Max: 3 AM Blues
It's 3 AM and I am pretty much wide awake. I have spent the better part of the last month in a drug induced haze as I sought to fight off the disease. It would seem the disease is finally going quietly into that good night. As I don't have to go to work tomorrow, I figured tonight would be a good night to go cold turkey from the myriad of narcotics my Doctor had me on to suppress my cough and help me sleep. After about four hours of staring at the ceiling I thought it might be a good time to see if TV is as boring at 2:30 AM as it was when I was working overnights as turkey bacon. It is.
I had no idea about what Jer has been going through these past few days until I read it here. I have always had my own personal compartment in Jer's life. Even when he lived in STL I rarely met his other friends. When I did, misunderstandings and/or GURPS campaigns tended to result. So, I ended up being kept in my cage. In another way, I have been all too aware of what he is going through. Maybe it has been the drugs breaking down my mental barriers. Maybe it has been my unconscious deciding it is time I started facing up to what happened. Maybe it has just been that I am fucked in the head. Regardless, for the past week or so I have been having flashbacks to my daughter's premature birth and all too premature death. Not just memories. I mean brief but all too vivid flashbacks.
Sometimes it seems like life is a process of losing everything you care about. Loved ones die. Dreams fade. Impermanence is often the greatest cruelty about life. This person/thing/event/sensation that means so much and makes life worth living is someday going to be gone and we have nothing to do for it except to try and find something to fill the void. Or to learn to live with the void. Or fall into the void and join the silent majority in oblivion. Each time, with each loss we are faced with that choice. The joke it, none of them are a good choice. Nothing can ever truly fill the void, only mask it a bit. Living with the void means living in pain. And falling into the void only succeeds in passing the void on to others.
Fuck it. I'm taking a Tylenol PM and going to bed.
I had no idea about what Jer has been going through these past few days until I read it here. I have always had my own personal compartment in Jer's life. Even when he lived in STL I rarely met his other friends. When I did, misunderstandings and/or GURPS campaigns tended to result. So, I ended up being kept in my cage. In another way, I have been all too aware of what he is going through. Maybe it has been the drugs breaking down my mental barriers. Maybe it has been my unconscious deciding it is time I started facing up to what happened. Maybe it has just been that I am fucked in the head. Regardless, for the past week or so I have been having flashbacks to my daughter's premature birth and all too premature death. Not just memories. I mean brief but all too vivid flashbacks.
Sometimes it seems like life is a process of losing everything you care about. Loved ones die. Dreams fade. Impermanence is often the greatest cruelty about life. This person/thing/event/sensation that means so much and makes life worth living is someday going to be gone and we have nothing to do for it except to try and find something to fill the void. Or to learn to live with the void. Or fall into the void and join the silent majority in oblivion. Each time, with each loss we are faced with that choice. The joke it, none of them are a good choice. Nothing can ever truly fill the void, only mask it a bit. Living with the void means living in pain. And falling into the void only succeeds in passing the void on to others.
Fuck it. I'm taking a Tylenol PM and going to bed.
posted by Max Dobberstein at 5/10/2005 03:36:00 AM
4 Comments:
Doesn't everyone compartmentalize? Am I the only one doing it? I hope not.
I mean, I'm sure you have friends now that I know nothing about, have never met and am not likely to meet. This kind of thing started happening to us in college. I think I first realised when we were out shopping one day. This cute blond walked up and said "Hey, Max!" First, i turned my head, because I had been using Max as a nickname half-heartedly in high school - I realized that day that you had not only co-opted the nick name, but with the radio show you had going on in college, you had a whole new group of friends that I wasn't a part of. Add in MOPIRG and your other functions and you had a whole different life I wasn't a part of.
Then, there's your wife. I first met her at your wedding. Come to think of it, you met Steph for the first time at your wedding, too. I mean, we had emailed each other and talked on the phone before your nuptuals - but that was the first time I met her face to face.
I don't know why I'm reacting to this. I guess I just hope that you don't feel bad that I compartmentalize you. I guess I never thought of it as keeping you in your cage. I'll try to take you out for walkies more often.
It wasn't a complaint. Just an observation. I don't expect to know most of the rest of your friends. Especially as we are going on just shy of a decade of living in different cities. Just a comment.
How you doin'?
Jer... you're tripping. We met once before my wedding. You were in town for someone else's wedding and the three of us hung out at Max's parents' house on Federer for a few hours. I think we got some grub at some point, too, but I don't remember for sure.
Did I make it to STL after Hud's wedding? Whoa. I totally forgot about that. I flew into Lambert, my Mom and I drove up for the ceremony then drove back down and I flew back to SEA from STL. Wow. That cleared out some cob-webs - totally lost that memory!
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