I am a real life Rip Van Winkle

[Photorikki]

Guys-
I've got a complicated story/rant to get off my chest.
Writing this down is hard to do!
This is the first part.

I am a real life Rip Van fucking Winkle.
Gone for 15 years-now back again.
And today is my birthday.
But I'm in a bad, bad place.
I never knew my life would ever be this bleak.
I'm the most unhappy I've even been, totally alone and completely stuck in time.
And now I'm facing eviction too!
With nowhere to go.

I lived overseas in Bangkok for the past 15 years and recently returned to a place (the USA) that I just can't recognize at all!
I got a great job but lost it due to downsizing.
The last 4 years of unemployment has brought me isolation and has been a real living hell.
I feel trapped with zero opportunity and even though I keep trying I'm unable to pull myself out of this negative whirlpool all because I can't find a single, stinking job.
Can't gt hired anywhere which is RARE for me!
WTF?!

For 15 years I lived surrounded by poor rice farmers with the biggest hearts and the widest smiles who had nothing to give but were full of generosity.
I miss that spirit so much right now.

What makes it triple hard for me here is that my San Francisco "family"- my three best friends- all died in their 30's while I was away.
It feels like my history has gone along with my roots.
(I haven't been back long enough to develop new friendships yet.)

Then only a few months after I got back to San Francisco-my best Thai friend-who saw me off at the Bangkok airport-suddenly died too!
He was closer than my brother to me.
Just up and died within two months.
I was stunned.
He was only 32 as well!
I had plans for the future with him.
My roots AND my future both gone!
Then the economy collapsed.

I hang here at icmag and thought it would be a great space to finally try and open myself up again.
It ain't easy at all!
I'm gonna try cause I'm going nuts.
I'm really angry and need to vent!
I'm literally facing homelessness here in america and I just can't believe it.

I'm originally from Philly but moved out to San Francisco.
My friend back home went to Bangkok and called me in SF to say that I would love Thailand.
He said he was offered a DJ job and he wanted me to move there with him.
He got there about a month before me.
We found a great, cheap 2 bedroom apt. in a private compound right smack downtown.
Bangkok was wild!
It was the beginning of the economic boom in Thailand.

I felt right at home there even though it was so bizarre!
But my friend fled after only 6 months.
He couldn't take it at all!!
The culture was just too weird for him.

I fit right in. LOL
So I stayed on alone.
Back home people thought I was weird for meditating.
But in Thailand everyone meditated.
I am quick to smile and I learned that Thailand is the Land of Smiles.
All these little things added up and I felt super comfortable.
Being a vegetarian was hard at first although its easier now-a-days.
Language was pretty strange at first!

I was there for about 15 years.
I supported myself as a freelance photographer.
It wasn't easy but I loved it!
I tried English teaching and hated it so much.
Thank god I was able to fall back on my photography.
But freelancing was all new to me.

Life there had all kinds of ups and downs but was just fantastic!
All my problems started when I came back here.
They started with the first friend who picked me up at the airport.

 

[paladin420]

Go back man...I can hear that there is your home..make it happen.good luck

 

[wilbur]

so Fate has disconnected you from the Past, right?

mate, this is a golden opportunity for you.

you can learn to be whomever you like if you learn to manage your Loss.

don't ask me how ... I don't know what life is like for you ...

but if you want we could share some of that in private messages and see if a new direction appears for you ... ?

 

[Nor'Easter]

oh I thought you meant sleeping for 9-13 hours a day as I do!

 

[Midnight]

Sounds like you need to go back to Thailand. All the best to you.

 

[gaiusmarius]

well i kinda want to read more.... so i guess a tag is in order.....so what happened next?

 

[Andyo]

Im still here bro

Im still here bro

I moved to a small island ,
yer i know much has changed here but not as bad as anywhere else.
Ive seen a few jobs with accomodation,.I lost my grow

,still got a few outside plants, tho the war on drugs is tight.

I send cigatettes to uk makin a few $$.

Im just gettin a few Personal training customers .
Place im stayin has brand new gym n 30 mtr pool n i got big room ,got a deal with the owner he,s happy fer me training people at his gym my balcony has a great veiw fer 8,000 baht a month 10 mins from the beach.
Oh n the thai pussy bro gotta love it.A

 

[Abja Roots]

I would move back.

 

[dansbuds]

And why are you still here ????

