Post by Andy D on Aug 8, 2016 17:30:42 GMT -5
A man should never neglect his family for business – Walt Disney
Those of you with an eidetic memory will recall how I discussed the strange things that happened to me on Independence day. For the rest of you, here’s the “Previously on the life and times of a wrestler.”
On July 4th, I spent the afternoon at a barbecue around at the home of one of my girlfriend’s work colleges. At the party, Becks (that’s the girlfriend for anybody who really hasn’t been paying attention recently) casually jested the phrase “when we’re married”, which freaked both of us out a little as we confessed to each other later that evening. We agreed that the freak out didn’t mean any major ramifications on the state of our relationship (and that the alcohol was probably to blame for the whole thing), but I couldn’t help but worry about when the other shoe would drop, when the brick wall would crumble, when the house of cards would fall down… oh wait, the 2Guys did that one a month or so back.
What I mean is that I knew that something big was probably going to happen that would throw my life into chaos as the universe never really lets me be this happy for very long. Turns out I wasn’t wrong on the “Fat Man” that was going to drop on me. What I never expected was where it was going to drop on me. Which in hindsight was really stupid and I should have seen it coming a mile away.
So, where’s the best place to begin here… probably the moment of detonation. The morning of July 5th.
So that morning Becks and I arrived back at my place after some breakfast. Why did we head there? No clue, we just did. Like the universe guided us to the place where it could strike me a cheep shot. So there we are, laughing and joking as we entered through the door of my place only to come and find this four foot eleven teenage girl standing in the middle of my sitting room (or lounge, if you’d prefer calling it that). Now Becks, she’s slightly freaked out. The kid was visibly shocked at Becks being slightly freaked out and I was momentarily confused at what this kid was doing there.
“Umm… hi?” The girl said sheepishly.
“Hey, what are you doing...” And that’s when the realisation hit me “That bitch” I ran to the phone and furiously dialled a number while both Becks and the girl were shocked at my language. “Pick up damn it, pick up. You do not get to do this again. Not to her…” When I realised there was going to be no answer I slammed the phone in anger to the point which (I realised later) I broke the damn thing and had to replace it.
“What the hell is going on?” Becks finally demanded. I took a deep breath to compose myself and walked back to the two ladies.
“Ok, first up, introductions.” I announced before turning to the girl. “Sarah, this is Becks. She’s my girlfriend for at least the next 5 minutes.” Sarah gave a very quick and nervous wave and said hello before bowing her head and looking at the floor, Becks gave a hello back with still some confusion in her voice. “Becks, this is Sarah. My sister.”
“Your sister?”
“Yup. My one and only sibling.” I said, adding ‘I hope’ under my breath.
“I see” Becks said contemplating the whole thing. “Andrew, may I have a word with you.” Uh oh, ‘Andrew’… that is never good.
We moved off to a corner of the room while Sarah stood near the couch she’d been standing by since we walked in the room. Becks did her best to keep her voice down enough to not have Sarah hear the conversation.
“Why have you been lying to me?” She asked, a tough of anger in underlying the words.
“Lying? I haven’t been…” I tried to work out what was perceived as lying in this situation “I mean I know I never mentioned Sarah yet, but it’s kinda complicated.”
“Oh I’ll bet” Becks again said, that touch still underlying. “She’s got to be what?” At which point she poked her head past my shoulder and directed a question to Sarah. “Sweetie, how old are you.”
“Umm… 14” Sarah said, surprised to have been talked to. Becks shot her a quick smile of thanks before turning back to me.
“And you’re how old again?”
“28.” for the next couple of months anyway.
“See here’s where you’ve been lying to me. Because you told me you’re parents died when you were ten, and you were never close to any foster family to have considered any of them as family.”
Took me a moment to clock on where the problem was. The Math! “Ah, the age difference thing. Yeah, that’s part of the complicated bit.”
“There had better be a perfectly reasonable explanation on how you have a sister born 4 years after your parents died.”
“Oh there’s an explanation” I said. “Although whether its perfectly reasonable is an ethological discussion of mammoth proportions.” This left Becks more puzzled than before as I walked back towards Sarah declaring “Why don’t we all sit down and I’ll explain everything.”
So we all sat down, after grabbing some drinks of water other liquid refreshments. The 2 ladies took the couch while I took the armchair off to the side so I could face them both while talking. I apologised to Sarah up front as while I knew she was aware of some of what I was about to explain, I wasn’t sure if she knew the whole story.
