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billdixonish · 11 years

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blog journal thing: alcoholism.

By Bill Dixon

“Billy, mommy is very sick. She has some substance abuse issues and is going away to a nice place to make her all better.”

This is the sort of euphemistically plentiful white lie I would hear from law enforcement officials as a child, seated on their knee in the yard of whatever house we were currently renting as a gurney rolls out of the house with my drunk & belligerent mother securely fastened. She lifts her hand to wave at me as they lift her into the ambulance.

“I think she is waving at me.”

“Now Billy, she’s just sick and needs to go away to get better.”

“Did you know ambulances can go as fast as they want?”

“Yes, Billy, They’ll go as fast as they need to go so they can get your mom to a hospital so she can get better.”

I thought it was unfair she was rewarded with an ambulance ride, speeding around turns, rolling through stoplights, sirens roaring.

One morning there were no more ambulances. No more cushioned talk about getting better, no more hurried sirens or flashing light. She’d have one more opportunity to neglect red lights but this time she would be leading a caravan of cars and minivans with hazard lights blinking violently out of chorus except for a few moments where the line of cars would blink in unison for one moment before falling out of sync again. If you are looking from the right perspective and have the patience to watch the flashing chaos long enough, you might be rewarded with that single brilliant moment where the individual amber bursts collect and fire in one great harmonic blaze, a collective moment of together in an otherwise isolating experience. Then, the great flashing fire is swiftly snuffed out like a collection of birthday candles and then, they resumes their self-centered, confused, blinking.

***

I’m not saying the undertaker was careless with my mother; I just think she looked like they may have applied foundation with a paintball gun.

I was 12-years-old when my step-father and the mortician took me into a small room at the funeral home to allow me to view my mothers “remains.” I didn’t like that word, remains. Remains, to me, felt like whatever was left over at a yard sale. Like I was being taken to a view a casket half full with a bent sand wedge, Kool Aid stained beanbag chair and a single size-13 ski boot. I was weary of euphemistic language. It was this same defanged talk that was spoon fed to me when explaining my mother’s “condition”, countless trips to rehab, and ultimately her demise.

“Your mom was sick, she really wanted to get better but this is God’s will and she’s in a better place.”

I lean over the open casket and look inside.

“Her boobs look a little…flat.” I say.

I remember mom being curvy, and that’s how I want to remember her. Chesticles in life as they shall be in death, asses to asses, bust to bust…through Christ our Lord, Amen.

I don’t remember how the mortician responded to my statement but I do remember the words he used were with the same cadence and temperament of a person who’s trying to explain to someone that they have spinach in their teeth. Very polite, hushed tones, “She’s in a better place and you may want to just make a quick trip to the bathroom because…right there, yeah, no go like this. There you go.”

I ultimately gave my approval, it’s not like sending a hamburger back at a restaurant, “I’m sorry, I asked for this corpse well-done and clearly I can still see pink in the middle…and please don’t just put it in the microwave and please don’t spit on it, thank you.”

I reached out and touched her like ringing a doorbell. No one was home. I thought that maybe I would cry. I didn’t. I had lost that connection to her when I was much younger. Not intentionally, there’s just only so much you can take before the brain decides that it’s going to be too difficult to continually invest in this person emotionally only to lose your investment a short time later. The market was turbulent so my heart made safer investments in Bugs Bunny and Ninja Turtles; they were on once a week like clockwork. Ghostbuster-index futures were a good investment.

What was hardest was not that she was gone but that I never had a chance to trust her and love her like a mother instead of a maintaining a dark tongue-in-cheek detachment that I maintain to this day. i.e., “No, Ms. Marshall, I don’t know why my mom didn’t pick me up from school and no, trust me, she’s not ‘probably stuck in traffic’ unless there is beer truck toppled over on 95. I suggest we call my grandma because something tells me mother dearest shall be ‘stuck in traffic’ for 6-12 weeks until she snorts all her Percocet and shows up in an ER in Philly drunk on rubbing alcohol.”

