Don’t forget to look me up on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter under “RealAutismSpeak” if you want to follow my daily exploits, for more than what I’m able to put out here–for the time–on this blog! Also on Clouthub, Gab, MAGAbook, Telegram, GETTR, Minds, Truth Social, and Locals as well….might look into Substack too.

Previous entry in the miniseries is here.

So….I have a fun announcement to share that just happened earlier today, and it does happen to coincide with the topic of discussion amongst this miniseries, and a bigger point I’ve been thinking about it–in part while re-reading earlier chapters of it, myself–late last night, before I went to bed:

Last year, in this update, I talked about how I was surprised to chat with my cousin on the phone, to the potential discovery that we finally had a connection, after decades of not being on the same page at all. I’ve said in several entries since that it turns out my excitement was a bit short-lived, and that we’re different people, and simply don’t have the chemistry, I realize now….but earlier today, I came to discover that my cousin flat-out lied to me. When we spoke on the phone, she was excited by one thing we seemed to share in common, but seems to totally otherwise dismiss the grand scheme of the rest of it; in fact, not only dismiss it, but goes head-first into endorsing the opposition, as it serves her immediate interests. Basically, every time I messaged her responding to the Torah readings she sent me, after that period, she basically did what I talked about in the entry from this miniseries. Not gonna lie though, it reminds me of something Steve Harvey once said about why God takes people out of your life:

“he’s seen things….you didn’t see; he’s heard things…you didn’t hear“

Well today, God showed me the truth, and the reason I bring this up is because of how much it lines up with something I was thinking about before heading to bed, last night, in regards to this miniseries, and everything I brought up toward the first few entries about college, and how my family reacted when I dropped out. The way I see it currently is how it goes back to what I stated here about never any genuine loyalty to me, but to the system. The way I now see it, my family wanted me to “stay the course” regarding the matrix offerings–good grades, college, all that shit–to keep me under their thumb. They couldn’t have cared less what I wanted, unless it aligned with social acceptability, and keeping their good standing within the system. Basically, I now understand even better why I was always at odds for the first 18 years with such a toxic environment: they thought the whole time they had me under their control, and as soon as I broke it by not continuing on the path of being “under their thumb”, all hell broke loose. At no point did they consider “this feisty fella who gives us lip, and fights back when we’re not making any sense–just trying to exert power–may try to fight back against our system/leave it behind, once he leaves mandatory schooling.” Would you folks like to know why they didn’t consider this? Because those who choose to remain and “thrive” within the boundaries of the lower frequencies only play chess within those boundaries.

To come up with genuine alternatives requires thinking outside the box, but to do that would have to consider that the person who wants something different would be willing to leave behind the “comforts” that are familiar to those residing in the matrix; the thing is…..those comforts are not usually genuinely afforded to those who challenge it, yet at the same time, those not willing to challenge it can’t even fathom the concept of leaving behind said “comforts”. These are the folks who do not truly even know who they are, couldn’t give you answers for your own life to save theirs, outside of insisting you go on medication or something, and will join in “circling the wagons” to push faux positivity, and–in our modern context–a lot of bullshit “likes” on social media that no one will remember in 5 minutes. It essentially requires taking a look in the mirror that most folks you’ll meet in life are not willing to do, and if they are…..don’t fully understand how to dig deep enough to embrace what’s deep down, and empower themselves.

This is how I came to realize, moving forward, how I proceeded with handling life would have to be entirely on my terms, with only minimal input from most others I’d known; moving forward, a lot more input would come from those that would enter my life at a later date, as mentioned in the previous entry.

So now that I got that segue out of the way, we continue this miniseries as I’m still working at Target, but now am starting to set my sights on wanting a fresh start, and out of NJ. Now, before I get to the process I made with my former roommate–in checking out Ohio–I wanted to bring up a few things regarding my job at Target, in part as they align with things I’ve already brought up in earlier parts of this miniseries; I mentioned here that during my final days of high school, I let my “mask” drop completely, and would go on profanity binges, and go all-out with my extremely dark sense of humor; well, at Target, I was the King of the “Yo Mama” jokes; mine were so depraved, so nasty, so disturbing, it was common to hear all of ’em followed by “awwww dude!!!!!!!” or “awww God dammit!!!!!!!!”; hell, I’ll even give you a few of ’em I came up with:

“Yo mama’s pussy’s so nasty, even Freddy has nightmares!”

“Yo mama’s pussy’s so nasty, Jason decided to jump back into the lake!”

“Yo mama’s pussy’s so nasty, given the choice, most Jews prefer the Holocaust!”

