From the Just So I'm Better Understood File #001

For those of you who don’t know, on a Meyers-Briggs scale, I’m a textbook case for an INFJ. Down to my blood and gristle. The introversion, the intense level of feelings, the intuition, the constant need for solitude and the taffy pull of desperately needing a few particular people in my life and shunning the rest of humanity. I’m not that guy you invite to the bar for a bender, because I’m that guy you stay up talking with until 2 am.

(I am also a textbook Pisces - but I don’t put any stock in horoscopes. Still, the details of that sign are very much me. Don’t ask me why or how.)

But what adds to it is the fact that I also suffer from Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is a relatively new thing to me, in that I was only diagnosed with it in the last year and that I finally have a “term” for what goes on in my head and my heart. My current doctor doesn’t like giving “firm prognosis”, (which is something I agree with since they can be limiting) but this is what I’m being treated for, so for the sake of brevity, this is what I have.

The thing is that one brings out the other in spades. INFJs tend to have that old adage of “still waters run deep” while C-PTSD also has an added detail of my staring off into space to think or simply “blanking out” very often. I tend to retreat from life at every opportunity and it becomes more pronounced both with age and with (particular kinds of) stress. So one feeds the other - my personality and my disorder - so its hard to see where one begins and one ends.

If you’ve known me at all for any length of time, the following list from the Wikipedia entry of the “Adult symptom cluster" should make some sense to you. Edits are based on my own history, emphasis meaning habitual occurrences and strike-outs meaning not applicable.

• Difficulties regulating emotions, including symptoms such as persistent dysphoria, chronic suicidal preoccupation, self injury, explosive or extremely inhibited anger (may alternate), or compulsive or extremely inhibited sexuality (may alternate).

• Variations in consciousness, including forgetting traumatic events (i.e., psychogenic amnesia), reliving experiences (either in the form of intrusive PTSD symptoms or in ruminative preoccupation), or having episodes of dissociation.

• Changes in self-perception, such as a chronic and pervasive sense of helplessness, paralysis of initiative, shame, guilt, self-blame, a sense of defilement or stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings

• Varied changes in the perception of the perpetrator, such as attributing total power to the perpetrator, becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, including a preoccupation with revenge, idealization or paradoxical gratitude, a sense of a special relationship with the perpetrator or acceptance of the perpetrator’s belief system or rationalizations.

• Alterations in relations with others, including isolation and withdrawal, persistent distrust, a repeated search for a rescuer, disruption in intimate relationships and repeated failures of self-protection.

• Loss of, or changes in, one’s system of meanings, which may include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair.

Largely, aside from an occasional meltdown (once every three months, tops - more often twice a year), I hold everything together and keep on truckin’. I’m not medicated nor does my doctor think I need any but its a struggle to see where one thing ends and the other begins because there is so much “natural” overlap.
However, with this new (sorta) diagnosis, I’m finding that I need to do something about my triggers. Most of them are based around work and, though they’re for solid reasons (or so I’ve been told), my … emotional reaction (or lack) is not. So, basically, its time to find something else - and the trick hat is the anxiety and frustration centered around doing *just that*. As was eloquently pointed out to me, I was never allowed to fail growing up - that is to say, everything had to be done right the first time and if it didn’t work, you’re fucked forever - so trying something without being utterly sure of its success is unnerving, to say the least of it.

But then, again, I’m an INFJ. So where do I even begin?

I Am Athiest And I Am For Religion

As an atheist, one would assume I worship at the altar of Neil deGrasse Tyson (I don't, can't stand the guy) or Carl Sagan (now we're talking!), but the fact of the matter is - my atheism doesn't stem from Internet group-think or a simple "rage against the machine" youth-logic that a lot of it seems to come from these days. Nor does it come from having a super-science brain. I am not particularly smart (I would consider myself more "clever" than anything else) and cannot explain away God like so many other people smarter than I.

Yet I would not rid the world of religion if given the choice.

Putting aside the absurdity that one person's or group's belief system can trump others (a common point in theological and political ideals - read Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer" to understand it better), the fact is that much of the history of art in all its forms is based on religion. The Louvre would be largely empty were it not for early masters and idiot children today would not have crappy pop music if those artists weren't influenced by the Beatles. And the Beatles by Bernard Herrmann... and Bernard Herrmann by Percy Grainger and Percy Grainger by Edvard Grieg and so on. All the waters - both shallow and deep in the streams and rivers of music - eventually flow out into the sea of classical influence. And classical music has a strong grip on all religious views.

