Uncle B's Corner

There comes a point in everyone's life when they are scared

2019-03-10T22:25:00.002-04:00

I have been afraid more times in my life than a normal person should be. I have been facing death and uncertainty for many years, but never have I felt closer to death than this past month. I went through chronic renal failure 5 times in less than 7 weeks and I had nothing holding me up. People who I thought were my friends felt betrayed and abandoned by me and yet there was nothing I could do as my health continued spiraling out of control. From the constant renal failures, I developed hypothermia and have been freezing cold ever since. Once that started a severe blood infection developed in my heart that spread from my port in my shoulder. Which blossomed into a full UTI which triggered seizures, low heart rate, and constant black outs. For a month I remained in Intensive care and until today thought I would never see the outside world again.

This morning my doctor informed me that I was finally cleared to move to out of intensive care and go to a recovery floor. If progress continues as it has this weekend I will be able to leave Tuesday morning and for the first time in my life I am happy to say that I am relieved to be alive. I was afraid that I wouldn't be there for my parents who are both going through their own series of health issues and as they have been my rock throughout the many years of my illness I would like to be able to return the favor to them. As for those that I thought would always be my friends I am not sure exactly why there is such bad blood between us because I it really wasn't my decision to get seriously ill when I did or for how long as I was.

What my main fault is that I constantly want to believe the best in people. To believe that they are honest and just and I take them at their word. I should know better with some. I have given them chance after chance and they still screw up. They continue to beat on me, put me down and expect me to pull their ass out of the fire every single time they screw up. People never tell you their full intentions and they always have other motivations that are eventually revealed. I need to learn to harden myself against this misinformation and know that past behavior is a clear indicator of what the future may hold. I have to stop putting everyone before myself and learn that saying NO and sticking too it is okay.

My heart is heavy because even now as we speak many things have come to pass that have hindered my forward progress in both my physical and mental health. The last bit was the fact that my ex who wanted to get married and swears that he loves me with his whole being and wants to do the right thing and go to rehab, and get married is just telling me what he think I want to hear because he doesn't want to go to prison. But, I have come too realize that even though he has told me these words it is only because he is in Jail and that is the sad truth. He is not going to change and he is never going to love me the same way that I love him, and everything that I have done, I have done out of love and concern for his welfare.

If only he would be truthful and honest with me, tell me what is actually on his mind because here is the thing. I have lost everything repeatedly because of him and the night he was arrested he hit me so hard that I ended up having a concussion and yet he is telling me that he didn't mean it that it was an accident. But to have hit me 22 times in complete succession may have helped trigger this bout of bad health that I just came a through and might have caused some of the problems that I am continuing to experience. I am sad and a little frightened because he is possibly getting out of jail in the next couple of weeks and then my safety is once again on the line.

Life is an uncertain road and filled with many obstacles and issues. You shouldn't have to deal with abuse on top of it. If you are being battered or abused then the only suggestion I can give you is to run and run far and fast because they don't change. If they hit you once they will continue to do so, I believe it is an illness and they need help and so do you. I know one thing I can't go back to the situation I was in before I came to the hospital because I may not survive the next encounter with him.

Please understand that you are worth something and important to others in this world. You deserve to be treated with love, and respect and if they feel it necessary to get their point across by using their hands or force on you it really isn't worth it.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Marching Onward with Time

2019-01-15T15:30:00.001-05:00

You cannot hold back the hands of time, they march ever onward never stopping. Seconds turn to Minutes, Minutes to Hours, Hours to Days, Days to Weeks and Weeks turn to Months, Months to Years.

Everything has a progression there is no stopping the ticking of the clock, the hour hand moves inevitably towards tomorrow. Nothing can last against it's angry sway. Even month move into seasons and seasons into years and then starts all over again. It is an endless cycle that has no end.

No matter what you do the human body cannot fight against time, and aging takes place. Though it's passage is slow the evidence becomes apparent soon enough first comes the roll, then the wrinkles, the hair thins and grays, the lines deepen around the eyes. Nothing prepares us for this eternal march.

Life is full of events that make up episodes and those episodes play out into the span of months and years nothing changes the fact that time doesn't slow down not even a fraction, no matter what you do or try. Nothing has any permanence anymore, everything is made to break down and be replaced this is what the world has devolved to in the modern age.

But with every invention that eases the burdens of man, time is the great equalizer making all things the same. equal. No one can run the race against time and win, because the body will give out way before the clock on the wall stops its ever onward rotation. We have trained ourselves to celebrate these passing years as a type of victory, that marks the year of our birth. Nothing can take that away from us that small victory that we celebrate with each passing year of life.

Judge not what others do for they are playing out their own version of the same story that you are in. Though the characters change everyone of is fraught with a multitude of issues, everyone has them no one is exempt from them. How we deal with them and move forward is what defines us. But in the case of time, our bodies slow and break down but in most cases the mind stays nimble and alert. Looking out for familiar patterns and doing things that make our world unique and our own. Stop for a moment and look at the world around us and see what is taking place around you and you will be amazed at how other's lives parallel yours. No one is exempt from the tolling bell and we will all succumb to the numb darkness of death in our own time.

Nothing tells us the day or the hour in which we will pass from this world to the next but you can be assured that the clock on the wall is keeping track of every second that you remain in this plane. Nothing can change the fact that even though time was created by man to help them navigate the daily rotation of the sun around the earth it also helps us measure the path that we take daily. We use it to govern our lives and we come close to worshiping it. Because we each have things that we need to accomplish during certain parts of the day.

Years treat each person differently and nothing stays the same forever, each of us is just going through time floating like a ship adrift on the sea. There is no compass to guide us just the rotation of the hand against our brains. We have ingrained upon ourselves the necessity to abide by time and therefore it controls almost every aspect of our lives. We punch a clock when we work, we go to sleep at a certain time, get up and start it all over again. This is not how it is supposed to be. But we are human and need guidelines and rules to keep us going at a steady pace so that each day is fulfilled to the fullest, or that is what the majority of humanity thinks.

I don't care what anyone else thinks or believes, because no matter what the march of time might have done to me I am still here chugging along, and yes I am 50 now, but I still feel like I am in my 30's. Yes I have a few more aches and pains then I used to but guess what I don't look anywhere near my age and I am still able to get out and do all that I need to to get through the day, I don't have to punch a time clock and I still survive. I do things when the time is appropriate for me and not for others. I try to abide by the structure so that I can make to appointments and stuff like that but I will tell you other than that time hold real no meaning for me in this life anymore. Each day is a challenge and I start them all the same as a brand new slate with nothing etched in it and I can screw it up anyway that I want and I am content to live like that.

Dimly I am aware that time passes and I acknowledge that passing with a glance and a move forward, because with each new down is a world that is open to interpretation and new mysteries and adventures are to be had. I am not locked into a single way of life and I keep surprising myself with all that I get done in a single day. How is time treating you and how well are you holding up under the pressure of age?

Let me know I would like to hear your thoughts about this.

As always you are in my hopes and dreams,

Uncle B

Give and Take

2019-01-14T16:49:00.000-05:00

I give and you take this is the story of my life. Or has been up till now, for years I was walking around invisible, the man behind the men in my life. I was taking care of the messes, the issues, the financials but I was behind the scenes. No one ever cared about my feelings, I was the one making all the sacrifices and the hard decision that needed to be made. I was essentially on my own taking care of everyone around me in ways that they didn't even consider. Now that I have reached the ripe ole age of 50 I am beginning to start a new chapter in my life and I don't want to be confined to the backseat role that I have always had.

No that life isn't for me anymore. I am not content just staying in the background and lurking in the shadows. I want the world to see me and I want center stage for a change. Someone needs to put me first and foremost in their life and if they can't do it, then it is time for me to move on. My name should have been Mat because essentially that is what I relegated myself too. I became the doormat for everyone to walk across as they came upon me. In order to get to the other side they had to walk right over me and you know what I let them. By holding in the hurt, sadness, disappointment and anger that I felt, I passively let each person continue on like I was just a fly necessary but a nuisance. I am very tired of feeling that way, and I have come to the point in my life, that it has become alright if I am alone.

I don't need anyone else to make me feel worse about myself than I already do. I need someone to lift me up and put me as priority and I will not settle anymore for less than that. With everything that I have been through and all that I have endured you would think that a simple relationship would be easy for me, but it has been the hardest work of my life, and I am still in a position where I feel like I am second rate. I should feel like a champion, I should have strength of mind and body to ensure that I am taking care of. Yet, for some reason I have yet to understand, I seem to put everyone else ahead of me and I am surprised when I end up getting hurt by them. Nothing has ever prepared me for the treachery of the human mind, and I guess that I have been setting myself up for failure all along, by not being able to remain alone, I open myself up to the predators of the world. They see my kind heart and good nature as a plaything that they can manipulate and use me. Guilt is their most effective weapon and I have begun withdrawing myself from the world and those around me. I am not going to be used and walked on for the rest of my life.

Somewhere out there there has to be some soul that is sympathetic to mine and who will love me and cherish me as much as I do them. All my friends tell me that I am a wonderful and beautiful person, so why can't I find a partner who see's me as they do? Why must I only find those that choose to use me and manipulate me, that eventually leave me broken hearted and damaged and alone. Where I have to pick up the shattered remains of my life and move on by myself, struggling to come to grips with the fact that the person I have spent my time, energy, money and resources on doesn't care enough to stay around when I need them the most.

Once upon a time there was someone that I grew close too and we were together a long time, we did everything together, though at first we didn't like one another something happened and 10 years later I am wondering where he went and why he left. When he was seriously ill I stayed with him and took care of him, got him back to health and put up with him going out and leaving for days on end and hooking up with other people, but eventually I went through a similar medical situation and I needed him and guess what after all that time together off and on he took off and never came back. I was younger then and I was able to finally slowly recover on my own, but in the long run things never got back to same place. Yes, we have stayed in touch but we have never gotten back together and that is no longer in the cards for us. We have drifted apart and taken different paths that are no longer in sync with one another, instead of converging at this point they are diverging and getting wider apart with each passing year.

A relationship is supposed to be a mutual agreement between two people that have similar goals and desires who choose to team up and help each other achieve those said goals. It is a partnership based on trust and compromise, that also has a physical aspect to it that makes it worthwhile. If said relationship lacks any of these qualities it falls apart fairly rapidly. One party or the other is unhappy and tensions build inside and tear the thing apart. Usually, one or the other partner cares more about one than the other and that is what makes it so easy for it to be torn apart. But the one that loves the least ends up with the power in the relationship because they end up being the one that has the strength to leave and move on with their lives the easiest. The one with the most love invested in the situation is the one that is left behind hurt and wondering what really went wrong with the situation in the first place. Most of the time they are blissfully unaware that their partner is unhappy and wandering. They have the most time and money also invested in the relationship so when they other leaves the other is ruined both emotionally, financially and worse off mentally.

My whole life has been a series of this unfortunate unions and you would think that I would have learned how to guard my heart and let a callous form around it to protect it from giving out that love again so easily, but in my case that would mean a total alteration in my personality and I am afraid that I would lose the big heart that I am known for. It is a pattern of behavior that I have to learn to break otherwise it will continue to happen to me over and over again if I let it.

I talk about patterns a lot and how we as individuals can get locked in to those patterns and if repeated enough they become second nature too us and become a habit. The courts call this Habitual Offense it proves a proven pattern of repeat behavior that will continue unless the cycle is somehow broken. The legal system feels that incarceration is the answer to break these patterns of behavior, but I don't think that works out like they hope, because in my experience once that person is released from jail they immediately revert to the old familiar patterns. My belief is that we can only break a pattern of behavior if we chose to directly replace that pattern with a different one that yields better results. Habits can be broken but take time and a lot of practice, they also need to be watched and worked at vigorously to keep them broken or they creep back and we relapse. Patterns are so ingrained in us that they cannot be broken they have to be replaced. I know that I said that I believe that patterns if done enough become habit, but now that I focus on it more closely the truth has become evident it is the habits that if done long enough become patterns and those patterns in turn keep us locked into a cycle of behavior that our mind just accepts as it's new reality. To truly break out of pattern we much replace it like I said and that requires us to change the entire parameters that make up the pattern, such as people, place, things, situations, triggers and memories. This becomes truly hard and that is why addiction is such a hard thing to overcome and why many people fall back and relapse time after time.

Nothing is easy in this life and if it hurts you learn from it and it changes you both fundamentally and mentally. I find that the more you have to work for and the harder you strive to get what you want the more you cherish what you achieve. With this in mind and a positive mental attitude you can achieve anything that you set your sights on. No one promised you that life would not have issues or difficulties along the way, and we are creatures of habit and fall into patterns of habit that become hard to break, but everything in this world can be changed if you put your mind to it. Always remember that every situation has a time limit. Every event that happens in your life is only temporary and will soon pass by. So at this point whatever difficulty you are facing, whether it is something that you know how to accomplish or not, keep in mind that it is just a flash in the pan, and that life will continue on. Minutes keep ticking by even in your are laying down, they keep going if you are in jail or sick and in the hospital. Nothing is forever but death and thoughts, and time. Everything else will pass by if you just keep going.

Some of the fundamental tenants that I live by is that you can change the outlook on things by changing your point of view and you can alter your perception of things by adjusting your mental attitude. Life is full of a series of roadblocks, pitfalls, and traps, but these only serve to make your stronger for the journey ahead. Also that it is not the destination that matter but the path you choose to take because that is what is going to define you. Never look back on your past and be disappointed in where you are, look closely to the journey you took to get there and all the things that you have learned along the way. A positive mental attitude will set you up for a very positive day and will disperse any negative energy that might be lingering in your path. Smile and be glad of heart because you have a new day to rejoice in with no mistakes in it, so go ahead and screw it up your worst because you will have another chance to do it all again tomorrow. Don't let other peoples opinions way you down, march to your own drum and be your own individual, because in the long run only you can create your own happiness, no one can do it for you. Always remember that you never know where a casual conversation will lead you and who you might meet because of it. Life is full of mysteries, learn a little something new everyday and you will feel better and like you have accomplished something. I could go on but I think that you are getting the point.

But the final thought that I want to leave with you before I close out this entry is that never take more than you give, and never keep those around that are taking more than they are giving back because those that don't give as much as you will eventually throw you out of balance and cause you negativity to build up in your life you don't need that, cut them loose because they really aren't good friends and they are definitely healthy for you to keep around you. Negative energy attracts more negative energy, and the opposite is true as well positive attracts positive and will increase your longevity in the long run. I am living proof of that

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Unexpected Turn of Events

2019-01-07T23:37:00.001-05:00

Who would have thought that in a matter of 1 short year an entire life can be turned upside and things that once made sense no longer seem to any longer. That is the way that life has a way of treating us. If you don't change your habits, patterns then you end up doing the same ole thing over and over again. This is what happened to me when I returned from Jacksonville to Daytona Beach, my life reverted back to what it was before I ever left. I was surrounded by the same people doing the same things, fell into the same ole routines and plain ended up struggling all over again. Sad part is that I was really doing good when I left Daytona, and my life really started turning around for the better and I let it all go to head back into the same mess and trouble that I left in the first place.

Now, I have moved on and I am in a new city or old depending on your point of view, but it has changed so much since I left that I hardly recognize it anymore. What is even more surprising is that when I left all those years ago, it was reasonable to live here, and I never really had to struggle to find a place and settle in. Now I have been searching for a place to call my own for months now and I am no closer today than I was when I started the search. What is unfortunate about this city is that the prices are so high right now that is near impossible for a person on disability to get in to a place. The ones that I have seen are in such bad areas that I am scared to try and move there, and the area in which I would like to stay there is absolutely no way that I can afford to live there.

The city in question is Orlando, who would have thought that the apartment prices would be on par with that of New York and Los Angeles? I never would have, I moved here back in the early 80's and didn't leave till 98 when I moved to Atlanta. So I haven't been back here is such a long time. But now the pricing is so outrageous that I cannot find anything under $1000.00 a . Even with assistance from HOPWA I am still having trouble getting in everywhere and the background checks and rental screenings are brutal and I haven't been able to get all of my background information changed. I have had 4 different companies do background checks on me and they all have the same misinformation about a charge that happened in Daytona back in 2016 where the judgement was adjudication withheld. Now, each one of these companies has it listed that I was found guilty and even after I have sent them the courts final disposition I am still having to go back and check to ensure that it has been changed on my record. This is a problem because it has caused me to lose employment and now denied housing based on erroneous information.

I am struggling right now and it is hard because I don't know what to do and this issue doesn't look like it is ever going to go away anytime soon. I think that I may even have to consult with Legal Aide to see if I can't get my record totally expunged at this point or find a way of getting this corrected nationwide so that I don't keep running into this problem. So here I sit waiting on all of these disputes on my background check to come back and clear my name which I carefully worked with the Volusia County States Attorneys office in the first place so that I would have a clean criminal history. Guess what that hasn't worked out so well.

Since October me and my partner have been in a forced separation, and it got even worse in late November when he was arrested and has been sitting in jail. Finally the end looks to be in site and hopefully in the next few days he should be home finally. Everything has been worked out and the issues that caused our separation have been cleared away and we have a chance to finally start over again with a clean slate. He is even willing to do a drug treatment plan and get a part time job to help out with necessary things. This will ease some of what I have been struggling against, but only partly. Because as things would turn out in the last few weeks several of my exes have come back in to my life and have started talking to me. This is very surprising and a bit confusing because the opportunity has arisen that would alleviate some of my current issues.

However, I am not really sure how my partner would fit into the scenario that has been proposed to me and I am not sure if the offer that was presented includes him in it. Plus, I am not sure that all the feelings are totally gone that I feel towards the person who has made the offer. I know that we haven't been together in several years, but we get along well together and we honestly complement each other in actions and deeds, it is almost like he is the flip side of me. My partner and I have been struggling for awhile now and there have been some issues where there has been physical contact in the past and I am not sure if he is really in control of his anger issues. He says that he is and that he is willing to work on it together with me and that he really loves me and that he wants to marry me and live the rest of his life with me. But, this is all new territory, he has said similar things to me in the past and manipulated me to get him out of jail and to clean up his messes.

