WAAAAAH!

There are benefits to being neurotic. For instance, I get to swing pendulous between extremes, moods turn on a dime, loving and hating at the same time makes for an interesting day. My neurotic side gets edgy at the prospect of a new therapist and shoots down potentials for having a lazy eye or a turkey neck. They're all crazy as Christians, he'll lament. I choose a woman so he'll compare her to Mom, orchestrator of this mess I call a psyche. She'll examine. But I'll shut her down at the door. Sorry, Bryan's unavailable at the moment, but if you'd like to leave a message....

I tried a male whose timidity fell somewhere between kitten caught in a thunder storm, and turtle surrounded by bored teens. I swear he salivated at my list of symptoms and their catalyst. I wrote him off, delighted that I present such a challenge.

I see her Monday. A smell something like potpourri or sleepytime tea will permeate the air. I'll decline all beverages. She'll interpret my choice of chairs. Hers will be cordoned off with everyday trinkets, glasses maybe, a cell turned off. Books will line the shelves, the titles will spill forth like bullet items on a resume. She read Jung and Erickson but finds Freud too...too...whatever. He snorted cocaine to quell a crippling fear of social occasions. Ditto. Call him what you like, the man had impecable taste in narcotics.

I'll need her to challenge me if this is going to work. She'll have to fight because I protect it. Cup it in clenched hands crowbars can't pry. Over time, she'll push me to release it, but how can I release the very thing that defines me?

My essence.

My pain...

Hindsight

Flashback to 05/02/1987. Like any other 17 year old, my friends were my world, impressing them, my priority. Twenty two years later, Blaine sets up dinner on a night that we're all free. Ritchie and Tommy blow it off. Pete's detained by work. Blaine, Chris, Duane, Rachel, and I sit down to dinner. Olivia, our waitress, is wonderful, engaging, attentive. Alcohol flows, tongues loosen. The skeletal remains of past insecurities wash up on waves of nostalgia. But I am inherently different now...or so I thought.

I wear my past like a red badge of courage, proof that the depths of depravity are inhabitable. I flaunt it, deliver it on the butt of jokes about amorous cellmates and rusty shanks. Dad's ring tone is Darth Vader's labored breathing. Part of it is a giant fuck you to the other survivors who hide it like a hairy mole. Grandma behests, Don't tell a soul, lie if they ask...except when she marched me to the Social Security Office in Lynn. She told them I paced the floor non-stop in an effort to squeeze an over juiced system for disability. And why shouldn't you? The Spanish and the Blacks all do it all the time.

And so I sit through dinner. Split a burger with Rachel, my arm around her, caressing. We check out her ass when she goes to the bathroom, their praise validates my petty existence.

At her expense.

There was a time that I was quite astute at keeping my neurotic side from grabbing the wheel and driving us into a ravine. I think it's time to go back to therapy...

Lilliputian

I’m little. No huge revelation there. Just take a look. Big is the last thing that comes to mind when looking at me. But I’ve always fantasized about being big. Working out everyday and gulping protein shakes only made me look like a blow fish, over-inflated and still…little.

They say you have to think big to be big. So I earned two college degrees. But intelligence is all relative. Compared to say, a vascular surgeon, I’m really little. I overcompensate with an outrageous personality, but little men with big personalities just look like assholes most of the time.

My littleness was tempted by the power of things like firearms. I felt so big the first time I held a gun. But when it went off by mistake it only shed light on how little I was. After I checked and rechecked to see if my stray bullet killed anyone, I realized I wasn’t big enough to wield it.

So overwhelming was my desire to be big that I followed other bigs like my father and brother into jewelry stores to rob them. For that they sent me to the big house where I had to survive amongst the most dangerous bigs in the world.

But I wised to the fact that to survive, I’d have to play the cards I was dealt. I embraced little and realized that bigs were the minority. I dropped twenty five pounds, toned down my personality, and let my guard down because vulnerability attracts other littles, especially female littles.

But nothing makes me feel littler than my felony conviction. It looms the biggest detriment to my littleness. Nothing looks as large on an application as --Have you ever been convicted of a felony. Massachusetts Law says I can seal my record, 15 years after the last day of my sentence, including probation. My record is eligible for sealing in 2017.

Maybe I'll apply to work in a flying car factory.

Getting Baked

Budgeting is hard, especially since I don't make any money. Training is in the dumps.

Discretionary income?

Please.

So we tighten our purse strings. I can't spend over ten bucks without hearing it from Rara. "Three dollars, three times a week, is nine dollars, that's thirty six dollars a month that we could put away." So I try not to spend. I bought braided bully sticks for Mow the other day and was handed my ass on a platter. Damn that broad can do math quick. She figured what that would cost us over a millennium, then broke it down to me in terms I understood. "If we want to buy things for her to chew, maybe something else needs to go, like chips," referring to my inability to stop buying munchies. (Notice she didn't say wine.)

I feel guilty. Rachel gets up for work at 5am every morning. So do I, but I move from the bed to the couch, switching one snuggle buddy for another. The neurotic part of me feels castrated. I'm the man, (picture me beating my chest here), I should be bringing home the bacon.

On the other hand, we have gotten creative. We cook together more. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we huddle around the mixer, baking, sifting through cookbooks and magazines for recipes. We eat healthy for the most part, incorporating grains, fruits, and veggies, whenever we can. The challenge is to avoid ingesting five hundred calories before the batter even sees the inside of the oven. Time is spent contemplating baking them at all.

Ever notice how hard it is to make broccoli taste better and how easy it is to turn a sugar cookie into an insulin coma? The other night we made the aforementioned. Rachel made a sweet lemon glaze for the topping. I melted down chocolate. We voted on which were the best.


Any guesses?

