To take a serious tone.

So, my father’s in jail, has been for a month now. Why haven’t I written about it? The whole affair is stupid, my mother was in with him, but my brother got her out on bail. It has effectively tore the distant family apart, alienating my parents from their parents. Or at least, my father is alienated from both sets of parents. My brother sends me an IM with the links to the news articles about what happened.

What happened? The honest truth? My parents were, are, and always will be hippies, I was raised in the drug culture, raised that pot was harmless, and I believe it, deep down I really do. Now, I don’t smoke pot, it’s not my drug. However, my parents did, as well as my younger brother. My parents always raised me in a very open manner, if I wanted to drink, or do drugs, they would acquire it, they would be consumed in the home, and I was not to leave, thus there were no DUIs, no getting hurt, and no police involvement. And believe it or not, all the way through my young adulthood I was almost a golden child, I didn’t do drugs, drink, smoke, or anything until I was eighteen and not under the legal authority of my parents. Following their own strain of advice they decided to grow their own pot.

The reasoning behind this? Safety, not having to go to a drug dealer meant that they knew what they were getting, they were saving money for their bills (my parents have always been on the brink of "impoverishment"), there would be no chance for police involvement. Everything would be behind closed doors, behind lock and key, and internalized. All went according to plan for years.

Until, that is, my father got cocky.  He started to visit sites on growing and cultivating pot, posting pictures of his small operation, his methods, the lights he used, the specs on the beds, etc.  And a cop was on the message boards, they ran a trace of the IP, and caught him.

The way he grew was to grow several plants, keeping only half of them once they got to a certain size, chopping up the least healthy for fertalizer, and then half again once they reached adulthood that way he wasn’t putting all his eggs into one basket, nor was he growing more than they "needed" such that it was wasted.  They weren’t selling it, they weren’t giving it away, it wasn’t hitting the streets or any other such thing, they were growing it for their own personal use, and they get busted.

My mother effectivly lost her job at Wal Mart, they put her on suspension without pay with the threat of termination pending the results of their trial, she applied for another job where a friend of her’s was the manager, to no avail, aparantly the charges had already hit her record, barring her from nearly any chances of employment.  My parents live in a very small town, everyone knows everyone, there’s an Ace Hardware and a Wal Mart as well as one grocery store (a Winne Dixie).  She hasn’t a chance, luckily her landlord doesn’t seem to care what happened, because she hasn’t been evicted yet.

However, she’s having to sell everything to afford rent, bail, and everything else.  I’ve given her permission to sell what few things of mine remain there, my collectables mostly…not worth "much" maybe a few hundred to the right buyer, if that.  I don’t even remember what things I have there.

Go figure that my father’s arrogance and stupidity would once again put our family under stress (before that it was his drinking problems, and before that, his drug problems).  Do I hate him?  No, I do very much love him.  A thing that most find hard to understand.  My mother’s parents want my mother to leave him, testify in court and blame everything on him.  (I’m no lawyer, but if I remember correctly from the few "law" classes I took in college, they can’t make her testify against him if she doesn’t want to.)  My father’s father is furious at him, I haven’t talked to either set of my grandparents in a rather long time (measured in months I think) so I don’t know the extent of the damage done, and perhaps fear stays my hand from finding, being as I’m a bystandard and don’t want to be muddled into this mess.

One thing that I do have to say is although my father is generally (from what my mother tells me) being a paranoid asshole, he’s still trying to retain some of the nobility that I think runs though our blood (ironic considering our lowly societial standings, as well as the general opinions of those around us).  He wants to take all the blame for everything, agree to all the charges (which is from my understanding four felonies), so long as they drop all the charges on my mother.  Not a likely outcome, but a noble notion none the less.

And it is those very notions that make it so hard for me some days.  A song will come on at work that reminds me of him or something, "Cat’s in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin or some such, and I come so close to bursting into tears, I actually tear up and have to pretend that I’m sweating, rubbing my eyes.  It doesn’t do much for my hardened image to cry you know.  Why?  They’re fifty, and neither of them are in the best of health.  I haven’t seen them in years, four of them.  In the probable event of jail time, how much longer won’t I be able to see them?  And though it can happen to any of us at any time, I just have this fear that I’ll never see them again.  Here I sit, over a thousand miles from them, poor as a pauper, I just rencently gained employement, and literally every single penny I earned had to go to rent/bills.  Notice I didn’t say food.

There is no food, none.  And I just wish I could send my mother some money to help out.  But I can’t.  I’m so far in the red that if I don’t eat more than once every few days until the end of the month I should be broke even to zero dollars, but my hours are cut at work…so that puts a damper on things.  I’m sorry…I had to change the subject a little…it’s hard to get my mind off of it though, what with no money to go do anything or just go anywhere in general, on top of that all of my so called friends and people that so called "care about me" just leave me be.  I just trudge through every day waiting for everything to be better, but it never gets better, the curse of my family.  Life never gets better for any of us.  One major reason I don’t want kids.  I do, but I don’t.  I’d love to have someone to share my knowledge with, to teach and help grow, but the life I’m destined to lead isn’t one for a child to grow up in, just like the life my parents lead wasn’t one for my brother and I to grow up in.

The constant moving and not knowing why (until I was older), never making friends, never having anything, starting completely over so many times, but I don’t blame my parents, I know they love me and my brother, even if it was hard for us to understand, especially me, my father was always so…"rough"…with me.  I’ve got to go…I’m crying again, and I’ve got to stop…

–RK