“Ok, so yeah, when I was ten years old my parents died in a car crash and I’ve known that since, well since I was ten.” I started. “Last year, I found out that before the crash my mother had cancer.” Which put together is the universe’s way of saying ‘F U’
I continued with my (and technically Sarah’s) story “When she was diagnosed she prepared for the treatments by making sure she could have another child later on once she was cancer free. They harvested the… reproductive bits” I wasn’t sure on how much sexual reproduction biology Sarah had learnt yet. I wasn’t big on science as a kid and cannot for the life of me remember what age that kind of education kicked in at school. “Anyway, that was all frozen to be possibly used at a later date.”
“They froze her eggs?” Becks asked, both slightly curious and slightly disturbed.
“Technically they froze embryos. It was a bit new age-y back then but regardless of what happened, a healthy womb and you can have you’re own kid running around in 9 months plus however long it takes to actually learn to run.”
“So wait, how did…?” Becks started to ask with pointing trying to finish her question.
Sarah did it for her however “...I get born?”
“Well, after my parents died in the crash, my Aunt Sally got all of my parents assets”
“including...” Becks didn’t even have to say it, the realisation at what probably happened next to result in Sarah’s existence. The look of both bewilderment, shock and underpinnings of disgust and appalled showed on Becks face and I knew them well. I had those exact feelings when I found all this out for the first time as well. Along with anger. I had a lot of anger as well.
The anger was simple. After the car crash, I went to live with my Aunt, but her job called her away from home and so she dumped me with my Grandma. Actually dumped isn’t a good term, it was cool to live with my Grandma… until she got Alzheimer’s and needed to go into a home. My Aunt tried to look after me but her job was too important and so I ended up in the foster care system.
And while I don’t have a problem with any of that, as it’s made me who I am today, to learn that a couple of years after all this happened that my Aunt, who was missing her sister terribly and discovering that there were these embryos of her child, goes and impregnates herself with one and goes to raise that child up after abandoning me to the system. Yeah, I was pissed to learn that. That was hurtful and insulting on a level that is difficult to describe. To be told that this member of my family, my mother’s sister wanted a child of my mother but I wasn’t good enough? That hurt.
To be told that at my Grandmother’s funeral. That damn near destroyed me.
That’s where I met Sarah for the first time. Where Aunt Sally explained everything. Where I yelled and screamed multiple profanities at her. Hell I even threatened Aunt Sally. Not because of what she did to me, that’s all in the past, but I didn’t want her abandoning Sarah (who she went and named after our mother in the first place).
Of course the moment (or at least the second moment) I saw Sarah standing there in the middle of my sitting room/lounge (delete as preferred), I knew that’s exactly what had happened. Aunt Sally has decided she’s had enough of her sister daughter and I’m now available to look after the kid so she’ll swan off to some destination unknown and we’ll get stuck with abandonment issues.
“I screwed up didn’t I” Sarah said, looking down to the floor again. What she finds fascinating down there I’ll never know. “You told me not to let this happen and I still...” She looked like she was about to burst into tears but the waterworks never started
“Ah, Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” Both Becks and Sarah looked at me puzzled “Bruce Lee. And considering you just admitted your mistake I’d say we are all good.”
Sarah smiled, all be it a small one. I suppose it was hard to be completely happy when you’re dumped into a foreign country to live with someone you’ve only really spent about an hour with about a year ago.
“Look, we’ll figure all this out. We’ll get you settled here, a life here.” I said to Sarah, trying to reassure her, and probably myself as well.
“Don’t forget school” Becks pointed out. Fuck, I forgot about school. Becks must have seen it on my face as it fell as she quickly said “Don’t worry, I know a guy who should be able to help us out.”
“You’d do that for me?” Sarah asked
“Sure” Becks said reassuringly “After all, you’re family.” Damn I love that woman
Becks gave Sarah a friendly hug and it made me realise how different my life is about to become and what truly is important in my life.
See this Pay Per View I am set to face Seromine for the International Title. Seromine is an oddball currently, and I half expect him to come out and say the difference between him and me is just one really bad day. His whole cult thing and the antics and devastation he’s been pulling against Nathan Saniti makes me wonder just how much he wants a title belt. My guess is he doesn’t care in the long run, just only really going for it because he has an opportunity.
In that we are no different. I don’t really care about the title, Seromine can have it for all I care. Now I fight so that I can take care of my sister. I will survive so that I do not abandon her like those in our family have abandoned us. And there’s no way in this universe I will let anything try and stop me from this, certainly not Seromine and his cult.
Now I don’t fight for gold or glory or even pride. I fight for my family. I fight for those that I love and who love me. And Seromine can never take that away from me.
