Comfort Food

When i start feeling down, i want comfort food. Sometimes that's mashed potatoes, or chocolate, or pizza...tonight it's a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup...


Why do so many of us eat when we're depressed? According to the National Health and Nutrition Survey, about two thirds of Americans are obese. That's a lot of depressed people.

http://nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

Sometimes I think it would be just as much comfort to get into a giant bowl of mashed potatoes or tomato soup and just move around a little bit in it. Then we wouldn't be obese because we would be swimming--getting our cardiovascular exercise... and we'd still have the comfort of the food itself. But it sure would be a hell of a mess to clean up. OF course, that would be good aerobic exercise, too.

Comfort Food

Strangled by An Angel

When things get this bad I look for the point. There always has to be a point. Otherwise, what's the point? It's an existentialist's nightmare.

I almost expect to see Roma Downey from Touched by an Angel standing outside the van in the Toys R Us parking lot in the middle of the night. Her aura an unearthly glow. She will say, in that endearing accent of hers, "Jae, Got loves yew. . .He only wants the best fer yew . . ."

And suddenly it would all be clear to me, and my heart would fill with love and understanding and I would sleep peacefully through the night finally, waking to find my whole world had changed...the claim had gone through with the VA, the lawyer calls and tells me he has a fat check from Social Security, a publisher is desperately trying to reach me to publish my book. I would gleefully deposit the money in the bank, buy a house and a new van, start a band, and then the real love of my life would enter, stage right.

In my distorted dreams, it's more like an ugly, unshaven angel appears, puffing on a big cigar he got from his deal with Castro, smiles at me with rotten teeth and from within his aura of soot and smoke, he says, "God doesn't love you. He thinks you're a miscreation. He only wants you to suffer." At which point he leans forward and burns me with an ugly finger.

An angel never touches me. God doesn't send any messengers, except of the foul variety, and I wonder why life can't be just a tiny slice of what Hollywood tells us it is.

And then my mind drifts to the only other method I have at my disposal to be touched by an Angel...take that step into the hereafter, hunt one down and say, "Touch me, Dammit!" And when it refused, I would touch it around the neck with both hands--and squeeze.

Strangled by An Angel

Alexander Graham Bell Overture

(from my unpublished memoir, "The Misadventures of No One Famous")

I intended to plug in my laptop through the open side window and into the outlet by the lot light in front of Barnes and Noble. I knew I couldn't take the chance of doing that in the light of day, so I was waiting for the sun to go down like some sort of literary vampire, who can't begin to sully the unsullied page until there's proper concealment.

I spent the usual few minutes staring into space, and was looking at Gizmo's ears. He is supposedly half spaniel, half Chihuahua, so his ears never decided whether to be perky or droopy. They sort of jut from the side of his head like wings that won't retract.

Pulling myself from this insipidness, I begin to read Carrie Fisher's "Surrender the Pink" and someone's car alarm goes off. It's one of those that honks the horn over and over instead of ringing.

HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK!

...in a cadence a metronome would envy. After a few minutes of this, I stopped trying to understand that paragraph I'd read four times, and wonder when the owner of the car will take care of the noise.

HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK!

That's when a creative soul in another car begins to join in, adding an echoing blast at equally metronomic intervals...

HONK! Honk. HONK! Honk. HONK! Honk.

I start to smile. The Alexander Graham Bell Overture in C Minor.

Then another would-be composer joins in...

HONK! Honk. TOOT! HONK! Honk. TOOT!

And there begins a cacophony of horns about the area. None of them are on their way to Carnegie Hall, but it was good for a laugh.

Alexander Graham Bell Overture

Petting the Hounds of Hell

from my memoir, "The Misadventures of No One Famous"

There was that short period in my life in 1998, when I actually believed all would be well. I had a great job that I loved, it paid well, and it seemed it was only a matter of time before I got back on my financial feet. I began to feel good about myself again. Deeply spiritual. Like I had just returned from a sabbatical in an ashram with the Dalai Lama, and was blessed and sanctified by my victory over previous hardships.

