The Long Road Parts 7 to 9
Part 7
Strange Doctrine
I found this web site full of documents, pictures and media from the COG that is freely available on the net.
Heaven and the End of the World
I’ve mentioned previously that we all thought that the world was going to end at any time and that we were living in the dying years of the world as we knew it. “The End Time was nigh”!! The idea was that there would be an apocalypse in line with what is described in the book of Revelations in the Bible.
We were all going to be hunted by the 666 soldiers and they described things in quite gruesome detail. There were depictions of groups of us huddled together in the middle of a frozen lake after the 666 soldiers had stripped everyone naked and we were all dying one by one. It showed one young man cracking and denouncing Jesus and he was given a warm coat and became one of ‘them’ but everyone else held firm and died on the ice. Men women and children alike. In the recorded tapes there was actual audio plays of this happening and a little girl telling her Dad that she was “cold, so cold”. All of this was to put fear in our very core so that we would stay away from and reject everything in the outside world. There were entire series of stories about it. This link https://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Heaven%27s_Girl will take you to a whole page on the series called ‘Heavens Girl’ and it is not safe for children.
So after heaps of us had died and been persecuted for being true believers, finally Jesus would return with the horsemen and we would be taken up to heaven with him while everyone else on earth were cleansed.
Now you need to sit down for this bit!!! So heaven was an actual place that was inside a Pyramid, inside a protective Sphere, that was hidden inside the moon and there were many posters drawn that we used to sell for 2 Rupees that showed it all. Inside the Sphere it was like an amusement park and there were people flying around everywhere with see through clothes on, having sex next to pools and laying on massive sofas watching Jesus TV on hologram TV’s. It was like an amusement park with all these different installations that you could visit depending on what you were into or what you wanted to see. Nuts, just nuts.
The idea was that we would then return to Earth after everyone had been handed their judgement and each of us would be “Kings and Queens” of the Earth. We would each be given areas to rule over and that’s where they mixed some Bible shit in there as well with the 1000 years of Peace when the Lion would lay down with the Lamb and there would be Peace on Earth. Sounds totally awesome except that you had to get fucked up by the 666 Soldiers first!
The end of the world was supposed to come in 1993 as per his Prophesy. As it got closer and closer (early 1987), he released an update to his Prophesy called “What If”!!! Basically he knew that his shit story wasn’t going to happen and he was going to start losing the faith of his followers if what he said didn’t come true. I was shattered by this because we spent hour after hour learning all about what was going to happen, preparing for the end of the world that was imminent and now all of a sudden he was backing out. I had my 11 year old Bullshit radar going off big time and was very disenchanted with the whole thing as if I needed further convincing!
This came out when we were living in a commune on Satellite Rd not sure what Indian city and there was this American family there as well. Finally, there was a boy who was my age, and we would hang out and talk for ages. Dad was always sus on what we were talking about and he should have been! We would spend hours planning how to escape from India back to our relatives back home. I was going to run away and call my Auntie in Sydney and he was going to call his Grandma in America. We both agreed that they would definitely send us enough money to get back home and when we were there we were going to work and save up to get the rest of our brothers and sisters out.
He told me about Michael Jackson and that was the only bit of Western culture info I had to hold on to! He wore those funny perforated tops that stopped at the midriff even for boys! He was so cool to me! I think I ended up with a pair of his shoes as part of the ‘forsake all’ thing!
There were teachings about Demons and Angels and there were, again, some very disturbing depictions that after my little brother read about them, wet the bed and had nightmares for weeks. There was so much fear and tension. There was a battle going on constantly in the Spirit world in which angels and demons were at war. God was always watching you and if you stubbed your toe or something then it was God punishing you for an impure thought or something.
We spent countless hours learning about the Statue of Babylon and all the different periods of history that each part of the body depicted. The head was Babylon then there was Persia and Greece etc etc and the feet were Rome.
