Why I am here and not there.

[Salty]

Just didn't really want this in AT.

This is gonna be verbose, so hold onto your asses.

I do actually hate getting advice, any kind. I am full of pride and arrogance, and I trust my own intuition more than any single person I know 99% of the time.

Most of the time advice I am given is something I have thought about millions and millions of times already. I do almost everything in life by myself, as I have done.

This has only recently changed and there is no greater catalyst for my ability do be around other people, to act without fear, than my son. You people have done a great deal, but would I give a damn at all without him?

I started posting on this forum the year he was born. That's the year I changed my name.

Some of you know my name, and it is a funny one. It is also not the one on my birth certificate.

Ooh, it's gonna get personal now.

0-2

Born in a German hospital I lose any claim to Presidency, which is a damn shame. My dad was a helicopter mechanic for the Army. My mother attended a Catholic-Hungarian boarding school I have no idea how my single grandmother could afford.

My grandmother on my mother's side is an evil old alcoholic from Serbia who cleaned upper class German houses for 25 years. She has severe mental illness that has been untreated (excepting congac) for her entire life.

She saw my father and mother making googely eyes on a boat near the Vilhelma Zoo, walked over to him and told him to talk to my mother.

New Years Eve - 1984

"Don't worry, you don't get pregnant the first time," -Dad.

My mom dropped out of school, as she had no choice, in her final year. They stayed with my grandmother and then...

ZOOOOM

2-4

Kentucky.

ZOOOOM

5

Alaska

My dad always wanted to see it. That's why we came here. He always had ze wanderlust, he's a rambler, that one. Or was. I got it real bad too. I hate staying in one place. Hate it. I could live in a brand new place every three months and you would see a very happy Alty.

ZOOOOM

7

I used to be a JR. My current name, which a bunch of you know, is not the one on my birth certificate.

Shortly before my parents split, shortly after my father threw me into a wall because he was casually disgusted with me, something my mother never knew, I wondered: why? Why didn't I get my own name?

Then, the split. The military elementary school had a counselor, and after my mom had told me she was divorcing my father and that my sister and I would be living with her and only her, they pulled me out of class and into this group called Banana Splits

On the first day we made a construction paper banana split. Dad and mom are choclolate and strawberry on the outside, and in the middle was vanilla me. It only took them about a week to realize I didn't need any counseling. When my mom told me what was happening relief such as I have never again experienced washed over me. I knew, at 7, that my life was going to be an altogether sweeter thing. I knew with absolute certainty that if things had continued on I would have been truly miserable, probably abused more.

My mother had already gotten a job at Burger King, and used it to aqcuire a brand new Honda Civic (loleconomy) in anticipation for leaving my dad. Which is funny because HE offered divorce as an ultimatum: You either stay home with me instead of going out on the town with your brother who you haven't seen in 5 years or DIVORCE!

LOL.

So moving into a shitty apartment wasn't all the difficult. And beautiful.

Through my whole childhood I never once resented having things. I had TV, I had enough food not to starve to death, and I was FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

8

This is the year I learned my father was an idiot and a coward and that I had to make every attempt to not be anything like him.

9-13

Thing happened. Many things. I grew up here, in the cold and the dark, watching TV and eating junk food and being afraid of boy and men, but also just people. Men come in and out of my mother's life. They are all losers. Even the lesbian. All of them, except my stepdad, who treats me right, keeps my grandmother from verbally, emotionally, and physically abusing me. He worked hard a shit job right next to my mom to build something together. She divorced him for no reason/my grandmother's influence.

I called that guy dad. Oh well.

Nothing with my father. He sent occasional letters and stopped once he realized I was never going to write back. To this day I still don't send people letters, other than Discordians. Letters can be full of meaning, but when I know you just don't give a shit and are still capable of sending me words, well, words are plenty fickle then, aren't they?

But then I went to stay with my paternal grandmother. I was 12, it was summer in Arkansas. My father found out and decided he needed to get his shit together, make some money, and save some by staying with his mom as well. That his children were going to be there was at first incidental, then obnoxious. Two weeks in he called my mother to ask her to have us come back.

42 at this point, he has no teeth. He wears full dentures because his teeth rotted from the inside out and vice versa. That happens when you chew, smoke two cartons a week, and drink Folgers like it's going out of production. He watches Walker Texas Ranger and claps his hands like a child, a stupid child, when Walker roundhouse kicks the bad guy. The man nearly leaps out of his chair with excitement. A big Chuck Norris fan, my dad.

