Addictions and The Glitter Pens

A few months ago, when I saw the psychiatrist at the clinic I go to (it was a medication management appointment, not a therapy appointment because … it’s complicated, it has to do with being poor, having no insurance, and a rant that will go on all night), so… I was sitting with the shrink, chatting about Klonopin and the fact that I’d stopped drinking since the first time I’d seen him.  As of that appointment, I was just approaching the four month sober mark.

Jokingly, I remarked that I was doing ok with the sobriety, but, I was looking around for my next addiction, as I seem to always have one.

He asked what I’d been addicted to before.

“Well”, I said, counting them off on my fingers, “cigarettes, sex, gambling, booze, and, for a brief period, eating Oreo cookies.  I can’t eat them any longer, I ate so many.”

He stared.  He’s nice, but I’m not sure he gets my humor.

“What do you think you’ll be addicted to next?” he asked.  A better question than I was expecting, though not one I was prepared to answer.  Not because I didn’t want to tell him my next addiction, but, because I didn’t know what my next addiction would be.

“Don’t look too concerned.  It won’t be drugs.  That’s not an option.”

“Why not?”

“Because they scare me”, I said, “I’ve never even really experimented with drugs, other than some pot when I was in high school.  I’ve stayed away from them.  It’s the one addiction I know I’ll get lost in.  If I start drugs, I won’t come back from that addiction.”

I think he was surprised by my self-awareness.   It’s not something I’ve admitted aloud too often.  Drugs scare me.  I may be suicidal, but, I don’t need drugs to add to the tumult, or to fake euphoria.  The alcohol was enough to kill the pain.  Drugs seem to just create more pain than they relieve.

“So, what will your next addiction be?”  He was persistent.

“I’m not sure.”

Well, now I’m sure.

I’ve developed an addiction to poetry books, art supplies, and paper.   Ok. Ok.  Sheesh.  You’re so pushy and demanding of truth.  Ok.  I’m addicted to spending Julian’s money.

I’ve been sober six months, and, in that time I’ve bought (ok, ok….sheesh… I’ve spent Julian’s money on):

• Enough poetry books to nearly require a new bookshelf to put them on.  Of course, I am at least able to say I’m becoming more cultured, reading so much poetry, and, therefore, can pretend to feel less guilt about buying so many.
• I’ve bought crayons.  The 150 pack.  Because it was there.  I had an idea I’d make little drawings on notecards to illustrate my blog posts.  Then, not until after buying the crayons, did I realize that I don’t know how to draw — little drawings or otherwise.
• A small, and a large artist sketch book.  No, no, not because I sketch.  Aren’t you paying attention?  I just said, in the last bullet point, I can’t draw.  Draw, sketch, same thing.   No, I’ve bought them, because one of the writing books I read some time back mentioned using them as journals, rather than lined notebooks — the empty, blank page is supposed to be more freeing to the mind, less limiting than lines and margins allow.  I don’t know yet if it works, as I haven’t written in them yet.
• I’ve bought 4 packs of lined 5″x8″ note cards, and one pack of 300 unlined notecards.
• I bought a set of calligraphy pens.  I don’t know caligraphy, but I do have nice handwriting, so I thought I’d use the note cards and calligraphy pens to write pithy quotes on, photograph them, then post them on my blog.  If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll have noticed lack of said pithy quotes on photographed notecards.
• Then, there is the pack of 8 colored lined mini-legal pads (2 each of 4 colors: yellow, pink, blue, green).  I thought the colors would make a change from the white note cards, or for extra-long pity quotes.
• Two-dozen Ticonderoga pencils.  I love to write in pencil.  I’ve got 40 or 50 unused pencils already, but, Ticonderoga are the best.
• A set of Sharpie calligraphy markers, because the ink flows better than the pens, so they’re for when I need to do something pithy and quick.
• Ten pocket notebooks, found at the new art supply store that just opened down the street, for $1 each.  They’re fake leather covered, flip open like a police notebook, are lined, and fit wonderfully into a pocket.  I need these to be able to jot down all the profound thoughts, and poetic things I think of now that I am sober.  I have one sentence in one book.   But, I have hopes for these, as I do normally think of things when I am out and about, and wish I had paper to jot down the thought.
• A small spiral notebook — 3″x5″– as a place to jot more thoughts, this is on my desk, next to the mouse (I have a small area to write on), so the notebook fits well, and, there are two lines for future poems written in it.
• Then there are the supplies for the new photography idea: Still Life photography.  Selling photos is not a big money making endeavor, unless one works for a big magazine.  I’ve made about $120 so far, in eight months.  Not enough to pay for the website gallery.  So, I thought I’d do some still life photography, and use the images for canvas bags, iPad covers, cards, etc. (one can do this on various websites.)   So, for this I’ve spent $84 on a small set of studio lights; several pitchers and vases (on clearance), to use to hold flowers — fancy floral photos always sell, some scrapbooking paper to use as backgrounds.  I still need some white/black cloth backgrounds, then a place to set it all up.  So far, the shopping for supplies has been great fun.  I’ll let you know if the photo-taking is as enjoyable and addicting.
• A set of 8 gel pens, in various retro-glitter colors, because, as a 47-year old, HIV+, recovering alcoholic gay man, I guess I felt the need for a bit of glitter in my life.  (Perhaps need to mention glitter pens to therapist).

So, I’ve found my new addiction.  But, I have a plan.  To use them.  For real.

Which is an improvement over my other addictions which used me.

So, don’t be surprised to see something pithy written on a 3″x5″ notecard in glitter pen very soon.

Some Thoughts On Adoption: Conclusion

If you’re just tuning in, read the following first: Introduction, Part One, Part Two, Interlude, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six.

When I sat down at my computer and started writing about my adoption, I had no clear goal in mind.  I knew that I wanted to respond to a few quotes that I’d read in a book, tell a few things about my adoption story, and to try and work out what, if any, impact being adopted has had on me.  I didn’t really know what I was going to say, I had no idea that I’d end up writing so many words about it, and, up until two nights ago, I had no real idea what the point of it all was.

As I wrote this series, I became more and more convinced that there was a reason I was writing about this topic.  I’d been thinking about adoption since I’d read Jeanette Winterson’s book, and thoughts were circling around in my mind — some complete, some just fragments of ideas.  It seemed they were all circling around something, but I just could not see what was at the center of it all.

Writing has often been my way of working through something. Sometimes I write and ask questions, then try to answer each one; sometimes I just let the pencil fly across the paper writing whatever is in my head, sensical or not.  I find that just getting the extraneous words out of the way lets me focus on what’s really at the root of my thoughts.  It’s not always about problems, or bad things — sometimes it’s just trying to make sense of something, or to truly examine how I feel about something.  That’s why I decided to start writing about my adoption.  Something needed to be said, some deep truth needed to be seen, but I just had too many other thoughts swirling around, clouding whatever Big Idea was at the center of it all.

So, I started writing.  This time, I did it here, on my blog.  I am fairly open about myself on this blog, but I still write many things that don’t make it out into the world of the internet.  I felt I needed to work through this one publicly, to share one of many different stories about what being an adopted child means.

Adoption impacts many people in the world, and, it is a big decision for people — a big decision for a woman, deciding to give up her child in hopes that the child will have a good, safe, secure, happy life; and, it’s a big decision for people choosing to adopt a child: adopting is a gamble after all.  In Winterson’s book, “Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal“, she sums it up quite succinctly: “The trouble with adoption is that you never know what you are going to get.”

Of course, this is true of any birth: adopted children have no idea what they’re going to get for parents any more than a child raised by his birth-parents; adoptive parents have no more idea of what the child they adopt will be like than the birth-parents of a child.  It’s always a gamble.  For millennia, people have continued to make that gamble.

I wonder, though, if adopted children are more prone to feeling guilt if they don’t turn out to be the best and the brightest?  Of course, as I’ve said many times during the writing of this series, I am speaking only of myself, and my thoughts–I don’t presume to speak for anyone other than myself.  And, I wonder if I am the only adopted child that’s felt as if he’s been a disappointment, and if my parents have had regrets.  This is purely hypothetical, and is really unanswerable, but, I’ll ask it anyway: if my parents could have somehow seen into the future, and known that the child they were adopting was going to grow-up to be a gay, HIV+ man, who suffers chronic depression and anxieties, would they have gone through with it.  The same question can be asked of any parent, really.  As I said, it’s an unanswerable question, but it’s one that I can’t help wondering about.

How much of the conflict that my mother and I have had over the years has been because of disappointment or regret?  I know, as I mentioned in the last post, that she wondered if “they’d been given one of those kinds of boys.” She’s called me “fag”, “queer”, “whore”.  A few years ago, when my partner was hired for a new, well-paying job, my mother said “His parents must be so proud of him.  I wish I had a son I could be proud of.”  She’s accepted my gayness in the sense that she knows if she doesn’t accept it she would never see me, and, yes, she’s let my partner move in, but, that offer came when I was contemplating moving in with him. She’s for gays being able to inherit from each other, and have hospital visitation rights, yet her Catholicism opposes same-sex marriage, and, she’s concerned that now that Colorado has civil unions that Julian and I are going to rush down and be … unionized?  Not long ago, after putting a damper on an idea of us moving somewhere (all of us), she informed me, loudly, in the hospital waiting room, that I was just selfish, spoiled, never did anything for others, and that the only good thing that has happened in her life has been marrying dad.  Based on the blatant stares from the rest of the people in the waiting room, it was, apparently, riveting theatre.

Perhaps I have been a disappointment.

Wondering if I’m a disappointment is not just an adopted child issue — I suspect a great many of us, adopted or not, wonder that. And, as I was thinking that previous thought, the fog suddenly cleared, and I realized what my reasons for writing this were.

It was important for me to not only say, but to search that deep, inner space where we hide our truths, and realize that indeed, I didn’t wish to seek out my birth-mother, even though it seems to be something that people think adopted children should do.

It was important for me to tell David’s story, and, to admit to myself, to say out loud, that that experience has haunted me all these years, and that it’s been the root of much of the conflict between my mother and I.  And, also, for me to realize that my distrust of people, my lack of feeling for family, that my distantness from people, that my anxieties all stem from that incident.  It was especially important for me to admit that even though I feel scarred by David’s being sent away, I don’t blame my mother for it, as I once did, in those first few years afterwards.  I’ve come to realize that she made a decision that seemed the best choice she could make at the time.

