If I was in any mood to write a positive blog about this rather than a negative one like I’m about to write, it would be a good message for Jake. This would be a message about how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and realize when it’s appropriate to call people and harass people….that there are times when people need quiet and most importantly, that not everybody likes mornings. For those who think in those terms, they’re exhibiting a trait called respect. Now as I said before, I’m not in the mood at this moment to give Jake a life lesson but maybe later I will rewrite this blog especially for him.

Unfortunately respect is one thing that mom or myself don’t get in the morning. It takes a man to admit when he is the cause of a problem rather than have him try to defend himself. I’ll be the first to admit my wrongdoing in saying that I’m the one who fails to exhibit respect to mom when I know she is trying to sleep. This goes way back to my childhood when I never gave mom the respect she deserved by always opting to go with Earl on weekends. On one particular occasion, I failed to call her for a whole weekend which I got in trouble for when I returned home that Sunday. During her tirade, she admitted that she felt rejected by me which made me feel bad at the time. With this in mind, I made it my mission to make up for that mistake by always putting her first. I’m pretty sure that by now, (almost 20 years later,) I’ve more than made up for my mistake and I have called her plenty of times since then. One thing that I believe is a common theme in most of my stories is me addressing some sort of change, usually one that goes from one way to the exact opposite. If you don’t understand what that means, I will take the time and explain it right now.

20 years ago, mom felt rejected when I forgot to call her over one weekend with that fat loser. Well, 20 years later, she probably wants to be rejected and prays that I don’t call her for days on end because if anything, I think I have proven myself to do anything but reject her in the last 20 years, but I have come to realize just now that maybe she wants to be rejected just to get a break.

From that day in 2004 until about 2013, my life was all about mom. I would constantly try to be close to her even though we lived in the same house, even at times when I knew she needed privacy. This obsession is what lead to a full morning fight right near Christmas 2011. This was when I was in the midst of going through the 5 year phase of believing my ex girlfriend was still relevant and was in a relationship with mom. I remember that the fight began when I wanted to join her in her room to spend time with her. Mom repeatedly said no until a yelling match started with me believing she was with my ex girlfriend in there. Ok so full disclosure…..I was very sick during this time. I didn’t have the flu or a cold and this was before covid started but I had mental problems stemming from the horror that was my first relationship. This story has gotten so stale over the years and it’s so stupid that I don’t even want to think about it anymore. In a nutshell, everybody has points in their life when they do stupid stuff or have stupid thoughts. Well during this time, I lived with the stupid thought of believing that my ex was still around when she wasn’t and this is the point form version of this story. Suffice to say, it got much worse from there.

So I want to fast forward to the year 2013. At this time, I was still living with mom where we had a conversation about whether or not I was ready to move out. I explained to mom that I would be ok with moving out as long as we were always on talking terms when I did. I cited the two times I lived with Earl as punishment in my life and recalled that mom and I weren’t always on talking terms during this time. With that, the year 2015 came around and it was time for me to move out. However, I’m sure in the last 10 years or so, mom has felt as I’ve never left home as I make it my mission to call her as many times as I can, sometimes even failing to do things I had to do for myself, (Drs appointments, in recent years, even taking my shower with staff,) ETC until after I’ve talked to her. However, in some cases, I need to get things done despite not hearing from mom yet. If this happens, I will call her at the first opportunity to do so. On normal days, my day usually starts with a call to mom, or in some cases from her. This is where problems start.