Yet, something has changed this time, his attitude towards me has been one of thanks and gratitude which he has never displayed before. I am used to him getting out of jail and within a matter of weeks reverting back to his same old self and then the issues start again. This time his words sound sincere, he has used the words "Thank you" and "I appreciate everything that you do and have done for me over the past 4 years". These are things that have caught me off guard and have me uncertain. There is a part of me that has been waiting for him to change and grow up to reach this point. Then there is the practical side of me which has been trying to convince me that this is an elaborate charade and that I am heading back into the same issues that I had left behind back in October when we separated.

I do realize that I didn't make things easy for him this time when we separated I cut myself off from him totally and even started seeing someone else. I started these dialogs with people from my past and I have kept my options open. I am also seeing that the time apart caused a great deal of struggling on his part and that he had to resort to things that he never had to do before to survive and that his constant battles left him drained and weary, it also drove him to the point that he has become ready to quit the drugs altogether. I have begun to believe that the distance that happened between us caused him to grow up a little more than he was and that it forced him to realize just how much I do for him. That I am not just someone who is there to clean up his messes and fix the mistakes he has made, that I am someone who really does care and deserves better than what he was giving me. I honestly think that this time might really be different experience and that we might be able to make it work.

If it doesn't what have I really lost but a little more time? I am still talking to others and letting them know what is happening and if he decides that he no longer wants me again like he did the last time, I will have some options available to me that I didn't have the last time. Besides which after everything I have done for him and how I have worked very hard to get him out of jail this time and lessen the punishment that might be imposed upon him, he has seen that there is no one else out there that would have been there for him and done the same things as I have done.

However, never in a million years did I ever think that my life would become so complicated with as many issues as it has. For years I have been sick and dealing with that alone, but now on top of all of that I am also dealing with the fact that every member of my family is sick and in bad shape. I am not alone in this battle anymore. My mom is very far away and dealing with declining health, my father is on East Coast of Florida and is dealing with inoperable lung cancer and my little brother is dealing with end stage renal disease, things just aren't looking good for my family. Then with Bobby and Dudley back in touch with me and the things that they are dealing with has also come to my attention and my best friend Robert Miller is dealing with work issues and needs some financial support things are a little heavy on my shoulders right now.

But, I am strong and I have been dealing with other peoples issues for years, and I am pretty good at it. What is hard is that there are other friends that are struggling and hurting too but I am already stretched so thin that I don't thing that there is anyway that I can help them as well as take care of myself and the ones that I am already taking care of. It is unfortunate that things work out that way, but I am finding it difficult to stretch any further, and yes I would like to be able to help everyone there is just no way that would be feasible. Especially in the present circumstances that I am in and the constant struggle to get myself back on my feet and re-established. I am doing everything I can and trying to get as much help as I can from agencies and people everywhere, it is just slow in coming and is taking much longer than I thought it would.

Anyhow, I just find that life takes these unexpected turns, bring people back into your life that have been long absent, and they are familiar with the struggles that you are going through and maybe just maybe God has placed them back in front of us so that we can help one another and get to the next level. Let me know what your thoughts are on this.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Rambling of the lost

2019-01-03T22:47:00.001-05:00

Darkness falls on the world around me, yet I cannot find the peace I seek. Endless nights of restless slumber hasn't eased my mind a bit. I am bound to another and haven't found a place to call my own. I think sometimes that I will have to forever roam.

I often wonder what is yet to come, I have been through so much there isn't a whole lot that I haven't seen. But who am I to make a scene. Nurses, doctors all in a row, where will they stop I never know. Maybe I would be better off wishing for some snow. But no I live so far south it doesn't seem very likely.

Yet as I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Moon and stars they wink and laugh as I yearn for relief. But my favorite friend is the quiet solitude that enfolds me and keeps me yawning and awake. I often wonder what it will take for my mind to feel at ease and drift off to a soundless sleep.

Nothing answers my lonely vigil as I sit night after night watching the clouds, moon and stars. It is like the world continues to turn and I am left on my own with some sort of lesson yet to learn. I sing and cry, I howl and yell but get nothing in response to my agonizing wail. I sometimes wonder if I am actually in Hell.

Nothing lifts my heart of soul, I muddle through each day aimless and unaware of all that looms around me. It is as if I have lost my sense of will. Nothing placates the inner longing for the days of light and laughter that once were. It is the darkness that clings to me and keeps locked down deep inside this well. I have no hope for rescue, no one understands my plight. Even if I sprouted wings and took flight I don't think anyone would ever see.

I am invisible, restless and lonely me.

A spirit without shape or form, a mind but not a body, drifting floating weightless and hopeless. What business have I left undone? Why didn't I see the light? Something just isn't right! Yet, searching, hoping, yearning and burning I wander each and every night looking for that one thing that will bring me to my slumber.

I wasn't a bad person, I did good by others, I cried and prayed, and lived like they said, yet still I am here, wandering the night all alone. Is this the penance I alone must bear, to never see another soul. To drift and wonder as each night is torn asunder. No crash of lightning or boom of thunder shatter this waiting and hoping for an end.

Was I truly once a live? Did I really have a life or am I just a dream of someone else? Why is the night my home and why can't I ever venture far from what I once thought of as home? Can you hear me? I know you cannot see me, you ignore me as I watch you in your bed. Maybe I am not dead but a figment of your imagination instead.

I guess I will never know, wake up please and tell me truly do you know who I am? Am I you? Are you me? or am I something that is yet to be, or have I always been. These are the thoughts that plague me as I wander through the darkened night and soundless halls. All I see are the same four walls.

Will someone tell me what and who I am for I am at a loss. I don't even know what is real and what is not. I guess I am well and truly lost.

Invisible, alone, figment, spirit, ghoul, or haunt. Heaven or Hell I guess I will never be able to tell.

The Power of Words

2019-01-02T15:33:00.000-05:00

We have talked about "Words" before and the power that they possess. But one thing that I was unclear on was something that I discovered while reading a novel. One of the writers in the Anthology I am reading stated that she didn't think that Words had power. She believes that the true power lies in our ability to believe them. She states that it boils down to three simple concepts: belief, trust and faith. Simply stated she asks herself Do I believe the other person? Do I trust the other person? Do I have faith in them. To her mind words are meaningless without these conditions.

But here is how I see it. Words either spoken or written have power of their own. In my mind it is the way in which the words are used which gives them the power over us. Not our belief in them. Humans use words in various ways most people in anger use words as weapons, to wound, tear down, and belittle others. But the opposite is also true we can use words to build up, encourage, strengthen and help others. Sometimes words spoken in anger, where very little thought is given to the barrage that we launch at another person in the form of insults or defense or just plain to hurt can cause a lot of damage. They can even create wounds that even time can't heal. These are the types of words that I am talking about.

The written word is even more powerful because it is open to the readers interpretation and can have various meanings and can be construed in multiple different ways. Some people can twist and malign words to fit any need they have. So be extremely careful when dealing with words. Positive motivation can be use by using Words of Power, these are written statements that are memorized and repeated daily to engage the higher mind elevations. We call these as mantras, words of power, or chants. These types of words are used to align the mind, body, emotions and soul. These are the components that allow us to visualize and manifest change upon the etheric plane. Which once something is manifested on the etheric plane, it triggers the manifestation here on the physical plane. Many mystics, seers, or students of metaphysics use creative visualization daily to manifest change into their daily lives. Words when memorized and repeated daily can set up the mind to reach through the barriers between the planes of existence and cause manifestations to occur.

So what is the lesson that I am trying to get you to take away from this post? I am trying to teach you that you must be very careful with your words, they have more power and influence than you can imagine. When you take our writers beliefs into account you can influence a person just by speaking to them. Because they trust you, they have faith in you and they believe you. You can cause damage without seemly meaning too. The inverse is also very true. When you speak out in anger without thought to your words you can wound, injure or even destroy a persons spirit and belief in you. Your words can cause permanent damage that even time cannot change. I urge each of you to use your words wisely, thoughtfully and with purpose. Be positive in their usage, use them to enhance, build up, uplift and strengthen others. Use them as positive motivation to encourage yourself and open yourself up to positive influences in your life. Words or Power can draw and manifest things into your daily life that are extremely positive.

Take a mantra for manifesting positive abundance and prosperity and paste it somewhere that you will see it daily and repeat it every morning to yourself and you will be surprised at just how different your life becomes. Here is an example try reading it every morning for a month and see if you don't manifest the positive benefits into your own life:

Words of power for material abundance
There is one power which is the perfect abundance and fulfillment.
And I _________________, and the perfect manifestation of this power.
The power working for me and through me, provides me with all the abundance and fulfillment which is rightfully mine.
I draw to me and create in my life all that I need in the world a form to fill my needs, This may come specifically in the form of money or material possessions or wealth and abundance.
I hereby release all cause effect manifestation form and essence and any channel within me which may have been preventing the appropriate flow of abundance in my life.
I draw upon the balance of the resources in the universe
for the good of all,
according to the free will of all,
And I am firm my own wisdom and understanding my needs, and how to fill them. I call to me just enough resources,
knowing I deprive none,
And I am not deprive myself,
I have just enough.
And so it must be.

Please try this and see if it doesn't work for you like it has for some of my friends.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Holiday Let Down

2018-12-27T18:20:00.001-05:00

Every year after the Holiday's the nation goes through a huge merchandise return period, followed by the yearly let down that people begin to feel as their family and friends leave and head home. Refrigerators are filled with leftovers and the nation goes through a period of feeling bloated and wishing that they hadn't over eaten.

This yearly cycle starts right around Thanksgiving and goes pretty much up till New Years. Every year we go through the motions of stating our New Year's resolutions and for some of us we struggle for months trying to keep them. Some give up in a day or two, others try to keep up with them longer, but eventually they are usually all broken by June.

I didn't have any big expectations for this year at Christmas, my partner was in Jail and I was spending the holiday's with my two best friends and called all my family and friends that I could think of. But other than that I just wanted a quiet time to myself and read my books then deal with a lot of people filled with cheer and gift giving.

Unfortunately, things don't always pan out as they are planned, I had thought that I would have enough money to pay my phone bill this week and keep it from getting shut off, but unfortunately, my funding fell through and it looks like my phones are going to end up being turned off till I get paid on the 3rd of January.

This put's a wrinkle in my plans in keeping in touch with my partner. It also limits me on some of my other plans that I had going on for the end of the year. But in the end everything is going to be alright eventually. I am not too worried at this moment. I am trying to get things situated to so that I can move into a new place after the first of the year. I am hoping that with all my planning and working through Miracle of Love to get into a very nice place works out smoothly so that by the time the dust settles and the partner is home that the new place is ready to move into.

I have also taken this time this holiday season to apply at Lyft and Uber trying to drive with one of them. Unfortunately, my background check came back with some issues and I had to send in to get them disputed and corrected. So I am back in the waiting phase for that. I have also put in my application to AT&T through Spring Mobile who I used to work for in Jacksonville and I am hoping that I hear something back about going back to work for them. I really enjoyed my position in Jacksonville and I have been trying to get back in with them since they let me go due to faulty information that they pulled during my background check.

All in all the new year is looking much better and more hopeful then 2018 did. Yet, with the holiday let down and my mood being all over the place, I have been strolling down memory lane lately and going through old posts and pictures from Facebook and Twitter and other areas of my life. I started reaching out to people from my past trying to rekindle lost friendships and relationships along the way. I think that getting back in touch with people that have meant something to me in the past is an important part of how I am going to move forward. Now that I am 50 I realize that I am missing out on a lot of their lives and I feel alone at times.

For the most part the contact has been positive and well received and I am looking forward to what the future may bring with the coming months and even years as we progress on a new journey of friendship and companionship. I look forward to reaching people who from my distant past seemed to have drifted away and I haven't heard from in years. We will see if things pan out the way I hope and pray they will.

Don't let the post party let down get to you. Don't feel like you have screwed up irreparably your diet because you indulged during your family gatherings, you have a whole year to lose those pounds that you have gained. Family and friends are just a call or text away, and you can stay in touch with them easier now more than ever. With technology the way it is today there should be no reason why you can't keep in touch with those that are important to you. Life is full of unexpected moments and we need to realize and take advantage of them as they happen.

The year is winding down and things are finally drawing to a close for 2018. It is time to start looking forward to 2019 and all the excitement and adventures that it will bring to your life. Forget about everything that you went through in 2018 because it is over and done now and can't be changed even if you wanted to. That is what is funny about the past it is the only thing that is set in stone and can't be changed! The future is fluid and elastic and isn't written till you stumble through it. We don't even know that we are in it till it is past. Because the present is constantly changing and fluxing as we make decisions. Our feet may be on the path, but until you take a step the present doesn't change to the past. Just think about it.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Christmas Spirit and Holiday Cheer

2018-12-17T23:05:00.000-05:00

For several years now I have been reluctant to spend Christmas with anyone, nor did I decorate or celebrate it in anyway. But this year here in Orlando, I am surrounded by the familiar and I have been watching Christmas movies nonstop on Netflix and the Hallmark Channel. This has rekindled a sense of nostalgia and a sense of longing for the time when the holidays meant something too me. Then to top it off Facebook shows me a memory from 6 years ago, to the last festive holiday gathering that I had. It was full of warmth, laughter and love and was spent 3,000 miles away on the West Coast of the United States. Kerry and I were in Los Angeles sharing the holiday season with his family and my friends. That was the last Christmas that I had a tree, decorated the house, had a holiday meal and really enjoyed the Christmas Spirit.

6 years later I am in Orlando with my friend Judy whom Kerry and I spent our that wonderful holiday season with. She is in the holiday mood and has a Christmas tree up and is slowly decorating the house. It is taking me a long time to warm up to the idea of celebrating Christmas again. But as I was sitting there binge watching holiday movies, I got a message from my ex's mother who shared my holiday photos back on her wall and commented on them. There were pictures of me and Kerry, his sister, his grandmother and his mom. We were at the mall doing Christmas shopping when we took those pictures. A sense of longing and loss filled me as I looked at those pictures and I wished that I was back there during those days once again. That truly was the last time that I felt a sense of family and belonging.

But as this year is progressing steadily toward Christmas day and the annual count down has begun and the Spirit of Christmas is slowly creeping upon me. I am beginning to feel the stirrings of Holiday cheer in my heart and I am wondering where it is coming from. I am wondering if it hasn't been there all along and I have been suppressing it along with the feelings of loss and longing that I normally feel at the holidays? I would have to hazard a guess that I was burying all emotions and memories of the holidays for many years, because my aunt, my grandmother and grandfather all died around the holidays and left a huge hole in the family.

This year I have something forward to look forward to. This will be the first year that Dominic and I get to spend a Christmas together, that Judy and I are back together for another Christmas and my ex Matthew has moved back to Orlando and will be hanging out with us to celebrate the holidays. It isn't the family that I remember or had in mind but they are the family that I have with me at the moment and it seems like the right opportunity to try and enjoy myself once again. As most of you know the last 3 years have been rather hard on me, and during the last 3 holiday seasons due to circumstances beyond my control I was homeless for each of them. 2015 was the last Christmas that I can honestly say that I was in a stable environment for the Holiday season. This year I am getting my feet back under me and I am in a safer, stronger environment than I have been in for quite some time and that alone is enough reason to feel festive.

Yet, I cannot help but have melancholy feelings about the last actual Christmas that Kerry and I spent together. We were happy then, everyone had smiles on their faces and it was a fun time where we spent a lot of time with our family and friends. I haven't felt that sense of belonging since that time and I wish for it again. My relationship with Kerry might not have worked out and we aren't together now, but that doesn't mean that he isn't my family and that he doesn't hold a special place in my heart. He is now and always will be forever a part of my life, my personality and will be a part of my family, even if him and I never get back together. We spent 10 years of our lives together, we went through way to many experiences, traumas, dramas, and life incidents that have created a bond and a relationship that can never be broken. Our mutual experiences alone, mean that there is no one that can ever take his place, he will ever and always remain with me.

I have a new life, and I am living back in Florida, I have dreamed of him and I getting back together, but back earlier this year he told me that he was thinking that maybe it was time for him to find a girl settle down and have kids. That would mean that I no longer fit in his new life and world, but that new world cannot and will not ever replace what we mean to each other or replace the things that we went through together. It just means that we have grown and are on a different path from each other right now. But 10 years is a long time to spend with someone and the future is uncertain, there may come a time and a place where we realize that we need each other and eventually find ourselves back together. No one knows! I can only speculate that he is happy in his new life and I am trying to do everything in my power to get to the happy spot in my own life and be comfortable with myself, who I have become and who I truly am. I am content with who I am with and I love him dearly, I can't honestly say that I want anyone else but him at this moment in time.

But this post is about the Christmas Spirit and Holiday Cheer, it really isn't about me or my needs, wants and desires. Christmas Spirit is about loving and giving to one another, uplifting those around us and making those around us feel loved and special. It is about caring and giving, being selfless and loving. It is about family, friendships, relationships and bridging past hurts and making amends, it is about forgiveness and moving on. LOVE is the one word that I would use to describe Christmas Spirit. What word would you give it???

Celebrating the holidays with family and friends is supposed to be a joyous time a year, where we set aside our differences and come together in love and unity. It is about giving presents and gifts from the heart and giving of yourself, selflessly without expecting anything in return. It is about fostering and kindling new relationships, rebuilding old ones and moving into a new year with Love and Forgiveness and Peace.

I am curious what does Christmas Spirit mean to you? What do you expect when you think of Holiday Cheer? What are you expecting this holiday season? Is it coming true for you? Are you happy, who do you miss? What is your Christmas Wish for this Holiday Season?

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

50 years and still going strong

2018-12-15T23:16:00.000-05:00

Despite my many health issues and set backs on this very rough journey I call my life, I am surprised and amazed at reaching my 50 year mark. I have come through some really difficult spots in the road, but I made it through relatively unscathed. My personality and body have battle scars and show definite signs of wear and tear but all in all I am still going strong after all this time. In this blog we have covered many of the battles I have faced and overcome, and many people get the wrong idea that I am a super strong person. They think that I have gotten life and all it's mysteries figured out and they would be so wrong. I am an everyday person who wakes up and faces demons both inside and out of my body. I have a mental addiction to narcotics, and I suffer from severe depression and anxiety to mention just a few of them.

