WORK WITH ME

RANDOM POST

I want to say that I read about Winston Churchill’s characterization of his depression as his “black dog” in the phenomenal biography, “The Last Lion”, but I am not sure.  Too bad, as it is unlikely that I would ever be as ambitious to tackle the task of reading such a book, leastways not while I am still engaged in other scholarly and academic pursuits.  “…Lion”, along with several other books that I have read that are unlikely to be read again (“Gravity’s Rainbow”, “Atlas Shrugged”, “The Stand” are a few that I have no desire to read again for pleasure), but as much as I like Churchill, I just might, to fortify my attitude and my convictions. 

As I was saying, I too, borrowing from Churchill, label my depression as “the black dog”.  For me, the idea dovetails nicely with Stephen King’s creepy story about a (c’mon, sha-sha-shake it like a...) Polaroid picture of a scraggly,but dangerous mutt, “The Sun Dog”.  That is what I see, a wiry black dog, with matted fur, and ribs visible but not starving, just walking around with me wherever I go.  Right now he is behind Doug, my mountain bike, lying there lengthwise, head on his front paws.  He isn’t looking at me and I wonder if he is even aware that I am still here.  Anywho, I am going to rattle of some thoughts that have crossed my mind lately and see if that does anything.

Not only is my current emotional state iconography that of a dog, it also comes with its own theme song.  I have always been especially keen on Nirvana’s “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle”, and this cover by another gone-too-soon artist, Jay Reatard, is the lead song to the soundtrack of this episode.  I have been wondering if I should call this an “event”, but I think “episode” has a better connotation to it.  I don’t think that this is something that is going to occur “just this time” with me.  When I appropriated “the dogs”, it was not because I needed them to classify any emotions that I was feeling, certainly not when I made their acquaintance.    At the time I would become aware of them, I inventoried them and used them when I did feel “less than good”, which is all that you could really ever had gotten out of me before this October.

 

 Going to my therapist regularly again… had to switch days as I work Fridays and getting back from out west in time for work was always going to be a near thing.  So Tuesday is the day… which bumps movie day to Thursday.  Looking forward to seeing “Skyfall”, with people going on about how good it is.  Growing up with Sean Connery and Roger Moore as 007, it was always tough to imagine anyone else as Bond, but craggy Daniel Craig has really taken on the character and I won’t get my undies in a bunch when a young person identifies him as THE James Bond.  Kind of like the same way I am over the song “Hurt” and people who know it as a song by Johnny Cash, when it was already a defining song of Trent Reznor’s.

One of the things that my therapist does that is wearing on me is speaking of her son, who is an adult in his early 20’s, interchangeably with me and my travails.  I don’t see the comparison and there really isn’t any.  He has other diagnosed issues that bear no real connection to my issues.  I think that I will tell her that on my next visit should she bring him up again.  It is such a different experience from the therapist that I had back in “the provincial town that I jogged ‘round”.  This is not to say that I have not benefited from her work, on the contrary, I certainly feel that she has been integral in my getting this far.  It is just that her son and I have symptoms in common and not root causes, and I think she is getting some self-therapy done at my expense.  Not that I am gnarly about it, just that it resembles the kind of self-absorption that another local resident seemed to have regarding me, and I don’t wish to go down that path again.

The end of the movie “Multiplicity” with Michael Keaton andAndie McDowell, where she tells her kids in so many words, that when you are in love, everyone you see reminds you of that person.  What had happened was that the clones of her husband, who were driving off into their future, were in a car as she drove with her children.  Anywho, that is sort of how I am when it comes to being focused in a relationship.  I see people who remind me of “that someone who IS that someone”, whether was someone who struck me the way Nebraska did, or someone who brought back to mind my starter wife when I thought we were in love with each other.

Whenever I spoke about the reasoning of my “ex-list”, I would always add the caveat that if my starter wife was to have been my ultimate life partner, then I would have to be on a solo trip through this life!  The reason that I had to make that a conscious statement and put it out into the universe is that I STILL WOULD HIT THAT! I mean, look at her!!  She looks even better NOW than she did in her 20’s!!!  Along with being loyal for my own reasons, once I “like” someone, I still will maintain an “account of affection” in the vaults of my heart for them.  The only way that I could manage the feelings that I pick up from and evoke in people is to objectify things as I do, in sports terms and other pieces of jargon, so that I would not be drawn in emotionally myself into the kind of relationship that I did not anticipate being in.

