AND WHY IT IS SO
A recent story on NPR about Alex Karras and his
joining in a suit against the NFL proved to be an interesting read because of
the role of his wife, actress Susan Clark, as an observer of his decline. The couple starred together as the adoptive parents
of Emmanuel Lewis’ character “Webster” back in the 80’s. Prior to acting, Karras was a four-time NFL
All-Pro, and one of the league’s most vicious players.
"All through the time that I've
been with him, he has suffered headaches and dizziness and high blood pressure
and all kinds of things that are ... usually the result of multiple concussions,"
Clark said from Los Angeles in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
“All through the time
that I’ve been with him…” Wow, that takes a special kind of person to want to
invest and be with you, especially without knowing what else is to come in the
future, what other kinds of symptoms and maladies that are awaiting you. Yep, I think that is a rare kind of
willingness in a person to go on and love in spite of the unseen that is
ravaging your body.
Now the reason that I
had sought to be alone after I lost Tee Jay would change over the years. The first change was the plan to be open to a
relationship from my past, originally developed to justify my desiring Tee Jay,
but to fulfill a personal philosophical theorem, it was open to anyone that I
included in my “past”, including Nebraska.
With the pact I made with myself fulfilled, by having rekindled a
relationship with Mookie Dee, approaching both SD and Tee Jay, and having a “darkhorse”
ride into the race in my SFC, I felt free to finally move forward and into what
the future held for me.
Prior to running into
and kicking things around with Mookie, I had never, outside of returning to my
starter wife after she threw me out of the “marital estate”, ever tried to
bother with someone that I had broken up with.
I never thought of as being anything but fair, as I feel that sometimes
your best isn’t good enough, and sometimes you just have to be satisfied with
that. So whether someone wanted me back
after I dumped them OR whether I really wished that I could have taken back
whatever I said or did to push them to dumping me, having done my level best in
the relationship, I would find comfort in that my best this times wasn’t good
enough.
Now with my injury and
my aspirations, I still thought that sucking it up and going it alone would
still be my best option. Unlike Alex
Karras, I won’t have a long body of “good years” to trade when my decline
becomes more stark and dramatic. So
though it was not a factor in my thinking about going through my “ex-list”, it
seems to be inspired from a then future-past, as though a “one day ghost” had
went back in time and whispered in my ear.
Another reason that I
had wanted to be to myself, harks back to when I did lose Tee Jay. Even then, I had felt that I had lost MY best
chance to be with someone I could grow with and spend the next 40-50 years
with. As I wandered my path, it would
become clear at that point and time that I may never find someone who would
commit to our relationship, at least not at the level I would have someone join
me in my life with. I could not entice
anyone when I was at my best to invest and trust in me and our ability to live
the best life together, so who would take that risk with me now?
I am not trying to
make a “woe is me” case. If I was to do
that, then I would have to give back all the small triumphs that I do have and
the personal battles that I do wage and win back to the fates, and groan in
lamentation of “how unfair life is”, or some other equally uninspired and
insipid drivel. I mean really, who gives
a rat’s patootie about why the same bad strategies and unimproved skill sets
continually bring you similar results? I
know that I don’t!
So I try to journal
honestly as this IS what it is for me… for anyone to think otherwise is a sign
of latent paranoia eating away within, something that is conjured and exists
only in them, for reasons that only they can fathom. And that is again, something that I am less
than thrilled to deal with, and I must be “highly motivated” to want to be
involved with at all.
Like the Marvel Comics
character “Longshot”, even though my plan was to go “this way because of that
reason”, by taking “that way because of this reason” still seemed to work
out. Coming here without any assurances
that there will be a “…oh, THAT me and you,” between Nebraska and me, I brought
my hopes and dreams along with me and venture out into the Ultraworld.
OFF INTO THE FORBIDDEN ZONE
Once I started to
settle in Omaha, I thought that I did not have to be as concerned about whether
or not Nebraska, or anyone else for that matter, have a opening for someone to
be a “Tonto” or “The Lone Ranger” to my playing the appropriate role in their
action/adventure show. Omaha had a vibe
to it, a feeling, that this was the place for me to be in my life, right here
and right now. Yeah, I am still on “guard
your grill, knuckle up” watch, but now it is with the other more crucial things
than whether or not someone is going to notice my gait and choose to try and
jack a brother, or more importantly, if there are people who actually are “looking
out” for a cat by noticing the big cat on his bike/or running around with a
smile on his face. It is really nice and
friendly here in Omaha, and folks are polite as well as engaging, which is
right up this cat’s alley! While I never
had any real concerns about being isolated here in Omaha, it was nice to have
that be one of the first things that I was able to confirm about my new home.
I don’t know what is worse… liquid
courage or internet courage. I mean in
both cases, people say stuff that they would not normally say straight-faced or
if they were face-to-face with nothing impairing their judgment. So when people have been a little rude or
lacked sensitivity with me on the internet, I have often taken their words with
the proverbial grain-of-salt, because I KNOW they would not speak like that to
me, personally. That crap hasn’t
happened to me since jr. high, and for real, I would be ready to “drop the
gloves” with about anyone in any situation.
Growing up, it became more obvious a risk to f*ck with me because I am a
big guy. And the answer to the question
of what is asked of dragons, it is nothing because he is a f*cking
dragon!! Did you want to get eaten or
worse?
Day-to-day life, Clark said,
"would be very difficult for him without help. He doesn't drive a car
anymore. He used to love to drive. He was an amazing cook, Italian and Greek
food. He doesn't cook anything at all anymore — he can't remember what his
recipes were."
