Never be bullied into silence

Well I said that I was going to make this, and I finally finished. I really wish I could give the person who created the pattern some credit because they deserve it for the work. I honestly wasn’t even sure if I would have the patience for this, but I did and it was actually fun. Some parts on the top are stretched in certain spots, but that’s fine, I’ll stretch the rest out to even it out, or maybe it will even out on its own.

It took me a couple weeks to make this because I was sick when I started this project. It took me a couple days to make the red, then another couple days to make the orange and so on. The green, blue and purple one day each. Actually I did the purple and the words on the same day. The reason I say it took 2 days for the first few colors is because I could only work on it for so long before the pain in my back came to stop me. This pattern is so detailed and the thing that took the most time was every time the embroidery floss knotted up as I was pulling it, and it was always in the back, but I always managed to remove them so I could continue. I didn’t have to use more than 1 skein of each color. In fact, I used less than a full skein for each color.

So some people may wonder why I would want to create something with the words “Never be bullied into silence.” Well, you see it’s personal to me. When I was a child, my mother knew I was being abused by my step father, she just didn’t want to admit it to herself. My little sister had bruises that the pre-school teacher saw. She was taken to the hospital and my mother was accused of abusing her, which in all honesty was false accusations. My little sister was so hyper that one day when I was sitting with her while she was playing on the stairs, cement stairs mind you, I was literally watching the bruises form. My parent’s were never abusive to her, but they were to me. When the guy from child protective services came to the house, my mother took me aside and threatened me. She told me so help me god if you say one word to these people, you will have the beating of a lifetime you will never forget. She knew I wasn’t going to accuse them of abusing my sister, she knew I would accuse them of beating me. So I was bullied into silence by my mother.

Another reason I would want to create this is because my sister does not like that I wrote my book. Her “friend” wrote a horrible review of “my book” (but it wasn’t a review of my book, it was an attack on me as a person by someone I’ve never even met). He said in his “review” that I am fooling my readers into thinking my lies are true when they are in fact lies and that I need to change the genre of my book from autobiography to fiction because it is full of lies. My response is it is not full of lies. This is my truth based on my memories of what happened in my life. I am allowed to tell me life stories, and if someone doesn’t like that, they can… and this is the part where I have to edit myself lol.

I wrote my book Diary of a Gay Nerd based on my memories of what happened to me during my childhood, when I was homeless at 15 and 17, and then homeless/sleeping on couches and living in motels until I was 23. And then of course my 3 bad relationships and my final relationship with the person I have spent the last 22 years with. These are my truthful life stories that I wanted to tell.

So I will never be bullied into silence, and that’s why I made this.

I said in my previous post that I was going to make this into a pillow, but my partner has convinced me to frame it instead. Since he wants me to frame it, and I still want it as a pillow, I’ve decided to compromise with him by making a second one lol. It was kind of fun to make and I want to make another one.

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Facebook Rehab

One week ago I blogged that I had an addiction with Facebook and it was causing me some trouble. I said that I would limit myself to 1 hour a day on my regular Facebook, and I would change my Facebook on my phone to another account which is a role play character from EverQuest, which I did.

So how do I think I’ve handled myself in the last week? I think I’ve done pretty good. During my 1 hour a day on my regular Facebook I try to just read the news feed and not respond, although there were a couple I did respond to, but I stayed on topic and I didn’t try to joke around which would make people yell at me. Just yesterday someone asked if there was a place he could get his hair cut without having to hear religious greetings. My response apparently showed how old I am because I was laughed at, but you know what? I honestly don’t care.

I actually had more fun on my role play Facebook than I have had in a very long time. My character is a gnome wizard, and I would see people post things and I would respond as if I were speaking for my gnome in EverQuest, and it made people laugh, in a good way. They were laughing with me, not at me.

Speaking of EverQuest, I logged into the game and saw that no one in my guild was playing, but someone left a message of the day saying “email me”, and so I did, and it was someone I haven’t seen in EverQuest in ages. So it was nice to reconnect, even for a minute. Someone else who I am Facebook friends with said he still plays EverQuest and asked if I had any Misty Thicket Picnics, which is food for our characters, and naturally I had 129 stacks. Stacks have 20, so I literally have 2,580 Misty Thicket Picnics heh. I also have 22 stacks of Qeynos Afternoon Tea’s, which is 440. Not bad. Sometimes it’s good to be a hoarder since I can give people things they can actually use.

