CHAPTER 1
PART 1
* * *
THE STARTING POINT
THE PRIMAL KVETCH
THE DARKNESS
L'INFERNO
CAPTIVITY
The Starting Point of my journey was in a small bungalow ina banal, middle-class Toronto suburb a zillion years ago. Iwas sitting in the middle of the living room floor surroundedby toys, books, and a TV (a focal point in my life). It was a boringSunday afternoon. My mother was yelling at me from the kitchen tofind something constructive to do like clean my room. My father wassitting next to me asleep in the chair that faced the television. My oldersister, all of nine years old, was yakking incessantly on the phone to herfriends.
Suddenly a wave of anxiety overcame me. I tossed my teddy bearaside, rose to my feet, and with outstretched arms, I cried out indesperation, "Is this all there is?!" I knew immediately something had tobe done. I had my future to consider. I was not about to allow somethingas trivial as the meaning of life to eat away at me until I was nothingmore than a shell of a man before my fifth birthday!
So, at the tender age of four, I began a review of my Starting Point,the place I was at, the events and circumstances, and the associatedthoughts, feelings and behaviours that made me the miserable littlewretch I was. This review lasted fifty years. I think I now finally knowmy Starting Point, beginning with a chronology of circumstance.
I made a grand entrance into this world—I stopped the Santa Clausparade. My father was at work so my aunt and uncle sped along thestreets of Toronto to get my mother to the hospital, located along theparade route on University Avenue. My uncle screamed at my mother,"Cross your legs!" for fear that my birth would mess up his new 1954Buick. They got the police to stop the floats to let them pass through tothe hospital. To the disappointment of the angry mob of spectators onthat frosty November afternoon, I was born.
I was a scrawny, wiry, sickly child who measured his milestonesin life by illness, injury, and dire circumstances. This made me feelimportant, loved, and happy.
I had the chicken pox at one month old, scoliosis diagnosed atone year, and a tonsillectomy at age four. At thirteen, I had correctiveeye surgery. I also suffered with various respiratory illnesses includingasthma, pneumonia, and pleurisy. Continuing into adulthood, Ideveloped myriad other illnesses and debilitating diseases.
I was delighted.
My parents were doting, and I always felt loved, even though myfather, forty-one years older than I, worked twelve hours a day andwas always too tired to play ball with me, and was too old-fashioned tohave a meaningful conversation with me because "only sissies talk abouttheir feelings". My mother was a smart, funny and loving woman whoalso happened to be manic-depressive (as bipolar was known in thosedays). She was in hospitals for treatment more than she was at home.From the age of eight, I would take care of her at home while she lay inbed in agony with severe headaches, as I stole glances out the windowat my neighbourhood friends outside playing. Or else I was visitingher in hospitals with barred windows and naked light bulbs. On manyoccasions, she was reeling from electro-convulsive shock treatments orwas stupefied into submission by the smorgasbord of tranquilizers andanti-depressants prescribed to her.
I was elated.
My only sibling was a typical older sister whom I love verymuch ... back then, however, not so much. When she wasn't on thephone with her friends, she was threatening to tell my parents thatI was watching TV instead of studying or she was blackmailing meif I didn't do her favours. Much of the time, she was begging me forreassurance that my mother's illness was only mental and not physical.Once I confirmed this, she was off with her friends again, leaving meto my own devices and holding the bag.
I was overjoyed.
School was a struggle for me. Just because I knew my times tablesand could spell polysyllabic words in grade two, I was accelerated ingrades three, four, and five, completing them in two years. This left mebewildered and socially inept. At ten years old in grade seven, I wasbeaten up by some schoolmates and teased mercilessly by others, someof whom were three or four years older than I was.
I was ecstatic.
I married my sweetheart after a two-year teenage courtship. Wedeclared our love and discussed our dreams for the future. Now, decadeslater with four grown children and a grandchild, we are still very muchmarried. Mostly she ignores me, nags me, or tells me all the things Ido which are wrong.
I am enthralled.
I had secured employment in the field of Social Services for theCity which I held for thirty-three years until my retirement. I am nowat home with my wife, complaining about my health, worrying for myfuture, and constantly looking around for something to keep me busy.My wife is not pleased.
But I am enraptured.
Our four beautiful kids are the lights of my life. My wife and Icared for them through the ups and downs of family life and I worryabout them every minute of every day, even now that they are adults.My son was hit by a car when he was fourteen and sustained a severehead injury. I have three daughters, one who overcame OCD, anorexia,and anxiety, one who was a rebel in her teens, and one who fought abattle with depression and trychotillomania (hair pulling) and won. Allof my children insisted on learning about life the hard way despite myattempts at teaching them and helping them. But this paragraph doesn'tbelong here. My success stories are found in Part III.
