Life story part one, v3

Life story part one

Draft, version three:

My life story part one

This is my life story, especially as it relates to my health, part one

Audience: the “basket of normals”

Sally from Southbridge, Michigan, USA

Jimmy from Perth, Australia

Takeo from Kyoto, Japan

Sophia from Puebla, Mexico

Murray from Hastings, New Zealand (originally from New Plymouth)

Setting the scene, it is a WhatsApp group chat with 5 relatively normal people. They aren’t members of the fae (aka philosopher-kings). They don’t like the whole “fae” thing. I have chosen to pretend that it is an interview by Skype, because it helps me to focus my mind. It’s a way to help me to adopt a suitable perspective and tone.

Sally: Where shall we start? There is a lot of ground to cover after all. We are trying to understand your health, how you became unwell, and how you ended up being crippled for so long. And all of the problems that occurred along the way.

David: I reckon that we need to start somewhere sensible. It would be daft to start too young. Maybe we should start in my teens?

Sally: Well, exactly where do you think we should start? How far back should we go?

David: I think that we might go back to the age of 16. That seems like a good place to start. There is some stuff prior to that, such as a significant bout of what I call “electromagnetic nervous system related harm” back at the age of about 14, after my trip to Japan. Which left me feeling quite unwell. But perhaps 16 is the right age at which to start.

[I might tell the story of the Japan trip and how sick I was afterwards later. I might tell it because it is such an important story.]

Sally: What were things like for you back then? Both in terms of your health but also for your life in general? Let us set the scene.

David: Okay, that sounds good to me. Let’s set the scene. I was fine. Life was going well. I was a high school student. I had a part time job cleaning school classrooms. I went to the Coast Community Church (CCC) on Sunday mornings for the regular morning church service, and on Friday nights for youth group.

I liked video games and played a lot of them. I used to arrange “halo days” at my home on the weekends and organise large group nights on Friday or Saturday at the local internet cafe (we would book it out for five hours at a time). I boxed and played table tennis. I used to do a fair bit of exercise. I did push-ups, jumped rope and rode my bike, amongst other things.

I socialised with people from church and school. But I preferred my family to both.

Sally: Tell me about your friends at the time? What were they like? That might be a good way to get started.

David: I’m not sure where to start. I suppose that I could give you a list of names, and a bit of background, and we could go from there. Here is a list of my friends back then. This is back in sixth form by the way, and maybe a little bit before that and a little bit after that. I would have been between the ages of about 15 and 17.

The first three worth mentioning are Amanda Ward, Jesse Orchard and Aaron Oldcorn. They were my best friends in Paraparaumu at the time. The next bunch worth mentioning are Max Macfarlane, Phillip Tiller, Nathan Thatcher, Kieran Rayner, Scott Mulcahy, Liam Cunningham, Michael Burton, Chris Westwood, Chris Barber (Amanda’s boyfriend in 5th form), Rachel Burston (Amanda’s best friend at the time).

Some of my other friends, associates and acquaintances include: Jess Mackenzie, Jessie Hendy, Jacob (I forgot his surname), Chips (aka Jono), Taras, Daniel Han, David Walker, Ben Jack, Ashley King, Grace, Emma McKay, Jenna Rowland-Skelton, Joseph Chapman and Chris Wilkins.

And a few family and family friends include:

Andrew Brody-Pop, Glynn Periam, Uncle Jonathan Foster, Andrew London (my father’s employee), Mike Hocking (my father’s former employee, as well as being a pastor and marriage celebrant).

At this point, I had recently moved from Taradale to Paraparaumu, as I have mentioned elsewhere. And so I had recently made a bunch of new friends.

I moved from Taradale to Paraparaumu in 2004. Just in case you don’t already know, Paraparaumu is part of the Kapiti Coast. And it is just a little bit north of Wellington, which is the capital city of New Zealand. It takes about 50 minutes by car to travel between Paraparaumu and Wellington. I am now living in Petone, Lower Hutt which is about 15 minutes north-east of Wellington. Taradale is part of Napier, which itself is part of the region known as Hawke’s Bay.

Sally: can you tell me more about these people?

David: Of course. When I first moved to Paraparaumu, I didn’t know anyone. And so I just met people at school and church. My father chose the church that I ended up attending (we ended up going to the Coast Community Church (the CCC) on Hinemoa Street). Basically he just took me along to it, and then I ended up getting into the habit of going to it. After a while he stopped going to it, but I kept on going. He then went to a different church (or churches). He went to the Meadows Church (a local Pentecostal church), Waikanae Baptist Church and a third church whose name I forget that used to meet in the Paraparaumu College auditorium. My father liked church hopping. The CCC was a nice church though. I liked the youth group as well, and I also enjoyed going to the youth group’s shared lunch on Sundays, held shortly after the Sunday morning sermon. I also went to the Sunday evening service which was put on by the youth group and the youth pastor Andrew Crawshaw. And at school, I met people in class. I went to Paraparaumu College, and I started going there in fifth form. Amanda and I ended up sitting next to one another in three classes (Accounting, Japanese and Maths). I think that there may have been a seating plan that caused this to happen, but I’m not sure. We became friends fairly quickly. What else? I met Jesse Orchard at church and at school. His father is an elder at the CCC. Back in those days I think he was a deacon, but he was promoted to being an elder a long, long time ago. He is now the chief elder. I ended up being a part of Amanda’s set of friends. She and her friends were very friendly, and easy to get along with quite quickly. They invited me to go to the swimming pools in Porirua with them in the first few days of school, and invited me to go to the boxing club with them too. IIRC, I had never taken the train without a parent at that age, and I think that it may have been one of the first times I had been to Porirua. I was actually a little bit inexperienced with things like public transport at the time. Also, I doubt that I would have gone to boxing without an invitation from them (Chris Barber, Amanda’s boyfriend at the time, and I sparred and boxed together a bit at the club. We all used to hang out at Chris’s place to watch dumb videos online). The following people came along with Amanda’s set: Chris Barber, Scott Mulcahy, Liam Cunningham, Rachel Burston and Grace. The following people came along with the church set: Jonathan East (aka Chips), Chris Westwood and Ashley King. I later met Max Macfarlane because he went to the Meadows church (my father went there, and took me along sometimes) and he was Matthew’s friend. I met him through Dad and Matthew (his parents later became missionaries in India). Also, Max is adopted. And his parents became missionaries to India. We played a bunch of Halo together. I asked him if he knew any other good Halo players, and he introduced me to his friend Aaron Oldcorn. Who was supposed to be good at Halo (he was okay! But not amazing, but so what! I was desperate for more players in Halo). Aaron was asked the same question, “where can I find more Halo players who are good” and he then later introduced me to his friends Philip Tiller and Nathan Thatcher. They weren’t amazing at Halo, but they’re quickly became my new set of friends. Aaron was one of my best friends at high school in Paraparaumu. A lot of my social life revolved around video games back then. Where did I meet Brynn? Brynn and I sat next to one another in Japanese class (I actually sat in between her and Amanda in 5th form, and we sat together in 6th form). We were thrown together on work day, and painted a roof together (without scaffolding or safety equipment). She and Joseph Chapman also dated for a while.

