Mike has had more than one affair with mostly biker chicks. His wife assumes this fact enough to actually tell him during one conversation “I don’t care what you do Mike, just please don’t get anyone pregnant.”
As time passes on, Mike becomes close to another woman and starts sleeping over at her house, only coming home about once every 3 days of so. Plus, his newly found girlfriend also lives with her mom. His wife tries to talk to him but he avoids any conversation with her as best he can. This goes on for weeks until days of encouragement from friends and family sends Mike back home to basically tell his wife that he no longer loves her and he is leaving. About a week later, Mike gets a call at work from his Daughter who is at the airport. She tells him of her mother shipping her out to her Aunt’s house in Florida because she cannot control her. Daughter literally left within moments of ending the phone call. It was painfully obvious that Mike was hit hard by the phone call, going around the rest of the day saying “why would a Christian women do such a thing, send my daughter away from me without even telling me?” The very next day, Mike had put it behind him and said nothing about it again for weeks, although he did comment daily about his girlfriend and how much she drinks. She also is known for her instability. Roger’s son has not talked to his father since he stopped coming home daily. By now, the two have not even looked into each other’s eyes for weeks, if not months. When asked about it, Mike simply says, “he hates me but he’ll get over it someday hopefully”. Just to recap, Mike and his wife are still married; his wife send Daughter to her sisters in Florida; Son is still living with his mom attending high school; Mike and his wife still share banking accounts; his check is still directly deposited into the same account that it has been for 10 years; Mike still continue to help his wife where he can, for example, buying wood for the house, cutting it up and stacking it in the yard for the upcoming winter; yet he is living at his girlfriends house, with her mother, who by the way, apparently holds absolutely no love for Mike at all.
Several weeks ago, Daughter shows up at her dads work looking for him. She flew up with her cousin to help her mother that is going to have some type of surgery. Apparently Daughter never told her father what the surgery was for, but she did try her best to patch things up between Son an Mike. Son wanted nothing to do with it and said he hated his father and didn’t care if he ever seen him again in his life. Mike, although is somewhat bothered by this fact, tries no personal attempt to patch things up with Son and still sleeps well because the world still had bars.
This week, Mike got a phone call from his wife at work, like he does almost daily. After all, Mike does not believe in cell phones, or anything technology that was born after the 70’s, and his wife still has no other way of getting in contact with him. This phone call was a bit different. Although the premise for her call was to bug him about getting wood for the winter, she also dropped a bomb on him. She has Colon Cancer and that was the reason for her surgery. I asked him how what stage it was in and what condition she was in but he said he didn’t know. I have asked the same thing for three days now, and he still doesn’t know!!! I gave him a long speech about how he needs to make things right, for his family and everything that goes with it. I told him that if his wife dies, his teenage kid would be in his hands. I thought I opened his eyes so wide you could drive a truck through them, I thought…
Today, his main topic of conversation was about how his girlfriend likes to dress up for Halloween and how they are both going to the club for the party. I just gave up. Sometimes people are so far out there, so lost, so disconnected from reality, that they themselves have no idea how bad their own situation is.
There’s this guy, let’s call him Mike. To even get close to fully understand his situation, we need rewind a few years of his life. He enlisted into the Navy just a few years after High School. He met his wife in California, a California-Mexican, average education, kind of mellow and down to earth. She would soon find God and become a deeply religious person. Although Mike was a bit wild, a partier at heart, he obviously felt something for her. They got married and had two children. The first, a girl we’ll call Daughter, ended up with the same sense of humor, attitude and a little bit of looks as her father. The second, let’s call him Son, ended up not even seeing his father until he was almost a year old. Duty had kept Mike away from his family during and after his son’s birth. Through the years, Daughter was always closer to her father than Son was. Living a long life of partying and fun loving freedom, while his wife cared for the kids, Daughter seen her father’s point of view, through her own eyes, while Son turned to his mother. Son looked at his father as a drunk, a person who he could never relate to.
