Rerun:Why I Hate New Year's Eve

This piece was written several years ago....This does not indicate my state of mind at the moment, but is rather a glimpse of why I hate New Years Eve, especially if you are alone for it. 

New Years is a bad night for me. Part of me thinks of the old Barry Manilow song, "It's just another New Year's Eve/It's just a night like all the rest..."

Part of me is feeling sad. Depressed. Wanting to put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. I realized yesterday when I w as eating Chinese in the Village with a friend of mine, that I was conceived on New Years Eve by a 12 year old girl who had too much to drink. Could my earliest memory of consciousness be that of my conception between a drunk sperm and a drunk egg?

After all, drunken conception is nothing new, it has been happening as long as primal man slithered out of the the primal ooze that was the river Charybdis and became the genus Homo. John Lennon once made a comment about half the people in the world being conceived by too much alcohol on a Saturday night. I shouldn't be teasing these Saturday night specials, after all it made my father's side of the family multi multi millionaires. It is like the Bible says "the sins of the parents are passed down to their children?"

I am lonely. I feel lonely. Thinking about conception has made me horny. But I don't want to get laid. I don't know what I want. I have an urge to fly; I want to have one of those flying dreams I use to have when I was a child, but don't anymore. But I do not know where I would fly to. There is no where I want to go other than my bed. I want to sleep. I never want to wake up again. This horrible thing is depression, and it has me in it's sharp talons, not letting me go. I am screaming, and no one is listening. No one can hear my soul in pain.

I had my last drink on September 26, 1996. I can still recall it, sometimes I can still taste it. September 25, I had a bottle of red wine, adding grain (Everclear) to it so I could get buzzed faster. I passed out. I woke up the next day, no cottonmouth, but thirsty. I went to an AA meeting where being so thirsty, I couldn't even hold my glass of water. Finally got some down, got drunk again, and went into the DT's. I have not had a drink since then. Every time I get an urge, I recall that drink, the DT's; being strapped down to a bed and shaking so badly that the bed was moving, and the feeling passes. At the time I was drinking, I was hell bent on destroying myself. I was in pain, felt my life had not meaning, and it was easier to stay drunk than to actually live.

Now I have tonight.

I want to drink tonight. I want to take a bottle of vodka and take a long hot bath in my pajamas. Drink the bottle in the bath tub. And when the bottle is empty, crash it against the bathtub, shattering it. Taking the shards and slitting my wrists, my ankles, my throat. How long would it take to see the blood ebb out before going to sleep? I just want the pain to stop. I want the loneliness to stop. I feel all alone. I feel empty. I feel worthless. I feel like I should have been born dead. I don't know why I was conceived in the first place.

I'm hollow. I don't even feel alive anymore. I feel like a Basilisk. Dead. Empty.

I am not afraid of dying. That is easy. It is living that is hard, and living , so much of it sucks. I feel the loneliness the despair and it chokes me. I do not know who to ask for help. Maybe I don't want it. All I know when I feel like this, I want to curl up and never wake again.

Please God, grant me that one wish. Please. Because I am afraid of tomorrow. I feel as if I have been lied to, it does not get better. All the hard work I have done, that I am doing, back breaking work when I hit bottom to be where I am now, was it worth it? I do not mind being alone. I cannot handle lonely anymore. I feel so lonely I really could die. I am so lonely I might as well be dead.

All that hard work, and just now, when I feel the most vunerable, the most wounded, the one time I need someone I am alone. Like Tennyson's Percival, if I was to see the Holy Grail, I would know that this quest is not for me. Like Percival, the purest of Arthur's knights, , but still not pure enough to touch the Grail. I am not a knight in shining armor. The only dragons I have slain are of my own making.

And I just can't see this fairy tale ending happily. A long time ago I use to do tarot readings. They said I was psychic. I can often see how people will die in this lifetime. I have seen my own death, and know it will be by my own hand. And this prophesy I want to change. I just want not to be alone right now. I just want someone to hold me until this feeling passes. I s that asking so much? But as always, I am alone. YOu come into this world alone , you die alone, but I never thought this middle part called life would find me alone as well.

(Original written in 2001, re written in December 2008, and December 2009).(Photo Times Square 2009)

Depression Like Peaches? Or To Drink or Not To Drink?

The last two months have been almost unbearable, impossible to write. Impossible to breathe, impossible to do anything other than sleep. Just sleep. But even in sleep there is no refuge. I dream of nothing but peaches. Peaches are in season. I smell them, I can taste them, I crave them. Yet I have no energy to get out of the bed, I am afraid to leave the apartment to purchase them. And yet, this is the only thought I have. I want peaches.

