Do you really think this way?

Tonight I have been tossing around several different ideas of what I wanted to write about.  I was sitting here talking to my friends all over the country. These are people that I have known for quite awhile, we are all older in our 30's and 40's.  Something came up in a discussion I was having with my dear friend Maritizio, I was explaining to him what had happened between me and my ex.  He knows both of us from our previous life in Atlanta, way before we relocated to Florida.  It dawned on me that the mentality of the people that I have dated in the past has certainly changed as I have gotten older.  See, when I was younger and serving in the Navy I had a boyfriend whose name was Andy.  We were together for a while but eventually as all things it ended.  Not really by choice I don't think but because of the situations we had found ourselves in.   He was still in the Navy and I ended up getting out. But, thinking back on my relationship with Andy, I realized that I could identify what was different.

It is my contention that those of us who are older had an openness between us in our relationships. We talked to one another, I never had to guess what my partner was thinking I knew.  I also knew what was going on at all times between us and our friends. I am struggling right now as I am trying to explain it to you.  But, those of us from the older generation were more open and honest with one another than the people of this generation.  I can tell you that Andy knew exactly where he stood with me and I knew where I stood with him. There wasn't much if anything that we kept hidden from each other.  I can tell you that if I look back over my past relationships, I can tell you that I had it only once, and then almost found it again.  However, in the end they both ended up breaking my trust by not being 100 percent honest with me and ended up getting caught in their own lies.

The one I want to compare and contrast with you is the relationship that I had the longest.  I met a guy in 1997 and we were together a very long time, we finally totally separated in 2010.  I can tell you for the longest time I knew exactly where I stood with him.  We pushed each other and built up a pretty nice setup.  However, he thought that I was too demanding and I was never satisfied with him or what we had achieved. He was under the impression that I only wanted more.  It soon became a battle of tit for tat and trying to one up each other.  But, I want  you to know that for most of my relationship with him I never had any doubts, we talked about everything. We knew each other pretty well.  Most of the problems came when I got really sick with cancer and had to have so many surgeries and I ended up losing a very good job.  I have never recovered from those losses and I am not sure I ever will.  Plus there was the introduction of a new element in our relationship and it was Meth-amphetamines.  Now, I will be 100 percent honest with you that the year before I got sick we had started having problems.  I have often attributed it to the fact that I went to school and finished my masters degree and got hired right out of school making more money than he was making and he was working in the industry already, and had so much more experience than I did.  But that is only part of the problem, we were both getting restless we had over extended ourselves financially and physically we went into business with a couple of friends and started a restaurant and bought our second house.

Once I got sick it just got worse, I honestly can't blame him as I look back and see what really was going on.  But at the time when I was going through it all I couldn't fathom how someone could do those things to another person especially when they were sick and fighting for their life.  The honest truth looking back with hindsight is that Joe was probably lonely and worried and stressed out. He was working full time, taking care of me  or visiting me in the hospital daily.  I had to spend a lot of time in hospital, I also wasn't in any shape to have any type of sexual relationship with him during those times.  He was human and a man and had needs and desires, sometimes you just have to go out and scratch the itch.  I was not the most understanding person in the world back then. I have to tell you that I was pretty selfish.  I didn't know if I was going to live or die and I wanted everything and nothing at the same time. No wonder he ended up going out to parties and cheating. I don't blame him for his increased drug usage either, a person has to do something to cope with all that shit he was dealing with and still keep his sanity.  It has taken me all of this time to actually reach this conclusion.  I wish I would have had these insights years ago. I might have been able to apologize for my behavior way before this.  Somehow I think that he will end up stumbling on to this and maybe he will read it and understand finally that I am very sorry for hurting him. I honestly was too wrapped up in what I was going through to actually consider anyone's feelings but my own, and I am ashamed of that.

