This is my first entry in this new journal. I am caught up in some kind of circumstance. I am torn and I am thinking too much. But ah, at least I have you and this empty screen.
I can vent here. I can scream. I can cheer. I can chant and I can do or say whatever I need to say.
And this is good.
Speaking of trick . . .
Here’s a trick I’d like to pull:
Sleep.
This is not a complaint by any means but more, this is an honest account of a mild to moderate occurrence of insomnia, which is nothing new to me. Then again, this is nothing new to us and the conversations we share.
The truth is I can fall asleep pretty well. As a matter of fact, I can fall asleep fast, as in like, in the blink of an eye or in a matter of seconds.
I can pass out with the best of them. But falling asleep is not my problem.
The trick I’d like to pull is to stay asleep.
But the mind is a trick of its own.
I’ve never been one to sleep late or to sleep the day away. I have done my share of lazy afternoons with naps and some food, which was followed by a movie, to which I fall asleep again. To be honest, these days are good to have.
These days are great, especially when it rains or when it snows and the regular business days are on pause. I love it this way. The streets are quiet, and maybe there’s an old black and white film on television, like something with Spencer Tracey — like, maybe The Old Man of The Sea.
That’s a good one.
My personal favorite is Boys Town, but I only watch this movie once a year. I watch this with reasons that I hold dear to my heart.
I make sure to watch Boys Town at Christmas time.
I do this to remember where I was during the month of December in 1989. I also do this to commemorate how life can change in the matter of seconds — at least, in my case, because all it took was a phone call and to hear the words from a man named Tony who said, “Son, your Father is not well.”
As for Boys Town, I like the idea of redemption.
I like the idea that someone who comes from a bad place or lived through bad times or even if someone did bad things, even they can be redeemed.
I suppose I lived with the idea that I was just a bad kid.
Or maybe I was destined to be a bad person.
But I liked the idea that someone, or something, could somehow change the soul and redeem the spirit.
That’s what I wanted. This is also what the movie Boys Town was about.
After all, it was Father Flanagan who said, “The one thing that I know, that I truly know is there is no such thing as a bad boy.”
(I always loved that line, Father. I hope this is true.)
Now, as for my time and my placement and the interaction with Boys Town, the emotion and the meaning behind this is simple.
I lived on a farm with a similar purpose and was made to adhere to laws from a similar commission, as well as with a similar government that was no different from Boys Town.
I was nowhere near a farmer. I was nowhere near innocent either. But this is where the courts sent me.
I was not prepared to live in a Franciscan household or undergo a real change.
Put simply, I was not a good kid.
No, I suppose I traded my innocence for quick fixes and long slow nods that made Heaven inevitable, at least, of course, I can say that this was true to me in some kind of synthetic version.
Sure, I was on the nod. I was called a fiend. I was called worse too, like a junkie, a drug addict and a hoodlum. What else is there?
However, there was a piece of me who wished I was different. I wished that I was good. I wished that I was comfortable. I wished that I was able to look myself in the mirror, or to be able to look people in the eyes without a shade of dishonest truth.
And the truth was that I was sick.
I was suffering. I was afraid and sinking into the spiral of some downward gravity. To me, the only thing that could reverse the weight was the same thing that weighed me down or caused me to sink deeper.
I had dirt beneath my fingernails. Do you understand?
This is the same as blood on my hands.
I don’t mean the dirt or the blood that you can see. I mean the dirt and the blood from grimy decisions and dishonesties, or as it were, I was saturated by the filth that came from scams, or from illegal break-ins, and from thefts of all kinds and with all different procedures.
I did this.
But, I knew there was good in me.
I knew there was a piece of me that was torn and broken. There was a voice inside of me, screaming to get out, as if to shout, “Doesn’t anybody see what’s going on?”
I knew there was a part of me that wanted to revolt against my actions.
I wanted to walk away from the hoodlum crown of local knuckleheads and burnouts.
