Harajuku moments- or How Tim Ferriss saved my life Twice.

This is a piece I wrote for my blog tracking my weight loss.  I haven't updated it in over a year, but this part of my biography, I guess, so it kinda fits here. I have put the dates of time periods referenced in {curly braces} to make putting a timeline together more simple.

For reference, I have now spent approximately 2 years doing this diet, and will continue it <or something like it> for the rest of my life because it is a very usable "best practice", and without extraneous effort I have lost approximately 56 lbs this year {2015} and am over halfway to a normal size, without making a single sacrifice.  I've had every cookie I've wanted in the last two years. I've just gotten smarter about how to want them.

Tim Ferriss, if you ever read this, this is a brief synopsis of why you have a permanent standing offer of equity <in the companies that will be formed to do this>, should you ever be interested.

A “Harajuku Moment” is the moment when something changes from being ‘nice to have’ and becomes 'necessary to survive’. {Edit 11/15: a better definition of "harajuku moment" might be "the moment when a decision can no longer be avoided", or "the moment that changes everything"}

For me, with weight specifically, I’ve had two of these.

The first was in Thailand, about 6-8 months ago {2012-13}.  I was living in poverty in Thailand, stealing food to survive, and I had the good fortune to steal a couple of books.  You can read more about this in the link I posted, but the gist of it is that I stole a handful of books, including the Song of Ice and Fire series by George Martin (every book except “A Dance With Dragons”), a book called “The Game” by Neil Strauss, and I got the 4 Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss.

I knew within 20 minutes of opening the 4HWW that this book would forever change the course of my life.

See, there are two important parts of the 4HWW.  The first deals with something called “Fearsetting”, and the second is something called “Dreamlining”.  The second is about setting goals you care about; and the first is about dealing with and mitigating all the things that make you give up on those goals.

So the dreamlining was something I was immediately drawn to.  My life, at this point, had nothing but fantasy that was appealing about it.  I was having panic attacks several times a week, and I was making half-hearted suicide attempts regularly, usually stopping myself in time to survive by reminding myself that my kids would be left uncared for, because their mother- who I was living with, who was crazy, and who hated/hates me and wanted/wants me to die, has HIV- and she’s an HIV denialist who thinks the whole thing is a conspiracy, and so she refuses to be treated for it.

So this was a situation I wanted no part of, but for a variety of reasons- my lack of legal status in the country, lack of financial independence, commitment to the kids- this was a situation I didn’t see a way out of.

When I first started dreamlining, two things happened.  First, it took me out of my shitty existence and let me see, clearly, what the real possibilities were and are- much of the book covers practical tools and methods of achieving various goals. Second, it made continuing this existence even more unbearable, because now I could see what was outside it.

The fearsetting exercises were the nails in the coffin.  Because of these, I methodically went through and identified the individual specific things I was afraid of and came up with strategies to avoid these and deal with them.  I was afraid of my ex trying to hurt or even kill me: I developed strategies to deal with this.  I was worried about the kids and keeping them away from her: this was dealt with.  I was worried about her trying to sabotage my future efforts: I decided to be as open and honest as possible about what had happened, and it rapidly became clear to people that she was mentally unstable.

So this was the first “Harajuku snowball”. This led me to realize that I did want to lose 100 lbs.  I did want to try doing stand-up comedy. I did want to start a tech startup and make millions of dollars on a piece of technology that would make the world a better place. and I did not want to continue this shitty life instead of reaching those goals.

And so I reached out to my family.  They paid for my kids citizenship- in both countries- and their passports, also in both countries- and then they bought tickets for all of us (but the terrible ex) to come home.

My second Harajuku moment came 2 months later, over Christmas.  I was gorging on sweets, guzzling eggnog, and getting drunk on cheap box wine every day. A couple times, I bought a giant bag of butterfinger bars and ate the whole bag in one sitting. When my mother made pies for a couple of friends who came over, I stole almost an entire pie.  I was just going nuts, and I was watching my waistline explode.

And then, one day, I’d just had enough. I knew I needed to stop dicking around and get a plan of action or I was never going to escape from this- the situation I’m still in- and I had to admit that I needed to start doing *something*.

So I had just downloaded a lot of ebooks on various topics- I got some things on hypnosis, I got a copy of '50 shades of grey’, and I got a digital copy of 4hww.  When I got that last one, I found a new book: the 4-hour body.  Same author and everything- so I figured, “Why the fuck not?” and pirated that, too.  I kind of played with the idea of the author being some kind of fucking schmexpert who’d had one successful book about one topic and figured he could do a book about anything else and that would by successful too, but I could at least read it for laughs before moving on to something more conventional and proven, like the body-for-life program or keto or whatever.

 I should mention that I do have a somewhat extensive history of trying different diets.  I did weight watchers as a teenager, and so I have some idea of what it means to control portions into manageable quantities, even without counting calories (at the time, the 'point’ system allotted a certain number of points per day, with points calculated by fat, carbohydrate, fiber, and sodium content, among other things).  I did body for life a few years later- in my delusional attempt at becoming a navy SEAL, and under the guidance of one of my father’s good friends, who is a genius-level fitness nut and a high-ranking Jujitsu practitioner and so on- and I made some impressive gains (and losses) with that.  I know that it’s possible to lose 10-20 lbs a week, because I did this on weight watchers.  I know it’s possible to gain strength very quickly, because- at 320 lbs- I was doing sets of 6 pullups from a starting point of not even being able to hang onto the pullup bar for 10 seconds a year (or less?) earlier.  When I first moved to Thailand, I lost approximately 60 lbs in the course of about 2 months, and kept it off for two years with no problem.

So when I opened 4hb and saw the same kinds of things I’d seen in myself, I wasn’t surprised by their claims, but by their compiled presence, and the presence (and claims) of things I hadn’t seen before.

And I knew: here was a way for me to go back to these kinds of results, with a cohesive set of described behaviors that would allow me to do different things to reach them.

And in that moment, I knew I no longer had an excuse to be as fat as I was, and so I began.

Being the Atheist in a Christian Family

The following is a letter I sent to my father, to explain why there was no chance of my kids going to "Vacation Bible School" (A triple oxymoron if ever there was one). This nearly led to a shouting match- but this email managed to clear the air quite well, hence I am reproducing it here, for future reference.

To preserve some privacy for the people mentioned, I have changed names to animals.

Hi Dad,

I wrote this out thinking I'd send it to you and mom first, but I figure it's a safer bet to send it to you first, to avoid any conflicts.

So, we had a good talk the other day, but one thing that's very clear is you guys have no idea what I think.  I don't want to inflict most of it on anybody, because everybody needs to sleep at night, but I figure I can give you guys the broad strokes in 5 bullet points, with a brief description of how and why I came to these conclusions or reached these decisions, so that you guys can actually address my concerns. 

• I don't have beliefs, because I've philosophically rejected the validity of 'belief' as a concept.  Simply put, belief does not make a thing true, and disbelief does not make a thing false.  At best, you believe something true- in which case the belief is spurious. At worst, you believe something false- and so the belief, itself, is the barrier to understanding. So instead of this, I try to have data and knowledge (the 'who', 'what', 'where', 'how much/many', and 'when') and understanding (the 'how' and 'why').  I don't believe in the 'big bang', or in evolution, or even that I'm sitting at the kitchen table typing this out for you guys. It is enough for me to accept that the evidince is that these things seem to be the case, no matter what I think of them, and that it is my duty- if I care- to know or understand them, rather than to simply tell myself- or anyone else- they are true or false. 
  
  This has a corollary- I also reject the validity of any faith, which I define as "the assertion of the truth without or in spite of reason or evidence".  But "Faith" in the English language has many uses beyond this meaning- most frequently things like "loyalty", "trust", etc- and I don't reject these things, but I try to use these more specific words instead.
  
• I stopped being Christian because it's no longer possible, knowing what I know, to accept that it might be true.  There are mountains of evidence and lots of reasons against what you believe. These are the things I've been "strident" about- Biblical contradictions, inaccuracies, forgeries, and apparent lies told for political gain by the factions of the authors, archaeological evidence, Historical records, etc.  Going through all of this was a very painful but eye-opening process. So my position could be stated as saying "Whether there is a god or not, it isn't that one".  But I don't hate Christianity, in the same way that you don't hate any other religion. I just think it's factually incorrect.  I don't hate Christians; you've got good reasons to think and act the way you do, like all of the social factors- for example, being able to still talk to your parents <mom> without them thinking you must be 'evil' or 'spiritually deficient'.  But I don't think these reasons contribute meaningfully to the truth of the claims of Christianity.
  
