Quite honestly, if I read a story or article that started the way
I just started this, I would skip it, delete it, say ‘fuck you' out loud to the screen/magazine, and go do something more productive with my time. I guess I am just a simple hypocrite. I will flog myself later for being such.
I remember the first time I had a conversation about saying ‘I'm Sorry'. It was about ten years ago. I was bartending regularly by then, and the guy I worked with on Sunday nights was becoming a new friend. We had known each other for a couple of years, and had been working together a day or two a week. I said something stupid, I do not remember what, trivial probably, and I followed up with, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
He then spent the next thirty minutes explaining to me why I should never say ‘I'm sorry' again. Now, he did not say to never be sorry, he just said quite simply, "Always say, ‘I apologize', not ‘sorry'." The thirty minute conversation came after that when I made him explain why. His point was that ‘sorry' sounded like weakness and was insincere, as where using the phrase ‘apologize' was genuine and, I suppose, more masculine. Damned if I don't say ‘I apologize' to this day when I fuck up.
That may not be as interesting as any other thing that has happened to me, but it can help me to explain something that I feel like explaining; I remember minute details from conversation from all different points in my life.(As I often say to people, I am a variable well of useless information) When someone has, in the past, said (or done) something to me that leaves an imprint (positive
or negative) I keep it forever.
The first time we learned in school, grade school I believe, how the brain worked....I remember specifically this; we use ten to twelve percent of our brains. The other eighty percent is either undeveloped territory, or is used in a way we can not understand. Somehow, I developed a fear of exceeding my 'capacity'. Yeah laugh, it's fucking silly. But it caused a few very important trends in my life that I follow to this day.
I pictured the brain as a storage space. Everything I heard, learned, saw, felt, was like a box being put in that space. I had this mental imagery or a space filling- top-wise, sideways, front to back... I started fearing that if I heard too much useless drivel that I would store it indefinitely and
if (at the time, I assumed it was
when) I reached capacity, I would not be able to learn anything new. So if I heard, say, too many commercials on the T.V., or radio, I would be filling my storage space up with the equivalent of pack-rat garbage. To this day, I need to mute or turn down the radio unless there is music playing. Sometime even when the D.J.'s talk. This, I would discover later, is a symptom of attention deficit and obsessive compulsive disorder. I suppose it does not matter, because I used it as a reason to not watch T.V., a habit far too many people do all the time. In fact, to appease my OCD nowadays, if I like a T.V. show, I wait for a DVD box set, sometimes even until the show is in the fourth or fifth season, so I can watch it uninterrupted, and without having to wait a week between plot developments. The hardest one ever to watch was the Sopranos, because it seemed like everyone I hung around was watching it. I would always hear, "Did you see Sopranos this week? Did you see how..."
That is where I would interrupt them with, "No I did not see it and if you tell me I am going to stick a pipe bomb in your ass so you can't ruin it for me ever again."
That reminds me, how many of you, all four of you, have an understanding of what anxiety disorder is? Briefly, it is a condition that increases heart rate and breathing [physical symptom] for reasons that are either minute or non-existent [psychological symptom]. Basically. It is like freaking out for no apparent or necessary reason. Now, one can experience anxiety at any time during a true crisis, but the disorder is when those same symptoms appear as a result of something much less serious. Panic disorder is nothing more than a series of anxiety attacks strung together that can last for hours or days. So, anxiety is bullshit, and panic is bullshit compounded.
Another disorder that is symptomatically similar, and often concurrent with anxiety attacks are anger attacks. Anger attacks are just like anxiety except (you see this coming right) in the stead of getting anxious, you get mad.
To truly appreciate what it is like, I will define this ‘anger'. It is not simply mad and in a bad mood. It is not simply put off a person or subject for a bit. It is not simply deciding that someone who said whatever it was that got you mad is an asshole/bitch and deciding not to talk to him/her again. It is the definition of seeing red. It is pure fury. Unadulterated, unbridled rage that, if left uncontrolled, can cause a normal sane person to commit murder. (Those cool phrases [seeing red] actually do have a root meaning/origin!)
I'll attempt to explain with an example. When I was a teenager, I had the OCD. Any semi-educated person now days would easily be able to make what is know as a pop culture diagnosis of my condition just by spending an hour alone with me. But that is a more recent phenomenon, probably form the internet and tv shows that attempt to be ‘witty' and ‘smart'. Either way, I had no excuse for the way I acted, no explanation. My friends just said, "That's how Damian is. You just have to deal with it."