 

[Photorikki]

Thanks for the input guys.
Appreciate it.
Its all that happened since I came back that has me all screwed up.
Here is more background:

After living in Bangkok for a few months I was at a club one night when a local girl asked me if I would model on TV.
I laughed my ass off thinking she was joking.
But she was serious!
They always needed hairy foreigners and I think they liked my big italian nose-lol.

I did a few TV ads and a bunch of magazine shoots.
Thank god cause it was hard to make money!
One TV ad for Chivas Regal was a mini 3 minute movie that starred a Hong Kong movie star
named Michael Wong and his model girlfriend.
It was shot at the Oriental Hotel & I got to wear a tux for that one!
Another one for American Express took me up north with an older guy Thai movie star.

I started to see that I could actually have a career doing this.
But in month 7 or 8 my sister back east, usa discovered she was pregnant.
She wanted to get married quick.
I kept my apt but flew back home along with my american cat.
Good thing I brought my cat because only 1 day after I landed in San Francisco-my father had a heart attack and was on life support!

I finally got home and spent my first two weeks living in the intensive care ward, sleeping on the horrible sofas and eating in the hospital cafeteria.
Either Code Blue calls kept waking us up or it was the carpet vacuuming.
It was rough.

My dad is a trumpet player and was going to play & sing at my sister's wedding.
She is a daddy's girl and was FLIPPING out because she wanted him there.
A dad is supposed to give away his daughter.
But he stayed in the coma.
We decided to go ahead with the wedding since everything was all booked and paid for, etc.
My sister came to the hospital in her wedding dress afterward hoping he'd wake up.
He didn't.

After a period of weeks we decided to pull the plug.
But my dad actually got healthier with all the tubes pulled out.
He stayed as a vegetable though.
Sometimes he hummed along with his trumpet music that we played for him on his tapes.
But you never knew what the hell was going on inside him.
Eventually that stopped.

Needless to say my mom was totally devastated.
I felt really, really bad for her.
I decided not to return to my apt. in Bangkok for a while longer.
Then a while longer again, then again and again and again.
I wanted her to see me sitting there if she ever decided to lift her head.

Meanwhile I had to get an apt. and find a job.
I lost my Bangkok apt. and the owners put all of my stuff into boxes for me.
That great apt. cost only about $200.
When I did finally get back to Bangkok 2 years later, I could only find a single room without kitchen in a slum for $200!
Times had been booming.
I lost a really good thing there.

My dad finally had to leave the hospital.
My mom swore he would relearn how to eat, walk & talk so we took him from rehab facility to rehab facility to rehab facility.
Before any place would take him, a panel of the facility's administrators had to inspect his insurance to see if he would be accepted.
Those places are really hard to take with car accident victims being the most gruesome.
There were people with only half their heads!

 

[Photorikki]

And why are you still here ????

I swore I wouldn't go back without having a job.
Now I can't cause I don't have the cash to get started again.
I am applying for work there though-so . . .

 

[Photorikki]

so Fate has disconnected you from the Past, right?

mate, this is a golden opportunity for you.

you can learn to be whomever you like if you learn to manage your Loss.

don't ask me how ... I don't know what life is like for you ...

but if you want we could share some of that in private messages and see if a new direction appears for you ... ?

Maybe I DO need to learn how to manage all the loss-never thought about that.
Thanks!

Right now getting a job is so critical.
I was hired out of 200 applicants for my last job but can't even get an interview these days!
Been trying for 3 years already!

 

[supermanlives]

dont know what to say except good luck man

 

[Photorikki]

anyway-
I had been in Thailand for 12 years without ever coming back to the USA.
I had just lost my job and my apt lease was up too.
I started thinking about coming home for a bit.
I could get work but more important for me I could reconnect with family.
I was afraid that my family started to forget me after the past 12 years.
My dad had finally died 10 years after he left the hospital.
He was still brain dead.
I hadn't gone home for his funeral because I already said goodbye to him before I finally returned to Bangkok.

I also thought I could better help my Thai friends by having steady work.
I had a lot of ideas and plans about creating work that would involve helping to keep them out of poverty.

Mostly I came back to the USA for my blood family.
I had a talk with my mom just prior to coming home.
I was so impressed because she talked with a real insight of how culture shock would affect me.
She never spoke anything like that before.
In fact it had seemed to me that she thought when you moved out of the country you just disappeared!
Where did this insight come from?!

