Apathy and Exhaustion

I’d like to think that it all went wrong on one dramatic day late last summer.  It would be nice to blame all of my troubles on that dreaded day, but the reality is that things began to slip long before that and it’s become a free-fall ever since.  What happened last summer?  Nothing special really.  I spent a nice morning with a woman who I had grown very fond of over a couple of months and after taking her to lunch as a thank you for helping me with some work; I made my big move and asked her out on a date.  The general response to the few times I have built up the nerve to ask such an outward and potentially life changing question of someone has always been some kind of awkward silence followed by a polite dismissal.  I am used to this and pretty much expect it.  This day was no different, and even though I should be used to being turned down, it is still disappointing and discouraging.  So, I found myself back in my office at work a few minutes later trying to figure out what I did wrong, when I received a phone call from my doctor.  She was contacting me to inform that my latest labs (blood tests) showed that my transplanted kidney was being rejected.  It was a ten minute stretch that I didn’t need.  It’s strange to think that day had held such promise.

The funny thing is that those two rejections no longer particularly bother me.  The kidney issue was resolved through a few changes in medication and a lot of labs and expense.  This process wasn’t easy, but things are back in control and have been for some time.  The other rejection?  Well, that one stings, as most of them do, but that pain mostly fades with time, despite the acute loneliness that such rejection leads to.

So I keep asking myself why I still feel so damn terrible all of the time.  I didn’t realize it then, but I think something turned inside of me a few months before the double rejection day.  The hope of winning the heart of a lovely, intelligent and driven woman was only a distraction that gave me temporary motivation.  Maybe it started when I decided I wanted to move from my apartment in the ‘burbs back into the city where I feel I belong - nearer my dwindling social life.  So, as my lease drew closer to expiring, I started to shop around.  In the meantime, I began the process of getting rid of things.  I discarded, recycled, or donated boxes and boxes worth of stuff that I had unwittingly collected over the years.  I made those tough decisions about several items that I’ve generally held onto over the years for sentimental reasons.  This time, most of those things were discarded.  It was time to change and simplify my life – to move forward.  This felt positive.  Along the way though, I seemed to have discarded many of my things and a big part of myself.  Many of my interests and hobbies – the things that have kept me distracted, entertained and inspired all of these years seem to have gone missing.  It’s like I’ve lost interest with everything I’ve always enjoyed.  Some of my extended family and co-workers call me “the golf guy,” yet I have only played one work-related round of golf in nearly two years, and I do not have any inclination or desire to play anytime in the future.  At the end of the 2013 season, I gave up my Portland Timbers tickets after 12 years of rabid fandom and have barely paid any attention to the team since.  I use to mainly write short stories and fiction when the urge struck, and enjoyed the feeling of creating and always felt a sense of accomplishment upon completion – well done or not.  Nowadays, my writing has been almost solely focused on promoting the music I love, which feels increasingly hollow and pointless (it’s not as though I command any kind of audience to spread the word anyhow).  This process lacks the creative spirit of the artists that I admire and that I so used to crave to emulate.  I’ve even found my lifelong passion for music on the wane.  It’s as though I’ve heard too much.  I’ve begun to question whether or not I am stuck in a rut as I listen to long-time favorites, or newer bands who remind me of music of days past, but very little seems truly new anymore.  Am I really seeking out new directions and branching out, or am I rehashing my teens and twenties over and over again?  Am I simply stuck on repeat?

I feel silly providing these examples of my current listlessness.  They are all unimportant, mundane and simple individually.  However, I’ve begun to notice that they are emblematic of a problem that I do not fully understand.  None of these things have progressed consciously.  It’s as if a trap door has opened beneath me.  It’s as though during my effort to simplify and improve my life by tossing away extraneous bits and pieces, I’ve thrown myself away.  I’ve blown out my pilot light.  I’ve lost my fire.  I’ve lost my ability to live.  I’ve become what I’ve always fought against.  I’ve become an automaton.  For example, I’m allowing my job – something I’ve always tried to keep from defining my person – to frustrate and confound me.  Every day feels like an impossible, frustrating and endlessly stressful trudge uphill with no hope of ever accomplishing anything.  It’s become a trap - a steeper hill to climb each day.  I’m stuck in a perpetual cycle of living paycheck to paycheck with a carrot dangling in my face promising something better on the horizon.  Only that something never materializes, no matter how hard I try to reach it.  Yet, I keep trying until my batteries run out.

