No Shame. Never Shame.

People have occasionally told me that I am a bit flippant about how I discuss having been sexually abused. I guess people think that it’s odd that I don’t try to hide the fact that I was sexually victimized. No one else tries to hide it when they’re victimized in other ways, though. I don’t know of anyone who covers up that they were physically assaulted or robbed or defrauded. No one feels shame in saying that some asshole broke into their car or stole their wallet.

That must be the magic word, though: shame.

I don’t feel shame about having been sexually victimized because it wasn’t my fucking fault. I did nothing wrong. I was the victim of a crime, just like any other victim, and I refuse to hide it. It might make people feel uncomfortable for me to be so frank about the situation. It might make some people view me as damaged goods. Fun fact: I am. But you would know that whether I was hiding shit or not.

If I speak openly about my abuse, others might realize they need not feel shame. At that point, healing can happen. The more often people speak out about their experiences, the less afraid they have to be.

I’m not over-sharing, I’m showing others it’s fine to speak up. If you can’t handle hearing about something bad happening to me, you aren’t my friend. If you like me less because I’ve been the victim of sexual assault, you aren’t anyone’s friend.

A crime that happened to me sucks, and it affects me, but it’s no source of shame and it’s nothing to hide. That’s a change that really needs to be made. It’s not as simple as blaming “Rape Culture,” because rape culture is a symptom of an ingrained desire to victim-blame, no matter what the crime. It’s the innate response called counterfactual thinking, and it’s going to happen; it’s a coping mechanism.

What we’re doing is trying to imagine a world in which bad shit doesn’t happen, basically saying that if we had done A differently, Bad Thing B wouldn’t have happened. Example: I once left a Discman sitting on the passenger seat of my car, and someone smashed my window apart to steal it. What did everyone say? “Shouldn’t have left your Discman on the seat.” Not “that guy shouldn’t have stolen it from you,” because criminals are criminals. No, what they were doing was offering what they thought was advice so it wouldn’t happen again, and trying to reaffirm that the world is a controllable, predictable place. It’s our stupid way of trying to feel in control. Our duty is to not let this override good judgment and to realize that our coping mechanism can sound pretty shitty when we don’t frame it right, especially with emotionally raw issues like the violation of sexual abuse.

There is nothing anyone can say that will make me think that what happened was my fault. I’m not ashamed of my past, and I’m not afraid of it. It’s there and it’s real, but so is my future, and that is far more important to me. 

Outcast

It was April of 1992. I was just entering my fourth school in two years, two each for fifth grade and sixth. Oakcrest Elementary in Pensacola, FL, Brevard Elementary in Brevard, NC, Fletcher Elementary in Hendersonville, NC, Hughes Middle School in Greenville, SC. No friends, no roots, no support.

Hughes was the worst. Figures it would be the school I spent more time at than any other in my life. It was a class divided. About half of the kids were the children of successful white business people. The school was less than two miles from the 10^th hardest par golf course in America, Chanticleer. On the other side of the school was a very depressed collection of houses, a place of rotting porches, domestic violence, and frequent house fires. From here came the other half of the school’s population, the poor black kids. They at least had strong community ties and all seemed to be friends, huddling together against the oppressive reminder of inequality.

Right between those two halves was a tiny sliver of outcasts, the poor whites. There were a few of us. We were ostracized by the rich white kids, and therefore easy targets of the aggression of the poor black kids. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, they were the only people I could sit with at lunch.

I fucking hated them.

They were constant reminders of my solitude. The only thing we had in common was our place in the caste system. Might as well have been lepers.

One I hated more than the rest was Seth. He was this skinny ginger kid who smelled of fried food and his mom’s cigarettes. He was even lower on the totem pole than me – people didn’t like me, but they didn’t really hate me. Everyone hated Seth, and he seemed kind of okay with it. We rode the same bus, but different stops. Of course all of the pariahs rode my bus, we all lived in the same shitty neighborhood.