Think of all the music that came from faith. To rid the world of Mozart is a much, much greater crime than to rid it of any supposed God. To rid the world of God would bring some peace but to rid the world of music would bring complete silence. There is no uglier fate than that.

And I am not talking about pop song religious fluff either. I am not talking about "Jesus take the wheel" schlock, which sells Christ like Reebok sold sneakers with basketball stars. I'm talking about *music* - that art above other art that expresses the incommunicable and changes and grows with every performance. Music music, not dance pop numbers or trivial rock music - but music that speaks to something greater than every day angst and doesn't consist of little more than minor chords or synthesizer beats. Music that, by its nature, informs you of a part of yourself that had previously not existed. 

Music is, in many ways its self, God.

So, I will live with the presumed silliness of (what I believe is) someone else's outmoded belief systems if it means the world has George Frideric Handel's "Messiah" and Morten Lauridsen's (totally fucking sublime beyond all expression, that I have to use the word "fucking" between "totally" and "sublime" just to get the point across) "Lux Aeterna" and the "Missa Solemnis" by Ludwig van Beethoven. It would not be a world worth living to remove the greatest musical artists of all time from history - nor should we invest in a future where religiousness or faith is undermined or removed simply because there is no proof in the existence of God or the obviousness of science and an arbitrary existence.

I will suffer, gladly, your notions of a bearded or multi-armed deity if it means you leave me alone with music. 

Beliefs (9/21/2010)

Be excellent to each other. Don’t eat the yellow snow. Don’t screw anyone over, even if you think they deserve it. Stop hating so hard. Stop caring so much about your job - when you’re on your death bed, you’re not going to think “boy, wish I put in more time at the office”.

Be so passionate about things it may scare other people. If you see an attractive woman, you can look all you want until she meets your eyes - then you have to smile. Approach all situations with joy. Live every day like you’re going to die to the extent that you have a slight death fixation (this makes more sense and sounds less creepy when you get through it all). Eat really good food when you can manage it. Stop buying material possessions. Don’t fuck unless you absolutely mean it.

Talk to yourself - its the only way you’ll get an intelligent conversation. Get angry about things that piss you off but don’t nurse it unless its forced on you. No one is better than you, and you’re better than no one. Don’t use politically correct language. God is a limiting detail on greater spirituality; he’s an atheistic conception used to control guilt-minded people.

Support first and second amendment rights - if only because not having the option is scarier than never needing to use it. Give to charity but mindful of what charity it is since a lot of them are just sharks out looking for blood. Thank every war vet you meet and shake their hand for it. Forgive your enemies but don’t forget them - they may try it again. When you walk into any room, think of the James Bond theme and then notice how your posture and stride changes. Drink heavily, smoke a lot, have some abhorrently kinky sex - but be careful about it all. Appreciate your parents but also realize they don’t trump your own self-respect no matter what. Take pride in your work but also take humor in yourself. Stop using motivational posters and self-help books to grow - just be, and the growing happens of its own accord.

In Her Own Words

I found an old, old AIM conversation with Amanda. It went on for an hour and a half and wasn't at all happy (we were discussing if we should stop talking - one of several times) but I figured this excerpt from her was the most telling.

(6/24/10 12:13:35 PM): well you are great though. the little weirdnesses about people are what makes them lovable, you know that. plus the connection between us feels a little overwhelming

(6/24/10 12:14:52 PM): here is how things go: i go away, feel OK for a while. one night i will randomly dream about you, not even anything scandalous just like when you know someone is in your dream? and then the next day you contact me out of the blue like you knew about it. and THEN i am like maybe we can get together when i am in CT and then i am like no we can’t because obviously i would cheat on (him) and even thinking those thoughts is already cheating so i am totally screwed. in the meantime i love my him and my dog and my life.

(6/24/10 12:15:12 PM): for god sake’s it’s been like 5 years. i will never know how we managed to have coffee last week without having like 80 kinds of sex that time.

I hate to say that I still get a rush thinking about this girl. She was the last one who held my heart in her hands and the only whom I ever shared a mutual, unspoken connection with. And I just found this old AIM conversation and, yeah, man, its been over three years and we don’t talk because she’s married now but … she still sent me an email or two this spring saying “I still love you”. Yeah. Its one of those unfinished works in life; everyone has them, I think.

Yes, this is such a destructive relationship to make another post about but good God was she cute - picture Emmy Rossum in thick framed glasses, having worked in a law library her whole life and dresses like a cross between Daria and Veronica Mars. And she treated me really well, emotionally, which is so very rare. Oh, and she could screw my brains out.

