“This Above All”

Two weeks ago I got drunk with my mom, brother Mike and cousin Ashley. It was Ashley’s birthday, so Mom was took us all to a local diner after the bar closed, and I was looking forward to having some eggs and chicken-fried steak on Mum’s dime. It wasn’t 15 minutes after getting to the diner, though, that Mike and I got into the biggest fight I’ve been in since last January.

It all started with Mike singing some song about living like a “rock star” and, ever my curmudgeonly self, me telling him “For now, sure, but live too hard and you’ll tire out.” I guess it’s never good to be a killjoy like that, but I was just trying to give Mike some advice. I lived pretty hard during college myself, and I’m not particularly proud of it. Mike, however, thought I was just trying to bring him down, and brought up the one thing in my life I regret: A fight I had with my roommate my senior year that landed me in jail for a week and prevented me from finishing my final class (thus leaving a permanent blemish on my transcript).

I’ve always been self-conscious about this, have even avoided applying to grad school because of it. And Mike knew this. He started yapping about having a better GPA than me (which I’m proud of him for), but I’d told him before that this was a sore spot for me. I have done pretty damn well for a writer without an MFA so far, but I always feel insecure around my fellow poets. And my mind is the only thing I’ve got really that’s anything to write home about. Mike knows this and knows the one way to really hurt me is to bring up how I’d lived hard enough to make the rest of my life a fight I sometimes worry I don’t have the energy for.

Well, so this turned into a fight. First there was a shouting match between me and Mike, then after Mike went outside to get away from me, I drunkenly followed him out to shout at him and tell him he wasn’t staying at my house. Mike started pushing me, and I told him I wanted him to hit me so I could call the cops. All the while, poor Ashley, whose birthday it was, kept trying to break us up. Mike ripped my shirt and threw my glasses on the ground, and I continued to chase him into the parking lot while everyone in the restaurant came out to rubberneck.

Eventually, the head waitress threatened to call the cops, breaking it up. But I still wasn’t over it. I was extremely hurt because of what Mike said, and after crying over my eggs and arguing with my mom, I walked the two-mile stretch back home.

I’ll admit, I was being extremely immature. But I also stand by my being right, even now. Mike has no right to bring up a situation in my past that has had a horrible effect on my life to make himself look better. And he also has no right to destroy my things with impunity.

I was still so huffy when I returned home that at first I wouldn’t let either of them into the house. Then, I only let my mother in to get their things, and I said some pretty nasty things to her. She slapped me several times, then she and Mike went to her truck to sleep. I just felt so abandoned. I couldn’t understand why Mike was able to destroy my things and insult me, and Mom was siding with him. I felt like a tiny boy who was being kicked and abused. I did swallow my pride and apologize because I couldn’t stand seeing them sleep in a truck. But I still felt like I shouldn’t have had to apologize.

The reason I’m explaining all this is because I have never really felt whole or complete. I’ve always felt the need to prove myself, and after my life turned for the worse, I’ve felt so insignificant and useless. Yes, there are the comics and the chapbook and the poems and the magazine work. But I feel like I should have a best seller already. I feel behind, like a complete loser.

The next day, three things happened that brought on an epiphany. The first was a conversation with my ex, Hilary, in which she said one of the reasons she’d broken it off was I was “too negative”; the second was a conversation with Mike after we’d buried the hatchet in which he told me a very similar thing. I didn’t think I was particularly negative, and even if I was, I figured it’s at least honest to be that way when things aren’t going your way.

But then the third thing happened: In a conversation with a new friend that night, I listened to her call herself a litany of terrible names. I tried to reassure her, but she wouldn’t have it. She just made me feel so awful for her. I kept imagining the little girl inside her and felt like she was beating that little girl. It was almost disgusting, and after she signed off AIM, I finally had an idea of what a negative person is like FROM THE OUTSIDE.

That night, I laid in bed remembering how my mom would bandage my knees and rub my back when I was sick or sad. I realized that she was never going to do that again but that that was natural. I’m an adult now, I realized. I couldn’t expect anyone to console me. Life is a lonely thing. You can never really be outside your own head, and you will always be alone in the final moment. The only entity that will be there always, in my belief, is God. But God has many larger problems to deal with than my hurt feelings. Will He do it? Yes. But God also knows better than I do what’s good for me, and what’s good is my growing up, learning to stand alone with courage and dignity.

Then I thought about my new friend and how she was harming herself. I realized that I was doing the same thing to the little boy inside me, and there was no reason for that. I am an adult, after all. I provide for myself, and I fight for myself. I am at the age when many men are already fathers, and I don’t think I would be a very terrible father myself. So it occurred to me that, with no other little people to provide for, I can father myself.

I decided that every night before I went to bed I would rub my own back (metaphorically) and tell my inner little boy that he was indeed a smart boy and a good boy. These things aren’t lies. I know myself better than anyone else, and I can firmly state that that little boy, who is the center of all my dreams and the origin of all my best ideas and creativity, is very smart and very kind. He can come up with some of the most amazing ideas, and in conjunction with my no-nonsense adult self, he can make those ideas a reality. Also, he always helps people. There is never even a question about it. If it’s within his power to help someone he will. He shares whatever he has to share, he is inquisitive and, above all, he is worthwhile.

It also occurred to me that reminding him of this was a good way to keep myself positive. Yes, there are going to be failures, but as long as I can honestly admit that those failures are not my own fault, then I know I’m fine. And if a failure is my fault, like that fight that steered me off course, the best thing I can do is recognize where I made my mistake, change whatever about me caused that and try to fix the situation as best I can.

Since starting this regimen of pre-sleep self-therapy, I’ve felt myself become a happier, more positive person. This does not mean I am a phony. I will still tell it like it is. But saying a negative thing once is enough. It’s far better, I think now, to concentrate on the positives. And, in doing so, more positive things happen. I’m sharing this because I feel it’s a worthwhile epiphany to have, and I’d like to see my friends try it too. Yes, there will be disappointments, but that doesn’t mean each of us isn’t worthwhile or that one failure is the end.

As every older adult I’ve ever met has told me, we are all still so young. Perhaps if nothing good has happened by the time we are 80, then we can complain. But considering complaining doesn’t get us anywhere and positivity does, I’ d like to see all of us become our own mothers and fathers and move forward. We have all been raised in such a morass of self-pity and self-loathing - the ’80s/’90s culture of self-victimization and psychobabble - I just think maybe this offers a good start for something different that will make our time on this planet more worthwhile.