Day 25 Oh to be a MAN

In a blackout, induced by Seagram’s 7, early morning barhopping and being 18 years old I confronted my mother about her recent lack of cooking interest.  The story is that I had her on the floor in the kitchen mashing hamburger in her face screaming, “Hamburger Helper is not dinner for a family!  No more Hamburger Helper!”  Cruel and heartless I know.  Being that I was in a blackout and my mom, a notorious patron of storytelling, the anecdote is suspect.  What I do know is that my mom refused to utter a word to me for the following six months.  As you may surmise this was not necessarily a punishment that I would suffer so much with.  But I did suffer.  My mom didn’t/wouldn’t talk to me.  I attacked my mom physically.  Whether it is true or not, what was I doing?  What was I doing drinking like a gutter drunk at 18?  I sure as fuck wasn’t making dinner for anybody so what was I complaining about anyway?  What kind of son would treat a mother like that?

This happened in South Berwick, Maine in the early 70’s.  I had recently come back from living in Germany as a military dependent.  I developed the habit of getting loaded during that time.  There was a lot going on.  My dad, a pilot, was constantly at work and probably well aware of the daily danger he faced flying mothballed jet aircrafts.  He had spent a year in Viet Nam as part of his military duty.  I have no idea what any of that meant to him as he never uttered a word to me about it.  In fact my dad never uttered much to me about anything.  “Put $5 a week in the bank Chris and leave it alone.”  That was a nugget that I have yet to treasure today.  I was a child of a “warrior” so to speak and yet I had the nature of a flower child.  Not saying that that was a bad thing but I didn’t have a sense of what was in store for me as a man.  What was masculinity?  What kind of sword was I to carry?  And sons carry swords their whole lives no matter who their dads are.  Dads’ responsibilities are to temper those blades so their arcs are true when they swing.  If not dads then who?  Certainly not my brother, I already brought up that relationship earlier.

I signed up for football but my parents never came to see any games.  I didn’t have the psychological makeup to realize that being a rookie, making mistakes was as much part of the game as the game itself.  I thought I had to be a hero in everything.  All the books I read were about heroes and my daydreams swirled about my swashbuckling.  In reality I was awkward, sensitive, always in competition with my brothers for my mom’s twisted attention, and hanging out with other misfits making loud noises.  Oh we were heroes to each other.  We dared each other to steal things, vandalize buildings, drink in gasthaus’s and dallying in other gallant adventures.  We lied about the girls we were kissing, the hands we were holding and the cheerleaders that were hanging out with us.

I was restless and cowardly alone with no words I knew to speak for help.  I say coward because that’s not how knights, ring bearers, or Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commando’s would act.  I wanted to be in love with Becky Thatcher but knew no more about love than did Tom Sawyer.  My only peace was in books and rock and roll.  I could wield thunder with my air guitar some days jumping up and down on my bed!  But I was only a boy with boy thoughts of being a man.  I spent a lot of time on restriction and testosterone does not take to idle time softly.  My grand heroic thought one day was to eat a bottle of aspirin thinking my funeral would bring out some attention.  I just got very sick instead and told no one the reason.  I crossed a line that day.  Depression was a feeling that I was familiar with and it held me in check with shame and guilt.  I tried hard to shake it but I lost that innocence of living with wonder a long time before that day.  Trying was a loss.  (to be continued)

1.   I'm grateful that I'm alive today.

2.   I'm grateful that I can appreciate the music I listen to today without playing imaginary chords.

3.   I'm grateful for my mental illness diagnosis' as it has sharpened my will to understand life in all it's details.