Dispensable Human

When I was 24 I worked for a Landscape contractor in San Rafael, CA .  I had finished college, but had no concrete plan for my life.  I didn’t have a specific career in mind, although teaching interested me. I started landscaping following a stroke I had while lifting weights that 'paralyzed' my left arm, and leg, for just under a week.  I enjoyed the physicality, and creativity of working in a garden, and appreciated working outdoors most of all.

I like working with my hands, and performing work that exhausts my body.  I always have.   I discovered that if I occupy my flesh with strenuous activity I think more clearly, and back then I was thinking a lot.  Still, I never thought of landscaping as a respectable career, even though I did it for 15 years.  I never thought of it that way because I wasn't thinking for myself.   I was about to, however, and, in turn, enter one of the darkest, most terrifying periods of my life.  I'm revisiting it in an attempt to better arm myself for the one I'm in now.

I was then, as I am now, struggling to become an adult. I knew I was expected to act like an adult, and I desperately wanted to be one. So I did the things I'd seen other folks do who became adults without the accompanying transition. I didn't know how to make it happen. 

In fact, the only criteria I had for determining whether I had already become an adult, or was getting close, were the number of remarks made directly to me, or brought to my attention by someone who had heard a remark, that specifically noted a manner that was observed, in which I behaved 'adult like'. I became an adult through the presentation of acting like one. Inside, I remained a child.

That's not made up. I simply mimicked the gestures, and postures of the people around me to gain admittance into their circles. I discovered, quite quickly after leaving home to make my way in the world, that I wasn't prepared to do so on my own. No one had taken the time to help equip with what was needed for such a complicated task. No one had mentored me in the ways of self-reliance. I learned that almost everything they had taken the time to show, or share with me, the things that were now the core of me, only accelerated my trip to the bottom.

No Place Like Home

About 10 months after my stroke my father died in an automobile accident.  He was returning home following a night of drinking, apparently experienced a blackout that caused him to drive a hundred yards past the right turn to home.  He veered left  into a grove of redwoods, and oak that resulted in a punctured spleen.  A jogger found him dead in his car the next morning.   He was the exact age I am today.

A relative was sent to tell me, and when I heard the news I had no reaction.  None. It was like being told the sky is blue.  ‘The sky is blue.  The grass is green.  The sun is yellow.  Your father was killed. A rainbow has many colors. Night is hour upon hour of black.’   I think my actual response was, “So, how are you?  Do you want to get lunch, or something?”  He suggested we drive home. It sounds harsh, I know. It wasn't intended to be, but it was. I felt no sadness descend, no sense of loss, no horror.  I just felt calm, and numb. I did an inventory as we drove to see my family.  

In the 24 years I had with my father...

