About two years ago, I realized that living in Dickinson, every day is like a battle, and my life is like a war.

It seemed like every day, something bad happened.  A dispute, argument, disagreement, confrontation, altercation, accident…every day something bad happened.  Overall, adding all these days together, my life was like a war.

I also came to realize, that living in Dickinson was just like being in a prison work camp.  Most of the people that I would encounter in Dickinson during each day, were rough, uneducated, ignorant, low-class people, many of them with criminal records.  And, every day the Dickinson Police tried to follow me like I was a criminal, as if I was an inmate in a prison.

I told myself, that when I woke up in the morning, just like a prisoner getting ready to leave his cell, that I had better be prepared for all kinds of bad shit to happen, whether from the inmates, the guards, or the prison.  This came to be the mindset that I needed to have in order to live in Dickinson, because life played out like this every single day.

I don’t know if other people in Dickinson look at life this way, and think that this is normal.  This is not normal.  In order to convince myself that life is not supposed to be like this, I thought about how life used to be before I came to Dickinson.

I remembered back to when I was a kid in elementary school, middle school, and high school.  I remembered what college was like, what my early career was like, and when I got older and moved out to the western U.S.  There was always, always this same cycle, where both good things would happen, and bad things would happen, and the good things seemed to outweigh the bad things.

I had some problems in school, but I ended up doing very well in school.  I had some problems in college, but I graduated from engineering school.  I had some bad jobs after college, but eventually I had some good and high paying jobs.  When I left my career behind, I had some low points, but I also had some of the best times of my life, met very interesting people, and had new opportunities.  Despite bad things happening from time to time, good things happened too.

However, living in Dickinson, nothing changes, it is just bad, all the time.  The local people here, they hate people who are from someplace else, and they also hate each other.  The local people here who have had the advantage of inheriting money, land, or a business would rather hire or advance local people, people with no education and a criminal record, before they would allow someone from someplace else to get ahead.

The local people here with no education, criminal records, and their methamphetamine addiction always begin with the intention of undermining and running off people from someplace else.  Being a worker in Dickinson from someplace else, is like being in a bucket full of crabs, every time you get a claw on the edge of the bucket to try to pull yourself out, you get dragged back down by the other crabs.

The reason why I stay in Dickinson, is because it sucks so bad here, that no one wants to live here and work here, so the wages are higher than normal.  It’s like working in a coal mine, it is dangerous, miserable, and dirty, but it pays well.  Or it’s like working in the Middle East or Afghanistan where the people are barbaric savages, but it pays well.