I use to see her around Christmas - spend the day in New Haven just loitering over coffee and talking quietly - so this time of year is awkward & wonderful for me. And without her, I feel like a ghost without a grave. I just wish she'd email me once in a while. Just because just because.

December, 2009 - Putting The X In Xmas

Humbug in its proper vernacular may be tied to Dickens best known book and character but intent of the word is still the same outside of the holiday season. When Scrooge says humbug, its not as a reaction to the holiday so much as his disbelief in people's attitudes. If the book were written today, Scrooge would probably be saying "Bullshit" instead - the affect, the meaning and the bendable quality of the word's intent is the same. That people making merry is bullshit, that people greeting each other happily is bullshit, that giving gifts and seasonal cheer is bullshit.

However, both humbug and bullshit are a less than accurate approach to how I feel about the holiday season. 

This isn't to say I disbelieve everyone's well-wishing or want to spend the holidays alone. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of people - family, strangers, people I work with - are people I do not want to spend time with and yet are forced to. These are people I actively avoid if I can and don't seem to understand I want to keep it that way. I am a miserable fuck this time of year - this year chief amongst all, for reasons I need not detail - and I'd rather not be cornered into giving what will surely amount to either a no-hearted holiday greeting or a screamed line of slurs. Yet they persist, even when I put my hand up and say "No, thank you".

There are three work functions for the holiday season this year: One for this office, one for this building and one for everyone. They all involve different habits and obsessions about what foods, what things to do, what jokes to tell and frankly I'm tired of each of them. People glad-handing each other as if that one day makes a difference, that things could be put aside (if they even existed, as most act out such falsehoods that everyone gets along anyway) and everyone comes together for a celebration of a job well done. My boss wants to take us out to lunch, the following Thursday we had a pizza party upstairs along with a Yankee Swap / Selfish Santa game and then today is a huge President's luncheon which I skipped out on because I am so tired of this drivel.

This is all in the midst of a supposed budget crisis where over thirty people lost their jobs. Where the higher-ups have their thumbs on a pay freeze while they have board meetings for steak and claret luncheons. As they raise a new building, build a museum, purchase a fleet of new vehicles for the "Go Green" ideal. Where they cite that there is no money for anything and yet continue to build, continue to consume, continue to push higher tuition because of fewer applications, continue to raise basic allowances like parking that are free most other places, continue to higher more vice presidents to overlook department heads.

And no where is baby Jesus to be seen. 

(And *I'm* the bad guy.)

Scrooge was right. Humbug. Humbug to the falseness shoved onto the holiday that people willingly take. That in the midst of supposed economic and environmental disasters, we're still expected to make merry even when we have no real right or reason to. That these horrible things that everyone is supposedly affected by somehow *go away* for a day and that goes double if you're Jewish or Muslim. That those of us who just want to skip the damn season aren't allowed to, that we're expected to go along with it and ride it out and give menial gifts we struggle to afford to people we usually don't want to see; these gifts becoming almost like apologies: "Sorry, I haven't been around the last nine months, heres a candy dish or paperweight or pencil sharpener with wall mount to make up for anything I missed bigger than a fender-bender and smaller than a funeral."

Would it be so unkind to get the one Christmas wish I really want: To be left out of this crap? To not have to deal with the social niceties no one actually means, to not have to fight for gift availability or traffic jams? To cut straight past the awful meals where everyone makes a compliment about the tablecloth because no one can think of anything else to say since no one wants to be there? To avoid the shit-stained kids you're asked to buy gifts for as if they didn't have everything already? To ignore the phone calls from estranged family members in the midwest or China or wherever the fuck they are?

I cannot tell you how many times and in how many different iterations I've had to go through with this: "Don't buy me anything. I'm not being coy. Don't buy me anything at all. Seriously, I don't want anything, I work for a living, if I want something I can get it myself. If you bought me something, return it and give the money to the Red Cross or some homeless guy who needs a fix to stay warm tonight. I don't want a goddamned fucking thing, so stop asking. I already have enough nostalgic attachment to shit I have and shouldn't feel attached to, I don't need more to shove into a closet and forget about. In fact, if you don't invite me over at all that would be best. Don't take it personally, I'm talking to you on the phone so I obviously don't mind your company but I don't like getting involved in this sham, thank you." (Strangely, it has yet to work.)