Revolutions
We were always going through some sort of Revolution like the “Honesty Revolution” or something and everyone would change their names again and be re born on the other side of the Revolution. Dad was the leader of one of the Homes and he had everyone sitting in the living room naked to show that we had nothing to hide. Everyone had to get up one by one, stand in front of everyone in the nude and confess his or her sinful thoughts. So let’s forget for a second that you were naked, but you had to be careful what you confessed. If it was too intense or bad, you’d get flogged for it. If it was too bland then you thought you were pretty pure and very close to God and proud = not very humble and so would be flogged and put in your place to be taught a lesson for being proud. This was a common problem for me because I am a very proud individual who has a great deal of self-respect and even then, that showed and I copped a lot of grief over that particular character trait. But I still wouldn’t trade it for the world as it’s exactly what saved me. Fight for your spirit people…
It wasn’t uncommon to have your pants pulled down in front of the whole house and get spanked in front of everyone. Like I said, stay fucking strong and fight for your spirit beautiful people. Fear and victimisation only has so much energy and you need to have more. Fuck’em.
We didn’t get to celebrate Easter like normal and we would have to spend the whole time reflecting on the sacrifice of Jesus and how he died for our sins. The Bible study time would be stepped up and we might get to paint some boiled eggs or something. Similar with Christmas. We didn’t have any money anyway so there was nothing to be had and to be perfectly honest I can’t remember any of the Christmas’ the whole time we lived in India. I do remember the New Year because we’d all stay up with a lit candle and pray the new year in… Lame man, Lame…
The odd thing is that even though the whole group was based on Christianity, studying the actual Bible was discouraged. Mostly because it would make you question the teachings of the “Mo Letters”. He had taken verses of the Bible out of context to justify his ideas and didn’t want people making up their own interpretation of the Bible. Dad famously sent a scathing letter to some of our family friends that were in the group rebuking them for reading the Bible and challenging the Mo Letters. His letter to them made them decide to leave the group and when we net them again in Australia on the other side of us all leaving they joked about how awesome it was that he’d sent it because it got them out!
These ‘Mo Letters’ would be stored in trunks with locks on them and hidden in the house so that if the Police came, they wouldn’t be found. We had to burn many of the instructional letters we were sent via mail. All of this added to the dramatics of the whole situation as though you were top-secret Jesus soldiers and were going to be at war at any moment. I still find myself needing to be ‘ready for anything’ to this very day. Not a bad outcome really but I wish it was founded on something more wholesome!
The Great Escape
We had only just moved into a new Home mid 1987 and we were going to be living with a Family that I was very fond of, (They now live in the San Francisco area and in our own special way, I am friends with some of them to this day), so I was really looking forward to it. We’d been there for maybe a week as everyone was only getting settled in.
We had 4 odd Budgies in a cage that we’d bought for very cheap.
We were told to stay in the bedroom during the Morning Prayer Meeting, which was very unusual.
Mum and Dad came back into the room and Mum told me that I was going to have to give my Budgies to the other families in the house. I started crying straight away saying “Why, why”, because we rarely had anything that we cared about or were allowed to ‘keep’, and I loved the birds. She said, “Don’t worry, we’re going to a place where there are lots of Budgies”. That stopped me in my tracks and I remember it as if it were yesterday. I thought “Right, game on”. We quickly gathered our things and raced downstairs to two Rickshaws that Dad had hailed and had waiting. We all scrambled into the Rickshaws and escaped. They had to do it quickly or we would have been surrounded by leaders of the other homes and it would have been chaos. Strangely, I remember leaving behind this stupid bloody type writer that we’d dragged all around India for years for some reason and that was a big deal!
Next thing I remember is we’re in a hotel in Bombay waiting for the day of our flight home. We went walking in the streets and Mum bought some last minute things knowing we weren’t going to be back. I bought a little wooden elephant for 8 Rupees that I still have sitting on my bed head to this day. As an act of rebellion, Mum bought my brother and I pocket knives because we would never have been allowed to have them in the group.
Little did I know, but the Olds had been planning this move for about 6 months. Hiding money, getting money from Mum’s Dad in Australia, selling cameras and VHS players, talking on the balcony about what they would do. While Mum and all us kids had Malaria and Typhoid and were in Quarantine, Dad was being flogged for performance, as he didn’t have us to worry about. He finally figured out that no matter what he did, or how hard he tried, it was never enough. This realisation as well as the fact that they thought that if they stayed in India any longer one of us were going to die. Then there was the other fact that I was nearly 12 and all the kids turning 12 at the time were being shipped off to Thailand or Japan into ‘End Time Teen Training Camps’ and they’d lose me. Now I am eternally grateful for this, as the reports from these Camps are horrendous and as I didn’t experience them personally, I won’t write about them but there is material out there if you look for it. May peace come to those who had to endure such things.