  Also important: Nothing bad happened to cause this. I still actively pursue the study of biblical topics - hence mentioning {reading} Josh McDowell's books, and CS Lewis, among others. But I think the best available lesson from any of these is how to think, not what to think. Believing in God gave me an additional coping mechanism for things like Dog's diagnosis- "God doesn't give you what you can't handle" - and was a source of hope in some very dark situations.  Nobody's 'misbehavior' caused me to doubt. I have a lot of respect for how you handle your beliefs, and for the rigor that Bear has, and the dedication that Dr. Pigeon in Thailand has, and as much for many other people you don't know about. But none of these have any effect on whether or not the beliefs are true, and in the end, that simply mattered more to me. And so I eventually had to confront the growing case against Christianity that I had been becoming more aware of and knowledgable about for years. By now you should have noticed the result of that, but I'm deliberately cutting out the data here because I know you guys don't want to hear it.
  
  Last sub-point about this: I'm not committed to the idea that Christianity is false, but if there is a case to be made for it, this case must also account for the evidence and reasons I've found against it; calling it all a "trick of Satan" simply doesn't cut it. Maybe there are evidence and reasons I don't know about, and if I find them, and they do account for what I've found, I've got nothing against reconverting- but at this point, I'm not holding my breath.
  
• I'm a materialist, in the sense that I think things that don't exist don't exist.  Maybe there is something beyond this natural universe; but there hasn't been any convincing evidence I've been able to discover that can't be better understood some other way. But I also think that what we are is not all we can be, and that it's all about how you use the substance of yourself and your environment before you die that allows for the best set of possibilities.  Even if we were just computers, computers are still amazing machines that can do awesome things, and the first step towards upgrading is knowing how to upgrade.
  
  As a sub-heading, I think the materialistic explanations for religious experience are more sensible than the supernatural explanations. It makes more sense to me that religious experience happens because human brains are amazing but imperfect machines, than to think that there are armies of demons running around putting on skits to dupe people into hell.
  
• I'm an atheist, not a nihilist.  I think that everybody has to find or make their own purpose, even Christians. Chipmunk is way more nihilistic than me; hence, he sees no problem with taking the kids to church, since everybody will die anyway.  I think what little time we've got here shouldn't be wasted on it, because none of us will get more time here, and the consequences simply don't justify it; At the very least, this means we agree that church is more than just free babysitting.
  
• I'm neither amoral nor immoral. Morality, even yours, is determined by consequences, as these affect happiness, well-being, and free self-determination of conscious entities capable of meaningfully experiencing these things. This is why it's more important to not step on an ant than to not step on a rock; because the ant can actally feel it.  All we disagree on is when the consequences occur: you think that the only ones that matter - the 'ultimate' consequences- happen after we die, in Heaven or Hell, and I think that death is the end of that for you, because by definition, there's no 'you' left to experience anything more.
  
  This one chafes, by the way. I've raped and murdered all I want. The amount I want is zero. If the only thing stopping you from doing that is fear of hell, you're just not a good person. Christianity doesn't give you 'moral superpowers', and it's insulting when you act like you're somehow the only ones capable of realizing if something is right or wrong. There's no action I've found that a believer could do that an unbeliever couldn't; but religion, yours and everyone else's, can make morally normal people say and do disgisting and wicked things that nobody would otherwise consider. I was circumcised to 'prevent yeast infections' hundreds of years after the invention of soap, because that was the treatment in the tribe you are loyal to- but that's like 'treating' sprained ankles by amputating legs. Being offended by this isn't 'vehemence', and speaking against things like it isn't 'stridence'. I just want us to all be reasonable, and I think these ideas aren't, that you guys (usually) are, and that we can work through this rationally.

I hope this isn't too long, and I hope I'm not browbeating you guys.  I've intentionally left my evidence out and focused on reasoning instead. I'm sorry for calling your beliefs "a cult" and "mythology".  I really don't want to jam anything down your throats. I just feel like I'm surrounded by people trying to do that to me and my kids, because trying to take them to church- when I've repeatedly and explicitly said I'm uncomfortable with it and don't want it to happen- is an example of this. I'm sorry mom is getting pity for it, but that looks like bullying to me, and that's another reason to not let the kids go to this church. 

An equivalent that might help you understand would be if you were visiting a Muslim's house and they had you kneel on the floor to pray before dinner; it's not your faith, it's theirs, and you can respect them and kneel, but they shouldn't take that to mean they can drag you to the mosque afterwards, or that they'll be doing you a favor by taking your kids there when you've told them you're not comfortable with it. I think I remember Mom turning down similar 'invitations' when I was Vince's age, for the same reasons.

Last, I want to reiterate that I love you guys. I don't think you're deficient parents in any way, I just disagree with you about your religion, and that's it.

Coffee with Warlords

It begins, as any story might, with me absent-mindedly doodling a submachine gun in the margins of a notebook, after my weekly English tutorials with my tribal refugee neighbors in Thailand, only to hear from over my shoulder a rather delighted-sounding "Oh! My cousin's army could use such a gun! Can you make it for them?"

Now, for those of you just joining this story, a bit more needs to be done to properly set the scene. This is late 2006 or possibly early 2007, and I'm living and working as a missionary with this sort of tribal minority in Thailand, as well as with orphans and kids who couldn't be raised by their family- of those, approximately half were in the orphan/hostels because they had family members with HIV, and virtually all were tribal minorities who were in Thailand in the first place because they <or their parents> had either been involved in drug smuggling from Burma to Thailand, were refugees from ethnic cleansing that was happening there, or both.

Being a missionary, I saw my work as God's work, and was devoted to bringing peace and prosperity and Jesus Christ to these people- virtually all of whom were already Christian enough to be uninterested in being converted again. But I was clever, and figured I could at least materially assist the "peace and prosperity" stuff, since that's all physically possible and mostly just a matter of getting things done.

But it was around this time that I was formulating my early ideas of both what is possible and what is beneficial in terms of raising the standards of living for subsistence hunters and farmers, living under occupation and with the direct threat of violence on a day to day basis.

Much of this is still not widely known. What you can probably find out, via sources like Google and Wikipedia, is that Burma had been a British colony which was basically shoved out of the Empire after world war 2 and nearly a decade of war and occupation by the Japanese, whereupon it promptly collapsed and entered what is still the longest civil war in history- as I sit here writing this, I'm fairly certain that whether it has been declared finished or not, there are still nationalist movements among the tribal groups I worked with, and I very much doubt that they know or care that the Burmese soldiers technically no longer have legal orders to shoot them on sight- and I'd be very surprised if the Burmese soldiers know or care either, being that the majority of them were tribal children who were forced conscripts into the same battalions that killed their families. {Edit for clarity: the "most Burmese soldiers started out as child conscripts" statement refers specifically to how the Burmese army operated in the tribal lands it was trying to re-capture, and does not describe the Burmese army in general}

Footnote: If you want to get a good picture of the sort of news clipping I saw on a day-to-day basis, there is a missionary group called Free Burma Rangers which trains paramedics in the tribal groups on the Thai border with Burma to deliver basic medical treatment to all of the villages they can reach.

The Burman ethnic group has a long and bloody history as a military power, and this is particularly the view of the Thai people, who have seen their borders shift over the centuries as the Thai and Burmans squabble over the same land and towns, with the Burmese occupying much of what is now northern Thailand for nearly 300 years, including Chiang Mai- the city I lived in. And the end of occupation saw the revival of these traditions, with the aid of modern weapons.

So it should make perfect sense when I tell you that, as a policy of self defense, and with the aid of the US weapons that the Thai government was receiving as part of their compensation for the anti-communist collaboration with the American military during the Vietnam war, the Thai government began arming all of the tribal groups along the Burmese side of its' border as a way of denying the ability to operate freely, and ths threaten the Thai border, to the various centralized Burman governments that rose and fell from the same ashes.

Now that the stage is somewhat set, what happened to his cousin's army?

Well, as it turned out, it wasn't much of an army- at various times, numbers ranging from 50-300 were thrown out as estimates of the number of their soldiers.  The conversation was mostly bullshit- I was in no position to be offering material assistance to any military effort, and had nothing to tell them that was useful.  After that English lesson, me and this person- I'll call him "Andrew", because he had such an "English name" that he had given himself, although it wasn't this one- retired to his house for tea, Jesus music (he sang, and I listened), and a discussion of what materials, machines, and processes were needed to make guns if we were, hypothetically, up in the mountainous regions on the northern border of Myanmar, near China, where the Lisu people have lived for centuries.

