I had ringworm once. When I was a young boy, a weird curlicue started showing up on my face. I was too young for actual acne, so my mother took me to a Doctor. Ringworm. Treat it with a kind of cream and be very careful with laundry and don’t let anybody touch my face and don’t touch my face myself. It wasn’t really obvious to others maybe, but it was to me.
I mean to say, other people notice if they look closely and they feel sorry for you. They feel sympathy, but what can they do? It’s same when you have an obvious physical disability; maybe confined to a wheelchair or are carrying a white cane or missing a leg or arm. Others feel sympathy and look away, but “it’s not their problem. Eh?”
“How did you get this condition? What did you do wrong that brought this karma, calamity on yourself?” “You must’ve done something really wrong, or bad.” “You earned or deserved this bad thing.” Which coalesces into “You’re just an inferior person.”
Everything makes you sad. A broken butterfly, a dying flower. A squirrel squashed on the road brings you to tears. Every minor criticism feels like a slap in the face. Every compliment sounds insincere, “What do they want?” Suspicion of every good thing that happens. Confrontation brings out the hulk, “FUCK YOU!” And, you know you are broken. You have sinned somehow. You are bad. You are always wrong. You are just plain bad!
And, you always will be.
IF we could just fix you. We being your friends and family. You being the “broken one”. But, it never seems to work. All efforts to “fix you” seem to only last a short while, or until you get triggered beyond the capacity of the medication you are made to take, that is supposed to control your “problem.” Or, the therapy you are made to attend.
Maybe it was because, when you were eleven years old, you fell off a truck crate, ten feet onto the top of your head. Onto concrete and broken glass. Or, because your mother drank too much, all the time, and turned from loving to brutal every day of your childhood. Maybe it was because your first great love killed herself. Or, the time when you were riding your bicycle and an old lady made a left turn, without signaling, at 40 mph and ran over your head. That was after you took out her left headlight with your skull. Maybe, just maybe, it was because you spent two years in a foreign war that was pointless and the images of that carnage, branded and scorched into your soul, will not let you sleep at night; ever.
All of those incidents were somehow your fault, really. Nobody cares. Nobody really cares. If you were a good person and smarter or maybe some God loved you a little more, none of them would have happened. Being told every single day that, “Everybody has problems” makes you feel sad, deeply sad, but somehow you don’t quite understand what that is supposed to mean. It doesn’t take away the fact that you went to war with four friends and you are the only one who came back.
It doesn’t change that memory of your first great love putting a rifle barrel in her mouth and pulling the trigger. Your child, your six year old son finding her and asking,”What’s wrong with Mommy?” Everybody has problems. And, you, well you are just weak and a narcissist because you let those things affect you.
Bad, weak, self-centered! When are you going to just get over it and get on with your life? You climbed to the top of the mountain several times. You even achieved some minor fame, notoriety, several awards in your chosen profession. You were the One. And, every time you fucked it up somehow.
The years ripped by and the bloom was off the rose. Suddenly you seem to be under the thumb of overbearing bosses, and colleagues who made certain your accomplishments went unnoticed. The gatekeepers and dreamstompers who held your career in their hands, made certain you went unrecognized and were kept in your place. You are no longer young and beautiful. Your experience makes you expensive to keep around. The shine is off the chrome. In a moment, an instant, quite suddenly you are irrelevant and expendable.
Any wisdom you may have gleaned from all that you did; all that you did accomplish counts for nothing in the present. What you may have overcome becomes only a matter of comparative value. “Other had it worse.” You’re old. What you know doesn’t count anymore. History is for whiners and fools.
All the bad things that happened to you were the result of poor luck or because you were a bit stupid. The good you did doesn’t matter anymore.
Driving home from my “job” (writing blogs) the other day, I was quite taken with the beautiful winter sunset. Stunning cloud formations, backlight with a fiery setting sun. This ephemeral nature of one of life’s masterpieces overwhelmed all of my inner struggles. “Go ahead; kill yourself.” That thought just cracked for a moment and my very damaged old soul quipped, “Fuck you! You might see me as a failure, as deserving of being left out on the ice. But, I’m sticking around just to see more of those sunsets.”
