Since the first post in my blog is my last ditch cry for help and my condensed life story, I feel it appropriate to repost it here.
My name is Bundy. It is January 18th at 10:05 pm as I begin to write this. I was born in 1983 and grew up in St Louis, Missouri. When I was in 4 years old, “Married with Children” began airing on ABC. By the time I was 8 I had been cut off from almost all social ties and was pushed around and made fun of nearly every day.
So, at a time in my life when my personality had yet to really form, people began laughing at me and ridiculing me each time I introduced myself. This has occured continuously over the course of my life, even unto today, when the doctor’s assistant I was making an appointment with could barely contain her laughter, and years of harassment have rendered me psychologically ill equipped to interact with other individuals. I have always found few friends, and been a quietly stubborn person with a quick fuse, and the public school system was not at all kind to me.
Near the end of my third grade year, my parents divorced and my mother, brother, and I uprooted and moved to a better neighborhood. Unlike most children my age, I was quietly overjoyed to leave. I cried at the loss of the familiar faces and those few people who had not cut me off from their circles, but I was glad to be gone.
While my first several years of school had been at a Christian academy, the remainder of my days were spent in the public school system. I entered my new school near the end of my third grade year, already scarred and betrayed by those I’d come to lean on at the Christian school, and entered what continues to be a waking nightmare. I was nearly two years ahead in almost every subject. Those who stand out in public school are taught not to by their peers.
The snickers continued at my new school, already a point upon which I was ready to scream and argue. Though I’ve never sought out a fight with anyone but my younger brother, many times I have longed to. It is not the person I am. I stayed quiet, shyed away from contact, and as I sought to be more and more invisible, more and more people continued to harass me.
By the end of my fifth grade year I still had no friends, an absentee mother who worked long into the night and could barely afford to feed my brother and I. I could not, and still cannot, relate to those around me. I entered middle school the next year, already bored with every subject they taught. The one thing I took pleasure in was band, which my mother pulled me from when my grades in everything else began to slip.
During my 6th grade year I had taken the SAT and scored quite high, so in 7th grade I was invited to participate in the “Duke University Talent Search” which consisted of attending two extra days of school one week, during which I took the ACT college entrance exam. I scored high on this as well.
I was invited to join the “Program for Intellectually Talented Students” at my middle school. I took this as a chance to learn something new instead of droning on with the same boring crap that had been taught repeatedly for the previous six years. My mother declined because my grades weren’t good enough.
I stopped applying myself. The next two years were the only years of summer school I ever attended. During these years I developed a drug problem. I still disagree that Marijuana is a ‘gateway drug’. I believe cigarettes do that, and that’s where I started. Before long I was smoking pot (which I wish they would legalize because it has beneficial properties and the vast majority of those opposed to the idea can only quote WRH’s bullshit propaganda), and close on the heels of that I was drinking.
Mushrooms, LSD, and cocaine soon followed, and by the end of my time there, I found myself addicted completely to methamphetamine… but I’m getting ahead of msyelf.
I muddled through the rest of a year and a half in middle school, barely scraping the grades needed for high school (it was the second year of summer school that actually got me over the hump), and entered high school with little respect for the teachers or students who had and would continue to laugh at me and treat me like crap for the entire time that I would be there.
At some point during my 9th grade year, my parents, always the thoughtful ones, instructed me that if people continued to harass me about Al Bundy, that I should reply that I’m not related to him, though I am related to Ted… which is true (if only because he was adopted).
This turned out to be terrible advice. Within two years I had been harassed, threatened, attacked, and put down enough times that I simply could not deal with high school any more. I dropped out and joined the work force.
Though working has always given me a sense of accomplishment, I find that I cannot hold a job for long due to the fact that I fucking hate human beings. Perhaps you don’t understand the reasoning behind my fucking hating people, but I do. If you are one of the people who doesn’t understand, I invite you to consider your first reaction to my first statement in this writing.
Onward.
When I dropped out of high school, my mother told me that I had to get a job or get out of her house. You may have guessed from my previous statement that I got the job. You may not have guessed that I lost that job not long after. It was my first job. I got another but quickly lost it because I had to work with those same people who had harassed me for years already. I became homeless. For a very long time.
It should be noted that because my mother had to work to support two children by herself she rarely actually had time to interact with us. I had been having trouble relating to people for such a long time now that even when she had the few minutes to spare I was unable to articulate my problems for her. I still am unable to talk about my problems verbally the great majority of the time.
It’s not that I can’t communicate myself, it’s just that I don’t understand vocal inflection, and years of emotional and psychological abuse has made it difficult for me to interact with people for more than a few seconds without wanting to kill them.
