How to Feel Rushed and Pressured When You Have Plenty of Time

When attempting to write about my life thus far, there are three events that seem impossible to put into words:

-The first time a friend betrayed me.

-My mother’s funeral.

-What I am going through right now.

If pressed, these are situations that I would talk about; often in a hushed, clipped tone with no small degree of pain in my voice. The first is becoming a distant memory that can still elicit a painful response if brought up in the wrong context. The third is still so fresh and unresolved; it is so fresh a wound that the scab has just now begun to form and picking at it is a bad idea. Any attempts to write about the present are clumsy, unfocused, and whiny.

Oddly enough, it is the middle problem that is causing me the most grief now. It is a memory old enough for me to be able to start writing about it, but still fresh enough to be crippling the longer I think about it.

Since being handed down the edict from my therapist about writing for five hours a day, four days a week, I have managed to do one better and not skip a day yet. In fact, the draft of this was written on the train while going to work and I worked on several more pieces while on my hour long break.

One of the things I have to do more than anything else is to challenge myself, and to some extent I have been succeeding. My movie blogs have been doing a fairly good job of keeping my critical thinking skills sharp. I have also taken to writing things purely for myself that I have no immediate intention to show them to anyone. Regardless of if it is a blog entry or diary entry, once I feel like I have said all that needs to be said on the subject at hand, I tend to leave it alone. After a very quick proofread, I’m mostly satisfied with completing the task, or as some people in the service industry like to say, “Gettin’ ‘r done.” The satisfaction of crafting something I am proud of is enough to get me to sleep at night. Well, that and the soothing sounds of CBC Overnight.

I decided that when I was going to write concurrent blogs, I would use it as a chance to further illustrate things I didn’t get to write about in my memoirs. Some of the things I will write about are just tangential anecdotes that didn’t fit that didn’t fit the narrative flow of the book, like the suddenly relevant Eric and Sunny story. Other incidents, such as helping my parents move, have either been reduced from its original format or extended from the brief passing mention they would have gotten.

My mother’s funeral is something that both didn’t entirely fit in long form and something that I desperately wanted to expand on because when I wrote the book I completely copped out when it came time to write about it.

I described in vivid detail the weeks leading up to her death. I described almost every moment of her battle with cancer and doted lovingly on the relationship I was in at the time that was keeping me strong. I still recall with a near perfect eye for detail the day she died and waking up on the morning of the funeral. I remember every incoming and outgoing phone call; every arrangement made and every condolence offered.

In the book, all of this was written about and then as soon as the reader gets to the part where the funeral should be, it skips abruptly to the following evening with only passing references made to earlier in the day. It was almost as if everything that came before and after the funeral was more important. Now, when I specifically decided I wanted to make the week of my mother’s funeral into a three part series focusing mainly on the morning, the funeral, and the days following.

I can still only write the beginning and the end.

From the point where I arrive at the funeral home until I get home and have to start packing my stuff still seems far too surreal to me. It feels almost like my brain has blocked out large parts, or else I was completely catatonic for the entire thing.

Here is what I can remember:

-Waiting inside the alarmingly cold funeral home; sitting in front of my mother’s casket twitching and staring until Kerrilynn (my girlfriend at the time) called me to see how I was holding up. She was off at school and couldn’t make the funeral or wake.

-I remember her family showing up late and trying to take control of everything as they always do.

-I remember the casket being heavy as anything I have ever had to life despite the fact that my mother only weighed 96 pounds before she had cancer.

-I remember deeply resenting Uncle Eddie and Aunt Lillian for having a Catholic burial for a woman who hadn’t gone to church a single day in my lifetime.

-I remember being called upon to speak and sleepwalking through a performance of “Golden Slumbers” by the Beatles, the song my mother always sang to try to get me to sleep.

But above all I remembered seeing her taken from the casket that was just for show and placed into a pin box before being lowered into a pauper’s grave devoid of grass and a headstone. This was the part only I was there to see since no one else bothered to come. They were all at my Aunt Jody’s starting the party early; getting drunk and helping themselves to all the shrimp and deli platters my Uncle Eddie could afford.

My uncle Billy had passed away a year earlier. Billy was a crack and heroin addict who had been arrested sixteen times between the ages of ten and 42. Everyone stayed for him being lowered into the ground and cried their eyes out. My mother, on the other hand, was addicted only to alcohol and nicotine, had never been arrested, and was physically and sexually abused by the same people who made seemingly cursory appearances at her wake and funeral.

The entire day took place at the point where rage and grief intersect. I couldn’t have been angrier in the morning, but in the church and in the graveyard I felt paralyzed. It had finally sunk in that this was real and my mother was never coming back.

Then when she was interred, and in the following days, everything became all too painfully vivid again.

As such, this entry stands as part 2 of three. It might seem like another easy way out to the reader, but I have been beating myself up far too much over this to keep dwelling on it.

I completed the first part almost on the fly since a large part of it is dialog based and it came out as easily as it always does. I did, however, rush through it and try to work more on this entry. If I had the time or energy I could have the third part written in roughly two hours and that includes plotting out what I am going to say ahead of time. A few nights ago when I planned on writing the second part, it just would not come out.

I sat in front of the notebook and nothing was coming to me other than the notes I had included here. Out of frustration and desperation to meet the goals I had plotted out for myself, I went to the computer and hoped that stream of consciousness could carry me through to the end. It didn’t help. I almost immediately shut down while staring at what would have served as two introductory paragraphs in an otherwise blank word document.

I still could not do it just as I couldn’t do it one, three, or six years ago. I started to get stressed and rushed by my own self imposed deadline. I began to write paragraph after paragraph and I kept deleting them. I was forcing myself to write about something absolutely no one was twisting my arm to write about in the first place.

I talked briefly with my friends Jenna and Lisa online. I explained to Jenna what was wrong and she suggested that I leave it be for now and come back to it later. I didn’t want to, but deep down I knew I had to. Plus, for as long as I have known her, Jenna has only been wrong about something once and it was due to miscommunication.