I don't want your holiday. I don't want your homemade dinner with the dirty potatoes made by Aunt Jenette. I don't want the fucking christmas carols. I don't want the holiday specials, the fucking Pine Sol stink of trees and I certainly don't want Its A Wonderful Life playing on the TV (Thats something so ruined by this holiday I'd require an entirely separate rant to explain.). I want to be left. the fuck. alone. I want to stay in and maybe have a few beers, take a nap on the couch and then maybe hang out with spme friends instead of driving to four different places, attempting to get to and from each place with the greatest of haste to get it all over with.

So stop. Please. For the fucking love of Christ in a very, very literal sense - stop with Christmas and leave me the fuck out of it. The real Scrooges are not the ones who say humbug, but Happy Holidays and if you think theres any good at all to come out of the season, you are part of the problem.

Four Rules I Learned This Year

1.) The "Hitler Loved Dogs" Rule (Context Is Paramount)

Everyone loves dogs. I love dogs. You love dogs. If someone stood up in a room full of people and said "raise your hand if you love dogs", most everyone would raise their hand.

However, Hitler loved dogs too, and if it was Hitler who asked you that, chances are you wouldn't raise your hand because, you know, Hitler was an asshole.

The point of the rule is that the source of a statement is as important as the statement it's self. A statement can be true but would you really want to agree with one from a questionable source or use it as evidence to support your own opinions?

The "Sarah Loved Dogs" Addendum: My friend Sarah created the first addendum to the above rule. Its a perversion of the logic stated but I have to keep it. It goes something like this: if someone were to make a truthful statement and they own a dog, you can retort that since they own a dog, Hitler would probably like the dog and thus they have something in common with Hitler and thus the opinion is irrelevant. Its definitely more of a joke than a rule to use but its a nice twist on the logic. Definitely a keeper.

2.) The "Gillian Anderson" Rule (You're Attractive, Fuck-o. Get With It.)

I will not paint over the fact that getting closer than I ever dared expect with Gillian Anderson and entirely of her own volition this year was some kind of weird validation - and I know how completely batshit that sounds, so stay with me.

I'm 32 and yet when it comes to women, I still think like I'm 14. I don't get them. Hell, sometimes I'm so confused by them, I'm outright suspicious - like the whole gender is some kind of collective succubus come to drain me of blood in the cold hours of early morning. And this is despite a pretty okay track record of  some very beautiful women. Yes, that last part sounds totally egotistical of me - but I'm saying that because, well, I'm still not especially confident in some ways. This isn't to say I think I'm a troll, or impersonal but when you live the last 16 years of your life thinking you're (at best) totally nondescript and have the outward personality of a rattlesnake, having *the* beautiful woman / celebrity you had a crush on since the age of twelve grab you and hold you against her goes pretty damn far toward how you feel about yourself. Yes, logically its completely stupid - but for once in my life, the logical part is not what I'm trying to describe; I'm appealing to the honest, emotional side that I keep from most everyone (Even myself.)

This isn't to say that I'm suddenly Don Juan or that my luck has changed. Just that sometimes I deserve to think better of myself than I normally do. And that is okay. Its just so very hard to wrap your head around the complete opposite of what you normally feel is honesty about yourself.

(And if you're reading this, Gillian: I'm free for dinner whenever. Have your people call my people.)


3.) The "JJ Abrams" Rule (Stop Identifying With Things)

If you're reading this, then you probably know of my dislike of everything having to do with JJ Abrams. The man is the literal embodiment of everything wrong in Hollywood: a career based on nepotism, everything  made is a copy sourced from something superior or from an existing franchise and he has no discernible talent in any aspect of writing or directing.

More to the point, you should know that I'd rather take gasoline through a catheter and then piss it out over the open flames of Hell than have anything to do with him. 

That said, his unfortunate presence in the world of the living taught me a very important lesson this year. While it was bad enough that he was behind two completely vacuous Star Trek movies that had no worth what-so-ever except as an example of how to do something wrong, his later assignment to the forthcoming Star Wars sequels sent enough pure bile straight to my brain to drown all joy from my life for several days.

So somewhere between the initial announcement and the half bottle of Jim Beam in reply to it, I came to realize that, once and for all, Star Wars was done for me. Abrams - a man who cannot even pace dialogue  between actors or frame a shot for longer than one whole second - was now being given the holiest of holy assignments. I could no longer identify with the series as I once had; I could not allow something I loved as a child and a teen be beaten down in front of me while I still loved it. Just like watching a vet euthanize your pet, I had to turn away while the needle went in.

