More bits

Tuesday, January 6, 2004 03:10 p.m.

I am hoping that this does not appear to be angst to other people. It is not angst. Angst is something teenagers feel. They feel it because they don't comprehend life's complexities well enough yet that they can deal with them in a totally emotionally healthy way.

No wait, most adults I know can't either. They just learn to hide their angst.

But seriously folks, this is not my angst. If it were, you would know. I would say, this is my angst. Maybe I am in denial but, I don't think I have angst anymore. I think I outgrew it somewhere along the line. Angst takes more energy than I have to spare.

Which brings me to something Suzanne told me once. She said that she was not sure she wanted get healthy mentally and emotionally because then she would lose her ability to write moving, angsty stories. I disagreed with her. My opinion was(and still is) that when healthy mentally and emotionally, you will write from a deeper perspective and not be limited to your pain. In fact, you could write from a place where you could look back on the pain and see where it came from and have a more poignant perspective.

There was this fellow named Robert A. Monroe. He wrote three books before his death. He did a lot of other things in his life, but it is his three books that effected my life so severely.

You could say that his recorded journey affected my journey. It seems that as I grow and evolve in this lifetime, a teacher always comes along with the very thing I need to learn at the exact moment I need a teacher.

Not that this doesn't happen with everyone else on earth, I just thought I would mention that I am actually aware of that process. God forbid someone accuse me of thinking I am the only one who experiences things in life.

I just thought I would mention Mr. Monroe. Just for the hell of it. Maybe I mentioned it because death has been on my mind of late. And maybe because I have been thinking of Debbie a lot lately and remember the feeling of unconditional love as her spirit passed through me at Gina's wedding.

Here is the deal with Debbie. Technically we had Power of Attorney over each other the whole time we were together. So when she went into a coma, I technically had the right to end her life if she was brain dead. When Gina called to tell me Debbie was brain dead, I of course was in shock. Other than begging me to come home to LA to help her, the one thing she asked me over the phone was which one of us it had been that had said "If I ever go into a coma, don't ever pull the plug on me."

I knew exactly which one of us had made that statement. The other one of us had said "If I go into a brain dead coma, pull that friggen plug ASAP!". Gina could not remember who had made which statement. I however did (and still do). So she was sitting there, trying to decide what to do since her mother was laying there brain dead. I told her out of the compassion in my heart that it was I who had made the former statement.

I lied to my kid to save her suffering through having to pull the plug on her brain dead mother. And ever since then I have felt a minor amount of guilt over that lie. Debbie was dead, only her body went on. Her brain had literally exploded inside her skull. The doctors had given her no chance for survival, period.

I remember sitting there at Debbie's side as she lay there dying, telling her how much I had loved her and still loved her. I never felt her there. Never felt that spirit I knew so well in the room with me. But I told that I did what I did with Gina to save our child from suffering any more than she had to. It was bad enough to lose your mother once to insanity, but then to lose her to physical death like this was more than one child should ever have to live through in a lifetime with a parent. I did it because I loved my child more than I felt the need to honor Debbie's request from more than 10 years before.

So there she was on Gina's wedding day. Embracing me with her being and I felt it as surely as if she had been there physically holding me in her arms. Which makes me think of Robert Monroe and his experiences in life.

I know no one can or is reading this, at least I am pretty sure they aren't. And even if they are they cannot respond to it anyway cause I wouldn't know how to make it so anyone can respond anyway. So I am going to continue to do this pretending that no one is watching (or reading). Sort of like masturbating when you are pretty sure no one else is around or listening.

At any rate, I am feeling pretty lonely right now (how can you tell?) The last few months I have had a friend here in my house staying while she got her shit together enough to get her own place. I guess I better back up here. She was not exactly my friend when she arrived here. She was my boy Audey's girlfriend and they needed a place to live while waiting for Audey to get out of the Army. I offered my home and they came (except Audey had to go back to the Army to await that nebulous honorable discharge).

Ky pretty much stayed to herself out in our Airstream for the first month or so. This was cool as we were just giving her a home and a place to use as she put her new life together here in NWA.

Anyway, I personally stay pretty much to myself here at home. I keep to myself and don't share a whole lot with the family members here. I have always been pretty much of a loner anyway. I have never trusted others to not hurt me and have pretty much stayed inside my own world. Once in a blue moon I let someone past the barriers I have created to protect me, but usually that is fairly short lived (just about the time I get hurt, that openness ends).