One day, Seth pushed me over the line. We were sitting across from each other at the lunch table after we had finished eating. I was reading Stephen King’s Tommyknockers, but was about to put it away to return to class. I looked up at him and our eyes met. He smiled and sneezed right in my face. I was always a fastidious kid, and this was an all out assault. I whipped my thick paperback across his face. Ms. Leiffer only saw that last part and I was given detention for the next day. Seth smiled as he walked behind the teacher and went about his day.

The bus ride home was tense. Randy, the fat kid (every school had one then, there seem to be more now), kept whispering at me, “You gonna take that?” Everyone loved a fight.

I got off at Seth’s stop. He wasn’t smiling anymore. A couple of other kids got off, too, also not their usual stop. It wasn’t a far walk for any of us, totally worth it to witness what they hoped to be an epic ass kicking.

I walked behind the frail little prick, pushing him in his cheap plastic backpack, trying to get him to stop and face me. He was silent. Shit, as they say, had gotten real, and he wasn’t smiling any more. I kept at him, knowing we only had a block until he could escape into his home to hide behind his notoriously litigious mother. I didn’t care if she sued my parents, we had nothing anyway. Finally, I kicked his right foot so that it caught on his left and he tripped. I could vaguely hear whoops from the onlookers, but they faded into the back. I was so mad at his affront. This little shit had the audacity to strike at me, his better. I was lower than basically everyone, but not him. How dare he?

I turned him over and he tried to ball up. I stood over him and did my best to punch him in the head a few times, but I was eleven years old and was not in the habit of punching people. It was pathetic, a thoroughly stoppable force striking a fully moveable object. After some time, hard to say how long, I was satisfied that he looked sufficiently frightened. Then, trying my best to block out the sun, I stood over him and gravely spit in his face. He took it with a sort of depressing aplomb. I turned away to walk home, trying like hell to not cry. It was a while before I heard him getting up. I turned around to walk backwards so I could face him, to stare at him to make the indignity last. He had no expression on his face at all.

Just another day.

On Confidence

Money does not give you confidence.

            You know this, because you know a poor person who has it.

Good looks do not give you confidence.

            You know this because you know an unattractive person who has it.

Intelligence does not give you confidence.

            You know this, because you know a dumb person who has it.

Accomplishment does not give you confidence.

            You know this, because you know an do-nothing who has it.

All of these things may give you self-esteem, but self-esteem and confidence are not the same things at all. There are rich, good-looking, intelligent, and accomplished people who are not confident at all, though a casual observer can’t understand why. It is because confidence is an attribute, not a byproduct.

Confidence isn’t something you receive, it’s an image you choose to portray.

How do you choose to act confidently? Fake it. Much like swimming, if you’re going through the motions, you are ACTUALLY doing it.

On Being Goth

Genesis

I’m a goth. We are a dramatic breed. We’re a bit defiant of convention, and we love to play dress-up.  We also have a certain flexibility when it comes to traditional gender roles. This has informed my love of wearing makeup and women’s clothing. I don’t mean smart pant-suits or sundresses.  In fact, there is nothing feminine about the clothing when I wear it. I can put on a full-length, flowing black skirt and change it from elegant to intimidating. I put on dark eye-shadow and become someone else, someone darker, someone unafraid. I can move outside of myself by embracing different looks and, in a way, personas.

My unconventional aesthetic desires started manifesting around when I started my junior year of high school. It was 1996. I had recently bought my first Marilyn Manson album, and was amazed by how the band members all looked so bizarre and so interesting. The Crow movies had come out, and I thought the male main characters looked badass in their makeup, so why couldn’t I? Before seeing these guys wearing their makeup, it never occurred to me that it was something that a male was allowed to do, like it might even be against some law somewhere. However, it seemed that American culture was moving to a place where, while it wasn’t ordinary, it was less extraordinary to see a guy in makeup.

My problem was that, at the time, I was going to school in Walhalla, South Carolina. The town was only a few minutes from the Chatooga River, famous for being the river Deliverance was filmed on. The closest shopping mall was over an hour and a half away. It was the kind of rural town where you did your shopping at the combination pizza place/video rental/convenience store – not exactly a hotspot of progressivism.

I don’t know what made me do it. Maybe it was something so banal as a cry for attention. Maybe it was because I was so disgusted with my life and the status quo. Or maybe it was just because I had discovered that I appreciated a different aesthetic. Whatever it was, I acted.

