As I think of how to put these ideas into words that are understood I know that words do not do justice to my meaning and intent, since each person has their own meaning and understanding of words. Everybody has made their way through life almost entirely on subconscious associations and internalized teachings based on their own observations of how to survive in the world. However since I have not had all of your experiences I cannot convey this message in a way that all who read it will understand and agree. Since it is our nature to look for fault and differences in people and their beliefs instead of wisdom and similarities.

We all start our lives with a set of blueprints that we call DNA, the instructions we are given are based on the combination of our parents life purpose and their beliefs. The debate has always been “Is it nature or nurture?”, but really it’s both, because we have free will. So despite being given a clear code and life purpose the people around us have a different purpose. So the environment we are put in shapes our subconscious associations just as much as our genetics.

The meaning of life is so simple I can sum it up in two words: To Evolve

Now the instant you heard my above statement in your mind you judged it. The judgment was based on your own beliefs and chosen affiliations. For none of us are completely open minded and we all put a different spin on those words.

For example If you are an Atheist and subscribes to the Darwinian belief on evolution you might say this is no surprise as life was just randomly created and nature will continue to evolve. You only read this post because you figured I am often funny and might have got a good jab in. Perhaps to you there is no meaning to life, but you figure while you are here you will still make the best of it and enjoy what life has to offer.

Now a Buddhist might tell me that the path to salvation is through ending suffering. They would probably say that all we need is within ourselves. If they are willing to bend their wording on Buddhahood they might see that one personally evolves until their fear and suffering is gone.

If you follow Wicca, you are used to people not understanding you. You live by a simple rule that says Do No Harm, and otherwise do as you will. You make magick and spend time focusing on your thoughts to try to help you improve your life and those around you using all the energies you perceive to exist. You see evidence for God all around you, and disbelieve in Darwinian evolution but you have an open mind and would listen to a new definition of evolution.

If you are labeled as a New Age person then your beliefs are extremely varied since you have observed life around you and seen value in many different philosophies. To my knowledge a large portion of the New Age movement believes in evolution, but calls it Ascension since we are all just energy trying to reach a higher state of consciousness.

If you are a Christian, you might have decided that evolution is blasphemy because God created us in his image and we do not evolve. We simply reproduce until death when god forgives our sins and sends the believers to Heaven. This may not be the case with all denominations of Christians, but our real problem is that a predefined denomination means that we chose to let other people interpret our beliefs for us by their understanding of a book that has been changed and translated many times since it’s initial writing. These are very good meaning people, who want to save us all but they live in constant fear of a vengeful god. For when Jesus walked on water he said that everybody could do it if they just believed and then Paul started to walk on the water, but he got scared and he fell in. Fear protects us, but also prevents us from evolving.

Now I have of course just generalized and in doing so will surely get many people telling me I have misinterpreted their beliefs. So instead of more examples I will instead define my beliefs, since this is the viewpoint from which I write. I believe in god, but I define god as the universe and energy that surrounds me and connects me to all things. The world I live in is very gray. To me reality is almost totally subjective and we all live in our own little world, which we have created with our thoughts and perspective. I see that just because one person’s reality doesn’t mesh with my own, it may be exactly what they need to believe in to accomplish their own life’s purpose. I do feel that there is some real objective reality however my eyes cannot perceive it because it exists in a higher dimension.

As a human we see ourselves as individual entities but anybody with a microscope can tell you that our bodies are made up of the same elements that are seen everywhere in nature and that there are living creatures inside of us. In fact there are nearly 50 trillion living creatures that make up a human being and each one works just like we do. It lives in an environment made up of the same elements as our environment, and each cell sends signals out into it’s universe asking for what it needs.