He also thinks the wrestler Chyna is just the hottest piece of ass in the known universe.



It's then when I realize just how different this man is from, foreign. Foreign. I LOOK a lot more like my uncle Bill. Which is probably why dad wanted nothing from me.

Bill was the baby and he was the favorite. Of EVERYONE HE EVER MET. Charismatic, funny, blunt, loud, successful, and as ignorant and racist as most white people below the mason-dixon. My uncle Bill was a lawyer for Walmart (hopefully battling millions of impovrished employees) who died in a car crash after going into a diabetic coma on the way home. My grandfather wrote a book called: My Son, a Gift From God. It was not about my father.

Yet whatever genetics passed my father's way seemed to gloss over the looks sort of laterally. Or something. You get what I mean. That must have been a kick in the dick.


13-18


I talked to the man after I graduated. He called and said he was going to Russia to get heli-mechanic work, make a bunch of money, and then come to AK to "spend some time with you kids".

*cricket song*

2009

The year my son was born. The year my whole life changed and my brain got all weird, but better. Also the year I started posting on this forum.

Before I changed my legal name I called him. Right when I had the money and the paperwork ready to go, I gave the stupid bastard a last chance.

I tracked him down by (somehow) finding HIS father, also discovering his parents came from Germany in 1923(?) so I come from bona fide immigrant stock on both ends.

"You're going to be a grandfather," I said.
"Yeah I know, my mom told me," he said.
"You're free to come up here any time and meet him," I said, quite graciously.
"Well, I think it'll probably be easier for you to just fly here," he said.

To Florida. It is easier for me to drag my infant son, his toddler (1/2) brother, and their mother to Florida from AK than it is to get his dumb ass into a single seat.

Ok. Thanks Dad for making that easy for me.

That's him, and that's it. He got on FB and I applied my maximum self, much the same way I handled my cousin. More crickets. This time I really DID kick him in the dick.

Now, I now that getting out of AK is best for me. And I know that if I leave my son alone, in the dark and the cold, with NOBODY who has a brain like his (like mine) because I FEEL bad I am not going to be like my father.

But that's not all there is so let's keep going.

I chose something I found, and the last name of my maternal grandfather because he is the sweetest, kindest, smartest man in my family and in my life. That old man, his story goes something like this:

Meet a Serbian woman who was probably abused by her father, who is an alcoholic, who will eventually beat your first and only grandson. Marry her, have two girls with her. She goes fully evil at a tender age and chops him off like a bad wound. Court battles, such as they are in that part of the world do not go well. Who knows exactly what happened.

But this woman leaves with your girls, marries another man, has a son, and then moves to another country. THEN she tells your children you want nothing to do with them, that you abandoned them. You know nothing of this.

I didn't meet this man until 2006. He didn't see his daughter from 196?-2006.

Basically, the same thing happened to me.

I don't know where the other kid who is supposed to be mine is at. This OTHER MOTHER halted my efforts to set up child support. I got swabbed any everything. I am not sure if this other kid is even mine. I am so fortunate, BLESSED even, to be allowed the opportunity to be around my son, to get to help shape his view of the world, to help keep his perspective clear, to give his mind and brain the best possible start they can hope to have.

And I am working hard to not just supply the needs of the son I do get to spend time with, but to also have enough resources and time to take the other to court because that's the only way.

So, maybe you can see now. I don't get mad when people tell me to move out of Alaska. You just don't know. You don't know that if I left the climate would change, my mood would be elevated, I would have rich and rewarding relationships that are not online.

And I would be a miserable husk of the person that you know. I would feel shame, self-loathing, and contempt for my entire person. I would drink, a lot. I would, suddenly, have no structure since I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. And something would take the place of that structure, and it would be ugly.

And maybe it would not happen that way. Maybe I would just be happier.

But no. It's not going to happen.

You say that this place is bad for me. That's true, in some ways. Many way. But what's bad for me is worse for the kid.

Somebody has to break this cycle, the buck stops here.




As for my happiness/unhappiness, recently. Some of you seemed concerned. I have some bad times. The number one reason for my misery in the last year has been my wife. And that issue is getting better all the time. My business causes me a LOT of stress and I do everything myself. This month I am short one tenant. My last groupon has killed my regular business, and my new pricing makes growth SLLLLLOOOOOOOOOWWWW. My work has socially isolated me more than usual.

Once student loans come back in, and I can focus on slow growth after my groupon, and once I start my new project (this month) things will be better for me.

