I’ve had occasion recently to really sit back and feel mentally sick. Really. It hasn’t been very hard to for a lot of reasons. First reason is that I’m old, or older. I’ve spun through over 20 year raising kids, sending them to college and getting older in the process. I haven’t come to terms with it. I rather hate it actually. I don’t want to get old. Of course nobody does, but I think others of you are better at the process than I am because I’m flat out great at denial.

Let me tell you why. I grew up on denial. In fact, I had so much denial and pretty much turned it into a lifestyle, or, perhaps better put, an energy that has driven me since. Now, let’s put that in perspective. Denying death leads to Christianity, doesn’t it? So let’s just say denial isn’t just a silly thing. It’s a monumentally crazy thing. But it’s really, really had to avoid. I certainly didn’t.

But I had to use denial. I couldn’t survive without it. Literally.  I had everything taken away from me as a kid, an entire life that was shown to me and then ZIP absconded with by those nasty fates. No point in sweating the details. Let’s just say I got screwed really badly and left to twist in the wind for my entire childhood, to live in fear and hopelessness and, you guessed it, denial.

The denial of course was to deny that what was so troubling me all the time, this terrible reality I lived with, was really real. I put it away, what I knew to be true, and what I couldn’t put away, what I threw in my mom’s face she put away for me. She slammed it back down on me with her own fear and her own denial. And, to be fair, my dad did, too. He just spun along with his own little fantasy and denied he had messed up super, colossal big time. I mean seriously big time. If I told you what my dad did, what unbelievably arrogant and short-sighted and horribly selfish things he did, you would practically wet yourself. He screwed himself, my mother and his kids simply for his pride. He knew it, too, later, but, you know, that was later.

So I was left to fend in a world that I was no longer really a member of. It’s hard to define that but look at it like this. I was bred into the upper-middle class intelligentsia and then thrown to the poverty line. Voila! Smartest and most educated guy on welfare! Well, not quite but close. And so I denied. Wouldn’t you? You would, don’t deny it.

Funny things happened and still happen as a result. I act weird sometimes and get mad a ridiculous things because I’m so used to not getting mad at the things I should. How do you though get mad at mom and dad when there’s no alternative? How do you survive when sense isn’t being used by anyone around you? Really. I’m not kidding. No one in my family seemed to grasp the simple concept of doing the sensible thing. I tried to say sensible was right and was slammed for it because sensibility hurt too much.

It turned me into what I am now, which is a mad fighter pilot riding my abilities over a deep gorge which, if I fall into, will take my life, my heart and my soul. I’m flying on fumes and hoping they last.

It’s an insane life and I don’t deserve it. I deserved sense and peace. My parents couldn’t give that to me and so here I am now trying to give it to my kids and probably failing. But that’s what I’m looking to reach on the other side: the land of peace.

There was a song we used to sing in grade school chorus which I loved so much. I know why now. Here wer the lyrics:

Waters ripple and flow
Swiftly flow to the sea
Bring my freedom to me
Set my spirit free
River flowing past
Give me liberty at last

The miserable know a spiritual when they hear it.