When Sorrows Come... Trollheart's Year of Hell

Trollheart · 10-30-2019, 12:38 PM

Have a Heart, Eddie: I’m Depressed

Dateline: January 2018

Listen, I don’t expect anyone has too much sympathy for those who get depressed. That’s not what I mean: of course you do. Everyone does. What I mean to say is that sadly it’s nothing new, and we all get down from time to time. Except, I don’t. Not normally, or at least, not before the last few years. I’m generally an upbeat sort of guy. When things were at their worst and it was hard to go on, it was me who was the strong one, as I pretty much always have to be, and still do. But now, well, in recent years I can’t deny it’s got harder to keep a brave face on, to take on the world on my own and not to let the pressure get to me.

So probably won’t necessarily surprise anyone that after the crappy New Year’s Eve we had, January was no barrel of laughs either. Specifically, there was nothing I could put my finger on or point to as the cause of my unhappiness, but then, when you’re in this situation you don’t need any more reason. I’ve been told better men than me would have found it hard to do what I do, and I’m sure that’s true - at heart, we’ll all selfish really - but I’ve always taken the view that this is what I have to do, this is the situation and I just have to get on with it. Sure, I’ve got depressed from time to time - everyone heard about my almost collapsing after eating nothing for three days in 2017 - but never anything you would call serious.

That all changed, however, last year.

I think it was more annoying and frustrating because of my inability to single out any cause for the sudden depression, but it just gripped me one day and, while it didn’t quite reflect the title of this journal, not yet, I did feel very hopeless. It’s a very hard thing, being depressed but trying not to show it, and I’m sure others of you have struggled with the same thing. You don’t want sympathy, you don’t even want understanding and you certainly don’t want idiots saying things like “cheer up, it may never happen” or other mindless platitudes, but in my case there was the added problem of Karen. If she saw I was depressed, she would worry - and she’s a world class worrier; she could worry for Ireland - and then she would get depressed too. Quite frankly, how she hasn’t up to now I don’t quite understand. She attributes her attitude to me, but I don’t know about that. Maybe she’s just stronger than she thinks.

Anyway, going about your daily business and trying not to look too down is hard, and of course in the end, in that situation it’s next to impossible, so she did notice, and I did have to admit that I was depressed. She understood, but there’s something innately selfish about Karen, I’m sorry to say. When something happens to affect her she really only thinks in terms of herself and how that impacts her situation, leading to her at one point telling me in a sort of bored, annoyed voice that I was making her gloomy. Needless to say, my reaction to that comment was not all it should have been!

I think the worst thing about depression is, at least from my perspective anyway, how it grabs hold of you and won’t let you get away. You want to be happy - you desperately want to be happy, or at least not sad - but you can’t see any way to. No matter what you do, no matter how you try to cheer yourself up, or how other people do, nothing works. You remain locked in this dark, dismal, unremitting world of misery and hopelessness, and despair just takes you over. It becomes hard to do anything, or want to; it becomes hard to get up in the morning (how cliched is that? But I did actually suffer from this, and had I not had to, I would have stayed in bed, unable to face the day) and even hard to go to bed at night, knowing that another day is waiting at the end of the relatively brief respite of a few hours’ sleep.

And, as the title of the journal suggests, sorrows tend to multiply when you’re down. I’m sure everyone knows where the quote comes from (“When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions!” - Hamlet) but it’s true. I’ve found the more down I am, the worse things get, the harder life becomes and the more obstacles are thrown in my way, or, to refer back to my recent entry in my Trollheart’s Theme Park journal, the more mountains rise up before me. Although I don’t believe, it’s always seemed to me as if some being up there is laughing at me: think things are bad now? ZAP! Chew on that, pal! This happened back in 2017, as already alluded to, when I was so badly depressed that I forgot to/couldn’t eat for three days and almost collapsed. At the height of this weakness I was forced to bring Karen to hospital, even though I felt the chances of me being taken in if we went were quite high. I felt like, how could I be so unlucky? I feel terrible, unable to move, and ready to black out, and yet here Karen is (no fault of hers of course) feeling sick and the doctor, when called, tells us we have to go to hospital!