I’ve been through a lot of difficult times in my life.  Everyone has, and as with anyone, I’ve faced life’s challenges and muddled my way through one way or another, but for some reason, this time, I do not know what to do.  I am at a loss.  Maybe, I’m simply exhausted.  For much of my life I’ve focused my energy to do battle against an ugly genetic disorder (VHL) and the multiple surgeries that I’ve endured.  Now that I’ve been fairly stable for the better part of ten years, the tiniest little thing these days can come along and knock me out – blown over like a feather.  The lingering effects of those battle scars have taken their toll.  I struggle with the concept that I’ll never feel truly physically well again.  And I don’t mean in the ‘I’m getting older’ kind of way, though that is very real.  I am in real physical pain all of the time, which leads to sleepless nights and way too much time to dwell on my shortcomings and the people that I miss and who I’ve lost.  I don’t want to lose anyone anymore.  I don’t know if I can deal with it again.

It’s time to find a direction to re-ignite that pilot light, but I do not have a clue what it would be, or what it could entail.  I’m not struggling to decide which fork in the road to take, because I’m no longer on a road of any kind.  This must be my so-called mid-life crisis.  I don’t really know what that means.  Maybe it’s the side effect of spending years and a lot of effort trying to achieve those dreams of youth and never quite doing so.  Maybe it’s the realization that those dreams were doomed to fail from the get go and there is no plan B lying in wait.  I’m tired of facing these challenges on my own.

As of now, I am trying to schedule small short-term activities each week that I can look forward to.  These are proverbial baby steps.  The hope is that one day I will once again find my stride and start moving towards positive goals that fuel and instill me with a reason to live and breathe and to feel like I’m worth something.  This feels an insurmountable task.

Arizona

Dear K*****,

I know it’s been forever and ever.  Not sure if this email address even works anymore, so I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough if this gets returned after hitting send.

Right now I’m listening to a recent album from the wonderful singer/songwriter Tracy Shedd titled Arizona.  I’ve always kind of taken her talent for granted since first learning of her through one of those cheap Teen Beat Records samplers I used to always buy around the turn of the century (do you remember “Circles” from that last mix tape I sent just before I went in for the kidney removal surgery?).  All five of her albums are excellent, and yet I’m pretty sure that I’m not listening to them enough and telling everyone I can about them loudly enough.  This new one though has really hit me at the right time.  Apparently, it is almost entirely acoustic guitars, aside from a from a few little added touches here or there, but I swear I listened this thing three or four times before I realized how stripped down and spare this actually is.  I have been so enraptured in her words and voice and the delicate and memorable melodies provided by the twin acoustic guitars that nothing has ever felt like it was missing.

Why has it been such a profound listen right now?  Well, 2013 was overall a pretty lackluster year.  It was filled with my usual health uncertainties, more heartbreak, and just a general distaste, as I noticed in retrospect that many of my old standby hobbies and habits have gone by the wayside.  Many of the old comforts don’t really do the trick anymore and I’m not sure why or what to do or where to turn next.  I simply know that it’s time to find a new direction and I’m starting to find some solace in that idea.

I don’t want this to be about me, except to say that I have serious self-doubt about contacting you again after all of this time and so absolutely out of the blue.  But I’m worried about you.  Rumor has it that you have not been in a good place of late and I wish to offer you my distant support.  And I think Tracy Shedd offers up a notion, in her song “Broken Arrows”: “You can die trying, or you can die with a broken heart,” where I’m not totally sure these are the only options available (besides the dying part), but I’m taking her thought as a kick in the butt for 2014.  I’m tired of not trying things I want to achieve for fear of whatever, so to hell with it!

“Walking down memory lane

You took me by surprise

I was homesick and blue

Thinking about what to do”

                                                           -from “Sweet Talking”

Tracy Shedd does a fantastic cover of the old Magnetic Fields song “Candy” that I put on the first mix tape I ever sent you back in ‘93.  Do you remember when we last parted?  We were listening to the Magnetic Fields’ “100,000 Fireflies” on your turntable, when you gave me a hug and placed a simple rubber band on my wrist to tell me that I should wear one as a reminder that there will always be ‘someone’ out there who cares.  Well, that always meant the world to me and sometimes I find myself wearing five or six rubber bands at a time – during those most distressing moments.  I don’t think I can ever repay you for that show of support, but my offers of heartfelt music have always been my return gift.  Shedd also closes the album with a cover of Sonic Youth’s now legendary “Teenage Riot,” which you never liked, because it was ‘worthless noise,’ while I always argued that the song was ‘artful dissonance.’  I think you’d really like this version though, because she turns the onrush of the original into something slow-paced and clear, putting a focus on its thoughtful distillation of our times - besides Howie Gelb from Giant Sand, who you always liked, sings the song along with Tracy.

