Author: blendedvertices

The Tangled Web of Thought

~ blendedvertices ~ Leave a comment

It’s been several months since I last submitted an entry. Several drafts were started but never finished. My laptop now permanently resides at the office and just happened to end up in the truck today. Sitting here on a Sunday I decided to free write and see what happens…

A depressing funk has settled into my consciousness and that surprises me. A new job was started a month ago and it has gone really, really well. Finally I can start to see an expanding horizon as I settle into the last phase of the long, steady climb out of the financial hole dug 10 years ago. What is the problem then and why do I feel this way?

I know what it is and it’s called loneliness. This new position is lucrative enough that a second job as a weekend bar and restaurant manager is no longer required. Upon quitting that people-centric social outlet a month ago, I knew the importance of promptly filling the gap. Even though I knew that, fear has taken hold and social isolation is now my reality.

I’ve been binge eating and my exercise program has fallen off the rails. Not completely vanished but the consistency that I normally maintain is not there. I feel as though I will be alone the rest of my life so what does it matter if I get fat and stay at home and watch TV. It hurts my heart to go out and see people laughing and couples holding hands.

After coming to the realization of how unhealthy even a friendship with D was, I cutoff contact. I tried Bumble and actually went on a date yesterday afternoon. I got the feeling she wasn’t into it and really, I shouldn’t be into her. There were many warning flags of a situation that I should run from. Heavy chemical use, broken home growing up, acrimonious divorce that she initiated, talking about herself the entire time, etc, etc. I think she didn’t like the fact that I don’t drink anymore. So A), why did I send her a text last night; and B), why was I depressed that she didn’t respond?

The stories I tell myself are pushing me towards an inevitable conclusion of relapse into drinking and drug addiction. I feel lonely and depressed, yet I sit home alone and feel sorry for myself because no one is texting or calling. What proactive steps do I take to make plans with people I know and to put myself in situations where I meet new people? Absolutely none. I would laugh at myself if it were funny, but it’s not. Because literally, my life hangs in the balance.

Even this weekend a few seeds of thought popped into my head regarding how much better I would feel after a few drinks. Last Sunday I went for a motorcycle ride (by myself). Passing by bars, memories of Jack Daniels flooded the senses: the smell, the taste, the feeling. Am I really fooling myself into thinking that the same cycle of relapse hasn’t already begun?

While writing, the reality of all this has become apparent. I am making a vow to you, oh great WordPress.com, to attend a meeting tomorrow night I’ve been wanting to try for some time. There are people who attend the meeting that I know casually from other meetings and the time has come to put myself out there and risk being vulnerable. The vulnerability risked is feeling nervous about being judged negatively by others, whether it is my appearance, the manner in which I speak, what I might say, or something else.

The funny thing is, I’ve never had an occurrence (when I’ve been sober at least) where I left a situation feeling like something horribly embarrassing had happened. The fear is irrational yet it controls my behavior. The fear is burned into my subconscious from events that took place as a child. Humiliation and shame consumed my adolescence. One of the main reasons I found chemicals so alluring was how they negated the anxiety that came with overwhelming fear of experiencing that shame and humiliation again.

I have accepted that suffering is an inevitable part of being human. And I know that current suffering has to do with a desire to avoid negative judgement from others. By acknowledging that action must be taken in spite of fear of negative judgement, I become willing to give up attachment to the desire to avoid judgement. I am now ready to challenge and redirect the cognitive cues that cloud the lens through which I experience the world.

Her

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I’ve made a vow that despite knowing others may read my posts, the value in doing this for me centers on being authentic. I’m not trying to get published or develop a following to make money. Rather, it’s a means to exercise something that I believe I’m good at. And,  most importantly, to sort out some of the monkey-mindedness that has gotten me into trouble so much in the past.

For the past two years, I’ve managed a bar and restaurant part-time on Friday and Saturday nights. I’ve dated a couple of the customers and made only a couple attempts to date some of the staff, to no avail. Since my divorce in 2010, only 1 of the 15 or so women I’ve dated have been over 32. I am in my mid-40’s. Its not that I’m opposed to dating someone older. In fact, I’d prefer it. However, that person has to have taken care of themselves for me to be attracted to them physically.

My parents bought me my first weight set when I was 10 years old and I’ve been an avid fitness enthusiast ever since. I go to the gym 5 days per week on average and for the most part eat very healthy. Also, I can thank my parents for the genes that have given me the outward appearance of someone younger. In guessing my age, most people arrive at between 30 and 35.

So to date someone my age, they have to have the same traits: a long-term interest in heath and fitness that is apparent in their appearance. Besides the attraction factor, the other piece to it is the mutual interest in a healthy lifestyle. If someone doesn’t get the relative importance I place on exercise and diet, then there will be conflict. Another factor to consider is the interest I have in the science of the mind and body; the two aren’t separate components but inextricably linked. One can’t live without the other. My emotions are felt in my body and they affect my behavior, which is exemplified by the action my body takes. So making the most and best use of this mechanism that I’ve been given, my body and the brain that lies within it, is a spiritual pursuit that allows me to comprehend the world and the place that my short life has in it. I look for that same belief and pursuit in a partner.