I am also plagued with self-doubt and self-worth issues, and I deem myself unworthy of finding and keeping love. I repeat my own follies and don't seem to learn from my own mistakes, but I have learned that I have the gift of helping people and that by sharing my experiences in this journal of sorts many lives have been touched. I see comments on Facebook and Google + that people leave me regarding what I write and it encourages me to express myself more.

I have just come through a health crisis that has left my body weak and tired. I have found myself lying bed and sleeping most days away. The doctor's tell me that my body is on the mend and that I should be getting my strength back and the sleepiness that I am feeling should fall away from me soon. I hope this is true and that this really isn't a side affect of bout of depression which is keeping me locked down inside myself. I find that when I write in my blog and I purge my soul to you my readers I sometimes feel better about my situation and I find the needed strength to carry on my daily activities and I can cope so much better with the stress and depression I have been feeling.

So here I sit at my laptop and I am pouring out my heart to you once again, even though I just wrote in you just yesterday. But, I couldn't seem to drag myself out of bed today and literally slept till 5pm this evening. I did get up to go to the restroom several times throughout the day but I couldn't bring myself to crawl out of my room or leave my bed for more than 5 minutes at a time. This is not my typical behavior and I am wondering if there isn't something more wrong with me that the doctors haven't figure out yet. For almost 6 weeks I suffered from internal bleeding and on Thursday of this past week I had an endoscopy where the doctor went in cauterized the ulcer that he found bleeding and took some biopsies and sent me home. I was told that I would feel sluggish for a little while, but this hit me 2 days after I had the minor surgery. The at home nurse from Humana suggested that I may be suffering low blood counts with my hemoglobin so low from the blood loss that might be the reason why I am tired all the time. I honestly don't know what my reasons are for feeling like this and I need to look at my schedule closely for the coming week to make sure that I don't miss any of my follow-up appointments because I am hoping to get back on the road to health and start doing stuff for myself and others again.

See, as I look back at what I have been through and all that I have accomplished during the past 25 years I am impressed with the amount of time, energy and emotion I have spent on taking care of others and how selflessly I have given of myself to making sure that my friends and family and extended family were well taken care of. But, this year I have learned that I can't always take care of others for numerous reasons and that I have to be content and happy with whatever level others allow me to participate in their lives. The first lesson is that you can't help everyone, and Second you can only help them if they want your help, otherwise you are meddling in things you shouldn't stick your nose into. Third lesson that I learned is that I can't take care of anyone if I can't take care of myself. Fourth and probably the most important lesson is that it is okay to focus on myself and say NO when I have too. Which, brings me to the fifth and final lesson I cannot continue to give myself, my money, my energy, my love, and my all to everyone that asks for it. I have to be selective and make sure that I am getting back from these individuals what I need to maintain my safety and security and health. Because No one is going to look out for me but myself.

2018 was a growing and learning year for me and I have had to experience more issues and problems so I could learn these valuable lessons. Which are lessons I should have learned a long time ago, but had been so busy trying to help others, and keep my mind occupied with their issues that I didn't have time to focus on myself or my own personal needs. But I was forced this year to take a long hard look at myself and I discovered that by wrapping myself so completely with other peoples issues I was neglecting myself and my own problems and that brought me some serious health issues that I had to deal with over the summer like constant kidney failure, heart issues and long extended stays in the hospital. I spent more time in 2018 in the hospital than I did in 2017 and almost as much as I did back in 2014 when I had my aneurysm and had to have my gallbladder removed and part of my stomach, then spent all of the fall that year in the hospital and rehab center because of osteomyelitis of the spine.

I have grown and learned a lot about human nature, the people I once considered friends, and about myself in 2018 and I am carrying that forward with me into my 50th year of life and 2019. I have learned that many people have hidden agendas that we are never made aware of and they have ulterior motivations for everything they do. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately I am not like them, I am what you see is what you get kind of guy, and if I make you a promise I strive my hardest to make sure I make it happen.

Medical science is still in it's infancy and still cannot predict with any certain accuracy when and if the human body is going to expire. For years they have been telling me that I am not going to make it and every year there is something new that crops up in my life that has the doctors trying to tell me that I am not going to live to see my next birthday, and every year I find a way to make their predictions wrong. One day I might not be able to succeed but not today! My body with the help of the medication that I take daily has controlled the advancement of the diseases that I have been infected with and I am maintaining a sense of health that many of the medical professionals I see are baffled. They can't figure it out and how I can keep going with so many issues wrong with me.

To me it's a no brainer, it isn't my time yet, and God isn't ready to call me home that there is some work left unfinished that I have to complete before my time on this earth is done. Plus, I haven't figure out how not to get up every morning and live. I feel like I need to wake up daily and at least attempt to accomplish something. Like today I feel that I needed to at least write in my blog to make some sort of achievement for today. Yesterday, I accomplished a lot and I have so much stuff coming at me next week that I am going to be going non-stop. I have back to back doctors appointment starting at 8am on Monday and going all the way till Friday with a rest of going to Court on Wednesday for my partner but again that is an early morning as well.

This year isn't going to be typical for me. Ever since I lost all my relatives at Christmas the holidays haven't been special to me or held any special place in my heart. Dominic and I have not spent a single Christmas together in 5 years until this year. I don't really like to decorate or get presents or do the festive holiday themed things that everyone seems to get trapped by. To me it is just another day of the year. So far this year is turning out the same way and I am hoping that something will change this week that will make the difference for me and bring me back to the Holiday festivities and celebration. But I am not really holding my breathe and counting on it. But I am striving towards that as I write this entry.

But here I am with 7 terminal illnesses, I am now 50 years old and I am still going strong. I am still looking out for my partner and friends and I am still taking care of myself. But I am now also following the lessons that I gleaned this year! That is the most important thing that I have found that I need to focus on myself first and take care of everything else after I have done that.

I promise you that if you take the advice given in this entry you will have a more happy and fulfilling 2019. Look forward to pampering and taking care of yourself first. Let those that depend on you take a back seat for once to your own needs. This is not selfish behavior it is truly human nature. Like me you have fallen into the trap of co-dependency and you let other take advantage of you and use your kindness for weakness and your big heart has become a target for abuse and misuse. Take back your power and live. Please don't wait till you are 50 to learn the life lessons I have just now learned. Something I should have known and exercised years ago. Take care of yourself, Love yourself and then look at those around you and see who really is worthy to receive your love and energy, you might find like I did that none of them are worth it and have to move on. If that becomes the case then so be it. AS Long as you are Happy nothing else matters.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Family Ties

2018-12-14T23:48:00.001-05:00

This evening I am sitting here thinking back over my family and wondering what happened in my life that there are no Family Ties. My mother and I are pretty close, I call her when I have the time and I am feeling up to it. But, I hardly speak to my father or my brother. I am trying to figure out what happened to these two relationships that makes them so difficult and hard for me. My father and I got along pretty well when I stayed with him, but since I moved out and have tried to make it on my own we have had some troubled times and have shared some harsh words and feelings.

My brother on the other hand we were closer when we were younger but ever since I moved to Atlanta back in 1997 we have drifted further and further apart and we hardly speak to one another unless something bad has happened in the family. I see some of his posts on Facebook but I don't even have an address or phone number to contact him on. I have asked my mom several times to send me his number she says that she will and never does.

But my family hasn't always been this distant to one another. When my dad's mom was alive we were a much closer knit family, and all of the relatives talked and we saw each other quite often. Since her passing the whole family drifted apart and seemed to go their own separate ways. My dad's youngest brother died just last month in November and that leaves only my father as the last of my grandmother's children. Though all of us grandchildren and great grandchildren are still around my dad immediate family line is completely gone except for him. This must make it lonely for him, though he drifted further and further from his family as the years went by it must be a terrible feeling knowing that you are the last one standing.

I really don't know what caused the rift in my own immediate family and I don't know what is keeping us so far apart from one another. I call my dad when I am go into the hospital, and I try to check up on him every couple of weeks, but he really doesn't reach out and call me like that unless it is my birthday or a holiday. As far as my brother, I don't know what happened between us, when we are together we seem to get along fine and we talk to one another as far as I know there is no hard feelings between us or a reason that is keeping us apart.

I don't know maybe it has something to do with me being gay and always being in a relationship that has kept him away. I don't know, or it could be that I have been sick for so long and everyone has thought I was going to die so many times maybe he doesn't want to get close to me because losing his brother to illness and death might be too hard to bare. I really don't know the answer to that question.

How can a family turn out to produce 4 individuals that are so different from one another? It is almost like we are total strangers to one another, we don't seem to confide in each other and we are all dealing with our own illnesses on our own and trying not to involve the other family members. I think this is totally strange. I see so many families that are so close, that the brothers are best friends and are there for each other. My family is nothing like that.

Maybe it is because of the difference in our ages. I am 7 years older than my brother and that is quite a bit of distance. He had to follow in my footsteps go to the same high school I went to and deal with the same teachers I had, who all probably remembered me. Maybe there was too much comparison between the two of us as he was going to school and he felt like he was treated differently because I was so much older than him. Again, I cannot tell you the answer because no one has told me how they have felt. Now back in June my father and I did have a heated discussion where he frankly told me that I have made his life miserable for the last 50 years and that I was making his death that much worse than it could be. We have made up since then but the words still haunt me to this day.

No, I wasn't the perfect child and I missed some very important life lessons along the way, and I am don't know how to correct that which I have never picked up or learned. I can tell you that I care deeply about people and I am a nurturer and that I try to take care of everyone around me. Most people including my parents are not like that. I may be stuck in a codependency issue at this point, because I feel like I need to take care of everyone and everything around me. Yet, many times I end up losing control of the situation and get myself hurt.

I struggle with these issues as well as self-esteem issues and self-worth issues as well and none of my immediate family seem to suffer from any of these problems. Some of these feelings I can attribute to my early age of having cancer and the scars and surgeries that needed to be done to correct the issues that I had. Some of these surgeries have left physical scars and permanent damage to my body that can never be reversed and at the age of 24 dealing with these life changing events can be traumatic. Not to mention that I suffer from severe depression and anxiety and in 2014 was diagnosed with PTSD.

I am actively seeking help through VA counseling and seeking psychiatric help as well. Nothing that my parents, military or friends taught me helped me deal with my body, illness and disability. I have had to learn to adapt and cope with this on my own. Luckily, I have made some very good friends along the way and have created a pretty manageable support network through them. I also am a writer and I use writing as a sort of coping mechanism that helps me deal with the issues that I am facing. There used to be a time when I wrote every day, but I haven't had that luxury in several years, though I am trying to get back in the swing of it. Because believe it or not it really does help me calm myself and focus on the things that are relevant and important to me at the moment. Writing not only allows me to express myself in words, it is an outlet where I can channel my frustrations and ask myself questions like I am doing tonight when talking about my personal family.

My writing is personal and based on my own life and experiences, it is an outlet and a medium where I can put my thoughts, ideas, poems, and prose into action to help others who may be facing or going through something similar to what I am going through at the moment. Not everyone can benefit from what I write, but I am read by over a million readers a day and I have followers in 40 countries and that is something to be proud of. My words are reaching people across the world and who knows who might be benefitting from my experiences.

Every day I remind myself that I have no idea who might be watching me, who might be learning from me by seeing how I function on a daily basis, nor do I know who is reading and hearing my words. That a simple casual conversation can lead you to an unexpected place. Fate, Destiny and Karma bring us to the place that we need to be at exactly the right moment that we need to be there. Plus God promises us that if we keep the Faith that he will not give us more than we can bear, for just as long as we can stand and will be with us through it all. He will carry us when we falter and lift us up when we fall.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Intolerance and Hatred Not welcome

2018-12-11T00:23:00.000-05:00

Earlier tonight someone posted something on my Facebook page which I took very seriously. For anyone who knows me, they will tell you that I am one of the sweetest and kindest people that they know. I have over 300 signatures and comments in my high school yearbook that will back me up when I tell you this, plus I have many friends from high school that will further attest to knowing me for years and that I am a solid individual who hasn't changed a bit since high school.

But there are several things that I will not tolerate and one of them is hate in any form. If you have problem with my sexual orientation or my being gay/homosexual then you need to keep that information to yourself because after living with this for 50 years I have found peace with it. Whatever your personal opinion is, mine is that being gay/homosexual is not a preference, it is not an illness, and isn't a decision that any sane person would make for their lifestyle.

If anyone has a difference of opinion they are ignorant and full of intolerance and bigotry and they are not welcome in my world or sphere of influence. Your opinion is not something that needs to be shared to me or to any of my readers, we have been through too much to hear your rhetoric, and we do not care what your opinion is because as far as I am concerned there is something terribly wrong with you.

Now this person didn't just go on to say that being gay was my personal choice, they brought my mother into the conversation and stated that I made a conscious choice to ignore her advice and that I went on to do just what felt good to me. I am sorry, this person knows me and my medical history. She used to work for my doctor's office and for her to state a blatant lie like that offended me to the core.

Not only does this woman not know my mother or my father, she put her own personal bias on my page unsolicited because she disagreed with me and my desire to bring my extended family together and to create an environment of love and laughter. To me this is highly problematic because Mommas House for Wayward Homosexuals is a dream that me and hundreds of my friends have talked about for years. For her to state something negative about a place that is being developed out of love, without expectations and recriminations of the past is shameful at best.

My followers and readers know that I have had extensive bowel issues, cancer that has destroyed my large and small intestines, which alone has caused me great deal of personal issues and anxiety in regards to my standing in the gay and straight community, and had me feeling isolated, lost, alone, alienated and unlovable.

You dare to come on my page JoAnn Duran and spout your nonsense hurts me to the core and has left me with very little regard for you and your ignorance. I lashed out at you because your own son is one of my closest friends and has spent hours and hours around me and has no personal problem with my sexual orientation or my identification as being gay, even though I don't have sex in that manner and haven't since 2008.

Whether you consider me gay, straight, neuter or otherwise is your personal opinion and I recommend that you keep it to yourself. You and I have talked on numerous occasions in the past and you have never brought any of your contempt or hate up to me verbally, for you to do so on Facebook is cowardice and shameful. I am embarrassed for you and I hope that you understand that Intolerance and Bigotry and Hatred are not welcome here! I have fought my entire life against society and people like you who have a warped opinion of reality, who refuse to see the truth of the situation and cling to the belief that Gay is a Choice.

Let me be the first to enlighten you! It is not a choice, it is not a lifestyle that is accepted or easy to live, and unless you have tried it you wouldn't understand the prejudice, hatred and pressure we get from everyone around us that want us to be just like them. No matter how hard I have struggled, endured and come through, I still wouldn't want to be someone like you a bitter lonely woman whose own son has used and abused, for the sake of his drug addiction.

Your words struck a chord in me and caused me to lash out towards you, to fall back from them and re-assess who I thought you were. I once thought you were a friend, someone who understood me and accepted me as a person. I never knew that you harbored such feelings against me as I saw glaring off Facebook this evening. I am overwhelmed with pity for you and feel sorry that you have missed out on love and companionship of people like me. Because there is definitely something broken inside of you to make you think less of a person because of their personal identity.

I do mean personal identity, because no other term fits my description. I have not participated in Gay Sex or Straight Sex in years, yet I have a boyfriend whom I love with all my heart, I have been by his side for 5 years and I had another boyfriend before him whom I was with for 10 years and just one more before him that I was with for 12 1/2 years. I am not promiscuous or prone to having multiple sexual partners. I find someone who similar tastes and beliefs as myself and who enjoys being in my company and I in his.

I didn't wake up one day and just decide that I wanted to be gay, that it was cool or fun. It certainly wasn't for the pleasure because let me explain, it had nothing to do with sexual gratification it has been more about who I felt more comfortable being around, and who I could express myself around totally. I many not be your run of the mill gay person, and I may not have a conventional relationship because it is based on something other than sex because me and my partner haven't had the luxury of participating in that event since my colon cancer and loss of my anus and large intestines.

I define myself by a sense of belonging to a community of individuals who are like minded who are attracted to members of the same sex, and I love as hard and as deeply as those with sexual relations. Unfortunately, I am unable to participate in the activity in the way or manner that I like so I tend to avoid it now. I have come through some dark times, battled depression and I have come to terms with my limitations and yet I still identify myself as being gay.

Whatever your opinion is of my lifestyle I am telling you to keep it out of your mouth and off of my page. I have dealt with people like you my entire life and I will fight you and I will tell the world your sad little story if you want me too and you know I know it. I don't want to make this a war, because I am sure you don't want your personal business spread out for the world to judge and see. But that is the major difference between you and me. See I have been in the Gay Community and a leader in it since 1986 here in Orlando, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Dallas, I organized the first gay pride march in downtown Orlando, was instrumental in starting Gay Days at Disney and instead of hiding myself I have been out there on the front line, I know what hatred is, and I have battled against intolerance. I am and advocate for equality, and gay unions, and I am a public speaker. I am an award winning author who wrote the play "The Changing Face of AIDS" and I am a member of the Positive Champions Speaker's Bureau who teaches and battles the myths and misconceptions the public has against HIV/AIDS. I am not some quiet person who doesn't have a voice.

I have published many articles, stories and poems, have even penned some science fiction in my time. My blog Uncle B's Corner has over 2 million visitors and read in every country in the world. I have a platform and a forum. I also am attuned to my writers voice and I know that you are hurting inside yourself and don't like you own life, but you have no right to place your burdens on me or my readers.

As I have said before and I mean it. Your Intolerance and Hate is not welcome here and if you don't have something positive and constructive to say I invite you to stop reading my blog, and my Facebook post because they are intended for my friends, and people who care about what is going on with me and what is happening in my life. Middle aged old bitter women with hidden agenda's personal bias and bigotry are not welcome here!!!

