Life Story

First I'd like to say, I'm not the type of person that asks for money or begs for a hand out so that's not what this will be about. This is more of me putting something down to paper so to speak. I'm tired of keeping this to myself and I've never actually sat down and told anyone troubles and tribulations of the last year or so that I've had. Some of my closest friends don't even know, and only know small bits here and there that I've allowed them to know. The reason is because I'm slightly selfish in a way. I don't like to be burdened with people worrying about me and I want them to know they can rely on me for help. I love to help people and I do it quite frequently and have literally given a friend the shirt on my back and my last dollar. My father had always taught me to help those close to you, and they will help you back. It hasn't always been the case, but I always feel a sense of satisfaction in helping people. Even when its everything I have.

That being said, I'm literally at my wits end tonight. This marks another chapter in my life where I have lost almost everything again that's important to me. Almost two years ago now, I was living in Washington, US. This was right before I had a major falling out with one of my best friends over a girl. It was silly and it was mostly my fault and I have always maintained, I'm the one that caused the situation, even though there was nothing I could do to stop it. But If I go into that, I will never have to go much further back, so we're not going to.

In Washington, I was living with a few friends of mine that I had known for quite a while but had never met in person. We got along quite well and I had found a job as a store re-modeler. It was an interesting job and pretty rewarding. On my off time I did what I always did, I played games and recently stumbled upon minecraft. Which I enjoyed immensely. I'd known of minecraft for quite sometime and had played it off and on and even meeting several people who are now pretty big on youtube. But had never really gotten into it, till now. When I wasn't playing minecraft though, I was roleplaying in various different mediums. I've roleplayed since the age of 11 and come here on the 10th I'll be 28 years old. So I've gotten to know quite a few people. One of those people's names was Sheena. She was always funny and we'd always gotten along with eachother. She was the type of girl I would have loved to date but, she lived all the way in Alaska.

One day out of the blue she messages me after not talking to her for a couple of months. She was in Oregon! Just one state below me. Living with her estranged mother and getting to know her for the first time in her life. Well, I couldn't let this chance pass me by and I asked for the address. I immediately drove down to spend the weekend there and to meet her two lovely children.

Though I had only planned to stay the weekend I ended up staying two weeks. We just hit it off so well and I didn't even want to leave. But eventually, I needed to go back to Washington. But when I got there, I found my friends in a strange mood. I don't think they liked that I had spent my money to travel to Oregon and were slowly I dare say it, getting revenge? It's well known with my friends and family that I am very allergic to garlic. It's not life threatening but it has ended me up in the hospital at least once and every once in a while its not uncommon for someone to just forget about it and put garlic in food that I would end up eating. Usually its not enough to send me into a bad allergic reaction, but you get the point.

They started spiking my food with an insane amount of garlic that sent me into several fits. Sheena found out about it and by now, we were officially dating. They called me up one day and told me they were on there way to pick me up and I was going to go stay with them for a couple of weeks. I couldn't believe my luck and soon, I was back in Oregon.

I ended up staying around two months that time around and I enjoyed every minute of it. Eventually though, it was getting close to Christmas. My family back in Ohio was really wanting me to come home for Christmas and was willing to pay for a bus ticket to come back. So I went back to Washington to settle my affairs and to pack my things. I sold my car to my friends father who needed it much more than I did and all I asked for it was the computer he let me use while staying there. It wasn't anything special but I thought he was getting a pretty good trade out of the deal.

My "friends" though, weren't exactly pleased about the deal and before I stepped onto the bus. Let me know, exactly what they thought of me. I've yet to speak to them since, even keeping avenues of contact open, for just in case they decided to open up contact again.

Arriving home, wasn't exactly the fan fair I thought it would be. I had visions of my sister running up to me and hugging me and my mom smiling from ear to ear and having a nice dinner with the family. I mean I hadn't seen them in almost two years, but the imagination is a funny thing. It seems to try and blow some things out of proportion I guess. So instead of the ticket tape parade I got a grumbling sister about the cold, no mother, my other sister at home and my brother in law waiting in his car. I don't even think I was asked about the bus ride. I can forgive all of that though, people are busy and my familys lives back in Ohio are ALWAYS busy.

