Todd Camack @ tumblr.

Tomorrow morning is my appointment for my initial meeting with vocational rehab. It’s been hard on me, not working. Obviously. You kinda need funds to get through this world and life. But there’s an emotional attachment to doing your part that’s severed when you no longer are and you’re left at the mercy of those who’ll take you in or, at worst, the elements.

I could no longer do what I was doing because my epileptic seizures were cutting in on time and my ability to perform. I’m currently in process of trying to get disability benefits from Social Security. But, after having been employed for the better part of a quarter century or more – twenty-one straight of those years on the payroll of one company – to find myself not working was losing myself. If not the entirety of me, then a substantial part of me. The part that allowed my independence. It wasn’t the best of jobs, but it allowed me to work around my issues. Mostly. It also put me at the mercy of a lot of bullshit that made it more difficult for me to both perform my duties and deal with my issues whether on the job or off it. It wasn’t designed for my particular shortcomings. And… There was a lot of negativity with it that was born of the fact that there was no real chain of command structure, there. I was expected to do things that were beyond my control and if I were to take initiative that put those things into my control, that control was immediately removed from me. Yet I was still expected to do what only being in control of those things allowed. And everyone above me and below took advantage of that. By the time I left – and I left on my own volition – I was a shell of man. Almost a child of a man. Because of what I endured there and within the perimeter of my own body. I left knowing that I had been taken advantage of and fearing that I’d not find work again. That I’d not be able to take care of myself, losing the independence that identifies one as a self-sufficient adult. And I worried about my mental state. Which threatened my identity as an adult, period. As an individual. As a human being. I worried that I’d have to be under someone else’s care and responsibility and I worried about losing myself and being a burden and never being able to follow my dreams nor leading my life I chose and- It nearly ended my life. I nearly ended my life.

I’ve been fighting for disability for about a year and a half. Sometimes somewhat half-heartedly. Because I want more than a check. Or a bank deposit, as it is, now. Direct Deposit. I’ve applied for work at quite a few places around this valley; I’m not what they’re looking for. I understand that. But it’s frustrating, nonetheless. To say the least. I need a paycheck. And that’s what it’s about for me. There’s something to a job that instills pride into one’s heart, that strengthens one’s soul. That gives you a reason for getting out of bed and out of the house and allows you to talk to other people and learn something new each day. And it pays you for it. It puts a person on his or her feet. In more ways than financial reimbursement for services rendered.

Although my disability claim is pending, the state mailed an application for vocational rehabilitation to me. It was one of the most life-affirming things that’s happened to me for some time. It really was.

Initial meeting is tomorrow. I’m both excited and terrified that I’ll not be able to get into the program. That I’ll not be able to travel back and forth to it. That I’ll have a seizure in the middle of it or need to lie down, at least. That I’ll not be able to pick up on anything said to me. But these people know all about the kind of thing I need, I’m sure. I was even told that there’s shuttle service.

I just want my pride back. You know? I want to be able to walk into a place and get to work and do my best and earn a check. Earn it.

What will I do? I dunno. I’ll know more tomorrow about what the program expects of me as well as what it can do for me and will do for me. And what I’ll be doing. During and after the program.

I did the same thing for so long. Doing something – anything – else is scary. But not as scary as being 45 and facing the second half of my life as- What. A child? In the body of an adult man? Dependent on others for everything from his telephone to toilet paper? Do you know what it’s like to live like that? Having others in control of your living arrangements and transportation? Do you know what that does to a person? What’s the alternative, though – total disenfranchisement? Living on the streets? While my brain is slowly eaten away?

If I ultimately get disability benefits, I might be allowed to work a bit at something and the program can help with that, too.

I’ll let myself get to thinking and find me on the dark side of it. Remembering back to leaving high school, when I was voted “Most-Likely To Succeed”. I was pretty sharp, they tell me. Those who remember me. From then. As I was, then. I wasn’t sure. But I was confident I’d pull something off. All these years later, I’m entering a program that once I might’ve laughed off as being for losers. Well, guess what, buddy: you’re one of those people, now. Wounded war veterans. Disease survivors. Middle-aged unemployed folks who’d worked for a generation as I had and suddenly found themselves laid-off and without marketable skills. There’s nothing shameful about it. It’s a gift from above. To be given another chance. A chance at a new life. A chance to talk about something besides sickness and dreams and shit that belongs in the past for the most part.

The diet. In case you were wondering, I did cave to my craving for that hot dog filled with cheese. 110 calories. I had it with a piece of bread (no buns on hand) – a regular ol’ wheat slice that was, if I recall, 163 calories. I am counting calories and decided, if things went as planned, I’d probably sleep through morning, being up so late – in a kind of dull agony from the gut and from the meds – so this, I reasoned, was “breakfast”.

I slept better. Somewhat so. Although I continue to dream somewhere on the “romantic” side. This time, I was being driven about in the wee hours of my former town by a beautiful young ebony woman in a taxi, trying madly to exchange business cards with her after a disconnected dream about being on a college female basketball team, pretending to be gay to be allowed a spot on the team, as I guess that at that college, they equated male homosexuality with femininity. The time, I believe, was set to at least in the mid-‘80s, so maybe that explains some of that. But you know how people are. People of older generations. It was their rule. And I was using it to get close to a girl on the team.

I played terribly. As I do in reality. I’m the worst athlete ever. But there was something else: I was running some kind of scam out of the business department and- Somehow, everything fell apart. And the next thing I knew, I was in the back of this cab. At night. Traveling through my old town. Which was different as I remember it, as it is now or ever was. Because it’s a dream. Shit in there nowhere near reality. A platypus farm? Never happened. And, of course, I was naked. I’m frequently naked in these dreams. Nude. Naked. The underlying meaning is “naked”. Naked to Creation. Uncovered for everyone to see. It’s metaphoric; hanging out – quite literally – without clothing is symbolic of truth exposed. How it applies to the dream – to any of these dreams – is a shrug, as it-

It’s not such a “shrug”. I get it. Although describing it isn’t the easiest thing, as it’s conveyed within me in the form of feeling. Usually – if not always – the dream isn’t about the obvious but the nakedness, which is pretty obvious as well. It’s just not always obvious that the dream is about nakedness rather than whatever other shit’s featured. Sex, love, adoration, something of sentimental value – whatever. Add nakedness to it and the dream becomes about the truth of what’s being featured and begs me to focus on it. Which isn’t always what’s put in front of me, in front of the “eyes” of my mind, but in the form of how the scene makes me feel. How I feel about it. And why.

It’s about inadequacy. Which nakedness adds to. Being about both truth and a weakening thing. Being put into a compromising situation. Being in such a situation. Feeling inadequate. And the truth behind it. Why I feel so.

