Above: me at age 20 ,on the right
I can remember feeling so lonely that I wandered around in the snow on a cold frigid night in northern Iowa muttering to myself 'I'm going fucking crazy. I'm going fucking nuts. I almost ended up with frost-bite due to that.
I was poor as all get out and spent my nights scrounging around in old ashtrays, looking for cigarette butts; or going through trashcans looking for cans to trade for nickels to buy cigarettes with.
At one period I was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Denver. It was an exceptionally hot summer(reaching well over 100 degrees fahrenheit for over a month) and my air conditioner barely worked: to survive I would do nothing but sit, in my underwear, in front of a fan which was situated in front of my window air conditioning unit drinking icewater, with the curtains drawn. In the dark.
I was so lonely I would spend hours on my dinky little half-sofa staring up at a spider in the corner of the living room. I imagined that the spider was staring at me, too. I stared at it for so long sometimes, that I literally felt like my soul astrally projected and traded places with the spider's; I literally saw myself where I was lying on the sofa. I watched myself breathe with eight eyes and a leaden, patient incuriousity.
Eventually the spider died, of boredom. His shrivelled up body remained in my corner until a girlfriend cleared it away.
I had intense social anxiety in crowds bigger than six or seven(still do, actually) and therefore rarely spent more than 30 minutes at big parties; when invited, I would show up, talk to a few people and then head back to my dorm room. Sometimes, so Iwould feel like I was 'partying' I would drink vile concoctions of orange soda and vodka. Alone.
Later, when I moved to a bigger cities, this trend of politely showing up at parties, and then slipping, unobserved, out the door, would continue.
I went long periods without sex. Even, at one point 2 years (from March 1993 to July(or so) 1995). I did have one girlfriend for a while at the age of 20 and the sex was extremely plentiful but then she attempted suicide--twice!--, got packed away to a hospital-- and I was on the sexual dole again. As my twenties went on I would eventually get involved in a two-year relationship (unhappy, full of strife, more of a friendship in my eyes but I was too weak to break if off) and later sporadically dated a few women, a few times: unhappy flings that started well and ended in bitter recrimination and hatred, culminating in a humiliating, extremely unhealthy and abusive relationship of which I have few concrete memories, but a lingering feeling of regret and dread. Looking back, I had plenty of opportunities for sex and dating but I was either too stupid or too screwed up to take advantage of them.
I was (and probably am) fairly good looking but I was convinced deep down that I was hideously ugly; and though I spent most of my twenties five or ten pounds overweight, in my mind I was 50 or 60 pounds overweight. This actually makes no sense: I could look in a mirror and like what I saw: but my self-image remained in the pits.
Me in my late 20s:there is a gap of almost 7 years in my life with almost a complete lack of photos.
I was bitter and sarcastic to my friends, and even vicious behind their backs; yet, amazingly I truly believed that I was a put-upon 'nice guy' whom nobody liked because people were horrible, horrible creatures who lived to torment the unfortunate. I believed I was beneath everybody; that genetics and circumstance had led me to occupy a certain outsider status.
I had shitty jobs and couldn't handle money. I'd go days without food due to mismanagement of my meagre funds.
I got involved in hard drugs: cocaine, speed, heroin. And though I never got addicted to any of them, all of them took a toll on my psyche because I actually did not enjoy them at all and only did them because...well, partly from curiosity and partly from self-hatred. I can remember spending two hours puking up food after a bout with heroin: at five in the morning, the sight of my puke, half-digested tomatoes and bile strangely beautiful in the none-too-clean toilet. I remember actually laughing. I had always heard that the body screamed at one that this stuff sucked: this wasn't a mere message or a scream: My body had actually decided to beat me up about the decision. I thought that was funny. Eventually I came to the conclusions that all drugs offered nothing more than illusion: the illusion of deep thought, the illusion of communication, the illusion of bliss. So I stopped. But I am lucky, having been born with some built-in addiction protection mechanism, because everyone else I know who experimented ended up really fucking themselves with drugs.
At the age of 30, sunk into a depression that my twenties were over and unhappy, I began drinking heavily. I hung out a dive that filled with lowlifes: whores and their weird white-trash husbands. I remember one guy, an old man there named Jerry playing some old country song--the same song--over and over again, every night, weeping for the wife he had lost. There was a fight every night at this bar. I would sit there and drink while these went on and the bartenders--burly, young men, usually college students--would hurl them out the door into the street with a physical pounding relish. One night the old man Jerry was knifed in a fight and died. I stopped going there. I woke up and thought: I'm going here every night because I'm depressed. And I stopped.
AT this point, I wasn't so keen on having a relationship. I continued drinking, but I admitted to myself that I wasn't the nice guy I had thought I was: in fact, I was quite a dick. I thought of myself as mister nice guy but up close I was real asshole.
That was one of the most difficult realizations that I had ever had. I faced up to it thugh and I embraced it. Oh, I didn't embrace being an asshole. I just admitted to myself that I, like most humans, had that capacity. And that while I must try not to be an asshole, in fact, I must also be aware that there was a time and a place for it.
Me in 1999
I hit a kind of rock bottom and I actually became homeless. By which I mean, to be clear, that I was forced to live in somebody's guest bedroom for a pittance. Thankfully I never slept on the street. At that time, utterly broke, starving, without the cigarettes I was addicted to, I suffered from a panic attack. I was literally staring at the ceiling in my darkened room and hyperventilating.
Suddenly the thought occurred to me: What is the worst thing that could happen? Well, the worst thing that could happen was that I could die, came the reply. And how likely is that at this point? said the voice inside my head. Well...pretty unlikely, actually.
A great calm flowed through me. I smiled. I even laughed a little. And It was all uphill from there.
My sex life picked up. Big time. Freed from the necessity to behave like a 'nice guy'(which was really all about manipulating people around me) women suddenly became interested in me. I suddenly had several lovers to gratify my sexual needs. I took charge of my life and started taking steps to better my situation and do the things I had always dreamed of.
At 33 I stopped drinking (which I had been doing heavily since my 30th birthday), realizing that I was on a pathway to alcoholism and that whatever benefit I felt from alcohol was outweighed by drawbacks of feeling like shit and having a difficult time getting up.
At 34 I entered a loving relationship which I'm still in and at 37 I started my own business which has given me a strong sense of control over my own life and also has made me feel more financially secure that I ever felt before. (Which is not to say I'm rich. Just that I live a normal middle-class lifestyle, which, growing up poor in the cold lonely Midwest I never thought I would achieve.)
At 39 my son Lukas was born, a fact which brings me joy and a new kind of fear almost every day.
My girlfriend and son, 2010
My thirties were awesome.
You see. what I needed was a change of paradigm. I needed to look at the world with fresh eyes. I had to completely change my position, my geographical location, I had to get to the bottom of the bottom and realize that everything I knew about myself and the world was, well, basically wrong. And I needed to realize that the things that I was hung up on were complete and utter bullshit.
And I needed love, I guess --because I grew up in a home where love was, well, not non-existent but it was rather under-pressure and a little warped.
Is life perfect no? No. Life is actually kind of boring.
I like it that way.
Oddly, at 45 I often feel sadly nostalgic for my twenties. I want them back! To be young again! The possibilities I felt!
This is the weird truth about mid-life crises, I think.
It's amusing to me that I look back at a time in my life marked by starvation, poverty, loneliness, emotional pain and drug use and yearn to have it back. Nostalgia is a drug like any other. Illusion.