It turned out to be an interesting problem, and one that I have spent years thinking about.  There is an abundance of raw materials- even scrap metal, often from things such as downed WW2 aircraft that have never been located or salvaged. But there are no tools, or the tools that exist are of poor quality, or are very rudimentary and largely unsuitable for the tasks that firearms manufacture would demand of them.

Some time after this, Andrew told me that he wanted me to meet "his friend" for coffee, because his friend was somebody important in the efforts to resist the crimes against humanity being committed by the Burmese military.

We took a Songthaew- a sort of modified pickup truck that serves as one form of public transport in much of Thailand- to a fancy hotel downtown, mostly so that we wouldn't get wet from the beginnings of the Songkhran festival that marks the start of the new year on the Thai calendar. We arrived a bit late and wandered in, two extremely out-of-place and mismatched characters, into a dark empty cold banquet hall with a few sleepy diners having breakfast in various corners of the room. 

The man we met was short, a bit stocky, beginning to bald, and dressed conservatively. We shook hands, and he announced that he wanted to begin with a prayer- and I think I might have prayed too, at his request, but I am not sure about this detail. It was clear that his faith was important to him, and that he wanted mine to be to me.

And then he introduced himself as a general in the Kachin Independence Army.

I can't say I remember the bulk of what was said very vividly- a lot of it was social niceties, especially to start, when he was trying to get a sense of who I was, and so on.

So I chattered away about "how X is made" and "if we could get y to your area, you could do guns AND z"- I think I was trying to sell him on the idea of industrializing these villages, which I'm fairly sure he wasn't interested in, and I'm more sure I wasn't coherently articulating.

But I do remember very clearly what the problem stopping the gun discussion was: there was no shortage of guns, but only of bullets, and the means to reload these.  I listened as he described how his soldiers would save spent ammunition casings- the {usually} brass tube-looking things that get spit out the side of the gun when the bullet (the actual projectile) is fired out the front. In his case, these were usually steel casings- nigh on impossible to reuse- and to compound the matter, the only available way to reload them was with homemade gunpowder, which caused the weapons to foul rapidly, leading to jamming.  I briefly described to him some of the ways we could go about making better powder, such as nitrocelulose-based smokeless powders- but I didn't know enough chemistry to describe how to get the ingredients necessary to make this.

The last detail I remember very clearly is describing the sort of minimum budget that might be needed to get basic production up and running- I cited the low thousands of dollars, describing the pricing I had seen on machine tools such as lathes and mills.

And this is where the conversation, for me, became unsettling, because money was no object- and my grasp of economics, at the time recently bolstered by my first 'reading' of the <excellent> book "Freakonomics", led me to rapidly conclude that there was no legitimate way that this guy had that kind of money that wasn't fucking somebody up somewhere, and that was something I was unwilling to play ball with. 

I am making an effort not to describe things more vividly than I actually remember them, but I remember probing at this gently in our conversation- or as gently as I could, given my very limited social skills, especially at that time- and the responses he gave were also unsettling. This was a man who seemed familiar with giving life and death orders without accountability, and who used his god's authority to do so.

Our business concluded, we exchanged social niceties- overall, it was a very pleasant conversation, although the coffee was terrible- and he gave me his phone number, telling me to call him if I needed absolutely anything.  I promptly added his number to my phone- and never called him.

A Very Long Atheist Testimony

Foreword 19/11/15:

I wrote this post several years ago for a blog that I never really did anything with. It seems to be a good basis for describing my atheism, as it began at the time and as it largely still is. Hopefully it will be clear why I wrote this: you don't become a missionary on accident, and religion was a big part of my day-to-day life. And still is, in many ways, since there is no escaping from it- but I consider myself fortunate enough to not have fallen for it anymore. And I feel like an asshole for how condescending that sounds, but not quite enough like an asshole to not say it.

 The things I list as examples of Biblical contradictions, errors, inaccuracies, and forgeries are the subject of a book I'd like to write someday and I am collecting notes about them. If you'd like to see examples of these things, the study tool I used primarily and still consider to be best is "BibleWorks", a software package that contains the canonical transcripts (lol, srsly) of the available fragments that the 'official' bibles in existence today are translated from.  IIRC all of these documents, and many more apocryphal ones, are held by the Vatican, but BibleWorks is as good as you can get to going and seeing them without leaving the house.

Failing this, check out the marvelous BibViz web app. It's truly a masterpiece, and I hope to see a Quran, Hadith, Bagavad Gita, and even a Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and Hamlet version.

If enough people pester me, I'll go through and fix things. I don't think it's my best writing, but it seems coherent enough for now.

IN THE BEGINNING  

 Before I begin, I should clarify the terminology used below.

A "Testimony", in the language of particularly evangelical Christians, is the story of how you 'came to Christ', usually with a list of reasons and anecdotal evidence of why it was the right thing to do, or how it was inevitable.

This is my testimony as a gnostic atheist- at least in regards to Christianity (among others, but Christianity is the relevant one for now)- and this is the other term that people trip over. A 'gnostic' atheist is someone who knows there is no god, which can be compared with an 'agnostic' atheist who simply doesn't believe in any god. One knows it's fake, the other does not believe. To again clarify my position: I know that the Christian god is fake (gnostic atheism) but do not have the relevant knowledge to make these kinds of claims about, say, traditional Chinese religion, however, I do not believe there are Chinese gods (agnostic atheism).

 

I was born into a Christian home and had an interesting upbringing. My earliest memories that are in any way relevant to the discussion of religion are of dinosaurs, and it was a knowledge of the time scales involved (millions of years, not thousands) that made me able to pick up on some details in religion that didn’t make sense early on. The next relevant memories, however, are of my own attempt at conversion to Christianity as a child of perhaps 3 years old. The teacher asked if any of the kids in Sunday school wanted to “Ask Jesus into their hearts”, and I raised my hand, thinking it was what was expected of me. I, and one other child, were taken into a separate room, where we were read` John 3:16, and both of us- quite awkwardly, as I remember it- asked Jesus into our hearts, and from that point on, I called myself a Christian. In relatively short order, I had read through a children’s bible, and subsequently (but a few years later) a comic book version which was more in-depth. Both were informative, and the second especially has stayed in my mind.

 

My subsequent studies of the bible lacked academic rigor, but despite this, I did manage to read much of it at random, and to also read through it entirely several times in various translations, notably KJV and NIV (76 Translation), and also used the Amplified Bible- before having any linguistic knowledge at all- in order to facilitate greater understanding sometimes.

By the time I was perhaps 14, however, I had wandered away from the faith. Perhaps it was a lack of Christian friends, perhaps it was the idiotic insistence on believing things that I knew couldn’t be true- such as biblical creation- and perhaps it was some of the bigotry and bizarre fundamentalism I saw in the churches I attended with my family. I was well-versed enough to know better than to ascribe these attributes to God, but in any event, despite feeling guilty about it, I left the faith and began mucking about with what I thought of as Wicca, but which was actually just a mess of different things I downloaded online. Why Wicca? Because the wiccans I met were nice, genuine people, who weren’t just in on it for the benefit of their parents social standing, and they weren’t concerned with souls- and their attitude towards drugs was one of experimental interest rather than shame-faced aversion, an attitude that, while I found fascinating, did nothing to facilitate me getting high as a teenager.

 

And so that is how I remained for a period of about 2 years, before being introduced to George Carlin, and becoming an atheist- for the first time. I can remember the occasion well, I had downloaded a small clip of a standup routine, either to my own laptop or to my grandfather’s computer, and the clip was the now-famous “bullshit” segment. For those of you unfortunate enough to have not heard the quote, here it is:

 

When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

 

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!

 

This byte resonated with me, and I had to admit- had to admit- that no matter what, religion was ridiculous and improbable. The emotional gut-reaction of realizing I was praying to what was, essentially, just an invisible guy in the sky.

 

Then Thailand happened (long story short- I got drunk, woke up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning, my dad saw this as a cry for help, gave me the choice of going to Thailand to teach English or Mexico to study art. I chose Thailand). After a few weeks of being here, spending all my time with missionaries, who themselves spent all of their time studying the bible and planning ways to spread the gospel to remote corners of the world. At a getaway, a camp lasting several days up in the villages on the border between Thailand and the Karren state in Burma, I was convinced that what I was seeing was divine purpose. Recapturing the essence of that moment, even after so few years, is difficult, but I genuinely thought that there was something to the work these people were doing and attempting to do, and that this was an admirable thing that was made possible only by their faith.