I wont let him!
Those of you with an eidetic memory will recall how I discussed the strange things that happened to me on Independence day. For the rest of you, here’s the “Previously on the life and times of a wrestler.”
On July 4th, I spent the afternoon at a barbecue around at the home of one of my girlfriend’s work colleges. At the party, Becks (that’s the girlfriend for anybody who really hasn’t been paying attention recently) casually jested the phrase “when we’re married”, which freaked both of us out a little as we confessed to each other later that evening. We agreed that the freak out didn’t mean any major ramifications on the state of our relationship (and that the alcohol was probably to blame for the whole thing), but I couldn’t help but worry about when the other shoe would drop, when the brick wall would crumble, when the house of cards would fall down… oh wait, the 2Guys did that one a month or so back.
What I mean is that I knew that something big was probably going to happen that would throw my life into chaos as the universe never really lets me be this happy for very long. Turns out I wasn’t wrong on the “Fat Man” that was going to drop on me. What I never expected was where it was going to drop on me. Which in hindsight was really stupid and I should have seen it coming a mile away.
So, where’s the best place to begin here… probably the moment of detonation. The morning of July 5th.
So that morning Becks and I arrived back at my place after some breakfast. Why did we head there? No clue, we just did. Like the universe guided us to the place where it could strike me a cheep shot. So there we are, laughing and joking as we entered through the door of my place only to come and find this four foot eleven teenage girl standing in the middle of my sitting room (or lounge, if you’d prefer calling it that). Now Becks, she’s slightly freaked out. The kid was visibly shocked at Becks being slightly freaked out and I was momentarily confused at what this kid was doing there.
“Umm… hi?” The girl said sheepishly.
“Hey, what are you doing...” And that’s when the realisation hit me “That bitch” I ran to the phone and furiously dialled a number while both Becks and the girl were shocked at my language. “Pick up damn it, pick up. You do not get to do this again. Not to her…” When I realised there was going to be no answer I slammed the phone in anger to the point which (I realised later) I broke the damn thing and had to replace it.
“What the hell is going on?” Becks finally demanded. I took a deep breath to compose myself and walked back to the two ladies.
“Ok, first up, introductions.” I announced before turning to the girl. “Sarah, this is Becks. She’s my girlfriend for at least the next 5 minutes.” Sarah gave a very quick and nervous wave and said hello before bowing her head and looking at the floor, Becks gave a hello back with still some confusion in her voice. “Becks, this is Sarah. My sister.”
“Your sister?”
“Yup. My one and only sibling.” I said, adding ‘I hope’ under my breath.
“I see” Becks said contemplating the whole thing. “Andrew, may I have a word with you.” Uh oh, ‘Andrew’… that is never good.
We moved off to a corner of the room while Sarah stood near the couch she’d been standing by since we walked in the room. Becks did her best to keep her voice down enough to not have Sarah hear the conversation.
“Why have you been lying to me?” She asked, a tough of anger in underlying the words.
“Lying? I haven’t been…” I tried to work out what was perceived as lying in this situation “I mean I know I never mentioned Sarah yet, but it’s kinda complicated.”
“Oh I’ll bet” Becks again said, that touch still underlying. “She’s got to be what?” At which point she poked her head past my shoulder and directed a question to Sarah. “Sweetie, how old are you.”
“Umm… 14” Sarah said, surprised to have been talked to. Becks shot her a quick smile of thanks before turning back to me.
“And you’re how old again?”
“28.” for the next couple of months anyway.
“See here’s where you’ve been lying to me. Because you told me you’re parents died when you were ten, and you were never close to any foster family to have considered any of them as family.”
Took me a moment to clock on where the problem was. The Math! “Ah, the age difference thing. Yeah, that’s part of the complicated bit.”
“There had better be a perfectly reasonable explanation on how you have a sister born 4 years after your parents died.”
“Oh there’s an explanation” I said. “Although whether its perfectly reasonable is an ethological discussion of mammoth proportions.” This left Becks more puzzled than before as I walked back towards Sarah declaring “Why don’t we all sit down and I’ll explain everything.”
So we all sat down, after grabbing some drinks of water other liquid refreshments. The 2 ladies took the couch while I took the armchair off to the side so I could face them both while talking. I apologised to Sarah up front as while I knew she was aware of some of what I was about to explain, I wasn’t sure if she knew the whole story.
