As Ron Swanson once said, "the sun will rise tomorrow, right over there. It will be a regular Tuesday" Or something like that. And I imagine it really will keep rising each day for many years to come. But it's a year for doom saying. And while I imagine the destruction of Pompeii and fall of Rome and any number of conquerings and enslavings and murderings and virus-ings of entire populations must have prompted similar sentiments, I found myself wondering today. And so am writing a letter to existence. A love letter and a farewell letter I suppose. Like a dear John to someone I still love deeply, though that makes it sound like a suicide note, which this assuredly is not.
The thoughts of doom began around 1AM when I awoke to the sounds of a loved one fixing themself a sandwich. This individual recently relapsed on an appetite suppressing chemical and had apparently gotten that appetite back in the middle of the night. This was annoying since sleep can be elusive for me, especially when I'm out of Tylenol PM, which is currently the case. Also I'm currently trying to stay clean so a loved one relapsing is a fairly huge trigger. Though 'triggers' is maybe a coddling-therapist way of saying 'event.' Anywho I took an hour or so to fall back asleep then slept through my alarm telling me to get up and exercise. The button on my pants would break later in the day...
I arrived at my office where I work as a social worker, attempting to help troubled youths and supervise others who do the same, while constantly attempting to define and redefine what the terms "help", "troubled", and "youth" mean. And realized again that aside from one, two, and/or three major exceptions, I don't care for young people or see a particular need for them to continue. Their culture is not weird or foreign or threatening to me.... just stupid..... Or like I'm embarrassed for them. A sure sign I'm approaching the age of crotchetiness and cantankerousness. But it's how I feel. And if it's the same thing that each generation feels as they watch the next, is it a sign of age, or a sign of decline (as some Samurai once noted)? I tell these young people that I understand what they are going through and that I care about them. At least one of those things is a lie.
I drive home (late, as my partner reminds me through text) under a sky darkened by wildfire smoke and traffic smog, noting that the artificial flower that I had clipped to my rear-view mirror had in fact... wilted. I don't know how, maybe the heat from this record breaking summer dissolved the glue which had secured the petals? I don't know. But somehow, the petals had dropped, some to the floor, some into the cup holder between the seats.
This sounds less like a love letter than a list of grievances written by an aging overweight man who had one bad day. But now to that.
I have watched this existence make the most delicious and surprising lemonade from the most shriveled and tasteless lemons. It has treated me like a storybook parent. Like the parent in the fairy-tales who is so perfect that they have to die early on so they can throw the evil step parent into sharper relief. I dreamed of helping people on a global scale, but dropped out of school (because focusing in class was hard and the teachers were pompous and way too up their own asses... and it was easier to not go....) but still, I find myself now in a position to "make real change" if that phrase means anything. Life seemed to design a job position for me. And when I found to many complaints with that one, a new one was created and I was invited to step into it....
And that has been a theme. I married young for weak reasons and ignored the advice of just about everyone in my life. I stayed in that marriage for cowardly reasons and had a son just as the marriage was gasping it's last angry, unhealthy breaths. Now I am with a woman who encourages me to be healthy, who understands me, who accepts and allows for my flaws while helping me to be what I can. A woman who I love. And my son now lives 5 houses from me and his step dad is a good friend of mine who is helping me produce my next album. His mother and I generally get on well enough.
Oh and music.... I naively went to a prestigious and expensive music school without thought of how I would land a job afterward which would allow me to pay off the loans.... Not to mention where I would find such a job, being rooted in Utah where entertainment jobs are near non-existent and with a family and bills and addictions keeping me broke... But my parents helped, and although I'm not running my own studio, I get to bring music production into my work with youth.... sharing with them the pitfalls on the road to fame. Warning of the jackals who will prey on their ambition, talent, their dreams. And also helping them produce quality demos which may garner some fans, open a door or two. Maybe not.
And my daughter. She wants to be with me. To learn to play chess, to play pretend with a pair of shoes, to just stay up a few minutes longer, to just be, but with me close by. That is maybe the greatest love of all this. Finding, despite my best efforts, that I can be loved. That whether it be the cat, or my partner, or my daughter, or a "troubled" "youth", I can be wanted by something..... And no matter how much I treat this storybook parent of life like the spoiled millenials that I rail against treat their parents.... I am not given up on. And if this parent is in the act of giving up on me and throwing in the towel, as I have seen parents do (and I have considered), I am still glad it gave birth to me, and to all those facets of itself that I've had the pleasure of loving and hating.