I just had to go take a dump and, returning, realized I was no longer in the groove of what I was on about. It happens a lot, anymore. I may have mentioned it before. Several times. The meds, the seizures – one or the other are to blame. I’ve surprisingly- I can’t be angry. It is. Right? It is. It is how it is. “I’ll live around it,” I’ve decreed, and I do. Or I do my best. I try.

I clogged up the gad-damned toilet.

The characters in the dreams never seem aware of my nakedness. Therefore, I take it as an internalized thing. An inside fear. What I worry about others seeing in me. Sometimes I feel smaller than life-sized. Smaller and naked. And no one seems to notice but me.

Sitting on the shitter, before becoming more aware of what was coming out of me at the moment, I thought on the “smaller and naked” thing. Understanding that these dreams aren’t about- What they’re about is accepting why I feel as I do and how to remedy it. But they cruelly access other feelings I’d rather they didn’t. Desires. Memories, sometimes.

The Tegretol is seriously tearing up my gut. Making it tough to get comfortable-enough for sleep at night – and even when I do get to sleep, it jars me awake.

I talked to my neurologist about it at my last check-up. Because, closer to the beginning of the year, I’d be on the john throughout the night with the trots. More recently, it’d be the opposite. Bound-up. With severe stabbing pains of gas that couldn’t get free.

“Oh, yes,” he nodded. “It can do that.” Of the Tegretol.

I’ve already got gastro-intestinal issues. I seem to have won the “genetic lottery” – if the genetic lottery offered, as its grand prize, a load of physical negativity. I don’t need any help.

I feel bad about- This. I’m naturally- I’m predisposed to opening up. To “sharing”. To being “naked” in this way. If what I have to show is more negative than positive, if it makes me seem like a “small” person, a weak person…

There’s a lot of reasons for me to feel this way. But… Sometimes, when we get messages either from others or from ourselves that highlight our negativities, they’re advice or pleas to turn those negativities around. They’re encouragement that we can do it. In spite of whatever’s been placed in our way. Hell – we can take the obstacles and make them work for us, too! I believe that. I believe all of it. Sometimes… Sometimes all of us need to be reminded. I needed reminding. I’ll probably need a constant reminding until I overcome.

I’ve done pretty good with the diet, today. Even with incorporating the hot dog from last night into Wednesday’s calorie count. I’ve done this before; I know how it can be. How difficult getting acclimated to changing my routine for intake. Eating for hunger rather than for sport. I fell a little off track, yesterday, mostly for misjudging portion size. What I ate wasn’t bad. Except for that cookie. The hot dog was a turkey one. There’s that. But I’m not gonna try to convince either of us that it was a healthy choice. I wanted it. Like I wanted the cookie. But we need to go outside the box, now and then. It’s okay. As long as it’s done sensibly. And we maintain control. Self-control.

I wanted to kiss this girl, but she’s- Gone. I mean, she’s- Unavailable to me. Her life occurs someplace else. Meanwhile, I pop anticonvulsants and shake and live somewhere between half-coherent and sleepless and I’ve decided – yes – on dieting. To diet. Which, over the past couple of days has been, as I’ve told others, a mixed bag. Overall, I’m somewhat proud of myself. I’ve either come in below my daily caloric limit or I’ve gone over it but not by much and in a manner that- I can easily see how to fix shit, food-wise, so as to prevent going over again. Or do better.

The exercising part of it isn’t going as well. I spent just under five minutes doing sit-ups and push-ups and it nearly killed me. Off to the side, my niece’s little girl was laughing at me. I was getting angry because I didn’t want anyone to be a witness. Wanted to perform all this on the sly.

I crawled over to the sofa and tried not to die. I’ve got important things for me scheduled later in the week; can’t miss ‘em. Employment-related things. The inklings of a first real job since leaving Nevada? Are you kidding me? I’m not missing that.

When I’ve been losing sleep, I get this sweaty feeling around my eyes. Pretty much just below the eyes. I don’t know what I’m talking about. My head’s up my ass, most of the time. I was probably going to continue about- Feh. Whatever.

What will I do if Yahoo! bans profanity on Tumblr? How will I express myself? Will my head explode from all the “fucks” stuck inside of it, pressing against the inside of my cranium, trying to be free?

It’s not the same girl from the other night. In the incredibly vibrant dream of the other night. It’s another. Another ghost.

“Tell us about these ghosts!” someone’s demanded.

Not a good idea. They need to remain where they haunt me, as they’re not at rest and have lives beyond mine and are alive, you see – not ghosts.

“What if they read this?”

Nobody reads this.

“Do they know, at all?”

Yeah. Yeah, they do. They do.

Suddenly, I wanna get something to eat. I’m not supposed to be eating. I’m dieting, I remind myself. But-

I don’t think that I can diet like this. I never have. I’ve gotta be out through the other side before I can do it. You know – living in a self-sustaining manner. Capable of taking advantage of all the happy things this valley has to offer. Right now, I honestly don’t care if I lose weight. If I become a sexy beast. I just want a sandwich. A hot dog. One of those Oscar Mayer wieners with the cheese, inside. They’re in the refrigerator, you know. The best ones were the ones stuffed with jalapeño cheese. Got-damn. I don’t think they make those, anymore.

Sometimes I wonder about people who want to trim up. What’s the real motivation? Where? Is it really about fitness into the coming years? Or is it trying to recapture one’s self in the rear view mirror?

Fuck me, back there. I don’t want anybody. Back there or up here. I like to eat. I like to drink beverages that aren’t good for me or that work against my medication. I wanna meander around life and suckle from its teat in that way. I’m too old for the other thing. Some have said “bullshit” to that… But I mean I’m too old for it. I leave that for dreams. And daydreams. My love is reserved for the contents of a pizza box. And a 12-ounce can. That love can’t hurt me worse than-

If I continue to feel the way I do, I’m-

I know people don’t like to hear it. They don’t like it when you talk this way. But seriously – it hurts. I’m not talking about emotionally. It’s a physical pain. In my gut. Eating helps get rid of it. I could drink half a dozen gallons of milk a day just fine. A few colas sound great, right now. A bag of burgers from McDonald’s.

This isn’t a “diet” thing. It’s the meds.

