Tom is a monster of commas and semi-colons.

(Before I start, I'll warn you that this will start out sounding completely petty and small. I am a brat of a generation that is extremely me-centric and I own it. If you're at this point, just stick with it. I'm trying not to apologize anymore for having feelings and wanting people to listen, but it's really hard right now. Also, this is all stream-of-consciousness without a single edit. If it’s hard to read, I’ll take that blame.)

So, I have a hobby that I really love. But I hate that I love it. It's this really stupid, ridiculous thing that no one should like, but I see why so many people love it and agree with them. I am a self-loathing pro wrestling fan.

It's my "comfort food", so to speak. When I'm stressed, anxious, worried, or just need my brain to go somewhere else, that's where it goes. I know too much about it and I have seen way too much of it. I have the same criticisms of it as anyone who is annoyed by its existance and am as disgusted by every horror story that comes out of its seedy underbelly as the rest of the world. But that's where my brain goes to rest. Even the most boring old wrestling shows that I have seen a million times sound like a more attractive entertainment destination on most evenings than a new band I want to listen to or a movie I want to see. Often, my anxiety makes it to where I'd rather just sit and watch wrestling on my phone than be around people.

I hate that.

The jealousy that I get when I see friends of mine who I consider to be intelligent boasting about the cool artistic endeavours they're partaking in or the great things they've read/watched/heard - it's almost like when a kid listens to an adult talk about something a kid would never experience. It's this envy where I want to be a grown-up so bad, but I need comfort more. There are times where I can read and hear the words of my peers discussing more worldly things, but it's like Mandarin to me. I want nothing more than to speak that second language, but it's too hard and I'm a baby.

I have been trying to wrap my head around this for a while. Why can't I escape it when I genuinely want to be a more well-rounded person?

While covered in soap suds and narrowly escaping slicing my fingers open on the knives at the bottom of the sink, a moment in time came back to me that I had not necessarily hidden, but I had kind of held on its own island. I wasn't connecting it to anything else that had happened to me, other than general sadness.

I believe I was ten years old. Maybe I was older, maybe younger. If I'm wrong, you have every right to try to take me to court over it. The year before, I had walked up to my mom at complete random and told her that I was adopted. I did not ask if I was adopted. I never had a single clue laid out that I was adopted. Before that day (going back to when I could first speak), I would tell people I was shipped to Indiana in a box from Australia from my "real family"; it's a fun story people get a kick out of when I tell it. Likely, it means that I always "knew", but that day was the first time I had the guts to say anything.

My mom (who is a saint and the best person I have/will ever know) sat me down and laid things out. She explained the who's, what's, where's, and why's of the situation. I already knew my biological mom (those of you who know me know this part of the story, but I need to protect the innocent in some ways), but my biological father was this unknown character in my story.

Having way more poise and a way more open heart than I ever would, my mom quickly set up for me to meet this guy just because I was curious. She probably knew how this story would end, but she trusted me enough to let me have this one. She's always trusted me - and most everyone else. She's wonderful in that way.

I met this guy at our house a while later (it feels like it was within days, but it was more like a few weeks or months after) in a chaperoned meeting. I would like to think I asked hard questions, but there is a lot of that day that I blocked out. What I didn't block out is that I thought this guy was the coolest guy EVER. He just seemed to know exactly what to say when and he won me over immediately. I wanted to see him as much as possible.

My mom started arranging visits to his apartment a couple of times a week. I was in heaven.

I had just started listening to music other than the country music my parents always listened to in the car, and he liked a lot of the same music I did. He had long hair and I was a dweeb who thought that was totally badass (my number one dream as a child was to move to Los Angeles at 13 and hang out at arcades; I was lame). He had all of these cool toys that he would get down on the floor and help me play with. My strongest memory of those initial visits was that he would always have a stack of rented VHS tapes, all of either pro wrestling or early Ultimate Fighting Championship events (which were way more like trippy pro wrestling events than it is now).

Going back to my mom, she would always tell me in the period between when I figured everything out and when I met him that he was "just like me" in a lot of ways, but his liking of wrestling really struck her. Mom thought that would really bond us. It did.