***

Let me tell you about Amanda for a bit. She was born out of wedlock to a 19 year old mother and a 22 year old father (Lesley and Darryl). Her parents split up when she was an infant. Her mother got custody. Her father had Amanda for just a couple of weekends a month (I think).

Her parents were alcoholics by the way. Her mother used to hide her drinking from her ("she never drank in front of me when I was a child"). But her father didn't exactly hide his drinking in front of his daughter, and used to drink in front of her. Sometimes he would drink so much that he would pass out in front of her. It was so bad that on one occasion when he passed out drunk in front of her she thought he was dead (or so the story went). He also exposed her to drug use when she was at his house for visits. To be specific, he had friends there passing around joints of marijuana. Another thing is that her father was a "punk" when he was young. He liked punk music. And he was even in a punk band at one point. That band's name was "goat rider". Her mother was a bit of a slob and a lazy mother and neglected her daughter. And she was a lesbian too (not that I knew it at the time; or a bisexual, whatever label you want). It was not a stable and healthy environment to grow up in. I think it had a negative effect on Amanda growing up.

Her father had since got married to a woman from Kazakhstan (she was russian, but from Kazakhstan), converted to Anglicanism and become a teetotaller, as well as a lay teacher at the local Anglican Church.

*

What else?

*

Shortly after we met, she lied to me and told me that she had been sexually molested by her step father. That they had had sex iirc. She confided in me to make me feel sympathetic towards her, but it was a lie (I only found out as an adult that she lied; and I am about 90% sure that she lied). That's the sort of person she is by the way. She is the type to lie about childhood sexual molestation in order to elicit sympathy. She claims that it caused her to have "mental health" issues. Even well into adulthood. She even had counselling at one point (or so she claimed). She was a somewhat troubled girl. But we were friends anyway. I liked her.

*

Why did I like her? I think that it was because she was intelligent. And fairly sharp. Or at least I thought that she was. That was the bit that made her worthwhile as a friend. And she liked books! And basically she was just friendly and welcoming. And witty too. She chose me as a friend, so I guess it just happened that way. We became friends. But basically she just fell into my life because she was there, sat beside me in three of my classes.

**

I didn't know at the time that she enjoyed being cruel to others. That she saw herself as a "bully". I wouldn't have associated with her if I had known that she was deliberately unkind to other people.

***

Jesse Orchard’s father was a major player in the Church. And so I spent a fair bit of time around the Orchard clan and at their house over the years. The way it worked was that my father knew his father a little bit, and so my father placed me into Jesse’s house to stay when my father was out of town. He eventually became a friend. And by the age of 17 was my best friend at that school (which is kind of sad, because I never really felt that I knew him that well!). But he was best I could find, and enjoyed video games. He loved Warcraft Three, especially the custom map footmen frenzy. He also liked World of Warcraft, which I never got into (after Ragnarok and RuneScape I wasn’t willing to get into another MMORPG). Oh well. It’s sad. It really is. Looking back, I think that he stole my login for RuneScape when I was 15 (I logged on to his computer to look at my account, and I guess he had a key logger). But I didn’t realise that this was what must have happened until years later. He was one of the leaders at the youth group, along with Ashley King. Also, Jesse managed the soundboard at church. The youth pastor was Andrew Crawshaw. I also met Leah and Helene at that youth group. I had a crush on Leah, but hardly knew her (she was pretty cute). Helene was a leader in the youth group, and later on she ran it herself, after it basically died. That’s a long story, but not interesting enough to retell. Jesse and I actually ran a couple of events (or tried to! I was terrible at it, or we were!). They were fun though (and no one got hurt). So it didn’t matter. [Note: my theory is that the rule is that if no one got hurt, and people had fun, it probably wasn’t that bad of an event. Ahaha, Jesse once broke his ribs at youth group. They were playing capture the flag, but the “flag” was a bucket full of rocks with a lid on it, and he fell over, landing heavily on it.] I liked youth group.

What else did I do?? I used to arrange to have nights at the internet cafe where I booked out the entire local internet cafe, and then I would get 20 or so guys together from school to play games like Battlefield 1942. I didn’t even like Battlefield 1942 that much, but it’s what we played. It was at this internet cafe (Cyberjacks) that I first played the Half-life One modification known as “Natural Selection”. Which was probably the best game I have ever played. I still miss it. Anyway, I loved video games. I used also to arrange Halo 2 gatherings at my home, usually on a Saturday, and invited my friends to those. These friends included such people as Matthew Solt, Aaron Oldcorn, Max Macfarlane, Andrew Brody-Pop, Reuben, Jesse, Phillip, Nathan and a few others. Chris Wilkins came a few times. Darren McKay (Emma McKay’s brother) came along a couple of times (he and my brother were friends). We took a break for pizza and coke halfway through. We could usually manage to get about ten or more guys to come along.

What else? We also had LANs sometimes.

Taras and Daniel were homestay students living at our house. Taras was German and Daniel was Korean. They were teenage males, one year younger than me. They were both fairly likeable, Taras more so than Daniel. We spent a fair bit of time with one another, because they lived with us. Taras dragged us on runs sometimes (he was training for rugby). We would run in the field behind our house. We were living at 24 Linwood Drive at this point. This was in 6th and 7th form. Taras was here for only one school year (or less?) I can’t recall. His English was already fairly good when he arrived (he did need to improve his style, accent and delivery though). Daniel wasn’t an exchange student. He was just a foreign student going to high school in New Zealand (he went to Kapiti College).

My best friend back before the age of ten was Ben Jack. We were still friends at the age of 16/17, but becoming pretty distant by then. We had both changed. We still saw one another sometimes. His mother was a lesbian. She worked for a mental health bureaucracy and then later worked for the UN in New York. Ben and I both loved video games when we were young. We had known one another since before we started school, I think. I can’t actually remember meeting him for the first time. We attended LTCS (The Lake Taupo Christian School) together. Ben Jack is now a bisexual.

David Walker was probably my best friend for 2-3 years back when I was younger. We met at the age of twelve during school athletics day and bonded over our love of video games and mutual hatred of athletics day, and we were fairly good friends up until the age of 15, which is when I left town. His father was a Presbyterian minister at St Columba’s Presbyterian Church in Taradale. His mother worked as the homestay and accomodation coordinator for international students at the EIT. Sadly, he wasn’t 100% honest as a friend, if you know what I mean. He was fake, and I only found out about this years later. I think that his mother was (secretly) a socialist. His brother became a chef. I still stayed in touch with them after moving town. We were still friends after I moved, and I would sometimes stay with them for a week or so. I had a lot of good memories and times with that family. I loved that family. Years later, David Walker became a homosexual. He wasn’t a homosexual when I knew him.