I’ve also realized while writing this, that fear has entered into my soul.  My mom will be ninety in November.  While I’m not expecting her to die today, or this week, it’s a fact that our time together is growing shorter.  I’ve said that my mom has been afraid of being alone.  I realize that once my mom is gone, I will be alone — alone in the sense of family; family meaning the basic, micro-level definition of family: parents, children, mother, son.  Yes, I have a partner, and am part of a modern Family Is Who We Make It, but once my mom is gone, I am alone.  Orphaned.  No ties to anyone.  I’ve not been close to any of my parents relatives — they’ve all lived in other states, our interactions have been limited and brief over the years.  In a way, that fear I had after David was sent away is close to coming true for me, metaphorically, at least — being sent off, alone, into the world.  And, it makes me mad that I spent all those years trying to hurt my mom, that we’ve spent so much time trying to hurt each other (that hasn’t stopped — in fact, I’ve managed to be a Pigheaded Ass as recently as this evening, and have been given the ultimate silent treatment — she went to bed at 8, and won’t let me give her her night insulin and night pill.)  As Linda Ellerbee used to say at the end of her news show: “And so it goes…”  But, it’s made me realize that part of why I stay here, care for her, is to try to, in some way, make up for those awful years.

Ultimately, though, what I’ve realized in writing this is that even with all the issues surrounding adoption that our family has gone through, through all my fears and insecurities, through all our fighting and lashing out, adoption hasn’t made us any less of a family than other, non-adoptive families.  We’ve fought, bitterly, awfully, woundingly.  We’ve laughed.  We’ve cried.  We’ve stood by each other, mom and I.  She’s been there when I’ve needed scraping up off the pavement, and I’ve been there to nurse her through one of the toughest surgeries there is.

As I was writing this series, as things were making sense to me, I began to look around at all the families I know.  And, I realize we are no different.  I’m adopted, but it doesn’t change the fact that we are as much a family as anyone else’s family.  Good, bad, indifferent — we’ve managed to look past the wounds and the scars.  I like to think that in spite of all the pain and hurt, that when we look at each other, we both see the love, the strength of the love that’s been tested, and that still holds us together.

Some Thoughts On Adoption: Part Six

(Previous pars of the series can be read by clicking on the link: Introduction, Part One, Part Two, Interlude, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five)

My mother is a strong, tough, opinionated woman who has always stood up for what she believed, and for what she wanted. But, when it comes to conflict, my mother is not a fighter.  When she and I fight, there are two possible outcomes.

If she is right, and I am wrong, she stomps out of the room (now that she’s almost ninety, it’s more of a quick shuffle out), and I’m given the silent treatment.  Pigheaded ass that I can be, I will usually go after her, try to engage her again, but her silence remains solid, so I leave, eventually to return with an apology, and am given the inevitable guilt trip for upsetting her.

The second response is a bit more complex, and happens when I’m right, and she’s wrong.  My mother has never, ever, admitted that she was wrong in an argument or fight, and I can count the number of apologies on one hand.  Usually what happens is that she stamps out of the room (see above parenthetical aside re: shuffling now that she’s nearing ninety).  Pigheaded ass that I can be, I’ll go after her, trying to get some response, other than the silent treatment that now ensues.  Getting no response, I’ll leave, only to return, with apologies for upsetting her. (Whether I am right or wrong, the apology has always come from me.)

Here’s where the complex part comes in: she’ll usually break into tears, and, sobbingly, will tell me that she tries hard to be a good mother, and that if I want we can probably track down Mrs Green (remember her from the Intro?) and that Mrs Green can contact my birth mother, and I can meet them, and I’ll probably have siblings and a father, and a better home.  I’m not entirely sure why this is her response.

I know when it started.  I’d once asked, when I was about fifteen or sixteen, during a calm period of our Uncivil War years, about my birth mother.  I don’t recall exactly what I asked, it wasn’t anything about wanting to find her, more of a “do you know if she ever got married?” sort of question.  That was pretty much it — she visibly crumpled, collapsed into a chair, started crying, and within a matter of minutes she had herself worked into a frenzy of belief that I was busily packing up my things so I could go live with my birth-mother.  This was the furthest thing from my mind.

Even during those really terrible years after dad died, and David left, I’d never given much thought to my birth-mother.  Mom and I fought more than we talked, hurt and wounded each other as often as we could, but, no matter how bad it was, it never occurred to me to go back to my birth-mother on my own.  After David’s being sent back to his birth-mother, I was afraid of being sent back to mine; seeking out my birth-mother voluntarily was not something I cared to do.  But, this particular day, in whatever mood my mom was in, she became convinced that I wanted to leave her.  A weird dynamic had set in: I was terrified of being sent away, and she was terrified of my leaving.  In spite of our war, in spite of the times we hated each other, neither of us wanted to end up alone, though, I suppose if I were to go to my birth-mother, I wouldn’t be alone — but mom would be.  And, perhaps that was the thought that terrified her most.

But, after that day, any time we fought, and if I was in the right, she’d just offer to find my birth-mother and send me to her.

One would think that once I reached a legal age, and was able to make my own decisions about where to live, that she’d stop offering to find my birth-mother.

One would be wrong to think that.

I am now forty-seven years old, and, while she and I don’t fight as much, about once or twice a year, she’ll get teary-eyed, apologize for being such a bad mother, and offer to help track down my birth-mother, so I’ll have a real family, with siblings.  As if siblings are the answer.  I know enough other people with siblings to know that, often, siblings are the problem, rather than the answer.

It finally occurred to me that my mother is not too different than her mother, though I think she’d be hurt if she knew I compared her to her mother.  My mother’s mother was widowed young, eight years into her marriage, and was left with one child: my mother, who was seven.  My grandfather had had a decent job, made enough money to afford some of the luxuries: electricity, a refrigerator, an automobile.  After he died, she was left with not much, and, times got tough during The Great Depression.  For whatever reason, my grandmother felt the need to test my mother’s love.  My mom would come home from school, and there, on the floor, was her mother, presumably dead.  My mother would try to rouse her, in the way a seven and eight year old would, and, getting no response, would begin to cry and scream and not know what to do.  Her mother would then rouse herself back to life, assured, that since her daughter was so upset by the thought of her death, that she must, indeed, love her.  This, apparently, went on for the first few years after my grandfather died, and then stopped.  There is much else that was wrong about the relationship my mother and grandmother had, but, I don’t know it well enough to recount properly.  But, I know that my mother swore when she had kids she’d not be like her mother.  And, like many parents before her, she has managed to not do the things her mother did to her, while coming up with similar things to do. My mother, like her mother, needs to know that she’s loved, and, by provoking tearful responses from me that I want nothing to do with my birth-mother, I give her the reassurance of my love and devotion, just as her crying and being upset reassured her mother of that love.

For a while I thought that the reason I didn’t wish to seek out my birth-mother was because of the guilt my mother was laying on me for wanting to leave her, and the belief that maybe that guilt had brainwashed me into thinking that if I looked for my birth-mother I would somehow be invalidating all the years of parenting, all the love that she, my adopted mom, had given me.  As I got older, and really thought about my birth-mother, dug down into those parts of mind and soul where we often stash the truth, I knew that I wasn’t guilted or brainwashed into not wanting to find my birth-mother.  I really, deep down, soul-searingly honest did not want to find her.  She gave birth to me, and I feel a sense of gratitude to her for that, but, other than “thank you”, I’ve got nothing to say to her.  Alright, well maybe I’d ask “does diabetes run in your bloodline?  what about cancer? heart disease?”  But that’s it.

Like my grandmother, I, too, am guilty of testing my mother’s love, seeing just how far I could push before she finally snapped.  Perhaps that’s what families are about, adoptive families or otherwise: testing boundaries, learning limits, struggling, fighting, yet, somehow still retaining that bond that keeps you together, keeps expanding boundaries and limits of acceptance, keeps you afloat, keeps you a family.

Some Thoughts On Adoption: Part Five

(Click on the following links to read the other parts of this series: Introduction, Part One, Part Two, Interlude, Part Three, Part Four)

I’d like to add the caveat I’ve added to the past few parts of this series:  this is one story of adoption, my story.  These are my thoughts, opinions, feelings about adoption, my adoption, based on my experience.  I do not claim that my story is typical of all adoptions.  We are a world full of unique and individual people, with unique and individual stories.  This is my unique and individual story.

You’d think I’d remember the date my brother left home.  It’s not every day that your adopted brother has his adoption reversed and is returning to live with his birth mother (see Part Four of this series for the entire story, if you’ve not been following along since the beginning).

I remember the date my father died: February 8, 1980.  I remember that David boarded the plane to return to his birth mother later that year — September, October?  It was either right before school was to start, or right before the second quarter of the school year was to start.  The date had something to do with school.  He was nine years old, and one did have to think about his schooling.

So, why can’t I remember the date?

I remember being at the airport.  I remember the striped shirt he was wearing.  I remember the flight attendant (stewardess, as they were called in those days) coming over to us, introducing herself to David, and walking him through the door, and down the jetway to the plane.  I remember him turning around, about halfway down the jetway, to wave and smile at us, at mom and I.  There’s a memory of a stuffed toy in his arms, but I won’t swear it.

I can remember standing there, next to my mom, and feeling dead inside.  My father was gone — something that wasn’t supposed to happen in the natural order of things.  I didn’t know of anyone my age, fourteen, who’d lost a father (at least, not then).  My world was already upside-down.  I was adopted into this family as a baby, and, five years later, my brother was adopted into the family as well.  Suddenly, after a ten-month battle with brain cancer, my father was gone, our family was one-quarter gone.  Now, here we were at the airport, and my family was now reduced by half — from four of us, to two of us.  My brother, my adopted brother, was being sent back to where he came from.

I didn’t understand it at all.

That’s a lie.  I understood that David had been a lot of trouble from the beginning, and that my mom, now locked in grief, anxiety, probably depression, had no idea how to deal with David on her own.  Sending him to live with the woman who gave birth to him, who was married and who’d had other children since, seemed a good option — perhaps having a big family, with more siblings, with younger parents (his birth mother was twenty-five years younger than my mom’s fifty-six years).  Maybe all those things would be good for David.

That was the hope.  That is what I think my mother believed with all her heart in that moment at the airport as we watched David leave.  I think she hoped for David what his birth mother had hoped for him when she’d sent him to live us when he was born: that he’d have a better home, that he’d be loved, that he’d be safe.

For me, it was the start of a lifetime of …. of what?  Of fear.  Of anxiety.  Of isolation.  Of more things than I can set down in words.  In those moments, leading up to David’s departure, it dawned on me: I could be next.  I could just as easily be sent away.