I stayed in Ohio for a short time but missed my Sheena and her children. I had fallen completely, and madly in love. It was beginning to affect my health with being away from them and I became extremely depressed. Eventually my mother didn't like me moping around and offered to buy my current car that I had bought to get back and forth to my new job. The price, another bus ticket, straight back to Oregon. I took up the chance and jumped the next bus.

These were my happy months, the 6 months of just pure joy. I had found another job, a great job, a job that I was in love with. I was working as a tech support rep for Xfinity Signature Support. Rules were lax, we cared about the customers and the times weren't hard to meet at all. In the mean time, me and Sheena fell deeper and deeper madly in love. We stayed with eachother everywhere. You'd think we would have gotten sick of eachother, but truth be told, we couldn't get enough of eachother. Her kids were wonderful little brats that I loved to play with and I was happy, for the first damn time in my life. I was completely, and utterly, happy.

But all good things come to an end I suppose. Something I neglected to mention, I was married previously and I had also had two children previously. They were both back in Ohio. Though me and this woman was divorced, I had never been able to get custody of the children because of how far I lived away.

One day, my sister calls me to inform me that my children have been taken away from there mother by child protective services. Usually, these government services are supposed to inform the father and offer them a chance to gain temporary full custody. I was never notifed and had to call them to find out what happened. I was assured I would be getting a packet in the mail, but that the kids custody had been handed over to my ex-wifes step-mother. I was furious, I had just lost a really easy way to get my children finally but I needed to know more information.

Eventually, I got the packet. What I found.. completely sickened me to the core. 3 pages of nothing but a laundry list of filth and depravity. I'm not going to go into details, even now it sickens me to think about what those children were living in and being subjected to. BUT there was a silver lining in a way. There was a court day, and I was invited to attend to protest for custody of my children. I talked to it over with Sheena who I was now calling my wife, even though were weren't married yet. She informed me that I would not be going back to Ohio without her. So I used all of the savings that we had gathered to get an apartment and we bought a van and stocked it. We took as much as we could and we began the trip to Ohio.

Now I should have learned my lesson from last time, that there wouldn't be a ticket tape parade on my return home. But I thought at least my family would be home when I showed up. I only found one person (my sisters and mom live together still). I brushed that off, its easy to worry about the little things. But you try not to let them bother you. We began to settle in with Sheena and her children and began to get attached to the black cat my sister had taken in.

It happened to be one of my friends cats that she had abandoned at my sisters house. His name of Jynx and he was just a wonderful ball of purring fur. Big too. We became fast friends with him, but my mother and Sheena on the other hand.. not so much.

There were a couple of close calls I guess. Sheena getting annoyed at mom or mom getting annoyed at Sheena but the final straw came when Sheena had tried to stick up for me. My mother had turned around and told her she didn't belong here, that her job was to shut up and not talk, unless spoken to. Well, I love Sheena very much and immediately informed my mother of the dangers of stairs and how hard they may hurt falling down them, if she were to ever speak to her like that ever again. We packed our things that night and left to an old Highschool buddy of mines house. Who we found out later, was having some pretty bad marriage issues.

My friends name is Karissa and her Husbands name, Jake. I never liked Jake, not because I didn't think he was good enough for Karissa, but because I KNEW he wasn't good enough for Karissa. Imagine your classic ass hole, bump it up a few notches and add in some pompous ass and you get Jake. He annoyed and pissed off every person that ever spoke to him. He was just that type of guy, and I think Karissa was getting restless. She had spent her entire life stuck at home and being home schooled for most of it. Jake was the first person she ever dated and never strayed away from him. She even had a kid with him named Kira. I think she wanted to try new things and so decided to kick Jake out with our moral support. Of course I was all for it.. I'll be it secretly.