David Walker has cystic fibrosis, and I would prefer it if people didn’t bother him. 

Jess Mackenzie and Jessie Hendy were friends in high school. We were in the same class as one another. They were quite smart and loved books. Jess Mackenzie has a degree in English (with 1st class honours), and Jessica Hendy studied anthropology, ancient history and chemistry at Auckland University (she finished a BA and BSc, and honours). She did her PhD at York University. She is now a senior lecturer in Archeology at York University. Jess Mackenzie lived on a farm and had four brothers. David and Jess Mackenzie were also friends.

That’s it for now.

Sally: Okay. What next?

David: Let’s keep on setting the scene.

My mother was still living back in Napier. I saw her sometimes. I was living in a yellow two story house on Mazengarb Road, Paraparaumu just a few minutes away from school. I was still getting adjusted at school in fifth form. It was very easy to make friends and meet people. But in hindsight, perhaps the quality control just wasn’t there (maybe I was a little naive about how horrible people can be, even at church). For what it was worth, I was very religious, and followed rules and believed the stuff. I had a literal, supernatural, fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. I also believed in the golden rule, and that you should “love your neighbour as your self”. And that you should be a person of integrity. As well as being loving, patient, kind and compassionate.

But back to the social life and making friends. I was sociable. I would do things like round up twenty guys to go to an internet cafe to play battlefield or Warcraft, I went to youth group and church, I went to the swimming pools with friends, I hosted LANs, I went to the beach, I made an effort to meet people who I could play Halo with. I was always looking for more people to play video games with. I went to the youth group shared on Sundays. I stood around and talked with my friends at school. And for a while I played table tennis at the school hall.

Note: I can’t prove this, but looking back, it seems highly likely that other people preemptively sabotaged my social life. Especially my younger brother Matthew. There was some sort of “big game” there. But perhaps I will talk about it another time. By the way, my family was out to get me. Legitimately out to get me.

What else.

I tried some karate (Kempo), kickboxing and boxing. I settled on boxing because I enjoyed it and appreciated the challenge. And then boxed on-and-off until half way through sixth form. I also bought some affordable dumbbells within the first week of arriving in Paraparaumu. As you can see, I was shopping around a bit before I settled on what sport to do. Table tennis was a strong contender, as were fencing, hockey or maybe rugby. Maybe. I had always wanted to do a season of rugby (as a young child I lamented the fact that I was put in soccer, not rugby). And I enjoyed playing both bullrush and rugby at lunchtime when I was nine years old. I was playing a lot of Morrowind at the time (this was in 5th form). I loved that game and I played a lot of it. I was also playing a lot of The Sims (which is unironically an amazing game; 200 million happy customers can’t be wrong). Matthew and I played a lot of both of those two games. We were playing computer games together all of the time, it was how we spent time together. Video games were a huge part of our relationship as brothers. It’s what we did. We also played them with our cousins.

What else? I had left my friends from Taradale behind. These included friends such as David Walker, Jessica Hendy, Jess Mackenzie, Daniel Sanson, Scott Young, Sam, Matt van Pelt, Adam Kendle, and a few others. I still saw David Walker and Jess Mackenzie sometimes. They were both still friends. Jess visited us a few times, and vice versa. And we exchanged letters. I had multiple stays with the Walkers after moving to Paraparaumu. The Walkers felt like family to me. And still I spent plenty of time with my family. And time with my friends at church. I know I’m rambling and repeating myself, but I’m trying to get plenty of information across.

David: Who else? Looking back? I spent a lot of time with my family. Here are the names of some other randoms, I met Kieran Rayner, Jacob and Ben Boland. Jacob was in my English class, and form class. He was a massive martial arts enthusiast. He did Kempo and a few others things, and had quite a bit of experience. We got along okay, but he faded to the background pretty quickly. And then moved overseas. I met a guy named Byron Mallet, who played violin and was good with computers (he got a masters degree and now works at a university). He was in a long term relationship with Brynn in their mid to late twenties, before breaking up suddenly. I think that it was a fairly bad breakup. They were living together. Byron Mallet and Jesse Orchard were friends. Although Jesse seemed to look down on Byron, somehow? Kieran was an opera singer, and went into show business. He likes Shakespeare, Gene Kelly, show tunes and all that sort of thing. He was reportedly very good at wc3 frozen throne: melee, but I never played against him. I used to invite him to things like Halo at my place, but he wasn’t a massive gamer by the time he was 16/17. I think he came to my 20th birthday party. I used to see him on and off. Actually, he and Jess Mackenzie dated! And they were in a long term live-in relationship together. Which is bizarre!! He got good marks at school and I think that he also got good marks at university. I met him on the first day of 5th form. He invited me to play “sogby” with he and his friends (soccer combined with rugby). It is soccer when the ball is on the ground, and rugby when you pick it up and are carrying it. If they are carrying it, then you can tackle them. Which is what I played on my first day of school. He is (or was) a mutual friend of Jesse Orchard and Amanda Ward. Amanda and I were friends. We were in accounting, Japanese and mathematics in 5th form. And in economics class in 7th form together as well. We sat together in all of these classes. She was also in 6th form Japanese class with me, until she quit. She invited me to go swimming with her and her friends when we first met. And so we went to the Porirua pools, and the local pools. Which was nice. I met Rachel and Jenna through Amanda. We quickly became friends. I used to hang out with her and her group of friends at school. She, Chris and Rachel were the ones who invited me to boxing. They all went for a while. And then faded out. A lot of guys from school went to boxing for a little while before quitting (such as Roman, Chad, Ben Boland, Kieran Corlett). I liked it at the boxing club. I liked it so I stayed. My father actually didn’t want me boxing, and neither did my mother. I also tried out kickboxing. Brynn’s step-father (Barry) ran the kickboxing club. I tried out his club, but it didn’t “click” for me. This is because we had to wear a mouth guard while doing pad work, and also because jogging at the start of each session left me feeling exhausted. I don’t like jogging! And I didn’t like the pace they set for jogging. The club was otherwise fine. I had previously really loved my kickboxing club in Taradale.

I knuckled down to study a bit harder in 5th form than I had previously. The thing is that I had been a little bit slack in fourth form (back in Taradale). Maybe this was because of the divorce, or maybe because I just played too many video games. Or maybe it was because I felt that school wasn’t that important in 4th form. But I was slack. I still passed fairly comfortably! And my marks were actually decent enough! But I wasn’t winning prizes and stuff so much. 