So, say a buddy came over to my mom's house after school and wanted a soda. I would get it out of the fridge, open it always returning the metal tab to the exact same spot, place it in front of them with the opening at a perfect 90 degree angle to their vantage point. That may be bad but it gets worse. While they were drinking it, whether it was a 2 gulp drink, or twenty baby-sips, if they put the can back down in any other position other than that perfect 90 degree angle, I would adjust it for them. Of course, with the asshole friends I had, after a while they would intentionally do it just to watch me. Kind of like dropping toothpicks in front of Rainman to see if he could keep doing it every time.
When they finally finished with the soda; sometimes I would ask three, four, or five times, "You done yet?", I would immediately take it into the kitchen, rinse it out (including the rim of the can) and then place it standing in the recyclables. This could be amusing except it wasn't just soda cans. It was also the toilet seat, the hand towel in the bathroom that had to be on the bar at exactly the meridian, the cigarette logo that always faced down when I lit one, the list goes on and the details get more mundane.
So, back to my asshole friends. Certain days it was a constant source of amusement for them. Two or three would be over and they purposely would do things that they knew would set me off. Oh OH oh...piss on the rim of the toilet was a HUGE one. Every time a male friend would piss, I would go in the bathroom, lift the lid and seat, wipe off the rim with toilet paper, drop the paper in, flush, wash my hands, straighten the towel, then exit the bathroom. If two or three guys pissed in an hour? Forget it, I repeated the ritual every time and than replaced the hand towel because it was wet from my incessant hand washing. So they would do things like that to me, ask for something to drink and than throw it in the garbage so they could watch me fish it out and clean it, piss and leave the seat up or crooked-up that fucking damnable hand towel so I had to shoot up, as if on a spring, to fix the thing. I think the goal was to see how many things they could make me do until it caused me to wash my hands, then count. On a particularly long visit, they could actually cause me to throw in laundry, because of course, there were only an acceptable number of hand towels I could dirty before I freaked out and had to do wash. Even my folding was ritualistic.
When they did it, I knew it was a joke, and I knew it was not usually supposed to be to hurt me, but I internalized it and often got upset. Every once in a while, when someone was doing that type of thing, I would blow up. Start by imaging screaming followed by unnecessary violence to an inanimate object [i.e. lamps, tapes, television, my guitar, my skateboard, windows - pick it]. I
did learn, as a wee, wee lad, not hit people, and however that happened, it is probably the only reason I am not in prison, or dead.
These violent outbursts led to more ridicule and self-loathing, which made the attacks happen all the more often, all the more intense, and last all the longer. I was eventually offered Valium, Ritlan, and this wonderful new drug (think early nineties) called Xanax. I was anti-drug so I never took them.....When I was sixteen, I ran away. Probably the fourth time; and I never left for long, a few days. It was that time my mother caught me at the door, bags packed with my tapes and some writing, two pairs of clothes, and suggested an alternative. I allowed her to check me in to one of those mental hospitals that had a wing for troubled kids. Not a gladiator academy with teen fuck-ups, a place where if you had the right health insurance you could go to for mild mental, mood, or substance problems. That place is a story unto itself, but it was there that I decided that psychology was the field I was going to go in to. After talking to shrinks, and ‘psych-techs', I started to realize from patterns I did what was wrong with me. I spent the next four or five years learning to break patterns that would categorize me with the OCD. Calm myself with breathing when I had anxiety attacks. Not break things when having an anger attack. And lastly, I began the lifelong struggle to focus and stay on one task until it is completed to my satisfaction.
I drifted into another field, on a professional level, but as you read this I still have several collegiate psychology textbooks on my bookshelf. I know them front to back.
I gave up the ‘no meds' ideology that I held for so many years a while back. I now take Adderol when I have to. It make s a substantial difference when doing anything involving patience or calm concentration.
A positive aspect I can tell you about though is how I learned to use my ADD and OCD to make money. I bartend. Busy places, consistent repetitive, but slightly different tasks on a daily basis. It is actually mentally soothing to me when I have five waitresses and ten customers at once yelling for something. It is the only time I can be me with out being ridiculed.
Wait, here is the point.....That's why it takes me so long between posts.
---fin---
P.S. Thinking about a post on the upcoming election, still haven't made my mind up yet. If you want to hear about the ten days I spent in that quasi insane asylum, let me know. Or, how I made the run-on sentence not only popular, but socially acceptable! (That last one was a joke, yes)
