A lot has happened to me over the last couple of years. Although I moved back to Las Vegas in an attempt to stand on my own two feet and grow up and become free, earning my own freedom, I had only partially succeeded. And each year since I moved here, I felt like I was on pace to become fully independent and free to act and do as I saw fit, but each year, I had failed and fallen back down to approximately where I was when I got here.
My mom was paying for my health insurance, and my dad paid to have me fly to visit him and my step mom. I was still living by the grace of others, and as unacceptable as I found that state, I always felt like at the very least I was working towards breaking away from that and being able to be financially independent. In fact, in the fall of last year, I was doing so well financially that I invited an old friend of mine who wasn't doing so well to come live with me. He was making his own way, but precariously, and his options were running out where he was, so we both thought that Las Vegas would be a great place to be—he, like myself, is a poker player, and having the casinos right here, as well as a bevy of potential students from the weekly discussions groups, and cheaper rent and shared utilities— this all was a much better setup for him. And I had a new comrade-in-arms to hit the poker tables with.
However, the weeks and months went by, and he did not attempt to utilize the new options available to him, and the money ran thinner and thinner, and eventually I was covering much of his cost of living. And this was at a point when, as I said, I was still not fully covering MYSELF completely. I was frustrated with his lack of effort, but at the same time, I tried not to interfere with his life and give him leeway. After all, I remember when I was up in Seattle looking for work, and I couldn't find any, and I felt completely helpless. I didn't know what I should be doing and why what I was doing wasn't working. I felt worthless and helpless and I had no idea how to change that.
Then came April 15th.
Suddenly everything was clear.
On April 15th, 2011 the United States Department of Justice seized the internet domain names of the three largest online poker sites in the world, and froze the bank accounts of their payment processors, all at once. One of my major life-lines had been completely severed. Author and poker professional Matt Matros summed it up decently: “It almost feels as if I’ve been stripped of one of my college degrees — as if a career skill I’ve been honing for all of my adult life is suddenly useless.”
I knew why they had been shut down—most people think it was some moral/political maneuver, but that's not the case. The Southern New York DOJ is famous for its relentless pursuit of money launderers, and there's really no easier method of transferring 5 or 6 figures anonymously than losing it at a game of poker. When it comes out of the account of the “winner” it is legitimate gambling winnings that can be spent freely without needing to be further laundered. For a $20 Western Union fee going in, $3 per hand rake, and $20 more in wire transfer fees going out, I can ship you a few hundred thousand dollars, and nobody can connect us together.
Regardless of the reasons, something in my brain clicked that day. This was unacceptable. My LIFE was unacceptable. As much as poker may be a conduit for money laundering, so is cash. So is the entire city of Las Vegas. And freedom of action, civil rights, must always take precedence over all other concerns when the rights of others are not infringed upon. This is when I realized WHY I was always agitated and WHY I always felt like I was struggling and WHY I found it so difficult to move ahead in life. I allowed the immoral to supersede my own judgment. But no more.
By April 17th, I had concocted a plan to get back online. I won't go into the details, but I will soon be playing poker online again. There will be no trace of it, or connection to me, other than this blog post. I will accurately report my taxes. I will not act immorally or harm others. I will simply do that which is accepted in nearly every other country in the world. I understand the risks of this endeavor and accept the consequences of my actions.
I had decided all of this within a few days of Black Friday, and I had also decided that I needed to cut off my “friend”. As bad as I felt for him, and as much as I know how helpless I felt, there were more factors that needed to be considered. Firstly, it was not only myself and my resources that I was expending. It got to the point where I was struggling enough that I felt like I needed to go begging at my mom's feet again. Now she has always supported me and come to not only accept but like the fact that I play poker, and she has been willing to support me financially when I needed it, and happily so, with the belief—the belief that I shared—that I would get on my feet soon enough. But when my choices were going to bleed over and start affecting her, that was unacceptable.
For the previous month or two, I had explained that my financial situation was getting dire, and I would barely make it until the World Series of Poker (which has been a nice annual boost, because I know I can deal there each year if I need the money), but still the effort was not increased. I had offered to teach him to deal in time for the WSOP, I had helped find him potential students, stakes him for games, but none of it was taken advantage of. Only I was taken advantage of. And THAT was unacceptable.