But I went back to my tech support job and began paying her bills, while we slept in the living room. In the mean time I began to go to supervised visitation centers to see my girls. They wouldn't let me have custody at all, but they'd at least let me see them. I would be content with that for a while. Though the issue was, I wasn't able to really save much money, Karissa always seemed to have something needing to be payed and eventually even had a guy flown over from California to come live with her. Then of course eventually she got pregnant by him.

We also adopted another cat into our family around here. We called him Chewy and we ended up having to bottle feed him. He was adorable and my Wife loved him to bits. Even though he was sick quite a lot of the time, my wife nurtured him and brought his health up to the point that, that kitten bit a hole through my foot once lol.

Eventually though Karissa went for a visit to planned parenting and then a panic stricken Karissa, decided to kick me and Sheena out of her house and give us 24 hours to get lost.

My dad is very finicky about his privacy. So that was a no go immediatly. I sisters live with my mother and we weren't speaking with my mother. The rest of my family would not be willing to take us in. So the only place left to go was a hotel. I pooled every last scrap of savings I could to keep us there as long as I could. We ended up being there for over a month. I ran out of money the first week. Thank goodness for local shelters and welfares and churches that were willing to keep putting us up for the night at the hotel. But it was hard not knowing if you were going out onto the street the next day or not.

Eventually, I convinced my uncle to loan me 5 grand to put a down payment down on a house I had my eye on. I would be able to afford it easily with my job that I had still been able to keep through all of this. We got the house and began moving in.

I was pretty happy again, I had my own house a loving woman at my side and two beautiful children in the house. I would have loved to have my other two, but I was pretty content with life. I figured it was finally leveling out, I was finally getting my stride and finally finding my place. But life, has a funny way of seeing you riding your bike happly and throwing a stick in the spokes to see what happens. Sometimes you'll scrape your knee, sometimes you'll fly off your bike head first into a river, hitting your head on a rock and slowly drowning. I think I fit near the end of that spectrum, but I haven't died yet.. I think.

My job was getting pretty bad, it had changed significantly and they were actively firing people and getting rid of them and down sizing. So I was beginning to look for new work again. Eventually I had turned in so many applications, I no longer remembered which places I had turned them in at.

I finally got a call back though, a nice business called "Sparrow Webdesigns". They were a new firm that did large website projects, sometimes worth up words to millions of dollars. They wanted to hire me as a project manager. I would handle all of the money and make sure my employees would get paid for the projects that they did. The pay was almost twice as much as what I was making currently and I jumped at the chance and put in my two weeks notice. I think I only made it a week before I just finally stopped coming to work.

The job was pretty easy, I just need to make myself available to take calls and do research when necessary on projects. But for some reason, a project never really came.. eventually it was time to get paid, but the pay check never came. I was assured, it was just a payroll issue. I could wait, it would be a nice check and I had a little in my savings. Enough to pay the house off for another month. But that month flew by, and so did the pay days, without a check and then they stopped responding to phone calls. My emails began to bounce back.

Then the worst happened, the website disappeared completely and I got a knock on the door. It was the FBI, they wanted to know about my involvement with the company. When they were sure I had nothing to do with the plot they suspected me of they informed me that the company that I thought was legitimate. Was actually a money laundering scheme setup by the mob and was caught before it took off. I was thunderstruck with the realization that I had no more money and nothing else left to pay any bills and no job. I had to think of something and with nothing left, I sat down with my wife and discussed the possibility, we may have to go back to Oregon.

It was around this time the CPS (Children Protective Services) had scheduled for me to be seen by a psychologist to determine my mental health. I showed up at the time they scheduled but the guy was no where to be seen. So eventually I left and then we rescheduled. That's when my Grandmother ended up in the hospital. I was so stressed, I ended up forgetting about my meeting at the last minute and showed up a little late. We got as much done as we could then we scheduled another meeting.

That's when Grandma passed away, and the day of her funeral was the day of my meeting. I was also a pall bearer. There would be no more reschedules. I had to choose between honoring the death of my GrandMother, or going to a psychologist to get my head examined for CPS to feel comfortable that I wasn't a lunatic. I chose to bury my GrandMother.