Other things I have done during my week. I’ve played The Sims FreePlay and I started to play a game called Hay Day. I’ve only been playing it for maybe 4 days and I’m already level 16.

I have also been reading more. I am currently reading a book called Pathfinder Tales: Liar’s Blade. There are a LOT of books in the Pathfinder Tales series, based on a tabletop RPG game similar to Dungeons & Dragons. I also bought the Pathfinder Beginner Box from Amazon and I should get it in a week or 2.  It was only $25 and it has a lot more than the D&D starter set had. I don’t have anyone to play with, but I plan on eventually getting a group together to play at the Bakersfield Gay & Lesbian Center. I don’t know how to play though. If I can find someone who has experience and can be the Dungeon Master then great, I can learn through them, if not then I’ll have to learn as much as I can so I can be the DM and we can all learn together.

I am doing my best to focus on other things, because there is so much more to life than Facebook. Remember a time before social media when people used to actually call each other, or they used to go to their friends houses and interact? Remember when we used our cell phones to actually make calls? Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, I am considering getting a gym membership. Planet Fitness has a special right now that expires on September 15th, that is no money down and $20 a month for a 12 month commitment and $39 a year fee. I don’t really have the money right now, so hopefully they will have another special again in the future because I really want to go to the gym. I need to exercise and get out of the house a little more. It’s a 21 minute bike ride from the house, but if their membership has unlimited guest passes, then both of us can benefit from my membership. I’d love to get in shape for the upcoming AIDS walk in October. The gym gives you unlimited use of their hydromassage and massage chairs and those are something I really could use because I am in agony every day. That would be a real big help.

Let’s see how things go from here. Until next time…

Is fat shaming necessary?

I decided to walk to the grocery store because I wanted an excuse to go buy a cookie. They sell single cookies at the bakery counter. I prefer buying cookies 1 at a time instead of having to buy a big bag or box of cookies because I don’t want that temptation. I think buying 1 cookie when I have a craving is perfectly fine, and my nutritionist agrees with me. She said having 1 cookie every now and then won’t hurt, because if you deny yourself sweet treats like cookies and ice cream and whatever else, you will end up binging on it sooner or later, and that is not good for your body.

As I was walking, I was literally only 1 block away from the house, and I was crossing the street and a guy was driving onto the street I was crossing, and he made a comment behind my back while still in his car. “Hey, I love your fat fuckin’ stomach.” I heard a woman giggling. “Your fat fuckin’ stomach is amazing.” More giggling.

Really? What is that supposed to accomplish? Yes, I know I have a fat stomach, but so does 75% of the country, and I only weigh 250lbs. Yes, I gained all but 12lbs of that 70lbs back that I lost a couple of years ago. They said if you don’t continue your diet you will likely gain back all the weight and more, and it’s been really challenging to maintain or lose weight since I lost all that weight. I don’t know what happened, because I’m still eating Weight Watchers Smart Ones and I’m not losing, but gaining instead. I don’t know why I can’t lose weight, but I do know that fat shaming me isn’t going to make me lose weight.

I didn’t respond to the jerk in the car, nor did I turn around to see what he looked like, but I’m sure he was no prize either. And you know what? I’m not proud of my fat fuckin’ stomach or how much I weigh, but guess what? Life’s a bitch! Who cares? It’s my life, not his, so why should he care about me? He doesn’t even know me. I certainly don’t go around mocking him or how he looks, so why is it that he has to go around mocking fat people? Fuck him!

That’s all I have to say about that.

Stepping off my soapbox now.

Rush Limbaugh and Shepard Smith’s insensitive comments about Robin Williams’ Suicide

I feel a bit upset tonight. I was on Facebook earlier today when I saw Robin Tyler post a status update from Lewis Black that said:

I wasn’t sure what Rush Limbaugh said, but he is a jerk and everything he says is negative and insensitive. I looked up what he said and here is the quote from Rawstory:

“What is the left’s world view in general?” Limbaugh asked his audience the day after Williams’ death was announced. “If you had to attach, not a philosophy, but an attitude to a leftist world view. It’s one of pessimism, and darkness, sadness. They’re never happy, are they?”

“They’re animated in large part by the false promises of America because the promises of America are not for everyone,” he continued, pointing to a Fox News report that suggested Williams had struggled with financial issues, and survivor’s guilt after the deaths of entertainers like Christopher Reeve, Andy Kaufman and John Belushi.

“Robin Williams felt guilty that he was still alive while his three friends had died young, and much earlier than he had,” the conservative talker explained. “He could never get over the guilt that they died and he didn’t.”

