September 29: Sunday Night, Feeling Prepared, Powerlessness

Sunday night.  Probably my least favorite time of the week.  It's all about getting my 11-year-old son to take a shower and put on his pajamas.  Making my lunch.  Setting out my work clothes for tomorrow.  Double checking that my lessons are planned and my books are gathered.  Leaving nothing to chance before I go to bed.

However, I know that I'm going to forget something.  I always do.  That's the way I roll, always feeling as if I'm forgetting something.  It could be a bill that is coming due.  Or an assignment I forgot to grade for my students.  Or some writing deadline that went whooshing by me like a freight train.  There's always some shadow looming over my shoulder that I can't quite make out.

I like feeling prepared.  That's why I addressed my Christmas cards for this year back in February.  And I bought a Christmas present for my nephew back in January in Florida.  At the moment, I'm planning to order the pictures that I'll stuff into those Christmas cards.  I just made a reservation for a little trip I'm taking to Calumet on Thursday, and I've completed two writing tasks that were on my to-do list for today.  Like I said, I like feeling prepared.

Of course, there are things for which you can never prepare yourself.  Illnesses.  Car problems.  Marriage problems.  Money problems.  Kid problems.  These things strike like lightning from a blue sky.  There's no way to anticipate them.  That's when you go into survival mode and live minute-by-minute, as opposed to day-by-day.

I've been doing the minute-by-minute thing for quite some time now.  It's exhausting.  And I don't see an end in sight.  Yesterday, I talked about everyone leading lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau said.  It's a pretty apt description.  You can prepare and prepare all you want, but there will always come that moment when lightning strikes and everything changes.  Then, chaos for a while.  Desperation.

I'm looking for a way to end this post on a positive note.  Something hopeful to say.  The only thing that you can do sometimes is acknowledge your powerlessness and give your problem up to your higher power.  Because it's always at the lowest times when God steps in and helps out.  That's pretty much the way it works.  When you hit rock bottom, there's nowhere else to go.

Saint Marty embraced his powerlessness quite some time ago.

June 26: Shades of the Color Blue, Coating of Silly, Okay

Arthur pages through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . . .

Ford had thoughtfully left him his copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to while away the time with.  He pushed a few buttons at random.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time.

One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the ballpoints he'd bought over the past few years.

There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centers of ballpoint loss throughout the Galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint theory that quite caught the public imagination at the time.  Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life forms.  And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoints would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpointed lifestyle, responding to highly ballpoint-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint equivalent of the good life.

And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was was taken away, locked up, wrote a book and was finally sent into tax exile which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make fools of themselves in public.

When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.

There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious sixty thousand Altairian dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod Beeblebrox's highly profitable secondhand ballpoint business.

Pure silliness of course.  I love the idea, however, of a planet of lost ballpoint pens.  Sort of like a planet of lost socks.  This passage just makes me smile for its sheer absurdity.  Sometimes, life needs to be dipped in a coating of silly and sprinkled with absurdity.  Today is one of those days for me.

This post will be one of those elliptical ones that I write sometimes where I am hovering above a subject that is possessing me but that I just can't write about.  Think of it as a missing ballpoint pen that is wandering around in the ballpoint planet of my head.

It will come as no surprise to the faithful disciples of this blog when I say that addicts and addictions have been a part of my life for a very long time.  Friends.  Family members.  Acquaintances.  People I love.  But that is not the subject of this post.

It will also not come as a surprise to the faithful disciples of this blog when I say that mental illness has been a part of my life for a very long time, as well.  Friends.  Family members,  Acquaintances.  People I love.  But that is not the subject of this post, either.

Ditto for poetry and Donald Trump and my daughter's high school graduation and my son's ADHD and the bills that are piled on my kitchen table.  None of these things are the subject of this post.  All of these things are stumbling around on their own mythical planets right now, and I will not pay attention to them this evening.

As I sit here, eating a chicken pot pie, I am thinking about resiliency and the ability to exist in difficult situations and remain positive and happy.  You may recall that I am working my way through a book about joy written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.  I am always struck by the passages in which these two figures talk about living through apartheid and exile, the darkest times of their lives, enduring difficulties that I can't even imagine.  Yet, every picture in the book shows these two men smiling, grinning, laughing, dancing.

As I look at those pictures, I think to myself, "I want me some of that."

How do they do it?  How do they remain so joyful?  Here is the answer that I've been hearing, over and over:  powerlessness.  Accepting that state.  Fear and anger and doubt and sadness--all of these emotions are products of trying to control situations that are simply out of your control.  The quicker you recognize your powerlessness, the quicker you will be on the road to happiness and joy.

This evening, when I got home, I was on the brink of something.  It wasn't joy.  Basically, I changed out of my work clothes, crawled into bed, and pulled the covers over my head.  It was a moment of feeling completely alone with some very dark thoughts.  It was a hole I dug for myself all day long, and I was at the bottom of it.  It was pretty deep.

After a couple hours, I got a text message from a really good friend who knows a few things about joy.  I responded to the text, telling my friend of my current state of mind.  My friend's words were pretty simple:  " . . . you're doing it, climbing out of the hole.  That's big, all you can ask of yourself, to reach for a better-feeling thought.  And know you are loved and have Big Love for yourself."  After a few more texts with my friend, I felt better.  Then I got an IM from another good friend, and we exchanged messages about poetry and happiness, mixed with some jokes.  And I felt better.