Like I said, I would still run at my starter wife… and recalling the words of my departed Mother, “…she’d let you put another baby in her if you wanted”, which along with other independent observations, would confirm my starter wife’s desire for me.  So, I have to let the “big head” do the thinking, and that was why when I was on the ex-list kick, I simply would have to accept that I would turn down a chance to be in a relationship if she was my “meant to”.  This of course, presupposes that we would have been happy together… even if it was given to me as a guarantee that we would have been in bliss, I still would rather be alone.

Sometimes when I am at work, I pick up on my radar the faint “pings” of someone checking me out… sometimes it is a cat just as other times I am picking up a kitten, so this is not ego talking.  Today while I was up cleaning the track that runs over the main floor of the fitness center, I picked up a guest who was checking me out… and part of why I was able to pinpoint her on my own radar was that she reminded me of Princess, not that she resembled her in any way but just brought her to mind.  And this is yet ANOTHER loop that my starter wife is in.

See, there are certain qualities to the kind of women that I like… while things are more specific that the general traits would indicate, I like full, buxom women.  There have been exceptions, my “cherry” was a normal Cass Tech “Mica Babe”, and of course, there is KT’s Mom Nixxie.  But the overwhelming majority has been at least “healthy” and generally plus-sized into the mid-teens.  When I am “scouting” women, I tend to put them into “player groups” and run their “measurables” through the proper filter.  I don’t like “drafting” defensive tackles or those who would play the offensive line.  I tend to like “athletic” outside line backers and defensive ends that also have the versatility to drop off into pass coverage as well as pressure the passer, along with their pursuit duties when the play goes away from them.  I also like big safeties, the free safety being smaller and more agile, but still willing to come up in run support.

What did all that mean?  Hard to say… I could show you better than I could explain it to you.  What I do know is that I do feel better about things and I expect to get some good sleep tonight!!

A TACTICAL POST

ALL THAT COULD HAVE BEEN

One day, the presence of your past is like a thousand needlespricking you over every inch of your skin; the next, you have become soacquainted with the sting that you hardly notice the needles at all

It is not easy to move on from a relationship.  You have to not only leave behind all that it was, the shared experiences and the wonderful moments that you thought would become a part of the lore of your relationship with that person, but you also have to let go of all the things you had hoped for with them.  You have to take down the picture that you had in your mind of you and that person at some kitsch shop in Branson, Mo, that you had hoped to see, or the post card that you both signed and sent back home from the Black Hills.  For me regarding Nebraska, there was all of that and more.

From such an inauspicious start in my “tweens” of being mostly ridiculed and overlooked by the females of the species, to the sudden and unexpected deluge of attention that I begin to draw from women in my early adulthood, I have managed not to get too banged up emotionally from my relationships.  This is not the result of my being reserved and protecting my feelings from risk, but I believe precisely because I do take the risk of being vulnerable to rejection and being humbled, that I have been able to “get around” as I claim.

Whenever I have felt what I needed to feel about a person to let them know that I am interested in them on a personal level, I have been able to find the words to make them aware of my feelings and of my intentions.  This has been the way I have basically operated after I was discharged from the Army, beginning with my starter wife.  The language may change to suit the individual person and the situational awareness of the relationship, but the approach I use to engage women remains fundamentally the same.  In addition to my being able to let and approach a woman that I am interested in, is what I feel is my uncanny ability to recognize and assess how interested someone is in me.  Notable incidents in my life have been Delta Girl and Tee Jay, as well as that of my initial meet with my current girlfriend, Princess.

Falling back to my days of sleepless nights and awkward encounters that made up my teenage “Era of Discontent”, I am still to this very day left humbled and slightly disbelieving at the attention that I draw because I am “attractive”.  What’s more, it is even more difficult to explain the regularity in which I am sought out or identified by a person, male or female, as someone that they would like to “get to know”.  But with my being in balance in my character and having the awareness to separate objectively from what is fair and unfair behavior, I do not  no longer will take advantage of someone who takes the chance to show their level of interest in me.  And because of my memories of what it was like from that aforementioned era also has left me with the grace to leave my would-be suitor with as much of their pride intact as they allow.

