How I got.... here.

[Dassquatch]

For those of you who will be interested in odd character traits, these are mine:

I have been told by friends with autistic or aspy's children that I may be a borderline Asperger's case. No official diagnosis, but it seems consistent among my friends. Outside of bouts of hyper-focus and a rapid sensory overload caused by physical touch, I don't really see any of the other symptoms.

Light physical touch is extremely annoying, but normal pressure or rough contact don't bother me at all.

I generally have a distinct disinterest in the short-term feelings of others, and that seems to be the trait that makes me friends.

That's probably it.

 

So, a brief overview of my childhood.My earliest memory is of having my temperature taken as a baby. Not pleasant, but it's my earliest memory. The next memory after that is looking down from the tremendous height of my new bike at about 5 years old.After that point, many of my memories have to do with my father's verbal and physical abuse of my mother. We were extremely poor and living in the barrio in Banning, CA. At this time I was attending a Baptist private school as a gift from the school to my parents because of my exceptional performance. This is what my mother told me, so I can't verify it through my own experience. From birth to about age 6, my father was on a plethora of drugs. On at least one occasion that I cannot remember, a SWAT team raided out house looking for my father.At age 6, my parents divorced, and my mother, sister, and myself spent a year or two living in the back room of an older woman's house. The only memory I have of my father from this time was one visit to the school I was attending. I didn't recognize him, but was overjoyed to see him again. then he vanished from my life once again. This lasted about 2 years, until my father and mother re-established contact and decided to give it another go. I believe this was due to my father giving up drugs and no longer drinking to excess. We moved to Milwaukie, OR (USA) where I spent the majority of my  life after that. I grew up with the attendant spankings, yelling, and occasional fight between my parents. Outside of these things, nothing new or particularly notable happened.

Upon reaching my teenage years, a sort of existential nihilism set in. I no longer cared about much of anything, because there seemed to be no point to all of it. The classes I attended in the public school system were mind-numbingly boring. My teachers didn't know what to make of me because I wouldn't pay attention in class or do my homework, yet I would still get As on virtually every test I took. There was no challenge. The closest thing I could get to pleasure out of my classes was to wait for some well-endowed female to stretch. Even that was more curiosity as to why none of the other girls had such sizable breasts. I was almost completely detached from the world around me. It's sort of surreal looking back. Nothing mattered. When I injured my leg on the leg press machine during 8th grade, I tore a quarter-sized hole in my skin, and looked directly at my shin bone (yeah, I forget what the actual name for the bone is) and thought "Huh, weird." I then approached the teacher and asked him if I could go to the office. He lasked me why I was trying to get out of class (I was kind of a fatty), and when I pointed down, he turned white and pointed at the door.

High school was even more of a mess. My freshman year I showered once a week or so. It was gross. Toward the end of that year, I did pick up the bathing, but only because I got tired of smelling myself. My sophomore year, I got into reasonable shape, showered at regular intervals, but still felt entirely detached from the world around me. There was simply nothing worth concerning myself with. My junior year, I got into symphonic choir, and just sort of fell into the artsy crowd. It brought me out of my shell a bit, but only in the sense that I really started talking to other people. I did enjoy their company. Unfortunately, this is also when I took to expressing whatever negative emotions I felt by punching things. Lockers, cinder block walls, that sort of thing. I hadn't developed a taste for fighting yet. I started dating a girl that had been diagnosed with manic-depressive disorder (bi-polar), and started experimenting with sex. We fought, we had sex, and that was about it. Still disinterested. Detached.

My senior year is where things got.... stupid. I decided I really liked a girl. We were friends, and she invited me to church. I figured, hey, why not. I went, and learned that I had absolutely no respect for suburban christians. This would change somewhat later, but was pretty steady for awhile. I then made it my life's quest to get into the pants of this church girl. After she broke up with her boyfriend, I moved in for the kill. We "dated" (read: had sex and occasionally fought) for approximately a year. Then, we broke up, but continued having sex. Shortly after our break-up, she got pregnant. This was after the summer after graduation. I do not add details about my education because nothing changed. It was still mind-crushingly boring, and I barely graduated with a crap GPA.

I urged the girl to get an abortion, and she refused on religious grounds. I shrugged and we tried to make a relationship work for a month or two, but I simply couldn't make myself marry someone I had no respect for. So, I didn't. She had the child, I showed up, signed the birth certificate, and was run off by her father. Not entirely unjust, as I had impregnated and abandoned his daughter, but frustrating nonetheless. My boy's mother later told me that he had been sexually abusing her and treating it as a form of "rent" shortly after she gave birth. At this point, I waited for him to get home from work. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I was sure going to do something. When he did arrive, I simply told him that if I ever found out that he harmed my son or his mom, I would visit horrors upon him that would leave him bed-ridden and shrieking in a puddle of his own urine and feces for the rest of his life. I then walked away. 

