This is not really a poem, its more of a story, novel, etc. This is just part of it. The beginning to be exact. Its supposed to continue, and hopefully I will continue writing this. This is my first attempt at writing anything except for college.
Basically this is sort of an autobiography, but people's names and country names, and university names, and other details have been changed, and altered in various ways. The general idea of this story is me coping with certain personal problems. Its kind of wishful thinking on my part, as a solution to my problem. Basically I'm supposed to be Michael. The other people all actually exist or existed, but their names are different.
It has a christian theme, indirectly, because Michael is supposed to be Christian and he has this complicate dilemma, and he makes the dishonest choice, because the honest choice is too painful.
Anyway, enjoy, or boo, whichever one you want, I'm just happy to share my inner most feelings with complete strangers as a coping mechanism for my insane life.
Mom, I married an Android
Michael was a smart guy, very smart, some would say too smart for his own good. This is probably the reason he was currently in his senior year at MIT for Mechanical Engineering, at the top of his class. But maybe not, maybe he was just lucky. Michael was also shy, and awkward. Those qualities usually come with being exceptionally bright. While his social skills were not the best, he was a very honest and moral person, and had it in him to be an excellent husband and father. “Then why can’t young women see that?” Michael asked himself. He asked himself many things, and in fact he talked to and mumbled to himself quite a bit. He never did this out loud; it was kind of just a bad habit. This habit was the result of loneliness, nothing more, and nothing less.
It was safe to say that Michael was lonely. He had no siblings, very few friends, and his family consisted of his mother and grandparents. Oh his mother. She was the root of so many of his problems. Not to say that his mother is a bad person, quite the contrary, she tried her absolute best to be a good mother, and had the best of intentions, but boy did she mess up his life, and created so many comedic possibilities, both comedic, and sad, but more on this later.
Michael was born in the late 1980’s in the Eastern European country of Belarus. Back then, the USSR had just collapsed, and his country was in a state of anarchy. Capitalism had come, finally. But give capitalism to people who were used to totalitarian communism, and you get crime, violence, and poverty. Add to this the horrific aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, and you understand why in 1993, Michael’s family decided to immigrate to the United States. They were Jewish refugees, like so many Russian immigrants during this time. Michael completed first grade in Belarus and was fluent in Russian. He also did math at a 5[SUP]th[/SUP] grade level, and built model rockets in his soviet apartment block yard, all at the age of 6. This was the reason why Michael’s grandfather Benjamin recommended that they move to Boston Massachusetts, in hopes that someday Michael can attend MIT.
Moving to a new country was difficult and exciting for Michael, and his whole family. On the one hand, life in America was so much better. There were supermarkets, convenience stores; practically anyone could buy a car and house. If you worked hard enough, you could achieve anything, very different from life in former USSR, where the only way to achieve something was to know the right people or be a child of a politician. On the other hand, Michael knew literally three words in English, “hello”, “goodbye”, and “banana”. The latter, was Michael’s favorite fruit.
Michael had a hard time in school, especially in non-math related courses. Even science courses required language skills. Math is the only truly universal language. Kids teased Michael a lot. Its uncertain, whether it’s because he knew almost no English, he was overweight, or he was a geek, probably all three. Either way, Michael was unhappy.
When he got home, he did his math homework in about 5 minutes, and then proceeded to learn English. He took special classes for immigrant kids. One would think that he will make some friends with fellow Russian immigrant kids, but nope, as luck would have it, none of his classmates spoke Russian. If Michael was more social, this would not matter. He would make friends with Chinese or French kids and talk in the few words of broken English they all knew. But Michael was not social. He was introverted and shy, and hence he had no friends. But he didn’t want them anyway. His best friend was always at home waiting for him, his grandfather Benjamin.
Michael had no father. Well, at one point he did have a father, for about nine weeks, but lets just say that his father was not the best person in the world, and only a few months after Michael was born, his parents got divorced. His father was so indifferent and self-centered, that he never even visited Michael in the hospital when he was born. Michael saw his father only once, and since he was two weeks old at the time, let’s assume Michael never met his father. Michael’s mother was a single parent, and this caused her to become extremely overprotective, angry, and depressed. She treated Michael like a baby, even when he was in his teens. She definitely spoiled him a little. If it wasn’t for his grandfather Benjamin, Michael would definitely grow up to be a sissy.