There was a part of me who wished that I was good in school, or who wished that I was fine to be unnoticed. There was a piece of me who wished I was fine to sit quietly in the middle of the cafeteria, unconcerned whether I was cool or hip, or whether I was desired, wanted, or included.
I wished that I was fine to be disconnected.
I wished that I was unmoved by the social addictions and the ideas that drew me in to the cesspools of social acceptance. I was fine. But I never knew that.
I was good. But I thought I was wrong.
I was right, but I thought that I was too stupid to be anything better than who I was, which was (and still is) me.
I wished that I found out how I could stop betraying myself by being kind to people who did not deserve my kindness.
I wished that I had the nerve to say no or to stop trying to buy friendships.
I wished I could erase the need to please or the need to be wanted or welcomed because otherwise, the outside world and the outside opinions of most people are absolutely irrelevant.
In all fairness, none of this has anything to do with our happiness.
I am a person who understands the challenges that come with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD.)
I understand social and general anxiety disorders very well. I suppose this makes me more normal than I realize.
I can equally understand the challenges that occur when it comes to medication resistant or moderate to severe depressive disorder. Sure, I have that too.
I am someone who understands the need to be calm or the need to find peace. At the same time, I can relate to the anxiety and the anticipation that everything is only going to get worse.
Not better.
I wished I was able to push a button and the power would turn off.
I couldn’t do this, but the drugs sure helped.
I wished I could silence the ideas in my head and quiet the committees to allow the emotional war rooms to soften to a dull hum. Enter the opiates.
I wished I could find peace instead of thinking myself into anxiety, or hearing the rage of my screaming whispers, which did nothing else but churn the fear and concern that something awful is about to happen—and in the end, it would be me, hurt and humiliated, or exposed and publicly destroyed, and incinerated into a hellfire oblivion of dust, sin, and regret.
I wanted peace. I wanted to be happy.
I wanted to be considered.
I wanted to be invited. I wanted to be included and regarded.
I wanted to be beautiful.
But how could I be?
I never asked to think or feel the way I did.
I certainly never asked to be “different” from everyone else.
I never asked to be painfully insecure, or to worry and question everything.
I wished that I was comfortable. I wished that I could come or go or stay or leave and not consider if I was missed or welcomed back. None of that would matter.
I used to wish I could rebel against myself.
I wished I would let myself be free and be myself.
I wanted better for myself.
But how can someone do this?
Better yet, how could someone “like me” be better when all predictions pointed towards the unlikelihood that I could be anything better than me?
There was no honor in what I was doing, There was no honor amongst thieves. There was no loyalty, no love, no kindness, and no warmth for the touch.
The summer of 89 was the coldest winter of my life, if that makes any sense.
I was cold but I wanted to be warm. I would sweat and I felt the heat, but otherwise, I was in the verge of some heartless account. I wanted to stand on my own and not care or give a shit who liked me, or who didn’t.
I wanted to let go of the ideas that I held on to.
But I struggled.
I knew that I could be better.
Then again, this would mean that I would have to play by the rules. I swore that I would always have to cheat, just to get by, let alone succeed or be great.
This would mean work and effort and, above all, this meant that I would have to play the game straight. This would mean that I’d have to stop lying or bragging, and I would have to stop posturing or pretending to be some kind of rockstar bad ass, which I knew that I wasn’t.
I was not a bad ass.
One night, I remember being drunk. I walked away from the crowd and found myself sitting in a stolen car that was in a vacant lot, stripped of most of its parts, and the car was resting like a crime scene or an outlined skeleton of life, which the car once had.
I was sitting in the car that was stripped of its worth, which I found to be apropos for the moment because I was stripped of my worth as well.
I was drunk. I was crying.
I walked away from the crowd because there was something in me that couldn’t take it anymore.
I couldn’t take the anxiety. I couldn’t take the social competition and the comparing of scars or the need to one-up, or to do more, or drink more, or smoke more than anyone else in the crowd.
I couldn’t let anyone see me cry. But some of my friends were approaching. They were laughing,
but I was crying.
I stood up. They asked me where I went.
I played the drunk role.
I played the villain.
