Bon Voyage Leaders of the Band

I’m thinking I should start using this blog for its purest intent – a reflection of self without my usual shield of comic book plotlines to express my feelings of life, love and the ludicrous freak-show that is modern life. I also don’t have the desire or patience to sit with a therapist to suss out what is plainly and so apparently ailing me. I don’t believe one person has the answer, individuals merely have theories that could or could not be the right answer. I say the hive mind can be more therapeutic than the mewling of a doctorate degree. Until I need meds, I choose to “talk it out” online. So please, leave comments to the contrary or in agreement to my ramblings – make social media social for fuck’s sake. Lurkers are just creepy.

Tarheels over Turnpikes 

My parents are getting ready to move to North Carolina next week. Rightly so, they worked their assses off the past thirty plus years and they deserve to revel in their earned spoils in whatever way they please. This move has left me in a state of everything from anger, to confusion, to an unending sadness. I love my wife, I love my life; but I’m an only child and for some reason can never cast aside the belief that the world is here to serve my will. Whatever I want I should have, and how dare any entity go against that herculean force of want. It’s a selfish and petty existence, but at least I have some self-awareness of the asshole fog those of us sans siblings forever reside in. Thank you my darling wife, you are the reality check that every “only” should have to navigate the real world.

So again, my parents are leaving. But as someone only a year away from 40, should I really feel loss over this event? Do I have that right? I truly feel I don’t. I carry a burden of guilt over daring to miss these people that sacrificed everything for me for almost half a century. As much as I am going to miss them only a stone’s throw away, I’m also carry this backpack of self-loathing for having the audacity to miss them.

I’ve spent my life always trying not to be a bother; to the point my not being a bother becomes a bother for anyone who professes to love me. It makes sense when you think about it; how on earth can anyone turn a blind eye to someone they love who is in pain, regardless of that person screaming “don’t help me, let’s talk about you instead.” Yet the martyr insists that they should look away. It’s ridiculous and another personality quirk I feel deserves an apology to family, friends and even co-workers. However, this martyrdom stems from a place of extreme love – a propensity to wear my heart on my sleeve for any and all until they deceive or betray me. I love until you give me a reason to hate. I love ferociously. So thus I miss and lament with the same ferocity.

Skip the Cabinets

I entitled this piece after the famed Dan Fogleberg song because my Father and I have always used the passages of this piece to demark our similar passage through life. Now most of the lyrics have not a God damn thing to do with our lives. Collectively we couldn’t make a cabinet if we tried (hell for my Weblo boxcar, my Dad paid a guy on his bowling team to make it), and as I said I have no siblings. But the spirit remains the same, the passing of the baton from one generation to the next. Sure there are a plethora of other dittys to choose from, like Sunrise Sunset for instance, but we Fiddler was not playing on a constant loop in the cassette deck of my Dad’s 1980 Honda Prelude. Ironically, my Dad forever complains about the Pussification of the American male, when his generation is truly directly responsible for this phenomenon (that’s a post for another time though).

Thank you for listening to my rambling. I know I’m lucky. I know my parents aren’t dying, merely making a minor separation. Yes, we’ll still have FaceTime, well at least with my Mother since she listened to me and bought an iMac as opposed to the shitty Windows 8 Dell that Dad decided to procure, but as the famous song goes “there’s nothing like the real thing baby.” And it will be those real thing interactions I will truly miss as they head south of the Mason Dixon line. Don’t let my aloofness fool you Mom and Dad, you merely taught me that family keeps a stiff upper lip to support one another’s dreams. When I turn away have no doubt that lip will be quivering.