Listened to the Joyce Meyer podcast from yesterday on Spotify today.

I gathered from listening to it that I need to practice some gratitude in my life, it’ll bring the happiness into my life that I’ve been craving.

I struggle a lot with getting upset when my expectations are failed to be met.

I think it makes me angry over dumb **** that really doesn’t matter in the long run.

Been out of balance since my kid went into foster care, long story but the short of it is my cousins wife reported me to CPS for smoking pot and now I have this open cps case and have to jump through all these hoops.

Had a rough go of it for the first month or so, completely fell apart in spectacular fashion. Finally pulled myself together and I’m starting to adjust to this thing I’m going through.

It’s crazy really, that’s all I feel like sharing about it now.. perhaps more on that later.


Gotta push back in.

We’re running 2 cash tables at ATX.

A couple players are being jerks but I’m keeping my cool.

I have a reputation in Austin for having a temper in the box guys but also, for being a great dealer lol

Oh man, so I’m like enforcing the integrity of the game, and there are like 3 players just doing all kinds of **** they’re not supposed to do and I keep correcting them, and keep calling floor now too because they’re just being over the top.

The one guy is to the point where he is yelling out “floor” and continues harassing me for enforcing the rules.

These players aren’t tipping me obviously when I ship them pots, and they’re being extremely rude.

My floor has warned them and they’re just pushing it.

I’m just smiling and telling them that I’ll continue to enforce the rules whether they agree or not.

The one guy who’s the worst is made because I guess the other dealers don’t enforce the rules.

The other players are extremely grateful for my unwavering effort to uphold the integrity of the game which gives me the calm I needed to find to hold strong.

I’m actually impressed with how well I’m doing holding it together lol

My floor said he’s just gonna keep me on the other table that’s not messing with me, and I really feel like he has my back which is nice. Not every floor knows how to have the dealers back.

Austin is a rough environment for players, but especially for dealers.

There isn’t regulation, so there aren’t dealer schools or certification courses here.

Lots of dealers don’t know how to deal anything but holdem.

The card rooms are always in need of good dealers, and I’ve been able to get into the underground in the box jumping the line a bit because I’m a good dealer, not the best by far but I’m consistent and know the protocols.

I feel like being a dealer is the ultimate test of patience, it’s also a great way to see tons of live hands and study live tells.

I think it’s different to be a player then a dealer rather than a dealer then a player lol just saying

Guys, she’s too cute

Sorry to hear this. I think it would wreck any person, at least temporarily.

Do what you gotta do, jump through the hoops, and hopefully never do anything again that could jeopardize having your child in your life.

If you need THC, there are plenty of places where it's legal and you can go deal at.

Good luck to you.

Sounds both risky and unwise given your open case with CPS. Kratom's side effects are very concerning: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-l...m/art-20402171

There is no substitute for sleep. You need 7-8 hours/night. Try to practice better sleep hygiene: https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_slee...p_hygiene.html

Good luck with your case.

I never said anything about not sleeping, that was an assumption hun.

I was under the impression it was akin to preworkout so I don’t see why it was necessary to jab at my cps case.

But ok I guess?

Yes, I did think these two thoughts were related. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

It was a shock but I adjusted to doing what I needed to do within a few weeks with the help of the friends I’ve made since moving to Austin.

I don’t think it’s fair to say I was doing something to jeopardize my child being in my life, as I’ve been smoking pot medicinally for awhile now and everywhere I’ve lived it’s been legal. I only moved to Austin in October of last year, when I applied for Medicaid I was denied because I was employed. I’m a single mother without child support, and with the cost of childcare and taking care of a bunch of people I’m not able to afford healthcare.

I have severe ptsd and panic disorder, adhd, depression, and a whole slew of whatever it’s labeled, I’ll just say I’m barely holding it together.

My pregnancy was difficult, I had a kidney infection from mid first trimester until I gave birth. Constant fever, always sick, always in pain. He was born blue and not breathing. The placenta ruptured while he was in the birth canal cutting off his oxygen.

Not to mention, my sons father physically, emotionally and verbally abused me. Threatened to kill me, to kill my baby.

So, I’ll tell you... when you say something like “hopefully never do anything again that could jeopardize having your child in your life.” It feels judgmental and although I respect your right to feel that I made the “choice” to jeopardize his presence in my life, I feel that I was backed in between a rock and a hard place and was really just doing the best I could.

Moved to Texas because it’s a genuinely good place to live.

They just expanded the things that qualify for medical marijuana, and if that goes though then I would qualify.

It’s like, I see where you’re coming from but realistically sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to survive.