Regarding younger women, I do not go out of my way to pursue them but if they initiate flirting or interest, then I reciprocate. So that’s how the vast majority of my relationships since my divorce have developed. It starts with an indication of openness to dating from them, which I suppose is most often expressed as flirting. I will then reciprocate and sometimes something more develops.

But, as most might expect, it never lasts. The longest relationship I’ve had in the past 7 years has been… (drum roll please)… 10 WEEKS! Yep… a whopping 10 weeks. Usually it fails somewhere along the 6 – 10 week range. What happens? It’s usually a 50/50 split whether they end it or I do. If they end it, the most often cited reason is …(drum roll please)… THE AGE GAP! What a surprise! If I end it, it’s because they act their age and I can’t deal with the immaturity and/or inability to communicate.

I am an expressive person. I like to talk about deep subjects like meaning and feelings. When I was 21 that certainly wasn’t the case. Looking back, the raw material was there for the substantive personality I enjoy now but everything back then ran on autopilot without much conscious direction. Meaning and feeling discussions were despised as talking about those thing typically meant I was in treatment.

So why bring all this up? A woman named D. And she is perhaps the most attractive woman I’ve ever dated. (Note: younger people don’t say dating, which is far down the relationship spectrum towards engagement. What I call dating is now referred to as “talking”  LOL, OMG!) D initiated this whole thing and for about 4 glorious weeks she is all I could think of. Then the rug got pulled and all the text messaging and Snapchatting came to a streaking halt. My therapist suggested that I might be addicted to that type of communication and after considering it, she is right.

I loved getting the good morning text and the sleep tight texts. The snap chats of her getting ready to tan drove me insane. I kept looking in the mirror wondering if I could possibly keep up with this woman. A local radio station has an annual contest to select 12 women to be in their calendar and she is one of the current bunch. In fact, she is Miss May! (I can’t even look at the calendar because I’ll miss her too much) I see the way men look at her and she talks about all the suggestive messages she gets, both creepy and not so creepy, and I am intimidated.

So the middle of last week is when it all came to a head and the next day I was feeling really down and once again, lonely. D works at the bar and restaurant I manage and we were together there on Friday and Saturday night. Friday was a little awkward but Saturday was great! We laughed, flirted, kissed once, and even …(drum roll please)… TEXTED after!  My Love-o-Meter was going strong. Texting continued into Sunday morning then abruptly stopped in the afternoon. The Love-o-Meter plummeted.

Last night I was resigned to just ending it and woke up this morning feeling relatively good; still down but definitely not out for the count. By early afternoon I had some mojo flowing. Then she sent me a Snapchat. She hadn’t sent a Snap to ME in like 4 days. It was of her dog. I didn’t respond. Then came a text message about work related drama. I felt compelled to call. She answered, we talked, and Love-o-Meter was back up.

Now I’m trying to cold turkey it and having some withdrawal symptoms. Time to eat some chicken breast and broccoli then go to the gym. But I better charge my phone first as I’ll be checking it between every awesome set.

Exuberance

~ blendedvertices ~ Leave a comment
“Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
                   Laughing!”
– From Chicago, by Carl Sandburg
I just returned from Chicago after visiting my daughter. Every time I travel there memories flood in of my first real visit to the city, in 2001. I remember feeling young, and exuberant about life. A rising star in real estate, visions of grandeur included skyscrapers built under my banner, with the rich and powerful interrupting their day to answer my important phone call. I was faithfully confident. Life was free, and easy, and seemingly under my control.
During my 2017 visit I watched the millenials cavorting around the restaurants and taverns, upwardly mobile with their trendy clothes and fast cars. They look happy and excited for what life might bring. I used to feel that way. Do I still? It’s different now. Sometimes I wish I could go back. Sometimes I’m glad I don’t have to.
I didn’t know it then, but my plan in 2001 did not correspond to Life’s plan. How often have I felt broken and lost in the past 10 years? Too many times to count. But I haven’t given up and I am grateful. So what is it? Why is my heart so heavy today?
I regret the losses and missed opportunities. I regret losing my marriage and am not sure if it possible to recapture the intensity of love I felt for Suzanne. I want my daughter to be little again and to go back, knowing what I know now, and redo it ALL. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You can’t go back, knowing what you know now. I’m afraid that if I went back that I would repeat the same mistakes over again. It’s only through the experience of losing things that I can seem to really know how valuable they were to begin with.
But there is something that supplants the exuberance of youth and I can’t quite define it yet because I’m going through it. Of course wisdom is involved but there is something more: an appreciation for the beauty of life that isn’t in the obvious. Youth is beautiful in a tangible way. When you’re young, life is still new and wide open, bodies haven’t broken down and faces aren’t wrinkled. The intangible beauty of middle age has to do with the quality and substance of relationships, an ability to consider mortality and how we are part of something bigger.
We went to the field museum in Chicago and walked through the Evolving Planet exhibit. (The one with all the dinosaurs). Even today we are part of this story. What we experience today is the result of what others did in the past and the experience of future generations will be predicated on what we do today, and so on and so on.
I don’t want to leave this life having “tuned out” to what Life really means. I don’t have an answer and in some ways I hope I never will. It is the search for meaning that allows for fulfillment and richness of experience versus the conclusive context of meaning in itself.
“It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. Right? And this bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember… I need to remember… Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.”
– Quote from the character of Ricky Fitts in American Beauty

