And with that paraphrase from former US President Richard M. Nixon said after he was defeated in the 1962 California Governor's race to Pat Brown, then being only the former Vice-President but not yet running for President the second time in his life, I begin what might be my last column posted on this site. I know - who gives a rat's ass? I don't any more. Yeah, I should take the lesson of Nixon's remark in saying he was giving up public life after that famous defeat (his second political defeat in an election during two years) as instructive since he returned to run again in 1968 (coincidentally the year I was born) and win a three-way race with Vice-President Hubert Humphrey and Alabama Governor George Wallace for the Oval Office. I am not as lucky (or unlucky if you prefer) as Richard Nixon. I'll surely never be as famous/infamous as that former US President. I couldn't ever become that well-known. I am not great at shameless self-promotion and only want my work to show if I have any natural talent.
But that is just not possible in this imperfect world where slick-talking assholes win all the time and inhibited natural born losers cannot catch the smallest breaks in life. Nice guys finish last and when they have emotional control problems that make them lash out at their tormentors with an imprudent acidic tongue (dishing it out but unable to take it in return) well that defines John X. Grey and the self-pitying man behind that pen name (Edwin Ray Haney) - a natural born loser from the day he was born, never fated to amount to anything different or unique from the remainder of humanity he cannot relate to or understand. Of course I know why I've never been able to make deep connections to other people in the last few months, but cannot prove it's a reality without the permission of the therapeutic culture, the guild of mental health professionals whose skills and talents are not far removed from primitive witch doctors in terms of their understanding the human psyche, throwing drugs and therapy at any problem in the hopes of controlling or hiding it from normal society. I may have a neurological impairment known by some as Asperger's Syndrome - a form of high functioning autism where the sufferer has above-average or better intelligence and normal language skill development, but suffers from social skill deficiencies and physical clumsiness seeming shy and withdrawn. One in 300 may have this genetic problem, mostly men rather than women and often not detected until adulthood because a shy woman is not seen as an odd thing compared to shy men who can't have any normal friendships or romantic relationships due to the social awkwardness in normal situations. I cannot begin to describe the crippling inhibition I feel when forced to socially engage with the outside world. I cannot stand crowded places, some sensations on my ears are troubling (mainly water in the ear canals) or pick up on subtle non-verbal cues from total strangers. I've never even been well-coordinated and have terrible hand-eye coordination making me hate sports as a participant much of my life. But until the last few months or so, I never could understand why I was the way I seemed. For years, especially after a nervous breakdown when age 12 that I somehow recovered from months later, I often asked myself the question "What's wrong with me?" but never had any answer from self or others. People have called me eccentric, weird, odd, insane, a creepy stalker (again due to social misunderstandings where I don't grasp the rules to human interaction like a neurologically typical person). I'm tired of putting up with all the bullshit in life of dealing with people because God obviously made me too screwed up to function as a normal adult.
Now that I cannot make enough money in a dead-end job I hate (call center work where rude people refusing to take voluntary surveys by phone hurts my sense of well-being more than an average person's), with a few thousand medical debts left from a procedure last year I could not refuse (due to a severe infection that was making me violently ill at times) the collectors now demand I don't have, unable to pay all my rent this month on the 1st with the next paltry paycheck to cover it thankfully, gasoline expenses to commute to this job running between $3.50-4.00 per gallon in a 15-year-old car that gets only 13 MPG I may no longer be able to even afford soon thus costing me my ONLY source of income (the writing sure isn't paying any bills), I have reached the point that any further struggle to survive is in fact pointless. If writing was meant to be my true calling in life by a just and merciful God, realized in my early 30s a few years after accepting Jesus Christ as Savior, then He has not provided me the resources necessary to realize that as my reality and has left me in continual poverty and economic hopelessness from day to day even though He has all the universe under His command, then I have truly failed Him, anyone who ever cared about me and lastly of all myself.
So, to the trolls who lurk out there stopping to read my insane periodic screeds at this page, the well-meaning acquaintances who stop to give me tough criticism and some advice more useful for some normal person, the same people who never comment on my positive messages, political discourses or more harmless writing-related announcements, just think of all the fun you'll be missing from my efforts (unintentional of course) to amuse your minds. Soon possibly you won't have Mr. Grey to kick around anymore. Good riddance, right?
