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.
Sentimental Drivel, Part 3: The Search for Thanks
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.
What kind of decade has it been?
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
Industrial strength goober
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.
It’s an unfortunate ride
My morning began, as it usually does, with a bout of irritation: I had fallen down the rabbit hole whilst watching YouTube, and found myself faced with yet another person who doesn’t understand the meaning of the term, “decimate.”
He was discussing theories for the upcoming Avengers film, and described how Thanos had “decimated” the MCU, whereas the plot point, the actual stated intent of Thanos was to halve the universe’s population. That got me wondering about the state of the English language, and the stupidity of those who voluntarily venture before a camera’s lens. I can’t remember the first time it began to bother me when someone confused decimation for devastation, but it’s got to have been several years now. Needless to say, this got me thinking about lawns, and how I’d like to have one, if only so that I might have the opportunity to shout at the youth of today to get off of it.
This isn’t like the anal tampon vodka shots or the Tide Pod challenge, or even the razor blades in Halloween candy or Satanism scare. This is a genuine concern from an older [citation needed] American, who frets over the future of communication in the world. I mean, hell- we’re back to hieroglyphs. And on that subject- an eggplant?!!! Really? Am I missing out on something, or am I merely inadequate?
I took to Facebook to vent my frustration, when I came across an article I’d seen floating around for a couple of days, mentioning FDA approval for the use of Ketamine in bi-polar patients as measure against suicidal thoughts. Throw the news that psilocybin can push back depression (or at least its symptoms) for up to six months, and the massive push for medicinally legal marijuana throughout the country, and a disturbing realization began to dawn on me:
All the things I used to do recreationally are now being introduced as therapeutic measures to treat my illness. For the life of me, I can’t decide if this is a positive development, or the loss of edgy counter-culture to the forward march of banality. And seriously, where the hell’s my lawn?
I mentioned all of this to my best friend, Fed, who responded to my assertion that getting older wasn’t really for me: “It’s an unfortunate ride.”
And speaking of unfortunate rides, apparently my step-dad has to go to Yakima today to get his… I want to say eyes or ears or something head-related, at the very least… checked out. I apologized for his unfortunate ride, and my mom answered on his behalf that Yakima was, and I quote “not so bad.”
Did you know that Yakima’s slogan (and I am not making this up) is “The Palm Springs of Washington?”
I wasn’t sure about the placement of that question mark, but I like as part of the official slogan. So yeah, it stays.
To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen in his epic retort to yet another Dan Quayle misstep, “I’ve been to Palm Springs. I know Palm Springs. Palm Springs was a place I’ve been. Yakima, you’re no Palm Springs. “
My mother then asked if Palm Springs described itself as the Yakima of California, to which I responded that not even Yakima described itself as “The Yakima of Yakima.”
“But they have a Panda Express, and I like that,” my mother interjected.
“Great,” I shot back, “now I’m going to have to go to Yakima and vandalize every instance of their Palm Springs nonsense to reflect a more accurate advertisement:
“‘Yakima- It’s Not So Bad. I mean, it’s no Palm Springs, but it’s alright, I guess, and we’ve got a Panda Express, which people kinda like.'”
Of course, now that I’ve posted this, I absolutely cannot go and do that, and absolutely cannot be seen to be advocating this sort of vandalism, so let me be perfectly clear:
I am in no way suggesting, nor endorsing the vandalism of Yakima’s official signs, placards, and letterheads to reflect a more accurate portrait of this Eastern Washington (boom)town.
I mean, if it happens, I’ll be tickled pink, but don’t do it on my account.
On Anxiety and Depression
So, I’ve managed, once again, to completely ruin the holidays for my wife. Why this would come as a surprise to either of us is anyone’s guess, but it still stings that I couldn’t help but do it.
Christmas was pretty much a fiasco, but I kind of knew it would be, as I was unexpectedly devastated by a fierce attack of bittersweet sentiment of grief, and the fact that, from a personally selfish point of view, Christmas has been, for the past decade and a half, generally disappointing.