• I can remember just one compliment from him, and it was veiled.  After a football game I made a big hit in during my senior year, he said, “You  knocked that kid out of his shoes. I really had expected you to play like that your entire career.”    That was it.  
• I never received validation from him, never heard “That took courage, son”, or  “That was a hell of an effort." No, “I’m proud of you.”   No "I love you." He never told me he liked being my father, or  that he enjoyed being with me.  I still have difficulty accepting compliments.  I don’t believe I’m worthy of one.
• With the exception of football, he never expressed, or displayed interest in anything I did.  To him my dreams were unrealistic, or out of my reach.  I didn’t have the talent, courage, discipline, or work ethic for this thing.  I didn’t have the focus, maturity, or intellect necessary to achieve success in any of those.  What I showed a genuine interest in was a waste of his time. I was a textbook fuck-up.
• I don't recall doing anything alone with him, nothing that was just he, and I.   Not as a child.   Not as a young man.  No ice cream cones.  No weekday lunches.  No spontaneous phone calls to ask how I was doing.  Not a single unsolicited remark saying I was missed, no Hallmark card to know I was in his thoughts. Never.  Not once in 24 years. I'm sure I did something that warranted at least one, but not so sure that I'd stand by it.
• In high school it wasn’t unusual to walk into a party, and find out he was already in attendance, and shit-faced.  I didn't stay at those.   Friends told me he interviewed them casually about who they thought would be successful among us. Then he'd ask about me before stating his opinions about why I had a good chance to never amount to anything. Dad, if you’re listening, you were right. I didn't.
• Even when we lived together there were no shared moments.   We didn't talk about anything, ever.  If l I left a dirty dish on the counter, however, my door would come off the hinges at 2 AM, and I'd be dragged out of bed into the kitchen, to clean it. If I left a door open, or a light on, he'd squeeze the top of my ear between his thumb and forefinger, and lead me to the crime site like a dog. He made fun of my clothes, and my hair, and my interests, and the first time I jacked off, and cleaned myself with a t-shirt, he laid the shirt out on my bed to confront me when I came home from school. I wanted to love him. I wanted him to love me, and act like other dads, but he couldn't. Instead, he diminished me for two and a half decades, and was gone.
• My father did a lot of the damage that defines me, but he didn't do it all. Each time I was beaten my mother would put me, and my siblings in the car, and threaten to leave. Dad would sweet talk her out of it, and she'd carry me back inside, and return me to him.
• When the family started showing signs of dysfunction, and disorder, I was blamed.   I was eleven.   I was told I wasn't normal, and that I needed help.  I was taken to therapists, but refused to talk to them.   I had my brainwaves analyzed at the Stanford sleep clinic, and when they were determined to be fine, they made me do it again.   When we moved from Los Altos to Aptos, when I was fourteen, my parents sat me down, and said it was my fault.  The upheaval everyone was going though was because of my inability to behave appropriately.  Decades later I learned that there is always a child who 'acts out' in a family as dysfunctional as mine.  The child acts out in an unconscious effort to bring attention to the things that take place inside the family, in an effort to bring someone who can help, in.  The child acts out because they're too young to know what to say, or do.  No one ever told me that.  If they had, they would have had to be accountable for what they did, and still do, and blamed on me.  I come from a family of cowards.
• When my sister was on her drugging and drinking benders all through out high school, she and my mom projected the rage, and dependency meant for my father, on me. When she swallowed a bottle of aspirin in an attempt to kill herself my mom dragged me out of a party to accompany her to the hospital. Later, when my sister was chosen homecoming queen she had me escort her at the ceremony while my dad watched from the stands. They used me, and put me between themselves, and the rage that was our father.

     They took my childhood from me, and never bothered to say 'I'm sorry'.  They taught me that love is earned, and the way I earned it was to willingly sacrifice myself for others.  They taught me that I held no value if I wouldn't forgive their sins, or shoulder their burden with mine.  Then, when I finally said 'no' to the deal, and they chose the wrong story over mine as I was divorcing, my usefulness to them ceased.  They turned their backs in a choreographed threat to leave, and when I didn't respond as they expected, they adopted fiction as fact, and left me.  The mother fuckers actually did what they told me they would do everyday that I knew them.   They abandoned me when I needed them most, and proved to me how little I mattered to anyone.

Separated

Learning that I was different was terrifying, because up until then, I didn't know I was.   I thought of myself as capable, and gregarious.  It was painful to learn I was socially incompetent, and that my 'capabilities' had been manufactured by myself, and those who needed me to seem capable.  The hardest part, though, was not knowing why I was broken, or how I'd been so hugely disfigured.  With my father gone my identity shifted from who I was in relation to him, to who I was.  I discovered an emptiness in me that was debilitating, and frightening.  Who I had been was gone.  I was socially paralyzed.  

     I called my landscape contractor boss, and said I needed time off.  I didn't know why, or for what, and no one asked.  They told me to take what I needed, and to return when I was ready.  I wouldn't return for six weeks.  A darkness descended upon me that was void of self.  I didn't leave my apartment for the first two weeks.  I didn't talk to anyone.  I didn't know what to do, or where to go.  

    When I finally did go out I went to a park on the shore of San Francisco Bay, and sat on the same bench, day after day.  I cried until I was too exhausted to cry anymore, then I'd return home.  I did this for days.  At some point, I went to a bookstore where I was introduced to the literature written about the effects of alcoholism on the alcoholic family.  Roles played by each family member were assigned, and explained, and there I was in black and white.  There was nothing unique bout me.  I was what everyone who had my role was, and I behaved in an expected fashion.  The person I believed I was, and was becoming, vanished into air.  So, this is what it feels like to be lost.  I was 24 the first time I went missing.  I'm 54 for this period of being gone.   I started writing again because 30 years after that initial darkness I've returned to it.  However, there's no fear this time.  There's resignation.  There's acceptance.  There's a need to tell my story.  