During one otherwise average lunch period, I noticed my ex-girlfriend Cindy reapplying her makeup. It was near the end of the period, and the clatter of hard plastic trays had given way to the excited chatter of children who thought they were adults.

“Can I borrow that?” I asked. She was a bit of a hellion, so with a shit-eating grin, she gladly gave me her black eyeliner, black lipstick, and compact. I snapped her compact open and used the tiny, powder-dusted mirror to draw my eyeliner on. I jabbed myself in the eye a bit, but I muddled through. I managed the lipstick slightly better – I had at least had some experience with lip balm to fall back on. When I was done, I looked up, not realizing the effects of my poorly-planned makeover.

The entire lunchroom had gone quiet, and everyone was staring at me and talking in hushed voices among themselves. I really wish I was making this up or exaggerating. This kid Chad, a ginger football player, actually fell over one of the plastic chairs trying to get a better look at me. I immediately regretted my decision, but refused to show it. I joked with Cindy for a minute, trying to appear nonchalant. The other kids eventually started talking to each other again, and after a few minutes I hurried to the bathroom to take the makeup off.

I sat in my next class almost shaking with adrenaline. The other kids who had shared the lunch period with me were grilling me, asking me “Why?” All I could respond with was “Why not?” Still, I felt as if I had broken some cosmic rule. It’s just not something that boys do. How was I able to say “Fuck it,” and how was no one else able to? Was something wrong with me? Was something right with me?

About halfway through the class period, a senior I didn’t know showed up at the door and handed my teacher a note. Mr. Richards took it and looked at me.

“David, could you go to the guidance counselor’s office?”

Shit.

Mrs. Côté and I had a perfunctory conversation in her tiny office, in which I (falsely) assured her that everything was fine at home. She seemed as poorly prepared for this discussion as I was. All I could think of was the fact that for my fifth grade “How To” presentation, I taught my class how to tie a noose, and that for my sixth grade book report, I chose Stephen King’s IT. This was what got people’s attention? This was the big red flag? A smudge of black around a kid’s eyes and suddenly they are “at risk?” What utter garbage. I was always the weird kid, I was always the damaged one, and any informed observer should have seen that as clear as day. What was it about makeup?

The next year, I was at a different high school in a slightly more cosmopolitan area of Florida. I wore black eye-shadow to class every single day, and it was great. It was baffling, too, because that was when people stopped making fun of me. I even made a few friends. People thought I looked, well, cool.

Primping

Some people respected me for my audacity. Some did not. Some didn’t know how they felt at all. In 2001, I was in the bathroom of the one bedroom apartment that I shared with three other people. I was hunched over the sink, gently pulling my eyelid out straight to put liquid eyeliner on, the cool sensation of it tickling.

“Move it, you prissy bitch. People have to piss,” Pippin said.

I sighed and didn’t move. “Beauty like this takes time, jackass. But I guess you wouldn’t know.” I made him wait as I put the finishing touches on my makeup; pale foundation, smoky black and purple eye-shadow, and black lip-liner with purple lipstick. He was probably really high, so he sat down at the end of Ryan’s bed and yammered on, hurling the usual insults at me.

 After a while, I had stopped caring about being called gay, or fag, or any other insult to my masculinity. It happened so often that I couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge each time. Whether it was some hillbilly screaming at me from his truck window or the good-natured ribbing from my friends, I became calloused to it. The insults were used to try to corral me into some image of heteronormativity that I simply couldn’t be bothered with. It probably helped that wearing lots of makeup had transformed me from an awkward weirdo to a somewhat savvy ladies’ man. For some reason, girls really seemed to like it, which was pretty great.

I usually didn’t wear skirts, but when I was getting ready to go out to a club that night, I decided to borrow one from my roommate, Kristen. It was a loose, black Lycra affair, and it matched my skin-tight Lycra short-sleeved turtleneck. I had pulled my long hair back severely, and completed the outfit with a pair of stompy boots. I thought I looked cool. Not everyone would agree.

