I confess: my neural processes are of the non-typical variety.
Ergo, rather than unalive myself when I was ready to go, I set a future date so I could leave on a low point. People would see why and not feel bad I was gone.
That plan did not work although, with exactly two months to go before my projected exit, I have, indeed, manifested a low point. The bottommost of my life, in fact. Deeper than when Tom died, than when my mother imploded my sense of being… even further down than when I realized I’d lost my daughter.
I see now I’ve been existing in a state of melancholia for most of the past fourteen years. I didn’t launch in this state. I began life as a pretty happy little kid, blissfully unaware (or non-heedful) of my daily confusion and non-ability to normalize. I let anger and frustration carry me through the years as I strove and failed, reached and missed, doing my best to learn, as humans do, through what felt like a spectacular series of failures but was actually just a typical course of trial-and-error. I was nothing special to the world, but my guy and my kid and a few other select persons liked me. So I was okay. As Porky Pig would say, “Buh beh buh de buh da, nothing here to see folks! Move along.”
The Healthcare folk have, of course, rewritten their scriptures to include melancholia as a form of depression, the better to classify, stamp, and store those who resist traditional shelving. But no pigeon-in-the-park am I; my essence non-matches any pre-fabricated hollow.
No, I deteriorated into my current pickle gradually, inexorably, driven ever downward by the weight of my own cowardice and desultory character… my formative conditioning or lack thereof… my eternal soul’s pre-birth determination… or perhaps simply my dumbasfuckness. Don’t know, don’t care, for the fact remains that I am now, on my natal-day weekend, up to my sizable ass in prehistoric oversized lizards with no swamp-draining paddle or shotgun in sight.
Wait… is this just a self-pity party on paper? A purposeless post about passing through the annual mortal portal? Not sure. I’ll keep writing, you keep reading, we’ll figure it out together.
When I was but knee-high to a jumping, chirping herbivore bug, I was as stymied about what I wanted to be when I grew up as I’d been when they asked who my role model was. No one, nothing came to mind.
Certainly not a ballerina, like my classmate who toe-danced on Kup’s Show, a late-night Chicago staple in the 1950s and early ‘60s. I didn’t walk well, couldn’t run at all, and to this day I cannot visualize what “step ball chain” means. (It’s actually step-ball-change, I just now discovered, which makes only slightly more sense intellectually but still none at all appendage-ly.)
Maybe a singer. My mother always wanted to be an actress/singer ala Rita Hayworth, except she was actually an actress/dancer, so that was out. I did like the dual idea of trying to follow in my mother’s footsteps (yes, I spent decades trying to make her happy, the very textbook child-of-malignant-narcissist definition) but though my voice was pleasant enough, I could not conquer breath control due to my left-ventricle heart congestion— that admittedly no one knew about because, what the hell, I was a kid and a girl to boot, so what difference did it make if I always needed to sit down?
Hmmm… does seem kinda like a downer, doesn’t it? But I’m on a roll, so stay with me. Maybe it’ll get better. Or at least go somewhere.
I’d also need to miraculously drop my vocal range a few octaves so I could be a true tenor rather than an awkward alto. I really wanted to be a baritone, but even I knew that weren’t agonna happen. I once, honest to unnamed deity, told a cantor that she seemed like a nice person, but did she have to keep to her sopranist register? It set my nerves on edge. Gads, what an asshole I was. These days, I’d never say anything of the sort. I’d keep my nasty thoughts to myself and just leave.
Growth.
For two-and-a-half seconds I wanted to be a soldier, but I think it best to leave that score-one for the hallucinatory-delusions team alone. Pussy, not penis. Breasts, not chest. How did I not see that in every mirror every single day?
Did I long to be a writer? Nay, nay! I explicitly and repeatedly denied that desire throughout my younger years, i.e., pre-2023, claiming I had nothing of worth to say. Shades of that non-entity-ness poking through, eh wot? Besides, it was too damn much work. And I knew that because I did write over the years—a bestselling book for musicians, five editions of a highly acclaimed, award-winning title for writers—and it was absatively a lot of work. And it not only paid less than minimum wage, it imbued me with imposter syndrome.
Honestly, there’s nothing more dumbasfuck than presiding over a ballroom of professionals who’d flown in from nearly every part of the world to attend the first-ever international ghostwriter conference—which I planned, spearheaded, and mostly executed —while feeling like a fraud about to be exposed as… what? Human?
Ah, shit. I’m beginning to suspect that’s what this birthday retrospection is about: admitting I have lived up to my potential, just not to the heights and perfection I expected me to reach. I’m just, ya know, a normal guy. Non- Diddy awful, non-Taylor spectacular.
No wonder I’m melancholy. What sour, non-coated-medication to ingest.
Well, if that’s what’s got me down—if’n I can’t blame the pile of past-due bills and tax demands and requests for account accountability I’ve dutifully collected and ignored—then I’m guessing I must needs scrape my act together once more for the umpteenth time, and just get ‘er done (thank you Larry the Cable Guy). ‘Cause if’n I’m just a regular ‘ol guy with maybe a slightly discrepant peck of content disruptions, then I’s ain’t got no excuse for not playing the ball where it lies, anteing up to finesse the cards I was dealt.
Besides, I think I’m plumb outta tortured tropes. Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, my dear reader, and thanks for listening. And don’t worry, I’ll be better in the morning.
I always am.
P.S. I made it through the weekend and had a glorious birthday. Onward!
Loving you 💛