When I was in Seattle, feeling helpless, my mom was frustrated with me as well. She too felt like I should be making progress, and it got to the point where she said I had to do SOMETHING even if it was work at McDonald's, and that I couldn't live with her forever. That was the jolt I needed, and about a month later I had packed up and come back to Vegas and was going to try to make a go at poker.
I was very angry at her for that for a while, because I felt like I wasn't ready. But although, as I mentioned at the start of this post, I wasn't completely on my own two feet, I was at least partly there and making a darn good attempt. And I eventually was grateful to her for forcing me to “sink or swim” because I think I would have continued wading in the kiddie pool forever if she hadn't. I owe her a lot for that jolt into action.
With that in mind, and secure in the knowledge that my “friend” was not going to do any more than he had been doing, I informed him that I was cutting him off—I was moving out. I don't know what he's going to do, and I don't know if he knows either. All I know is that I can't afford the emotions or the finances he needs for support. He has drained me, and I let him do it.
My friend, do not try to find me or contact me; I will not be there. If you are to die in the street starving, I understand that is a possible outcome. If some day you understand why I feel not that I have abandoned YOU, but that YOU have abandoned ME, and if some day you understand why and how I can care about you while still being numb to what happens to you, and if some day you are standing yourself on your own two feet and wish to meet me on equal ground, and if some day you wish to share a friendship and knowledge that is of mutual benefit, then on that day I will want to be found by you and be your friend. I understand that that day may never come and that you may always be angry at me for what has happened, and blame everything but your own choices on how your life turns out. But I hope that is not the case.
I know I am not in the wrong. I have helped two other people prior to trying to help you. They both took advantage of the opportunity and got themselves back on their feet, and I am proud of what they've accomplished and who they are, and proud to be their friend. They did not view life as endless struggle, to be lived day by day with no forethought and with only the avoidance of today's pain in mind. They did not wait until the last minute to fix problems they knew about in advance and then claim to be so unlucky as to have the problem still exist after all this time. (And no, I will not remove or edit this post.)
ANYWAY....
So I had come up with a plan to get back online, and I had decided to move out—in short, I had realized that my own inability to stand fully on my own two feet was my acceptance of that state of being, and I had decided that was no longer acceptable.
Backtrack about a year and a half.
I went to New Zealand, on my dad's dime of course, to visit my dad and my step mom and see New Zealand for the first time. (South Island FTW!) I thoroughly enjoyed the trip but having then run me around all over to make sure I got to see all of it got tiring, and I requested a day or rest and hanging around home once or twice. Additionally, I didn't sleep well a few of the days, and was thus more concerned with when we were getting to the destination rather than the scenery.
Background info: My step mom has never liked me. She tolerated me because I was my father's son, and she loves my father. But she wholly disapproves of my view on life, my ethical standpoint, my lack of religion, my poker (gambling).... pretty much everything about me and who I am as a person. That's fine. She's allowed to think and go about life however she pleases. Although I disagree, I understand WHY she feels this way because I know what her world view is, and I can see why I appear to her the way I do. And besides, she makes my dad happy, and for that, I am eternally grateful. I have basically tried to just avoid communication with her because it seems that we end up in a disagreement every time we speak, so I feel that not talking was the cleanest way to handle things.
Now then, as I said, I was very much enjoying the New Zealand trip, but I was worn out for some of it, and I guess it showed. My step-mom wrote an exceedingly vile letter (because speaking out loud was too difficult) about how ungrateful I was, and basically how I was a little punk leaching off my dad and not properly appreciating the trip which he had paid for. The other main point of the letter was that I was a poor communicator and didn't attempt to engage her in conversation. As I said above, I thought not speaking was the best way to keep the peace, but apparently, she disagreed! (You can read it for yourself, Page 1 and Page 2.)
I have written a similarly vile letter. When I was in high school, I had a long distance relationship, which is certainly odd for being in high school, and my parents were concerned about it, and I wrote a long hate-filled diatribe about them, their separation, and who are they to judge me blah blah blah. I don't have a copy of it to link to, but I would happily show it if I had it, because I am rightly ashamed of it. I also don't expect my parents to forgive me for it. I love them, and I think they understand WHY I wrote it and how confused and angry I was when I wrote it, so although it was completely unacceptable and unforgivable, I know they at least know where it came from and that I have grown past such stupidity, and that I love them and appreciate them for who they are and all they have done for me.
