I wish I’d planned better, worked harder, took the other job, done that and not this. I wish I’d had someone to tell me what today would be like. I wish I hadn’t called in sick, took that fall, been more careful at certain things and more careless at others. I wish I’d been able to see the world, see my grandchildren, see my lover one last time. I wish I’d stayed in the game, away from those of some people and closer to those of others. I wish I’d lived when I had the chance and taken the chances that made me feel alive when I had them to spend. I wish I could go back in time to take the road less traveled more or just traveled more often. I wish I had more wishes that came true and that I’d been truer to myself. I wish I’d given more instead of giving in. I wish it wasn’t all over when I still have beginnings left. I wish I’d dwelt on cliffs instead of in the valleys, in the nows instead of in the maybes and I wish I’d been more aware. I wish it wasn’t so quiet and dark and moist and blurry. And I wish it wasn’t so red.
And I wish I’d kept my eyes on the road
instead of my phone,
and had more time for a better final wish than that.
A silent night.
Outgoing holiday message set, decorations down, packed and stored for another year, tonight I flipped the switch and twisted my key to its final click of the year on the office door, marking the end of a job well done and more than a wish granted.
Arms loaded with lingering projects for my week off between the holidays, I paused to look back at that same door, reflecting in the darkness of the evening, and I had myself a nostalgic cry.
Thousands came through that portal this year seeking help, looking for a home, food, safety, hope, a respite from the circumstances of a very difficult year none of them ever expected, and most of all, a second chance. 2016 will be remembered by most as a rough year that didn’t grant many second chances, wishes or do-overs. But we did. It marked the start of our 25th year of service to the neediest of our community, having entered as the top nonprofit of Southern Nevada — a couple proud achievements, but by no means our greatest.
As staff cleaned up the office for our post-holiday return, what captured my heart were the private conversations I overheard among small couplings of our frazzled dozen recalling stories from the year about this woman, that family, a senior citizen, that man and his child and the difference they hoped they’d made to ease their year’s burdens.
More than a few hugs and tears punctuated today. Consensus was that we each believe we are called to be doing these right things with our lives. We might be able to earn more elsewhere if it was just work. But it’s not. No other job pays the lasting emotional dividends we earn right here.
I emptied my arms into the back seat of my car and closed the door. Strapped in and backing out to go make my own holidays with my family until the new year, I made a final glance at the door through my tears. But my glance was diverted upwards to a light overhead and centered above the rooftop in the night sky.
The first and brightest evening star.
It was the best drive home, on a silent night, and a year of Christmas wishes granted.
Lost and found
There we were, both of us, four decades later, in the bottom of the lost and found bin of my high school cafeteria.
Weathered by the ravages of the paths we’d chosen, we were the oldest survivors in attendance and the most thankful, at least in our own eyes.
It’s one thing to find a lost friend and entirely another to be found by one.
She’d no idea how many times I’d thought about her over the past 40 years as she made her way across the maze of tiny chairs and unsuspecting classmates in the festive room.
She reintroduced herself with the only five words I will most clearly remember from that evening and perhaps for the remainder of my life.
“You probably don’t remember me.”
I cut her off at the fourth, said her name, and hugged her like she was my best friend. Truth is, she never really was, but she’d been a long lost acquaintance in the truest sense and I was relieved to find we’d both survived.
It was the 40th anniversary of the opening of our high school with alumni of all years in attendance. And despite the event being prepaid, ticketed and on my calendar for two months, I’d spent most of the day attempting convincing excuses in the mirror on why I was unable to go.
Once the social king who wooed factions and cliques for my candidacy as student body president, I’d met her many times, during most of which she was never completely there.
She was 23 years smarter than me, having surrendered her addiction twenty eight against my small handful at the time but what mattered most was that we’d both been lost, but now were found and we both were there to meet again and share our stories, if only briefly.
By her own admission, she was high as a kite during all of high school and probably many years prior. I know nothing of the precipitating events which had led her to such an empty young existence but then again, she knew nothing of mine, and it really didn’t matter. That’s the way it is with addicts. Looking back isn’t the way we roll.
A master of disguise at an early age, I had all the makings of an unrealized addict nesting unknown secrets for the sake of popularity, acceptance and political gain. In high school, you don’t see how or when it will all come together, but it inevitably does, and did, at least once each for the two of us and likely for dozens more who were there still in hiding with secrets of their own that night.
