Final Summation...

Goddammit I hate memory sometimes.

And everything it leads to.  Nostalgia.  Reminiscence.  A concrete sense of Self.  Rambling, confessional blog posts about supposed childhood sexual traumas.  And so forth.

After all that, after my whole humiliating confessional frenzy here in my last few posts (holy crap, was that all the way back in February??), I have to admit now that I'm not entirely sure my memory of these early experiences is even correct.  And I've wanted to write and post this explanation for a good while now, because those posts are still sitting there on the front page, like a severed head at a dinner party; but I've been alternately too busy, or, mostly, too embarrassed by the whole ordeal to want to return to it.  But I can't just leave that shit up there for anyone to read without any context or resolution.  I have to put this to bed.

So here's how it all started.  I was driving to work that February morning, and there was a discussion on the radio of how children respond to parental abuse.  I don't remember what it was exactly, but something they said reminded me of this childhood friend (I'm going to start calling him "Bill" just so that I have a name to refer to him by).  I hadn't thought about Bill in many, many years.  I remembered some of our experiences together, and I remembered his big, angry father.  And that's when I suddenly made the connection and realized, "Oh!  Bill was abused by his father!"  And everything else just followed from that.

I still believe that to be true; I believe Bill was abused (at least mentally and emotionally, if not physically or sexually) by his father.  But the rest of it, I must admit now, I am significantly less sure about.  I know that Bill and I "played doctor," but I don't remember all that we did.  I don't actually remember how far our sexual play went. And, I am forced to admit to myself and all of you now, I don't actually remember who suggested what.  I thought I did at the time, but I've since realized that's not true.  It was just too long ago now for me to remember it clearly.  It was so long ago that even the things I do remember clearly are suspect.  And through my research I discovered that I would be forced to admit something else, something much worse:  it is entirely possible that I am the one who abused him.

Reading through literature on the subject, I was surprised to find out that one of the more common, and yet least often discussed, forms of childhood sexual abuse is to simply educate a child about sex too much at too early an age.  (It had never even occurred to me before my research that this could possibly be considered a form of abuse.)  Sex is one of the most complicated and complex of all human interactions, and a 4 or 5 year-old child is simply too underdeveloped to be able to fully understand it (hell, a lot of adults are too underdeveloped to be able to fully understand it, for that matter); and so therefore giving a child that age too much information on the subject can often lead them to act out behaviors that they are not able to fully understand, process, or deal with in a meaningful way.  That's the basic idea.

My mother's policy was that if I was old enough to ask the question, then I was old enough to hear the answer.  And she was always very quick to let me know that if I ever had any questions at all, she would do her best to try to answer them truthfully and completely.  And she lived by that statement.  And I was a very curious boy.  I had a lot of questions.  And she answered every one she could.  So I remember that throughout my childhood, basically until high school, I always knew more about sex (among many other things) than any of my friends or classmates seemed to.  I was proud of that, actually.  It made me feel grown-up.  It made me feel strong.  And superior.  (Realizing now, as I type this, that this may have something to do with why I value intelligence so highly, in both myself and others.)

But in terms of my memories of my experiences with Bill, that throws everything into a new light.  I only actually remember one thing we did that was definitely Bill's idea, and while that was a little dirty, it also wasn't exactly sexual, either (we were naked, but there was no touching); it would fall squarely in the category of "normative childhood sexual play."  I don't actually remember what else we may have done, or who might've suggested any of it.  But I know that in my memories of all the other boys (and some girls) who came after Bill, I was definitely the aggressor.

The hard part to admit, is that when I suddenly realized that morning that Bill had been abused by his father, I didn't then "realize" that he had actually been acting out his abuse on me, as I originally wrote.  No, the truth was that I actually just assumed that was the case, and didn't recognize that I was making an assumption.  "OMG, Bill was abused by his father!  What do abused children do?  They act out that same abuse on others.  He must've been doing that to me when we played doctor!  So that's why I then went on to do it others; I was acting out his abuse on me!  That's where it all started!  It makes perfect sense."  And it does make perfect sense.  But that doesn't automatically make it true, either.