His grandfather Benjamin was a classic daredevil and rebel. He was a cosmonaut (astronaut), civilian pilot, test pilot, motorcycle racer, served in World War 2, and etc. He was a jack of all trades, and all without a college diploma. Self-taught. He could literally fix anything, and build anything. Without a question, it was Benjamin who inspired Michael to become an engineer. Michael always had the talent for math and science within him, but it took Benjamin to get it out. When Michael was four years old, his grandfather taught him the multiplication table. They did science experiments together, built model rockets, and explored old Soviet cities. His grandfather taught him about politics and history, and told him to choose his own religion or lack thereof when Michael grew up and was old enough to understand. Needless to say, Michael and his grandfather were very close.
For years after moving to America, Michael and his family lived in an apartment building in Boston. Eventually Michael learned English, and had straight A’s in English, as well as Math. Yet somehow Michael never made any friends. It was always very hard for him. He was always very different from most kids his age. Most kids were into sports, Michael was an overweight nerd who played with model rockets, and documented the lunar eclipse with his telescope. His grandfather tried to get him to exercise more, but his grandfather’s age and health got in the way. Benjamin was just too tired to force a fat nerdy kid to play sports. That task is practically impossible anyway.
As far as girls are concerned, forget it, Michael never had any luck in that area. This was sad, especially since Michael was a good looking kid, he was just slightly overweight and shy, and lacked confidence. But the very idea of girls judging him by his outer appearance rather than his soul and intellect made him cringe. Michael was a deep kid. He read many books, lots of philosophy, classic literature, and etc. His whole life was in his head. As far as he was concerned, he had a beautiful soul, if a girl can’t see that, forget her, that was how he thought. There was this one girl in 8[SUP]th[/SUP] grade. Her name was Anna. She was sweet and as geeky as Michael himself. She memorized the entire works of William Shakespeare for fun. She was an artist and poet. Michael definitely liked her. But again his confidence failed him. He thought of talking to her, but going home and programming his computer was easier, so that’s what he did.
So this is how Michael lived, alone, reclusive, mumbling to himself, solving his little equations. He wanted to be the next Einstein. Then high school happened. Hell on earth. Take the way in which kids abuse each other in elementary and middle school, and multiply it by infinity, squared. This is how bad high school was for Michael. From day one kids messed with him, in every way imaginable: insults, punches, stealing his underwear during swim class, and etc. And the worst was girls. Imagine being a teenager and your body forcing you to reproduce, while you either don’t want to, or can’t. And the insults from girls, those were the worst. Remember that Michael cringed at superficiality, well take every superficial and petty insult you can imagine and throw it at Michael from a giant cannon at the speed of sound from the mouths of pretty girls. Yea Michael was depressed, very depressed. He got so depressed that his grades began to suffer. He tried to isolate himself even more, treating every day in high school like a war zone, and counting the days until graduation. Then it happened, the worst thing that could happen to Michael did, his best friend died.
His grandfather was in his 80s at the time, and was ill for years. It was just old age, nothing you can do, we are all mortal. After his grandfather’s death, Michael was in a very dark place. He was 16 and lost his male role model. His whole family now consisted of his mother and grandmother. His grandmother Deborah was a great lady. Michael was very close to her, as well as to his grandfather. Deborah was a sweet quiet old lady. She was also very talented and made clothes for rich people back in the day, she could literally do anything with a needle and thread.
His mother Irina was a former schoolteacher. She was a very nice person, but her divorce, in addition to being a single parent and immigrant to a new country had affected her character quite a bit. Irina became irritable, cynical, jaded, reclusive, depressed, overprotective of Michael, controlling, and treated Michael like her missing husband rather than a son. When his grandfather died, his mother’s psychological issues went into overdrive. Michael was very close to his mother, after all she did a lot for him, and even spoiled him, he had to do everything in his power to help her. And sad to say, his mother began to abuse the fact.