    My "family" was able to  walk away from me uniformly, and as a unit, because of the belief my family created, and promoted.  They were able to abandon me without a single voice in protest because they were taught, and believed,  that I am a dispensable Human Being.  I was the Caretaker in our family, so they rationalized their treatment of me, and convinced themselves, just as they'd done when they carted me away to therapists, or glued electrodes to my head when I was 11, that anything they heard about me was a viable narrative, and could be considered true, if it served their needs, even if the narrative they adopted, and told to others about me, was a complete, and absolute fabrication.

    I've heard the story my sister, and brother, tell about me.  There's no truth to it.  None.  Every decision they've made, every behavior they've enacted upon, or toward me, has been founded upon a story someone gave them to protect their own ass as things fell apart around them.   I was subjected to the darkest hurt I've ever known because other people needed the escape that fiction provided. Those people are, and have been dead to me.   For years, when asked if I have family, I say yes, I have one brother.

Dali Trauma 

    I imagine it seems like an odd thing for me to share what I share publicly, and put on parade,  especially to anyone unfamiliar with the nature of trauma.  I totally get that, I do.  The best way I can describe it is as an invisible force field that's always around you, preventing you from genuine connection with others, and yourself, and without anyone telling you you have it on.   It's like running at full speed, headfirst, into a brick wall, over, and over again, without the awareness of a wall being there, just a sudden, violent stop.

    I am not an evil, or bad person.  I'm not selfish, or insensitive.   I don't use others to satisfy myself.  I don't lead you on just to be able to pull back.  What I am is inept.  I'm incapable of manifesting, creating, or sustaining the simple, and basic things many people take for granted, that I crave.  That's why I've stopped pursuing some of them.  That's why my world view seems bent, or hopeless to others.  I know about the invisible shield, and the brick wall.  I know they'll be there forever, and I won't get around them.  I know now who, and what I am.

Scorecard

The reason for focusing on them so many years later is because of the cycle of trauma I've been trying to navigate out of for the last 8 years, the one put in play by those "family" members who left me. Trauma is a cycle. It doesn't end. One familiar trigger brings it back again, as if it never left. I do not have the energy required to escape it. I can't escape who I am.

The table below is comprised of categories of circumstances, and events, most responsible for causing the profound childhood traumas that quietly disallow the bloom into adult. It’s a specific accounting of what shaped me.

I used a simple checkmark system to indicate those within my experiences.

- 1 check mark represents the less substantial events,  

- while 4 represents those that were, and continue to be, the more profoundly damaging, and most difficult to get away from, for me.

One primary,  and nearly universal dysfunction in families like mine is the lack of communication, and maintaining of secrets, between family members.  

For example, only one of my siblings has agreed to bear witness to my story by simply allowing it to be told, truthfully.  When I  finished,  I asked if he knew I’d been beaten.  He said he was, and had seen one of the beatings take place through a small crack left in an unclosed door.  I asked what he felt at the time. “I made sure,” he said, “that what he did to you would never be done to me.”  I asked how he managed that, and he said, ”I did what we all did.  I blamed everything on you.”  

Believe it or not,  that was a brilliant survival strategy, at the time.  What had been a secret between us for 40 years, and a source of deep shame, was forgiven in an instant because we’d both done the individual, painful work necessary to comprehend, and forgive, what was done.  That's why being allowed to tell your narrative in it's complete truth is absolutely essential to the recovery of the individual forced to hold the story.   

Those who haven’t done the work necessary to take full responsibility for what they did to others will be unable to hear the story.

