1) As I said, I know exactly how it feels to grow up in a loveless home. It wasn't a family. It was a group of strangers, who happened to be related to one another, going through the daily motions of a home life. It turned my father into a stranger and serial philanderer, who died alone of lung cancer, and my mother into a self-medicating alcoholic, who floats through an imaginary dream-world, where "everything is just fine".
If it hadn't been for my grandfathers, uncles, and great-uncles, it would have been, statistically, a perfect recipe for producing sociopaths and serial killers. But I learned how the be a Man from them, and I went the complete opposite direction. I swore that would never happen to my family.
2) It would not be overstating the case to say that my career could be loosely termed as, dynamic. The very real possibilty that I would not be coming home alive, and/or in one piece was always hovering in the background for my family, like an unwanted guest at the party. Acknowledged, but never spoken of. Hint: my tag, "BulletStopper", is not a euphemism, and I have the scars to prove it. (and "BlastWavePropagationStopper" is too long to type)
So every time I told my wife and six kids that I loved them on a satellite call from some third world shithole (daily if at all possible, but as often as I could arrange it), it was always with the unspoken knowledge that it might well be the last words they ever heard their dad say to them. And that was okay.
BulletStopper 0 points 8 months ago
1) As I said, I know exactly how it feels to grow up in a loveless home. It wasn't a family. It was a group of strangers, who happened to be related to one another, going through the daily motions of a home life. It turned my father into a stranger and serial philanderer, who died alone of lung cancer, and my mother into a self-medicating alcoholic, who floats through an imaginary dream-world, where "everything is just fine".
If it hadn't been for my grandfathers, uncles, and great-uncles, it would have been, statistically, a perfect recipe for producing sociopaths and serial killers.
But I learned how the be a Man from them, and I went the complete opposite direction. I swore that would never happen to my family.
2) It would not be overstating the case to say that my career could be loosely termed as, dynamic. The very real possibilty that I would not be coming home alive, and/or in one piece was always hovering in the background for my family, like an unwanted guest at the party. Acknowledged, but never spoken of. Hint: my tag, "BulletStopper", is not a euphemism, and I have the scars to prove it.
(and "BlastWavePropagationStopper" is too long to type)
So every time I told my wife and six kids that I loved them on a satellite call from some third world shithole (daily if at all possible, but as often as I could arrange it), it was always with the unspoken knowledge that it might well be the last words they ever heard their dad say to them.
And that was okay.