The Extremes of Self

I've been in the middle of a move and occupied for the past couple of days with much else besides my current writing projects. I've moved into a new building, or rather an old building that has been remodeled. My computer problems persist and will likely continue to hassle me until I can find a way to secure a new hard drive, so I'm starting this post on my laptop. If something happens I'll finish it up later on a borrowed computer somewhere.

Moving is a drag, of course. After an early rush of moving around the country for various reasons, such as work and a general restlessness of youth that seems to be a part of every young person's experience, I settled into a routine in Portland. I lived in one apartment for 12 years. I had an amazing deal on a one bedroom in Northwest Portland, where most rents went through the ceiling as the neighborhood evolved from a slacker/hippie haven into a gentrified shopping mall.

I had a nice landlord who appreciated the fact that I lived there so long and always paid my rent on time. A couple of tenants living there when I moved in in 1989 are still there. They feel the same way I felt about the place. It really was the best deal in the neighborhood by 2001 when I moved out shortly after 9/11. I would have stayed but I'd had a nervous breakdown and couldn't work and I couldn't find the right kind of help. I'm not even sure I knew I needed help either, which is fairly common among the mentally disturbed when they do not see the most common realities in the same light as those around them. I'd fallen into a deep depression without really understanding what was happening to me.

The best way to describe the effects of my illness is to make a list. I lost interest in everything. I became reclusive, which is in my nature to begin with, but this time I went deep under cover. I developed an irrationality about many things. I lost three jobs in three months. I couldn't string a spoken sentence together without garbling it, and then, strangely, I took to practicing my speech in public before it was my turn to talk. In other words I started talking to myself. A few rows broke out over my rudeness and impetuosity, which again are aspects of my nature, but at that time I had taken things to the extreme, or rather something had caused me to lose control.

I must be very careful how I say this. I would hate for people to misunderstand. I am better now than I was five or six years ago. I had until then never given suicide much thought. I seemed to skip over the feeling in my youth, a common age--along with the very old--for certain personality types to more frequently think about and act out suicide. I could never understand the drama that always seemed to play out among my high school friends, for instance. I never understood the cliques and the intrigue that sprouted in the hallways and the personal vendettas and jealousies that flared up all around me. The whispering conspiracies. I would hear fragments of conversation that astounded me, rumors, supposed secrets and sorties of accusations and counter accusations. I'd suddenly see a girl crying and I'd think, what the hell is that all about? She was fine a second ago. Thus the niche-age for suicides, when the world is a passion play.

At age 48 I began to obsess about suicide. Was I having a second go at youth or what? I realized that I'd known several people who had committed suicide slowly, or in several cases rapidly, by drinking too much. They were powerless to stop drinking, to the point that it appeared they simply did not care if they lived or died. My brother Lyle seems to have gone that route, dying an alcoholic in an Alaska rooming house, cut off from his sons and our mother. And I had an uncle who overdosed, likely on purpose, on opiates. And I often wonder about the circumstances of my father's death. I knew he had mental problems, for he had been committed for a time years before I was born. He was a drinker. Could he have drove deliberately off Highway 20 and into a deep ravine? Had he quit on life in an instant of remorse?

Among these types there is no ultimate reckoning in other words, no apparent struggle with the "demon booze." No desire to quit, or so it appears.

I'd seen yet other types battle the bottle. They had a fundamental remorse that clung to their every movement. When I was a bartender I could see them at the bar in the middle of the struggle. Should I have another? Yes? No! Yes! No... It played out like an existential exercise. Am I a drinker? Am I man enough for this? Depending on the fellow's mood his remorse might win one day while the exuberance attached to drinking became irresistible the next.

I had become like the man I've just described. I didn't want to crash into the wall, or into the ravine, with the full force of my habit. I wanted to live, yet I could find the darkness at will. I could go deep within the sorrow of a drunken spree and stay there all night, or I could get happy, fill the bar with my laughter and, though shy, even tell a story to a group of pals. That was my nature, my personality.

Then I fell apart. Was it the drinking? Or did I have an awakening? The suicidal thoughts crashed through my defenses all at once. I had become something other. I wasn't who I believed I was and I realized I had come to mid-life without knowing. Without knowing.

Isn't that something? It was one muthafukin' mid-life crisis my friends. It was brutal. So far I have survived.

TS