Sing a sigh of sweet surrender
As you fall into his arms,
Held by love and understanding,
Kept safe from doubt and harm

Treasure daily the simple things
And love her more and more each day
Run wild through fields of butterflies
And leave the chance of happenstance
To take you where it may.

Two become one in the
Crucible of love as
The daily trials will burn away
All that is impure

And what remains is
Love itself
Eternal, passionate, mundane

This is the love
We dream about

Not fireworks,
But fireplaces.
Not grand displays,
But consideration.
Not codependence,
But appreciation.

This is the love
That takes a lifetime
To enjoy.

In the past, I’ve mostly used these Sentimental Drivel posts to talk about loss, but I thought I’d try something different this time. Maybe it’s because it’s Thanksgiving and I’ve been told that I have to be thankful for something. And I am, in a way. It’s just hard for me to express my gratitude, as it means opening up and letting others in. I mean, I’ve written lots about mental illness on this blog, and many other personal things, but I’ve usually had some other reason for doing so, and besides, it’s always been easier for me to write about pain than joy. So let’s give it a try and see what I can do.

Though I’m not currently even remotely okay, I know that it could always be much worse, and that there are many people in my life who actually care for me, and want the best for me. Maybe this is hard for me because I never learned how to accept praise or love without worrying that it would come to a ruinous outcome. That I would somehow not live up to expectations, and have to face abandonment or ridicule. I should know better, but it’s been so ingrained in me for so long that my first instinct is to shut down and distance myself before I can get hurt.

Okay, so this isn’t starting out too promising. Lots of pain still. I’d write something funny, but I can’t seem to find it in me at the moment. Well, we’ll power ahead anyway, and see where this all leads. Hell, we could even wind up with rainbows and puppies.

But this is for my friends and family. Well, my Family. My friends (all three of them) have been so for so long, that I consider them siblings, which is nice, as I’m an only child. We’ve been through hell and back, all the while making sure that we never went through it alone. To this day they are ready to be at my side, and I at theirs (though I honestly don’t know how much help I’ll be at this present time). It’s hard for me to say, but I do truly love them as if we were bound by blood, and couldn’t face the emptiness the world without them.

And then there’s my grandchildren: a source of joy throughout my life, they brighten every moment of the year. They remind me of my son when he was younger, and give me another chance to see a world of wonder through their eyes. My grandson is overflowing with ideas and stories, and every time he’s over, he regales with with his tales. My granddaughter tackles me when she arrives, giving me a bear hug and telling me she loves me. They are both so sweet and loving that they almost restore my faith in humanity.

My step-daughter is a whirling dervish of creativity, and reminds me of myself when I was younger, and my son-in-law is a giant teddy bear of a man, who ,loves her dearly. I am glad that they are family, and with their children, make a warm and inviting home away from home.

I suppose it’s time to turn my gaze to my not-so-little Monkey Man. He is so much like me that sometimes I worry, but then I remember that he doesn’t suffer from mental illness, and I can stop and appreciate how I might have been, were it not for my own. Being his father is a privilege, and though I look forward to his 18th birthday and the beginning of his own adventure, I know that I will miss him as he is now, much as I already miss the version of him when he was just a child.

And then there is my wife, the light of my life, the love I’d always wanted. To her I give my thanks for nearly 20 years of putting up with my bullshit and eccentricities. If she wasn’t such a wonderful human being (quite probably my favorite), she would have left me years ago for someone who could give her the life and love that she deserved, but for some reason she sticks with me. She supports me in every way, and I do my best to let her know how much I love her.

For my family in Washington, I wish that you all were closer, so we could see you more, but none of you want to move to California, so I suppose we’ll just have to remain apart by the size of Oregon.

See? I did it! I brought this back to happy from the brink of despair. It’s definitely not the best thing I’ve written, but I think it’s got some moments. No jokes, though. I’ll have to work on that in the future. I’m going to go now, as it’s time to start thinking about getting ready to go off and do the whole Thanksgiving thing, but I’ll leave you with a final thought:

Be kind, be loving, don’t take anything or anyone for granted. It’s a short ride on this blue marble of ours, far too short for hate and division. Embrace your friends, embrace your family, and embrace your neighbor (but not the one upstairs that blasts reggaeton at all hours, because fuck that guy!). Make jokes, make memories, and make it a life worth living. Take a moment to find the beauty in the world, be it a sunset or a simple moment with the one or ones you love.