I know how to get them. There is a farm near me, that was featured on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares that is famous for it's apples and peaches. I can drive there and get a bucket. And eat peaches at home, dribbling peach juice down my neck, chest, have it on my fingers, in my hair, all over me. I long for this.

What is it about a peach? It is the title a wicked record by the Allman brothers. If you cut one open it looks like a Georgia O'Keefe painting of something that reminds you of a woman's privates, and is done absolutely beautifully. No doubt if a peach tree had been growing in the  Garden of Eden instead of an Apple tree, Eve would have bit that.

What really got me going this depression was the drinking issue. September 26 is my 14th anniversary. I have a little widget on my computer that tells me how many days, and hours, minutes and seconds it's been since my last drink. It's a wonderful little thing that helps ground me and keep me in the moment, and the few times where I did feel like slipping and I couldn't get to a meeting, I would go to the widget, and look in amazement. Today I am sober for exactly 5101 days. See? Amazing. Who wants to destroy that record?

Lying in bed, I dream of Peach Schnapps. Oh, I loved drinking that, as a shot, or in a drink. I would even add it to water and make ice cubes out of it. I want to drink worse than I ever had. And I know, if I get out of the bed, I will get dressed and walk across the street to the liquor store. I won't leave til I have a bottle of Peach Schnapps in my hand. Then it's home, pour a glass on ice, and get comfortably numb.

There is a saying in AA that your last drink will take you back to where you were when you stopped drinking. My last drink had me in a state hospital, tied to a bed for two days on a plastic sheet while I had the DT's and during that time my roommate took the blanket off my bed and tried to hang herself from the exposed pipe coming out of the ceiling.

I don't want to drink, but I can taste it. I can feel it, I can smell it.  I dream of it. It's the only thing I desire, an ice cold glass straight up on the rocks.  Somehow, somehow, I have to get to a meeting, but if I go outside, I will want to go to the liquor store. So I go into the living room bookshelf, grab the Big Book, and take it to bed with me. Read. I find a few AA forums and lurk in a few of them. And make myself a big glass of Peach tea, on ice. It gets me through. A miracle. It was the closest I've been to picking up since my first 30 days.

Miracle indeed. Going to meetings now, twice a week. It's not a lot, but it's all I can handle being in a group of people. It's my old home group. It's a good group, I would say 90 percent of the people in there have less than 1 year sobriety. I do not have a sponsor at the moment. I am looking.  In the end, one year, one day, 14 years, it's all the same. One day at a time.

I still dream of peaches. But now it's the fruit. And yes, I am eating one or two a day while they are in season, along with my beloved peach ice tea.

Why I Hate New Years Eve- Rewrite/Revision

This piece was written several years ago....This does not indicate my state of mind at the moment, but is rather a glimpse of why I hate New Years Eve, especially if you are alone on it.


New Years is a bad night for me. Part of me thinks of the old Barry Manilow song, "It's just another New Year's Eve/It's just a night like all the rest..."

Part of me is feeling sad. Depressed. Wanting to put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. I realized yesterday when I w as eating Chinese in the Village with a friend of mine, that I was conceived on New Years Eve by a 12 year old girl who had too much to drink. Could my earliest memory of consciousness be that of my conception between a drunk sperm and a drunk egg?

After all, drunken conception is nothing new, it has been happening as long as primal man slithered out of the the primal ooze that was the river Charybdis and became the genus Homo. John Lennon once made a comment about half the people in the world being conceived by too much alcohol on a Saturday night. I shouldn't be teasing these Saturday night specials, after all it made my father's side of the family multi multi millionaires. It is like the Bible says "the sins of the parents are passed down to their children?"

I am lonely. I feel lonely. Thinking about conception has made me horny. But I don't want to get laid. I don't know what I want. I have an urge to fly; I want to have one of those flying dreams I use to have when I was a child, but don't anymore. But I do not know where I would fly to. There is no where I want to go other than my bed. I want to sleep. I never want to wake up again. This horrible thing is depression, and it has me in it's sharp talons, not letting me go. I am screaming, and no one is listening. No one can hear my soul in pain.