Then my paycheck bounced. Then another, and another, and the NSF charges began to pile up since I wrote checks for bills on that amount I expected to be there. I confronted my boss with the admonition that I would need to be compensated immediately or I could not continue to work. The conversation deteriorated from there, turned into an altercation, and a refusal to pay, and I threatened to leave and take the extra computer with me as collateral until he paid me. That's when he called the police.

The officers arrived, a report was filed, and I was escorted to my car-- without a paycheck, and without the computer. I entertained the idea of sugar in his gas tank, or a well-placed banana peel, but thought myself above that sort of pettiness. I was out of sugar and bananas.

Many weeks later, my ex-boss finally sent a check, painfully short of what was actually owed, and wrote a little legal statement on the back stating that endorsement of that check meant that it was payment in full. By that time, my financial status was so bad, I didn't have a choice. I had to take what he offered, even though he owed me over a thousand dollars. So I signed my name to the back of the check, all the while sending really nasty black energy in his direction.

Jobless and in financial hot-water, I took my disabled self to the first job I could find. Delivering pizza. Problem was, the original job description was that I would deliver only. It developed into being on my feet 8-10 hours, carrying large trays of very heavy dough, enormous cans of sauce, mopping, sweeping... all the sorts of things "normal" people can do.

I told the manager on duty that I couldn't do those things, wasn't supposed to do them, but got no sympathy. That conversation ended in sophomoric chastisement in front of several customers. I knew it was only a matter of time before my back gave out. And when that actually happened, I headed for the door with a slipping disc, bent over like a great-grandmother with osteoporosis.

I was practically bedridden for the next two weeks, as the bills continued to pile up. My water was turned off, my electricity was about to be, and I knew I had to find other work, regardless of how long I could keep it.

I started a job at Blockbuster, but soon discovered that 4 to 8 hours on my feet was just as bad as short hours lifting things. I started missing work, and finally went down with another slipped disc and had to turn in my notice. I also had to turn in my notice to the landlord since I was two months behind and saw no end in sight.

A Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and the guest room of an old friend were all that saved me from living in my van. I moved almost all my things to storage in January, '99, while applying for increases in my VA disability and compensation from Social Security.

I still owed the landlord for that month's rent, and wasn't able to sell that furniture to pay him--which is still in the living room of my ex-house. And Tyler (my ex--the one who ripped my heart to shreds) is moving into that house since they raised the rent where she was...odd...like some sort of personal insult...

So this morning, after a long night of anxiety dreams, I pulled myself out of bed and started a strong pot of coffee... Checked the mail...My thoughts kept wandering back and forth between these things:

• what's the going price for cocaine?
• how many people do I have to kill to join a gang?
• how exactly does one contact the devil in order to sell one's soul?
  
• Does he carry a "sell" phone?
• what should be said in my suicide note?
  

This delightful frame of mind is brought to you by the Sherwood Municipal Court, Hot Check Division: "We're just doing our jobs." These fine people now hold a warrant for my arrest. Talk about adding insult to injury, salt to a wound...

Funny, they managed to put out a warrant for me, but that check from my ex Boss-From-Hell never was covered, even though I filed an affidavit on him. I continue to feel he's responsible for much of this Misfortune Circus that is my life. If he hadn't written me those hot paychecks and thrown me into financial devastation, which meant I had to leave the job-- well, none of this would have happened.

And if I had never joined the Army, none of the past eleven years of crap would have happened, and I would be able to find other work, no matter how physical it was. But my choices are limited.

So there was every possibility I'd end up getting arrested and going to jail--all because I couldn't whip out my checkbook and pay for this fine.