But I’d really been hoping that I could get it together yesterday for my wife’s birthday. I’d spoken with my psychiatrist, and stocked up on my anxiety meds with the expectation that I could deaden the nonsense inside of my brain long enough to appear to be a functional human being, of whom my wife was not ashamed, and for whose absence she would have to make no apologies.
To be fair, I was running off of very little sleep, and despite the fact that I got home several hours earlier than my normal workday allows, I was completely wiped. She insisted that I try to rest, but I was afraid that if I let my body dictate my affairs, I would sleep through the changing of the year. Would that that had been the case.
I went to the store to grab a couple of highly caffeinated beverages (which I didn’t consume until much later), and a couple of canned cocktails which I felt that she might enjoy, and then took her advice to lay down for awhile to try to rest.
Hours later, I was still dicking around on my phone, and trying to squeeze in some last-minute reading to pad out my 2018 reading list. Basically doing anything to avoid doing anything positive to mend my mental state and growing unease at the notion of being surrounded by entirely too many people (which is apparently any number over 3 or 4). I dutifully took my medication and waited for the numbing to begin.
As the sun sank beneath the horizon and the shadows of dusk became evening’s darkness, I could hear people beginning to arrive outside my bedroom door. I decided to wait awhile for the meds to kick in, but the longer I waited, the harder it became to engage some form of social inertia required to launch myself into the orbit of these people (with most of whom I had no real connection, or even previous knowledge). I could hear the conversations and laughter beyond the door, and felt that it would be unfair for me to make an appearance just to bring them down,
Eventually, I did manage to abandon my seclusion for a bit to hide out in the kitchen, where I was asked for my expertise about the cooking ham. A few test chunks later, I proclaimed it ready and delicious, only to finally truly notice all of the additional people in my apartment.
I’d told Wildflower that she should have the people over that she wanted, as it was her birthday, and that I would try to cope with it as best I could. My best, apparently, was to quickly exit stage right and briskly make my way back into the safety and solitude of my bedroom.
At some point (though where on the evening’s chronology it fell, I cannot for certain say), Wildflower did come in and ask for help removing a table which we’d been storing there (presumably for occasions like last night). I should have been more conscious of my reactions: irritability, inability to work out simple geometry, and entirely misplaced anger, but I couldn’t. Apparently it takes the next day’s anguish and depression at having failed so completely at such a simple task (and by this, I am not only referring to the passage of the table, but at my inability to be an actual fucking human being for any length of time) to realize that there was no way that I could have been of any use in that moment.
The longer I remained secluded, the more the shame and terror built. In between the bursts of laughter and merriment, I could plainly hear the silent recriminations of my absence, and the shame my wife most assuredly was feeling as her useless husband hid away like some sort of antisocial personification of rudeness.
I watched the clock inch closer to midnight, just praying for the year to finally be done with; hoping that, somehow, at the year’s end, I would be washed clean of everything, and that I could join them in their celebrations as if nothing had ever happened (though, I suppose, that should read as if something had actually happened). Alas, it was not to be.
Toasts and cheers were made, and I turned off the light and wept myself to sleep, for I had missed my opportunity to spend yet another special moment with my wife.
When I woke, sometime in the early morning, she was snuggled up beside me.
When I woke again, she was gone.
As the daylight grew, I could hear the voices again, the noises of a household already waking up. By the time my nicotine addiction had given me the courage to try to make it out the front door of my apartment, I still found that I could not bear to face the people I’d managed to let down. So I left my phone to charge, that no one could reach me on the chance that I allowed my melancholia to win, plugged my headphones into one of my old and dead phones (with which I can never seem to find the courage to part ways), and pretended to have a conversation with someone while walking through the living room, past all of those judgmental eyes (author’s note: I’m pretty sure the intent which I’ve ascribed was entirely in my head), and out the door, waving meekly at those with whom I’d failed to completely avoid eye contact.