 

And so I began studying the bible in earnest, seeking, for the first time, to both have faith and to know exactly what that faith was. I was introduced, at this time, to a program I still use to study the bible, called “Bibleworks”, which enabled me to not only compare translations, but to examine the original words in those translations and the way they had been translated in other places. For the first time, even considering my use of the amplified bible before this, I was able to see theological disputes with science laid bare, from a biblical perspective; the biblical story of creation in Genesis, for instance, makes no claim that god made the world in seven days; the actual word in Hebrew, “Yohm”, is translated in various places as ‘hour’, ‘day’, ‘month’, ‘season’, ‘year’, ‘period of years’, and notably in exodus, it is this word that refers to the 40 years in the desert (story of Moses leading Israelites out of Egypt). And so, with this knowledge and a very good impression of the character and demeanor of Jesus (I remember being particularly impressed with the verse of Matthew 15:14, and still consider it a valuable lesson), I resolved to attempt to believe on the basis that, if it was true, I would have the benefit of meeting at least one literary figure with whom I was enamored, and if it was not, it should still convince me to live a good life and at the end of it, I would never know the difference.

 

And so my faith remained for a time, growing slowly as I came to accept more things rather than critically question or reject them- a fact I was uneasy with, but accepted as a natural part of ‘spiritual growth’. My previous dint in atheism left a mark, and I tended to refer to God as “My invisible friend”, and I learned interesting things about church history, the interpretation of the scriptures and biblical doctrine. I truly believed- I must emphasize this, because the attitude among nearly all Christians is that, if you become apostate, it means something was wrong with you and you never were truly saved, but this is a false statement, because I truly believed, and knew I was saved, and was secure in that knowledge.

It is difficult for me to pin down where I stopped believing, because it happened slowly over a very long period of time. One of the things I found more and more unbearable was the idea that some people were created with the odds so incredibly stacked against them. If the objective (for God) was to make as many people go to heaven as possible, then this seemed wasteful; and so I became slowly convinced that portions of the bible were immoral, whether or not they were right or wrong. Despite this, I found comfort in the belief (I don’t think it is biblical, although it may be) that, first, God would not give anyone anything that they truly could not bear, and second, that all people had equally valid struggles which would consume the whole of their lives, and it was the overcoming of the barriers in one’s own life that was the necessary ingredient of success.

Then I began to read critical scientific books. The first of these, and perhaps the most important for this discussion, was “The Grand Design”, by Hawking and Mladanov. These books walked me through the physics of the creation of the universe, of dimensions so small that they would be smaller than themselves if measured, and of the beautiful and complex universe we live in, and how it may even be giving rise to entirely new universes. It was listening to this book via my MP3 player that led me to seek out more scientific books, because I felt my eyes opening. I do not remember clearly how I came upon the next books inevitably mentioned, but in fairly short order I had discovered that I had downloaded both “The God Delusion” as an audiobook, and “God is Not Great”, in one folder, perhaps in a moment of religious belligerence. I had already begun questioning my ideas of God a bit more as a result of The Grand Design, and I had to shrug them off- I simply didn’t know enough to reach any meaningful conclusions, and I was still secure in my beliefs (notably, God provides purpose, God takes care of people, God does not test anyone in a way they cannot bear, and what I considered the ace up my sleeve, that God was the basis for morality, and that this was the design he referred to in Genesis when he said “in his image”).

And so, with this paltry handful of arrows in my quiver, I ventured into the books by Dr. Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens. I was not sincerely moved by them at first, to be honest, and while I admired Dawkins’s honesty and the scientific exactness of his arguments, I was less impressed by the arguments made by Mr. Hitchens. Both, however, provided suitable starting points for the unavoidable conflict between Science and Christianity (and indeed, all religion), and so I set out from that point, determined to find the truth, confident that God was watching, secretly proud, and also that he was keeping score.

 

My faith did not last my next bible study. I began looking at, for example, the story of Noah’s Ark, and found it unbelievable. I compared the order of creation in Genesis to what is known about the evolution of life on earth, and was forced to conclude that at least two of the three accounts (for there are two in Genesis) must be incorrect, and that even if evolution via natural selection was incorrect, both discrepant accounts in Genesis could not be correct. For several hours, I pored over different sections of the Bible, alternately Googling things I thought might be relevant. By the end of it, I was disappointed with Jesus, thought that David (of David and Goliath fame) was an unabashedly ambitious bisexual warlord with a Machiavellian bent, I disbelieved all accounts of Moses, and I could not stand to look at the actions of Israel when it was acting under the orders of God.

 

It has been several months since then, and I still read the bible regularly, and even take the odd lesson from it- but the more I read, the less I am able to believe. My beliefs, first in actual doctrine and second in the purpose, morality, and overall goodness of god, have been damaged by the bible to the point where they will very likely never again be taken seriously. My morality, however, and my belief in the goodness of my fellow human beings, and my determination to make- rather than find, or be given- a purpose for myself has given my life new meaning. I have seen it suggested, in many places, that atheism is spiritual death, or that it is suicide of the soul, and I can’t take that idea seriously anymore. If I were not an atheist, I would not have realized that I have had a perfectly good soul my entire life- it's made of neurons.

THE END

Stealing diapers and apologizing profusely

This will be an interesting post. I'm going to adapt a Reddit AMA I did about a year and a half ago so that all of the questions and my responses are in order, and pared down to strictly relevant things.  If you're interested, the original can be found here.

I want to leave this up as a reference, but I may take it down if people start being able to identify the other person I'm talking about- I may have regrets and resent the way I was treated, but I'm not a fucking asshole.  Don't look for her, don't look for revenge, don't be a fucking asshole.

Intro

I've recently escaped from this situation and am still coming to grasps with it. Here's the basic rundown:

Eight years ago, my family sent me to Thailand for a short term mission trip. Two years after this, I came home for a month and met a Thai girl online: when I went back, we hooked up and kind of hit it off.

To cut a long story short, she had baggage: so we got STD tests together and both came out clean. Then, after much drama, she got pregnant with the first of our two children, and prenatal screening confirmed that she was HIV positive. I got tested again (and multiple times since then) and have never had any kind of positive test result. The same is true for both of our kids.

The other important detail is that we started a business together, and through a combination of accumulating poverty, mental instability, and outside interference, we lost everything, and so the second half of the relationship was plagued by continuous poverty, where we became deeper and deeper in debt (mostly to suppliers for our business) and then things came apart. I was unable to obtain a visa because of the lack of money: all of us were unable to afford basic medical care in one of the cheapest places in the world to get this.

Beginning two years ago, we had so little money that I began stealing food from supermarkets to make sure we'd have enough to eat. I became quite good at this, and eventually worked my way up from stealing candybars to stealing diapers, and baby formula- large bulky high-risk items- as well as staple foods, such as bags of rice.

I was never caught. I also made an effort to not steal things that would hurt people- I never stole from small mom-and-pop stores, only from large well-established retail chains that could withstand the losses.

Approximately 10 months ago {Edit 11/15: this refers to approximately March 2013}, I caught my fiance (as I thought of her) attempting to have an affair. This, combined with the intermittent physical abuse she targeted me with (I wouldn't hit her: she was basically able to get away with anything, to the point of beating me with sticks, destroying all my possessions, etc), was just too much to bear- and after a month or two of denial, I began taking steps to get myself and my kids out of the country.

 I can't make a diagnosis, but I very strongly suspect that the woman I had been living with has borderline personality disorder- a condition where emotions are experienced so intensely that they distort rational perception of the world- and that this condition was present for the entire time that we were together, and that it was exacerbated by our on-going situation.

So, I think that's the big picture. AMA.

Questions and Responses

How'd you manage to get back to the US with your kids?

My family here bought tickets and paid for the paperwork to be done (getting kids citizenship and passports, paying my visa fine, that kind of thing).

EDIT

I should add that most American consulates and embassies around the world offer a 'repatriation' service, where they'll get you out of whatever country you are stranded in, to a major US city (Boston on the east coast, LA on the west, iirc), but this isn't free- you have to pay them back later- and I was less sure about being able to get my kids out with this as well, because even though they technically qualified for citizenship, we'd never applied for it for them, because we never had the extra money, and so family was the first choice- and I'm incredibly grateful for their support.


Did you and your kids leave without your wife knowing?

