No REAL need of a Tactical… everything is just fine. I am on track to make my visit to see KT graduate in a couple of weeks and THAT is the main thing, after all, is it not? Not only have I decided to become more open about my condition here in my blog, but I also share more with my co-workers as well. Saturday morning as I went in to work, I heard a story on Weekend Edition during the Story Core segment about a young Military couple, a housewife and her wounded soldier suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury. Like many young people, he was motivated by 9/11 and he got hurt in Afghanistan. His wife shares what she was told to expect by one of his Doctor’s, how it would be like she was living with an advanced Alzheimer’s patient. She was told that he would not be able to follow one-step instructions, to expect that her husband would not be able participate in or follow a conversation. “It was like he was catatonic at times”, the soldier’s wife said of her husband. The story has more wrenching events and together with our shared condition, had me on the verge of tears when I arrived at work One of the supervisors who was on spot duty this weekend, saw me and asked if there was anything wrong. I told her about the story that I had been listening to on my way to work, and the emotional effect of the segment was palpable. I told her how fortunate I felt and that I was going to be okay… after all, I had brought a Burger King breakie! I thought about the soldier and his wife, and how lucky he was to have found a woman who was going to “soldier on” with him. With the notable exceptions of the SFC and Tee Jay, it has been difficult for me to find someone who did more than fancy themselves as a good partner in their own mind and were willing to be as proactive and interested in our relationship as I was. So if I believe that if I am thinking that “she’s not that into you”, then why should I being bother with someone who acts entitled to a space inside of my mind?
Similar to my perception of my ex-wife, Nebraska could not convince me that she did not view our relationship with a sense of entitlement, along with a great deal bias borne of lack of a validating process. I keep hearing Coach Singletary’s words as he reiterated his distaste for a person who “...thinks it’s about them when it is really about the team…”. Though I am looking forward to the moment that she is relegated to an afterthought, just as my relationship with Mookie Dee has become to me, whenever I have cause to think about how we’d relate to one another, it is usually because of stories like the one from Story Corp, and it usually confirms not just the current state of affairs between us, but of things I took in from the beginning of our relationship. She has never been that “into” me, and I saw myself as tolerated more than wanted or desired by her. Being at risk of being as dependent as the soldier in the story is on his wife on Nebraska is, well, frightening.
KNOWING THE FREAKIN’ ENVIRONMENT
I don’t have any sympathy for people who are so dimly aware of themselves and how their own interactions and how they contribute the fail that is their love life. Coming from where I come from (which was a long,long way away), it is still like Christmas for me whenever a nice looking woman shows any kind of interest in me. Still, if never forgetting where you are from means that you still can see yourself as a child bravely standing up to neighborhood thugs whenever you find yourself in with conflict with a person under the auspices of being in love, then that's me, I guess.
The incidents that live on from my time spent involved with Nebraska exemplify why I made the decision to write down and analyze what was taking place in my life and with the connections I had with those in it. Think of being an addict and having someone close to you test your addiction by walking deliberately on the fringes, dancing along the various tripwires that could send you into relapse. Seeing and discovering how involved we are in making our own happiness, I spent much of my later adolescence trying to divine the various patterns in my life ( because can YOU recognize the patterns that you find… stuck in your mind..?)
The impact of his story begins to land on my at around the 4-minute mark for me. Listening to Anthony Griffith’s voice crack from the welled-up emotions as he talks about all the things that he has not planned for and now he has to plan for the dress to bury his daughter in… it is his use of Denzel Washington’s character from the movie “Training Day” that really struck me.
It was at the height of his career highlights and personal grief that gets at the crux of the arguement that I have with the different imagine anagrams that I have used to represent the different character traits I have noticed about “the sisters”. “Man UP N*GGA!” begins the Alonzo Harris in Anthony’s mind. “You think YOU the only one losing kids today? 25 kids walked in here with cancer and only 5 walkin’ out!! This ain’t no sitcom!! It don’t wrap up nice and tidy in 30 minutes… this is LIFE! Welcome to the real world!!” See, the model provided me by my Mother didn’t ask herself questions like,“why black men ain’t sh*t,” (which is can still be seen/heard said and accepted without challenge… I mean, why else would someone think that I was angling for a “booty call” and not a symptom related to my condition without a connection of my character related to “triflin’ black man” meme?). Anthony speaks to the character of the African-American community… which is also a trait that I use to generally define an ignorant person* (*in the most academically detached and objective use of the term… I don’t want anyone to think that I am calling anyone a name…) and how psychological help is frowned upon. And that too is cool, but if you choose to go that route, you risk the same crash-and-burn of the Mr. Harris character, and if you avoid that fate, it will only be due to the slavish adherence of the spirit of the man that boasted “King Kong ain’t got nothin’ on me!” during the moment you are broken. It isn’t enough to simply get mad enough, to get strong enough, to overcome and persevere. You also have to be strong enough to go from that moment and leave as much as you can of your “Ny-Quil moment” behind and continue on. From being a teenager and fetching my Father’s shotgun to protect my step-siblings, sucking up and selling out for people from the likes of the SFC, Tee Jay, and my ex-wife among others, I have an understanding that PMS’ing about things that can be related to the beginning of Blake’s speech to the embattled real estate salesman of Mitch and Murray’s office. LET’S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING IMPORTANT.
YES. LET’S TALK ABOUT IT INDEED
When I first began this blogging thing, all the whining and attention seeking behavior that is being done on social networks presently It all seemed so innocent, open without being overtly demonstrative, without the contradiction of telling the people who were a part of your life the vagaries of your own being in a plea for attention and pity. and I blog to “see” and “hear” my thoughts in a different dimension. In the Story Corp segment, I heard a piece of the explanation as to why I feel the way that I do with regards to Nebraska. There is a different part of my mind, a different part of ME that yearns for “something” with her. Like with bad relationships, the best thing for me to do is to go on without a thought about her. I never intend to see her again, and in this town, though small open socially, is still a very segregated city. It is very probable that without willfulness on either side that we may never cross paths again. This realization is one of the driving forces that is behind her being in my thoughts. And believe you me, I am just as surprised by this development as anyone.
I like to think that I would not have came across the story of “How Love Came To Professor Guildea” when I was still young and impressionable if my life wasn’t supposed to develop any other way that it has. As long as I am still using it (barring some amazing technological advance that makes discovering the how and what of the brain more accessible), I can only guesstimate what is going on with me is somehow related to my injury. It isn’t like my personality has taken
total leave of me… I don’t now nor have ever been given (and before I’m contradicted by someone, the proper way of the old idiom is “the exception PROVES the rule”) to being friends with people, particularly someone who fits the “doesn’t give a flying spaghetti monster f*ck about you, Mark” profile as well as Nebraska does.
1 comment:
That story by Anthony Griffith was one of the bravest things I've ever seen.
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