At that point, my intention was to rid myself of the burden of myself which I have, for a dozen years, inflicted on my wife. But, as I wandered in the outside world, free of the physical and social claustrophobia I’d been enduring for so many hours, I felt that, perhaps, it wouldn’t be fair to my wife for me to end my failure to her with an even larger one.
I bought a beverage for myself, and a pack of snack cakes for her, and came back to the apartment.
I wish that I could say that I managed to be sociable, or that she wasn’t deeply hurt by all I’d failed to do the night before, but I think we all know how these type of stories wind up ending.
And so I sit here in my bedroom, typing up my failures, and generally avoiding the family to which I pledged myself when I married Wildflower.
‘I wish that I could be someone who deserved her. I wish that I could be someone whom she deserved. But I remain myself, and seem destined to ruin everything between us until the day she meets someone who makes her happy (without a preponderance of tears), and decides to leave me.
Believe me when I say that this is not my ideal outcome, in terms of positive life choices, but I am honest enough with myself to recognize that she deserves some modicum of happiness (especially having had to endure over a decade of Tex Batmart), and this velvet voice inside my brain (the one I know to be a master misinterpreter of truths) assures me that I will never be the one to give that to her, nor, for that matter, am I even capable of providing her with that.
tl;dr- I suck as a human being, and especially as a husband.
Quod est dicere cum gravibus corde suo qui non est paternitas (and other poor translations)
We’re going to concede that this sweeping melancholia may, in fact, be a reaction to the increase in my medication, as well as the time of year. Despite the fact that this is the first year in a while in which I’ve not lost someone to the icy hands of death, I seem overwhelmed by a sense of grief. Nothing is going quite as I had hoped, and with every passing day, it seems that I can no longer recognize my victories, however insignificant.
Perhaps it’s that the house in which I spent the majority of formative years is passing into the hands of someone (as yet to be determined) else. Perhaps it’s that my expectations of my personal life are unrealistic, and that my dreams are simply too lofty for my ability to achieve them. Or perhaps it is the knowledge that I have failed my son in ways which I have not yet begun to comprehend. Regardless, it all seems to boil down to a single common denominator: the man who abdicated his role as my father.
Somehow, no matter how hard I try to convince myself, it seems that I cannot get over his absence, and what it meant for me. Was it my mother he was escaping, or was it myself? Had he remained, would I have grown up in toxic home, somewhere in Boise, Idaho, or would fatherhood have helped him to discover something within himself that would have transformed his pain to joy? Then again, have I?
How can I be an effective father, or for that matter, husband, if I still have yet to have made peace with myself? I must have written this dozens of times, but what if I’m not cut out for this? If I cannot figure out how to live with myself, how can I expect others to live with me? If I cannot figure out how to help myself get past the pains of adolescence, how can I hope to help David survive his own?
I have been in stasis since the onset of my disease, and, despite the strides I’ve made toward understanding the secrets of reality, that’s been merely and intellectual exercise. I’ve stagnated emotionally, and face the world, and all it holds, not with wisdom, but with the terror only a child can muster. And now I must square the circle, and reconcile these disparate parts within myself to become greater than the sum of my parts.
***********
My psychiatrist is worried that I’ll do something stupid, as I have made the mistake of being candid with her, but if I am to find a medication which works, I feel that honesty is probably best. But as much as she is concerned about the risk of self-harm, I cannot seem to get through to her that I have dreamed of little else but the cessation of existence for as long as I can recall. For some reason, this answer doesn’t seem to satisfy her, no matter how many times I try to tell her that my desire for the end is not an active one, which I am seeking out, but rather a passive hope that one day I will permanently fail to wake. Perhaps the distinction is too subtle for her to have noticed, not that that should surprise me.
***********
I have built up a coping mechanism over the years, though I wouldn’t say it’s healthy. I have found that humour, especially that involving wordplay, is am extremely effective balm for those around me. I slip silently into the mask of a clown, disarming the worry of those around me, and allowing them to believe that I’m okay. For me, however, it’s not as simple as screaming Dad Jokes into the Void. I mean it is that simple, but it’s not terribly effective at relieving the existential pain.