I didn't think I would experience any culture shock.
I expected to just come back & get a job!
I had no idea what was about to happen in this country.

My mom basically told me that she met with my brother and sister and discussed how they would adjust their lives to start including me again. She said they were in full support of the entire situation.
I knew that my San Francisco 'family' & support system were gone and having everyone else on the same page meant a lot to me.

So I came back and went to surprise my brother at his house.
We were really close.
(He had been holding my rare punk rock record collection.)

He wouldn't let me in!!!??????????
Can you believe that?!
I went in anyway.
He said he had to go to the gym!
WHAT?!?
I told him to go, I'd round up my records and wait for him to come back.
He started screaming at me-I couldn't believe it.
I couldn't understand what the hell was happening.

He screamed and screamed at me to get out of his house as I went downstairs to get my records.
Seems my albums and singles mostly got destroyed with water damage but he never told me.
He refused to tell me what he was yelling about.
He was really, really angry.

I finally had to leave that atmosphere and he still hasn't spoken to me since.
Its been 8 years now!!!
WTF?!
I worked for 5 and have been unemployed for 3 already.

And this is what really, really pisses me off!
The rug was pulled out from under my feet.

My mom won't discuss it.
My sister won't discuss it.
Instead they don't speak with me.
It is so fucked up.
I left a great friend/soul mate who has since passed in order to join my blood family-who don't have the time of day for me.
Despite my mom telling me all that stuff about support!

 

[Photorikki]

edit double post

 

[Photorikki]

well-

It's obvious that people don't like talking or reading about depressing shit.

Using my family as an example as how friggin weird I found people to be, I have to say that I found most Americans to be nearly the same.
(If you were gone for over a decade and dropped right back in-you'd see what I mean.)

It seems that people in the usa weren't paying attention or something for the past 15 years while the country was being destroyed right under their noses.
And because it must have been a slow gradual decline-I think most people STILL don't even notice!

Thank god for the Occupy movement.
They show me that somebody is alive and kicking.

__________________

 

[trichrider]

land of the free, home of the brave rikki.
everybody's got problems, reading yours doesn't make ours go away...we still face them daily.
i feel for ya, but how much empathy can you expect from an anonymous post?

it's become a sorry situation, and we cannot discuss it lest we be chastised. the beast not even caring to hide any longer.

best meditate on accepting the inevitable, or connive some ways to thwart its armor.

 

[Shcrews]

wow, sounds like you have had some bad luck. heres my advice.

1. you have no obligation to your family, only to yourself. Go wherever you are happy.

2. you need to make new friends. I am sorry for the death of your friends /loved ones, but time heals everything, and you must move on. No regrets. be glad you are alive.

3. you are not alone in your financial struggles. jobs are hard to find these days. have you considered becoming a school teacher? truck driver? Alaskan crab fisherman? there are professions that will always have openings if you are willing to travel. I grow weed for a living, that is always an option.

4. seek inspiration from your negative experiences, realize what you are thankful for. The less you have, the more potential exists.

 

[Photorikki]

thanks guys-

Really appreciate the feedback a lot.
Helps me see the bigger picture.
I need that perspective.

I didn't even tell ya half the story-lol.

I guess it was such a major disappointment & shock to me to experience the reality vs what I was told to expect from my family.
And the fact that none of my family were anything like this 15 yrs ago is really, really strange.
Like the Twilight Zone-I keep waiting for the real people to come out of hiding.

I'm a straight up guy who says what is on my mind.
You know where you stand with me.
I spent a lot of time with monks in Thailand and Tibet and went to meet/volunteer with Mother Theresa in India.
I was forced to become even more and more open due to the culture that I was living in.
That doesn't seem to be a virtue here right now.

I am a really good grower.
But I live in a studio and can only fit 2 400s in here without blowing the fuse.
Almost enough for my personal use-lol

Now that I understand the family situation I've come back to-I want nothing to do with it.
So I am trying to moving on.
I've used up all my savings trying to hang on while looking for work. I'm on GA now but can't make rent this month.
Its the joblessness that is making everything sooooo difficult.

I am a photographer/photo editor who ran the photo dept. at an adult entertainment company.
That industry has nearly imploded!

Is it because I worked in porn that I can't get hired anywhere?

 

[Shcrews]

Is it because I worked in porn that I can't get hired anywhere?

that's a good one!

no, it's not because you worked in porn. it's because the global capitalist system is starting to collapse. you are not alone.