I went to my mother’s Facebook page to check on her health and well-being recently. After the 2013 fallout, my mother and I haven’t spoken on video or by voice in half-a-decade. Regrets? Absolutely not. It takes two to tango. However, the health of my mother is always important.
Her first post was of my brother — an individual who has hated me since I was a child. Hot-headed, angry, know-it-all/alpha mask possessing individual who’s following similar footsteps of his father. He was featured on Fox5News in Las Vegas. Being an avid drummer and always have been for years, music has always been in his heart. Having taught at high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, apparently he had auditioned for the Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey team — and got the job. During one of the openings of last year’s playoff game against I-HAVE-NO-IDEA, I saw someone wearing glowing, neon glasses while drumming who had a beard similar to what my brother normally flaunts. Indeed, it was my brother. I was super proud of him.
Two years ago, he had sent me a message, berating me with derogatory slurs and yelling, “don’t come back to Vegas! Mom doesn’t wanna see you! Your sisters hate you!”
I laughed and felt sorry for him. Since those 1995, Mega Man X days where he would beat me up on the SNES and tell my parents that I did wrong, he still has an impenetrable amount of hostility that’s tormenting him inside.
During the recent interview in the link above, I can still see it in his eyes. Hearing him speak with the freakish looking smile and saying, “it’s about being positive,” or somewhere on the lines, is what I would always see before he unleashed an unfathomable amount of hell upon me and spew rhetoric at my siblings. He was a power junkie and always has been — very different from what my father used to be, to be honest.
Nonetheless, I told my siblings, and the last time I spoke with them back in the summer of 2016, that I would never speak to Steven Buck again for as long as I live. It was time to finally move on. Wish him the best in his future endeavors, but enough was enough. Gary Vee says drop your loser friends and family members, and my brother, who was the antagonist of every story, has never been supportive.
But please don’t let this confuse any of you. Holding a grudge against anyone is ridiculous, and this is why I forgave him from within and sent the rest to the universe. He doesn’t need to know that I forgave him, nor would he care, but it’s for my own peace of mind.
You know, going through the battles I’ve gone through, especially living in Thailand, it’s perspective.
Do you know how lonely I felt being in a household where everyone hated me? I was the “selfish” one for not saving money. I was the bad son for not giving my mom 25% of my salary while living overseas by myself. Going through that dimension of it, and then battling the racial discrimination in these borders? 150 jobs denied me because I was BLACK.
Could you imagine not having anyone to go to in terms of that?
You can’t. The brute force and nature of it all id unprecedented. But how did I go through it? Was it the motive? The purpose, as Napoleon Hill has said before? How did I flip it from a push to a pull? How did I go from a negative mindset to a positive mindset? How did I go from getting by at the beginning of this year, to becoming financially independent by next year? I’m still trying to piece it together.
One thing is apparent, however, and it’s the fact that I have an indomitable will.
Arsenio's ESL Podcast 
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