Quantifying the trauma, and its source, from my youth

1 check mark = the least substantial events,  
4 = more profoundly damaging

Verbal abuse	Physical abuse	Sexual abuse*	Mentally ill household member	Household member in prison**	Substance-abusing household member	Parents separated/ divorced	Witness Domestic violence***
✓✓✓✓	✓✓✓	✓✓	✓	✓✓	✓✓✓✓	✓✓	✓✓✓

1. *I wasn't aware of the sexual ‘abuse’, or transgressions I’d been subjected to until I was almost 50, and a therapist identified them, and educated me as to the inappropriate nature of each, and how they compromised the essential characteristics (like trust) required by a healthy relationship.    He provided the first concrete reason to explain why all my relationships fail, and why I’ve never had what I long for in love, support, and trust. The model  I build from is missing too much to make anything sustainable from.  It’s sad, but it’s also a relief.  I’m not sure how many more failed relationships I can survive.   Knowing what's missing, and what would need to be replaced, and the unlikelihood of replacing it, allows me to realistically consider if I might be better off spending my life alone.
2. Learning about the effects of trauma, and that I've been repeatedly traumatized, saved me. It was the first validation I’d received in my lifetime that confirmed the lack of malicious intent in my efforts to connect, and try to have the things others have.

I may never find my way in the world. The older I get, the less hope I have. I think about ways to kill myself almost daily, in case I don't. There is solace, though. I've seen the statistics that offer an explanation of myself, to me. I know nothing is, or was wrong with me. The fact is some of the most familiar people in my life did some pretty horrible shit to me, and left me damaged, beyond repair. And I found a way to name them, and have my story, the real story about me, told. I have one less step to take on this tired journey.

Upwelling

The last two years have been difficult, and during those years I've sensed something rising, or changing, within me. Something was not yet settled, or complete, but I had, or have, no idea what.  I've been attentive to it, and I've been stitching thoughts together in an effort to assist it's completion, or need. 

My life never made any sense to me until I started writing.  It still doesn't, not really, and I need to make sense of it now, more than ever.  I don't care if anyone sees this post.  Why would they given it's on a blog that's been inactive for two years?  The truth is I don't write for an audience, or for attention.  I write to fulfill the agreement I made with the Universe to be what I've always felt it wanted me to be.  I'm just an employee determined to cover the shift I was assigned.  

The farther away I get from who I wanted to be the more grateful I become for who I am.  I am no longer afraid of what people might think of me, or what they might say about what kind of person I am.  I'm not threatened by anyone leaving me, or of rejection.  I'm not interested in your opinion of me, or pissed off if you don't have one.  Why?  I think it's because I'm finally living, and feeling truly alive, and neither one of those things is what I thought it would be.  I just know that each time I've lost something, or experienced a colossal failure in the past decade,  my capacity for joyful self-acceptance, and genuine self-love has deepened.  Those feel like things you arrive at in the final act   They feel like a strategy for letting go.

My journey looks unchoreographed, and meaningless to anyone who believes the tracks we leave tell our story.  I agree that they do. However, my journey was never on display, or played out in the world.  I barely manage to maintain a place in it most times.  I'm not a competent, or proficient Human.  My tracks, if looked at closely, show a man whose mind was often elsewhere while here.  My journey went through the quiet spaces in me.  I only feel deep connection with others when I retreat into myself, and emotions.  I know someone, somewhere, has had the same one, but to a degree so far north, or south of my own, that it makes me question how sincerely I've been living.  I have strength, and resilience in me, but we all do.  There are some people, however, who are the source for what the rest of us just carry. 

I don't know how extreme joy, or extreme sadness feel to others, but to me they often feel exactly the same.  Whether it's wonder, or grief, there's an emptiness.  I haven't expressed gratitude to the degree I feel it, or shown love in the volume I can afford to give away.   I rarely admit to whatever made me that I feel blessed to have experienced a Human narrative, no matter what that narrative was.  I don't think I express it because quite often I think I wasted the life I was given.  I think I wasted the time I had.  I think I could have been more kind.  I would have liked to have done more for my parents, and children than I did, or do.

I'm writing this post because I'm Humpty Dumpty, and after 53-years of sorting pieces, and aligning jagged edges, I was presented with the pieces to put myself together in a way that explains, matter-of-factly, why I've been relegated to the fringe, and why I can never get past the place I've occupied both in solitude, and community, my entire life.  In fact, statistically speaking, a guy like me who was raised the way I was by the folks doing the raising is in the exact place, and circumstance those statistics predicted I'd be.  I needed to write this because of how I've experienced the judgement of others, and how I've been labeled a loser by family, and a few 'close' friends.  They're wrong, and whether anyone reads this, or not, is irrelevant.   In fact, it will probably take them another lifetime to acknowledge their own behavior, or the need for that behavior to change.  