Revelation

~ blendedvertices ~ 1 Comment

I was going to title this post “vulnerable” and while accurate for the intended subject, I think western culture too often associates that term with some kind of weakness. Actually, the willingness to be vulnerable is a sign of strength and being emotionally expressive in a humanist sense allows for revelations about the self and the spiritual universe.

I was first exposed to the concept of vulnerability within the context of addiction recovery. Common phrases such as “being outside the comfort zone” and “having faith” are used often in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and are synonymous with being vulnerable.

I’ve lived most of life believing the more shielded I was from any risk of rejection, abandonment, or criticism, the better off. Many years were spent building a facade that was meant to be protective but became isolating and selfish. Displays of anger, the emotion most often modeled by my parents during childhood, coupled with an intimidating physical presence allowed me to effectively repel perceived threats from others.  A certain gratification was felt in the moment, only to be replaced with regret and shame as I found myself alone once again. A hypersensitivity to perceived threats meant that the filter through which relationship status was evaluated allowed for very little authentic human connection.

Great artists, musicians, and writers are humanists that see the world and then create a snapshot of time, which constitutes the artist’s perception of their own reality. The painting, song, or novel isn’t a truth to be taken literally, it is merely a lens for us to look through. As a result of publishing and public exhibit, an invitation is made  for others to look through that lens and make their own determination of what constitutes truth.  The expression of who the artists are as individuals is important enough to risk possible rejection and misunderstanding by those who take the time to peer through the lens. I find their confidence in expression inspiring and laudable. To grant myself that same privilege, however, still escapes me.

We are all creative beings, and our expression takes many forms. Perceptions of existential life show up simply through our conduct and behavior; how we see the world is projected in the way we treat others. Products of relationships and human interaction in general range from biased future expectations to raising children. The true legacy we leave has nothing to do with outward appearance in the form of vanity, possessions, or esteem. Rather, it is the effect left on those that carry on in our absence.

This isn’t to say that a morose or jaded outlook predetermines those who experience it to repeat it forward in their own relationships. It is much more likely to occur though if honest expression is thwarted through defense mechanisms employed to reduce the risk of experiencing painful emotions. An abstract, inauthentic, and deflective lens is thereby created that camouflages the origin of emotion to hide it from attack. Those that look through an obscure lens are liable to see the world accordingly.

But that same lens can be cleaned and resurfaced at any time and it happens through honest emotional expression, whether that occurs in the presence of other human beings or alone. There is no denying life is hard and that making it through the trials and tribulations is what brings about an appreciation for the richness of life. That richness is an amalgamation of pain endured and joyful celebration. Being honest about the appreciation of both creates authentic selves. In my opinion authenticity transcends the average human experience and this gift embodies the ‘lens’ I refer to in this philosophical post.

I can’t entirely comprehend the fear felt in considering my own means of expression, whether it is voiced, written, or exhibited through behavior. It still terrifies to think about approaching the pretty girl I don’t know, for example. Chemical mood alteration proved very effective in mitigating this fear; now with that compensating possibility removed, I am left with only my core self. And on an intellectual, therapy-supported level, it is an undeniable fact that what lies in my essence is good, and worthwhile, and deserving of love. Writing this post is another step towards authenticity. With each small step, confidence grows into what I am becoming.

 

Happy, Joyous and Free

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I woke up today feeling content, light, and purposeful. It has occurred to me that nearly all of my posts in Blended Vertices deal with heavy, painful thoughts. When feeling low, it helps to write. Tribulations can be considered from a different perspective when time is taken to untangle, organize, and reconfigure the circumstances surrounding them through words.

Today I wish to describe the happy events of yesterday, which were not significantly unusual but which are for some reason more challenging to commit to text. The contradicting difficulty in expressing pleasant versus painful emotion is yet another indication of what some core beliefs are. Perhaps applying the same process to the joyous and happy experiences of my life will allow for another channel, in addition to those already practiced, to reconstitute core beliefs while also bringing an understanding of where true motivation and passion lies.

On Thursday night I had a conversation with my friend and AA sponsor, S. (An entire book could be written about how much he has helped me in the past year; yet another realization of what needs to be celebrated in my life) S asked me to attend a meeting yesterday morning and I agreed, following up with an invitation to him to go out for breakfast after.

