you'll be proud of me

im 4 weeks into an 9 week program that basically helping you break an additction- in this case, to cigarettes. But what they dont know is that, internally, im not only going to stop smoking... im also going to break my addiction to all things. Because ive had enough, this year - 2011 - was a turning point in my life.


It is in this - my 32nd year here - ive finally opened my eyes and see the world; seen life; understood things...

it is in this year that i decided, i will never, ever allow myself to be in debt to anyone... or anything for that matter.

So i spend the year working my debt off, and well as stated im 5 weeks into a 9 week program about how to quit smoking...

We're all supposed to quit on the 5th meeting. Which is this Sunday, 6-730 pm.
Ive decided that my last cigarette will be at 5:55... and thats it, 16 years of smoking will come to an end. Oh, ironically, i started around the age of 16.

Anyhow, i digress... so this sunday im also using it as an opportunity to break my other  addictions. But whereas quitting to smoke can be done like pooof - cold -turkey - breaking my other addiction will take a few weeks... because from all the research and studying ive done over the years on this, i have to do it gradual- they say somettimes slowly - but i want to start 2012 clean-- debt free-- both in terms of money and in terms of health... i think when you abuse your body then on some level you also owe a debt, in this case a debt to your health.... and i decided i dont want to owe any debts to anybody.

I HAVE 3 WEEKS TO GET MY ACT CLEAN - because i have faith, i believe, i want to achieve my goals, to see my dreams become a reality.

But that’s the thing, you see; im scared to become one of them

Who is them? Them there, the ones you pass everyday, the one that search in your eyes, they are, them are the walking-numb… they are just numb to life, of life, from life. They have seen it all and have accepted, they don’t put up they fight, they don’t have energy to fight. They are worn with fear, worn to the core, or they are medicated, or they hate, they helt themselves AND their loved ones for not being there for them; but more than that, for knowing their loved ones don’t really want to here their cry for help. And from all this – this disappointment, this fear, this hate – all this excess of emotion has overridden their being, their core, and so they have shut-down. They are numb. And when they walk down the streets, when their eyes meet yours, its them searching, without knowing, for others just like them.

From the backseat, looking at the road ahead

We’re going 80 down the highway and just as I type this I hear my cousin say, “ah fuck!”

I look up and there it is, the snaking red lights of a traffic jam winding up ahead. Ah, seriously. Fuck.

Oh well. So, other than that, the ride started pretty cool. I got in, got situated, and we had good conversation from the get-go. Conversation flowed as if I see them every day, and conversation stayed on all things positive.

Conversation lasted until my phone rang, it was work, and so I felt obliged to answer.

A colleague had some questions, questions not to do with the office but about his own company, he wants to go independent, but he’s unsure of the path forward. 

Odd how so many people think I know the path forward, maybe I give off that vibe, but between you and I well I don’t quite see the path.

I know my work, i think if you were an objective observer you would think that I’m quite accomplished, though internally I know that all signs point otherwise. I mean… I pop pills just to get through the day, if im invited out I usually turn offers down – id rather be reading, writing or watching TV then socializing with people; listen I socialize enough at work, it’s a large company.

As im writing this Goody interrupts to let me know, “Look there, Jacob, that’s where we’re getting married!” he’s pointing to a clearing just off the highway, and though we’re flying right by I can just make out the outlines of some sort of convention-center.

Goody’s fiancé, Ilikeher, has just offered a great big smile and started speaking about the wedding plans. I think at this point im supposed to speak up so, well, I guess I will do so. Close down this laptop, when I get to Aunt Anger’s place I’ll quickly click post on this. 

Dinner should be interesting. It’s going to be Aunt Anger, Lecturina, Goody, Ilikeher and I. BTW, I just named her Ilikeher because the moment I met her I realized, she’s cool, nice, a good heart. Therefore I like her – she cares. 

She’s a social worker, odd to think that she, my cousin Goody’s fiancé, is a 30 year old social worker. Weird to think that my little cousin no longer little is now getting married. 

It’s just all weird, everything is so weird, weird is not the right word for all this, these things going on!

My Friend Ruby

My friend Ruby is a transplant like me; born in one country but raised in another.

One day she made an observation, one that’s so succinct it stays with me on and on… we are travelers at heart. We are never settled. 

She theorizes that this is due to us being born in one country but raised from an early age in another. When growing up in the states she, like me, never felt native; and when we came here to visit – on summer vacations or whatnot – we felt like tourists. 

Ruby is on Citalopram, also known as Celexa, .25mg x 3/ day. She’s been on it for several years now. Wiki says: Citalopram is approved to treat the symptoms of major depression.  

I remember when Ruby first told me that she was on the drug, I was surprised, not in the fact that she was on an antidepressant, but in the fact that she was so open and comfortable talking about it. She said to me, “You remember, Jenny, right? From college?”

