A Long, Difficult Journey

 Free! Free at last!

What the hell are you talking about now, Bryan? You always start your posts with something clever only to you.

Well, for one thing, I am free of a sickness that gripped me almost three weeks ago. It really made the last two weeks of school a torture because my voice was so raspy and at times a whisper.

But that's not all. As this really felt like my first true day of summer in terms of feeling good, my daughter and I went on a little errand run together for the first time in a while.

I love our errands, just the two of us. It's the best father-daughter time we have. Of course, we have had many a drive to school together, but since she is not a morning person by personal nature, many of those drives were in 99% silence.

When we do errands, we move fast. We also talk honestly. I feel closer to her now than since she was a little kid falling asleep on Daddy's lap.

I haven't been Daddy for 8 years. The moment she asked me in the fourth grade if she could start calling us Mom and Dad was a heartache, the end of that phase of childhood innocence and starting to feel self-conscious about things. 

It happens. In fact I think the -my and -dy came off of my parental addresses at the same age. I'm not sure if it hurt my parents or not. If it did, they certainly did not show it.

During our errands today, we were talking about the past a bit...a dark past at times. I can practically name the moment that darkness began to disappear.

It was when we were on a trip to Laughlin 2 years ago and we went to see Inside Out 2. It was during that movie when a dam broke inside of me, a dam so full of inner bullshit that had been building for a few years. 

It was a defensive dam to be damned sure (pun intented), defense from stress of finances, job, marriage, parenthood, self respect, all of it.

To give you an image, if you have ever seen the movie Click with Adam Sandler, particularly the scenes where he is an emotional zombie, you get a little idea of what what I was going through, though not quite that unexpressive and dead.

Looking back on it all now, I see a little more clearly what was going on. Actually, two things.

The first was, I was going through my own type of midlife crisis. For sure, we all have our own version, and if you deny it, you might still be in it. That's ok, I was in denial for a long time, too. For me, the midlife crisis was trying to see if I was in the best place, if there was something better for me down the road. Some married men look at other women longingly, seeing if they are still the stud they thought they once were.

Listen to the song, "Middle Aged Crazy" by Jerry Lee Lewis, he says it all on his own perspective.

However, I was also dealing with a then recent observation that I was quite possibly "on the SPECTRUM"...at 49, that bugged me, like there was something ELSE wrong with me on top of other things. 

Yet as time went on, especially after that Laughlin trip and many more relevant therapy sessions (meaning I had a few irrelevant sessions where I wasn't getting to the core yet), I came to see that it made sense over the course of my life, the way I related to a very thin percentage of my peers growing up as well as adulthood.

That brings me back to the "crisis". Being who I was, I wasn't going to seek out an affair with another woman, though the fantasies existed. Hell, we all have fantasies. But I also knew I was not Captain Stud, not even Private First Class Stud...5'5 and hovering around 200...nah. Still, there was an itch somewhere in my head for a while that was not scratchable. 

Also, part of my being on the spectrum means I am a little too open (like now) and obvious in terms of what I say and do. At my previous school, there was a teacher friend with whom I shared a quite taboo love of...STARBUCKS! (had you going?) We had a nice weekly trade-off for a few years of grabbing each other drinks on Fridays. We also chatted pretty frequently and that got a few whispers among the rumor mill, from what I heard (another pun, I am on a roll!).

Going back to high school, I can remember liking a certain girl there quite a lot and being quite obvious and open about it and practically the whole school knew as a result. She and I have chatted about this since then and I sincerely apologized for embarrassing her and we are friends decades later.

Three years ago, there was a friend from an old workplace who was going through a major crisis and we had regular talks to make sure she was doing ok...yes, you caught the SHE, but honestly if it were a male, I would have done no different in terms of trying to help. It made me feel useful for a little while, like I had purpose. The itch was being partially scratched.

But not completely.

The result of this itch at home was me being more than a bit irritable at times and lashing out more than necessary at both my wife and daughter. It was like a pressure valve being released here and there to keep from exploding, but it wasn't solving the problem.

And then the marriage crisis of 2023 hit. 

I will spare the gory details, but many things came to light for both of us and on my 51st birthday, I was asked what I wanted to do. I chose to work on our marriage. Things were pretty good for a month or two but then old behaviors began to resurface that put us in conflict. 

That's when the therapy began. As I said, it began with a certain amount of superfluous bullshit, the kind  a good therapist sees right through...and she was and is a good therapist, I still see her to this day.

And then the Laughlin trip of June 2024 came.

I saw Inside Out 2...and something crumbled. I looked at my kid and realized what a shit I had been for a while. Not all the time, but many times, and it caused her a lot of stress. 

When we got home, I watched Inside Out 1 for the first time. A lot of tears came out of me. I apologized to Natalie for everything. She accepted readily and gave me a big hug. After that the therapy was more honest and right down to it and I was finally able to accept things for what they were regarding who and what I was and not too long after, that itch went away (not that it would ever be scratchable because I was never clear what was itching, I was just lost). It took work on my part for sure, but a lot of buillshit went away. I stopped wondering about another world outside myself. I learned to like myself and where I was.

And when that bullshit goes away, there is a reflective period for me and I probably overanalyze myself more than I should, but that is my nature. It's what keeps me awake at night every so often. I sometimes look back at all those things I've said and done in 53 1/2 years.

Definitely an oddball!

A true geek!

And I'm good with that, finally.

One thing I have stopped doing is trying too hard to get people to notice me.

Going back to high school (once again), I can think of a number of dumbass things I said that earned no small amount of ridicule for days or weeks on end (there was no online meme machine in those days to quickly divert attention) just to satisfy some need to be noticed, even in a way that would backfire.

Hell, even when I hit a fire hydrant in early 1991, the first thought of many of my peers was that I was driving by that girl's house when it happened...it was in my own neighborhood ironically, that's how the ace unform squad of the Spring Township police found me within hours, no need for Ice T and Jerry Orbach to scour the county.

It's all so laughable now, especially to me. But not always.

My mom insisted for years even after I was out of COLLEGE that I was bullied when I was growing up.

I don't even think that word occurred to me back then, growing up. I knew some kids gave me a hard time and ridiculed and criticized me. But I was never beat up or given the junior high toilet swirlie. I was just being me and thinking back on it, being me made me a target. 

Kind of a natural selection thing.

My only standout now is wearing loud Hawaiian shirts and being a kind, funny colleague. Suits me fine.

I could go into other things that make me weird/unique/me, but that's a long boring entry in itself.

All I can say is, I feel good to be accepted by who accepts me, and who doesn't, that's their loss, not my problem. Most importantly, my kid accepts me, and quite frankly, in many ways, that will always suffice.