If we pollute our bodies with “toxic waste” like pharmaceutical drugs and heavily processed foods we start to get sick, and then we pollute ourselves some more to suppress the sickness. By this time the environment inside our bodies has become disgusting and our cells are no longer able to send correct signals. This doesn’t stop the cells from replicating though so now instead of giving birth to new healthy cells, they give birth to little mutations that will be able to survive in this new toxic environment. These “bigger, stronger, faster” cells start converting the rest of the cells so that they too can survive in toxic waste world, because the body thinks that’s what it needs because nobody is telling those cells any differently. What we need is a housekeeper to come and clean out the waste product so that we are free to send good signals out again.

The reason doctors have a hard time making a pill that will cure cancer is because any cell can get pissed off at the world it lives in and decide to create garbage but this is self-evolved garbage, so our pills targeted pills don’t understand it. In the same way that this happens we can cure all of our problems and diseases simply by cleaning up our own environment. This applies not just to the quality of food we eat, but the environment we live in, the stimulus we give ourselves and the thoughts that we think (Placebo is proven to work better than all drugs when properly administered).

Bruce Lipton, Ph.D writes: This new perspective of human biology does not view the body as just a mechanical device, but rather incorporates the role of a mind and spirit. This breakthrough in biology is fundamental in all healing for it recognizes that when we change our perception or beliefs we send totally different messages to our cells and reprogram their expression. The new-biology reveals why people can have spontaneous remissions or recover from injuries deemed to be permanent disabilities.

The functional units of life are the individual cells that comprise our bodies. Though every cell is innately intelligent and can survive on its own when removed from the body, in the body, each cell forgoes its individuality and becomes a member of a multicellular community. The body really represents the cooperative effort of a community of perhaps fifty trillion single cells. By definition, a community is an organization of individuals committed to supporting a shared vision. Consequently, while every cell is a free-living entity, the body’s community accommodates the wishes and intents of its ‘central voice,’ a character we perceive as the mind and spirit.

You should know that “The Secret” is real and so is the placebo. If you wish to find value in life, then you need only to look for it. If you wish to just see misery and corruption in the world then you will find it. Do not try to solve all the problems of the world but rather be grateful that you live in a magical world filled with so many things to do and learn. Spend your time as best as you can trying to focus on good things. You optimism will not only improve your life but it will infect all those around you to some degree and they will in turn infect other people. This group of people you have infected are how evolution works, because we evolve the fastest when we are working together with others of a common goal.

Saying that evolution is the meaning of life does not mean that is your purpose in life. For a cell in my ear that makes earwax has a different purpose than a cell that produces urine. It would be a sad day if one day they decided to produce the opposite without moving places in the body. Yet each one of those cells was formed from from the exact same chemicals and protons. Each cell was born and figured out what it needed to do, and if it decided to do something else with life another cell was born that would take it’s place if the body still had need for those cells. Such is your purpose in life. Do not be hung up by the beliefs of the people around you because their beliefs got them to where they are, not to where you are and they will never understand the universe quite as you do.

The earth is just an organ in the great body that is our universe. There is an abundance of energy and resources that we need to live so there is no reason to live in fear. If you live for the moment and something bad happens, you can just deal with it when it happens. If you spend your time worrying and dwelling you are giving power to the things that you fear.

So live well and continue to find and create new things and ideas so that the our universe and our thoughts continues to evolve.

I seemed to have a lot of technical ranting in here so I decided to break the post up by themes.  If you aren’t into the technical ranting or start to lose interest just skip to a different colored text. 

<ultimatepc>
Even before I got back from New Zealand I had started to purchase the pieces to build my ultimate home computer.  Believe it or not I am not a gamer, but I still needed to build a giant PC with the newest shiznit because I run so many things at once on my system.
</ultimatepc>

<boasting>
Right after I got back I went and ordered all the missing pieces for my computer.  Spending more money than I had because to me a computer IS my lifeblood.  I purchased 2 monitors (one 24″ and one 22″ that was also a HDTV) an insanely large computer case with water cooling. 

