Post your sob stories. A challenge, but serious

[william]

So Many Motherfuckers Fronting.

First Edit. Raw.

The night before Thanksgiving I invite him to join us. He owns a three-chair Barbershop. His place. A small little place. All his own.

Three years before he was practically homeless.

-- Naw. I got plans. I've got mad girls inviting me to be with them. Besides I gots to work --

His words make me want to cry.

"Riding Dirty" comes on and he turns up the volume. The walls start to shake. His place. He can play the music as loud as he wants.

Just a moment before he had been giving out advice. A seventeen year old kid who just did six months in Lincoln.

"Fuck! They want me to go in tomorrow. I'm thinking of skippin'"
-- You just got out today? --
"Yea"
-- Then they gotta give you thirty days to come clean. You tell them you got high before you got out. You can hit them with that --

Later...

-- You gotta get a job. That's how they knocked three years off my parole. Niggas be going to the program but they don't got a job or go to school. What you think they're gonna be thinking? That you just hanging out? --

His world's rules are unlike any we know. I sit there amazed and enthralled by the language, the dress, the society.

'Riding Dirty.

He was riding dirty.

Ten years before we meet on the night before he's scheduled to turn himself in. And on that night I was a tourist, consumed by selfishness instead of selflessness.

In a dark city street
With broken lamps
And fears in my heart.
I know now where I Failed.

For Failure is all I know.

We were two men connected by blood and love and memories of a childhood long gone.

Memories.

I could have been a far less selfish snug son of a bitch. Instead I used my intelligence as a weapon to belittle, to ridicule, to distance myself, to raise myself above others - to a place I didn't belong.

I was never anything special.

I just thought I was.


-- I can't go in again -- he sobs. -- I can't. You don't know the shit I've been through --

"You gotta," I tell him, automatically reverting to my street cadence. My wife hates it when I do that. "Why do you speak like that when you're with him?" she asks.

Why? Because I don't think he would understand otherwise? Because it makes me more comfortable? Or is it because deep down inside its the language I desire?


I look down the street and give him a moment of privacy, and then I take him in my arms and hug him, and at that moment I want to wash away his pain, release him from his suffering and bestow on him a new life, where through the miracle of my childhood's Lord's promises I resurrect the boy I once know, the child who was free from sin and longing,

But I can't. I don't have such powers. No one has.

All I can offer him is my love.


And at that moment I know I have failed him. I don't have an answer. I don't offer to help. I have nothing to give. Even my love is tainted with the selfish desire to be rid of his problems.

My love Failed him.
The gift of Failure is all I have.

My lips brush against his forehead and I smell a masculine smell. "You gotta go in," I tell him. "You can't run all your life. Its only five years. Before you know it you'll be out."

-- You don't understand. You got mad niggas who are facing hard time, who don't give a fuck. Five years! Times make you hard. I don't wanna be hard again --


I don't understand him, but I know that what I imagine could never be as bad as the truth, a truth I'll always be spared.

Two years before he had stood at my doorway, a free man. He had done his time, had been given a chance. And now he was facing five more years.

He sits down on the stoop. With his head in his hands, he cries, -- Five years. I don't think I kin survive five years --

What can I to say? What comfort can I offer?

Will I be there for him? Will I be the last free face he sees? Will I be the witness to his sentence? Will I forever remember the moment he's lead away?

No. It never even crossed my mind.


And because of this I am the one who will never be paroled. Forgiveness is not mine to have for I will never grant it. Never. Ever.

Failure is all I know.

---

That was years ago. He did his time upstate - alone. Occasionally he would call and ask for something - a pair of sneakers, clothes - all ordered through a prison mail order catalogue, a company that turns a profit off unfortunates and criminals.

And when he would call, collect - through a dehumanizing mechanical operator - my number being one of the few he could call - I answered begrudgingly. So little he asked for. So little I was willing to give.

How can they not relapse? What choice do they have in a world of six dollars an hour and thousand dollar rents?

He come home covered in tattoos that chronicle a time he would rather forget. Tattoos that acted as a shield, true symbols - talismans for survival. Reminders of what not to do.

Riding Dirty. Just a song.

But for some it's not a song. It's not a lifestyle.

It’s their only choice.

How he made it so far on his own with so little help from anyone else amazes me.

So Many Motherfuckers Fronting.

[DanClass]

solid

[DaveNJ]

Originally Posted by Blitzgal

I've had so many family members who've died that I don't expect to reach old age myself. In fact, there is no one in my extended family over the age of sixty.

--At the age of twelve my cousin accidentally hung himself in the bathroom as he attempted to re-create some stunt he'd seen in a horror film. My aunt and his sister found him.

--My grandmother died of a stroke when I was six.