Ten years ago, I quit my job at Blondie’s Pizza to embark on my lifelong dream of writing for a living. I bought a website, and set out a goal of writing 2,000 words daily until I could conceivably write halfway decently again. I succeeded, at least until it came time to monetize my efforts. Six months were all I got until the money ran out, and I had to get back into the workplace again, as all I’d managed to generate was tens of dollars, at a net of negative more than that.

So I got a job, which destroyed my back, and only lasted there about 3 months. The worst part was that it took me a couple of months to get even that. Turns out that not a lot of places want to hire an ex-GM. Through professional networking, I got another job, not too soon after I’d reached my (literal) breaking point, and jumped ship to move over there. It was another restaurant gig, but I was good at that sort of thing, and it was a chance to try to undo the damage to my back. Unfortunately, like a lot of new restaurants, this one was destined to fail. So I used my professional contacts to get in at another place.

I compared working at my favorite restaurant as something akin to Jason Newsted joining Metallica, having forgotten my ability to foresee the future, and threw myself in entirely. But my mental state was beginning to deteriorate, and after only seven months there, I had to leave. Luckily, there was hope on the horizon.

My old GM (before I took the reigns from him) at Blondie’s was working at a market in San Francisco, and I called him up and asked if there were any openings. He told me they were looking for a Deli Supervisor, so I hopped the BART, and went in for an interview. Of course I got the job- I was too qualified not to. It wasn’t until later that I learned that the role of Deli Supervisor had the shelf life of a fruit fly, and that soon I would be desperate to move on.

But what a ride it was over those three years. I loved making sandwiches, although the supervising aspect began to take their toll. I grew up in a different generation, and I couldn’t stand these kids and their lack of work ethic. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that they were the vanguard of a new mentality, that being one where you only work as hard as they pay you to, and that being married to a job wasn’t the flex that it was meant to be.

It was during that time that I discovered that years of embracing unreasonable stress as a fact of working life had brought about severe anxiety and I was forced to take a medical leave. It was the best thing to happen to me in years. The fact that it was a disability leave meant that I got some of my tax money back, and didn’t have to worry about finances, which allowed the accumulated stress to wash off of me like so much mud in the pouring rain.

The main reason, of course, for the leave was that it would be a month until I could meet my psychiatrist and the intake physician and I decided that I couldn’t work until then, as only the psychiatrist could prescribe the anti-anxiety meds, and the symptoms were so strong as to have necessitated my visit there in the first place. Even having had my insurance for years, I’d never availed myself of psychiatric help until I had no other choice.

After that month had passed, I was able to be diagnosed with General Anxiety and re-diagnosed with Bi-Polar Disorder, Volume Two (Nervous Breakdown Boogaloo). I got on some meds, and back to work, making adjustments to both, as needed. But seeking help meant becoming aware of how untenable my situation was, and even though I was starting to get better,{I needed to come up with a more sustainable type of workstyle.

Sadly, I was incapable of this, and when the paperwork began outweighing my actual work duties, I knew it was time to leave. I didn’t want to spend months waiting while I looked for another job, so I picked up the phone and sent a text to someone with whom I’d not spoken in five years.

I’d worked with him in Blondie’s years before, as we had both been GMs for the company (myself in SF, and him in Berkeley). Of course, the owner being who he was, as soon as I’d managed to get one store back on track, he’d send me to the other, but as of when I departed the company, I was in The City. Years later, I ran into him again, and found out that Blondie’s had gone out of business, and that Abdul, the mystery man in question, had bought out the Berkeley location, and started his own pizzeria. I popped in one day to congratulate him, and went on my way, thinking nothing of it.

But when he got back to me, that moment was still fresh in his mind, and he told me that I was welcome to join him, and that he was looking forward to working with me again. After three years, I left the Market behind, and went back to making pizza for a living.