 Intimation - An indirect way to cast aspersion and doubt on someone’s character, a whisper campaign or as a part of character assassination attempt.  Though I don't think it was quite that serious, I do think that Nebraska thinks it unfair that I make her out to be as sketchy as I do.  Now, personally I don't think that I paint her as “anything”, but, “to each their own”, I guess.  Meanwhile, I do think that if she did not like how I described our interactions, then she could have done things to have made them different.

Our disagreement in my mind centers around fundamental principles of what I think makes for good relationships, as well as basic expectations that as a person who is being considered as “that someone who IS that someone”, is entitled to from the very beginning of the relationship.  “There are more than enough to fight and oppose, so why waste good time fighting the people you like and who would fall defending your name?” sings Morrissey in the song “Hold Onto Your Friends”. 

Whether or not I am serial relationship character or not, I tend to be a loyal cat to those I care about.  From my days in “the provincial town I once jogged ‘round”, as well as heeding the beckoning of an ancient friendship, to even the filling of a blood-bound duty to a unrepentant sibling, I am there for those that matter to me.  And I never have asked anything in return for “whatever”, and the only expectation I have is that things work to the benefit of the subject, and that they consider me when they need to be social to another human being, you know, as a friend.

But now you only call me when you’re feeling depressed

When you feel happy I’m—

So far from your mind… my patience is stretched—

My loyalty vexed… Ahh—

You’re losing all of your friends

 (Really that is not true… they are only losing me, and they (and there is a “they” as well!) don’t seem to have cared too much about their loss)

Regarding Nebraska and her protests of my “painting” her out to be anything, there is a simple and quite obvious solution – DON’T BE THE PERSON THAT DOES THE THINGS TO MAKE ME FEEL AND THINK OF THEM IN THIS WAY!!  It is just that simple.  I have been very grateful for her help in managing things once I got here and for her and her daughter’s invaluable assistance in creating my project for my class last spring.  But, for the most part… things have been tenuous at best between us, and efforts to communicate has been as challenging as those between Israel and the Palestinians (not really, but you get my drift).

NOT MISSING WHAT I DID NOT HAVE

I could go with a smart-aleck reference but I will forego that and keep to the seriousness of my entry.  It has been nearly a month, 4 weeks, since I noticed a disturbance in my attitude and I resumed my medication and visiting my therapist.  I still have moments of sadness, but they are becoming fewer and farther between.  Maybe one day I will elaborate upon why the advent of this episode has worried me and how I managed my way through it, but that kind of stuff is very proprietary and only is certain to work for me.  Myblogger friend Senorita made a great entry about her dealings with depression, and this is a case where knowing that someone else is facing a similar condition really helped ease some of the things that I am dealing with.

The nature of how I engage with the opposite sex, which I used to imagine as Dobie Gillis-like, and how things actually happened between me and Nebraska, me and Princess, me and the SFC, me and pretty much anyone ever, is part of the concept of FRICTION (here is the Clausewitzdefinition but pretty much any definition of friction could be made to fit).  This is another major sticking point between Nebraska and me, and it is something that we both have to come to terms with as individuals, if we are going to have a friendship.  Since I cannot account for her feelings and emotions in this area, I will go ahead with mine.

As a matter of policy, under what I call the “One-time Learning Rule”, a biological idea I borrowed from a study on birds, I had not ever had any kind of relationship with a person once they had fallen out of my life.  Whether it was because I was a sh*thead or because they were an a**hole, it did not matter as long as it was to the mutual benefit of both parties.  Do I think that my starter wife is better off without me in her life?  Mookie Dee??  Tee Jay???  I have no real idea but that was the intent when those relationships dissolved and it is my hope that the improvements that they felt were necessary in their lives were made.  So my assumption is yes, they are better off without me and meanwhile, I am fully engaged in making my life a better one without their involvement.