Crazy James happened to be hanging out in the living room, and he stepped into the back room to see what we were doing. He immediately became very agitated.

“Aw, God, David. Why would you wear that?”

“Wear what in particular, James?” I replied innocently, pressing my lips on the edge of a tissue to remove the excess lipstick.

“The - the skirt. That’s just wrong.” He kept averting his eyes and then looking back at me strangely. He held his arms tightly around his chest and paced around the cramped room. His tension was palpable, I had no idea what he was going to do. Pippin was watching him with a confused grin on his face.

“Why?” I said. “Because the fabric isn’t divided between my legs? I’m covering just as much as I normally would. Besides, the dance floor gets hot, and it’s July. This is way more comfortable.” I tried to be reductive and sensible. James walked out of the room muttering to himself angrily.

Pippin chuckled. “You remember that time James said ‘I have gay thoughts like everybody, but I suppress them like a good Christian?’ I think you almost made his head explode. I don’t know if he wanted to fight you or fuck you.”

It was not for nothing that we called him Crazy James.

Meg

On the other hand, dressing in an unconventional way may have saved my ass. October of 2012, I was at the Chameleon Club in Lancaster, PA. It was Shadowland, the monthly goth night, and a costume night in honor of Halloween as well. I know just about everyone there, and we are exceptionally tight-knit. I also know most of the bouncers and bartenders, so I felt comfortable going out dressed as Meg Griffin from the TV show Family Guy. I looked ridiculous, everyone got a great laugh, and I won “Funniest Costume.” It was a great night.

Towards the end of the night, though, something bad happened. I saw a stranger punch my friend Grace in the face and grab a handful of her hair. I didn’t stop to think. I immediately ran to break up the fight. I grabbed the offending girl and tried to subdue her. There was a scuffle, more people got involved, and I ended up on the bottom of a six-person pileup. A few minutes after everyone got pulled apart, the bartender, Brenton, asked me if I could talk to the cops.

Dressed as Meg Griffin.

I was a thirty-two year old man with broad shoulders and, I’ve been told, an intimidating appearance. I had just roughly and physically subdued a small young woman. I might normally have faced some repercussions for this.

The cop could barely keep a straight face while I was talking to him.

Sure, it helped that the bouncers were in my corner and very appreciative of the help, but I can’t help but feel that if I were dressed normally, something bad might have happened. Any time fights break out between genders, the guys usually get the brunt of the legal action. However, when the police officer saw me holding my pink crocheted cap in my hands, I immediately gave him the first impression that I was a funny, light-hearted guy who probably didn’t rough girls up for fun.

Also, I got to break up a bar fight while cross-dressing as Meg Griffin. I have to doubt that anyone else in the world can say the same thing, and I will treasure that memory until the day I die.

Progress

Over the years, perception of wearing makeup and women’s clothing has changed. It has been a long time since anyone has yelled obscenities out of their cars at me. Of course I still get dirty looks, but it wouldn’t be as much fun if I didn’t. Part of the allure is being confrontational, getting in people’s faces and forcing them to assess their traditions. That doesn’t always work out well for everyone.

In 2007, in Lancashire, England, a young goth couple was attacked. Sophie Lancaster, a beautiful girl with black and red dreadlocks and a lip ring, was beaten to the ground and kicked to death. The perpetrators’ only reasons were based on the couple’s appearance.

Sophie Lancaster is a name we know in the goth community. Her death acted as a rallying cry. Her death was a result from ridiculous prejudices, but ones that are slowly eroding. As a direct result of this incident, in April of 2013, the Greater Manchester police added Subculture to the list of protected groups in the case of hate crimes.

The world is slowly growing to accept us playful deviants. The relative fearlessness of my youth has declined as I’ve aged, but I’ve had less cause to be afraid. I would still wear whatever the hell I wanted to wear, but that wouldn’t change my anxiety. Today, I’m known and (apparently) liked in my town. I’ve managed businesses and made connections with many professionals. I am respected and involved, and I play dress up. I’m not ashamed of it.