At first, it was great. He’d only needed a cashier, so I was able to just be this guy, you know. But soon I was running the shifts on the GM’s days off, and, when he left, I became the General Manager. I really thought I could do it this time, and for a while, I could. But after five years there, the physical and mental stresses there became too much. Midsummer, nearly six years to the week, I was forced to take a month-long medical leave, though I was completely unable to contact my psychiatrist during that time, so I didn’t actually receive funds from that time.

At the end of that month, I went back to Blondie’s, and once again ignored the limits I had set for myself, though I cut my workweek (not entirely on my own) down to three days, it was still too much. There were several gaslighting incidents which caused me to begin breaking down. By the end of October, I knew I’d had enough. I could no longer physically or mentally continue to work there. Not if I wanted to retain my sanity and physical wellbeing.

And so here we are, coming rapidly upon December. I haven’t been working since I left Blondie’s halfway through October. I’ve looked for work, but have been entirely unsuccessful. And the longer I go without the daily grind, the more I become aware that I’m not actually sure if I can go through it all again, not that anyone is breaking down my door, looking to hire me.

I’m coming up on 45, joining my chosen siblings at that inauspicious age, and here I am again, ten years on, facing the unknown. I haven’t written during the time I’ve been “retired” until today, because I didn’t know how to describe, even to myself, what I was feeling or even who I was anymore. It’s been said that you only have the courage to go and face your dreams once in your life, and now it seems that I am begging the universe for a mulligan. But I suppose that when all you’ve got are words, then words are what you’ve got to do.

I have an appointment with my psychiatrist mid-December, and it is my intention to seek disability. I do not know if I can work, assuming of course, that someone hires me in the first place. I feel broken, and need some time to rest and reflect. That, and I’ve paid for years into the state disability fund, and I think that it’s time that I use it for it’s intended purpose. We will see.

*****

So that was work. And mental health. What about the family, and what about the future?

My precious Minkey is now 17, and a senior in High School. He’s doing about as well as I did, when I was in school, which is to say, not outstandingly. He learns well enough, but he can’t be bothered to do the assignments, and that’s kind of tanked his grades. But he is turning into a good man, kind and generous, if somewhat a kind of hermit. Mostly he just plays videogames all day, and asks me to make him food.

But he’s not all so bad. I’m actually quite proud of the man that he’s become, and I am eager to meet the man who he will grow to be. Just the other day, it seems, he was running around in diapers in the back yard of our place in Berkeley, and now he’s got a girlfriend, and a limitless future before him.

My marriage is the best that it has ever been. Turns out that after 15 years of marriage, and 18 years together, we have finally learned to live with one another. Of course, Wildflower may have opinions on the matter. She’s had to put up with me and my illness for all that time, and I’m amazed that she can still find it in her heart to love me.

Oh, and my grandparents died, so there’s that. I won’t go into too much detail here, as I’ve written about it several times on this site, but, suffice it to say that those losses devastated me.

Of course, I am a grandparent myself, so I can see it from the other side, and I know that I was truly treasured, just as I treasure my own two grandkids.

And…. that’s kind of it. I’ll be writing more, and taking on more serious subject matter. I’ll still try to write the odd humorous post from time to time, but it turns out that I have things to say, and I have some time to finally say them.

Thank you so much for coming back, and I hope to see you all again quite soon.

tl;dr Over the past decade, I have quit Blondie’s twice, been diagnosed as slightly crazier than I was before, lost two grandparents, and had a handful of job “experiences.” Also, we’re getting the blog back together!

-Tex Batmart

So this year, I’m turning 40, and what do I have to show for it?

Massive anxiety and depression? A job which I have fallen out of love with? A website which I hardly ever use? I can’t seem to find any words inside of me with which to populate my online vanity project. But never mind all of that. None of those issues are anything new. You could have checked in with me any time over the past… well, forever, and I would have told you the same, apart from the website, of course. That’s a fairly recent addition to my ineffective arsenal, although we’re coming up on five years, so that’s something.