I even made a lot of really twisted jokes about incest, and things like that; one of which I’ve entitled the “middle man” joke, and….maybe I’ll save that one for another time; I think I’ve done enough to shock you, and make you wanna vomit, for now

I would even get asked how I came up with something so incredibly depraved and disturbing, including with the knowledge that I was a virgin. I simply explained that I thought of the most sick, twisted, depths-of-depths-of-Hell scenario I could possibly envision, and that’s how I came up with ’em.

I’m going to mention some other very significant things that happened at Target, but I have something far more important regarding my plans here to discuss first, as those elements will be involved with those events:

So, on our weekly hangouts, I’d talk to our buddies, and ask who wanted to join in on moving out to Ohio, cause I still wanted an experience with my buddies, even if I was hoping we’d all grow together in that next venture. As stated in the last entry, once I pushed how much more definitive and specific our plans were, that’s when people started dropping out a lot more, though one other who claimed to be on board was my former coworker from Wal-Mart. So now, we had three of us, and my former room-mate at the time said he was planning a Trip out soon to see his girlfriend, and I said “ok, we’ll join you”; from there, we started planning out the trip, who was gonna pay for the gas, get the hotel accommodations ready, ask for time off at work for the trip, and if I’m not mistaken our first trip out to Ohio was in Spring of 2006. Honestly, I will never forget the experience, because I remember the drive as we drove over the Delaware Water Gap and left the state, and began the long slog thru Pennsylvania to get to Ohio. Let me tell you, btw…..Taking Rt. 80 from NJ to Ohio–thru Pennsylvania–is 5 hours of trees (and just wait til you hit the Chesapeake Bay Water Shed area). To say you better be the biggest nature buff, this side of Jellystone Park’s Ranger Smith (who always has to tussle with Yogi Bear) is the ultimate understatement. Hell, PA is what East Coasters consider going “out west”. Well, as we were driving thru PA, I kept thinking to myself the whole time “this place could honest-to-God look exactly like PA, and I’ll still take it, because I cannot afford NJ, even if I did want to!“; thru at least half the drive, I remember my former Wal-Mart coworker in the backseat being asleep; this was….something we’d get used to with him, and this was regardless of whether or not we hung out at his place, or in the hotel rooms we’d be staying in; his entire attention was “eat, watch TV, fall asleep”, when he wasn’t at work, of course. The guy even had stacks of unwrapped DVDs in his place that he never watched because he was always falling asleep, at a hat-drop; in hindsight, I’m glad I wasn’t able to successfully match him up with my Suncoast store manager, for multiple reasons on both their ends, but that was definitely a factor.

After a stop for some food & gas in Clarion Ohio–we had some Taco Bell, and checked out the 24/7 Wal-Mart, before continuing our journey–we arrived in Ohio, and one thing I noticed before anything else was all the trees that had surrounded us in PA…..I mean there were still some, but most of that had gone by the wayside, once we left PA. We stopped I think briefly in a Visitor’s Center on the side of the road so my former roommate could use the latrine, then we continued our journey, as we were to meet up with his girlfriend in Sandusky, then follow her to her town of Port Clinton, before getting to our destination in Toledo, where our hotel was. Well, this is important, because of everything I saw as we got closer to Sandusky, and between that and when we arrived in Toledo: I started feeling like I was in Heaven. I started seeing all these marinas and motorboats–and motorboat dealers–pop up, the gorgeous Bay of Sandusky, and the piece de resistance: the gorgeous Ohio sky sunset; lemme put it this way….I took several pictures of the sunset, it blew my mind that much. I remember when we first got out of the car at the Sandusky Wal-Mart to meet up with his girlfriend–even though we’d also done so to go into the Visitor’s Center upon entering the state–I genuinely felt like “the eagle had landed” once I set foot on the pavement of the Wal-Mart parking lot there. As we followed her to Port Clinton from Sandusky, I literally remember my hands and face up against the window, like an excited little child, with my mouth dropping of how amazing the experience was. I didn’t think Ohio was gonna be anywhere near this awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Before I tell you about where we stayed during that trip, I need to set a certain visual stage for you; something you may not know about cities out in Ohio, save for Cleveland:

Most big cities in Ohio are a lot of suburban/rural area surrounding a small urban portion of the city. I remember on trips into NYC with the first Rat Pack, even getting to the outskirts of NYC by train, the sights were a total shithole. Like…you know you were there, because you’d be passing by all these abandoned factories with broken windows, and shit like that. That’s not how cities are out here, for the most part, and the reason I bring this up is first of all, because of where in Toledo we stayed: a city on the immediate outskirts of it called Perrysburg. To give you an idea of the street our hotel was on in Perrysburg–so you have an idea of what the terrain in my neck is like–one side of the street was loaded down with K-Mart, Target, Wal-Mart, and several other things along the strip; Meijer, our hotel, and a Big Boy restaurant were on the other side, and past those three things, nothing but farmland; imagine that right on the outskirts of a major city. It was a brand new experience, as I was so used to the city life borderline-engulfing everything, being on the East Coast.