“Ok, so yeah, when I was ten years old my parents died in a car crash and I’ve known that since, well since I was ten.” I started. “Last year, I found out that before the crash my mother had cancer.” Which put together is the universe’s way of saying ‘F U’
I continued with my (and technically Sarah’s) story “When she was diagnosed she prepared for the treatments by making sure she could have another child later on once she was cancer free. They harvested the… reproductive bits” I wasn’t sure on how much sexual reproduction biology Sarah had learnt yet. I wasn’t big on science as a kid and cannot for the life of me remember what age that kind of education kicked in at school. “Anyway, that was all frozen to be possibly used at a later date.”
“They froze her eggs?” Becks asked, both slightly curious and slightly disturbed.
“Technically they froze embryos. It was a bit new age-y back then but regardless of what happened, a healthy womb and you can have you’re own kid running around in 9 months plus however long it takes to actually learn to run.”
“So wait, how did…?” Becks started to ask with pointing trying to finish her question.
Sarah did it for her however “...I get born?”
“Well, after my parents died in the crash, my Aunt Sally got all of my parents assets”
“including...” Becks didn’t even have to say it, the realisation at what probably happened next to result in Sarah’s existence. The look of both bewilderment, shock and underpinnings of disgust and appalled showed on Becks face and I knew them well. I had those exact feelings when I found all this out for the first time as well. Along with anger. I had a lot of anger as well.
The anger was simple. After the car crash, I went to live with my Aunt, but her job called her away from home and so she dumped me with my Grandma. Actually dumped isn’t a good term, it was cool to live with my Grandma… until she got Alzheimer’s and needed to go into a home. My Aunt tried to look after me but her job was too important and so I ended up in the foster care system.
And while I don’t have a problem with any of that, as it’s made me who I am today, to learn that a couple of years after all this happened that my Aunt, who was missing her sister terribly and discovering that there were these embryos of her child, goes and impregnates herself with one and goes to raise that child up after abandoning me to the system. Yeah, I was pissed to learn that. That was hurtful and insulting on a level that is difficult to describe. To be told that this member of my family, my mother’s sister wanted a child of my mother but I wasn’t good enough? That hurt.
To be told that at my Grandmother’s funeral. That damn near destroyed me.
That’s where I met Sarah for the first time. Where Aunt Sally explained everything. Where I yelled and screamed multiple profanities at her. Hell I even threatened Aunt Sally. Not because of what she did to me, that’s all in the past, but I didn’t want her abandoning Sarah (who she went and named after our mother in the first place).
Of course the moment (or at least the second moment) I saw Sarah standing there in the middle of my sitting room/lounge (delete as preferred), I knew that’s exactly what had happened. Aunt Sally has decided she’s had enough of her sister daughter and I’m now available to look after the kid so she’ll swan off to some destination unknown and we’ll get stuck with abandonment issues.
“I screwed up didn’t I” Sarah said, looking down to the floor again. What she finds fascinating down there I’ll never know. “You told me not to let this happen and I still...” She looked like she was about to burst into tears but the waterworks never started
“Ah, Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” Both Becks and Sarah looked at me puzzled “Bruce Lee. And considering you just admitted your mistake I’d say we are all good.”
Sarah smiled, all be it a small one. I suppose it was hard to be completely happy when you’re dumped into a foreign country to live with someone you’ve only really spent about an hour with about a year ago.
“Look, we’ll figure all this out. We’ll get you settled here, a life here.” I said to Sarah, trying to reassure her, and probably myself as well.
“Don’t forget school” Becks pointed out. Fuck, I forgot about school. Becks must have seen it on my face as it fell as she quickly said “Don’t worry, I know a guy who should be able to help us out.”
“You’d do that for me?” Sarah asked
“Sure” Becks said reassuringly “After all, you’re family.” Damn I love that woman
Becks gave Sarah a friendly hug and it made me realise how different my life is about to become and what truly is important in my life.
See this Pay Per View I am set to face Seromine for the International Title. Seromine is an oddball currently, and I half expect him to come out and say the difference between him and me is just one really bad day. His whole cult thing and the antics and devastation he’s been pulling against Nathan Saniti makes me wonder just how much he wants a title belt. My guess is he doesn’t care in the long run, just only really going for it because he has an opportunity.
In that we are no different. I don’t really care about the title, Seromine can have it for all I care. Now I fight so that I can take care of my sister. I will survive so that I do not abandon her like those in our family have abandoned us. And there’s no way in this universe I will let anything try and stop me from this, certainly not Seromine and his cult.
Now I don’t fight for gold or glory or even pride. I fight for my family. I fight for those that I love and who love me. And Seromine can never take that away from me.
I wont let him!