But what I really wanted to talk about was my little industrial strength goober. The Minkey turned twelve this year (12!), and has started in middle school. Where have the years gone? It seems like he just started kindergarten not too long ago. And of course, this year isn’t just about a confusion about the compression of the past, but also a unwelcome reminder that he’s very close to becoming an adult. Six more years, and he’ll have to get ready to join the world. I’m not optimistic at this point.

I mean, I know that eventually his poop and fart jokes will give way to something else, but I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I know that he’ll eventually get bored of Minecraft, and may pick up a book at some point, but I can’t imagine when that might be. and yet…

He’s my little guy. My Monkey Man. The baby who became a boy who became a young man, all, it seems, at once. And while it seems that he’s lost that preciousness which was the hallmark of his youth, I can say that at least he’s become more interesting over the years, though I beg you not to tell him that. Don’t encourage him to tell me more fart-related anecdotes.

*********

It’s been five years since I started this post, and that might make this the longest running project on which I have embarked. Of course, in Batmart time, I’ll probably only have spent a couple hours on this. So what’s changed, and what has stayed the same?

The Minkey is in his senior year of high school, has a girlfriend, and still tells fart jokes. He’s just over six months out from adulthood, and I’m now not sure how to feel about it. He’s grown considerably as a human being over this past half-decade, but the world has grown into a far more complicated place, and he’s going to be faced with some very serious decisions very soon.

There has been a… rhetoric in this country recently (well, not just recently- it’s been a part of this country for at least as long as I’ve been alive) that what this country really needs is fewer immigrants. Especially those damned illegals! People very close to me have jumped on this bandwagon, despite the fact that this proposed mass deportation would target my wife of 15 years. “Oh, well, she should have come here legally.” they say. I respond with the reminder that she wouldn’t have come had it now been an emergency, and hadn’t planned on even staying. Were it not for me and the Monkey Man, she would probably be in Mexico right now, living a good, contented life, relieved to be away from somewhere she was hated just for being brown.

So we’ve been talking about when we’re moving to Mexico. It’s no longer a matter of if. Of course, we were always going to go, but now there is a ticking clock. We’d like to wait until the Minkey finishes out the school year, but we also want to get out of here sometime shortly after the new year. If we decide (or need) to go sooner rather than later, he will have to decide if he’s staying here or coming with. On the one hand, it would be an incredible experience for him to come with us, a chance to immerse himself in another culture, but on the other, it would mean abandoning his friends, girlfriend, and the only life he’s ever known. I do not envy him.

I’m sorry if this has gone from moderately amusing to fairly depressing, but it’s been kind of a year, and that’s my current state of mind.

I’ll be trying to write more in the coming days, as I’ve embarked on a new literary journey, and I need to, once again, knock the rust off and remember how to write again. Welcome to Thunderdome, my pretty guinea pigs. Buckle up, it’s not going to be pretty.

Before I begin, I want to make something absolutely clear: This is not a cry for help. I don’t want you to ask me if I am doing okay, nor am I interested your suggestions for how to miraculously turn around my life. This is hard enough as it is, without people trying to help.

I want to be honest, which means I need to let myself be vulnerable. And for that to happen, I need to feel safe, I need to know that I can tell the truth, and that nothing will be okay.

It’s come to my attention that I am in the midst of my annual summer depressive cycle. Were it not for a record of my musings over the past several years, I would most likely still believe that I was simply inexplicably exhausted. The depression which comes in the weeks leading up to my birthday is well known to me, but I always manage to forget the misery which the Summer Solstice delivers.

This isn’t about committing suicide. Ironically, I have my depression to thank for my continued existence. The same apathy which overwhelms me also keeps me from the meager stores of energy I have left which I might use to end this bloody nightmare I call life.

Would that I could but fade away, slowly disappear from the tapestry of reality, painlessly, without fanfare, without being remembered at all.

Painlessly.

I would so very much like the ending of my life to be entirely unlike the rest of it.

I wish that I could just go to the doctor, get my pills, and pretend to be regular folk again. Cut off everything that makes me me and just get by.