Because it is policy and while I do have several former partners as Face Book friends, the boundary is clear on both sides of the Internet.  Princess is aware of this, and basically until I start flying out of town on a regular basis and/or I start needing more and more “time to myself” that I can’t explain, she has to “deal with it”.  It is no different than her Face Book buddies with any of her “unexplained friends” who I have no need or desire to ask her about.  But what of Nebraska and how do I explain her?  Unlike the others, there is no dimension of space/time that would make our getting together improbable.  How, then, do I justify her being in my current retinue of people I am involved with?

This is when the policy kicks in regarding “one-time learning” and is joined by what is “reasonable expectations”.  More on both at another time.

THE MOOD OF THE DAY

EPISODE 1

I never thought to try and keep track of anything like this before… in my life as a Neuro-typical, there was never any real need to annotate and record my life before.  There was no reason to share what I thought or how I came about those thoughts, either.  After all, nearly everything that I held was confirmed, though that still means it was malleable enough to have been altered upon further review of all the surrounding circumstances.  Think of my brain as a smooth and efficient working environment like that in the way that it wasn't in dystopian future of  the movie “Brazil”, and you will have an idea of how I imagined my brain as working (there is a lot of Orwell in that image… like Rand’s pseudo-philosophy, I did not think that Totalitarianism was bad on an individual… just not as effective on a group level).  Somewhere within, beneath the surface levels and the superficial exo-decks or the universal vessel named Mark, guarded and shielded by layers of space-mined ore from other planets, lay the kernel, the ultimate program that ran the machine.  Self-sufficient and constantly upgrading as I encountered more and more, this where the life-altering decisions were first heard and made in my mind.  Whenever I mentioned how I made the choice to ignore the bullies and go on and BE, which I have NO DOUBT gave strength to my darling brother, it was there that case was heard and decided on. 

My decision to ignore the outcome of the hearing on whether or not I should have gotten married is one that has lingered, if nothing but in tendrils of smoke and ash blowing in the air on occasion.  I think I had consciously got over my marriage the last night we were in the same home, and she threw me and my belongings out, to the shock of my sister Jan, and to the distraught cries of our daughters.  Just because something is “heard and decided on”, does not mean that it is implemented.  I guess this is what many people would call their “first mind”.  And like many other “first minds”, the kernel of my brain’s processing unit has an incredible “correct rate”.

Getting back to the decision in junior high not to let the teasing get to me and my Aunt’s affirming words guiding me into high school, the idea of me and depression as a concept was non-existent.  “Sad”, was the most I could admit to being, without any understanding of what it meant to be “beyond sad”.  For years and years, the saddest moment of my life was September 16, 1981, when Tommy Hearns lost to Sugar Ray Leonard.  And I mean that too.  Even now, it is still one of the top 3 sad moments of my life.  The other were similar, in that they involved a relationship ending, Delta Girl deciding to part ways with me and my choice to go my own way from Tee Jay.  Those relationships ended with so much “air” between them that they would become the haze that surrounds the light as it hangs from the ceiling of my bedroom, waiting for the touch of darkness to cover my eyes and for my spirit to lift out of the shell that is my body, and for it float, float to find a purpose and then return to me.

My spirit (or astral form… thanks Dr. Strange!!) does all the time-traveling… and anyone who is versed in the 20^th century view of time travel (whose physics all come undone in a quantum universe) knows full well that a future person cannot occupy the same temporal plane as their past self.  So with that, I have written about “who, where, when and why?” and thought about the past without ever getting lost back there.  There was one more thing… something that I have not spoken on too frequently, and that is HOW.  How do I comb through what happened before without being lost to those moments?  Easy, that is how.  I simply said to myself that I could.

My past is where I get the majority of my object lessons from and I let my own history inform me as to what step to take, what I should anticipate, and most importantly, what I have  learned from this experience that I can take away and grow from.  It is also why as those relationships became stored away and entered into the “brain computer”, they immediately became what I had learned from, and having learned from them, I felt obliged to move forward.

That is why I had to come up with an “ex-List”, so that I could call it a “new experience” and continue to pine for Tee Jay, and also why I ended up with Mookie Dee instead of directly approaching Tee Jay.  It was more than just pining away over a lost love… it was a design that met the standards for enter in as a purpose statement of policy, and allowed me to go forward from “there” to “here”.  And where is “here”?