So after about a sixteen-hour stay we get through that, come back home in the late morning/early afternoon, I get her to bed then collapse myself for about three hours before I have to haul myself back up, sort out her bags (ie replace all the medication, clothes, other paraphernalia we brought to the hospital in case she got admitted) and do the dishes from last night, and then prepare her dinner, all while feeling like I just want to die. I’ve related this story before, so I won’t go into all the details, but let’s just say at that point I really felt that if there was a God after all, he really hated me.

So after that diversion in this story, how did my sorrows become multiplied? Meet Eddie, one of our remaining cats. Eddie is what Karen calls a “big, beautiful boy” and what I call fat. He’s a gentle giant, one of those scaredy-cats who’re afraid of their own shadows, but he’s very affectionate and he loves being petted, to the extent that if he hears our other cat, Millie, being given attention and he’s upstairs he’ll charge down so as not to be left out. Eddie’s a great comfort when you’re down, and at one point I was petting him when I realised his ears felt very rough. As often things tend to get stuck on cats, from sitting in the grass or whatever the hell they do, I assumed it was something he had been messing with that had adhered to his ears and I began scratching at it. Only then did I realise it was more like the skin of his ears was flaking, as if he had eczema or something.

Eddie had also been subject to fits of coughing, not just fur balls, but more a kind of nervous wheeze, which had made me think in terms of panic attacks. All things considered, I resolved to take him to the vet. This is not as easily accomplished as you might think. Look at his picture. He’s a big cat, and big cats are strong. In order to get him into the cage in which he would be transported, I had to grab him while he was asleep and force him in. Unfortunately for me, the cage was in the middle of the floor, and as I pushed forward and he pushed back, trying to escape, I had to move forward, the cage moving with me, until we came up against the wall and I could squeeze him in, locking the door. The few seconds we performed this mad dance seemed like hours to me; I knew if I slackened the pressure or he broke away I would never get him in the cage. You only get one chance, and if they get wary you’ll never catch them, never mind get them into the cage.

Anyway, finally imprisoned in the metal box, Eddie was examined by the vet, who said he was a little concerned, and wanted to keep him in. And so he did. A week later I went back to collect him, to be told the bad news. There was, and is, a problem with Eddie’s heart. It’s enlarged, and is therefore beating faster than it should, to compensate for the larger size. As a result, he is now on medication for the rest of his life. Always knew he had a big heart, but this is something else. I was however told there may be further bad news. Kieran, the vet, took me in to show me an x-ray of Eddie’s leg, where there was a “growth” which he wanted to get analysed, in case the dreaded C-word might apply. It would take another week to get the results, and he suggested I leave Eddie with them until they came back. I did, returning without Eddie and with a heavier heart than I had before I had left the house. Didn’t do my depression any good, I can tell you.

Needless to say (to those of you who know Karen) I didn’t tell Karen about the leg. Karen doesn’t do well with bad news. I mean, she’s almost a child when it comes to that. You have to hide things from her; she gets very emotional and always foresees the worst possible outcome. She has enough problems in her life already, so I never see the point in adding to her worries. I told her about Eddie’s heart, as I had to, but just mentioned vaguely that there were more tests to be run. As it turned out, the leg growth was not cancerous, so that was at least some good news.

The postscript to this was that when I went to pay the bill it came to almost 700 Euro, which equates to about 800 dollars, but luckily Eddie is insured, so we were able to claim back about half of that. It does mean that we now have an extra expense every month for his medication, and that the two cats get a meat pouch every evening in addition to their dry food (other than Wednesday and Friday, when they get fish) because I have to grind Eddie’s tablets up into food he will eat. So although she’s not sick, Millie still wins.

Me? I was still stuck in a depression, with now a sick cat on my hands, extra bills to pay and Karen depressed too over Eddie’s sickness (even though it could have been a lot worse). The next month, it would seem, rather surprisingly, that light could finally be glimpsed at the end of the tunnel. But you know what they say: be careful what you wish for. That light is usually something very fast and very dangerous hurtling right for you…

Key · 10-30-2019, 11:42 PM

I'm full on supportive of the personal journal idea. Nicely done, TH. I'll be sure to read this as it goes on.