There is one thing that every alcoholic and addict has in common: the inability to control their use once the first drink, drug, or bite is consumed. That one commonality is all that is needed to pull together an otherwise extremely diverse group of people. As experienced many times, the most powerful moments for me in meetings tend to be when sharing an experience or thought believed to be unique, then looking around the room to see others shaking their heads in acknowledgement of having had the same experience. For someone who has believed themselves to be so fundamentally flawed, the understanding that deficient thoughts and actions can be attributed to the disease of addiction is spiritually renewing.

And so it was that this is how the day started. After the meeting, S and I went to a great little breakfast spot down the road in St. Paul. We then spent 90 minutes talking about the serious subject of recovery intermixed with laughter and talk of life in general. After the self-imposed isolation of the previous 60 hours, it was good to be around people and participating in society again. The protective shell that I’ve employed for so many years, the shell that served its purpose when I was a child but has now proven to be maladaptive, keeps me isolated and disconnected from others. The effort required to break out of the shell, on the occasions I let it encircle me, can feel herculean. But once out, the question arises as to why the shield was raised in the first place.

After the meeting and breakfast, I spent time reading and writing (see Old Sport). I also sent an email to my alma mater inquiring about the possibility of taking a class in an area completely unrelated to my business degree. Part of my shell is to turn off my brain and get stuck watching hours of TV or perusing social media on my phone. There are several purposes for starting Blended Vertices,  and one of them is to put my intellectual brain to good use. I was happy with the effort made yesterday, and so far, today.

I then went to the gym, which is also important for my sanity and overall mood. Poor diet and lethargy is another symptom of the ‘The Shell’. Exercise has been the one constant throughout my life and something I’ve always done regardless of what else is happening. Addiction and loss didn’t stop it and I’m grateful this has always come easy for me.

The last activity of the day was a recovery celebration called Founder’s Day. If you are going to have the disease of addiction, there is probably no better place to be than in Minneapolis / St. Paul, MN. Many people come here for treatment and end up staying because of the incredibly strong recovery community. There are two annual conventions, Gopher State Roundup, which attracts almost 10,000 people, and the smaller Founder’s Day celebration. It opened last night and runs through the weekend. At the final speaker meeting, which I attended, it was announced that roughly 675 people had already registered.

I am really, really glad I attended Founder’s Day. It’s another thing where hindsight so obviously allows that the right decision was made but leading up to it, there was fear and anxiety about being around so many people. That fear and anxiety, which is experienced in many different facets of my life, NEVER is justified once I go through with whatever the anxiety is about and is another example of how ‘The Shell’ causes more harm than good.

S met me there and I was happy to see many other friends. Interacting with such a variety of people, those I already knew and those met for the first time, it occurred to me how much is different and how the fear I still experience from time to time is unjustified. By putting forth the effort to break out of the shell, then forcing myself to overcome inertia and conduct the activities I truly know will bring spiritual fulfillment, experiences are encoded that make the shell thinner when next called upon for protection.

Faith leads me to confidence in the new and authentic identity being formed. Blended Vertices is but one component in my years-long shift from avoiding painful feelings to embracing them with a desire to learn what they are telling me. When I stop to look back at the progress made in gaining the wisdom to love myself, contentment and gratitude abound and I anticipate the promise of deep joy that comes through sharing this love with others.
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Old Sport

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“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”

I watched the most recent version of the film, The Great Gatsby, last week. I read the book in high school and viewed both versions of the movie multiple times. For some reason this viewing resonated with me in a way that hasn’t happened in the past. Maybe it’s because my boat has hit a section of very strong current recently and continuing to paddle through it, upstream and into the future, has proven exhausting. I’ve had to take a little break and the current has carried me back to the past, where I no longer wish to go.

Gatsby wants to escape the self-proclaimed label he identifies with and to be accepted by an affluent group of people. This acceptance, in his mind at least, will signify that he is worthy of Daisy’s love and affection. Success, adulation, and possessing Daisy will validate Gatsby’s desire to be something different than what his inner monologue suggests. The problem exists though in that nothing can supplant the identity burned into his subconscious, of not being good enough, and he loses himself, yet again, to the selfish impulses of the one he falsely believes can provide salvation.

Damn can I relate to that. It’s been written about in previous posts and I won’t go to great lengths to rehash it all now. Currently I’m reading a book called Unbroken Brain, by Maia Szalavitz, about addiction. In it, she talks about the root of the majority of addictions being maladaptive coping mechanisms to trauma and extreme stress in childhood. For the author, her trauma came from believing at a very young age that something was fundamentally wrong with her. This may be a common core belief for many addicts and alcoholics and it certainly was with me.

Several months after my father left my mother for another woman (we’ll call her P), it was my father’s weekend to have us children. Mom left the house and dad came to stay with us. It had happened this way before and I kind of liked having him all to ourselves versus absorbing the negative radiation of the strained relationship when mom and dad were both together. This time, however, dad informed me that P would be spending the weekend too.

