my careless contagion

So I'm back (sigh). I tucked in my tail and returned, just as I did when I quit my job recently. I did that at least two other times before, actually. I know what it is that makes me do that. It is the reason I can't stay here. The common denominator in those events is my parents. But I digress. People talk about the state of mind of someone who did something crazy like that actually matters. Our minds are seen as the pilots of our vessels. Well, I think my pilot jumped out. Without a parachute. "Good riddance," he said. Splat. An old Kenny Rogers (rest in peace) song called Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) explains that sometimes when we take a moment to check on ourselves, we find things have turned into a dumpster fire of epic proportions. That's definitely the case with me. I apologize for some of the alarming things I've written lately, but you really wouldn't believe how bad my life has become in a short amount of ...

Normally I feel like Evel Knievel. Being sick, I feel like I got run over by Evel Knievel. While the body is sick, the mind continues to churn, though muddily. I've been sick for almost two weeks now. I've had just about every symptom possible. It's been a merry-go-round of misery I can't seem to get off. When you're sick, priorities change. You no longer want to conquer the world; you are only interested in surviving the next two minutes. You don't care a whit whether anyone loves you or hates you or what tomorrow may bring. It narrows your focus by necessity. I think of it as kind of like being drunk 24/7. As long as you have medicine flowing in your veins, you are okay, even though you may be in a burning building.   I don't get sick often. And it never lasts more than a couple of days. To be sick for two weeks is almost unheard of. It's almost like a somatic illness, possibly triggered by recent personal disappointment and made worse by my r...

Alex Honnold after his death-defying, 3,000 ft. free solo climb of El Capitan in 2017. Death is terrifying. It's like walking through a door you can't ever reopen. It is the most final thing we can do. It's not that our lives are so short, though some of them are. It's that we're dead for so long.  So many millions and billions have died before me. I should be assured it is nothing but common to die. Yet, I have not died, therefore, it is an uncommon experience for me.  I'm not concerned about myself, as I trust my eternity to God. I did nothing to be brought into this world, He has gotten me through my life thus far, and my eternity is entirely up to Him, as well. However, what about those left behind?  I've contemplated suicide many times, for years, really. Most of my life. I remember being in the back of the family car (station wagon, Suburban, I don't remember which) and wishing with all of my might to die. I was banished yet again to the...

There is a trope in many Lifetime movies of the psycho woman. She may be a girlfriend or just a friend. But she is dangerous. And she's going to kill you. I used to make fun of this trope and say, "Always get with the psycho girl because otherwise you end up dead." But getting with the psycho girl in this case almost killed me. I've been hearing Sweet but Psycho by Ava Max (not her real name) on the radio for a while now. I don't know all the lyrics. I don't care because it's a dumb song. All I know is the song reminds me of my ex. Yes, she seems like a sweet girl. I'll give her that. Maybe she really is sweet. I don't know. But I do know she is fucking crazy demented. Like house-of-horrors demented.  My son continues to berate me for divorcing his mother. Now he's claiming someone else is on board with condemning me. I think he said her name is Amy. Who the fuck is Amy? Who is he hanging out with besides his crazy mom? Crazy Amy, ap...

The opening line of Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence comes to me often. Hello, darkness, my old friend ... This old song no doubt means many things to many people. And that opening line means something to me as well. It means, "Here we go again."  It's hard to fully express what it means to be prone to depression. Looking back on my four decades of life, I see a lot of prominent themes. But the thick vein of depression runs through it all. I don't know when it took hold, but it's been there as long as I can remember. It is an old friend of the worst kind.  I don't want to be depressed. I don't choose this. I don't want to waste endless days simply wishing I could climb out of whatever funk I'm in. All the people who have come and gone in my life I certainly can't blame for this. I'm depressed, no matter who is in my life. Sure, certain circumstances haven't helped. And alcohol just made the whole thing worse. How I...

My parents in 1984 surveying the house they were having built. I have this memory, but not because I actually remember it. I was too young to remember it, but the story was retold often enough by my mother that it seems like I actually have the memory.  I was very young. It was the mid-1980s. My parents had a house built (which went wildly over budget) in 1984 on Happy Hollow Street in a little town in the Southern Black Hills in South Dakota. Parents raised their kids a little differently then than they do now. There was also the matter of finances, which meant that a babysitter wasn't always possible. My parents had a colleague leave their company and start up a competing business across the street. In order to compete, they were putting in 100 hour weeks, both of them. This continued for years.  My mom didn't want to work, but my dad was the boss and women were working a lot in those days, so he said she should too. She started out as the bookkeeper, setting ty...