GET YA PEOPLE

Here all things scream silently,
and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
turning grey.
–Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Nothing may be found, but surely, something has been lost.
–Clint Margrave

I’ve been publishing at Going For The Throat for almost 10 years, and every Thursday since 2016.  Some weeks are bound to be fallow.  Creative Nonfiction has been crucial and formative.  It gave me backstory and character and the character is me.  I’m still carrying the torch for Personal Journalism with varying success.  The Coarse Grind is testament, I think, to staying on brand but not just writing about myself.  At least I hope it is.  I missed a Thursday, during the holiday catering season, and it baffled me as much as it made me mad.  The day got away, all the way away, which was slightly easier to deal with than if I had just blew it off.  I missed a Grind, too, around the same time, but I think that was because those go up first Sundays which is harder to keep track of than every Thursday.  I don’t think these are excuses and you know I’d never settle for one anyway.  As hard as I am on people and this life, I’m harder on myself.  You know this though, don’t you Good Reader—the pressure I put on myself, the way Capitalism squeezes our souls through a tube, anger and malaise and an overwrought libido coupled with egomania are what put me in the chair to begin with.  I don’t think the blues will ever say goodbye and in the meantime I put my demons to good use ain’t it.  “What’s wrong with me” has been my biggest inspiration even if it’s done nothing to halt or stop my end-date, adamantly and steadfastly approaching.  Though I suppose death inspires me too.

I’ll be 45 next week.  The way my life looks at this late date and in total is devastating.  The day to day is little better and I know that ultimately they are the same.  What happens today is what happens for the rest of your life.  I don’t get blamey or technical.  The only slack I can afford is knowing I was suffering from a disease.  The fact that it took me so long to get help is hard to swallow but the fact that I’m not getting any help now is unconscionable.  I’m still living like I’m in a war.  Still rationing my time out in their world.  Still getting high on my own supply of resentment, then coming down hard later for hours that equal days in recovery and more like a cancer patient.  That comparison isn’t meant to be insensitve.  Both depression and cancer are a disease so I think it’s apt though those I know suffering from the latter and worse should probably have some wisdom for me that ought to put my woe to rights and at least get me back to living and back to life.  I hit 6 years sober on Tuesday and I’m glad I am though the anniversary is empty and doesn’t help me with the way I feel about myself and my life.  It’s been 6 years raw, Bubba.  6 years in the hothouse.  Those first 3 were real, white-knuckling, a thrill.  I thrive on opposition and in this war, being against is better than being for.  What ensues is the holding on, the holding out and the nagging question of What now?  When I tell you I’ve been sick I mean it.  I have been and still am.  It just so happens I’ve found a way to make things better, for awhile anyway, afternoons and mornings like this one when I can quietly stanchion a column of words between me and my blues.

These posts carry me through the week, too, Good Reader.  It’s no accident that you’re here and your readership is better than love because I feel seen here.  I unfurl here, and unkink.  Get through the burrs and snarls and, perhaps better than finding a cure, I’m able to say that I am afflicted.  That I’m old and sick and running on nothing but fumes of hatred and sorrow most days.  It ain’t a victory being able to admit this, Good Reader, but it’s heaps better than pretending it ain’t so.

See you in the by and by, motherfucker.  May we all heal and stand up and start kicking again.  Seems to me we were born for more than this and even if I can’t find much faith in my self, you are a marvel to me.  You’re keeping me alive.

IT’S ONLY GETTING WORSE.  THURSDAYS AT GOING FOR THE THROAT.

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