The rest of the computer was a QX9650 (quad core, extreme processor 3.0ghz per core that can be overclocked and has 12 megs of cache), 4 gigs of DDR3 1600, an Audigy X-FI sound card, Some fancy 802.11n Wireless card, a nice Radeon video card and 6 terabytes worth of hard drives (though I owned most of them already.
</boasting>

<technical rant>
Here’s the funny thing.  I fix computers for a living, tis all I do.  I am VERY good at it.  However when I built this and turned it on the first time It was working, however it started randomly resetting.  I surmised at that time that it was either the really expensive power supply or that it was not grounded properly.  The grounding being the more likely. 

<thanks>
Still, a HUGE thank you to my friend Kevin who helped me with this.  Because even though I had “tried everything”, I didn’t try everything twice… He also dealt with me bitching about how he was doing things and didn’t back down.
</thanks>

<name>
I needed a name for this computer but I had already named a different computer Evil.  I briefly thought of naming it “Woman” because it is awesome but has been a huge pain in the ass all at the same time.  I decided instead that I would get over the computer being a bitch and just name it LSD. 

Why?  Because it started as a bad trip but is now awesome.  I figure it’s “all tripped out”.
</name>

<XP-vs-Server2008>
In a side note, I have installed both XP Pro 32bit and the 64 bit Server 2008 (supposedly 12% faster than vista) on here and I have done my own comparison tests. 

By far the fastest computer I have ever used, though it seems sad that vista/s2008 both run slower for me.  I mean what a cruel joke for Microsoft to play.
</XP-vs-Server2008>

Haven’t been writing much of what’s been going on in the last month.  My mind has been overloaded with thoughts.  Realize that last October was THE hardest month of my life, and so so much has happened in the last year.

The other day I went to court. The reason was to defend myself against a DUI charge that I had occurred only 5 or 6 days after moving back from New Zealand. Yeah, good timing, I know.

1st Case (license be suspended): I won my MVD/DMV hearing, mostly due to my massive amount of machismo (though it helps when the cop doesn’t show up). It was important to me to win this since I do mobile pc repair for a living, though my lawyer warned me that I might not WANT to win that case because if I were to take a “voluntary suspension” at this hearing, they could NOT give me an “sr22″ on my insurance causing it to go through the roof, even if I got a DUI in the criminal case. I was feeling righteous so I won and declined the suspension.

2nd Case (Criminal): Now if I got a DUI in this case, in Arizona several things would happen.
1) License would be suspended (even if i won the first case)

4) I would end up in “Tent City” for 10 to 30 days in summer. Yikes (worse than min security prison).

So given the above facts I decided to shell out for a lawyer for this case. Knowing that around here even with a lawyer a lot of people fail, I decided that I absolutely must win so I hired the best damn DUI lawyer there is in Arizona. Well, at least according to research on Google (who can’t be trusted since they are working on world domination).

An amazing lawyer costs $5000 just to hire him, to research and work for you. Then another $5000 if it goes to trial. Think the smartass is rich? Heh, wrong… I just don’t let things like “lack of money” prevent me from getting what I want.

Enough hype, the results are: Did not go to trial to save myself $5k, took a settlement offer of “Reckless driving ($478), a mothers against drunk driving class, traffic safety school ($120) and 30 hours of community service (no big deal, I will just design a website or something for somebody).

Still between that, living overseas and deciding to run my own company full time, money is pretty tight.

I don’t worry about things like that though because, when in need I always manage to find enough to get by, and I am fully capable of getting a new pc repair client every single day if I try.

Ultimate goal is to just barely get by for 6 months to a year so that I can make this website my only focus and complete my enormous to-do list. When list is completed the site will work kind of like a shady version of Facebook, only will have the added benefit of users being able to create new content, pages, art, or other contributions and then contributors will get their own donate button. The theory is that say somebody besides me designs an amazing page that people spend a lot of time on. Then that person has the potential to make donations from people who appreciate it.

So last night I spent a good chunk of time answering random people’s questions on uk.answers.yahoo.com. I know, I could have just answered some of the zillion ask-a-smartass questions I have ignored this year, but those take actual thought and telling people how to fix their own lives on yahoo is quicker.