Lisa offered to talk about things further and as of last we have been a great set of ears for each other seeing as neither of our lives has exactly been coming up roses. I would have talked to her about it more, but I felt exhausted just thinking about the funeral and straining to remember every detail. I doubt I could have felt worse had I been crying over it.

It was at that point I opted to lie down. Not necessarily to sleep, but to change my focus. I had to step back from where I was, and remember for a moment the support and encouragement my mother gave me in her moments of clarity.

I listened to Ben Folds’ cover of “Golden Slumbers” (since I did not have a copy of “Abbey Road”) and was transported back in my mind to a simpler time. I remembered a rainy summer afternoon spent looking through cookbooks and begging to have her make anything that looked yummy and finding a cupcake recipe. I remember using a slotted spoon as a guitar while my mother used the beaters from the electric mixer as drums on the side of the bowl before I licked them clean of their chocolaty goodness. I remembered rubbing my flour coated hands on her black pants. I felt terrible about it, but all she said was, “I guess I’ll just have to put sprinkles in your hair then,” and she proceeded to chase me around the kitchen with a shaker full of icing sprinkles while I squealed with the kind of delight you can only truly experience when you are very young.

I finally tasted the cupcakes before being tucked into bed that night; shortly after she sang me to sleep. It never ceased to put a smile on my face.

Slowly in the dark a smile emerged while the song played in my ears. A single tear rolled down my cheek. I rolled over and slept last night just like I was six all over again.

A Mourning to Forget

This is the second (and technically third and fourth) entry dealing with how music is consequently tied to memory. Today's song, since it isn't directly mentioned in the piece, is what was on the radio the morning in question. It is the Carlos Santana/Everlast collaboration "Put Your Lights On." Also, please excuse the fact that this starts of well written and kind of goes to seed before the conclusion. The reason why it turned out the way it did, will be explored in part two, which will be posted tomorrow night provided that I get some well needed rest.

My first thought upon waking up was being glad the sun was shining; it would make the day go by a lot easier. The sun managed to peek its way through the dirty nicotine stained windows and curve its way through the corners of the dingy alleyway to shine directly onto the side of my face. It was a nice and early wake up call on an important day.

The bed was a mess but served its function as a place to lie down. To the right of me was my phone on the charger; still trying to regain that power it lost the day before during it’s marathon of usage. The top sheet in a heap to the left of me from being used as a security blanket; the real blankets and the fitted sheet normally used to cover up the mattress remained in a pile beside the bed where they resided for most of the summer.

The room itself was cluttered with wardrobe boxes and garbage bags full of clothes that had done virtually untouched in the past year or so. All of it belonged to my mother who continuously used my room for storage despite having a room of her own. It was so cluttered that only a small strip remained to walk from the door to the bed. As such, I never cleaned my room very often.

On the dresser next to the television that was in dire need of a dusting was my mother’s nebulizer. Despite my mother’s need for the machine, it ultimately contributed to my complete lack of piracy. She would walk into my room all hours of the night, often drunk and trying to sneak a smoke despite constantly telling her not to smoke in my room and reeking of stale urine from never cleaning herself moaning and wailing about how no one ever loved her.

There was nothing I could ever say to convince her that she was loved. Once she said that if I really loved her I would buy her beer and cigarettes. When I asked why she wanted me to contribute to her killing herself, she scoffed and said “Oh please. You did just enough by being born.”

Then my mother walked back in to apologize and plead fro help. When I offered to call an ambulance, she refused on the grounds that they would just tell her she had a drinking problem. Even on her death bed she insisted that she never had a problem.

I thought about that night while staring at the bedroom’s ugly and tar stained fake wood paneling. The sunlight accented the nicotine stains that ran like an extra pattern atop the grain that already existed.

I arose without making the bed or even bothering to go to the bathroom to wash up before getting dressed, but I did have enough strength in me to turn the radio on. I planned on leaving the house before any one arrived. I put on my black work pants and the cleanest white shirt I could find. I had the tie on before the shirt was even fully buttoned. I slightly adjusted the tie, checked my hair in the reflection of the television set (after brushing away a thick layer of dust with my hand), grabbed the guitar case and headed out into the kitchen.

Unfortunately, my quick getaway was thwarted by my uncle Eddie sitting in the kitchen counting a large stack of money. It is not mincing words when I say that fat ass drug dealing white trash douche bag was one of the last people I wanted to see upon waking up.

“Hey. Hey you.” He never even bothered to stop counting the money, look at me, or take the cigarette out of his mouth.

“I have a fucking name Eddie.”

“Oh, big talk from a little man. Who the fuck do you think paid for everything today? I even bought fucking flowers you ungrateful piece of shit.”

“You booked the fucking church. Other than that you didn’t do shit. And I’ll believe the flowers when I see them.”

I went to pour myself a cup of coffee since a pot was on that I figured my aunt Lillian, who owned the house I was living in and that her brother Eddie occasionally hid large amounts of weed in, had made one like she usually did upon waking up.

“Don’t you fucking touch that god damned coffee pot! I put that shit on.” Eddie pointed at me when he said this as if it were a life or death situation.

“Listen you fat fuck. I bought the god damned coffee and you come in like you own the fucking place.”

Eddie threw a twenty dollar bill at me. “Well, go buy yourself a fucking can of Maxwell House, why don’t you?”

“Look at you trying to be the fat Boston version of Scarface

“You aren’t going to be laughing in a minute motherfucker. I’m moving in tonight. So that means it’s my rules. So you can just get the fuck out.”

The coffee mug I was holding caught Eddie square in the jaw, and luckily for the both of us the mug only had sugar in it. Within seconds Eddie’s fat ass was on top of me and pinning me against the kitchen wall.

“You are fucking lucky you are my sister’s kid. God rest her. I would fucking bury you with her if I had my fucking way you little shit.” Eddie punctuated the end of his sentence with a slap in the face.