The older you get, the more ghosts you see. You see them everywhere. In crowds. Alone while meandering through a park or while pushing a shopping cart. On television, when watching the news. On the Internet, somewhere. Anywhere. A face appears and you wonder, “Is that…?” And it gets at you because it could be. The world is small-enough. Or – more-convincingly – it belongs. It should be there. For some reason. You’ve begun to rattle it through your head, the reasons why you’re seeing it. The significance of it. That’s when it starts to play with your mind – or when you start to play with your mind. When you start going through scenarios of how this has come to be – and why. Especially the “why” of it. That’s how it begins to thread itself into you. How you thread it into you. And, really, that’s how you see ghosts. Your mind tells you that it’s gone through this process, the one I’ve just described. But it hasn’t. You’ve been threading the scenarios in which you see the ghosts of your life since the people they represent left it – and I’m talking about living people. People who are out there. You’ve been doing this nearly automatically. Dreaming it, daydreaming it. One day, one of these scenarios goes hot and your mind tells you it’s really happening. Runs through all the reasons how and why it’s really happening. And your skin chills and your knees knock and you think to yourself, “It’s really happening.” When it’s just someone going through their daily errands in your path, someone you believe looks like a ghost from your past. Someone who, in reality, may not be anything like the ghost you think you’re seeing. In personality nor appearance. They’re just-enough of- Something. Just enough to push your mind…

Then there are the dreams. When you’re trying to work your life out in your sleep and the ghosts show up. Sometimes fucking you up for days afterward.

I tried to embrace her, but she let go the loudest of shrieks, her face contorting into ugly as she pushed me away.

Days of trying to come up with some kind of answer I can rest easy with. “Easy, easily”… There’s a difference. The colloquial… Writing, for me, not only embraces it but has to accept the fogginess of mind that’s come with more seizures and the larger amounts of medication to prevent them. So I’ll write. Or be in conversation. And I’ll forget what we were talking about. Or what I was writing about. I’ll be onto a word or a phrase and can’t- I’ll be just this close to it, but can’t remember what it was. The word. Or the set of words and how I’d meant to arrange them. At first, frustrating. But now… I incorporate this into writing and speech. I have to. Sooner or later, whatever’s escaped me will come back. I’ll return to it, then. As it’s returned to me.

In many ways, my life – life itself – has become a ghost to me. Everything about it. Anything. The past… Anything existing in my past… Anything that isn’t in front of my face right now is a ghost. And, contrary to what I might’ve- Contrary to what you might think, I don’t long for the ghosts of my life. I don’t not long for them… I guess it would have to depend upon the ghost. And what it means to me. What the object or person it represents means to me. And, yes, there are objects that haunt me. Places. Did I previously allude to my ghosts being only representations of people once but no longer in my life? Sometimes they’re representative of people and things I see every day. They’re shades of how those people and things once were to me. And not necessarily for the better. Sometimes they’re ghosts of the shit something or someone once was, something or someone who’s become- Like a jewel to me. And I’ve got to remember when it wasn’t always like that. Always reminded that it wasn’t always like that.

Then there’s the fact that I’m my own ghost. There’s something that’ll drive a person crazy. Taking every moment of my life I can recall, every change for the better, every slide into the worse, and making it or what came before it- Making that a ghost.

I’m hardly alone in this. As we age, don’t we all look into the mirror and wonder who it is looking back? Don’t we all go through our days with thoughts about people who’ve left us long ago? Or whom we’d left behind, maybe not realizing that we never would? Thinking about some little town or former home or the schools we’d attended and the people there and how that life was for us, good or bad? An old dog or cat. Not always about just it but how we’d could have done better by it? Or, similarly, how – if we’ve got children – how maybe we could’ve done better as a parent. All of these things piled into a corner marked “Us”. We are our own ghosts. And we haunt ourselves worse or, at least, more frequently than any other could. Even when our lives, at present, could be brightest, happiest they’ve ever been. Even then, we’ve gotta look back on the shithole each of our lives maybe used to be. Even if we’ve found people who treat us well, we have to torture ourselves with memories of abuse and neglect. I dunno. Maybe we need ghosts to remind us how good we’ve got it. But, when things aren’t so great, they’re never far away. The older you get, life becomes one big ghost. You can’t get away from it. Your mind is a gad-damned ghost factory. And you’re running the joint. And you’re the worst ghost of all.

The imagery made perfect sense – albeit cruel. There are people in the world to whom I was once important, loved. I was loved by them. They were in love with me. Within some moment in time. If only for a brief moment of time. For that moment, some given moment, each of these people were in love with me or, at least, I’d meant something to them. I’d meant a great deal to them, to each of these people, at some time, some moment in time. For a time. Until I didn’t. At which point – and I no longer did, no longer meant what I had to them – I became less. Something less. Maybe not enough to any longer warrant physical displays of affection. Maybe not enough to care about me as they’d once done. Maybe less-enough for hatred. Or, at least, disgust. For whatever reason. Or reasons. Sometimes, the only reason necessary is the passage of time. Within which, from the beginning of a moment to its end, affection turns to disaffection and lovers become no more. In the same manner as life becomes death.

She was everyone I’ve ever been in love with. At one moment a-

Yes. Yes, I snorted, shaking my head in the pretense of not crying about it, but I was. It was the most shocking thing I’ve experienced in years – and it wasn’t even real. Nor was she. A symbol. A ghost. Of everyone she symbolized, and a ghost symbolically of its ghost. Yet never cold. Warm. As if to symbolize recent life. Present life. For everyone she symbolized (almost everyone, that is) lives and is warm with life. Just not- Not with me. Not for me.

There’s not a moment I don’t think of them. That I don’t love them. Not a moment I don’t recall their love for me. But, if I were to approach them now… If I were to touch them… Any of them…

I’m a stranger to her. An ugly stranger. To whom I was ugly and old and sickly and she was as young as she ever was and even if she was older than that, she remained as young as she’d been – then or ever. Of another time. As I was out of time in her present tense. Trying to put my arms around her, trying to grab at her in some ridiculous display of delusion and need. When- Hadn’t been only minutes before that we’d leaned into each other, foreheads pressed, our fingers intertwined, skin heated, breath steaming?

“I love you,” she’d said. Into my face. Into my ear. As she had in her letters. When people still wrote and mailed letters to each other. When receiving letters was like Christmas.

“Camack!” the corporal shouted.

“Here!” I called, from the second row, a column to his right.

He paused to make a show of sniffing the perfumed envelope. “Jesus,” he winced. Then flung it toward me.

They never made it, our letters, to any of us. That was intended. Added to the spectacle of mail call. To the cadre’s fun, anyway. Mine landed three columns to my left, in the front row. The guy who picked it up mimicked the show of sniffing it as the corporal had done and let out a “Woo!” before passing it back and to the next guy who did the same.

“Give it here!” I bellowed, snatching the envelope from the man as he’d tried to hold it over my head, grinning at him after he’d surrendered it, slapping him in the gut with my free hand.

“Knock it off!” the corporal growled.

I read the envelope. Its sweet fragrance strong-enough that I didn’t have to bring it to my nose – but I did, anyway.