Shoes.  

A mile.  

Walk mile with other shoes on.  

It's the same tired, discounted, simple principle thingamajig. 

The truth is all men, and women, are not created equal.  Asking each to perform the same tasks, in the same way, to earn basic material items, or to be welcomed into a community isn't realistic, or even possible.  The randomly assigned IQ of 105 to little Ned will never shrink the gap between the other randomly assigned IQ of 160 to big Fred.  Little Ned will pull up to your driveway every Thursday at three in the morning to collect your trash, and Big Fred will do boob jobs, and lip enlargements for anyone with a Visa Gold Card in an office over a crowded Starbucks in Saratoga, and both will convince themselves they are where they are because of work ethic, or personal ambition.  Neither will ever admit one of their 'careers' is essential to the needs of daily life, while the other could disappear without notice, or alarm.

Below you'll find facts about the process of brain development in babies, how it occurs, and what is required for optimal development, as well as how the process is altered by circumstances that are less than optimal.  There are no excuses, or shifting blame.  Just facts.  Here's what happens when you build your house out of straw.  Here's what happens when you build your house out of bricks.  Here's how a wolf blowing on each affects your insurance premium.  I've never said shit to the folks I've been analyzed, and scrutinized by, in part because they refused to listen.  I don't know, or care, if they are now.  Nothing would change.  Besides, it's not their fault that they're idiots.  Mile.  Shoes.  You know.

Now, about that brain.

1. When we’re born, the only part of our brain that is fully developed is the lower part, the ‘primitive brain’.  The primitive brain is responsible for survival.  It’s where the Fight, Flight, or Freeze reaction originates, and not much else.  It’s what kept us from being eaten when we were cave people.   It’s not responsible for high level thought, or functioning.  The higher level parts of the brain,  the complex parts that make us what we are,  develop during the first two years of life, and they require intimate interaction, and connection, with other human beings to develop properly.
2. Baby brains are unique in their design, and growth.  Babies are born with the instinctive ability to elicit as much response as possible from a caregiver.  In fact, a baby learns how much response each individual caregiver is capable of giving, and modifies it’s strategy for each individual one.   The baby knows how much it can extract  from each adult who cares for it.  That’s the design part.  The growth of neurons in a baby’s brain is unique in both volume, and speed.  That’s why they’re capable of learning multiple languages, essential motor skills, and how to play a variety of musical instruments when they’re still in diapers.  The neurons in their brains are in a perpetual bloom.
3. A healthy neuron looks like an extended arm with a hand at the end of it, and fingers feeling about for something to connect to, and expand.  This is how higher brain functions like analysis, and social interaction are formed, and develop.  If a baby has invested, attentive, and emotionally balanced caregivers it's brain will develop in a manner that allows the baby’s brain to form, and achieve those capabilities as well.  And, since the brain is designed to develop in layers that become the foundations for each additional layer, individual brain development is dependent upon, and determined by, the quality of the interactions that take place in the first two years.  I visited homes of friends throughout my childhood that exemplified this model.  Now I’ll invite you to visit mine.  Mine, and millions like mine. We represent the opposite.
4. Two things were in abundance in my childhood household.  One was neglect, or lack of interaction.  The other was violence.  Neglect doesn’t require an explanation.  Violence, however, does.  Although there was physical abuse in my childhood, it was not abundant.  Shouting, and anger occupied more space.  Here’s a fact about the effects of that kind of violence.  “Children raised in households saturated with shouting, and regular angry exchanges end up with mental health problems at a rate higher than children who were targeted as direct victims of physical abuse.”   Here’s the two-pronged reason why…