Instead of dealing with conflict, Lillian simply turned up the volume on her Catholic mass that she watched religiously every morning even if it was a repeat. I could hear the hum of her oxygen tank turning on (yes, Eddie was smoking in a house where there was a fucking oxygen tank, but then again so did my mother, hence why she always snuck into my room to do it). When the tank turns on, quite often, it means she is stressed.

Eddie slapped me again. “Now look what you did.”

I sucker punched Eddie and quickly grabbed a chair to keep him at bay like I was a lion tamer. “I don’t give a shit what you do Eddie. I really don’t. Throw me out. I didn’t give a fuck. But the only thing I owe you motherfucker is not turning you the fuck in.”

“What the fuck have you ever done that was so fucking special? What do you contribute? You never paid any rent here. I keep the fucking lights on here and I don’t even live here.”

"I have a legitimate fucking job Eddie. I don’t use my fucking family to hide his fucking stash every time the cops get too close. And if I had a sister I sure as shit wouldn’t guilt trip her into... wait. You’re moving in? You have a wife and fucking kids. Why the fuck are you moving in?”

“I don’t have to explain jack shit to you. The truth is, that to me, you are not family. Not here you aren’t. And the one person who ever linked us together is dead.”

At that moment the door opened and Beto, one of the six people who lived on the third floor walked in. Beto was there to meet me and follow me through the neighbourhood so no one tried to rob me for the guitar. He was a half cousin of mine and a Crip to boot. The neighbourhood knew exactly what he was capable of, but at least I was cool with him. No one ever gave me any trouble if they knew who he was and how we were related. In my neighbourhood if you wanted to walk down the street in a shirt and tie carrying a musical instrument, having any sort of back up helps.

Beto never liked Eddie; even though they were in the same line of elicit trades. Eddie always brought undue attention to the house. If the police showed up, nine times out of ten it was because Eddie was caught doing something incredibly stupid like speeding the wrong way down a one way street or trying to coax money out of some insurance scam.

Beto was smart enough not to keep anything in the house and always worked far away from where he lived. “You don’t shit where you eat,” he once told me.

“What the fuck is going on in here? I’ve been waiting outside for you and all I hear is Eddie fucking screaming.” Beto glanced at me with a grin and a nod as he said this before turning his gaze to Eddie, who was still defiant. Eddie thought he could take anyone based on his weight alone, but clearly as I showed earlier, he couldn’t.

“I’m kicking this piece of shit out tonight. The fuck are you going to do about it?”

Beto probably would have made a few calls and had seven or eight people show up then and there to dump Eddie in the woods (something I know Beto had been dying to do for as long as he had known Eddie), but I just wanted to leave. I didn’t plan on spending the night at home anyway.

I walked passed my Aunt Lillian’s room and asked her if she was going to come to the funeral. She shushed me and said that mass was still going to be on. Lillian watched roughly six hours of Catholic mass per day and spent an extra two hours praying the rosary.

“You know, it’s going to be in a church, and she is your sister. She only lived with you for the past year.”

Lillian didn’t respond. She just quivered with a simple “I’m not going” escaping from her mouth.

Beto and I walked out into the morning and made our way towards the funeral home.

“What’s the guitar for?” Beto asked as we rounded Piedmont Street and made our way onto Main South.

“I’m going to play it today at the funeral.”

Beto nodded. “Hey, I know it doesn’t mean much to you now and we never, you know, hang out and shit, but your moms was pretty cool.”

“Yeah, she was.”

Beto said he would come to the funeral, but he had other business to attend to. When we got to the funeral home he said he would come back later to check on me, and he started on his way back.

The last thing I remember clearly that I did not want to go back into that funeral home. So I stayed a moment longer in the sunlight; soaking it up like it was the last chance I was ever going to feel that warm inside again.

My Right Foot

Some days I prefer waking up from a nightmare than from a fantasy designed to make me happy. Today was one such day. I barely remember what I was dreaming about, but I remember it involving me having a really good day. I was a better version of myself. I was happy and had friends to hang out with. Everyone was laughing and joking as if nothing bad had ever happened.

Then when the phone rang, I was snapped out of it, and was quite thankful for it. Not only had I overslept, but lately my dreams have been causing me to get out of bed on the wrong foot. I will be perfectly happy when I am sleeping, but when I wake up I realize that the chances of today being a day unlike any other are very slim. Almost immediately, I start to feel almost like I am hung over and I want to crawl back into bed.

While that seems like a cynical thing to say and might seem like I don’t enjoy happiness, nothing could be further from the truth. I love being happy and over the past week I have felt a great deal of satisfaction. My only hope is that my dreams don’t try to create a day that was better than the one I just had.

When I completed my blog about “The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking” over at “Because You Want To...” I felt more confident that I have in a long time. I felt a great deal of satisfaction and was glad to see my writing slowly coming back to the point where I am proud of it again.

That day I started writing the piece was pretty uneventful except for the massive KFC feast we had for dinner in honour of Jeebus and the Easter Bunny. After watching the movie, taking notes, and drawing and outline to write the final product the next day, I went to bed perfectly content. The movie might have stunk, but I was once again thinking clearly enough to craft something linear (even if I admittedly did try to wrap it up pretty quickly since even I thought it was getting a bit long).

I had a great dream that night, too, and damned if I didn’t wake up feeling like crap the next morning. It wasn’t bad as waking up happily on Monday morning. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the cat wanted food. It was a few animated chipmunks away from being a Disney film with the most disgruntled and half asleep character they ever thought up.

Come to think of it, maybe it isn’t my dreams that are troubling me as much these days. In a way, I am kind of disappointed that I don’t seem to be a morning person anymore. I used to be the type of person who no matter how begrudging I was when I woke up, could always function at the drop of a hat.

In the past few weeks, it has been the exact opposite, and I don’t think my daily routine is helping too much. Ever since I had my nervous breakdown about a month ago, I decided to give myself a daily routine to try and psych myself into being motivated. I get up, make the bed, get somewhat dressed before going downstairs to turn on the coffee pot and wash up, do a couple of chores, then grab my coffee, sit at the computer, check some e-mails and take the day from there.