Every time that someone who has learned to respect me learns of my unconventional style, they start with the questions. “Why?” they say. I still haven’t come up with a better answer than “Why not?” However, I feel stronger about the philosophy behind the question. Why shouldn’t I wear a what I like to wear? Many cultures throughout time have allowed or expected it. An ancient Egyptian man wouldn’t have been caught dead without eyeliner. Even if there were no historical allowances made, what difference would it make if the garments I wear on my lower half are split into two sections or not?

My petty rebellion won’t change the world, but it might broaden a few people’s perspective on what traditional appearances mean, and why we cling to them. That, and it gets the ladies.

Sexy Beast

It’s Saturday night and we’re going out. My wife Angie and I are in our tiny, cluttered  bathroom trying to use the mirror at the same time. I’m prying my eyes open to slip in my red contact lenses and she’s applying some feathered fake eyelashes. I blink away the extra moisture and grab my black eyeliner pencil. The tip is dull.

“Sharpener?” I say. She passes it to me. I sit on the toilet lid and grind the pencil to a point, shaking the moist shavings into the trash can. When I stand up, she’s using spirit gum to apply rhinestones along her cheekbones. I cover the inner lids of my eyes with kohl, giving them a dramatic, smoldering look. Angie finishes up and goes to find her boots, leaving me with some elbow room. I pour some foundation onto a makeup sponge and begin applying it to my face, using special care around my beard. I have to get the makeup as close to the hair as possible without getting any on the facial hair so as to avoid any lines or hair discoloration – a problem that I feel very few people have. Satisfied, I stand back and examine my face at a few angles. I look into my red eyes lined with black and I smile. I look like a sexy beast.

On Pain

Dear Diary: Part 1

If you’ve ever experienced the sound of your alarm clock intruding into dreams and shaping them, that can happen with pain. I was dreaming of being hit by a car. Again. I saw my body mangled, because it was the only explanation my mind could give for the pain I was in. I was lying in the street, bloody and broken from the waist down. My eyes snapped open as I woke, but the pain persisted. It had been with me for over six years, and it wasn’t ready to stop.

I rolled over to face the window. On its sill were all of what I consider my essentials; my pills, my Xbox controller, my television remote, and my cell phone. I had finished my bottle of water the previous night. This isn’t a depressing thought if you aren’t me, but this meant that I had to go downstairs to get water to take my Vicodin. I sighed and rolled onto my back. My wife had already left for work, so I wouldn’t have to endure crawling over her. I untangled myself from the blankets and the cold air of winter morning hit my leg. My muscles tightened and my nerves blazed. Crawling gingerly, I made it to the edge of the bed and sighed, my eyes clearing of dreamy haze. I stood up slowly, groaning like an old man. I took my first steps haltingly, my feet barely leaving the carpet.

When I got to the hardwood floor of the hallway, I was shocked to full wakefulness. The cold wood sent pain shooting from the arch of my foot straight to my knee. My eyes widened as I held back a gasp. I turned around to search for my fuzzy slippers. I slipped them on and braved the hallway again. I got down the stairs without too much trouble. I shuffled to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. When I got back to the foot of the stairs, I had to steel myself. Fourteen steps is something most people never think about, but that morning, it might as well have been a marathon. I could only lift my body with my good leg, so the trip took twice as long as normal, with pauses taken for pep-talks. I got to my bedroom and fell back into our king-sized bed. I took a deep breath and crawled back over to my side and tried to get as comfortable as possible. I shook a pill out of my bottle and chased it with cold water.

I peeked out the window. Thick, wet snow had covered everything. Cold temperatures and high humidity individually make my pain worse, and the combination is brutal. I checked my cell phone to see the time. I still had an hour or so before class. I resigned myself to playing video games until I needed to get going. There was a ton of other things I could have been doing, but I would need to reserve my stamina for those that I had to accomplish. There was always an opportunity cost associated with everything I did since becoming a cripple, so I couldn’t just do things without weighing the consequences. After about twenty minutes, I looked at my pill bottle again. “Did I just take one? With this pain, it doesn’t feel like I took one. Should I wait a half hour to see if the pain level drops? Can I wait a half hour? If I take an extra one, I might be too fucked up to drive to class.” I took another one.

