Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Lost Souls with Uncertain Futures

This has been a blog that was in my mind for almost a couple years now.   I know I haven’t written anything for almost two years, which is something I need to get back into considering life for me is so much better when I do write, or to create in general.  For that, I decided this blog would be a good start for other things to come.  As I said earlier, this has been in my mind for quite some time now, and it’s time to finally get it out into the open.  About five years ago, I lost two good friends of mine under different circumstances, some being my fault and others completely out of my control.  Finding it ironic though that I lost both friends around the same time, and after thinking about it they also seemed to be nearly on the same parallel of each other.  Both went to ITT Tech, a now-defunct college which both guys received degrees at.  Plus, both had the same recognition of being gamers, liking Star Wars and Star Trek, and even comic books to some degree.  Also, looking back as to how I stopped being friends with both guys, over time I began to realize that it was all really for the best in the long run.  Both guys, MSB and DJO, have a substantial amount of issues between the both of them, so much so that along with my personal issues at hand I needed to be out of my life completely.  So, here it is, a blog for me to give myself closure to the situation once and for all. 

MSB

This gentleman I met while I was in Basic Training at Ft. Knox back in 2009.  Of all the recruits that were in our platoon, he was one of the few cool, like-minded guys that I befriended while going through the rigorous training on becoming a Soldier.  Unfortunately for MSB, he was unable to graduate with our platoon and therefore was recycled into the next company that was to graduate.  He did complete Basic Training, along with AIT, and went into the Regular Army where he served for about five years total.  As my time in the Army, his time was not very good at all.  MSB had the same issues I had to deal with: toxic leadership, bad morale, dumbasses, and no way of trying to better himself due to those circumstances.  He did eventually get out of the Army through a medical discharge, I think largely for having Asperger Syndrome and some other ailments he obtained with serving.  Over the time after Basic Training, I and MSB stayed in contact with one another, I was sort of sad that he was leaving the Army being he was one of the very few people in the Military I knew of that had similar tastes as I did.  However, if he was injured or unfit to keep serving then it was best that he got out when he did.  The reason we stopped talking was largely in part of my doing: I was joking around with him online, sort of praising him in a sense of his Military service because he felt his time in the Army was a complete waste.  However, I took the joke way too far than what it should have gone and MSB got pissed off and blocked me from just about everything he had on the internet.  At first, I was upset and surprised he did this, considering I was also an editor for a page he owned on Facebook.  Then, after about six months, I tried to get in contact with him to apologize for what I did, and in turn, MSB just blew me off and didn’t respond at all.  After that, my original Facebook account got hacked into and I was unable to log into it.  For some reason, I always thought it was MSB who did this, considering he was a pretty tech-savvy guy.  My final attempt to try to bring peace with him was promoting his blog page to the masses, which all that did was only infuriate MSB more and began to threaten to call the FBI on me.  That was the final straw for me and once I found out about that I concluded my attempts on trying to bring any kind of compromise to him.  At the time when this was happening, I was suffering greatly from injuries, a TBI, and eventually, a nervous breakdown which led to me being suicidal from my unit’s overloaded work schedule that really had no meaning except to make our leader’s OERs and NCOERs look good.  After the nervous breakdown I had suffered, I began my medical discharge process out of the Army which was concluded five months later with me being medically retired, but that’s another story for another time.  Since then, I began to notice that MSB did have numerous issues with himself and I wasn’t the only one that he did this to.  For instance, there was a mutual friend of ours who he also cut ties with because he simply suggested he should leave the New Orleans area, which is where MSB is from and went back to after leaving the Army.  Also, he stopped being friends with many people for other various reasons, such as political views, currently being in the Military, and even simple disagreements of such minute topics like UFOs.  MSB, overall, seems to put out any sort of reason to stop talking to people, whether if it’s logical or not.  Plus, later on, MSB wrote about me being suicidal and just mocked me for it, which was literally one of the worst things you can do.  Although he somewhat apologized for his comments, that was still a hit below the belt for even just mentioning something like that.  For being a Veteran himself, MSB is well aware of the number of Veteran suicides that happen every day, twenty-two to be exact.  Also, over time I began to see the hypocrisy in MSB that really showed he wasn’t a very good person.  For instance, he claims to be a Christian, but yet doesn’t practice much of the beliefs in that religion, such as forgiveness.  Also, he claims to always try to rid his life of toxic people, which I don’t disagree with him the least being I do so myself, but it comes back to how he rids people from his life, like as though he tries to find a reason to stop talking to them.  There is a fine line of getting rid of toxic people from your life, and just being stuck up altogether, which MSB is the latter.  Also, MSB simply acts too much as an opportunist when it comes to friendships, religion, business to the point he really doesn’t deserve to have any friends or be successful in any venture he gets himself into.  Finally, his stance on marijuana use I find not agreeable with.  MSB seems like one of those that support the legalization of its use but doesn’t want to associate with anyone who does the substance, whether for medical or recreational use.  Sort of reminds me of an ex-girlfriend of mine, in a sense.
          