Anyway back to the negative spew. I have been trying to keep my mind occupied on things the past couple weeks, but the only thing I have going is roommate drama. Oh don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with my roommates. The drama comes from the fact that are also getting hit with one bad thing after another. You know, crappy changes at work, traffic tickets, medical expenses, loss of a TV wall (yeah it was my projector that exploded, but it effects us all and we are no longer hanging out in the same room much anymore).

Well tonight, it hit another point where one of my roommates got 2 flat tires and a DUI… (and he got the DUI just because he was changing his tires at 1am… they are assholes in AZ) and is very depressed that he will be getting automatically fired from his 74k/yr career and he won’t be able to afford his child support payments and he has had so much other financial hardship that I don’t believe he even has all of his rent money that’s due this weekend.

I have advised him that the people who have succeeded the most in life are those who have hit rock bottom (and then we proceeded to have a discussion about how he could not go beyond the rock bottom since it’s really strong rock… shaped by Ancient Egyptians).

He will be okay, because he has kids that he cares about so he will find a way to survive. I will keep reinforcing that and trying to share some of my perspectives on how the universe works which might change the way he looks at where he is and how he will get better…

Still, today is my mother’s birthday and I refuse to end things on a negative spin, so I will tell you that it can only get better from here because tomorrow we are having a lingerie party at our house (that I assume I am paying for everything). I mean you gotta know that you are doing something right when you get asked to host one of those…

Also I bought a new domain (absinthemynd.com), and had some amazing ideas for how to use it, which I suppose is also slowing down me making this site successful so for now I have decided not to develop it until I finish at least 1/3 of my to-do list for thesmartass.

FYI: I predict that the next week is going to be pretty hard on me, so it will go one of 2 ways. I won’t work on my site at all, or I will throw myself so deep in my work so that I can’t think of anything but.

P.S. Here’s my Yahoo Answers Profile. Lemme know if I gave them good answers, or if I should stick to answering only smartass questions.

So I went and passed the fuck out at 8:30pm last night.  I knew I would fall asleep right away because I had a chiropractic adjustment and then acupuncture… This alone would make me sleep well because a lot of blockages in my system would have gotten unblocked, releasing toxins and other shit into my blood stream.  Now a wiser man would have just drank water the rest of the night to help carry the toxins out of the body… I however felt I should add more toxins in…

In the history of me there has always been one thing that has totally relaxed me; and that is Absinthe.  Then there is another alcohol that has always made me kind of goofy… Brandy.  So I made up some Ethereals to get both effects.  It worked pretty damn well and I sat and watched a movie on my site called Art School Confidential, because it was made by the same guy who made Ghost World so I thought it might be interesting.  I guess it was interesting at the time, but it wouldn’t be a top pick when I have other movies like Fracture and Mr. Brooks online…

Have you ever had REALLY lucid dreams?  Ones so real you felt like you were using all 5 senses?  Man they are intense… Especially when they aren’t daydreams and you aren’t really trying to make anything happen.  So your subconscious is just trying to figure out / cope with / understand what happened to you during the day while you dream, and you aren’t supposed to see the process it uses for this.  Because the process doesn’t make sense consciously. 

Alright… Enough hype so now it’s done and I’m dreaming…

I was at a jungle gym with my friend Justin.  It was larger than your average jungle gym and looked like it was crafted just for tall people instead of kids.  We were talking about the universe and how if one could change the vibrational rate of another object then he would have the Midas Touch (turn whatever he wanted into gold).  As we were talking we seemed to really be getting a great understanding of this and as soon as we hit an ah ha moment a tank rolled in to try to shut us up.  It wasn’t just any tank, it was the tank from Beijing that the guy stood in front of in 1989 (Tienanmen Square Protests).

One would assume I wouldn’t want to just stand there like tank man did but I was suddenly not there anymore and was on the opposite side of a barrier talking to a pretty lady that I believe was a school teacher, but I have never seen her before in my life.  I do not recall any actual words from our conversation but it ended when I decided to show up at the airport. 