Sadly so, also for some who couldn’t make it for the sheer fact they simply didn’t make it this far in life. Addiction has an indiscriminate way of taking friends and soulmates to the great beyond well before their years and maturities can catch up.
At my table, the conversation of the dead rattled off names of countless classmate victims. Two at our table shared their very personal stories of close friends and lovers who found sobriety too late. To my amazement, they shared having read my many testimonies recounting a miserable eight years on meth during their lowest times and the spark of hope and understanding my stories had ignited for their own healing. We made promises to continue the discussion first hand over the upcoming holidays.
And it was at that moment that no one there knew the joy I felt when our two names were not among the casualties.
The lost and found bin of high school is possessor of both heartbreaks and joys. But as we say in recovery, “Keep coming back and you’ll find it.” And I suspect that’s why we both were there last night, not lost but found by one another forty years later.
Surely, I’m not the only one.
Surely, I’m not the only one.
For most of my life, things have always seemed secure and generally routine. The world’s tragedies were things delivered to my doorstep once a day by the 5am paperboy. More detailed news was something I voluntarily walked to the TV to turn on. There were no remotes. Tragic news didn’t wake me from my sleep via smartphone and even later when I could afford a computer, it didn’t erupt onscreen with images of devastation, tragedy and world corruption without my search or consent. Fewer and fewer remember those days not so long ago when the world at least seemed more stable and predictable.
It happened again yesterday, twice.
Maybe it was since 9/11 or even a little before, but that seems a good marker for when the world as I knew it changed. The reality that my country, town and family were no longer shielded from the unpredictable became the new order of thinking. Then all the mass shootings, the waves of home invasions, news of meteoric threats to our planet, notifications of natural disasters within seconds of happening and acts of sheer terrorism were suddenly off the charts, occurring in places nearby we all thought were surely off limits.
I was driving home yesterday when the second moment hit.
Same as the first, there was nothing particularly different. In traffic, music low and about three miles from putting my feet up after a long but productive day at work, it was quick, fleeting and uninvited. That CVS there could suddenly blow up. What if North Korea got a hand up this time and one was incoming, destined for the valley in front of me in ten…nine…eight…? That guy in my parking lot looks suspicious, perhaps lying in wait to gun me down and take my car and my future. I even shot a glance to the sky when the reflection of a plane-that-might explode mid-air caught my eye. Where are my kids right now? Did I tell them I love them when we talked last? Crazy invasive flashes of tragedy to paralyze me for a brief instant as I turned down the radio and cracked open my window in hopes they’ll evacuate my mind and fly out.
But I’m not crazy, and surely, I’m not the only one.
Each time, the moment passes. I relax back to finish the drive home and wonder. This is America, but not the same America I used to feel confident affording me the protections against these kinds of threats that must happen a hundred times more often to those in third world countries and nations like Syria and less stable others of the middle east where driving home from work is a daily unpredictable fear and arriving home could easily find it and your family obliterated by tragedy created by evil men with guns and bombs and ideologies. It’s hard to imagine what a daily reality like that might be like. Crazy, but I think I’m starting to.
I’m not the fearful type. My time to go will be my time and I know where I will land afterward. But the encroachment of evil is happening more rapidly than any time before, a record pace in our American history, and to date, my crazy little moments of doom-wondering pass, but for how much longer?
Odds are, there will come the day when what I’ve only imagined walks right up to the door of my own home or the corner CVS and knocks or opens fire on my secure little mind, and surely, I will not be the only one left wondering if I was actually crazier to believe otherwise.
Remember September.
Though I try my best to remember
the months and years I can never forget,
every time it’s the month of September,
I most often remember regret.
Regret for the times I was never…
Regret for the times I was lost…
Regret for my lack of endeavor…
Regret for all that it cost.
But regrets now take no lead,
because from them I’ve been freed.
Regrets bring strife, but remembering brings life;
An incredible distinction, indeed.
September fourth it was over,
Now it’s September fourth of nineteen,
eight wonderful years I’ve been sober,
eight sobering years I’ve been clean.
But I’ll always remember September
and thank God I survived to regret
the lost years I’m alive to remember
And the best still ahead of me yet.
Bullseye on your back?
If I’ve learned one thing, haters are gonna hate if it’s the last thing they do. Fortunately and sometimes, it is.
The best thing about having a dark, sordid past, is having a public dark, sordid past. For those who know me and many who don’t, if there’s one thing for certain, I’m pretty transparent. It took handcuffs of course, but since then, my past is so widely known and told in so many of my own and others’ stories, it’s pretty much old hat and inconsequential anymore. My stories themselves however, have helped free many who’d held themselves captive to their own.
