Stopped

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 20, Verse 9

"Who can ever say, 'I have cleansed my heart;

I am sinless'?"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

My life has been a series of "stops" lately.  Or, rather "stopped's".  

I've stopped taking my Viibryd.

I've stopped looking at porn (how do you really know for sure that they're eighteen?)

I've stopped my Facebook account.

I've stopped trying to get rid of my car for something more economical.

And what's the other thing....  Oh, right:

I've stopped blogging.

For a good while there, I was like clockwork.  Monday Thursday, Monday Thursday, Monday Thursday.  

March.  

Tick 

tick 

boom.  

Even when a Proverb really didn't make sense, I beat it into submission until we got where I wanted to go.  These Proverbs are really just along for the ride-- and I think they know it, too.  They know.  I mean, really-- what does Proverbs 20, Verse 9 have to do with not looking at porn anymore, or any of the other jumbled shit going on in my brain that I feel compelled to try to put down?  I don't know.  

It's been about a month since I've been off my medication.  I was just telling someone the other day that I don't seem to notice any difference (I'm certainly not shedding pounds like I was hoping I would) and then, just today, I noticed a difference.  Short with my children, inattentive, restless, agitated, exasperated, frustrated, down, vacant, closed.  

Stopped.

Now, yes, we all have "off" days, but this was a little too "off" for my liking.  I wonder if part of it's the heat.  It was 84 today, and muggy, sloppy and slow.  Even just standing in the kitchen, there was sweat on my brow and my skin felt like it would set my arm hair on fire in an instant.  I don't do well in the summer.  I snap easier, I'm more overworked, more raw.  Less patient and less refined.  I guess being half Israeli only does so much in regard to tolerance for the heat.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do-- am I supposed to go back on my meds?  Were they making me "nice"?  Funny?  Effervescent?  Were they making me who I was, or someone I never was?  Or were they very expensive sugar pills?  Hey-- maybe that's okay-- I like sugar.  If I need medication to get me back to who I was before, why the fuck is that?  What happened, and when?  And why?  I don't want medication and, much more, I don't want to need it.  

My birthday is on Monday-- I will be thirty-four.  This will be my first birthday sans-Facebook in quite a few years, I guess, and it will be interesting to experience my birthday free from the exploding Wall phenomenon.  Obviously, there will be a dramatic decrease in well wishes-- Gary from elementary school will probably not remember-- but I wonder if whatever contact I do receive on my birthday will be of a higher quality, if it will come from the heart, from someone I didn't expect.  Of if there'll just be texts from my sisters and my parents and my best friend, and dinner with my wife and my babies and the dog and presents on the couch.  And I wonder if that will be just fine with me, or if that's what I'll say to conceal the hurt at being forgotten about by my 458 "friends"-- whomever they were.  

Of course, my life hasn't all been about "stopped's" lately-- I've started some things, too.  I auditioned for a film/television/commercial talent agency to try to get my name and my gorgeous face out there.  If I get anything, I'll probably play a doctor holding a clipboard, explaining the side effects of the latest grape-flavored adult suppositories in a commercial that'll air between two and four-thirty a.m. on that Christian network, but I'm okay with that.  Work is work.  I also started to not be afraid of flying solo as a director.  I'm directing a show, all by myself, like a big boy, for the first time in a long time, and I am terrified and head-over-heels with the show already, and I haven't even cast it completely yet.  And I started something else, too... what the fuck was it?  Oh, right:

I've started blogging again.

The Wise Mind

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 4, Verse 5

"'Learn to be wise,' he said, 'and develop good judgment and common sense!

I cannot overemphasize this point."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

It's no coincidence that this blog is called "Chipped Wisdom."  It's not just an exceedingly clever and unending morsel of drollery.  It stems from my very deep rooted belief that my thought process, the way I formulate ideas and plans is inherently flawed, harmful, broken and busted.  Imperfect.  If my brain were a product, it would be most readily found in the Scratch-and-Dent section of Best & Company.

I used to LOVE going to Best with my parents when I was a child.  I always seemed to end up in the audio equipment section-- lustily eyeing an incongruous selection of microphones with the ball-top pushed in and stereo speakers that were ripped and de-laminating.  Occasionally, these oddball things would make their way home in the trunk of my mom's Camry where I would display them proudly for a few months, and then either impulsively break them or methodically disassemble them, depending upon my mood.  The end result was the same-- it's not like I was some autistic child prodigy who had some innate knowledge of electronica and could put the goddamn things back together after taking them apart.  I didn't know a motherboard from Whistler's mother.  And I'd be no use at putting that bitch back together either.  

I guess I look at the way I behaved as a child-- not just what I was interested in acquiring but what I would do to these objects afterwards-- and I find it troublesome, that I didn't behave logically.  I wasn't content with MicroMachines or Hot Wheels-- I needed meticulously crafted 1/18th scale painstaking replicas of the Peugeot 505 or models of antique Cadillac hearses, complete with mini casket and gurney and faux-velvet drapes on the windows that cost over $100 to complete my fetishistic play.  And then, eventually, these expensive playthings would meet their unfortunate demise.  

Yes, I was a child.  Yes, you did dumb stuff, too, and you were also weird.  And maybe I want to be dumber and weirder than you were-- maybe that's my narcissism bubbling up to the surface-- but I am nevertheless concerned that my judgment has never evolved or improved as I've aged.  I'm still saying and writing things before I speak, I'm still terrible with money, I'm still reacting to anxiety instead of acknowledging it and controlling it, I'm still eating the wrong things and saying the wrong things and laughing at the wrong things and being generally, well, wrong.  