“Oh, if I’m gonna sit down

And listen to this

Oh, I’ll need a stiff drink

To get me through

Oh, nothing is certain

And no one is perfect

Oh, and you’re no fool

You’re just a little lost”

                                                     -from “You’re No Fool”

It’s the bulk of this album though that feels like it should be the metaphorical rubber band as my gift to you – hell, I’ll mail order a copy for you!  Tracy Shedd’s words are so perfectly straightforward and free of useless complications.  She is direct and lets the power of her phrasing and her beautiful voice and melodies to hammer home whatever emotions she sets out to evoke.  She is clearly singing from the point of view of having someone in her life deal with some serious shit - someone who is on the brink, as she boldly sings on the song “Control”: “don’t end it all tonight / you have a life to live.”  It is a simple message but her soaring voice drives her worried plea home overwhelmingly.

I can only hope that you are not at such a terrible point.  Life is often painful, frustrating and extremely difficult to deal with, but it’s something that we all have to do our best to persevere in order to reach those moments of sheer joy and inspiration that make it all feel like we each have value and that are lives are meaningful.  It’s music like this album that always remind me that we all go through tragic times and that it’s okay to take comfort in the poetic words of great artists such as Tracy - it's life-affirming.  You have always been a spark and the first person to help your family, friends and anyone you come in contact with.  It is time to focus your amazing healing powers inward and help yourself for once and to realize that you will always have someone out there supporting you in spirit. 

                                                                                                                                                       Warmest Wishes,

                                                                                                                                                                      Chris.

Tracy Shedd

Arizona

(New Granada 2013)

 http://tracyshedd.wordpress.com/

 http://newgranada.bigcartel.com/

 http://tracyshedd.bandcamp.com/album/arizona

That Smiling Face

“I’m not sure I’m ready for this,” Sophia said and laughed nervously.

“You shouldn’t doubt yourself! You’ll do just fine!” Chuck responded immediately, trying to fight the urge to reach over and touch her arm and verge into creepy territory.

“This is my first visit…”

“We’ll be there together and we’ll work through it together,” he tried to be reassuring. He was always a little nervous about these visits as it is and this was still his responsibility, so having someone there to help always comforted him. He always appreciated the back up. He was also nervous because he had developed a crush on her from afar. She was so pretty and so keen on jumping in and helping anyone and everyone out.

The week prior, Sophia approached him at the office out of the blue. He had seen her around, but didn’t know who she was. He had noticed her wandering through the office with her resonant smile and that long dark hair. Now here she was asking him if she could join him on his next run of home visits. Turns out she’s interning two days a week and wants to expand her experiences at their busy little office. Chuck straightened his back and stammered an approval. She brightened and said enthusiastically: “See you next week Charles!”

There she was sitting in the passenger seat of his car and he had been trying to prepare himself for this all week. He knew she would be with him, and he hoped that he would like her as much as he found her physically attractive. He wanted to make a good impression. So far during the drive across town everything had gone great in Chuck’s mind. Sophia was easy to talk with. She was interesting and engaging. She told him about what she wanted to do with her life and why she was interning. She wanted to help senior citizens. She wanted to be an advocate for them. She was going to school to study all angles of the social, political, and health concerns of all of our grandparents. She told Chuck about how her dream had been sidetracked as she initially dropped out of college to begin raising her two young children, but how after her divorce, she found the courage and wits to get her affairs in order and return to school. He marveled at the idea of her raising two young kids on her own, working a job, going to school full time and still taking time to volunteer (or intern) where he works in order to achieve her goals. It made him feel a great admiration for her and very sheepish about how much time he wastes away every day.

Still, despite, his own personal misgivings about the state of his life, that half hour with Sophia instilled Chuck with energy and inspiration. She helped him realize that his job is important and increased his focus on the few visits he had scheduled for them that morning.

“What will they think of me?” she asked him, concerned that his clients wouldn’t take her seriously.