I still don't know what happened back then, and I probably never will.  But I have to admit that the much more likely scenario seems to be that I was actually a victim of childhood sexual abuse, but the abuser was my mother, not Bill.  And it seems much more likely that I was acting out my abuse on him (and all the other boys and girls that came after him) rather than the other way around.

Bill moved away before we even hit puberty.  I haven't seen or heard from him since I was a child.  I have no idea what his life has been like.

If you're still out there, "Bill," I hope you're okay.  And if you're not... all I can say is, I'm so, so sorry.

It wasn't my fault.  I was only a child.

Carpe Diem, My Captain...

I really don't understand why the death of Robin Williams is hitting me so hard.  As shocked as I was to hear of his death, I was (and still remain) almost as shocked by the depth of my reaction to it.  I mean, sure I've felt saddened by the death of other celebrities before.  I remember being particularly saddened by the death of Heath Ledger, and more recently, Philip Seymour Hoffman.  But I've never been moved to tears like this before.  Celebrities are, by nature, almost fictional characters to us themselves; always removed from our actual lives by cameras and screens.  (I think that might have something to do with why it feels so strange whenever you see one in person - it's almost like TV or a movie coming to life!)  And since we don't really know them personally, there's only so much their death can move us.

Or so I thought.

I don't know why this one hurts so much.  Maybe it's because I grew up with him?  Because I've enjoyed him so much for my entire life?  I remember the rainbow Mork suspenders I had when I was five years old.  (My first cosplay, I guess?)  I remember seeing Popeye in the theaters with my parents just a few years later, and loving it completely.  I have the same memories of Good Morning, Vietnam.  And Hook.  (Oh, Peter Pan!  Why did you have to grow up?!)  I watched Mrs. Doubtfire and Jumanji over and over, just because of the way it delighted both the boy and the man in me at the same time.

And I've seen Dead Poets Society so many times I can practically quote the whole movie.  I don't know when I'll be able to watch that one again now.  At the very least, I know I'll never be able to see it the same way again.

Maybe it's because it was apparently a suicide?  It's possible.  Might be the connection to my own mother's death.  But I haven't reacted this way to other suicides or overdoses, so why this one?  Maybe it's just the fact that suicide adds that final crack of heartbreak to the story.  We didn't just lose one of the greats forever; we lost him to himself, to his own demons, to his own sickness.  It feels like there must've been something that could've saved him.  It feels like it didn't have to end this way.  And it touches us all because, let's face it, haven't each and every one of us been there, or somewhere close to it, at least once in our lives?  But if we could survive it, then why couldn't he?

I think it's true that there are few things more sad in this life, than a funny man, with a broken heart.  His mentor, Jonathan Winters, knew that only too well.  But he survived it anyways.  It's too bad he couldn't be there to help his friend, who clearly needed him more than anyone knew.

Like so, so many of us today, I feel the need to pour my heart out to the memory of this funny man, who's been there my whole life, in some vain and desperate attempt to figure out just what in the fuck it means to live without him now.

Below, I've collected some of my favorites that other people have been sharing today.  Some are funny, some are poignant, some are heart-breaking.  But they all made me feel something.  And that's helped, at least a little.

Here's hoping it can do the same for any of you.

Every time I hear a siren I still say "that's my ride." Thank you Robin Williams. I wish your ride had not arrived.
— John Hodgman (@hodgman) August 11, 2014

Spontaneous tribute appearing at the bench in Boston, made famous from the scene in Good Will Hunting.

We mourn the loss of our friend Robin Williams, who always made us laugh and smile. pic.twitter.com/UOY8LTjVRA
— Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) August 11, 2014

"Robin Williams is not dead, he is just waiting in the jungle until somebody rolls a 5 or 8." -testingonetwothreetesting, via imgur



"One of the funniest people alive died from sadness." - chili1179, via imgur

Nanu nanu.
— SarcasticRover (@SarcasticRover) August 11, 2014

Come on in Rob. I got you.
— Jesus Christ (@jesus) August 11, 2014

The first comment on this image, from NancyNevada, I think says it all:  "When Peter Pan dies, don't tell us to grow up."

