Because of the pandemic, I’ve asked my partner to interview me and put her own interpretation on the introduction to give me some ideas on introducing myself. Blushing profusely, I helped edit and correct grammatical errors, adjust meaning, suggest synonyms and overall co-edited this introduction. I felt it would be more fitting to have his introduction from the point of view of an observer and interviewer, rather than just a flat “About me” post.
The Man Who Hated Everyone
Allaire, T. A. & Kaminsky, K. S.
May 5, 2021
Tristin Allaire is a survivor of many sorts. Most people know him as Alex. Battling through the foster care system from the age of two, Alex had to endure neglect, systematic abuse, and emotional, mental and physical starvation. As Alex developed into a young teenager, he encountered a hunger born entirely of instinct. Not so much a desire for food. Nor hunger for money or fame. What Alex hungered for the most was knowledge.
Entirely dismissing humans as untrustworthy and unreliable, Alex began to isolate himself in books, though many people, including myself at that time, tried to get close to him. Aloof, with no family or friends, Alex devoured books and educational media as if it were the air he needed to breathe. When approached he was cruel and sarcastic, making condescending remarks about those people’s intellect or making extremely intelligent and ruthlessly mean jokes that he believed were just outside the understanding of the person he was speaking with. Generally, Alex didn’t talk to his peers, and only when interrupted from some tasks or subject did he produce a sarcastic diatribe. His goal, conscious or not, was to keep people, who he considered distractions, as far away from him as possible. Few people knew Alex as I did during your youth, but one thing I knew of him was that he treated older people with incredible respect. He often seemed to develop friendships with those three or four times his age, as though they had something to teach him. Some tiny bit of wisdom to impart that he would find helpful. Maybe a historical subject or a way of fishing he hadn’t considered before. Alex wanted to know everything.
Many his age found him to be conceited and aloof. Some thought he might be brilliant, others thought he was pretending, and many thought he was just an asshole.
The truth is that Alex lived in a constant state of panic anxiety, drowning in the sea of type-two bipolar disorder. With the emotional development of a 10-year-old, He was unable to reach out and connect with anyone. Unable and unaware that his attachment values had not developed, Alex was driven by the need to know how to do and make everything. His subconscious would not allow him to stop learning how to find food or build shelters. He read volumes regarding Indigenous survival skills and techniques. Animal husbandry, hunting, fishing, trapping, building log cabins, engineering, farming and gardening, food preservation, foraging, cultivation, soil biology, botany, woodworking and cabinetry. Any skill that Alex thought would be useful to a person destined to live an isolated life in the wilderness, free of the bonds of money and reliance on others. Free of human connection.
By the time he was 15 years old, Alex had worked a full-time job stocking shelves during the night and attending high school during the day. His grades suffered from his lack of sleep, and by the last year, it was a struggle not to drop out. But one thing Alex could never be was a dropout. The idea hurt him more than any burn or cut. He graduated high school, trapped in an endless cycle of poverty. Alex could not proceed with post-secondary with no resources or community and went immediately into the daytime workforce.
Alex took a job in northern Albert, in a town called Mannville, two and a half hours outside Edmonton. In the frozen muskeg swamps of northern Alberta, Alex worked as a hydro-vac Swamper, using high-pressure steam and water to cut through the ice and expose damaged oil pipelines needing replacement or repair. Alex suffered from frostbite and almost lost his toes. He experienced truck accidents, ice bridges collapsing into lakes, and heatstroke from being confined inside oil rig mixing tanks while cleaning them. Alex, like his coworkers, was regularly treated for chemical and steam burns from the hydraulic drilling lubricant called invert. Even though he experienced sleep deprivation from working 20 to 30-hour shifts with minimal breaks, Alex was happy. Happier than he had ever been. He was making enough money to buy a rural home in five to ten years, maybe a decent truck and some good animals. He worked hard and was a sought-after resource in his field. No friends or family, no wife or children, Alex never took a vacation, never went home and never said no to work. He lived in the camp for three years before one day; his biological mother reached out to him wanting to meet.