“Well, that is a constant measurement that is made by political leftists in judging the country.”

Listen to the audio from The Rush Limbaugh Program, broadcast Aug. 12, 2014.

Later he tried to back pedal by saying he was misquoted. This is what he had to say:

“[A]ll of these low-rent, despicable, irresponsible, pathetic, so-called media watchdogs on the left are trying to make it sound like I said Robin Williams gave up because he was a liberal, and he’s hopelessly doomed to misery and despair because that’s what liberals are devoted to. And I said no such thing.”

Really? “Low-rent, despicable, irresponsible, pathetic…” Excuse me? This coming from the low-rent, despicable, irresponsible and pathetic man who does drugs, more specifically OxyContin, can’t get an erection, I know this because he was detained in the Domincan Republic for traveling with a prescription of Viagra that was not prescribed to him. He has been married 4 times and I know this because of this article. So let’s not pretend he is an authority on well, anything.

He has no room to talk negative about anyone and frankly he has the biggest balls of steel to even still be on the radio talking trash about other people. I mean, what good has he done in his life? Robin Williams was a good person and he lived a good life. He made everyone happy every time he opened his mouth, what has Rush Limbaugh done to make anyone happy when he opened his mouth? All he does is talk negative trash about everyone, unless they are conservatives, then he praises them, even when they do stupid things.

Instead of saying negative things about the man, just shut the fuck up! I apologize for my language but I’m at that point where it’s going to come out.

Shepard Smith called Robin Williams a coward just hours after he committed suicide. HOURS! Can you believe that? He later apologized for it, but it’s still out there.

“Something inside you is so horrible or you’re such a coward or whatever the reason that you decide that you have to end it. Robin Williams, at 63, did that today,”

You cannot give your opinion about something that you know nothing about. If you have never suffered through depression or even contemplated suicide, then you have no right to talk negatively about someone who has.

I have suffered, and am still suffering through depression. I have PTSD from my childhood. I have been depressed since I was a child. People who are depressed don’t let anyone know they are depressed, so they put up a front to make it look like they are happy. I’m constantly trying to lighten the mood by cracking jokes or making puns because I want people to think I’m happy.

Suicide is not a decision to be taken lightly. It is not easy, and you are not a coward. If you have thought about taking your own life, it is not something that you just decide to do, then do it. You have to be going through some really bad stuff for a long time and be wishing you were dead throughout that long time. You don’t just decide today I’m going to kill myself. That comes from years of depression and years of people treating you like crap.

I attempted suicide for the first time when I was around 12 or 13 years old. I didn’t just decide today is the day, no this was after years of being treated like crap by my step father. My sister had started treating me like crap when I was 9 years old, and by the time I decided to commit suicide, my baby sister had joined in on the fun. I was also being beat up at school because I was gay and being called names like fag, faggot, mother fucker, asshole… you name it, I was called it. My step father had been calling me a sissy since I learned to walk and when I was 12 or 13 made a comment that “he wished they would put all the faggots on an island and kill them all” right in front of me. My sister started calling me a bastard when I was 9 and a mother fucker when I was 11. Just imagine what I was going through on a daily basis. So yeah, I was severely depressed and severely suicidal.

How did I try to commit suicide you ask? Well, it started out punching myself in the face in my bedroom. Not because I was trying to get a bruise so I could say my family did it to me because I knew I didn’t bruise, but because I was punishing myself every time they punished me. Then I started to choke myself by holding my finger right on the spot on my neck where the airway was. I would hold it for as long as I could. Sometimes I would hold it until my natural reaction was to let go to breathe again, but then I would just keep holding it until I had passed out. I would wake up in the morning and be pissed off at myself because I thought it would work. Of course when I did that, it was while I was laying in bed. I wanted it to look like I went to sleep and just didn’t wake up. I tried that nearly every night for months.

There are other times that I tried to commit suicide that I wrote about in my book in detail, so if you want to read those stories, buy my book.

All I’m saying is, you cannot judge a person based on why they committed suicide, because you simply do not know what is going on in their private lives to make that judgment. So next time you say that it was because of this or that, well you just don’t know and you should get the facts before you say anything. I don’t know why he committed suicide and I will never know.

I am so beyond sad that he died, but I was so happy that this world had such an awesome man entertain us for so many years. It kills me inside that he died and it kills me even more that people have to be such assholes by saying such horrible things about him.

Rest in peace you wonderful funny man. I loved you so much and I will never forget you.