We would sit there and watch all the sweaty, half-naked cartoon dudes flip, flop, fly, and yell at each other. We would laugh and scream. It was like I had found a friend who just happened to be what I wished I would grow up to be. Bio Dad was like a kid who just happened to be able to grow a big mustache and was allowed to stay up all night.

Bio-Dad was married and had fathered another child. Their kid was a three-year-old boy who I remember being nice enough. I vaguely remember her always hovering over me when I was playing with their son, but nothing that bothered me too much. It was a typical relationship in that situation. Their son seemed to like me as a playmate, but for obvious reasons there was jealousy. The kid would take it out by making up stories and telling on me, which they would always take his side. As visits became less one-on-one time with Bio-Dad and more with his entire family, I recall spending a lot of time in "time out" for crimes I had never committed.

Even then, I remember liking my time with Bio-Dad's family. It was an escape from what I knew. Those visits were still like a shiny, new toy and I had yet to see that it for what it was.

With all stories, there comes the end of the second act.

One night, Bio-Dad was driving me home from a visit. Normally, we would just listen to the same Van Halen cassette tape he always played (I never asked why). On this night, I specifically remember it being completely silent for half of the trip and being weirded out by this. I asked why we weren't listening to the music in a very Pavlovian reaction. I don't remember all of the exact words that came next. I hope I never do.

I do remember the worst ones, though.

This guy ripped my heart out of my chubby little chest and ran over it with his broken down Ford Taurus.

A brief summary of the experience - he repeatedly asked why I never called his current wife "Mom". I don't know if he gave me a chance to answer, but likely I became paralyzed by anxiety as I don't remember being able to answer him. I was blamed for breaking her heart and told me she would cry when I wasn't there because I wasn't as accepting to her as I was him. Right now in my office chair, I can give you a completely logical reason why I never did and would never call her "Mom". In that moment though? Obvious silence.

I remember a lot of slow, low-tone explaining. No yelling. I recall the word "disappointment" used. Bio-Dad knew exactly what he was doing to me. He had an intent to hurt.

Then, he drops the bomb and other such cliches. It's the one sentence I remember; the one I will never forget.

"If you can't accept (my wife) as your mother, I can never love you Tommy."

Almost like a television show, the timing was perfect. The car parked and he told me to leave his car. I ran. I was a fat little boy with two left feet, but I probably broke Olympic records getting from his car to my bedroom.

My mom had given into a whim of mine the year before and bought me bunk beds despite being the only child living in the house. I wanted the top bunk only, but wasn't bright enough to know what a loft bed was. The way that these beds went, there was one going sideways and the other going forward, with a dresser in part of the little space on the open right side. Behind that dresser, there was a tiny square of space that I would crawl into sometimes when I felt the need to isolate myself. In that moment, that urge was as strong as it ever was.

Literally a minute before, the person whose love I wanted more than anyone's on Earth told me he could never love me because of the thing I felt strongest about - that my mom (the one I had known for my entire concious life and had saved me from horrors I would learn about later) is my mom and there are no other moms for me. I wanted to be him worse than anything, but he could never accept me for what I had to give him at that moment.

Again, my memory doesn't work well with time. It was probably a few minutes only, but I feel like I had an hour of sadness to myself. I remember the crack of light coming into my room from the hallway growing, as my door squeaked open. It was Mom.

She sat on the lower of the two bunk beds with a Walmart bag. She didn't say anything, but handed me the bag. She had gone to the store while I was on my visit and bought me a wrestling action figure. I had said nothing, but I would like to think my eyes said that life sucked for me right then. As much as I remember the worst sentence I heard that day, I specifically remember the best one.

"We were out and I felt like you might need this."

I stared at this comfort object for way too long. It was awkward, I'm sure. Then I threw it down and gave her the tightest hug.

"He doesn't love me, Mom..."

To this day (not often, but probably a few times a year), that statement rings through my head during a bout of sadness. Over and over. It haunts me.

In that moment, Mom hugged me as tight as a tiny middle-aged woman possibly could. I didn't need to say more and she didn't ask me to.

I was safe with Mom. Always have been, always will be.

