a short entry? C’mon, who’s the writer?

That’s what I planned, anyway.

**

My parents died when I was 15.  My brother and I were packed off to boarding schools (which I have mentioned at greater length elsewhere here on OD) and the estate my father had built virtually vanished in the years between 15 and 29, when I got the last half of my share. 

(about 200 thousand dollars is unaccounted for… and since someone will ask, yes, I did contact the lawyer who set up the will and was told that the way it had been written that it gave my uncle, mom’s brother who had been appointed guardian and executor of the will/estate, complete discretion over the money and that there was nothing I could do about it.  That money would have made a REAL difference in how life has turned out, especially for my brother, who was in and out of homeless shelters and wrestled with cocaine addiction for years. YEARS, mind you, when the so called guardian had washed his hands of us and (maybe an unjustified accusation) spent the money.  Our money)

All that is prologue to explain this:  I spent a great deal of my life feeling fucked over and unloved by the family, who should have, by all rights, cared for their orphaned newphews, but who packed them off as fast as they could (ten days after my dad died) and had as little to do with us as possible.

Am I bitter?  Fucking A dittybag.

As I said, I spent a large part of my life pissed off and wary of it happening again.  And again, and again.

In 1997, things came to a head.  I had all but fled Japan in 1996 after our marriage failed and had moved in with an old college buddy here in Portland.  What I didn’t know but soon found out was that the other people who lived in that house were not the best of people.

(have I ever mentioned that I tend towards understatement?)

The buddy turned out to be an unrepentant coke addict.  The second housemate was a tweaker.  The house owner was bent – I never did figure out what his game was – not drugs (that I knew of) or booze, but he was definately weird… and not in a good way.

I fled that house in the summer of 97.  Packed everything in my stationwagon and drove away, never to return.  (Ahh, but before I left, I dropped a dime on the tweaker, who I had heard molesting his young daughter.  Things happened there, and he lost all rights to the daughter, but he didn’t go to jail, mores the pity)

I moved into a room in a house converted to apartments that I could barely afford on my pay at the Scottish Rite, where I was a custodian.  One day at work, a sheriff’s deputy served papers on me that I thought were conected with the molester – the DA’s office had interviewed me several times there at work.  The papers, however, turned out to be an accusation by a county in California that I had fathered a kid during a one night stand 15 years before.  Being poor (and stupid) I didn’t get a lawyer, figuring that the "truth" was on my side, since a blood test 14 years before had denied that I had anything to do with it.

Of course, the state of California fucked me over.  I was, by default, named as the kid’s parent, and my already meager pay was seized, to the tune of over three hundred a month, in March of 98.

As I said, I had spent much of my life until that point pissed off.  I was. excuse the anology, like a keg of powder with a short fuse, that California lit and walked away from.

I have written about this before; that I was drinking heavily and had been, by that time, for years.  The marriage failure, the housing failure, the job situation, and just life in general seemed to be more than I could handle sober.  They lit that fuse 4/23/98 and I crashed my car, drunk, and nearly killed myself doing it.  I was so fucking pissed off by then that any sense I might have once had was evaporated by the bourbon fumes.

**

I don’t remember about a 45 day stretch of life – a week or so before the wreck and a month and a half more after.  I woke up in a hospital bed, not knowing my own name, or where I was, or why I was there.  I was very confused, and it took a long time for me to fully recover.  Years, as a matter of fact.  That car wreck changed a lot of things for me and about me.

**

It is no stretch to say that that car wreck and the injuries received was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

**

I got my life back.  I very nearly died.  I was in a coma for some time.  My brain was damaged, (split into three pieces, as a matter of fact) and they couldn’t say whether I’d be a vegatable or heal or what I’d be for the rest of my life.  Or even if I’d live.

Or even if I’d walk again – my left leg was pretty chewed up in the car wreck.  I worked on walking very hard.  I stuggled to regain my intelligence even harder.

I have regained both.

I have lost the anger that drove me for most of my life.  I still get pissed off, and seemingly little things can upset me (idiots on the road, for instance) but the anger that powered my life had evaporated.  I got my life back, and that alone cleaned the slate.  For years after the wreck, I was not angry.  My face changed because of the wreck.  I wasn’t disfigured, no, I’m still the same in a lot of ways, but the anger that drove me had given me an angry face, and that was gone.

<font face="Comic Sans MS" si

ze=”3″>My "normal" expression now is a smile.  I have a lot to smile about, and do.

I am a very fortunate cat.  Very, very fortunate.  Maybe even lucky too.

I say it could be worse, and I KNOW it’s true.  It could be, it was, it is not now.

In a perfect story, I’d be able to say I haven’t had a drink since the wreck, or gotten pissed off, but this ain’t the "perfect story".  I do have a drink occaisionally, and there are times when I get pissed…. but not as royally as I once did, and nowadays, a shot or three is more than enough to say "enough".

***

The reason for this not so short entry?

I received some notes on my last entry re the workday I had yesterday asking how I could cope with what, to others, might have seemed like the workday from hell.

No problem.

I’ve seen worse; lived worse, and here I am, handsome as ever, intelligent, friendly, polite, kind – a hell of a guy.

I can do this.  I can live this life.  I can play the hands I’m dealt.

I can.

****

Grace under pressure?

Upwards and onwards.

*****