A Single Year

Adios, Amigos!

I’m a little anxious today. Tomorrow I’m going to Puerto Vallarta with the woman I’ve been dating. It feels oddly ironic in an “isn’t life funny?” kind of way. The last woman I dated ended up in Puerto Vallarta with another woman and a diamond necklace. Apparently money CAN buy you love.

In any case, it all seems to be happening at just the right time now. In spite of the fact that the anti-depressants and asthma inhalers I’m on have more side effects than benefits, my life appears to be getting better.

For one, I may have found the perfect new gym near my work where I can get the discipline, support, and physique I’ve always wanted. For another, I have more opportunities at my job since our web services manager quit and we’re distributing his work rather than hiring someone new. This means a little more money, more work, and a chance to do something different that might not bore me to tears. All of these things will force me out of this deep rut.
 
And now, to be able to take a break and spend some time with a woman I’m learning to communicate and be intimate with in a whole new way is pretty damn sweet. For the first time, I have lots to look forward to when I’m away AND lots to look forward to when I return.

I hope to be able to ditch the drugs (and their awful side effects) once I’m officially out of this rut.

In the mean time, don’t miss me too much!

Back to the Past

Everything keeps coming back to the past. My past. I stumbled upon a FaceBook fan page for Pinewood Box, an old band I used to follow in the 80s. I followed them from the age of 16 until I went to college in the 90s. I was a sort of groupie, though I didn’t technically have sex with any of them. There was, however, a lot of other stuff going on, especially drinking.

They were all older than I was so there was never a problem getting booze. I got introduced to the group through my friend Nikki, the first woman I ever had a major crush on (though I didn’t realize it at the time). She was straight and eventually met and married Stan (which broke my heart).  We remained friends through my coming out process and I even stood up for her at their wedding. Stan was a big drinker and we’d drink together in his basement. When I sobered up, I said some things I shouldn’t have and lost Nikki’s friendship.

I found out today that Stan died in 2002 of cirrhosis of the liver. At the age of 38—the same age I am now. Scary. Would I still be alive if I hadn’t quit drinking? I don’t know. Sadly, there are memorials on the band’s fan page for several friends and members. All of them died tragically young. Most of them I knew pretty well.

I’ve found a lot of people from my past on Facebook recently and the timing seems odd given what I’m going through with therapy. For this week’s session, I was supposed to try to remember the very first time (from way back) that I felt unlovable. I thought about it all week and Tuesday night when I realized I couldn’t remember anything from my childhood before the age of 10, I got upset. I thought, “Maybe I’m just plain fucked up for no good reason.” “If something happened to fuck me up this bad, wouldn’t I remember?”

The next day seeing pictures of people from my past on FaceBook, forced me to try to remember other parts of my life, like what it was like before I sobered up. It was strange to see a picture of me with Nikki and Stan that I’d never seen before. (I’m the one between the sullen-looking man [Stan w/Nikki] and the woman raising her fist [Gina]. Yes, I have a mullet.

So many memories of who I once was, but no memories of how I got here.

Elephantiasis

I had another heavy therapy session this week. I told my therapist that I no longer wish to pay her to listen to me ramble endlessly about my weeks. I need to start working on the real issues again. We’d taken a break because things seemed OK, but they were only precariously OK. The elephant is still in the living room and it’s not going anywhere. It gets in my way no matter what I do now. I used to be able to avoid it. In fact, my avoidance skills were really quite impressive.

I used everything from reading, to drinking to exercise and relationships to avoid the real issues. Now I’m finding that none of my tools for coping work anymore. Or maybe I finally realized that I can’t fill the emptiness with distractions or people or activities. Instead, I feel numb and unmotivated. I may have been depressed before, but now even worse than that, I’m indifferent.

I don’t know if this comes with being an addict or not, but I find that my tolerance for any coping mechanism increases exponentially. When drinking, I needed to keep drinking more and more to reach the level of oblivion I sought. In relationships, I needed more and more attention to feel loved. With running, I had to run further and further to get to where I was going. Even with sex, I needed more and more stimulation to reach orgasm.

Now that I’m on anti-depressants, everything feels numb and flat. I guess that’s the point. No highs, no lows. It’s what they call balance. But right now, balance feels a lot like death. And death is just as preferable to life for me. This is what happens when you lose your passion for life. You don’t want to die, but you don’t care if you live.

I even started seeing someone recently and she’s great. She likes me for me and isn’t demanding of my time. She isn’t into dating multiple people and wants me for more than sex. She doesn’t expect me to earn more than I do and understands a lot of where I’m coming from because she comes from the same place.

So, why isn’t that enough to make me happy?

I think it’s because distractions aren’t enough anymore. The elephant is taking up a lot more of the room than it used to and it’s hard to walk around it, especially with another person in the room.

So, I’m going to start REALLY working again with my therapist so we can try to get the elephant down to a manageable size. This means examining my past and trying to see where and when the elephant first began to emerge so we can arrest its growth there and move forward.

