takes time

Ok, I shall try this again. I was kicked out of the place where I was. I think I stood up too many times to get copies of a HTML tutorial. I feel I need to learn every part of creating a package on the internet.



When you think about it, in real estate or sports marketing or selling anything else, I have been putting together presentations all of my adult career. There is no reason for me to believe it is going to stop. Every day I put together at least one presentation and publish it on the internet.



I must speak to the Chrysalis lady today but I am thinking about my mother, mostly. Jose, a good friend of mine asked me if I was ready to reunite with my family. (were versus was, that is the question. Yes, I must check with Joe on that. I noticed he exercised the "a" versus "an" rule in grammar. It has been a long time since my grammar has been tip top. ) Jose wants my sister to know that I have made great strides. The fact of the matter is that the great strides were made long before I was arrested. If they had not been made, I would be out in the streets doing cocaine. I worked for years, to end the cocaine usage.



I did not treat the drug usage per say. Drug usage is only a symptom of a greater problem. LIFE. I examined my own life. I took time out of the working world to save my life and ensure that my life would be happy and fulfilling. I had to look at the problems in my life that created enough emotional misery that I would seek out drugs. Then, by doing drugs you create more misery and ensure a future lack of success in relationships and employment. At a time when one of my best friends was disgusted with me, he should have been proud of me. AT a time when my sister should have been proud of me, she was ashamed of me.



My mother was proud of me because she was there. There was a time eight years ago when my mother would tell me"I wish you were never born." It hurt more than you could imagine. My mom would get such joy when she could talk about me to friends. Her friends would get much joy hearing about the things I was doing.

However, if I did not address what was wrong with me and resolve some issues, I would never having a chance to being a complete man.



I set forth doing that, writing my emotions down, examining my life. Examining the TRUTH about my life.

My mom examined the truth about her life. We we in a study lab on that street corner where the family house sits.



My mom began to want hugs after all the years she never had any. I always wanted to give them but she was not used to it. My mom never said she loved me until my mid 40's. She did not know how to say it. I knew she loved me. She showed me every day. When my mother said she did not know how to verbally express herself, I thought she was talking about using ten cent words, words that she purchased for me to learn how to use, paying for my education. But that was not what she was saying. "Elderly Speak" or the "great generation speak", it was. She was really saying that she did not know how to tell me that she loves me. I just figured that out. That is why we said it so much the last two years. That is the one thing that she wrote on my birthday card that she gave to my sister to give to me. "I love you, Walter!"



Did you see that exclamation mark?

MY MOTHER NEVER USED AN EXCLAMATION MARK IN HER LIFE WHEN SHE WROTE TO ME. NEVER.

SHE NEVER SAID SHE LOVED ME IN ALL OF THE LETTERS SHE WROTE TO ME.



SHE WANTED ME TO KNOW, THAT NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO TO US, DENY US, DENY HER, IN THE NAME OF IT IS IN HER BEST INTERESTS, SHE LOVES ME. NOBODY CAN TAKE THAT TRUTH AWAY. OTHER TRUTHS HAVE BEEN TAKEN AWAY. Other truths have been ignored or manipulated.



I have people who, now are attempting to prove the truth that I am saying is the truth. It may take a while. Someone told me today that there is no way that the misinformation that was said about me could stand up to scrutiny. It can't. I do not believe it. And everything I say about the drugs must be true because I am still clean and will stay clean.

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I do not know how people treat drug addiction. I treated my life. I treated it my understanding it. Let me tell you a story.



I told you about my friend Kenny, the one who will not see me. He is in this story. So is Lydia, my girlfriend. Lydia is the executive director of all of the los angeles airports. Yes, she used to be my girlfriend. In fact.

the Los Angeles Times did an article on her when I was wasting away in jail. Imagine seeing an article about your ex girlfriend and sitting in jail for no reason. Hurts.



When I was with her, at the end, I started using drugs again. I stopped for a while. I was not finished. I knew I was not finished. I stopped when I moved from Philadelphia to Atlanta. However, I knew I was not done with t hem. I was not trying to be done with them. I was on a sabbatical.



When I met Lydia, I was not playing tennis. I stopped playing for a while. Kenny, met Lydia and the first thing he said was I should marry her because she makes alot of money. He did not even like her.

I could not believe he would say that.