   
5. A child in a healthy environment begins to construct higher brain segments on top of the lower functioning, primitive foundation we all begin with through the safe, and consistent interactions with their caregivers.  Together, with each interaction, they build a stairway to to this ability, and to that one, and so on, until they complete the design that nature had idealized, and desired.  A child like me, in a household like mine, gets something quite different.
6. When the neurons that are in bloom, and reaching for the next level of construction don’t find it because it isn’t there, they eventually stop looking.  And when they stop looking the part of the brain they were looking to connect to, or form, gets shut down.  It’s a one, and done opportunity, and it has to be.  In households like mine the brain determines on its own that it is unsafe to move beyond the primitive floor.  Fight, flight, and freeze are no longer emergency functions.  They’ve become the essential, and necessary exclusive functions for the environment that must be navigated, and survived, on a daily basis.  There’s no need for the second floor if there’s very little chance of ever being able to relax, or luxuriate in it.  It gets red-tagged, and removed from the blueprint, and it never gets built.  You can’t study harder, or attend group therapy, or take it on as a ‘do-it-yourself’ project in the future.  It’s gone.  No foundation was ever laid to build upon, and building the foundation can only occur during the first social interaction because that interaction becomes the paradigm, or model, for all social interactions that will follow.  It took fifty-three years for science to interpret the the method of construction that explained to me why I am the way I am.  
7. I’ve endured 53 years of whispers behind my back, and blame dumped on my front doorstep by people who were shaped by master builders, and refused to be thorough in investigating the truth of the rumors they participated in spreading. Still, I’m sure I’ll be the lucky recipient of more of the same.  I don’t care.   
8. I don’t care because I can finally stop the hurt that accompanied each attempt I made at trying to act like everyone else, so I could 'fit in'.  I can stop setting myself up for rejection by a demographic I never wanted to emulate.  I wanted to be accepted like everyone else I knew, but I was judged for my incompetence instead.  I was judged by a jury with no frame of reference, or experience, with the very thing they passed judgement upon.  
9. I’m the only judge, and jury I need now, and my first act is to grant a pardon to my parents.  What has hurt me the most, and for the longest time, was knowing how much they wanted to love, and protect me from the atrocities of their own childhood experiences.  Pardoning them so many decades after losing them is the only way I have to tell them that I understand, and that I miss them.  It’s the only way left for me to say thank you for the intent behind an inescapable result.  Susie and Kevin and Donna can fuck off.
10. To the others who were a part of my life at one point, before making their self-righteous exit, I just say thanks.  What I, and you, thought would hurt, and break me, hasn’t.  Your message to me that I’m not deserving of your presence in my life awakened me to how much of my life was wasted navigating your presence in it.  Susie, Kevin, Donna, Chris, Darren, and all the others who migrated away, you brought me to the beautiful realization that I actually get to choose who I want in my life, rather than feeling I must accept whoever showed up to occupy it.   
11. Ironically, it was your conscious decision to implement the most extreme experience of abuse, and neglect I've been subjected to, that allowed me to identify it, at all. You provided the perspective necessary for me to measure what I have never had the capacity to enact on others, by enacting it on me. You brought clarity to what kind of people I agreed to have in my life when you taught me the lesson by walking out, and refusing to hear my side of things. It's impossible to know any story if you refuse to hear just one half of it. You took my trash out for me, so I could see what it had been covering.
12. What was intended to be punitive became an enlightening reward, and I wanted you to know I'm grateful. The hatred I developed toward you, and your self righteousness has transformed itself into the most genuine joy I've ever known. I would never have discovered I'm allowed to tell anyone their treatment of me is unwelcome, inappropriate, or inhumane without your exodus, and self-serving participation in the spreading of erroneous, made up, and personally harmful details through gossip.
13. The clarity of my direction was galvanized, finally, after a decade of watching you interact with my sons, as if you were entitled to do so, while you prohibited me from interacting with your children, or never even informed me you had some. I can't believe any of you would want someone like that interacting with your kids, yet it never appeared to have any internal conflict from your self-made decision it was in their best interest that you continue to do so. You definitely taught them something, too.
14. But, what I'm most grateful for is the writing. Your refusal to agree to allow me to tell it to you directed me to the next best thing, which was to tell it. Period. Furthermore, by removing yourselves, and much of what I loved from my life, you removed the fear of what might be lost by making some people upset. Having nothing left to lose allowed me to collect the courage to use my voice. I finally did, and good riddance.