My name is Bryan Zepp, I am known as Uncle B and I write about my own personal life and experiences. I talk about issues that impact my life and I try to help people avoid the mistakes that I have made and try to soften the hurt that they might feel if they screw up. I am here to make people feel good about themselves and who they are. I preach love, happiness and light. I eschew negativity, hatred and idle prattle that means nothing. No one has the right to invade my space with their own bias, let alone their own rhetoric of intolerance. If I wanted that I would listen to mainstream media and espouse the national solidarity which I find utterly laughable. The Moral Majority with the anti-gay marriage stance is archaic and belongs in the middle ages. We are no longer saved by the law. We are cleansed and saved by Grace. Spoken by the apostles all over the new testament. The old covenant between God and Abraham was done away when the temple veil was torn in two and Christ died on the cross. If you are a true Christian and believe in the resurrection of Christ then I advise you to pull your head out of your ass and read the new testament of the Bible where you will learn that We are now saved by Grace and washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb. We no longer need intercessors we have a direct link to Heaven through Jesus Christ the Son of God.

He who hath ears let them hear, He who hath eyes let them see. God is giving us a chance to change our fate and save our world. We have it in our power to change the course that we are on. Jesus only preached love, compassion, understanding and tolerance. The world would be such a greater, safer and happier place if we all just learned that simple lesson and accepted one another for who and what we are and embraced each other in love and kindness.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Walk away While you Can. You don't know when your last moment will be.

2018-12-10T00:22:00.001-05:00

I may be preaching to the choir, but many of you don't seem to realize the truth behind the message that I am trying to send out to you. For years I lived in Atlanta, and in 2012 I moved back to Florida because I was having severe issues with my kidneys and many of my doctors thought that I wasn't going to make it. When my father offered to buy me a ticket from Atlanta home, I took the offer and I have been fortunate ever since. I have been back and forth to Atlanta many times since then, my last visit was in 2014. I had gotten stuck there and ended up landing at my friend Chris Tucker's house and stayed with him till I could find a way back home to Florida. I had gone weeks without my medication and had run out of Colostomy bags and I was in a miserable place spiritually and emotionally. If it wasn't for my ex's mother, caring about me I would have gotten much worse than I was, she took time out of her schedule and drove me to the VA hospital in Atlanta, and got me some Colostomy bags so that I could hold on till I found a way back home.

But it is now 2018 and the world has gotten darker and each morning I wake up to news that I have lost another friend or acquaintance because of an overdose. Drugs have become a major problem for the middle and lower class society here in America and it isn't getting better no matter how much money the government spends on their war against drugs. Prescription pain killers, Methamphetamines and Heroine are the drugs on the street, easy to come by and readily available. Fentanyl is being used to cut many of the substances that are readily available to drug users and is the leading cause of death from ODing. Since 2017 I have lost close to 150 friends and acquaintances to overdose, and that is way too high. The number needs to be zero!

By December of 2017 I had my fill of the drug culture and society that Daytona Beach, Florida hosted. I was tired of being homeless, hungry, scrounging for drugs and constant theft. I was tired of freeloaders and others that were just around because they knew that I was connected and could find them their next fix. So I packed up what few things I had left and I moved to Jacksonville, FL where I started over. Within a few months I was on my feet and doing well for myself. I had gotten a job, got myself back into care and was making improvements in my life. Things were going good for me and I wanted to share them with my boyfriend and partner, Dominic. Unfortunately, after being in Jacksonville for a week he decided that he missed the old life so much that he went back to it and left me sitting at home. He kept saying that he was coming back that he wanted to be with me, but every opportunity he had he squandered and stayed struggling with his addiction in Daytona. Now there is a reason why I am telling you all of this and it is to paint a picture for you and to tell you my story. What happened to me and why I am thankful now that I am finally clean. The setbacks and mistakes that I made along the way and how I am focusing on myself to avoid making them again. Each of us can relapse at any moment, it happens, and it is something to be expected from time to time. But let me tell you something that you might not be aware of. You never know when you draw up that last shot or snort your next line if it might be your last. God is with you and is going to continue to be with you, but He only gives people so many chances to change their ways before he takes those chances away.

In late February I started talking with a friend of mine and Dominic's, I listened to what he told me, which turned out to be my mistake, because I went from the frying pan into the fire. Will had painted a picture of Dominic that was very easy to imagine, used words and arguments that Dominic and I had in the past that only could have been come from him to Will. Will had me so convinced that Dominic didn't love me and that Will was the better person who was going to come and take care of me and sweep me off my feet. The reality was so much different then the fairy tale, let me tell you. Yes, Will did show up and get a job within the first couple of days being there, but the cost of bringing him down from Pennsylvania, and then the expense of having stay with me, began to take a heavy toll. Not to mention that he chose to leave the 1st week of April supposedly to go to court, yet I found documents that he left behind showed that he really didn't have court, he just took off. Trying to minimize my losses I tried to close my bank account which never happened because he over drafted it by 800.00. I ended up cancelling the credit card that was used to rent the car he drove to Pennsylvania, but even today I am being sued by Hertz because there was damage to the car, it was turned in late and in the wrong city. Now let's talk about the reason why he left. Plain and simple he brought drugs into the home after he was told not too. I ended up doing them with him and relapsed. He got funny and stayed away from me but accused me of trying to pick up the neighbor and some random kid off the street. It got so bad that he got physical with me and when that happened it was literally over between us. Dominic and I were together 3 1/2 years before there was any violence between us, and after all the fighting Dominic and I had been through and the associated abuse, there was no way I was taking it from someone else. I was determined and shut myself totally down. I wouldn't give Will a break nor another chance. It just wasn't in the cards.

Meanwhile Dominic had been left in the cold and locked up in jail in Volusia county because he failed to appear in court even though I had sent him back in enough time to make the court date. Because I was so angry with him and I wanted to make sure that he was the right person for me, I wrote him a detailed letter explaining what I thought I knew, everything that Will had told me, I explained that I understood that he wasn't attracted to me and didn't want to be with me and that Will was there now and we had made plans and things were going good. I did however send Dominic a care package as I normally would have but I let him sit in jail. I really thought it was the best thing to do and I thought that it would teach Dominic a lesson and everything would turn out for the better. What I didn't know is that my roommate's partner was going to die and that my dad was going to find out that he had stage 4 inoperable lung cancer and that my world was going to fall back apart.

I ended up going back to Daytona, at first to get some drugs because my roommate really needed them to cope with the passing of his partner. But I went back on the promise of making some money by helping a friend try and get a car. I figured this would help me recover some of the losses I took when Will left. But it only made my life so much worse. I ended up getting my car, wallet and Iphone stolen. My checking account was flooded with fraudulent transactions and I got extremely sick and ended up in the hospital from the end of May till the beginning of June and then to make matter worse from June 20th through the end of the month, then ended up back in there from the 1st of July till the 28th. Again my car was stolen and this time was involved in a couple of accidents. I lost my place in Jacksonville, was strung back out on drugs the entire time I was in Daytona and was extremely sick on top of it.

Dominic got out of jail while I was going through this series of events and was so angry with me for the way that I left him and let him sit in jail that he wouldn't talk to me and only wanted to fight with me. This made my situation that much worse because the one person who I thought would understand what I was going through would be him. But he turned his back on me and left me to my own devices, which on hindsight was probably for the best. In Mid-July my father and I had a blow out my step mother drove me to the McDonalds. I ended up having a minor heart attack and ended up back in the hospital till the end of July, Dominic got caught shoplifting again and was in jail and I ended up having no place to go when I got out of the hospital. I ended up calling my life long friend Judy in Orlando and asking her if I could come and stay with her till I could get on my feet again. I have been here since July and it is now Mid-December and I am still here. Dominic and I eventually start talking and set our differences aside and made up with one another and when he finally got out of jail I brought him to Orlando to stay with me and Judy. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to last because in October when I took Dominic back to Daytona to court he met up with some friends to get some of his clothes and jewelry and the next thing I know he has brought drugs into the house.

This led to major problems. Both of us relapsed and he ended up cheating on me with someone else and I got hurt. He fought with my friend and roommate and was asked to leave. It wasn't pretty, but it is what it is. I took him to a friends in Deland where his relapse continued till he ended up back in jail on November 25th. He is still in jail today but we are hopeful that he will be out by the 19th of December and we will be able to finally spend our first Christmas together. Since we have never been able to share a Thanksgiving, my birthday or Christmas together since we got together in 2013.

I went into this whole story to show that everyone no matter how hard they try is prone to relapsing and falling back into a habit and pattern of usage over and over again no matter how far or how hard they have tried to get away from the drugs and the people that have them. Because we are all human and we suffer from anxiety, depression, insecurities it is hard to stay away from a long term habit like that. I used to think that by changing the people you hang around, the place you live and your entire surroundings that you could totally escape it. That isn't the truth! It will be a life long battle trust me when I tell you this.

But now let me talk to you about the friends and loved ones that weren't so fortunate as me and Dominic, those that didn't escape the epidemic that is sweeping the nation and the world. Many of my friends are no longer here, so it is my job to convey to you their story to leave with you the last thought that they each had before the past from this world to the next. Like Dominic and I they thought that it would never happen to them, that they were stronger than the addiction and that they could do just one more line, one more shot and it would be okay. But, in all cases they were wrong. My dear friend Jade was found outside of an abandoned resort so desiccated that they could not identify her by anything other than the serial number on the pacemaker that was installed in her heart because like many of the young ladies in Daytona she contracted Cardio myelitis and cardiotoxicity associated Methamphetamine usage. Neil was found blue and in his car dead because of a hot shot that had been laced with heroine. So many other I could name have lost their lives to drug use and overdosing. But drug use alone is not the only cause of loss of life, many of the gay people I know are heavy into the use of methamphetamine to get their high and intensify the feeling of sexual activity. Many of them have poor diet and end up forgetting or stop taking their medications and before you know it they have complications to HIV/AIDS that they are dealing with.

To sum up what I am feeling and the fears that I have for you I am going to include an earlier post that I made a couple of days ago. But first let me tell you that each time you pick up that needle, make your next line, you are taking your own life into your own hands. You think that you are strong enough, that you don't have an addictive personality or you can handle it just one more time. You are wrong too many of our friend are no longer here because they too thought that way and felt that they could beat back the addiction that was plaguing them. We are not strong enough alone to combat this demon, and it will never be a battle that can be fought and one by a single decision. This is a life long commitment and a struggle that will consume you for months and possibly years to come. But I have known others that have fought and won, some days are harder than the next, some days might be easier to cope, but after a time the fight will become second nature to you and you will stop focusing on the battle and will begin living again. Reach out to those around you, tell them about your issues, your addictions and ask them for help. The first step in dealing with a problem is knowingly acknowledging that you have one. Do not be ashamed to ask for help or guidance it may just save your life. So now I want to dedicate this to my fallen friends, lost loved ones and anyone else who is battling this dreaded demon of Drug addiction.

To all the friends, family, loved ones, acquaintances that I have lost my heart goes out to you and I want you to know that my world has become less bright and so much smaller since you are no longer in it:

Listen everyday I wake up and the world has become a smaller place. I have lost too many friends, relatives, and people I care about to this drug epidemic that has hit Florida. My heart is in Daytona Beach and everyday some is ODing or getting locked up. What will it take to get you to see that the few minutes of a high is not worth your life! The grief you have to go through to get the stuff, not to mention the constant loss of clothes, material possessions, the couch visitors and homelessness that accompanies it all. The daily struggle, the daily loss, sickness and just miserable feelings!

Please understand I am your friend I am trying to look out for you. I got tired of being walked on, homeless, struggling for food and housing, I got fed up with asking for help and never finding it. The constant drama that followed not being able to always supply demand. I want better for all of us. I want to stay clean and sober, if I could I would continue to help everyone!

Yet, I reached a limit and had to put myself first. Everyone else second. It doesn’t mean I love you less, it means that I finally realized that if I am not clean I cannot expect anyone else to get there either. That if I couldn’t take care of myself I couldn’t help anyone else. I am struggling right now but I am moving forward. Staying away from the drugs and bettering myself. I have a hope for the future and I am working hard to create a reality of safety and security. I am going to get this right and lead others to follow me.

We have lost enough, suffered enough, endured enough. We have survived so far and have changed, grown stronger and wiser. We have heard it all, know all the excuses and will not tolerate anything but the best from the rest of you. Join me we can beat this thing together. Grow stronger and make a difference!

-B

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Nothing prepares us for the future

2018-12-09T16:36:00.002-05:00

My birthday just passed on December 1, 2018 and I reached my 50th birthday. A mark in my personal history that I thought I would never reach. Many of you know my story and my history and have known that I have been sick for a very long time. That almost 27 years ago now I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Large Cell Lymphoma that destroyed most of my Large and Small intestines. I have been lucky and have survived through many things throughout the years. But nothing ever prepares you for the future. It is true that with each illness I have gained knowledge and strength, I have been surprised with the ferocity that the illness returns each time. Even now I am being plagued by internal bleeding and not knowing what is actually wrong and causing it. I have spent most of the month of November in and out of the hospital, had to have blood transfusions and a battery of tests that were inconclusive and didn't shed any light on my recent illness and lack of strength.

2018 has been a strange year for me. It moved fairly rapidly and many things happened that have left me with my head spinning and less of an understanding regarding human nature. It is also true that the strong prey on the weak, and people constantly try to take advantage of the ones that they think are weaker or nicer then themselves. I have been constantly embroiled in a battle since 2010 where I have been continually used and abused by people I struggled to help and who I thought I was doing good by. When I ran into difficulties of my own, I found myself struggling alone and there was no one around willing to help me in the same ways that I had helped them. I bounced around and was struggling constantly battling drug abuse, homelessness and hunger. Several times I attempted to change my circumstances and twice things rebounded on me and I ended up on my own and all alone again.

I lost a lot of friends and acquaintances over the past 2 years to drug overdose and complications to HIV/AIDS it hasn't been a comforting thought. I never thought that I would face such loss. Now that 2018 is drawing to a close I am reminded that some of my very best friends are no longer here. Every one of my family members is sick currently, and none of the prognosis's are good. My father is battling in operable stage 4 lung cancer, and my brother is battling end-stage renal disease, my mother is paralyzed from the waist down and has been extremely sick since June. All of us have been going through hospitalizations and multiple doctor visits.

We also lost my dad's youngest brother in November to Lung cancer and the family is still in shock about that. It is unfortunate that as we get older our bodies tend to weaken and our ability to heal slows and we don't recover as fast as we did when we were younger. It is hard to believe that I am 50 years old now, that I have reached middle age and haven't really grasped the essential concepts of how to live and survive on my own. My entire life I have been constantly surrounded by other people and have been a care-giver. I thought that by now I would have at least learned the basics of survival and living on my own. But unfortunately, somehow I missed those life lessons.

Nothing that I have been through has prepared me for the future that is looming in front of me. I am suffering from the loss of many of my friends and a support network. I am in love with someone that I realize doesn't honestly feel the same way for me. I struggle with depression and dependence issues and I also have a desire to change my outlook on life. With the possible loss of my family closing in on the horizon, I am afraid of what I am going to find when I am all alone. I have never learned how to survive on my own and I struggle daily to overcome my own depression and weaknesses. I am afraid that once I loose my parents I will be totally lost and will not know what to do with the rest of my life.

None of my dreams ever included me outliving my friends, peers or my parents. I thought when I was diagnosed with cancer that it was the end for me but I have survived longer then most other people and I have overcome so many obstacles and outlived so many predictions of my demise. I am not sure what I actually thought my life was going to be like, but this is not what I imagined when I left Orlando the first time and followed Joe Royer to Atlanta. I never imagined in a million years that I would suffer from Colon cancer and that I would become disabled at such a young age. I never really faced the truth of it all preferring to loose myself in drug use and addiction. I surrounded myself by like minded individuals and created relationships and sexual partnerships with those that were lost in that world. I have clung to the tapestry of my life and my existence because I really knew no other way. Now I am back in Orlando, back where it all started and some of the same people that I have known from my past are here as well. I am trying to rekindle those lost friendships and relationships trying to rebuild my life and change the course of self-destruction that I have been on.

I don't understand what the future has in store for me but I know that I don't want to continue down the path that I have been going down for so long. I want to change and by doing so I need to change everything about my life and what I have going on around me. I want my partner to be with me, but if he doesn't want me in the same way that I want him then I am afraid that I am just waisting my time all over again and just setting myself up for heartache and pain. I am going to stop writing tonight and continue this more in morning when I have more time to reflect on my life and situation.

Till we meet again in the morning! Well it is actually a few days later I am picking up where I left off. Today is now the 9th of December and I have gained a few more insights into the world that I was writing about the other day and I wanted to finish up on the topic of Nothing Prepares Us for the Future. From the previous written dialogue you can see that I wasn't given a manual in which spelled out the answers to all of life's problems and made it easier to live by. No after Joe and I broke up my life changed dramatically, I couldn't seem to pull myself together in any way that mattered. I have struggled from that moment on till now, I can't explain it. But the lessons I should have picked up along the way I didn't or maybe have forgotten. I pushed myself further into my misery and drug addiction and as I said surrounded myself by like minded individuals. I lost myself and my direction and it has taken me years to come back to the realization that I am a person and that I do matter and that I do count and that I have purpose and meaning. I still haven't made it back to my go out and get what I want personality but I am striving daily to reach it.

I realized not too long ago that when I left Orlando and went to Atlanta I had a go getter mindset. I saw what I wanted and I set about getting it. Years of being with Joe softened me and then illness struck and I lost heart and hope. I gave up literally because I couldn't see a future with me being the broken and lost person that I was. I suffered and still do at times from the illusion that the Gay lifestyle and world couldn't accept me, that I was a broken person and that I had no place in either gay or straight society. I was hurt and lost, I drifted aimlessly for years feeling sorry for myself and I left so many friends and loved ones behind in my self-pity trip. Luckily many of them have stayed on the edges of my life all these years and I hear from them every once in awhile. But here I am now at 50 and I am looking at my life and wondering where to go and how to begin again. As you may be aware I have never figured out how to give up or surrender. I just couldn't figure out how to stop living, waking up in the morning and going on with life.

