Since I’m back to blogging I’m determined to post regularly.  Wish I could do it every day, but I’m a big fat loser and have permanent brain freeze when it comes to any kind of expectations.

I’m trying to quit my addiction to Mafia Wars but knowing my Cuban businesses are making money and that eventually the coffers will be full and unwilling to accept more if it’s not banked gnaws at me like a teething child at mommy’s boo-boo (or a grown man of a certain type).

So I’m going to make a list of things I could do instead of clicking that magical button that takes me to a comatose state similar to a quaalude (which I did ask my doctor for a prescription for but he refused).

1.) Bathe

2.) Clean the house.

3.) Take action toward earning money in the near future.

See?  I’m bored already.

4.) Send another text message.

5.) M*sturbate

We’re talking short-term here.  Neither of these take long at all.

6.) Wake up my daughter and make her day delightful.

7.) Send my son an e-mail that makes our lives sound like they are perky and wonderful and so much better than reality, in an effort to make him miss us desperately and realize that California is not that great if he can’t be near his adoring mother.

8.) Try and call my niece, who should be on her way to Kentucky right now in a car with my mother, the most hellish thing I can imagine!

9.) Read some blogs and comment so everyone knows I still love them dearly even though I seemingly dropped off the face of the earth.

10.) Call Roxanne & see if she’s going to laser tag tonight. 

Yeah, that’s what I’ll probably do. 

I really wasn’t meant to be unemployed. 

I need direction at all times, like an ADD-riddled child standing on the beach holding sand in one hand and a dirty cigarette butt in the other, wondering if he should eat the cigarette or throw sand in his sister’s eyes, therefore scratching her cornea and damaging her vision for the rest of her life.

* * * * *

Just so you know that I didn’t spend all my time on Mafia Wars just clicking buttons, there was an actual incident that occurred in which my assistance was helpful and I received a ‘Thank You” note regarding same yesterday.  Last week at 3 or 4 am, I forget which, I noticed someone leaving comments that sounded like “Help me,” “I can’t take this any more,” “I just can’t do this.”

Nosy bitch that I am, it was necessary to intervene mostly for my own mental health.  So I told the guy he was scaring me and asked what he meant by those apocalyptic messages.  After no response I instant messaged him and sent another request to his in-box, determined busy-body that I am. 

When he wrote back it was to ”Pamele.”  This was the first indication of his drunken state, such poor spelling.  Fortunately, since he was suicidal, I did not deride and mock him as I might have otherwise.  I did not tell him that my son won the whole school spelling bee in 6th grade & his current successes more than likely hinged on that fact.

BACK TO THE STORY AT HAND, MAINTAIN FOCUS PAMELE!

After half an hour of back and forth in the instant message box and repeated statements that he had to go because he needed to end it all, I finally looked up his profile page and called the police department located halfway across the country.  It took close to 30 minutes to explain the story, find his address & get an emergency unit to his house.  In the mean time I eventually had him on my house phone and a dispatcher on my cell phone asking if there were weapons in the house.  It was like an egomaniacal dream come true being in the middle of such chaos, a two-fisted chatterboxing life link.

He was quite soft-spoken and thanked me several times for talking to him, even though he continued saying he had to go.  I kept asking questions.  He told me I was such a kind person (clearly hallucinating at that point).  Then I heard male voices in the background.  They entered his home without even knocking, which seemed rather aggressive.   Then he REALLY had to go.  Afterwards I was instructed by a fireman who called my house that I needed to call the Emergency Room and give them any information I had. 

How do you explain at 4:30 AM that you live in NJ and you have never met this man from Illinois before, but you’re “friends on Mafia Wars“?  I felt like a certified lunatic.  Fortunately the game is so huge that the psych tech knew exactly what I was talking about.  Unfortunately she had a voice that made me think she could convince ME to commit suicide if I had to listen to her drone on for long. 

She instructed me to send copies of everything I could find regarding the things he’d written, then she gave me an invalid e-mail address to send them to.  It did not instill a feeling in me that my unskilled and off the wall crisis intervention would be followed up on properly.  Naturally I began thinking that maybe I should drive the 14 hours and give the only appropriate counsel available in North America, my own.  Because, you know, I am a fixer freak.  I’ve never truly fixed anything in my life, but in the back of my mind I KNOW that I’m PRACTICALLY the BEST at doing EVERYTHING.  That is because I am a GENIUS and all around me are IDIOTS.

Yeah, I tell myself that as I sit home contemplating whether to twiddle myself or brush my teeth.

So, anyway, Chris sent me a note yesterday saying that he was sorry he dumped his problems on me but was glad I was there.  I was tempted to write back and tell him it was the most important I’d felt all summer and could he recommend me to other suicidal peeps or would he prefer a cash remuneration? 

Instead I wrote something nice about how I would really freaking hate it if he was dead, all the while wondering if we panic at the suggestion of suicide because, hey, if we gotta stay here you do too!  Like, what if death is actually nirvana?  You just don’t freaking know!  I mean, he said he was in physical pain from an accident.  I really freaking hate pain.  I am a huge pussy, like f*ck that!  I would totally off myself if I was painfully miserable!