No Known Solution

My problem has been termed idiopathic neuropathy of the left leg, highly focused in the knee and hip. Neuropathy means nerve-related pain or weakness. Idiopathic means no one has a damned clue what’s causing it. Apparently, around 20% of people who suffer neuropathy also don’t know what causes theirs. My neurologist at Hershey Medical, a bright, kind doctor, tried to minimize not being able to diagnose me, saying “Lots of people have migraines, and we don’t really know what causes them. Some people are just in pain.” I’d wanted to punch her in her bright, kind face. I left the building, only half listening to my wife fuming about the ineptitude of doctors. We left the medical complex and I almost laughed when I saw the street name: Hope Drive.

That was only a year or two into my answerless odyssey. The pain started in February of 2007. I decided I had to go buy a cane, because I just couldn’t take walking around on my own anymore. I started going to every specialist I could get an appointment with. I even went down to John’s Hopkins. Probably the least fun I had in a doctor’s office was when I got my electromyography test. I’d had no idea what I was in for, so I had no way to prepare myself. I walked into the small, sterile office and laid down on the faux-leather table. A short Indian doctor came in and asked me to remove my pants. Then, the sadistic sonofabitch jammed needles into different spots of my lower back and leg and ran an electrical current through me. This was apparently to see how well my nerves conducted electricity – the signals were translated into sound like a Geiger counter. For the first time, I could hear my pain. This awful person then had the audacity to tell me to relax when my muscles were tense. My wife sat by the door, wincing for the entire session. When we were done with my backroom Baghdad torture, I demanded ice cream. Of course, this was all done for nothing. No answer for why some days I couldn’t walk down the frozen food section of a grocery store without almost dropping in pain. No insight as to why I was a cripple at age 26. No answers. No cure.

Dear Diary: Part 2

The pain is often at its worst in the mornings, because it’s usually been eight to ten hours since I last took pills. Once I was able to medicate, movement started getting a little easier, so after a few hours I had the fortitude to face life. It was time to leave for class. Had I taken too much Vicodin to drive safely to campus? Probably not. I set my oversized pants in front of the heating vent to warm for a few minutes while I gathered my books. I have to wear them loose, because when I sit in properly fitting pants for any length of time, the waistline presses into a pressure sensitive area on my hip that will cause immense pain. I put on my pants, squeezing my eyes shut as I lift my bad leg to slip it into my jeans. I made it down the stairs, grabbed my cane, and opened the door. The cold wind cut through my clothing and I contemplated staying home, but school was more important. I had to walk through the snow and cursed all the way to my car. Cold, wet shoes will cause my leg extra pain for hours. I was (thankfully) fine to drive to class.

I sat in the cold plastic chair with my jacket draped over my leg to keep it warm. I kept shifting and fidgeting, self-conscious about the creaks of the chair that accompanied my every movement. I accidentally knocked my cane into one of my classmates and I apologized profusely. Not only was I more than a decade older than most of them, but I had to walk around with a cane. How… alienating.

I finished my classes and drove home quickly. My wife wasn’t home, so I tried to take a nap before my work shift. I couldn’t get into a good position, so I just flopped around for an hour. I decided I needed to call out of work. The last time I had gone in to work with pain this bad, my boss had to have a little chat with me. I’d gotten very terse with a student from Sudan because I didn’t have the patience to hold her hand through her seven page paper, and she got a bit upset. Apparently, she went to my boss in tears. I hoped to avoid this mistake again, and thought it would be best for all involved if I shut myself away for the day.

Pain and Perception

When the pain is greater than average for an extended period of time, I slip into a bad two day cycle with my sleep schedule. My leg will hurt so much that I won’t be able to fall asleep until I finally relent and pour myself a drink and take an extra pill around five or six in the morning. This will leave me with only three hours of sleep or so, leaving me exhausted. When I’m tired, I get emotional, and I don’t have the mental fortitude to deal with the pain as well as I normally do. Thankfully, I’ll be so exhausted that night that I will pass out pretty easily.