--My father died of a heart attack on his 47th birthday. We found him sprawled in his easy chair when we got up to go to a celebratory brunch that morning. It had been his second heart attack in two weeks but instead of going to the doctor after the first one, he just stayed home from work claiming to be sick with the flu.

--My grandfather died of a stroke when I was sixteen. He'd been in a VA hospital in West Virginia following an earlier stroke for some time and clearly had been hanging on in the hopes that his son, my father, would come out to see him. My father couldn't deal with that shit and never went, and my grandfather died shortly after finding out that his son had passed.

--My mother's parents are both dead but I never met them because she left home at the age of seventeen and never spoke to them again. Her father was an abusive alcoholic and her mother (I believe) was an undiagnosed bi-polar. She didn't even go to their funerals, but I don't blame her.

--My uncle (on my father's side) died of a massive coronary at the age of 29.

--Another uncle nearly died after being taken to the hospital with meningitis. While he was there they discovered he had 80% blockage in his arteries and probably would have dropped dead of a massive heart attack within a year. He's alive today only because he came down with another dangerous illness!

--My mom is now 54. When she recently made out her will with my step-father, it really freaked me out.

People always ask me why I don't want to get married and have kids. Why the hell should I? I only have thirty-some odd years left! If this makes me sound depressive, I'm really not. I don't drink or smoke and try to take care of myself, and have pretty much accepted my bad family history. So I'm pretty content and happy with life, because I really enjoy what I have. That sounds really morbid I guess but the more you deal with death the less it messes with your mind, I think.

Similar story to your uncle who was lucky. This summer my father contracted a staph infection in his ring toe (left foot). He didn't want to lose the toe, and the family has a history of diabetes, so they assumed it was diabetes related. After 2 months (he's a teacher, summers off), the toe hasn't healed, and they move to amputate. The doctor cuts open the toe, finds that the staph is gone, and it's only gout, cleans it out, sews up the toe. Due to this major thing, my dad is sent to get an EKG. An irregularity shows up, and he gets a cardiac catheterization that reveals a 99% blockage of his right cornoary artery. 99%. They angioplasty the shit immediately and put in a stent. He showed no symptoms for some reason that's unexplainable, but had he not contracted the staph infection, odds are he'd have suffered a massive heart attack and died at some point. So in reality the staph infection saved his life. This angioplasty happened last Tuesday. He stayed overnight and is back home healthy and very lucky to be alive. Not a sob story really, but for all the bad things in this world, there is some good too.

[blue eyes]

Originally Posted by DaveNJ

Similar story to your uncle who was lucky. This summer my father contracted a staph infection in his ring toe (left foot). He didn't want to lose the toe, and the family has a history of diabetes, so they assumed it was diabetes related. After 2 months (he's a teacher, summers off), the toe hasn't healed, and they move to amputate. The doctor cuts open the toe, finds that the staph is gone, and it's only gout, cleans it out, sews up the toe. Due to this major thing, my dad is sent to get an EKG. An irregularity shows up, and he gets a cardiac catheterization that reveals a 99% blockage of his right cornoary artery. 99%. They angioplasty the shit immediately and put in a stent. He showed no symptoms for some reason that's unexplainable, but had he not contracted the staph infection, odds are he'd have suffered a massive heart attack and died at some point. So in reality the staph infection saved his life. This angioplasty happened last Tuesday. He stayed overnight and is back home healthy and very lucky to be alive. Not a sob story really, but for all the bad things in this world, there is some good too.

collaterals saved him baby

not staph

collaterals

the organic ability to adapt and circumvent obstruction

[OSLIN]

DJQ, how about another thread for the worst christmas ever...just in time for the holidays

[sharkface]

uhh.. my boss got stoned yesterday and forgot to put his truck into park. it rolled into my new car. he doesn't have insurance so i'll end up paying for it. then i got pulled over on the way home coz my tail light was out. also i didn't get my history paper done and failed the class.

i think the history paper pisses me off the most.

[StuartPants]

I'll be honest and say that most of my life was pretty sheltered. One thing I noticed, however, was that while people I knew would lose family and friends I was somehow being spared from dealing with loss. I was not passively ignorant; I knew that eventually it would catch up and I would have to deal with it. I was right.

2000 - my first introduction to death. My best friends brother, Freddy passed away. I did know, Freddy but I was better friends with his brother. I went to the wake with my girlfriend at the time... and for the next couple months I would stand stunned in the shower every morning for about an 40 minutes. Just overwhelmed by the idea that this person was no longer around.