I had my last drink on September 26, 1996. I can still recall it, sometimes I can still taste it. September 25, I had a bottle of red wine, adding grain (Everclear) to it so I could get buzzed faster. I passed out. I woke up the next day, no cottonmouth, but thirsty. I went to an AA meeting where being so thirsty, I couldn't even hold my glass of water. Finally got some down, got drunk again, and went into the DT's. I have not had a drink since then. Every time I get an urge, I recall that drink, the DT's; being strapped down to a bed and shaking so badly that the bed was moving, and the feeling passes. At the time I was drinking, I was hell bent on destroying myself. I was in pain, felt my life had not meaning, and it was easier to stay drunk than to actually live.

Now I have tonight.

I want to drink tonight. I want to take a bottle of vodka and take a long hot bath in my pajamas. Drink the bottle in the bath tub. And when the bottle is empty, crash it against the bathtub, shattering it. Taking the shards and slitting my wrists, my ankles, my throat. How long would it take to see the blood ebb out before going to sleep? I just want the pain to stop. I want the loneliness to stop. I feel all alone. I feel empty. I feel worthless. I feel like I should have been born dead. I don't know why I was conceived in the first place.

I'm hollow. I don't even feel alive anymore. I feel like a Basilisk. Dead. Empty.

I am not afraid of dying. That is easy. It is living that is hard, and living , so much of it sucks. I feel the loneliness the despair and it chokes me. I do not know who to ask for help. Maybe I don't want it. All I know when I feel like this, I want to curl up and never wake again.

Please God, grant me that one wish. Please. Because I am afraid of tomorrow. I feel as if I have been lied to, it does not get better. All the hard work I have done, that I am doing, back breaking work when I hit bottom to be where I am now, was it worth it? I do not mind being alone. I cannot handle lonely anymore. I feel so lonely I really could die. I am so lonely I might as well be dead.

All that hard work, and just now, when I feel the most vunerable, the most wounded, the one time I need someone I am alone. Like Tennyson's Percival, if I was to see the Holy Grail, I would know that this quest is not for me. Like Percival, the purest of Arthur's knights, , but still not pure enough to touch the Grail. I am not a knight in shining armor. The only dragons I have slain are of my own making.

And I just can't see this fairy tale ending happily. A long time ago I use to do tarot readings. They said I was psychic. I can often see how people will die in this lifetime. I have seen my own death, and know it will be by my own hand. And this prophesy I want to change. I just want not to be alone right now. I just want someone to hold me until this feeling passes. I s that asking so much? But as always, I am alone. YOu come into this world alone , you die alone, but I never thought this middle part called life would find me alone as well.

(Original written in 2001, re written in December 2008, and December 2009).

Sophie's Choice- To Med Or Not To Med

I have a bad back. So do lots of people. Mine stems from a bad fall, landing on my back as a summer camp counselor. Add to the fact that Mother Nature has, depending on your view, either blessed me or cursed me with a set of DDD's. So this past September, I threw out my back. Nothing new here. A couple days in bed with the heating pad, and I should be as good as new.

This one went from bad to worse. I could barely walk, crawling around from the bed to the toilet, into the kitchen to put out kibble and water for the cat... back to bed. I couldn't reach the cabinet to get my meds, so I went without. And during that time, I went cold turkey off my anti-depressant. I don't know if the pain and nausea I felt was from my back pain or the med withdrawal.

Eventually, a couple days later, I felt fine. And when I went to take my meds in the morning- I noticed the Cymbalta bottle was empty. And my brain, felt clearer than it had in over a year. I didn't think twice, took my lithium, and decided from that point on- no more Cymbalta. No more anti depressant in my cocktail.

I started running low on my lithium back in October. I was flying blind, no psychiatrist at the time- because she and I had a parting of the ways. I was on a dose of 3100 mg a day, and I realized- I better find another doc, and make the script last. So I weaned myself down, on my own. 3100 one day. the next day, 300 less. A week later another 300 less. And down down down til I got down to nothing. That was one fortnight- two weeks ago.

I feel wonderful. My brain is clear for the first time in years. I can write. I actually feel like I can talk to people. I am not afraid to leave my apartment. Other than massive cravings for sea food and sugar, (Anyone for chocolate covered shrimp?), I feel better than I have in years. I've gone down from sleeping 12-14 hours a day to a normal eight.