I haven’t forgotten
how little I would cook while in Virginia.
And while I do have a bunch of spices, I still haven’t gotten around to
cooking a full meal. Though I do think
some of the reason I don’t cook much lay off on things like being single and
not having the enough utensils, it is easy to realize just what is going
on. But I am forging ahead with my life
anyway. And what I am not getting on one
go-around that I will get on another, because I will be around again!
But I do have “moments”
and sometime those moments linger… and since they have been a part of my life
for the last seven years or so, I take them in stride. Woke up at 0430, went to the loo, brushed
teeth and splashed water on my face, ran water for my bath. Sat down for a bit while my tub ran and then
IT happened. Returning from the bathroom
after shutting off the water, my body began to go into a “shut down” of its
own. I was fully awake and conscious,
but I did not want to move. Looking down
at my thighs at the two bruises that I don’t remember from where they came and
considering the aching in my left elbow to be something other than a gout flare
(which
would have been odd considering I am on medication for the preventing of just
that!), I look to see a
recently-formed scab, and I had to ask, “When did I fall?”
It was at 0730 hrs.
when I went down to the gym and got some work in. I did not bath or brush my teeth. I went in, worked out (and a good work out too!) and
rode from the gym, with my schoolbag in tow, straight on to school. I had both classes and did not care one bit
that I was “funky enough”. I really
could have given less a f*ck.
The Human Relations
class was productive. That was the class
we did the volunteer work for and today the instructor took us through some
seated yoga stuff, which I really enjoyed.
If I could afford to, I would go take a class, but I asked her about a
book for a beginner and she did make a few suggestions. I thanked her and started walking around
school between classes. As I approached
one of the open areas where students lounge and whatnot, I saw this cute,
spunky little red-head that I had in my first term English class. We always speak and make with the small
talk. Today she looked especially cute,
with her hair done very professional-like, which prompted me to say, “You look
like you are going on a job interview!”
RING, RING, we have a WINNER!!
For me, that two-word phrase, “job interview” set of all the alarms it
needed. I had a JOB INTERVIEW a 1330,
and I would have had to cut out of Algebra to make it as it stood, and cancel
my tutor appointment.
One of the feeds on my
Face Book is one going by the name, “You Never Know How Strong You Are Until
Being Strong Is The Only Thing You Have”, or something like that. A person’s strength is shown in many ways and
the opportunity to display your strength comes when you least expect it. Now, it would have been reckless to through
off the interview, with the lady from the Ollie Webb program coming to get
me. I was funky and had NOTHING ready to
wear, and an hour to get everything done.
I called my counselor
at school and left a voice mail asking her to cancel my tutor appointment. Then I ran to my bike and hightailed it
home. Called the woman from Ollie Webb and changed plans to her meeting me back at the apartment and did a splish and
splash in the tub, shaved, ironed and got this mess together for my interview!
The young lady came
and took me out to 2 Pacific Place, to the Wheatfields restaurant there where
they conducted the interview. We had to
wait for a bit, but I was unfazed. The owner
and her daughter, along with their store manager did the interview, and though
it went well (the Ollie Webb lady really thought so!), it is unlikely to result
in a job. Still, it was good to get back
and get into the game, especially since I want to play!!
But all in all, today
was the kind of day where I ‘maybe coulda’ used someone like a Susan Clark (oh,
the irony!) in my life, to help
me make more of my life, but if that happens, it is seeming more and more unlikely to happen with
Nebraska. While I did make to Omaha to
be in a relationship of some kind with her, we have been unable to manage an “uncommitted,
committed” relationship with one another.
Sometimes you can still
lose big even if you are right. Was
Nebraska “right” about a lot of things?
Yes, yes she was. But I don’t
think that she ever understood that I was not FEELING good about things between
us, and until that was resolve, her being right about things like dates, and
frequency, and whatever empirical things that would come up between us, DID NOT
MATTER TO ME. I would feel things that I
did not want to feel and the source of those feelings were our relationship.
This is sh*t has been written that could
have been, SHOULD HAVE BEEN said face-to-face, but we never could get close
since we saw the movie “The Artist” at the end of January. Wow, that is deep, considering you have women
who visit their men in prison with greater frequency than what Nebraska visited
me. Now that is deep.
I finished one recent
entry with a nod to Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”, and how fitting that
poem should be a part of this relationship.
I don’t know what more she could have expected to discover or why she
felt the need for so much caution, or why we could not talk to one another
without upsetting the other, but that is how things stand.
Again, I’ve no hard
feelings of any kind toward anyone or anything.
But when I read Susan Clark’s description of what her husband’s life was
like and me wondering if I would be able to build that kind of connection with
someone at this stage of my life when I couldn’t a “neurotypical”, I have to
express my doubts about the enterprise…
…which doesn’t mean
that I would not give it a go..!
3 comments:
If you EVER learn anything from me, I want it to be how to relax and go with the flow - to not over analyze - to just "be" in the moment, whatever that moment happens to be. To give yourself a chance. You seem to make up your mind about the value and direction of a relationship before it even gets off the ground.
Awesome picture. You look great!
I happen to believe there is more than "one" person for everyone... and you simply have a different kind of life had you gone for "that one".
You're going to find someone awesome.
I just know it :) :D
I'd love to say forget the past, just live life and all. But you know, that is a fucking hard thing to do. So just let it all out and blogging is the best way to do that :)
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