Note: I did however win the most humorous speech award for my speech in 4th form. It was the funniest speech from among those in third and fourth form. It was the first time I ever spoke in front of a significant crowd of people (the assembly). It was a good speech.

David: I want to backtrack for a little bit to talk about getting streamed into the wrong classes when I started at Paraparaumu College at fifth form in 2004.

Sally: is this important?

David: Yes, it probably is important. If you get put into the wrong classes it has an effect on your education, your social life, your likelihood of winning things like dux in seventh form, and the way that teachers and other people treat you.

Here is the story. The decision to move to Paraparaumu was made at the last minute. Two years prior when they had first announced that they were divorcing, I had asked to be allowed to move to Paraparaumu to live with my father. In fact the very first thing I said when they said they were getting divorced was, “I want to go with Dad”. But I was told by my father that I wasn’t allowed to. He claimed that he wanted to take me with him, but my mother wanted to keep me. And he said that if he took me with him, that my mother would challenge it in the family court, and that the woman always wins in the family court. But then after two years, he changed his mind. We were at the Parachute Christian music festival when he invited me to move (honestly, I should have just stayed put, given that I was settled in where I was, but we will talk more about that later). The decision was made. I kind of think that he used that situation to persuade me to move. But I can’t remember perfectly.

And anyway, we then went to Paraparaumu College, just after the music festival (iirc), to sign up for school for the next year. And as part of that I had to take the previous year’s exams for math and English to figure out which classes to stream me into. I had to take the end of year 4th form exams from the previous year, without revision. And these aren’t standardised tests. I wasn’t ready for them.

And so I took the tests and got mediocre marks. And got put into mainstream classes for science, mathematics and English. And so I had to work harder to get out of those classes and into the proper classes the following year. By the way, this harmed my social life. The way that this happened is that I ended up meeting “mainstream” class level people instead of “extension” class level people. And so I probably didn’t meet high quality people, and therefore didn’t end up being a part of the right social sets. Anyway, I put in the work to do well. And I did do well. And I did even better in 6th and 7th form. It was okay. I didn’t study hard all year long, but I put in the work when I needed to. Such as at the end of the year before exams, and before minor “internal” assessments. Also, I probably would have done better in terms of awards and stuff if I had been streamed correctly.

**

I was at one point planning to go to Japan on a one year long exchange with the organisation AFS (American Field Service). But I decided against it. It was expensive.

*

My family and I were close. I enjoyed spending time with my friends. But I actually stuck fairly close to my family. Especially my father and brother. I liked my family! And I liked my extended family too, especially my Nana, Grandma and Grandpa, my Uncle Jonathan and my Aunty Wendy.

*

My father and I were close when I was growing up. Or at least I thought we were! He was my favourite parent, out of my mother and father. He was smart and he was good company. He was easy to talk to. We used to spend a lot of time with one another. For example, we spent a lot of time in the car together while he did stock transfers or deliveries. He used to own multiple shops. At one point he had a shop in each of Taupo, Napier, Hastings and Paraparaumu. Or we spent time together while he set up new music shops, or we went to music festivals together, or we sat at home talking, or talked while running around town doing errands. We spent a lot of time together. We were always together. Or, very often together. We often enjoyed listening to music together. Both at home and in the car. We used to listen to a lot of music in the car. That was a big thing for me growing up: listening to a lot of music in the car with my father. As well as talking with him for ages in the car.

He also enjoyed showing me his favourite songs from his collection of CDs and records (vinyl). We would talk about music and listen to music together. He also was a pretty good pianist and a good song writer. And so when I was young, I would enjoy listening to him play his songs for me. He would simultaneously play the piano and sing. Most of his songs were Christian songs. I loved the songs he wrote. I was always worried that he would forget how his songs went and how to play them, and I always wanted him to record his music, so that it wouldn’t be forgotten. But he never did. He taught me some of his songs, which I learned through copying and memorisation.

We spent a lot of time together while I was a child. And this continued when I was a teenager. When I was in my teens, we would still spend plenty of time together. Talking, debating, arguing, and going for drives in the car. I would work at his shop sometimes. We played cards together (we enjoyed playing games such as hearts, blitz and other games. He also taught me to play chess). We also played board games (such as monopoly, polyconomy, risk and a few others), although not as much as we used to back when Matthew and I were young. We also had his cousin Glynn over a fair bit (second cousin), and sometimes Uncle Jonathan (Uncle Jonathan is my Uncle, and my mother’s younger brother, he is my father’s former brother-in-law). They were both close friends of Dad, and also were very good company in general. When they came around, we would get coke and movies from the video store. As well as “hard jubes” (which were lollies that Uncle Jonathan was obsessed with). We would all then watch movies and dvds together. What else? I saw a not insignificant amount of my father’s employees and friends growing up. People like Mike Hocking and Jaime. They were nice, and very easy to get along with. They were a big part of my life at some points. I also saw a fair bit of Andrew London and Aidan (employees of my father). Because they worked for my father, they were present in my life.

We also used to go on nice holidays to the beach/sea/ocean when Matthew and I were children. I loved the beach. And we also visited Australia a couple of times, Japan once and America as well.

Next my brother, Matthew.

Sally (and the other normal people): can you tell us a bit more about you and your brother growing up?

Both Matthew and I liked video games, music, books and TV shows like the Simpsons. We used to bond over books, video games and music. And much of our relationship involved playing video games together, talking about video games, planning to have our friends over to play video games, listening to music together, talking about music, talking about books, and sitting around reading stacks and stacks of books. We also loved shows like the Simpsons and cracking jokes with one another. Going further back into childhood, as little kids, we used to spend hour upon hour playing with Lego in our room, or playing with hot wheels cars and tracks (especially the loop-the-loop track and the electric boosters), or building forts out of furniture and blankets. Or building fortresses and habitats for our cats out of cardboard boxes (we used piano boxes), and other household goods, using steak knives from the kitchen to chop them up (the boxes, not the cats).

We both played table tennis. I was older than him and probably had more natural ability in table tennis.  Dad wanted to train him up in table tennis, so that he could win tournaments. And so he did. Matthew and Max (a mutual friend of ours) began to win tournaments. Matthew started to get good. I still played table tennis, but not seriously. I briefly thought of working at it to overtake him (knuckling down and practising), but instead I quit table tennis to let him have his own thing. I was being kind to him.

Matthew was a weird kid. That was his image in my eyes back when we were young. But he was still my brother. He had asthma and eczema. Also, he had Aspergers Syndrome and had been officially diagnosed. He was diagnosed as a child, at great expense (thousands of dollars, allegedly). My father used to take him to special meetings and they had a support group that Dad and Matthew went to. Looking back, it seems to me that this aspect of their life was probably riddled with dishonesty. What I mean by that is that I think that the diagnosis was fake. At the time, I thought that Matthew was fine, and his social skills seemed fine to me. He was maybe a little eccentric.