No, we had to get her consent on some of the documents in order for them to be able to travel with just me (as opposed to travelling with both me and my wife/fiance/whatever). So she was on board, on the basis that we would return to Thailand after just under a year.

After arriving here, she began accusing me of kidnapping the kids- where my whole idea from the beginning had been joint custody (edit: I have documents that can also show this is the case, signed by her and legally notarized. Kidnapping was never an option, joint custody was)- and when I responded to this, she began sending death threats for me and my family here in the US, saying things like "I will hunt you down" and "If I can't win, nobody can win!". She'd made death threats in person in the past, but this was a first for having it in writing, and so I promptly reported this to the US Consulate where she was apparently applying for a visa.

There was a brief period following this where we were in contact, but I ended that contact and told her to leave us all alone. She was contacting anybody she could find to try and get them to tell her where we were (which she knew already)- including work associates for my father's business and a somewhat famous family friend.

 How did your family feel about you moving to Thailand at the time?  

Well they originally sent me there as a kind of 'learning punishment' for being an unruly teenager. I'd gotten drunk underage- the first time I'd ever been drunk- and I woke up in a hospital, still wasted, and so my family basically gave me a few options, one of which was going to Thailand short term to teach English and so on.

So I went over there the first time (late 2005) to do that and just loved it. The cost of life is so low that it seems ridiculous, I rented a small apartment for about 40 bucks (USD) per month, I spent my time learning languages and teaching English, and at night I'd meet up with international friends for drinks. It was genuinely the best time of my life, at least thus far.

and after two years of this, I came home and had a vacation, saw my friends and family, and then went back to continue it, only to find myself in a pretty bad relationship that always seemed like it was just about to get enough better to make it all worthwhile- and it never did.

So I'm bitter about some of this, I think. But I'm not resentful about going to Thailand, and it was such an obvious improvement over the massive time-wasting I was doing in the US at the time that everybody recognized it as a good thing. All else aside, I speak Thai fluently now, I can get around in Laotian and Cambodian Khmer, I can perform basic social niceties in a half dozen tribal languages from the region- including Hmong, which is actually a substantial minority asian group in the US- and I can understand conversational dutch and german. I learned web development and programming while I was over there. I made real, measurable positive impacts in the lives of some of the people I knew there.

it's just that being there was one of the things that made this terrible situation possible. It wasn't just that I was there, in the same way that it wasn't just that I had to be human- these are anthropic, necessary to the condition. But it was kind of a perfect storm that happened while I was there, that could have ultimately happened anywhere.

I've only been to Thailand once, but it's the LAST place I'd send my unruly kid to.

well, their intention of getting me to function was successful, until the bad relationship thing- and bad relationships can happen anywhere.

That's like saying "traffic accidents can happen anywhere", and then proceeding to cross a 10-lane highway blindfolded.

For a western guy, Thailand carries 10x the risk of a bad relationship compared to most of the West... for one, it's impossible to read Thai people without having stayed there for many years, and women interested in Farang, although plentiful, are on average not the cream of the crop either -- most are scarred by past relationship issues with Thai guys (and some are their own fault, despite what they say!), or just can't get a decent Thai guy interested. Not all, of course.

My relationship, while bad, wasn't bad in the typical ways that you hear about there.

• She was well educated. She spoke multiple languages in business environments, she attended one of the best colleges in Thailand and was on her last semester of one of the more difficult degrees, with a very good GPA.

• She was generally self-sufficient. I was not a 'cash cow' that she brought home to the countryside: her parents are divorced, and she's not on the best of terms with them for reasons I won't get into, but the consensus from both of us was "they might deserve some sin sod in 10 years, after we've got our shit together and they've been sufficiently chastised for their actions".

• She was from the city, not the countryside, and so this made her behavior different, as well as her standards for everybody else's behavior. Very atypical for the 'easy going' Thai people.
  
  
• She wasn't promiscuous- at least when we were together, she simply didn't have the chance. I didn't either, despite constant accusations by her. She wasn't ever a 'bar girl' of any variety, and generally found it difficult to have conversations with them- she considered them idiots and was very impatient with them. I don't think she was wrong about them being idiots, honestly.
  
  
• Both of us spoke each other's languages going in. I apparently had an easy time learning Thai- most people complain endlessly about it, but I didn't find it terribly difficult or time-consuming, I just looked up or asked about what I wanted to be able to express and then practiced that and apparently got pretty good. She did the same thing, much more intensely, as a child- a kind of rebellion against her teachers saying what a bad student she was because her parents were divorced- and learned English, to an impressive degree, over the course of a summer. Not perfect, but about 95% of the way there, as opposed to maybe 70-80% of the way there for most Thai people in Thailand who speak 'fluen' English.

  

Being on poor terms with family (especially the mother) is a massive red flag for a Thai (much more so than an American). Duty towards parents is so central to Thai society and culture, that no matter how big the parent's flaws might be, children are not allowed to break it off. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and it's impossible to know that starting out in a new culture (I know folks who naively take it as "good, no need to worry about the parents", when it's actually a strong indicator other relationships will shatter in a worse way).

However, it's odd since she's so well-educated/self-sufficient and you were not the cash cow, that she did not manage to contribute some income to the family. Enough rice for the family of 4 is well within means of most Thais, even without much education or skills... and women are often the breadwinners here (e.g. all the street vendors).

Well, we started a business together, and for a while we were pretty successful at it, but the biggest detriment to our cash was her trying to buy things we couldn't afford. She spent 50,000 baht at a time getting laptops, which she'd have to pawn in order to make payments on, and then she'd lose it at the pawn shop after not making enough to buy it back (pawning, by default, implies a secured loan less than the value of a commodity used to secure the loan), but she'd pay interest to the pawn shop so they'd hold it for her for the next month- and on and on, stuff like this happened over and over. Notable purchases included a second-hand car with a first-hand price (she didn't haggle, I was kicked out of the house at the time and she came and picked me up from the friends house I was crashing at in her new old car), a brand new iPad 2 when they came out, and a macbook pro. besides other computers, a motorbike, etc.

I should also note that, while what you said about 'family obligations' isn't wrong, this isn't the complete picture- things in the big cities are substantially different from the countryside, and this is one of those things. It's not so much a failing of tradition as it is pragmatism for how different life in the city generally is, with a sprinkling of daily foreign cultural influence thrown in. Above and beyond this, the Ex's family was atypical in not being strictly Thai, but rather 2nd or 3rd generation Thai citizens on one half of the family and native thais on the other. I think you'd be surprised by the mix as well, it's one of the less common ones. But anyway, this did change some things as well.

The impulse purchases you're describing sound a lot like the mania of bipolar disorder. I don't think she has borderline personality disorder. I am extremely familiar with both of these mental illnesses, although not with your wife, obviously. Bipolar disorder misdiagnosed as something else can be a nightmare.

There are more behavior patterns that I haven't really given a lot of time to- they're one of the hundreds of detail that made this story what it is, but which don't all need to be recounted to help you have an understanding of it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not writing you off, you may be right- I spent a long time seriously considering the possibility that she was manic depressive. I seriously asked whether I was a sociopath for not feeling the emotions she was feeling. But I came to the hypothesis of borderline because of a few critical elements.

• Her consistent inability to accurately frame emotions in a relative scale. A minor embarrassment in front of one of my friends early on, for instance, caused feelings of intense shame and betrayal, rather than a moment's embarrassment- and this was to the point that I had to alienate this friend to a large degree (make contact on a yearly basis rather than a daily basis) in order to keep her happy.
  
  
• Her consistent inability to see where she might have gotten something wrong. Small arguments where she'd misunderstand something were things she'd bring up every time we had a fight, on the basis that I was such a dick and she had understood everything correctly and fuck me.
  
  
• A lot of her behavior managed to keep me successfully in orbit and never abandoning her. A lot of her paranoia involved unreasonable things, like "people will kidnap our kids because they have white skin" and so we were a bit cloistered, with her having longer stretches with jobs (I didn't interfere; she always inevitably quit after a few months; I was stuck watching the kids during these times, sometimes literally locked in and unable to leave). So this looks more like the abandonment prevention than mania to me.
  
  
• not much seemed taboo when she wanted to win an argument (more control, less abandonment). The time (mentioned earlier) where I thought she had given me a concussion, she was hitting me in the head while I was holding our 2- or 3-month-old second child, and she was accusing me of loving one and hating the other and so on. During another argument of a similar nature, she grabbed this child- who was maybe 8 months old at this point- by the hair, and began to shake them violently, and the only time that I ever laid a hand on her was then- I grabbed her and pushed her across the room onto the bed. (I was very glad this had happened to her: but I was very upset that it had to be at my hands.)
  