In a way, I was sent away — on my eighteenth birthday my mother threw me out of the house; I’d been late coming home from a job interview because the interview ran long. I missed the express bus, had to take the local bus, and was late.  There were no cellphones in 1984.  I couldn’t call.  We were to go to dinner, to celebrate my birthday.  My mom was convinced that I was having sex with a man, and that I thought having sex with a man was more important than celebrating my birthday with her, so, I should just go live with this man I was supposed to be having sex with.

There was no man.

I was gay.  I’d told her — it was either a few weeks after dad died, or a few weeks after David left.  I can’t remember that detail either.  I can remember that she wouldn’t touch me, that she didn’t hug me again until after she found me on the streets, where I’d been wandering around for nearly twenty-four hours after she threw me out.  She hugged me then, and brought me home.

I spent the years between David’s leaving, and my turning eighteen waiting for my turn to be unadopted.  It seemed logical to my teenaged mind (because teenagers are known for their logic and astute insight into the workings of the world, right?)  I didn’t take the time to mourn my losses — I cried the day my father died, standing there, next to his bed, watching him breathe his last, but I didn’t cry for him again until I was well into my twenties.  I cried that day at the airport, watching David leave.  But, I didn’t mourn for him until later, years later, when his life got even more troublesome.  And, then I mourned him when he died five years ago.  Mostly, I was too busy being afraid that my turn to leave was going to come.

I spent those four years, from fourteen to eighteen doing everything I could to push my mother’s limits.  I can distinctly remember thinking that if she was going to send me away it was going to be for as many reasons as I could give her.  I was angry.  I was full of unexpressed grief.  She was the one who was there to direct it at.

I started ditching school.  I started having sex with men.  She’d marched me into therapy the minute I told her I was gay, because it was just a phase, and she didn’t want anyone blaming her for my being gay — Mama’s boys, was the polite term for faggot back then, and my mother did not want anyone to think that she was the dominating mother who’d turned her son into a Mama’s Boy.  The therapy didn’t work — the therapist never even tried to cure me.

She’d stopped hugging me, which, to me meant she’d stopped loving me.  I couldn’t get her to talk about it.  So, let her see me doing it, then she’d not be able to pretend it wasn’t true.  I was good enough to not let her actually catch me having sex.  She just caught me after it was done, and the man had to flee, out a window, to avoid her wrath.

She was my scapegoat.  Every drop of grief, loss, fear, and confusionI had was directed at her.  I ditched school more.  I had more sex with men. I stopped going to school, dropped out, and just spent my days having sex with men.

When I was sixteen, I told her that I was no longer going to church.  My mom, staunch Catholic, was devastated.  First I was gay, then I’d dropped out of school (she was a teacher, and my decision stung), then I rejected religion.  I would have left the church eventually, as I’d never felt any sort of feeling towards the whole thing — no matter how hard I tried, I never did find faith.  But, I left the church early not just because it meant nothing to me, but because I knew it would wound her. As I write this paragraph, I realize that I spent my time rejecting everything she stood for. Maybe that was the point.  If I reject all she believed in, then maybe it would be easier for her to reject me.  There was a part of me that wanted to be sent away, because once I was sent away, I could stop worrying about when it was going to happen.

Do I blame her for throwing me out when I was eighteen?  No.  I’d been trying hard enough to provoke some sort of reaction, though I admit to being surprised when I got a reaction.

In many ways, my teenage rebellion is no different than many teenage rebellions, so I can’t, and don’t, blame it on being adopted.  I don’t blame it on my mother — logically and rationally, at least.  What she did, sending David away, was something she felt was the best decision for her and for David.  I don’t think anyone thought about what it would do to me.  It took away my sense of security, my sense of safety.  I was already in a state of emotional turmoil, trying to come to terms with my father’s death, dealing with my own budding sexuality — something that was still Very Wrong back then; then the one unimaginable thing happened: my brother was unadopted.  To use a well-worn metaphor, I went over the edge of the emotional cliff.

My mother and I were both locked in our own emotional vortex.  We avoided each other when we could.  We clashed when avoidance was impossible.  She hated my being gay; I hated her for taking away my sense of safety and security.  We were mean to each other during those years.  I acted out, and she volleyed back with words like “fag” and “queer” and “whore”.

In those years I wished she’d never adopted me, and, I wonder if she didn’t feel the same.  She’d questioned it before, years earlier.  I was five or six, and was caught playing with a pair of my mom’s pantyhose (I had them on my head, holding them up, pretending they were a conical hat, imitating a picture I’d seen in a fable of some princess — the women of the court had on conical hats, with little veils at the top, one woman in the drawing had a hat that had two cones, almost horn-like, with a veil on each one — hence the pantyhose).  My mother turned to my father and said “Oh my god! Do you think they sent us one of those kinds of boys?  What if he is? Would we have to keep him?”  I had no idea what kind of boy she was talking about, but, the part about keeping me I understood.  I never touched the pantyhose again.  So, she’d questioned the decision to adopt me once, I wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t questioned it again in those years.  I certainly gave her reason to question her decision.

Those years ripped our souls apart.  They very nearly destroyed us. I think some parts of us were permanently destroyed.  Something held us together though — perhaps it was a fear that without the other, we’d each be alone. None of my parents blood-relatives lived here, though there were family friends who filled part of the gap.  But, when it came down to that concept of family — the micro-definition of family, the Mother and Son definition, not the definition of Family Can Be Made Up Of Whomever You Surround Yourself With — but, the simple, basic family law of mother and son, it was clear: together we were a family; apart we were each alone, orphans.  So, maybe it was that fear of aloneness that kept us together.

Maybe, just maybe…. it was something more.   It’s entirely possible that love played a role.

Some Thoughts On Adoption: Part Four

(The Introduction to this series can be read here, Part One here, Part Two here, Part Three here)

Life changing moments are not unique to adopted children.

Moments when something happens, and you discover that everything you thought you knew to be true is not, are moments that everyone has, adopted or not.  We’ve all had the proverbial wind knocked out of our sails, had our life turned upside-down, had something happen that made us question everything we knew about life.

This is about my world-changing moment, and I include it as part of this adoption series because it not only changed my world, it changed everything I thought to be true about being adopted, and left me wondering for many years if the same thing would happen to me.

So far, in these adoption posts I’ve left out mention of my adopted brother.  I left him out of the previous posts on purpose, because his tale deserves a post of its own.

I wrote a lengthy post last year about my adopted brother, and, that tale contains much more of David’s story than I’ll tell here.  Even in that long post, I’ve not told his whole story, nor can I ever really tell his whole story, because there are chapters of it I know nothing about.  In the interest of space, and keeping to the adoption theme, I’ll give the super-condensed version of his tale.  If you wish to know more about him, you can read the longer post at your leisure.

When I was 5 years old, my mother and father adopted another baby: David.  David’s birth mother is my father’s niece, the daughter of one of my father’s brothers.  Her story was not much different from my own birth mother’s: a young, unmarried girl who wished to give her child a better home than she was able to provide.  David was bright, personable, and prone to trouble.

If there was a rule, David would break it.

“A handful”, my mother called him.

“They say all David’s are Devils”, was another of mom’s phrases, and, in my brother’s case, the phrase proved true.

My mother was 42, and my dad was 41 when I was adopted; they were 47 and 46 (respectively) when David came to live here.  One could spend many hours writing about  the psychology of our home life — two young boys, raised by older parents — both of whom worked two jobs, and how we were cared for by a housekeeper (no, there are no stories there really — someday I’ll write about Alice, the lady who came to our house every morning when my parents went to work, who cleaned house, cooked dinner, got us off to school. She was a large presence in our lives, but doesn’t play much of a role in this particular tale).  How much David’s tale is influenced by not having two parents around is debatable, but, I believe that many of David’s demons were just part of who he was.

In February of 1980, at the age of 55, our father passed away.  I don’t know the impact dad’s death had on David, who’d just turned nine.  I don’t know what one thinks about a father’s death when one is nine years old.  I only know what one thinks about a father’s death when one is fourteen years old.  For me, my father’s death is the first moment that my world went haywire.  Life shows us that fathers grow old, watch their children get married, and spoil the grandkids; they don’t die when you’ll be starting high school later in the year.  Life kicked me in the balls, and, before I could fully recover my breath and stand upright again, life delivered another ball-kick.

Long before my father died, David already had been in trouble in school: stealing from the other kids, stealing from the teachers, punching a pregnant teacher in the stomach, stealing from the store.  He’d been kicked out of the regular elementary school and was sent to the Problem Kid Elementary School (On a side note: if you want kids to learn to be better behaved, why group all the bad ones together, where they teach each other new bad habits?)

After my father died, David, perhaps in grief, acted out more — finally being arrested, at age nine, for theft from the convenience store.  During my dad’s life, mom and dad had spent hours with David in various therapy sessions — to no avail.  After dad’s death, my mom was locked in a crippling bout of grief and anxiety, and she was unable to deal with David’s continued, worsening behavior.

A flurry of phone calls and letters followed.

A decision was reached.

David was too much trouble, and he was being sent back to his birth mother, his adoption was nullified.

Seven months after my father died, my troublesome brother was being unadopted and sent away.  Even today, thirty-three years later, that thought still terrifies me, still horrifies me, still keeps me struggling to stand on trembling ground.  Adoption, I thought back then, was supposed to be permanent.  Overnight, adoption was just a thing, like an article of clothing that was damaged in the wash cycle: it was returned, thrown out.

In many ways, it is the defining moment of my life, David’s being sent away.  It proved to me nothing, absolutely nothing was permanent.  Friends didn’t stick around, parents died, and, if you were too much trouble, your adoption papers could be ripped up, and you could be sent packing.  It meant that if I wasn’t good, I could be sent away.  In my 14 year old mind, that had little concept of the world, all I knew was that for nine years my parents told David the same adoption story they told me: the mommy and daddy who wanted children; who adopted children and loved them as if they were their own; and that adopted children were special because they were wanted.

Then, just like that, he wasn’t wanted.

Just like that, he was shipped back to his birth mother.

Of all the stories I’ve shared with people in my life, of all the stories I’ve written about in this blog, and elsewhere, this one is the one I struggle to articulate.  I can write about the depths of depression. I can write about being suicidal.  I can write about being gay. I can write about the devastation of finding out I was HIV+ almost twenty-five years ago, at the beginning of the plague when we all thought if you got it you’d soon be dead.  I’ve written about my father’s death.  I’ve written about my past addictions: sex, gambling, alcohol.  I can write volumes of words about how each of those things feels, how each has changed my life, how much grief and pain they’ve all caused. But this one moment, this realization that my home was no longer safe, that I, too, could be sent packing is something that I have no words for, other than to keep repeating “I realized I could be sent packing” over and over again, as if saying it enough times will somehow explain the feeling of the solid earth as it disintegrated beneath me.  I’ve spent a lifetime beliving that I’m not a victim of anything — that my depression, my addictions, any troubles were of my creation.  I don’t like the victimization attitude that permeates our society — yet, in this one thing, this one moment, I feel a victim: a victim of a situation I had no control over, that has left permanent scars on my psyche. And, it bugs me.  I don’t like feeling that I’ve somehow been victimized, yet, I’ve been unable to step out from under its weight.

