AKA: When it all feels like chicken
Not always, does it go so wrong, so fast, but just when the frail brightness of a supposed happiness longed for daily seems to dwell more around you, more consistent, much longer than ever before imagined, and the failures disappear for a prolonged instant, that is when BAM!!! CRASH!!! Everything goes black, and to dread, and you feel so much the foolish soul for the prolonged effort in trying…to get it right, finally, again. Turning over and over events in your head, in a proverbial irreversible grave if you will, the errors discovered in a life that was… not going right at all. This is technically is called: the point of realization that you fucked up royally. And the place where all stories begin.
I was 18, going on 40, or 35 going on 12…it doesn’t matter what age I was. I was working the 9-5 for quite a few years, making people things, selling ice cream, keeping the boss happy and the like. The time was also filled with tons of restless sleep, socializing with bar buddies at local watering holes and bad women picked up at the 'last chance' gully of despair. My biggest goals were to keep the rent paid, the ‘rents out of my hair, a fairly healthy appearance (so I could dwell on the glory days) and someone coming around to satisfy those other needs, we all have. After all, what is a person to do if they are not focused on other things: like community service, long-range security, kids or 401Ks.
I met people like that. Some I could understand their points, and agreed wholeheartedly with their beliefs, until, when I saw them slamming down 151, Hot Damn or Stoli or gossiping excessively about some Jennifer so-so, then I heard the truest words they ever spoke about themselves, "I'm am so fucked up and I don't know where I am going." I kept that in mind, and decided those other goals don’t carry weight, much, after beer thirty and liquor lunch. Rarely, but it happened, as you approach milestones, those fated anniversaries of emptiness, you ponder harder on those issues because you never thought time would catch you by the short and curly ones.
It had in my case and the pull was painful.
The experience of life is not connected by just days, turning months, then years marked by candles, liquor celebrations or mid-life crisis, but the relationships we settle into out of desire, necessity or the convenience to not be alone. And not just any one relationship; most of us see our problematic situations for years and years, we bottled them up in neat little packages of anger, frustration and insecurities waiting for a solution to come out or about, usually, and instead, we crave an insincere apology from the other side of the divide. We seek our due penance through new relationships- trying to exercise the demons of old- hoping this friend is better than our family was, or our teachers were, or some other missing element of growing up, or the lagging development of being a overstressed, under appreciated, near-do-well adult.
God calls too. The Big Man. The Creator. His Most High. And all the futile pleas to find out why we wake up wishing we weren’t us. Some people don’t have this, and I truly envy their positivism in the bleak world it often is. I bid them do great things. Fine a way to solve all the hunger, and violence and end all the suffering everywhere. We all should be so lucky. But the remaining persons (like you and me) have to wonder why Billy Joel’s “Captain Jack” speaks to us vividly and resonates loudly, and we laugh along with Billy, for a brief moment. Then we just ponder it all. Just like God (or Billy) expects us too. And He (GOD) sees this whimsy moving in our heads like a fat hamster on the wheel, and probably appreciates it in us. Just hoping action follows bloated thought.
And for the countless times I thought it out, that I’ll put my better soled foot forward, and find a real way to make the right choices and forge new beliefs, using the infallible guidance of the Creator or what I thought was his calling to some goodness that must exist inside of me. (It must, or I’ll be damned to understand why the game.) True to form, I wander away after a few weeks, or someone comes around to “tempt” me back to the consistent B.S. I got a post doctorate thesis working towards. But the song gets play again, by another artist, and that is the depressing part of this story. (Note: The Bible was a source of inspiration too. But for artistic purposes, utilizing the symbolism of a song just works…or not.)
Later, if the same year, I don’t think so, the finally resting place of the old, cynical, crab ass happens. A different inhabitant begins to take form. The first of it is to ditch the beer buddies. They are quick to exit and easier to contend with once I just don’t go to their bars. I lose my controlling interest in MGD incorporated, and find faith in something more useful: jogging around my neighborhood every night. I can hear you say, “I thought it would be the church, or AA, or community service.” Grand leaps of faith are a glorious thing. Just they are not for us all. Commitment is a freckled and fickled thing. But for anyone managing it, I commend it. Enjoy your 12-step program to enlightenment.
Next came the rush to find a new job. Pulling out a different mask: the considerate, kind, energetic, team player, all that you wanted to be and should be, only practicing it takes time. Discouragement happens, but rebounding is easier without the negative vibes in life. Hangers-on to the old self are damned, and the better part of rejection is the knowing the right person is still available for that dream job: me. But it came, and the fruits came with it. You like what you do. The boss does not bother you. I make the effort to stay later and get in earlier. Hours in my life seem like minutes. Days click by. Projects never done, get done. The hum and drum start purring and soothing over me like a waterfall hitting rocks and enticing me to relax, take it in, see all the good stuff.
Finally, the best part of it all: a relationship that counts. By the way: I met others that counted on the way to this. Just the relationship that matters, is the romance lost in the gloaming of the springtime of youth.
End Part I....