Yeah, not the kind of philosophizing you want to do with a dude who’s already questioning his commitment to breathing and blinking. 

I also stopped myself from saying “Call me any time you want to talk about your problems,” because I really wouldn’t like it if this was an ongoing thing and I couldn’t feel like I fixed him in 90 minutes or less.  That would just piss me off and eventually I would say something stupid like,”Stop with the f*cking depression bullshit!  I already told you, just go to sleep!” 

Pretty much the way I act as a mother when my children are unhappy.  Like, “DON’T FUCKING CRY, IT MAKES ME SAD & I HATE THAT!”

* * * * *

Growing up in constant crazy, my brain was permanently conditioned so that NOTHING makes me feel more content than contending with a crisis, as long as there’s nothing REAL I have to do, like cope with a dead body or clean up puke or see anyone completely losing their shit from injury or loss.  I don’t like illness or icky stuff or real human emotion. 

Who knew crises of a virtual nature would fit my criteria so well?  Good God, like I needed another reason to remain behind my computer screen, tucked safely within the folds of my superhero sweatshirt.

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10 Responses to “My Alter Ego ~ A Twisted & Demented Superhero”

  1. birdpress Says:

    Wow, what a story. Maybe you should be a 911 operator!

    Something similar happened to me once. It was one of my closest friends that I had never met in person, but emailed and talked on the phone with daily over several years. Both of us had drinking problems at the time and this time he was in a really bad place. I came home to several messages on my voicemail, each one more slurred than the last.

    His messages talked about self-injuring, and the last one said he had just sliced his arm open and was going to slice his throat. I called him back over and over and didn’t get an answer. Panicking, I called the police in his town and told them the situation. They sent people to the house he was staying at, but he wasn’t there.

    Luckily, he had just passed out, and the injuries he’d already done weren’t really bad. He called me back once he’d sobered up and gotten my frantic messages, thanking me for caring so much. I yelled at him and made him promise never to do that again!

    Approximately six years later, we are both sober for good. We are also married. :)

    OH MY GOD, THAT IS THE BEST STORY!!!!!!!!!! Thank you for telling it:)

  2. Soapbox Diva Says:

    Birdpress….to each other? Too cool!

    I like to read that new name as Pamele, like in tamale. You know one of my son’s teachers called one of his ex-girlfriends ‘quite a hot tamale.’

    That’s how I think of you now. Hot Pamele!

    What have I done, giving you the ammunition for this new nickname? LOL

  3. birdpress Says:

    SD, yes, to each other!
    I like Hot Pamale!

  4. Tara Jo Says:

    So glad you’re back. We’ve missed you.

    Thank you:) Considering what you’ve been through this week, I can’t believe you had time to visit and read it!

  5. amandalinn Says:

    Pamale is my copilot!

    When I was about 16, a 19 year old guy down the street had me on the phone and told me he was going to commit suicide if I didn’t stay on the phone til his brother came home. His brother was a youth leader in my church (who told his girlfriend he could not continue to date her as she was not a virgin like him) and the suicidal guy was someone my mom claimed to have seen jerking off on the bus.

    I can’t believe I forgot about this the other day. I was shaking by the end of that phone call. Looking back I wonder what was really going on down the block…

    You’ve had SUCH an interesting life with so many fascinating characters! I would snap your book up at any cost. :)

  6. trishatruly Says:

    I find it funny as hell that you ARE the Mafia Queen, whacking people all over the danged virtual world but here you are, rescuing some sad man from himself. Perhaps you could work a hotline for abused women or something. They’re always in need of phone-counselors and you would be forbidden to give out your own personal info so this way you could do good—-from a distance!

    And my favorite line of all and one I can SO relate to:
    “Pretty much the way I act as a mother when my children are unhappy. Like, “DON’T FUCKING CRY, IT MAKES ME SAD & I HATE THAT!”

    Ohh, yeah… 8O

    Oh, I’m so glad you identify with that line — it’s so totally what happens to me! I was sure there had to be somebody else out there – lol:)

  7. boundandgags Says:

    She’s not just a Mafia queen, she’s the Mafia queen you sure as hell want on your side. Happily, she took a liking instead of a shiv to me.

    I’ve often said about having a work-a-day life, “Why couldn’t I have been born rich instead of incredibly employable?”


  8. Wow, so what you’re telling us is that you were drawn into the evil that is Mafia Wars so you’d be able to save someone’s life? That’s cosmically awesome. Things happen for a reason, sometimes.

    I feel weird too, when I talk to other people about my “friends”. It’s hard to explain that they are real, and not in my imagination, just because I haven’t actually met them.

  9. amandalinn Says:

    Hey hot tamale. I feel like I’m missing some more interactive way of playing Mafia Wars. But I might be okay with that on the other hand….

  10. Jen512 Says:

    Wow! Amazing story. You saved a life, score one for Hot Pamale!


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