After thirty-three years, I can rationally understand what happened, and understand why my mom felt that sending David away was her only option.  Rationally, I understand that she was encased in her own grief, that her anxiety attacks had become One Big Attack that lasted over a year, that she could barely function on a day-to-day level, and that David’s dramatic behavior left her unable to cope.  Rationally, after all these years, I’ve worked my way to a place where the decision has a certain logic to it.  And, after thirty-three years, I’m still emotionally unable to process it so it makes sense.

That fateful decision, sending David away, took away everything I believed about adoption, about unconditional love, about family, about trust, about loyalty, about promises, about security.  It has had an impact on every relationship I’ve had — whether it’s coworker, boss, friend or lover.  I can be sent packing at any time, because I’m no longer wanted, so I keep my distance, never fully engaging with people, ending friendships and relationships first, that way I’m the one who left, rather than being the one who is sent away, unwanted.

Thirty-three years after David’s leaving our home, and five years after his untimely death, I find that I’m still at that moment: standing at the airport, watching the stewardess walk David down the jetway to the plane and out of our lives, taking with him a much bigger part of me that he ever knew. Everything I had once thought I knew followed him, shadow-like down that jetway, never to return.

Some Thoughts On Adoption: Interlude

For those of you who have read the entire series thus far (Intro, Part One, Part Two), and who left comments: I’m grateful.  Many of you who, in whatever way, found my posts, and stopped in to my blog for the first time, and let me know that the story meant something to you: to all of you:  I’m grateful.  Adoption impacts many, many lives, and I’m happy to have met some new people through this telling of my story, and I’ve been honored that you’ve shared stories wit me.  This life is about stories — your story, my story, our story, and how all our stories overlap, and how our stories are knitted together to form this world that surrounds us.

I’ve tried to avoid too many generalizations in my tale, trying to keep the focus on my story and my thoughts.  I realize that while the general idea of adoption is common, the individual stories are diverse, and, well… individual. So, I’ve tried not to write in such a way that I make assumptions that all adopted children think and feel the way I do.  Hopefully, I’ve managed to do that reasonably successfully.

I’ve not yet finished writing about my adoption, and the thoughts, questions, and experiences I’ve had along the way.  I’ve still got many more things to say.  However, I think it’s important, when writing about an emotional issue, to be sure that my words come across in a way that is not misunderstood or misinterpreted.

I’ve written the next two posts, but, I want to leave them sit and solidify like jello in a mold.  And, I want to not have to think about them for the next day or so.  It’s a personal issue, so I need to step back, let my thoughts drift elsewhere, then come back and reread what I have written — with fresh eyes, as it were.  Writing about personal and emotional issues, one can sometimes get caught up in the churning of the mind, and words come out that don’t sound quite right.  I want to be sure that I avoid any misunderstandings.  I want to be sure that my meaning is clear and precise.

So, give me a day or two to let the stories sit, give me some time to calm my thoughts, and some more time to go back and review and edit for clarity.

The adoption stories continues… just not for another day or so.

Again — to those of you who’ve commented and shared your thoughts and stories — I’m very appreciative.

 

Battle: Lost

It’s been a struggle.

It’s been more than that.  It’s been a battle.  Of near epic proportions.

I’ll admit that I didn’t always play fair:  I evaded the question, hid the remote, even flat out said “no.”

But, in the end, it was all for naught.

I’ve lost the good fight.

My mother has now become a member of the Faux… I mean Fox News audience.

Please, join me in a moment of silence to honor this tragic loss.

Take A Few Minutes And Get To Know Pearl

If you’ve followed me for more than a month, you’ll know I recently started a poetry blog.  The goal of which is to share my journey into the world of poetry, but, also, to encourage others to discover poetry — to recover from those high school English classes which, often, kill people’s desire to read and write.   Except for mentioning the blog here, I’ve been trying to keep the posts separate.

I think, though, that this is more appropriate to post here.  You’ll remember that my partner and I live with my nearly ninety year old mother.  My parents started parenting later in life, so many of the people I grew up around were my parents age or older.  And, over the years, I’ve watched them grow old, slow down, lose their memories, and, have watched most of them die. While my mother is still very much alive, and I’ve not had to tell anyone of her death, this poem resonates with me, and, I hope that you’ll find some of the magic and emotion in the poem resonates with you.

This poem, shared by my Poetry Guru, seems to fit better here, on the blog where I’ve shared the stories of an elderly mom, and have written about watching people grow old. The poem, the story of the poet’s drive to tell his mother’s childhood playmate and lifelong friend, that she had passed.  It’s a glimpse into the world of growing old, dying, treasuring those special moments, and the people who live in the shadows.

The poem is by Ted Kooser, and is about as fine a piece of contemporary poetry as one will hear.  Even if this doesn’t encourage you to give poetry another look, I hope at least you’ll enjoy the tale:

Poetry From The Spam Filter: Six

Another entry in my ongoing series of taking the complete, unedited text from an email caught in my spam filter, and formatting it’s gibberish into poetry…  strangely, they seem to make sense when you read them as a poem.  And, as a service, I perform a reading of the poem as well:  

Today’s entry is a few syllables too long to be haiku … but, it’s strikingly haiku-ish:

Six

Really do not communicate
all of your felicity
to just one reduced
successful as personally.

The Wigs

(This essay was inspired by a post by my blogger-friend, Andrea)

There was a period, back during the 1960s and 1970s when wigs were…fashionable doesn’t seem to be the right word, because back then, they were pretty obviously wigs, and rather unfashionable looking.  Let’s say that there was a time when wigs were a convenience.

It was a time of change in America.  Women were entering the workforce by the millions.  But, they still had all the responsibilities of home life too: shopping, cooking, cleaning, child-rearing — after all, America was changing, but not all attitudes were — some things were still a woman’s job.

One day, I don’t really know when, someone in an office somewhere said “Let’s make fake-hairdos, call them wigs, and sell them to working women, so they don’t have to spend as much time on their hair, and can spend more time in the kitchen.”  I suspect it was a man who said this.  So, overnight, an industry was born.  (Ok, so wigs weren’t a new invention, having been around for centuries; it was the concept of marketing them as a convenience, a time saver, that was new.  One could say, if one really wanted to, and I really want to, because I’ve been thinking about this all day, and it’s about to burst out, so I have to say it:  One could say that wigs were Hamburger Helper for coiffeurs.)

Us. 1968/1969

My mom, who was a woman ahead of her time in many ways, (like joining the Army during WWII), gave up dresses when pantsuits became acceptable work attire (she wore pants at home always), and, at some point, when I was too young to know why, she decided that wigs were the answer for her.  She cut her hair short, and embraced the wig.

I cannot honestly answer the question, “did people know she was wearing a wig?”, because I always knew she was wearing a wig, and, it always looked like a wig to me.  Whether people she worked with knew, I know not.  I suspect so.  I mean, back then, wigs really looked like a wig.

Us. April 1972.

When I was little, my mom went with wigs of black-colored hair.  Then, sometime around the time I was five, and my brother was born, she switched to brown-colored hair.  Finally, sometime around 1976, during summer break (my mom was a teacher), she went with silver-haired wigs — she was 53 then, and was turning silver already — so, during the few months school was out, she just went with a silver wig.

Us. 1976.

When she wore dresses to work, as soon as she came home, she changed — the dresses became pants, and the wig came off.  Sometimes the wig wouldn’t come off right away, if she thought she was going somewhere.  But, usually what happened was she’d get hot and take the wig off and set it down wherever she happened to be.  Sometimes there would be a pile of hair on the back of a chair, on the seat of the chair, on the couch, on a counter in the kitchen.  As many times as I was confronted by a wig-hair-pile on the chair, it always startled me.  I was always a bit scared that I would reach out to pick it up in order to move it somewhere, like the coffee table, or bring it down to her room and put it on the styrofoam heads that were on her dresser, and, instead of touching a wig, it would be some fuzzy animal.

The styrofoam wig stands, shaped like a head, always intrigued me.  I liked to draw eyes and mouths on them.  And, there were these long pins that held the wig securely to the styrofoam head, though mom never used them. I liked to stick the needles into the heads, like some sort of voodoo ritual, though I never imagined the heads to be anyone.  It was just fun to stab them with the pins.

The scariest moments would come when the wig ended up in the washing machine, and I’d be pulling clothes out, and would touch this wet, fuzzy thing and nearly screech in terror.

My mom and her wig did cause one small child to screech in terror.  We had a cabin in the mountains, and, one winter day while we were there, some people that had a cabin down the road invited us to go tubing with them.  There were three adults: mom, and the couple that invited us; and, I think, just three children: my brother and I, and the couple’s grandson Andy. After watching Andy, my brother and I tube down the big hill several times, my mom, never one to stand still, grabbed the tube from me, gave a little run, and jumped on the tube (yes, she was in her 50s then, and she was wearing the gray wig).  About half-way down the hill — it was quite a hill, and she was going very fast — her wig flew off.

It Flew.

Very Far.

My brother and I, and the couple who invited us, all knew it was a wig, and we were all laughing about the flying wig.  Andy, who was about four or five, didn’t know it was a wig.  As soon as the wig landed, he let out this scream of pure horror, and started crying, and screaming at the top of his lungs: “Her head flew off! Her head flew off!”

By the time my mom got to the bottom of the hill, turned and walked back up the hill (remember, it was a big hill), picking her wig up along the way (and plopping it back on her head), Andy’s grandparents had managed to get him calmed.  Once he saw her stand up, when she got to the bottom of the hill,  he began to ease up on the screaming, though, he still had some tears going by the time mom reached the top.  We repeated the story to her, and, laughingly, she pulled off the wig, to show Andy it was just hair, and that her head was ok.  Andy, seeing the hair come off, started crying again.  He wanted nothing to do with the wig.

Mom finally gave up the wig, but kept her hair quite short for a number of years.  I think it wasn’t until she was in her mid or late 60s that she let it grow out, and started getting perms.

Mom. 2010.

As an adult, somewhere along the way, I ended up being the owner of three cats (or, maybe I should say that I was owned by three cats?)  Often, they’d curl up in a ball on a chair, or the couch, and, I’d be reminded of mom’s wigs. The cats have all departed this life, and the wigs are in a landfill somewhere.  I miss the cats; the wigs — not so much.

