Things I Have Survived — But for What?

Posted on December 10, 2002 in Crosstalk Memory

chari related an great anecdote about the Princess. Go read it. The rest of this article really has nothing to do with it.

My meditation began with this:

When I called The Princess’ mother this past Friday to give her the wonderful news regarding her daughter’s health, her mom cried. She then said,”God has plans for her. You tell her I said that! He isn’t done with her yet, and she is meant for something”. I passed on her mother’s words to The Princess.

Then out rolls the “It’s a Wonderful Life”, dyke style. Great anecdote and Princess should be applauded, but that’s not what this blog bit is about.

It’s about me. Earlier in the year, a friend told me “This is your breakout year. I just know it.” Seems that I have been told by several friends such things or variations such as “You know, you’re one of those people who, when he makes it, is going to make it big.” Or “You’re a talented guy. You’ll make it.” Or “God is saving you for something big. I can tell.”

Let’s examine what God — if the bastard exists — has put me through:

• An abused childhood that people outside of the immediate family did not see or act upon if they did
  
• Asthma that has brought me to the ER a few times
  
• Several cuts and scratches that required stitches, often to my head
  
• Major depression that went undiagnosed for years because family and “friends” convinced me that the problem was “all in my head” but not in the way it actually was in my head.
  
• Several layoffs. One firing by an est-hole who lied to the unemployment office afterwards. He tried to tell them that I just walked off.
  
• Pressure from my parents which refused me to major in my true love, which was literature. I wouldn’t have been any poorer if I had. I might actually have a decent job like an editor.
  
• Somewhere between 16 and 20 root canals. Some of the teeth were done twice. Some had complications like extra roots and forking roots. Fun.
  
• Deep cleaning — they carve your gums away to get at the gunk on the roots. They do one side at a time. You spit blood for three weeks in between times.
  
• Six extractions. Four of them were wisdom teeth. The other two were weird: I had two bicuspids growing in atop each other. I believe that I had three grow in each spot altogether, but the first set fell out.
  
• My brother breaking my arm with a baseball bat when I was five and then coaching me to tell my parents that I fell on the sidewalk. I kept the secret for twenty years. He broke it, not me.
  
• Living with my brother was, in itself, a survival story. We could number a lot of things, including his antics at my wedding rehearsal dinner, his telling me that “I didn’t feel like a brother” because I didn’t booze up like his friends did, etc. etc. Load of fun that one is.
  
• Type 2 Diabetes.
  
• Gout
  
• Various other curious relations who apparently think I am too insane to bother with. Like the brother-in-law who asked at the dinner table if I didn’t drink because I was an alcoholic.
  
• A major breakdown in graduate school which resulted in my losing a full fellowship. The woman who got it after me ran off with a coke dealer.
  
• A sadistic boss who I endured for three years.
  
• Various Internet screwballs (there can be no other word) who rallied their friends into thinking that I was evil. (Mind you, I’ve pointedly asked my friends not to do the same. I can’t bring myself to do that to anyone else having felt how it hurts.)
  
• The rupture of my ear drum — a major rupture — the whole thing was gone because my father hit it when I had a cold. (Has it sunk in to those of you who consider me “humor impaired” because I don’t find violence funny why this might be?)
  
• Regular arguments between my parents which my brother told me were all my fault. (If you have ever seen the film My Life as A Dog, that’s me. Except I didn’t get to escape to a funny, warm-hearted uncle. I had a lot in common with Laika.)
  
• Being pat on the head as I was being laid off and told that they had no doubt that I would find another job because I was “a smart guy”.
  
• Family who decided that tough love was required for me, so they wouldn’t help me get back on my feet or finance effective psychiatric help for my problems. Somehow, with all my mental problems, (which they knew I had inherited from my grandmother but didn’t bother to tell me until I found out by myself at age 35) I was supposed to put myself through school and overcome things. After all, I was “the smart one” of the family. In the meantime, my brother bought a house with money that my mother loaned him.
  
• Ridicule from other kids and some teachers through most of school.
  
• Having credit for things I did by myself claimed by others. Classic example was my speech coach who never had time to listen to my stuff, but told my parents that she’d made me. I went to State Speech Finals twice. I wrote my stuff and practiced it on my own.

This list isn’t complete. In spite of all the crap that has come down, I haven’t attempted suicide, I haven’t killed anyone, I haven’t taken my revenge against society by turning to a life of crime. I have never crashed my parent’s car or burned down the house or abused alcohol or done cocaine, heroin, etc. I’ve known people who’ve done some or all these things who have, nonetheless been helped by their families to achieve better things. Hell, we’ve got such a guy for president right now.

OK, it’s a whine. I’m not feeling great after last week’s news that Lynn was laid off. No reason other than some executive looked at the company’s otherwise profitable balance sheet and said “Hey, we could make even more money by axing this whole department which isn’t making money yet!” I’m not feeling great after all that other stuff that “God” has made me go through in preparation for “something”. I’d like to know what that something is. I’d like credit and a little help to get out of the hole I am in. I’m not accepting the excuse of others that I just “dug it for myself”. No, I had plenty of help. If I had had the kind of help some real losers got, I’d be places by now, I am sure.

So, please. Don’t tell me that 2003 is going to be my breakout year. Don’t say that I must have gone through this for a reason. Maybe there’s no point to all of this. Maybe existence is just us and all the things people do around us as well as the natural and artificial fixtures like the sky, the ground, roads, houses, airplanes, cars, etc.

God, if you’re out there, you’ve done a damn fine job of making me feel like the whole of existence is all my fault. Now it’s your turn. Don’t tell me that you’ve been carrying me all this time. As the man said in The Onion, you were out taking a smoke, you bastard. I did all this walking by myself. Pay up or strike me dead. I’m not going to do it for you.