This the beginning of the chronological section of my time in Tennessee. It covers the month of July, and the last of the HONYs.
In general, names have been changed or removed. Information may have been removed or added. Length is around 9 pages.
July 2018
As stated before, Humans of New York was a Facebook page I followed that at one point seemed to be relevant to me, as if intended to influence my behavior. After one entry, I had gone back and copied all the relevant ones and the future entries seemed to indicate Andrews knew I knew it was him, and spoke to me more directly.
Humans of New York
Page Liked · July 9 ·
“I like to shop, but I hate going to those fancy stores in midtown. They treat me like I don’t have any money. They’re always telling me prices when I didn’t ask. Either that, or they figure I’m coming in to steal. I went to one store recently, and as soon as I walked in the door, I saw the manager lean in to the clerk and say, ‘Watch her.’ And so this girl starts following me around-- real close. She was acting like she wanted to help. If I picked up an item, she’d say: ‘Let me hold onto that for you.’ So I thought to myself: ‘I’ll give you something to hold.’ I walked around that entire store. I went on a real spree. By the time we were finished, she was holding 25 dresses. You could barely see her face. Then I led her up to the cash register and said, ‘You know what? I changed my mind. I think I'll shop somewhere else.’”
[After spending a lot of time inside studying, [this was posted on the same day that] I had gone out exploring and stopping off at a ton of different places in …………., seeing if it was a place I could live at. -12/7/18]
Humans of New York
Page Liked · July 10 ·
“I was in a relationship for most of my teenage years. He wasn’t a bad guy, but I think long relationships can be toxic when you’re that young. That’s the age when you’re supposed to be figuring yourself out. And that can be hard if you’re completely focused on another person. I was always more worried about ‘us’ than I was worried about myself. I’d make decisions just to maximize our time together: the places I worked, the classes I chose, the friends I spent time with. Recently I looked through my high school photos, and I don’t have a single picture when I’m not with him. And, I don’t know… it feels like some of those memories should have been mine alone.”
[I liked this post on Facebook. Her life was in a way taken from her. -12/7/18]
Humans of New York
Page Liked · July 11 ·
“My mother was sick for most of my life. She had nineteen years of treatment for Hodgkin’s disease. But she was the kind of mother that would come home from chemotherapy, vomit in the bathroom, and then still cook dinner for all of us. And she did this while getting a PhD in clinical psychology. She just loved being a mother. Even after the chemotherapy destroyed her ovaries, she adopted two more children. She passed away I was twenty-five. Shortly after she died, I realized that I couldn’t remember her voice. I’ve just never been an oral person. It was maddening. It felt almost disrespectful. I had all these old videos of her, but they were silent. So I thought I’d just never know what she sounded like. Then last night, my sister found a small cassette in an old box. It was from my mother’s answering machine. And she picked up the phone during one of the recordings. It was a month before she died. She was so sick at the time. But she said to the person: ‘Nicholas is coming to visit me, so I stayed up late baking, and I’m waking up early to clean.’”
Humans of New York
Page Liked · July 15 ·
“I feel like I had so many more stories before I came to film school. I wrote so much when I was young. I’d fill up entire journals. I was a quiet kid, so writing was my way of imagining conversations that I’d never have in real life. But it doesn’t feel like I’m expressing myself anymore. It’s become less about whether I like it, and more about whether my professors and classmates like it. I’m always focused on the rhythm, or the structure, or the notes I received in class, or all these rules from a long time ago that everybody uses because they work. And it just feels like I’m swapping out decorations in a house that’s already been built. But I’m afraid to be more inventive, because if your work doesn’t fit the rules, then people will doubt your talent. So film school has made me much better at making other people happy. But it’s made me less happy. And that’s not a direction that I can see myself continuing for very long.”