Paul and Joy, (COG Names), two of the very high up leaders of the group in India, came to the Hotel Lobby to try and talk the Olds into staying but they wouldn’t be swayed. My brother and I played with our pocket knives in front of them just to spite them! Small victories ay? He was a horrible man and we’d known them in Australia before we went to India as well. He eventually came back to Australia and was one of the senior leaders then as well. When the cops came to our house at the time of the raids in Sydney and Melbourne in the early 90’s, they had a photo of Paul and when they turned the page to his face it made Mum slump in her chair and take a gasp of air and couldn’t talk for a while. They may as well be Satan incarnate to me, only Satan would be way more awesome…
While we were at the Hotel in India we nearly ended up on a Bollywood film which Dad was trying to wrangle for some extra money!
The flight back to Australia was horrible. We’d only driven in 1 car the whole time we lived in India. The rest of the time it was trains and busses and the motion sickness got us big time. I must have thrown up 15 odd times and the lovely Hostess was giving me chocolate which tasted like it came from the angels themselves after lentils and rice for years but it was so rich that it was making me even sicker so I couldn’t eat it.
We came from the Indian summer with temps in the low 40’s (degrees C) to Sydney in winter with temps in single digits and we froze. We were all huddled around this little heater in my Aunties house and she took us out and bought us a track suit each! My Auntie was like an angel to me and I love her to bits. She would send us birthday presents like action figures and it may not have seemed like much to her but it was the world to us. She is amazing.
The other weird thing about being back in Australia was that it seemed so empty. My little sister said once when we were crossing the road, “where are all the people?”. The cars moved so fast, there were no animals on the roads and there were no people! I remember freaking out the first time we went to a supermarket because we’d been taught that you had to scan your 666 barcode on the back of your hand to buy groceries but that was nowhere to be seen…
Coming Back to Australia
So after all the madness and living under pretty extreme conditions, we ended up in Canberra! Crisp, clean, spacious, organised, clinical Canberra. I was enrolled into Evatt Primary for the last term of Yr 6, which would bring my grand total of time spent at Primary school to 1 Yr, yay! I was 11 and it was 1987. We had nothing and St Vincent De Paul gave us mattresses, bedding, clothes, a tiny shoe box sized black and white TV, cutlery, plates, pots and pans and boxes of food. We went into The Smith Family and after Mum spoke to them about our situation, we were allowed to get anything we wanted to wear from the whole store and even get a toy if we wanted. I was a bit hardened and was well above toys by that stage but the little kids loved it. So remember beautiful people, give to charities if you can because you never know what it’s going to mean to someone with nothing.
So I rock up to my first day at school in Yr 6 last term with my second hand out fit made up of a yellow skivvy tucked into my tracksuit pants and worn shoes. Everyone else had known each other for ages and I had this strange accent because after a Canadian Father, NZ, Australia, India and then living mostly with Germans, French and Americans, I was a mixed bag. I didn’t know who the PM of the country was or any of the pop stars. I could barely do maths but could read and write years above my grade and I could sing and play guitar like no one knew!
Because I was so keen to learn, I won the affection and efforts of my very lovely teacher. She was very thin and didn’t have any children of her own. I wish I knew her name or could find her again because she was one of the most significant people who helped me during an extremely fragile period of my life. I’m currently sitting in a pub writing this and the very thought of how good she was to me has brought me to tears! Sorry everyone!!!
She would stay back and help me with my maths. I remember her saying what a surprise I was when we did our first music lesson and I picked a guitar up, tuned it and then belted out a song no one had ever heard before. “You are a complete mystery Joey” she said. At the end of the year there was the graduation to High School and she got me to cut the Yr 6 cake. I remember all the kids getting upset because they all said that someone who had been there since Kindy should be the one to cut it but I think she knew I had years and years to catch up on… what a wonderful woman. The Yr 6 camp came along and I didn’t get my hopes up because I knew we couldn’t afford the money for me to go and I remember telling her that I couldn’t go and no sooner as the words left my lips, she said, “We’ll see about that! We’ll work something out!”. I still reckon she paid for me herself but either way I got to go. We went to Kangaroo Valley for 3 or 4 days and the other kids were complaining about the food being horrible but I thought it was absolutely amazing.