It began when his mother asked Michael to get a job to support the family when he was 16. That seemed reasonable. Michael would love a job related to science, his excellent academic record will surely help him. But no, his mom found a boring mailroom job, after all it has benefits, sounds reasonable. Michael was miserable, but he was a responsible adult so he did it. He ended up doing that job for 8 years. Michael did not want to hurt his mother’s feelings and was constantly tricked and manipulated into staying every time he wanted to quit. His mother’s rationale for Michael not trying to get a temporary science related job seemed reasonable enough, “although if she would only take a little risk for once in her life”, Michael said. “Okay fine”. And so began a long sequence of settling and appeasing his mother. He felt like its his duty to help his mother and grandmother. The ultimate result was this. It was 2008, Michael was 25. He had just entered his freshmen year at MIT, living with his mother, her having total control of his finances and his every breath, working every weekend while doing an engineering major at MIT, having no social life, depressed, lonely, sad, constant thoughts of suicide. Yea. Not fun.
But wait, Michael was doing so well originally. He had excellent grades, how did he not go to college until he was 25? You guessed it, the death of his grandfather, constant bullying in high school, and his controlling mother made Michael so depressed that he barely graduated high school. The kid had it in him to become the next Einstein or Tesla, and look what happened. Sad. After high school, Michael had attended community college for years, constantly dropping classes due to depression. Eventually a certain religious experience when he was 20 caused Michael to partially leave his depression behind and graduate from community college 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] in his class. This gave him the boost to make it to MIT. But this religious experience can be saved for another time, in another story.
So here Michael was, depressed, no friends, alone, controlled and manipulated by his well-meaning mother due to her own psychological issues. The guy was 25, and he never had a girl-friend. You bet he wanted one. Heck he just wanted a friend even. The last 10 years of his life were nothing but emptiness and depression. There came a certain day when Michael said, “Enough!!! Either something changes, or I no longer want to live”.
So here was Michael’s dilemma, the only way he would be happy was to escape his mother’s unhealthy controlling behavior. He understood that his mother was that way because of her own psychological problems, not because she was a bad person. He felt responsible to take care of his mother and grandmother after his grandfather’s death. He did not want to abandon them. But the only way his mother said he could ever move out was if he got married. Oh of course Michael can just get up and walk out the door. This would result in his mother and grandmother never speaking to him again. Sadly this was an option he considered. But this would be the most desperate option. Something better must be tried first. Then it struck him, the idea. It seemed absurd, and even dishonest and wrong. But somehow it seemed less wrong than walking out the door.
It all started in MIT’s robotics club. Michael had finally found a group of people that understood him. He even began to make some friends, a miracle in itself. They were all epic nerds. They spent their days programming, soldering, eating pizza, and drinking beer. They designed and built robots capable of exploring mars, in between watching videos on the internet and playing World of Warcraft. A bunch of introverted, reclusive, and misunderstood geniuses. Sure they smelled a little bad, Michael always took a shower daily. Sure they wore clothes that needed to be thrown out 5 years ago, Michael loved his suit and tie. But okay these people were cool, for sure.
So one day, a nerd at the robotics club asked Michael, “Hey dude why are you so depressed all the time?”. Michael explained his situation with his family. After a 20 minute procession of laughter about Michael living with his parents at 25, which Michael did not appreciate, the nerd said, “Dude, you should totally build an android girlfriend for yourself, and tell your mom you are getting married. You seen those Japanese androids, they look so life like, they could easily fool anyone. We could totally get the materials for one of those”. Michael thought about it, and thought this idea is insane enough to work.
“Sure, it could definitely fool a non-technical person like my mother”. Michael still felt guilty about doing this. It was lying after all. A pretty serious lie too. But was his mother’s behavior fair to him? Was being under her complete control financially and otherwise at 25 years old fair to him? Will any sane and normal girl want to date him when she finds out about his insane helicopter mom? “No! Of course not!” “I have to do this. It’s a bad solution to a bad situation, but she left me no choice, other than walk out and never talk to her again”. “Mom, I married an android”.