As an adult he has had weird autoimmunity issues that affect his skin and hair. For example, half of his eyebrow fell off as an adult and had to be pencilled back in. He also had some sort of weird skin issue on his face that ruined his complexion very badly and he wears makeup sometimes to cover it up. He has had problems with hair falling out too, in weird ways.

In our teens we played a lot of Halo 2 together. And I invited his friends to my house to play Halo 2 along with my friends. His friends and my friends had a fair bit of crossover (such as Max, Aaron, Reuben, Darren and a couple of others). We played a lot of Halo 2. They were good times.

***

Sally (and the rest of the normals): What other games did you guys enjoy growing up? Were video games an important part of your life? I’m asking about you and Matthew, what sort of games did you play?

David: I’m glad you asked. Video games were a huge part of our lives growing up. 

We liked games such Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Red Alert Two and the expansion pack, “Yuri’s Revenge”, Gran Turismo, Tekken Two and Three, and Tekken: Tag, Worms, Pokémon Red (we both loved and adored that game), Leiro, Age of Empires, Morrowind (and expansions), Sonic the Hedgehog, Jill of the Jungle and many, many shareware games, Icy Towers, Duke Nukem, Jetpak, Age of Empires Two, Halo One and Halo Two. We liked Tiberium Sun and the Sims. We had all of the expansion packs for the Sims (the Sims is one of the best, and most popular, games of all time). We liked Sim Tower, Sim City 2000 and 3000, Theme Park, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Gunbound (Original), Heroes of Might and Magic two and three, Oblivion, Golden Eye 007, Lemmings, Abe’s Oddworld, Tony Hawk, Gex the Gecko, Batman Forever, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Grand Theft Auto Two, Diablo Two, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (1996), Wipeout (racing game), One Must Fall: 2097 (fighting game), various arcade games. And many others. We played a lot of games. We played a lot of really good games, but we also played plenty of shareware, shovelware and freeware.

We were both massively into video games growing up. I cannot over emphasise this enough. Also, our father owned a computer shop which sold video games and game consoles. He owned that when Matthew and I were approximately seven or eight years old. I loved the computer shop.

We also had a similar sense of humour to one another, and enjoyed things like Simpsons reference humour and reference humour in general. We would just hang out and watch cartoons and stuff like that. We spent plenty of time together. What else was there to do? Who else was I going to spend time with? It was me, Dad and Matthew. We were actually pretty close.

Sally: what else?

I loved my brother, not that I would ever have wanted to say it out loud (because I don’t like talking about feelings too much; talking about feelings is actually lame).

And I liked him too, in general. And I cared about him. And I liked spending time with him. We did argue and fight a little bit. But brothers often do. Overall, I liked him. I thought I had a good brother.

It turns out that he was actually a bad person, and he was a big part of running “games” against me. My family were horrible people.

Sally: That’s awful. Shall we move onto the next thing?

****

****

David: Sure. I had a variety of jobs as a teenager. Let us talk about those quickly.

I worked a number of jobs as a teenager.

I sometimes worked at my father’s music shop. I unpacked boxes and entered goods into inventory. I helped with deliveries (carrying heavy objects such as pianos and drum kits). I assembled instruments and set up pianos. I did plenty of cleaning, such as vacuuming the floors and polishing instruments. I also served customers and kept an eye on things so that people didn’t steal things.

I worked as a paid cleaner. Cleaning school classrooms after school. I liked that job. I vacuumed, swept, mopped, polished and scrubbed floors.

I picked raspberries in summer. In Hawkes Bay. And blackberries. 

I sold coke and other fizzy drinks at school for a profit. It was a “black market” good because coke and other sugary drinks were banned at school. The canteen wasn’t allowed to sell them. I enjoyed that job. The only downside was that my bag was heavy when it was completely full of cans of coke, sprite and other drinks. It gave me a sore back sometimes. But it was fun being the only guy in school who could supply you with a cold can of coke, and at the price of only $1 NZD too.

(Note: I sold Coca Cola for $1 a can, and usually bought it for between 53 and 60 cents a can. I had to account for some stock losses due to explosion of cans in the fridge. It was a decent money earner, but no better than a part time job. But it was fun. By the way, a Coke would often cost $1.50 or $2.00 from a vending machine at this point of time, so I sold it for less than the retail stores).

There was an almost libertarian aspect to it… where I was kind of like, “how dare they say we can’t buy and sell coke at school, just because it is unhealthy”. And also there was a somewhat moral aspect to the $1 price point. That price point was basically dead in NZ by that point. But I wanted to sell coke at that price because it just ought not to be more than that. It’s silly, to be honest. But there you have it!

*

David: Next, I want to talk about my study habits.

Sally: Okay, tell me about your study habits.

David: As I mentioned earlier, I was a little bit slack in third and fourth form. This was due to the divorce and possibly because I played too many video games.

I still got pretty decent marks in third and fourth form, just not spectacularly good marks. Perhaps they were fairly good marks. I forget.

At the same time I was still an avid reader and I loved the local library. And also I was trying to learn technical skills on the computer. I learned some programming, game design, web design, CAD (rhino3d and solid works) and animation. I also got into robotics a bit.

At the same time, I was really into games like Morrowind, Half-life , Diablo 2 and The Sims. I also was hanging out on the RuneScape forums.

If I had set myself the goal of being a top student, and then worked to accomplish that goal, I probably would have succeeded at becoming one of the top 2-3 students in my year. I also could have skipped a year (4th form) if I had worked towards that goal in 3rd form. But I decided against it (also, my father advised against it, suggesting that it would be "bad for my social life" to skip a year). I was a genius, after all. And academically talented/gifted. That sort of thing was easy for me, and I had the work ethic for it.

I started at Paraparaumu college at the start of 5th form. This was in 2004.

Just as an aside, we had streaming at that school. Streaming is where you get placed into classes based on ability and test results. They had three streams: extension, mainstream and alternative. They placed me into mainstream based off of a hurried test I took in February, just before the school year started (I mentioned that earlier). Streaming only existed for science, math and English. It was a hurried test because the decision to move towns occurred at the last minute. It was basically a surprise test.

The class for mainstream mathematics was a zoo. The mainstream classes for science and English were okay. But anyway, I put in the work and got good marks all the same. It was in 5th form that I started working hard at school to try to do well. I started studying properly. And it worked. I succeeded. I got good marks and won awards at the end of year prize giving. Being in mainstream classes had a negative effect on both my academic performance and on my ability to meet the right sort of people and make the right sort of friends. I still made friends, but in hindsight I may perhaps have met and made better friends otherwise. I might have had higher quality friends.

Just because I don't know where else to mention this, I briefly joined the debate team in fifth form because Amanda was on the team and they needed someone to fill in. 