When I’m tired or in pain, my fuse shortens dramatically. I used to have one of the slowest tempers of anyone I knew.  Now, not so much. On really bad days, I feel like a dog that’s been hit by a car, snapping at anyone who gets too close, no matter how much they want to help. I find myself hoping that people can relate. It seems like everyone gets touchy when they have a headache or other malady; I feel like I should be allowed the same consideration. However, I’ve been this way for over six years. Do people still give me allowances? Should they?

After so many years of being a cripple, my friends and family started running out of sympathy. For the first year or two, they were caring and understanding. They made sure I didn’t have to carry heavy loads, and they accepted it with grace when I couldn’t follow through on the plans we made together. After a few more years, that well of allowances began drying up. They expected me to be a normal, functioning person and to pull my own weight. Hell, half of my friends never knew me without the cane, so they can’t even know what I was like. The non-handicapped David is dead, and to many people who know me now, he never existed. This is what I’ve got. This is who I am. Still, it’s not so bad. My wife married me as a cripple, telling me “Even as less than the man you were, you’re still better than everyone else.” I don’t care if she’s objectively right or not. The fact that she thinks so is enough for me to keep going.

The Most Potent Poison

A week or so ago, I went to my coordinating doctor. We made the usual small talk about how long it had been since I’d last been in (seven months), what had I been doing with myself (school), and had there been any change in my condition (no). He also made the hollow offer of doing the same tests again to see if there had been any change. “I’d hate to just sit around with my teeth in my mouth” he said, but I murmured that I’d have to think about it. More tests would require two things of which I was in short supply: money and hope. I’m not terribly concerned about the money. What really matters is the hope. I have none.

I don’t often tell  people that, because they tend to get a patronizing look in their eyes that’s equal parts pity and amusement at how dramatic I must sound. They don’t understand. I worked hard to destroy my hope once I knew how deeply it was poisoning me. Hope was what was keeping me from doing anything in the present. For the first few years of being a cripple, I would tell my wife, “When I get my leg sorted out, I’m gonna hit the gym like a fiend. I’ll never take my body for granted again.” I would fantasize about getting back into martial arts, or going hiking. I would totally do all of that stuff, just as soon as I was fixed. As soon as the pain went away.

After four years and no answers, I started realizing that there was no light at the end of the tunnel. The pain wasn’t going away. It continued to wake me up every morning and keep me from sleeping every night. I was also continuing to not do a damned thing. I put on fifty pounds and neglected my friends and family. I lived my life in my bed. I was waiting for my life to return to normal, while refusing to accept that this was my new normal. Somewhere in year five, I started killing my hope. Maybe I was inspired by The Dark Knight Rises. In it, Bane gives a stirring speech to Bruce Wayne, saying “There's a reason why this prison is the worst hell on earth... Hope. Every man who has ventured here over the centuries has looked up to the light and imagined climbing to freedom… I learned here that there can be no true despair without hope.” Those words burned a hole in me. I was waiting to restart my life, watching years pass. And why? Because I was afraid of making my pain worse.

Marcel Proust said “Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.” I was obeying my pain, and my pain wanted me to lie down in my bed and die. I started fighting that urge. I learned when to pick my battles, but I still don’t know if I’m winning the war. There are costs. The pills blunt my mental edge, but my pain is too distracting if left alone. Too much medication keeps me from activity, but so does too much pain. I have to walk a fine line, and I don’t do it very well. Then, there are the other factors of taking narcotics steadily for six years.

Dear Diary: Part 3

That night, I decided that I needed a drink. I ended up sitting in a bar and drinking with a few of my buddies when another knife of pain drove into my hip. We were sitting on high barstools, which inevitably leads to a flare up. I winced and pulled out my pill bottle. I shook it vigorously and my friend looked at me quizzically. Anticipating his question, I launched into my pat explanation. “When you shake a pill bottle, the pills rub against each other, which creates a fine powder coating on each pill. When you take one, there’s a bit of narcotics ready to jump into your bloodstream without having to be eaten away from the body of the pill by your stomach acid. This will, in a perfect world, get the drugs into your system faster.” I have no idea if this actually works, but it doesn’t really matter – the habit is with me and it will never leave. I dumped two Vicodin into my hand, took one after the next, and washed them down with my bourbon and water. A decade earlier, this would have been the start of a great night. At that point, however, I was just hoping to stave off the end of my stamina so that I could spend some more time with the friends that I constantly neglect. My friend looked at me with a mixture of surprise and pity. Maybe it was me, but I could almost hear the question in his head: “Is Dave a drug addict?”