Basically this is sort of an autobiography, but people's names and country names, and university names, and other details have been changed, and altered in various ways. The general idea of this story is me coping with certain personal problems. Its kind of wishful thinking on my part, as a solution to my problem. Basically I'm supposed to be Michael. The other people all actually exist or existed, but their names are different.
It has a christian theme, indirectly, because Michael is supposed to be Christian and he has this complicate dilemma, and he makes the dishonest choice, because the honest choice is too painful.
Anyway, enjoy, or boo, whichever one you want, I'm just happy to share my inner most feelings with complete strangers as a coping mechanism for my insane life.
Mom, I married an Android
Michael was a smart guy, very smart, some would say too smart for his own good. This is probably the reason he was currently in his senior year at MIT for Mechanical Engineering, at the top of his class. But maybe not, maybe he was just lucky. Michael was also shy, and awkward. Those qualities usually come with being exceptionally bright. While his social skills were not the best, he was a very honest and moral person, and had it in him to be an excellent husband and father. “Then why can’t young women see that?” Michael asked himself. He asked himself many things, and in fact he talked to and mumbled to himself quite a bit. He never did this out loud; it was kind of just a bad habit. This habit was the result of loneliness, nothing more, and nothing less.
It was safe to say that Michael was lonely. He had no siblings, very few friends, and his family consisted of his mother and grandparents. Oh his mother. She was the root of so many of his problems. Not to say that his mother is a bad person, quite the contrary, she tried her absolute best to be a good mother, and had the best of intentions, but boy did she mess up his life, and created so many comedic possibilities, both comedic, and sad, but more on this later.
Michael was born in the late 1980’s in the Eastern European country of Belarus. Back then, the USSR had just collapsed, and his country was in a state of anarchy. Capitalism had come, finally. But give capitalism to people who were used to totalitarian communism, and you get crime, violence, and poverty. Add to this the horrific aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, and you understand why in 1993, Michael’s family decided to immigrate to the United States. They were Jewish refugees, like so many Russian immigrants during this time. Michael completed first grade in Belarus and was fluent in Russian. He also did math at a 5[SUP]th[/SUP] grade level, and built model rockets in his soviet apartment block yard, all at the age of 6. This was the reason why Michael’s grandfather Benjamin recommended that they move to Boston Massachusetts, in hopes that someday Michael can attend MIT.
Moving to a new country was difficult and exciting for Michael, and his whole family. On the one hand, life in America was so much better. There were supermarkets, convenience stores; practically anyone could buy a car and house. If you worked hard enough, you could achieve anything, very different from life in former USSR, where the only way to achieve something was to know the right people or be a child of a politician. On the other hand, Michael knew literally three words in English, “hello”, “goodbye”, and “banana”. The latter, was Michael’s favorite fruit.
Michael had a hard time in school, especially in non-math related courses. Even science courses required language skills. Math is the only truly universal language. Kids teased Michael a lot. Its uncertain, whether it’s because he knew almost no English, he was overweight, or he was a geek, probably all three. Either way, Michael was unhappy.
When he got home, he did his math homework in about 5 minutes, and then proceeded to learn English. He took special classes for immigrant kids. One would think that he will make some friends with fellow Russian immigrant kids, but nope, as luck would have it, none of his classmates spoke Russian. If Michael was more social, this would not matter. He would make friends with Chinese or French kids and talk in the few words of broken English they all knew. But Michael was not social. He was introverted and shy, and hence he had no friends. But he didn’t want them anyway. His best friend was always at home waiting for him, his grandfather Benjamin.
Michael had no father. Well, at one point he did have a father, for about nine weeks, but lets just say that his father was not the best person in the world, and only a few months after Michael was born, his parents got divorced. His father was so indifferent and self-centered, that he never even visited Michael in the hospital when he was born. Michael saw his father only once, and since he was two weeks old at the time, let’s assume Michael never met his father. Michael’s mother was a single parent, and this caused her to become extremely overprotective, angry, and depressed. She treated Michael like a baby, even when he was in his teens. She definitely spoiled him a little. If it wasn’t for his grandfather Benjamin, Michael would definitely grow up to be a sissy.