This was the weirdest airport I have ever been to and I thought that in the dream.  It was massive and had elevators that took you to other elevators and then signs pointing in 7 directions.  Yes, 7… So I choose the right path and ended up getting stopped by 2 rent a cops wearing bellhop uniforms.  They had another barrier up and would not let me or any of the other people pass.  i was at the head of the line and was protesting that they move and was considering bribing them with $100 and seeing if other people in the crowd could pony up some more money. 

Well before I had done this I was in Wisconsin, in a parking lot and there was a huge semi in this parking lot that said JVLNET on the side of the vehicle.  Well this intrigued me as I used to work there so I looked around.  There was a new store that somebody was moving into in the dark of the night that sold robots and mechanical lego sets.  Sure enough a minute later I saw Bob and then his son Joe.  They both looked very different as Bob had really long straight blond hair on his head and a long blond beard and was wearing a Jerry Garcia T-Shirt.  Joe however was just the opposite and came out with a well trimmed up hair and was wearing a tuxedo, which was really odd since they were moving stuff into a store in the middle of the night. 

Joe told me to look around and we would catch up in a minute.  So I did, however not in the store… Next to it.  Well next to it was all mud for about a mile and then there was a barn with cows in it.  This didn’t fit at all and I knew it and was very confused as to why such things would be in a location and the smell was awful so I went to walk back to the store to talk to my old friend when I was suddenly back at the odd airport trying to negotiate our way past the barrier. 

Before I could get the guy to move my friend Justin was there again and he tried to negotiate his way past the bellhops/rent a cops.  He had this big shit eating grin and pulled out a playing card from his pocket.  It was a red 6 of spades.  He told the bellhops that it was the death card (as if it was tarot) and one guard took the card and let him past the barrier.  My eyes were bugged out with amazement and I no longer wanted to pay my way past.  Well it was just their sense of humor because as soon as Justin had rounded the corner they let the rest of us past.

I was now in another elevator and I asked Justin where he got the death card and he shrugged with a half magic and half I don’t know look.  Thinking about it now I believe it was part of the secret of the universe that we were talking about and that he had really changed the vibrational rate of something to make it into something else. 

The elevator disappeared and I was back with the woman.  She smelled nice and I was loosing focus from the rest of the things around me.  For example, there had been a background, however it started to fade away.  I just had no interest to shift my focus to anything except this woman… and then I woke up, feeling fine… Kind of thirsty, but not ill in any way.

I was just sitting in the chair playing some music. New to me music that has no prior associations and once again I am hit with the “damn, I bet Beth would really like this song”. Yet, now I will never know. Well I know she would have, but now she never will. For the most part, I get through most of the days without any “never more” thoughts. I can focus on my own life and how to improve it. So far I have actually been improving it. I am exercising every day (no joke) & paying off debt. I am active and fairly productive.

Yet, I go to work and I say I will go in with my A Game today and kick out more posts than anybody else like I was consistently doing before at the end of September and beginning of October. Yet I can never do quite that much. I just can’t focus on the task at hand anymore. It’s not that my mind is flooded with negative or sad thoughts. It just won’t grip onto any one thought.

I used to make my sister laugh. When I lived in Wisconsin she wouldn’t sleep on Fridays and would come hang out with me during the day. She would be really over-tired from not sleeping and if she hung out with somebody else she would get cranky. Yet with me I could just make her laugh. So we would often go out for lunch and by the end of lunch we always had our waitresses convinced that we were crazy (well, not exactly a stretch), because we would be laughing so hard.

I enjoyed that, and enjoyed the time we spent together. Yet I was growing older and my sister was older than me. I needed to break away from my friends and my family and leave. I needed a break from it. I needed to make new friends and to force my sister to do the same by me leaving.

I did. She didn’t.

She absorbed a couple of my friends that had lived in the Madison area and latched on to them very hard. She had known them through me before I had left. It was comfortable. It was easy since she didn’t have to meet new people. In her dishonesty she would just bitch about how hard it was to make friends. If she had to be honest with herself she would have actually said that she didn’t want to make more friends because then more people would have had to see her suffer and she would have just made their lives more miserable. This is what she actually believed.