As for the place itself? I love Alaska. I love the rivers and the trees and the mountains and the fresh air and the peace. But Anchorage offers none of these things.

Anchorage AK is all of the midwest plastic nightmare wrapped into one place. Sure, there are mountains, but they are covered in human filth.

Were I in Talkeetna things might be different. But that's not going to happen either because a four hour car ride is too far from my son. You see a theme here?

Does living here make all that shit worse? Yes. Many of my problems probably would not exist in another place. And I am making a concerted effort to get out alongside my kid's mom. She and I are lining up all of our shit so we can leave. I even told her TWO years would be better than four.

Now, to add moar FUN:

He other son has a father who is a liar, cheater, and a thief, who I know personally, and dispose at levels you people know nothing about. HIS mother is the same. She bought a lawyer, told him to move in, so she could sue for more custody right. So the dad sits around getting high while his son is tended to by the grandmother. It is a cozy arrangement for them. Which is bad. Since they got more legal customer MY kid's mom can't just up and leave.

Now this dad doesn't give a shit. As a pathological liar he will say otherwise, but I know better. I saw him feed his two year old toddler by throwing cheerios on the floor and telling him to shut up.

So, yeah.

I find happiness where I can, and I am succeeding.

Making enough money to leave this place on a regular basis, that's doable.
Anything else...eh....

[Salty]

That said, I have always found value in the advice you people have offered me.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You're a good man, Alty. You've been through the wringer and you're determined not to let your kids go through it too. That's admirable. I hope you are able to get at least partial custody of your other child.

[Salty]

Thanks. I am trying.

[Salty]

Really, at this point my life is pretty sweet. Business stress aside. And half of THAT is because why wife was unemployed for a long time. I would have had plenty of money to save, if not for that.

But my life is a lot like this:

Sunday-Wenesday with The Boy. We hang out, walk around, eat food, I teach him how to cook. I let him do what he wants so long as he is polite. We get groceies. I show him the street names for out neighborhood. Sometimes he watches cartoons all day and I do shit like post on here.

Wednesday we walk/bus 7 miles so I can work 5 miles from the daycare. The daycare is stupidly out of the way and cheap/low hassle. Then I make the trip back the same way.

Thursday we do the same but his mother picks him up.

Thurssday-Saturday I WORK and have FUN.

I walk everywhere, smoke when and where I want, drink the same. My house is pretty and colorful. This neighborhood might be the AK ghetto, but it's one of the few with trees.

I have school online. It's all pretty sweet actually. If I had money, and if my wife keeps up being awesome, all I would need is, oh, maybe some friends.

But I don't have all that much to complain about. I am actually a lot happier than I have been in a long time, healthier too!

My marriage really sapped it out of me, but now it's more of a nurturing thing, as it should be, I think.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm glad things are better. I hope they keep getting better still.

[Eater of Clowns]

I don't necessarily believe that a person's life will be better by moving to another location. Problems have an unfortunate way of following people. I also come from a total shithole but it's MY total shithole, like Anchorage is yours (and as charming as my visit was, that city is a SHITHOLE). That said, anyplace that cold and that dark IS trying to kill you, but so does Tucson's desert and so do Portland's bridges and so do New Bedford's staggering poverty and violent crime rates.

I don't doubt for a second that you're doing absolutely everything you can for yourself and the ones you love, Alty.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't necessarily believe that a person's life will be better by moving to another location. Problems have an unfortunate way of following people. I also come from a total shithole but it's MY total shithole, like Anchorage is yours (and as charming as my visit was, that city is a SHITHOLE). That said, anyplace that cold and that dark IS trying to kill you, but so does Tucson's desert and so do Portland's bridges and so do New Bedford's staggering poverty and violent crime rates.

I don't doubt for a second that you're doing absolutely everything you can for yourself and the ones you love, Alty.

It depends a lot on what the problems are... if it's something like being surrounded by a culture in which there are few people with whom you can relate, then moving can make things much better. I know a lot of people who moved to Portland for that exact reason, from places like Anchorage, Salt Lake City, Mobile, Appleton, and so one, and found that here they made connections with a community and support system that they could relate to.

Other people move here and hate it because they DON'T find people they can relate to, just a bunch of queers, freaks, hippies, and hipsters.

[LMNO]

You're a good man, Alty.  Keep it up.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

I hope things continue to improve.

[East Coast Hustle]

Wow. I had some idea, but at the same time I had NO idea.

I admire the fuck out of your will and drive to see your family be a proper family.

[Salty]

Thanks for saying so.