She’s on Facebook, I remind myself. Frequently. So what? Am I supposed to bust in on her after all these years and announce, “Hi – here I am!”?

My time’s long gone. She’s got a family, now. It’s their time. I’m not the guy she thought she knew, all those years ago, anymore, anyway. I don’t know if I ever was. It’s so long ago. So long ago…

There’s a helluva welt near the top center of my forehead – just off-center, to the left, a quarter of an inch or so below the hairline – that refuses to pop open. Welt, zit… It’s huge. Painful. At least when I’m fucking with it. There’s a lot of pressure to it; I can tell. I can’t see why applying more won’t blast the gad-damned thing all over the bathroom mirror in a spray of pus and blood. And let its insides heal for the lack of shit on hand to prevent it, and the area around it, too. So that each nearby touch doesn’t make me wince and feel the need to squeeze at it, making it worse.

That’s my “pimple” story of the day.

The thing’s been my adversary for days. I’ll not rest until I’ve proven myself its better.

“Don’t mess with them!” I can still hear old Coach Arnold warn, during his duty as the boys’ health instructor in high school. “You’ll push that stuff further down into your skin and infect the area around it, making it worse!”

He was a large, hulking man. With a limp and a crew cut. He’d served in the Marine Corps during World War II, fighting in the battle for Guadalcanal.

Kids these days usually can’t tell you what “Guadalcanal” is. The have a hard time with “World War II”.

I believe the man was a Mormon. Told us stories of how, when he was a young teacher, his colleagues would try to play tricks on him by spiking his soda.

He’d notice. By a sip, maybe. Or the smell. Anyway, he’d quietly set the drink down and not say anything about it, this huge man. Who, when he was a kid, would have to drag his dad home in the wee hours in a toy wagon.

“It was the Depression,” he explained to us. “We didn’t have much. Put cardboard in my shoes to keep the snow out of the holes.”

Nightly, he’d have to trudge through the snow to the bar with his wagon to get his dad, then – after having loaded the drunk man into that toy wagon – he’d pull him home.

“I had a ‘no lenience’ policy for drinking on the team,” he’d tell us. Of his time as the high school’s football coach. “One of our best players came up to me, one day, and said, ‘Coach… I’ve been drinking.’” Coach Arnold quietly told him he was no longer on the team.

He was no longer the P.E. teacher by the time I was a senior in high school – his last year, as well. But he’d sub, from time to time. He was known to have silently walked to the equipment room and return with two pairs of boxing gloves upon having encountered a squabble between two of the male students and quietly – always quietly – he’d escort them to the gym and have ‘em duke out their disagreement by Queensbury rules. This was at a time in which teachers routinely paddled their unruly students; boxing matches conducted by teachers were then looked upon as a good way for fights between students to be safely resolved under supervision rather than something to be gasped-at by today’s sensibilities, I guess. Anyway, we’d try to stage fights between ourselves, just to get old Coach Arnold to let us box a round or two for fun. He’d silently smile, shaking his head.

There weren’t many fights in school during my time, there. We were looked-upon by those we knew who’d graduated a year or two or three or five, ten years before as being kind of- “Soft”, maybe? We were, a good number of us, on our way to a yuppie future. We weren’t the beer-swilling “Rock & Rollers” before us, the hard-charging, hard-partying, hard-fighting souls who’d pass the time trying to knock each other of the roofs of their houses with shovels. Our noses were in books. Even those of us who’d wanted to identify with that older crowd.

I can think of three former schoolmates or younger fellow alumni off the top of my head who are now school principals. I’m always floored by this. For a moment. Before I realize how old I am, how old they are, how many years have gone by and what must’ve gone by with them through those years. With all of us. Some of us are old-enough to be grandparents, now. With enough years behind us to retire if we could. And do those things we’d always wanted to do when responsibility was of prime import.

I woke, this morning, from a nightmare. A “morningmare”, I suppose. I couldn’t quite shake it, even after sitting up. I was still half in the dream, in a heated argument with someone within it. A byproduct of the antiseizure meds I figured, when later finally standing up and out of it and after that, while scooping raisin bran out of a bowl in front of me.

The content of the dream continues to make me uncomfortable. Though I’m slowly forgetting the dream altogether. It, as I’m finding a lot of my dreams are, lately, took place during high school years. Not necessarily my high school years, but during high school. And it’s-

I dunno. Painful. What I experienced in it mostly isn’t- Wasn’t- It was a quiltwork of images and interactions that were the worst. “Is”, “were”. Still processing it as if it was still happening.

The part that gutted me was when this beautiful young girl came up to me in tears. She’d been on my periphery. As being someone with a connection to my past. She had light brown hair. Wavy, bobbed at the shoulder. Brown eyes. And milky-white skin.

She took my arms in her perfect, milky hands and ran them down to my wrists as she moved closer to me, the heat of her body sending steam off mine as she moved closer, tears running down her cheek, tears running down mine.  As she wrapped her ghostly-white fingers around my hands and entwined her fingers in my fingers, she placed her forehead onto mine and we remained there like that for a long while, blanketed in a moist, teary warmth. Until a period bell rang and she pulled away – at which point I reached out to embrace her.

She pushed me away with an angry screech, her face contorted into ugliness.

Words were said. But I can’t remember what they were. Only what they represented.

I was out of time. I didn’t belong there. Not the person I’ve become. Someone else, beyond time.

I don’t know who she was. A composite of every girl I’ve ever loved, maybe.

I was a stranger.

I stood up, moved to the bathroom and looked into the mirror and saw an old, fat man staring back. With frightful hair and bags under his eyes. And that huge thing on his forehead. Which I wanted to squeeze the shit out of-

I pulled my hands back as they reached for it. It had stopped hurting. Maybe, if I leave it alone, I thought to myself, it’ll go away. On its own.

I never leave things along. I fuck with them and fuck with them and fuck with them until even their memory hurts. Until the memory equals pain. Until all I want is for them and my memories  of them to-

There was once a young girl whose forehead rested upon mine as our fingers played with each other’s. I won’t describe her. The color nor texture of her hair. Nor her skin. I remember the heat of her breath as it hit my lips. The shape of her body. How it felt. We were leaned upon a doorjamb; the world around me had disappeared. All that was happening was this girl.

I know I’ll never enjoy that experience again. But… If I leave it alone… Maybe I’ll get to recall it. As it was. As beautiful as it was. Forever.

If I let her be.

If I don’t poison it.

If I keep her in the past.

If I keep the person I was- If I keep him there with her and the person I’ve become here. And leave her alone.

I bent over the toilet, flipped its seat up, and emptied my guts into it.