His grandfather Benjamin was a classic daredevil and rebel. He was a cosmonaut (astronaut), civilian pilot, test pilot, motorcycle racer, served in World War 2, and etc. He was a jack of all trades, and all without a college diploma. Self-taught. He could literally fix anything, and build anything. Without a question, it was Benjamin who inspired Michael to become an engineer. Michael always had the talent for math and science within him, but it took Benjamin to get it out. When Michael was four years old, his grandfather taught him the multiplication table. They did science experiments together, built model rockets, and explored old Soviet cities. His grandfather taught him about politics and history, and told him to choose his own religion or lack thereof when Michael grew up and was old enough to understand. Needless to say, Michael and his grandfather were very close.
For years after moving to America, Michael and his family lived in an apartment building in Boston. Eventually Michael learned English, and had straight A’s in English, as well as Math. Yet somehow Michael never made any friends. It was always very hard for him. He was always very different from most kids his age. Most kids were into sports, Michael was an overweight nerd who played with model rockets, and documented the lunar eclipse with his telescope. His grandfather tried to get him to exercise more, but his grandfather’s age and health got in the way. Benjamin was just too tired to force a fat nerdy kid to play sports. That task is practically impossible anyway.
As far as girls are concerned, forget it, Michael never had any luck in that area. This was sad, especially since Michael was a good looking kid, he was just slightly overweight and shy, and lacked confidence. But the very idea of girls judging him by his outer appearance rather than his soul and intellect made him cringe. Michael was a deep kid. He read many books, lots of philosophy, classic literature, and etc. His whole life was in his head. As far as he was concerned, he had a beautiful soul, if a girl can’t see that, forget her, that was how he thought. There was this one girl in 8[SUP]th[/SUP] grade. Her name was Anna. She was sweet and as geeky as Michael himself. She memorized the entire works of William Shakespeare for fun. She was an artist and poet. Michael definitely liked her. But again his confidence failed him. He thought of talking to her, but going home and programming his computer was easier, so that’s what he did.
So this is how Michael lived, alone, reclusive, mumbling to himself, solving his little equations. He wanted to be the next Einstein. Then high school happened. Hell on earth. Take the way in which kids abuse each other in elementary and middle school, and multiply it by infinity, squared. This is how bad high school was for Michael. From day one kids messed with him, in every way imaginable: insults, punches, stealing his underwear during swim class, and etc. And the worst was girls. Imagine being a teenager and your body forcing you to reproduce, while you either don’t want to, or can’t. And the insults from girls, those were the worst. Remember that Michael cringed at superficiality, well take every superficial and petty insult you can imagine and throw it at Michael from a giant cannon at the speed of sound from the mouths of pretty girls. Yea Michael was depressed, very depressed. He got so depressed that his grades began to suffer. He tried to isolate himself even more, treating every day in high school like a war zone, and counting the days until graduation. Then it happened, the worst thing that could happen to Michael did, his best friend died.
His grandfather was in his 80s at the time, and was ill for years. It was just old age, nothing you can do, we are all mortal. After his grandfather’s death, Michael was in a very dark place. He was 16 and lost his male role model. His whole family now consisted of his mother and grandmother. His grandmother Deborah was a great lady. Michael was very close to her, as well as to his grandfather. Deborah was a sweet quiet old lady. She was also very talented and made clothes for rich people back in the day, she could literally do anything with a needle and thread.
His mother Irina was a former schoolteacher. She was a very nice person, but her divorce, in addition to being a single parent and immigrant to a new country had affected her character quite a bit. Irina became irritable, cynical, jaded, reclusive, depressed, overprotective of Michael, controlling, and treated Michael like her missing husband rather than a son. When his grandfather died, his mother’s psychological issues went into overdrive. Michael was very close to his mother, after all she did a lot for him, and even spoiled him, he had to do everything in his power to help her. And sad to say, his mother began to abuse the fact.