What was hardest was not that she was gone but that we spent so many years blinking in the same house. She would blink on the couch, drunk and alone. I would blink alone in my room with the covers pulled over my head. It wasn’t until she was gone that I wanted to glisten with her, in unison, in a temporary and beautiful chorus, if only for one glorious amber burst and then blink into darkness—together.

#prose

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billdixonish · 11 years

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blog journal thing: depression.

By Bill Dixon

It’s difficult to describe depression to someone who does not suffer from depression. Human nature dictates we reference a personal experience to relate to others so the non-clinically depressed reference the loss of a loved one or a tough semester in college to relate and often, they conclude it must be external elements that fuel clinical depression. It’s hard for people to wrap their minds around the idea of their brain chemistry being the culprit. It’s been my experience that large swaths of the population think depression is some footnote in the DSM, a symptom of being tired or bored. Some people react with self-righteous indignation. “Listen, Bill, I’m not happy all the time either. But I suck it up, and go on with my day. Life is hard, man.” The clincally depressed have heard some version of this dazzling pep talk any number of times. “Oh, life is difficult? I thought that life was supposed to be all trampolines and Rice Krispie Treats. This comes as a total shock but now that I know that life’s default position is ‘fucked’ according to you, Assistant Manager at Forever 21 & Official Human Condition Expert, I’ll readjust for this new paradigm.” For me, it’s not about sad. Sad is when I realize that a new episode of Mad Men is postponed for a week. Now depression is when I truly understand that I am going to die alone and everything that I am, everything I have worked so hard to build and rebuild, to construct and demolish, everything I think is important and true, my existence — this brief fleeting spark of consciousness — will be stifled and forgotten. My bones will turn to dust and I will be washed away into the cold, infinite ether of the universe. It’ll be like I was never here. I will be nothing. Lost in the void. I will be forgotten. And also…new episodes of Mad Men won’t resume until next week. For me, depression surreptitiously manifests itself in all sorts of tricky ways. Depression is hysterically sobbing while watching West Wing reruns eating a $15 store bought red velvet cake with a serving spoon. Depression is hating myself but still compulsively wandering onto improvised stages in dive bars and failing bowling alleys and trying to make strangers laugh for 4 minutes. Depression is staring at the endless collection of deodorants at Target, trying to decide, “Am I a Pure Sport kind of guy or a Pacific Surge man” and concluding that I am going to die someday and none of this matters…and Speedstick is probably a good utility antiperspirant. It’s not about being happy, either. Happy makes me uncomfortable. It’s a turbulent emotional condition, like rage. It’s unpredictable and irrational and hard to accurately judge the intentions of the person consumed by it. It’s the same reason people are afraid of clowns. If you are exuding that much unabashed joy, then the only reasonable conclusion is that you have come untethered from reality and you’re probably a dangerous individual. Happy is, and should be, a short-term condition. Joy allows the symbolic self to flourish and temporarily mute the static hiss of a dangerous, cold, ambivalent universe. It allows us to forget about all the shit. Happy is a temporary denial of the truth. Although indispensable and necessary, it’s no way to live a life. I’ve seen what “happy” does to people over the long term. People who insist that they are happy end up having psychotic breaks and intentionally punching the nose of their minivans into the front window of a McDonald’s after the drive-thru kid accidentally shorts them a chicken nugget in their Happy Meal. I just want to be alright. I want to be 80%. I want to be a toothless smile. I want to know I am going to die in the same way I know I should revere the last piece of pizza. I want to learn to appreciate the unbelievable miracle of consciousness, however brief. I want to be okay with temporary. I don’t want to spend my life rushing to build sandcastles, hoping I won’t be forgotten. I want to be okay with being sad sometimes. I want to be okay with being happy sometimes. “Listen, Bill, I’m not happy all the time either. But I suck it up, and go on with my day. Life is hard, man.” Yeah, life is hard but I haven’t eaten a red velvet cake in months; I’m not sweatin’ chicken nuggets and there’s a new Mad Men this week. So I guess I’m alright.

#prose #lol #health

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