Cleaning out my Closet

“Ha! I got some skeletons in my closet

And I don't know if no one knows it

So before they thrown me inside my coffin and close it

I'mma expose it;”- Eminem “Cleanin’ Out My Closet”

I have done some awful things in my life.

This may be the last blog of mine you ever read, as you may judge me unfit for human contact. Trust me, I’ve felt the same way.

Throughout this blog, I will talk a lot about some terrible things others have done, especially my family. One of their complaints is always “Clean out your own closet, before you open ours.”

So, I will reveal all the sins I’m am not too jaded to have forgotten. The door swings both ways. Come on in.

I am a thief.

For a large portion of my life I have been a shoplifter. The earliest I can remember was when I was 12. I was building a tree fort in the woods with another neighborhood kid. These woods backed up to a set of houses. We took it upon ourselves to raid an unlocked shed for tools and materials. We were arrested, and I was retrieved by my parents for retribution. At court, the other kid had a record and took full responsibility. He was tried and I was dismissed.

Afterwards, however, I began taking small things from stores: candy and trinkets. At some point, my mother began to catch on. Then, she began stealing again. At 13, me and my brother were used as accomplices to block security cameras at Sears. She was caught, and along with a later arrest, she was sent back to prison. In 8 months she was out. In that time, I had reached puberty and began to have some worldview clarity. This family is not the way it’s supposed to work. I wanted out as soon as I turned 18. To do that, I convinced myself I needed things for an apartment. On top of working as much as I could, I entered into a criminal partnership with my mother. My mother got away with a lot of shoplifting, because she did not fit any stereotype that store employees look for. I did, since I was a young male. However, her impulsiveness was too great to think through the logistics: watch for security cameras, store clerks, security devices, general driving directions, etc. That was my job. We were very successful, often filling the suburban minivan to full capacity with our ill-gotten gains. I got more than any kid would ever need for their first apartment. During this period, I was arrested once while stealing school clothes with her. My juvenile record read, “Ryan is not to attend any stores with his mother.”

At 18, I repeated a pattern of stealing developed 35 mm photo prints at Giant Eagle I had many times before. I was caught and received probation and community service. I later signed the unpaid prints out of police evidence. I hid the arrest from my girlfriend until she found my Community Service report on my desk. I promised her I was done and she promised to help me out of the home that corrupted me so.

Little did she know, that I was too deeply corrupted, as much from my own choices, as the environment I was in.

Nonetheless, that is the lie I lived with from that point on. I never stopped stealing, but managed to not get caught for a very long time. It should have been obvious to those who were close to me, but no one ever called me on it, especially that girlfriend, even after we got married. My criminal actions with my mother were so successful, I could not see quitting such a profitable venture. Additionally, my artistic creativity exploded, and I found myself often “needing” materials I could not afford, even while discovering ways to use discarded free items for art purposes.

This pattern persisted for quite a while. Then, my divorce happened, and I found my life shifting dramatically. I came from a blue collar family, and our job was the definition of safety and security. I had changed so much, however, after my divorce, that I made enough mistakes at work to lose my job, my security. Then, I made the unheard of decision to the working man: let’s not work harder. I went back to school. Although I still feel that this was the correct choice, this radical choice had no precedent for me, and was absolutely insane to my family. They could not believe in my decision. I felt unsecure, unsafe, and vulnerable. Blue collar men do not get vulnerable, they get harder.

I began stealing more radically this time, often without my mother’s camouflage. I told myself, that I was due for impoverished days. I needed to do what I could to survive. Also, since every person I had every had any stability and safety built upon, was gone. Even my mother had returned to prison again (although released before I really hit “rock bottom”). If I could not have a person to be safe with, to rely on, at least I’d have things.

Of course, I got arrested again, this time for $19 of merchandise. Thanks to ten years and a previous diversion program, my former record slipped through the cracks. Another diversion program and community service program kept me out of jail again. I would like to think that my schooling and intelligence, despite making many very stupid choices, helped me as well.

Fast forward four years. I was still in school. My meager savings were exhausted. I’d been in school too long. The job I took to help me through this eliminated my position. I was facing another “long winter.” At this point, I had a son, with a woman I loved dearly, but was wisely scared of committing herself to my dysfunction. Things, however, were still there for me. I started pressing my luck even further by just blatantly walking out of stores with items still in my hands. It was surprising how many times I got away with that. I assumed I could just explain it as general forgetfulness if someone stopped me. Until I was caught and my excuse did not work with a bag of other unpaid for items. I had a panic attack (or made myself have one). Several months earlier I had also been caught in another store with my mother, after she made a foolish decision, ignored my warnings, and left me with the bag as she drove off.