Trollheart · 11-02-2019, 07:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Key

I'm full on supportive of the personal journal idea. Nicely done, TH. I'll be sure to read this as it goes on.

Thanks man. You should know that your A Loner's Story was the inspiration for this. Without that I possibly would not have considered it, so you can either share in the credit or the blame, whichever way people see it.

OccultHawk · 11-02-2019, 08:23 PM

Either you’ve become a much better writer or I didn’t realize how talented you are before.

Trollheart · 11-03-2019, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OccultHawk

Either you’ve become a much better writer or I didn’t realize how talented you are before.

Yes.

Seriously, thanks. That means a lot, coming from you.

Key · 11-03-2019, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trollheart

Thanks man. You should know that your A Loner's Story was the inspiration for this. Without that I possibly would not have considered it, so you can either share in the credit or the blame, whichever way people see it.

Seems a bit odd that people are giving you a hard time about it from the get go but oh well. but thanks. i need to update mine eventually.

The Batlord · 11-03-2019, 05:29 PM

I'm not giving him a hard time. I posted a gentle, supportive ribbing and it got silly.

Trollheart · 11-03-2019, 06:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

I'm not giving him a hard time. I posted a gentle, supportive ribbing and it got silly.

You couldn't give me a hard time if you tried.

Anteater · 11-03-2019, 06:24 PM

With all that going on, I'm surprised you stuck around MB and spent as much time as you did. You really do have a knack for details in all of your reviews: I'm surprised you had the time to put any of that together.

In any case, will be following this and welcome back to this digital Purgatory.

Trollheart · 11-08-2019, 11:00 AM

Coining It In: The Road to Ruin

Dateline: February 2019

Disclaimer: I know. Anything you can think of calling me, I’ve already called myself. The fact that this should happen to me, who knows about these scams, and had in fact warned someone else about something similar, is perhaps just the universe laughing at me again. Or maybe it’s just that bad things happen to good people, I don’t know. It’s a cautionary tale, a salutary lesson, a warning. It’s all of those things. It’s also the biggest pain in the hole I’ve had this year. Almost.

You should all understand that this is very, very hard for me to write about. I feel like a fool, and the emotions are still very raw. But I have, to an extent, put it behind me now, and it does characterise a large part of why this year was indeed the Year of Hell for me, though there were other, perhaps more significant factors to bear in mind too. So anyone who wants to say “dude wut” or variants of that - surprise, shock, dismay, disparaging remarks, anything along the lines of “are you retarded?” please keep them to yourself. As I say, you can’t call me anything I haven’t called myself, and you can’t and won’t make me feel any worse than I did then, or indeed often still do.

So, that out of the way, here’s how it went down.

Actually, before that, yet another sort of prologue, just so you understand where I was coming from.

While working, I was never one to save. I just didn’t do it. I know. But I would spend my money - either on myself or on others who needed it - and there usually seemed to be a surplus. It’s not that I was working in such a well-paid job or anything, but up until the passing of my mother I had little real financial responsibility beyond giving her a certain amount (I’m obviously not going to disclose figures here; it’s private and it’s nobody’s business but mine) each week for my keep. I did of course offer more when I could, and when I got overtime I would pass some of that on to her. But when we were suddenly left to fend for ourselves one cold February (coincidence, I do assure you) afternoon in 1991, the world tilted sharply at an angle.

We were spoiled Irish mammy’s boys (and one girl), which is not to say we were indulged, as my parents were never rich, and I remember watching my mother sitting in the kitchen, totalling up the expenses for the week and trying to make the little my father gave her from his piss-poor-paying job last. So we weren't spoiled in that sense, just I suppose in that we were never really adequately prepared for the real world. My mother died at the rather young age of 62, so it was a shock, not something we had been expecting. It wasn't a quick death, so we had time to consider, get ready. But we didn't. I never realised, until she was gone, how hard that was, and how she would often go without the necessaries for herself (including food) to ensure we did not go short.