The first thing I did was join a magazine crew. I poor decision, but then, I’ve made many. These people travel around the country selling magazines door to door. It’s always a contest with fun and exciting prizes like a vacation to hawaii that nobody ever wins… because it’s a scam. They get kids with nothing left to live for, press them into service hundreds of miles from where they might find a familiar face, and then tell them that if they can’t sell magazines they’ll be left behind.
They took my N64, most of my music, my books, and my alarm clock, leaving me beaten half out of my wits in an apartment complex in Golden Colorado with no money, no food, and no clothing but what I was wearing.
I found a gas station and asked for a ride to the nearest truck stop. I’ve always been inventive.
When I got to the truck stop, I went straight into the restaraunt and began asking for somewhere that I could sleep for 3 hours. I met a truck driver who wound up taking me all the way across the country and back. I even wound up moving to california at his urging, though not for several years.
He dropped me back off at my mother’s house, after nearly a year of my absence, and my mother let me stay a single night before telling me I had to find somewhere else to go. Keep in mind that most of my problems with my mother stem from how I treated her as I child… but there again, I never had a shot in hell of being a nice person did I?
I don’t blame my mother for kicking me out and keeping me as far from my brother as she could… I was a bad influence… but it’s not exactly as if I was shown how people should really live for most of my childhood.
Ultimately I spent about 8 years couch hopping, sometimes with people who wanted a little more than just to give me a place to sleep. Not that I ever gave anybody anything… and I’ve actually met some interesting people with whom I’m still good friends.
The last couple of years of my homelessness, however, were actually spent living outside. Where before I had friends who would at least let me crash at their homes, if not give me clothes and food, now I didn’t even have that.
My family had long since abandoned me, I had no more friends, and all of the people I knew were homeless, ready to beat me half to death for a crust of bread. I could not get a job because I had nowhere to shower, I could not buy clothes or food or go to college because I had no money.
There was nobody to turn to, nothing that I could do but fight to survive like an animal. An animal is what I became. When something threatens or irritates me I hiss and snarl. I have no internal censor, as most people do, I haven’t the training to go “Oh hey, I shouldn’t say this because it’s assholish.” I just say what’s on my mind. I can’t do anything else. I don’t even think before I speak, I just react, because that’s what I’ve spent my life doing.
Even the Salvation Army has kicked me out of 4 of its homes simply for not being Christian.
I don’t remember a great deal about my life between these major points. Most of it has been scoured away. I have flashbacks all the time, to high school. To people laughing at me or harassing me loudly in the commons. When i can remember my dreams they are nightmares about that place.
Eventually I met Ralph. He’s been one of my best friends for a very long time. He took me over to his house after work one day to play some video games. I counted 22 systems, turned to him, and told him that I was never leaving. He didn’t manage to get rid of me for a very long time. At times we fought like demons.. mostly because I can’t talk to people without pissing them off. A time or two shit got out of hand.
Ralph gave me clothes and food and a place to stay. He helped me get a job and begin turning my life around.
At this point I’ve spent my entire life working toward just being able to survive. I am finally in college, working, and trying to better myself, and I find myself getting sick nearly every day, sometimes to the point where I spend HOURS every day wrapped around a toilet.
I have not worked enough to be eligible for Disability or Social Security, I have not been at my current job long enough to receive benefits, and I am now sick so frequently that I am in danger of losing my job, even though I have been to see two doctors (and a third in two more days). I have felt sick nearly every day for 10 years now, for varying lengths of time.
I am at my wit’s end. I cannot survive in any situation that requires me to interact with people, because I have spent the entire period of my life that should have been devoted to learning that skill, to survival instead. I am a feral person.
I have come to doubt, after YEARS of attempting to find a way to cope with my own malformed psychology, that I will ever be able to navigate a social situation successfully. I have begun to doubt that I will ever be able to sustain a job for more than a few years, and indeed, if my chronic illness continues, I will likely find myself unable to FIND work, much less PERFORM it.
I have a plan. It’s a plan that would provide for myself and my future wife, it would provide for my future children. It would allow us a place to live and a sustainable source of income, whilst I seek help with my psychological problems.
It’s a plan that will cost 7000 dollars to begin.
I need help, and there is none to be had.
I am at my wit’s end.
I have, MANY TIMES, considered attempting to sue ABC, Sunset-Gower, and SONY for emotional distress due to this show and its ridiculously long run time (a run time that, to me, seemed hundreds of times what it actually was). I have lived my life in the shadow of a retarded shoe salesman.
I wish to buy a house and get married, I even have the girl picked out… but I can’t work and interact on a daily basis when everybody is laughing at me. Even if I could, I’ve been sick nearly every day for the last three months. The doctors say that I have IBS but my place of employment is unimpressed. I remain unimpressed as well, as I’ve changed my diet and my abdominal distress continues.
[edit] update on my condition in post “Doctors”
mynameisbundy 