As I have lived in Arizona since April of 2006 now she came to visit me once. The trip was paid for half by me and half by my mother. I was glad to see her and vice versa but she was so damn miserable inside and couldn’t outwardly think of anything except the money it was costing to be there. Took her and some friends out on the town and she was just miserable the entire time. This was so foreign to me because I have always made her happy.

I knew she was fucked up inside, but she has always tried to hide it from me when she can. Still, she left early and I was glad to see her go. She was being a bitch and I wasn’t happy with it.

She left and on the way home she broke down. Seems she had a panic attack and cried for 12-14 hours straight. I mean she was clearly sick and suffering, but I could not see it. To me she was just my same old crazy sister, and I would not take any more crap from her on a crazy day than I would on a non-crazy day.

Despite me seeing it as a lousy time for all involved. She said she enjoyed her time in Arizona and wanted to move here. She started saving up so that she could move here. I warned her that I would NOT live with her. That we would end up killing each other. She agreed and set that as a goal. Go to the nice warm place where her brother lived.

Me, this didn’t seem like such a great deal. I had moved away from Wisconsin to be my own independent person and did not need my sister brining me down.

Well, Fuckin’ A. Now I would give anything to have her live in Arizona making me miserable.

I miss being able to call her and say random things about nothing. I miss being able to give her shit about not being able to think of the word flashlight (one time, long ago). I just miss knowing that somebody else in the world needed me. That somebody gave a shit about the stupid things that I do.

See it kills me because I have something my sister never had. I have a lot of friends who would listen to me and actually care. However I don’t have anything to say to them. There is just no part of a conversation that I can have with them that will resemble the conversations I had with my sister. It is something torn that can never be mended.

Most days I will be fine. Unfocused, but fine. Today I was totally fine until right before I started to write this. Yet, now I can hear her voice in my head saying “hey kid”. I can hear a conversation that never happened, and never will. I can see her in my mind and I wish I couldn’t because it’s not real. Because seeing her and really thinking about her is harder than not thinking about her. It’s eating at every one of my senses until I cannot breath.

I am not an emotional person and I held it together like a fucking rock when I needed to, but now as the people and things in my life gain more distance from me I can’t help but to get drawn in. To be just another example of psychology’s 5 fucking stages.

I am a non-emotional optimist with a good outlook on the future, who never dwells on the past and whom rarely worries. Yet for all of who I am, nothing in life prepares you to accept something just because you understand it.

“hey kid”… It’s just there. I know why it’s there and I know it’s not real. Yet If I were holding a seminar right now to teach people what I would know I would tell them that all we are is our memories. I would tell them that we can change and shape our memories and our perspectives to move beyond things. I could tell them how to make the memories more or less intense at will and thereby change their entire life.

Yet, I can’t bring myself to do the same thing to my own memories. I do not want to loose them, or change them at all. I don’t wish to have a different perspective on them, or make them less intense. I want to just be ok and go on with my life, but only time will let me do this.

I shall never forget her, even in death, even if it pains me she will live on forever in my mind.

Beginning of the month
———————–
I paid rent today… for the second time since I am paying for one place AND living in another. I am ok with doing this because it means that despite having to come up with more money, I will not have to get defensive and prepared for war.

3rd
—
It’s my mom’s birthday! Gave her a call, things going well and moving back to normal

4th
—
I woke up with moderate vertigo. Just moving my head caused me to spin. I had been kicking some ass at work and actually wanted to go, but I was too bloody dizzy and couldn’t pin point why but I could not go to work.

My friend Chris sent me some messages that concerned me about my sister. I asked him straight if he thought she meant suicide and he said it was more like a “terminal disease” and that we should talk to her.

There are only 3 people my sister will REALLY talk to at this point. Me, my Mother and Chris. So
I call my mother and she has heard nothing.