Though, I do miss stabbing the styrofoam heads.

Yet Another Addition

This blog, Johnbalaya, is, and always will be, my main blog: it contains my heart and soul.  Read through any of the postings here, and you’ll get a glimpse of me, sometimes flattering, more often it’s not-so-flattering.  But, this blog is me.  If someone asked me for a biography, or to explain Who I Am, I’d just point them to this blog.

Recently, I made an addition, a photography blog, NoonTime Photography, where I can post my photography, and have it link off to a website where I can sell the images.  While photography is as much a reflection of the photographer as it is of the subject being photographed, the blog only features something that is a part of me.  One couldn’t get a full idea of who I am by simply visiting that site.  Photography is just a small part of who I am.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a new interest, poetry.  It’s made a strong impact on me, and, as I’ve written a few times in the past, I am seeking, and searching for things to help occupy my mind, to help me deal with my anxieties and depression.  Being able to focus my mind on something outside of myself is very helpful.  And, I’m finding that poetry gives me much to think about.  It’s a new world for me to explore, and I’ve been wanting to write and explore it more.

However, I do realize that poetry is not for everyone.  Let me rephrase that: poetry is not taught very well, so a great many people have been turned off by it, and, as a result, they find it difficult to understand, and have no interest in learning about it.  I felt that way myself, until recently.  I am wanting to explore poetry more, write about it more, share poems and readings, yet, at the same time, as much as I’m interested in it, it’s only a part of me.  Because it’s only a part of me, and because I know that many people don’t find it enjoyable, I don’t want to go on and on about it here.  There’s only one logical conclusion: make a place where I can talk and share poetry without having to worry about boring my regular Johnbalaya readers with a topic they have no interest in.

With that in mind, I am opening a third home on the web, a place of poetry, called Poetically Versed.  There’s an introductory piece there, if you care to read it.  The blog is meant to be a place where I can share what I am learning, share some poems, do some more poetry readings, and, hopefully, meet some people who are interested in poetry.

Because I know that poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea, I will not be offended or hurt if you do not make the journey over to the new blog.  Please, do not feel obligated to visit me there.  I will still be posting here, as always.  The poetry blog is something I plan to update only a couple of times per week.  So, you’ll still get plenty of Me here.

Thanks for being a follower, thanks for being a reader, and, for those few of you who take the time to Like and Comment: an extra special thank you.

The Turquoise Fence

(This essay was inspired by the photo below, found while browsing This Wild Idea, and was found as part of this story in particular.  While the photo was found on that site, as part of a story, my essay is in no way connected with the site, with any of the stories or people.  It is purely an essay inspired by a photo.  I just wish to give credit to the photographer, and site the source where the photo was found.)

************

If you’ve ever been to New Mexico, more specifically, if you’ve ever been to a gift shop in New Mexico, whether it’s in Taos or Santa Fe, you’ll discover a plethora of turquoise: jewelry, ornaments, key chains.  Turquoise is everywhere in the desert Southwest.

So, it seems rather fitting to find a wooden fence painted turquoise at a house in Taos.

My first glimpse of the photo reminded me of that perennial favorite poem, about being an old woman wearing purple:

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

–Jenny Joseph

It seems to me that there might have been a time, probably was a time, was definitely a time in my life when I would have laughed not only at the old woman wearing purple, but would have laughed at the turquoise fence: the laugh would have been followed with some sort of bitchy comment about the kinds of people who’d wear purple, or who’d paint their fence turquoise blue.

Somewhere along the way Life Happened.

Can I say for certain what, if any, decisive moment occurred that made me change my mind, that changed my response to a turquoise fence from one of laughter and derision, to one of a wistful longing?

Loss? Grief? Broken-heart?

Yes, I suspect all of those things have changed and shaped me in some way or other.  But, are those things enough, are they the kinds of life experiences that would change an attitude about a fence?

Maybe it’s age?  Does one change simply because one ages?  Is it the physical and chemical changes that occur as we age that make our attitudes change?

Was it someone I met along the way?  An uncle or cousin?  A friend or coworker? A passing stranger?  Our encounters with people can change our life in big ways, and set us off down new paths in life.  But, do people change us in such small, simple ways, that a turquoise fence seems a thing of beauty, rather than a thing of ugliness?

Some things in our lives cause epiphany moments, those seconds where something instantly makes sense, the dots are all magically connected, and we say “So that’s why!”

Some epiphany moments happen at the instant something happens.  Like that moment when you were 7 years old, and you went to mass with your dad, just the two of you, because your dad was on the mass schedule to usher and give out communion, and it was a Sunday morning mass, and your mom liked going to the Saturday night mass so she didn’t have to get up.  So, since it was just you and your father, you got to sit in the room that was used not only as The Crying Room, where mothers with crying babies and fussy children came to sit so they didn’t disturb the rest of the congregation, but, it also doubled as the room where the collection baskets were kept. The Eucharistic Gifts were also kept there, the water and wine that was brought to the alter, for the priest to change into the Blood of Christ, the water and wine that were kept in small crystal bottles that looked remarkably like the crystal bottles a friend of your mom’s filled with oil and vinegar, and placed on her dinner table, and called them Salad Dressing.  Also, in the room, there were several candles and holders, two of which were lit, and brought to the altar, along with the water and wine.  There were also books of matches with which to light the candles.

Your epiphany moment happened when you picked up a book of matches, and tried to light one of the matches, something you’d never done before, so even though you’re still, to this day, not entirely sure how it happened, it was inevitable that your inexperience with matches would result in a bright red burn mark, right in the middle of the palm of your left hand, a round red mark that looked suspiciously like the round red mark that Jesus always had on his hands in the pictures in your bible books at home.  It was in that moment that you had your epiphany: God was punishing you for not obeying your parents, who’d always told you not to play with matches, and, now you knew why you shouldn’t play with matches, because that red mark on your palm was really starting to hurt, maybe it was hurting to show you how much the mark on Jesus’ hands hurt, dying for your sins, so that you could be forgiven for disobeying your parents.  You spent the next week trying to keep your palm hidden so your mother wouldn’t see the burn mark, because even though God had already punished you, you just knew that your mom would punish you more if she saw that mark.

Then there are those epiphany moments that don’t happen simultaneously with an event, but, rather, are tracked back to a specific event that seemed rather unimportant at the time.  Like that time when you were 21, and you met this really attractive older guy at the gay bar, and he took you home, and you spent the next four hours having what was, at that point, the most mind-blowing sex you’d ever had.  You spent the next few days wondering why he never called, like he said he would, promised he would. It wasn’t until much later, after a strikingly similar occurence, except that the mind-blowing sex was even better, and you wondered, and pondered, why he didn’t call, like he said he would, like he promised he would, that the pieces started to fall into place.  Your epiphany moment happend a few mornings later, in the shower, perhaps because you were spending a bit too much time soaping up down there, and you experienced a moment of pleasure that then recalled the mind-blowing sex to mind, and, before you could get too carried away with the soap, It All Made Sense! You thought about both of those men, and the intense sex, and laying there, once it was over, basking, glowing, and it suddenly dawns on you that you used the exact same phrase both times: “I could easily fall in love with you.”  You realize that this is simply not the appropriate thing to say after knowing someone only four hours, no matter how mind-blowingly intense the sex is.  You file this away, and are very careful afterward to only remark on how fantastic the sex was, and that he was The Best Ever — because men fear falling in love after sex, but, they can always be manipulated through their sexual ego.

I say this as a man who has been both the manipulated, and the manipulator.

As I think back, I am certainly able to think of numerous moments of epiphany, but none that seem to explain my change in attitude, from one of mocking the fence and the owner of the fence, to an attitude of wishing to be the owner of such an idyllic fence.

Perhaps it’s not a specific moment, but a synthesizing of all the large and small epiphanies in your life that bring about that attitude change.

Large epiphanies, like why not to play with matches, and that men can, and do, think of sex and love as two distinctly separate things

And, small epiphanies, like realizing that wherever you work, there are always going to be complainers.  Like realizing that there are always going to be people who think they’re better than you. Like realizing that there will be people who like you for you, no matter how differently you dress, or how funny your laugh is.

Like realizing that there are people who would never live somewhere with a wooden fence painted turquoise, and, thankfully, you’re no longer one of those people.

Just Another Reminder About My Photography Blog

Those of you who’ve been following me for awhile are already aware of this, but, I’ve picked up quite a few new followers of late, so I figured I’d mention this again.

I was posting my photography, along with all the other things I post, only on this blog.  Recently, i’ve decided to make many of my photos available for sale, so I’ve set up a blog to focus exclusively on my photography.

I posted this photo over there a couple of days ago, and, if you click on it, you’ll be directed to my WordPress photography blog, NoonTime Photography.  You can, if you’re so inclined, follow me there, sign up for email notifications, or, look for the Facebook “Like” button, and follow NoonTime Photography there.

Thanks!  (I’ll try not to mention this too often, but, expect to see a message like this from time to time).

A Wee Bit Of Spring Snow

Today’s snow, with maybe another inch or two expected tomorrow.

Will be good for getting all the flowers to start blooming… which will be not so good for my allergies.  But, hey: flowers! Spring!

The Subject Line

I often wonder why, when writing a blog post, the subject/title line box comes first.  I find that it creates too much pressure.  The subject line should be at the end.  So many times when I start writing, I have no idea what I’m going to say.  I’m sure I’m not alone in this.  Sometimes it’s a flicker of an idea.  Sometimes just a sentence. Sometimes (very rarely), it’s actually a fully developed idea.

• Side note: As I was writing that last sentence, I was going to say that sometimes it’s a ‘fully fleshed’ out idea; then I wasn’t sure that was correct.  Is it “fully flushed” out idea?   So, now I’m not sure if it’s fleshed or flushed.  Then, as I think about it, neither word actually impresses me.  I mean “fully fleshed out” seems really creepy, all sorts of Silence of the Lambs images come to mind.  When you make a suit out of human flesh like the guy in the book/movie, and you try it on, I guess you could say you were ‘all fleshed out’ instead of being ‘all decked out.”   On the other hand, ‘fully flushed out’ seems more like some sort of polite reference to an enema.  So, instead, I went with ‘fully developed.’   And, while there are many things that can be fully developed, I can live with the word choice in this instance.

Most of the time though, when I sit down to write, whether it’s here in my little blog, or in a notebook, or on my laptop’s Word software, I have no subject in mind.  Most of the time it’s just me and the empty page, staring at each other.  It becomes this Psychological Staring Contest – who’s going to look away first?  Me, or The Blank Page.  As the page has no eyes, it’s usually me that looks away, while the blank page still stares straight ahead.