[Because I stopped journaling and don't express myself? -12/7/18][Narcissists are extraordinarily controlling. Showing emotions or being less than perfect or a number of normal human behaviors are routinely punished. They get as invasive and constant in their surveillance as they can. They are fully convinced that they own your soul, and depend on it. On the one hand they crave authentic expression. On the other, they exploit it.]
Humans of New York
Page Liked · Yesterday ·
“It happened on Father’s Day. I took him out to lunch, and then afterward we went to a barbecue at his family’s house. He’d been drinking all day. At one point he’s got our daughter in his arms, and he tells her to call me a ‘biatch.’ So I start yelling at him. And he hits me so hard with his fist that I had to get ten stitches. That was the last straw for me. I still think he’s a great dad. I’ll give him that. A lot of people ask me how I can say that, but I see it like this: when he’s around my daughter, I see the love. She lights up when he walks in the room. I wanted that love for myself, but at least she gets it. And he’s a good provider. He works. He just bought her a bunch of new clothes this weekend. When he dropped them off at the house, he asked me if I was going to drop the charges. I told him ‘no.’ Not this time.”
[I went shopping at the …………., and a man came up behind me in line before the store opened. I got out of line and walked around for a few minutes, and then got back in line behind him casually. He looked behind him quickly and nervously three times, not looking directly at me. After seeing this HONY, I wrote a note to myself. "It is better to be hated by King Midas than it is to be loved." -12/7/18][This was a way to describe what would be done to the victim of narcissists. They are forced to appear perfect, but go through serious psychological damage.]
Humans of New York
“Last week I was picking through the trash, looking for bottles and cans to recycle, and my social worker walked by with her family. She walked just a few feet from me. And I know she saw me. But she didn’t say a thing. Not even ‘hello.’ I asked her about it during our next meeting, and at first she denied seeing me. But then she told me that she had been in her ‘private space.’ That really put a stake in my heart. Why can’t you say ‘hello’ to me in your private space? So I’m writing her a letter. I’m using a dictionary because I want the words to be perfect. If you mess up your words, then it’s easy for people to ignore what you’re trying to say. And I want to be sure she knows exactly how it made me feel.”
[I was looking for a place and a way to build a tiny home, move out of my apt, and live alone. -12/7/18]
7/18/18
Humans of New York
“Last year I did an exploration of having a child on my own. I went to the doctor, and after she looked at my uterus, she said: ‘Not only is it possible, but your uterus looks younger than its years.’ Then she put me in the stirrups and did a demo to show me exactly how the procedure would work. The ultrasound screen was right next to me. I kept looking at it and wishing I could see a baby on there. But I was already 48. I was single. My income wasn’t secure at the time. And I didn’t have family that could take care of the child if something happened to me. So I decided not to do it. I finally closed the door for good. I cried uncontrollably for weeks. It’s a gaping hole in my life that will never go away. I’ll just get better at dealing with it. I wish I’d done it on my own when I was younger. I wish I’d stopped complaining about the past, and hoping for the future, and just said: ‘**** it. This is where I am now, and this is what I can do about it.’”
[I had just received a response from …………. about the legality of building a tiny home in the area. After that, I had been sitting on the edge of the bathtub crying, like a truck had run me over. -12/7/18]
[My comment on Facebook]
Sometimes people can suffocate you, consuming your whole life, and you may not be able to achieve the success, love, or spirit that were once yours. It's a shame. Everyone loses. 7-20-18
...
7/22/18
Humans of New York
“My mom left the Philippines when I was five years old. My sisters and I were very young at the time. We basically raised ourselves because my dad doesn’t talk much. It must have been hard on my mother. She wasn’t able to come back because of her visa status, and we didn’t have the money to visit. We talked on the phone about once a month. She’d send us letters, and clothes, and toys. It took ten years of working and saving for her to finally bring us over. I think the reunion was much different than she imagined. She probably expected us to be grateful, but all of us were teenagers by then. We weren’t used to being told what to do. So we were pretty awful to her. And my father divorced her soon after we arrived in America. But her sacrifice paid off. We all graduated college and have good jobs. But it wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized how lonely those ten years must have been.”