For many years I dedicated myself to the service of other people, trying to help out where I could and take care of those that needed it. I threw myself into trying to take care of everyone and being there to help others that were in need. In other words I gave myself over to the service of others and I put their needs ahead of my own. In a sense this worked to give me a purpose and I woke up daily to take care of those that I felt were less fortunate than me and who needed my help. By focusing on their needs I was able to put my own to the back of my mind and focus totally on them. This maybe the very reason why I am still with you today. I selflessly dedicated myself to helping and taking care of others. I created a huge extended family and I struggled to take care of each and every person that I cared about. This may seem crazy to you but I believe that by doing this I was able to live a much longer and fuller life than I normally would have. I believe that my dedication to others is what helped me survive all the sickness and illness that plagued me through the years and helped give me the desired will to survive so that I could continue taking care of those that mattered to me.

Food for thought: We are not able to chose our own family but we do have the ability to create and extended family that we can relate to and who is there to support us and nurture us and we offer similar support back in return. Many of you are in my extended family and I am grateful to have each and every one of you in my life.

As I am looking back on the days that have gone by and I be extremely honest with myself we endured a lot and overcame so many hardships that bonded us together in ways that others just couldn't understand. Despite that we are all separated by distance now and have scattered to the 4 winds. Some of us still in Atlanta, others in California, Florida, Texas, Chicago and other places we are still a family and what brought us together is apart of us forever. Our mutual experiences and the challenges that we faced and overcome together have bonded us in ways that make us irreplaceable in each others lives. No one can take the place you hold in my heart ever and no one will ever be able to replace what you mean to me and how you are a part of me. Each of us has left their mark on the other and that has helped shape us into the people that we have become. I know that it might seem like I was complaining earlier about my life and the losses that I suffered and have endured but the truth is I wouldn't change any of it for the world because if I did I wouldn't be the same person that I am today and you wouldn't be in my life making me a better person.

I may not have learned how to take care of myself and learned how to live alone, but I learned something just as equally important. I learned how to take care and appreciate others, I learned how personal sacrifice and dedication of the heart and spirit to the wellbeing of others is helpful to ourselves. If I hadn't I probably wouldn't be here today. Many of you would have to visit my resting place and wouldn't be able to talk to me like you can today. So let me thank you for helping me learn this lesson and for giving me the strength to carry on when all seemed so hopeless around me. Understand and know that you are the life source that has kept me alive and healthy all of these years.

Now that I am looking toward the future and many of us have been scattered to the 4 corners of the earth I am struck by the over powering desire to reconcile all of my differences with everyone, to apologize for the wrongs that I have done and the sins that I may have committed against you. I want to rekindle the relationships the friendships and bridge the hurts, the harsh words and bitter emotions that might be separating us. I want to be your friend again, and be able to count you as mine and for us to be there for one another because lets face it none of us are getting any younger. We are going to need each other and we once supported one another and will probably need to do it again as we move forward.

I was feeling melancholy when I started writing this entry into my blog, but I am feeling better now that I am drawing to a close. My desire above all else is for us to all come together again in person. I still have a dream that has been with me for a long time now. In the future we are all of going to need a place to call home. Many of you might remember us talking about and joking about me starting a retirement home, I used to call it Mommas Home for Wayward Homosexuals. It is my dream to buy a huge mansion one day and bring all of us who know and love each other back together again and have our own place. A place where everyone has a place there are no expectations, no recriminations and everyone can live out the rest of their lives in happiness and friendship, surrounded by love, light and happiness. This is not an impossible dream or goal and might be something that we could all accomplish together. Creating our own compound where we all live and work together to build a stronger and brighter future for ourselves and where each of us is able to live stress and debt free.

Please let's try and make my dream a reality.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

A little story can lift your heart and soul

2018-10-09T23:03:00.001-04:00

Have you ever watched a feel good movie and felt better about yourself and your life afterwards? I did just tonight. I watched a movie called "Fishbowl California", a movie I knew absolutely nothing about, and it lifted my spirits and gave me some peace of mind. The story is seemingly ordinary about the life of a man battling cheating girlfriend, unemployment, homelessness, and plain old bad luck. I felt like I could relate to the main character and have experienced much of the same issues that he was. He met an older woman that challenged him, and in the long run changed his life. As I said it was a feel good movie, with everyday challenges and life issues, but throughout the comedy/drama you began to feel something for the characters and were pulled into the story along with the pain that each one was feeling. It isn't every day that a film comes along and makes me feel the way this one did.

In the story the main character suffered from being homeless, aimless, and having no thoughts other than himself, yet along the way he runs into a tough older woman, with a gruff exterior and tender interior that she hides from everyone including herself and her daughter. You find out that she is sick and possibly dying, in mourning for her husband who has passed and has finally given up on living and is just existing day by day. She is a drunk and has a tough exterior, she takes no bull from anyone yet has a kind heart. Our main character is caught stealing from her and she puts him to work, fixing up the house and cleaning up the yard. Pressure from her daughter to take better care of herself and to get some help. In an attempt to do that she lets the guy stay with her, but he starts to understand that her drinking is a form of avoidance from life and her illness. The daughter appeals to the young man to help her make sure that the mother starts taking her medication daily. This causes a rift in the household and the old lady throws the young man out.

She starts regretting how she treated the young man and begins taking care of herself and stops drinking totally. Within a couple weeks go by and the young man comes by the house to see how the lady is doing only to find that a memorial service is going on. Thinking that the lady has passed away he starts talking about how the woman helped him find himself and took a chance on him when no one else would. This turns out to be a joke and he passes out. When he wakes up he finds that she had decided to give her old self a funeral. She had decided to put her house up for sale and move to Hawaii, apparently the ocean air will be good for her health. As such she decided to give something to the young man who had inadvertently helped her give up drinking and changed her life for the better.

This story reminds me so much of something I wrote a lot about in earlier blog posts about not knowing where a casual conversation will lead you, or how your interactions with someone might benefit them in some way that you couldn't have foreseen. Life is like that in so many ways, we don't know who is looking at us or why. Others might find hope or inspiration in how you are living your life, or could be gaining strength from your struggles. I would like to remind each of us to live as an example for others to follow. Believe in yourself, and know that everyone out there is going through something. You are not struggling alone, and there are people out there who see you. You may not even know them. Others might find inspiration in your life, your story and your struggles. You might be helping people without even being aware of it. Everything you do has far reaching effects on those around you and the environment in which you life.

Take the time to talk to strangers, introduce yourself too them, tell them your story. You might be just the thing that they need to help them get to the next step or progress past an issue that is heavy for them. You never know but each of us has come through so much, done things that others have been afraid to do and we have grown from our efforts. Others, can benefit from you in small or even big ways if you just take the time to express yourself to them. I have often been accused of never meeting a stranger and that is partly true. Every opportunity I get I talk to others about the things that I have been through, my illnesses, my victories and even my defeats. I talk to them about my struggles with addiction and depression and I try to help others by writing my story in my blog. I want people around me to see hope, to gain inspiration and joy from getting to know me. I hope to be someone that helps others around me and teach them how to be the same for those that look to them.

My dad has told me that I can't save everyone, that I have to be smart about how I go about helping other people, and that I shouldn't let them take advantage of me. Sometimes, I get to involved and wrapped up in myself that I don't even notice when someone is using me or trying to take advantage, so I have started distancing myself. But I have begun to see how many people look at my life and they are trying to better themselves by using my examples to help themselves around the issues that plague them. This is a form of helping and is a by product of merely just living my life the best way that I know how.

For many years I led people into the drug world and at times that I thought I was helping them, I was actually enabling them to continue in their abuse and addiction. Only by walking away from the scene myself and encouraging others to do so have I truly been a help. I may have provided a safe warm place that they could indulge themselves, but I wasn't really helping like I thought I was. I have taken so many people off of the streets, and thought I was giving them a chance to better themselves and help them get off of drugs, but what was really happening was I was allowing them to continue in their habit without recourse or consequence to their actions. The weren't on the streets anymore I was providing them with housing, food, and often times more drugs. In effect I was keeping myself surrounded by similar types of people so I didn't feel so guilty about what I was doing, and I convinced myself that I was actually helping others. Some I may have, others maybe not so much, but in the end I learned more about myself and what I really wanted out of life.

Drug addiction is not a game, and it really takes work to remain sober, each day is a constant battle of the soul versus the mind and it never gets easier. If you truly want to help someone get out of that situation the only way to really do is it is to have a zero drug tolerance policy and enforce it. Otherwise you are just fostering an addiction and enabling the person to keep using. Recovery is not something that can be undertaken lightly and must be committed too from the very start. No ifs, ands, or excuses about it. I know that the methods that I used to employ were not effective for treating an illness, they were a way for me to surround myself by like minded people and feel better about myself and what I was doing. Even though I had their best interest at heart my methods were suspect and the help that I gave wasn't effective. I have since changed my thoughts on this and I still try to help those around me who need helping but I have different ideas now about how to go about it and what I am willing to accept in my life and what I am willing to do to help them.

I won't be buying the drugs, will not allow them to be used in my home and I will not let someone manipulate me into falling for the "Just one more time routine". Enough is enough too many of my friends have died or gotten so sick from drugs that it really isn't worth it. Life is the most precious gift we are given and to squander that and to through it away is not something I want to help with anymore. I am so proud of my friends who have started down the road of recovery and are celebrating their sobriety. I wished I would have learned this to help more people earlier. But I am with you in this battle now and I am not giving up and neither should you.

As always you are in my hopes and dreams,
Uncle B

Disappointments

2018-10-09T22:06:00.000-04:00

Disappointments should be nothing new to me. I have placed my hope in others and have been let down so many times in the past that I should be used to it by now. Things hardly ever go the way I plan them, so I try to remain spontaneous and in the moment all the time. I had wanted to go to visit my friend Robert Miller in Ft. Lauderdale this month because he was having surgery to replace his hip. Unfortunately, I made some choices that limited my travel options. I can't go and surgery took place today, but he is doing well and should be on the mend soon. Early this month I helped out a friend and used up what savings I had. But disappointment aside, I wish I could have gone, but things just didn't work out toward that direction. I wanted to go see my dad at the end of last month because he was in the hospital, but things conspired against me and I have run into trouble with the bank that actually occurred over Labor Day weekend. A clerk at the local Circle K where I bought my cigarettes actually used my debit card and charged $335 dollars and the bank found that these charges were similar to my spending habits and that there were no wrong pin attempts and decided that these charges weren't fraudulent. This has set me back over a 1000.00 in the past 2 months and has seriously hurt my ability to make ends meet let alone go anywhere on a weekend trip.

I am still battling with TD bank over the fraudulent charges that were put against my account back in July when Domeneck Lattella stole my iphone and debit card and tried to put through checks that weren't any good. If I could recover a portion of the money that he profited from against my account I would be in a much better financial situation. But, I am not sure what is going to happen with the bank and the decision that they had come to. I had told my friend Judy that I wasn't planning on staying with her longer than 90 days and that time is rapidly coming to a close and without the financial help of Ryan White or the Bank reversing their decision I am sort of stuck in the living situation that I am in.

I have found a house here in the Orlando area that is $800.00 a month and it includes all the utilities. I am excited that I was able to find the house, now I am struggling to come up with the move in money that the woman is looking for. I am hoping that everything falls into place and that I don't have to struggle to get into the house. It will be a great feeling to finally have a place over my head again, after being homeless for so long. I have come so far, and overcome so many hardships that it is time that something good finally falls into place. I am hoping that in the next couple of months I would have enough saved up that I will finally be able to get another car. In the 2 1/2 months that I have been in Orlando I have been able to clean up my act and get many of the things that I lost when I got screwed over in Jacksonville.

I know that things will eventually come out the way that they are supposed to. I have registered with Ryan White and let them know that I am in need of housing assistance and I am hoping that someone will be in contact with me soon and will be able to help me some towards getting into this place. It will certainly help me get into a better place and be able to stand on my own two feet again. After being adrift since 2017 to have a home base and firm foundation will be an achievement that I can be proud of. I thought that I was on the right track when I was in Jacksonville, but things went sideways so fast, and I ended up being on the streets again and that was extremely rough. I don't want to put myself in that type of situation again.

It has been my history that once things start going better the rug is pulled out from under me and I fall flat on my face. I have lost so many things over the past 20 years that these moments of achievement pale in comparison. I am not sure what the future holds but there are many programs out there that might be able to help me get further ahead then I have been before. I have been coasting for the past several years and just riding the ups and downs of life, and not trying to really embrace what things are happening around me any more. I gave up on my volunteer activities because I got wrapped up in my own little world and didn't want to burden those around me with the issues that I was facing, preferring to handle them on my own. But, the truth of the matter is that I was embarrassed, I got back involved with the drug culture of Daytona, and got sucked into the schemes and scams of those I associated with. Before, I knew it I was back on the street doing the same things that I was doing before when Kerry left me.

Now that I am away from that crowd and the influence of drugs I can see that others have followed in my footsteps and have begun the journey toward sobriety and recovery. Though not everything has been a disappointment and some of the gambles that I have taken have paid off, I am never the less concerned about where I am heading in the future. My direction at this point is unclear and people from my past have stopped talking to me altogether and I am not sure what that means. Originally I was hoping that I would be back up in the Atlanta area by the beginning of the new year but that doesn't look like that is even in the picture anymore. I have been talking to the Carol, the lady that owns the house that I am attempting to rent about doing a rent to own purchase from her. This would be something that would give me stable roots and something that I am extremely interested in. The truth of the matter is that I am hoping that this first year lease works out and that we get along well with the neighbors and the landlord and that opportunity is still on the table. That would definitely be something of a plus for me going forward. It has been a long time since I have owned my own place and it would be nice to finally have something to call my own again. A place that would continue in my family and be a legacy I could leave to others after I am gone.

Speaking of gone, my father is still very sick and isn't doing all that well with his treatments, which is also a disappointment to me. I don't know what I am going to do if both of my parents pass away, both seem to be going through their own series of medical issues and at the age of 70 they may not be around much longer, and I can't keep depending on them like I used too. This means that I have little time to get my stuff in order and get back on my feet, because once they are gone I will not have any other support system around me. Robert is in Fort Lauderdale and is married now and has a husband to worry about, and all my other close friends are in Atlanta or Pennsylvania, I am here in Florida on my own now. So much has happened over the past 6 years that it is impossible for me to know how my friends in Atlanta are fairing and if they are still doing the same stuff they were doing when I left, I am not sure I want to go back into that situation. Up until 2015 I was traveling up to Atlanta fairly often and was in contact with a lot of them but over the past 3 years my health and situation has changed and I am not as capable as I was before to travel up there and get myself wrapped up in the silly games I used to play around with.

I haven't heard from Kerry or Sterling since I first got to Orlando. I don't know if the plans that Kerry and I were talking about are still on the table or if he has changed his mind and is going about doing his own thing and not included me in those plans or what. Last I heard Sterling was heading out to Washington State to help his friend who was going through some heavy medical issues. So plans moving back to Georgia seem to be on hold indefinitely at this point.

Good news is that Dominic has gotten himself into rehab and will soon begin the program and that will benefit him in the long run. The waiting game is the hardest part right now. But we got him in and got him an ID, the program is supposed to help him with housing and job assistance both of which he needs for the future and will help cover some of the out of pocket expenses I am having to cover at the present time. The only draw back at this moment is that of transportation. I don't have a car and there doesn't look like there is going to be one on the horizon any time soon. I am hoping that our friends Nick and Justine who say they want to come to live with us in Orlando will be able to help me cover the rent and that will free my money up to help with transportation costs.

What I have discovered that with any plan there are bound to be many disappointments in life. It seems that every venture comes with its own share of disappointments, and issues. It is by coming through the disappointments and overcoming the issues or challenges, that we learn and grow. We don't ever start something knowing every nuance there is about it, and unforeseen things tend to crop up at the most inopportune moments, but it by these things that we mature and grow and learn how to deal with them. Life is full of excitement and challenges, but along with those comes the disappointments, the struggles and the of course the doubts. Yet, the rewards for doing a job well done and the feel of accomplishment outweigh the disappointments, discomforts, and tears that we shed over them.

No one ever promised us that life was going to be easy, or free from disappointments, nor did they tell us that it would get easier the further in life you go. No unfortunately, the challenges are going to remain the same or become greater the longer you are alive, the good thing is that the more you experience, the more you learn, the faster you grow, and the more knowledge and wisdom you obtain. Sometimes, it might seem easier to give in to hopelessness and despair, but believe me there isn't any reward in doing such. You will feel better about yourself, and gain more confidence and strength the harder you apply yourself to the situations you find yourself in. Even now as I am facing an uncertain future, and my health isn't the greatest it could be, I find myself in a hopeful place, a place where I can reflect on my past and I have a clear vision of what I have accomplished, what I have survived, what I have come through, what I continue to go through and I have a better more complete understanding of the struggles that I am facing today than I did yesterday. I have more hope today than I felt last month or even last year. I know that if nothing changes I will be alright and I can make it, I can survive and I will.

Don't give in to your despair and doubts, know and reflect constantly on your past and what you have accomplished, achieved and come through. In light of that the challenges of tomorrow won't seem so scary and you will be able to have more confidence in your decisions and your choices. Think smart, stay alert and be vigilante not to succumb to the doubts, depression, and disappointments that creep up on you. You are stronger than you give yourself credit for and you have accomplished so much and gained even more through your personal trials and struggles. Use your story, to help others and give others the tools they need to move forward. Be a shining example of what other can be, even if you have doubts yourself. You never know who will benefit from hearing your story and how your struggles might inspire someone else to move forward in their own life. Life is not easy, it is tough and demanding! Every day is a struggle through grief, strive and your own personal demons, but you can come far just by believing in yourself.