I know, you're right. Items 7-14 don't really have anything to do with brain development, but it is an upwelling, after all. They have to do with the plight of the individual trying to compensate for what didn't develop, and the way most people with developed brains often lack an understanding of how the events, and relationships responsible for the undeveloped brain destroyed any chance that individual had at knowing real love, or developing any sort of competency, for anything.

No amount of self-will, or determination can circumvent the brain in order to find a path outside of it that works. Whether you like it, or not, the path of partial vacancies is the only path that ever appears. Eventually you walk to where it begins, hesitate because you know what occurs when you're on it, and you turn, and walk away. Eventually, you're not certain you can do it anymore, and it gets harder, and harder, to find reasons to do so. Lately, I've been unable to find any.

People go through things, private, painful things, that no one else ever knows about. They go through them, and do their best to live their lives with the parts of themselves that remain. What they need is empathy, and compassion. What they get is an emptiness that's very hard to fill.

Having been on both sides, sometimes as judge, sometimes as the one being judged, I've come up with a series of question I ask myself when interacting with someone whose behavior seems bent on creating a gap between us, or that's void of focused attention.

"What if today was the one we all dread, for this person, the one we learn a parent is terminally ill, or that we are.  

What if it's the one the insight into our life that grants the truth we sought about how best to live it, the one we hoped for at 20, but came at 45 with the hint that we wasted it, or chose the wrong one because we were scared.  

Or maybe it's just another day for them where the loneliness can't be ignored, or the pain can't be forgotten, and the love they need is no where to be found.  

What if it's the day the ground fell out from beneath their feet, and although we can't see it, they're in the somersault of an inescapable freefall.  

I ponder these things because these things happen, and when they do most of us want to appear strong, or choose to go through them alone. Pondering them reminds me that I don't know what the person has been through, or is going through, or has endured, because we've all been through something.  

After pondering these things I can feel compassion, and show empathy.  

I can cut some folks some slack.  

I can choose not to immediately react.  

I can be humane." 

Countdown to Vanish

It's fucked up that 52 years of arduous living is careening, full throttle, into a single moment that will define every breath I've taken before it.  Or maybe, in a way, I'm lucky.

I'm lucky because I don't give a shit, anymore, how that moment will reflect my story, or who gathers around to hear it.  I'm lucky because I've let go of any expectation I held about being treated with decency, by anyone.  I'm lucky because I'm alone.

I don't even talk to God, anymore.

You Have ONE Message

Oh, but the X has been calling.  She wants money for the boys, and she's screaming into my answering machine, and putting me down again.   She's telling me I'm full of shit, that the credential isn't the issue.  There are "other things" I'm capable of doing, she says.

Forget the fact that she hasn't asked if I've been pursuing those other things over the past year.
Forget the fact that she hasn't asked a single question about what I have done, or what I've been met with. 

Forget the fact, while we're at it, that she hasn't stopped to consider what it must feel like to be destitute, despite all efforts to be anything, but that.   

Forget the fact that I can barely provide for myself right now, let alone my sons, and how that might feel as a man, and a father.    

Forget the fact, that to hear her tell it, this is my choice. 

Forget the fact that she hasn't stopped to consider that being destitute does more than affect what I can buy  my sons.   

It affects the time I get to spend with them, and the state of mind I'm in, when I do spend any time with them, at all.   

 Forget the fact that the diagnosis of severe depression, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, are, by themselves, enough weight to kill a man.  

Forget the fact that if any one else she knew was in a similar position, there would at least be a show of false compassion, and quite publicly, I'm sure.  

But it isn't someone else, it's me, so there's a traditional playground dog-pile, and all her disdain, and the weight of it, times a thousand.

 I got a text from The X requesting that I come to the house that I was kicked out of, and told never to come to again, so she could berate me, about me.

I told her I was open, absolutely, to a discussion, one that allowed equal time to the participants, and the promise of civility, and being heard, for real..
Just not in the place she kicks me out of, if I disagree with what I'm being told, I'll do.

I asked that we conduct our "discussion" through email.   That seemed reasonable, and productive.  And it might have been, had we done it.  Evidently, however, she didn't want a "discussion", at all.
My request was deemed unacceptable, and she's yelling at me again, in my voicemail.