Goodbye pal.  Thanks for everything.
— Louis C.K. (@louisck) August 12, 2014

This was reportedly posted to Disney's FB page this morning.  Heart-wrenching.

"But doctor, I AM Pagliacci." That's the only way this makes sense. Can't stand thinking of him being that sad. #RIPRobinWilliams
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 11, 2014

And finally, this is how I always want to remember him:



Your barbaric YAWP! was heard around the world, sir, and inspired MILLIONS.

And you will always be my captain.

Keeping Her Secret, Postcards Home...

In the middle of our two weeks at Summer camp, we received a special treat.  We were allowed to kayak out to Santa Claus Island, an uninhabited spit of sand and tall pine in the middle of Rehoboth Bay, and camp there for the night.  There were about thirty of us boys, all around nine years-old, and six adult camp counselors to watch over us all.  We picked our campsite, pitched our tents, built our fire, dug our latrine, and spent the rest of the day catching crabs from the bay for dinner that night.  Late in the afternoon, I snuck off into the deep woods by myself to masturbate.  After dark, I was running through the woods with some other boys, our flashlight beams bobbing and strobing through the brush as we ran full speed, and I tripped over a root I hadn't seen.  Scraped myself up pretty good.  That was normal for me.  I was a spaz.  Always getting myself hurt somehow.

We ran back to the camp to get first-aid from the counselors.  As they gathered around me, shining their flashlights on my leg to check the extent of my injuries, one of the grown-ups whispered to the counselor who was holding my leg, "Dude.  Your arm."  I looked down to see something protruding from the sweatband he was wearing stretched across his forearm.  I recognized it as a rolled-up sandwich baggie.  I knew exactly what it was.  My parents kept theirs in the same type of bag, rolled up in the same way, in the secret drawer in our coffee table.  At night, they would pinch a little from the bag and smoke it from their tiny wooden pipe, and then laugh and laugh and laugh.  I can still remember lying in bed as a child, and hearing my mother's laughter echoing up from two floors below.  Sometimes, if she was already in her nightgown by the time the call finally came in, and she didn't want to have to get dressed again, she would send me out to meet her connection for her.  I would meet him down at the end of our cul-de-sac, hand him a check for the correct amount, and he would hand me one of those rolled up sandwich bags, filled with the fragrant dried remains of the secret plant that I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about, ever.  And I would bring it back to her and she would smoke it and I would smell the strong burnt odor and she would laugh and laugh.

The counselors had a Secret.  And I knew what it was.

I don't know if it's true or not, but at the time I felt like I was the only one who knew.  Even if any of the other boys had seen the counselor's stash peeking out from his wristband, surely they wouldn't have known what it was.  But I was Special.  I had grown up keeping this secret.  I knew the ways of this hidden adult world, and was comfortable there.  I like to think that when the counselor looked up at me with panic in his eyes after re-secreting his hidden eighth, that I said something like, "Don't worry, it's cool.  I won't tell anyone."  Because I wanted them to know that I was cool.  I wanted them to know that I was down.  That I knew what they were doing, and that I was perfectly okay with it.  I wasn't like all these other little boys who didn't know anything about what adults like to do to have fun.  But I don't think I actually said anything.  I was too shocked, and too afraid of getting in trouble.  I probably just pretended not to notice.  But I saw.  And as I laid in my tent that night, trying to sleep, I couldn't get out of my mind the image of the counselors sitting around our fire outside the tent, passing a joint the way I'd seen my parents and their friends do so many times before.  It reminded me of Home.  It was the first time I'd felt comfortable the entire time I'd been at camp.  The first time I'd felt like I fit in at all.  But no one knew that I knew.  No one could know that I knew.  So even though I suddenly, finally, felt like I belonged, to everyone else I was still just The Spaz.  And there was nothing I could do about it.