  
• She had abandonment issues during her childhood that are typical- but not diagnostic- of people with BPD. part of the reason sin sod ('bride tax', discussed elsewhere) wasn't an issue with her family is that she has vivid memories of her parents arguing over which of them had to take her, because both wanted her brother.

AHHHH, what you've described above. Let me break it down for you.

• SHE'S THAI. You made her lose face in front of your friend. That is a HUGE no-no.
  
  
• SHE'S THAI. You shouldn't tell her she's wrong about anything. Do you know about greng jai? Also, see the losing face thing above. I know very few traditional Thais who can admit when they are wrong. It's embarrassing. And a traditional Thai wouldn't tell someone that they are wrong (even if they are).
  
  
• SHE'S THAI. Most traditional Thai women I know stick to their men LIKE GLUE because they are so afraid they will cheat. Are the women paranoid? Not really - men do cheat here, and they do it often. Other women don't care that a man has a girlfriend and/or wife already. They. Do. Not. Care. It's insane. How do I know this? I've been living in Thailand more than four years. I've lived in both Chiang Mai and Bangkok. I will say that BKK has much more modern and western-style relationships. But the insane crazy jealousy is still an issue here.
  
  
• Not sure about this one, it could be a sign of being nuts. Or it could be a sign of trying to control you. I've never dated a Thai woman, being a woman myself, but I've heard EVERYONE (including Thai women themselves!) say "all Thai women are crazy." So there's that.
  
  
• Uhhh... if I heard my parents say things like that, I'd have abandonment issues too. Don't think you can count that as evidence of Borderline.

Anyway. My diagnosis: she's a Thai female. One of the more crazy ones, perhaps, but still. Thai female.

Look, thanks, but I did live there for 8 years, and I did speak the language- more fluently than perhaps 90-95% of expatriates there. she was far from the only person I knew there, and far from the first.

What you're saying isn't blatantly wrong. But you're attributing too much to culture- especially a culture that she somewhat rejected and operated in as an outsider, in many ways- and even if everything you say were right this would still not excuse her actions.

So, look, I really appreciate the input here, but this is something that I made a very serious effort to discover the nature of, and you seem to be writing off the examples of the kinds of behavior I gave as if they're simply cultural misunderstandings. Did that play some role? Certainly. Often. Without question.

But in this case, culture failed to provide sufficient explanation for the behavior. And it's more pressing, because, again, this was a culture that this person (rightly, I think) saw as overly dogmatic and less capable of allowing personal accomplishment or innovation and so on. I can't speak for her, but I can say that other people didn't have, eg, the problem I had- where she took statements out of context and never acknowledged correction- and this selective blindness, especially in a way that allows some kind of control of the relationship, is the kind of thing people with BPD leverage.

What religion was the basis for the mission trip?

Christian. (edit for clarification: I was an agnostic atheist when I went, my family was unaware of my lack of faith, and I didn't see it as a barrier to going somewhere exotic and doing good) I converted to Christianity shortly after moving to Thailand in '05 because of something I call "Losing Pascal's Wager", I studied the Bible in a theological seminary there- with genuine experts, who I still admire- but became atheist again when it became apparent that whether I liked it or not, the Bible didn't answer important questions, answered them incorrectly, and contradicted itself; and so my last 'quest' as a Christian was to set out and find these bits for myself, to answer them, or at least know what they were, because ignorance would be inexcusable.

So I'm a gnostic atheist now, basically, and I know pretty authoritatively that whether there is a god or not, it isn't the one in the Christian Bible.

WHY didn't you teach English at some crappy illegal place for 400/hour? That could have given you enough baht for food. 

This is one of the things I did, actually. Other things include outbound telesales, starting a startup (one of the things I'm doing now is re-building this, because I think the idea still has merit), acting as a tour guide and tour booking agent, and other things of this nature. I was even a TEFL course instructor.   {edit 11/15: don't forget that we were also running our own business together during all of this, which provided enough to keep a roof over our heads, usually}

What's the best item you stolen?

I stole a couple of the Song of Fire and Ice books to read. I was very depressed and needed SOME kind of escape, and this is what I got. I eventually sold these- the only items I made money on.

{edit 11/15: I also stole Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Work Week, which I credit with giving me the mental tools I needed to address and escape from the situation, or at least inspiring me to try, and Neil Strauss's The Game, which gave me hope that I wasn't the crazy one and relationships weren't generally like this}


You are a white, English native speaker. You had NO reason to live in poverty in Thailand. Bad choices and a lack character made you a thief. 

The issue wasn't finding work. The issue was keeping it with the crazy ex calling up every place I worked and causing drama. Every job I held in Thailand after I met her, she did this.

Why did it take you so long to bail?

Because at any point, bailing looked like it would have all been for nothing, and it's more appealing to give yourself the reassurance that you haven't wasted your time this way, and that this will be something you'll be stronger for having come through together.


And the attempted affair crossed the line, I see. Looking back, what are your lessons if any? do you think it was for nothing, or do you feel stronger for it, even though you did not make it together, or both?

The lessons, so far;

• get out of something terrible as soon as possible. When you are alienating people you know and care about, and can't give a good explanation why- especially when you can't explain why and are still blaming yourself- make an objective assessment of your ability to meet the needs of the other person, and their ability to meet yours.
   
• Telling yourself that 'everything happens for a reason' is probably a symptom that there is no reason you can discern for the things that are happening. Further, something happening for reasons you can't discern is no excuse for you to be unreasonable.
  
• There is always a way out, there is always a way to survive, there is a solution to every puzzle, even if the solution is killing the puzzle maker. If there isn't, you'll never know, so there's no point in thinking there isn't.

also worth noting, I have a much different assessment of my capacity for endurance now than when I went into this relationship. I know my tolerance for pain of different types. I know what I can and will put up with. I know how to survive.

So I kind of regard this as fertilizer to make me grow.

{...} I think it's an important point to make that the affair... well, it wasn't so much that it crossed the line as it was the tipping point of me realizing all the signals I was getting from this other person meant that they were absolutely no longer committed to having a relationship with me. The affair itself is something that, if the relationship were on firm ground, I'd at least have been open to the idea of working past.

I'm completely open, now, to at least having a serious discussion about open relationships or polyamory with whoever I am with next- even if I don't decide to engage in these in the future. And this is discussion was explicitly forbidden, even in the context of 'look at this thing, what do you think of it?', and it's kind of jarring to realize that this person- who is demanding to take up your whole world, in a lot of ways- is completely unwilling to give you the same consideration.

I think we even had a fight were this dichotomy came up- where I saw what we were going through as a big deal, something changing the course of both our lives, and to her it was just a breakup and not a huge deal.
So the realization that I was on the fucked end of a double standard was really the tipping point, more than the affair was.

• Favourite food?
• Best beverage?

My favorite food to steal?

Hmm. I stole packages of uncooked chicken a lot- usually breast meat, sometimes drumsticks, that kind of thing. I stole jars of sauces- things like peanut butter. I stole cheese, usually the cheap locally produced mozarella cheese that local pizza places used. I stole bags of flour and yeast.

As far as beverages go, by far the best bang-for-lack-of-buck was with flavoring syrups, such as Hales Blue Boy. With that, you could make your own drinks or flavor carbonated water so it would be a conventional soft drink, Thai people also use it on ice cream- a bit like chocolate syrup in the US. I also stole boxes of loose-leaf tea, which is cheaper and more common there than the tampon-things used in the US. Tea of all varieties is a locally produced commodity there, and so some of the really good stuff was very cheap, and thus 'fair game'.

Your story is fascinating. Do you have any photos from when you were really struggling? Or any photos at all, really. 

I'm actually not sure. Right towards the end of this I got a cheap tablet and took pictures of my kids with it, but- for the sake of their privacy- this isn't the kind of thing I'd like to share. I may be able to find some pictures of the house we lived in somewhere online, but I want to restrict that to interior shots only, so that the location of this can remain private- because I suspect my ex still lives there. As bad as the stuff she did was, I really want to keep her out of this, because mental illness is a terrible thing, and I really do pity her, even though at the same time there is much I am unwilling to forgive.

What ethnicity are you? 

I'm white. The ex described here is Thai- so my kids are half Thai.

Did that make it harder or easier to steel? I would think that you would stick out like a sore thumb. 