She's yelling at my outgoing message, and telling it the credential thing is a lousy excuse, along with other unpleasant comments that destroy a "discussion".
Comments with nothing constructive about them except the intent to let me know that I'm small,
and worthless.

I can't wait for the day that I drive away without leaving a hint as to where I'm going.
I can't wait for the final "discussion", to be over.

'The X' only sees one thing when she sees me.  She sees a place to spill the anger that is otherwise hers to hold.  Its been 8 years, and I haven't heard a single kind word from her.  Not one.

Does she really expect me to sit down, and have a "discussion",  when the only "discussions" we've had have been her tirades about my inadequacies, and her anger?

I don't think she's capable of even considering how painful, or hard this has been for me, or how I already feel inadequate as a father in this situation, on my own.  That's evidence enough for me, that the only person she's considering, is herself, and a dog-pile.

Divorce means it's time to find another guy to berate, and call names, and make small.  This one's not available, anymore.
Leave a message while you can.
I'm starting my countdown to vanish.

BEEEEEEEP.

Talking To Myself

 The only person I want to talk to about this, is myself, and I'll talk to myself in the same place I've held my  discussions for the past year, and a half.   I'll talk to myself on the pages of the blog that I write.  The blog that no one reads, or at least, no one is forced to read.  It's still a choice, I think.

I'll talk to myself about nothing in the only place where my voice is still allowed, and where no one's listening.

I'll talk to myself here, and remind anyone who's eavesdropping, who wants to say I'm inappropriate, that perhaps they should take their ears elsewhere.
This is my forum.
You shouldn't be shocked by what I say here.
If nothing else, I'm redundant.

The reality is that when I do find consistent employment, I'll be giving my paychecks away.  The debt I've accrued is so significant, I'm unsure I'll ever get my head above water, again.
I'll have enough leftover to rent a room in a house, with strangers, and to shop at the Dollar Store  for groceries, just as I have been, for over a year.

The bigger reality is, that won't matter.
Not to her.
She'll leave her angry messages until she's seen proof that I'm dead. After that, she'll be alone with everything she's been accustomed to dumping on me, that isn't mine.
She'll be left alone with everything she's so desperately used me to rid  herself of,
and avoid.

  This may sound harsh if you're reading it,
and it may be  to an outsider.  If you're me, however,  its just

 survival.  It's just the outlet that arose from qualified instruction.

Each of the three, most significant mental health professionals who I sought help from, told me to anticipate being stuck in this, with her, for awhile.
Each of those individuals taught me about the dynamic we created that fed it, and each of them said it would remain a necessity to her until one, of two things, happened.

It will remain a necessity until I am able to leave, and begin a new life elsewhere, where I can cut myself off, or until she has a new partner in her life who can fulfill the role that I left vacant.   But as one therapist said to me, " I wouldn't anticipate that, Patrick.   It's going to be very difficult for her to find another man with the extent of dysfunction that you had, and that fit hers, when the two of you were together."

"Until she finds one, she'll still need you to be the person you were, and she'll continue her attempts to convince you that you are.  No civility.  No kind words.  They're too dangerous.  If they were offered, you might believe she was acknowledging Human value in you, and if that were to occur, she wouldn't be able to characterize you as everything she needs to keep beneath her, to feel tall.  Unfortunately, that's who you are, to her." 

Pause

 I think I'm alright with that.
I'm alright with that as long as I can politely suggest our discussions take place through the medium of email. I'm alright with that now that I have a place to deposit my voice, a place where I feel heard.
I can live with that.

 I'm open to any discussion she, or anyone else would like to have.
But if you leave me a voicemail full of criticism, belittling, and anger, I'll remain doubtful that a discussion is truly what you're after.

"Discussions", as I know them, are built into a framework of respect for the other person, and their story as they tell it,  not as you see it.

Based on past discussions, and this most recent voice message, there's no indication that a "discussion" could take place, at all.

 "So, Dying Year Blog that no one reads, thank you for listening.
Thank you for allowing me to voice my side of so many "discussions" that never took place.  Thank you for listening, and not shouting, or calling me names."