#its only been a few months but td has been marinating in my head so im now older and wiser

[sapphirepatch]

are my td followers still here? do you still love me?

[alrightcomputer]

“That one time I lost $17,000, my dog fought a skunk, I levitated, got stung by a scorpion and then was homeless for a week.”

The story begins with money. In my 20’s I was a ship with no anchor, which is ironic since the Saint of my namesake is the patron of mariners and children. I felt like both, but without a map or a compass, so I took a paycheck in the meantime. The first job I took in a kitchen was at the Great Wolf Lodge through a favor from my cousin who knew the Exec and Sous. Started with no experience beyond grilled cheeses and bowls of cereal, a strong work ethic, a hunger for my own money and the good will of others. It was the best job I’ve had in the industry and I wish I hadn’t left but life dangled the carrot of love in front of me and I jumped ship and swam. It was nice to be wanted, so I let my pride take the wheel and quickly got lost in the sauce. Ended up at another corporate place in MHK, but rose quickly, fell in love quickly, and fell out just as quick. I was drifting in the wind in Manhattan, which is what you do there. Still felt adrift, the arrogance of youth filling my sails. I was discovering myself on my own for the first time, having looked through a telescope for so long I was finally starting to appreciate the vastness of the horizon. That I could go any direction I wanted, as fast and as far. I broke a heart, cut bait and went looking. I let my mother live vicariously through me by enrolling in culinary school, despite 2 years already having risen quickly in every kitchen I had worked in. She loved cooking, but to me it was just a skill. I thought with this same formula applied to school I’d jump into any space I wanted. I was as ambitious as I was broke, and still dreaming. Surprise! My parents had been keeping $35,000 in a mutual fund, in my name, since who knows when?! I was dreading borrowing $42,000 to pay for one year of school but damn they made it sound pretty, so I accepted the “help” from mom & dad, without a promise of repayment, even at my insistence. I didn’t want to lose my motivation. I say “help” because the way it played out I think they had ulterior motives. I got enrolled and find out the basic college credits I already had saved me $7000. I had school paid for and would just need a part time job to pay my rent and have fun. Fast forward 6 months, halfway through school, taking control of my life finally so I decide it would be easier to move my school money out of the joint account in Downs to a bank in Austin where I was going to be staying after graduation. I called the bank and asked them to transfer and they put me on hold. Weird. The teller gets back on the phone and they say they can’t make the transfer and that I would need to talk to my parents. My name was on the account. The checks were written from TD Ameritrade to me. This shouldn’t have happened. They pulled the rug out from under me, absolutely zero respect. No discussion. I was still a child to them, and I realized then that I always would be. This is where the story really begins. At this point I was so torn between honoring my parents and gaining autonomy over my life. I took out $17,000 in loans to finish school despite my instinct telling me to just quit and work full time, it had worked best for me anyway. Finish school with my head down, feelings up in smoke, heart in my hand. Long phone calls that always ended up in anger. They were in charge, they had the upper hand. How I felt about it was of no consequence to them, especially 700 miles away. I moved back to Manhattan after a wild year in ATX following graduation because I still had friends in Kansas, even if I didn’t feel like I had family. It’s okay, everything’s okay. I’ll tell you the 512 story later. Staying in a friends basement rent free until I get a job and a couple paychecks in my pocket, playing a lot of Call of Duty and smoking as much weed as humanly possible to keep my mind off of my deteriorating relationship with my parents. It's okay, everything's okay. Never really get off my feet in those three months so I concede to everything I’ve been fighting against with my parents and move back in with them, working at their furniture store and helping with funerals when needed. It’s okay, everything’s okay. It wasn't. My dad told me if I wanted the money that I should sue him. Hope will allow you to suffer much longer than is necessary. Few months go by, living rent free in a place I don’t want to be in has really motivated me to save some money at get the fuck out. Having my dog around is a small comfort. I’m still trying to resolve my feelings about the situation internally but I can’t, so I approach my parents. It doesn’t go well. It never goes well. When someone has seen you bare assed, bent over, taking an ass whoopin’ with a fraternity paddle, you can still love them, but you will never respect them. Not unless you meet them where they’re at. But I had been bent for too long to be able to carry that weight. After several attempts at resolution, each with escalating climaxes, leading up to the night they kicked me out. I still had most of my things packed in my car because I hadn’t planned on staying long. My mom tells me to leave after multiple attempts to try and explain