Maybe I am suffering from “Groundhog Day” syndrome. The days just seem so similar that there is no way my dreams could ever hope to compete. In the end reality always wins, and often in a rout. At least on Thursday and Friday I actually have stuff to do. That will hopefully break up the monotony for a little while.

Despite all of those issues, I have been working well throughout the afternoon and I am pleased to say my headache is almost gone. Even though this is something that could have been better written, I just wanted to put it down as a reminder to myself to keep going and to not give up.

I feel like I am on the cusp of something better than I have ever attempted before.

Letters to a Non-existant Editor #1-China

The recent turmoil in Tibet has renewed conversation in several countries over boycotting the Beijing Olympics. While upheaval and unrest in China is nothing new, it is a stark reminder of China’s dark side coming up at a bad time.

The truth is China has acted in recent years like a never-do-well sibling. You know the kind who keeps coming back to the house insisting they have cleaned up their act and then goes and does something stupid again? Between shoddy products, poisonous foods, inaction in Darfur and Burma, and numerous human rights violations, it makes one wonder why Beijing was still considered for the Olympics in the first place. (Admittedly, it helps that the games were awarded during some "down time.")

It is downright disheartening that some of the people who made the decision to grant the games to Beijing are now some of the very same people saying their countries are going to boycott the Olympics. What good do they honestly think boycotts of the Olympics are going to? The Olympics will go on regardless of who shows up. The Chinese could play themselves if they wanted to.

The only people a boycott would hurt would be the athletes at this point. These are the people who followed their dreams and put their lives on hold in pursuit of them. They have bled and sweat for what they wanted to achieve, and now it is all threatened to be for naught because a suit in an office is second guessing themselves and wants to make a political statement that won’t make fuck-all difference.

If you want to make a statement to China, sanction them. Taking away a sporting event changes nothing. Leave the boycott up to the individual athletes and let them decide with their own conscience what to do.

Make It Happen

I hate the reception area at my therapist’s office. Everyone in the waiting area seems completely burnt out. The two receptionists, an older man and woman both either over the age of sixty or severely ravaged by the passing years, were particularly nasty upon my first visit. This time, however, they merely acknowledged my presence at the wood panelling covered intake counter by sighing accordingly and handing me paperwork without once making eye contact.

It was certainly off putting to meet them on my first visit. I was scared and nervous and I was greeted by people who simply grunted and sighed with exasperation at any questions I had. Today I realized that it can’t be easy for them as the appear to be the only receptionists that work for a non-profit metal health organization that is located directly in front of a row of group homes. Over the years I can see how people in that position can build up such nastiness and call it a defence mechanism.

The wait wasn’t as long this time before I was able to see the doctor. As far as I could see, there wasn’t even a patient in her office before I was. My agent, who dropped me off as planned but had to back out of a lunch engagement, had left only minutes before I was told to take a seat in the doctor’s office.

I have yet to be in a therapist’s office that has one of those neat couches you see in the movies or on television. I always end up in a cramped room devoid of the volumes of books you would expect to see in such an office. This is probably attributed to the fact that I have never had to pay for therapy yet in my life, and as such routinely see doctor’s who have more of a travelling practice rather than a steady office.

The chair I sat in seemed made for fidgeting around in with high arm rests that were too uncomfortable to rest your arms on and yet too pushed together to comfortably cross one’s legs. I repeatedly slouched as it seemed the only way to be truly comfortable since the ungodly looking red leather backing was both padded and oddly curved from years of use. I would have switched to the chair to the left of me, but the rip in the cushion always makes me think that something has fallen into the chair or it has been the victim of someone’s ill placed rage. I never once consider a ripped seat to be the work of simple wear and tear.

I could see my file on the desk in front of me and it was alarmingly bigger that I remembered it being the last time I visited. I was tempted to look at what information she had gathered in my few week absence. My somewhat delusional paranoia kicked in and I began to wonder who she had talked to and what they had said about me. Then I began to wonder if she had left it on the table deliberately to see if I would bite and try too peek into it. Then again, one of my biggest problems was always questioning other people’s motives.

My doctor (who I shall now refer to as my doctor since I don’t anticipate seeing another one) entered the office dressed a lot more casually than the last time I saw her. Last time it was a pant suit with a slightly mismatched jacket; today it was jeans and a button down shirt. It seemed like it was a much more laid back day at the office all around.

We exchanged pleasantries and got all the juicy details that I am not going to discuss here out of the way. The one thing that I am not going to discuss here are, oddly enough, my feelings. I can’t give all my secrets away. We discussed people in my life, how I feel about them and how they feel about me (or at least how I perceive it). Since a lot of those people could very well be reading this, I find it very unfair at this point to put things like that out into the open. I will say that what was talked about was nothing that I wouldn’t tell someone to their face. Also, without frame of reference, many readers of this blog would be completely lost.

Technically, I shouldn’t be discussing any of the therapy session, and I probably wouldn’t have but in an odd way the talk we had pretty much demanded that I did.

The file on the desk had been bulked up with my past medical records. I expressed during my last appointment that I feared my problem was more than simple depression. I lied to a lot of people that I cared about and did some very stupid things. I felt trapped and lashed out in the worst and most self serving ways possible. I distorted things to create a more palatable reality for myself. The first thing that sprang to mind was that I was bipolar; a disorder that I brought up the last time I was hospitalized for trying to kill myself in October of 2006 with an ill advised overdose of Tylenol P.M. Instead of getting a concrete answer, I was prescribed sleeping pills that made me sick and an antidepressant that I was weaned off only a few months after I went on them. Then I was given anxiety medication that I avoided like the plague and threw away.

When I tried killing myself it was my second hospitalization for depression; the first coming shortly after my parents passed away and I found out my girlfriend was cheating on me over the span of what remains the worst two weeks of my life. Both occasions were now in the file in front of me, along with every trip I had to psychiatrists and psychologists over the course of my life dating back to high school.