(To make this story slightly more strange, the  toy Mom bought for me was for a character named Goldust. For the uninitiated, Goldust was a villain who, during that time, could be summed up best as "a rich, straight white man's vaguest idea of a transgender/homosexual/whatever else most straight men feared back then". I have grown to admire the work of Dustin Rhodes, the man behind the giant golden bodysuit. But having this cartoonish icon of an antiquated stereotype as a pivotal item in this traumatic moment is the one part of this story I find a little bit of humor in.)

That's where my breakthrough (as small or big as it might be) comes in. I had never put two and two together, but that's where I think everything comes together. I liked wrestling up to that point, but it intensified to where I became "the wrestling kid" and like grew to love.

I don't collect things. I've never seen the point in it. But the one thing I have found myself collecting well into my adult life? Wrestling figures. I have wasted so much money on them, but I've always gotten a weird relief out of irresponsibly blowing $10 on those overpriced plastic molds. Bringing home a toy like that - one that I don't need for any reason whatsoever - literally calms me. There is a full container that goes up to about my knee's level of wrestling toys that I've passed down to my sons, but will likely continue to grow. Even now, friends sometimes joke that they are surprised that I gave up my toys.

Now I get why.

Mom can't be here to hover over me now. I have my own family to fight battles for. I can call her when I'm overwhelmed or sad and she can empathize with me. But she can't hug me every day, as badly as I probably need it.

In some screwed-up way, my brain connects little plastic wrestlers with the comfort that Mom brought me in my saddest moment. As much as the most important people in my world need me to be a brave father and husband for them, I am very much still that sad little boy hiding behind his dresser because I had "I love you" taken away from someone I needed it from.

Maybe all of this clicking on this night was the world's way of telling me to get this story out beyond just a few people who know everything. Even reading it out now, I am not sure if a lot of it really "matters". If I click the "Post" button, it means I was too late in talking myself out of deleting this.

Since I brought you this far, I should probably tell you about how the story ended for the other party. Truth be told, I don't have a lot of hands-on knowledge. I never spoke to the creep who gave his seed to create me after that day in his car. I never wanted to face that again. Whether it be because I genuinely hated him fully or I simply feared facing that conflict again, I haven't seen him since, other than hiding from him when I recognized him in a Wal-Mart about ten years later. I can tell you that the rad jet-black hair I thought was so cool was now really thin and grey. From hearsay, I've learned that he's had multiple stints in prison. Drug abuse, bank robbery - all that jazz. He was still with the same woman that he demanded I call "Mom" and had a few more kids. For their sake, I hope those kids love her with all of their hearts. She obviously needed it.

As for me? I have the two most wonderful little boys in the entire world. They create their own frustrations and they aren't perfect, but they have more love in their heart than anyone who ever rejected me could withhold. Even coming from an unimaginably bad situation, those two love so intensely. It's the quality I admire most about them.

My younger boy Nolie (age two) runs up to me every day, holding the figure of a masked high-flying wrestler named Kalisto (that he's come to obsess over because I showed him wrestling way before Alex wanted me to show it to him), screaming his battle cry of "LUCHA! LUCHA!".  Nolie came into our home five months ago, scared to death from being bounced from home to home before he could even process the world around him. He didn't even feel safe enough to take off his shoes when he first got here. The only word we got out of him for a while was "no".

Because of something I thought to be a flaw of mine, my boy found a hero that he can use to hide from the world when he needs a break from being Nolie. I was able to cut off a piece of my security blanket and make him feel safe. I’m done. I am going to go watch Hacksaw Jim Duggan thump some dudes while I cry, and that’s okay.

All of these things that I'm attached to that have brought me to that moment, or any cool thing that I have gotten to do in my life - you could credit someone else besides me for it working. Just for this instance - Gagne makes the Funtime Arcade work. He's such a pleasant and funny guy. It shines through anything he does. He's so likable. I just write in a couple of jokes and piece together video.