I won’t bore you with the details, but it illustrates how unprepared we all were - me especially - for the realities of financial burden. I had been getting bank loan after bank loan - no reason, nothing to buy, just “why not”? In the end I had amassed somewhere in the region of 25,000 in debt, over a period of perhaps twenty years. The day I finally paid that off was, at the time, the happiest of my life. But it just shows how naive I was about money. As long as the bank lent it to me, I took it, and never worried about paying it back. It came out of my bank account every month, and I got used to it, with the result that once it was paid off I suddenly had a LOT more money to spend every month.

And of course, I made a point of saving it.

No. No I didn’t. I just found either things to spend it on or found a way to help those of my family and/or friends who needed it. I was, in fairness, a nice guy. I hope I still am. If I saw someone in trouble and could help, I didn’t hesitate. One afternoon Karen called me from her job (probably mid-nineties I’d say; I know my ma was gone at this point) literaly crying that she was being taken to court over a credit card bill unless she paid the outstanding amount. How much was it, I asked her, and she told me. No problem, I said. I’ll get it out on the way home. That might have got me arrested.

I didn’t ask for it back. I didn’t tell he she had to pay it back. I didn’t get it back. I didn’t want it back. The most important thing was that I was able to help her, and where a situation to her had seemed grim in the extreme, I was able to reach out and sort everything as a big brother should. This was who I was. If I still had money, this would still be who I am. She feels surprised that, should we ever come into big money, like winning the lottery, I would still look after my two brothers, neither of whom we speak to any more as they cut themselves out of our lives when Karen got sick. She says she wouldn’t give them a cent. I just couldn’t do that. I hate and despise them for leaving me on my own with Karen, but were I in a position to, I would feel wrong not sharing the wealth. I have, by the way, no doubt that were it either of them to come into money, they would not consider helping us. But that doesn’t matter. As I say, that’s who I am, who I’ll always be, and I wouldn’t want to be anyone else.

When I left work in 2009 I got a decent severance package. That lasted for a few years, and things were rosy. I was careful. I didn’t buy anything extravagant, I didn’t go on any holidays (not that I could have done) and yet it went, as money always does. I then had a chance, on reaching age fifty, of taking a lump sum from my retirement pension, which I did, and this got us through another few years. But nothing lasts forever, and the sum dwindled under we were down to scraping a living. Then my aunt died, which was a horribly traumatic experience for us all, but did result in our receiving a small inheritance, which boosted the bank account back up to a reasonable figure.

Nevertheless, I knew it would not last, and I wondered and worried how I would manage when the money ran out. What the government pays me to look after Karen is by no means sufficient to live on, and Karen sadly has little conception of the value of money, so it’s hard to explain to her how tight that money is. She’s quite childish that way. But I couldn’t see any way any more money was coming in to the house, to me or to her, until one fateful day, which brings us back to this February.

I’m sure many lives have been wrecked by the simple words “do you know anything about bitcoin?” An innocuous phrase, and if either a) no interest is expressed or b) the followup talks about a reputable, knowledgeable and professional broker, no harm done, and possibly some cash made. Unfortunately, as in my case, the “s” word applies, but of course I didn’t know that. I did, to give me some small credit (which is removed since I went ahead anyway) consider it, but not for too long.

See, when someone shows you the “profit” they’re making, and they at least are trustworthy, you want to get in on the deal. To be fair to the person talking to me, she didn’t try to hook me in, just showed me what she was making. It was me who went back to her and asked her to put me in contact with this guy. And she did. And from that moment, to paraphrase the end of The War of the Worlds, I was doomed.

People who run these things are of course clever; they convince you they’re not scammers by playing to your insecurities, providing false information about themselves, ingratiating themselves with you by pretending to sympathise over your situation, explaining how “your money isn’t working in the bank” and making false personal connections with you via made-up stories about their past.

Bastards.

Anyway, it’s fair to say they can’t force you to “invest” your money, so while I can blame them for being cunts I can’t shirk the final responsibility. It was me who made the decision to start giving him money to supposedly buy bitcoin and thereby make money for me, so that’s on me.