I kept trying to see the point of it-- the larger spiritual picture...I just continued to feel like the Biblical figure, JOB. Funny, that name looks an awful lot like something I wish I had. They should have added an "e" to the end of it. Hey, I even have boils again. Didn't "JOBe" have to deal with that, too? (I would ask the POWERS THAT BE please not to kill my family). That story strikes me as bogus anyway. A Loving God? God kills a man's family in order to test HIS faith....mmm. I must remember to ask Reverend Sid to explain that one.

So what have I learned?

I've learned that it's not a good idea to save the unused canned biscuits for later baking. They come out flat and firm like hardtack. (I only opened them because all I had was a can of 10, and I was hungry. I couldn't very well eat 10 Texas-sized biscuits, even if I am hungry most of the time lately).

So I've learned that now, God. I understand. Now, call off your Hounds.

Petting the Hounds of Hell

It Only Hurts When I Think About it

(From "The Misadventures of No One Famous" my memoir)

I flipped through the TV channels and found nothing of interest, read some, put the book down and stared at the dust on my alarm clock, and then started thinking about living in my van. How it would be. Would I be able to maintain the fiction that it's a romantic idea once I was actually there, and the temperature drops to freezing? Would my cigarette lighter work so that I could plug the power inverter into it for a space heater? Could I live on ready-to-eat foods? Would I be able to find a place to shower and go to the bathroom when I needed to?

And I won't be able to leave the van for very long because Giz and Bingo would be there and it's cold, and I can't leave them without heat. So I won't be able to sit in warm coffee-shops and bookstores and libraries and movie houses. I will be making my pain, their pain, and I would not let them suffer more than me. It wouldn't be fair.

I hate the fact that I have to depend on anyone else to survive. I want to depend only on me. But I'm undependable. I hate that I can't pick up something heavy and walk across the room without excruciating pain afterward, or during. I hate the way one disability leads to another. . . if my back is out, I have to walk on crutches, then I get a catch in my spine just outside my shoulder blade, and carpal tunnel in my wrists, then I can't write or use my hands without pain, then I can't use the crutches, so then I can't walk. Then I have to lie down a lot, and I smoke and drink to have something to do with my hands, and to numb the pain and to feel like I'm indulging in some guilty pleasure. And when I eat, I know all those calories are just going to turn to fat.

I hate, then, that I'm fat and can't lose weight because I can't exercise. I don't look good in any of my clothes and can't buy new clothes because I can't work and earn the money. I hate that I can't play racquetball or softball or volleyball anymore. I hate that I have to watch other people do that. And I can't dance, so going out becomes a form of self-torture and self-loathing. Then I hate how I feel about myself and I get depressed. And I long to be thin and nice- looking, but I know I never will be.

I hate that I can't have sex when my back is out, even though I might need it-- Need it to feel human, to escape from the confines of my disabilities. And when I can have sex, I can't stop thinking about how I'm fat and ugly, and that no one could possibly be attracted to me. And then I can't enjoy the sex, and I don't get what I need. Then I'm angry and bitter and I push everyone away from me with my rage and caustic words. Then I just hate the Army and the V.A. and that drill sergeant who got me hurt, and I hate that they've taken away my life. Why wouldn't I want to kill myself? It's just finishing a job, isn't it?

Sometimes the subject will come up--the "suicide gesture" as the hospital form said-- When I talk to Terra. about it, she can't hear it. She tells me to stop, it's disturbing. She's more traumatized than I am about it. The only thing I find disturbing is that it doesn't disturb me. Like it was someone else. Or a dream. Or someone else's dream.

I wasn't just depressed when I did it. I was angry. I wanted it all to stop. I didn't have the strength to face another day of starting over. And there was this other part to it. When I got that denial of my claim that day on the 16th of December, 1999, it was like they were saying, "You don't exist. Your pain isn't real. You aren't real." Maybe I thought that if I could bleed, I was real, and that would be proof enough.

Life blood.

The blood of life.

Alive.

If I bled, I was alive.

Isn't it ironic that you have to try to die before you know you're really alive? And then what did that prove?

I was alive, but still pathetic?

It Only Hurts When I Think About it