Showdown at Fresh Pond

It was a great walk up until that point. Mow frolicked in the small stretch of wood bordering the golf course, nothing new, but when she boldly stood at its edge and looked my way, I knew it was on. She baited and I fell hook, line, and sinker calling, "Mow Mow, this way."

She glanced back, poised to blow me off. I readied. We looked like two gunslingers, facing off at high noon, that is if showdowns consisted of one gunslinger running headlong into an open field while the other shouts obscenities. My blood boiled, propelling me forward.

I swooped upon her and grabbed her up, anthropomorphizing her with talk about how mangy mutts don't disobey me. I catch myself, as always, on the edge of an abyss. The edge of my anger. She did what any pup would do. I try to remind myself that running full speed toward a dead fish sounds like the most fantastic thing ever to her. I let her go, along with my homicidal ideations, and breathe. I leash her and deescalate, finding it hard to do these days. Eventually, I drop the leash again. Before my end hits the ground, she bolts back to the rotting carcass a few hundred feet back. I blast past her, feeling a measure of sick satisfaction that I outran a ten month old puppy. Her eyes begged, please Dad, don't kill me. Again I caught myself before committing the deed. Mow would live another day and I would be forced to temper my rage.

My therapist constantly points out the fact that my anger is never commensurate with the circumstance. Dubbed male's disease, he reiterates that I am struggling with the pain I'm in by dumping my anger on convenient targets. He adds that anger is usually equal to how weak I feel, that males especially, combat feelings of weakness by spewing anger on the world.

But I continue to fail at reconciling with the fact that I am human, and as such, try to deny my own ambivalence. No one can be all one thing all the time, and every powerful emotion has an equally powerful opposite. The equation sounds so simple: to acknowledge that we are comprised of both a healthy and neurotic side means that great love gets countered by stifling rage. I love you, and hate you equally.

It has never been more apparent that this concept eludes me as when Rachel says things out of the blue like, "It's the paradox of being Bry," referring to a conversation she had with her brother, Austin.

"Meaning?" I ask.

"You can be so resistant to change, you fight it tooth and nail, yet I've never met anyone with such a tremendous capacity for it."

Mow is safe, for now, but ignorance hasn't proven blissful at all. It becomes more and more apparent that digging out of old habits is like digging out of prison one painful spoonful at a time. But I'm hopeful...

Editor's Note: No Mow's were harmed during the writing of this post. 

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

FELLOW FOLLOWERS: I have finally launched my website: www.changeisoptional.org from now on all blog posts will be there and here. The site is for potential schools to check me out and see what I do...spread the word. Let me know if you know of any schools that need me. Thanks again for your support.

We are all faced with change. When there is dysfunction, we adopt behaviors that help us survive, that become so enmeshed into our unconscious, we never give them a second thought. Some lay dormant, others manifest in obsessions. From isolation, depression, and acting out to more serious problems like drinking, drugging, promiscuity, and crime, we act on our unconscious motivation to survive life, rather than live it.

We ask of those struggling, “Why don’t you just stop behaving that way,” and become even more frustrated when they shrug and reply, “I don’t know.” Both sides lose patience, and the lines of communication are severed.

Often, the catalyst for change is either a significant emotional event, or as in the case with the addict, hitting bottom. This can take years. As the consequences become more dire, family and friends may initiate ‘Tough Love’ in an attempt to force the willingness to change, and to preserve themselves from further emotional harm and deepening feelings of helplessness.
Nothing short of complete honesty will get the addict through this crucial time. Anger is high. Relapse is likely. Emotions crescendo.

Developing new coping mechanisms begins with the realization that anger is a non-optional response to pain. Confronted with the root cause of their need to self medicate, the addict comes full circle and must face the fact that substance abuse is a symptom, not the cause, of their issues.

Neurotic behavior can be traced to a faulty belief system. Beliefs about oneself that are inconsistent with reality, such as low self worth and self contempt, can cause erratic behavior. Guilt in the absence of a crime is neurotic, as is anger in the absence of any real threat. Faulty beliefs require thorough examination, often with the help of a trained professional. Here, the distinction between the ‘Dry’ addict and the recovering addict, emerges. Dry addicts see no need for change aside from cessation. Recovering addicts choose to look beyond the behavior.

Public Speaking 101

I survey their faces at the start of class, during my introduction, and notice the ones that may embark on the road to hell. No one can convince them not to travel it and very few turn back, not until they realize the climb out hurts far more than the fall. Utopia is a concept dependent upon current generations learning from our past mistakes. But the inherent folly in our nature is that we need to experience it firsthand, despite wisdom’s warnings.

One tells me that cutting helps release her anger and gives her a sense of control over it. I grimace, knowing anger is a non-optional response to pain, toxic waste that no one wants dumped near them. But anger demands expression, so we’re forced to stuff it down. Inevitably, like a beach ball submerged, it pops up elsewhere, like cutting.

I feel a tremendous connection to these kids, especially the one that sits just outside my periphery and pretends to be bored, nodding off. Later, she’ll admit to taking an oxy, an 80, enough to knock most of us on our ass, but she’s stingy about the details, the why, the true reason for doing something so reckless. Some jump right in the water, others dip a toe to see how painfully cold the plunge will be.

They size me up and write me off before I utter a word. Soon their expressions change as whatever stereotype I fit initially is shattered. Suddenly they can relate, perking as I tell their story, wondering how I know.

I still get nervous but eventually find a groove. I focus on the one avoiding eye contact or cracking jokes in the back corner, in other words, me. After, I bask in the adoration and check my blog incessantly for new followers. Occasionally someone like my cutter contacts me and tells me she heard something in my story...

I hope to reach them all but am satisfied to reach even one. Healing is like tunneling out of prison one spoonful at a time. I’m still going through the process, I guess that’s why they say, progress not perfection. After all, change is optional.