I didn’t have a good answer for him.

Nothing Comes From Nothing

Quote from Jan Morris: “Every sentence we create we have created from nothing, and made real, and every situation has been touched up in our memory.”

Nothing comes from nothing. Every action or item is a reaction to some antecedent. Every sentence we create, whether written or uttered, is created in the immense, complicated structure of our brains. We want to believe that we create spontaneously, but I just don’t buy it. We are products of DNA, manifesting our genetic identity. That genetic trajectory is focused and shaped by the deeply rooted culturing influences that have surrounded us since we came into being. We are, if examined with enough scrutiny, entirely predictable creatures, and once we have been set in motion, will continue to stay in motion along a certain path.

Each idea we hold has a reason behind it, and each sentence we create comes from an idea we hold. To say that every sentence comes from nothing does a disservice to both language and human agency. We are creatures filled with amazing things, and the sentences we build, the thoughts we express, originate in the confluence of the meat and majesty of the human being.

As far as situations being “touched up,” I will agree with that. No one knows their own past; they only know their own personal narrative. We all view the events of our lives subjectively and with immense bias. If we try to cross-reference an event with another person, discrepancies emerge, because we are remembering things how we want to, and they are doing the same. We have to accept that we can never remember past events objectively, because we can never experience *present* events objectively. We are all telling ourselves our own stories as they happen, and we are all unreliable narrators. Thankfully, stories don’t need to be factually accurate to be true.

On How We Learned Nothing Bad Can Never Happen.

“Nothing Bad Can Ever Happen. Proceed With Confidence.”

There is an old Chinese proverb to ponder:

A Chinese farmer has a stallion. One day, the stallion runs away. The village people come to him and say, "Ah, such a bad thing to happen!"
The farmer shrugs, "Good thing, bad thing, who knows?"

A few days later, the stallion returns with three mares. The village people come to him and say, "Ah, such a good thing to happen!"
The farmer shrugs, "Good thing, bad thing, who knows?"

The next week, the farmer's son breaks his leg taming the wild mares. The village people come to him and say, "Ah, such a bad thing to happen!"
The farmer shrugs, "Good thing, bad thing, who knows?"

A month later, the Chinese army comes and demands all the young men of proper age to be a soldier. The farmer's son does not have to go because of his broken leg. The village people come to him and say, "Ah, such a good thing to happen!" 
The farmer shrugs, "Good thing, bad thing, who knows?"

How can it be that nothing bad can ever happen? It seems so alien to us, so contrary to all of our traditions. However, when one takes themselves out of the center of their universe, one begins to see that it is impossible to determine whether an event was good or bad. An individual’s finite understanding of the totality of time and causation prohibit the full appreciation of how an event affects the world around it.

We find it difficult to evaluate an event as good or bad because it is impossible to evaluate an event while being objective. The very act of evaluation is antithetical to objectivity. We are only capable of evaluating an event as preferable, enjoyable, sad, happy, unfortunate, etc. - we can only make subjective evaluations. If we begin to accept that we don’t live in a dyadic universe, tossed between two extremes, and that Good and Bad are concepts constructed by human minds, we begin to understand that there is no Good or Bad.

Things we dislike will happen. However, does the fact that we dislike these things make them bad? I was laid off by my job: I turned it into an opportunity to go to college. I ended a relationship with a woman I moved to another state for: I met the woman I married in this new state. All of the supposedly Bad things that have happened in my life have all led to the enjoyable, agreeable state which I now live in. Nothing Bad has ever happened to me: only things that I could not appreciate at the time. The things that I do not enjoy now? Those are only things I cannot appreciate at this moment. Only at the end of my life could I look back at events in judgment, and even then, only insofar as they affected my own limited life.

These thoughts are incomplete, a start on a meditation to remove ourselves from our lives for a moment, to try to look at the bigger picture. Expand the notion with your own perspective.