Twenty twenty twenty four hours to go I wanna be sedated Nothing to do, no where to go o, I wanna be sedated
I Want to be Sedated, The Ramones (1978)
Most people are familiar with the chorus of “I Want to be Sedated,” perhaps the most famous song of punk rock band The Ramones. This song debuted in 1978 and it seems that America took this on as the new national anthem. Joey Ramone wrote the song in response to the band being overworked by an overzealous manager. Ramone claimed to have worked 360 of 365 days that year.
What is it about life in America that has people so desperate to tune out? Drug and alcohol abuse continues to climb. Suicide rates have gone up significantly in recent years. Why are Americans so unhappy?
Another new year. Does it matter? I am not one for New Year’s resolutions. I fully believe that expectation is the mother of all disappointment. Therefore, the lower one’s expectations the better the odds we have at for contentedness, which in my opinion, is the most we can really ask for in this life. Externally imposed demarcations of time, such as New Year’s Eve, does offer the opportunity for reflection. As a self-declared neurotic, I’m always up for some reflection.
I feel the dream in me expire And there’s no one left to blame it on I hear you label me a liar ‘Cause I can’t seem to get this through You say it’s over, I can sigh again, yeah Why try to stay sober when I’m dying here
2018 was one of the worst years of my life. There seemed to be two themes running throughout the year for me: 1) loss and 2) here today, gone tomorrow.
2017 ended with me rededicating myself to my 2nd marriage… to Lena and her children… to life in a place that I did not fit in to, pretending to be someone I wasn’t… but doing it for the right reason – love. I made a real effort to make that life work, but it proved to be in vain and the marriage fell apart. Within a few months I was once again relegated to position of house boy and driver. Lena treated me this way and the children followed suite. I am not saying that I was blameless in the marriage not working; far from it. But I do believe I put in much more of a significant effort than the others in the relationship. In March I was asked to leave. There one day, gone the next… with no evidence that I had ever been there. They moved on with apparent ease.
I spent a lot of time crying… and crying.
I moved back upstate. I was devastated. I was hurt; really hurt. Despite the way I was treated and the way things ended I can still say that Lena was one of the loves of my life. And, I loved and cared for her children as if they were my own. In some ways, my love for the children and their indifference towards me was the immediate catalyst for the ending of the marriage.
Watching the walnut limbs swaying in the wind.
In Hampton I vacillated between pain and yearning… sorrow and anger…. sadness and relief. I couldn’t find the light at the end of the tunnel and didn’t know how to move on — again. I had “rebooted” myself and my life so many times already. Each time moving and redefining who and what I was. I was spent. Empty and drained… physically, emotionally and financially. Ready to disappear… to fade away quietly forever. I wasn’t exactly suicidal. I didn’t make plans to kill myself. I didn’t engage in risky behaviors like I had in the past. I just sat here… waiting to disappear.
‘Cause I’m broken when I’m open And I don’t feel like I am strong enough ‘Cause I’m broken when I’m lonesome And I don’t feel right when you’re gone away
I started this blog on April 23; almost two months into my exile. I wrote as a way to work through the debilitating pain that had permeated my entire being. I was asked to be interviewed for a piece on the Today Show about suicide attempt survivors. I started to discover my true self for perhaps the first time in my life. Not living for anyone else. Not trying to fit into anyone else’s mold of what or who I should be or could be.
Just at the point in time when I started to begin to feel some semblance of being OK… my father died. His greatest fear came true: he died alone, away from his family, in Poland. There was a voicemail from my step-mother saying that my father had died. That’s all I got. No further communication for weeks. I heard from my brother that our father supposedly had a heart attack and that our step-mother had him cremated in Poland. There was no funeral. There was no obituary. Here one day, gone the next… without a hiccup or a cough in the universe. Everything just kept spinning. This shitty fucking world doesn’t care who we are. When we die, it doesn’t matter. Everything keeps moving forward. Period.
My dad and me in 1976
Humans suck, therefore, all relationships are “complicated.” However, my relationship with my father was particularly complicated. My father was a brilliant academic. He had a genius IQ and scored perfect scores on the college boards. He was a pioneer in his professions but as a person… as a human being, he was retarded; beyond flawed. As a child and young adult I was very close to my father. When I was in grade school people called me his “Mini-Me.” I looked like him and talked like him. In order to spend time with him I learned to adopt his interests because as a child I was never encouraged to discover or pursue my own interests. I loved my father fiercely. Eight years ago I wrote a Facebook Note (below) about feeling as if I had lost my father and how sad that made me. In many ways, I had already grieved the loss of my father before he died.
His death, however, re-opened old wounds and I found myself angry at him like I was when I was a junior high school kid facing the dissolution of my family of origin and seeing my father for the severely broken human being he was for the first time. The funny thing about psychological wounds — they never really heal. They just get pushed down and covered with new shit, but the hurt is always there just waiting to kick the crap out of us again and again (Lena divorcing me brought up 20 year old pain over my divorce from Ava which both probably stem from feelings of abandonment as a very young child) whenever we give it any chance to.
I have spent the last three months sitting in my house depressed; too depressed to write or do much of anything constructive. I am an avid music lover and almost always have something playing. Every room in my house has a stereo and I own very nice head phones so that I can take the music with me. I also have a piano and several electric keyboards and have always enjoyed creating electronic dance music on my computer. Music has always been integral to my life. After my father died, I spent September and October in near silence. I did have the TV on sometimes, but most of the time I just sat here. Looking out the windows. Watching the wind blow through the trees. Watching the sun rise. Watching the sun set. Vaguely aware of the hands of my wall clock moving. It was like be stoned out of my mind, but I wan’t high. I was low… really low.
We’re on a ride to nowhere Come on inside Taking that ride to nowhere We’ll take that ride Maybe you wonder where you are I don’t care Here is where time is on our side Take you there, take you there
I am on a road to no where in particular and I am OK with that. And, time is on my side… since every day is borrowed time, cheated from the hands of death, it’s all I really have. Let’s see where this road takes me.
A friend texted me, “I hope you feel better.” And I had to respond, “My depression is not the kind of thing that gets better — forever. I have good days and I have bad days and I have really bad days. I am up, showered, dressed and working in my office… so starting off OK. Thank you!”