[Enter still addicted ugly person with time on their hands and an axe to grind.]
Having spent the better part of a week helping someone out of their own bad mess at great expense of time and money, instead of gratitude or at least silence, they embarked on a tour of public badmouthing me like a Salem witch trial to which a. nobody came and b. they ended up hanging themselves. They’d spent countless hours gathering internet evidence of my former bad character, criminal history and other Google hunts to defame and discredit me. To this day, I still don’t know their motives or goals and mostly don’t care. Long gone are the days trying to understand people like this, but since I’ve grown up, I just say “Some people…”
Going public with their findings to my friends, family and acquaintances they were met with blank stares who aptly replied “So what?” and “Yeah, he wrote a cool story about that on his website, you should read it.”
Haters are gonna hate.
Transparent living is not simply an admission of your skeletons, but putting them on parade in dunce hats for the world to see. Good 12 step programs are about using transparency to help others free themselves from their own secrets and disempowering and disarming your past from its ability to haunt your future.
So when the bullseye is on your back and haters take aim, transparency is your best defense because the bullets go right through you. Active shooters with bad aim can’t hurt you. They do, however, get caught with their pants down, left to hang with their own skeletons and bullseyes on their own backs.
He’s going home.
Today, he leaves on the trip of a lifetime, and I don’t expect he will return in one piece.
Going home for the first time in 40 years rarely returns the same person.
Things change. People change. Stories change. And his youthful life on a now abandoned small town Colorado farm, is liable to answer many questions he would rather not. But it’s time to grow up. And he is driven.
Ignorance is bliss when you are a child. As a grown man decades later, ignorance loses the soothing capacity that makes a difficult life bearable at 10 years old. Truth tends to sour the sweet, connecting family dots in a way that never made sense at 10, but every sense for a 50 year old in need of answers.
Going home again breaks family secrets, exposing well-intended protective lies which have haunted him with so many questions he’s compelled to answer before their depositions are unavailable and it’s too late to correct history.
So he’s going home.
Like so many, we grow up with fond recollections of being normal but a persistent, grating curiosity about the real truths behind them that we’ll address on a better day somewhere, somehow, sometime. But time is not the great healer it promises to be. So many events of our lives are proudly recalled in cocktail conversations which should end the unnerving, silent question marks hidden from others and ourselves because we just want to fit in and be normal and for them to just go away.
But forty years later, we are no more normal than we’d chosen to believe all these years, and living with those nagging inconsistencies drags us back to the place of their birth for a private intervention that will very likely put us in pieces on the floor of an abandoned farmhouse, alone asking all the whys of no one there to answer.
Go home, good friend.
And when you return, I’ll be here to help you pick up the pieces and reassemble your once favorite stories in a painful new narrative of truth that hurts so much but heals so much more.
I’ll still be here with no better answers but to help unpack the discoveries of your new baggage and put it all away for good.
God grant me the serenity, dammit!
The last time I got really angry about something, I really didn’t.
It’s rare that something upsets me to the point of being angry anymore. Disgusted, yes. Irritated, sure. But angry, almost never. I credit four years of a psychotherapy degree, 15 years in practice, and six years clean and sober for that rarity.
Anger is always the second emotion.
Anyone who’s read a book on managing emotions knows this but fewer know what it really means.
People don’t actually get angry, but as one of my favorite instructors once put it, “They should all over themselves.”
Martha was one of those weird professors with a new age twist on pretty much everything. But having run out of grains of salt taking in her lectures, one day the epiphany finally hit me.
There are few things that get me so riled up that blood pressure medicine is the first remedy. Thanks to Martha, though, the second is a quick evaluation of the shoulds, oughts, musts, need-tos, have-tos, got tos and supposed-tos that overcome us all at times.
For the record, as if it really matters, my angering short list includes a)incongruous people who publicly profess one virtue, yet practice another in private. The other two include self-absorbed people and bald-face liars, both of which round out my personal anger trifecta.
But why?
Anger is the second emotion…second only to deep and erroneous beliefs that things and people should be different, better mannered, more fair, decent and, well, more like me.
Plenty of good people fit that bill, but there are plenty who don’t, won’t and don’t care to.
In my recovery from drug addiction, the Serenity Prayer was the cornerstone: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. The healing power of this prayer lived out within a congruous life has helped me address my angry moments therapeutically, long before they become destructive words or behaviors to myself and others.
