Shelter From The Storm

Entry 1

I am sure I learned cynicism at my mother's knee, listening to her deconstruct bullshit about the Vietnam War, Watergate, talking about Nestlé killing babies in the global south for fun and profit, U.S. sponsored death squads seemingly in every country that

July 11, 2018, top of Notre Dame,

avant l’incendie.

.

dared to seek liberation from colonialism, etc. I was raised to understand the world is a hard place, and as Leo Getz says in Lethal Weapon II, humans, given the chance, "They fuck you at the drive-thru." I like to think that the jadedness of my teenage years was as real as it was justified. 

My mom, and life generally, is complicated. She also taught me to give back to my community, and without saying it, she had a belief that all people are good. She was a member for a time of a small sect of radicals, and they would meet at our house. It was the 70s, and the idea that a revolution was coming didn't seem so crazy. She had my sister and I go out and put stickers on telephone polls up and down Rainier Avenue advertising the Emergency March on Washington, protesting the Vietnam War. I remember sitting downtown against the wall of Bartells as she hawked some sectarian newspaper, and we were bored for hours. That happened once, she got and lost religion pretty quickly. But she also did amazing work, she was deeply involved in organizing the free-clinic movement in Seattle in the early 1970s, and I remember sitting on the floor in meetings in Holly park, where one of the clinics was set up, my mom clearly a leading organizer, even if she didn't understand how fundamental her role was.

Looking back at 56, I understood a deeper truth about human beings my mom understood, than I didn't care to admit to myself as a kid.  People, given the chance and circumstance, are generally good and giving. I learned this in so many places at

SODO, 2015.

my mother's side and/or direction-- at mall fundraisers for MDA, while out collecting money at 9 and 10 years old going door to door for Unicef, walking 20 miles each spring in the 1970s to raise money for The March of Dimes, gathering food in high school for food banks, and working every summer of the 1980s and most of the 1990s at Camp Waskowitz for kids with neuromuscular disorders. A host of people, including me, stepped up to do what we could to make our world a better place with no need for utility maximazation--a condundrum even now for classical economists and rational choice theory. This need we have as humans to connect to one another, to help others, to alleviate suffering and to bring joy to one another is fundamental. This admission isn't earth shaking, but it is important to keep front of mind as I sit around licking my wounds and whining about how shitty life can be.

Entry 2 11:08 a.m.

I rode the bike this morning at therapy. Having skipped working out this week at home, I was glad to try something new. My knee doesn't ache. I didn't get the workout I would have liked, but the trade-off is I can keep working out. My two nurses really hovered over me today and really worked hard to help me in myriad ways this morning. First was putting me on the bike. Second, after were talking for a bit, they reached out to the Harborview Diabetes Clinic to set up an appointment with their chief doc. Its set for Sept. 20. I just need a referral from my regular doc. Third, I had the nurse who did my original intake measure my width. I have shrunk an inch since starting, which is thrilling. When I got home, the scale told me I am at 172.0, so things are happening again and the world is making sense. Off to work I go. 

Entry 3 11:43 AM

Vive le France

Our trip in Europe was generally very good. I have said many times that I thought that things were fine then--but memory tends to embroider. As I looked at the picture above, showing a grand sweep of Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the distance, I remembered that Jenny and I had a fight in front of the kids that day at dinner, in the 19th Arrondisment. I don't remember what it was about, other than Jenny's constant disdain and anger with me. Maybe I deserved it, I don't know. But the trip wasn't free of her moods. It was a terrible thing to fight in front of the kids, which had become very rare upon my return from California--I had practiced non-engagement. I practiced it so hard, that it was likely to the detriment of our marriage--although it seems she was cheating the whole time, so who knows. Her anger was certainly showing up less by 2018, but I attributed that not to detente of any sort, but because I studiously avoided it and she seemed less ready to engage with me. Plus, I thought that  I was earning points by doing all household duties while she was getting her 3rd masters. I wasn't, if her text to el pinche complaining that I had run a half-empty dishwasher is any evidence. 

A psychotherapist finished cardiac rehab today. Asked if he had any advice for us, he said that we should throw all of our emotional baggage in a garbage can. Let it go, move on. I hope I can get there, but it isn't happening yet. Last night I bought a book called, "Stop Walking on Eggshells," the seminal book on being in a relationship with someone who has BPD. Reading this now is the equivalent of Hagar the Horrible opening his mouth and shaking salt down his throat to improve the meal he had already eaten, I am aware. And while it may help me better understand what was going on, it won't answer the question that runs through my head on the daily, did she ever love me? Could she even understand what love is? I have heard several psychotherapists opine on this, none answering in the affirmative with regard to NPD/ BPD and the ability to love. Still, for me, the jury is out.