On the flip side, anything else I work on that actually works can be credited to someone else on the project. With the Funtime Arcade it's Joe (who has such a broad appeal and is so much more humorous and subtle than I could ever, ever be on my best day). With Everywhere You Look (the Full House podcast I do), Alex is the real star and the one who more people relate to because of how real and endearing she is. I just hang on the coattails of those who are much more talented and appealing than me. Anything else I've put out there that's just me (most notably that bizarre web series I tried about the weirdo who wanted to ask The Rock about his poop) has bombed miserably. But, people seem to forget that - or I certainly hope they do.

Heck, I did a panel similar to the one we'll be doing in Cleveland at this awful convention in Indianapolis last year. At the last minute, they stuck me with some goof troop Youtube personality who not only did I have no chemistry with, but I actively loathed because, for every insecurity I have about myself, he had an abundance of false confidence in himself that seemed to be built from a web of lies that he had told himself and others throughout the years. He actually tried to expose that I wasn't an expert on the field, which got SO bad that I looked at him at one point and said, "I'm the fart-dick-poop guy on the Funtime Arcade team, dude". I deflected most of his heat with bad jokes, but it came very close to being my nightmare. It was a bad enough incident that while I know there were photographs taken and video captured, neither has ever been released publicly.

While I'm focusing this piece of writing on this upcoming particular weekend, this is a fear that never goes away and it borders on being crippling. I'm not proud of the number of opportunities I have turned down because I'm afraid of being found out. Anytime I leave the house to go do something productive, I'm scared to death that someone will figure out that I don't really make things work. Whether it's something like this or even going to the store to get groceries - at some point, I expect someone to turn to me out of nowhere and expose that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

Every encounter I have with anyone I respect, no matter how fun the atmosphere is, comes with this weird, thin layer of fear. The way my brain works, it's as if almost everything I do is about being tested. That's not a good thing, in case you're wondering.

I'm always, always, always nervous. Nervous that someone's going to figure out that I'm just some goof who accidentally talked his way into some cool things. I'm frightened that someone will figure out that I'm just this scared, jealous, bitter, one-dimensional little boy. That might be why I find rare solace in spitting my confusion and my negativity out in written form. Maybe if I'm the one who reveals aspects of me, I can divert everyone away from the real issue - that I'm not important, interesting, or can add all that much to the world. If I know you or I've met you and I've ever talked over you or made you feel like I am trying to set some sort of immediate food chain in the conversation, it is because my ugly defense mechanism went off and I subconsciously wanted to get on my tip-toes before anyone saw that I wasn't taller than you, in a sense. If I've ever done that, it's because I believed you could expose me if you really wanted to, as just a gust of wind and nothing more.

In the case of WGF in Cleveland (while they're not expecting a huge crowd like the biggest of conventions these days), there are more people there who will know who I am gathered together in the same room that aren't related to me than probably at any point in my life. I know for a fact that there are individuals coming to this thing that are coming specifically because of something I've put work into. My picture and bio are on the "Guests" page on the website (and at one point, I was right next to WWE Hall of Famer Greg "The Hammer" Valentine, who once inspired me to be a rotten kid and wrap a chain around my (same age) nephew's head while playing as a child!).

Most people would find comfort or success in this. That petrifies me. Any time I open my mouth in front of these people, I risk stuttering, stammering, and revealing that the prize behind the curtain is just a dumb old rock with shiny spray paint applied. I am not funnier than any person appearing. I am not smarter than any person appearing. I am definitely not more interesting than any person appearing. There's nothing special here.

While I'm thankful that I'm booked, I also have this feeling of guilt that I've somehow tricked these people into thinking that I'm worth putting any sort of stock into. If anyone's interested in me being there, I feel guilt that I've tricked these poor people into putting worth into whatever talents they perceive that I have. And I absolutely feel guilt toward anyone who I’ve convinced to allow me to leech off of their abilities.

If you come out to Geek Fest in Cleveland, I know you're going to have an awesome time. So many legitimately gifted and entertaining people will be on hand to give you more than your money's worth. The coordinators are busting their humps to make sure this is the best experience possible. Go to WrestlingGeekFest.com NOW and see all the cool stuff they have planned. Seriously - if you're a wrestling nerd and you have nothing going on August 14-16, Cleveland should be your destination. They have every single base covered. If nothing else, it’s my birthday weekend. If you can find me and I’m not subtly pooping bricks, we can celebrate.