I was furious! How dare he bring her to OUR house. I had never met P before and my 11 year old mind was still desperately hoping that mom and dad would reconcile. She came over and I retreated to my room. Proudly displayed on my dresser and shelves were all the things that my father had given me and which I loved: the Dairy Queen football helmets of every NFL team at the time, the autographed baseball in it’s display case, the Hardy Boys books that I collected, my Empire Strikes Back Snowspeeder, and my framed picture of me with my mom, dad, and sisters.

I took all those items and proceeded to tear, break, and otherwise destroy them as best I could, leaving the mess piled upon my bed. I wanted dad to know how upset I was and given that the parental modeling of emotion to that point consisted solely of flash displays of rage, that’s the only way I knew how to express it.

I called my dad into my room so he could see what I had done. He walked into the doorway, shook his head in disgust, then called for P to come in there. She entered without a word, saw the pile of debris that had moments ago been my proudest possessions and listened to my dad say,”look what a great son I have”. He walked out, closing the door behind him, and I fell into a sobbing, convulsing heap on the floor. For two hours I lay next to my bed in the fetal position, trying occasionally to get up, though every time I did my senses were assaulted by the broken items centered on my carefully made up bed.

Upon forcing myself to look at the mess, I would fall back on the floor with thoughts of despair racing through my head. How could I have done that to my father? What did P think of me? And most significant of all, “How could I have done this to the most important possessions that I owned?” Adding to the intrinsic value was the symbolism behind them. My dad and I spent several months dutifully going to Dairy Queen when new helmets came out and we would carefully apply the stickers that signified, along with the color, which team they belonged to. There were two model airplanes that I destroyed and I remember the time we spent at the kitchen table putting them together.

What kind of a monster would do this?

I seriously thought from that point on that something evil was inside me and things never felt the same after. Once the initial shock of what I had done subsided, I next had to go through the process of deciding if anything was salvageable and throwing away things that were not. Most of it had to be thrown away and even seeing the damaged items on display again brought back the shame and despair; eventually it all was designated as trash and placed in the container for things unwanted. Then I was left with barren shelves, a barren dresser, and a barren outlook on what life held for me. No one talked to me about any of this, consoled me, or helped with fixing or disposing of things; my 11 year old brain was left to its own devices.

The funny thing is my father doesn’t even remember this and I’ve been battling against the current of that river my entire life. I was Gatsby and I tried to gain all the material possessions so that S could see what a successful person I was and be proud of me and happy to be married to me.

Even her love wasn’t enough to escape the nagging, disgusted voice of my soul. Look what a great husband you are. Look what a great father you are. Look what a worthless piece of shit you are.

“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. 

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Opaque

~ blendedvertices ~ Leave a comment

So here it is a Saturday afternoon. It’s cold outside, we had our first snowfall yesterday, and Thanksgiving is next week. Typically these are the darkest days of the year for me, both literally and figuratively.

In the literal sense, well… that should be self-explanatory. I can’t say with certainty that I have seasonal affective disorder but the symptoms which develop this time of year are similar. Generally, I feel depressed and anxious. More specifically, there is a sense of hopelessness and foreboding.

However, it is possible that darker days correlate to the upcoming holiday season, which unfortunately has more often than not been experienced as a burden rather than a joyous time to spend with family and friends. My earliest memories recollect Thanksgiving and Christmas spent at my grandparents, with all my aunts and cousins there. Food, drinks, and laughter abounded. The children, including myself, were constantly in motion, building blanket forts in the basement and playing indoor tag, much to the chagrin of the adults. These were categorically happy times…

After moving to the suburban city at age 10 and the subsequent divorce of my parents, things changed. A pall was cast over those happy memories. Dad was no longer at my grandparents and a different format for “celebrating” the holidays ensued. Instead of unity there was division and I began to learn that expectations for behavior, and by extension my personality, changed according to the venue and the people in it.

With the addition of new romantic partners for each parent and their extended families, some years required four different “celebrations”; I only wanted one, that which I already knew and loved. Dad and P had a very formal, please and thank you, Christmas. Mom and B had a drunkfest and B’s family had a combination drunkfest / please and thank you Christmas. We would still go to my grandparents’ home in rural Minnesota where I felt most comfortable but the naive innocence of my young life was gone, though the complexity of that reality was not consciously understood. All I knew was that I didn’t feel as though I could be me; I tried to conform to what others wanted me to be.

As distress over the loss of family stability began to manifest in chemical use, poor school performance, and legal trouble, the feelings of identity alienation became more apparent when contrasting experiences from each distinct and separate family unit. I compensated by trying to conform even more to what others wanted of me. By the time I reached adulthood, the coming holiday season would bring dread along with it.

There have been periods where the opposite was true, most notably when I was married and my daughter was younger. In those times a feeling of being connected and a sense of patriarchal duties gave the holidays meaning, though my identity was still based on falsehoods and was built as a means to protect my soft and sensitive inner core. In those years I felt others viewed me as a success and I felt accepted, even if I didn’t accept myself.

