Author: Bob

Today was the day. For three and a half years I walked the halls of a psychiatric hospital, with a badge that said “Bob D.” and key that could get me out of there whenever I wanted. Most nights I left around 11:08pm, but I always returned, eventually. Today I had to ask someone to let me through the doors, because today I turned in my badge and key. Today I said goodbye to my co-workers, my friends, who are — without a doubt — the finest group of people I’ve ever worked with.

I’ve been ready for a while now. Ready for a change. Ready to leave that place behind. But it’s more than a place, really. I lost sight of that too often. Each one of us brought our lives, our whole selves to what we did, day in and day out, together. Babies were born. Loved ones died. There were crises, one after another it seemed, that had to be worked out. And we always seemed to work them out. We somehow managed to keep it all together. We laughed a lot, too.

When I got home this afternoon, I couldn’t keep myself together for long. I went into the bathroom, sat on the floor, and sobbed hard. Real hard.

Today I left at about 4:25pm, without a badge and without a key. But I have some gratitude, for Larry and Linda, Marc and Mike, Leslie and Geoff, for Teresa and Delania, Debbie and Gary, Michael and Ryan and Jennifer and Old Chief and Paul and Greg. And, of course, for the kids, the hundreds of them who sat with me on those ugly pink chairs, all of us staring at that big chunk of wood in the center of the room known as “the pick,” sharing our pain, our confusion, our bullshit and bad dreams, our experience, strength and hope.

I’m leaving a lot behind. A big chunk of my soul.

Keep it well, my friends.

Thank you.

My wife and I are in Vermont visiting her father and step-mom. They’ve recently bought some property up here. Just an hour ago we were all hiking on the grounds, imagining what the future might hold for this land of moose and maple syrup. Speaking of the future — I’ve been living squarely in it, imagining any and all possible scenarios for my time in Mexico. Banditos. Scorpions. That sort of thing.

I have to take a little road trip to Boston while I’m up here, to pick up a travel visa. New England is beautiful this time of year. It’s cool in the evenings. The houses are old, the floors uneven, the people pleasant. The too-long, too-cold winter is nowhere near at hand.

I’m hoping to recharge the old batteries on this little vacation. There are days I can barely contain my excitement about Mexico, nights I can hardly sleep. I feel like I’m at a critical juncture in my life. Patterns have been hardening these past few years. Limiting patterns of thinking, feeling, and being. I suppose potentials and possibilities necessarily get whittled down a bit as we get older and make choices in life. I’ll probably never dunk a basketball. I can accept that. But connection to spirit, soul, hope — this I can’t let go of, this I won’t surrender. Not for safety. Not for security. Certainly not for comfort.

If it takes TEN years in Mexico, then so be it.

I finally got strong-armed into updating WordPress to the latest version. As expected, it took me half the day to figure out how to get the site looking like it did before. As far as I can tell, the only remaining issue is that the posts I’ve cut and pasted from MS Word are all messed up, with apostrophes and other punctuation turning into different symbols. Oh well — the price of progress, I suppose.

My wife and I have not yet come to a decision about where we will be moving this fall. There are so many things to factor in, and much depends on my job situation. My dreams have been more intense and memorable these past few nights. Wednesday night I dreamed I was driving down a country road in the middle of the night. To my utter surprise, I saw my old VW Van — Good Ol’ Bessy — parked on the side of the road. I pulled over to make sure she was the real deal. Sure enough, Bessy was just as I last saw her on that dreary afternoon, a little over a year ago, when I sold her to a heavy-set hippie from Virginia. Impulsively, I hopped inside and started her up, using a spare key I held on to for just such an occasion. There seemed to be no one around, so I decided to take a little joy ride, for old times sake. I went a few miles down the road, absolutely elated to be cruising around in Old Bess again. I turned around with the intention of returning the van and heading back home in the Corolla I arrived in. It was very dark though, and as I searched along the side of the road, I couldn’t find the car. A panic set in, as I realized I was committing a fairly serious crime. Not knowing what else to do, however, I drove home in the van, feeling somewhat excited to be living on the edge.

I don’t remember much else from the dream, only that my parents (especially my mother) strongly disapproved of my crime and whatever related decisions I was making about my life. I felt rebellious and misunderstood, frustrated about having to justify myself to my parents or anyone.

These days I seem to let every anxious thought and image take my mind for a ride. I know life transitions can be stressful, but I’m a little disappointed in myself that I’m so utterly unable to maintain a sense of groundedness and equanimity in the face of doubts and fears. Of course, I’m not doing the things I know I need to do — i.e. meditate, write, body-work — in order stay rooted when the whirl-wind blows through.

So, here we go again…

Last night I watched a documentary on Henry Miller (Henry Miller Asleep and Awake, by Tom Schiller) in which an eighty-one year old Miller is interviewed in his bathroom, dressed in his pajamas and robe. The walls are covered with various pictures and photos, and Miller reminisces and tells stories about several of them in his raspy Brooklyn-ese. At one point he talks about a recurring dream in which he doesn’t recognize his own face in the mirror. He ends up in an insane asylum, eventually escaping over a great wall. When he tries to talk to some people he meets in town, he realizes they can’t understand him at all, as if he’s speaking a foreign language, and the feeling sinks in that he must still be mad. At this point, Miller says, he usually wakes up with a gasp.

