The Real Introduction

I'm not a blogger. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of disillusionment. I generally don't think people give a fuck about what's going on in other people's lives unless it some how effects their own. Call me cynical? You wouldn't be the first. No, the first was my program director from a trip I took at age 16 to none other than the orient. China to be exact. He was a friend of the family and he thought I was so nice at first. After all, he'd seen me grow up. Babies aren't mean, right? Well, I believed some girls in my group were crying dragon tears for attention over horribly disfigured homeless people as they crawled to our feet. Imagine: Seventeen white high school kids in the streets of Beijing doing their best to not look directly in the eye of an old woman with no legs and a face that was stretched from third degree burns, crawling on her stubs toward them begging for change with an outstretched tin cup. Not pretty. Anyway, I don't know why I thought they wanted attention. Thinking back now, I was just stressed with the whole trip and had befriended a particularly cynical upper class woman who had rubbed off on me more than a little. I remember my program director sat me down in a room, a man I'd seen my whole life looking at me with new, angry, confused eyes; ones that held a world's full of perceptions and judgments of human character that a 16 year-old simply couldn't grasp.

"You're a cynical asshole, you know that?" he fumed. "When you get out in the real world, no one's going to give a fuck about what's happened in your past."

Freeze frame. Squeal the breaks. Really?

I guess he was referring to my Mom dieing. It had only been two years, after all. I guess I was ready for a reality check.

It was a normal day that fall afternoon. I was on the cusp of my fourteenth year and the chill of autumn was making me really enjoy the sun as it beat down on my long sleeve-covered arms in soccer practice that day. I remember walking into my house after my Dad dropped me off at home. He was living with my grandmother at the time; a living situation crafted from a volatile, Popov Vodka infused romance that died out only after my brother and I peaked in our adolescent years. Flash forward: Mom's on the floor, lethargic. Probably just another seizure from alcohol withdrawal-- happened all the time. At the time no phone lines powered the black rotary phone that lay still on the kitchen counter. To be sure, it was fully functional; Mom just never had the money to pay all the long distance bills she racked up. I ran down the road-- still mildly warm blooded from soccer practice-- to our neighbors and called the ambulance.

Volunteer firefighters came, many with familiar faces; the fathers of some acquaintances I had at school. I heard the words "possible attempted suicide" and froze mentally, recalling an empty pill bottle by her side. I knew that was not correct. It wasn't as exact and planned out as most suicides. This one took years to accomplish.

We're in my Dads Lumina van driving 85 miles per hour a day later. I remember the smell of the fresh linen sheets mixed with sterile air as I entered the small space she would eventually die in. A sheet was drawn back, the rings sliding metal-on-metal against the rod that held the private barrier. Another person lay hooked to machines. A puffed, tired face with glossed-over, swollen-shut eyes lay attached to cords and tubes. Chest contraction and facial distortion overcame me as I let the much-needed tears drip down my cheeks, which at the time were clear and untainted by a future of adolescent acne that wouldn't quit.

"Oh, don't cry," the nurse sympathized. Poor girl: Dartmouth medical school didn't teach her how to deal with this situation. There wasn't a formula to it, no answer that was easily found. Just a scared child, crying.

We sat down in a conference room at a long table. Doctors explained the scenario: Either a quadriplegic, amputated, retard or the seemingly effortless task of pulling a plug from an outlet. The players were my brother, my father, my Papa, my lesbian aunt Betsy, another woman who also was my Mom's sister who had chosen to stay away too long, my Nana and some other people my brain has locked out as collateral damage from its natural protection process. Poor little Mitch had to break it down that day and choose the logical decision because men didn't want to be men. Who could blame them? Mitch could and still does.

I remember the preacher coming in and saying the final prayer over her body, which had gone into full rigor mortis and featured dark spots all over from natural blood pooling. I had my moment with her; I apologized for always being embarrassed by her for calling herself "the pioneer woman." I hugged her and put my hand in hers and felt the smallest squeeze that told me she was in there, fighting, but knew she lost the battle and harnessed all her last energy to let me know she was still there, even for one split second.

How did I handle all of that five days before my fourteenth birthday? The real question is did I?

I don't remember much after that day. I went directly back to school the next day; I wanted to move on and I wanted pity. I wanted people to feel too bad to be mean to me or judge me.

I let weed soften the blow for the next two years. It did an okay job of making me feel okay. Each time I'd break apart that sticky nugget, put it in a pewter bowl and smoke it, I was robbed of motivation. It felt good for a while; I loved it. A mental pause button would be pressed and a tingly fuzz hummed through my head. It made my usually high-strung mind lay still but very active nonetheless. That is until I started to feel my heart beat fast in my chest and my palms sweat a cold, clammy perspiration.

Inner dialogue: "Wait, what? Does my voice really sound like that? Do people think I sound gay? I laugh that loud? Does everyone think I'm fat behind my back? Is it awkward that my mom died? Do people feel like they have to be nice to me because she died? Do people think I want to have sex with them when I don't say anything? Is it awkward that I wore that tight red shirt to school yesterday?"

I put away the homegrown Vermont commercial bud right before I went to China. I wanted to remember it, you know?

The Constant Mind emerged. It may have bore out of high paranoia, but since its inception it has evolved to be a burden, a maintainer, a motivator, an insanity, a tick. To clarify, The Constant Mind isn't paranoid thoughts: it's every thought, racing through my mind so quickly, counseling yet reprimanding, telling me to do this, not that. Keeping me insecure without warrant, making me feel lesser than without reason. Constantly analyzing every interaction; was it good or bad? Being happy then sad, then rationalizing both thoughts into the greater scheme of the world and feeling undeserving for being emotional in the first place. There are starving kids in Malaysia, right? Feeling inadequate and wondering why, constantly. Thinking rather than doing, thoughts holding up physical actions and moves towards progress. Wondering, "Is it just me that thinks like this?" Being unsure but so sure. It never shuts up, it never turns off; a thousand thoughts entering and mitigating each other without prior warning. I'm okay, I'm allowed to feel this way, I'm strong-willed and diligent, I'm justified, I need to work harder, I'm not saving enough money, I need more sleep, I shouldn't be eating that, I need to concentrate more, I just wish I could get to sleep without having to recite that same prayer to a God I am unsure I believe in or not, I'm not crazy.

This is how a constant mind speaks, only stopping when it sleeps and even then not for long, for dreams mask the true complexities of its power.