In attempting to keep my promise that I made to mom before I moved out, I will call her once. If she doesn’t answer, will call every few mins until I reach her, sometimes disregarding her previous request to let her sleep if she is off work or to not call her at all if she is busy in the morning getting ready for work. Up until the day Jake was born, not getting an answer from mom despite numerous tries always resulted in a hissy fit occurring where I would hallucinate her being with my girlfriend, (not my real life ex but a fake girl named Lisa that I made up in my head,) as the reason why she is not picking up the phone at that time. The hissy fit would consist of me assaulting Lisa in various ways while swearing at her, screaming, making homophobic remarks to her, and trying to convince mom that Andre will assault her if he finds out what she is doing. The problem is that all of the screaming and swearing and even violence, (towards myself and even the furniture,) can be heard throughout the building. If this occurred early in the morning, I would eventually receive a call from the staff where I live addressing a noise complaint, though the sound of the phone ringing in reality is usually enough to set me back to normal before answering. Despite me being myself during the call itself, the noise level is addressed by staff. However, I occasionally play dumb as if I didn’t know it was happening. On certain occasions, the problem in question, (which does not always pertain to mom,) is bad enough that I fail to pull myself out of my outburst before answering and will occasionally scream with a comment to the effect of: “What the fuck do they want? Can’t they just leave me alone?/FUCK OFF” ETC. On certain occasions, I will decline the call all together while on other occasions I will tell them to mind their own business and that I have every right to make as much noise as I want since I pay rent here, (or where ever I lived at the time in question as this happened at other places I’ve lived as well.)

Note: Not one instance of a freak out has been excused by mom. Though most times I strive for her not to find out, she always has eventually found out either by it coming up in conversation by accident or through an email from the person in charge of the building where I’m staying. Every single conversation pertaining to this has ended with mom saying that I will get kicked out of where I’m staying if it happens again, or with a warning that she will not help me financially anymore or in any other way and even has gone so far as to say she will want nothing more to do with me.

As mentioned before, things have changed since Jake was born as I have found myself with more patience as I want to be a good uncle to him and continuing to freak out early in the mornings as well as getting in trouble with mom will send the wrong message to Jake as he gets older. Therefore, in recent weeks, episodes (as I will call them,) which are described above no longer happen when I get stressed out. When addressing this to mom or others who have noticed this, I will say that “You can thank Jake for being born. Before he got here, I never would have been able to deal with (insert situation,) without freaking out or getting angry.” On most occasions, I will end my statement with something to the effect of, “Thank you Jake, uncle Jeff really loves you.” “”You have helped him out so much and you probably don’t realize it.” ETC. I have also made positive comparisons to him and the Christmas song with the verse of:

“How a little baby boy could bring the people so much joy” I don’t know the name of the song but as far as I’m concerned, he is the little baby boy in question as he brings so much joy to those around him.

However, Jake’s influence can only go so far and though I have not actually freaked out, at least to the extent which is described above since he’s been born, I have to admit that I’ve had my moments where I could have freaked out only for me to realize that I made a promise to Jake that I wouldn’t anymore and stop. The biggest instance of this occurring has been staff’s obsession with calling me too early in the morning, most times when I’m either half asleep or sound asleep, (the latter of which occurred this morning,) where they expect me to be fully awake and ready for them to come and give me my shower with me sometimes unable to even formulate a proper sentence. After completing my covid screener call, (which I still think is bullshit since covid isn’t even a thing anymore,) I will stupidly try to go back to sleep as staff have informed me that they are on their way. Of course, usually when they arrive, I have fallen asleep again. Though I will try to ignore the fact that they are in my room, it doesn’t take long for them to force me out of bed where I occasionally have complained on most days that they call too early with them saying it’s just their schedule. On most days, (though not in the last few days since I have adopted the new routine I’m on,) I will return to sleep after they leave until my lunch is served.

The point is that I find myself with a “Like mother, like son” scenario where I have the same problems as mom has with me with the staff. Each morning when I call mom, the same thing repeats albeit without the frusteration with me being unable to get an answer from her despite numerous attempts. When she does eventually call back, her response in annoyance where she tells me she is trying to either sleep or do something else of importance to her, (take another phone call, one of which is likely more important, ETC) and that I need to wait for her to call me.

Well what mom doesn’t realize is that the same problems which I unintentionally cause her, the staff unintentionally cause me as they don’t care that I’m asleep when they call and they just expect me to be….”Oh hi there, good morning,” ETC when the reality of the situation is that I have just woken up and I’m not a morning person.