Since my son is in the system, and all these things I couldn’t afford before are now being court ordered and paid for, I’ll be able to get the help that I wasn’t able to afford the time or money to get.

But, if I were to kid myself into believing that sometime again in my sons life I don’t jeopardize him being in my life, I’d think myself quite silly

Maybe context and circumstance doesn’t apply and I shoulda just folded pre fml

All gravy

Not judging. Good luck again.

Good to know, it’s a sensitive topic for me.. and thank you.

Gonna go play this $50 single re entry Big O tournament at the lodge.

I’m so burned out on tilt from NLH and PLO now, and it was Big O tilt a few months ago. I’m hoping I can access my data bank of Big O strategy, it’s hit or miss sometimes

Hey there, long time reader, first time poster. I’m curious what made you start posting again after 2 years with no activity and 1 year of little activity? What made you want to start the thread in the beginning? Are you still sober? THC does not count obv ��

(Trigger warning)...

My last post was right before I went to the series in 2017, and I had every intention of posting a lot that summer. It was the first summer I was actually gonna play more tournaments than cash games and I was really looking forward to the PLO games because I was on fire really. Just playing well and winning a lot.

I had a back up job lined up in Vegas, and was supposed to be staying with someone through a friend of mine.

All of that fell through, and I had tried to contact my backers to stay with them but at the time the person I was with didn’t understand why these people were gonna help me because as I soon after found out he was extremely jealous.

We were staying at a hotel near Sun station I think, and when the time in the room was up, we wound up being without a place to stay.

We went into the casino while I tried to contact someone to stay with, and while I did this, the guy I was with was just verbally abusing me saying it was all my fault and making a big deal about how he didn’t know anyone in Vegas.

He was drinking with the last bit of money we had, and after enough drinks he started threatening to hit me so he would get arrested and at least have somewhere to sleep.

He wound up hitting me in the throat while sitting next to me as I was turning towards him. He just barely missed crushing my windpipe. I freaked out, he ran, I filed a police report, he begged me to go back to him, my dumbass did because I felt bad for bringing him out in the first place.

We make it to the strip, we sleep outside on the streets behind the bushes in the back of the casinos.

Find the tunnels behind harrahs, stay there for like a week.

I’m feeling insanely suicidal, I’m 10 days late on my period and freaking out because I’m too broke to get a test and I’m sleeping on the streets and my boyfriend is insane and wants to kill me.

So I try to kill myself by making a slip knot out of the scarf I had, it was working really and I was starting to blackout when my boyfriend realized I was just gonna let myself go out and he fought to stop me.

The next day I had myself committed.

They told me I was pregnant and I stayed in the hospital for 2 days.

I get out and find out he gave my dog away. Then he leaves me on the street and has his uncle pick him up and take him to AZ.

I go stay with my backer.

Make another dumb decision to go to his parents in Kansas bc I was pregnant and had no ****ing clue what I should do. My parents were of zero help. I was alone and confused and abused.

I was doing well at his moms.

2 weeks into being in AZ he gets drunk and arrested for domestic violence against his uncles wife. Jail for 5 days, comes to Kansas the night before my birthday July 16 2017..

He was cold and distant.

After the pregnancy confirmation on the 18th, he told me he was being mean because he thought I was lying about being pregnant. He was constantly telling me that I shouldn’t feel the way I felt. Told me none of the things I wanted for my baby were gonna happen. Told me I couldn’t go anywhere with his baby, I wasn’t allowed to leave.

I tried to arrange a secret escape on July 22nd through my father, he discovered I was trying to leave and stole my phone.

Forced me to cancel the flight or he wasn’t giving it back.

My dad stopped talking to me, assuming I wanted to stay, not realizing I was fearing for my life and the life of my child.

The physical abuse became daily.

He threatened to poison me and tell the doctors I did it to myself, his mother said she would back him up on his accusations.

He threatened to kill his 9 month old daughter while she was sitting on his lap, to prove to me that he’d kill me too.

On July 26th at 6am in the morning he was supposed to get up for work.

I had been laying awake, bible clutched tightly to my chest since 5am when I awoke crying from the night terror I had of him beating me.

I couldn’t go back to sleep.

I waited patiently for the time he was supposed to leave so I could go to sleep.. to rest without fear..

I kept asking him to wake up, every few minutes I would ask if he was getting up and tell him that his mom would kick us out if he lost this job.

He kept telling me to shut up.

In the darkness, while I lay at the opposite end of the bed staring at the ceiling through the faint morning sunrise, he slams a pillow into my face, screaming at me to shut up.

Out of reflex, I sit up and swing. Punching him right in the side of his face.

He jumped up out of the bed, I tucked my head into the blanket between my legs and grabbed the back of my head bracing myself as he punched me in the back of the head..