So as time went by, I started just chatting with Ky. A lot. Like I know I bored her to death because the subject I chose were random thoughts with little vignettes attached to them (sometimes lengthy dissertations on things that even bore me). But I was her host and so she let me ramble and kindly feigned interest.

She usually didn't share a whole lot back, but then that was because I was taking up the lion's share of talk space. That's a sure sign I am lonely. I start talking way too much about shit that bores everyone around me to tears. Someday I will apologize to Ky for tormenting her so with my boring dissertations. She was so terribly kind to listen.

Now they are leaving, they have their own home now and I am feeling lonely tonight. All of their things are gone. For one bright and shining moment I had people to talk to, a captive audience. Now I am back to where I was before they came here. No Audey, no Ky... well for the next day or so their dog is still here, but even Ko will not listen to my garbage.

I am feeling pretty low right now. Depressed is a better word for it. I was feeling pensive this whole week knowing they were leaving in a few days. That has given way to this loneliness, which in a few days, once Ko is finally gone will turn into melancholy.

I will have nothing to come home to again. Nothing to brighten my days like they did.

Melancholy, boring, mediocre (at best). The story of my life. Boring, occasionally bright, but never brilliant.

I wish I knew why I cannot go beyond being occasionally bright. Slightly above average, that's my IQ. Most of my friends my whole life have been brilliant. IQs that go through the roof. Why they bothered to hang with me I will never know.

You know what being mediocre really feels like? It feels like you can see brilliance, you are even dazzled by it. You can smell it, taste it, hear it, but you are never allowed to touch or hold it. You reach for it and it hovers just a little higher out of reach, never allowing you to embrace it.

I have bored myself, so now I am going....

Sunday December 28th, 2003 3:11 p.m.

I am being prodded to get dressed on this lazy Sunday so that we can go shopping (something I abhor). Actually it hasn't been that lazy. I just managed to get my desk cleaned and the surrounding area. I even washed the windows adjacent to my desk area. It's 50 something degrees right now here in the Ozarks. It should be in the 20's. I am not complaining, not one little iota.

My five year old daughter just told me she wants to be a beautiful lady (she just dressed herself up in a faux leather skirt and pink sweatshirt). I told her she already is a beautiful lady. My child has no gender dysphoria. She loves being a girl. She loves anything Barbie. I just want to know how it is that someone like me could have had two daughters who are such girls. Daughter Number 1 also adored Barbies and makeup and playing house and dress-up and all those other gross girl things. How did this happen? All I ever wanted was a son I could go fishing with and teach to play baseball.

We are trying for our second child, me and the little spousie. We are using my brother's sperm this time. My sperm count seems to be a little low, always has been. Funny how things work out that way when your testicles were missing at birth.

The spouse can't figure out how come we are not pregnant yet. We have been trying for this second child for a goodly long time now (she can give you the exact amount of time if you need that). The five year old was easy. One time, one shot and wham bam she was pregnant. Course we had fresh sperm then. Had a friend in the master bathroom making a donation that night she was ovulating. The sperm from my brother has to be shipped 300 miles from Iowa. That sucks.

After all this time trying for child number 2, my spouse is getting more reflective about why she is not pregnant. She is beginning to think it might be the great cosmos trying to tell us something. I say that if it is the universe speaking, it is them just telling her that maybe it is better to be a widow with only one dependent child rather than two. Just my take on the cosmic voice that may or may not be trying to speak.

Ok, they are going to kill me if I cut into their shopping time any further. Thank god I hate football or they would be in really big trouble on Sunday (big baseball fan here, go Dodgers!!!).

Peace

Sunday, December 28th, 2003 3:22 a.m.

A solitary, hermit in hermitage. The redundancy says it all. I want to be alone.

Since I was seven anyway. Mrs. Carpenter, my second grade teacher asked our class one day what we all wanted to be when we grew up. One by one she pointed her translucent, bony index finger at us and required an answer. I went with my gut feelings at the moment and said "a hermit." The shock and horror on Mrs. Carpenter's face was palpable. The innocent child look on my face must have pissed her off even more. Because boy, was she fucking pissed off at me. I thought she was gonna hit me, that or stroke out.

Now my standard answer to that question at age seven was not that at all. The pat answer I always gave to inquiring adults was that I wanted to be an architect. I actually wanted to be an artist, but at age five, when the first adult to ever ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up posed this question to me, well, I got sort of tongue tied and instead of artist, out came architect. That became the answer of choice until I was at least 18. Spent my entire high school career in preparation to be an architect in fact.