my feelings, not even demanding any type of action on their part other than hearing me out. They were very defensive. My mom told me she wanted me to leave, so I packed up my toiletries and suitcase I had clothes in, grabbed my dogs leash and called him as I walked down the stairs to leave. My mom grabs my collar at the landing, where the stairs make a 180 degree turn, there’s a small area to stand there before the stairs continue down. I just kept walking, she didn’t let go. She fell to her knees but let go finally, and right at that moment, my dad is coming up from the basement, to the first floor. My mom takes a flop, sliding down the stairs behind me, with her hands out in front of her. I kept walking towards the back door and my dad stands in my way and won’t let me pass. Step left, gets in my way, hands on my chest. I tell him she wants me to leave, so I am. Step right. Hands on my chest. Call my dog Jonas, he’s waiting patiently. My dad is still trying to stop me from leaving, he doesn’t know my mom was talking to me, assumes I threw her down the stairs or something. I quickly explain what happened and he doesn’t believe me so I say I’m just going to leave and he tries to stop me again so I grab his shirt and throw him to the side, he stumbles but doesn't fall down. I can’t take this shit anymore. I walk to the back door calling my dog to go outside. As I get out to my car and am loading my things in, tell my dog to get in and he complies as always. My mom is hysterical, begging me to stay. I tell her this obviously isn’t a good place for me to be and get in my car and leave. I go to a place I frequently go and let Jonas out and light a cigarette as I sit on the ground. I hear Jonas running through the tall grass until he stops suddenly and I hear a low growl so I call him back. Immediately after I hear a very shrill yelp and him sprinting towards me, I figured it was a raccoon at first until he got about 10 yards away I could smell exactly what it was. He smelled like sour ass and a plastic fire. I finished my cigarette as I figured out what I was going to do. His face is staring at me searching for answers and I comfort him telling him its ok and I’m going to get him cleaned up. He stunk so bad. I go back to my parents house and walk in the back door where the pantry is and grab two cans of my dad’s tomato juice. He’s on the couch so I tell him Jonas got sprayed by a skunk and go back outside. I call Jonas over to where the hose is and begin to wash his face. It helps, kind of. Go through both cans and I can’t tell if I’m just used to the smell, if my olfactory senses are fried or if its actually helping. His spirits were lifted so that’s all mattered at the moment. My dad says I should stay and that he would make sure my mom didn’t talk to me. I leave Jonas outside and go upstairs to fall asleep. We don’t talk for several days. I sleep in my car and read Bukowski by the river in the town I worked in until I meet up with a friend who was in California for a long time, back in town for her sister’s wedding. Her sister is actually marrying my cousin. My friend Carrie’s house was where we used to hang out and party in high school. My mom looked down on the whole family. The oldest sister (who was marrying my cousin) was best friends with the only openly gay kid in the town. The oldest son was a musician and goth. The youngest daughter Carrie was a completely free spirit. The youngest son was a skater. Their mom was a single mom who raised 4 kids working graveyard shifts at the nursing home. They were kind and open minded. She did a complete 180 on her position once my cousin and the oldest daughter were engaged. She couldn’t maintain it and be perceived like she needed to be by them. She’s a textbook narcissist. I spend the night at my friends house the next couple nights leading up to the wedding, we watch movies and get drunk. She gives me half a Xanax so I can sleep. I needed it so badly, she knew I was a wreck. We went to the lake with old friends and rode jet skis and took turns throwing each other off doing 180 turns at the fastest speeds we could handle. She won. I took one of my favorite pictures of her talking to her brother on the phone while he was in a psych hospital after an attempted suicide. She had the biggest heart, and I think living in all that space felt lonely for her. The day of the wedding gets here and I go out to my favorite place to be alone a few miles outside of Downs. It's the tallest hill around in a farmer’s pasture, surrounded by grazing land and prairie for his cattle. The top of the hill is limestone and there are several smaller hills littered with volcanic rock surrounding it. Wildflowers and thistles scattered around haphazardly. It looks like the Windows background with the rolling green hills in spring. I have my camera and I take a few pictures along the way, I was very much in tune with the frequency of the place and this made me feel at peace and connected with myself. To be fair, the hill is not very impressive, but once you’re on top of it and see just how flat everything around it is and just how far you can see it’s a significant difference. For what it’s worth. I get to the top and I’m watching a man tend his field with a tractor about a mile away and thinking of my grandpa Jim, as I often do when I’m feeling stressed. I snap a few photos. As I’m sitting on a rock near the top, reading some initials