"What is a Man? A miserable little pile of secrets!" Dracula

At first glace, you would think my situation consummate:

If you come to my house, you will find me behind a fine chess table, you'll see a $1500 hand carved set including a solid leather board imported from New Zealand.

I will serve you either Dan Aykroyd's "Crystal Skull" Vodka, or if your brave, my own home made 1800's formula Absenthe.
I will offer you a cigar from my humidor. The prize smoke being a Jamaican, rolled with aged vanilla, aged in old rum barrels, and stored in Spanish cedar. Or a bowl of my own blend of orange-vanilla pipe tobacco.

You'll find yourself surrounded by a couple thousand books, half on Chess and the other half on every kind of philosophy, history, and medical you can imagine. The only thing you won't find is fiction.

I don't watch T.V. except for company, I don't read the papers. When I get up in the morning, I turn on a DVD about Chess, or some "personal development" philosophy.

I dress well. Slacks, collar, pin, steel business card case, I even wear a wind up pocket watch I've had since I was 16. How many people you know wear a wind up watch anymore?

I give off all the impressions of being the kind of man that used to be called a "Dandy".

I was quite the player in my day. This is a sample of my "15 minutes":

http://yourcommunityshopper.net/archives/a022107/newsstory6.html

http://enewscourier.com/homepage/x1037403858/Learning-chess-strateg...

Playing Chess on 20 boards for a Boys and Girls club benefit, Teaching Chess and holding closed tournaments in the Summers.

But, as always, looks can be deceiving, and the contents of my book are certainly not what's on the cover.

Nothing will steal your sense of manliness more completely, than getting up in the morning and sending your wife off to work at a job she loathes, while you sit at home on your ass at home.

About 3 years ago I became disabled by an advanced case of Meniere's Disease. Never heard of it? Of course not. No Star, or professional athlete has ever complained of it, so it gets no research.

In short, I'm in a wheel chair, or on crutches, and have severe tinnitus and vertigo, and all that goes along with.

I can give you a great idea of how F'ed up I am if you have ever dealt with Social Security:

I got my SSI in only 11 months.

I've had lawyers look me in the eye and tell me "That doesn't happen." Yet, here I am.

I didn't have to see a judge, their Doctor, nothing. THAT is how messed up I am.

So what kind of man am I, to be so sophisticated, yet living off the backs of the taxpayers, and worse, off the tears and sweat of my "Princess" who I love more than ever even after 20 years?

My own opinion fluctuates between "complete Bum who should just expire and be out of the way" and "Doing the best I can with what I have to work with"

To my friends, to my family, it doesn't seem to matter The kids I'm teaching look up to me like some sort of hero, their parents say, to which I reply "What an imagination". My wife bravely says she's happy to do it for me.

But it hurts, every bit of it. From her going off to work, to when they strain to get my chair in and out of the trunk. I feel it and I make myself feel it. I never want that to go away. I never want to forget their pain, less I get lazy and quit struggling against my disease, less I give up and wind up living my life for nothing. Less an opportunity to do something to get myself off the backs of my family, and the government come along, and I miss it out of apathy.

I don't know if it's being a man or not, but I don't know what else to do.