Then at the end of my senior year, Mr. Rife, my Architectural Drawing 1, 2 and 3 teacher (not to mention Mechanical Drawing 1, 2 and 3, and Drafting 1, 2, and 3 too) told me it was a shame that I was his best student and had such talent because, as a female, I would never get a job as anything other than a draftsman somewhere (emphasis on the man part there). With graduation (and a 4.0 grade point average, I might add) looming only a few weeks away, that was enough for me to just say fuck it all and become a hippie wild child, alcoholic, drug addict. I did bother to graduate though. The drug and alcohol thing started on grad night and didn't stop for the next 7 years. But more on that at some other time.

I should have just corrected mybad ass five year old self, but everyone was so fucking impressed that I not only could say the word architect at age five, but that I also actually appeared to know what that was and aspired to be one (my parents, slack jawed, with amazed look included). They were so fucking proud at that exact moment that I just didn't have the heart to correct the answer. And all I really wanted was to be Michaelangelo and live in eternal angst while creating monumental works of great art. That or I wanted to be Tchaikovsky and create monumental works of great music (more angst, just a different century, language and culture). Either way I would have been a social outcast with incredible talent which was all I really wanted anyway. Which brings me back to the hermit thing.

At age 4, somehow my parents managed to convince me I was not a boy. They did it by laughing at me and ridiculing me when I insisted I was a boy. I knew I was really a boy, I knew they were wrong. I know they still are for that matter. But after a self exam of my genitalia, I realized that technically, they were correct. That sent me into a rage against God that took a lifetime and then some to get over. In the meantime, childhood was a living hell for me. Being a hermit seemed a decent alternative to the ridicule I received at the hands of my peers and the adults that populated my life.

I think around age five of six I finally learned to shut the fuck up about being a boy. It was bad enough personally knowing my penis was missing, but to have people look at me like I was some kind of freak (which actually gender dysphoric children and adults are freaks to the general populace) was more than I could withstand. It didn't stop me from being myself though, which was a bad thing because, myself was a boy and I acted like myself. Being myself caused me a lot of ridicule in my childhood. Now it just makes some people uncomfortable. Too fucking bad for them, eh? I am 49 years old, I am who I am, get the fuck over your bad selves people.

At any rate, my fantasies in childhood revolved around running away into the mountains far, far away from any living human being and living as a very self sufficient hermit (it helped that particular fantasy in that I actually lived in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas too). As the years dragged by, these plans became quite elaborate. I spent a great deal of time day dreaming during class about my plans to become a hermit. Especially during boring subjects.

Mrs. Carpenter's second grade class was incredibly boring, beyond measure. The whole fucking thing, day in and day out, boring. Mrs. Carpenter should not have been teaching second graders. She would have done better teaching remedial High School English. Then as her students passed out from boredom, she would have had a more valid reason for going off on them with her violent fits of temper. Or at least students who could emotionally handle her tirades better.

The only thing I remember from second grade (other than that stupid career question) was when Mrs. Carpenter went off on Rebecca Randrup who was nearly blind and needed special paper to write on. Now, no one in Mrs. Carpenter's second grade class liked Rebecca Randrup, because well, she was different. Her physical disability had made her someone who would probably have been relatively shy and withdrawn anyway, even more so. I personally had no attraction whatsoever to Rebecca, but then I was kind of a solitary kid anyway (no, duh, really?). But that day, when Mrs. Carpenter jumped Rebecca's shit big time because she needed that special paper to take the spelling test we were about to take, well, something just snapped in me and if I had not hated Mrs. Carpenter before, I sure as fuck hated her now.

When the bell rang for recess, everyone bolted from the room, relieved that it was not them that Mrs. Carpenter had gone off on. I stayed behind watching Rebecca quiver and shake at her desk, trying to hold in the tears. It took everything in me to get up from my desk and go get Rebecca and take her by the hand and lead her outside. We just stood there during the whole 15 minutes of recess, she crying little sobs of persecutorial grief and me patting her on the back and holding back burning tears of intense hatred. I was so fucking mad it was unbelievable. I told Rebecca that Mrs. Carpenter was wrong to say she was a freak in her class. I told her she was a good person and nothing was wrong with her.

At that moment, Rebecca Randrup decided I was her best friend, all the way through ninth grade. I never decided that, ever, even all the way through Junior High School. Rebecca was one of those kids who was a social liability to hang around. I hung with her out of pity, not because we had any interests in common. I always felt major guilt over that too. I also treated her like total shit and told everyone she was my puppy. She would bark whenI said that and wag her little ass. Rebecca was pretty desperate for friends if you haven't noticed so far.