It’s not until the words start appearing on the page that the idea begins to take shape (to develop!) into something.  Sometimes it takes many lines of nothing intelligent before something catches in my brain and the words and ideas begin to flow (perhaps not always intelligently, but at least their flowing and developing into something cohesive).

It’s not until I’m many, many, many sentences into it that I even have an idea of what the subject is.  So putting the subject line right at the beginning seems daunting, almost making me not want to write at all since I can’t come up with a subject.

• Another side note:  don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against having the subject line at the top when you’re reading something.  It’s a good way to get a quick glimpse of what’s coming up.  It let’s you decide if you want to read it or not.  But, when you’re writing in your blog, the subject line should be at the bottom of the template.

If the subject line were placed at the end of the template, it would be psychologically less intimidating.  By the time you get to the end, you already know what it is you’ve written about.  The obvious retort (I can hear many of you making it) is that you skip the subject line, write your little blurb, and then go back and type in the subject.  Which is, of course, the most logical of workarounds.  However, that still doesn’t make that blank box labeled “Subject:” any less daunting.  Besides, it’s a logical workaround, and I’m more … artistic, yes, that’s the word.. artistic, rather than logical.  Artistically, the subject line, in the writing phase, would be a little box at the bottom, or, even better, in a pop-up window.  After one clicks the “publish” button, one would get a pop-up that said “Please add a Subject Line To Your Post”, and would have a blank to fill in.

Yes, it’s an extra step, but, again, what better point to add a subject to the line than after one has already written something.

I suppose some people see it as a challenge:  “Oh, there’s a blank space! I need to fill it up before moving on to the text part!”   And to those people I say: “Take a pill for your OCD!”     If you’re that obsessed with filling in blank spaces in order, then you and I haven’t got much in common.  If that’s your thing, fine and dandy, and more power to you.   Me, I am not compelled to fill in the blank space right away, even though the blank space of the Subject line sneers at me, laughs at me, dares me to come up with words to fill in its blank.

And, that’s ok, because at this point the idea development has come to a screeching halt.  I had no idea when I started this post what it would be about, and, perhaps it’s not about much of anything.  Either way, the post seems to have come to an end.

At least I can say though: I now can fill in the subject line.

The Precious Hat

Once upon a time, there was a restaurant here, named Goodfriend’s.  It was our usual Friday night spot for dinner.  In fact, for awhile, it was our usual spot any time we went out to dinner.  The restaurant closed, sold, opened as something new, but, the memories of the Nachos and Hot Wings Julian and I made many, many meals of, still linger in my mind.

So, too, does the memory of one particular Friday night.

It was a relatively busy night, the hum of conversation was high — high enough that you could really only hear what was going on at your own table.  Eavesdropping, a terrible habit I have when I’m out dining, was impossible this particular evening. That’s why the voice still echoes in my head — it was loud enough to be singled out among all the other voices.

We: mom, Julian and I, were sitting in one of our usual booths, in the room in the back, eating our dinner, when, over the hum of the surrounding noise comes this voice: Nathan-Lane-in-The-Birdcage-but-with-deeper-Lauren-Bacall-gravel, that shouts “Oh my God! I can’t believe they’ve taken down the real art and hung this stuff on the walls.”

I looked at the walls that featured art from local artists, and noticed that the art had changed since the last time we were there, changed as it did every month.  Seemingly, the new stuff hanging on the walls was not art to The Voice.

Before The Voice rounded the corner, two things were apparent already: the speaker was most likely homosexual, and, odds were good that he was drunk.

Then around the corner, he came into view.  Tall, large framed (but not fat), middle aged, perhaps early 50s, maybe late 40s and wasn’t aging well.  His outfit was as distinctive as his voice. Overalls.  Not plain, blue denim overalls.  No, these were striped, the train engineer kind of striped overalls.  There was no shirt under the overalls, but, he wore a lovely leather jacket, beige, with those fantastically long fringe strings that hung down from the arms, something Farrah Fawcett might have worn on Charlie’s Angels.  The fringe hanging from the arms was at least a foot long, it was fringy in that Judas-Iscariot-from-Jesus-Christ-Superstar sort of way.

Around his left wrist was a lovely silver bracelet with a rather large turquoise stone in the center.  In his right hand was a cane, all white.  Around his neck, accenting his chest, was a nice collar necklace, made up of four rows of beads and turquoise stones; it had a very Native American feel to it.  His lips were painted a shade of red (I know so little about lipstick, that I can only describe it as reddish), and he wore eyeshadow of an indeterminate, light color (I wasn’t close enough to really tell the color).

The crowning glory was the hat.  Perched high on his makeup covered, manly shaped head was a hat.  A nice, white, full attention, ultra starched, sailor hat.  On a sailor, in a nicely starched sailor’s suit, chances are that the hat would go unremarked upon.  However, on this womanly man, on this large, big boned, over six-foot tall, aging gay man in turquoise jewelry, and leather fringe, and striped overalls, the effect was simply the most precious thing I had ever seen.

Truly.

He and his dinner companion were seated in the booth in front of ours.  I never got a look at her face, and she sat with her back to me, so all I could tell was that she was a bit older, her hair was all white.

During dinner, he told her that he “just had to stop at the bar” before coming to dinner, because he was “unable to face it all without a drink.”  What the “it all” he was having to face was never made clear, although it was glaringly obvious that the drink at the bar had been rather large, and rather strong.  If there were any doubt to how many drinks he’d had at the bar, one just had to listen to his voice as he talked to the busboy that was cleaning the booth across the aisle.  His voice was loud, in the way drunk people are, and he kept telling the busboy that he, the busboy, was much too pretty to be a waiter, and that he needed to be a model.

He informed the actual waiter, that he and his companion would just like some coffee before they ate, and that they’d like a chance to relax before dinner.  He then ordered them both dinner:  French onion soup, a bowl each, and an order of onion rings to split.

The coffee turned out to be Starbucks, “the best he’d ever had”, and, actually, it was all very surprising that it was Starbucks because he “couldn’t abide Starbucks coffee.”  But this coffee, this was “really, really, very, very good.” Was the waiter sure it was Starbuck’s?  ”Well, really, it’s quite good.”

After some coffee, but before the food, he got up from the booth, and went around the room, gazing at the art on the walls, commenting, again, to his companion, from across the room, that the real art had been replaced with this stuff.  He finally made his way back to the booth, and sat down.  When the waiter came by, he exclaimed that they had relaxed enough and were now ready to eat.

While sipping his soup, and crunching his onion rings, he uttered the most wonderful line I’ve ever heard.

“I like my hat.  Do you like it?  I was going to wear my cowboy hat, but I think this hat looks much better when I’m wearing makeup.”

We left shortly after that.  On the way home, I thought about this loud, drunk, gay man I’d just seen.

So he was gay?  Big deal.  So am I.  So he was drunk and loud?  Big deal.  Yeah, sometimes loud, drunk people can be uncomfortable to be around, but, so what?

And, you know what else?  He wanted to wear fringe, and turquoise, and makeup, and a sailor cap, and fuck what everyone else thought.  Maybe he made me laugh a bit, and maybe this tale makes you laugh a bit too.

But, deep down, he makes me a bit jealous.  When was the last time I left the house wearing whatever I wanted, and fuck what everyone else thinks?  Not ever.  So, I was, and still am, a bit jealous of that man with the precious hat.

I gave up drinking, but, still, I can raise a glass to make a toast:  Here’s to all the sailor-hat wearing men with their makeup on!  I think it looks much better with the makeup than the cowboy hat too!

The Bookstore

It must have been six months, at least, since the last time I was there, at the bookstore.  Maybe longer.  Ever since the Kindle came out (yes, I am considered an early-adopter), my trips to the bookstore have become less and less frequent.

I love the bookstore.  I worked there for many years, and spent a decade working for the company in different stores.  Books are in my blood.  I had lots of books as a child, I have more than 1,500 books in my home right now, not counting the several hundred more on my Kindle.  I cannot, will not, live without books.  I get the same pleasure buying books that women get buying shoes and purses.

Serious pleasure.

But, with the advent of the ereader, and the gloriousness of the instant gratification one gets when one can, on a whim, buy a new book at 2 a.m., and instantly possess and begin to read it, the thought of getting into the car, driving to the bookstore, dealing with traffic, parking, and then having to deal with he General Public, well…it hardly seems worth the effort.

I will admit that an ebook does not have the same sensual pleasure as a traditional paper book: ebooks lack that new book smell, they lack the pleasure of feeling the paper, of turing the page, of easily flipping back and forth among the pages.

As someone who grew up with traditional books, and who spent ten years of his life working with traditional books, I’ll be the first to admit that I mourn my frequent book buying sprees. Coming home with a stack of books was the best part, taking the books from the bags, piling them up next to me.  I’d pick up the first book, touching the cover almost reverently, feeling the weight of the book, enjoying the texture of the cover, the pages, the dust jacket. I’d read the cover, both front and back, then, if the book were a paperback, I’d turn to the pages at the beginning which contained quotes from various book reviews, and read each quote with interest.  Sometimes, most times, I’d read the first chapter.  Then I’d put the book down, pick up the next new book, and begin the worshipful adoration process all over again.  Ebooks aren’t as magical to the senses, but, they can be cheaper, they take up less space, one can travel with one’s entire library, and, forests of trees don’t have to be cut down to supply the paper.  So, my Kindle is here to stay.

Perhaps I was feeling a little nostalgic for the past as I was walking around the bookstore where I’d spent so much time as both employee and customer.  As I was walking through the space that was once the Self Help section, I began to feel the pull of the past, and hear the voices of the ghosts of days gone by.  I was reminded how much I disliked the Self Help section–not because of the scam aspect to the books, but because it was the section that created the most impossible conversations with customers.

“May I help you find something?”  This in my most-helpful bookseller voice.

“Yes, I’m trying to find a book that was on Oprah earlier.”

“Do you know the title?”  Again, my helpful employee voice.

“It was on Oprah.”  This said in a tone of superiority mixed with a bit of panic. “It was about relationships and communication.”

“There are quite a few new books on that topic.  Do you recall the title?  Any of the words in the title?”

“It was on Oprah.” Said, as if repeating that often enough would magically make the book appear; said with a growing sense of panic that said book might not be found, and the customer’s relationship would dissolve before the day was over.

“I’m sorry, but I was here, working, and didn’t see the show.  So, I’m not sure what it was.  You don’t recall anything about the title?”