So I left. I didn't damn it, I didn't cry "rape" like the common Internet drone nor did I make some crazy-ass YouTube video about what Star Wars is and isn't. I just put it away carefully and closed the lid.

And that made me grow (the fuck) up.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not thumbing my nose at the films already made or that I'm dismissing my adoration of them - but like the song goes "Don't dream, its over". Someone I dislike for so many strong reasons is taking something and will no doubt put his stamp all over it. It also doesn't help that Disney is putting out character-based films outside of Episode VII - because people need to know what Yoda was doing with his off-time or something? (Hint: no one cares)

So I just can't go on with that. I can't. Its done for me and I'm a lot happier for it. I feel no anxiety over if it'll be good or not (though there is some anxiety about John Williams being alive to finish the scores) and by pushing it out, man, talk about your relief of burdens. I have refused to take it on as a person and thus, give no shits to how badly Abrams will undoubtedly ruin it.

Thirty years of putting too much of myself out there and into a non-corporeal concept like a movie series. I feel cleaner already.


4.) The "Executioner's Axe" Rule (Don't Throw Yourself On The Sword Willingly)

This is really more of an Internet rule but I suppose it could also be used in face to face conversations at parties. Its basically "don't volunteer to put your head on the chopping block", which is something a lot of people seem to do with immense haste. Its an easier rule to explain by example though.

I'll use the easiest of examples, since this is so common for me: lets say you have two people talking about a movie. One person loved it and one person hated it and the person who loved it is making a much stronger intellectual argument for his viewpoint.A third party comes in and starts yammering that he hated the movie too - totally unprepared for the conversation, without having any of the context spoken between the original parties and simply throwing their hat in the ring in that "JJ Abrams" rule (over-identifying with something) cited above. Needless to say, this third party person gets steamrollered by the opposing party and usually cries foul for all sorts of nebulous reasons.

But they're the ones who stepped in. Its no one else's fault but their own. They put their head under the axe, so to speak. Anyone who voluntarily sticks their neck out is, by the nature of the act alone, probably asking for a direct rebuttal.

Amanda, Epilouge - Sheinberg's edit, "Love Conquers All"

When I told you about moving to Texas, you told me you wanted to see me one last time before it happened. We make plans quietly - another day or short weekend in New Haven. No presumptions, no plans, just idle wandering. It gets compared to the movie Before Sunrise, where those two people just wander around a strange city and ignore everything but each other.

The Saturday morning rolls around and I'm standing in the train station again, my flat-cap in one shaking hand and the other in my pocket. And as you step up, you're wearing a purple scarf, or a purple beret, a purple something. You smile out of the corner of your mouth and we walk out into the street, holding hands. New Haven is busy and loud and we don't notice any of it. The pull of you has nothing to do with how you're leading me.

You talk about your life and your job and your marriage and your dog and how broken your car is and where you got your boots and how tired you are of your mother; with every new subject you creep closer and grip my hand harder until your fingers are pressing white between my knuckles. You coo quietly and say to tell me about my life instead. My job, my apartment (I want to see it! she says with enthusiasm), my cat Greta, my car that is always falling apart, movies, music, close-calls that somehow never turn into girlfriends. An existence of near-misses that somehow culminate into the misery of lost chances, bodies of dreams strewn about.

We duck into alleys and corners and the windows of book stores.You go to kiss me and miss my mouth and get me right under the eye. I ask how long I have with you and you pull away to an arms length before saying "Tomorrow, noon." The last word curves up to the corners of your voice, almost like a question, easily confused with hope.

I take you home and put on the television and we get to cooking. I'm a terrible in front of a stove but between the two of us we make something passable before deciding on throwing it out for Chinese take-out. Between the phone call and picking up the order, we become a mess of limbs on the living room floor, grinding like machines. I can hear the fabric stretch along your back, under your hair. You guide me once or twice - a hand here, no, move your knee - before we start laughing.

I stand up to get my keys - the Chinese is surely ready and probably cold by now - and you hold me before we walk out. My hands find your elbows and I wonder aloud how small they are in my hands. Weird detail.

The takeout is bland, the movie we watch is half ignored. The lights stay off after the plates are in the sink and the DVD player is still. Your glasses come off, the hair is down, we both know this is the one last time we have in a relationship of one last times. Your legs meet around my back and so it goes, on and on, for an hour and then two. You shake so hard that it might actually be me shaking. You curse loudly. It sounds weird coming from you.