I have had periods of my life when I have been med free- the shortest one was about 2 or 3 months, the longest was slightly over a year. Mood swings, hanging pretty close to the middle, but no serious highs, or lows. What would happen is my brain would clear, and I would evaluate my life. And I wasn't happy with it. At various times, I was working at jobs that I was over qualified for and bored out of my mind. To the outside world, it seemed like a good job, i just felt my brain was atrophying and I just started hating it. Hating getting up in the morning, hating every part of work....hating coming home to an empty apartment with a cat, and no other company. I joined a dating service, no luck, and I was past the point where I would go to City Gardens or Zadar's or Katmandu, after spending an hour or more on makeup, hair and clothes, to have some drunken clod spill beer all over my clothes, or bump into me and make drunken sexist comments about my figure. Ugh.

I stopped drinking in clubs and started drinking at home, on the weekends. Really drinking. From Friday night, til Sunday night, drinking, passing out, anything to stop the lonliness I was feeling. I always had bad luck with men, they either were intimidated by me because I was "smart", was "one of the guys", or just "not pretty enough, too low maintance". Finally, I got tired of it all, decided to give up my weekends doing volunteer work and working in bookstores for extra pocket money. I love books. I love every aspect of them, feeling them, shelving them, reading the book flaps, opening them and just loosing myself in a world of words. But I was still suicidal, I just knew how to hide the ideation. I would go to the shrink- to the therapist, and just take what ever pills were given to me, not questioning. More lithium. More antidepressants. More more more.

And hate the way they would make me feel. But I was a good girl, I wanted people to like me, I wanted...... I wanted no trouble, and to be liked. Winding up in a Dickensian orphanage was my biggest childhood fear. I still act like a child around authority. Never questioning, never saying "please sir, can i have some more", while my tummy is rumbling.

Now, a new doctor. A script for a new med cocktail- back to lithium- a new anti depressant- Abilify- and Topamax. I put them in my wallet, shake hands with the doc, and leave. The scripts have stayed in my wallet for a few days. I don't feel like filling them, yet I finally do. And put them in the medicine cabinet, not taking them. I know my disability needs me to be on meds, but do I take them or not?

My mother cries. She wants me to take them. She is convinced I will suicide if I don't take them. I am convinced I will suicide if I do take them. Not now. But someday.

The other night at my local DBSA meeting ,I bring up a topic. Would you rather live two very good years, being able to be the best of your abilities, functioning as a real human being, and happy- but off meds- or on meds and live 20 years just existing, just breathing but unable to think as your brain is clouded in a sea of fog and miasma? All your life is reduced to a bunch of involuntary bodily functions?

I said I would rather live two more good years than exist in a prison of fog and miasma made possible from a clouded, broken brain. Some agreed with me, most did not.

Most did not. The story of my life. Not fitting in anywhere- and not knowing what to do, but following my heart, and soul. Tomorrow may rain. I'll follow the sun.
(Picture by Frieda Kahlo. She knew about a bad back too).

Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing

Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing (say, say, the light)
I'm very scared for this world
I'm very scared for me (say, say, the light)
Eviscerate your memory
R.E.M

Why bother? Watching the evening news, i just don't understand. Tensions in the Middle East mounting, most likely a war next year. Every day another story of a mother or father murdering their children. Or a boyfriend murdering their girlfriend. Children in parts of the world, all parts going to bed hungry. Commercials on TV asking you to sponsor a hungry child. Another commercial for Polar Bears. Our Boys and Girls coming back from war and nothing there to help them once they arrive back here. People abusing animals.Tiger isn't a hero anymore. It's all too much.

My mother and I were watching the news and what made me even sadder than I was, was how she was talking about how almost everyone writes a book nowadays, what is the fine line between fiction and non fiction?

This brought up the discussion of my novel- I told my mother it is a NOVEL. I will send it out as a novel, even though most of it is true. Mom had just read a book about prison and she was upset about strip searching. I just looked at her and said, they do that at every hospital I have ever been at.

She looked at me and almost cried. No....

"Oh yes, and it 's the most horrible thing, evasive as hell. They do a body cavity search". She didn't believe me. I continued, "yes, they put you in a room with a nurse and another woman, they tell you to strip down to your bra and panties, then they remove the bra, one woman is checking out the bra to make sure there is no contraband sewn in, and the other one is checking your boobs to make sure there is no contraband there. Then they hand the bra back to you, you put it on, and they tell you to remove your panties and it's like having a gynecological exam, they stick a finger inside, and they check your rear end too." She got upset and said why?

Easy, I said. The second time I was at that hospital a girl OD'ed because she snuck sleeping pills up in her privates. They were finding the drug addicts were putting drugs up there or their rear ends.... And yes, it's humiliating, it's really humiliating. I am sure it's worse though for a guy.