of lovers, some school rivalry, some curses and a banal greeting I decide to close my eyes. I become very aware of the breeze and the swishing sound of the grass is very hypnotic. I sit in the Lotus position, palms up, index and thumb pressed gently together. I focus on my breathing and after a few minutes it happened. I felt the strongest sensation of floating, like vertigo but not spinning or swaying. I felt it so intensely that I violently shook myself out of it and snapped my eyes open. I don’t know how long I sat like this before it happened. I sat for a little while longer, looking out towards the horizon before I decide I should probably head back. I look down and about a foot under where I’m sitting I see a small scorpion. A cloudy, white, almost translucent exoskeleton. It’s pincers are raised, but it’s not moving around. I can see it’s stinger and for whatever reason decide to pick it up. So I did. I did it successfully. It just hung there between my thumb and index finger. It starts to sway back and forth so I decide its probably time to put it down. I had conquered my fear. As I move my hand towards the ground the angle I was holding it changed slightly and it spun and grabbed my finger near my finger nail. Without thinking I let go of the stinger and it struck immediately and then dropped the rest of the way to the ground, scurried under a rock and that was the last I saw of my friend. The initial pain was sharp but the sharpness of the sting dissipated quickly. The deep, throbbing pain of the venom was slow to take effect but plateaued much higher than the initial prick. It was intense to say the least, a very unique experience. Very grounding. I waited for the pain to peak, realized I could handle it, considered whether or not I was dying, but realized I had never heard of deadly scorpions in Kansas so I started to walk back to my car. When I get there I see my keys laying on my drivers seat and try the door. It’s locked. From this amazing moment of Zen to a slow deterioration of my physical reality in like 3 minutes. I didn’t have much time and it was the middle of the day in July so I started to walk back to town. Thankfully I had a long sleeved shirt on. I get almost a mile down the road and I hear a vehicle approaching behind me. The guy stops and asks if I need a ride. I accept. He asks what I’m doing out here and I tell him it’s where I go to clear my head and that I was taking a few photos while I was in town for a wedding. He says he’s going to get beer because his town is dry and he won’t tolerate a Sunday of football without a 12 pack. I said I appreciated his foresight, and was thankful that it had worked out in my favor too. I had a spare key with me at my friends house thankfully, and he dropped me off there. I didn’t feel like asking for any help at this point. I felt like I was on a personal journey. I figured I’d have just enough time to walk out and drive back to shower before the ceremony. It's hot as hell, but not like this summer. It was probably in the upper 90’s with little cloud cover, but there was a breeze so my sweat was working nicely to cool me. I knew the average walking pace was 5 miles an hour, so as long as I kept a steady pace I’d be there in about 45 minutes. It took about an hour cuz I got lazy and a little lost in thought considering how my day had been. Got into my car and drove back to my friends’ place, change and make it back about 5 minutes late to the church. My friend waves from the altar and I smile and mouth “sorry”. My story was a huge hit at the reception. My cousin thought it was especially hilarious that I got stung by a scorpion. The next day I woke up hungover but calm. Something I hadn’t felt first thing in the morning for a long time. I had work that night so I got cleaned up and drove the 20 minutes over and got a sandwich and read Ham On Rye for a while before my shift. My life was wild, but I had it good compared to Bukowski. Flipped some burgers for a few hours, had a few beers down the road and drove back to the park by the river to sleep in my car. I did this for several days before I asked my friend if I could crash in his basement again. I needed a shower, but nobody at work noticed because all the other cooks never showered despite having perfectly good homes to bathe in. He said it was cool, so I just ghosted my job and went back to Manhattan. I had a job there in 2 days, at a popular local burger spot with the menu of the last job I had in Austin hanging on the fridge when I got there. A place I could contribute to. A job I would ultimately be told to do less at. A few months went by just working there in the AM, reading in the afternoon while eating a burger and getting drunk at night or playing FPS games with my friend while we got stoned. He didn’t like to be out in public or be very social, but we’d have house parties every now and then. My dog was my best friend, letting me know who was to be trusted and who wasn’t. I was way too far in my own head to notice or care. He hated our fucking mail man, and I thought for no good reason until I caught him peeking in our front window, the one much too far out of his way to the mailbox to shrug it off. He tried to yell at me when my dog wouldn’t let him in the yard, and I said he doesn’t have to, plus I trust his judgement. We had a new guy on the route the next week. This was the beginning of a new level of strangeness.