There was a school disco and Dad came along to supervise and wore ear plugs because the music was too loud… I was so embarrassed. The kids did some performances and the main song was “You’re the Voice” by John Farnham and I so wanted to be the kid who got to sing the lead but they’d been practicing the whole year for it.
So you don’t need a very active imagination to think what it was like for me to come from a life where you were very nearly having sex with girls of all different ages to going into Yr 6 in Australia. I was terrified and just held back and watched what everyone else did. The girls were swooning over pics of their favourite pop stars in magazines saying how hot they were and I just had to smile and wave. I had a girl who chased me into my room on the Yr 6 camp and I just didn’t know what to do. They were just at closed mouth kissing stage, like little pecks, I didn’t know what to do…. I couldn’t relate to any of them.
Add to all that, the Olds decided to start going to Church. Next thing you know we’re learning that you can’t have sex until you get married and that lustful thoughts are sinful. Like fuck…. Really? Fuck me. I was put in Sunday school with a heap of Christian kids that were straight as a ruler. Talk about feeling out of place! These girls didn’t even want to hold hands, let alone kiss! And can you imagine what they would have thought of me if I’d told them what I’d lived through. I felt like a complete alien. That’s some extremely fucked up shit right there.
The olds told our story to a couple in the church who then stopped talking to them and they didn’t get the reaction hey expected. So we were all brought together for a family chat and told that we couldn’t tell anyone anything about what we’d been doing or the COG. We were told to say that we were in India as missionaries helping schools with teaching material.
I went to Yr 7 at Lyneham High in 1988 and I really started loving it. I had a couple of friends and even though the one I told a bit of my story to couldn’t handle it and called me “Cult Boy” it was pretty good. I joined a band with 2 other yr 7 boys and a yr 9’er (Stumpy). I started growing my hair long and everything!! I had a couple of girl friends who wouldn’t even hold my hand which I thought was pretty funny. They had their friends ask me if I wanted to “Go Out” and then they stayed away from me completely till they “Dropped” me because we didn’t do anything!!!! Such a spin out!
At the end of Yr 7 the Olds told me they were going to take me out of Lyneham High and send me to O’Connor Christian School, I was so angry and really tried to fight that off. They said that I was going off the rails and they were worried about the band I was in. I was crying in the dining room while they were telling me this and I was replying with, “I’ve finally made some friends, I finally feel a little bit normal, and now you’re going to move me again”. I was so angry. I was in the Badminton team and everything. I had to buy my own racket ($14) and it was like a lead balloon because it was so cheap, I won the under 13’s doubles state Gold with my friend Matt.
Anyway, Dad won again as usual and I was made to cut my hair and go to O’Connor Christian School for Yr’s 8 to 10. Only good thing that came out of that was my good friend Mark M. The man! When Dad made me cut my hair I was sitting outside crying again and very angry. Mum was over me with the scissors and he was standing there saying, “If you don’t let her cut it, I’ll do it myself.” It was that point that made me decide that everything I’d been taught was shit, my parents were ridiculous and that I had to start from scratch. When they were telling me about their decision to move me to the Christian School I said to them, “Everything I’ve learned so far in my life has been a waste, everything you’ve taught me was wrong and my whole life has been a waste. Nothing we lived for is right and I’m going to have to start from scratch”. I remember the discussion clearly, it obviously didn’t stick in my Dad’s dogmatic, stubborn, brain because they stuck with their choice and I was made to change schools. I’m sure they thought they were doing the right thing but I just wanted some stability and to finally be able to stay somewhere with the friends I’d made.
I didn’t cut my hair again for another 3 ½ years.
Trying to Fit In
To begin with, I largely buried everything. I just wanted to be as normal as possible. I worked hard at school, I became the Blue House Captain for Yr 9 and Yr 10. I was extremely wary of authority and while I wasn’t exactly rebellious, I certainly made it known that I wasn’t owned by anyone. A teacher told the Olds in one of my Parent & Teacher Interviews that “I thought I had it all sorted but he could see through me”. Dad came home and told me this and I knew that teacher knew absolutely nothing. I wore whatever face I wanted people to see at any given time but I was in deep hiding.