The story, insofar as it goes for February at least, ends here. Having been inveigled into investing in bitcoin, I did, and I hoped that this might finally be the answer to our problems.Of course, it wasn’t, but I wasn’t to know that at the time.

Meanwhile we had our usual problems with Karen and her kidney infections. I lived - and continue to live - in fear of those words “I feel crap” or “It hurts when I pee” which usually means a call to the D-Doc. Honestly, we ought to have a revolving door installed in our house for the doctors to use! It’s getting ridiculous. But throughout February she had I think three infections (or suspected ones: since she usually can’t give a sample it’s hard for a visiting doctor to be sure, so they usually just go with a best guess) as things got steadily worse.

Had I known what was on the horizon at that time, I would have considered those days in more glowing terms.

10-30-2019, 12:38 PM	#11 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,992	Have a Heart, Eddie: I’m Depressed Dateline: January 2018 Listen, I don’t expect anyone has too much sympathy for those who get depressed. That’s not what I mean: of course you do. Everyone does. What I mean to say is that sadly it’s nothing new, and we all get down from time to time. Except, I don’t. Not normally, or at least, not before the last few years. I’m generally an upbeat sort of guy. When things were at their worst and it was hard to go on, it was me who was the strong one, as I pretty much always have to be, and still do. But now, well, in recent years I can’t deny it’s got harder to keep a brave face on, to take on the world on my own and not to let the pressure get to me. So probably won’t necessarily surprise anyone that after the crappy New Year’s Eve we had, January was no barrel of laughs either. Specifically, there was nothing I could put my finger on or point to as the cause of my unhappiness, but then, when you’re in this situation you don’t need any more reason. I’ve been told better men than me would have found it hard to do what I do, and I’m sure that’s true - at heart, we’ll all selfish really - but I’ve always taken the view that this is what I have to do, this is the situation and I just have to get on with it. Sure, I’ve got depressed from time to time - everyone heard about my almost collapsing after eating nothing for three days in 2017 - but never anything you would call serious. That all changed, however, last year. I think it was more annoying and frustrating because of my inability to single out any cause for the sudden depression, but it just gripped me one day and, while it didn’t quite reflect the title of this journal, not yet, I did feel very hopeless. It’s a very hard thing, being depressed but trying not to show it, and I’m sure others of you have struggled with the same thing. You don’t want sympathy, you don’t even want understanding and you certainly don’t want idiots saying things like “cheer up, it may never happen” or other mindless platitudes, but in my case there was the added problem of Karen. If she saw I was depressed, she would worry - and she’s a world class worrier; she could worry for Ireland - and then she would get depressed too. Quite frankly, how she hasn’t up to now I don’t quite understand. She attributes her attitude to me, but I don’t know about that. Maybe she’s just stronger than she thinks. Anyway, going about your daily business and trying not to look too down is hard, and of course in the end, in that situation it’s next to impossible, so she did notice, and I did have to admit that I was depressed. She understood, but there’s something innately selfish about Karen, I’m sorry to say. When something happens to affect her she really only thinks in terms of herself and how that impacts her situation, leading to her at one point telling me in a sort of bored, annoyed voice that I was making her gloomy. Needless to say, my reaction to that comment was not all it should have been! I think the worst thing about depression is, at least from my perspective anyway, how it grabs hold of you and won’t let you get away. You want to be happy - you desperately want to be happy, or at least not sad - but you can’t see any way to. No matter what you do, no matter how you try to cheer yourself up, or how other people do, nothing works. You remain locked in this dark, dismal, unremitting world of misery and hopelessness, and despair just takes you over. It becomes hard to do anything, or want to; it becomes hard to get up in the morning (how cliched is that? But I did actually suffer from this, and had I not had to, I would have stayed in bed, unable to face the day) and even hard to go to bed at night, knowing that another day is waiting at the end of the relatively brief respite of a few hours’ sleep. And, as the title of the journal suggests, sorrows tend to multiply when you’re down. I’m sure everyone knows where the quote comes from (“When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions!” - Hamlet) but it’s true. I’ve found the more down I am, the worse things get, the harder life becomes and the more obstacles are thrown in my way, or, to refer back to my recent entry in my Trollheart’s Theme Park journal, the more mountains rise up before me. Although I don’t believe, it’s always seemed to me as if some being up there is laughing at me: think things are bad now? ZAP! Chew on that, pal! This happened back in 2017, as already alluded to, when I was so badly