Now, my initial plans were for us to move to Toledo, but my former roommate was recommended by his girlfriend to go for Sandusky, since it would be closer, and a Target was opening up there (this would’ve been very helpful to hear before we made our initial trip, as I had planned out everything to ask about apartments in Toledo, including jotting down several availabilities, brought along rulers to take measurements, and everything–and we still did, might I add), but I felt a little deflated from this, seeing as it would delay our progress a bit suddenly having this dropped on me. I guess in a way it did work out, as this was our first trip, so as a result, I could view it as more “getting a feel for the place” rather than just jumping in head-first; I can see looking back why I didn’t care if I was jumping in head-first (especially knowing the general motivation levels of those around me), but it did at least give me the opportunity to experience more of the area, and get a better “feel” for Ohio, and in a way…you could say it gave me the chance to “smell the roses” a bit, which is something I don’t normally get much of to do. In fact….looking back, it did make a lot more sense, considering another factor that I’ll be bringing up in a bit, but first I want to talk more about my first trip out there….

I remember that next morning, I told ’em we had to be up, to go out and check the apartments in the area; I think my roommate’s girlfriend noticed very quickly how different I was from her man, and probably wondered how he and I managed to have chemistry, at all. I was literally sitting in the lobby of the hotel room, jotting down things in my checkbook log, waiting for them; such a sight, and being so prepared and organized was simply not something she was used to at all with her guy in any way (to a point, herself either, really). After a breakfast at IHOP, the four of us (Wal-Mart coworker, roommate, his girlfriend, and I) parted ways with friends of hers that lived in the town of Bowling Green, as we drove around Toledo, looking at apartments, as I asked the property managers 50 questions, and took measurements while at each of the availabilities. While we were out, we had lunch at Big Boy–my very first experience at that restaurant, and for many years it became my all-time favorite burger; my former roommate, being stressed out about the thought of how genuinely serious I was with looking for a place, and focusing on starting the next leg of our journey in life, was having some issues on this trip with getting very argumentative, to put it nicely, including pestering me both at the restaurant over my eating whatever I wanted to eat, then pestering me long after that, about it too, which would not even officially conclude that topic until what I brought up here, years later.

The bulk of the remainder of our trip was both checking apartments here and there, hitting up the Franklin Park Mall in Toledo, of course planning our return trip to NJ–including staying over in Ohio an extra day, cause we loved it so much–before literally getting home late enough the day I had to return to work with just enough time to get some sleep before going in to work, that day. And this here, my friends, is why I brought up the significance of just “smelling the roses” on our first trip; I went into work that day both on Cloud 9, and utterly fucking pissed off of what a dismal embarrassment I considered NJ, moving forward, after how much I’d fallen in love with Ohio. I’d like to add…..I was not afraid to let the folks in NJ know it, and take one guess how well everyone responded to me, factoring in how they already had done so, and about….well pretty much anything. On a very interesting note, however (and I remembered this off and on these past few days, including as I just went downstairs to start up the dryer), years later, everyone would come to me in hindsight, and say “you were smart to leave NJ when you did; it’s gone to complete shit”; I mean…in my mind “gone to” doesn’t compute, cause in my mind there was….really never anything to crow about to begin with there, but I guess as the Schumann Resonance assists in waking people up, they’re starting to see what I have seen my whole life.

At the time though, this is the bulk of what I got from people:

(sneering) “what’s out in OHIO? PUH-LEASE!!!!!!”

“NJ is like a vaccuum; you get sucked in, nobody leaves”

“don’t go out to Ohio; there are no jobs there!”

“all there are out in Ohio are cows”

That last one actually came from my former roommate’s girlfriend, as she was likely uncomfortable with my clashing personality to his, to which I responded to hers though, with “yes, but in Ohio I can afford to experience the cow; in NJ, I’d have no time, working three jobs to pay my rent”. As for the claims about “no jobs”, there–as I told people–is more opportunity in Ohio along one goddamn strip in Sandusky than there is ANYWHERE in NJ. I also proceeded to attempt to share my experience with my family, when we went there for a family reunion, and….they cared as much as they normally do, while the went back to chatting about the same things as normal; just like my cousin on my Mom’s side, they were humoring me the whole time.