I'm rash, judgmental, sardonic, apathetic, quick to anger, slow to think-- and those are just my good qualities.

I suppose I'm being particularly harsh on myself tonight because I'm considering stopping my meds.  I don't notice a dramatic enough change, after five months or so, to warrant staying on it in view of the weight gain.  Yes, I could stand to maybe gain even a pound or two more, but I am becoming obsessed with my burgeoning belly, and having to buy new fucking pants, and losing my identity as "the skinny guy."  When I think about the theatre reviews that have been written about me-- the positive ones, at least-- the reviewers have almost always, without fail, mentioned my physical appearance in relation to how funny they thought I was.  Now that may be a truly terrible reason to stop an anti-depressant that may or may not be having a positive impact on my mood, but I don't want to not be skinny.  I want my Ethiopian-like body back.

Is that wrong?

Or is that just another example of why my brain would be discounted by 25% on the shelf at Clover?     

Saying Yes

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 24, Verse 6

"Don't go to war without wise guidance; there is safety in many counselors."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

A few months ago, I found myself at the library where my mom works, dressed up as the Cat in the Hat, reading Dr. Seuss stories to a bunch of kids.  

These things happen sometimes.  

One of the books I read was "Green Eggs and Ham".  I guess, when reading Dr. Seuss stories, you don't really trouble yourself too much thinking about what internal struggles the characters are going through during the course of the story.  But try it some day.

Try it, try it, and you may!

I was thinking about how much I identified with the poor stuffy bastard in the crumpled top hat with the big furry ass who doesn't want to eat the green eggs and ham.  

I mean, I get it.  That's me-- my ass is even furry, though big it's not-- and that's how I've always been.  Anyone who's ever tried to convince me to have an alcoholic beverage or watch "Titanic" can tell you that I'm as truculent as they come.  When I try to convince my children to ingest even just a small morsel of food at dinner time when they don't want to, and they twist in their chairs and swipe off every comestible speck from their trays and defiantly shout, "NO!" I have that sinking feeling that tells me unmistakably that, yeah, they're mine.  

"NO!" is my middle name.

I say "NO!" a lot.  To social engagements-- I've said it so often that the inevitable has happened: people stop asking, stop inviting-- stop.  There are no texts that come in saying, "Let's hang out".  And I'm not crying in my Caffeine Free Diet Coke about it, it just is what it is.  

If a solution to a problem is offered to me, "NO!" is generally how I respond, even if I never petulantly come out and say it.  I've learned to at least behave polite, but I might as well be standing there with a frowny face and my arms crossed in front of my chest peeing my pants just to make the point that I want you and your solution to STAY AWAY FROM ME.  

STAY.  A-WAY.

I don't like you.  

In therapy, I've said "NO!" to mindfulness, to meditation, to alternate ways of thinking, to behavioral modification.  I've said "NO!" to homework, and even to something as simple as "give this some thought for next time".  I just... don't.  

But, after three years, I'm finally saying "yes" to medication.

Why now?  Because I am an absolute anxiety-ridden mess.  And I'm depressed.  I am so consumed with panic that some days I can barely function, barely focus.  Barely get through the day.

Now that I have a desk, it's very tempting to just curl up into a neat little ball underneath it.  That space underneath desks makes a great hiding place.  No one will try to feed me green eggs and ham if I'm all folded up like a pretzel in there.  Especially if I'm peeing my pants.  

My therapist is happy, my wife seems happy, but I'm not happy.  Maybe that's because I haven't found an in-network psychiatrist yet.  Maybe it's because I haven't looked for one yet.  But I have made up my mind to try it.  While I am extremely apprehensive about taking medication that "the way __________ works is not completely understood", I've resigned myself to it.  It's the best we've got at this point in time, and clearly what I'm doing for myself (saying "NO!") isn't working terribly well, so it's time to try something else.  And if I go running down the street naked while ululating and playing the triangle, we'll know I probably need to, um, not be on meds.  Or different ones.  Maybe it'll take some fiddling and some switching and some tweaking and-- hopefully not THAT kind of "tweaking"-- we'll see what happens.

He was so gentle in his suggesting.  He's quiet.  His tactics were barely perceptible.  But I noticed, and I pushed him off.  Away.  

No.

And he would yield, and be quiet about it-- for months sometimes.  And it wasn't because I'd be doing well.  I wasn't.  I don't.  I don't do well.  Not in therapy.  But he knew when to be quiet and when to speak up.  It's a dance, you see.  He leads, I lead-- it's a whole thing.  

"But I shouldn't need it.  I should be able to do this on my own."  He raised an eyebrow.  "Well, with you."

And maybe I could.  But how much longer would it take?  Five years?  Seven?  That's a lot of $50 co-pays. Maybe I'll be paying those forever regardless.  Who knows?

One thing I do know, though, is that every day feels like I'm going to war.  And that may sound a trifle dramatic, but it's how I feel.  And even Robert E. Lee didn't feel like that every day.  That's too much.  You get tired.  And I need to not be so tired.  I have 20-month-old twins that I need to be awake and alive and silly for.

Thoroughly silly.

I was rolling around on the bed with them kissing their necks and their ribs and they were laughing so hard that I wanted to eat the world, hug the globe, kiss the sun.  Go to war-- but in the good way.  The lusty fife-blowing, drum-banging, button-gleaming bagpiping your brains out up and down the square way.  

Cannons.

Sabres, glistening in the sun.  

Left wing, right wheel.  

BAYONETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Charge.