Mike retires from the Navy, moves his family back to his own roots here on the east coast and gets a job doing what he was trained as in the military. By this time, Mike owns a Harley, belongs to a motorcycle club as Vice-President, often attends functions with at the club and stays overnight without calling home and just lives his life for himself, hardly every making it home in time to eat dinner with his family. It’s fairly obvious to the people around him that he just doesn’t want to be a home. His wife, on the other hand, still has no job, takes care of the kids alone, hands her husband beer on demand and does everything she can to make her family be happy and healthy, including her now sometimes violent husband. As time progresses, Mike has had more than one affair with mostly biker chicks. His wife assumes this fact enough to actually tell him during one conversation “I don’t care what you do Mike, just please don’t get anyone pregnant.”
As time passes on, Mike becomes close to another woman and starts sleeping over at her house, only coming home about once every 3 days of so. Plus, his newly found girlfriend also lives with her mom. His wife tries to talk to him but he avoids any conversation with her as best he can. This goes on for weeks until days of encouragement from friends and family sends Mike back home to basically tell his wife that he no longer loves her and he is leaving. About a week later, Mike gets a call at work from his Daughter who is at the airport. She tells him of her mother shipping her out to her Aunt’s house in Florida because she cannot control her. Daughter literally left within moments of ending the phone call. It was painfully obvious that Mike was hit hard by the phone call, going around the rest of the day saying “why would a Christian women do such a thing, send my daughter away from me without even telling me?” The very next day, Mike had put it behind him and said nothing about it again for weeks, although he did comment daily about his girlfriend and how much she drinks. She also is known for her instability. Roger’s son has not talked to his father since he stopped coming home daily. By now, the two have not even looked into each other’s eyes for weeks, if not months. When asked about it, Mike simply says, “he hates me but he’ll get over it someday hopefully”. Just to recap, Mike and his wife are still married; his wife send Daughter to her sisters in Florida; Son is still living with his mom attending high school; Mike and his wife still share banking accounts; his check is still directly deposited into the same account that it has been for 10 years; Mike still continue to help his wife where he can, for example, buying wood for the house, cutting it up and stacking it in the yard for the upcoming winter; yet he is living at his girlfriends house, with her mother, who by the way, apparently holds absolutely no love for Mike at all.
Several weeks ago, Daughter shows up at her dads work looking for him. She flew up with her cousin to help her mother that is going to have some type of surgery. Apparently Daughter never told her father what the surgery was for, but she did try her best to patch things up between Son an Mike. Son wanted nothing to do with it and said he hated his father and didn’t care if he ever seen him again in his life. Mike, although is somewhat bothered by this fact, tries no personal attempt to patch things up with Son and still sleeps well because the world still had bars.
This week, Mike got a phone call from his wife at work, like he does almost daily. After all, Mike does not believe in cell phones, or anything technology that was born after the 70’s, and his wife still has no other way of getting in contact with him. This phone call was a bit different. Although the premise for her call was to bug him about getting wood for the winter, she also dropped a bomb on him. She has Colon Cancer and that was the reason for her surgery. I asked him how what stage it was in and what condition she was in but he said he didn’t know. I have asked the same thing for three days now, and he still doesn’t know!!! I gave him a long speech about how he needs to make things right, for his family and everything that goes with it. I told him that if his wife dies, his teenage kid would be in his hands. I thought I opened his eyes so wide you could drive a truck through them, I thought…
Today, his main topic of conversation was about how his girlfriend likes to dress up for Halloween and how they are both going to the club for the party. I just gave up. Sometimes people are so far out there, so lost, so disconnected from reality, that they themselves have no idea how bad their own situation is.
posted by mattandriver at 7:47 PM
2 Comments:
the real problem is when you do the multiplication on this.
The rev.'s got it on this. I know exactly where you are coming from as I have seen it all too often. Slightly different at times with a twist or two, but overall the same. There is a “John Doe” who is a senior officer at my command suffering from the same depression. He is a geographical bachelor by choice only going home on the weekends because he has to, not because he wants to. He spends most of his time at one of the local casinos. Instead of affairs, gambling and alcohol is his drug of choice. He is facing retirement here very soon and it doesn’t sit very well for him, because he then be home every day instead of on the ship. My heart just goes out to his family. What you described is a classic case of male depression. There is growing research that depression for men is different than for women. For men its a double edge sword. If you are depressed then you are mentally ill and sick; and we all know that men don’t get sick. I hope somehow, someway this turns for the better. I know its frustrating when you try to point out the obvious and they just don’t see it.
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