Last night I dreamed of J- I had not dreamed pf him since he left over 3 years ago. I woke up in a cold dead sweat. I dreamed of Absinthe, something i have never had, but i feel like the girl in painting.

I want to sing again. i want to pick up my clarinet and wail hitting that high "F" in Tchaikovsky's 5th- and play jazz. Pick up a guitar with my surname on it- and play til my fingers bleed.

I want to be able to write, write write until my fingers bleed and my nails have all broken. I just don't know how to anymore. I have more ideas floating around in my head than I have in years, I just... I just.... I want to be great. It's all I got, it's my only dream. And I feel like I am that guy who gets to the Olympics, breaks his leg and comes in last with his father. I may be down and out, but I will cross the finish line. As he was dying, baseball great Tug McGraw signed a baseball for my father. "You Gotta Believe". I believe this. I will get my groove back. I just need patience, and that is something I have never had.

Saturday Night Fever (on the brain)

Snow. Falling silently, softly, the neighbor's Christmas twinkle lights turning it all shades of blue, green, red, yellow. I lie in my bed, warm under five blankets, and the cat is near me. I have fresh washed flannel sheets on the bed, and to enjoy them even more, stripped down to my birthday suit, so I can feel flannel on my skin. It's a wonderful feeling. Window shade up, snow falling, I am lying in bed, propped up by two fluffy pillows, and one fluffy cat on my side, occasionally swiping a paw at an imaginary mousie she is chasing in her dreams. All I am missing is a cup of hot chocolate, on my night table.

Sounds nice, doesn't it? No. Not. My brain is going a million miles an hour. Since 2 pm the only thought in my head has been to change the lyrics on a popular song and sing it' - "Susan's got a gun".....but I don't have any. I do have a water pistol some where, but no... no gun. And again and again the thought goes through my brain- I wish I had one. But if I did, right at this moment, I would be too terrified these would be the last things I would be doing until I pointed it at my heart and pulled the trigger.

I am holding my AA coin in my right hand. Holding on to it for dear life. My 13 year coin. I have two- one for me and one I mailed to my blogging friend Mary. The last couple of days, I have been having drinking dreams, I dream of cool Long Island Ice Teas, White Russians, wine in slender glasses. I dream of getting high, feeling I can do no wrong, that I am indeed pretty, smart and a good person to be around. I have a trick up my sleeve- the same trick I used when I was first getting sober. Go to a 24 hour club, stay there all day if need be, and drink Diet Peach Snapple every time you want to drink.

So I am safe. Safe right now.... and trying to do every trick in the book to quiet my brain, hence, looking at snow and meditating. Giving into the purely hedonistic feel of flannel on an icy cold night against my warm skin. I'm staying alive.


In the morning, hopefully the thoughts will be quieter, and the loneliness I feel won't be so acute. Who knows? Maybe in the morning I will have something to look forward to, something to do that will take me away from my own existential angst. My own hell in my brain. Hopefully I will be able to eat something... and it will stay down. Hopefully I will be able to go to Sunday Dinner at my parents house. Hopefully, hopefully... it will be a good day.

Let All The Poisons That Lurk in the Mud Hatch Out-Repost

This is a real oldie but goodie.

There is a line in Oedipus that goes like this;

"

Let all come out however vile.
However base it be, I must unlock the secret of my birth.
The woman, with more than woman's pride,is shamed by my low origin. I am the child of Fortune,
The giver of good, and I shall not be shamed.......Born thus, I ask to be no other man than that I am, and will know who I am."

One of the things I am working on in therapy is dealing with my birth mother. It is difficult. I have known all my life about my birth mother's faith, the adoption agency only allowed adoptions from that faith to parents of the same. I never knew much else about my nirth mother. It would make me wonder all the time, I was the child with the fair skin that couldn't tan, blonde hair and blue eyes. The only other person on either side that had blue eyes was a paternal grandfather. My sister on the other hand, resembled both sides, and didn't get the kind of stares i got as a child.

When I was 20 I had to go to court to open some records regarding a physical problem I had. I found out the problem was heredity, and that was that. And it was then I learned my birth mother was a child when I was born, a mere 13. And had it been legal in the year I was conceived, I would have wound up down the drain and not been born. As is, I was conceived on New Year's Eve by a drunken sperm that swam up the Charybidis, and hooked up with an egg that was drunk too.

That was enough information. I didn't want to learn anymore. I recall going back from my mother's house , driving back to school and drowning my pain in a few brewskis we had in the dorm room.