He called me a dumb ***** and went to the bathroom.

I grabbed my book bag, laptop, phone and wallet and ran past his mother and out the front door.

I didn’t really know where I was, but knew there was a church nearby. I picked a direction and ran as fast as I could while praying it was the right direction.

By the Grace of God, I found the church and hid behind the fence of the AC units.

I called my mom, in shock, and then called the cops.

They took me to the hospital, then took me to a women’s shelter.

I had been in contact with my cousin while he was deployed, and when I told him what was going on he offered a spare room. I went there after 2 weeks, and that’s where I went through my pregnancy and the first 7 months of Malakai’s life.

I moved out of their house and into assisted living for single parents while trying to find a job in Colorado.

There wasn’t any poker, and I was honestly extremely depressed.

Was offered an opportunity to get into dealing without a bunch of red tape, and an opportunity to be able to still do what I love and support my son while doing it so I took the job and moved to Austin.

Throughout all of this I was extremely depressed, the issues with his father were continued and are continued, he’s a dead beat. He had another son 4 months after mine was born.

I’ve had so much stuff going on, I really pulled away from sharing my story because I was hurting too much from everything that was going on.

My life has been a **** storm these last few years.

I stayed sober through it all guys.

I was a wreck, but I was sober.

It goes without saying that going through what I went through was created an impossible amount of shame and regret. Pain, depression, anger...

I wasn’t playing poker, I had tried to play online in Colorado but honestly my heart just wasn’t in it.

My heart wasn’t in anything.

I had a rough pregnancy and constantly thought my baby was gonna die on top of constantly wanting to die myself. I know many nights I would imagine what would happen if I killed myself, many times I found myself in despairing piles of guilt for even thinking the way I was thinking.

I had a kidney infection the majority of my pregnancy and was in severe pain from it. Had fevers constantly from it, could never sleep, I would just binge on Netflix.

I had no motivation.

I’ve had no motivation for a long time.

I’ve been locked in this place of despondency for a long time, and then the most crippling thing that’s ever happened to me happened, I lost my kid.

I’ve been without him since June 13th 2019, and it’s completely rocked my world.

I’ll admit, I fell apart in the worst ways. Spiraled for a few weeks, then realized my son needs his mama and I started pulling my **** together.

I’m new to Austin, so I don’t have a lot of friends and I have pretty much cut my entire family off in the last 2 months as well as burned a lot of bridges.

I got back on the wagon and the fog of despair is beginning to lift.

I have a responsibility to get my **** together and be all that I can be for him. I need to advocate for him, be aware of how what’s going on is going to effect his development because he’s only 17.5 months old and his sensibilities are fragile.

I want to be his protector, and I want to be all the things for him that my parents were never for me.

I want to end the cycle, and I’ve realized that unfortunately, I don’t know everything. And although I know deeply how to love my son, I might not know how to care for him the way he deserves because for one, my head and health are a wreck, and for two, my parents did not teach me much in the ways of good parenting.

So TLDR: lol

I used this thread to get through some rough ****. I gained inspiration to get better and be better by inspiring others with my story. After my sister died I got crazy writers block that was exacerbated by continued traumatic experiences over the last few years, and now I’ve found my way back to being in the headspace I need to be in when I share these aspects of my life that are admittedly over personal.

Plus, I’m playing poker in Austin TX, and I didn’t even know that was possible until i was offered the job and it’s way different here than anywhere else so I figured I’d share that with everyone too.

Since I’m also now a poker player on my upswings and poker dealer on my downswings now too

Well to say that was a thorough answer would be an understatement. I appreciate the time and thought you put into your response. It seems to me you started the thread because you wanted to make some changes in your life but you were not sure what or how. I believe you restarted for the same reason.

Separate thought. Your mind works very differently than mine and you clearly obsess over many things. If you could figure out how to harness that obsession and make it work for you instead of against you there has to be a job out there where you could have a good, steady income and would likely both enjoy the work and benefit mentally.

crazy story OP....I always thought the go broke -> Tunnels was just a meme.
How many nights were you in there? What is the temperature in there during the peak of summer?

Hope you're in a better place mentally now...GL!

Wow. Powerful stuff. You can break the cycle. Believe.

When I originally started this thread it was because I wanted to share about poker. What it became was a way for me to have people tell me the things I might not want to hear, but needed to. Or the things that people close to me were too afraid to tell me, or had told me but it didn’t matter because the well of denial went deeeeeeep.

It took me getting sober to realize that this thread is a big reason I am still here today. The people who read and post to either support me or challenge my way of thinking, are the reason I keep coming back.