Alex decided to take a two-week vacation and head down to The lower Mainland to meet his parents. The same two weeks, the oil field crash caught up with his company, Bulldog Hydrovac, and they laid off anyone who wasn’t on call or had a permanent residence within the hamlet of Mannville. The company barely survived after that, but Alex was 1500 kilometres away, with no home or job, and only his savings and his car(which he could not legally drive without a license). Finding himself in an apartment, searching for meaningful work, Alex struggled with self-worth, spending months refusing to take a job less than 20 dollars an hour, which of course, there were none. He burned away his entire savings. I genuinely believe he was holding out for his old career, as he sent them resumes, letters and emails about returning. He would never admit it, and he never got to return. Without a license, most other hydro-vac companies wouldn’t even consider him, and he had little experience working elsewhere. After his savings burned away, Alex was forced to move in with his estranged parents. His parents both struggled with drug addictions and had mental illness. It was a rocky relationship, to say it mildly. His parents introduced him to drugs he had otherwise avoided most of his life, and his own father introduced Alex to a professional sex worker, encouraging him to apprentice.
Alex went through several different low-paying jobs, some lasting months, others lasting years. But the one thing that kept coming into his mind was that time was passing faster and faster, and his dream of leaving society was becoming further and further out of reach. The magnitude of depression began to overpower his resilience.
At 22 years old, Rock bottom struck when Alex was placed on life support from severe alcohol poisoning. His doctors believed he would not see another morning. Binge drinking and minor alcohol poisoning had become common, along with making extra money as a male sex worker. Alex struggled to control his bipolar disorder and maintain daytime employment while on the verge of losing his home. Drinking had always been an effective tool for turning down the mental volume. But little did he realize it was just as effective at adversely impacting his mental health. Bipolar and alcohol don’t mix. Alex regularly avoided using most drugs by this point because he found the effect unpleasant or boring and preferred to consume alcohol.
Luckily enough, Alex did awaken the following evening with a torn esophagus and severely bruised abdomen from excessive puking and dry-heaving. After three days of recovery, he walked out of that hospital and never touched a drop of liquor again. He attended therapy for years and began stabilizing his own life, taking money management classes and rekindled his love of learning. He took up an obsessive interest in human psychology. Alex began dating. He had always had sexual partners but never committed himself to a partner long-term. Now he was dating and learning how to care about others the way he should have in early childhood. Alex met his first wife, and within three years, he had a beautiful daughter. Alex was and still is, working on his ability to express himself while supporting his stay-at-home wife and daughter. One day, Alex’s wife could no longer stand being at home alone while he was working, stuck watching TV, and taking care of their daughter. She left, leaving him and their 14-month-old baby behind. Alex spent so much time caring for his family, believing that even when he had no blood relatives, his little family was an oasis he had crafted with his own two hands. So when it fell apart, he was shocked and crushed, and it may have been the hardest blow of all, but with the new tools and knowledge he had attained, Alex took this life event as it was, stayed positive, frequently spoke with his therapist, and moved on. He says, “It was the best moment of my life, and I didn’t even notice.”
This was when he and I reconnected after years of on-and-off friendship. I had a daughter from my previous relationship, and he and I, over the years, began to rebuild our own little family by combining them. Both the children are ours together now. Sisters attached at the hip. Alex is my best friend. We have built one another up and have decided that we want to try this marriage thing again.
So while he works on obtaining his post-secondary education, I watch the girls, and while I obtain my post-secondary education, he does the same.
The Man Who Hated Everyone: Loves more than any person I’ve ever known, shows more patience than any I have ever met, and treats every person as though they are worthy of respect and have something important to teach him.
https://wtbbpod.buzzsprout.com/996916/7985374-things-will-get-different