Back at camp the next day, we were encouraged to write a postcard to our folks back home.  I was only there for a two-week stay, so I'd only brought one postcard with me.  Trying to think of what to say to my parents, all I could think of was the counselors' secret.  The secret they and my parents shared.  So I wrote it all down on the postcard.  I wanted to tell my parents that there were people like them here with me, watching over me.  "It's okay, they smoke just like you."  I wanted them to know that I was okay here.  That we were all part of the same group, the same tribe, the same family.  The family of people who Kept The Secret.  And I was so proud of myself for being such a grown-up about the whole situation.  And I wanted to show them what a good, grown-up young man I was being for them.  After I'd finished writing out the whole story, filling the entire postcard, I went to hand it in to my counselor to put in the mail for me with the others, so pleased with myself.  And when he held out his hand to take it, I suddenly realized the horrible mistake I'd made.  This was a postcard, not a letter.  There was no envelope.  Who knows how many hands this would pass through between me and my parents?  Certainly other camp staff would see it.  And right there on the back was a detailed description of the secret I was supposed to be keeping.  That I was so proud of keeping.  The counselors smoke pot.  My parents smoke pot.  And everyone who saw this postcard would know!

I couldn't hand it in.  I quickly said I had to fix something, and ran back to my bunk, fear knotting in my gut.  I didn't want to get anyone in trouble.  Not the counselors, and especially not my parents.  I'd written it in pen, so I couldn't erase it.  But I couldn't re-write it, either; I'd used all of the room on the back.  And I didn't have another postcard.  And the counselor was waiting for me to hurry up and hand it in.  Everyone else had already finished theirs and were ready to move on to our next activity for the day.  Everyone was waiting on me.  I had to do something, but I didn't know what to do.  I had to hand in this postcard, but I couldn't hand it in with these words on it for anyone to read.  So I just started blacking out each letter, one-by-one.  Using my pen the same way we used our #2 pencils to fill in the bubbles on our scan forms when we took tests at school, I drew spirals over and over and over each letter until they were just a dark-blue scribbled blob of ink, and the letter underneath was completely obscured.  I pressed down hard, so that my marks bulged out on the backside image on the postcard, like braille.  It felt like it took forever, and eventually the rest of the group left me there in the cabin by myself to finish up whatever it was that I was doing that was so secret and so important.  Once I was finished, all that remained of my original letter home were the words "Hi Mom and Dad!" followed by line after line after line of big, fat, blue scribbled dots, and concluding with a quick "I miss you.  Love, Mike" squeezed into the lower right-hand corner, like an afterthought.  And then I handed it in.  And worried every day the rest of the time I was there that Summer that I might've just ruined my parents' lives.  What if someone could make out the words underneath my scribbles?  How could I have been so careless?

When I got home at the end of the week, my parents asked me about the postcard.  When it had arrived in the mail, they didn't know whether they should laugh about it, or be worried about me.  Once again, I'd done something strange, that didn't seem to make much sense, and that they didn't know how to take.  But now that we were alone, I could finally tell them the whole story.  And afterwards, I saw relief spread across my mother's face.  And then she kissed me, and told me she was proud of me for being so smart, and for doing such a good job of keeping her secret.

The Hole In The Middle Of Every Spring...

I never know how to feel on Mother's Day
My mother killed herself
She checked into a hotel room
without telling anyone
and took a bottle of sleeping pills
one at a time
until they were all gone
and then she laid down
and put herself to sleep
She did it to escape the pain
yes
She did it to save herself
certainly
She did it to save us
undeniably
to save us
from her
from her madness
from her long pain
from her forever scream
She loved us so much
that she died
to protect us
from herself
She gave me life
and then she gave it to me again
saving my life
by sacrificing her own

So whose life
am I really celebrating
today?

And should the flowers
be daisies
or lilies?

Mother's Night...

Tonight is Mother's Night.  The first night of Yule.

As I ranted yesterday, I celebrate the secular, American holiday of Xmas, rather than the Christian holiday of Christmas.  However, I do also celebrate a religious or spiritual version of the Winter holiday, as well.