I kept that information close to my chest, carrying it around like an albatross for the next score. It really was no one's business, and somehow the pain was my own and I didn't want to share it with another soul.

I consoled myself with the Oedipus quote. It was my fault for finding out the secret of my birth, it was my fault for treading on the carpets after I was egged on to do so. I deserve anything and everything the universe would throw at me.

Fast forward to September 16, 2001. I spent the night before in a hotel I love, 3 blocks from the Empire State Building. Lovely Art Deco, it was home to Tesla in his last years. I had a view of it all night long, from 4o floors above street level and sat on the bed with the window blinds open staring at it al night. Petrified that an airplane would hit it and I would be dust. Afraid to put on my pajamas in case I had to run down 40 flights of stairs to the street. It was strange being in the city so close after 9/11. Everywhere I saw missing people flyers. At Grand Central. On the street. Over the newspaper recepticals. But what was strangest of all was the city seemed to be going in slow motion. Normally it goes manically fast, but that day every thing was slow, people were smiling and talking to each other, and even the taxi I flagged down stopped and the driver got out to open the door for me. Is that a NY Miracle?

The social worker who greeted me that day was tall, elegant woman in her 50s. She shook my hand, and ushered me into a cramped office cluttered with papers and manilla folders.

She sat down crossing her long legs. I noticed she still had sneakers on, the fashion of working girls in the city. Go into the city in Keds, change at your desk to pumps. She obviously hadn't changed yet. She asked if I wanted a cup of coffee, I could tell it was an excuse for her to get one. I declined, but she went out, coming back a moment later with a mug, and sat back down again.

"Ok, Susan, you asked a few months ago for the records your birth mother's social worker kept. I can not let you have them, but you can write anything you want on this pad here." She passed me a pad and pen. And then it began.

"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out', said the Emperor Claudius shortly before he died. I should have never gone into the city that day. I should have ran out the door and flagged the first NJ transit train back home. Ran , not walked. What she said grew more and move vile, more accursed to my shell like ears, as she put a box of Kleenex in arms reach and stopped occasionally as I sobbed.

My birth mother's age was known to me for one score. There was no mention of the father, they were not sure who the father actually was. The social worker who checked on my mother when she was carrying me could not get anything out regarding that.

But she interviewed my birth mother, and her mother, over several months until I was born. This is what I learned. My mother was the youngest of 5, 2 sets of twins, identical and fraternal. Almost everyone in the family tree had problems with drinking. The social worker turned around in her chair, and said "Alcoholism runs in this family. Do you have a problem with alcohol, dear?". I told her I was in AA and had a long run of sobriety.

But I told her I wish I had known that since I was a child. I would have never, ever, had one drink.
She paused for a minute, got me a glass of water and continued. On my birth mother's side of the family, everyone, except my birth mother had problems. None of the siblings had graduated High School, but it was her dream to do so That was why she was giving me up. Noble. More things, it just kept coming out like torrents and waves from a hurricane.

All the sibs had mood problems. The girls were considered "high strung" the boys were known to the cops for drinking and fighting. What struck me were the aunts and uncles and great aunts and uncles. All who died, either died by heart attacks or their own hand. those who died by their own hand, all died by the time they were 40. Most did actually die by their own hands. There were some great uncles and aunts and grand parents who had been lobotomized in the 1950s.

She looked at me with those big brown myopic eyes and said- "I am so sorry. It says here that most of your family was schizophrenic".She stopped and handed me another Kleenex. I didn't want to hear anymore. It was in my genes. It didn't matter that I learned that day my mother and her sibs were all blonde and blue eyed. That is where I got it from. It wasn't anything I could change, just like I could not change my eye color. I take that back, I can change my eye color and hair , but what was in my genes made up my soul.

For a while when I was in college I use to imagine my life was controlled by the Greek Gods. (This is what you get for too many semesters with the Classics). They would play with me, deciding what turns my life would take until they tired of me and dropped me from their warm clasp. Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos cut the thread and I would return to dust and sleep. They alone would decide what would happen to me in this life. I don't believe it anymore. You make your own fate, you control your own destiny. If my life was subject to the whims of something more powerful than me, I would be dead now. I would spend the rest of my life in an asylum measuring out my days by coffee spoons.

I am blessed I had a good childhood and if there is a curse on my house, I have escaped it thus far. Nature vs. Nuture, I am proof of the latter working harder than the former. If there is a curse on my house, it won't catch up to me. But I will be running so fast it won't find me.