After this time I was mysteriously denied any contact with my son or his mother. Odd, yeah? So, left to my own devices, I finally got me a  grown-up job and started experimenting with religion. I started with paganism. Some sort of neo-wicca eclectic coven or whatever. It was fun, kinda. After I ended up splitting the group because of a social "scorched-earth" policy I carried out in response to one of my friends being singled out for something she did not do, I decided to give up on that. I then claimed I was an atheist, and spent my free time lashing out at christians. Mostly out of some odd hostility. After a few years of this, I just stopped caring about religion altogether.

Now, on to my actual adult years. I spent most of my time working, drinking, and not caring about much. I hadn't become  an alcoholic yet, but I had definitely reached "proficient binge drinker" status. Outside of this, I jstu sort of drifted. Somewhere between choosing the Green Party and joining the Marine Corps, I decided that the government should control everyone with regards to the subjects I care about. Making a law was my solution for every problem. By the time I joined the Marine Corps, drunken and tear-soaked rants about how much I love my country had become the norm.

"Eat the apple, fuck the Corps."

The real reasons I joined the Marine Corps I wouldn't voice  to anyone. It would make me sound crazy. After some personal exploration over the last few months, I have discovered it was simply part of the existential nihilism I was drifting through. I joined to get the hell out of Oregon. Secondly, I joined because I wanted to become a grunt (infantry) and go see how many people I could kill before they got me. Not out of anger or fear, just out of some bored fascination with killing and dying. I had no concern for whether or not I would die. I just wanted to go fuck something up. So, I lost the weight to get in. Of course, I am eternally thankful to my recruiter for pulling me into the job I got and away from infantry.

Recruiter: "Hey, you wanna learn a language?" 

Me: "Shit yeah!"

Recruiter: *some drivel about working with special forces*

That was it. My scores had opened up every job in the Marine Corps. I ended up as a spanish linguist. I went through Boot Camp, and really threw myself into training. I got really good at being a Marine. I paid special attention to everything I did. I put extravagent effort into everything they taught me. In Boot Camp, I found what I called my "kill switch." It's a switch that I flip in my head to shut off human emotion for a time. It's a skill I'd used previously when I would focus on a problem for some time. It allowed me to shut out all of the background noise associated with emotion and focus entirely on a problem at hand. Now, it gave me the ability to put the sights of my rifle on one of my fellow Marines during force-on-force exercises and not care about their humanity, their qualities, or that they were my friend. Then I could pull the trigger and fire a blank without the slightest hesitation. This did not disturb me in the least, as Marines needed to be able to kill to do their job. At long last, I had found something challenging. I had found a place where the expectations did not automatically point toward the lowest common denominator. I had found a family.

Among these men and women, I found some of my closest and longest friends. These were people I could trust with anything but women and money. I could trust them with my life and livelihood and not lose a wink of sleep over whether or not they would betray me. Because, you see, they wouldn't. It's still one of the things I have been unable to find outside of that world. Someone I can truly trust. People that enjoyed the destruction and mayhem as much as I did. People that genuinely enjoyed the recoil of a machinegun and the deafening explosions  of artillery and IED simulators. People I could say anything  to and be completely honest with, without the concerns of butthurt and damaged egos I  had to tread carefully around with my friends back home. I was  a new man.

After being stationed in San Antonio, I met a wonderful woman, and her daughter (now effectively my daughter). More on this later.

And after awhile, my inability to keep weight off caught up with me. I had 1st-class (highest grouping) PFT and CFT scores, but I couldn't keep the weight off. This, of course, led to the "eat the apple, fuck the corps" saying so common among Marines. When the shine wore off of the brotherhood we had formed, it was a thick and distinctly distasteful layer of shit we found underneath. It was arbitrary and heirarchical nonsense around every corner. The only solace I can take from  this time is that my involuntary discharge for weight combined with my high physical scores made many Marines I know decide not to  re-up. I still value the friendships I made there, and still have difficulty trusting others.

After getting out, I got a pretty solid job for someone without any real private-sector skills. I made good money, bought a few firearms (one of my favorite long-term hobbies), went to the range from time to time, and  generally drifted along.

 

The key to my conversion:

The real key to my conversion was meeting my now wife and her 3-year-old daughter. I found her on MySpace and thought "She's hot, I'ma try to hook up with her." And shortly after some email and phone conversations she invited me to see a hockey game, and it was all a psychotic roller coaster ride from there. 