The loss of everything that held up the facade including my ex-wife, business success, money, and possessions, has left bare what was underneath. But that is the best thing that could ever have happened. I shudder to think what the next 40 years may have looked like had the pain experienced not jolted me towards spiritual redemption. All I can do now is be honest and show myself for what I am. And just what I am, I am truly learning for the first time. Great fear existed for what I might find underneath the facade because of the illusion believed by using other people as a mirror of my soul.

It’s like standing at the edge of an opaque pool of liquid near a volcanic hotspot. You don’t know how deep it is, what temperature it is, the poisons that might be hidden in it’s chemical structure, whether the bottom is soft sand or sharp rocks, or what demonic creatures might be lurking within. At first you gingerly stick a toe in to test the temperature and make sure there is no reaction on your skin. Next, you place your foot in to test whether the bottom is sound. Gradually you begin to submerge your entire body, the pace of which accelerates as you grow more comfortable believing nothing bad will happen. Exploring first the edges of the pool, keeping your head just above in order to breath, the point comes when you are no longer touching bottom and, finding yourself in the middle of it, your eyes fervently dart around to find an easy escape route in case it were needed. Faith grows to the point that curiosity and excitement outweigh fear and you dive below the surface, feeling light and free as you are unsure which direction you are going but just knowing, knowing, that it feels right.

Either that or you accidentally fall in like the guy at Yellowstone, and the boiling hot, acidic water eats away everything but your clothes. Poor guy…

Levity.

 

Musings

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I really don’t have anyone following me but on the chance that someone does read this or other recent posts, it would be easy to assume that my view of the world is pessimistic. This is not the case. Currently there are many issues that I am dealing with, and writing during this process will hopefully be cathartic. Professionals say there is a lot of unresolved grief and I’ve been working really hard on getting it to the surface and expressing it to hopefully move on to bigger and better things.

Twenty years ago I had a plan for my life. Unfortunately (or fortunately, maybe?) life had its own plan. My twenty year plan included success, money, marriage, more children, and exploring the world through travel and cultural experience.

Over the last two decades I achieved many of those objectives but the path has proven anything but linear and previous ideas of success and life exploration have followed a different paradigm. I enjoyed success in two different and substantial careers, real estate and money management, that allowed for a high degree of material possession and personal freedom. I fell in love and got married. I went to college as an older student and obtained a degree from a tier 1 business school.

I felt successful in the typical western sense. But none of this brought internal peace and contentment. Every individual goal that was achieved was never enough and the stakes kept getting greater and greater as I pursued the elusive carrot on the stick, always in sight but never quite able to get there. The reward sought was acceptance of who I was internally and what I perceived others wanted me to be.

From 2003 through 2007 I was sober. Sober as in not using mood-altering chemicals but not sober in the sense of recovery from the pattern of thinking which caused chemical seeking behavior. The booze and drugs had been replaced with success. I would get jazzed on reaching a goal but that hole in my soul still couldn’t be filled. My wife and material possessions conveyed a sense of accomplishment to the outside world. If other people thought I was doing well then that internal semi-conscious monologue of personal contempt and loathing was silenced, even if it still remained below the surface like the San Andreas fault, ready to devour the good life in California when the friction became too great.

The Great Recession was my earthquake. The large house was a symbol, and as the ability to sustain the cultivated lifestyle of success began to erode with our dwindling incomes, cracks in the marriage widened. She was beautiful, inside and out, and I never felt like I deserved her. With a half real, half made-up back injury in 2007, my chemical addiction was off and running again through prescribed opiates.

At first she wasn’t aware. It took nearly one and one-half years before she found a pill bottle and it was another one and one-half years later before she finally had enough. There were several ultimatums during that period and somehow it was believed that she wouldn’t really leave. When the last ultimatum was presented, either go to treatment or move out, I knew it was serious. But delusional thinking had me believe that those two choices were of equal weight in her eyes. She really wanted me to go to treatment and had I done so, maybe it would have shown that for once, her hopes, dreams, and wishes could be placed in the primary position of our life together. My need to support the facade created against the world had been the most important objective to that point and the decision to move out rather than acquiesce to her demand was just another attempt at wanting to maintain my “position”, regardless of the position I really held.

It turns out that everyone knew then what I was struggling against. When she said she wanted a divorce six weeks later, I ran to her father thinking that his religious conservatism would somehow prevent her from making a terrible mistake. Little did I know that he encouraged her to leave. Words he told me the day we met, the last conversation I’ve ever had with him, stung me to the core. I had already lost her respect and now I was losing her.

Things spiraled out of control after that. She was gone, the house was gone, eventually I lost my job and the money was gone. I spent several lost years pursuing relationships devoid of meaning and in jobs that corrupted my morals and sapped my motivation. It took a DUI a little more than a year ago to finally embrace the idea that everything needed to change, including what was happening internally. It isn’t to say that change was resisted. In fact, I had been dabbling around the shores of change without diving into the middle of it.