One last note that I would like to share with those of you who are going through your own recovery. Keep in mind that you will have to fight every day to overcome the urges and desires of your brain, but you can do it, you can overcome and be victorious, you have to keep going, even if you have a fall and slip up, don't give up you owe it to yourself and those that love you to keep trying and to live again. It is hard, and doesn't get easier, but I know you have found the strength to start this journey, now all you have to do is fight to make it through. Battle everyday, fight for what you want, and keep your head held up. There are others like you going through it and they too are struggling and you can help each other by sharing your testimony and your story for others to hear. Know that you are not alone, that I am fighting every day the same way you are and if you need me I am hear to offer you words of encouragement and guidance, pick up the phone, call, email, text, I will encourage you as much as I can.

As always you are in my hopes and dreams,

Uncle B

Trying to reconnect with my lost extended family

2018-09-14T06:32:00.000-04:00

The lack of the ability to sleep. Is the classic definition of Insomnia and it is an affliction that I have been battling for a very long time. I used to joke that I lived a Vampire life with my use of drugs I would be up all hours of the night. When I lived in Atlanta I would get high and walk the streets, and I always had a house full of people that surrounded me, but still I felt isolated and alone. Now that I am finished with that life, I am still plagued by the sleepless nights and it is wearing on my heart and mind a lot lately.

I have been reaching out to friends from the past trying to reconnect with them, once I had my heart attack in July I began to realize how important those people were and are too me. Yet, I have talked to a few, I can't seem to get them all to communicate with me on a regular basis. So instead of sleeping at night now my thoughts have turned to them and I am worried about them and wonder what they are each up too. I must admit that I feel responsible in a major way for each of them. At one point or another they were in my life as a partner, boyfriend or lover and I am wondering if they are suffering and going through many of the same things that I went through.

I wonder if they are lonely, suffering, going through recovery, or are still stuck in the Vampire life that I have left behind. Many of these individuals I introduced to the world of the needle and at one point one of the people I was associated with called me the angel of Death. I often wonder if that name might not be appropriate. I cannot change what I did in the past, but I never once stopped caring about any of the people who I dated or were in my life. The world of meth and it's culture is something that I have been intimately associated with for the last 20 years or more. I have met a score of people, shared my home with them, my drugs, and life with them. As more and more of my peer group is disappearing to death, drugs and disease I worry more for them then ever before. I want to rekindle those past friendships and relationships and see what has become of them. I am not proud of the person I was, but I am not ashamed because of it either.

Because of my past experiences I have met so many wonderful, unique and quality individuals that have left a huge impact on my life and have taught me so very much about myself and humanity in general. I still have a dream in which I bring as many of these people back together in my life and we share once again our passions, dreams and ambitions. It was never my intention to close myself off from them or lose contact with them. It is something that just happened over time and distance. Though I have been sporadic in my contact with them. I am hoping that by reaching out now as I have been doing that I will at least get the chance to see each and every one of them again. As I have been posting for weeks now, my 50th birthday will soon be upon us. My hope and wish is that from my 50th birthday onward to find as many of these past friends and acquaintances and put back together my extended family. I am not sure where or how this is going happen yet, but I am hoping that it will present itself in the near future.

But as I started this post about insomnia I guess I should explain what is actually happening to me, and it seems to be getting worse instead of better. In the 1990's and 2000's I was introduced to Meth and was mainly a smoker of the drug until much later. Sleep and being a night owl were always a thing of mine, but I never really had a problem falling asleep till recently when I came back to Florida in 2012. Now it seems like I cannot sleep at night at all. I can nap during the day but as soon as the sun goes down I am up and restless the whole night through. You would be amazed and surprised at all the movies I watch on my computer. I am also writing more in my blog which is a good thing actually. It is more for my benefit than anyone else's at this point. It helps me sort out my feelings and is a good coping mechanism for my anxiety and helps keep me from falling head long into depression.

I am not sure if the insomnia is a psychological issue or if it is something that has become a habit that has been ingrained into my pattern and is something that I am going to have to fight to break out of. It really makes it hard to go to doctor appointments in the morning when I am up all night, then I am tired all the next day. For the past 5 days I have been feeling terrible and I have been sleeping almost the whole day through. But, as I laid down again this evening thoughts of everyone kept crowding my mind and I am wondering what has been happening with them and where are the all right now, are they safe, are they struggling and what is it that they need or are doing and it has kept my brain going crazy. I had a totally different post planned about insomnia when I sat down at the computer and now this is what has hit the screen. I am thinking that I am going to change the title to searching for my lost family and see how it is received.

I miss Xavier, Sterling, Madison, Vito, Sa'corey, Nathan, Bobby, Kodi, Joe, Scotter, Peanut, Cam, and Robert. All of them were my extended family and each of them brought something into my life that non of the others did. There were others like Gregg, Mike, Mike Z, Brad, Heather, William, Max, Norico, Isis, and so many others that I just can't name them all. Tonight I am sitting here at my computer and I am thinking about all of you guys, and the ones that we lost like Linda, and Mike Rose and a few of the others. Life has not been the same for me since I left Atlanta, and I miss my friends and family and I wish nothing more than the best for all of you and I hope that you are doing well and are successful in whatever endeavors your are involved in. But I miss my place in your life and I miss your friendship and your love. I wold love to have a chance to make up for all the mistakes I made and have you all around me to celebrate my 50th birthday that is coming up.

There are many of you who have been in and out of my life for years and you know how much you all mean to me and that I want only the best for you and hope that you. I will continue to reach out to the past and try and reconnect with as many of these people as I can and hope that life is treating them better than it has been for me. But I don't know what the future holds and life is too short for me to plan anything more than just telling you that I love you all and I want you all to be happy and healthy and that I would like to see you all again. I would like to bring the entire family back together again and see if the world isn't better and kinder to us this time around. I am done with the drugs that drove me away from getting close to many of you as I wanted to and tore us totally apart in the end and it is one of the many reasons that I left Atlanta to begin with. I have been looking at my past and wishing there was a way to change what I had done. But the truth of the matter is if I did go back I wouldn't be the same person I am today without our challenges and interactions that we had. I needed to move on for the time that I did and maybe it is time for me to come back home and try and mend the broken fences and lives as best as I can. Life is too short for regrets and grudges, it is time to let them go and see what we can build from the dust of our past and see what the future has in store for us.

I hope that some of you read this and know just how much I care about you all and how much you all mean to me. If it wasn't for you all I wouldn't be here today. I would have left this world a long time ago. I love you and miss you all very much.

Uncle B

Death comes for us all

2018-09-14T05:35:00.001-04:00

Back in April my father found out that he had late stages of lung cancer. By the time that they found the large mass in his lungs he had already developed 2 matastasized tumors in his brain. Within a few days of finding out that he had cancer he was in the operating room and had brain surgery. He recovered from that rather quickly and seemed to be getting stronger. However, when I went to visit him in June he had started treatments and was feeling sick all the time. I must admit that my troubles in Daytona with my car, and then my wallet and checking account plus being in and out of the hospital all the time didn't help his situation. At one point he told me that I made his life miserable, why couldn't I just leave him alone and not make his death miserable. I was hurt because my father is my go to person whenever I am having problems and he has been there for me every single time that I needed his advice or rescuing. My step mother talk to me one afternoon after him and I had a fight and told me that the medication and the steroids they had my father on was making him angry and crouchy and that he didn't mean to hurt me.

However, in a way I think some of what he said to me that day was true. Over the past 6 years my dad has had to rescue me or bail me out at least 15 or 20 times. I got stranded in Atlanta, Ft. Lauderdale and struggled since my break up with Kerry. My dad was there for all the problems that Dominic and I had and all the fighting that him and I went through. Dad had to come and get me several times when the fighting became physical. My dad has been my rock and sounding board since I got sick in 2005 when he came to live with me and Joe and take care of me after my first couple of bowel resections. It is hard to think of the man who has been there for me so much in the past to be down and out like his right now. As a matter of fact his birthday is just a few days away and he is going to be 73 years old. It makes me feel bad that the last summer of his life I made him miserable and had him worried about me and my welfare when his own health was hanging in the balance. But the job of a parent doesn't ever end no matter what is happening. I am just learning this now.

I hope that my dad gets better and is able to read this post because I want to tell him that I am very appreciative of all the things that he has done for me and that I am thankful for all the times he has been there for me and that I am going to be lost without him. He is right that I never grew up and I don't know how to live on my own. I don't know how to deal with people and that I am better off on my own. Because I really don't have a clue as to what I am doing. I am very intelligent but I don't have any common sense at all. I was lucky when I met Joe Royer and I left Orlando and I went to Atlanta. He was the stabalizing force in my life, he had the practical knowledge on how to survive, and since him and I separated I have been drifting and struggling with people, emotions, and drugs. I found my refuge in my high and I used it to escape the reality of my situation and my disability.

I have some growing up to do. I have to figure out how I am going to survive on my own without having my dad as a safety net. He was correct that I could take chances in my life because I knew that he was right there and would help me pick up the peices of my life if I failed or made a mistake.

Maybe I took that too much for granted, and didn't tell my dad as much as I needed to how much he meant to me. Now that I am sitting here this morning I am really scared and wondering what I am going to do if he dies. I know that sounds silly and selfish and pretty childish, but honestly I have never truly been on my own, all I had to do is pick up the phone and call my dad. Last night when I was told that my dad was in the hospital again, and that he wasn't doing all that well, I got to thinking about how much he means to me and what it would be like to loose him.

Apparently, according to my step mother he has contracted a virus and hasn't been eating or drinking and has not been in his right mind in a couple of days. He apparently doesn't always know who is around or where he is at. He mistook my brother for my step mothers son, who is in Ohio and not close by at this time. This makes me think back to the last few weeks of my friend Demario's life and how right before we got him to the hospital he was experiencing a similar episode and didn't remember leaving one hospital and being admitted at a different one. My friend never recovered after that and was gone in less than 10 days. I am hoping that this isn't the case with my father but I don't really know what to expect because this is my first time when I was extremely close with death. When my grandparents died I wasn't anywhere near them and couldn't tell you how they acted. But, I was there for Demario's passing and I know the struggles that he went through and I am seeing a similar pattern with my father.

I know that each of us has and allotted time upon the Earth and when it is our time it is our time to go. That there is nothing that is going to change that fact, but there is still the hope that more time will be granted if asked for. The mind and the body are incredible pieces of machinery that have the ability to adapt and overcome to a myriad of illnesses and disabilities. The human brain can cause miracles to happen and heal wounds by sheer though power alone. But I also believe in the healing power of prayer. I believe that God has a plan for each of our lives and that He is the ultimate physician and can heal the body totally and instantly.

I would ask all of you to keep my family, especially my father Bryan Zepp Sr. in your prayers. Because I don't think that it is quite his time to go just yet. I would ask for prayers of total and complete recovery and the lessening of pain so that he is comfortable.

Please do this for me.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

No take backs

2018-09-08T21:28:00.000-04:00

What's done is done and I cannot change the facts. All I can do is face the results of my decisions and take responsibility for my actions. For several years I was an advocate and public speaker, volunteer and committee member of the PCHAP in Volusia county. I worked closely with a gentleman named Jeff Allen and he introduced me in to the world of advocacy and education. It is with a heavy heart that I am writing this tonight because on July 28th in a tragic accident Jeff lost his life and left behind his life partner and best friend Jim Geary. It is to my everlasting shame that I wasn't there for Jim or the other members of the Positive Champions Speakers Bureau through the loss of their leader and mentor Jeff.

In 2014 my life started to fall apart at the seems my lover Kerry Rutherford Jr. left me and went back to Atlanta, and from there I started on the downward spiral. What transpired in my life was not triggered by the my loss of my friend and partner alone, but I made it worse by my turning back to drugs and dependence on them to get me through the day. I was in and out of the hospital from 2014 to 2017 with chronic renal failure, Hep C and Renal Carcinoma and esophagus cancer. Financial issues and homelessness became a constant struggle for me and I soon lost the ability to volunteer and attend the duties that I had signed up for.

Jeff was there for me during these times, would come see me and talk to me whenever I picked up the phone and called him. Jeff, understood me and accepted me for the person I was with all of my flaws and all because he suffered from similar addictions and knew the battle that I was facing. I never saw sympathy or ridicule in his eyes only love, compassion and understanding. He always had a kind word for me and a smile and told me that I was welcome back when I got my life turned around. Unfortunately, my turning around of my life took too long and I have lost my friend and champion when he passed away.

I have finally gotten through my own recovery and I am healthy again, I won my battle with cancer and hep C and I have overcome the addiction issues that were holding me back. I wish my friend Jeff could have lived to see my victory. He was and is an inspiration to me and his story has helped me deal with my own issues and move forward with my life. I am so glad that I met him when I did and he helped me in so many ways. He was the one who encouraged me to write and helped me get myself together a few times over the past 7 years or so. It is my hope that I will be able to leave my imprint on this world in a loving manner that he did. I may not be the advocate or champion that he was, and I may not have made as many contributions to the HIV/AIDS community as he has done. But he encouraged me to write and to help others through my writing and I have continued to do that despite my struggles.

I can only hope that my life will be an inspiration and testimony like his was. He was a shining beacon of light and hope that drew others together to champion a cause. He was relentless and once started something fought for victory and would accept nothing less.

I cannot take back my actions and I have no way to change what has come to pass already, all I have the ability to do is continue forward and make positive changes in my life and help as many people as I can by following his example. When I see a need I need to address it in the appropriate manner and strive to make a permanent change in our world. Equality, fear and persecution are still things that we as a community are still fighting for and against today. Jeff had a huge heart and a loud voice that was heard around the world and throughout our community. I can only hope and pray that my voice will carry like his did.

As I stated earlier there are no take backs but there are areas for which improvement can be made and I would like to dedicate myself in the memory of my friend Jeff Allen to always fight for the underdog, advocate for greater equality and better funding and healthcare, housing and the needs of the HIV/AIDS community.

I am going to miss my friend more then ever. But I hope that I can do some good and effect positive change in this world.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you, Jeff, I hope that you are Mary are looking down and can see that you both impact my life in different ways, but have been the driving force behind many of my actions.

I am going to miss you my friends and I will see you soon.

Bryan

Time Progression

2018-09-08T16:42:00.001-04:00

Time marches swiftly on and waits for no one. Hours turn to days, days into months, and months into years. Nights blend to days as the earth travels around the sun, those months turn to seasons and the seasons mark the year. Nothing can bind the hands of time. Like a tightly wound spring our lives slowly wind down as the second hand ticks around the clock. Life has a limited amount of a lotted time. Like a grandfather clock that is wound daily and eventually winds down so does the body wind down. Wrinkles, gray hair and other signs are developed and shows the passage of time.

Days and night blend together with the lack of sleep I achieve, and still the night rushes towards the dawn. My mind clings to the events of the day and I can't seem to relax and let go. Up each night as hours count down, yet sleep eludes me this way. Every passing day my strengths wain and I sit in bed with demons yet to be slain. I don't really know if I am rational and sane, I just know that I can't continue on this way.

I never thought to reach this age, growing old has always frightened me. Now I am facing the end of youth and I see the writing on the wall. Though my days seem to speed up and my ending is coming soon. I never thought that my body would hold together for as long as it has. I have passed through the Spring and Summer of my life and now I am entering the Fall, before I know it it will be the winter of my life and I will see you no more.

When I was younger I could put so many things into a day, now I barely have time for mundane things. My days and night blend in motion and month pass so quickly. Years have seemed to pass in a blink of an eye, and what have I accomplished? What is the mark that I leave upon this world?

It is you my fellow friends those whose lives I have touched and made a difference in. You will be the ones that will carry me forward and remember me once I am gone. Nothing lasts forever, I hope that you will keep my spirit alive and in your heart. I have tried to be fair to all around me and spread my love and charity. It is my wish that you take my life as an example and gather hope and inspiration from how I have lived.

I have made many choices that have left me wounded and broken. I have learned from them and have tried to share those experiences with you. You are my legacy the ones that will remember me. Your thoughts of me will keep me alive in perpetuity. I love you all and wouldn't change a thing that I have done, I have gained knowledge and strength through every battle I have won. Keep me alive in your hearts and minds and I will live on forever. Hope, spirit, and vitality I bequeath to you and wish you a long and happy journey.

I have left so many opportunities unexplored and let my fear hold me back from becoming more than I am. I am a prisoner of my own design and I leave no regrets behind. As I age and grow older I have learned many things. One of them is that I love you all and I am glad to call you friend. Without knowing you I wouldn't have become the person that I am and I am thankful for the memories that you have given me. I wish I would have been better towards you and never made mistakes, but perfection isn't something that is granted man.

Every day that passes by I am looking for a chance to prove just how much this life has meant to me and I look to leave a lasting monument or testament to my life and I can't think of one. I have only you my friends and the work that I have left behind. My fondest wish was to make life easier for each of you and to show you that no matter what Hope is a gift that can survive through anything. I have had cancer, illness, tragedy and despair and through it all I have never lost my hope or faith. This is what I want for you to find and learn to live by.

Please understand there were so many things that I wanted to do and leave behind and unfortunately I have run out of time. It is late in my life that I have come to this. I put my talents and passions to the side and I chose business as my life, and though I brought some creativity into the field with my computer programs and designs. I could have done so much more if I would have followed my heart and chose writing as my career. I haven't created any memorable or lasting characters to leave behind. I have only my life and the lessons I have learned that I can leave to you. I never finished any of the books I have started and I haven't made it to the fame and fortune I once desired. I will only be remembered as your friend and I hope that you truly remember everything that we have been through.

Now as things wind down towards the close, I wonder if the curtain will rise again and show me another glorious morn. Sun bright and shining, birds gayly chirping and cattle nearby lowing those are the sounds that I hope to hear when the sun rises in the morning. I could have done so much more, been so much more but I was content to live my life this way. I made the most of each and everyday that I got to spend with you and I hope that you feel the same way. Some of you might not remember or it might be who could be wrong, but there is a strength with each new dawn. There is a promise in the air that things won't matter when this life is through, I often wonder if this is true.