I started playing tennis again. I wanted to get back into sports. I worked out and played a tournament where I grew up playing. Kenny and Lydia came to watch me. I was losing and Kenny kept telling Lydia how I was not doing the write things to when the match. Lydia, on the other hand said I would be ok. Kenny played tennis at Crenshaw and at UCSB. We grew up playing tennis together. Lydia knew nothing about the game.

She believed in me.



I was down 0-5 in the last game. I was down forty love the last game. The man had triple match point against me. The man was the coach of Dorsey high School. I ended up being the volunteer assistant coach for Dorsey High School after the match. He had tripple match point against me.



I WON THE MATCH.



I went on to play senior tennis tournaments. Lydia and I broke up before I started to play the tournaments.

I played them because I needed something to feel good about. I needed something to keep me from going over the edge. I was consuming cocaine quite a bit at the time. I received a ranking my first year back playing competitive tennis. I, of course, reestablished myself as a competitive player and my self esteem was much better.



Kenny found out about my ranking. He called me up and told me that my ranking meant nothing because I was not playing against the guys we played against when we grew up. We grew up playing against guys like Jimmy Connors, Brian Teacher, Raul Ramirez and others. They eventually were in the top ten in the country or the world.



Kenny was always competitive but he was not competing against me. I was not competing against anyone, even when I was on the tennis court. I was competing against MYSELF.



Here I was trying to feel good about myself, and had every reason to feel good but my best friend was belittling me and my accomplishment. He did not know that that ranking meant so much to me. He did not know that that ranking was important because it symbolized that I could fight back. The tennis ranking was not the issue. The issue was I was fighting for my life. He could not see it. His major was communications.
His major was also comparative cultures. He was and is a VP with a major corporation and he could not see what he was saying. Of course, anybody who competed would like to be able to say that they were in the top twenty in Southern California in their age division. The souther California division was from Bakersfield to San Diego. That is not too shabby. Sure there are guys who played with us growing up who I could not beat who were no longer playing. I competed with who was competing. That was all I could do.

I was playing for my life.

Kenny would say, "Walter, women will go out with you when they want to have fun but when they want to get serious, they would pick someone like me." He was telling me I was not good enough. He was telling me that I was not good enough in tennis and with women. He, in effect was telling me that i was not good enough in life. Well, what he did not know is that I was trying to battle that. I was beginning to believe that.

My sister did not know that I was trying to battle that. What my sister did not know was that my mother did not feel she measured up. My mother and I both had low self esteem issues. I knew we both had them. I knew from where mine came. I knew from where my mother's came. We battled ourselves to examine why we had those issues and what we could do about them and by doing so what we could learn about ourselves, could love about ourselves, and do for our relationship. I did not call Kenny very much because I knew how he felt about whatever I tried to accomplish.

I felt the same about my sister. I did not call her because she would not understand. Unless I accomplished what needed to be accomplished, nothing else would matter. I would be hollow inside and a closet drug user to ease my pain.

People relapse on Skid Row because they do not treat their life issues. They do not tackle them.
They believe too much about what others say. They believe that they will relapse again because they are told they will relapse again. I hear counselors tell them that all of the time.

I knew no one knew the battle I was raging. My mother knew. My mother saw me work out every day. My mother saw me study books. My mother saw me battle with her. She knew I begged her to take care of herself. She knew I cooked for her. She knew I shopped for her. She knew I begged her to clean the house. She knew I did alot of things.

She was used expecting the worse. She expected the other shoe to fall with respect to me. She expected me to return to old habits. I never did. She began to look at me differently. She would kick and scream when I wanted to clean the house. IT did not bother me. I just waited until she went outside and I ran around the house and picked up old newspapers. You may not think that is alot but try 5 years of old newspapers in one corner of one room. We had newspapers every where. Coupons everywhere. bank atm receipts everywhere. She felt she needed to hold on to them. Apart of it was the Auditor in her. Apart of it was the depression in her and the fact that she was so used to clutter that to not have it was the unknown.

I knew all of these things. I watched her. No one else was around. My sister was not around. Kenny was not around to watch me battle. My mother believed in me when she gave me 600 dollars to days before the triathlon to buy things, wetsuit, the entry fee. etc. She saw me train for it.

I did not train for it when I started swimming, or riding the bicycle, or running around the track. I started training for it when I started swimming again when I was in my early thirties. Yes, the triathlon was the pennacle of success. It symbolized that I could endure, that I could focus, that I could withstand all of the hardships put in front of me to accomplish my goal.