===

Now - none of this happened. This epilogue just above. Its what I thought should happen and likely never will. Because, as life is always ready to prove, love does not conquer all. Love is a building block of life, like water, like carbon. It is a thing that is necessary to exist but it is also an inert element when left to its own devices. It is a thing that does not move on its own, does not change without outside forces, does not have any greater meaning without more placed on it.

And thats the cusp of our relationship I guess. And its inert because of you.

I'll allow myself a little bit of anger and a whole lot of self-loathing over that anger because, well, this is all unresolved. What I wrote above was what I would need to end or continue everything we had instead of the basic building block you and I started so long ago. We never finished what we barely even started.

What drives me nuts isn't that I lost to the lesser man. Its that I lost to you. I never tried harder with anyone in my life, never wrote more, never expressed more, never more more'd - and here I am writing fantasy-fiction as I hold a glass of vodka in the other hand. I am drunk enough to know I am right and sober enough to know I still love you; tomorrow morning, I will be sober enough to know its your own decision to make and I'll still be drunk on my affections. (Ah the curse of the Irish holds strong in my genes.)

I don't like letting go. Ive never abandoned a friend in my life and have gladly welcomed back any who have wandered away. That is just who I am. And maybe you need to wander away for a bit too. And like the rest, you're always welcomed back - but I also have the gnawing feeling you never will. That you shut the door so quietly as you left, neither of us heard it click.

So, you are now a song from a summer too far away. A vibe from a passed era, the watermark from a flood forgotten. I loved you like all men would want to love a woman and you found it best served to be cast aside.

Maybe one day you'll find this blog, this entry, read it in full. Maybe you'll take my old suggestion and look up "When You Are Old" by W.B. Yates and know that that is where we've been shoehorned: part my fault, part your decision. And part of me will be waiting for that reply; though instinctively that part of me waits knowing that the reply will never come, or even if it did, it would be much colder than desired.

So this is it then. This is us in our thirties. The bond you and I had under so many dark nights, awake hundreds of miles away and wondering about the other is now tethered to a still lake, all life and living gone from it now.

My God, how I loved you like no one else in my life.

And how I wish that part of me would stop holding on.

March 2013, 10:14 am

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm sure I'll get all sorts of well-wishes and well-meaning gifts from people and they'll all be nice but none of them are going to be what I want or need. Only I can give that to myself, I suppose. Just sending this to you is that gift - even if you roll your eyes and delete it without reading, thats cool too. You have that right and that option.

This speech, this email was originally something I had hoped to tell you face to face but I fear that time has passed too far and us living in different states nixes that idea. I may be more eloquent here but I'd be more effusive and probably less long-winded if I said it out loud. Blech.

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase. First, my apologies for sending this seemingly at random. I'm not here to kick up dirt or start your day on the wrong foot. I realize we haven't had the best friendship and I realize that I'm pretty much persona non grata as of a decade ago. Its well earned on my part. But now that I'm older and notice how I'm not in touch with those people from my teens and twenties anymore, I need to strike that iron while I still have a chance at saving my soul.

I did a lot of awful things to you way back when and said a lot more. I hate to say the bad things seem to outweigh the good, now. I pretty much hate myself for it. I am so very sorry for the person I was then. It may be water under the bridge for you and I truthfully have moved on a bit myself - but the effect you had on my formative years deserves more respect than I gave them then and at least some acknowledgement in hindsight. I am truly sorry I did not see you for what you were and that I did not love you like you deserved. And this is all some sort of a "Personal Hell In Hindsight".

But I'm not saying I've turned over a new leaf or that I'm a totally new person - just that I'm a little more seasoned, a little more mellow. And looking back at the angry, young man I had been, I feel very little but shame for it all. Its okay if you don't believe me when I say I'm sorry to you every morning I get up; I do it anyway. And I know no matter how many times I say it, what I did to you won't heal anyone's wounds any better but I'll say it every day in hopes it does heal something. 

Believe me when I say I don't expect or require a reply. Its enough that I got to send this to you after years of running this stuff through my head. I feel a little free after typing it and yet the worst part is that everything I said here is an abject failure because what I feel is so much more than what you're reading. I am so sorry for what I did to you. So very sorry.

If you made it this far in reading, thank you. And if you didn't thats fine too. I really, really honestly and truly hope you're happy with where you are and whom you're with and I suspect the best is yet to come with you and I wish nothing but the best for you too. You have, at the very least in your short life, entirely changed my life in the process and taught me some tough lessons in the process.

I miss you, fidget.

J

Elka, Four Years After (Now With 40% Less Uncontrolable Sobbing!)

