LNB-T5 Collateral Damage in Asserting Self

It was training in the art of self-assertion. The way I see it now is very simple. First you learn to build a house before you tear it down.

Or put more playfully yet crass, before one sees through this division, you'll need to grow a pair. Or show them off.

Otherwise, you're always lost in letting others build the edifice without the understanding that it's just a building of so many stories.

Of course, it's more destructive in its practice than a simple education in following your bliss, intent or Tao.

The fact is others had assisted in constructing what my person was and my adjusting, realigning, or creating something new

is bound to be a little disconcerting to a wife, for instance, who worked so hard to get her apprehensive partner to the point of some respectability

as a husband and a father and a member of society, if not exactly in good standing, then, at least a member.

So when I quit my part-time job, she was vociferously disappointed. And when I lost my job of ten full years

and started looking for another more in line with interest than merely money in itself, she threw me out. For half-a-year.

The Long Nervous Breakdown: Take Four

I question if this story is of any value. But it's the hardest thing I've ever written. So that means something. Still, it’s just a story.

We were sitting at the kitchen table to talk about unspoken matters which were driving us apart.

We both had our psychologists and could not afford a separate marriage counselor. So we tried to work things out amongst ourselves.

It was a big heart-breaking mistake. At some point, the conversation turned from love to war.

My strategy was simple. Tell her she no longer turned me on. I'd rather use a magazine than sleep with you, I thundered.

But she was ten-thousand times my better at this kind of thing. And not to go all psychological, but her parents both were alcoholics

and her childhood atmosphere was one of hurtful words and then denying they were said at all. It was a world of sad illusion for a child.

And what came next, although she would deny it really happened after all and that she only wished to hurt me

and that I in fact had just attempted something similar, I never could successfully forget, forgive, or understand, although, God knows, I tried.

She looked at me and laughed, I've used much more than pictures. Do you remember passing out that night when they demoted you at work,

she stabbed her finger straight at me. I told you, I replied. Those fuckers needed me to be the fall guy.

Sure, she said, and Nick came over, drinking you beneath the table. Well, he made a pass at me that night.

We left you in the living room and went upstairs. I guess he fucked the both of us. Real good. Her words, not mine.

The Long Nervous Breakdown: Take Three

When she stopped the car, I didn't exit. Instead I started sighing, I don't know, repeating it as if a formula to keep me grounded.

She waited silently until I stopped. I have to say, despite the wretchedness that would occur between the two of us in years to come,

she hit the right notes on that night. I think you need to see someone, she said. I looked at her in working class hero horror.

You don't mean I need to see an actual psychiatrist? Psychologist, a therapist, you need to talk about what's going on inside your head.

But that's the thing, I muttered. Everything has speeded up to such a point I feel as if it's all inside my head

and I can't get away from none of it. Then talk it out, she said. Or in, I actually found myself laughing.

The Long Nervous Breakdown: Take Two

I was married with a lovely daughter and endeavoring to live the life the way one is to live it as a middle-class American in nineteen-eighty-four.

I hadn't written poetry in years and my quixotic twenties filled with Transcendentalism, Tao, and Dostoevsky

seemed a million light-years in some other’s past. I even had attempted Christianity to fill some void but that's another story.

My therapist was asking me just who I wished to be and not what others wanted me to be. I didn't have a clue.

That's when she asked me why I gave up on Thoreau, which somehow came into our conversation half-an-hour ago.

He seems impractical, I said, or that's what others say, I further said. And what is it you say, she asked.

I couldn't say, I said. Then go and ask, she says, as fifty minutes is annunciated by an unembellished little bell.

The Long Nervous Breakdown: Take One

Now was moving faster than belief could cover it. No internal clock could keep up with this timeless emptiness growing like a grander canyon.

I was at the threshold of a precipice without a single object to hold on to. And the wind was growing stronger

with every passing building I was seeing sitting on the passenger's impassive side. It was either me or my belief.

We were somewhere near the border when I cried out. Stop the car! I have to get out right away!

She looked at me like I was crazy. I'm going crazy, I was crying. So she stopped the car and I at last began to tell it like it is.