Now you might be asking yourself why I told you all of that stuff and what is the point that I am trying to make. If we take my relationship with Joe and compare and contrast it to my most recent relationship. I think you will begin to see that there is a great difference in the way my generation thinks versus this new younger generation.  Let us begin, from day one with Kerry there was turmoil, half-truths and lies.  An example that I can give you is we were in L.A. staying with my friend Judy and it was a few days after Christmas, him and I headed upstairs, I thought we were going to bed. I stopped at the bathroom, he went on to the room.  A minute or so goes by and he tells me that he is going to go outside and smoke some herb with his cousin.  I hurried up in the restroom couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes. By the time I had come out he was gone. He had taken my phone and left.  I went outside looking for him and he was nowhere to be found.  Later on I found out that he had been talking to somebody on line and had set up for them to meet him so they could go party and get high on meth.  He was gone with my phone and didn't come back for four days.  I should have known then that the relationship was doomed from that moment on. However, when he came back he was upset and remorseful he convinced me that he was he had royally screwed up and that it wouldn't happen again.

Unfortunately, this was a pattern that was going to be our relationship till he finally left me and moved back to Atlanta.  For the next 2 1/2 years I was on an emotional roller coaster.  Drugs would play a major part in all of this. But, this wasn't the extent to what was going on behind my back.  I would catch him talking to other guys on Facebook and Adam4Adam and other sites, telling them that he was in love with them and wanted to be with them  It even got to the point where he would lie and mislead me into going to Atlanta because he would have arranged to hookup with someone. the problem with that was he would never tell the other person about me coming.  Though he would tell me that they knew and it was all okay. You don't know how many times I was thrust into uncomfortable situations by his doing this.  Worse yet would be that every time we would go to Atlanta I would end up getting sick when I got back to Florida and end up in the hospital for 5 days usually at a time.  You don't know how much trouble always seemed to happen to us when we were in Atlanta, we were robbed twice and lost 2 rental cars.  Twice we ended up losing everything we had taken with us up there.  The last time I went with him to Atlanta was in February of 2014, I was going through chemotherapy at the time, all of our stuff was in the rental car and he was high and took off from the hotel that we were staying in and got himself arrested. I was stuck with no money, no car, no place to stay, and no medical supplies because our stuff was in the car.  I finally got a ride to my friend Chris's place and I stayed with him till I could find a way back to Daytona.  However, shortly after I got back I ended up having an aneurysm and had to have 28 blood transfusions and 3 surgeries.  Shortly after all of that he left me and didn't come back.  Drugs played an important role in his decision making process. But I have to say that once he was gone I began to realize how much money I was spending on him each month.  It soon became much easier to cope with the loss knowing that bit of information.

In the relationship with Joe, him and I worked together we hid nothing from each other and we ended up doing very well and staying together a long time. The relationship with Kerry was based on lies and half-truths from the very start. There was no real talking between us, he would just tell me what he thought I wanted to hear, and do his own thing.  As I look back I can see that he had little to no interest in really building anything lasting and was just looking at how he could score drugs and do for himself only.  As you can see there is a difference in the way of thinking between the different age groups. Joe and I were only 6 month apart, and there was 17 years between me and Kerry.

So my original question was Do you really think this way?  I have brought to your attention that the younger generation is more about themselves and what they can get from their interactions with others than dealing with another person with total honesty.  There always seems to be an ulterior motive or half-truth in play with them.  The older guys have a tendency to open up to with each other and work together to build something. They don't hide their intentions from each other.  As I have been thinking on this subject tonight it also became obvious that the younger generation who is only looking out for themselves also seems to be wanting everything handed to them without them having to work for it.

