Three years later

 In the season of eternal status, where spring would always give way to summer in the most predictable ways, as it was in the 1920s, the 40s, the 60s, and here today in 78, it did not seem to change. I got off the bus that came down the hill every day, and I knew what to expect. 

The summer pressed on. Inside of me however an awakening was underway. I could tell that behind the summer music, things were never going to be the same. A bouncy and complex jazz run had laced the airwaves and it boasted sharpness. There were signs that time was moving, which also meant that changes were in the wind. 

The late summer movies gave way to the atmosphere of the fall background. The smell of new clothing, and paper, and the hum of fluorescent lights overhead in a building constructed in 1906 gave way to gravity that could never be denied. In a moment you can learn so much about yourself. 

As the leaves changed color, we were mobile again for the first time in two years. The freedom brought about uncertainty. As I look back on this, I realize that this was a small example of a phobia that could return to me in 1991 and in 2022. Sometimes it takes a long time to find the answers to your questions.

I woke up, and things were new. I was new. I was in control now. I was viable and it was great and weird at the same time. In only 4 seasons such as this one, things would be more different than anyone, anywhere could ever imagine.

Three years later, we are on the 36-month merry-go-round. Everything always looks the same. But somewhere on the piano keys in the smoke-filled VFW hall, the player makes a fatal slip of the hand, and a wrong note echoes off into the night. With that, there is a shockwave promising change we did not see coming or even could have imagined. It will look like freedom for sure. It will write books and songs and people will be born. But it is not freedom, it is worse than death, and we will live to regret it.

Three years after this, on a subzero morning, reality is stifled for a moment and my brain even paints what I think I should see. Suddenly, the parachute opens and tears me back from my manufactured vision, forcing me to see how unfair the world is. Innocence notwithstanding, crushed you will be whether you deserve it or not. There it is, my ride is here.

The bridges of the Intercoastal Waterway slap the tires in rhythm with the music and the hot summer breeze. Everything is different. There is sand in my bed and sand in my dreams. There will never be a feeling like the one I feel now. Never. Here there will be nothing but bridges and they are everywhere. I would never trade this for anything. 

And then three years later, the sun rises over the severity of the Adirondacks and I see it as if it were my first time ever. I start the days slowly, resuming what the bitter cold day took from me back in 84, but soon, my impulse takes over and I am living nothing short of an action thriller, that sometimes I lose minutes or even hours of understanding about where I am or what I am doing.

Raw survival instinct kicks in and coupled with the life I have lived the last three years, I know I have something rarely ever imparted to anyone. The ride gets faster and more wild; that is when we jump and succeed. It is a new day and that is good, but things turn dark the following year and I find myself out on the fringe again, more than ever now.

It has been three years since I journeyed north, and it was time to go south again. The things you do when you have completely lost yourself and your mind. It was here that I was destroyed at the wall of creation in a violent blast! Rage coursed through me and revenge was all I could think of. But as the hours passed, I knew it was all me. The ride had to stop here and now, and somehow, it did. Big painful changes had to be made. There were so many of them. Some still hurt today.

What happened next defies who I am and yet defines who I am too. The one thing that I feared the most, the one thing I never did, denounced, and would never be a part of, I accepted, embraced, and watched it unfold like a novel that I was reading and not actually living in.

Three years later, Neil Young's Harvest Moon came out and in the notes of the music, I could feel that everything up and around the bend, was about to change. It changed in a very big way, forever. 

It was a very dark day three years later, standing at the bedside of my father learning that time was up, this was all we would have. It wasn’t right but it was happening anyway. The days that followed were even darker, I was sure I would never see the light of day.

Three years passed and I found myself in a whole new life despite not moving from where I stood. It was timeless and daring. Voices came in over the stratosphere warning that the end of everything was coming. We could never make it back. Suddenly I woke up in a dark parking lot, music was playing and change was in the air. As soon as I heard the music, I knew.

Three years later, Warren was gone, Johnny was gone too and I had a beautiful son. Everything was new and it made everything else that came before seem like it had all been a movie that I had been watching in a dark theater on a sunny afternoon. 

Three years later, there were two beautiful boys in my life. It kept getting better. Late in the year, affliction came knocking. Undiscovered country to navigate, to fight, and to survive.

Three years later, I sat in the hospital reading Are You My Mother to Noah hundreds of times, praying that he would be able to read it too someday. I walked the basement of the hospital with Liam exploring, spending time with him, hoping that soon we could be together again.

Three years later everything changed in the war. Where we were stationed, and how we were equipped. New normal. 

Three years later I am still climbing out of the mire of a life lived in a defensive posture. Never figured it out but I knew where to go.

Three years later I got perspective on the trails. I was starting to learn that discomfort is a diploma and one we should not deny. The biggest trial was coming. 

Three years later I fell on the dying grass that was recently only lush and green. I could not get up and I could not move. Everything that I was got turned upside down and spilled all over the ground. I did not know how to put everything together. A spaceship descended from the sky, and a woman got out and lifted me to my feet. She looked at me and asked, what would you do if you were not afraid?

Three years later I am sitting here writing this. I never noticed this unique rhythm that has played out here. Some days, I feel like I have come a long way. Other days I feel like I have not moved in 30 years.

Look away down Gower avenue

For some, I was on the other side, an adversary. For those who loved me, a spectacle. No matter what, it was bad. Resigned to this failure, this me, the alien who I lived with but did not understand.  Even the self-deception. Absolutely ridiculous. 

There is low and then there is low. To live and die in disaster every day and console myself by dipping potato chips in teriyaki sauce. Alone.  There is no difference in the people around me from anything else as far as I can see. There is anger in them, in the air, the sun, and the trees. Running is no longer possible. If I don't believe it, just watch what happens when I try it.

I am angry too at the ones who can live my way and still stand at the common and be found acceptable. How do they do it?  How dare they? In my heart, I play out the day they too have to cash in, just as I am being forced to.  It will take 31 years for them to come to me to say, we should have listened. Instead of this bringing me peace it made me thankful they did not listen. Those bitter ironies inside of me can also be sweet.

Despite repeated warnings, I flee.  Running like never before, changing everything.  Maybe changing something. Anything? Anything at all? I push hard for the surface of the syrup like water and blast into the air where there is sun and blue sky and those moments are fantastic. Coming down from the arc I dive even deeper into the dark thickness.  New depths over and over that overshadow my climb into the air and light.  Less light, more darkness. Where is this going?

An old man passes by and throws me a line and I grab it. I rise determinedly from the depths into the living.  Dry ground, the first I have seen in a long time.  What I did not know, is that this is part of the healing as well as what happens next. Soft and friendly voices reassured me that I was safe and that my path was not as treacherous as I thought it was.   As I step across the welcoming threshold and turn, the heavy door of ancient steel bars slams hard to let me know, that I have betrayed myself and it is over.

I have written over a dozen times about who saved me from myself one night in September.  It was a man who could save me, but not himself.  For this, I am forever grateful and forever sad. What I had done until now was not living, it was dancing at the zombie zoo.  Taking hope from nowhere, I saw a way back to the land of the living.  I knew for sure this time, it could really be. I walked the piers late at night looking at the reflection of the lights in the water somehow believing that a vessel smashed into 100 pieces can become one piece again.

September 9, 1989, was the last time I ever drank alcohol.  If I had not stopped, I would not be here to tell you about it.  Here, now, 34 years later I still see it as just as dangerous and just as much of a risk.  Even in my worst moments, there was a glimmer of hope within me. That was me, looking away down Gower Avenue.