P. S. - The one-story ranch house pictured above (with my late father standing in the foreground) from around 2000 A. D. is the place I lost to deceiving people I should never have trusted who acted like they were doing me a favor in 2011. That loss set me on the path of spiraling self-destruction for someone without the social skills to know when he was being taken or even the good sense to know the house should've been sold at a fairer market price months before then. I am a failed person and deserve to die in poverty, hunger and hopelessness soon, all of which bad choices have yielded to this day. Goodbye.
But that is just not possible in this imperfect world where slick-talking assholes win all the time and inhibited natural born losers cannot catch the smallest breaks in life. Nice guys finish last and when they have emotional control problems that make them lash out at their tormentors with an imprudent acidic tongue (dishing it out but unable to take it in return) well that defines John X. Grey and the self-pitying man behind that pen name (Edwin Ray Haney) - a natural born loser from the day he was born, never fated to amount to anything different or unique from the remainder of humanity he cannot relate to or understand. Of course I know why I've never been able to make deep connections to other people in the last few months, but cannot prove it's a reality without the permission of the therapeutic culture, the guild of mental health professionals whose skills and talents are not far removed from primitive witch doctors in terms of their understanding the human psyche, throwing drugs and therapy at any problem in the hopes of controlling or hiding it from normal society. I may have a neurological impairment known by some as Asperger's Syndrome - a form of high functioning autism where the sufferer has above-average or better intelligence and normal language skill development, but suffers from social skill deficiencies and physical clumsiness seeming shy and withdrawn. One in 300 may have this genetic problem, mostly men rather than women and often not detected until adulthood because a shy woman is not seen as an odd thing compared to shy men who can't have any normal friendships or romantic relationships due to the social awkwardness in normal situations. I cannot begin to describe the crippling inhibition I feel when forced to socially engage with the outside world. I cannot stand crowded places, some sensations on my ears are troubling (mainly water in the ear canals) or pick up on subtle non-verbal cues from total strangers. I've never even been well-coordinated and have terrible hand-eye coordination making me hate sports as a participant much of my life. But until the last few months or so, I never could understand why I was the way I seemed. For years, especially after a nervous breakdown when age 12 that I somehow recovered from months later, I often asked myself the question "What's wrong with me?" but never had any answer from self or others. People have called me eccentric, weird, odd, insane, a creepy stalker (again due to social misunderstandings where I don't grasp the rules to human interaction like a neurologically typical person). I'm tired of putting up with all the bullshit in life of dealing with people because God obviously made me too screwed up to function as a normal adult.
Now that I cannot make enough money in a dead-end job I hate (call center work where rude people refusing to take voluntary surveys by phone hurts my sense of well-being more than an average person's), with a few thousand medical debts left from a procedure last year I could not refuse (due to a severe infection that was making me violently ill at times) the collectors now demand I don't have, unable to pay all my rent this month on the 1st with the next paltry paycheck to cover it thankfully, gasoline expenses to commute to this job running between $3.50-4.00 per gallon in a 15-year-old car that gets only 13 MPG I may no longer be able to even afford soon thus costing me my ONLY source of income (the writing sure isn't paying any bills), I have reached the point that any further struggle to survive is in fact pointless. If writing was meant to be my true calling in life by a just and merciful God, realized in my early 30s a few years after accepting Jesus Christ as Savior, then He has not provided me the resources necessary to realize that as my reality and has left me in continual poverty and economic hopelessness from day to day even though He has all the universe under His command, then I have truly failed Him, anyone who ever cared about me and lastly of all myself.
So, to the trolls who lurk out there stopping to read my insane periodic screeds at this page, the well-meaning acquaintances who stop to give me tough criticism and some advice more useful for some normal person, the same people who never comment on my positive messages, political discourses or more harmless writing-related announcements, just think of all the fun you'll be missing from my efforts (unintentional of course) to amuse your minds. Soon possibly you won't have Mr. Grey to kick around anymore. Good riddance, right?
P. S. - The one-story ranch house pictured above (with my late father standing in the foreground) from around 2000 A. D. is the place I lost to deceiving people I should never have trusted who acted like they were doing me a favor in 2011. That loss set me on the path of spiraling self-destruction for someone without the social skills to know when he was being taken or even the good sense to know the house should've been sold at a fairer market price months before then. I am a failed person and deserve to die in poverty, hunger and hopelessness soon, all of which bad choices have yielded to this day. Goodbye.