(Image Redacted For Reasons Of Privacy)

Today marks the fourth anniversary to my losing my mind.

Halloween 2009 was the worst day in my life. I waited months for a reply from a woman I was very much in love with and had foolishly prepared myself only for good news. And in reply to my page of heartfelt adoration - got a three sentence Dear John style reply that broke my brain. I may not have beat my head against a wall, but I understood why people sometimes did that when under duress.

Only two people saw me at my worst and its such a sensitive memory, I don't want to detail much of it. My emotions were completely out of control the first 24 hours: I had lost the ability to use words, sobbing so hard into my best friend and her sitting there knowing there was nothing to be done about it. I shook, I cried, snot ran freely. I was a hopeless bag of flesh; not quite a man, quite nearly a thing. She held me and after a time, said nothing, noticing that the words meant less than just being gripped tighter. It was strangely, deeply intimate in a way and its a favor I still feel I should somehow repay to her. I don't like being the vulnerable one, even less so to that degree.

The months that followed were a rolling fog. In hind sight, I probably should've gotten better help than being alone or even had myself checked into a mental health ward. I would come home every day from work to scream-cry on my couch, sometimes to the point where I'd end up dry-heaving into the toilet. I'd shake uncontrollably: my hands, my legs, the kind of feeling in your guts tremble under your skin. I'd have to go through this for hours every day, just to release all that tension, just to be able to fall asleep. Weekends were the worst since I was left to sit by myself in the dark. And though some days were easier for others, it would eventually crest once again and I'd be back where I started. It made my soul sick to be housed in such an emotionally-ignorant body.

Thats when I started writing about it:

And I know she still thinks about me. And I know she still feels for me more than she dares let on. You don't get close with someone with those kinds of words in an ankle-deep world and then just let go or forget or walk off. But shes with someone else now and I sit in an empty apartment scattered with beer bottles and loose change. A pile of struck matches around the cheap scented candles and the stabbed out ashtray. The bedding needs to be changed though its never been slept in it. The empty refrigerator. The cold linoleum floor. The TV tuned to a dead station. The hot, grimy intuition that shes thinking of me right now.
  

But that doesn't even matter. She's with someone else and she'll probably marry him and that is what wakes you at night and makes you look over at the little black velvet box sitting on top the nightstand. She'll get one like it from someone else.

And writing did help. It was a valve that helped me discard all the collected tension in my chest from days and weeks and months of waiting and suffering and wondering. But even writing can only do so much, words can only go up to the point of the incommunicable. You hit that barrier between language and experience: you can't step through it. And so, left at an impasse, I was right where I started before writing.

By this point, I had considered taking my own life. The memories, the feelings, the unresolvable madness of questions unanswered were pushing me toward that permanent silence. I didn't quite plan it but I was pretty resolved in doing it. I started writing individual letters to people, tidying up my affairs as it were. I began writing about her, about the cancer in my chest from all the thoughts I had had for months, in the hopes that it would not only explain why I was going to do it but have someone have some appreciation after the fact. "I understand why he did this" was what I wanted to hear.

Then I had the dream. A dream that scared the hell out of me. I was in a small glass enclosure, like a phone booth. This booth was floating around a fog of sorts and I saw all my dearest friends going on about their lives - being happy, having children, growing old and satisfied with living. I was banging on the glass, screaming as loud as I could but none of them could hear me. I was trying to warn them about death: that it was one-sided. That you'd float forever, able to watch but unable to interact. That the short time you had was it and that after that, you became a permanent spectator who was alone in his own little glass cube.

When I woke up, I realized that the subconscious part of my brain had basically solved my recent problems for me; that there was no guarantee of peace in death. That there is no contract, no reasoning, no universal agreement or proof of peace in the Great Beyond. That if I had killed myself in that brain-state - who was to say I wouldn't be locked in that place forever? A glass coffin for a ghost without a grave.

So, now what was I left with? I went back and started reading (the worst stuff you can read during major depression) Satre and Hesse and anything basically existential and provoking. I started watching The Fountain once a week; I started to mine myself for all I was worth by overexposing my soul to anything that could touch it. And it helped. Well, it helped a bit anyway. I was trying to squeeze as much blood out of the stone while I could.

And it took over a year to be more or less back to myself. A lesser version of myself - that woman strip-mined everything I had been for 30 years and left me shallow - but myself none the less. And every once in a while, that feeling of her loss creeps up on me. It never comes on fully, it simply passes by and keeps going. Because truth of it is, I won't let it come around to stay anymore. I can't. It crippled me once, and I'm afraid a second round might kill me stone dead.