I played the rebel without a cause and then I opened up my stainless steel, flip-top lighter. I stuck the flame, and then I tossed the lighter with the flame going in the front seat of the car to light it all on fire.
I couldn’t let anyone see me this way. So, I had to create a distraction.
Better yet, this was not a distraction, but a statement, or a standard, and movement that mirrored that hatred which I felt from within.
I knew that I was spiraling out of control.
I was only 15 years old, for Christ’s sake.
I had already undergone the realization of catastrophes. I can recall the moment when I realized what had happened to me. This is when I realized what took place and the unwanted attention of a touch that should never happen to a child.
It was perhaps around this age when I saw a bullet go through a man’s body for the first time. This was at a drug spot in East New York, Brooklyn.
I knew this is not how I wanted to be.
But there was no way for me to change. And more, I didn’t believe that change was possible.
I wanted more myself,
but more seemed impossible to me.
I was too afraid that I would be unheard or uninvited. I was afraid that I was nothing more than a mark or a figure—as if to be nothing other than a bullseye for some bully, or a target for a social terrorist who was neither cool nor tough, but only someone in a position that was better than me.
I was afraid of everyone.
I would hide in fear of those who walked around at better or higher levels than me.
In most cases, people are just people. However, we fail to see this.
We often depict people in classes, or as I used to see it, I viewed people in the social world of varying popularity. I was in the underbelly of the beast.
This is where I thought I was supposed to be.
I would see people as otherwise above, empowered over me, or elected in some crazy way. I never knew who got to decide the criteria of what meant to be popular.
Was there a vote on this?
Are people elected into these position by some unsanctioned way that allows for social groups to have the benefit of priority which comes to those who are popular. And for those who aren’t . . . let them get the scraps.
Is that it?
It’s funny to realize how exhausting it is to think this way.
And yet, I could never sleep.
But no one ever said I wasn’t tired.
Yes, this is exhausting. But insomnia is like a ride.
You have to ride the roller coaster until it ends, and when the ride ends, you have to hope the operator or the brakeman at the carnival decides to stop the ride, instead of sending you around again. And then what?
I’ll tell you what.
You’re back on the trip of thoughts that take you around the world.
And yet, you go nowhere (except crazy).
I pulled a trick when I was young. Or maybe the trick was pulled for me.
I was removed from my surroundings and taken from my environment.
I was rehabilitated, at least to some extent.
I remember being awake on the farm at night. Everyone else in the dorm was asleep.
I would look out the window, which overlooked the pasture where the cows stayed. I could see the cold moon in the middle of winter. Bright and blue, like a soft electric glow.
I could hear the winds blowing and whistling through the branches of some of the nearby trees.
The Old Man died in December of 89.
I lost everything. Or so I thought.
I saw Boys Town for the first time.
What a great movie.
I have lived with my insomnia for as long as I can remember.
Last night was no different.
I was up.
I was in my head, too deep, and I couldn’t stop the thoughts from spinning.
And there I was at 3:00 in the morning, awake, thinking, and then I said to myself, “Ah fuck it!”
I got up.
I got out of bed. I cooked something called pastelón, which is not a hard dish to prepare.
But it is somewhat time consuming.
Basically, this is considered to be like a Puerto Rican Lasagna
Only, we use sweet plantains (or maduros) instead of pasta.
Either way . . .
I had to replace my thoughts with an action.
Come to think of it, when it comes to pulling a trick on how to remove negative thinking, or when it comes to figuring out how to stop our thinking errors from growing or multiplying—replacing thoughts with action is the best way to pull off that trick.
The gym is going to open soon.
Might as well pull that trick too.
For the record,
I understand when I hear people tell me how they feel “off.”
I feel that way too.
But this is neither true or false, fact or fiction.
It’s just a case of the mind and us thinking too much.
I think too much too.
But thinking too much almost killed me
(more than once).
Or maybe this did kill me, in more ways than I think.
But I don’t want to die like that anymore.
No, I want to pull a trick
(and live).
The Written Addiction 