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My friend and her family have suffered a great loss. I too am suffering from this loss. While I hadn't talked to him in a long time, I did know the young man and I always liked him. With this I am feeling that loss and the heart break of seeing my friends in so much pain.

What hurts me even more is the fact that people in our community are allowing their mouths to run without the benefit of engaging their brains. Why is that when they know people are hurting that they seem to want to fuel the fire?

I have to admit that within my own family I have met with some frustration. Dad has been okay. He too is in shock and unsure. My sister however seems to be oblivious to the fact that people are hurting. It took 2 days and 2 different phone calls for her to listen long enough to even hear that something bad had happened. Damn-it that just pisses me off.

My biggest frustration is that I don't know how to help. I have tried to be a listener, but unfortunately I always end up blabbering on because I really don't know what to say. My first instinct is to take a big blanket and wrap them all up and hold onto them until the pain is gone... I know I can't do this but I want to.

Nothing to say...

Well as most know I am a big supporter of the NRA and my father, sister, and I are all life members. However, no matter how much I support the ideas behind the NRA, I can never get past their constant pestering for money. It just drives me nuts. I know that they need money to do what they do, but I often wonder how much money the waste by send me letters and calling me long distance to have me throw the stuff away and hang up on them.

I mean even thought I don't have to pay a yearly membership anymore I usually do send them more money than the yearly dues, I just wish there was some way to opt out of all of the crap.

These 3 things seem to be missing in a lot of places these days. What happened to being honest and honorable in all things you did. Isn't these things that do make you happy?

We seem to be lacking these from all angles. It all relates to what happens to your order at McDonald's to if your company will down size you so that some CEO, COO, CFO, or other alphabet head can get a 5 million dollar raise.

A good example of a company that has lost this is Chaco Sandals. They knew that they were going to move their line to China but they lied to their employees and their community all in the name of making a buck.

People want to know why we are losing jobs overseas... It isn't because the can get cheaper labor or that the quality is better (another Chaco lie). Neither is true. Yes the labor is cheap but with such poor and at times illegal or dangerous quality the math can't hold. The reason we are losing jobs is because the people running these companies have no honor and are completely dishonest.

These people don't care about their consumers or their employees. All they are about is how much green they can stuff into their off shore accounts. The don't care about the quality, they can afford to pay for the good stuff.

If people want to know how to keep jobs here, the best way is to teach their children honor, honesty, and respect. Then when they become the next generation of alphabet heads, maybe they will understand what it means to be happy.

Just as it seems today has lead us back to the many blood suckers who want to run our country. What a bunch of crap.

As anyone who has read this blog knowns, I have enough of my own BS to deal with, I really don't need to worry about this political stuff. However, I do know that if we all don't take some interest in what is happening we might all just get screwed and not even get a smile or thank you for it.

In my view I am loving the dems arguing with themselves. I am not a big McCain fan but I do support him over the other 2.

So it is another one of those nights when my brain is keeping me awake. The only difference I can see tonight from some others is that I am beginning to see things a little more clearly. It is almost like some sort of haze is starting to lift.

I think this is partly do to the fact that for the first time in 8 to 10 years that I have people that I can talk to without worrying that they will think I am weak or stupid. However, that doesn't mean I don't worry about talking to them. Mostly I worry that I am going to overload them with my problems when they have their own problems. This bothers me even more because there are only 2 of them. One of them is my brother (No were not related, what's your point?) and my newest friend.

The last person I felt this okay talking to was my Mom. I have been thinking a lot about her too.

I have to admit, I am uncomfortable writing this here, but this again is something that I don't want to dump on my friends. You would think that I could talk to my blood family about this, but I can't. It is just that I really have never been able to talk to anyone but Mom about this stuff until now.

When I try to talk to my Dad about this stuff it seems like I am talking to a brick wall and he doesn't get it. Plus he, along with my sister, has always had the “big boys don’t cry attitude.” Also, when I try to talk to my sister about stuff I always feel like the little kid brother that she had to drag around and sometimes I think she thinks I was pampered and spoiled and she got treated unfairly.

You know I don't know if that is true or not. I do know that we are 22 years apart and that means the times in which we grew up where 22 years apart. It just bothers me because there are things that I have talked to her about only to have her tell them to everybody else and leave me feeling like a little kid who wants to go run and hide.

Case in point: A few years ago I spent time at a care center trying to get some wounds healed up. During my stay there I had a roommate "expire" (the facilities word). Well at that place they just leave you where you are until someone comes to get you when you die, so I spent a whole day next to a dead body.

Well, normally dead bodies don't bother me but in this situation where I wasn't exactly in the best shape myself, being stuck next to him did freak me out. So not knowing what to do I called her just to talk. Well, now she has to tell everyone about how I called her all scared and crying and she had to rush right down to take care of her baby brother.

That really bugs me. First because it isn't what happened and second because I always feel like that little kid, embarrassed and ashamed. It always feels as if the people she is telling the story to are looking and laughing at me for being a wimp and not a strong man.

What bothers me even more is that I knew better then to try and talk to her, but I didn't know whom else to talk too. The reason I say I knew better was because of one conversation that happened right after I became paralyzed.

Shortly after it happened while I was still in the rehab hospital someone gave her an article on electric stimulation of the muscle to simulate walking. Her idea was that well if you can even simulate walking then everything would be all better.

That just isn't true and even if it were, it wouldn't work for me. I have some sensation in my legs and the majority of the people who are even candidates for that have complete injuries. In other words they can't feel a thing. So that pretty much left me out, something that I had already talked about with the rehab people. Well, my sister decided that I didn't want to get better and that I was just being a wussy and she told me, "no pain, no gain." That really pissed me off and to be honest I have never completely gotten over that.

See she didn’t realize a few things. One, I was already in a lot of pain, so it wasn’t the idea of pain that bothered me. Second, she didn’t realize that to me just being able to “walk” with the electrodes wasn’t really getting better. It would not alleviate any of the other issues that come with being paralyzed. In fact it might have created some new ones. For instance she didn’t know that the electrodes used at the time had a tendency to rust inside the body. Or the fact that the electrodes also created a great path for infection and sometimes people ended up having to get a leg amputated because of it.

The truth is, I don’t even think she was thinking about me at the time. I hate to say it, but I think she was trying to figure out a way for her to have “normal” brother again…

I guess with all of this what bothers me EVEN MORE is that she now has found herself in some of the same vulnerable positions I have. She has spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital trying to deal with her own medical problems, but she can’t seem to remember that I have been through it too. Every once in a while I do see a sliver of hope when she seems to relate to something I have gone through, but unfortunately those times are rare.

I don’t want to be mean or unsympathetic because I can completely understand most of what she is going through, it just upsets me that she needs to talk to me and tell me things and have me understand when I never had that from her when I needed it.

I am just really glad that there are at least 2 people out there (one of whom I know reads this blog once in a while) that are willing to listen (and read) and know that sooner or later I will get my head back on straight.