I put in the work in 6th form as well. That is, I worked hard. And I got good marks. I was in extension mathematics that year. But due to a scheduling issue, I was placed into mainstream English again. I was top of physics that year. I was also top of "information science" (aka computers).

And so we come to seventh form, my final year of high school. I still played a lot of video games at the time. I owned my own PC by then. I studied a fair bit, but mostly only when I was coming up to tests and so on. I was going to youth group, which was nice. And at the time I was dreaming of owning my own electric guitar. Boxing was in the past. And joining the gym was still in the future (I just had a bench, a barbell and some dumbbells). My friends were still playing Halo 2 with me (they gave up eventually) and I was starting to have more PC LANs at home and elsewhere.

Sally: Seventh form? Let’s hear about it.

David: Hold on a moment, I would like to talk to you for a little while about my parents' divorce, and then I will talk to you about my seventh form year. My parents' divorce will take us back to the past for a few moments. And then we'll talk about seventh form.

***

{my parents divorce}

My parents announced that they were splitting up when I was 13. By the way, when my parents announced that they were separating, I immediately had said that I wanted to live with my father. He was my favourite out of my two parents. The way it happened was that they took Matthew and I to a park, and sat us down on a park bench and told us that they were getting divorced. The first thing I said was that "I want to go with Dad".

But I wasn’t allowed to go with him. My parents told me that they had decided ahead of time that my father would take Matthew with him, but not take me. According to their point of view at the time, I was the easy child and Matthew was the bad and difficult child. And my mother couldn't handle him. But she wouldn't let my father have both of us. My parents both felt that my father was the only one who could handle Matthew. And so they split us up.

According to my father, if he had fought it in the family court, my mother would have won. He said that "the woman always wins in the family court". This is why he didn't fight to have me in the family courts.

I had complained often. It seemed unfair to be that I be forced to stay with my mother. He claimed that he wanted me to move with him to Paraparaumu, but that he wasn’t able to take me. They had decided in advance.

**

As for the marriage break up itself:

I think that it might have had a bit to do with our high school aged Japanese exchange student Tomoe Takahashi, not that I knew it at the time. He started something with Tomoe Takahashi, and I think this contributed to my parents breaking up.

The story of Tomoe Takahashi is at the bottom of the page, in the notes section. I wrote it up earlier on another page, so I thought that I would just reuse that rather than rewriting it.

There were also some petty conflicts between him and my mother that seem to have contributed to their splitting up. For example, he used to complain that she wasn’t very good at housework, and should do a better job. And he also felt that if he left, that she would plead with him to come back because she couldn’t manage without him. Somehow he had had some idea that Mum would have asked for him to move back because she couldn't manage to keep afloat without him (financially, or with housework, or in terms of parenting; or just that she couldn't cope physically).

He actually had the fantasy that he could split up with her, leave for a whole, and then she would plead for him to come back, and then he would. It didn't happen that way.

Fwiw, She actually struggled very badly without him. She struggled to manage to work a full time job, and was daft enough to pick a job that was badly paid and bad for her health, worked too hard, had exposure to chemicals on her hands, which are carcinogenic. And probably had an effect on her kidneys, which started to decline not long after. Her social life took her away from paying attention to her eldest son, and his grades slipped (my grades). And she struggled physically to keep up with housework. And she wasn't smart enough to talk normally to me to get normal help with housework or to ask me to work a part time job to chip in with expenses. And also she couldn't be bothered explaining to me that Christianity isn't their cup of tea, and they're just faking, and that both she and him were sleeping around with all sorts of people. That one conversation would have helped me to understand that she hadn't ruined their relationship through adultery, and would have completely rescued my opinion of my mother, and restored our relationship.

It was very bad for his shops. Very bad for him financially. He neglected his Napier, Hastings and Taupo stores, and it pushed them into debt. The house my mother lived in appreciated. It was a really dumb move. My father and mother were daft people.

It set our family back really badly, this whole divorce thing. We were doing much better beforehand! Divorce drives you towards poverty, welfare dependency and living in rented houses, and needing to do things like take in boarders to survive.

***

I didn't know about those issues. I didn't know about Dad and Tomoe Takahashi at the time. And I didn't know that both of my parents slept around. I also didn't know that they were members of the fae (aka swingers, wiccans or communists; or that they were habitually and incorrigibly cruel). I thought that my parents were Christians (or in my mother's case that they she was trying to be a Christian).

And so when I was thirteen or fourteen, I got to wondering about why they split up. In the Christian religion, you're not supposed to get divorced other than in cases of adultery. You're supposed to be together for life. Even if you're miserable. I just didn't know why they got divorced. There is a biblical prohibition against divorce. I thought that Christians weren't supposed to get divorced. 

Moving ahead in the story, I remember talking to him while we were on holiday in Perth one time. And I asked him why it was biblical that he split up with Mum. He said basically that she hadn't been faithful. I actually looked up some Bible verses to ask him to justify his point of view relative to Christian teachings. And asked him, "why"?

He said that my mother had had affairs. That was his narrative. He actually maintained this lie, and further and further lies about infidelity, for years and years.

And so because I trusted my father, I believed that my mother had been unfaithful. And that her adultery had ruined their marriage.

I very nearly cut off my relationship with her because of this.

It basically destroyed my relationship with my mother.

**

I wanted to live with my father Paul, not my mother. My belief was that their marriage ended because she was unfaithful, and that he was the aggrieved party. And that he was a good, moral and decent Christian man. I also preferred my father to my mother, just in general. Unbeknownst to me, my father was a philanderer. Which I actually think is kind of gross. He was also in a secret relationship with Tomoe Takahashi. And had groomed her into that relationship. This is also gross.

My belief that my mother was an adulteress and had been unfaithful, and that my father was blameless. This belief soured my relationship with my mother very badly. And I very nearly cut off my relationship with my mother (sort of, I kind of wanted to). It also led to my wanting to move in with my father even more.

Anyway, we decided at a point about two years down the track from their splitting up that I would move.

Please note: I did not know that there was any kind of inappropriate relationship between my father and Tomoe Takahashi at that point, I found about about it later, after moving house.

We have already talked about the moving towns thing a bit.

I will try not to tell all of that story again.

Sally: that's a lot of information to get through, but I'm starting to see a whole lot more what your family was like.

David: Yeah, but they were fun! Don't forget that, they were fun and clever and easy to get along with. And they kept me in the dark about a lot of things. I was a very trusting person at the time.

****

****

David: Okay, now I will tell you about seventh form. First I will talk to you about a few minor illnesses, and a few minor symptoms (fatigue), then I will talk to you about going to see a doctor, and then about Amanda converting to Christianity, and then about her and me getting together, and then exams, before heading overseas. And about getting engaged to be married (asking Amanda to marry me).