This was to be the end of my stealing, I told myself. I have spent more than half of my life as a thief. I was nearing graduation, and all of that means nothing with a criminal record. Couple that with the sudden realization of how deep-seated my mental illness ran. I was depressed, suicidal, and in need of help.

I turned to my son’s mother and my son. When my son was born I vowed to break the abuse cycle that filtered down from my grandparents to my mother to me. I would not carry on this criminal legacy, either. My son had a real chance to be a “good” Kinney.

For the first time in my life, I came clean to someone. I told her, in hopes that having the whole truth out in the open would provide a check to my impulses. I wish I could say it was that simple. To this day I do not enter stores without checking the security system. Police make me nervous, no matter what I am doing. Every time I purchase something the thought enters my head of how easy it would be to not pay for it. But, how much would I really pay for it. Is it worth my future? Is it worth my son’s?

Before I close this exhaustive section of this one sin, I need to offer one apology. I’m sorry, Monica. As far as I can remember, her home is the only of my friend’s I ever stole from. I was 14. My mother was in prison. I was the only one writing to her, paying for the stamps out of the meager earnings from bussing tables at a bar. Her family invited me into their home, and there, in easy reach, was an entire roll of stamps. I took them, but was quickly caught. At that point in my life, I had never felt such shame.

Let’s move onto sex. No list of sins is complete without the sins of the flesh.

I lost my virginity in high school to the woman I eventually married. Until I was 26, she was the only woman I ever slept with. I would have kept it that way, if she had not decided otherwise.

Since then, I have slept with a total of 15 women (including the wife). I don’t keep these numbers as a scorecard, but rather as a stark reminder of how many woman I have taken advantage of. I keep a list of each of these women, so I remember that each had a face and a name (with the exception of two prostitutes in Amsterdam). These are all people, not throw away sex dolls.

The problem, however, is that most meant little more to me that assisted masturbation. I was hurt and desperate. I wanted affection, and used every manipulation I could to get it sexually. This included a long list of friends. Several of them had boyfriends. I knew this. I had been cheated on. Maybe a part of me wanted to exact the same kind of pain I was dealt. Maybe part of me was just lonely and horny.

Three of them were fun. The rest were not satisfying. One was a very close friend who I knew had affections for me for a long time. I took advantage of this, with no intention of following through. I often try to justify it by saying it was that act that made us both realize that it wasn’t going to work. That is a comfortable lie.

Of these 15 women, only two do I consider “making love.” One is my wife. The other bore my child. To the latter, I loved every minute of it, but she was a long determined virgin, having vowed to keep her chastity until marriage. Along I came, and broke her vows. It was mutual, but I will not pretend that part of the thrill was not the corruption of her innocence. Again, and again, I made her betray her beliefs to satisfy my loneliness. I love her. Eventually, she told me the same. Can I ever really come back from the amount of manipulative lust I have lumped upon her? How many lies did I tell, before she couldn’t even believe “I love you” anymore? During the many interactions of our relationship I have done things to intentionally hurt her, to make her pay for hurting me, whether intentional or not. Often, I used sex as a mask to provide some chemical comfort while not dealing with the root of my issues.

Since we are on the topic of pussy, let’s talk of another kind, the feline ones.

I have had serious problems with cats.

Generally, I am a creepy guy. I keep dissected dolls in open display, as well as horror effects, and animal bones. My home is adorned with enough of the dark side, that it’s no wonder people can never see my light. It is a part of my personality, and keeps most people at a distance.

In another attempt to quell deep loneliness, I started collecting kittens. I live alone. Most nights I return to a home meant for a whole family, to no one, but the mewing of my cats.

Kittens were easy to come by, unwanted by most, and dolled affection without question. Surely, I could control them more easily that the humans that kept rejecting my affections. One kitten was great, so 12 must be even better. I even justified it by saying I was fostering them until I could find a home. Couple that with a scientific fascination with genetic randomization. I wanted to see what their offspring would randomize as. Add in the additional lamentation of the loss of my barn cat, and the legitimate need to replace him.

I had no idea how in over my head I was. Cats cost money. I had severe credit card debt and little money to provide the necessary food, litter, and vet care. Many of the people who were giving away free cats had not cared for them well. I wanted to keep them long enough to breed a generation of kittens, selfishly adding to the burden of pet overpopulation. I kept them in my basement. While working 50 hours a week, I simply could not control them. Each time they shit on my floor, or peed on a couch, I felt my frustrations of every rejection, every abuse by every person who ever claimed to care for me.

