life is fucked up sometimes

life is fucked up.

as a kid, my parents got divorced when i was 6 or 7.  those words are almost meaningless to me now.  like the pledge of allegiance or the lord's prayer, you have said the words so many times they don't have any meaning to you anymore.  i don't remember a lot from my childhood.  i was sent to the principal's office for calling a friend "gay" once.  i was sent to the office for "stealing" a girl's ring.  i put "stealing" in quotes, because we were taking a test, she was sitting next to me, her ring fell off without her knowing about it, i picked it up and said "wow, this is nice," she freaked out and told me to give it back to her, and trying to play around with her, i said "it's a really nice ring, i might have to keep it," she freaked out more, ran and got the principal, who pulled me to the office and gave me a lecture about stealing.  wish i could go back in time and give her a lecture about stupid lectures.  somewhere in there, i tried to kill myself.  my father discovered me with a knife to my wrist, and i was sent to a therapist.  the reason the therapist was told i was being sent to her was because i was still wetting the bed.  she had great legs, and wore pantyhose and dresses that accentuated her legs.  my time with her was pointless, except to fill me with guilt about how i was supposed to be talking with her about why i was still wetting the bed, even though it was more important to talk about why i wanted to kill myself, and all i was doing was checking out her legs to see if i could see up her dress.  what a waste of time and money. 

in middle school, i went on a date with this girl who, the next day, said that i shouldn't tell anybody we had gone on a date, because then they might get the wrong idea and think we went on a date and liked each other.  and my obese father grabbed me, pulled me down to the ground, and sat on me so that i couldn't breathe because i wanted to recycle an aluminum can.  i remember feeling like i had been treated like an adult for the first time when my step-father talked with me openly and honestly about taking nudie magazines from his room, and how i shouldn't do that anymore, and i should treat women with respect, and those magazines were fantasies and not real ways to treat women.  but then because of that incident, my father said that he couldn't trust me anymore because i lied about taking a massage book from his room that had illustrated pictures of naked people in it when, in fact, i had never seen the book and still have no idea what it looks like.  as punishment for this misstep of mine (which i never took), i was made to memorize the ten commandments, the boy scout honor code and have the door removed from my room because i was undeserving of privacy.  if i messed up on even a little word of the ten commandments or the boy scout honor code, i was made to do twenty push ups and twenty sit ups.  all because i took a book from my father's room.  which i never took.

in high school, i was told i was going to hell because i believed that a woman should have the final say over what gets to happen to her body.  i didn't advocate abortion or condemn it, but i said that i would be mad if somebody told me i couldn't do something with my body and i don't think anyone should have the right to tell somebody else what they can or cannot do with their body.  at which point, i was told i was going to hell.  i started smoking.  i started smoking pot.  i started drinking.  i chose to live with my father because he had a car i could drive and, eventually, own.  immediately after making this choice, i realized i had made the wrong choice and have regretted making that choice to this day.  i found the love of my life and refused to have sex with her because i didn't know what it would do to our friendship.  then i didn't see her again for seventeen years, and i always kept it in my head that if i had just had sex with her, she would have returned my phone calls or my letters.  i had driven her away because i wouldn't have sex with her. 

i went to college where i spent two years drinking and getting high.  i had sex with lots of people i didn't like and i wasn't attracted to.  i wasn't able to get cast in any plays i auditioned for.  and i lived in a desolate, depressing town that had one main road into town that had a pig slaughter house on it.  so every time you drove into town, you drove through a long, drawn-out smog of slaughtered pig reek.  i started my stand-up comedy career with quite a bit of success (my current therapist recently said that all comics are tortured souls), and i saw david letterman and jerry seinfeld using my jokes on their television programs without giving me credit or paying me for my words.  there aren't any rules or regulations about plagiarizing jokes.  see bill hicks and denis leary.  the dead one wrote the material for the one who is still alive, and who got famous off the dead one's work.  fun stuff, huh?  i transferred colleges, and had a little more success academically, continued to drink and get high and involve myself with women i didn't like very much.  i befriended a guy who, the day after i broke up with my girlfriend because she wouldn't break up with her other boyfriend and just date me exclusively, slept with my newly-exed girlfriend who went to him and told him that they should sleep together so that she could hurt me.  that was fun.  one of my friends died in a random accident involving rain.  i wrote a stage play based on the pain of the absence of the love of my life and how i was continuing to mistreat myself because of the pain from her absence.  it was well received, and it was the way that my grandmother discovered i was a smoker.  "you don't smoke, do you?" she asked.  i pulled out a cigarette and lit it.  "don't ask questions you don't want answers to," i said.  i say the coolest things when i'm being an asshole.  in a movie, that line would have been killer.  in real life, it was just mean to my grandmother.