For the last twelve years, I have celebrated the pre-Christian Winter holy days of Yule, which begin tonight at sundown, and last until sunrise on January 1st.

As a child, Christmas never felt like just the 24th and 25th to me.  I always felt like it lasted much longer than that.  It felt like it started sometime the week before (both of my parents' birthdays are the week before Christmas, which probably had a little something to do with that - more on that later), and it felt like it ended with New Year's.  It felt like a multi-day event, with the 24th and 25th as the central climax of the whole thing.  It always felt that way, as far back as I can remember, and I celebrated it that way.  I could feel the magick of the holiday begin sometime the week before, and I would always make my parents keep the lights up and lit until New Year's; it didn't feel right to turn them off on the 26th.  That just felt like too abrupt and sudden of an ending to everything.  It didn't feel right.

As a young adult, as part of my exploration of various magickal disciplines, I discovered the pre-Christian pagan traditions of the Northern European cultures.  The gods of the Vikings - Odin, Loki, and Thor, among many others.  I found myself drawn to these traditions; something about them resonated with me, and I began to adopt them as the first religion I had ever chosen to practice.  And no part of this tradition resonated with me more than their Winter holy days of Yule.

I spent many years working within this tradition as one of my primary spiritual practices.  Over the years, I've let go of all of it, as I've grown and moved on.  All except for Yule.  As with Taoism, when I discovered Yule, I realized that I had been celebrating it my entire life, and simply never knew it.  Instantly, it felt right to me.  No matter what other spiritual paths may come and go in my life, I know that I will always celebrate Yule.

In the pagan calendar, Yule is a very magickal time.  In fact, it is a period out of time.  The darkest, coldest time of the year.  A time to gather the entire family together under one roof, and keep safe and warm by a huge fire, to hold back the cold and the dark.  They believed that time stopped at sundown tonight, and started again on sunrise of January 1st (though they didn't call it "January," obviously).  In the interim, was Yule, when the material world and the spiritual world are one and the same, and the spirits of our ancestors and family who have passed on return to us, and we are free to enter their world, as well.  Other spirits, malevolent spirits, are also free to roam our world during this time-out-of-time.  The height of Winter was the most deadly time for the ancient pagans of the North, and they heard frost-giants and dreadful monsters in the howling winds of snowstorms.  Someone who ventured out of the hall, away from the group, away from the hearth-fire, may not come back.  Did they succumb to the cold and the dark and the storms?  Or was it something else?

Most of our "Christmas" traditions come from the celebration of Yule.  When the Christians converted the Northern Europeans, they couldn't get them to stop celebrating Yule, even under penalty of death.  And so instead, they moved the celebration of the birth of their god Jesus from mid- to late-Autumn, up to December 25th - right in the middle of Yule.  And they adopted the traditional Yuletide celebrations into the celebration of their Mass of Christ.

The christmas tree is a pagan tradition.  The yule log.  The wreath.  Mistletoe.  The New Year beginning one week after December 25th.  Leaving gifts in socks that are drying by the fire.  All originally pagan traditions.  Yule, from December 20th through December 31st, is where we get the idea of the "12 days of christmas."

All the parts of xmas that I liked the most - all the non-Jesus parts - turned out to be from this pre-cursor holiday of Yule.  And it covers the entire period of the calendar, from beginning to end, that always felt like the "real" Christmas holiday to me.  It leads up to the climax of the season with Xmas right in the middle, and then winds down to Twelfth Night (New Year's) at the end.  It is perfectly balanced.

Christmas was, by far, my mother's favorite holiday.  And I get my sincere love and appreciation of this season from her.  She was born on December 20th, which turns out to be the first night of Yule, and is traditionally celebrated as "Mother's Night."  It is the night to celebrate all the Mothers in our life, both living and dead, and all the good they've done us, and all they've sacrificed in order for us to be here, right now.