Personal experience shows me that I can’t very well exist in a state of being that’s all about self-medication. A medicated state of being that may be prescribed, may be legal. It’s not really “self-medication”, that. The self-medicated take it upon themselves to prescribe medicinal treatment though legal or illegal means. Or both. I put the pills into my headhole myself, thus it’s “self-medication”. But the medication’s been prescribed by a licensed physician for a specific reason, as part of a specific treatment of a certain ailment. How I function throughout my given day and night is dependent upon this medication and my ability to take it when I’m supposed to and how I’m supposed to and- Though the success of my treatment – in my case, for epileptic seizures – depends upon my ability to exist in a state of being of perpetual medication, administered by myself, I’m not- I don’t enjoy the- I don’t enjoy it. The state. The process. Being medicated. Any more than I enjoy the affliction it treats. It affects everything I do, is responsible for a large part of everything I don’t do.

I see or hear of someone living under the influence of shit they needn’t be on and I-

Why. Why do you do that, man? Why do that to yourself? When you don’t have to? I ask these questions not knowing the man’s pain, of course. Or woman. It can be a woman. It very likely is a woman. Why are you doing this?

The fact is, you’ve gotta include everything of an intoxicant into the answer to these questions. Anything that fills a hole, fills something that’s missing in someone’s soul. Anything that adds a little more pep when that ass is draggin’. So you come back with not just some kind of drug but alcohol. Sex. Food. The Internet. Books. TV. Work. Coffee. There’s a lot of real estate to cover in the answer. When you include these things with the specific ill that each of these things inflicts upon a person. Any person.

My antiseizure meds kind of fuck me up. But they’ve done no more harm than me than food has when I’ve used it to take the place of love that’s missing or to make up for what I went without in younger times. Passive entertainment has cushioned me against the pain of living through loneliness. Boredom. Caffeinated drinks keep me going when I can’t sleep (and contribute to the next evening’s sleeplessness, contributing to a vicious circle of sleeplessness and pepped beverages and more sleeplessness and more pepped beverages and so on). And the Internet. It’s often a convenient surrogate to life in general. Interpersonal communication, entertainment – anything that can’t be physically pumped into one’s body, the Internet’s got it. And we keep coming back to it. When we’ve become so empty inside that it’s our fun. Our social life. Do we really need chemicals, as well? To get us along?

Sometimes, yes. I think we do. My drug of choice is a nice girly drink. Fruity and fun, with a big garnish on it. I like a beer, too, but they don’t make my favorite, anymore. Tequiza. Remember Tequiza? Anheuser-Busch’s lager with agave nectar? And a hint of lime? For awhile, you could get, from your local distributor, packets of Tequiza-branded lime-flavored salt in case you needed a bigger hint. And it gave the impression of a tequila-themed drink. That was a good-ass beer. “A little girly,” some warned me. Perfect.

When I was a kid in my late teens and early twenties, I was a stick and just hearing the top of a beer pop off sent me into a buzz. Maybe the uncontrollable heaves, even. Usually both. I was a cunt. But, as I aged, I put on a tremendous amount of weight that has not only protected me from not being able to drink without getting sick, it’s allowed me to drink more. And recover quicker. In almost every example of a soaked outing, I had to get up for work within two or three hours of staggering home. And I performed my job wonderfully the next day, as I’d also learned to keep my body full of food and water while out on my boogie.

My current treatment for epilepsy prevents me from “enjoying” nights like those. I rarely – if ever – partake in the dread alcohol. Of any variety, manly or otherwise. I, recall, prefer the otherwise. But there’s always somebody who insists you solidify your bond of friendship with them with a gad-damned shot. A shot of anything. Depends on the company you’re keeping. Shots are usually manly drinks and being that, I loathe them. I did my time in my college years trying to butch myself up with bottles of tequila and vodka and even chugged a bottle of – gag – Scotch; I needn’t prove myself to anyone, now.

“C’mon! Have a shot of Crown with me!”

Jesus Christ.

What you’ll typically find me imbibing is some manner of tea. There are nine-hundred varieties of tea in this house and my favorite is regular-ol’ fucking Lipton in a gad-damned teabag. I make no apologies for it. I also enjoy Bigelow “Plantation Mint”. Keep any other kind of mint-flavored tea away from me. I assure you I’ll hate it. I take either one hot and sweet and sometimes with milk (not the “Plantation Mint”, however, with the milk). They are like liquid candy to me on the one hand and on the other, liquid aspirin. I can have the worst headache and I’ll space the aspirin almost every time in favor of a nice cup of tea. I swear the shit works.

Other guilty pleasures? Milk. Plain-ol’ cow’s milk. Chocolate milk, too. And sometimes buttermilk. For when I’ve got that really deep hole in my soul that needs soothing. And Coca-Cola. In a classic glass bottle. Which means it’s made with real sugar. The Mexicans know how to cater to both my weakness for American nostalgia and the taste of sugar over – gag – corn syrup. Which some fucks are trying to call “corn sugar”, now.

Fuck you.

Oh, man. Remember buying Coke in glass bottles out of vending machines in this fading republic? Sitting on a bench, somewhere, clutching a bottle of Coke, listening to real “Rock & Roll” on a shitty transistor radio while eating a hot dog, the scent of onion rings deep-frying in the shack behind you, neon lights crackling on a vintage sign above your head? That’s America, my friend.

I’ll never get those days back any more than Jay Gatsby can recapture his past. Any more than those kids from “American Graffiti” can stretch one last night of their high school years into forever. Any more than-

Any more than I can look through a list of names on Facebook and make those names be the people I used to know, so many years ago.

I think that some of the people I know who crawl into some easy chair or onto some sofa in some dimly-lit room to spark up or shoot up might be looking for the America they knew or some long-ago love they knew and maybe each time I shove another cheeseburger down my gullet, I’m trying to replace one or the other or both with something tangible, if only temporary. So the burgers have to keep coming and coming and coming. Like the smoke for some. Or the junk.

I was going to write something about that final scene in “American Graffiti”, when Richard Dreyfuss’ plane takes off and he’s looking down, out through the window, and spots that “T”-Bird cruising along a farm road below.

I’m still trying to get at that girl in the “T”-Bird. Among other ghostly things. In spite of everything that went through my head when I was at that radio station, being schooled by Wolfman Jack as he was sucking on Popsicle after Popsicle, trapped in that booth.

“I love you, Curt…” Suzanne Somers coos over the payphone at Mel’s Drive-In.

But she would never tell him her name.

I put her into my system four times a day. Two 200 milligram pills, once every six hours. I stuff her into my mouth, I pipe her into my ears, I spike my mind with her image constantly. I could never get onto that plane.

