MORE FROM THE TRENCHES

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A post shared by Jim Trainer (@goingforthethroat) on Mar 4, 2019 at 12:33pm PST

for Doc

Saturday I took off work.  Well, my scheduled job fell through and I was offered another but I declined.  Most of Saturday was wasted.  Deliberately and semi-joyously.  Doing nothing was the point.  Truth is, I vacillated to painful extremes and pored over job offers and the staff calendar–until they were staffed and the start time for each had passed.  It’s hard to refuse work in this business–you’ve got to take it when it comes.  5 jobs this Saturday and zero next.  It’s the nature of the biz.  It’s hard to refuse work because that’s not how I was raised.  I’ve my parents in my head when I take off work but I’ve no parents in the world who would help me if I fell on hard times.  The fear of the outdoors has reconditioned my nervous system.  It’s well documented and, after all these years getting by, irrational and not based in reality.  I probably won’t end up on the streets again but in my mind it’s a fine line between taking off work and being destitute.  Chalk it up to the karma I inherited from depression-era grandparents and parents who had it drilled into them–without a job you’re nothing.  Throw the Catholic faith into the mix and a belief you get nothing without paying for it and even then you’ve got to grip it with white knuckles because you don’t really deserve it anyway, and I’m a model employee.  I’ll show up early.  Until I start to feel trapped.  Then I’ll start being late, maybe, or at least be remiss on the job.

I’ve avoided feeling trapped for most of my life.  A lot of the contention with my last gig was just that–it had me by the balls.  It was a live-in position.  My boss was a micro-managing pothead who doubled as my landlord.  I got sober there but it’s a wonder I didn’t kill myself.  I had to walk back from my own suicide and spend time on the island in an attempt to shed the dark impulses commonly found in newly-sober alcoholics.  My understanding is that without drink and drug, and anyway your identity as a drinker and drugger, a colossal nihilism can set in.  Alcoholics don’t know who they are.  We’re frozen developmentally and never really dealt with the crises of identity and how we relate to the world.  I can speak for myself–I got blotto for many years, it was a movable feast and anyway heaps better than dealing with how up against it and trapped I felt, and how dismal the world looked to me.  I’d internalized so much of my parents split, my mother’s smothering love and my father’s absence of or any validation at all.  You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to add that up–I was a depressive nihilist with zero self-esteem but doted on if not beloved by a cast of gorgeous and cruel women.  I had no boundaries and I didn’t want any.  I couldn’t see past tonight and I didn’t want to.  Live for today wasn’t a positive maxim for me.  It was more like fuck the world.  I didn’t care about myself or anybody else.  I wanted to die before 30 but I had dreams, I was a dreamer, and I was stubborn about that.  When I tell you Art saved my life, I’m not being cute.  It’s as real as it gets.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu6c03cF7UP/

Not much has changed and I don’t really expect it to.  I’m still a nihilist.  I don’t believe in Gods but have come around on the idea of thanking them.  Things are still fucked for me–I’m wracked and barbed with it, this black disease.  I isolate myself from my friends and everyone else is an enemy.  None of this is news for you though, is it Good Reader?  I’m as fucked as ever but what’s wrong with me stands in bas relief.  Without distraction it’s all-the-time-blues, you bet.  Humility’s doing wonders, too, tell you the truth.  I gave up my power, and I’m sorry to all my punk rock friends about that, but–I don’t know if I had it anyway.  Surrender isn’t really surrender.  Surrender, the Gods, power–call these what you want but call them what they are.  If I’m out of control, the surest way to stay that way is to pretend I’ve got it.  Know what I mean?  I’ll take the truth over the Lie any day of the week and it don’t get more punk rock than that.  I’ve been writing these posts back to back for a couple reasons and it’s all related.  I’m calling this one MORE FROM THE TRENCHES because these last few weeks blogging have been intensely personal and usually the kind of thing I fall back and cringe from.  But I’m getting closer, Good Reader–peeling back the onion and I can’t stop now.  Point is, I’ve only been warming up.  It’s taken me this many posts and in these many words to get to it and here it is.

I’m depressed.  I’m watching Life pass me by.  In my day to day I’m tired, I’m over it, I don’t like you or your politics and you’re boring.  Truth is when I look back these will be some of the finest days of my life.  At least I know they could be.  I’ve got some health issues.  They’re taking the joy out of life and they’re demoralizing.  I can’t love and work is incredibly exhausting.  I can’t be the ladies’ man and I can’t relax at all being that’s how I always did it–spooning with her, in her bed, watching the fan and fitting in there, breathing at her neck and mmm…  All that is gone.  Vacillating between shitting my brains out and not being able to shit at all is exhausting, demoralizing and unhealthy besides.  It’s forced my dietary hand though and I’m loathe and strangely thankful for it.  I can’t do carbs, dairy, sauces, gluten, spice or refined sugar of any kind.  Barring heroin I’ve done everything under the sun, and sugar is at the root of it all and the worst thing we can do to ourselves.  It’s the antidote for this cruel game we’re trapped in but not a very good one.  Coping is just that–getting by.  Be it:  food, booze, sex, drugs, dysfunctional relating and drama, and anger–these are all ways in which we try to distract ourselves from our one great wound, our zero point and even just this grim reality surviving the meat grinder of capitalism and watching our Brothers and Sisters go down, with blood on our hands and powerless to turn or hold back the murderous fucking fray of–the United States, hegemony, money, lust and power and the rest.  Darkly turns the wheel of these end days of the final century.

I’m not telling you you’re wrong about the end of the world.  Nor would I ever simply suggest you feel any way other than how you do.  I believe that in the coal mines of isolation there are diamonds of solitude.  Being alone most of the time affords me time away from the Lie that most folks live by and have to, to get by.  I don’t fault them.  I don’t want to be around them either.  In the meantime, I am not living my dreams.  I’ve zero nights at the bar, zero mornings hungover and waste zero time texting or waiting to hear back from partners who aren’t stalking their dreams or living their best lives.  I’ve plenty more time on my hands than before.  Less in the long run but death and the fear of it should only put some spring in my step.  I’m hiding away and only coming through with the bare minimum.  I’m depressed and I’m in a bad spot right now.  I suspect it may be the same spot it ever was, I’m just better equipped to see it now.  I’ve less illusions and perhaps only one–that this world ain’t for me.  I don’t deserve to be happy or live my dreams.  This is where my heredity kicks in, though Good Reader.  I’m half Irish so you know that if it’s a lost cause I’m only going to champion it.  I’m half Italian so you know I am not going to give up.  I’m accountable to you and these posts, here on this blog.  I don’t want to be depressed anymore and at the very least do not want to give any more of my life over to a disease.  I’m looking back at how much of my life was wasted in its thrall and I’m terrified watching these few and fewer days go by–coping and hiding from the world and otherwise wasting away.  Wish me luck.

See you on the frontlines, motherfucker.

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This is your Roll Call, your Call To Arms and invitation to stand with The Burning Creed. #TheCoarseGrind at @intothevoidmagazine. Link on profile. #writing #amwriting #writerslife #jimtrainer #selfpublishing #artist #art

A post shared by Jim Trainer (@goingforthethroat) on Mar 3, 2019 at 9:20am PST

Rest easy my Friend.

BRIAN GROSZ