The doctor told me what I heard time and time again when researching bipolar disorder; that one in three people who have it will go undiagnosed and will not receive proper treatment. I was delighted and scared at the same time to learn that she was inclined to agree with me based on the evidence in front of her.

She said that she noticed in the U.S. that there is a stigma surrounding diagnosing anyone as being bipolar, or even calling it manic depression. Much like how a person who is bipolar will try to blame their problems on other people or situations (no matter how well placed the blame might be), doctors in the states prefer to look simply at the “depression” part of the equation rather than the “manic part,” preferring to place the blame on other tangential societal forces or more Freudian notions.

The reason the last doctor I saw never really said much about my condition is because she simply believed I had a nervous breakdown brought on by extreme stress and despair. She thought my problem was solely societal and had nothing to do with the fact that I lied and deceived friends into thinking I was fine. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my brain’s fault. In the old doctor’s eyes, society was to blame.

The new doctor said that the signs all point to me being bipolar, but she was going to stop just short of diagnosing me on the spot. Being bipolar means sometimes having to take some potentially dangerous medications that need to be continuously calibrated and tweaked as time goes on, and as such further testing is needed on my part. She said since I have been showing some signs of progress, she was not going to have me committed (not that she really would have been able to do that anyway), but she scheduled an appointment for a physical where some tests will also be run to make sure my liver isn’t damaged since Lithium is most likely what I will be prescribed along side an anxiety medication and some sleeping pills. Two days after the physical (which will be handled in the same building when they have their monthly “physicalpalooza,” as she called it) we will meet again and talk about medication.

I am willing to go along with anything at this point. I think I have done a fairly good job thus far of pulling my life out of a nose dive and am slowly pulling back up from the floor of the jungle, but I know I need to stay on something regimented. I don’t want to go through what I have just gone through a second time. Or a third time. Or ever again.

In the meantime, I have been given a homework assignment-slash-job of sorts. Which is why I am posting this not just to let people know how I am feeling, but to explain what I am going to be doing over the next few weeks in this blog and also in its companion “Because You Want To....”

My doctor knows all about the troubles I have had with my past publisher and knows how I have been struggling with my writers block and lack of motivation or stimulation. She also knows that I fluctuate wildly between narcissism and extreme self deprecation that it makes sense that I delete half the things I write.

She wants me to realize that art for art’s sake is not art for the sake of life. She also knows that without steady paying work, I have a lot of downtime where I lamentably either flip through the channels over and over again or compulsively check my email in hopes of something arriving.

She said that if I want to consider myself a writer, I need to start treating it as if it were a job again. As such, I am now on a strict writing regiment. I must write five hours per day (research not included, but drafting is), four days a week, and I am not to delete anything. I must turn out four pages of material per week either typed or handwritten that I am truly proud of or at least think sound coherent. She will be calling to make sure I am doing as such and checking these blogs to see if I am following through.

She didn’t give me a list of Dos, but gave me a list of Don’ts.

-Do not substitute writing for action. If something comes up, by all means tend to that first.

-Don’t be overly intellectual unless you have to. It will only give you a bigger ego.

-Don’t use writing to complain unless it is necessary to prove a point or it is in a jocular manner. If you do, make sure it is to convey a feeling. If you bitch and complain all the time, no one will read anything you write.

-Don’t become self-absorbed. Over analysis is counter productive.

-Don’t use writing as a substitute for therapy.

-Most importantly, don’t delete or throw anything away regardless of how you feel about it. If you aren’t proud of something or it isn’t ready, simply hide it away.

-Don’t repress your feelings. All you will do is kill your soul.

-It doesn’t have to be serious (recipes even count as writing if you commit them to paper and make them up creatively) and don’t take it as such.

I was also given a suggested reading list of authors and books I should look at and study in my off time. I do plan on reading some of these if I get the chance, so if anyone reading this has any of these, a loan for a week or so will earn you baked goods as soon as the oven gets fixed.

Living by the Word by Alice Walker

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

The Crack-up by F. Scott Fitzgerald

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Anything by Elizabeth Bishop

Anais Nin’s Journals

The Diary of Alice James

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”

The Liars Club by Mary Karr (which I started reading years ago and never finished)

Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (which I wouldn’t mind reading again)

The White Peacock by D.H. Lawrence

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

Jazz by Toni Morrison

House of the Spirits by Isabele Allende

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

The Pinch Runner Memorandum by Kenzaburo Oe

Now to end this on a somewhat abrupt conclusion because I am tired and just want to post this before passing out and going to bed. I still do have one more issue from today to address.

My agent was going to have lunch with me this afternoon after the appointment, but we had to settle for a quick cup of coffee at Tim Horton’s before she had to go away on business. In my last blog I stated that I had two potential options with regards to my old publisher. After much thought, I decided that I don’t want to fight with them right now.

In such a business you don’t want to make too many enemies as the very people who said no to you before might very well come around in the future and want you for something else. Now with the notion that I have to push myself on a constant daily basis, I am positive that I can come up with pieces I can sell over the next year or so. I’m not going to pressure myself more than I have to. I am going to let things come naturally. A lawsuit is not guaranteed and could very well take longer than waiting for my option to expire. That’s more stress and uncertainty than I am willing to expend on a gamble.

I will wrap this up now with a simple thank you for those who have stuck by me over the past few months. Without you guys, I am a fraction of a person.

So until tomorrow then?

Lean On Me

“If you were to ask me if you need an agent to be a successful writer, my answer would be an emphatic, no.” – Alex Haley

“Andy, the truth is that I don’t have the energy to fight this for you. You are more than welcome to... hang on a sec...”

Her call waiting beeps as it often does and I am put on hold. I have been around my agent more than a few times on such an occasion and know that if she likes you as a client she will only put you on hold; if she doesn’t the person who just buzzed their way into the conversation will be the only excuse she needs to hang up on you.