2001 - Andy, one of my father's best friends and close friend of the family passed away. My father had told me later in my life that Andy had a coke habit and really bad diabetes. I remember seeing sores all over his body, but I never knew what it was. I was raised in family and social circle that really didn't have any exposure to the drug scene (aside from weed, shrooms and the like), so to me this was just a waste. I didn't know Andy as well as my father, but I remember being a disappointed, if not upset with my father for not doing something about Andy's habit. At the same time my father had a great deal of respect for other people's choices, opinions and ways of life.

After Andy passed away, Robert, another one of my father's friends was afflicted with what doctors first thought was Alzheimer's. It was ultimately unidentified. My father never lived to see Robert pass away, only his degradation from best friend to diaper-bound, bed ridden vegetable. Whenever I saw a certain look on my fathers face, I knew exactly what he was thinking about, and it killed me.

2002 - Over the next year my father lost 2 more friends. If this hadn't taken it's toll on him, the death of his own father did. DJQ said it best... everyone's pains are equal if taken from a subjective standpoint. Yes, objectively we can compare one travesty to another, but the amount of will-power required to handle your personal worst is equal to the next person's. After My grandfather passed, my father went into a private world where I knew he was torturing himself with questions that would never be answered.

2003 - My mother had been trying to call my on my cell, but I wasn't getting the calls. It was raining a very sombering rain that day, and I was already on my way to her house. When I got there, she was standing, looking out the window at the rain which hit the green backdrop of trees before splattering onto the lawn below. She turned to me and said through watery eyes and a quivering lip "I have to tell you something.. Brian is gone." Brian was my very best friend since nursery school. I don't remember my reaction. I just remember hugging my mother. I don't know if I cried at that very moment. But this was it. This was the first big one for me and none of the loss I experienced over the past two years prepared me for it. I had been through everything with this kid. I know that his life was torn apart with his father's abuse, which would later be a torch his father handed down to his older brother. His parents divorced when we were kids. And he had endured one thing after another, after another, after another. In his last days, Brian was on a veritable broth of medications. While in highschool Brian was built, good looking and had an amazingly beautiful girlfriend, he was 380 lbs in his casket. He had gone down the shore for the weekend with his brother, Steven. Brian and Steven had passed out on the bed. The next morning Steven woke up with his dead brother lying next to him. I don't know what really went on down there, but his brother was a bad influence. I remember him offering us cocaine when we were 13. Either way... Brian was a completely selfless kid... dropped everything to help out those he cared for. He was dealt a bad hand, did his best to deal with it while still remaining a good person. In the end, though it must have been too much.

2004 - I normally don't go to bed before midnight on any given night. On April 18th, 2004, however, I fell asleep at the ungodly hour of 8:00 pm only to be woken by screams of "Stuart... I need your you help.. why won't he wake up? George.. it's me.. wake up." My mother was screaming from my parents bedroom. I can't remember the sprint from my bed to their bedroom, but the sight in front of me when I passed through the doorway was one that I will never, ever get out of my head. My father lay on his side as if asleep, tears running down his cheeks. My mother over him trying to wake up him. Obviously fear had overtaken her, but it wasn't processing that he was not just sleeping. I don't remember this as clear as my mother, but when she tells me her version of the events that night she remembers me saying in a very calm and monotone voice "oh my God" repeatedly as I picked up the phone to cal 911. After that, I came back and tried giving him CPR but to no avail. He died in the hospital at 11:59 pm of cardiac arrhythmia. He had no history of a heart condition, and this has never happened before. A week later, Easter Sunday, I found out that he passed away 1 minute before the end of what is celebrated by the Catholic church as Divine Mercy Sunday.

2005 - My father's best friend Robert, passes away due to the mental disease I mentioned earlier.

Since then a few other removed relatives in Canada have passed away. Going back to DJQ, while my losses haven't been ridiculously tragic or horrifying, they are all I know. While losing my best friend and my father is a terrible thing, I can't even begin to count the number of very positive effects their deaths have had on my life and the lives of those around them. I don't mean that to sound harsh, only that when horrible things happen, people sometimes make the worst of it instead of looking around at what good things can come from tragedy.

This is probably the first time I've actually addressed all the people I've lost in written format at one time. Who knew, KATG would be such a source of therapy. I don't expect anyone to read all of this, but it's been a huge source of ventilation. Thanks DJ.

[Lexi]

see blog.


blog.myspace.com/ltothexe

[Lexi]

Originally Posted by spaceboy

]

It's set to private.

add me.

last name-lala

[Rhian]

Originally Posted by StuartPants

I don't expect anyone to read all of this, but it's been a huge source of ventilation. Thanks DJ.

I most certainly read this, and it was with such open honesty that it touched me. I have lost many people close to me, and have gone through many stages - anger-fuckit-questioning. I'm in a 'it is what it is' now. I am sorry that you had so much in a short time, that's heavy.

Shine on you crazy diamond.