Intro: March 28^th  (1)  

Present:

  Here I sit, stuffing sour cream and onion Pringles into my mouth, watching the television watch me, sipping on a warm glass of gray goose, my heart beating erratically…stumbling along blindly and numbly on its perfunctory path, and I’m wishing I had a big fat joint…or at least a packed bowl…or at the very least, someone to talk to. A girlfriend perhaps.

It’s been a while.

I need to create this years TO DO list.

Flash back Memory #1 - 

Eleven years old. Sitting in a restaurant with my mother. And her date. I guess she couldn’t find a babysitter.

She’s not happy with me. I’m pouting.

Her date is a cop in the small town we live in. He’s well respected. He’s a good guy.

I don’t like him, although not particularly for any of those reasons. I just don’t like cops.

He orders pizza and when the waiter delivers it, he asks me if I want a piece. I say no.

My mom pinches my leg under the table. 

I take a piece.

The restaurant is also a bar. It’s smoky. Back when I was eleven you could still smoke in restaurants and bars.      

The lighting is low. There are a lot of people dining and drinking and smoking around us…so the noise level is high.

Sitting there, picking at my pizza…listening to some cop talk **** trying to get into my moms pants…I suddenly get a very peculiar sensation. It washes through me, sizzling through my skin in waves. Like a mild electrical charge…static electricity. I feel pleasantly flushed. I would later in life experience a similar sensation when tripping on acid.

Then a voice vibrates in my head. It’s not forceful. It’s not distressed. It’s female and it’s monotone. It says:

“Life’s not worth living. There’s nothing after.”

The voice repeats this several times before I feel the sensation completely wash through me…out of me…away from me.

My pizza goes uneaten. I get grounded for a week.   

I think this was when my sadness began.           

Present:  

When you’re young, certain days of the year are looked forward to with amazing anticipation. Christmas. Easter. Last day of school before summer vacation.

But is any day quite as special as your birthday? It’s all about you. You don’t share it with anyone else. (Unless you’re super unlucky and another kid was born on the same day…or you’re a twin).

That’s my day.

This is my day. Aries!

Today is my birthday.

When you’re young it’s hard to grasp the fact that your birthday, unless it falls on a day that is of national significance for some other reason, simply doesn’t get people as excited as it does you. It’s just your day. No one anticipates it like you do. Your special.          

But as you get older you start to realize that your birthday takes on a whole new meaning. For some it can even becomes an uncomfortable situation.

Being the center of attention. The congrats. The cards. Presents. Cake. The singing of the traditional song. 

It can be downright humiliating.

And as you get older still…that day that once meant so much to you…now becomes a beacon of distress.

You watch it approach on the calendar. You pray others have forgotten about it. Because lets be honest, everyone wants to make those around them just as miserable and uncomfortable as they are. So they go out of their way to remember other people’s birthdays. Go out of their way to tell the waiter it’s your birthday. Go out of their way to get you a card that jokingly reminds you of your age. (Like saying something really hurtful and then justifying it with a…“Just kidding.”)

Misery loves company.

But you don’t need to be reminded do you? Your body does it for you.

Your back starts to ache.

You start getting pains, dull throbs and assorted tics and rashes and odd spots on your skin.

You can’t hold your drink like you once did. Hangovers are now debilitating, taking several days to fully recover when it used to take hours.

You can’t run with the big dogs anymore. You can’t play basketball with your younger cousins. You can’t run that 5k in less than 25 minutes anymore.            

The other day, coming out of a 7-11 with a six pack of Heineken light under my arm, I was approached by a smoking hot dark haired girl with perky little boobs sticking straight out at me. I got a bit nervous…it had been a while since I had been approached.

I love aggressive women. Did she want to party? I sucked in my gut…pushed out my chest…

“Umm…excuse me sir…but I totally left my ID at home. Would you mind buying me and my friends some beer? We can give you a few bucks or something.”    

Sir. Me?

I died a little inside. Trite, I know…for sure.

But honestly, as you get older…everything does become trite.

Trite, tried and tired.   

After I bought her a twelve pack I asked if she was interested in partying. I’m not a pervert. I don’t like underage girls. I think that’s just **** wrong and anyone who does should be locked away for life.

I was just interested to see the response.

Now I wish I hadn’t. It’s never a good thing to be laughed at.

Yep, today is my birthday. I’m thirty eight.

More hackneyed clichés:

I’m another day older.

I’m another day wiser.

I’m another day removed from innocence and childishness.

I’m another day muddled in the madness and tedium of adulthood and responsibility.

I’m another day closer to death.

Flash back Memory #2  

Fourteen years old. Detroit. Living with Mother and Aunt in a two-bedroom house.

Remembrance: The property slopes on about a 30 degree angle, front to back. The house sits straight, right in the middle of it. The backdoor is roughly 10 feet above the ground, due to the slope, so there is a deck that stretches about 30 feet out and the length of the back of the house. Beyond the deck is a river. On a good day, when I eat my Wheaties…I can just barely clear the other bank with a decent sized rock. 

If you go down the steps of the deck you can walk along the side of it down to the water. There are two docks that stretch out into the river about 20 feet…both are weathered and unstable from years of neglect.

It should be mentioned that the river is not suitable for swimming. Fish we catch, we throw back. 

Under the deck is just dirt. And spiders. You can walk up to the house and see into the basement windows.

I’m standing there, under the deck…by the basement windows, staring out into the dirty water of the river.

I’m depressed. You wonder how an eleven year old can be depressed.

I don’t really recall the exact reason that day. I was grounded. My girlfriend dumped me. My mom wouldn’t let me go to the mall. Whatever…

Sadness wasn’t a foreign emotion to me. I learned to embrace it. Use it to my advantage.

Sadness was my sister. I was an only child.

I wrote incredibly pathetic poetry that years later I would turn into emo music. 

Standing there that day though, I was empty. Alone. Invisible.

I decided I wanted to break my arm.

I walked to the side of the house where the bricks cornered and were jagged. Looked like a good spot. I cocked my arm back and let fly.

Nothing.

So I did it again. And again. Faster and harder.

Until the pain was blinding.

Until I wound up with nothing more than a deep purple bruise on my forearm. And on my ego.

I just couldn’t do it.

My depression sank deeper and I retreated into the house. Into my room.

I wasn’t aloud to close my door. My mother was pretty strict. So I just sat on my bed and thought…

Who was this God that everyone wanted me to believe in and why did he have so much power over me. He could break my bones anytime he felt like it. But I couldn’t…?

“Life’s not worth living. There’s nothing after.”

He could smother my Grandmother in her sleep…take her to this Heaven. Away from me.

“Life’s not worth living. There’s nothing after.”

He could make my father leave us.

“Life’s not worth living. There’s nothing after.”

He could allow a drunk driver to run a red light and smash into my best friends mother.

It wasn’t fair that he should have so much power.

“Life’s not worth living. There’s nothing after.”

It didn’t seem…reasonable.