We knew each other casually when I lived in Buffalo and heard her spoke very highly of amongst creative types. I had met some people she had represented; promoters, club owners, other writers, bands, and even the odd actor or two, but she rarely took work from them since the money just wasn’t reliable enough. Almost everyone I spoke to thought of her as a fierce and well rounded agent. Almost a wunderkind by the age of 30, she had degrees in marketing and entertainment law.

She knew my story before I finished writing it, told over a few black and tans at the Old Pink, and although it took her a while to get back to me, I knew she was my best shot of landing an agent.

“You there?”

“Yeah.”

“Now, I can’t make this decision for you, but my own selfish advice to you is to cut your losses. Your life is a mess right now and you really just need time to get your shit together. Right now, you don’t need their grief; they screwed you over and treated you like shit when they weren’t screwing you over. That’s the nature of the business. And without a lawyer and someone willing to pay for them, you won’t win.”

“Why can’t you represent me?”

“You know I am burnt out, and as much as it hurts me to say this, you lean on me too much. You know I would do anything to help you, but right now I physically can’t.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I can’t argue with anything she just said. I know she is burnt out. She hasn’t had a vacation or even an entire real day off in three years. I also know damn well that I tend to lean on people more than I should. On either count, I am glad to be blessed with one of the most honest agents on earth.

“If you need a ride to the doctor next Thursday, we will meet up then. I’ll take you and we’ll do lunch when you get out, and from there we will decide what to do next. The way I see it, you have two options in front of you. The first is you wait one year and eight or so months for the option to expire and you write something else in the interim that I can shop around. Your second option, since neither of us can afford a lawyer and I sure as hell ain’t doin’ it, you rewrite the book, make it just different enough from the original, make it better, sell it, and get the new publisher to pay for a lawyer to get it out quicker.”

Both options have their obvious ups and downs and I am not going to rush into a decision on this one. I will admit that I am leaning towards option A for the time being, mostly because there is no guarantee that option B will take less than a year and however many months. Plus, I do want to get my life together and put a few things behind me. Rewriting the book has become a task that cripples me every time I think about it. If I change my mind and find that I can go back and write more and improve on it, I can switch to option B at any time.

“What about my money?”

She sighs and seemed afraid that I was going to ask that question. “There isn’t much I can do about it now. I tried talking to them and they want a war. It’s cheaper for them to throw a little bit of money at their legal team since you are such a little fish with no stable legal representation yourself, and then they can keep you tied up in paperwork for as long as they want. Which means until your option is up.”

My expression turned crestfallen on my end of the line, and I wanted to say how I felt at that moment, but I am trying to curb such outburst. Plus, what she was about to say made my tongue biting all the more relevant.

“Don’t rock the boat, Andy. I know these types. If you push them around too much, they will not hesitate to make your life more hell than it already is.”

“Yeah, no... I know.”

“Well, think it over and we will discuss it.” Then she pipes in with the best news of the conversation. “I made a decision about the summer. If you still want my place, it’s yours, but there have been a few changes.”

“Sure, you name it.”

“First, moving in early is a no-go since Tim (her fiancé whom she plans on marrying during their summer sabbatical) isn’t cool with it. He also thinks that you are paying me rent and subletting, so don’t blow my cover.”

“OK, what else?”

“I’m not leaving until June 16^th. I have a lot coming up in May that I can’t cut out early on, plus I am having trouble at the moment finding a good replacement to take over for me while I am gone. Finally, I talked to the building owner... you weren’t still planning on bringing that cat were you?”

“No. Not anymore.”

“OK, then forget I brought it up. Anyway, I gotta’ run (famous name to remain nameless) is calling me back again and he won’t leave me alone. Think about what I said and above all just take care of yourself.”

I told her I would, and then went back to my normal day of housework and chores almost as if she hadn’t called at all.

Leaving the Presidential Suite

Note: This is the first in a series I intend to run in this blog about how different songs remind me of different points in my life. This is a reworked version of what was supposed to be the first chapter of my book, and it is in a very rough version. I know there are punctuation errors, and most likely typos that point out the fact that when I type, I do it quickly and don't pay much attention to things like "their" and "there." Almost everything I write is handwritten first and I transcribe as fast as possible. I post it here because I am happy with how it has turned out thus far and wanted to share it.

Three men in yellow jump suits were attempting to save the city from various monsters while I took a break from loading up the U-Haul my father had gotten stuck on a tree stump and that I ultimately had to pay for. I didn’t sit down, but I watched them do battle from the middle of our almost empty apartment. I was exhausted and the battle was a distraction. Truth be told, I don’t know why the television hadn’t been moved yet. All that was left to move was the television, the couch, and my mother.

I had been working straight through the night with the exception of a tear filled, hour long nap on a mattress that used to be a part of my bed in a room that used to be mine as well. No one usually watched MTV in my house. I know I hardly ever did unless it was the movie awards. I was so tired that the video began to hypnotize me despite the fact that we still had one last trip to the storage locker to go. From that bleary eyed moment I could never listen to the Beastie Boys without thinking of how badly my parents had fucked up.

My mother’s empty beer cans should have been cleaned up, but looking back at her from my spot in front of the TV she bought back when she had money and less of a drinking problem, it was clear that neither of us really cared about the apartment anymore. There was a broken lamp left behind in the old dining room, blending dangerously into the ugly, yellow shag carpeting and causing us to step cautiously. The avocado coloured kitchen was a maze of stains where the oven and fridge used to be, and the already worn out and matching linoleum tiles were showing even more cracks than I ever remembered seeing in eighteen years. The only room that remained mostly the same was the bathroom because nothing really had to be moved out of there.

I asked my father if we were even going to bother moving the couch at all. I would have asked my mother, but she was passed out. She never once lifted a finger to help us. Instead she remained on the couch drinking all night only to get up and go across the street to the new liquor store next to Shaw’s to buy another twelve pack of Meister Brau that I probably inadvertently paid for but was too stupid to notice. My mother was a tiny woman about four foot ten and 92 pounds, but she could drink with the best of them.