My mother died on December 31st.  She took her own life, in part, to spare us, her family, from having to suffer through her slow and inevitable decline into madness and agonizing death.  She sacrificed herself for us.  She was born on the first night of Yule, Mother's Night, and she died on the last night of Yule, Twelfth Night, the very year that I first came to know about this tradition.  I never got to tell her about Yule, or Mother's Night.

Yule, her favorite holiday, though she never knew it, is a time when our homes are open to the spirits of all those dead that we have loved.  And so every December 20th, I invite her into my home, and I pour her a drink, and I thank her for the life she gave me.

It just feels right.

It always has.



        Disir, I call,        ur-mothers dear,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Frigga, I call,         frith-weaver wise,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Freyja, I call,        holy and bright,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

        We give thee Welcome this Mother’s Night.


        Hallowed women of the home,
            I raise this horn to you.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Freyja, riding forth this night,
            Look kindly on our home.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Disir, wights of the wheel,
            Spin us good wyrds to come.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Frigga, who winds the distaff full,
            Fill our house with joy.

        We give thee Welcome this Mother’s Night.

Confessions #1...

A couple of hours after writing this post, I was reading an issue of The Sun, a non-profit literary magazine I subscribe to.  In every issue, they have a section called Readers Write, where they publish true stories sent in by readers, and related to a different topic each month.  At the bottom of the first page of the Readers Write section, I saw the list of upcoming topics and submission deadlines, and I thought, Well here's a ready-made list of ideas for whenever I have a day like today where I can't think of anything to write about.  How perfect!

So, I think I'm going to start trying to do that for a while.  As always, we'll see how it goes.  The first topic on the list is "Confessions," and the submission deadline is May 1st.  I've got a few ideas, and we'll see how many I post in the next couple of weeks.  For now, here's my first submission:

...

"I'm Suzanne, and I'm an alcoholic."

"Hi, Suzanne!"

My mother and I had always been very close.  I was her first-born, and my father worked three jobs to support our family, so my mother practically raised me herself.  She was my best friend, and we shared everything with each other.  So when she finally had to give up drinking and drugs, after her gall bladder had failed and had to be removed, it seemed completely natural when she invited me to attend some of her AA meetings with her.  I was ten years-old.

I think she wanted to share this new world of hers with me.  And I imagine that she wanted to show me that she was different now, that she was getting better.  I was curious, too, and I enjoyed being included in her new grown-up world of church basements and coffee urns and chain smokers.  And I have to admit, there was a definite voyeuristic thrill in spending an hour listening to strangers' sordid tales of addiction and despair.

Every story began the same way.  The person would stand up and state their name, followed by, "...and I'm an alcoholic."  Then the entire group would respond by saying, "Hi," always using the person's name back at them.  "Hi, Suzanne!"  And then they would tell whatever story was on their mind to tell that day.  There was no judgement, no disapproval.  Everyone understood what everyone else had been through, because they'd all been through the same thing at some point.  They were there to take care of each other.  "Keep coming back," they'd say.

We weren't Catholic, but I'd seen the ritual of confession enough times in movies to understand that these meetings served a similar purpose.  Everyone there all seemed to feel very guilty about who they'd been and the things they'd done.  And so they were confessing their sins.  Not to a God, but to their peers; people who had suffered in the same way, who understood their pain intimately, and who could provide immediate feedback in the form of reassurance and support and compassion.  And forgiveness.

As I got older, I stopped going to the meetings with my mother.  And she stopped going, as well.  Over the next ten years, she would fall back into drinking and getting high again and again.  And in her brief periods of sobriety between relapses, she would go back to the meetings for a while, until the next time she fell back off the wagon.

On December 31, 1999, she went to her last meeting.  She left that particular basement room that day, checked herself into a local Holiday Inn, and took her life with a bottle of sleeping pills purchased at a nearby grocery store.

Now it's my turn to stand up at the front of one of those rooms and state my name.  But I can't bring myself to do it.  Because I can't find any comfort or solace in that ritual of confession.  Hearing those familiar calls and responses, all I can think of, is the life I've lost.