[My mom may miss me and want me to talk to her. I may have been watching the Korean drama Call Me Mother at the time. -12/7/18]
7/23/18
Humans of New York
“My father called me ‘stupid’ a lot. Even when I’d bring home good grades, he’d say things like: ‘You’re smart, but you don’t know anything.’ I just wasn’t a big reader like him. He always had a book in his hand. Math was my thing. During lunch I’d go to the junior high library and sit on the floor with puzzle books. Now I’m a teacher, and I’ve taught every math class in the high school curriculum. A few years ago I was teaching my precalculus class, and I stumbled upon a set of numbers that generated ellipses with identical positioning in both the rectangular and polar coordinate systems. So I turned them into variables, wrote a two-page proof, and had my work published in a journal called The Mathematics Teacher. Take that, Dad.”
[I was studying precalculus, maybe not as hard as I should. -12/7/18]
7/25/18
Humans of New York
“I’ve been on antidepressants since August of last year. I was living alone in the city at the time and feeling a lot of anxiety. So I talked to a therapist, and she recommended antidepressants. At first I was nervous about taking them. There’s a bit of a stigma in the African American community. If you take any sort of medication, it’s like: ‘Oh, you crazy now.’ So the first thing I did was look on the Internet. I’m not even sure what I searched. But somehow I ended up finding Matt’s videos on YouTube. He was sort of documenting his own experience with antidepressants. He was black. He was male. He was queer. And he was doing fine. It just made me feel a lot less alone. I sent him a short message thanking him for his videos, and he started checking in on me about once a week. He’s been a great friend. We actually just met in person for the first time on Saturday.”
7/26/18
Humans of New York
“My son is on the computer all the time. He’ll start as soon as he gets home from school and goes until bedtime. It’s some sort of adventure game involving teamwork. He wears a headset and plays with his friends. His goal was to go outside more this summer but that hasn’t happened. Maybe I enabled him. I held off on getting him a phone and computer, but at some point every other kid has got one. And you don’t want him to fall behind with technology. He’s a good kid. His grades are pretty good. His teachers love him. He’s very polite. He helps his mother. I just wish he’d apply his interest in games to other things. He was in science club, but he quit that. He took some Tae Kwon Do lessons, but he quit that. I thought maybe coding classes would interest him because he loves being on the computer, but that didn’t work either. I also played video games as a kid. But we’d just beat a few levels of Mario, and then we’d get a call to come outside. But that doesn’t happen anymore. Because the person who’d normally call you is on the other end of the headset.”
[I don't get out much. I used to do Jujitsu.-12/7/18]
7/28/18
Humans of New York
“My superpower is fire. It’s inside my hands but I only use it on bullies. My dad is a superhero too. His power is minding his own business.”
7/29/18
Humans of New York
“So one day I’m sitting here talking to this lady, and I’m eating a sandwich. And the lady says to me: ‘There’s a sparrow sitting on your sandwich.’ And I think, ‘Wow. That’s pretty thrilling.’ So I began to feed it. And that sparrow started spreading the word, and I developed a bit of a reputation in the sparrow community. And suddenly I become the sparrow guy. There’s like sixty of them waiting for me every morning. All these benches are covered in ****.”