That’s not fair. I’d have had to have those pills, anyway. But the rest of it. The rest of it. The rest of it is my fault.

I see these people whining about the monkeys on their backs, these monkeys in the darkness of some seedy room in which they do their shit, and I say, “Fuck you. Nobody did this to you. You did it to yourself.”

“To yourself,” I remind me. In queue to board the plane.

“Don’t leave the queue. Stay in line.”

The subject of marijuana is- It’s one of those things that’s- Damn. I don’t like to get into it. Because I’m of a certain mind that straddles the two main, battling philosophies on it and I’ve got a leg on either side of the line just far-enough to get me in a lot of trouble with the opposition and- I get it. On the one hand. On the other, I don’t see why it should.

I grew up at a time and in an atmosphere that branded pot heads “freaks”. It branded them “pot heads”, actually. Born in 1968, I spent the first seven of my years living with my grandparents. In rural Nevada. “Hee Haw” was on the TV. Country music on the radio. Short haircuts on our heads if we were guys, young or old. In many ways, we still lived in the mid-1950s in 1974 in our little world. But it was a bubble. A bell jar. Irreflective of the world outside. A world that was creeping in. And not honest with itself. Marijuana wasn’t a new thing. It’s been around for centuries. And all those clean-cut people we saw on television and listened to on the radio, they used it. The good boys and girls in town used it. My grandparents used it.

“I tried it,” my Grandpa Sandy admitted, almost twenty years ago. “Didn’t do anything for me,” he shrugged. And there’s the contention that my Grandma Gwen used it when she was dying of cancer. Had it sneaked into the hospital to her by one of our more rascally relatives.

“That’s not true,” my Aunt Suzy has countered.

Maybe it was at home she’d used it. Maybe Suzy isn’t aware of everything. Maybe she’s right but it’s just too good a story to leave alone. In any case, I’ve – throughout my adult years – accepted the story as fact. Because I want it to be fact. That this poor woman suffering a terminal illness – my grandmother – got a little relief from the dread weed. So what? Is that so bad? So wrong?

No. Since coming of age, since discovering the tale (from whom I can’t recall), I’ve been an vocal supporter of medical marijuana. But… I could never shake the philosophy from the little boy in me who went home at lunch, each day, to watch reruns of “Ozzie and Harriet” in black and white on a black and white TV set, that marijuana was the evil pot, attaching it to dirty, hairy ne’er-do-wells who-

I’d think back into my history – as I am now – to all the dirty, hairy ne’er-do-wells I was exposed to in my early-to-mid childhood and, yeah, most were fucking assholes. Dicks. Shit-heads. But weren’t they all that without the weed? Yeah. If anything, the weed made them more docile about their assholery. In truth, I met quite a few people who liked their weed who were sweet, gentle folks and were most-likely that way without the weed as all the assholes I knew were assholes without their weed. If anything, I repeated… If anything, marijuana mellowed them the fuck out. But, as I think on all of this, I realize that marijuana to me, in that era, was- Hmm. An accessory. To a lifestyle. I didn’t like the lifestyle, I didn’t like its accessories. The assholes in my life would’ve found another accessory to their lifestyle if pot was unavailable. Some other kind of medicine for their wounded souls. And they were wounded souls. Most assholes recognize it, that they’re wounded. They medicate. Try every kind of medicine they can. They’ll grab for it all. And there’s always another drug coming along. Right now, these people are on meth. They found methamphetamine. It’s not new, either. Been around a few decades. But it’s the “in” thing, right? Killing people fast. From the inside, out. Turning them into something less than human.

Isn’t that a shitty thing for me to say? “Less than human”? But it does things to a person’s body, mind, that’s irreversible. Takes them away from humanity. Turns them into angry, thieving zombies. Murderous, sometimes. It takes the humanity from their minds, replacing it with one goal: to get more meth.

That’s not the gentle hippies I met in the late ‘70s who tried to get me to unwrap myself from all the negativity I’d experienced by just talking with me. Marijuana certainly had a major role in their lives, but it was one of- An almost reverence. It was holy. It was natural. From the earth. Healthy. Hell, it couldn’t hurt. It didn’t impede one’s humanity but expanded- No. It- Then again, yes. Anyway, it didn’t remove humanity from the human being. It asked me to take a ride with it. When I was angry with my dad, one night. And counseled me – gently, warmly – on remembering not to forget my humanity, myself.

I’ve never used the stuff. But I’ve never forgotten those kindly, gentle hippies – a couple, husband and wife, the wife being the daughter of a minister of some variety – and their message of love to me. I started to think that maybe, in spite of the continued exposure to people just out for a high, that maybe there was something Heaven-sent to this herb. Something holy. Something that doesn’t just ease the pain of the dying but also the pain of the living. How can that be so wrong?

Recently, several people I know have suggested I try it to help ease the effects of my epileptic seizures. I just- I can’t. Because of that old stigma I have – still have – about marijuana. Most of it comes from the idea of smoking it. I’ve never been a tobacco smoker. The thought disgusts me. Switching tobacco for marijuana produces the same disgust.

“You can eat it,” they’ve suggested. “Lots of different ways to take it in. Make brownies.”

“Make me some of those brownies!” another friend told me, her eyes widening, her mouth turning into the widest of grins.

I shrug these ideas off. I just don’t know. I’ve spent so long- Oh. And there’s the influence law enforcement has had on me. I’ve got a lot of cops in my life. Or had. At one time, I’d wanted to be one of them. Makes shedding that stigma all the tougher. But… In all of this… In spite of the stigma, in spite of anything else to the negative toward marijuana… I really don’t see why it must be so vilified. Especially with anything else out there we may legally put into our bodies. With what else is illegal and what those things do to our bodies. Weed is hardly the worst thing to happen to humanity.

That old support I threw out there for medical marijuana – “medical” alone – doesn’t seem to get it with me. I don’t see the problem with decriminalizing it. With taxing its retail sale. For those who don’t care to grow it themselves, for their own use. Decriminalize it, you drive its sales price into the dirt and the criminal element can’t find it worthwhile to continue its involvement in it and that goes away and so does that attraction illegal things have for a certain section of the populace. Soon, you either like it or you don’t and that’s all there is. As with certain types of alcoholic beverages. Or alcohol in and of itself.

I bring it up. The subject. Of marijuana. And its supporters can only see my apprehension and its detractors can only see my support and this person or that attempts to pigeonhole me, my personality, taking either into account. I just want to be left alone to my own opinions on it. While I think others should be afforded theirs. And, in the middle, those who choose to partake, let ‘em.

There’s no shame in that.