My Charlie Gordon moment

Driving to my local support meeting last night. Not a cloud in the sky, perfect weather, it is actually getting cooler.

I took the back roads to the hospital, where we meet, because if I take the main road through my town I have to drive through the main street of the town, and this town is famous for jay walkers. I am always sick to my stomach thinking I am going to hit one. I've never hit anything in my car, but I once had a bird fly into my windshield and flop on my hood, dead. It had me in tears the rest of the day.

Everything was lovely, I was getting in mode to lead the meeting, something I hadn't done in months. I was going down Hamilton Ave and I hit the light by the fire dept. Ok no big deal. There is a pedestrian crossing there, and a very tall, scarecrow thin man in filthy tattered clothes walked across the street. I hardly noticed him. He walked past the silver SUV in front of me, to the middle of the road, (three lane highway with large shoulders), towards the other sidewalk, then he turned back around, heading back to the SUV and fell as the light turned green. At first I thought the SUV hit the man, but no, he was several feet away from it's passenger side tire.

He just lay in the road, like a broken doll. After a moment, realizing he couldn't get up, I put on the blinkers, went to the shoulder. The SUV in front of me moved to the shoulder. I pulled my cell out of my handbag and called 911. Then I went out of my car and saw several people had already gone over to him. I had my cell in my hand and the man in the red car on the opposite lane, the first car at the light yelled to me he too had called 911. We then had the people behind us move to the shoulder so the ambulances and police cars could have the road to themselves.

I walked over to the gentleman because I am Red Cross trained in CPR. I wasn't needed, since this was 3 blocks from the hospital, there was a nurse in one of the cars who was with him. I could smell the alcohol on the man from 5 feet away, mixing in with the smell of dirty clothes and BO.

And while I waited for the ambulance and police cars to arrive, I called a dear friend who I consider to be the older sister I never had, even though she is only 2 weeks older than I.

I told her about the accident and started to laugh. I didn't realize I was making fun out of this poor guy. Yes he was drunk, and fell down, but this was my evil side. Yes I was having what I refer to as a Charlie Gordon moment.
Charlie Gordon, the protagonist in the book "Flowers for Algernon". In one scene in the book, when he is a genius, he goes out to eat, and sees a bus boy drop a tray full of dishes. Everyone laughs at the poor guy, including Charlie.
Then Charlie realizes the poor kid thinks they are laughing with him, not at him, as the kid turns to the diners and smiles. He realizes it wasn't that long ago he was in the same place.

It might have been years since I was a fallling down drunk, and I forgot.
Even though I never drank in public once I left college, that still could have been me. Unkempt, poor hygiene, falling down drunk in my apartment.

I should never have laughed. I hope the ambulance sends him to the hospital, where they can pump him full of fluids and hydrate him, give him a good meal and help.

But I know one other thing I left out. The guy was clearly illegal so he won't get into the rehab hospital, unless it is at state expense and I seriously doubt they will put him in there.

I gave my statement to the police officer who basically told me they would do all they could to help him, but he seemed tired and uncomfortable in the heat wearing his uniform. It was a long hot day.

I hope the man got help.

And I thank him, who ever he is, for grounding me again.By forgetting my past, I cannot have a future.

Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out

There is a line in Oedipus that goes like this;

"Let all come out however vile

However base it be, I must unlock the secret of my birth.

The woman, with more than woman's pride,

is shamed by my low origin. I am the child of Fortune,

The giver of good, and I shall not be shamed.......

Born thus, I ask to be no other man than that I am, and will know who I am."

One of the things I am working on in therapy is dealing with my birth mother. It is difficult. I have known all my life about my birth mother's faith, the adoption agency only allowed adoptions from that faith to parents of the same. I never knew much else about my nirth mother. It would make me wonder all the time, I was the child with the fair skin that couldn't tan, blonde hair and blue eyes. The only other person on either side that had blue eyes was a paternal grandfather. My sister on the other hand, resembled both sides, and didn't get the kind of stares i got as a child. 

When I was 20 I had to go to court to open some records regarding a physical problem I had. I found out the problem was heredity, and that was that. And it was then I learned my birth mother was a child when I was born, a mere 13. And had it been legal in the year I was conceived, I would have wound up down the drain and not been born. As is, I was conceived on New Year's Eve by a drunken sperm that swam up the Charybidis, and hooked up with an egg that was drunk too. 

That was enough information. I didn't want to learn anymore. I recall going back from my mother's house , driving back to school and drowning my pain in a few brewskis we had in the dorm room.