Publishers, authors, and bookstore shareholders all loved the money that Oprah made them.  Booksellers, mostly, learned to despise Oprah.  When customers used the word Oprah, bookstore employees secretly prayed for the ground to open up and swallow them up — them being either the employee or the customer, it wouldn’t matter which, as long as one of them suddenly vanished, putting an end to the conversation.

“Oprah said it was in stores now.  It was about how to communicate in relationships.  It was called ‘The Something or Other’ and, there was a subtitle, with the word love.  The cover was white.  It was about this big.” Hands would be held up, showing measurements of most standard sized books.

I always resisted the urge to say, in a “I Could Have Had A V8″ kind of voice, “Oh yeah!  I know that book!  It’s over here, in the White Books That Are ‘This Big’ Section.”

Mostly, I was amazed at how often I’d be looked at like I had the plague because I didn’t watch Oprah.  Being at work during the time Oprah was on didn’t seem to matter.  The looks implied that Oprah should have been playing somewhere in the store, so we would know what book had been on the show, and would instantly know what the customer was talking about.

I walked around the store, walking down an aisle filled with fiction, shelf after shelf of novels, and was reminded of the countless number of people who wandered around the store, eyes vacant, who would then finally ask, in a frustrated voice, where the non-fiction section was (please don’t make me explain this to you).

I walked past a copy of Steinbeck’s “The Grapes Of Wrath” and recalled the countless number of times I was asked for the book: “I need a copy of The Wrath of Grapes” or “I’m looking for “The War Of The Grapes”, or, my personal favorite “I need a book for class, something about angry grapes…?”

The aisles and memories melted together, the store and the memories became all the stores I’d worked in, the aisles were all the aisles of each of the four stores I worked in over the years.  I walked through the aisles, recalling that I stood in this or that spot, gossiping with this or that fellow coworker.  I was reminded of coworkers at all of the various stores I’d worked at, recalled moments of laughter with many of them, moments of anger with others.  I thought of coworkers I hope I someday reconnect with, because I loved working with them every day; I thought of coworkers I don’t miss at all.

I recalled one Store Manager I hated so much I purposefully made her cry one day, her last day there, by telling her what an ignorant cunt I thought she was. It was not one of my finer moments; the momentary satisfaction I felt at the moment of uttering that awful word to her has since long gone, replaced with endless moments of wishing I could see her and offer a sincere apology, letting her know that it was I who was ignorant for calling her such an name.

A memory surfaced, of a young, District Manager, who’d been liked by us all, and how his life was utterly shattered when, driving home one day, only a few months after starting with the company,  he struck and killed a child who dashed out into the street, chasing a ball.  He was not at fault.  Witnesses spoke of how slow he was driving — it was his home neighborhood after all, and he was just a block or so from his own home, where his wife and young baby were waiting for him to come home.  He never came back to work after that, and, someone told us months later that he’d moved back to the midwest state he’d originally lived in, before moving here to accept the job promotion.  I don’t imagine that one’s spirit ever heals completely from something like that, but, I like to hope that he was able to at least find some peace.

I was reminded of one particular Store Manager who died much too young.

As I was walking around, looking for Dostoevsky, I nearly laughed aloud, remembering one girl who worked at the store for awhile, and, always said her alphabet out loud while she was trying to figure out where to put the book on the shelf, trying to place the book in the Alphabetical by Author scheme of the bookshelf.

And, I was then reminded of the day a woman stomped up to me while I was at the Customer Service Desk, and announced rather loudly: “This is the most unorganized store I’ve ever been in.  I cannot find anything.”

Again, the helpful bookseller voice issued forth from my lips “What book are you trying to find?  I can help you find it.”

She named a title I no longer recall, though I do remember it being a book I knew where to find, without having to look it up.

As we walked towards the aisle where the book was to be found, she kept her tirade going. “I cannot understand this.  Most stores are so organized, it is easy to find things.  You look at the signs, you know where to go.  Here, it’s all a jumble, nothing makes sense.”

We arrived at the shelf where the book she wanted was, just as she uttered the words “There’s not even a vaguely discernible pattern to how these books are arranged on the shelf.”  As I took the book off the shelf, I said “The books are arranged by author, alphabetically.” I couldn’t resist pointing to the sign, that is on the lip of each shelf that says “Arranged Alphabetically by Author”.

She turned and looked at the shelf, and said with as much sarcasm as she could muster “No they are not.  Look.  Here’s Robert, followed by Ann, then Lawrence, and then Thomas.  That’s not alphabetical.”

I smiled, and pointed to the books she had just pointed to and said “They are alphabetical by the author’s last name, not first name.”

She was silent.  Took the book she’d wanted from my outstretched hand, and walked away, her body language screaming embarrassment.

Suddenly, a kid ran down the aisle I was standing in, and broke the Memory Spell that had engulfed me.  I was standing in the aisle, looking at the shelves of books written by writers who had last names that started with D.  I found Dostoevsky.  ”Demons” by Dostoevsky.  A double dose of Ds.

I looked around.  It was a store full of ghosts and memories, but, it wasn’t home to me any longer.

My Midlife Crisis: Part 3 (And, The End, For Now)

So, I haven’t needed a convertible Porsche to have a midlife crisis.  I’m too much of a nerd for that.  Now, maybe a convertible Fiat, or Mini Cooper…  maybe.

But, really, I’m not a convertible kind of guy.  I don’t enjoy bugs splatting onto my head.

Or sunburn.

I’ll stick with the sensible car.

I don’t need a 20-something boy toy, because, they’re really only good for looking at.

I’m too practical, and boring, because instead of asking myself the questions one would think to ask a boy toy, like “Will you sign a pre-nup so you can’t take anything of value from me?”, I, instead, think of questions like “What could we possibly have in common? What could we talk about?”

So, no. No boy toy.

I’m quite happy with Julian, and, well, since he is 3 years older than me, technically that makes me the boy toy, so….

I jest.

I’m happy, content, and really not having a midlife crisis.

It’s more just coming to terms with the fact that my HIV didn’t kill me, like we assumed it would, twenty-four years ago when I was diadnosed, because, that’s just what people did back then, when they had HIV: they got sick and died.  Now, that looks like it’s not going to happen, and I’m trying to figure out things like “What do I want to be when I grow-up?” and, “How the fuck am I going to survive when I’m in my 60s and 70s, because I have no savings, because I wasn’t supposed to be here?”  I’ve been unemployed now for five years, in order to stay home and be with my mom, who’s 89.  She won’t be here forever, and I’ll have lost all that time in the job market, and I’ll be even that much older, and, we all know that it’s tough finding a job as a college grad in your 20s, so what are my chances as a high-school drop-out in my 40s, or 50s (or whatever age I am when mom’s number is up.).

It’s not really a midlife crisis.  It’s more of a midlife WTF!?

Anytime I’m having a WTF moment, I find that shopping helps.  Yesterday I was sort of having a WTF-day, because I’m still frustrated about the whole mental healthcare provider thing.  The counseling center that I was referred to, that worked on a sliding scale in order to help people who lack funds, still, at the lowest end of the scale, charges $70 a session. My thoughts aren’t worth that kind of money.  Not until I’m famous, at any rate, then people can pay me to hear my thoughts.  So, I’m still exploring options.

However, the $150 shopping spree at Barnes & Noble, while it would have paid for two therapy sessions was, as a matter of fact, much more emotionally satisfying and helpful.  I mean, one of the books I got was the 1100+ page “Collected Poems of Allen Ginsburg, 1947-1997.”  How can you not feel better after Ginsburg?  Then, fittingly enough, among the stack of new books, is “Demons” by Dostoevsky.  Reading Russian literature one cannot feel depressed about one’s own life when things were so much more depressing for those poor Russians back in the day.

I’ve been trying to pretend to be younger by now owning Converse (a.k.a. Chuck Taylor All Stars) for the first time in my life.  The rubber smell always bothered me, and I had a friend, years ago, who wore them, and always had the funkiest, stinky feet, so I had no real interest in owning shoes that made my feet stink.  I have since discovered that wearing socks with Chucks is the solution to the funky feet smell issue, so, I had to own some.

My first pair, as I mentioned in the first post of this trilogy of posts, are Navy.  The second pair are high tops, an almost khaki, dark-army-olive green, with hunting vest orange accents.

The third, fourth and fifth pairs arrived today (yes, I had said there were a total of four pairs, but, I was a bit spacey when I wrote that).  There are a total of five pair.

Pair three, like pair one, are just the basic shoe, in a nice green color:

By the way, I spent all of about 90 seconds taking snapshots of the shoes, so they’re not creative, or up to my usual photographic standards.  I just wanted some quick snaps).

Pairs four and five are where the issue of a midlife crisis comes into play.  I’m not entirely certain that they aren’t a cry for help;

I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

Pair four:

And, finally, and, I think, my most favorite pair:

My Midlife Crisis, Part 2

So, yesterday I admitted to the “I am now 47, and having a midlife crisis”.  And, I showed you how I was indulging in this midlife turmoil.

Well, here is the second, of four pairs of Chuck Taylor’s…  the light was extra bright, so it’s tough to tell the exact color… a sort of dark, khaki green…   Pair Three and Four should arrive tomorrow.  You’ll definitely see the emotional turmoil I’m in when you see those pairs!

My Midlife Crisis

I turned 47 at the beginning of February.  And, I’ll admit, I think I’m having a midlife crisis.

But, not in the usual way men have them.

I’m not buying a convertible.  I’m a really pale-skinned white boy, and I’d be burnt to a crisp by the time I drove five miles in the convertible.

I’m not leaving my spouse for someone half my age.  I don’t understand that one at all.. there’s no way I could live with someone who was 23.  I love my current partner much too much.

No, my midlife crisis is maifesting itself in two ways.  First: I’m letting my hair grow.  Since 2001, I’ve had a buzzcut. Late last year, I started shaving my head completely.  But, I’ve decided to let it grow until I’m 50.  Or until it drives me crazy.  Or, if I start looking like a man who’s trying to pass himself off as twenty years younger.  I promise, no tiny little ponytails.  I do still have a thread of vanity….

Secondly, my midlife crisis has involved buying my first ever pair of these (they’re Navy colored — the light wasn’t good):

I bought another pair, and have two more pair on order…  pics to follow soon.

 

Get Help? Seriously?

I’m a fan of therapy.  I’ve found it useful from time to time.  Some people I’ve met during my life’s journey have been perpetual attendees of therapists offices.  And, if that’s what they need to cope, then I’m not going to judge — we all do what we can to help make sense of our lives.

I, however, am not an eternal therapy patient.  I’m a Use It When I Need It kind of guy.