That is why I do not do drugs now. I dealt with those things. That is why all that they said I did is so rediculous.

Somebody said to me in an interview recently about Skid Row, "Walter, how is it that people can speak for us but they never speak to us?" I asked the same question. How can people speak for my mother when they never asked her anyth ing". All of these years and they say trouble was within the last few months of the summer last year. Obsurd. They knew nothing of what went on in that house. My mother could say something to me and I would know exactly what she was talking about and noone else would.

Why becaused I perservered with her and she with me. I say all of this because I saw a few men relapse this past weekend. They believed they would relapse. They TOLD me they would relapse. They were told they would relapse by counselors who said they would if they did not get a sponsor. Of course the sponsor relapsed as well because he believed he would.

After what I have gone through, people wonder how is it that I do not do cocaine. They wonder how is it that through all of this IQUIT SMOKING CIGARETTES. It is because I believed I could stop smoking cigarrettes after what I learned about the marathon match I had with cocaine.

That is why I never did cigarettes again after May. It was further proof that it could be done. I did not want to transfer one addiction to another. I ended it all. The more I ended it the more peaceful I became. The more my mom dealt with her issues, the more peaceful she became.

Who is it that can come in our house and say such untruths about my mom not having groceries? that is staggering. People can come in and say things that are untrue and can affect our lives. My sister did not even know about our lives. We did not know about hers. The difference is that we minded our own business. Sometimes my mom would engage in speculative gossip about my sister. I would tell her you do not know that. Concentrate on your life mother. Concentrate on our lives. "Yes, Walter, you are right." She told me that so much the last few years. She Thought all of my accomplishments were huge. Each day I accomplished something.
She became my greatest advocate NOT BECAUSE I WAS HER SON BUT BECAUSE HER SON EARNED HER CONFIDENCE THE HARD WAY. I WORKED AT DOING THE RIGHT THINGS. AND BELIEVE ME MY MOTHER WAS MY HARSHEST CRITIQUE. WHAT MY MOM SAID ABOUT ME AT TIMES, WHEN I WAS DOING DRUGS WAS NOT TRUE. BUT SHE BELIEVED THE WORST. IT TOOK A LONG TIME TO CHANGE THAT.

I endured and perservered. I learned so much that I knew when I finally cleaned her room she would want change. She did. She wanted me to paint. She wanted me to do more. She believed in me.

I am finally with people that believe in me. People that I know and people that I have not met yet.
I met with an attorney last week. I was told by residents at the old place where I lived that I have established longevity. You have earned the right to have what you say scrutinized. I have a City attorney who believes in what I say. He doubled checked the veracity of my statements. He found out that what I said was true.

He knows how to endure. He endures with me everyday. He used to here so much down stuff from me on Monday morning. He did not here that this morning. I spent the time giving him a briefing on what I realized over the weekend about Skid Row and the currents that flow through it and around it. He listened with total attention.

I have a Police officer who believes in me. He knows how to perservere. He ran the 400 meters in high school. Let me tell you something. You must know how to perservere to handle that event.
It took me a week or two to find out what was in him that I knew taught him to perservere. That event was it and the army.

That is my point. It took time for me to find out. If the public defender wanted to know the truth, she could have asked me. It would have taken little time. She did not care.
She did not here anything from me. Nothing.
"You have 60 seconds to make this deal. If you do not make it you will spen 8 years in prison." That was it.

The co conservator did not spend time with us. I INVITED HER IN AND THEN SHE SPINS THINGS AROUND to manufacture truth. I will talk about that later.

Mental disease starts at home at times. The streets of Skid Row are filled with mental disease that alot of people think is normal. When kids hear adults say "Why are you saying hello to that woman? or Why are you speaking to that man?" , those questions plant the seeds for mental illness. Control issues are being born from the seeds that are planted.

Women can't even have a friend outside of marriage, male or female. Likewise with men. You see it all of the time on television. Control issues. You see it all of the time on Skid Row.

"That is my man". She knows the person for a couple days. That is why the man relapsed. He placed his whole value on her being his. On controlling her. He did not face his life issues that is why he has a drug issue.

I faced mine. Yes Joe, candor heals. Candor brings truth. When I read your profile I knew why you said you appreciated my candor. Thanks. I am becoming more candid in my blog. Thank you for giving me that confidence.

Good morning world. I love you