I’m not looking forward to it. But then, that’s pretty much par for the course these days.

A Sad Day

March 13, 2006 is when I first enrolled at the Crunch on Grand and Wabash, approximately five blocks from my job. I had just ended a tumultuous relationship and needed to get my head straight. Many lunch time jaunts to the gym followed where I worked off more than calories. It became a refuge from the obsessive thoughts in my head (among other things). I looked forward to my workouts and had a particular affinity for the spin classes, not to mention the instructors.

It’s been more than three-and-a-half years since that day. Today I went there for the last time. Crunch went bankrupt and is closing its doors. I didn’t think it’d be a big deal to go there one last time, but I felt more overwhelmed than I thought I would. Sure, it’s been referred to by some as a ghetto gym and it was in a basement and it was small and the shower curtains had mold on them and they sometimes refilled the body wash with shampoo, but it was MY gym.

The price was right ($69/month), the amenities were adequate (towels, shampoo, mouth wash, hair dryers, ear cleaners), and the classes were great (spin, tread n shed, yoga, pilates, thai boxing, etc.). Fitness Formula is taking over Crunch memberships, but instead of the 5 minute walk it was to Crunch, it’s a 12 minute walk to FF. Plus, they have no noon cardio classes. Sure, they’re bigger, and cleaner, and have three levels, and a Jacuzzi and a pool, but I don’t NEED all that. All I needed was my little ghetto gym.

I thought today of all the times I went to spin class and felt its therapeutic effects. When the instructor told us to imagine that we were passing four people on the road, I imagined four people I wanted to get past in my life and I pedaled with everything I had. The classes were hard, REALLY hard at times. I sometimes thought of them as metaphors for my life. If I could make it through this one hour of excruciating physical and emotional pain, I could make it through anything. More than once tears would splash on my spin bike right along with the beads of sweat.

I exercised my demons, flirted with instructors, and worked my way through three of the toughest years of my life. When everything else in my life was falling apart, Crunch was there. I would have paid more for everything to stay the same, but even before they closed, my favorite instructors had started to disperse or open their own high-priced gyms that are too far away and too expensive. So I am gymless for the first time in years. (Before Crunch, I belonged to Bally’s.)

I don’t know what I’m going to do. Considering my motivation is at an all time low, maybe it’s just as well that I don't join another gym. Then I won’t feel so guilty about not going to work out and can spend my lunch hour eating lunch, or reading, or shopping.

Unfortunately, that brings me (and my demons) very little comfort.

Goodbye Crunch. I'll miss you.

Truly, Madly, Madly

Had my first follow-up with my doctor yesterday since being on all these meds. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Perhaps I was foolishly hoping he would give me permission to go off them because of the undesirable side effects I’m having. But of course he told me to give it more time. He even suggested I increase the dose, which he wisely reconsidered after my negative reaction. This is why I never wanted to try drugs as a solution. “Didn’t work? Let’s pump some more into your system until you’re completely zoned out and numb. Then you can walk around like 80% of the population out there and blend right in.”

I’ve been debating about what to write here for days now. Do I paint the picture with the colors on my palette, or do I borrow from someone else’s? My colors are all dull, muted, and dark. If this is for public consumption, shouldn’t I paint a happy picture? One that’s full of bright colors and happy rainbows to convey how wonderful my life is? Isn’t that what people do these days? They open Facebook accounts and fill them with pictures of them smiling and having fun and surrounded by friends. They post clever things on their walls and amass friends and poke each other from afar. It’s all happy, fun times in Faceland.

In fact, we’re probably ten times happier now than we’ve ever been and we have the pictures and comments on our walls to prove it. Yet, it seems we are more disconnected from people than we’ve ever been. FaceBook is a way we fool ourselves into believing we can communicate and have friends in a world that’s going 100 mph all the time. But really… how many of these “friends” are people you would call in the middle of the night if something serious happened to you or someone in your family and you needed support, a ride, a hug?  How many will be there for you if you go through a spell like I’ve been through and still want you in their lives, despite the fact that you’re not Happy McGigglepants posting a clever status update every twenty-six minutes?

I don’t have a FaceBook account anymore for a number of reasons, but it’s a struggle every day to avoid going back to it. So many people I know use it as their primary means of communication. By not being on FaceBook, I don’t get to see pictures or receive invitations or snoop into the lives of my “friends.” However, I also don’t have to become obsessive about who’s talking to who (and not me), or agonize about why I’ve been unfriended by someone, or deal with the aftermath of a breakup and all that goes with it (deleted photos, changed relationship status, who unfriends who first, etc.).
 
Essentially, I don’t have to act like I’m in high school anymore. Not that it isn’t tempting. It is. It’s very easy to want to get wrapped up in something as deliciously distracting as FaceBook drama. However, as it turns out, I have plenty to keep me busy. Like trying to figure out who my real friends are, and wondering what it means to be in love, and recovering from my childhood, and finding new passions, and climbing out of my rut, and... oh yea... writing.