Meeting her was my first stable relationship in about 4-5 years. Kinda. She had suffered horrible sexual and physical abuse during her childhood. She was separated from her husband. But, the sex was great, and I couldn't get enough of that little girl of hers. The first time she met me, she motioned for me to pick her up, and I did. It was love at first poke. You see, my now daughter, as soon asI picked her up, began poking at the mole next to my nose and didn't let up for the 20 minutes I was holding her. It was the first repetitive touch that didn't bother me at all. She was a wonderful little girl with a mop of curly hair and bright, curious eyes. So, her mother and I dated for 3 years, and then major trouble struck.

We moved in together after 2 years dating. The relationship had been slowly degrading, and she and I were becoming more and more distant fromeach other. She was always snapping, and I was always snapping back. She had a job at a local automotive services office. On a training trip, she met a guy who made her feel good short term. So, she cheated for the few weeks she was on the trip, and didn't tell me until she got back for a short break preceding her last week of training. Actually she didn't tell me at all until I asked her if she had found another guy. After she told me that she was dumping me. Having taken care of her child so she could go on the trip without any significant problems, I was quite upset. I considered suicide. Then I thought about the child that had taken to calling me "Daddy." I couldn't do that to her. Jesus, not to her. So, I waited until her mom got back and had a talk with her.

 

Back to the church.

I wanted to make it work. I didn't want to leave my daughter without a dad again. She deserved a helluva lot better than that. So, I told her OK. And after I got tired of waiting, I offered to go with her to a church she ahd been talking about for some time. I figured it would at least give her a support structure so she could get some help working through her problems. So, off we went. I simply intended to go and leave her there, then work out the move shortly thereafter. But, when I w alked in, I heard some guy talking about the self-discipline required if they wanted to fully pursue becoming a Christian. What? A church guy talking about self-discipline? Hold on. 

So, I decided to give Christianity a try. I met some people I liked and got along with, and ended up converting. All out of some curiosity that I couldn't seem to repress. After being there for awhile, my now wife and I worked some of the mess out amongst ourselves, and decided to stay together. Now we're married, and have been for two years as of this writing. I still don't regret it, as we've both made strides and are doing quite well, all things considered.

 

The dark clouds on the horizon.

One of the reasons I have been Christian for a couple years now is because my wife's healing was restored. I'm not sure what happened, but she couldn't hear certain frequencies when we met, and now she can. She refuses to get it tested, as there are records from her youth that indicate the degree and frequencies where she lacked the ability to hear. But, when I cover my mouth and speak, she can hear me where she couldn't before. Oh well, I can't explain it, but  enough of that.

The dark clouds started forming when I started really started reading and analyzing the Bible. Passages about killing disobedient children and the massacre of entire nations made me question what this was really about. This came during the  period whenI  had begun  to  familiarize myself with the NAP and had decided I was a Libertarian. Further investigation led me to a ludicrous number of equally ludicrous inconsistencies. So I asked myself: "If God exists, is he good?" 

I won't  bore you with the details, but as of now, I am an atheist who attends church because I am in a position that is far too delicate to risk opening myself up to the ostracism and potential retribution of the well-connected church members (I'm in Texas after all) while I am in the position of barely being  able to support my family while going to school using the GI Bill.

 

The beginning of the end.

I actually came to know of Mr. Molyneux through Adam Kokesh (Adam vs. The Man). As he is a Marine, I could relate to him. I didn't have the direct horror of war to propel me in the same direction, but the indirect horror was enough. Being an intel type, I was exposed to many of the truths of war. Things that still bother me to this day. When Mr. Kokesh spoke, I  could understand and relate to his anger and abrasive style. Through his show, I was first exposed to Mr. Molyneux's interviews and style.

 

"Eat the apple, fuck the... State?"

As far as my political conversion, it came through the same means my atheism did. Thanks to Mr. Molyneux and my interest in philosophy, I have reached the conclusion that the state is invalid. I decided on Anarchy a few months ago. As such, I am taking the baby steps to being free in my own life, and have begun  raising my daughter non-violently. It took about 6-8 months of watching his various youtube videos and alot of very painful self-review to reach this point. 

It's been hard, but I'm thankful to both Mr. Kokesh and Mr. Molyneux for bringing me to the point I'm at today. I'm not healed, and I'm certainly not whole, but life is by far better than it has been before. 

 

And if you're still reading, sorry for the life story, but it seemed relevant.

 

-The Dassquatch