          However, despite all the negative views I have with MSB, I do hope he has his life in order and does have a successful life after the Army.  There are a few things I do actually agree with him, for one, on what happened to him on Facebook.  Any of you who didn’t notice, after the 2016 presidential election, Facebook began to fully censor people who had conservative views, whether if it was posting videos about certain topics or even just making memes and posting them onto the website.  MSB was renowned for his meme-making, and Facebook kept banning him for posts he did a couple years prior.  The situation got so bad for him that he ended up deleting his account, and the music page I was part of before he blocked me.  Now, let me mind you, I was sort of celebrating the demise of his music page and profile because I was thinking about my olde Facebook account that got hacked into.  However, I didn’t agree with the reasoning behind it, mainly because I’m an advent supporter of free speech and free speech is for everybody, including the ones you don’t agree with.  I remember before I even made a parody blog with his writings, which I thought if I did put more time into it, I would’ve made it really funny.  However, I decided to delete it because I really didn’t want to waste my time with something that anything to do with the dude.  The only thing nowadays I really look at when it comes to MSB is his views on retro game consoles, video games, and olde arcade games.  The reason for it is because that is one topic, he actually knows quite a bit about, when the other references I have don’t give me a thorough answer.  But that’s all I use him for is just another reference or opinion, on the subject at hand.  I still will not say or support anything he does, largely after he threatened to call the FBI and my unit about me supposedly stalking him.  In fact, MSB even tried to say that to me after I was out of the Army, “Just because you’re out of the Military, doesn’t mean you’re safe,” garbage, like as though I was parked right outside his house.  Even for some crazy notion he finds a cure for AIDS or invents a piece of cutting-edge technology, I still won’t say anything good about the guy.  I won’t say anything bad either, but certainly nothing anything good.  MSB burned that bridge ten times over. 

DJO

This was an even harder blow to me, considering I was friends with DJO for almost twenty years up to when we stopped being friends.  Sadly, after looking back at the situation it seemed inevitable to happen.  It started really back about fourteen years ago when I and a mutual friend of both me and DJO were talking about his habits and his activities.  At the time, DJO was about thirty years olde, and he was still hanging out at the same twenty-four-hour restaurants with the same sixteen to twenty-one-year olde crowds that go there.  I began to think about why DJO was continuing to do something that me and him, along with a few other people we know, were doing when we were in that age group.  It is not that he was dumb, DJO was a very smart guy.  To me, I always felt it was sort of a getaway from almost all the stresses he had in life, kind of like his comfort zone.  However, as the years went by and as I and other mutual friends began to move away from hanging out at those restaurants, DJO would still continue going there.   Then, a year and a half after talking with the mutual friend of ours, I moved out of my dad’s place after I and him got into a heated argument.  With nowhere else to go, I went to DJO’s place to live after telling him what had happened.  While living with him, I tried helping him assist his father, who lived there as well, to try to overcome an issue he had.  His father’s issue was that he was a hoarder, and was very bad with it.  I knew about it since I became friends with DJO, through him telling me and visiting him at his house.  Also, DJO’s father had an issue of hanging out with a bunch of crack whores, which he started doing after he got divorced from his wife.  I agreed to help DJO any way I can while living at his place, and help pay the bills and so forth.  However, looking back at the time I lived with DJO, I and he only grew further apart.  For one, he began to stop trying to change his father, despite the fact his dad found out he had colon cancer and ended up getting surgery for it.  DJO simply had a tendency to just give up when something wasn’t going his way immediately.  As a result, he ended up retreating back to his comfort zones of twenty-four restaurants and playing D&D (Dungeons & Dragons), which he was an advent player of, and even created a game for a group of people with him as the DM(Dungeon Master).  Over the time I lived with DJO, nothing seemed to be going my way at all.  First off, I wasn’t speaking to my parents at all, and I didn’t even want to talk to them after the argument I had with my father.  I was never in good standings with my mother, which again is a whole another story in itself so I’m not going to go into full detail on that.  Secondly, this was around the time when the recession hit, and I ended up getting laid off from my job.  And thirdly, DJO’s excuses for not being able to do anything about his father and just retreating to gaming made my time there miserable.  That was one thing DJO always had a problem with, which was making excuses for why he couldn’t do something.  One thing I did learn while I lived with him was why his brother and sister don’t want much to do with him, because of his self-loathing and overall sense of not doing anything for himself.  Luckily, while I was living with him, I found some friends that helped me guide my decisions on getting out of his place.  Although I already had the idea in my head, my newfound friends told me I should look into joining the Military.  I eventually did go into the Army and got out of DJO’s place after living with him for two years.  After joining the Army, I and DJO really drifted away much further, largely in part he ended up coming out of the closet, which was a huge shock to me considering I knew how he was with the opposite sex in the past.  Plus, I remember DJO telling me before I left for Basic Training, to not act like I was better than everyone else because I was in the Military and they weren't, which is not an issue at all for me, but yet he turns around and ignores people who are not into RPGs(Role Playing Games) or into the card game Magic.  Also, his politics were very liberal, which only gotten even more so in later years to the point DJO started to base his friendships on that subject, and that was how we stopped talking altogether.  He eventually became an Anti-Trumper, along with his new boyfriend, and also the two ended up getting married.  All in all, I still feel very disturbed about that, considering I was his roommate. 
                
             Despite DJO becoming homosexual, and also claiming to be transgender later on as well (he’s really lost his rocker), I’m glad he has found happiness with someone, even though it is a dude.  That ordeal still boggles me to this day, considering how long I’ve known the man.  I know his brother, on the other hand, would’ve claimed that DJO was always gay from the beginning.  I can see him definitely joking about that.  Also, I know his father is no longer with us, so DJO has to live on his own without any help from his parents, which he should anyways be considering he is in his forties now.  Overall, I hope he does maintain his happiness and tries to guide himself on a more positive note.

I am glad to know that I’m in a good place right with my life.  I found a nice home here in Pueblo, CO, where the scenery is beautiful and the people are nice.  Also, I have found some like-minded people here in this town that shares much of the same tastes as I do.  After getting medically retired from the Army, I decided to stay in Colorado over going back to Illinois and I couldn’t be much happier with my decision.  I mean, where else can I easily own a gun and smoke pot legally?  Finally, I would like to again say best of wishes to both MSB and DJO, for a good and fruitful life.  To whatever brings them joy, whether good, bad, odd and so forth, continue to give them growth in a more, positive atmosphere.


On a final note


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