These were some of the circumstances of my life to date. I amsharing them to give context to the thoughts, feelings, and behavioursthat I developed over the years with which you, lucky reader, are nowto become acquainted.
THOUGHTS
In order to examine thoughts, I believed it was necessary to understandtwo basic elements:
1) What is a thought?
2) Where does a thought come from?
So I started simply with a dictionary definition:
Thought (n): the act of thinking; an idea. Guess what I found when Ilooked up the definition of 'idea'? A thought. Naturally! So my thoughton thoughts was that this is bullshit.
I explored some more and got much more than I bargained for, andeach answer elicited more questions, leading me into the fields of physicalscience, neuropsychology, linguistics, spirituality, and philosophy. Hereis some of what I found about thought:
• An organization of electro-chemical impulses in the brain. Do I haveto become a card-carrying member of this organization?
• An internal response to internal or external stimuli. What could theinternal stimuli that trigger imagination or creativity possiblybe? A stomach cramp?
• A mathematical computation which occurs above the level ofconsciousness. What if you're lousy at math?
• Depends on the type of thought: reflective, reactive/responsive,connective, deductive, intuitive, idle, directed, psychic, interpretive,perceptive, etc. Huh?
• There is no such thing as individual thought ... We all tap intoa pool of infinite cosmic thought. Where did this pool of cosmicthought come from and how do we tap into it? Does this meanyou know what I'm thinking (God forbid!)?
• We do not actively think; thoughts pass through us and we simplybecome aware of them. So now I'm a ghost?
All of this research was fascinating but it was taking me in directionsI did not want to go, at least for the purpose of this book. And I still didnot understand what a thought was or where it came from. Besides, Ithink all this thinking about thoughts was giving me a headache.
In an effort to stay focused, I decided that, as a review of my startingpoint, I was not going to worry so much about what thought is or whereit comes from but would, instead, focus on the kinds of thoughts onehas and their impact on living and well-being. More specifically, whatwere my thoughts and how did they shape my life?
Here are some of them. This is by no means a complete list but Ibelieve they do show where I was coming from ...
WHO AM I?
(What I think about myself)
* * *
"I just retired from a successful thirty-three-year career in Social Services.Not bad, considering I'm anti-social!"
* * *
I am stupid. I am fat. I am ugly. I am lazy. I am incapable. I amunlikable. I am inadequate. I am sick. I am boring. I am worthless.
And so it goes, on and on.
Labels.
My mother used to sew labels on my summer camp clothes that read"ROTTEN LAZY BRAT" for easy identification.
Adjectives.
Adjectives are the prettiest part of any language and open up awhole world of imagination. Strange that, like thorns on a rose, theycan have a painful aspect to them as well. Adjectives are lethal weapons.They provoke arguments. They initiate wars. They are instrumentalin battles. More significantly, adjectives can be the cause, effect, andjustification for suicide.
Labels are adjectives.
Labels describe who you are. I know who I am. I am a stupid, fat,incapable, unlikable, inadequate, sickly, worthless, lazy bore.
It says so right here on the back of my shirt collar.
IDENTITY CRISIS
(Seeking my identity)
* * *
"A young man walked into a dermatologist's office and said, 'Can you help me?I think I'm a moth.' The dermatologist said, 'You don't need a dermatologist.You need a psychiatrist.' 'Yes, I know,' said the man. The dermatologist asked,'So then why did you come in here?' The man replied, 'The light was on.'"
* * *
At the risk of sounding like an amnesiac, I have often asked myself,"Who am I?" I never allowed myself the chance to get to know me andconsequently was never able to answer the "Who am I?" question to mysatisfaction. Oh, deep down I indulged in an assortment of fantasies likewe all do (don't we?), of who I am.
• What I do (or did), my profession: Now retired, I was a SocialServices supervisor for the City
• What I would like to do or be: I would like to be a writer, Iwould like to be smart, I would like to be famous
• What my relationships are: I am a father, a husband, a son, abrother, a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, an employee, astudent, etc.
• What I have accomplished:???
• How I would like to see myself: I would like to see myselfas a good person, useful, important, kind, virtuous, honest,honourable, sincere, blah, blah, blah ...
But those fantasies always maintained a faded, translucent qualitythat never quite took form. Ideas were never fully developed, goals werenever clearly defined. And so I remained in this hazy state of limbo formuch of my life.
Could a reality check help me figure out who I am? Well, I amone of several billion people on this planet; I am a microspeck in thecosmos; I am a figment of someone else's imagination (dumb son-of-a-bitch!That someone else is either a masochist or has the world's worstimagination!).
Heavy sigh.
I never learned how to define myself and consequently never reallyknew who I was.
THE PHYSICAL ME
(Dealing with who I am physically)
* * *
"I was trying to write a joke about penis size but every time I come up short."