depressed that I forgot to/couldn’t eat for three days and almost collapsed. At the height of this weakness I was forced to bring Karen to hospital, even though I felt the chances of me being taken in if we went were quite high. I felt like, how could I be so unlucky? I feel terrible, unable to move, and ready to black out, and yet here Karen is (no fault of hers of course) feeling sick and the doctor, when called, tells us we have to go to hospital! So after about a sixteen-hour stay we get through that, come back home in the late morning/early afternoon, I get her to bed then collapse myself for about three hours before I have to haul myself back up, sort out her bags (ie replace all the medication, clothes, other paraphernalia we brought to the hospital in case she got admitted) and do the dishes from last night, and then prepare her dinner, all while feeling like I just want to die. I’ve related this story before, so I won’t go into all the details, but let’s just say at that point I really felt that if there was a God after all, he really hated me. So after that diversion in this story, how did my sorrows become multiplied? Meet Eddie, one of our remaining cats. Eddie is what Karen calls a “big, beautiful boy” and what I call fat. He’s a gentle giant, one of those scaredy-cats who’re afraid of their own shadows, but he’s very affectionate and he loves being petted, to the extent that if he hears our other cat, Millie, being given attention and he’s upstairs he’ll charge down so as not to be left out. Eddie’s a great comfort when you’re down, and at one point I was petting him when I realised his ears felt very rough. As often things tend to get stuck on cats, from sitting in the grass or whatever the hell they do, I assumed it was something he had been messing with that had adhered to his ears and I began scratching at it. Only then did I realise it was more like the skin of his ears was flaking, as if he had eczema or something. Eddie had also been subject to fits of coughing, not just fur balls, but more a kind of nervous wheeze, which had made me think in terms of panic attacks. All things considered, I resolved to take him to the vet. This is not as easily accomplished as you might think. Look at his picture. He’s a big cat, and big cats are strong. In order to get him into the cage in which he would be transported, I had to grab him while he was asleep and force him in. Unfortunately for me, the cage was in the middle of the floor, and as I pushed forward and he pushed back, trying to escape, I had to move forward, the cage moving with me, until we came up against the wall and I could squeeze him in, locking the door. The few seconds we performed this mad dance seemed like hours to me; I knew if I slackened the pressure or he broke away I would never get him in the cage. You only get one chance, and if they get wary you’ll never catch them, never mind get them into the cage. Anyway, finally imprisoned in the metal box, Eddie was examined by the vet, who said he was a little concerned, and wanted to keep him in. And so he did. A week later I went back to collect him, to be told the bad news. There was, and is, a problem with Eddie’s heart. It’s enlarged, and is therefore beating faster than it should, to compensate for the larger size. As a result, he is now on medication for the rest of his life. Always knew he had a big heart, but this is something else. I was however told there may be further bad news. Kieran, the vet, took me in to show me an x-ray of Eddie’s leg, where there was a “growth” which he wanted to get analysed, in case the dreaded C-word might apply. It would take another week to get the results, and he suggested I leave Eddie with them until they came back. I did, returning without Eddie and with a heavier heart than I had before I had left the house. Didn’t do my depression any good, I can tell you. Needless to say (to those of you who know Karen) I didn’t tell Karen about the leg. Karen doesn’t do well with bad news. I mean, she’s almost a child when it comes to that. You have to hide things from her; she gets very emotional and always foresees the worst possible outcome. She has enough problems in her life already, so I never see the point in adding to her worries. I told her about Eddie’s heart, as I had to, but just mentioned vaguely that there were more tests to be run. As it turned out, the leg growth was not cancerous, so that was at least some good news. The postscript to this was that when I went to pay the bill it came to almost 700 Euro, which equates to about 800 dollars, but luckily Eddie is insured, so we were able to claim back about half of that. It does mean that we now have an extra expense every month for his medication, and that the two cats get a meat pouch every evening in addition to their dry food (other than Wednesday and Friday, when they get fish) because I have to grind Eddie’s tablets up into food he will eat. So although she’s not sick, Millie still wins. Me? I was still stuck in a depression, with now a sick cat on my hands, extra bills to pay and Karen depressed too over Eddie’s sickness (even though it could have been a lot worse). The next month, it would seem, rather surprisingly, that light could finally be glimpsed at the end of the tunnel. But you know what they say: be careful what you wish for. That light is usually something very fast and very dangerous hurtling right for you… __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