It began when his mother asked Michael to get a job to support the family when he was 16. That seemed reasonable. Michael would love a job related to science, his excellent academic record will surely help him. But no, his mom found a boring mailroom job, after all it has benefits, sounds reasonable. Michael was miserable, but he was a responsible adult so he did it. He ended up doing that job for 8 years. Michael did not want to hurt his mother’s feelings and was constantly tricked and manipulated into staying every time he wanted to quit. His mother’s rationale for Michael not trying to get a temporary science related job seemed reasonable enough, “although if she would only take a little risk for once in her life”, Michael said. “Okay fine”. And so began a long sequence of settling and appeasing his mother. He felt like its his duty to help his mother and grandmother. The ultimate result was this. It was 2008, Michael was 25. He had just entered his freshmen year at MIT, living with his mother, her having total control of his finances and his every breath, working every weekend while doing an engineering major at MIT, having no social life, depressed, lonely, sad, constant thoughts of suicide. Yea. Not fun.
But wait, Michael was doing so well originally. He had excellent grades, how did he not go to college until he was 25? You guessed it, the death of his grandfather, constant bullying in high school, and his controlling mother made Michael so depressed that he barely graduated high school. The kid had it in him to become the next Einstein or Tesla, and look what happened. Sad. After high school, Michael had attended community college for years, constantly dropping classes due to depression. Eventually a certain religious experience when he was 20 caused Michael to partially leave his depression behind and graduate from community college 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] in his class. This gave him the boost to make it to MIT. But this religious experience can be saved for another time, in another story.
So here Michael was, depressed, no friends, alone, controlled and manipulated by his well-meaning mother due to her own psychological issues. The guy was 25, and he never had a girl-friend. You bet he wanted one. Heck he just wanted a friend even. The last 10 years of his life were nothing but emptiness and depression. There came a certain day when Michael said, “Enough!!! Either something changes, or I no longer want to live”.
So here was Michael’s dilemma, the only way he would be happy was to escape his mother’s unhealthy controlling behavior. He understood that his mother was that way because of her own psychological problems, not because she was a bad person. He felt responsible to take care of his mother and grandmother after his grandfather’s death. He did not want to abandon them. But the only way his mother said he could ever move out was if he got married. Oh of course Michael can just get up and walk out the door. This would result in his mother and grandmother never speaking to him again. Sadly this was an option he considered. But this would be the most desperate option. Something better must be tried first. Then it struck him, the idea. It seemed absurd, and even dishonest and wrong. But somehow it seemed less wrong than walking out the door.
It all started in MIT’s robotics club. Michael had finally found a group of people that understood him. He even began to make some friends, a miracle in itself. They were all epic nerds. They spent their days programming, soldering, eating pizza, and drinking beer. They designed and built robots capable of exploring mars, in between watching videos on the internet and playing World of Warcraft. A bunch of introverted, reclusive, and misunderstood geniuses. Sure they smelled a little bad, Michael always took a shower daily. Sure they wore clothes that needed to be thrown out 5 years ago, Michael loved his suit and tie. But okay these people were cool, for sure.
So one day, a nerd at the robotics club asked Michael, “Hey dude why are you so depressed all the time?”. Michael explained his situation with his family. After a 20 minute procession of laughter about Michael living with his parents at 25, which Michael did not appreciate, the nerd said, “Dude, you should totally build an android girlfriend for yourself, and tell your mom you are getting married. You seen those Japanese androids, they look so life like, they could easily fool anyone. We could totally get the materials for one of those”. Michael thought about it, and thought this idea is insane enough to work.
“Sure, it could definitely fool a non-technical person like my mother”. Michael still felt guilty about doing this. It was lying after all. A pretty serious lie too. But was his mother’s behavior fair to him? Was being under her complete control financially and otherwise at 25 years old fair to him? Will any sane and normal girl want to date him when she finds out about his insane helicopter mom? “No! Of course not!” “I have to do this. It’s a bad solution to a bad situation, but she left me no choice, other than walk out and never talk to her again”. “Mom, I married an android”.
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