We made two further trips back to Ohio–one in September of that year, and the other in April of 2007–before our officially leaving NJ for good at the end of May, that year (the second one, my former room-mate stayed with his girlfriend in Port Clinton, and I stayed with my former coworker in Toledo; we crossed paths a few times, but kinda wanted to “feel our way around” on our own terms, this go; incidentally part of the experience this time was checking out a lot of “dead malls” in the Toledo area, including Southwyck, and Woodville Mall…..the latter of which I remember we spotted the labelscar for a KB Toys, and I paraphrased a Shakespeare quote with “Alas poor Yurick, we didn’t know you at all”). In between trips, though, is when another important aspect happened at Target; I was deep in thought (what else is new) one day, while at work, and I bumped into my former Suncoast Store Manager and the former Assistant Manager who–as I was informed shortly before that time–were now officially an item–I gave them a short chat, but I was both mentally overwhelmed figuring out the next moves of our Ohio planning, and kinda felt torn to shreds on the inside that she’d officially gone with him. My coworker passed by me, a short time later, and I looked like I was about to explode, and I launched into how my bosses came in, and how I never wanted to see them again; he responded with “well, they’re gone now, so you don’t have to worry about it”; no, they weren’t gone, they weren’t that far away, I have a very loud voice, they heard me just fine. So, for several years, out of sheer jealousy and other aspects (including not being fond of the Asst. Manager), they were on my “shit” list, though finally came off shortly after my breakup with Jeanette, as I was no longer as incredibly jealous of people in relationships, seeing as I proved I was indeed capable of it in my adult years, but on top of that…hate them for what? What’s the point? Am I particularly fond of them, all these years later? They’re who they are; they served the purpose in my life they were meant to, and it’s “whatever” from there, y’know? I have no idea what happened with their lives from that point, but I hope they’re enjoying them, and living the best lives imaginable, on their own terms.

Two more important things happened before the move in May of 2007, that I feel worth bringing up, before we bring this entry to a close, for the big conclusion next time:

On the remaining hangouts with our crew from that point on, and while I’d be watching TV, or seeing movies with our buddies (including to the Palisades Center Mall in NY), I was getting messages from God constantly reinforcing “Ohio” to me; it was spelled out on the wall of one of the restaurants we went to, the word was being used constantly in the movies and TV shows, and when I even brought it up to my relatives on the phone, they acknowledged it was indeed a sign from God; he wanted me to go there; I even remember as we continued those hangouts–and before I ran into the former Store Manager–some crew members and I stopped at the Livingston Mall, and discovered Suncoast was gone, and would later be replaced by a store called Quails. Basically, it was like God was closing all the doors on me in NJ, as if to say “there is nothing left for you here, my son; your journey continues out West”; as Rafiki said in The Lion King ” it is time!” However…..

Literally two months before we were about to move, my former Wal-Mart coworker got cold feet, quit his job at K-Mart, and immediately had to search for a new one in NJ; everything from 2006-on was about saving up for our trips, and our move out to Ohio; I even went so far as to open accounts in four separate banks in the area to make sure each account got funds that I couldn’t as easily access at any given time, cause I wanted all of that to go to the trips, and to the move, as the time drew closer. What my former coworker did was acknowledge he was just too scared to go out on his own, officially dropping out. So now it was down to me and my former roommate; our final trip just consisted of the two of us, and I could even tell he was starting to get more antsy, as he preferred to have others around him, not just answering to “one other”, if that makes sense…especially when you consider our clashing personalities.

Well, as luck would have it, doors weren’t only closing for me out here; my Dad–after being retired by his employer–tried getting a PT job at the ITC, at a pet store, and he didn’t last long; the employer pulled that shit about wanting him to get a particular task done in a certain amount of time that he couldn’t do it, either; NJ was really changing at this point, and was about to push my Dad out too; not to mention the rent was gonna keep going up even on where we lived, and I didn’t want my Dad to get priced out yet again, so I suggested he join us out in Ohio, and after an employer and apartment applications fell thru over this clause about needing to make three times the cost of rent, and the employer not taking me seriously, misunderstanding that I was planning to move out there, my Dad offered to go in on the apartment with us, semi-renewing my former room-mate’s confidence, pushing us over the edge for what we needed to have a place, securing one with a place called Bogart Landing in Sandusky, and from there, after a few final hangouts with our crew–and my making a speech to commemorate us, and officially stepping down as the leader in the process–and watching the mouths of my coworkers drop as I told them I was resigning, as the transfer to the store in Sandusky wouldn’t work out, as they insisted they were too low volume (seriously, my coworkers were actually muttering: “you…you mean…you weren’t kidding? You were serious about this…about actually leaving? Wooooooow……”), it was official, and a few days later, our stuff was packed, and on the day of the move, I’ll never forget the feeling when I left NJ, and entered Ohio (this time, for good); I flipped off NJ as we crossed over the Delaware Water Gap, and as I crossed under the sign for Ohio, I almost felt something in the air…..as though NJ had said to me “oh thank God, that loser is finally gone!!!!!!!!!!”, and Ohio was saying “where the hell have you been?! We’ve been waiting for ya; we need ya! Welcome aboard, son!!!!!!!”

Next time, we conclude this miniseries by getting to “where it finally all made sense”; hope to see you then