I should have done more, helped more, and accomplished more, but I settled way too easily and turned my thoughts aside to help those I thought needed me at the time. Nothing was ever easy that is for sure, I struggled against the system and did things my own way. I didn't care if they were right or wrong as long as I got my way. Now, when I look back and see those eager faces I wished I would have told you more that you meant so much to me. It was you that I used to keep my troubles at bay. For as long as I remained focused on you, I could forget my shame and pain for just a little while. Several years ago I turned aside from my quest for fame, and decided that the best way to leave my name was to work through you to help you too. In that way I gained a measure of satisfaction and drove away my pain. I found inspiration in your need and felt so useful, but much to my chagrin I am not needed ever again. I am used up and my time is fading and I have nothing left but the waiting. I hope you understand that you helped me as much as I tried to help you, you were my distraction, the only way I knew to focus my gaze away from my faults and limitations. Through you I have searched and seeked redemption.

As this journey draws to an end I hope that you will remember that I was and always shall be your friend. I did my best and hope it was enough to give you the rest that you needed along the way. I hope that you see me in each new day.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

please read my entry called Marching Onward of Time

Confessions of an Addict

2018-09-06T23:31:00.000-04:00

I woke up in a haze and wondered how if today was the day I would change my ways.

You came in and handed me a syringe and there I start my endless binge.

A wake me up, a pick me up and then a shot to make it through, my days flash through and it was all I knew.

Something missing the search is on, but it was well and truly gone, no one saw, never touched and still it can't be found it's nearly dawn.

I don't know where I am going to lay my head, I have been on my feet and walked on and on I am nearly dead.

I am broke and fading, I spent the day contemplating and still I can't figure out what's the joke.

No food no home I am on my own, so it down the streets I roam.

Homeless and worried about my high never thinking that I should ask my self why?

I have given my all to those around me, shared and tried to be fair, but in the end it is me that is left with nothing to show and my cupboards are still bare.

Every day the endless cycle begins, I don't know how to make it end, I am stuck and alone with nothing to call my own.

That is they way I feel each and every day, I know I have got to find another way,

But all my friends are just like me full of false hope and drudgery.

My days and night were filled with hopeless despair until I decided that realized that it was all more than I could bear so made a change and left it all behind and I chose a different path to grind.

Now things are so much better than they were before and I don't feel like my life is at chaos and war.

*********

This is dedicate to all those who I have left behind who are still struggling and railing against the grand design. I hope that soon you will find peace that comes with recovery and clear headedness.

All my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Effecting Change

2018-09-04T01:49:00.002-04:00

Today I sat on the computer and sprouted some heavenly epiphanies with everyone. Just random thoughts that entered my head, they made a lot of sense and may have helped a couple of people, but the truth is that sometimes good thoughts come to me and I don't always put them down and when I do they are quickly read and forgotten on Facebook and other mediums. I continue to write in my blog and every once in a while I will get a response and an email from someone encouraging me to keep writing, but the problem is that some of the things I talk about are repetitious, there are bits and pieces of lessons that are shared in one post that are referenced and brought up again another post. I have been giving advice and writing in this blog since 2012 and I have repeated some of the lessons that I have learned multiple times. Most of the time it is on purpose because I have this feeling come over me that someone is needing to hear that message right then and there and so I sit down at the computer and I begin writing.

2018 was supposed to be my year, because at the end of 2016 I lost the trailer and ended up on the streets and Dominic was arrested and I was on my own and I didn't have a clue what to do. Luckily Miss Milly came into my life and let me come stay with her. But, she ended up losing her place and we landed smack down on North Street in Daytona, and because of foolish decisions Dominic and I both got arrested the summer of 2017 and we ended up losing the house on North and Spruce. Since then Dom and I have been on the street bouncing around and finally landing at Tattoo's house we started to get ourselves together then things started going crazy again and I ended up get robbed several times and everyone got really heavy into drug use. Finally in December of 2017 I called my dad and I asked him to take me to my friends place in Jacksonville and I started over, I had invited Dominic to go with me, but he didn't want to and he asked me to stay with him and not leave him. But thinking I knew best I took off and I got on my feet, only to have to rug pulled out from under me again when tragedy struck in Jacksonville, Demario passed away rather unexpectedly, he had been sick since late January early February but we were thinking that he would get well enough to travel home to Boston and get a full recovery. But in May it all went wrong and before I knew it he was gone and things started getting crazy and I felt totally different. Around that time I also found out the my dad and brother were both sick, I had finished chemotherapy for esophagus cancer and I was on the mend and thought it would be okay to head back to Daytona.

I should have known better from the moment I stepped into town the forces aligned against me and everyone who claimed to be my friend ended up trying to scam me and use me, they used guilt and against me and even took my car and left me stranded multiple times. I got so sick while I was there and so many other things happened that I thought I would never be able to escape. Luckily I was able to, I was able to finally get away and got out of the situation that I was in. But, I didn't do it on my own, I had to have the help of a couple of friends, one who was kind enough to open her home to me and the other who was willing to help me get the bus ticket to get to my other friends house. Both of them knew that I was strong enough to recover if I could just escape the influences that were holding me back and fighting for control of my life. You may think I am crazy but I am going to tell you that demons exist and are on the earth today in many different shapes and forms and they are great at possessing people and using them for their own gains.

This summer when I went back to Daytona, I took note of the evil that had taken control of my friends and how seemingly innocent actions had severe and extreme impacts on my life, how my kindness was turned against me and they would play on my feelings and insecurities to get me to do what they wanted. But more importantly I began to realize that these weren't my friends anymore, these were individuals that had lost their identities and their life to drugs and the lifestyle that accompanies it. I watched how each and everyone of them was actually homeless and was bouncing around from place to place, staying with friends or family and using everyone they came in contact with to get the next high or hit. I also started to realize that it was designed as a trap to lure in people and lock them in. I began to see a pattern develop that was consistent with other friends in other cities that were dealing with the same lifestyle and understood how we had all been fooled and possessed by a very powerful demon and how that demon feeds on our misery and homelessness and our discontentment. How when I got away from those that were affected by this entity I felt better and stronger about myself and I could think clearly.

I also realized that none of us are willing to change until we get fed up and are tired of the struggle, when the despair and depression gets great enough it forces us to think about ourselves and helps us break free from the hold of the demon. I am seeing how others that are finally getting clean and joining the ranks of sobriety are feeling and they have shown me that it is possible to end it's hold over us and move forward and get ourselves together and clean up our lives. Many times in order to accomplish this task it means getting away from those that are still under the influence and out of the area where that influence is the strongest. I called it in one of my older posts changing your venue and friends. You have to get away and consciously decide that you deserve better and want better for yourself and that you are tired of struggling and fighting a loosing battle. You are fed up with people stealing from you and using you for their own selfish games. Believe me it is entirely possible to get yourself off the street and recover everything that you have lost. But in order to do that you have to surrender your use of the drugs and stand up and decide that you have had enough and you can't stand to be treated that way anymore, that you are worth more, deserve more and then demand more from yourself and everyone around you. They are going to be against your change, they are going to want to pull you back to your usage, they aren't going to offer you support or help, because they are fully under the control of the substance and the demon, and they want you to be in misery just like them.

Yet, once you get away from the influence and you are off the drug for awhile you will start to feel better and be able to think more clearly. Then things will start to get a little easier, it will take some time, you didn't start doing drugs over night and you will not stop over night, it is a process and a daily struggle. I will admit that I sometimes have feelings of wanting to go back and do it again, but then I see how far I have come and what I have to lose by going back and I am not willing to sacrifice anything that I have gained for the minute of a high and then those terrible hours of regretting what I had done. I learned my lesson this time when I went back to Daytona, I saw exactly the cost and the toll that my dependence cost me. But, because I had the strength to do it once, I was strong enough to be able to do it all over again this time. My bounce back and recovery was much faster than the first attempt. It took me 4 months to get back on my feet when I left Daytona for Jacksonville, this time it took me less than a month. I was able to clean up my bank account, clear up my debt, get my cell phones back and the lines caught up. I was able to get a computer, laptop, Ipad, android tablet and a Macbook laptop, a brand new bed and a new clothes and shoes. If I can do it and all it took was me to turn and walk away from those that were trying to hold me back and I surrendered my dependence on the drug and went sober (cold turkey), you can do it too.

I am telling you that you have the power to effect change in your life, you can accomplish anything that you want, it is all possible and within your grip. First you must recognize you have a problem, you have to have reached a point in your life where you unhappiness outweighs your need for the drug, you have reached a point where you are tired of being stolen from and broke, you are tired of not having your own things and depending on others, and you are tired of having to struggle every day just so that you have food to eat and a place to lay your head. Once you have gotten there everything else is cake and all you need to do is walk away, start over and make the change for yourself. Unfortunately, this is a solitary journey and unless your partner or friend is willing to make the same changes you are they may end up getting left behind. I know it is hard and almost impossible to do, I thought I was going to fail because it was so hard leaving Dominic behind after spending 4 years of my life with him, but I did it, and I am still doing it. I have offered to bring him with me, to move anywhere in the country that he wants to move, on the condition that he is ready to walk away from the drugs and is ready to start living instead of existing. He hasn't gotten there yet, maybe he will never get there, but I know that one day the demons hold over him is going to weaken and when it does it will be his chance to get through this and move on to something better in life than what he has right now.

They tell me that I was always a go getter and when I was younger I would go after things I wanted and rarely would I come back empty handed. I put myself through college, got my bachelors and masters degrees and my first job with the state just because I wanted to. I had the drive and the ambition to succeed and that is exactly what I did. Then cancer came back into my life and I lost myself for a very long time. I turned to drugs to help myself cope with my limitations and disfigurement of my body. The drugs made it easier to have sex and helped me deal with the pain a little better, but for that temporary relief I relinquished my freedom, my will and lost myself in a world where I fell into a pattern of use and abuse and it would continue for years and I thought it was an acceptable trade, but somewhere along the line it got more of hassle to get high, I no longer felt the joy or the rush of the drug and I only felt disappointment and regret and let down because I stopped finding the sex and the joy that I used to have when I would shoot up or smoke, somehow I lost the magic and all I was left with was the drudgery and the loss that my addiction brought me. I was constantly struggling to replace those things that were stolen, and I ended up losing my roof and my independence and became homeless and despondent.

You are a powerful being, God gave you a powerful mind, a living computer capable of restoring and functioning when tragedy and illness hit you. It is so powerful that it can alter your perceptions and change your reality. Take back the control of your life, exorcise your demons, strive for sobriety, set your mind to doing and discovering new things and become an achiever a go-getter and make a change in your life. You have the ability to come back from where you are at, you are stronger than you know and you have been given and extraordinary power to change your environment for the better, you just have to regain control of your life and reality. Attain what is right in front of you and consciously choose to change your life and you will succeed. Effecting change in your life will affect everything and everyone around you and you will become an inspiration for others to follow. Lead by example and triumph over that which has held you down and back from everything you ever wanted.

Trust me if I can do it, SO CAN YOU! God gave you free will so use it! Exercise it today and Exorcise your Demon and leave it powerless behind you. Let it feed on someone else's misery and pain. You deserve so much better, and trust me you will be so much stronger because you have lived through it and survived.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you!
Uncle B

Finally Alone but not at Peace.

2018-09-02T01:20:00.000-04:00

I am not sure how many of you remember my life, and history, but you can find it here in the pages and posts of my blog. One of the people that used to care about me told me once that I shouldn't put all my business out there on social media for the world to see. That I would learn better, now Reggie told me that back in 2015 and here we are 3 years later and I find myself still doing the same thing. But here is what Mr. Williams didn't know or care to understand back then is that I am trying to redirect my personality, my desire to help other people instead of opening my home and providing everything for them like I used to do, I now use my life as an example to hopefully impart and pass on some of the lessons I have learned. In this way I can actually reach and help more people than my feeble efforts I was attempting when I lived in Atlanta and Daytona. It has taken me a long time to get to this point and I have been working on it since 2012 and it still isn't quite sunk into my thick skull yet. Tonight I am reminded of something my ex-lover Sterling Williams once said to me "Bryan it really isn't you it is all the extra that comes with you!" I remember sitting at the dining room table and him saying that to my face, and at the time I didn't understand what he meant but now upon reflection I can see exactly where that was coming from and why he said it. Guess what he was absolutely right.

Every relationship, every person I have ever dated not only had to deal with me, but also the people that I wanted to try and help along the way. It was never just me and that one person it was me and my entourage. Tonight, I am feeling particularly vulnerable and reminiscing about my past and what I have been through. I am thinking about all the people that have come in and out of my life, those that I really cared about and those that just was there because I thought I was helping them and doing the right thing. My mother even pointed out to me the other night on the phone that I have always gone the wrong way when trying to help people out. I had a single thought in my head that if I could help one person out and get them off the streets or off the drugs then I was accomplishing something. I ended up inviting these people into my home, providing them with security, comfort, food and shelter as well as providing cigarettes and other items. Some people genuinely took my help, learned from me and made some remarkable changes in their lives. Others, I ended up just enabling and helping them maintain their current lifestyle. Problem was that the person I was involved with had to deal with these people and their using me and me doing for them and I forced them to accept it. Not right or fair.

Here I am and my 50th birthday is approaching fast, in just a few short months I will be there and yes it is a blessing to make it this far, it has been a struggle and a near impossible feat to get here. I have endured and survived so many illnesses and surgeries and yet I keep on chugging along. But because of my choices that I made when I was younger, I hurt and alienated a lot of people along the way. I ended up leaving people that loved me and cared about me, for the users and abusers of the world and though I was trying to help others, and trying to spread my own kind of hope and peace in this world. I regret the sacrifices and the people that I lost along the way. Over the last few days I have been reaching out to some of these individuals, past relationships and ex's that had to endure and suffer through my indulgent and reckless behavior. In away I am hoping that they will have gotten to a point in their life that they can accept my apology and forgive me for the struggle and heartache I put them through.

2018 has been a year of learning for me, I have had to endure crisis after crisis and fend of users and abusers at every turn. This summer was extremely hard when I got trapped by my own foolishness and was sorely taken advantage of. I ended up losing everything that I had left. The few things that I had been able to salvage over the past 4 years I finally lost and at the end of July I had to start over completely from scratch. The last time I had to do that was in 2012 when my dad sent to Atlanta and brought me to Daytona because of my living situation and my health. My doctors had feared that after my kidney surgery and all the bladder and kidney infections that I had been through that living on the streets of Atlanta would end up killing me. So when Bobby O'hara and I broke up and Robert Miller and I were bouncing from friend to friend and place to place with nothing of our own I called my dad and ended up moving to Florida. Thanks to Linda Stapleton for driving me to the bus station or I would never have survived at all. Unfortunately, the years haven't been all that kind to everyone, we lost Linda, Mike, and so many others along the way. But as I am learning Death is part of Life itself and is just a gateway to another place. I am keeping faith that it is too a much better place, where all the struggles of our past are forgotten and life of plenty is granted.

But tonight as I am writing this because it is a holiday weekend and I a sitting in my room writing in my blog, I am not out getting high with my so-called friends, or people that chose to be around me because I have money or drugs. For the first time I am finally Alone, I don't have a boyfriend and I am not in a relationship, I am not walking up and down beachside or walking the streets of Atlanta high as hell on Meth. I am not surrounded by a bunch of people who need or want something from me. I am not sitting here worrying about how to pay the bills to keep a roof over everyones head or the power from being turned off, nor am I worrying about what everyone is going to eat tomorrow. I am sitting here and for the first time in my entire life I am thinking about myself and what I want. I am trying to figure out what I would like to do for my 50th birthday to make it memorable and special, and I am wondering who would even want to come and see me. How many people really still care enough about me out there to want to spend time celebrating my milestone birthday.

I have invited one person definitely and he said that it would be cool. I have mentioned it to several others, but the reception has been rather mellow. Maybe I am deluding myself thinking that anyone out there still cares about me. I wanted to invite all my ex's and see which ones come, and see if they are with anyone else and if they were happy. Hoping against hopes that they could tell me the secret of how they finally got there because the mystery still eludes me. I always thought that relationships and life were supposed to get easier the older we got, but surprise the joke was on me because not only do they get more complex and complicated they are fraught with new issues like declining health. In the back of my mind I have always thought that I would get back together with one of my ex's that our story wasn't finished yet, but I am not sure anymore. I wrote not long ago that one of the reasons that I keep looking backward was because of the level of acceptance and understanding that these men gave me when coming to grips with my illnesses and limitations, but maybe I am kidding myself, maybe there are others out there that would be willing to do the same if I just gave them the chance. But I have been running for so long and hiding from the real me by using drugs for so long that it is hard now that I am sober to see any future for myself at all. My best friend Robert Miller got married and him and I used to joke that when we were old and gray together that we would open Mommas Home for Homeless Homosexuals a senior gay retirement community and would chase each other around in our wheelchairs. Guess that isn't going to happen, guess I am always going to be on my own.

For the past 4 years I have been with someone who never wanted to sleep with me because he was afraid of catching HIV, I missed the intimacy and the closeness, but I settled because I thought that the companionship was enough, and I was happy getting high and taking care of everyone else in my life. But, in truth I wasn't totally there for him, I had so many other needy people in and out of my life that I was trying to help that him and I really never had any time to ourselves or were alone. For that I am truly sorry, and I have been for almost a year now trying to make up for the mistakes of the past that I made with him, and nothing really seems to help. He has grown more distant and withdrawn than he ever was. I haven't heard from him in over a week and I am worried about him. I know in his own way that he loves me, but we aren't right for each other, I want more than he is willing to give. I want a real relationship with love, intimacy, closeness, tenderness and compassion, and I think that I deserve that in my life.

So here I am alone for once but am I at peace with myself? No, is the answer to that. I want more out of life than what I have gotten. I really do want a true relationship, with someone who isn't afraid to tell others that I am their lover and that we are together, who doesn't mind holding me and telling me that they love me. Like I said I have been so used to being surrounded by others and taking care of so many other people that I honestly don't know how to take care of myself at all. The one person who ever treated me like how I wanted was the person I treated the worst his name was Sterling Williams and he is the person I told our story wasn't finished yet. I don't know if we will ever get back together, but he is the only person that I was ever in a relationship who never asked me out and I didn't ask him out it just happened. We lived together and he wasn't embarrassed by me, he introduced me to his family and friends as his lover and even told his mother about me right away. Funny how all of that transpired so long ago and how angry that made so many people. But that was a different life and so much has happened, who know if and when we will ever see each other again.