**

[a brief note about health and illnesses]

David: Oh, one quick mention. I got sick a few times in my final year of high school. Just colds and flus and a stomach bug. Also, this possibly included glandular fever. I had to take a week off of school a couple of times. I suspect that one or more of these bouts of illness may have included cell towers and satellites, or some other type of foul play. And there was a digestion thing that may have included foul play (drugs [Imodium], deliberate infection with a stomach bug and/or cell towers or satellites, but we can discuss it elsewhere). They did lots of stuff to me over the years involving digestion.

So I had a few minor bouts of illness in 7th form, but overall I was well.

And I had a few brief moments where I felt a symptom that I would call, “waves of fatigue”. I just felt these waves of fatigue come out of nowhere, and there was no explanation for them.

**

[visit to a doctor]

I visited a doctor once to complain of symptoms of fatigue while I was still in high school. Nothing came of it. He was a doctor at the Mazengarb Road surgery.

I told him that I was experiencing a symptom that I called “waves of fatigue”. He fobbed me off and basically told me that there was nothing wrong. He asked me if it had “checked my balls” and told me that I just needed to “ride my bike”. I was insulted and found the incident to be off putting.

Sally: You were experiencing symptoms as far back as your final year of high school?

David: Yes, I was. And my doctor didn’t help me at all. He was very unhelpful.

I also went back to him in 2007 once, if I remember correctly, to complain about symptoms (I was very unwell after coming back from my overseas trip). But he did nothing to help!

Sally: So your ordinary, everyday, garden variety GP wasn’t helpful?

David: That is correct. He was useless. In fact, he worse than useless.

The next thing I want to talk about is that Amanda embraced Christianity in her final year of high school.

Sally: Did she actually convert?

David: Yes, she converted. Or rather, she was “saved”.

Amanda became a Christian in our final year of high school.

I had been encouraging her to come to church a little bit, and had talked to her about religion a few times. At least I think I did (my memories are fuzzy at the moment and my head hurts). Encouraging people to become Christians was important to me. At the time, I believed that it had eternal and supernatural consequences. It was really a pretty big deal to me at the time. I had been trying to get Amanda to go to church with me, and also I think that her Nana had been trying to influence her in the direction of Christianity. Her Nana Kath gave her a Bible too.

And so Amanda became a Christian.

The idea when you become a Christian is that you get saved. You confess your sins to God, admit that you are a sinner, ask for your sins to be washed away and then commit the whole of your life to him and serving him. It is very significant. The implications are that you spend eternity in heaven with God, rather than eternity in hell suffering constant pain and horrors. By the way, she had a not so great background. I didn’t really ask about it.

Sally: so she became a Christian. A new creation in Christ. Born again, made brand new. Sins washed away? Here in Michigan, we know about that. Even though the lesbians and Chinese pretend not to, we know all about that. It is normal. Besides, when it comes to matters of a spiritual nature, Marxist-Leninists, Confucians, Buddhists and other orientals are a little sub par, or so I have always thought.

David: Yes, like “the children of the soul”. It is like they never really grew up…

Sally: but anyway, she became a born again Christian. Did she get baptised?

David: Yes, she got baptised. But first she did a pre baptism course to confirm her as being ready to be baptised and also to become a member of the church. I thought that the was legit. But it turns out years later that she was not legit. She was living a double life. It’s horrible.

Sally: Okay, she converted to Christianity, you thought it was legitimate, and that she was legitimate. But she was living a double life! Did no one tell you? No, no one told me. They could have talked to me at any point. Even my friends at church kept me in the dark. And ditto for the elders, who even baptised her, knowing full well she was good for nothing.

Sally: What horrible people.

David: Yes. They are all horrible people.

What next? Yes. We ended up dating. We became a couple. I had a rule against dating non-Christians. She was a Christian now. And I guess we ended up dating. I am skipping a bit of material here.

She and I started dating sometime later. We became a couple and were dating for a while in high school.

I was crazy about her. And then later on, we got engaged. Some months later. We got engaged.

Sally: you got engaged? While still in high school?

David: yes. We got engaged in high school. We got engaged during exams.

And then later got married.

We got engaged young because we were religious. We also got married young.

Sally: that’s crazy. So you guys were young and religious, and decided to get together?

David: Yes. I guess that’s how it went.

Sally: how long between when you got together and when you got engaged?

David: probably about three months. We were good friends for about two and a half years before we got together and became a couple. And we got engaged a few months later. She was one of my closest friends, and I cared about her very much. I was quite attached to her. She had converted to Christianity a couple of months before we got together.

Sally: Uhhh. I’m just going to point out to you that this wasn’t a sensible decision. But you probably already know that.

David: Yes. I can see as an adult that it wasn’t a sensible decision. But I was young. And in our culture at the time, we had this ideology or superstition that if you have strong feelings about someone, that you are supposed to label it as being “love”. And that this set of feelings is tremendously meaningful, has as almost a sort of mystical or sacred value. We even write songs and poetry about it. It’s quite absurd. I’m being sarcastic by the way. I think that you come from a similar background.

And so I decided that I had found someone good, and so we decided to get married.

We were Christians. Sometimes Christians get married young.

I bought her an engagement ring and all of that stuff. The initial plan was to wait about two years before we got married. I think that there was even a date set aside.

David: let us move on to another topic.

The next topic is my studies in seventh form.

I worked fairly hard in 7th form. I studied in moderation throughout the year. But I really put in the work when it came to exams. Funny story: I pretended not to study that hard, but then got good results. Which annoyed people. But the truth is that I did actually study. Just not as much as other people did during the year.

Anyway, in seventh form I was doing things like going to church, going to youth group, reading the Bible and books about Jesus*, playing computer games, exercise, going to the gym, lifting weights, playing cards with my friends and father, watching movies with my father and his friends, working a job cleaning school classrooms for minimum wage, and somehow ending up with a girlfriend. And I was hanging out with Amanda in her car talking and eating $4 pepperoni pizzas from Pizza Hutt, going for long walks hand-in-hand, or going to the beach. Basically spending a lot of time together. I was also arranging LANs, shadow boxing too much, doing too many ab exercises, reading Terry Pratchett and Grisham novels and reading forums online (about Halo, fitness and natural selection). I think I joined a clan in Natural Selection, and they invited me to play DotA with them. And listening to music with my father. And we lived off of pizza, schnitzel and rice, and chicken and rice. And frozen vegetables, cooked in the microwave in a plastic microwave dish.

I also went to visit Napier in the holidays just before the fourth term of school. I stayed with David Walker for a bit. And briefly caught up with Jess Mackenzie and Jessie Hendy. It was a nice visit, but one thing to mention is that I felt the symptom of electronically induced “waves of fatigue” while I was there. But I didn’t know it was electronically induced. It was an enjoyable trip to sunny Napier (Napier, Taradale and Hawkes Bay are almost synonymous, don’t worry about it). I think that Dad did it to get me away from Amanda, because I was too crazy about her? And because he was out of town for a while.