Going back to Jake for a second, I want to address something that’s been happening in regards to him in the weeks since he’s been born. You see, I have made it my mission to make sure Jake is well respected by everybody. As he is my nephew, those around me should respect him too, even if they’ve never met him before. No sooner than the day he was born, I began showing the picture of him that mom sent me to people around the building. While most of the people here, (generally staff, however I did show it to Paul and he was happy about it too,) were happy, others didn’t show any signs of really caring as if it wasn’t a big deal.

Though I do not like to mention names, one staff in particular has come to acknowledge his existence….whether she wants to or not remains in question but this staff is Megan, (or as I like to call her, “Megs”) but one day in particular, she’s lucky I didn’t report her and I’m lucky I still have residency here.

You see, she was the first staff who did not acknowledge Jake’s existence the way I felt she should have. The first time I showed her the picture, she shrugged it off without making any of the necessary comments about how cute he is or congratulating me on being an uncle where other staff did. She went about her business as if Jake was no big deal which in turn insulted me as I’m his uncle. I dismissed this as her just having a bad day and thought to myself that there was no way she would look at a picture of a baby and not comment on how cute he was.

Over the next few days, I continued to show her the picture, either while she was assigned to my booking or in the common area but still got no reaction other than her saying on one occasion, “I know,” before moving on and performing her normal duties. Little did I know she was getting a little frustrated with the whole ordeal. When I asked her one day to help me get ready for a para outing, she arrived where I asked her to hold the cap I had with Jake’s face on it.

“Here we go again.” she said sarcastically before asking me what I wanted her to do with the hat.

I then played the song “Circle of Life” from “The Lion King and told her that if she’s seen the movie, she will know what to do next, (raise the hat as if it’s Jacob in a callback to the opening scene of the movie.) Megan then got a little more impatient and said she didn’t have time to play games, which I took offense to and said that Jake is not a game, he’s a human being. As she failed to perform the act the first time, I played it again where she finally caught on and did it. After I turned the music off, she tried to drop the hat which I managed to catch before it hit the floor where she angrily asked, “are you happy now?” before telling me that she doesn’t care about Jake and that what I did wasted her time. She told me that from now on, I should not bring up Jake to her as it is not part of the service being provided, where I said that with an attitude like that, she doesn’t deserve to have him around her.

Later that day, I got a call from Jen who arranged a sit down meeting with the three of us to discuss the situation. This was actually the first time I had heard Jen being less than pleasant. She started by saying that staff are not present to make comments about Jake and that Megan was frustrated over having her time wasted. I then came back to my room where I obtained the hat before pointing at Jake’s picture and asking:

“How can she consider this a waste of time? He’s not. He’s a bundle of joy and everybody in my family loves him and things have changed where I’m concerned. As this child is part of my life, if you don’t show him proper respect, in turn you do not respect me. So this isn’t so much that she’s disrespecting Jake but she disrespecting me as I have nothing but respect for him. As for Megan, I would be willing to still respect her if she was to put her feelings for Jake aside and show him respect too. Look at him, he’s cute and right now he needs people to respect him and not consider him a waste of time. Megan, I do apologize if my new requirement of respect for my nephew caused you a delay but this is how it is now…..Jake is part of me and therefore you need to respect him in the same way you do to me.”

With this, Jen got a little more stern when she said:

“I’m only going to say this one more time….you are completely wrong. Staff are here to service you and not to make comments about your nephew. Perhaps an email to your mom will change your mind. From now on, you are not to shove your nephew down staff’s throat or I will be emailing your mom.”

Jen’s response

So from that day on, I don’t mention him to anyone anymore, even the ones who I had yet to show the picture to as they obviously don’t deserve to know about him. He’s just a great human being who fell on some hard times and his uncle was basically told that nobody around the building cares or has time for him. No more will I try to enforce it. If they don’t want any part of the greatest thing to happen on earth, then I’m through with trying to force it. It’s their loss but I want to make one thing clear….this in no way changes how I feel about him. I still love him.

By the way, the issue in question took place within a week after he was born during which time I have not brought him up once.