To add to all the chaos of feeling different, Dad kept up the strange factor in a big way. We weren’t allowed to watch Ghost Busters because there were ghosts in it. All the kids were talking about TV shows and what happened on them from the evening before and I could only say that I wasn’t allowed to watch them. We were only allowed to watch 30 mins of TV per day anyway. I wasn’t allowed to listen to Pink Floyd because it was drug music. I was banned from going to the Yr 7 school Blue Light Disco because I wasn’t ‘praying enough’. So when everyone was talking about what had happened at it I had nothing to say.
It was very hard to slip under the radar and it was just so obvious that we were so very different to all the other kids. Some other kids at school were getting $10 a week in pocket money and I had to mow the whole lawn with a push mower to get $1 if I got anything at all! I was lucky though in a way because I’m so outgoing. I just pushed past any of the oddness kids were reacting to, shrugged it off and moved on. It would have been crippling if I was naturally insecure or introverted. My little brothers and sisters had varying degrees of success in integrating. They were younger though and so the other kids their age didn’t notice these types of differences as much. But again, that’s their story.
Part 9
Getting on with It
Now anyone that knows me, knows very well that I don’t dwell on bad stuff and it’s been a bit hard writing about all these things from the past because I’ve already processed them and I have decided they are in my past and not in my present or future. They only need to be brought to light in order to tell the story.
I’ve written previously that I’d decided at 12, that everything I’d been taught was shit and that my life had been a total waste. This was a crucial turning point because I knew that I was so far behind the starting line that I needed to start running. There was no way I was going to let all this shit be the way my story ended. I think that it’s not so much that I was in a rush because I didn’t know how long it was going to take to flush all the bullshit out but I knew I needed to start, and keeeeep going.
I just got on with life. I was an expert in fitting in. I was like a Chameleon and had lots of different friend groups and I had a different persona for each one. I was into Skating, Heavy Metal (Death Metal), Sports, Farming, etc etc.
I knew that if I wanted something, I sure as hell wasn’t going to be given it so I started working. At 12 yrs old I started working on a Farm outside Orange in NSW that was owned by a kid in the Church’s Uncle. I’d go there as often as I was allowed to and they’d feed me and every now and then I’d get paid! I loved the freedom out there and could ride motorbikes, the farmer took a shine to my hard working attitude and taught me to break horses. I kept working there on school holidays till Yr 12 and head out there on a Bus that cost $20 for the ticket. I could muster on horse back and shoot rabbits for dog food. I’d toss fleeces and attacked being a rouse-a-bout like I was born to do it. I loved the freedom and not being at home.
I’d sometimes be stuck fencing for weeks as was the case at the end of Yr 8. I won the Yr 9 Swimming Championship because I’d been digging holes for 3 weeks in slate with a crow bar and even though I couldn’t put my head under the water, (pools in India were disease ridden so we didn’t really know how to swim) I had muscles that the other kids in Yr 9 didn’t know existed! I jumped into the water and went like the clappers!
I worked in my friends Dad’s bakery as soon as I was old enough to have a job (14) and worked Sat and Sun for about $60. That paid for the clothes I wanted to wear, my $20 bus fare to the Farm and anything else that I really wanted. But mostly I saved it and ended up with $1200 saved pretty quick!
Sifting Through the Issues
I would often get dragged down into despair due to the sheer volume of issues I needed to work through in order to become the person I wanted to be. I wanted to re evaluate my morals and understand the reasons behind my beliefs, fears and reactions. I wanted to re-set my moral virginity.
I would visualize sitting on the edge of a massive black hole in the ground about 3m in diameter with my legs dangling over the edge. I would take a fishing rod and toss it into the hole and drag out one issue at a time, analyze it, and go through the 5 steps of grief over it if I had to. I got pretty proficient at recognizing the stages of grief when I was feeling them and gave myself space to feel them. During the anger stages, I’d stand and look at myself in the mirror and say to it what I wanted to say to the people who’d brought this on me. It got pretty intense at times. Then during the sad phase, I’d just let that shit pour out, no room for boys don’t cry in my ethos! Some issues were much larger than others and took longer and others could all be sorted in a few days!
Sometimes though, I’d just fall into the hole and feel lost and hopeless. But that feeling would pass and I’d climb back to the top and sit back down on the edge of that big old hole and start fishing again.
