All Tied Up

I really need to be better at identifying the things I’m grateful for. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Ebenezer Scrooge when it comes to the things in my life that I have. What I am saying is that I just need to take more time to focus on the good than the wanted.
More often than not I always have the next goal or accomplishment already thought out. Life starts to take on a series of things I need to do. Things aren’t urgent, but they’re not getting put off either. I need to take more time to enjoy instead of accomplish.
The child in me, that was forced to be an adult too soon, is the driving factor in a lot of this, but I also know that if I don’t do it it won’t get done. There’s nobody else for things to fall back on.
I’ve learned that I need to take time for self comfort and self care in the absence of the ones I would normally seek for that. It means I have to program rest and relaxation into the day. I love naps (mostly on the weekends), but if there’s a goal I’m aiming for then some things, including self care, come off the plate to make room for the things I really want.
I’ve already accomplished a lot in life - there’s still more I want to do. I guess at this stage I get to be a little more picky about what they are. I don’t feel behind or that I’ve missed the boat by waiting too long to start (albeit having a kid might have been a thing to do earlier). But I don’t feel bad about that. That’s a discussion for another day.

Memorial Day

I probably should have posted this on Friday because Monday is just one day.

As you’re celebrating this weekend please donate some of your time to recognize a Gold Star family. If you have never heard of a Gold Star family, it is a family that has a Soldier who gave their life in the service of their Country.

Take the time to welcome them over for a meal, help them with their groceries, a project around their house, give them a tray of cookies, or just say hello. Let them know that you’re grateful for their sacrifice. It’s just a few minutes of your time, but it makes such a huge impact to people when they can be heard.

In the wake of recent events we need more of this.

Get out of your comfort zone today.

Friday

This will most likely be the longest entry on this site, but it’s warranted. Bring snacks and plan some breaks.

I just finished CCAR (Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery) training today. It’s one more tool in my pouch as I move toward working in the addiction community, specifically with family members of addicts. There’s a long way to go.

I was the only white male in the class. The only male NOT in active recovery from an addiction (I also have never dealt with an addiction personally). Only one other person in the class, an African American woman, had also never dealt with a personal addiction issue. Several of my classmates had spent time in prison at least once. Due to my chosen profession I’ve been shielded from people who live with these challenges. I can honestly say that it’s eye opening and I felt very out of place.

My mother and father were married for about a year - long enough that I was brought into the world. They divorced and my mother married my step-father almost immediately. My mother and step-father were together nearly 10 years. My sister came into the world about 2 years after they were married.

For as long as my mother and step-father were together violence and drinking existed. Their anger was also directed toward my sister and I. Eventually my mother would meet a drummer at a bar, pack up my sister and I, and flee to Dallas, Texas without telling anyone. It only took a couple weeks for the authorities to find us with the help of my father and step-father. I went to live with my father and my sister with hers. We would only see each other two more times in the next 10 years.

I was 12 when I went to live with my father, who had never remarried. He would go to work before I woke up and get home after I got home from school. It was my responsibility to wake up each morning, get myself ready for school and pack a lunch, and then make my way home after school. He would come home from work, get high, cook dinner, and then go to bed.

I lived there until I was 16 when I moved in with some friends, dropped out of high school, and got a full time job.

The only thing I ever wanted to do was go to college, but I was essentially living by myself and my performance in high school was terrible. I was never in trouble (other than the occasional bullying which was just typical high school stuff) but I had friends that were religious and took me with them to church, which kept me out of a lot of trouble (and probably still does).

I worked as a CNA (I wanted to work as a nurse in an ER because I a friends father was and it looked awesome) because it was SOMETHING that felt like progress toward my goal. I earned my GED and then started chipping away at my college application until I found out that you can’t fill out a federal student aid request (required by all schools as part of the application process) by yourself. Your parents have to sign it. At this point I was 19 and I had not spoken to or seen my mother since I was 12. It took all of my willpower to call my father and ask him for help after moving out 3 years earlier. He refused, mostly out of ignorance to the process. He didn’t want his information on my loans. I asked him if he would at least make an appointment with the financial aid office just to clear up any misinformation. His recommendation: find a good job.

My father’s parents moved to Idaho in the late 1940’s. Once my grandfather was old enough to cut down a tree that’s what he spent the rest of his life doing. The money in the timber industry in those years was endless and my father (as well as his brother and sister) never went without. My father spent his entire adult life living in a house that my grandparents had built on land they owned. He paid them $150 a month in rent (even when I lived with him). As a wedding present my grandfather built my parents a house, with lumber from trees he cut down and sold himself, on land he owned (it was later sold in the divorce). There were stark differences in how we were raised.

I started the process of what’s called a financial override with the administration of the school. You essentially have to prove that you have zero support and can’t complete the FAFSA process by yourself (even though you’re an adult past the age of 18 your parents can still legally claim you on tax returns until the age of 29 - emancipation has no application here). There is a board that meets to review your paperwork twice a year (each time financial aid is cut). If the board is late with a determination, or you can’t provide them with the necessary documentation (e.g. tax documents, legal statements, and other forms that you need from organizations outside of your control) then you’re not getting money that semester. Add to that trying to hold down a job or two to pay the bills as a 19 year old and things can get overwhelming quickly. I barely completed two semesters in two years with marginal grades before I was overwhelmed, couldn’t get financial aid, and gave up.

In the middle of all this I met a girl and things were getting fairly serious. We had dated for about a year while I was attending college and decided to get married a year after my last semester. In the middle of our relationship I really considered the military as an option to earn money for school. There really didn’t seem to be a better option, and 4 years of service didn’t seem like a terrible idea, especially since I wasn’t marred at the time. It was still early in 2001 and our wedding was planned for October of that year.