My father muttered under his breath that he didn’t give a shit. The couch came from the attic and was a must old replacement for the musty old couch my father had worn out two years earlier. I also think that much like the couch, my mother could have rotted there for all he cared.

My parents never married, and the only reason they ever stayed together was out of fear. Or at least that was my understanding. Their stories always varied wildly in terms of how they met. My father insists they met at the bar my mother was a bartender at on a night when someone got stabbed in the men’s room. My mother insists that they first met at The Fair (a shitty department store on Front Street in Worcester, Massachusetts that shuttered it’s dingy yellow windowed façade for good in the early 90’s), but she did admit to having seen him at the bar before that and he probably wasn’t even there the night the guy was stabbed and my mother was the only witness.

My mother was born Alice Abbott in 1943 in Worcester, the second oldest of eight brothers and sisters. Only Lillian eclipsed her in age by two years, and neither knew who their real father was. She always suspected that her mother was ashamed of their real father and lied to them, thinking her step father was the real deal. My mother was the only one abused by him as far as she knew. I didn’t know before she passed away that her suspicions about him had been right and she had in fact been raped by her own father. It might sound callous and cold to write something like that off in such a sentence, but that was all I ever really knew about my mother’s relationship with her parents, who had both passed away long before I was born.

Alice had previously been married to Robert Parker, the name that she kept and passed on to me instead of my father’s surname of Cooke which boggled the minds of my teachers all throughout school since God forbid a child ever be born out of wedlock. They met by chance in Green Hill Park. She was serving beer at a lawn fete and he was in a band playing at the gazebo on the other side of the park. They struck up a conversation, began to date, and apparently married in 1972 after a two year courtship.

While I didn’t know much of their relationship, and probably never will now, I do know they divorced in 1979 due to the old chestnut known as “irreconcilable differences,” and that as far as I know they never spoke to each other while I was alive. Robert died in 1985 after a lengthy battle with lung cancer. His decision to have his body cremated and strewn about a field of daisies in Green Hill Park where they used to go, was one they had talked about while they were married. She never went to the ceremony (one performed by his sister) but remembered him in her own way: with a bottle of vodka and tears for two straight weeks every night before going to bed.

My father was born in 1930 something in Sommerville, Massachusetts, and while I had met his mother (who ended up living until she was 98) and one of his brothers (who was a stock broker in Chicago and the only present he ever gave me was a holographic beer stein from the Marlboro Racing Team when I was ten before never seeing him again), the only relative on his side of the family that ever opened up to me was his sister Hazel who seemed to like me very much, but never thought very highly of my father. When he refused to show up for his own mother’s funeral, I never so much as got a card from her every again. She was the only extended relative that ever remembered my birthday or ever really seemed to care that I existed.

My father’s life in general was a mystery to me. All I know about Donald Cooke (other than the last few years of his life) is mostly random knowledge. He was hit by a school bus when he was six. He served as a paratrooper in the Korean War. He could have been a stockbroker with A.G. Edwards had he bothered to go to college, and he always wanted me to become one without outwardly saying it, but instead he went to work with his friend Bill Wentzel (whose daughter Jill would later become my prom date Senior year) and Newman-Haas Racing.

At some point, Donald and Alice met, fucked, and had me. Then they moved in together. Why they stayed together was anyone’s guess, but apparently Donald threatened to kill me had she ever had the nerve to try and kick him out.

I never remembered being there when that fight happened since I was still in diapers, so just like most things they had told me over the years, it could have been bullshit, but my father’s violent outbursts were no secret to me.

My father had only been physically abusive toward me twice. The first time was in sixth grade when I tried running away. I was failing all my classes, save English, and had already been grounded for the remainder of the year and the summer to follow. I thought I would hop on the city bus, go to the Greyhound station and just disappear. I got as far as the public library when I saw him standing there. When we got home he beat me senseless with my English book.

The second time was right after my senior prom. I had just picked up my pictures from CVS before going to school on my daily morning trip to get my father his morning coffee and newspaper. I was nervous about him seeing the pictures because I had honestly forgotten to take a picture of Jill and I together, and had wasted all the film on pictures of my friends and teachers.

He opened the envelope of pictures almost as soon as I had entered the house, and I knew what was coming as soon as I saw the look that came across his wrinkled face. “Not one fucking picture of you.” Each word was punctuated with a long pause that no ellipsis could rightfully convey.

That was when he threw the scalding hot medium double-double at me, most of it hitting my left bicep and chest after dodging most of it.

“Now everyone is going to think my son is a fucking faggot!”

I saw red with him for the first time. I thought back to all the things he had done to my mother that I had always been told to stay quiet about. The time I had to run to my neighbour Shannon’s house by escaping through the window and just barely out of his grip on my bare ankles while he screamed at me and punched the air. I was six and had playfully slapped him with a spatula before he snapped. I had no idea he had been fired from his job at a junkyard (or as he always hastened to say “salvage shop”) and he snapped. He slammed my mother on the coffee table and told me to watch what he was going to do to her because he was going to do it to me next. Before he could pull her pants down I had been making a break for it. He had previously nailed the back door shut, and it wasn’t until that terrified moment as a child that I realized exactly why he had done it. He made it back to the window just as I had gotten away with my mother screaming at me and telling me to run.

I took a shortcut through the woods as the fallen pine needles and branches cut up my feet. I kind of blanked out at that point and remembered nothing until my mother came to Shannon’s door to get me, wearing a plain white T-shirt covered in blood and a small trickle coming down her nose telling me that everything was ok and that it was safe to go home.

I remembered the time my father was throwing open beer cans as if they were grenades at my mother’s door and nearly missing me as I sat at my desk trying to read “Trumpet of the Swan” for school. That was because he came home drunk and wanting to fuck, something that hadn’t been done since I was conceived.

When he was out of ammo, he turned to me and ripped the book form my hands, screaming at the top of his lungs that I was the man of the house now. He stormed off and out the door, only to come back the next morning after my mother had gone to work with no recollection of what happened the night before.