Also, have you see the movie "Brokedown Palace" and, if so, did it ever weigh on your mind.

I wondered why you were asking this!

and on some level, this made things easier- I was less of a 'default suspect'- but also much harder to get away with, if caught, because I would have 'no excuse' in the eyes of anybody who caught me. White people, in the stereotypical Thai mind, are never poor. We're too rich, look at us, how fat we are, and so on.

Since nobody is asking about this, I might as well mention, I was very very careful about how I went about this. Most of my stealing was done with technology: I'd hide something from view under a 'shopping list' in a notebook, and then I'd slip it into a laptop bag I always carried- when nobody was looking- from under the notebook. So even if you did see me, you would probably miss this unless you looked for it. and even then, I was very meticulous about how I did this- I never hit the same place so often as to arouse suspicion, I knew where the cameras were and what they could see or not see, I knew the aisles that people spent the least time in that I could slip something away most easily in, and I cataloged countermeasures- like RFID tags, security personnel, etc- so that I could avoid these by default, with little effort.

Some of what I did was also behavioral. For example, the only way I was ever able to steal a loaf of bread was by hiding it in a shopping bag from a competing chain of stores- hiding it in plain sight, with other (stolen) groceries as 'camouflage'. In one case, 'browsed' out of a store, into the adjacent store, conveniently 'forgetting' that I had an item from that store tucked in a store ad paper in my hand.

My point in saying all of this isn't to brag. These aren't things I'm proud of. But I want people to be able to know about this, so that the people who need to can prevent it. Or, you know, god forbid, somebody who needs to do this to survive can have some idea of how to start.

You seem very cool and calculated with how you describe it all. Part of the reason I brought up the movie is I'm wondering how it was effecting you more on an emotional level. What was it like the first few times you stole? What was going through your mind with regard to your family, your personal well being, your feelings of self worth, guilt, fear, anger, anxiety?

The most prevalent thought was something along the lines of "Goddamnit, is this all I'm worth?", and then I'd try to rationalize it, or think of ways to come back and pay it all back.

I'm not a terribly emotional person, generally. I've got the full range of emotions that I experience, including plenty of regrets and things that I blame myself for. But I prize reason above these things, and being objective, and rational, and so on. So my description takes that color- a deliberately objective account, or as much as I can make it so.

And about the movie, no, I haven't seen it. The kinds of movies/media in general that played through my head... well, not much, to be honest. There is one scene from the show Prison Break, where the Hispanic guy (who's name I can't remember, and feel bad about forgetting because he's a good actor)- Scofield's cell mate? that guy!- the scene where he's just found out he's going to be a dad, and he 'robs' a store that he knows the owner of, and his friend reports the crime and he gets arrested, and he watches it all go to hell, and he loses everything, even though the owner of the store wouldn't have pressed charges. That really weighed heavily on my mind.

I also didn't take any risks if I was getting freaked out, which did happen numerous times. It's not an easy thing to break an unspoken social contract with your entire species, and that's kind of what it felt like. Like "this is bad for all of us, and I'm just rationalizing it so my own selfish genes can carry on, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing this is bad for me, too".
So it's kind of a shitty prospect. I don't know if it feels different stealing other things, if maybe bank robbers get these feelings or whatever. I suspect they don't- the payoff is too big, and the consequences too permanent- but I don't know.

Self worth- well, because of this, I began to break that into two categories: Your value and your potential. If you see someone homeless, on the streets, eating out of bins- that person has no value. They have no money, they have nothing invested in the economy we (most of us) live in- but this is a very different thing to saying that this person is 'worthless' or 'not valuable', because of potential. With the right investment, in the right individual, you can get somebody functioning, back up on their own two feet, supporting themselves: and this is valuable, but it isn't new value, you are unlocking the potential value that was trapped in an un-valuable configuration of a person's circumstances.

You seem like a very mentally strong person, I applaud you for that. You don't seem to have any issues with depression (which I feel that I have had in my life). It's a bit inspirational to me, thanks for sharing your experiences. 

Where do you think you'll go from here? More education? Entrepreneurial? 

I had massive issues with depression. But depression is sometimes a systemic problem in the brain, and sometimes the result of circumstances that are genuinely depressing.

So I don't go too much into it, if I can, because it's depressing, but I attempted suicide many times. Sometimes, it just didn't work- and I have no idea why (methods such as intentional pill overdose). sometimes, I was interrupted, sometimes I stopped when I realized nobody would take care of the kids. But the yearning to be in different circumstances was so intense that I'd have done anything, basically. I'd have done myself up in drag to be a girl- or at least a drag queen- because that would have been a vacation from being the 'me' in these shitty fucking circumstances. I'd have crawled around outside naked with a collar on like a dog. I'd have done fucking anything to escape.

So I get the feelings of depression. I definitely had them. I also had terrible panic attacks, triggered mainly by things like not being able to meet the needs of my family, or by fear of the next fight with the ex, because she was actively making death threats and saying things like "If I could kill you now and get away with it I would" and so on. It was... well, it makes you numb, to start. and the feeling of realizing that this- this person saying these things- this is the person who you have loved more than any other, and now you have two kids who will not have a perfect family life-

These are things that you must be very reasonable when you think of- or at least this is the armor against this that I use. It's easy to think about the lost opportunities, about your kids growing up without both parents in the same house- but it is reasonable to want them to grow up with parents who are separate and who act like decent human beings. It's easy to want to love because you have loved before, but it is reasonable to not love someone who hates you. It's easy to write off mistakes for someone you love, and to forgive them. Less so - but more reasonable - for someone who hurt you on purpose, and who wants you dead.

From here, I don't really feel as if I have the opportunity for further education, at least in terms of going to school. This is a luxury I no longer have. So my whole focus right now is entrepreneurial. I am living with my family in the US, and they are running out of money, so my focus is getting myself stable and supported and my kids in a stable life, and then paying them back as I'm able to.

What type of business did you run? What do you mean by accumulating poverty and outside interference?

How old are your kids? How are they adjusting to living in this country and living without their mother? How was it like for them growing up in the conditions you described?

The business... well, it was a B2B supply business, mostly. We sold to end customers sometimes, but our focus was on other businesses. In order to preserve what anonymity I can, I don't want to say what industry we were in.

The 'accumulating poverty' was largely caused by irrational 'self satisfying' behavior- she would get depressed, and then cheer herself up by buy something wildly out of our price range, like high-end electronics or, at the most extreme, a car- which we did need, but couldn't afford. All of these things were more highly priced than could be justified- the prices weren't bargained- and when we failed to make payments, they got pawned, or repo'd, and we spent money on trying to get them back, eventually failing- in a vicious cycle that would leave her depressed and seeking a way to cheer herself up.

The 'outside influences' is largely in reference to a single individual who we partnered with in our business, who wound up running up large debts- in our name- with our most important suppliers. This made us unable to fulfill orders, it made us late to fulfill them, and the suppliers- who were more familiar with him- took his side a couple times, until we demonstrated that we had paid and he had stolen the money. and even then, he was never kicked out of the picture.

My kids are 3 1/2 years old and 1 year old. They're both adjusting well. The conditions they were in before were not great- no climate control (no air con, no heater), just fans, We were constantly short of diapers and didn't have a working washing machine at the end (the one we had died), so my older kid was running around naked, peeing/pooping in a training potty, and I was cleaning him up with the hose (note: instead of toilet paper, thai toilets generally either have a bucket or a hose, you wipe with your hand and water), and same with my younger kid- no buttwipes- but they had diapers, at least. So this is an improvement, the older kid is now fully potty trained and has graduated to underwear from diapers. The younger has started walking, both of them are interacting socially and talking more, they've resumed normal development, maybe even exceeded it. Latest focus is getting older kid in preschool.

How did you steal something as large as a pack of diapers?

I would keep it out of view under another item- normally a notebook or sketchbook where I had a 'shopping list' written down- and I would slip things from here into a laptop bag I carried. The sketchbooks were about 10" square, and the laptop is something like 16" x 22" x 4", so there's a decent amount of room in there.

The diaper packs, by the way, were all the smallest number of diapers, and I got these from convenience stores, like 711 and Tesco Minimart, so there would be something like 5-10 diapers in a pack.

Did you have any near death experiences?