She calls my sister and gets no response, leaves a message.

5th
—
No response, no call back.. we are now fairly worried.

6th
—
My final day off and I’m still bloody dizzy so I had to make a doctors appointment.

Then Beth calls me. I kept trying to hint at things but never threw anything at her. I wanted her to tell me on her own. She seemed very in check with her emotions and just referred to herself as her usual crazy self. I asked her what was wrong but she wouldn’t say anything. I was not satisfied with what she said…

My mom got a hold of my sister, and she was acting completely normal. For awhile she refused to admit anything was wrong. So my mother told her what she had heard from me… There was silence… Eventually she said she had gone to her local pill pusher and he had informed her that meds don’t work seem to work for her and that she had two choices. Either she could get electroshock therapy (which isn’t proven to help at all for people who have bipolar) or she could go on massive doses of anti-psychotics / anti-convulsants (which would make her into a vegetable). She was unwilling to go with either one of these options and instead of trying to find another doctor, or another answer she just decided that she would not do either choice, but in not taking her pills she knew she would go totally crazy.

So she told my mother that she had some connections and had gotten together a new identity, and she was going to go away so we did not have to suffer along with her.

My mom though upset about this, believed her and tried to get her to stay, but her mind was made up and she didn’t want to be confused with the facts.

She informed our mother that she wanted to leave with the last conversation with her brother being peaceful, so that I would just remember her as my “crazy sister”.

I discovered after this that she was also giving away a lot of her stuff…. not selling it.

later
—-
I have been worried, which I never worry, so I call a couple of her friends to just call her and see if she is ok. I do not believe the “new identity” thing and am hoping the people telling me she is just looking for attention are right, but I don’t believe them either so I called a couple other people to go check on her.

7th
—
She sends me 3 text messages. They appear to be her going away messages.

Nobody’s calls were answered but she is still sending Chris text messages, so hopefully she really is just “going away”. Still, I don’t for a moment believe the new identity thing so I send somebody else over to check on her and she says her car was there, not packed, and her A/C was running. That’s all I could get out of them.

8th
—
Unsatisfied with the last person I sent to check on her Chris agrees to leave early in the morning and go check on her. He has an hour to drive, but after I think he would be there I send him another text message from work.

He told me to call him, and he always prefers text so I knew my sister was dead.

He had to let the police into the apartment. She had shot herself. Sorry if I am not prettying this up but this is how it happened.

I told my boss a quick version of what happened and I left. I got a plane ticket but it didn’t leave for awhile that day. So I started calling people, lots of people to tell them what happened. While still waiting for the plane I went running. There was nothing else I could do.

My friend Josh picks me up in Milwaukee and I stay over at his place.

9th
—
Life has come to a halt, and nothing is getting done. The coroner had some lock box with notes to me and my mom as well as some other paperwork in it, but he would not release it until both my mother and father signed for it because they could not find an official will.

Nothing is progressing except arguments between my family.

I stayed at Josh’s place again and he says something that really sets me off. He meant well but it came off badly. He said “You seem a little too ok with this”, he said it because I had been laughing and watching tv and doing normal things. So I snapped and said “how the fuck am I supposed to act”. I mean I really didn’t know. I haven’t cried, and I have just been working on what I need to do for this crazy situation. He takes it hard because he was just trying to help.

10-12th
——–
My mom keeps not being able to leave due to all sorts of things, but without her getting to WI, nothing was getting done. So I found a way to get the keys to her apartment and Chris and I went to her apartment. I only wanted to walk as far as the computer. I found some documents on it that were VERY helpful and I printed them off. It was the first real progress we had since we didn’t have the box.

I have been managing the different sides of the family as best as I can. My dad hasn’t spoken to my mother in 9 years and he has nothing but hatred for everything when he tries to communicate.

13th
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I wasn’t satisfied with the “no service | no obituary | no reception” response I was getting from my dad’s half of the family so I said screw ‘em and I threw a get together myself at a bar in Madison.