I went home that day hopping mad and told my Mom what Mrs. Carpenter had done to Rebecca. Luckily my Mom was a teacher and also pretty good friends with Rebecca's Mom. I know something was done because Mrs. Carpenter was so fucking nice to Rebecca from then on that someone had to have done something to that bitch to get her to treat Rebecca like a normal human being.

I spent a lot of time in the mountains being a hermit in Mrs. Carpenter's class. Which is probably where I was when she asked that question in the first place. If you fast forward the 1961/62 school year at Easterby Elementary in Fresno, California to the Ozark Mountains in December of 2003, you have sitting before you a wholly different person than the one that befriended (albeit reluctantly) little Rebecca Randrup. Now I know why I befriended Rebecca. Rebecca was an outcast, just like I was and deep inside I knew that I needed to protect her from the evil of the world. What was wrong with me was something that I personally would never find acceptance over, I knew this even at age seven. But Rebecca had hope. She had surgeries lined up to correct what made her weird and unacceptable. The doctors were going to fix Rebecca's eyes. I however knew that my missing penis was never going to be found and that I was just plain old fucked.

Still, I needed to protect her simply because like me, she was an outcast. I could not save me from the onslaught of cruel humanity, but I would be damned if they were going to fuck with Rebecca. She might actually have some hope. I had none. Which brings me back to being a hermit.
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Self inflicted death was also an acceptable alternative to hermitage at age seven too. I was just thinking to myself that I am not sure how I made it past the age of 14 without committing suicide, but then I thought a little harder and I am not sure how I made it past 35 without doing it either. In my young adult years (and even into my 30's), the hermit theme often had a suicide fantasy attached to it too.

I dumped all that when I was 36 years old. That was when I entered psycho therapy for the last time. This time I did the work to get better inside. It worked by the way. I got better. But that is a whole other story for a whole other time.

So why the hermit/solitary theme now? (heavysigh) Because one thing I have never managed to do my whole adult life is be alone. When I was young I did not want to be alone, I needed people around. As I have slid off into the bowels of middle age, I find I crave solitude like never before in my life. It doesn't appear that the opportunity to be alone will be presenting its self to me anytime soon either. Even a week or two would be nice.

See, I am dying from emphysema. I might have 10 maybe 15 years left at best. Maybe less, but I like to go for the bigger number cause it makes me feel like I have more time. It's good denial for me too. I need denial occasionally. I need to believe I will live to be 96 like Grandma and Grandpa did respectively. Keeps me from getting pissed about things. Well, that's not true. I still get a little annoyed at people without terminal diseases in their 30's acting like I have forever and wasting what I feel are precious moments.

The upside to all this is that I spend more time with my five year old child than I did with my first child (who is now 31 years old and pregnant with my first grandchild). I am not sure if I will see her graduate high school (not even thinking about college, I am pretty sure I am going to miss that one while still in this flesh). What I really want is to have blocks of time (a month is a nice block of time) where I can just explore what I want to explore and experience without a whole world on my shoulders that I am responsible for. I want to touch and taste and experience as much that interests me as I can with whatever time there really is left.

The problem with having a disease that is slowly killing you is that no one around you sees you dying. Well, my significant other sees me have these coughing fits where I turn purple and I begin to think that maybe I really should go get an oxygen tank and she does get to listen to my serious wheezing all the time. But even she is in denial about my death. Course if I were her I wouldn't want to be thinking about my spouses death either. After all, I don't have good life insurance, oh wait, I have no life insurance and no chance to ever get any either. Her greatest hope is that I get the house paid off before I die so that I do not leave the family bereft and homeless. Which by the way, is the greatest cause of stress in my life. The thought of leaving them bereft.

Something in me just can't let that one go. I need to protect them, to take care of them, to make sure they do not starve when I am gone. But more on this theory of life later. Just one more thing to let go of. Something about growing older and on top of that, knowing you are dying (albeit slowly) helps you to trim away the things that do not really matter in life. You learn what is important and what is not and you start letting go of things you once thought were so important. Things are not important. Relationships are. Power is useless (unless you want lots of things). Personal spiritual power is another story, you need that. Unconditional love is everything, very little beyond that matters. But more on that at another time and place (oh sorry, the place will be here for the time being).

Well, that was a lot to say. And I am done now. Good night Gracie.