Mothers’ Day isn’t- I drop my head. I never had a good relationship with my mom. I’d spent my early years until my maternal grandmother died with that grandmother and my grandfather. They were my parents until I was seven. Then I went to live with an aunt. How I came to live with my mom after that is a whirlwind of different explanations, the truth of it locked within my own mind. I’d gone through some hell, but life at my aunt’s was far from hellish. I had a lot of issues by the time I’d chosen to live with my mother; the choice was about- Taking care of- I had to bury them. The issues. Many of which weren’t issues but to me. Because we’ll often take something and make it serious in our own minds, regarding it as something that maybe everybody else has their eyes on. When they don’t. There might be the occasional question.

“Why don’t you live with your mom?”

It meant nothing. It was just a question. Never loaded with some kind of negativity. It was innocent. From somebody who’d never not known life with a mother, the kind of mother that could be defined as ideal. The state of being of not living with mine was foreign; they just wanted to know how or why I wasn’t living with mine. There was no malice in it. But I took it as being- I dunno. I hated having to answer it. That question. To explain it. To someone whose face would gradually blank out in- The inability to understand. My situation nor how I-

I would read their perceptions. Of anyone I’d try to explain it to, why I lived with my aunt instead of my mother. I hated having to explain. I hated the looks on their faces. Even though they weren’t looks of disgust. They just couldn’t grasp my explanation, never having had to have lived a similar life.

“I’d wanted,” I told a shrink, years later, “to not have to explain to some kid why I wasn’t going home to my mom. Why it had been my aunt or my grandma or whomever.” Everything we were doing would stop in order for me to go through the story and whatever we were doing would lose importance and even though there was no apparent maliciousness directed toward me, my friend or friends to whom I’d find myself explaining my story to would end up looking gut-punched and the theme of the day, then, became about my living arrangement and their minds were too busy being wrapped-up in trying to wrap themselves around my living arrangement to bother with whatever else we’d been up to and- Fuck. I hated it.

We spent part of the summer of 1977 in Nevada, visiting my mom. She was quiet. Withdrawn. Gentle. The anger and viciousness I remembered from years before weren’t there. I developed a tenderness in my heart for her, then, and began to fantasize a life with her.

In those days, I’d become hard to manage. I fought with my aunt a lot. Mostly out of my refusal to let my grandmother go. I’d become almost uncontrollable because I’d only grant my grandmother a right of authority over me and she was dead. There was a different philosophy of life in my aunt’s house than what I’d been used to in my grandmother’s, too. I couldn’t-

She wasn’t bad to me, my aunt. Unlike my mother, she always expressed affection. But there were rules. Rules for things I’d never had rules for while living with my grandparents. Times for bed. Rules for coming and going. Rules for the dinner table. Rules for interacting with others. These rules were in no way bad for me. I just wasn’t used to rules. Not that my grandparents had none in their house. It was just a different house. And suddenly a different life. I wasn’t ready to be thrust into a different life. I fought back. I was verbally abusive. Incorrigible. My mother had made a couple of visits around this time and it was during the last one that I, while in a fit, declared that I’d wanted to go live with my mom and my wish was granted.

For a few short months, things were probably okay. I saw that with the wag of my leveled palm. It was “iffy”. Life, then – at least for me – was great. I loved being back in Nevada. In the small town of my early youth. With friends I’d made during preschool. And others. For me, it was almost idyllic. My mom, though, never seemed to be very into me.

My Grandma Gwen- We were close. Today’s her birthday. It’s Mothers’ Day, too. Not the first time her birthday fell on Mothers’ Day. I remember believing, when I was just a little guy, that her birthday fell on Mothers’ Day every year. I thought it was appropriate. She took us to get a puppy, one year, as a present to both of us. As my birthday was only three days before and it was hers and Mothers’ Day, too, and- That puppy symbolized our bond. That dog. “Laddie”.

We had to leave him behind when we moved to California. After Gwen passed.

I left everything behind. Everything I knew, everything I was. Everything I loved the most.

I left myself behind.

One day, my mom’s boyfriend told us she’d be going out of town for a couple of weeks. To the hospital in Reno. And we’d be staying with various people during that time – including him.

When she returned, she was like an animal. Snarling. Shrieking at us. At me, mostly.

“It’s all your fault! None of this would’ve happened if not for you!”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t say anything. I remembered when she lived with us – my grandparents and me – a few years before, cordoned-off in another room. She’d not let any of us in. She lived in there, as did my sister Wendi and baby sister Trish, who was all smiles in her white bassinet.

One afternoon, she’d caught me after sneaking inside to see Trish.

She screamed at me to get out, slapping at me as I fled. Shouting, “You wrecked my life!”

The passivity I found in her a few months before going to live with her was artificial. I didn’t know until I’d become an adult. She was heavily-medicated. I don’t know what happened between then and the time she was hospitalized or when she was discharged. Afterward, though… Things began to go worse. It took a lot of time before they got-

I remember a day, years before, at my grandparents’. By then, my mom had moved out. To her own place. She liked to come over, though, now and then, to generally be disruptive, as I recall. She used to whisper into my sisters’ ears to get them to come across the room and pick at me, which they gleefully did. When I’d get upset, my mom would use it as an excuse to barb me. That particular day, though, my grandmother was sitting off to the side. “I saw and heard the whole thing,” she scolded my mother. “Leave him alone!”

I’ve likewise defended my grandmother. Most of my aunts have angrily explained to me that she wasn’t who nor what I like to remember, detailing moments before my time in which her behavior to them was terrible, her judgment something less than stable, maybe. But I can’t vilify her for any of that. I only know what I remember. “Maybe,” I suggested, “she was trying to make up for it through me.”

“Maybe,” one of my aunts snorted, not convinced.

I remember a woman who’d hold me and show love for me. Who’d feed me or see that I was fed when the end of her life came, who’d likewise see that I was dressed. That I had everything I needed and a few things I didn’t need but were nice, too.

I never asked to be brought into this world. I wasn’t the one who was doing the fucking.

I’d hide behind the house in San Diego not long after our arrival, there, following my grandmother’s death. Which was during the summer following her forty-fourth birthday. Thinking back on how, the on the night of her passing – after her passing – my grandpa had returned from the hospital to tell me. How, when he told me, I’d lost my mind, running amok through the house while the adults there tried to catch me and hold me.

He caught me and held me and whispered into my ear that everything was gonna be alright. “It’s gonna be alright, honey,” he assured me. Addressing me as “honey” – something he’d never done before nor since that still seems both weird to me and- Sweet. Like the word itself. Warm.

He took me outside, into the backyard. Under the clear, starry sky. He asked me to crouch as he did, then he – with one arm around me – pointed upward into the heavens and explained to me that my grandmother was up there, looking down upon me from those stars, and would always be there whenever I needed her.