* * *
I do not like my body. I think it is rather grotesque. I am unequivocallythe baldest, fattest, ugliest man in the whole wide world, even when Iwas a kid (except I had hair on my head; except I was skinny; except Iwasn't a man when I was a kid). I have the crookedest face, the yellowiestteeth, the smallest endowment, and the bumpiest cranium. I concedethat I am a superlative specimen of Homo Sapiens. Not all my attributesare God-given; some of my hideous corpus is self-made: chewed-atfingers, portly paunch, stooped posture and the like (nothing less thanan ostentatious demonstration of my passive-aggressive psyche). Buteverything must be put in perspective, mustn't it? The body is only ahost, after all. My body is not the real me; it contains the real me. WhenI secrete body fluids I am not making a statement. My body is my bodyand has a life of its own (doesn't it?).
I particularly do not like my body when it misbehaves and causespain. I have a very low pain threshold. Often, when in pain, I make abargain with God (usually in a whining, pleading voice), "Please, God,make the pain go away and I promise to be a good husband, father, son(depending on with whom I have argued most recently). The rule isusually one promise per favour. I will never offer to be a good husbandand a good son in exchange for help with just one pain or just oneunpleasant occurrence. By the time I recover or by the time the badexperience has disappeared I have already broken my promise. HastilyI tell myself that I didn't really make a promise because perhaps there isno God, or that the promise was actually invalid because there is a goodscientific or psychological explanation. Hence no more pain and a clearconscience. But I would rather not have had the pain in the first place,if the truth be known. Physical discomfort definitely reduces emotionalpain to mere self-indulgence.
To wit I raise my Maalox cocktail and hurl it at the mirror in honourof the physical me.
WHY BOTHER?
(Finding a sense of purpose)
* * *
"Everyone has a purpose in life. Mine is watching television."
"My mother told me that my sole purpose in life is to serveas a warning to others."
* * *
One of my favourite pastimes is writing, however, more often than notI am stricken with writer's block. Everything I want to say has alreadybeen said one way or another anyway so why bother? "Why bother?"seems to sufficiently answer most of my problem questions. Rhetoric ismy life.
There were so many things I wanted to do with my life (on gooddays) and still do. But we all end up dead anyway, so why bother?
My wife seems relatively content with her life. I hate her. She goesthrough the motions of filling her day with things that "have to bedone". This was my father's notion of an ideal lifestyle. Except he didn'tbelieve my wife was really doing anything that had to be done. My fatherinsisted that she did nothing and what she did do she did wrong. Thismade him happy. He picked on me more; after all, I was his flesh andblood. I never did the right things at the right times. I would argue withhim about this. And he would reply, "Fine, you don't want me to be afather, I won't be a father!" I would try to explain and he would accuse meof being a know-it-all who didn't know much about anything. "His heart!His Heart!" my mother would shout, whipping me into submission. Iwould always surrender to it all with a sigh: "Why bother?"
My wife can be quiet, remote, and withdrawn. She denies it andaccuses me of being sarcastic, moody, and depressed. "What's wrong?"she asks, feigning concern in a most obvious manner. "Nothing," Ianswer in an extremely sarcastic, moody, and depressed tone of voice.Why bother?
Sometimes, out of frustration, I would pack my books away, or cleanout the basement, or rearrange the furniture. Or I would go upstairs,throw myself on the bed, and exclaim in a well-rehearsed, melodramaticvoice, "Why bother?"
I've always been searching for meaning in my life, a sense of purpose.At first I wanted to be an architect but my Lego blocks kept tumblingover.
Then, I thought my purpose was to be creative. I tried my hand atcarpentry but I found out that I was not very handy. At six years old,I showed my father my handiwork, using the tool set which he boughtme for my birthday. "Look at what I did!" I shouted with pride. Theblood drained out of his face when he saw that I sawed the legs off ourdining room chairs.
Next, I wanted to be an actor, bestowed with fame and riches, so Ijoined the drama club at school. But when the school bullies caught meat the stage door and beat the living crap (ew!) out of me, I suspectedacting was not my purpose.
Well, maybe a singer. With my voice yet unchanged, my motherbragged to all her friends, "He sounds just like Julie Andrews!" As ifthat wasn't enough, one of my friends told me I was so off-key thateverything I sang sounded like I had invented a whole new melody.Singing, therefore, was not in the cards for me.
Perhaps a scholar. Except I spent most of my studying timedaydreaming or trying to figure out how to get out of studying and stillpass the exam.
Later, I wanted to be a psychologist but I failed Statistics 333 threeyears in a row.
Raising four kids kept me too busy with life to think about itspurpose, even if it was right under my nose.
Being in Social Services gave me a purpose of sorts—like havingsomewhere to go every day for thirty-three years—and there werefleeting moments when I did feel useful and that I may have made adifference in some small way. I would, however, not know since mostof the time I was quagged and mired in paperwork, regulations, andoffice politics.