“Just be the kind, courteous, and caring person you seem to be and they will all love you. They will prefer you over me, I’m certain. The most important advice I can offer is to genuinely listen to what these fine people say and ask,” Chuck offered.

Sophia let that last sentence hang in the air and they sat in the car wordless as Chuck turned left and pulled the car into an apartment complex parking lot. He kept hearing his own annoying voice echo around his thoughts. He always hated being aware of his voice and the stupid sounding things he would find himself saying. He didn’t allow this to deter him though. Being with Sophia made him feel positive and he had had a great week leading up to this day. He had been social and hung out with friends. He had found himself noticing an occasional smile from women he would pass at the grocery store and the bank and over the weekend he was pretty certain that the bartender at Bottles was flirting with him. He felt foolish thinking such a silly thing, but it made him smile anyway.

They grabbed some notebooks out of the back of his car after Chuck finally found an open parking spot and Sophia shadowed him as they made their way to the front entrance of the building to see Howard. Howard was in his 80s and mostly bed ridden and needed help filling out some insurance forms.

“You have a pretty girl following you! Heh Heh!” someone shouted towards them from the smoking area near the front door.

“I sure do. It must be my lucky day!” Chuck shouted back, as he grabbed a security card from his notebook and used it to open the door.

**********

“Do you think Victor will be okay?” Sophia asked Chuck after they climbed out of his car at the office parking lot. He noticed that she had turned her face skyward to absorb the warmth of the sunshine after she asked about Victor. He cursed himself for keeping the car too chilly. Too much air!

“I sure hope so. His health hasn’t been very good lately. I’ll be joining him for his doctor’s appointment tomorrow, so we’ll see,” he told her with enthusiasm, but he knew that Victor was not doing well. “I sure hope so,” he mumbled.

“He’s so sweet,” she added before thanking Chuck for letting her go along.

Chuck did not want to say goodbye, but it was clear that their arrangement for the day had come to an end. He did need to file his reports and make some phone calls and so on.

“Thank you, Sophia!” he chirped back overenthusiastically. She headed off to see Theresa, her advisor, and he headed to his downstairs office to check his email. He couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened. His face was flushed and his heart was racing. He was smitten, whether he wanted to be or not. He sent Sara a quick email about how his “hot date” had gone. Sara was the only one he had told about his new crush and how she had arranged their afternoon together. Sara was the wife of one of oldest and dearest friends. She had become his closest confidant, unwittingly, with his imaginary matters of the heart.

“Do you think you’ll pursue her?” was Sara’s immediate response, always the one to get straight to the point.

He pondered with his hands hovering over the keyboard, “Do I?” he thought. All of his crushes had gone nowhere except for one, which became a suffocating nightmare after only a couple of months before coughing, choking, and wheezing to a collapsing, yet merciful end.
“Not sure. She has two kids and is always busy. Not sure I’m ready for that,” he carefully pecked out. “I do really really like her though.”

“Hmmm…when will you see her next?” Sara replied immediately.

“Next Thursday,” he answered, realizing that the week ahead without seeing her made him feel sad. Again, he paused and wasn’t sure what to type. He knew he had all kinds of emotions boiling under the surface, but none of them made any sense. “I guess I’ll just talk to her then.”

**********

Luckily for Chuck his week was incredibly busy. He had a weekend scheduled with friends and family. Nearly every night was booked with some sort of social engagement and work was always three weeks behind schedule and there to keep him occupied. Sometimes he had to over schedule his time because he struggled to be alone. Alone, his thoughts always turned to what he was missing. It was when he was alone that he realized that he had been alone for far too long. He thought of Victor. He thought about how he was close to the end and had no family and no friends around to care for him or to simply keep him company. All he had were occasional visits from people who were paid to check in on him. A big part of his job was employing a heavy dose of empathy and none of his clients could possibly know how deeply he understood their plight.

**********

Chuck splashed on some cologne for the first time in about a year. He laughed as he glanced at the small bottle in his hand. He didn’t know what this was, where it came from, or if it still existed. He wasn’t even sure if he liked the smell, or if the smell was the same as it had been when it appeared in his medicine cabinet countless years ago. He tried to wash it off moments later. He smiled and bounced around that morning and hummed along with the Allo Darlin’ CD playing quietly from the oversized speakers in his adjoining bedroom:

“If I told you

I was never cool
And all I wanted

Was just to have you

And when I see you

I will put my arm around you

It will be hard to let you go”

One of Chuck’s other crushes was with lead singer Elizabeth Morris’s voice, and the uplifting message of “The Letter” was a perfect song to start his hopeful day ahead. Even with his busy week behind him, the idea of seeing Sophia had always been at the forefront of his mind. He was hoping that she would join him on some more visits. He pulled the disc out of the player and took it with him for the commute to work.