I suppose I should find it amusing that I am using Dad Jokes to combat the ache inside me where the love of a father should have been, but it only compounds the misery, and lets loose a sigh from betwixt my lips.
The only thing my father ever gave me was an inheritance of mental illness, which he, in turn, had been gifted by his father. And it looks as though I’ve regifted it once more to my own son. They say it’s better to give than to receive, but having lived these nearly three decades with Bi-Polar Disorder (Type 2- Neurochemical Bugaloo), I wish that I’d been able to hold on to it a while longer, instead of lavishing it upon my son.
So instead of facing this head-on, I merely cry at any presentation of interactions between fathers and sons, be they cinematic or literary, and seek out catharsis by proxy in the words and images of others. I would ask why there seems to be such a prevalence of estrangement, but I think I know the answer. Either that, or I am like a salmon, returning home to hurt, and allowing it to spawn.
I cannot help but wonder how things might have been, had they been different from the start. Would I have loved my grandparents as much as I did? Would I have even known them? Would I have survived my adolescence?
I am, at best, an ineffective husband, and a distant father. It’s easier for me to throw myself into work, than face having so fundamentally disappointed those who love me.
***********
I was hoping that by the time I’d reached this point, I would have come to one, or at the very least, managed to maintain on topic, but alas, it seems that my depression has held the reins all along, weaving me erratically between self-recriminations as I’ve tried to make my point.
Depression lies, but it’s not really that.
Depression wouldn’t be deceptive if it could get caught in its own lies, for it is a master of half-truths, brutal and incapable of giving quarter. It reminds me of all of my failures, which I know are not untruths, but it also fails to allow me to acknowledge my victories, which is where its brilliance lies.
We are human, bound to the wheel of uncertainty and doubt, capable not only of exceeding expectations for unlikely successes, but for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Whispers in the dark remind me of my fears, but also cloud the revelations of the light of day.
Shall I step boldly forward toward the future, or cut my losses and congratulate this indifferent universe upon a game well-played? The candle which burns as proof against the monsters in the night is almost gone, and I don’t know if I’ve got it within me to find another before the light has finished sputtering and gone out.
But I will try. I will try for as long as I can, until the weight of it all will no longer let me rise. I will keep doing what my father never could: being there for my son.
Maybe.
It’s one day at a time, which means no promises. But it also means no worries, at least not for today.
A Philosophical Exploration of the Reality of Self
I was in a spirited discussion the other day regarding the nature of the conscious mind. My friend put forth the proposition (the Lord with prayer) that each day was a fresh start, and that we reinvent our selves (or should) constantly in an attempt to find and be our best selves, whereas I countered with the belief that we are narrative monkey fancypants who need a continuity of self and, while more than the sum of those parts, are in fact rooted to the memories of the past, informed and burdened by all that has gone before. To be fair, I’m making it sound like we were complete stoner nerds who were engaged in navel-contemplation, when, in fact, it was a tad less structured and slightly more respectable than that.
I am willing to concede that memories are ephemeral, and that, like time, at a fundamental level, it is merely a subjective concept, much as free will, or morality. In a sense, we do recreate our selves every day, constantly adrift in the ever-shifting concept of the present. As the past and future are constructs of the conscious mind, the only possible existence is of the present moment, albeit with a small delay for processing, and discounting, of course, all of the heavy editing that our brains engage in to keep us from going mad by sensory overload (such as eliminating our noses from our field of vision or blurring a bunch of still frames played at high speed to create the illusion of witnessable events occurring in “real time”.
If you factor in the predictive software that we are constantly running, allowing us to do simple things such as catch a ball or engage in anything moderately athletic, and it gets even weirder.
What we perceive, then, is not the present, but the amalgamation of events transpiring microseconds in a scatter plot surrounding the now.