True change only seems possible by going well outside the comfort zone and protective shield of the external facade. In other words, only by a willingness to be vulnerable to others. For me that means acknowledging faults and failures and allowing others, as human beings, to make their own mistakes without judging them. It means letting my innate sensitivity out as a strength rather than perceive it as a weakness when expressing emotion to others. And it means grieving the loss in my life.

I loved my wife and I’m sad she’s gone. I love my mother but am sad she never took interest in me or my daughter. I’m sad for the multitude of lost opportunities of love, happiness, and fulfillment in this life.

Fear has been the single greatest motivator of action thus far. I am scared that the pattern of loss is now ingrained in my psyche to the extent that it is subconsciously recreated over and over again. Mortality is in sight and it seems time is running out. Can I salvage what’s left and change the pattern? Can the fear of lying on my deathbed in ten, twenty, or thirty years with massive regret supersede the fear of being hurt today or tomorrow?

 

The Start of My Disease

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I talked in a previous post about my first experience with a chemical substance at age 12. It happened to be alcohol but it could have been anything. The way it made me feel and the relief it provided is universal across the chemical spectrum. When I look back, almost 30 years ago, it is so readily apparent how life changed at that moment. The coping mechanism available was more powerful than anything else learned from parents and teachers and it took hold in a way that causes me to shudder when I think back on it.

It’s not like there was an immediate transformation into daily use, rather, it was an evolution that took place over the next four years. During that period, puberty and all the associated hormonal brain changes kicked in while at the same time the total consequences of my parents’divorce became apparent.

I felt abandoned by my father. He left our family, which included my mother and us three siblings, for P and her three children. We moved out of the house we all shared so P and her three children could move in. I went from sleeping in my own room one weekend to sleeping on some strange couch in the living the next. There was now another person occupying my room and the entire house had different furniture and even a different smell. We had to get rid of our cat, who I loved, because P had a cat and the two didn’t get along. It was really shitty.

The foundation for maladaptation was set from the moment I was born. With an alcoholic mother and a father who was the youngest of twelve children, meaning he never learned how to nurture from his own parents, I was left to my own devices directly out of the womb. Stories circulate among my extended family of the temper tantrums they experienced when I was very young. This was a symptom of an inability to self-regulate and a simulation of the one emotion that was freely expressed around the household, anger. The lessons of discipline and perseverance in the pursuit of intrinsically motivating activities were never taught, and this was and still is a key factor in the lost opportunities of my life.

I was identified as highly intelligent at a very young age and excelled at school until the affect of the divorce had driven me to believe there was something fundamentally wrong with me. When I discovered marijuana at the age of fourteen my ability and desire to escape was propelled to a new level. When I was high, the knot in my stomach went away and I felt light and could fantasize about good things happening: falling in love, making money, liking my appearance. Without drugs, insecurity and shame prevailed and kept me isolated behind a wall devoid of human connection.

Besides intelligence, I also have the physical stature of an athlete. I was told often of the “potential” (I now hate hearing that word) I possessed in academics and athletics. The expectation was there for me to excel at football and the chance was given to me in the 10th grade to start on the defensive line. While I possessed the physical attributes, my insecurity and inability to regulate emotion would not allow me to channel aggression in the way that football demanded. I was demoted to an average player and in my senior year, was kicked off the team after missing the first two games because of a DUI in my junior year, playing two games, then getting arrested for drinking beer at the festival where I worked.

At that point I entered a group home because my father was disgusted and wanted me out of his house. After completing juvenile treatment in the summer and coming to live with him to escape the alcoholic household of my mother, it was maybe six weeks before I relapsed. The shame of being a “groupie”, as they were known around high school, was immense. My chemical use slowed down while in the group home, not because I wanted to but because if caught, the level of consequence began to increase dramatically to the point that incarceration was a possibility.

That fall the US Marine recruiters visited the school. Feeling so ashamed, military service seemed to be a shot at redemption and in my eyes, the Marines were a caliber above the other branches. The day after my 18th birthday I enlisted under the delayed entry program and scored a 98 on my entrance exam. Once again, I was told how smart I was and that I could do anything. Shortly after my birthday I moved out of the group home. Though it would have been possible to remain until high school graduation, I was an adult and off juvenile probation. The short-term benefit of shame reduction outweighed the obviously more important long-term benefit of graduation.

After moving into my own apartment, T came into the picture. I never had a girlfriend before and was a virgin. Now the attention and affection of a female, which was never received from mom, took on great significance in my decision making. The drug and alcohol use returned unfettered after the reigns of the group home were removed and this certainly clouded judgement as well.

