Tag Archives: life

Why I Care About the Subscriber Number

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Disclaimer: Bad humor and language

Someone asked me once “well what good are all those subscribers?”

Ok, I’ll list them.

1 – I could be dying and need blood. My blog might help me find that rare blood type I probably am, but don’t know for sure because I’m lazy on health and don’t know my own blood type. I believe it is green.

2 – I could be giving away three guinea pigs and need people to adopt them because I am fucking sick and tired of cleaning their fucking cages!!! … but I love you boys, Noah, Snowy, and Luke…


3 – This is a real fear. I could be driving around in bumblefuck New Mexico and some cop pulls me over and arrests me because he thinks I look like an illegal alien he has seen. I don’t memorize phone numbers due to the day and age of cell phones. So there I am young, cute, virgin butthole in prison and I can’t call for help. Gee I wish I had a blog with 50,000 subscribers that might begin to miss me and ask where I am…

To be continued…

-OM

@smokendust

Chapter 1 Page 1

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I look down through my tears at a trail of tears leading to a photo. My sorrow draws a line from the photo towards the one taped above it. I hear the words again that have impacted me so, that have made me want to flee.

“He says that this photo above yours is a picture of your biological sister. Apparently your mother left both of you on a street in front of a police station. After the officers brought you here your mother had a change of heart and came to retrieve only your sister. I am sorry you had to find out this way.”

They are words that will replay over and over in my mind as long as I have a mind to play memories in. My Korean translator was as kind as you can be while shattering the only world a person has ever known. I was eighteen years old and about to go off to college after the summer was over, and what was supposed to be a fun vacation touring my motherland had just transformed into a horrible nightmare I couldn’t wake from. I felt like everything I had known about myself had suddenly been erased as these strangers began to tell me about myself.

As an adoptee you often find your life is held between the sleeves of a manila folder. As long as you know what that folder contains your life is less of a mystery and is instead simply difficult… as life is for everyone. It is when missing pieces of a puzzle you never knew were missing pieces begin to show up that you find your course in life is altered. I thought I knew everything there was to know about myself and my life because I had read that folder and knew what it said. I never imagined how much a single sentence could mean to me.

Jason C. Cushman

-Opinionated Man

44.1

@smokendust

Prologue Page 2

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It feels almost like a movie, but the sights and sounds are as real as the pain I am feeling right now. This pressure around my heart that makes it want to crush itself.

The window frames the picture of the city of my birth and begins to age with the clouds of my depression until the screen looks like an old fashioned television show.

And then I see her. I don’t know why my eyes are drawn to her, but I notice a woman walking quickly down the street holding the hands of two young children behind her. She looks so familiar, like the glimpse of a memory I can’t remember, and I know that I know her and yet I don’t. The older of the two kids, a young girl, looks around obviously confused by the early morning adventure into the city. She is too far away for me to make out her face and I feel suddenly frustrated by my lack of view, I feel like I must see her. Behind her struggling to keep up with the group is her younger brother.

The mother has a face of determination as she marches by purposefully with a need to see the deed done, whatever deed that may be. Again I have this haunting suspicion that I know this woman as she passes further from my view. I keep watching as the young boy turns his head quickly and shoots a furtive glance in my direction. Our eyes meet and I look at myself in the mirror until he turns away to find his mother suddenly stopped in front of a building.

I can tell they stand in front of a sleeping police station that hasn’t started protecting people yet for the day. The mother seems to gather herself for a second before gathering her family around her. She gently pulls the two children closer in and hugs them while saying words I obviously cannot hear, but somehow I know them in my heart. I can tell she is trying to make the moment last a lifetime that can’t last forever as she abruptly pushes the children away with some last words given forcefully towards the eldest daughter, before quickly walking away. She doesn’t look back, I wait for her to turn back. The children instantly look scared and confused as all they know walks away. I can almost hear their cries and the sorrow of the moment brings me back to my moment and the sorrow that waits for me.

Jason C. Cushman

-Opinionated Man

44.1

@smokendust

Notes

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She left on a bad note. Actually a few notes after that.

And between us sat a side note, or was it a note that was sad.

I missed her on a high note. And many notes after that.

She leaves me without a note. Just the impression where one sat.

-Opinionated Man

44.1

@smokendust

Do You

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28

I had someone try to lecture me once about how I was squandering my platform and wasting it by posting needless bullshit.

I agreed of course.

I have the worst blog.

I should give a fuck about the whales. I should feed everyone in the world. I should save the mermaids. I should pick up all the trash that pollutes the planet. I should fix everyone’s problems.

I’m getting to it.

-Opinionated Man

44.1

@smokendust