Given this, it is my hypothesis that, due to the fact that we are bizarrely evolved apes, we must construct a narrative built of the past, of everything which has transpired (whether or not it actually happened) in order to give ourselves meaning. This is how lessons are learned, progress is made, society is formed, and neuroses are developed.
We are the stories we tell ourselves, be they novels or collections of short stories. Seasons of television with story arcs, or a jumble of episodes held together by a cast of characters and similar settings. We are Westworld or we are Cheers, and there is no spoon.
But is there a middle path, threading the needle between the extremes? Is it possible that there is some common ground between constant reinvention and thralldom to the storied which we tell ourselves? And if there is no spoon, how are we to eat soup or cereal, or even ice cream?
The answer is that we must create the spoon, while understanding that it is but a tool, an artifice of ape-based genius, and not something which exists in its own right.
We must learn to dream lucidly, aware that we are but stories we tell ourselves, both protagonist and author. And while we cannot change what’s come before (even though we do it every day), we can and must interfere with our own narratives from time to time if we are to take control of the trajectories of our own lives.
We are the principles upon which Heisenberg built his uncertainties. My friend knew who she was, and therefore could no longer see the countless possibilities of where it was that she might go, where as I know the arc of the narrative which I’ve come to know as me, and yet have not a clue as to where exactly within it I am now,
This is oversimplification, obviously, for she has hopes and dreams, and has learned from what has come before, while on occasion, I have been known to have some sense of what is going on within me at any given moment.
The fact is that we are neither wholly creatures of the now, nor are we neverending stories that we tell. We are chimeras of subjective reality. We are both the spirit and the flesh. Ghosts in meat sacks, held up by skeletons, fueled by our consumption of the dead. Fine-haired monkeys, crippled by anxiety.
We are who we were and what we choose to be.
So curl up with a good book about yourself, sip your warm evening beverage, and tell yourself a bedtime story about who you’ll be tomorrow.
Harvey
There are two forces which tend to influence my mood in the attempt to get me to take action: the first is the result of an over-analytical mind, which has limited powers of prognostication, and the other is a sense of self-hatred which desires, above all else, that I place my head into the lion’s mouth to boldly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But, because I am a biochemical meat sack propped up by a skeleton, both forces are relegated to a painfully simple vocabulary, The result of this is that, while my gut may be shouting, “Go! Danger!”, I’ve no idea from what I should be running, to where I should escape, or, most importantly, why. And due to the fact that this communication is carried out chemically, on a subconscious level, I have no clue from whom I’m being warned.
I am a creature of habit, fearing change much as would a germophobic panhandler, and often remain in harmful situations because I’ve come to know that devil, and, for all his faults, he’s a hell of a conversationalist. In an attempt to keep me from the inevitable despair of stagnation, my Hippocamp Nostradamus will begin flooding my awareness with subtle signals of disgust and frustration, in the hope that I will lose control and either quit the scenario outright, or scorch the very earth so that the status quo cannot continue.
This has happened any number of times, and though the process has been painful, I have always landed on my feet, and even wound up coming out ahead. That’s not to say that I am grateful, for I carry the stress of my entire life upon the diminishing capacity of my shoulders, like a mistreated and forgotten Atlas. That, and the extra three stone I carry about within my gut (a nod to the fears of harder times ahead) can make it difficult at times to stand up straight, hold my head up high, and tell the world to just fuck off.
Now, my depression is another matter entirely. In the past, I jave likened it to a sensual seductress, enticing me to fail, or some rotund, alcoholic, and abusive heckler, reminding me of all my failures (including those which resulted in a net victory, but with the redemptive postscript deliberately removed). In reality, such as it is, it is no more anthropomorphic than yesterday’s underwear (if anything, slightly less). That feeling of self-worthlessness is best represented by a hand-stitched quilt (always just a tad too warm), made up of every memory of when I had failed to be the man I know I should have been (every shame, embarrassment, and lie, neatly stitched up embroidered in a dazzling display of craftsmanship), draped over my shoulders to remind me not to get above myself.