My wife and son would probably appreciate that.

But I can’t. Hell, I can barely even force myself to take a shower, I feel so overwhelmed and beaten down.

I feel so torn apart and raw inside that I cannot even find a way to cry.

I just want all of this to end. I don’t care how things will work out. I’m sure that everyone will carry on without me. Hell, they’ll probably do better without having to keep dragging me on.

I keep trying to find a reason.

They tell me to stay for the sake of my son. They tell me to stay for the sake of my wife. They tell me to stay because of countless reasons which don’t mean a damn when I’m amazed that I somehow managed to get out of bed.

When it gets this bad, I don’t even want to write. You know, that thing that I’ve dreamed of doing since I was seven years of age.

The only reason this exists is that I need to remember. I need to remember how this feels when I come out on the other side, for I’m not so daft as to believe that this will be the end.

During the cycle of mania, I am blissfully incapable of of viscerally feeling what it’s like to never want to be. That’s the time of whispered lies and inflated dreams of glory. Those are the moments when I feel like everything will be okay.

 

I wanted to write more, but it seems that the Bi-Polar Bears have seen me typing and are closing in on me.

 

Everything seems to be back up and running now, here at The Continuing Adventures of Tex Batmart (Formerly Known as The Vaults of Uncle Walt).  There are still a few bugs to work out, but overall, I am pleased with current events here at The Home Office.

In the coming days, I will begin to catch everyone up on the adventures from which I have been recently suffering, but for now I just wanted to wish everyone a good night, and welcome you all back!

-Tex

Just a quick update:

I am still working on restoring functionality to the site. Once that is done, the Archives will return.

I am hopeful that things will happen at some point.

 

I’m still not sure if I am going to keep this as it is right now, as I still haven’t managed to actually accomplish the one thing I wanted to do with the whole reformatting thing. If anyone reading this knows how to deal with the back end of websites and would like to volunteer to give me a hand with a little housekeeping, I would be extremely grateful.

As for now, we’ll see how this goes.

The classic posts are still safe and secure, and when I finally have this page back to where I want it, they’ll make their way home, albeit a slightly different one, rather like adult children coming home to find that their room had been converted into an office, I’m even going to set up a special page for them, “The Vaults of Uncle Walt”, which you may remember was, up until about half an hour ago, the title of this website.

In addition, it’s my goal to create a page to showcase some of my shitty poetry (and a much smaller quantity of my good poetry), as well as news on any projects which I may happen to finally start working on, in addition to links to my e-books and various other endeavors to finally be able to sit down for a living.

Of course, all of this will take time.

Stuff like the poetry (and even photo galleries) will exist on a more or less permanent basis, and will be installed in chunks over the coming months, as time allows. Additionally, I intend to spend the next couple of weeks going through my old posts from “The Vaults” and streamlining things that existed in multiple parts so that I could pad my 1,000 word/day quota, as well as try to find some sort of thematic arrangement so that you could, should you so desire, head directly to my handful of posts about Star Trek without having to wade through a sea of whinging on regarding mental illness.

As for the blog, I still intend to run it much as I had before (though I should hope with somewhat increased frequency), but I will no longer be holding myself to a word count above 500. Your collective sigh of relief is doing wonders for my self-esteem…

I’m sure that there will be many times when I will wind up on a roll, and write to the length with which I’d grown accustomed, and maybe, once I figure out this whole work/life balance I’ve been hearing about, I might start to think about reviving it once again. But honestly, it’s hard enough to find the time to write without imposing arbitrary obstacles upon my path.

The truth is that I am a writer, though I far too frequently find whatever excuse is handy to avoid actually doing it, and I want to be able to write again. I can’t keep up the whole food/customer service life for too much longer, and I definitely can’t afford to take off more time for rust removal.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it.

It’s kind of late, and I’m pretty tired, so I think that I’ll be heading off to bed.

On a personal note, I would like to offer a heartfelt thank you to all of you who have stood by me these past few years, and who may (I hope) have found comfort, humor, or enlightenment within my words.

And so I present to you:

The Continuing Adventures of Tex Batmart