I am not sure if there is a solution to this, and I have yet to meet the exception to this observation.  After what I went through with my last relationship I have pretty much given up on love. I don't think it is possible with the morals and standards today for any type of relationship to have any stability or longevity.  All I have ever wanted was a companion who didn't feel that they had to lie to me or had to hide anything from me.  For the most part I am pretty much open, and if you let me know your intentions beforehand I will not feel betrayed and used.  I wouldn't think that you deliberately misled me and lied to my face.  Because of the things that I have been through I am finding it extremely difficult in trusting others, and it has made it that much more difficult for someone to get close enough to me to get to know me or understand where I am coming from.  I can't say if this might change or not. I can tell you that it will take a very special person to get through my walls and gain my trust.  I think they are constantly going to be scrutinized and questioned about everything. So if you have an interest in getting to know me you better be ready for a long hard journey to earn my trust.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Assumptions and Conclusions

Every time I talk to one friend that he says that I go from one extreme to the other by either jumping to a conclusion or making an assumption. So I thought that I would explore this a little more and see if I can actually figure out what he is talking about. I will admit that I go from one extreme to another on an emotional level, I am truly bipolar. But I don't honestly think that I make assumptions. See I know the definition of assumption it is "a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof." So if I state a fact or tell you something that I think is true, that doesn't mean it was an assumption. See, I have been trying to live my life as honestly as I can since I found out that I am terminal. An assumption would be a statement that I thought to be true about the other person. But what is actually happening is everything is colored by my past experiences.

One thing that my friend doesn't understand, I filter everything I say and do by my past experience and relationships. It doesn't have to be a sexual thing either. See in my family birthdays are very important and we have all out celebrations for them each year. So when my friend told me that his birthday was coming up on the 19th of Feb and he wanted me to come and visit him around tha time so that we could spend sometime together and see how things went. While I was talking about his birthday, I told him that I would like to be around him for his birthday, but I didn't want to be in the way. He told me that he was black and that they didn't celebrate getting older.  Can you see how I based my response on the fact that my family did celebrate  birthday. it was a grand thing in my home, so I assumed it would be in his home and family as well.  I had no idea that he didn't celebrate getting one year older.  In this case I was trying not to get in the way of anything his family may have planned for him, I stated that I didn't want to be underfoot.  Maybe it was wrong for me to assume that his family was just like my disfunctional family.

Assumptions are bad and can hurt a relationship badly if you don't take the time to communicate openly and honestly.  An assumption means that you have accepted something about the other person without any proof.  Now, if you remember what they used to stay in school that making an assumption makes and ass out of you and me.  Keep that in mind the next time you want to make an assumption about another person.

If you know what the definition of a conclusion is a judgement or decision that is made through reasoning. I know that I am a culprit of jumping to conclusions.  I rationalize everything and like I told you above that I filter everything that I go through by my past experiences.  I think this is a common error that we all make. See it is our past experiences that have shaped us and molded us into the person we are today.  But the problem with using those same filters is that we tend to conclude that every situation can be measured by those same filters.  The truth of the matter is not all situations fit into the mold that our past experiences have prepared ourselves for.  So what do you do when a new situation arises and you have no experience in dealing with it.  Your past hasn't prepared you to adequately handle the situation.

It is easy for us to draw conclusions when we over analyze every situation.  Many of us nitpick and pull apart the motives of others, we try to figure out their intentions and agendas are.  But, when you draw a conclusion based on just the facts that you know, the issue becomes you may not know everything about the situation so your conclusion will be faulty and misguided.  Remember that every relationship is as different as the person involved in the relationship.  So, even in new situations our past information is not always enough for us to draw the appropriate conclusions.  So you run the risk of hurting someone without hearing all the facts and drawing a false conclusion.

So, if you are like me try to keep the assumptions and conclusion jumping to the absolute minimum.  Go out and research the facts of every situation and confront the people involved directly so that you get all the facts.  Remember it pays off to get the information straight from the horses mouth so to speak.  It is also helps if you are honest in your communication with each other so that all the facts come to light and no one has to draw a conclusion or make and assumption.  Because you will have all the information.  Remember being for warned is for armed.  Which means if you have all the information at your disposal you can make an educated decision based only on the facts.