My first experience with a therapist, a psychologist, was when I was fourteen, and I told my mother I thought I was gay.  It was a week or so later that I found myself in therapy.  The first session was a joint session, mom and I, talking to the doctor.  My memory of that session is mostly of my mom talking about how I needed help to understand that I wasn’t gay, that it was just a phase, and that it had nothing to do with her being a domineering mother — she wanted my gayness to not be real, and, more importantly, to not be her fault. To his credit, and something I didn’t realize until much, much later, the doctor, Dr. Graham, never did try to cure me of The Gay.  I remember talking about it once, early on, but, after that, it never came up again.  In fact, after a few months, I stopped seeing him, because I was mad at him: I was mad because he didn’t want to help me not be gay.  It wasn’t until I was older that it occurred to me that he had been trying to help me accept myself for who I was.

Over the years, I’ve seen a few different psychologists and psychiatrists, even a few social workers, one of whom, Leah, I’m particularly thankful to have seen.  All the hours, all the talking, all the listening, all the sharing have helped me through rough times, through grief, and, most importantly, they’ve anchored me when I’ve been at my most depressed and despondent.

Yet, the world of mental health professionals is not always an easy world to navigate.  People who’ve never had a need for therapy seem to think that someone can simply go to any qualified therapist and have their problems solved.  It works that way for your autos, right, so why not for your mental disease?  You bring your car to a good mechanic, all is fixed, and you’re back on your way.

Though mental health professionals and mechanics are not the same, there is an odd similarity, in that finding a good therapist is like finding a good mechanic: not everyone who’s qualified is good.

Finding a good therapist is, actually, much tougher than finding a good mechanic.  You don’t really have to like your mechanic, as long as he’s good at his job.  Sure, maybe he’s brusque, seems mad all the time, is rude; but, wow, can he fix a car quickly and for a reasonable price!  Finding a mechanic can be easy too: you ask around, your friends, your coworkers, maybe the neighbor.

Therapists, however, aren’t so easy to find.

Sure, there are pages and pages of them listed in the phonebook.  But, they’re not always accepting new patients; or, if they are, they only have appointments in the late morning, when most people are at work, and, of course, you can’t take the time off from work to go.  So, you have to find one who is accepting new patients, and who are able to schedule appointments that work with your schedule.  And, it’s tough to ask around for recommendations.  I mean, do you really want to stop Beth from Accounting in the hall and say “Hey, I’ve got a mental problem, and I was wondering if you knew a good therapist?”

Then comes the first session, which, is not unlike a job interview.  You, as a patient, are talking with the therapist, trying to determine if they’re someone who you feel comfortable talking to.  You can’t open up to just anyone, you can’t share your suicidal thoughts with everyone who practices therapy.  Sharing your deepest, innermost thoughts and feelings requires trust, and, believe me, I’ve met a few therapists with whom I had exactly one visit, because I knew there was no way we’d get along.  Some therapists require a few visits before you realize they’re not quite the one for you.  If the therapist doesn’t work out, you have to go through the whole process of, again, trying to find someone who will meet your needs.

Let me give you two examples.  A few years ago, I felt the need for some therapy.  The clinic I go to had a therapist on staff.  I saw her four times.  And, while she was nice enough, she liked to share her own experiences as a patient in therapy, sharing things that I don’t think I needed to know.  Like that she’d been raped when she was in college (about twenty years earlier).  Now, I’m not unsympathetic to her having been through such a heinous act, it was horrible that it happened to her.  But,  I didn’t know how it helped me with the issues I was wanting to discuss. If I’d been there because I’d been raped, I’m sure that the fact that she understood how one felt afterward could be helpful in therapy sessions, but, I was not there to talk about being raped.  And, she agreed with everything I said.  She didn’t ever challenge me.  Yes, it’s nice to be agreed with all the time, but, sometimes, even if you think you’re right, a little challenge to your thinking is healthy.  At least, I believe it is.  Maybe there are those who just want someone to tell them that everything they think and feel is correct and proper.  I need someone who, while they may believe that I am right to feel a certain way, will question why I feel the way I do, just to be sure my belief is solid.  Finally, she wanted to talk a lot about the fact that I am an adopted child.  It was as if she wanted to ascribe all my issues to being adopted.  Maybe they are.  I don’t know.  But, I cannot accept that everything that is wrong with my mental state has to do with being adopted.  It seems like a copout to just blame everything on adoption.  So, after the fourth, or maybe it was the fifth session, I stopped seeing her.  I knew it wasn’t working for me.

Last summer, I wanted to give therapy a try again. I’d still not dealt with my issues, and was having a very tough time. The clinic I go to now has a new therapist, so I thought I’d visit with her to see if she’d be able to help.  I knew rather quickly that we would not have a successful relationship.  I was her first appointment after lunch.  She was twenty minutes late to the session, walked in to the office, Starbucks fancy iced drink in hand, closed the door, went to her desk, sat down, said “Hello. Just give me a minute to look at your file”, and turned away from me.  Now, the fact that there was zero acknowledgment to her tardiness was pretty much a deal breaker right there. I get that people are late, I get that doctor’s can be late because they stayed longer with a previous patient.  That does not give them the right to not give a simple “I’m sorry, but I’m a little behind schedule today.”  There was no mention of her lateness, and she then spent the next  ten minutes reading through my medical records, and the last fifteen minutes of the appointment asking me general information questions: had I had therapy before (it’s in my medical records that she’d just spent ten minutes reading); did I suffer from depression or anxiety (also part of my documented medical records), and, then suggested I should come see her at the Addiction/Recovery center she worked at, because she was certain that my issues were because I drank (she did see that part mentioned in my medical record).  Yes, I had been drinking heavily (though it’s now been four months since I’ve had a drink) but, my drinking had little to do with the issues I wanted to discuss.  I understand that she wanted me to quit drinking, but, I disliked that all my problems were being written off as drunken ravings.  I’ve suffered severe, chronic depression since I was 14, and severe anxiety since I was in my thirties.  I didn’t start drinking until 2006, and not heavily until 2010, so, while drinking was an issue, I know that my depression was not from the drinking (though, probably the alcohol did exacerbate it).

The meeting did inspire me to quit drinking, because I realized that as long as I drank, my issues would be blamed on the alcohol.  So, I quit drinking, and, I’m still having the same issues that I want to talk about and try to resolve.

Last month, I tried again.  There is a psychiatrist at the clinic, and, I’d seen him once before, to talk about antidepressants.  I made an appointment because I liked him, we seemed to get along, and I felt comfortable talking to him.  He doesn’t really see patients though, as I found out on this visit..  He’s got another practice, and just works at the clinic, as psychiatrist on staff, to deal with the medications for those of us with mental problems.   He did agree to have a few sessions with me, though they may be four or more weeks apart, because of his limited availability at the clinic.

I go to this clinic, because it’s at the university hospital, at the HIV-clinic, and, because I qualify as indigent, because I have no income.  Staying home to care for my 89-year old mom is a choice I make, but, it limits me in other ways, such as health insurance.  Not having a job, and having a pre-existing condition make me pretty uninsurable right now.  So, I’m indigent.  At this particular clinic, I can go to the clinic for a $7 copay.  And, because of The Ryan White Act, funded by the U.S. Government, I can get my HIV-meds for free, because I’m indigent.  So, I get decent HIV-related healthcare, but, the mental healthcare available to me is rather limited.

I’m exploring options, with a couple of mental health counseling centers that work on a sliding scale, to see if I can find some help.

I look at myself, I look at my past history, I look at my current circumstances.  I am a person with mental illness.  I am lucky that I do not have a severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, but, I have an illness nonetheless..  I’m frustrated with the lack of understanding among the general public about mental illnesses, I’m frustrated with a mental healthcare system that’s as strained and broken as our regular healthcare system is.  I’m frustrated by people who, when they hear you are struggling with depression, say “Get some help.”  Most therapy sessions go for $100-200 per session.  As a person with no income, I cannot afford that.  Even having a partner who is employed, we cannot afford that kind of money.

I’m doing what I can to get better.  I’m trying to find out what other options are available to me for mental health therapy.

But, there are thousands of others, just like me, many with more severe mental health issues who cannot find treatment, who cannot afford treatment.  We do what we can to hold things together, to seek out help that’s not always there.  We deserve better than cheap platitudes from people telling us “Get some help.”  We already know that. Telling a person with a mental illness to “Get help” is like telling someone with broken bone “Better get that set.”   (Yes, I know there are people with severe mental issues, like being bipolar, like schizophrenia, and, often, they need to be reminded, even pushed to get help.)  Depression is different.   Depression is not an illness you are unaware of — you know you have it, and you know you need help.  There have been times in my life when I have been so crippled by depression that I could not pick myself up off the floor.  That sounds exaggerated, but it’s not.  I’ve literally spend hours, laying on the floor, often in tears,  hoping for death, unable to move, to get up, to do anything other than lay there and cry and wish for death.  And, if you think that I am unaware in those moments that I need help, then you are sadly misinformed about depression.  I may be depressed, I may not know why, I may not care about much of anything — but, I do know that I need help, and telling me “Get some help” is insensitive and insulting.

Maybe, instead, you should ask “What can I do to help?”  Though we all might respond to that question differently, my response would be “Thank you for asking.  Your offer of help does more for my soul than you could ever know.  It tells me I’m not isolated and alone.  What you can do to help is to just check-in, just so I know you’re out there.”  Think about a time in your life when you’ve felt lost and alone.  Think about how a random call from a friend or loved one can brighten your mood.  It’s the same with many of us who suffer from anxiety and depression.  Sometimes we’re so lost that we can’t see our friends, and we need our friends to remind us that they are there.  It’s simple.  It costs you nothing but a few minutes of your time, to call, to email, to text. They say knowledge is power.  Knowing that someone cares about you is one of the most powerful forces in the world.  Use that power.  Tell someone “I care.  I may not be able to cure your depression, or stop your anxiety, but, I care that you’re here, I care that you’re a part of my life.”

Yes, I’ve descended into a rant.  We crazy people rant sometimes. Sometimes we crazy people can be a little scary, and it’s easy to sideline us.  But, you know what?  We are still people that deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.

End of rant.

P.S.   If you’re wondering if this rant is directed at anyone in particular, the answer is yes and no.  No, it is not a result of something that happened today, or this month.  It’s not directed at one person in particular.  However, it is directed at many people.  It’s directed at people who’ve told me “Get help”, and it’s directed at others out there, others I don’t even know, in the hope that they stop to think before telling a depressed friend or loved one “Get help.”

Today’s Blizzard

Yes, it is snowing here, though it seems like it’s not going to be the blizzard we were told to expect… at least not in our area, anyway…