6 years. It just seems so much longer than that.
I can’t even remember all of it. So let’s try for the ‘high’ points, maybe later I’ll go back and explain more, but at this point. If you weren’t there for it, what does it matter? Words don’t really convey all the thing that happened.
2021 - quit job, after they raised insurance to about 1200 a paycheck. Still didn’t cover anything so I left. Took a job offered by a buddy. Then they let me go a week after I finished their training. Because I failed the drug test that was not required to work there?
Scrambled, managed to find a ‘IT position’ working for a healthcare provider, I took the job b/c I was desperate and also it was a work from home position. A rather big company that had just changed to ‘elevance’.
Turned out the job was a lie, it was just customer service dealing with SNAP benefits. Was by far the worst job I had ever taken, up to that point. Rudest people ever, getting screamed at by both other employees and the customers, I managed to suffer through it for 6 months. Long enough to reapply at the job I had lost due to failing a drug test.
2022 - Took the IT call center position, it was easy enough, but as a level 1 i was only making 17 an hour, insurance was way better, i got 100% of mental health covered. Which allowed me to let start going to a therapist, I’ll talk about that some other time, and by doing so convinced my son that it was okay to go to see a therapist, despite his mother saying he was weak for doing it and such. The job barely gave me enough money to cover my car payment and insurance. And very little else. I pushed to be promoted, or a pay raise, was constantly met with pushback, while i was definitely qualified to be higher level, i hadn’t shown enough ‘loyalty’ to the company to move up. So i would need to act as a level 2 or 3 for up to 2 years with no pay increase before they deemed me okay enough, but then I could start the process of sucking up to the Process Analyst and his people to see if they would promote me. I refused. I started doing the bare minimum at work. Spend most of my time high and playing games on my computer on the other screen. I searched for other jobs while doing this. I noticed that everyone new coming in, had less training than I had received and most barely spoke English. I realized that the company was outsourcing a lot and started looking for a way out.
October 31st they let me know that my services were no longer required. And that my insurance ended the last day of the month I was fired. Awesome thanks. Fuck you too.
Luckily since I noticed the writing on the wall I had been looking for a job.
Let’s backtrack a bit. Sometime in late 2021? or early 2022 I noticed that I was having problems sleeping, due to constantly having to get up to go to the bathroom. I thought maybe i was drinking too much water. So i stopped drinking after 9pm. didn’t help. I stopped drinking around 5pm and still was waking up every 2 hours to go pee. My sleep suffered and finally I went to a doctor who let me know i was on the cusp of becoming diabetic. I was slightly over the limit but the doctor thought I could start working out and put me on meds to help with that.
Over the next 3 months I started working out more taking the meds etc and managed to lower my blood sugar to acceptable levels, more importantly I started losing weight. Dropped about 50 lbs. I finally weighted myself and realized that I’d gone up to around 350 lbs. which.. astounded me. I guess I just never noticed. I didn’t care? I don’t know. There was no real excuse. Just being lazy and settling.
Moving on, due to my weight and needing to be more active I sought out a job that would let me be more physical. My career in IT was… pretty much over. Due to a lack of caring and being lazy I never upskilled and well stagnated. My last 3 ventures into IT lead me to think maybe this isn’t’ for me and i should try something else.
I found a job working for L’oreal, a buddy had to vouch for me and I managed to pass the drug test, all thanks to a fake urine I bought. I started end of November.
The work was hard, and as a factory worker there was this weird ‘family’ culture. You can’t let the plant down, and such. It was kind of sickening. But whatever, they were paying me 24 an hour to weigh things. I had a 90 day trial period. On day 89, I hurt my back. It hurt to stand, to walk, to sit to… anything. I convinced my manager to let me go home, cost me a point. As that put me at 2 points in my 90 day period, if i missed another day or left early I would be fired, so I convinced my manager to let me take the next day as a vacation day.
It’s also important to point out that in October my younger brother Scott showed up. He moved up to Ohio to get a break from everyone/everything. He got a place and seemed to be doing well. Aside from the fentanyl he was smoking. I hadn’t seen him in 10 years and it was nice to have him around and I really believed I could help him out. He had spiraled into a lot of drug use and was making his money robbing people via mail and identity fraud. He explained to me the process, which i will not repeat here, and how he made close to 90k in 6 months.
He showed up right as I was going through my job loss and everything. I also forgot to mention that Ashley and I had decided to sell the house and be out from under her father. Another long story. So during this time I was also doing all the remodeling of the house, we moved out at the end of november. Ironically moving closer, to her sisters house, to Loreal and making my drive to work go from 1 hour to 10 minutes.
My brother drove back to Austin to get more drugs, and got arrested. Spent another christmas in jail, I had access to his money so I paid his bills and rent, as per usual. Scott got out of jail and subsequent rehab on the day before I got hurt. He was supposed to call me that night but never did, I was in too much pain and worried about my future so went to bed at 8 pm and thought nothing of it.
The next day I woke up in a lot of pain, normally sleeping will help me get over pain but this didn’t seem to help. I thought about going to a doctor but thought I would just rest, take the day off and the weekend, and then go back to work on Monday.
I took a shower and my phone rang 2 times while in the shower, ignored it. When I got out it was my brother’s low life landlord. It was the first of the month and he hadn’t paid rent and he was going to evict him unless blah blah blah.
whatever fuck you dude.
The second call was from the ICU in Austin, Scott had been admitted there the night before and was in critical condition. Since I called his phone they were able to get it unlocked and see that I was the emergency contact. I agreed for them to start treatment immediately, but it was too late. He was found around 8 pm the night before, he got out of rehab, did some coke and had a heart attack in a parking garage of the restaurant he was going to meet some old friends for dinner and then he was supposed to be at my step-mothers to meet up with the rest of the family.
I think that’s enough for today.
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