I went to bed shortly after watching the film, feeling particularly clear-headed and alive. I dreamed that my brother and his wife had another child, a third son, and they entrusted me to keep an eye on him for a while. He was very small and, in fact, kept getting smaller as the dream unfolded. I wasn’t particularly alarmed by this until he got so small I could barely see him. He was playing on the floor beside me, but soon he was the size of a tiny spider or flea. Eventually I lost sight of him, and a sense of panic set in. I had lost him, and I’d have to face my family with this unforgivable failure.

I’ve been preoccupied lately with fears, self-doubt, and confusion as I enter into another major life transition. I’m wrapping up a three and a half year stay in Kentucky, during which I have often felt like I was doing little more than waiting for my wife to finish her PhD program. As I search for a new job and place to live, I have had to face the fact that, at the age of thirty-six, I still don’t have a clue what I want to do with my life, in terms of a career. In my clearest moments, this doesn’t concern me much, as I sense that such matters carry little weight in the grand scheme of things. Whenever my mind takes me for a ride about this or that career path, I eventually get the sense of being on a wild goose chase, of pursuing a meaningless question, of being lost in a distraction from matters of spiritual substance. But then again, a man has to eat and pay the rent you know, and what a man does for a living shapes his body and soul in ways that are hard to fathom sometimes.

I have been working in the human services field for fifteen years now, and it has taken its toll. I’m no saint, as my career path has been more about the limitations of my experience, skills and education, than about a compassionate desire to help others. Don’t get me wrong — I have had many deep moments of connection and compassion, and indeed I have expended a great deal of energy helping people in dire need. It’s just that I would have dropped all that in a heartbeat had my band been signed, or had some college given me the opportunity to teach.

I am, once again it seems, at sea without a rudder, about to head off in another direction with little to guide me other than the compulsion to survive and the hope that this time I will live up to my potential. Perhaps that’s what the tiny child represented in my dream — my potential. Hope. It’s no wonder I felt so sick when I lost sight of him.

If there’s a theme to my blog and journal writing over the years, it has something to do with forgetting and remembering. I seem to come to the same realizations over and over again, returning to them after a period of forgetfulness. This is a cycle I have to break if I’m to continue growing. I’d like to start learning some new lessons, but it’s that damned forgetfulness that forces me to keep retracing the same steps again and again.

I can’t seem to stick with a practice in a disciplined way, even though the most repeated realization I have is “Practice more, in a disciplined way!” It’s maddening, really. Something always seems to come up to derail me — at least I find something to use as an excuse. Right now the excuse is: “I have to worry about leaving my job, getting a new one, moving… There’s not time to do everything.” I just keep playing games with myself. It’s as if the part of me that doesn’t want to grow and change keeps winning the day. I know what to do, and have known for years — I just can’t seem to do it for any sustained length of time without eventually sinking under the weight of distractions and self-deceit.

Part of the problem, I think, is that I’m forever trying to pull myself up by my own bootstraps. I’m out on an island here, thinking my failures are simply matters of a lack of will power and resolve. But there’s more to it, I know. I need other people. That’s it, yes.

A new realization?

Change can be freaky. My wife will be leaving for Mexico in two months to do her doctoral research — which means I am finally free to leave Kentucky. Not that there’s anything wrong with Kentucky, really — it’s just not home. So now I’m faced with an extended period without my wife, and also a transition to a new place to live, a new job, etc.

I’ve been having dreams about highschool — a period of my life I had long assumed was entirely expunged from my psyche. I suppose that was the first real conscious (well, semi-conscious) transition I made in my life, when I decided to go off to college. Over the years there have been many more changes, and very few that I could have predicted. I have no real picture, at this point, of what my life will look like a few months from now. I’m not even sure where I’m going. The uncertainty frightens me, but it’s also energizing as it reminds me of times past when I felt anything was possible, when I was filled with hope.

My wife and I went to the park Tuesday evening to hang out with friends and listen to some jazz musicians perform. I wasn’t particularly interested in the music, but it was a beautiful evening and I enjoyed watching our friends’ three year old run around the park, narrowly avoiding trouble at every turn.

At one point the little guy was blowing bubbles in my direction. For his amusement, I snatched one out the air and pretended to eat it. This turned out to be poor judgment on my part, as soon he was imitating me and, within a minute or so, he started to put the bubble wand in his mouth. As a quick distraction, I fell backward out of my lawn chair. He found this hilarious, and we immediately started playing this new game, whereby he would blow bubbles at me and I would fall back out of my chair to avoid them hitting me.

After about the third round of this, he suddenly exclaimed: “Bob, your silliness knows no bounds!”

I fell out of my chair again, this time from the sheer force of laughter. He must’ve picked that expression up from his Dad, but to hear it from a three year old at that moment was just priceless.

This past week has been a rough one at work, and I’ve felt like a decrepit old man dragging myself through the days. That one moment at the park seemed to release me from myself just long enough to snap back into the flow of life. Thanks little buddy.