And I know a lot of friends who pat me on the back and tell me I made it through a bad ordeal and that I'm stronger for it - but the other side is that you're left to wonder if everything is worth surviving? That you're so changed after an event like that, you know you can't ever go back to who you were before, so you're lost even in yourself. The thing is everyone tells you time heals all wounds, but no one mentions that the scars can be disfiguring.

Would you really want to walk through Hell to prove any point? I wouldn't suggest it.

But I'm here now. And she married and had a couple more kids and I definitely think I dodged a bullet in a lot of ways. I don't regret what we had when we had it, simply how we decided to end it. It was a callous way to bring that amount of closeness to an end. And the experience has made me gun-shy: I've all but dismissed the idea of dating ever again. The best way to explain it is that wonderful exchange in 1991's The Rocketeer:

Peevy: You got a good thing goin' on with that girl, Clifford. And I'm tellin' you right now, if she flies the coop, it's gonna be your fault.

Cliff Secord: Aw, what do you know about women, Peev? You haven't had a date since 1932.

Peevy: [wistfully] Flora Maxwell. There wasn't any point datin' nobody after her.

But I'm a little more solid now, a little more on an even keel, a little happier not chasing after a skirt for the first time since high school. I'm practically disinterested in dating now and happy with that. I'll stay with this mindset for as long as it suits that happiness, despite the looks of concern from friends and terror from my elders.

Lets try this out for a while, shall we?

Lou Reed Is Dead. Long Live Lou Reed. - 90 Minutes After The Annoucement Of His Passing, Aged 71 Earth Years

 
The passing of Lou Reed is an odd one. I suppose the big reason is that, by this point, we had all assumed his hard-living lifestyle would've kept him permanently embalmed. Like a Keith Richards or a Iggy Pop, here was someone who lived hard and fast and then harder still and kept on living somehow. His face looked like someone had left Lyle Lovett out in the rain and sun for too damn long.

I don't have many distinct memories of Reed's music either. I really started listening to him in my early 20s, when I'd be up until three in the morning talking on Instant Messenger and watching the Late Late Show. There was a thing I liked about him that escaped me for many years - but it was really about how simple his music was. Unlike a lot of other rock artists before him or following, the great point of Reed's material was how simple it was. At times, I'm even reminded a bit of Philip Glass - where its one idea stretched to its greatest limit, changed in the simplest ways, so its basically four minutes of a chord progression. But where Glass is brilliantly maddening, Reed was brilliantly approachable. His music (and especially his lyrics) were so much like the kind heard in art class rooms where bohemian wanna-be teenagers strummed a guitar and didn't sing a song so much as talk through it. Not quite poetry, not quite fumbling in the dark. But it was distinctly understandable: some half-way-there poet finger-banging greatness but never going the whole way.

And thats where I think the tragedy is in Reed's passing: the man was a simple storyteller. In an age where music has been castrated and cauterized by increasingly stupid pop music clap-trap - the immediacy of a guy struggling to make a song sort of work has all the vibrant workings of a story around the bonfire. Simple. Direct. You either bought it, or you didn't. Pure narration, in a way. I respect that - its the same approach Hemingway had with his readers. Except, you know, nothing about blowjobs.

Reed was the ultimate dream-come-true for all those high school rock band kids. He never made it very far in the charts Hot 100 sense but he never gave in to outside excess or pressures from trends. He was just Lou Reed. Here he is. And his talent wasn't in arrangements or big ideas; he was just a guy with some cute ideas and they were the kind you could see him scrawl on ratty cocktail napkins with ballpoint pens. His kind wouldn't last in this day and age if he was just starting out - which makes you wonder how many other people are out there like him and don't get the chances he had. After all, we don't like people who are just talent and we don't trust people if they're not interested in just taking our money.

But I listened to him a lot. I'll fault the movie Trainspotting for introducing me to my favorite song by him "Perfect Day" but there were others like "No Money Down" which is terrific and a throwback to his love of 50s rock, though it took me a long time to warm up to. "New York Telephone Conversation" with its oom-pah-pah bounce comes off as Danny Elfman finally not giving a shit after coming home to a dirty, laundry-smelling apartment after spending all night drinking mezcal in a dive bar in Hell's Kitchen.

So yeah, Lou Reed is dead. Long live Lou Reed. Ain't gonna find many more like him unless you look harder at the people struggling in high school art class with badly tuned guitars and not giving a fuck about it.