The day of the court hearing finally arrived and I lost, badly. I had lost my job, and was soon going to be losing my house and I had not gone to my last Pyschologist meeting. The day I got home, was the day I got the eviction notice. Feeling crushed, there was nothing more I could do. We set up a garage sale. We sold as much as we could, packed up the kids, the cats and just tried to leave Ohio as far behind us as we could. We went back to where we were happy, Oregon.

Things had changed there though, Sheena's mother was not the same person she was and seemed to actively pursue ways to piss us off. By now, I had gotten a job working on Minecraft Servers. I was particularly happy about this, because it was something I really enjoyed. I was finally happy again with my job, even though it seemed not to pay to much. I was getting maybe 500 a month, not enough to live on. But it was something.

Finally my "Mother-in-law" let us know, we had limited time at her place. We had to be out in a couple of months. We began looking for better jobs, but the economy in Oregon still wasn't stable, and neither were the jobs. During this time period, we began to get more and more stressed out. Everything was beginning to take there toll on both us. We were tired, depressed and above all.. just tired.. I began going to a free clinic to see a psychologist, who diagnosed me with Bipolar, OCD, Depression, Stress and Anxiety disorder and Stress induced Anorexia.

I began taking some medication and with that, came my Wife's ex knocking on the door. Sheena was originally from Alaska, so her childrens father naturally was from Alaska. Chad was an eccentric drunk and a stubborn ass hole and I very much enjoyed him being in Alaska. One day though, he informed us that he was quitting his job and moving to Oregon to be closer to the kids. He was going to live with my mother in law and us for a short time before he could find a job and find an apartment.

This is when we found our dog Sable, a sweet little Chihuahua. She was supposed to be for me, but ended up being more for my wife lol. She followed us everywhere and was the sweetest little thing on the planet.

By now though, I was getting a little sick of the place I was working after I found out they had screwed me out of quite a bit of money and was actively screwing me out of my time. Thankfully though, I met a nice guy named Giz. Who owns a server hosting company. He offered me a job and I grabbed it up. Wasn't much more pay, but I was in charge and I was making more then I was before.

Chad finally moved in and I think that was the beginning of the end of us there. My company had just picked up a project and we were working like mad to get it done and calling on all of our contacts to get things straightened out. But with Chad being there, the land lord took notice and gave us no choice. Be out in 24 hours, or my mother in law would be evicted.

Chad's dad has a bit of money and was able to pay for a hotel, but the condition was. I couldn't stay there. The only place I could go, was to California and to move in with Giz. I had a little money saved and began funneling it to my wife to pay for background checks for apartments and to pay for the hotel room when the money ran dry. Eventually though, there was nothing left. Chad made the decision to use the money he was going to use for an apartment to buy himself, the kids and Sheena a plane ticket back to Alaska.

I can already hear people screaming at me to not let her go. But you have to understand Sheena, she's been wanting to go back to Alaska since I met her. She missed it terribly and this was a way for her to go back to it, without having to worry about the funds. She stuck by me for my dream, I was sure as hell going to stick with her through hers. This also meant though, we'd have to leave the animals behind with my mother-in-law. Who hasn't exactly had the best track record with us so far.

Sheena landed in Alaska and we began to plan on ways to get the cats and dogs to Alaska. I had already borrowed money and used all of my savings to help her and there wasn't anything left. So the cats and dog would have to be at my mother in laws for a while. The land lord though, apparently had different ideas.

They have to be gone by tomorrow and theirs no way for me to gather the money to transport them to Alaska. I had to call up my wife today and inform her.. that I wouldn't be able to make the amount needed to even send a single animal up to her in time. My son called me 20 minutes later asking me why mommy was crying. An hour ago, I heard the dogs already gone and my wife is still crying, locked up in the bathroom where she's staying. Tomorrow we lose the cats we'd done everything to keep.

This, has been my life, paraphrased, from over the last year or so. I've skipped over so many parts of it, that it seems a little disjointed. But I wanted to put something down for anyone willing to read it to know. Even though you've been through a lot in your life. I'm still here, and I've been through a lot.