The gathering went really well. My mom was in town and virtually every single person I invited came as well as a couple others. There was a letter my sister had written to “anybody and everybody I ever loved” and my mother had written another letter about Beth and we handed out a lot of copies of those.

It went really well and as it was breaking up Chris / Isaac told me that I needed to go with them to the Essen Haus for a ‘boot’. I decided that was a lot of beer so I said that Tom (stepdad) needed to come and also my mother to help me finish some of the beer off.

We got there and they were out of da boots. So instead we ’settled’ for a 5 liter beer (that had a $120 deposit on the stein). We drank all that and THEN we had a boot which became available after Isaac made friends with somebody at another table. So we drank that too.

A little toasted, but still feeling good we left, but stayed at a friends in Madison instead of driving home.

I ended up staying up till sometime in the morning talking to a wonderful girl whom I had met before, but never really knew.

14th
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More phone calls etc..

15th
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We actually got the lock box today but we have to go start cleaning out my sisters apartment. However my mom won’t read her letter (for good reason) until after she leaves the apartment.
Not a pleasant thing to mention but the crime scene cleaners have not made it to the apartment yet, however my mom insists we get started. So I ran in ahead of her to close the bedroom door.

The apartment smelled awful, but at the time I was able to get past it and I insisted that my mom did NOT go into the room. I had not gone in and neither should she. There was NOTHING in there she needed to see.

Well I went out to throw away some trash and came back in while she was walking out of the room. I was pissed because I told her not to and she had ignored me. She acted ok with it but she was not. I know damn well that she held up a front and then let it out later. Yes, she has thick skin and will be able to handle it… eventually…. but there was no reason to do it.

I eventually left and picked up my friend in Janesville and went to a bar for a couple drinks.

16th
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I spent 3+ hours talking to my father this morning and trying to help him leave the past in the past so that he could handle the situation that was in front of him now. As it stands he hasn’t been dealing with the last 2 weeks, but the last 15 years.

We got a moving vehicle today to take stick furniture and other crap in the back. My sister had SOOO much accumulated crap. The ‘cleaners’ still have not been here despite the apartment complexes call to me saying they got a different company to do it. Still, as far as I’m concerned we NEVER have to go in the bedroom. There was 0 reasons to do it and no stuff that is in there needs to be saved at all.

Same thing happened, only this time it was Tom. He decided to be ‘manly’ or some bullshit and go get all the fucking stuff out of the room and half ass clean the place up. I walk in to see that after another trash run and am really pissed off. I mean WTF purpose will it serve. So the cleaners haven’t gotten there yet, so what. Either they will later and then you can go in, or you will need to leave before they come and you never go in. Both seem like valid / rational options to me. The apartment complex can dispose of the stuff in there on their own.

Until this point I have showed virtually no emotion. I have simply managed things. It’s not that I am trying to be “brave” for everybody, I simply have only had thoughts of still living, getting by, getting things done. However In that apartment my heart beats faster and my energy is drained. So I would work fast to fill up a garbage bag and take it outside for air (garbage is a long ways away from the door).

Yet with that door open and the pungent smell coming from it, I was having a hard time breathing and keeping in check. I left for the night because I had hauled out most of the stuff and it was obvious that they didn’t want to listen to me.

I left there and everything hit me at once. For the first time since this has started I am “showing emotion” over the situation. I was having trouble breathing, and I just felt miserable.

Look, it’s not that I don’t want to be emotional over this. Hell, then I could better relate to people who are ‘expecting’ it from me. It’s that I have been in control over the situation. A fucked up situation that nobody should ever have to deal with, but I have been dealing with it. Now all of a sudden a door opens and I loose my control.

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I don’t know what will happen next. I only have a few days left in Wisconsin, and the number of things I need to do is decreasing. I will fly back to Arizona and go on with my life. In this shitty time in my life, I can still see hope and the possibility of something better to come from my time here.

It will take time to get past this, but I have a lot of time left.

The below section is a letter my sister wrote to ‘anyone and everyone she ever loved’
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