September Tenth

Through some shared numb-skullery between me and my doctor's office, I went off my meds last Thursday. It's something I take, and a real light dosage at that, to help with anxiety and depression but my script ran out and I detoxed off the shit, hideous skin-crawling withdrawals and everything, all weekend. Strung out in front of my kids just like I promised myself I'd never be again. Called around to all my friends in recovery trying to score pills, had some big laughs about it. However I got a legitimate refill  last night. Today is the closest estimation of the phrase "Back on Track" that I can imagine. This is the chemical approach to the idea of Self Care and as indignant or hostile as I may be toward it, it has been helpful. We take care of ourselves first. So that we may then therefore take better care of our children. Or each other.  I guess helping daddy bring in groceries and put them away while he lays down for a bit is not the same thing as watching daddy sleep off a bender all day on the couch.

I told my son once about the idea of having a wound of the mind. It was just after a friend of his, age four, the same age as his sister, had died suddenly and unexpectedly. She was the red headed daughter of a carpenter I work with, she was sweet and funny as hell and everybody loved her. Actually we had the conversation well before that point, when he asked me why I was moving out and not living with him, his mother and his sister anymore. I explained to him, that because of some things that had happened to me, I had something I considered a wound of the mind, and that I needed to do somethings to work on it. When his friend the little girl died, he asked if her father would have a wound of the mind because of it. I said, yes, that was the idea of it, and that was something he'd have to deal with for probably a long time.

So today is September tenth and this morning, after I realized the date, felt like writing something here. Whenever I run across firemen, be it in the grocery store parking lot or riding my motorcycle past a firehouse, I always try to make it a point to blip the throttle one time and wave or else look them each in the eye and say good morning. I never go any further than that. They look at me like I'm a nut anyway which I may very well be, but I never explain to them I was in New York city on the eleventh. I never tell them that I knew people who lost half their family that day or for years I'd watch the stupid memorial shows on tv and cry my fucking eyes out whenever everybody would march down there and play the stupid fucking bagpipes and all that shit. It took me a couple years before I figured out the wound in my own mind did not necessarily include what happened on September 11th 2001 just because I was there. But because I was there strode in to work the next morning to put on a tool belt and do what I could, when there were hardly any subways running and not a single car in the city, I can feel some ownership of it, and that for that reason, I've always felt a kinship to firemen whenever I see them, like they're my brothers of some higher nobility. I don't know, maybe I'm just crazy and stupid. Maybe when I'm an old man, I'll stop one of them or else wander down to the firehall and sit a young guy down and tell them my story, touching them occasionally on the arm to make sure they're still paying attention to me.