Though metaphysical in their description, these entities seem very real, especially to someone who walks the narrow line of sanity to peer into the hidden depths of insight which the human condition may provide.
Now, for the sake of carrying on, imagine these two, not as disparate enemies, one foul, the other fair, but rather, as identical twins, down to the dimple on their left cheek, Got that image firmly in your mind? Good. Now get rid of it because it’s completely wrong.
Neither foul nor fair, nor twins of DoubleMint, this pair of overactive malcontents are, in fact, one in the same. They are a double-headed coin*, tarnished a bit from all the years, yet worn smooth from countless handling. They both despise the status quo, and hate me for who I am. One side would prefer that I live up to my ideals, while the other is more interested in my baser natures. And they can both read past and present to glimpse into the future, and nudge me toward one of their preferred destinies.
This isn’t a campaign waged on a scale of weeks, or months, or years, although I’m fairly certain that they’ve both and endgame in mind for me.
No, these skirmishes within my psyche happen in the beats between the moments which eventually coalesce to become that thing that I call life.
Say “fuck this!” now, and lose out on that promotion they were about to offer, but couldn’t yet discuss because they were checking the financials, but say “fuck this!” now, and miss out on a massive clusterfuck of corporate restructuring resulting in a stagnant wage and overwork ad infinitum.
It’s all contained within the spaces between words, in that anxious moment between heartbeats, and rather than being immediately obvious and clear cut, it can often take months or years to assess the benefits of damages of any given choice.
And that’s just if I am able to decipher the rumblings and pains of my padded tummy enough to make a choice at all.
Then there are the times when it’s just gas**.
* Phew, almost wrote dildo there.
** For the sake of appearances, I’ll not mention into how may existential crises I have launched myself in a response to lactose intolerance.
Damn, Grandma? Damn?
Note: I originally wrote this eulogy for my grandmother and posted it last year, but when I overhauled my site, it was the one post to have vanished. I’ve saved it until now to republish on what would have been her 83rd birthday.
Thinking back to that service, and my delivery of the following, I’m kind of amazed that I made it all the way through.
I can’t believe that it’s been just three and a half months since I saw my grandmother. I was lucky enough to steal some time away from work to be able to come up for what would turn out to be my final Christmas with her. I always found a reason to let life get in the way, and I never came back up to visit as often as I’d like. It’s funny, but during these past twelve months, I’ve flown back up here more than I had in the past twelve years. Part of that was due to the fact that when my great-grandmother died, I knew that I had thrown away my chance to say my last goodbyes, too worried about work, and life, and somehow being a failure in her eyes.
Sure, I’ve done better for myself since then, but when I heard that my grandfather was beginning to fade, I knew I couldn’t just hide away down in California. And when he died, I knew that it wouldn’t be long until I was back up here to say farewell to my grandmother.
I’m sorry. This is harder than I expected. You see, my son came up with me this time, and this is his first real experience with death, the first time he has been exposed to the concept of a bittersweet celebration of a life well-lived. He is lucky to have spent as much time as he did with both of his great-grandparents, and I guess what I’m about to say, the stories I’m about to tell, are as much for him to learn a little more about them as they are for me to pay my respects.
The hardest part is knowing where to start. There are so very many things which I’d like to share with you, but right now they’re just a jumble in my head; lodged behind this lump in my throat.
Perhaps I should begin with how she taught me (quite inadvertently, I’m sure she’d insist I clearly mention) my very first four-letter word. That sort of thing tends to happen when a car door swings shut with only your leg betwixt it and its final destination. Later on, in an outing with my Grandfather, I used it in perfect context, to the effect of nearly causing him to have an accident (of either variety). Since then, I’ve been extremely cautious in my usage of… colorful metaphors while traveling by automobile.