The kittens were cute, affectionate, and supposed to be there for me. It was a lie. They were also going to push me beyond the brink. These creatures became the manifestation of all my loss; of all the lies I had been told. It wasn’t their fault. They were cats, just living as cats do. I had to get rid of them. It was time that I got to dump someone.

I tried the usual avenues. The Humane Society rejected any new intakes due to over-capacity. APL required a donation amount per cat. No person I set up to meet ever took a single cat with them. Despite my previous statement, I was not going to dump them as many people have. They were my responsibility.

What did I do? What I was told was legal by the game warden:

I put them down.

By myself.

If you’ve ever had to have a pet put to sleep, you know the horror of that look on their face as they question why you’d betray their unwavering trust, unable to understand the realities of their health or your human justifications.

Multiply that feeling time 12.

Then, add the fact that this poor series of decisions, also cost the life of one my original cats.

Those looks will forever be burned into my mind. For weeks afterwards, I could not close my eyes without seeing it. To this day, I still see it from time to time.

Twelve little faces asking, “Why didn’t you love me enough?”

With my every attempt to gain affection from some living things thwarted, or at least in my mind, I could not see my own self-destructive tendencies that pushed that affection away, I turned to things. I have often in my life. People leave. Things stay. I had such an attachment to these things that I often replaced people with them, then, when I ran out of money, gambled my entire future on stealing them. My house swelled with unneeded trinkets, and my friends questioned whether I was a hoarder. Thankfully, my OCD towards order and cleanliness kept it mostly in reasonable balance; organized clutter.

More than just my dependence on things, I began to treat my friends as things. When I entered college, I made a whole new set of friends, many of which had untapped artistic talents hindered by the lack of resources, experiences, or knowledge of what they could do with their talents. I tell myself it began altruistically, as I genuinely hate to see talent go to waste. I began assigning them projects from my long list of ideas. When these stopped being fun to those people, I still persisted, pushing them far beyond any personal growth for themselves. They had already learned what they wanted from my projects. It was time for them to develop their own unique mark. Instead, I had projects I wanted them to do. I was no longer helping them to become creative individuals. I was using them as free labor for my own ends. I put my ideas over the importance of theirs and used my greater resources as leverage to force them to comply. ART was more important to me than them. Simply creating was worth more than anything they cared about. If art imitates life, then mine would have been: put people in, get art out.

And finally, the last of my sins that I can clear out, are all in my head. I am hypomanic and coupled with my overactive imagination I have constant scenarios and discussions running through my head. These involve arguments and debates that have never occurred. However, I tend to interact with those people as though they had. I often have trouble remembering what discussion and event actually occurred and which was another fantasy. This is a great talent for a piece of art, as I can usually work most of it out in my head as though I really went through it. In the case of people, though, it makes living with me very difficult. If I need to be emotionally close or intimate with a person, I have worked it out long before they ever get to me physically. If an argument needs to be settled, I’ve already had it out without them. More often, I’ve repeated and built up an argument in my head to the point that I am now very angry at that person for sleights they never inflicted. It makes dealing with me very difficult and despite my frequent insistence at honesty, hard to get close to. Most disturbingly, I often see very bad things happening to those I care about. The general formula seems to be, the worse I am feeling; the darker they get; the closer I am to someone; the more frequently they die. I have traumatized myself repeatedly with the thoughts of my father’s death, as he begins to near such. What scares me the most is how often I have watched my 2 year old son die in my mind. How many times I have had to purge and repress what I tell myself is not real. But, I feel that pain. Every damn time. It adds to a never ending cycle of remorse and depression, and recently has fueled a growing suicidal tendency. How can I live with myself, if my brain keeps killing off the only thing that may ever make me happy?

With that, I have tossed as many skeletons as I could out of my closet. A few may still be hiding in the corners, and it may take years for me to find them. It is my hope, that by getting this out there, I have finally turned on the light.

In light of my kitten killing, stealing, lying, and infidelities what possibility do I have for any kind of redemption? With all the darkness in my soul, what light could possibly shine on me? I guess, I’ll just have to make my own.

Keep reading.

“I'm sorry momma!

I never meant to hurt you!

I never meant to make you cry; but tonight

I'm cleaning out my closet” – Eminem “Cleaning out My Closet”

-Love, Me