This was just before the mock exams (I think).

And I had to study and do exams. Let us talk about exams.

In seventh form I had ten exams in total. Each exam was three hours long. I had five ncea level three exams, and five scholarship exams. That is thirty hours of exams in total. But before we got to that, there were the mock exams. 

Scholarship exams are worth cash money.

I studied hard for the mock exams. And then sat them. And I rested after that. And then a couple of months later, I studied for and then did my main set of exams (both level three and scholarship). It was pretty gruelling.

And that was high school and exams done and dusted!

I got good marks in my exams. I got good marks in both the "internal" mock exams, which counted towards school level prizes and the award for dux, and the "external" exams, which go on the long term Government records. As for the scholarship exams, I won $500 for my statistics exam and $500 for my accounting exam. I came within just a few marks of passing the economics scholarship exam. If I had passed the economics scholarship exam, they would have paid me $2000 per year for three years. Or maybe it was $3000 per year. Either way, that would have been nice! But I missed out on it.

I asked Amanda to marry me sometime during exams. I can’t remember. I think that it was before her English exam, or just after my accounting exam? I guess I must have been pretty exhausted and bewildered at the time.

**

I had just done ten exams and I was exhausted.

I had a couple of days off.

**

The next part of my story is that I went off on an overseas trip to America and Europe to visit my Aunty Wendy and my mother.

I got very sick on that trip to America and Europe. After that, my life became characterised by wave after wave of crippling fatigue. After that trip my life was characterised by persistent chronic illness that consisted of fatigue, exhaustion, brain fog, digestive problems, an inability to exercise, and an inability to sleep, serious back problems, breathing problems and many other symptoms and issues. I was always tired! I eventually was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. My life also became characterised by people disbelieving me when I said that I was chronically unwell. They acted like it was just psychosomatic, including and especially my mother and father, and doctors. Even though they actually knew what was wrong.

End.

Note 1:

Amanda and relationship

At the time I was a believer in the ideologies associated with what I call romantic love. Yes, that is an ideology, and a fairly horrible one (romanticism). And I was under the impression that the strong feelings that you might have for someone you are dating are meaningful and worthwhile.

The word often used for these strong feelings is “love”.

I reject the ideology that I call “romanticism”. I think it is garbage. I also reject the ideology of “chivalry”. I think that chivalry is garbage.

I think that caring about the people who are part of your life is good. And that feeling strong feelings of attachment and affection when it comes to these people is normal and good. But I don’t want to talk more about ideology, philosophy or theology at the moment.

**

I was also a very trusting person back then. With good intentions. Furthermore, I was kindhearted, reasonable, caring, compassionate and trustworthy. And witty.

And as friends, we also just “clicked”. I got along with her straight away. She was the first friend I made when I moved to Paraparaumu and when Indian know anyone.

This might seem like a strange thing to find meaningful, and it isn’t a big thing, but when I was unwell a few times in 7th form, and had a little bit of time off, she showed up to bring me my homework. She went to all of my teachers to collect homework for me, and notes, and brought it to me so that I wouldn’t fall behind. She also brought me food once or twice. Which I appreciate. A friend who shows up when you’re unwell is a good thing. It’s nice to have visitors when you’re sick.

Note 2:

[[[someone just got me decertified as a “whatever to whatever” aka thrall. Because I “was too too in love to do anything with anyone”]]]

I might also mention, that I was too religious as well to even consider polyamory.

**

Way back in the day, I was too much of a Christian to even really want to say hello to someone showing up in an inappropriate manner. I had a bit of hesitation when it came to even spending time with a woman who wasn’t my wife. Because of my religious beliefs.

Note 3: Tomoe Takahashi

Also, there was the issue with Tomoe Takahashi.

At around about the same time (in 2001), we had a young female Japanese student come to live with us. Her name was Tomoe Takahashi. She was 16 years old and came to New Zealand to do her sixth form year in high school here, and to improve her English and learn about our culture. For us, the sixth form year is the second to last year of high school. And it was her second to last year as well.

My father groomed her while she was with us.

He also took her to table tennis tournaments out of town, alone, without my mother present.

She was a table tennis enthusiast, and when we applied for and selected an exchange student, Paul specifically requested a table tennis player.

At the end of the school year, she returned home to Japan, to finish high school. After her final year in high school, she came back to New Zealand to study law at Victoria University. She also became Paul’s live-in-girlfriend. They were together for three years before he dumped her.

Looking back, I strongly suspect that they started sleeping together when she was still a high schooler. At the time, I was about 12/13 years old and totally unaware that there was anything between them at all. I only found out that there was anything between them partway through my fifth form year, shortly after I moved halfway across the country to live with my father.

A couple of years back (2023), my mother told me a few things which led me to believe/feel that Tomoe and Paul had started sleeping together when she had first came to New Zealand. We had a conversation in 2023 in which she said that she had once caught Tomoe Takahashi sitting on his knee. And also that after Tomoe had gone on a Table Tennis tournament with her now ex husband, that “Tomoe wasn’t her daughter anymore”. That is, the relationship changed. Before the trip out of town to play table tennis at a tournament, Tomoe used to split her attention between both of my parents and she would play table tennis with Paul and do arts and crafts with my mother. Relations were warm and relaxed with both of them. After the tournament Tomoe was cold towards my mother, and kind of followed Paul around too much. Was too friendly, and too attached? I suspect that my father used trips to out of town table tennis tournaments for the purposes of grooming, and then eventually for the purpose of sleeping with Tomoe Takahashi. In other words, there is a clear pattern of behaviour/offending here. All of this happened while she was in New Zealand for the first time (that is, as a high school student).

People on “wifi” tell me that he started sleeping with Tomoe when she was 17, and still an exchange student.

He was married, he claimed to be a good and moral person. Claimed to be a Christian, and had a Christian public image. Also, when he split with my mother he claimed that he did so because she “had affairs”. My mother played along with this lie.

This relationship with Tomoe Takahashi was highly unethical. He was in a position of power, and in a position of trust and authority. My father and mother were her caregivers (unsure if they were “designated caregivers” under any kind of laws in New Zealand). By the way, she could hardly speak English when she arrived, and was living in a foreign country without her parents.

Furthermore, a man who is willing to do this sort of thing is going to be willing to do other bad things.

He has poor character, and there are clear patterns of bad behaviour.

Note 4: the atmosphere we had at home, in 7th form.. was characterised by argument, debate, banter and joking around. We cared about one another, but we weren’t ooey gooey about it. And we were Christians. Although somehow I managed to hand wave dad and Tomoe Takahashi. I don’t quite know how I did that. A couple of years had passed. Don’t over think it.