In so many ways, I’ve found that I am like my Grandmother (and not just in my reaction to vehicular agony). She was the standard which I’d found I’d set for myself, when that sort of thing began to matter. But really, I think that the biggest impression she made on me was in treating me like a person when others could only see the symptoms of adolescence. It’s quite simple to dismiss someone when you know better, but it takes integrity and valor to see them as a human being- moreso when that human being is an abrasive, caustic malcontent. She had my back when no one else did, even when I walked on painful and lonely roads, beset on either side by buffalo too numerous to mention.
That’s not to say she didn’t speak her mind. Sure, she had my back, but she never hesitated to tell me when she thought that I was in the wrong. We used to argue all the time, on all range of matters, from the mundane to monumental, relishing not in the causing of pain, but rather the gamesmanship of passionate debate. There were times we got so into it, that my mother appeared to be upon the brink of nervous breakdown. But when we’d finished, there was no bitterness or anger left remaining, just a renewed connection between the both of us, and the unspoken eagerness to do it all again sometime.
It’s funny. One of the points on which we argued most since I left home, was my choice in paramours. She never missed a chance to speak her mind on the subject of the dubious ladies who had contrived to besmirch my honor and misdirect my virtue. Until she met my wife, that is. Not once, not even once, did I hear so much as even an uncertain word against my dearest one. She loved my wife as only someone who truly understands the concept of unconditional love might. She saw, perhaps even before I, that meeting and not driving my wife away was the best thing that I’d ever managed to accomplish.
One of the hardest things for me was to watch her health decline. 26 years ago, give or take a month, she had her first heart attack. So I suppose, in a very real way, she’d been declining for a while. But these past few years managed to steal away her vitality and stamina, and our debates, once lively and verging on a yet-undiscovered full-contact sport made up of naught but words, had fallen into carefully moderated disuse. They weren’t nearly as fun as they’d been before, as she required oxygen to even cross the living room, and so we’d lob our gentle jabs at one another until we both got bored.
As you can probably infer, we didn’t have the typical familial relationship, filled with loving words and niceties. Somewhere along the way, she expressed her affection toward me by reassuring me that she could rock-a-bye me with real rocks. I never failed to retort that there was still time to push an old lady down the stairs. A few years ago, out of gift ideas, and with time running out for Christmas shopping, I ordered her some polished rocks off Amazon, with an invitation for her to give me that rock-a-bye. I’ve been told that it was one of her most treasured possessions.
I’d love to say that my grandma was a sweet and kind little old lady, full of sunshine and other assorted flavors from the Whitman’s Condolence Sampler, but I don’t want to sell her short. She was her own person: proud, and fierce, and above all loving. Besides, if I say too many purely nice things, I’m sure tonight I’ll hear the wind carrying her message past my window of, “Oh, pooh!”
(sigh)
As has been observed, my Grandmother managed to transmute the simple expulsion of carbon dioxide from her lungs into a form of punctuation. If you were to base a film franchise upon her life, and for some inexplicable reason, cast Bruce Willis as the lead, you would be treated to such cinematic gems as: Sigh Hard, Sigh Hard With a Vengeance, and Live Free or Sigh Hard. There again, she and I share a bond.
It’s funny: my mother has repeated, on numerous occasions, that were it not for the pains of childbirth, she would have been convinced that I was her mother’s child. I suppose that’s why that last bit, originally a self-deprecating observational jab at myself, works so flawlessly with her.
So I says to this guy, I says…
(chuckle)
More jokes? I can almost hear you thinking, I’m not sure if this is the time or the place for that sort of thing.
But when, then, if not in a moment of despair?
The time for grief has come and gone, and will most likely come again, striking in those unguarded moments when we think that we’re alright. We do not grieve nor weep for her, for, regardless of your views on what comes after, it is an incontrovertible certainty that she is now finally free of pain. Our tears are shed only for ourselves, because we are human, and because we so very dearly miss her. We weep not because she made us feel that way, but rather for the laughter which in us she so easily inspired, and from which we find ourselves so suddenly bereft.