i moved away from home and gained no new friends.  i tried to make it as a professional actor.  i failed.  my girlfriend slept with two of my friends during the same week, all of which happened less than a month after i left home.  i went on depression and anxiety meds.  i was hit on by nathan lane.  gregory hines opened a bathroom door on my face.  i befriended robert sean leonard, who turned out not to really be my friend and wouldn't return my phone calls.  i met ethan hawke and frank whaley, and they were both incredible assholes.  i made a movie trailer, and was nominated for best supporting actor in a movie trailer.  i ate food out of dumpsters sometimes.  i bought $20 worth of tea from a guy named Snake who had gold teeth.  the tea didn't get me as high as i thought it would when i thought it was marijuana and not tea.

i moved to a place where i lived for over a decade because i fell in love with my job.  it was a great job.  i continued to drink off and on, get high off and on.  loved my job.  got involved with women i didn't really like.  i dated them because of their hair color or ethnicity, not because i had any real interest in them.  i had a woman demand to wash my feet, and my roommates all made fun of me that i didn't have sex with her after she finished washing my feet.  i had a woman demand that she and i were going to do cocaine together, and when i told her i would listen to her talk with me all night long but i wasn't going to do cocaine with her, she broke down into tears and told me that nobody had ever been her friend without cocaine and i was the first person to accept her without drugs.  and then she talked to me all night long as she did copious amounts of cocaine.  i talked about the love of my life often at the job that i loved.  i was promoted at my job a lot.  i was given lots of freedoms and privileges.  i was respected.  and i liked the work i was doing.  i liked who i was when i didn't have to be who i was.  when i could be funny and i could make people feel good.  it was as close to being jesus or a super hero that i have ever gotten.  then i wasn't promoted at my job like i thought i was going to be, and i quit and moved back to my fat father who had sat on me, suffocating me years before, and who had adopted two children to take away money from me that his father had given to me when i was a child.  cool guy, huh?  later on i found out that he had duct taped his 10 year-old son's hands and ankles together.  classy fella.

then i reconnected with the love of my life again, and we got married.  that was the best day of my life.  i relive that day often.  all of the people i love most in this world were there.  and i wasn't drunk or stoned.  i was just completely happy.  and when i'm able to shut out all the guilt that my mind seems to feed me so often, and i'm able to remember that i have my wife, that's when i'm truly at peace.  when i'm able to stop judging myself of all the things i believe i've done wrong and just look at her and see that she's in front of me, i'm completely happy.  those moments are the moments that are most important to me.  even last night, i was half asleep at one point when my wife was having a hard time sleeping, and i got to roll over and stick my arm up the sleeve of her shirt and scratch her back.  i don't really remember it well, but i remember that she calmed down, and i felt great being able to touch her like that.

i would imagine that everyone has a story.  some of it happy.  some of it miserable.  some of it just weird.  it would be nice, i think, to hear some of those stories rather than being consumed with my own.  plenty of good things have happened to me, and i can even remember some of it, but my head always leans towards the negative.  some days i win the fight for positivity.  my wife helps on those days.  someday, i don't win that fight and i'm depressed.  my wife helps on those days, too.  i like it better when we're able to feel good together. 

i guess, ultimately, i'm grateful that she has stuck with me, sitting beside me, despite all i am, all i was, all i continue to be.  that part-- sitting beside me and just being there-- makes everything else so, so, so much better.  i am very lucky to have that.