Another way I liked to describe it was spending time in all my little dark corners. I imagined a cave like a lung with all the little caverns and ventricles hanging off it. I’d spend time in all my little dark corners till I could bring some light to them. It was like a slow moving pendulum and I write a song called “Lost on the Way Back” about it all and it’s on my “Table with No Legs” album as well. I figured that if my pendulum had been swung so far into the black, that once it was let go, it would swing that same distance into the light.
It was hard to know what I was needing to process as a result of the COG and what were just normal teenage life discoveries but I just tackled them all in the same way. I’d question why I responded to something in a certain way and then decide how I was going to tackle the same issue next time based on what I believed to be right. Another important thing that helped me was giving myself room to decide something at one time and then upon hearing another opinion or view later, be open to adjusting my personal view or theory after assessing the one I’d just been introduced to. I was determined to evolve into a human I could stand behind proudly. It was as a result of this process that I gained a great deal of deep inner confidence. I owned the ground I stood on no matter where I went and I not only had a strong moral belief structure but I knew exactly the reasons behind it. This really set me apart.
Sexuality was obviously a big one and I went about re inventing my virginity! I wanted to clean up the way I approached women and sex so that it was something I’d decided on rather than the sick way I was taught. The timing was bad though because Yr 11 and 12 could have been some good, fun, sexually lucrative years if I could’ve only been like the other happy go lucky boys without these issues but whatever! I was determined to respect the individual rather than just see them as a body and that got me lots of female friends! That respect is the basis for all my personal relationships and is something I’m extremely proud of.
Two areas of issues I left behind for many years though were Dads and God. As far as I was concerned, I’d been completely fucked over by all of them and had no real interest in wasting my mental space thinking about them. Every time I thought about my Birth Dad I just felt hollow and I know there’s not much that can be done about that except to just acknowledge the feeling and let it pass. He well and truly abandoned me.
I also acknowledge the Dad No 2 for the things he demonstrated that I do agree with like a strong work ethic (he’d get second jobs during his holidays to top the income up to feed us all), protectiveness (he’d jump up and run outside to chase people out of our yard, happened twice! even if he didn’t know how big they were or if there were more than one), and even if his passions were misguided, he followed them with enthusiasm.
As for God, I respect that some people need a God for direction in their lives, but I don’t advise trying to talk to me about him. I despise organised religon!!!
Embracing the Differences
At about 14 or 15 I really started to process things at pace and in stead of trying to ‘fit in’ all the time, I started to embrace my difference. I felt fierce. I knew I was different but with my growing confidence, I was ready to wear it proudly. I was determined to not be calloused by life and to remain soft on the outside so that I could feel things with minimal filters. This meant that I got hurt by things and people but I preferred that to just being Mr Teflon.
Always in my mind was my inner Armour that gave me my strength and fortitude. A core of steel with a soft outer skin was my goal. I wanted to love and feel loved but always knew that the strength was there if I needed it.
I loved being able to listen to someone speak and quickly catch on to what the real issue was. I had a greater depth of understanding because I’d felt all those things before and knew they could rise above them with a bit of support and encouragement. I talked to girls who had been raped or molested, kids who had been bashed, people who had been emotionally abused through guilt, and I understood it all. Even though I hadn’t been raped, I knew what the feeling smelt and felt like and how it had made them feel. I knew what it smelt, tasted and felt like to be powerless against an abuser and to feel hopeless. And I had experienced massive assaults against my soul’s fortitude and spirit from emotional abuse and made it to the other side even stronger than when it had started. I had turned all these experiences that were supposed to break me and bring me down and let them Galvanize me.
When you galvanize steel you have to put it through an acid bath to remove the impurities and then dunk it into the boiling hot Zinc bath, but when it comes out the other side it is far more resistant and durable. Oddly enough a Galvanized coating also breathes which I like! So like I’ve written in my Story on the ‘Benefits of Adversity’, you wouldn’t wish this shit on your worst enemy but once you’ve been pushed through it, you have an amazing opportunity to become far stronger than you’d ever imagine. Get galvanized people! Think of the pendulum theory. The harder your troubles and struggles, the further you’ll swing into the light once you get past it and let go.
The inner fortitude gave me the chance to shed a lot of false ego. It didn’t matter what someone thought of me or if they said something about me because I knew who I was, I owned the ground I stood on and I took that ground everywhere I walked. I owned my ground because even though there was so much trying to steal it from me, I’d fought long and hard for it, and fuckin’ won…