But no I am not at peace with myself. I don't see a future a head of me and I only see a road full of doubts. I am trying desperately to figure out how to live by myself and take care of myself. I want to finally be able to give myself to someone else if the time presents itself with no baggage dragging behind me and no clingers either. I no longer open my home to the homeless and help them off the streets. Instead I give them clothes, and blankets, gift certificates for food and I let them work out the escape plan to get off the streets. I also offer them guidance through my blog and my daily life. There are agencies out there that will help them, traveller's aid is one that will give you temporary emergency housing and help you come up with a plan to move from homelessness to productivity. I recommend giving them a call and seeing what they can do.

I am learning and I know that I am old, but whoever said you can't teach and old dog new tricks is totally wrong. Because, I am living proof that insanity isn't healthy for any of us. Albert Einstein stated that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result". I am through being insane, and I am ready to embark on a new life with a new purpose and a new adventure. My mission of giving hope and peace to others is still intact and sound, but I want to offer more, guidance, inspiration, motivation and education as well.

I have been through so much and have learned a lot, but there is so much more for me to experience out there. I am thankful for the strength I have received from the trials I have been through, if I can give hope and inspiration to just one person then my life and all the pain I have been through is worth it. I will learn how to adapt and I will learn how to take care of myself and I will survive. I hope you will too.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Life is Finite

2018-08-29T23:10:00.001-04:00

08/29/18

Getting older, aging is a part of life itself. You know that life is fleeting, that we are here one minute and gone the next. This is part of the Human Condition, it is inevitable and everyone of us must face the certainty of death to come.

Most of us measure our lives in years, some by achievements, others by amassed wealth or possessions. No matter how you measure your life you know that at some point it is all going to come to an end. Some plan for it, other's are taken completely unaware, and some live by the moment. Because living in the moment and by the moment keeps them in the present and leaves no room for the past to hold them back or slow them down, that way they can experience and enjoy every moment they have upon the Earth.

It's very hard for me to live in the moment and stay there. Being sick for so long I have tried to teach and program myself to live in the moment and not take each day for granted and enjoy the time I have and give thanks for every new dawn that I get to draw a breathe, but my past has a hold on me and maybe it is fear that is locking me down or just not wanting to totally give up on people that has me constantly looking toward past relationships hoping that one day they might come back into my life. I have explored this in other post, but I honestly think that because they were able to accept me for the person I am with all of my physical limitations and illnesses, that I fear I won't be able to find anyone that will be able to in the future. I know that I am not perfect and I have made many mistakes in my life. That too is a part of the Human Condition, we learn from our mistakes and the more painful the mistake the greater the lesson that is learned. I once believed that the only way that we truly learn is through pain, however as I have gotten older I am beginning to see that humans have a a greater capacity for learning and understanding than I once had given us credit for. I have since learned that we also learn through memorization, repetition and through trust, these are the most common ways we retain knowledge.

Yet wisdom is something that is gained from knowledge accumulated over time and put into practical use and practice. Just because you have some knowledge and understanding it doesn't mean that you are wise or have achieved wisdom. I think wisdom is knowing when to apply your knowledge and understanding tempered with kindness and compassion. This can take years to achieve and is something that we gain as we age and mature. It is not something that happens overnight, wisdom, patience, understanding, compassion and knowledge all go hand in and hand. In order to achieve the state of wisdom you must master all the required parts.

As most of you are aware I have been sick since 1992. Not every single day but more often than not. I have battled many types of cancer along with hepatitis C and HIV. I have experienced chronic renal failure, had more surgeries than you can imagine and recently started experiencing heart issues. No one knows better than me how fragile this body is, how tenuous our life is and how fleeting the moments we share with other can be. No one knows when we are going to die, not the hour or the day. Some of our lives may be long life, others will be cut short. None us can fathom the cause of our own demise whether it be from illness, tragedy, disaster or some other form.

I have always tried to cultivate lasting relationships, I have wanted to be in all the way for the long haul. Everywhere, I have gone and every person I meet I try to lay the groundwork and foundation for a long enduring and lasting friendship. Many of you I have met in high school, college or during my time in the Navy, others still from my time when I was in Atlanta, when I moved there 25 years ago. Technology has come a long way enabling us to reach out and talk to each other. FaceBook, Twitter and other social media have given us a platform and an environment where each of us can showcase our lives and achievements. Where we can record the narrative of our lives and reach out and connect with those that we have lost contact with over the years. Times have sure changed!

In just a few short months I will be turning 50 years old. Many of my friends and loved ones didn't make it to my age and I miss them sorely, and think about them all the time. I find turning 50 both a blessing and a curse, I had never in a million years ever thought that I would ever make to this age. I can remember when I was in my early 20's thinking that I wouldn't ever reach 35 and that was so old back then. I sneezed and looked in the mirror and wow look at all the time that has passed. I still grieve and mourn for those that have come into my life and are no longer with us. Many of whom I feel were more deserving than me to live, yet they were take away totally too soon.

Many of my peers can relate, we lived through the 80's and 90's and lost so many friend during that time. Even though I am aging and my body is weakening and falling apart, I will tell you that I am thankful and grateful to be here with you still today. But life is finite, it is fleeting and sometimes very brief. Please be sure to make time to talk to those that mean something to you. Reach out to them and tell them that you love them, and appreciate the. Let them know that you care and they are important to you. There are so many friends that I have lost over the years to drugs, disease and tragedy that I wish I could have told them how much I cared about them and how much they meant to me. If I had the opportunity now to tell them something I would tell them that I miss them every day and wish that I had been a better friend and knew how to communicate better with them when they were alive.

I don't know how much time I have left. You don't know how much time you have left either. Somebody can be in your life one day and be gone the next. I know this from very personal experience. I just recently lost a roommate and a very good friend around the same time that I found out that my dad had extensive lung cancer and metastasized tumors in the brain, my brother is dealing with End Stage Renal disease and my mother a paraplegic and extremely ill. This has all come to light in just a very short time span and I don't know when or if I will ever get to see any of them again.

Do yourself a favor and reach out to those that you count as a friend and loved one let them know exactly how much they mean to you, tell them that they matter to you. If you aren't truly there for them like you should be or if your friendship is strained then make and effort to fix it before it is too late. Save yourself some regret and make it right. Because you just don't know what tomorrow might bring.

So at this time I want to reach out to each and every one of you. I want to say thank you for being my friend. Thank you for listening to me, being there for me! You are important to me and I care about you and I am thinking about you a lot. Pick up the phone, drop and email, write a letter, send a card do something! Let's get our friendship back on track, you are part of me, you have taught me so much and I am grateful for you each and every day. I miss interacting with you, being able to see you and talk to you. I want to reclaim our friendship. I am here for you and I love you. My life is more complete just because you are in it and I wouldn't want it any other way. We need each other!

LIVE IS FINITE IT HAS AND END! I want you to be there with me all the way! What do you say I look forward to hearing from you soon.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Learn, Live and Adapt

2018-08-26T12:03:00.002-04:00

08/02/18

Who could have known that a series of misadventures would lead to the discovery of a serious heart problem. A dear friend passed away in Jacksonville, almost around the same time that I found out that my father had lung cancer. Another friend asked me to help him so I thought that I could make a few bucks helping him out and visit my father and family at the same time. How was I too know that my car was going to get stolen from me along with my wallet and my phone.

Or that the person I came to help would end up screwing up my checking accounts so bad that I would end up losing one of them due to fraud. Which also led me to lose my credit card and cause so much anxiety and tension between my roommate and myself that I would end up becoming homeless once again and put me in the hospital for almost 2 complete months.

During the hospital stay I was to find out that the lower artery of my heart was completely blocked. I also found out that since my partial nephrectomy that both of my kidneys had shrunk and that dialysis was looming ever closer to my future. Further, I discovered that my roommate in Jacksonville wasn't as much of a friend as he claimed to be because not only did he tell me that he changed the locks and that I couldn't come home, even though I had paid my rent. He ended up taking everything I owned and left me with only the shorts and t-shirt that I left Jacksonville with. Not to mention that since I have been out of the hospital he hasn't tried to contact me once. Wonder why I even considered him a friend.

On July 15th I had heart surgery and was soon released from the hospital. Actually on the day that I got out Travis text me and told me that supposedly we had been evicted from the apartment and everything I owned was lost and gone forever. I have since learned from his Aunt and other friends that he lied about it. Sorry to say that I once considered Travis Young a friend but I found out the hard way that he was nothing but a liar, user and a thief.

Starting over is never an easy thing to do. This time it was going to be especially hard just coming out of major heart surgery, having lost everything including my car and all my worldly possessions and not having a cent to my name. I really had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew that going back to living on the street wasn't an option for me this time. My health was too poor to handle the situation. I had already been in Daytona almost 2 1/2 months by the time I was released from the hospital and all of my medical supplies and medication was left in Jacksonville. I had never imagined that I was going to be stuck in Daytona as long as I was. Originally I was only supposed to be gone a couple of hours and then all of the bullshit started happening and I got stuck and trapped with no wallet and no phone.

So here I was released from the hospital with no place to go, and nowhere to turn. I ended up spending the night at my father's house and contacting my friend in Orlando to see if I could come and stay with her. Once I had done all of that I contacted Progressive to see what they had determined to do with my insurance claim on my stolen car. To my dismay they decided that it was better to total the car versus fix the damage that was done to the vehicle and so I am homeless and pretty much stranded with no exit strategy in place.

My friend Judy agreed to let me come stay with her because she is about to have surgery and wold need someone to help her during her recovery. So it seems like making the decision to come to Orlando was the right decision after all. My friend Jack bought me a bus ticket to Orlando and I was soon off to start over once again. I have only been here a couple of days and I have already gotten my cell phone service re-established and my internet account set up, also have transferred my medicare and gotten a new primary care physician. I am well on the road to recovery from my folly!

If things continue at this pace I will be re-established with the VA and Ryan White and all the other services that I need in record time. When I moved to Jacksonville it took me almost 4 months to get totally established and recover all the things that I had to leave behind in Daytona. Sometimes making the wrong decision can work out in your advantage as I am finding out. It will not take me near as long to get myself back to where I was when I left Jacksonville this time. It is true that I lost all my clothes, shoes and hats. Most of my important papers are also gone but I was able to come to terms with this loss so much better. Maybe it was because of the amount of time I was in the hospital and how serious my illness was, but honestly I am finding it so much easier to cope with loosing things this time around.

Plus I have come full circle in my life, who knows what my future may hold, I could even end up back in Atlanta. Seems like forces are aligning towards that direction in my future. Kerry and I have been talking again and once he recovers from his craniotomy we have discussed us moving back to Atlanta together. Kerry and I have a long history together spending close to 12 years dating off and on. I am not saying that we are destined for one another or anything like that. All I can tell you is that our story isn't finished yet, there are still several more chapters to write in that book. For those of you who have been following my blog from the beginning you might recall my experiment of love from the past. The series of misadventures that Kerry and I had in Daytona, Los Angeles, and so much more!

Life has pulled us apart, but every 4 or 5 years or so we are drawn back together. This is actually our 5th year apart and he almost came to visit me in Jacksonville back in March, to be honest with you I was really disappointed when he couldn't make it and ended up back in LA before we had a chance to get together. You never know if we would have gotten together in March things may have turned out totally differently, but since it didn't happen that way there really is no need to speculate. Just understand that we are talking again and things are different between us then before. I am worried about him, he has to have surgery on his head again in a couple of weeks and I don't know what is going to happen.

But I am learning that the key to surviving and even possibly living is you must have the ability to adapt to whatever situation life throws your way. Further, if you really want to overcome the obstacles and hinderances that people throw in your way you have to develop and attitude of not caring. You have to look out for yourself and put your own well being before that of others. This has been a major problem for me ever since Joe and I broke up and Sterling and I started dating. When Sterling and I broke up and Kerry and I decided to become a couple and life began to change dramatically for me. It became clear that I was a nurturer and that I felt the compulsive need to take care of someone and with Kerry that need was filled because of his aneurysm. Who really knows what the future is going to bring I certainly don't. What I do know is that life gets far less complicated when you aren't burdened with carrying the things from your past with you.

It is true that I have lost everything that tied me to my past, I lost all the stuff from my relationship with Joe and the 12 years that we were together and the things that I managed to salvage from that relationship. Then I lost everything from my time in Florida and Georgia, and California because I couldn't afford to pay for the 2 storage units I had. So when I left Daytona and went to Jacksonville I had pretty much already lost everything that tied me to my past and all the associated memories that were with them. The truth of the matter is despite the loss of my physical possessions I still have the memories intact. There is no way that I can forget all that I have been through and the people that I have met along my life. The truth is what I have done in the past has become a part of me that have molded me and shaped me into the person I am today. These memories are mine and can never be taken away from me, the people I have history with are still a part of my life and I theirs. Though I don't get to see them as often as I like we have a shared past that is unique between us and can never be changed or broken, a bond has been forged and lessons learned.

Though my future is unclear as to where I am going to end up and who I will be with. The truth is that at this moment I don't really care. Those that are important to me are still in contact with me. Like I said it really should be more but they have lives to lead and I have mine to get back on track so I can understand the distance, though it really doesn't help the lonely feelings that I experience from time to time. I just know that at some point in the future we will see each other again and things will not feel stained or strange.

Sterling, Jason, Scotty, Kerry, John, Alan, Allen, Jaime, and all the other friends that I have made throughout my life, we will see each other again of this I am certain. It might not be this year, or even next year but it will happen. Its funny that life has been throwing curve balls in my direction. Yet, even with them life seems to turn out just the way it is supposed to be and I end up in exactly the right place at the right time. It will happen for you too if you are just open to the future of possibilities and live learn and adapt to anything that life deems fit to throw your way.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you!

Uncle B

Saturday oh what a Day

2018-08-18T20:44:00.001-04:00

You may be wondering where I have been for so long and why I haven’t posted anything? Well I have been in and out of hospitals and recovering from all sorts of medical issues, then there was the fact that I lost everything that I owned that was up in Jacksonville. I may never find out what really happened to my stuff, I just know that what I was told seems highly unlikely to have occurred and I am saddened that I lost a friend over stuff like that. However, may the stuff that he has of mine serve him well as he embarks on the new journey of his life.

I just know that I was stuck and had no help out of my situation and was constantly in and out of the hospital. He didn’t bother to come and see me or try to find out what was happening with me, he just turned his back and blamed everything that happened on me and walked away. He made me very uncomfortable the last time I saw him anyway, and his behavior really left questions in my mind as to his real thoughts and intentions. With that being said it is time for me to move on and explain why I haven’t written in my blog in so long.

The truth is that I have been writing and it is all down on paper in a 3 ring binder here on my desk. But since I didn’t have a computer I had no way to get the information into the blog like I normally would have. But I have stuff dating back to my final day in the hospital back at the end of July. I have been in Orlando exactly a month and I have to say that I am in a much more stable environment than what I had been in. Already everything that I lost except for the car has been recovered. I have gotten a new bed, a new computer, a new laptop, my iphone service turned back on, an ipad as well as an android tablet.

There are some things that are different though, I am away from Daytona and the influences of the people there, which in my case is a good thing. I couldn’t understand why I kept ending up in the hospital and why my kidney’s and blood pressure kept failing. Come to find out that the major artery to my heart was almost 85% clogged and I had to have a heart catheter and angioplasty to fix the blockage. So on July 15th I had heart surgery. It was scary, but several good things came out of having that surgery, immediately following it my blood pressure stabilized and I stopped having the dizzy spells and seizures that I had been having prior to the surgery, and my kidney function improved almost back to normal levels. Indicating to the doctors that I may not be as close to dialysis as they had thought.

But since I couldn’t get online and give you regular updates I decided to sit down and do it today. Just last night I was writing in my journal and was talking about what I was thinking about my future and weighing my past. Something that I have been doing all week actually and most of the posts that I am about to type up are regarding that same issue. But today was a beautiful day full of sunshine and no rain as of yet. Which is something of a change in weather for what it has been like around here since the first day I arrived.

No matter what I am headed on the right path at this point, God has given me back all that I have lost and then some. I am even doing well enough that I feel I am at a new point in my life and can honestly say that I have a future. I have wrapped up many of the loose ends that I had left in Jacksonville, paid off the bed that I no longer have and the frame, I also got my checking accounts straightened out and I have gotten myself back into care with the VA and got my medicare straightened out. All and all I am very happy with my progress since I have been here. But, seeing as I had no other options, and the person who I was staying with and considered my friend turned me out like that, claimed that he had changed the locks and told me that I wasn’t welcome back there, then just a week or so later text me saying that everything I owned was lost that supposedly the landlord had evicted us and my stuff was on the side of the road and gone.

I know that this is not the real truth, it may have some factual basis, but being a retired attorney I know that there is an eviction process and that with me being in the hospital in intensive care my roommate could have used that and gotten an extension, he could have fought the eviction and won especially since he just suffered the loss of his partner and then I had the heart attack and was in the hospital. But No everything that me and my ex had left up there is either gone or he is using at his own. Either way it is on him. I know that my situation was extreme and I had people lying too me, stealing from me, and literally trashed my bank accounts, credit cards and the whole nine-yards. But, that is all in the past and I am in a better place with all new things and life is once again sunny.
I couldn’t have asked for a better Saturday, I woke up a little tire and a bit sore, but that quickly passed and once I got out and was able to enjoy the sun I felt so much better. So much so that I am sitting here now typing to you telling you all about it. I am still having some minor chest pains, but I see the cardiologist next week again and hopefully he will be able to tell me what is going on with my heart and why I am still hurting after all this time. I sure hope that it isn’t another heat attack coming because the first one was very scary and totally unexpected.

Anyhow, I hope that you have a glorious Saturday like I did. I am going to start typing my past entries into the journal. Though they are not actually going to be posted on the date they were written. I will make sure that I put somewhere the date that I wrote them, and hopefully by Wednesday I will be caught up enough and will be able to keep writing almost daily and let you know what is happening and going on.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B