It all came back when the coffee hit my arm. I knew that in less than three weeks all this would be over and that testing my patience at this point in my life would make for a fair fight.

“Who the fuck is going to think that, Don? You don’t have any fucking friends anymore!”

I ducked out of the way of the lamp he ripped from the wall; the same lamp that remained in the corner of the dining room on the day we got evicted.

I cocked back with my fist ready to strike and he recoiled. I wasn’t young anymore. I was tall as he was now and in much better shape from playing varsity hockey. I didn’t pursue the issues any further. I changed my shirt despite the sting from the burns and left without saying a word.

The last job my father even held was a landscaper, which he quit when I was seven, never to work again. Instead he spent his days watching CNN, C-SPAN, and listening to Rush Limbaugh all day complaining about the state of the liberal world while doing all the chores himself because my mother and I would just “fuck it all up.”

My mother used to be quite successful. She was an assistant manager at a Friendly’s restaurant when I was born and for the longest time was supporting the three of us. I never noticed her drinking problem, which led to her demotion to wait staff and work, until I was almost out of high school. My father always brought it up, but I always refused to believe him. I always thought that the woman who always use to soothe my wounds and meant the world to me could do no wrong.

I never questioned that we needed to go to the supermarket every day with her tip money and that the only things we bought every day were beer and cigarettes (the beer for her, the smokes more for my father). She always told me we were just living day to day. I believed it. I never found it odd that she always had a beer before work when she got up at five in the morning. I thought a lot of people did. I never questioned her need for a beer as soon as she got home, and I never questioned her need for one every time she got up in the middle of the night.

My mother did have the vast advantage in my heart precisely because she did actually work and wasn’t a lazy piece of shit like my father was. I will always remember that every morning she would write me a note if she had to leave before I went to school telling me just how much she loved me. No other reason other than love. Every note was written on blank checks from Friendly’s, like the kind you would get your bill on. Always along the margin she would write “P.S. I love you!!!! XOXOXOXOXOXO” until she ran out of room on the page. Every day a new pet name for me (some I would adopt as pet names for others) and a smiley face right next to where she would sign her name. And just so I wouldn’t forget she would put my lunch money and bottle of Flintstone’s Vitamins next to it.

But now, here she was passed out and reigned to her own fate. She hadn’t been working as much. Her drinking more prevalent and our new landlord (a strip club tycoon and owner of the Palladium Entertainment Complex) wanted all the tenants out. We couldn’t afford the rent increase and my mother was fast talked into a sucker deal that stated she could pay the old rent of $480 a month until I graduated high school, and if we wanted to stay after that, we would have to come up with $1,400 a month. It went to court. She never sought counsel no matter how illegal and shady the guy was. She did it, even though my father grumbled about it constantly (despite refusing to go to court in her place even though he knew a lot more about tenant’s rights).

My father was on his way to the storage locker and I took a break. I was drained, both physically and financially. I was supposed to be starting at Boston University in the fall, but I had just spent all the money I had saved on getting a storage locker for all of our possessions (which my parents said the would pay for after I loaned them the money) as well as on the U-Haul and it’s future damages. I was broke and no amount of money that I could possibly earn over the summer would ever be enough to cover the difference between what my grants would get me and what I had on hand. I guess that was my own damned fault for wanting a quality education.

“You know you are going to have to find some place to stay, right?” My mother had woken from her cheap beer induced coma to do nothing more that rub some more salt in my wounds. She was going to live with her sister on Preston Street in the city, which is a nice enough neighbourhood if you enjoy muggings, car crashes, fires, and shoot outs every night. I wanted to tag along with her since I really had no other place to go and my application for last second on campus housing hadn’t gone through yet. Sadly, that was never going to happen as Lillian thought I was a heathen in her devoutly Catholic eyes and she never forgave me for calling her brother Billy a low life smack addict (to his face).

“Yeah. I know.”

“Why don’t you go stay with your father?”

Given our past history, one could assume that I just flat out wouldn’t want to live with someone who was so abusive towards me, but if he even bothered to come up with a plan, anything would have been better than being homeless. I know he attempted to contact Hazel. I even attempted to contact her on his behalf, but we had all lost touch for so long that we didn’t know where she lived anymore. Or even if she was still alive at all. Despite her disdain for her brother, she probably would have let him stay with her had we been able to track her down.

When I asked my father what he would do, he simply shrugged his shoulders and mumbled that he would survive. When I broke down and started crying because I didn’t know what I was going to do he just told me to stop my crying and move the TV set.

I unplugged the television and unhooked the cable. Somewhere the battle still raged on, but here, it was a lost cause.

It comes at night while you're waiting

A good writer should be smart enough to know why their writing is suffering. I, unfortunately, am not that smart.

To say that I have been stressed out lately would be putting things mildly. Really fucking stressed. Now that is more like it; even though I am am aware of how piss poor that sounds.

I spent the better part of the last four years working on a book that isn't going to see the light of day any time soon. For some people, that would be enough to give up. When the book you wrote was your life story, you tend to take the experience harder. It is almost as if your life has meant nothing, and all those people who questioned why your life was so special were proven right.

I know that I am suffering right now and that my mind is in a bad place. I used to be able to write full sentences and be able to give everything a considerable amount of thought. These days I just feel numb and I I don't give a shit about my own writing. I can still proofread something a friend has written and point out every flaw, but I can't be bothered to even reread this sentence.

By nature, I am bipolar. The ups and downs are nothing new to me. What I can't stand is the general apathy I feel right now. I am stuck in a place where I have little to no stimulation and I only have myself to blame. There is nothing I can really be mad about these days except for myself and petty setbacks that a normal person could easily shake off, but would manage to throw off my entire day.

The purpose of this blog, as well as my other, happier blog ("Because you want to") is to get back on my feet and get me back to the point I was at before I lost my train of thought. This is the darker blog, as you can see. In this blog things will be a bit more personal and serious. If something is bothering me, you can find it here. This will also be the place to find me writing about serious issues rather than pop culture.

That's all. Sadly, even writing that took a lot out of me.