Even after the events of 9/11 I still joined in March of 2002 (after background checks and applications were complete which took 6 months). My first assignment was an infantry medic training units to go to war by spending 21 days in the field every month (except for Christmas and the 4th of July - we were able to take a couple weeks off during those times). In 2005 I was sent to Iraq for 14 months and by the time I returned home I was single. I was never home and my relationship suffered because of it.

This was also my first real relationship with anyone in my life - I didn’t have the relationship kills to buffer all of my time away. I didn’t learn how to nurture relationships, or myself, as a kid and that cost me dearly as the learning curve to young married life was steep and not in my favor. Looking back, I honestly don’t know if those skills would have helped the situation much, but it wouldn’t have hurt.

It was now 2006, and due to the war my job (Combat Medic) was listed as a critical skill, which meant that I couldn’t leave the Army. I was going to be sent to another combat team and be immediately redeployed. Since I was stuck, I quickly signed up for nursing school (paramedic training didn’t exist at that time in the Army) and after graduation did my required time working on a medical/surgical floor while aggressively chasing an ICU job. I landed a job in a medical intensive care unit where I spent the next two years doing primary care. I would spend the next 10 years in heart recovery units, surgical intensive care units, and damage control resuscitation teams, to include teaching and instructing various advanced medical certifications.

I dated off and on through all of that until I met someone through mutual friends several years later (2010) who was also an ICU nurse. We talked and traveled to see each other (we lived in separate cities and she spend a few months in Alaska) until we moved in together. We took a couple years to get to know each other and eventually got married. We had a lot in common professionally, which was a nice change and made goals and daily occurrences very relatable. She was smart, gorgeous, and brilliant. I deployed to Afghanistan in 2013 on a trauma team and she decided that she wanted an open relationship a week after I left. I returned home to blame for abandonment and while we attempted to seek counseling and repair our relationship I could never escape her anger and resentment. We divorced in 2017.

I spent the next several years chasing some career options that weren’t family friendly, focused on myself, and enjoyed just being single. I didn’t date (geographic location(s) had a lot to play into that), but mostly I was just really busy and kept myself that way. What spare time I did have was spent in counseling and going to Al-Anon. At this point I’d had been attending Al-Anon off and since 2008. I stopping going when I remarried, but the recurring emotional turmoil with infidelity and how it shifted my view of the relationship forced me back into it.

I’ve been deployed several times (Iraq and Afghanistan) and hit 20 years of active federal duty this year. I’m currently in the process of planning for retirement.

I’ve developed a love of running and have completed 8 marathons, a Half Ironman, a 100k ultra-marathon, and many other races of various formats and distances. I’ve been injured, had surgeries, recovered, and continued to race. As of this post training for the 2022 Marine Corps Marathon starts the first week of July. It will be my fourth time running that specific race (it was also my first marathon) and a future fifth (knock on wood) will earn me an entry every year for the rest of my life. Training and races are fulfilling. I only compete against myself and each event brings a new challenge. The reward that it brings, as well as the life application, is unlimited. It forces patience, getting to know yourself, and a form of faith regardless of your religious or spiritual situation. You’ll learn to push through soreness, weather, and attitudes (especially of others) all the while learning resilience, forgiveness, and failure. It’s been one of the most versatile tools I’ve developed and it’s still going. Most importantly - you meet a lot of great people who have the same outlook you do in these places and you’re there to do the same thing: suffer and finish. It forged a lot of great relationships.

As for my current relationship with my parents: I haven’t spoken to either of them for over 20 years. There’s isn’t an exchange of cards, presents, or texts. It’s complete silence.

When I moved out of my father’s house the rest of my family stopped communicating with me. At 16 they saw it as an act of rebellion and didn’t listen to what I was trying to tell them: I was alone and tired of being alone. I couldn’t rely on my father. He wasn’t a source that I could go to for support or comfort. He might have been physically present, but he was absent just like my mother. We sporadically remained in contact until 2005 which was the last time I spoke with him. He made plans to visit for Christmas and didn’t show up. I was the one consistently making trips home once a year (with my first wife) on an income of less than $20K a year. I had regained contact with my mother prior to my first marriage, which she showed up for, but nobody on my father’s side would - they couldn’t stand my mother so they refused to be there. Historically my parents could never set their personal differences aside in order to support important events in my life; one or the other would show up or no one at all. I was able to address my mother’s past behavior with her, but true to form she blamed everyone and everything else.

My mother did call for the first time about 2 years ago around Easter. In a nutshell the conversation was that she was 65, wished people treated her with respect, and that was the excuse for her poor behavior. She’s just another person to me now. My father as well.

One evening, when I was 14, I was sitting in a church with my high school friends. A woman was speaking to the audience about her many years of addiction to alcohol. It went on for a while. I don’t remember much of what she said, but it was enough to make me approach her after she was done and confide in her that I was living in a very similar environment. She said one thing to me and every word of it was burned into my memories: “Stop talking to them.” At first I didn’t understand what she meant, but she repeated it and said that it would change everything.

She wasn’t wrong. I mourn the loss of my parents. It’s really the only way I can explain it. They’re not there to ask for help and they can’t offer it. There are times I really wish it was different, but I can’t change it or them.

Another question I heard somewhere: If you met them on the street today would you want them to be your friend? That’s a much more direct way of doing an assessment on someone important in your life. If these are the types of questions that are being asked, there’s a real good chance the answer is no.

It has been, and still is.