Over the last 6 years poker and the people in poker have taught me more about life and balance and growth than anyone in my previous 21 years had ever managed to teach me.

I think that keeps me coming back. The hope of growth by trying to find that line that’s gonna work best each day.

Like ice skating circles around the intangible challenges that await me each time I open my eyes to start a new day.

**

I suppose I have a certain level of obsession when it comes to how much importance I place on thoroughly thinking through all the possible outcomes of every situation.

Sometimes I think it’s an obsession, but more recently I’ve realized it’s less obsession and getting stuck within the process of cognitive dissonance.

Simply put, I don’t trust my choices or decision making capabilities and this causes me to overthink everything trying to overcompensate for the lack of faith I have in myself.

I think the greatest gift is the way I think.

CPS gave me a psychological evaluation, one of the 4 hour long variety.

One part was an IQ test, I tested in at 127, with my range of like 123/131

So naturally, I too have been trying to find something that I could do as income in addition to poker and to balance poker in my life since I will have my child home within the year and need to also plan for the restrictions I’ll have to my schedule once he comes home.

Sorry, I am a prolific rambler

Go broke tunnels aren’t a joke, definitely real.

Lots of people camp out in them, there are multiple tunnel ways for the water to come. They also build camps up and down the floodways.

The one I was in had what appeared to be a clean stream of water flowing from one of the tunnels. This is where they showered, washed clothes and dishes and whatnot. Wasn’t drinkable.

They were mostly all methed out, it was extremely uncomfortable.

We stayed out first night just sleeping in the floodwaters, there were two people arguing like crazy. That was the night I had tried to kill myself, and I always felt like my belligerence triggered them because of proximity and energy or whatever.

It was honestly cooler down there than anywhere else. Standing by the running water, in the tunnels is probably the coolest place in Vegas lol

I’m slowly clawing my way out of this tunnel, we’re making progress and pushing through all the hard days

Thank you hun <3

Im not the OP of course, but as someone whose has a lot of experience being homeless in vegas many years ago, (back when my roll was often below $2000 a good 15-25 years ago) i lived in some pretty shitty weekly rentals but even when sleeping outside and hiding in the convention areas of casinos to sleep in the closet or under the stage at night, hoping to avoid being seen, i could never bring myself to sleep in those tunnels i knew of. u couldve been flooded out with rain, or easily killed in your sleep for as little as the change in your pocket. i couldnt do it, and i dont see a woman doing it.

A mother's love is the purest thing in the world. Even imperfect your love for your son will be far superior to what anyone else can muster. So good luck getting him back and dont stop fighting!

Well obviously OP has some big ole lady balls.

I went to see Malakai this morning.

I was running behind so instead of being inside waiting for him like I usually am, I walked in right after he did with the foster dad.

He smiled really big and put his arms out as he ran over to me. His shoes were new, and way too big. He tripped right in front of me so I scooped him up and he went back to smiling.

I brought him a little old school game boy looking video game thing I found. Had 200 Nintendo-esk games on it, makes sounds and is the shape of a phone. He pretended to use it as a phone, and would answer when I said “hello hello” into mine

As we were walking out, in the lobby where no one else could hear, I whispered in his ear that I love him and miss him and think about him every day. He just kinda stared into the distance and I gave him a bunch of kisses until he put his head on my shoulder and melted into me as I gave him a super tight hug while walking him out to the car.

It’s the first time he’s really shown me that he misses me, he’s been super distant this whole time. It’s actually one of the things they keep saying is a problem

Luckily, Since having my 1 two hour visit spilt to 2 one hour visits, especially the morning visits, he’s been opening up a lot more when I do see him. He’s also self regulating his coping skills with his temper. The head banging that’s been really bad has definitely become less frequent.

They have him in ECI therapy since he had an evaluation that said he has a cognitive delay that’s significant enough to require intervention. And they don’t want to include me in it, but obviously I’m fighting them on it.

He also has an ear infection now

Damn, I miss him so much after every visit. Breaks my heart to leave him every time.

I cry after like every one, and I just get so mad. I don’t want to get into the details as to why since I’ve managed to finally calm myself. Visit ended 3 hours ago. Anyway, I digress.


*****


I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a vlog about Austin/poker in Austin and how it’s different or whatever

The thought is a rough draft, but I’ve been thinking about restarting my twitch steam too

Mmm... I don’t know, roast me maybe

You gotta do you - BUT

if you are actively trying to regain custody of your kid. I prolly would not start a vlog. I also would not go to into detail about my personal life in this blog here. Sht people post on the net has a way of coming back to bite em in the ass. And once its up, its up

I wish you the best of luck in all of life