11-02-2019, 08:23 PM	#14 (permalink)
OccultHawk one-balled nipple jockey Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Dirty Souf Biatch Posts: 22,006	Either you’ve become a much better writer or I didn’t realize how talented you are before. __________________ 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Member of the Year & Journal of the Year Champion Behold the Writing of THE LEGEND: https://www.musicbanter.com/members-...p-lighter.html

11-08-2019, 11:00 AM	#20 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,992	Coining It In: The Road to Ruin Dateline: February 2019 Disclaimer: I know. Anything you can think of calling me, I’ve already called myself. The fact that this should happen to me, who knows about these scams, and had in fact warned someone else about something similar, is perhaps just the universe laughing at me again. Or maybe it’s just that bad things happen to good people, I don’t know. It’s a cautionary tale, a salutary lesson, a warning. It’s all of those things. It’s also the biggest pain in the hole I’ve had this year. Almost. You should all understand that this is very, very hard for me to write about. I feel like a fool, and the emotions are still very raw. But I have, to an extent, put it behind me now, and it does characterise a large part of why this year was indeed the Year of Hell for me, though there were other, perhaps more significant factors to bear in mind too. So anyone who wants to say “dude wut” or variants of that - surprise, shock, dismay, disparaging remarks, anything along the lines of “are you retarded?” please keep them to yourself. As I say, you can’t call me anything I haven’t called myself, and you can’t and won’t make me feel any worse than I did then, or indeed often still do. So, that out of the way, here’s how it went down. Actually, before that, yet another sort of prologue, just so you understand where I was coming from. While working, I was never one to save. I just didn’t do it. I know. But I would spend my money - either on myself or on others who needed it - and there usually seemed to be a surplus. It’s not that I was working in such a well-paid job or anything, but up until the passing of my mother I had little real financial responsibility beyond giving her a certain amount (I’m obviously not going to disclose figures here; it’s private and it’s nobody’s business but mine) each week for my keep. I did of course offer more when I could, and when I got overtime I would pass some of that on to her. But when we were suddenly left to fend for ourselves one cold February (coincidence, I do assure you) afternoon in 1991, the world tilted sharply at an angle. We were spoiled Irish mammy’s boys (and one girl), which is not to say we were indulged, as my parents were never rich, and I remember watching my mother sitting in the kitchen, totalling up the expenses for the week and trying to make the little my father gave her from his piss-poor-paying job last. So we weren't spoiled in that sense, just I suppose in that we were never really adequately prepared for the real world. My mother died at the rather young age of 62, so it was a shock, not something we had been expecting. It wasn't a quick death, so we had time to consider, get ready. But we didn't. I never realised, until she was gone, how hard that was, and how she would often go without the necessaries for herself (including food) to ensure we did not go short. I won’t bore you with the details, but it illustrates how unprepared we all were - me especially - for the realities of financial burden. I had been getting bank loan after bank loan - no reason, nothing to buy, just “why not”? In the end I had amassed somewhere in the region of 25,000 in debt, over a period of perhaps twenty years. The day I finally paid that off was, at the time, the happiest of my life. But it just shows how naive I was about money. As long as the bank lent it to me, I took it, and never worried about paying it back. It came out of my bank account every month, and I got used to it, with the result that once it was paid off I suddenly had a LOT more money to spend every month. And of course, I made a point of saving it. No. No I didn’t. I just found either things to spend it on or found a way to help those of my family and/or friends who needed it. I was, in fairness, a nice guy. I hope I still am. If I saw someone in trouble and could help, I didn’t hesitate. One afternoon Karen called me from her job (probably mid-nineties I’d say; I know my ma was gone at this point) literaly crying that she was being taken to court over a credit card bill unless she paid the outstanding amount. How much was it, I asked her, and she told me. No problem, I said. I’ll get it out on the way home. That might have got me arrested. I didn’t ask for it back. I didn’t tell he she had to pay it back. I didn’t get it back. I