People ‘should’ all over themselves.
If anger is the second emotion, then the taking of a big disgusting ‘should’ in your head is the first.
When I was a therapist, I used this simple illustration:
The speed limit is clearly marked 45mph. People should observe that limit. But however reasonable, life-saving or safe the speed limit, if I pull onto that street, I am bound to encounter an 80 year old blue hair in a Dodge dart going 20 and/or a dude in a Ford F-150 going 70. Failing to embrace this possibility beforehand is a certain set up for becoming angry and saying or doing things I will regret later.
Changing my expectation of situations and the behavior of other people to a language of “I hope that…It would be nice if… or I’d prefer that…” before I pull out into traffic, potentially mitigates against an angry response if my preference of what happens doesn’t actually come to pass. Our heads are full of mistaken beliefs and expectations such as these which embrace more of what ‘should or ought to be’ than what, in all honesty…and sadly…, really ‘is’ in this world. So when I’m stuck behind the blue hair, I accept the imperfection of the situation and arrange away around her, and maybe even chuckle at her timidity. When the truck blows by, though startled, I can save myself the rage and perhaps wonder if he’s late to watch the birth of his first born. It doesn’t make it right. It just makes the moment tolerable.
I’ve learned to be creative. Not so much for the sake of others, but for the sake of myself. “Be angry and sin not in your anger” is the key to control and the solution is to abandon the mind’s misbeliefs of a perfect world.
God, grant me the serenity in this imperfect world.
And God bless old Martha, wherever you and your blue hair are now after all these years.
I’m not sure what I’ll do.
I’ve bought more panties, bras and pads
than any gay man should.
More comfy purses to fit my arms
than any straight man would.
To beauty parlors, nail salons
and pharmacies with you.
Been here and there and everywhere…
I’m not sure what I’ll do.
Our little walks and tearful talks
and stories of your life,
Have filled the days with laughs so thick,
can’t cut them with a knife.
I get us lost, you drive me mad
and tell me what to do
But we always end up back at home…
I’m not sure what I’ll do.
The butt of jokes and puns of posts
that make so many happy
That Q-Tip hair, the clothes you wear,
you always look so snappy.
So many pics that you have nixed
and some you never knew
You make life fun to be your son…
I’m not sure what I’ll do.
Clockwork calling days and nights
to see how your day went
You always ask reciprocally,
The way that mine was spent.
I can’t imagine how it will be
some day when yours are through
You’re woven deep in my days and weeks…
I’m not sure what I’ll do.
No clue what I will do.
When 18 turns 50.
With a little luck, patience and a few decades, most 18 year olds eventually turn 50. Some arrive a little sooner, but barring tragedy or developmental setback, nearly all arrive safely and on time with enough life experiences to have made it worth the wait.
When I was 18, so was my entire world.
A society of 50 something year olds was an unconscionable concept. It was a morgueful of the old and diapered on canes, cursing gravity through dentures between sips of chicken noodle soup someone else fed them. Nobody wanted to be there, they just arrived one day on a short bus to the grave.
At 18, 50 something was a distant age of unnecessary people.
I wish back then I’d known otherwise.
Today, the gears of my world run on 50 year olds.
I’m talking about all my friends from high school and before who made it here unincarcerated, consciences intact, generosities abundant and much kinder hearts for their journies.
The career I chose is one that helps the most unfortunate of the 50 plus generation who are indeed, diapered and caned, dentured, dying and worse. What was unconscionable at 18 is my everyday reality now where I work to add a little glitter to the not so golden years of the poorest group of senior citizens this country has ever created.
Thankfully, I don’t work alone.
I have a lot of 18 year olds who help me.
People like Steve, Misty, Lori, Cece, Tama, Jenai, Karen, Marc, Anne, Heidi, and all those who have re-emerged from my high school woodwork to support my cause. The captain of my high school football team, the first runner up at junior prom, the bass player from band, songleaders, student council secretaries, and even the weird kid from the lunch room…they all grew up and into really cool people who now partner with me 40 years later in my pursuits to feed, clothe and care for people we all once thought unnecessary and fortunately, have not yet ourselves become.
We are all still a bunch of dreamy-eyed 18 year old high school kids who eventually woke up to realize that all people are necessary to make this world a better place for all people.
So shout out to a lifetime of friends who still have my back just like we were 18 all over again, only kinder now, and up for challenges of life that make a difference.