**********

That magical smiling face of Sophia’s caught Chuck’s eye as he finally spied her on her way into the office. He had kept looking at the window all morning and there she was. She waved a greeting to Cindy as they passed in the parking lot. He was stuck on a conference call, which he had long ago stopped paying attention to. All he wanted to do was drop the line and rush to the entrance to greet her. He didn’t know what he would say anyway, so he put his head down on his desk and continued to tune out the chatter coming from his phone. He didn’t see her again the rest of that day.

**********

“Good morning,” Chuck said to Sophia as she wandered into the break room. She had her back to him and looked out the window. He was squirting old coffee from a broken urn. She had surprised him. He hadn’t seen her all morning and wasn’t sure if she was scheduled to work on Fridays.

“Oh, hey,” she glanced back over her shoulder.

“How are you doing?” he asked, ready to ask more rapid fire generic small talk questions to keep her around.

“Okay,” she said as she turned around. She turned her attention to the doorway. Chuck could hear voices. She trotted out of the room after them.

“Hey, Mark,” he heard her voice again. “Would you mind if I joined you for that meeting today?”

“Sure! I’m headed out now. Come on,” Mark encouraged.

Chuck poured his cold cup of coffee down the sink and sat down at the table. He thought about their drive the week before. It was then that he realized that through their entire conversation, the only questions she asked of him had to do with work, while he had touched on not only work, but also her life and her interests and her kids and childhood. When Sara asked him if he was going to pursue her, he only thought about the idea of him not being able to handle being a part of her busy life with kids, school, and work. He could only think about the amorphous directionless mess of a life he had always led – a life without a plan. All he could count on each day is that he would wind up at work the next day until he could no longer work anymore. He never considered what she might think of him. She smartly was on a fast track to achieve her goals, which had nothing to do with him. Chuck needed to get to Victor’s to take him to his doctor’s appointment. The last prognosis was not positive. He started his car and rolled down the window. Allo Darlin’s “The Letter” spurted on midway through the song. This time Elizabeth’s words made him feel overwhelmed with emptiness. He wanted a beautiful voice to be singing those words to him – not for him.

la lune

Swallowing down a burning taste of cancer and cringing from a rusty throat. Two plastic tubes dangle from a hole just above the heart without use and panels of several IV lines stretch out from the neck. An itch on the tip of the nose reveals what feels like a wire hanger unbent and then shoved into the right nostril and down through the back of the throat and on into the stomach. On the other end, another tube runs from the hanger into a bag hooked to the side of the bed. The bag is beige with a chunky viscous. The left arm is wrapped tight in bloody gauze and is throbbing to escape. The chest is trapped underneath a weight of monitors and tightly wound bandages making breath difficult to draw in. Wires and tubes strap the body down from all corners of the plastic bed, which somehow are keeping track of proof of life on one of the boxes with lights on the periphery of the room.


“A little drumming boy
Is beating in my chest”

Lights flash and scream out alarms, while feeble beeps come and go or jab at an annoying constant rate without consequence. A television shows a blurry figure dancing to the hum of quiet static in front of the moon from above. It is the only distraction from the various intense aches and stabbing stings taunting every second.


“Is this a competition?
I’m definitely winning
Because two by two
They came through
And one in every one
Fits a million”

Is this an experiment or simply organized torture? Is this worth a potential extension of life, or is it an extension of a nightmare? Choking down regret and questioning every decision and every move along the way. Is this all there is? Sensory deprivation is the only way to survive this moment and the moment after that. It is disorienting and disillusioning, but the only time that the pain is somewhat bearable. Maybe someday this will all end. In the meantime, it’s best to keep it all inside. Carry it to the grave. Pretend that everything will be alright and that it’s all worth the effort, while knowing that none of this matters. This is potentially how we could all find ourselves sooner or later.


“You keep on holding back
Can’t break it to yourself
That your life means nothing
But the fear’s making sense”



song lyrics: Sons and Daughters.