[There was a cat who came into my room to get pets, and there was fur all over my floor that I just left there. -12/7/18][Brian had told me he was a bit OCD at Porcfest. -2/26/20]
7/30/18
Humans of New York
“I took him to see Brokeback Mountain when it came out. I thought I was challenging him with the choice. But at the end of the film, he turned to me and said: ‘That’s me.’ We’d been married for thirty years. Our kids were still young. I didn’t know what to do. Do I leave? Do I stay? We were ex-pats in another country at the time, so we were all alone. I had nobody to talk to. We went to a therapist to see if it was possible to stay together, and she told us: ‘I’ve seen it work. But only if one person is very discrete and the other is very tolerant.’ So I agreed to try. It’s been ten years. It’s been exhausting in a lot of ways. I asked too many questions at first. I made myself miserable. Now I give him a lot of space. And I get a lot of space in return. I’ve been traveling alone for about two months now. I know what’s going on back home but I don’t ask about it. My friends ask me why I don’t move on with my life. I don’t know the answer. Maybe I’m just too afraid to be alone at this age. But I still feel like he’s my soul mate. We have the same view of the world. We both love children. We love traveling and good food. He really is a good man. He’s just gay. And we’ve had such a good life together, I’m just not ready to stop sharing it.”
[I was watching a Korean drama called Call Me Mother. There is a part near the end where the detective catches up with the kidnapper (who is rescuing a child from an abusive household) and tears the child away from a distraught "mother." Watching that scene tears just kept falling from my eyes. I had been rather stoic for a long time otherwise. After this HONY post, my mother contacted me again to chat. Note, toxic personalities consume all relationships. -12/7/18][It was like he was saying my desire for a relationship with my mother was like cheating on him, and he was offering to be very tolerant and to let me be very discreet in having a relationship with my own mother. -10/20/20]
7/31/18
Humans of New York
"I’m a single father raising a teenager. We’re meeting here in a few minutes to go on a run. I’m trying to teach him discipline and focus. He’s had some problems paying attention in school, but I don’t want to put him on medication. His mother and I divorced when he was four. She’s a good person. She’s very appreciative of what I’ve done. She just wasn’t ready to be a parent. I was in a much better place. So she didn’t fight me on custody. But it scares me to think if she had. The courts are set up against men. They almost always determine that women should raise kids and men should pay child support. I don’t understand it. There’s a big push to see women as equal workers. Why can't men be equal parents?"
[It was as though Brian wanted me to transfer the regard I had for my other loved ones to him.]
August 2018
8/1/18
Humans of New York
“I love walking around the city. I catch the Metro North train at 11:40 every morning. I go to the same gym that I’ve been going to for forty years. Then I just start walking. If you take big strides it really stretches you out. And there are millions of other people walking around. You never feel alone. People smile at you. On weekends I’ll bring my granddaughters with me and we’ll tour different neighborhoods. We’ve seen ten or twelve so far. Sometimes I get to borrow them for the whole afternoon. But they’re at sleep away camp right now so I’m missing them a lot. And that’s about it. I do a little shopping at the thrift store. I stop and read the paper. I eat at outdoor restaurants. It’s simple but I found what makes me happy and I’m doing it. And when I’m heading home at night, sometimes I think: ‘I just had the best day of my life.’”
[I would walk all the time and go to thrift stores. This is praise for my kind of lifestyle. -12/7/18]
8/2/18
Humans of New York
“I started my career as a teller at a community bank in Florida. I was in my early thirties. At the time I had a young child and I just needed a way to pay my rent and car payment. But I kept moving up. I wouldn’t say I’m overly ambitious. It didn’t come from a place of ‘I need more.’ I just have a lot of energy. And I’d always ask the next question or apply for the next job. So I worked my way up to CEO. It was demanding but I enjoyed the position. I was handling it quite well until a few years ago when my husband passed away. Then my mother. And then my best friend. All of this happened in a single year. I’d never even lived alone before. Suddenly I felt unanchored. I reached this place of ‘what do I do now?’ I couldn’t go back to making more money. So I decided to make a change. I went back to college to get a Master of Public Administration. And right now I’m actually on the lunch hour for my final class. I’ve already got a job waiting on me back home. I’m the new Director of Broward County's Business Council on Homelessness. We’re working toward getting homeless people into permanent housing. And I’m really excited. I want to do a great job. I’m in a place where I can change some lives. It feels like I've moved from success to significance.”