I am not completely out of the hole yet, but I can now see light.  I know that, in the situation causing me so much struggle, I am completely, totally, utterly powerless.  I understand why people turn to alcohol or drugs or cutting or suicide.  It's all about escape.  Lessening the pain.  A seeming way of taking control of the uncontrollable.  (The key word in that last sentence is "seeming.")

Tonight, God texted me and IMed me as I was spiraling.  He reminded me that I am loved.  That I am important.  That I make a difference, however tiny, in the world.

Saint Marty is okay, and okay is best he can do at the moment.

January 21: Saint Agnes

First, let me put one burning question to rest:  no, I did not have jury duty on January 19.  The trial was settled, and I happily reported to work.  Life was good.  Life was full of sameness.  I have two more days next week for possible jury duty.  If the trials on those days settle, then I will have done my civic duty without having to do my civic duty for the entire month.

Right now, my two-year-old son is sick.  A few days ago, my wife took him to the doctor, and we found out  he has bronchitis, bilateral ear infections, and a sore throat.  He is one sick little boy.  Usually, my son only stops moving to sleep.  Even then, he throws himself around his crib as if he's a spot of canola oil in a hot frying pan.  He just doesn't value inertia very much.  On the other hand, give me a bag of scoop Fritos, a six-pack of Diet Mountain Dew, and an all-day marathon of Inside the Actor's Studio, and an F5 tornado couldn't budge me from the sofa.  My son, obviously, is a different story.  So, when he was content to sit in my lap, suck on a bottle, and watch The Antique's Roadshow, I knew he really wasn't feeling well.

As a parent, there's nothing worse in the world than to know that your child is hurting and not be able to make her or him feel better.  The complete and utter powerlessness is terrifying.  It's like watching the opening scene of Jaws:  you can't save the naked girl from becoming shark bait.  You have to sit and witness it.  Just like you can't make your son's lungs clear up or ears drain fluid.  You just have to squeeze medicine between his lips and wait.

I've written in other posts about my fears that my children will develop mental illness.  Two of my best friends have children with mental illnesses.  One has a daughter with schizophrenia, and the other has a son who was diagnosed with bipolar in the last year or so.  Both of my friends have said to me, "I don't think I could handle my husband having a mental illness."  One of those friends has stated, "I'd send his ass packing in the blink of an eye."  I suppose it boils down to a matter of choice.  My friends have no choice with their children.  You can't divorce a son or daughter.  A spouse, however, is supposed to be a partner, someone who shares the work of home and heart.  You choose your spouse.

Me, I think it would be worse to have a child with mental illness.  It would be like my son having bronchitis, ear infections, and strep throat for the rest of his life.  Nothing I could do would make him well.  I would be in that constant state of powerlessness I just wrote about, watching my child struggle every day.

I fell in love with a woman who happens to have a mental illness.  I choose to stay with that woman, despite some difficult struggles and complications, including sexual addiction.  I can not and will not give up on her, no matter how exhausting the problems may be.  And I have children who may, one day, because of their genetics, develop mental illness.  For a control freak like myself, I have relinquished control over a large portion of my life, by choice and by inheritance.  My marriage is my choice.  My son and daughter are my inheritance.

Agnes is today's saint.  She is one of those virgin martyrs who, at a very young age, was killed because (a) she refused to deny her Christianity, (b) she refused to accept the sexual advances of the guys who wanted her money and body, and (c) she pissed off a Roman judge.  The judge sentenced Agnes to a whorehouse, but she emerged untouched from that punishment.  The men were too frightened to even go near her, and the one man who did approach her was struck blind.  Eventually, Agnes was beheaded, but, like most of the virgin martyrs, she went to her death "more cheerfully than others go to their wedding."  She is now the patron saint of people in love, girls, rape victims, and a religious order named the Children of Mary.

My ten-year-old daughter and two-year-old son are pretty stubborn kids.  If my daughter decides she wants something like an iPod touch, she will eventually wear me down to the point where I'd buy her 10,000 shares in Apple Computer just to shut her up.  My son has thrown up so much food he didn't like that, by the end of dinner, he looked like a vomit-soaked version of Sissy Spacek in Carrie.  Agnes was a stubborn 13-year-old girl; she set her eyes on Christ and never looked back.  Some people think I'm stubborn (or stupid) for sticking with my wife these past eleven years.  My friend with the schizophrenic daughter has told me, "I don't know how you do it."  I would say the same to my friend.

It's a matter of acceptance.  I love a person who has bipolar and sexual addiction.  My friends love children who have serious mental illnesses.  Some day, my daughter or son may develop mental illness.  We can't control our loved ones' lives.  We have to take the back seat on the bus.  That's what really sucks on the lowest level of suckitude.  Sometimes, you just have to watch bad things happen.

I've been struggling to finish this post now for four days.  I can't.  I'm not sure what I'm trying to say.  So I guess I'll just sum up what I have said:

1. I hate seeing my kids sick.  
2. I hate seeing my wife sick.  
3. You shouldn't piss off a Roman judge if you're a 13-year-old, Christian virgin.
4. And, given the choice between being in control and being in love, I choose love.