Not that I recognized as such until after. She beat me with a broom handle and left me dizzy enough that I stayed up that night in case I had a concussion. I got in a motorbike accident once and landed face-first in a muddy patch next to the road- she accused me of getting in the accident on purpose to fuck up her new motorbike we couldn't afford. I attempted suicide a couple of times, some of which I'm not sure how I survived. Made exit bags and things like that, I'd wake up with them around my head and a pounding headache, presumably I clawed them open after losing consciousness? I don't know. I hid this stuff from her as well, so I'd be surprised if she saved me.

It seems like its a miracle <you're> alive

That would be a terrible miracle.

What do you mean your stealing never hurt anybody? Aren't other customers people? You were affecting the prices everybody else paid!

It was a rationalization. And I don't think it was a bad one, as they go. I didn't get anybody fired. I didn't put anybody else in poverty. I did only what I had to do in order to put food on the table: I stole the cheapest version of anything I did steal, from the establishments that could withstand the losses.

So, look. I'm not proud of this. But if I were in this situation again, would I do whatever it took to survive again? You bet your ass I would. I watched my kids go hungry once, and there is no power that will make me inflict this on them again if there is something that can be done to end it, especially when your sole complaint is that something you can afford becomes something you pay more for, but can still afford.

Don't you think you should pay back the people you stole from?

Yes, of course. With interest, to reflect the period of time between their initial loss and their subsequent compensation.

This is an excellent question, by the way, that opens up the possibility of a conversation about exactly how you might go about paying back a company you spent a substantial amount of time directly stealing from.

What about walking up to the manager, explaining what you'd done, saying sorry, giving them a bag of cash, and walking away?

It's not a bad place to start, but my first thought with that is that the manager would pocket the cash and tell no one.


Considering what ground you're standing on at that hypothetical point in time I would question your reluctance to right your wrongs based on the presumption that someone else may do wrong.

Let me see if I've got this right... because I stole to feed my children, I think the manager would steal?

Well... yes and no. What's more important to me is that I have a better insight, now, into when there is an opportunity to steal with nobody knowing- because this is what I actively did- and this would be creating that opportunity for the manager, with low risk, and with high reward.

 have you never been desperate to eat? ever tried living out of bins? sometimes these are the only options people have, you can put whatever morals you like to it, but hitting megastores and large chain super markets is the most moral solution to being that desperate. walk a mile.  

{Edit for clarification: this question wasn't directly addressed to me, but I answered it anyway}

There were multiple periods of time- I'm not sure how many, but between 5 and 10- all over 2 days- where I went without food in the last year. the longest of these was five days, during which I was fired from a low-skill job (the ex contacted my employer at the time and told them I was spending work time stalking her- which, to be fair, is how I had caught her attempting to have an affair) and also kicked out of my house by my ex for several days, amid accusations of having an affair (which I didn't have, but which she absolutely has coming). The sum total of the cash I had went to paying for a hotel to sleep in. The first day after I was fired, I still brought home food for them- bought, not stolen- but I had nothing for myself, so I spent what time I had perusing help-wanted ads, writing business plans, watching evangelist television, and having panic attacks about this being it, about never getting out of this.

So, I don't think I'm on unsteady ground here. I got what free food I was able to. Sometimes friends helped, but the nature of my relationship with the ex alienated a lot of them, so I didn't have many places to turn. I also used what survivalist knowledge I had to get edible plants, vegetables, things like that, but most of this in thailand is deliberately cultivated, so that's stealing too in a lot of cases- so I didn't have a lot of that. And of course what money we did have got spent as frugally as possible- probably more frugally than most people here can imagine. Standard meals, for weeks at a time, would be rice + an egg, or rice porridge (which let us extend the life of a pot of rice rather than waiting for it to go bad) with cheap pickled cabbage in brine with chili peppers. We were able to get some fruit cheaply- mango trees grow everywhere in Thailand, as do banana trees, and so neighbors would sometimes give us mangoes and bananas- and so we were able to make do with this as well, sometimes.

Other Questions from Other Places

He says there was "baggage" that led him to getting STD testing early in the relationship but later says she was "not promiscuous" and "definitely not a bargirl" to the point of being "sexually very stuck up and prudish". But, for some reason, she had fluent English, and also spoke Japanese, and managed to catch HIV, somehow.

And she was definitely faithful but apparently caught it after they got together, as they both tested clean after the relationship started. There is a window period, but with current generation tests 95% of people will test positive if they have it within 4-6 weeks of infection.

The whole thing just doesn't really add up, unless she was a IV drug addict. I'm not sure he's giving us the full story. 

Well, the place to bring this up would have been the thread I started, but anyway, here's what I know.

• we both tested negative for HIV when we were first together. I saw her test results, she saw mine. She was worried about STD's because her ex had apparently been cheating on her with bargirls, etc. So that's a big part of what the baggage was; not trusting men in general because she'd been betrayed in the past.
• • it is possible that she was infected at this time and seroconversion- the immune response where antibodies begin to be produced- had not yet happened.
   
• after this period, she spent a month or two out of town concluding business and getting her things to move to where I was. This is her biggest opportunity to have been infected sexually, but remember that we were in constant contact during this time- talking online at night, calls during the day- so this would have been something she'd have had to work around to do that. and honestly, she had a full plate, and didn't seem to waste any time, and if she'd have found someone else, she could have just gone with them.
  
• relatively early on in our relationship, she was hospitalized with Dengue fever, at a hospital with a horrible reputation for neglectful incompetent treatment. During this hospital stay, she told me that a nurse had injected something into her hand (where the IV's were attached- they couldn't find the veins in her arms) with a needle that looked like it had already been used. She was paranoid about it being HIV, I calmed her down at the time and told her it was just medicine (I think I was at home when this happened and visited her the next morning, I was at the hospital some nights and at home some nights during this). So, there does seem to be a possibility that she was infected by this. It's also noteworthy that her recovery from dengue was abnormally long, and that her symptoms during recovery neatly coincide with the initial high-viral-load HIV infection, where you get things like rashes, peeling skin, pneumonia, aching bones, and so on.
  
• It is absolutely possible that I'm just wrong and that she did have chances to cheat that I didn't know of, and that this is what she did. It's important to note, however, that she was in a new town and knew nobody, and she wasn't going out and meeting people. So I consider this unlikely because of reasons like this.

Fair enough, thanks for the reply.

I'd be very sceptical on the "infected by dirty needle" in a hospital possibility. Needle reuse just doesn't happen in Thai hospitals, even eight years ago. And even if it did, she'd still have been very unlucky- it would have to have come pretty much immediately from someone else with HIV (unlikely - prevalence is around 1.5%), the virus dies quickly in the air, and even then the risk of transmission is quite low for an individual incident- under 1%. So you are looking at what, around a 1 in 10,000 chance, (~1% of transmission * ~1% chance it came from a HIV+ patient) if a needle was reused which itself is unlikely. Junkies get it this way because they are already a high risk group, share needles immediately, and keep doing it repeatedly. Not so likely for a single reuse in a hospital - although I'm honestly sceptical that would have occurred in the first place. 

That honestly sounds to me like an excuse from her as to how she might have got it, that didn't involve sex. 

Can you be sure the results you saw were genuine? In fairness to your point that she might have seroconverted already, I believe the window period before a test would pick up infection was longer eight years ago. 

I just wonder given what subsequently transpired with the cheating and the crazy, if you can really trust everything this girl told you.
To be honest I posted here as I didn't want to go clogging up your AMA insinuating that your partner was a bargirl.

The crazy was constant, but was made worse by our situation. I really think she had borderline personality disorder- but I'm not qualified to diagnose her as this, this is only my hypothesis.

The 'dirty needle' thing was something that, from the description, sounds more like a deliberate infection: done at night, the nurse had tried not to wake her during it, it was a nurse that she described as acting jealous (keep the crazy in mind here: it saw jealousy everywhere), etc.

{Edit 11/15: I don't say, but I'm not sure I believe her story here either, but it remains as a possibility that I can't rule out, especially in light of the lack of other opportunities for infection}

So, I'm in a pretty good spot to make an assessment of whether she was cheating or not. I kinda suspect she might have done something at the beginning after we met but before we were committed, which I don't hold against her, but after that point I really don't think she had enough motivation or opportunity.

<Deleted comment along lines of "Why did you stay with her when she got diagnosed as HIV+? You should have just left.">

It's an easy thing to suggest this, but it's harder to do in practice.

Remember, I'd already made such a commitment to this person that the fact that they had HIV was something I was happier dealing with than abandoning them to.

So you're not wrong. But for stupid unreasonable reasons, it wasn't that simple for me, and I suspect the unreasonable reasons are pretty common elsewhere too.

THE END