WATCHING THE WHEELS MEANS I'M NOT UNDER THEM

Absolutely on a whim, I decided to return to this blog after five+ years. I decided I have tales still to tell, and while I've sometimes used this site as a means of blowing off steam, now that the steam is completely blown off, it's probably somewhat safer in terms of exhibiting my stories, to excise some of the hurt, and return to what I most desire to remember. I have almost too many stories to tell, and most of them are stories I believe should never be missed. By anyone. 

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 I've been living in a state of relative solitude for quite some time. I actually relish this. I've never been too prone to loneliness, at least when I'm free of the Bipolar 1 mung, and I've been careful more than ever these last five years to learn about that disorder, and learn to identify dangerous trends in my thinking and affect that could point me in a direction not preferable to, well, much of anything or anyone.

 One of the biggest examples of mental or emotional progress has been my discovery of a tendency I'd long entertained under the misapprehension that what I was feeling--powerfully numinous, almost antagonistic discomfort and euphoria blending into a sort of sphynx. 

 Most often, I'd meet a woman who, from any objective standpoint, signaled her emotional unavailability. For puzzling reasons, despite the rejecting gestures and signals, I'd nevertheless attach myself, then obsess, then ultimately get irritated and angry at the "target woman". 

 Now I've come to realize this is an unconscious pattern I've been condemned to repeat, likely since infancy.

I'd already known about the emotional unavailability of my mother. That unavailability wasn't intentional. My mother had many problems in her world that were inevitably going to preoccupy her around the time I was born: Her father had fallen into a stroke-related coma and remained a vegetable in an iron lung for 10 years, thus draining my mother's family fortune. Her sister had endured a series of nervous breakdowns, was suspected of being schizophrenic, and thus was interred in the New Mexico State Hospital for the Insane.

 Then, her mother came down with cancer. Add to that my father's drinking and possible infidelity, and my poor mother was practically anorexic simply from imprisoning stress when I was an infant. 

 "We knew you would likely be hurt by my divided attention," my mother told me several years ago, "but we didn't know what we could do." 

 She and my father were often called away to New Mexico, leaving me with a series of babysitters. Add to that my mother's relative shut down on an emotional level (she was often overwhelmed and depressed), and I was left in a situation where I needed love, knew I needed love, and even imagined I was loved when it was clear the affection was oddly absent, even in times when my mother was physically present. 

 Not long ago, I came across a photograph taken in the park near Denver's Sloan Lake. I remember this day. I was very small. The now almost ancient photo from 1955 or 1956 portrays me atop my mother's shoulders.

The sheer bliss on my infant face, when I peered into that photograph, made me sad. I was blissful because--at last, I was being loved by my mother. 

 That wasn't always the case. One time, when I was confined to a playpen, as my mother napped, I became so enraged I reached for and grasped a table clock and hurled it at her, hitting her. 

 There. I was trying to enforce what I knew had to be wrong. How could I have understood? 

 But there I was, atop my mother's shoulders, my beatific smile almost religious in its dimensions. Numinousness. Magic. The belief I had somehow pleased her enough to have been "rewarded" with what, under normal circumstances, simply is. 

 This is what I'd learned love is. 

 Hence, when I needed love, I'd find an unhealthy or dysfunctional attachment, and repeat the approach-avoidance numinousness, and this would eventually end in a blow up or a breakdown. 

 So. What's the change? 

 Now I know what that powerful numinousness means when it comes upon me. Insight. Now I can choose to draw back and reconnoiter the proverbial "lay of the land", detach, and then decide to cool off. 

 That to me signals some progress on a perplexing and often humiliating pattern I've endured for many years.

 This is one of the upsides of having the downside of an emotional disorder: You're forced to learn about yourself more so than the average individual ever will. Which is good for a writer. 

 I've begun to observe that, oftentimes, those who have known insanity actually come to understand sanity better than do the sane.

After all, we get an objective viewpoint out of a very bad deal. With long solitude, I've also noticed my propensity to become irritated has diminished considerably. If I drink too much coffee or become emotionally overextended, I am learning how to simply move away from any at-hand task and simply relax awhile. 

 Best of all, being away from the dysfunctionality of my addict-alcoholic running buddy base, something I left in 2014, has shown me a wonderful panorama of the bar scene and why it always confounded me. I never needed the withdrawal inherent in mind-changing chemistry. And to think some of that involves a pretense of euphoria that feels almost like being more intimately connected than one is. 

 So that's the overview. I'm not always this serious. In fact, I almost never am.

 One thing I find interesting is how, in social situations, I'm known to be funny, sometimes outrageous and irreverent, and somewhat of a cut-up. Those who only know me on that level don't have the slightest idea I read difficult books up to four hours a day. I don't know if that knowledge would scare those who view me as if I'm a movie under critique or not.

I ain't no Richard Burton.