I like being up at night. Through the night. I always have. I’ve always been a night owl. I used to stay up, waiting for my grandpa to get home from work. He’d bring with him a couple of packets of instant coffee, two Styrofoam cups, some sugar and creamer packets, and a couple of plastic spoons, and he’d perform the nightly ritual of fixing us coffee before we’d catch the news or a NASA launch if one was going on or the late night scary movie.

In later years, I’d sneak outside. To be under the stars.

He couldn’t take care of us himself. My sister Amy and I. I think to the day he died he felt guilty about it, but he shouldn’t have and I’d tried to talk with him about it for years, even as we hurried to California in his final hours. We didn’t quite make it. I wanted him to know that I understood. I still do. And that, in his absence, I’d sneak outside as a kid. Or, as an adult, I’d just go out. And stand under the stars for awhile. To be with Gwen. That was our “coffee time”.

“It’s the best 45^th birthday I’ve ever had!”

That’s Thursday’s catchphrase. Already overdone by dinnertime. But, as middle-aged birthdays go, it wasn’t bad. Had bloodwork done, then went to Golden Corral to dine with 500 other large people with mullets and T-shirts without sleeves on them. People fighting over the last chicken quesadilla, then the last egg roll. Even as someone from the kitchen was scrambling to bring more.

I overate. Making up for all the years I endured being a skinny kid without food at home. “‘Elvis’ Syndrome”, I call it. Quick to admit that I don’t even know if that’s a thing. But I’ve grown huge in the second half of my life, slowly approaching the 170s, the 180s, approaching 200, tipping that and into the two-hundred and teens… Into the 220s… And to where I’m at now: teetering between 225 and 235 lbs. A lot of pork products. A lot of gravy. Making up for lost time. Making up for a lot of years in which I’d pine over photographs of meals.

I never went hungry. No matter how grim the worst of times were. I just liked to eat. And you can tell where things would lead if you go back and look at some old photos during times in which there was a little extra. I’d have me a bit of a belly. The belly would come and go with such times, with their coming, their going. You could tell that, if I had the means, I’d become a large, large boy. A huge man. Just because I liked to eat. And still do.

I make no apologies for it. People are turning that sort of thing into a shameful act in this country and it pisses me off. You see it in pop culture and have for some time, the teasing of the fat kid. But, growing up, I never experienced that. I mean, as directed to the truly fat kids.

As I say that, I catch myself in a falsehood. But it was weird. Some of them got it, some didn’t  I guess it depended on personality. I think girls got it worse. It wasn’t like on TV or in the movies, though. Where things are often exaggerated. That’s easy to say, not having been on the receiving end of that. Ask somebody who got it every day and- You know. Me? I had my own battles. It wasn’t easy, living out of a suitcase. Rationed showers, baths. Having to go about in filthy clothes. I looked terrible, I stunk. My weight wasn’t on anyone’s radar.

I remember, then, that I’d – out of boredom, mostly – I’d go to the town grocery and just glide through the aisles, fantasizing about everything on its shelves.

“What’s he stealing, now?” I recall one of the clerks – a bitter-looking elderly woman – saying. I hadn’t been stealing anything. Just fantasizing. Imagining the dishes on the sides of those boxes steaming on the table in front of me. Meandering down the frozen foods section with the same thoughts in mind. Taking in the overall scent of the produce department. Jars of jam, The smell of rye bread…

As an adult, I no longer had to do that. I’d started working at an early age and was soon buying my own groceries, my own clothes, knocking out my own rent. Living as I saw fit. For myself. Sometimes, I overcompensated. Though not at first. At first, I was budgeted. Rationed. Portioned. But then, something happened-

I’m not gonna get into all that. Suffice it to say that I filled the hole with something else I loved. Food. Not that I’d not already been eating like a Viking. But I did know some restraint. Suddenly, I knew none. I stopped eating when the refrigerator was empty. When the cupboards were bare. Then I’d go out. At which point I stopped when the cash was gone. My appetite was great. Insatiable. Because I was trying to satisfy a hunger that wasn’t in my belly.

Liking to eat is one thing. But…

I smile. You know. I’m at a moment of fog, again. Losing my place. It’s-

There are so many places to dine in this valley. So many. Quiet little places. Good food. Great atmosphere. Great food. And drink. If I were inclined. Oh, I wish I were…

I’m slowly moving into the realization that I no longer have an emptiness within me that isn’t physical hunger that I must fill by gorging myself. It’s not been easy. Last night, for example, was hours of discomfort, wishing for sleep. I’m a belly-sleeper. Or I’ll curl into a fetal position. When you’re overweight, either is more difficult for- You can’t get comfortable-enough to rest with a big-ass gut. Add to that a state of being over-filled – bloated – with gas, with shit… Praying to shit before dawn…

I weigh the pros and cons. A short period of joy is what I get out of scarfing down so much food at once. Or throughout the day. And night. Compared with the length of time I’m almost in agony. It can be agony. It’s certainly not comfort. It’s surely not restful.

Then – I grin, with shame – I start the day with a piece of yesterday’s birthday cake. Well, I was too full, last night, to have any. Birthday cake. And leftover Tuna Helper. Orange juice. And my antiseizure meds.

I can do better than that.

I think that the first evening of my 45^th year quietly explained to me that life is something to be hungered-for, too. Living. Everything about it. Enjoying life. The ability to do that. And little arrows appeared over my bad habits attached to little word balloons that said, “No. This isn’t gonna get it, anymore.” There’s so much more to my life than- Anything that came before yesterday at 12:14 p.m. Forty-five years to the minute I’d come into this world.

I don’t sit around, regretting choices I’ve made. I’m far-too busy sitting around, lamenting other things. The choices I’ve made were made in the moment in which they were because they had to have been made, then. There was no alternative. I know people call “bullshit” on that, but I’m totally right. You make the choices you make because, in the moment of time in which you make them, there isn’t an alternative to any of them that is as correct as the choice history shows you’ve made. Even if you could go back in time to choose differently, you’d not be able to, because any other possibility would be wrong. So I don’t fret. At least not too much. Instead, I worry about shit like my hair or skin tags or the lack of cash. When there’s a lovely breeze, outside. And a birdhouse populated with a male bird of some kind and a female one, just outside my window. Are there eggs in there? How many? Have they hatched? And the blossoms are blooming on the strawberry plants and why am I not fishing? I could’ve been fishing, this morning… All I need to do is buy a fishing license. And photographs. I haven’t been taking photographs. What I have taken are cloudy and shaky and unoriginal for me and- There’s so much out there. Forty-five gave me a birthday gift itself and it’s the realization that there’s more to life than lukewarm pans of dubious chicken on a steam table.