A PEACE OF MIND… NOW YOUR PEACE IS MINE

Even before my finding out that I was suffering the effects of TBI and still mourning the loss of Tee Jay from my life, I was developing the outline for my next life.  Detroit is still and always is my home, but it has never been “for me”.  And with my life being a “presaged bucket list fulfilled”, I merely needed to look to my childhood for inspiration.  Of all the likely places and “usual suspects” that remained on the list, only one, Omaha, resonated with me.

By now I had made the acquaintance of my friend Nebraska, and that further cemented the decision for me. And whether or not I had heard anything good, (which I had) or bad (of which attempts to warn of were made), I KNEW that it was the place for me to set down and grow from, and I set my course accordingly.   It would be a very long journey with detours between me from my destination, but it was a destination that I was determined to reach.

From time to time in my journal, especially prior to 2010 when my SFC came back into my life, I had adopted a “Nebraska or bust” platform regarding relationships.  What I thought was the genius behind the “ex-List” is that by getting with someone who already knew me, that a lot of the “blah, blah, blah” between couples would have either been dealt with or easily managed.  This former love would already “know the environment” and would have an expectation of me based on their experience with me.  If they wanted to get back together with me, they would also have more than facile understanding of my character.  To me, it was a great idea… as long as the person who I was getting back into a relationship recognized their flaws, their contribution to our original fail, and was willing to work on them, to NOT let them determine the fate of our “second time at the rodeo”.  And so, with that as the foundation, I got at Mookie Dee after a chance encounter spurred me to get after her.  The result from that, as they say, is history.

I don’t want to be dismissive of the SFC, but heading to the Metroplex was not a good experience.  Other than seeing someone who I had and still hold in the highest of regard, it was a detour on my way to Omaha (but I wonder if I had finished with the FOC would I have been less distracted..?).  Returning to the Motor and tying up major loose ends, I would have the opportunity to aim directly for Omaha and BAM!  Here I is!!

One of the lingering ideas in my mind has been is “what if I was left alone”, like Nigel in his bathtub and his drawings or, the preferredNigel, who “likes to speak and loves to be spoken to?”  It is ironic that now the case can be made for me actually needing to be a part of something, I have finally achieved the kind of autonomy that I had long sought!!

When I mentioned David Foster Wallace (who I have never read but was by most accounts a wonderful writer) in my previous entry, I had hoped to expand on how the condition of clinical depression never rests in a person.  Here he was, super smart, talented, and part of a great family, freed from some of the more mundane trivialities of life, and he could no more be “not depressed” than we not observe the sun rising.  It followed him all of his adult life.

I don’t wonder why those closest (or claim intimacy) to people who make the decision to end their own lives are shocked when the affliction does take their own life.  Often, people who are being overwhelmed by the pressure to live up to the impossible standards and expectations of people, along with those who suffer clinical depression, are no different from addicts who can hide their various addictions.  They are experts at acting and covering their tracks, and they even know their own “tells” better than anyone else.  And in many ways I have believed that for the first two groups, the pressured and the depressives, that adds to their problems.

AND WHY IF YOU DID NOT KNOW ME THEN…

I think that those who would cut the social safety net and remake government simply do not get it.  Just as those cats that the GOP campaign tried to sell as the “we didn’t build this” guys conveniently overlooked the role of community (which I feel is a legitimate way to think of “government”) and how that contributes to the successes of those who have built their lives themselves.  Using my own experience in the extreme micro-verse of humanity, I could not stress enough how much the support that I have received through my blogging has meant to me.  From being inspired by those whose journeys I have read, to those who offer encouragement to me when I am faced with my own obstacles to overcome, it has meant a lot to me.  But what, I wonder, would happen were we friends IRL?

Skipping all the details, what would be happening if someone was here, right now, able to interact with me, what would happen?  Would I reach out to you for help with my invisible ailment, where perhaps the best treatment is not found in a bottle but simply in your companionship, your time??  Often I have wondered if this was presented as a “treatment option”, would the people in the afflicted life find the time to cease focus on the spinnings of their lives for a moment, for an hour, nothing more or less, and devote their attention to the needs of another person?  Who can be that selfless??

I can.  And I have been, many, many times… and that is just the way it goes. (And please indulge me with this moment… this is not that kind of party!!)