Similarly, I understand why my step-mom felt the way she did, and the torment boiling inside of her that forced her to express such feelings. I do not forgive her for it, since she has never attempted to understand me and my life, and why I am proud of the person I am, while I have sought to understand her and her world view. But at the very least, I do understand why she feels the way she does, and I know that from that point of view, I am a gross outsider and a freak. An immoral and disrespectful person.
Normally, I show respect when I feel it is earned... and as I've said, I'm not the fondest of her and don't respect much of the way she approaches the world. But the thing is—she had a RIGHT to expect respect.
That's important, because it's the crux of my entire problem. I was relying on my dad and in part on her, not just financially, but in many respects. And because I was dependent on her, she felt she had a right to expect certain things from me. And you know what, she's right. When I was supporting my friend, I had a RIGHT to expect him to try and break free of my support. And if my step mom is in some way supporting me, she has a RIGHT to expect things of me.
Fast forward now to a few weeks ago. I was at a game night with some friends, and the wife of one of my poker buddies, in a completely off-hand comment mentioned that she thought I was a virgin. (My ego compels me to mention that I'm not, although seeing as how my mom is the most frequent reader of my blog, I'm not sure how grateful I am about my ego's desire to put that out there. Hooray for awkwardness!)
Anyhow, prideful as I am, I was a bit upset about this, but it only took a moment to realize that she ALSO had a right to this opinion. She's a smart lady, and I value her friendship and her opinions, and if she thought this of me, it was not a fault of hers, but of mine.
The image that I project to the world clearly is not the image I have of myself. And you know what? The image I have of myself just isn't accurate. My projection is my actions and my way of presenting myself, and those ARE who I am, so it is my own image of myself that needs adjusting. And who I really am is not who I want to be and who I thought I was. This women thinks I am a soft spoken computer geek virgin, and I think I am some kind of god. The problem is, she's closer to accurate than I am.
That is unacceptable.
Because she's RIGHT to think of me the way she does, and because my step mom was RIGHT to feel the way she did, and because I am RIGHT to leave my old friend in the dust, because of the moral code which makes these values real to me—my moral code—I needed to change who I was and how I approached my life. Being dependent on anybody else for my finances, for my happiness, for my well-being, for my LIFE, is unacceptable to me and will not stand any longer.
From this point forward, I will be responsible for my destiny. My life will be my own, completely and irreversibly. If that means when I go broke I work at McDonald's, then that's what it takes. I will at the very least still have my pride and my knowledge that I am doing what it takes to EARN my own way in this world, without relying on the charity of others. If I visit my dad in New Zealand this year, it will either be on my own dime, or with the understanding that he wishes to treat me to the trip as a gift, and that I am free to enjoy the gift as I see fit, and not in any manner that he expects of me. (To be fair and clear, he DOES already feel this way—it was only my step mom who didn't.)
In a similar vein, I have recently realized that I am no longer a liberal democrat. I am an anarchist. If I felt that government COULD work, I would still be a liberal. (The people who self-identify as the American Christian Conservative Right are the most evil and vile people whose way of existing actively harms the rest of humanity, and they should be fought fervently, whether you are for or against government.) But alas, I think the red-tape bureaucracy is too ineffectual to work, and acting in accordance with my morality of self-reliance, I have realized that I must live for myself, in every respect, including politically. (I am NOT an anarcho-capitalist... I have already outlined many of the problems with capitalism and shown more reasons why if government can work, more regulation is better.)
I will from this point forward respect myself. That means not just being financially independent and free in all other respects, but treating myself with the respect I deserve. This means getting my fat butt back in shape, speaking my mind more often and clearly, and projecting to the world the person I want to be and feel that I should be.
I am a good person, and I seek to leave the world and humanity at large better than I found it; therefore, any action I take to better myself and make myself happy and achieve what I want in life is a moral action.
I can now pay my own way and stand on my own two feet, and I will make sure that is always the case. My life is my own, wholly and without reservation.
I will live for myself. I will only help others if I can afford it and if the enjoyment I get from being able to help them and see them succeed is worth the price I am paying. I will treat others with the respect they deserve in my eyes, no more and no less. I will act according to my own morality at all times and in all things. I will treat myself, my body, and my mind with the respect they deserve. I will love others for who they are and what they bring to my life and to the world, in combination with the knowledge of their love for who I am and what I bring to their life and to the world. I will choose freedom over security; I will choose my life over others' beliefs that I owe them things I do not owe. I will be free. And I will earn my freedom.
Anything else is unacceptable.