I kept that information close to my chest, carrying it around like an albatross for the next score. It really was no one's business, and somehow the pain was my own and I didn't want to share it with another soul. 

I consoled myself with the Oedipus quote. It was my fault for finding out the secret of my birth, it was my fault for treading on the carpets after I was egged on to do so. I deserve anything and everything the universe would throw at me. 

Fast forward to September 16, 2001. I spent the night before in a hotel I love, 3 blocks from the Empire State Building. Lovely Art Deco, it was home to Tesla in his last years. I had a view of it all night long, from 4o floors above street level and sat on the bed with the window blinds open staring at it al night. Petrified that an airplane would hit it and I would be dust. Afraid to put on my pajamas in case I had to run down 40 flights of stairs to the street. It was strange being in the city so close after 9/11. Everywhere I saw missing people flyers. At Grand Central. On the street. Over the newspaper recepticals. But what was strangest of all was the city seemed to be going in slow motion. Normally it goes manically fast, but that day every thing was slow, people were smiling and talking to each other, and even the taxi I flagged down stopped and the driver got out to open the door for me. Is that a NY Miracle?

The social worker who greeted me that day was tall, elegant woman in her 50s. She shook my hand, and ushered me into a cramped office cluttered with papers and manilla folders.

She sat down crossing her long legs. I noticed she still had sneakers on, the fashion of working girls in the city. Go into the city in Keds, change at your desk to pumps. She obviously hadn't changed yet. She asked if I wanted a cup of coffee, I could tell it was an excuse for her to get one. I declined, but she went out, coming  back a moment later with a mug, and sat back down again.

"Ok, Susan, you asked a few months ago for the records your birth mother's social worker kept. I can not let you have them, but you can write anything you want on this pad here."  She passed me a pad and pen. And then it began.

"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out', said the Emperor Claudius shortly before he died. 

I should have never gone into the city that day. I should have ran out the door and flagged the first NJ transit train back home. Ran , not walked. What she said grew more and move vile, more accursed to my shell like ears, as she put a box of Kleenex in arms reach and stopped occasionally as I sobbed. 

My birth mother's age was known to me for one score. There was no mention of the father, they were not sure who the father actually was. The social worker who checked on my mother when she was carrying me could not get anything out regarding that. 

But she interviewed my birth mother, and her mother, over several months until I was born. This is what I learned. My mother was the youngest  of 5, 2 sets of twins, identical and fraternal.  Almost everyone in the family tree had problems with drinking. The social worker turned around in her chair, and said "Alcoholism runs in this family. Do you have a problem with alcohol, dear?". I told her I was in AA and had a long run of sobriety. 

But I told her I wish I had known that since I was a child.  I would have never, ever, had one drink.

She paused for a minute, got me a glass of water and continued. On my birth mother's side of the family, everyone, except my birth mother had problems.  None of the siblings had graduated High School, but it was her dream to do so That was why she was giving me up. Noble. More things, it just kept coming out like torrents and waves from a hurricane. 

All the sibs had mood problems. The girls were considered "high strung" the boys were known to the cops for drinking and fighting. What struck me were the aunts and uncles and great aunts and uncles. All who died, either died by heart attacks or their own hand. those who died by their own hand, all died by the time they were 40.  Most did actually die by their own hands. There were some great uncles and aunts and grand parents who had been lobotomized in the 1950s. 

She looked at me with those big brown myopic eyes and said- "I am so sorry. It says here that most of your family was schizophrenic".

She stopped and handed me another Kleenex. I didn't want to hear anymore. It was in my genes. It didn't matter that I learned that day my mother and her sibs were all blonde and blue eyed. That is where I got it from. It wasn't anything I could change, just like I could not change my eye color. I take that back, I can change my eye color and hair , but what was in my genes made up my soul. 

For a while when I was in college I use to imagine my life was controlled by the Greek Gods. (This is what you get for too many semesters with the Classics). They would play with me, deciding what turns my life would take until they tired of me and dropped me from their warm clasp. Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos cut the thread and I would return to dust and sleep. They alone would decide what would happen to me in this life. I don't believe  it anymore. You make your own fate, you control your own destiny. If my life was subject to the whims of something more powerful than me, I would be dead now. I would spend the rest of my life in an asylum measuring out my days by coffee spoons. 

I am blessed I had a good childhood and if there is a curse on my house, I have escaped it thus far. Nature vs. Nuture, I am proof of the latter working harder than the former. If there is a curse on my house, it won't catch up to me. But I will be running so fast it won't find me.