[I had just submitted a scholarship application which talked about helping the homeless. -12/7/18][Given the way I have seen them operate, such a statement would be expected to be taken as a threat. Threatening the safety of a person's family falls under the legal definition of torture in the US. It has happened at other times in other circumstances as well. Right now someone is whistling and burping. That is usually the signal for "I'm not bothered." -2/26/20]
...
8/4/18
Humans of New York
“I haven’t worked with an American for three years. I’m a union drywall finisher, and my job has completely been taken over by Central and South Americans. All of them have union cards now. Can you imagine being the only one on your crew who doesn’t speak Spanish? There’s nobody to talk to. You have no clue what people are saying. It’s isolating. And all of them stick together too. My last three foremen were from El Salvador, Paraguay, and Peru. And whenever work dries up, I’m the first one trimmed from the crew. Always. No matter how hard I work. I used to get angry about it. It felt like I’d been sold out by the mayor and the union bosses. I even started having racist thoughts. But that’s not me, man. I know they aren’t bad people. They’re just sticking together like any of us would. How can you blame them? My parents were immigrants. I grew up in New York. I’ve got friends from all over the world. So I’m not going to start thinking like that. I’m not going there. That’s not who I am.”
[This might be an unfavorable experience of someone on the "outside." -12/7/18]
[My comment on Facebook is in response to the next post. His tone had changed and I wanted to make sure I understood. It seemed he had decided to take off the mask once I was stuck in one place and he didn't have to pretend to be caring. Though I'm not sure why the dramatic change in tone.] Not clearly understanding the people around you can cause a lot of problems. If he can't get a reliable channel of communication, he should look elsewhere. Confusion is not the path to success.
8/5/18
Humans of New York
“I had to take a bike ride to get away from my teenage daughter. She missed the deadline for her college application, but she lied and told me that she’d sent it in on time. I believed her. I decided to give her space and let her do it on her own. Then yesterday I found a letter saying that her application came too late. So I cooked her dinner. I let her have a nice meal. Then I served her the letter for dessert. We started arguing. She told me that she wants to take a semester off. She thinks I’m bossing her around and she wants to do things her own way. But I worked two jobs for this girl. I raised her on my own. I’ve given her everything. She was born at 11:58 PM, two minutes before my birthday. She looks just like me. She acts just like me. And she’s stubborn like me. Whenever we butt heads I think, ‘Oh my ***. I’m Angie. I’m fighting with my eighteen-year-old self.’ Except I was already pregnant with her older brother by then. And I just want things to be easier for her.”
[My comment on Facebook] There are always curve balls. I hope she's able to focus and stay on track.
[I had just successfully applied to college.-12/7/18]
8/6/18
Humans of New York
“A few years ago I get a call from my wife, and she tells me that her aunt is going through a tough time and needs a place to stay. So I agreed to let the aunt stay with us for a few months. ‘I’m doing a good deed,’ I thought. But things got weird after she moved in. She was a really quiet lady. And she always seemed to be watching me. I’d be walking around downstairs, and I’d notice the aunt peering down on me from the upper level. Like I was some sort of intruder. But I think to myself: ‘Just ignore it. She’s going through a rough time.’ Then one night I wake up at 2:30 AM and the aunt is standing over my bed, saying some sort of prayer over me. And I sleep completely naked. And I have no idea how long this woman has been there. And I wake up my wife, who starts dragging the aunt out of the room, and the whole time the woman is screaming at me: ‘I know who you are! You aren’t fooling anyone!’ It was terrifying. My wife and I separated four months later. Things hadn’t been going great, but that aunt definitely flushed the toilet.”
[After the 8/5 entry, I wondered if perhaps I was mistaken about the HONYs, and so I made a comment on the 8/4 entry asking to make sure I was hearing from them correctly. This post is what came next. After this, I unfollowed HONY and have not looked back. -12/7/18]