didn’t want it back. The most important thing was that I was able to help her, and where a situation to her had seemed grim in the extreme, I was able to reach out and sort everything as a big brother should. This was who I was. If I still had money, this would still be who I am. She feels surprised that, should we ever come into big money, like winning the lottery, I would still look after my two brothers, neither of whom we speak to any more as they cut themselves out of our lives when Karen got sick. She says she wouldn’t give them a cent. I just couldn’t do that. I hate and despise them for leaving me on my own with Karen, but were I in a position to, I would feel wrong not sharing the wealth. I have, by the way, no doubt that were it either of them to come into money, they would not consider helping us. But that doesn’t matter. As I say, that’s who I am, who I’ll always be, and I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. When I left work in 2009 I got a decent severance package. That lasted for a few years, and things were rosy. I was careful. I didn’t buy anything extravagant, I didn’t go on any holidays (not that I could have done) and yet it went, as money always does. I then had a chance, on reaching age fifty, of taking a lump sum from my retirement pension, which I did, and this got us through another few years. But nothing lasts forever, and the sum dwindled under we were down to scraping a living. Then my aunt died, which was a horribly traumatic experience for us all, but did result in our receiving a small inheritance, which boosted the bank account back up to a reasonable figure. Nevertheless, I knew it would not last, and I wondered and worried how I would manage when the money ran out. What the government pays me to look after Karen is by no means sufficient to live on, and Karen sadly has little conception of the value of money, so it’s hard to explain to her how tight that money is. She’s quite childish that way. But I couldn’t see any way any more money was coming in to the house, to me or to her, until one fateful day, which brings us back to this February. I’m sure many lives have been wrecked by the simple words “do you know anything about bitcoin?” An innocuous phrase, and if either a) no interest is expressed or b) the followup talks about a reputable, knowledgeable and professional broker, no harm done, and possibly some cash made. Unfortunately, as in my case, the “s” word applies, but of course I didn’t know that. I did, to give me some small credit (which is removed since I went ahead anyway) consider it, but not for too long. See, when someone shows you the “profit” they’re making, and they at least are trustworthy, you want to get in on the deal. To be fair to the person talking to me, she didn’t try to hook me in, just showed me what she was making. It was me who went back to her and asked her to put me in contact with this guy. And she did. And from that moment, to paraphrase the end of The War of the Worlds, I was doomed. People who run these things are of course clever; they convince you they’re not scammers by playing to your insecurities, providing false information about themselves, ingratiating themselves with you by pretending to sympathise over your situation, explaining how “your money isn’t working in the bank” and making false personal connections with you via made-up stories about their past. Bastards. Anyway, it’s fair to say they can’t force you to “invest” your money, so while I can blame them for being cunts I can’t shirk the final responsibility. It was me who made the decision to start giving him money to supposedly buy bitcoin and thereby make money for me, so that’s on me. The story, insofar as it goes for February at least, ends here. Having been inveigled into investing in bitcoin, I did, and I hoped that this might finally be the answer to our problems.Of course, it wasn’t, but I wasn’t to know that at the time. Meanwhile we had our usual problems with Karen and her kidney infections. I lived - and continue to live - in fear of those words “I feel crap” or “It hurts when I pee” which usually means a call to the D-Doc. Honestly, we ought to have a revolving door installed in our house for the doctors to use! It’s getting ridiculous. But throughout February she had I think three infections (or suspected ones: since she usually can’t give a sample it’s hard for a visiting doctor to be sure, so they usually just go with a best guess) as things got steadily worse. Had I known what was on the horizon at that time, I would have considered those days in more glowing terms. __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

10-30-2019, 11:42 PM	#12 (permalink)
Key . Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 13,153	I'm full on supportive of the personal journal idea. Nicely done, TH. I'll be sure to read this as it goes on.