Death is not something to be feared, like an arbitrary cessation of festivities, nor some sort of adversary to be outwitted ‘til the end. It’s a natural closing of the story of our lives, our hopes, our dreams, one which will be continued in the tales of our children and grandchildren and in the hearts of all who’ve loved us. Death is but a liberator from endless pain and suffering, the final rest which we have sought since we were old enough to regret all those naps not taken in our youth.
Okay.
I’d like to end this with a story from years ago, from one of the many road trips I had the pleasure of taking with my grandparents. You know, I always found it amusing that my grandfather, who worked at Boeing, preferred to get somewhere behind the wheel of a car. Maybe he knew that it wasn’t just about the destination…
We were in Oregon at the beginning of the summer, right after school had gotten out. It must have been close to a hundred degrees, even as night began to fall. We’d had a particularly trying day, the three of us, especially my grandmother and I, an occupational hazard, I suppose, of one of the travelers suffering from his particularly potent form of adolescence.
We’d pulled up to the motel in the early evening, just as the sun was beginning its descent, and my grandparents decided that what they could really use, after a day cooped up with me, was a quiet evening out. Sure, they invited me to come, as they were obligated to at least offer me some sort of sustenance, but, as our room had air conditioning and HBO, I elected to stay behind. Let’s just say that no objections were made. I did what any red-blooded American boy would do, and flipped through the channels to see what sort of life I had been missing with Basic Cable, while my grandparents had an evening of civil conversation in an environment free of rolling eyes and a constant stream of sarcasm.
It must have been a couple of hours later when they returned, because I’d managed to get bored by the offerings of even Subscription Television. From the way they… let’s say… sauntered in, I knew something was amiss.
Driven by maternal (or gran-maternal instinct, I suppose), though it could have easily been the finest example of passive aggression which I’ve been honored to have witnessed in all my many years, my grandmother decided that she’d had enough that day. She snapped her fingers toward the cot, informed me it was time for bed, and, uncertain as to the duration of my safety, I skulked my way over and sat down upon it. Another snap of her fingers, and I laid down, immediately regretting my decision.
My grandmother then began piling blanket after blanket upon me, comforters used to ironic effect, until I began to sweat uncontrollably, both from the trapped in atmosphere and body heat, though I must say that stark terror played no small part. She tucked the many layers between the mattress and the frame, informing me that I was cold, and that I needed to bundle up. Had I the presence of mind, I might have voiced a concern that, in light of this apparent cold snap, said provisions would be best utilized by the those touched not entirely lightly by the eld.
My options rapidly evaporating, much as what moisture I’d managed to conserve, I turned my head (the only part of my body which I could move) toward the other side of the motel room, to where my grandfather was seated on the bed. I could just make out his face in the reflection from the mirror which stood adjacent to the bathroom. I shot him a pleading look, to which he responded with a small shake of his head, and non-verbal “I told you so.”
My eyes screamed at him for help, but by then it was already too late. I was beginning to suffer from heat stroke, and my eyes began to close. The last thing from that evening which I can reliably remember was that look upon my Grandpa’s face, and the smell of wine upon my Grandma’s breath.
My grandmother always had my back, but she felt it necessary, at times, to remind me not to run afoul of her good nature. Especially all day. In a confined space. Regardless of how many buffalo she pointed out (it was all of them). I’ve since taught this lesson to my son, though I refer to it as “not being that guy.”
I will miss my grandmother, and grandfather, who passed away not even one year ago. I never knew my dad, and therefore could almost be excused from understanding that two people could be so very much in love, were it not for the pair of them. They inspired me to look for someone with whom I could tolerate the idea of a togetherness spanning decades. In my heart, there is emptiness which is suspiciously their shape.
It’s tempting to despair that I won’t know what to do, should I one day need them again, but then I remember the love we shared, and all of our happy moments, and I realize that I’ve learned everything I needed from them (but nowhere close to what I wanted), and perhaps they left so that I could finally set aside the training wheels.
I love you Grandpa. I love you Grandma. Keep the car running, because I’m waiting on another road trip. And Grandma, I wouldn’t mind that rock-a-bye.