It is my recommendation to be absolutely honest with yourself and others.  That way everything you speak and tell can be counted on as fact.  Plus, I have found that if you start lying to yourself it is very hard for you to stop.  It becomes so easy to rationalize our actions and make stupid assumptions as well as jumping to an easy conclusion.

So take my advice.  Talk everything out, be honest, let your feelings out and look at the facts with a rational mind.  This way you can make an educated decision with all the facts at your disposal.  Remember that assumptions and conclusions can only hurt a relationship, or make a situation that much harder to resolve.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

The weight on my chest

They keep telling me that life is what you make of it.  I have yet again taken a wrong turn and before I realized it I was back to where I started.

It is sad when you really like someone and they take advantage and end up pretty much just used you.  You know it used to be that way in my life not to very long ago.  There was always and excuse or false hood that had been concocted and I would allow myself to be dragged in.

Ulterior motives, hidden agendas, and pretty much the norm these days.  This new generation feels that they have to hide what is really going on.

I am hurt, betrayed, angry, frustrated, and laughing and crying at the same time.  Why not just tell me that you want to party and have some fun.  Why put me through Atlanta all over again?  Why do what he did?

I have learned my lesson, a true friend would not have encouraged me to stay off the drugs and walk away.  However, the temptation was there and then it got so easy to take advantage, purchase, and even take extra money out of my account.  All under the guise I know only too well "Lets go half, and I got you, don't worry, I am going to give the money back.'

I am not sure why you played with my heart, you should have just asked for the money.  But, I take responsibility, I could have walked away anytime and come home. I chose to stay, because I thought I saw an honest and kind person. But as the weekend progressed, I heard things and realized that I never should have come down there.  It was a set up from the get go.

Okay I accept that and now are letting go of all the animosity, hurt and pain that I am feeling. See the writing gets it out of my system. Now that I have written about this I am going to be fine emotionally that is, any other way I don't think you honestly give a crap about my health or well being.

I only stayed because my heart wanted to believe that I had met someone that truly liked me.  But, the day that you hit me you told me I was ugly.  Which only confirmed the other little comments that were said under your breathe.  You knew what happened to me every time I went to Atlanta and you orchestrated it well, yet I stayed.  I stayed because I think there were some sincere moments when the real you surfaced for just a minute, and that was the person I was trying to get too.

You knew the limitations I continually told you that I needed at least 700 in my account to keep the rent check from bouncing.  Yet you manipulated me, told me you were going to take 40 out of my account yet when you came back you took 100 out of my account.  I am not sure why you did it. Once again, if I would have been told the entire situation, I could have  bought more stuff and saved some money.  But here we are and I am sitting negative 500.00.  That come on you know I got you.  I am going half with you, everything is going to be alright.  Guess what it isn't alright.

A real friend and someone that wants to get to know you. Would have been up front told you what the plans were and that drugs were going to be involved.  Second they would have shown some interest in you which never happened.

What I find even more funny  is that I was buying the sTuff, and I was shorted all weekend.  You gave everyone more than me.  I didn't say anything it was just drugs.  But for you to actually get mad at me and punched me in the face and told me that I shorted and stole the sTuff,  which was impossible it was mine to begin with I paid for it.

But, through everything that you did too me, I still turned around and picked you up and took you to your mom's house.  I still wanted to be a friend and made sure you weren't stranded.

Damn if you were just a fraction of the man I thought you were and what you portrayed yourself to be while talking to me on  the phone, I would have been happy.

How disappointing!

But I have to give credit where credit is due.  My ex never, ever, hit me first off especially over drugs. Second him and I always made sure  the the bills were paid first they were priority.  Over and over I kept telling him that I didn't have the money and that my rent check still hadn't processed.  He didn't care, just kept on pushing and nagging and wheedling and eventually I caved in.  Now, I have to face the consequences of all of this alone.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B