Scheduled to ship out that August after graduation, the decision was made that four years of military service wasn’t worth missing what I thought were going to be the most fun four years of my life in the small, suburban city where I grew up. In hindsight, this rationale behind that decision brings incredulity and significant regret. I was able to get out of my commitment to the Marine Corps by stating that A) I did not want to go and B) I was a daily pot smoker and was unfit for military service.

Little did I know that the consequences from my disease were just beginning.

Free Write

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My mood is down. Many things are occupying my mental capacity and they include this “search for fulfillment” that I am on, my mother’s alcoholism and our attempts to help her and my own recovery process. There is also the unbelievable results of this election; I am really beside myself wondering how so many people think Donald-fucking-Trump is the best person to lead the most powerful country in the world.

I had a meeting with E on Monday. I had been working it up in my mind as the career breakthrough that I’d been waiting and longing for. I started the meeting with a synopsis (that I had practiced delivering beforehand) of what I was doing and why I was there. After my 5 minute introduction he started by saying he didn’t think I needed to do that and that Christ led him and the answer was inside me. I felt invalidated and marginalized. He had no interest in me as a person; rather, he was interested in what I could do for him and how I could help the company. Even though I clearly communicated that I was not there to solicit a job, it is important to know that secretly I coveted the opportunity to be associated with that company again.

After taking the wind out of my sails, E tried to get me to come back as a PT so that I could manage my own department and eventually, my own club. 1. I’m not interested in going back to the same job I held 20 years ago. I was successful at it then and for three years. If that isn’t evidence enough of my ability and personality, then fuck it. 2. The company hasn’t really changed. The same machismo meatheads are in charge and the great success they’ve had has only fueled the narcissism. I wouldn’t fit in there. I’m too introspective and identify more with intellectuals than athletes. My interaction with E confirms that he is looking for the latter, just as he was 20 years ago. 3. Why do we need to bring Christ into it? Listen, if that’s what someone believes and it helps them live a better life, so be it. But don’t try to influence me with that crap. I don’t believe in any organized religion that deems itself to be the one true discipline and that other practices are wrong or worse, blasphemous. Keep it to yourself E. I hope you and JC can go skipping through the flowers together.

Dealing with my mother’s alcoholism directly ties in to my own recovery. My mom took no interest in me as a child or an adult. She also has no relationship with my daughter, her only grandchild. There are many deep-seated hurts that I try to bring to the surface for expression so they do not continue to have a subconscious but powerful and detrimental affect on every single other important relationship and interaction in my life. An example is the meeting with E. Some of what he said was taken very personally, too personally. In the grand scheme of things, who gives a fuck what he thinks or says? He does not know me. But… for 36 hours after the meeting my mood was near the lowest point it gets from time to time. It still is having some sort of affect on me now, more than 48 hours later.

The direction we are going in is to do an intervention on mom. Before that would have any chance of success, my youngest sister and stepfather need to be on board. M is my stepdad, B’s, daughter. They both have alcoholic tendencies and may or may not be classified as such according to the DSM-V manual. M was at the meeting last night with the interventionist and I’m not entirely sure she is buying into the idea. In order to get B involved, M needs to be in 100%. So all of this secrecy and maneuvering to get the opportunity to sit down with B to convince him to meet with the interventionist and then, hopefully, accept that treatment is the only option for mom is taking a toll on me and I suppose, bringing up some very old feelings. I’m working on identifying what those are and trying to express them with my therapist but as I write this, I don’t know quite how to explain them.

Trump… What the hell is going on? Speaking of religion, I’ve wondered if he is the Antichrist. But then he says something so incredibly stupid that I realize he isn’t charming enough. But still, how do so many people fall under his spell? The only mandate anyone seems to coalesce around is the vague notion of change. Change something, change anything, change everything. It does not seem to matter that he is a misogynist bordering on sexual predator, a selfish tax manipulator, has defaulted numerous times on the debt he agrees to borrow, seems to be cronies with the leader of a country that America has long distrusted and viewed as our greatest rival, openly makes incredibly inflammatory remarks regarding foreign and domestic people and entities that challenge him, and has shown himself to be an absolute demagogue with virtually no political experience or political stance beyond the rhetoric of “change” and “make America great again”.

Who are these people that buy into this bullshit? The anger regarding the current political system is palpable and I share in feeling it. But that doesn’t mean we turn over the keys to someone who we know simply as the tough boss from reality TV that espouses the themes we want to hear without the details to support and explain it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking there is a chance, just a chance, that Trump could prove all us disbelievers wrong. However it still doesn’t excuse the behavior of the stupid, yes I said stupid and I stand by it, American voters that pay attention to sound bites and emotion, and respond to populist crowdsourcing that alleviates the candidate from having to define their platform. Its almost like a work of art; the piece will mean different things to the different people that view it. If the artist never explains what it means to them, then the work might reach a wider audience and have a greater emotional affect as viewers adopt the meaning that fits best for them.

Feels good to write but the knot in the pit of my stomach is still there. It’s almost always there but sometimes it radiates less. In those moments I can be still and let the gratitude wash over me, wiping away the sadness.