“Yeah, your friend, I remember.”

“And Michelle?”

“Yeah, you guys all went shared the dorm.”

“Yupp, anyhow, we’re all on it, it’s like the new it thing, I mean Celexa is totally fine, it makes everything OK!”

She then continue to talk about the beauty of SSRIs, a class of medication which when its all boiled down comes to, “This class of medication makes everything OK.”

Random BTW

The drive from where I live to his mom's apartment is about an hour. So i have decided that IF i go i'll be writing part of the time...

i wonder what i'll write about, whatever it is i'll have to do so with good old fashioned pen and paper, and then retype it. Sounds a bit fun.

Another thing... before relocating to LA (I was 4 at the time), we used to live in the town where my aunt lives now; in fact, our apartment was just above hers.

So going there always brings back memories, good memories of the fun summers i used to have with my cousins - i'd be shipped off from the states, arrive with my suitcase, and stay with them for at least a month.

Those were good times because, well, we were just kids, we didn;t know better, and our whole purpose in life was to just live the moment, to just have fun, the kind of fun that doesn't cost a penny - playing hide and seek or tossing the ball.

The town is a beach town, just outside the 3rd largest city in this country, and so often times we'd head for the beach and just waste hours on hours playing in the sand.

But waste isn't the word for this, certainly this time of my childhood, summer days brimming with pure energy, were anything but wasteful, they were what they should have been... the basis of a happy, healthy child who has yet to comprehend, experience, understand the harshness that is life.

Another [the next] Friday – Forecast: partly cloudy with a chance of Goody, Lecturina and Aunt Anger bringing either sun or rain

Sitting at the new café, the one that just opened, the one I visited the other day. Now considering what my plans are for this Friday.

My cousin, lets call him Goody cause he’s a good-kid (though not a kid anymore, he’s 30), called me the other day and invited me to ride with him and his fiancé up north to his mom’s place for dinner. His mom, my aunt (dad’s older sister), is much like my dad in the sense that they come from good, old-fashioned we work hard class; this we work hard class has anger management issues, probably from a childhood void of parental emotion – they’re from a farm, my dad shoveled shit for much of his youth. 

On top of that they’re 1^st generation post-Holocaust, and from what I understand (in general) the kids of Holocaust survivors experienced a silence.  Said survivors were so traumatized that they would not speak of the horrors they experienced, internalized the pain and built great big walls of denial. They’re kids suffered a silence so loud it passed through their blood, and affects the grandkids generations on.

Aunt Anger is strict, stubborn, frugal yet I know she very much loves her family… though its hard for her to express this love; her expression of love comes in the form of regulation – she regulates the lives of Goody and his older sister… lets call her Lecturina (word root = lecture and Ive slapped on the ‘ina cause she’s a girl – woman – 34 years old). I’ve christened her Lecturina because she always wants to lecture everyone.  This is a really annoying habit, and I think it comes from a complete and utter disappointment in her life. 

Anyhow, so Goody invited me to go for dinner at his moms.

Truth be known, I suspect that my dad spoke to him before he left the country, maybe asked him to check in on me or keep me occupied with family. I suspect this because since the invite, Goody has been overtly aggressive at inviting me out; at first it was for dinner with his fiancé two nights ago. I turned this down, thank you very much. And now it’s tonight’s dinner invite.

Will I go? I still don’t know… but I'll have to decide ASAP – Goody will be calling shortly.

Depth of Debt

I moved to this country a little over 4 years ago, and I started working full-time non-stop within a week of my arrival.

Like a machine, ive been working working working, for a while it seemed like the drive to succeed was breathing life into me, and as I succeeded I felt more alive.

It surprised me how easily I succeeded. It still suprises me how it feels like in terms of work im succeeding. I worked so hard to establish a name for myself, and now that name seems to open doors. Yet I just don’t want to step through, more and more im turning down work.

That’s not like me; well, it used to need be the case, I used to wake and look forward to going to the office. Now I don’t anymore. I just don’t care. And the sad thing is, sometimes it feels like me “just not caring” is what most people deliver at work… and that seems to be OK. How is that OK? Or maybe it is, OK for things to be just… no one cares. It’s OK to not care?

Though my salary places me in the top 10% of scale-wage (I think), it still doesn’t seem to help me get out of debt… a debt incurred in my 1^st year here. Well, actually, to be honest I guess im working through it, today’s salary wiped out bank debt and put me in the positive for the first time in about 3 years. Yet I just don’t care.

Because there seems to be more debt everywhere I turn… no longer debt to my bank, now there’s debt to a credit card. And electric. And taxes. And rent.

But there is another kind of debt, the kind that’s not physical, it is a debt to the ones who care because you feel like you’re failing them, you’re making them worry and you don’t want them to worry, “please don’t worry everything is OK.”

Please don’t worry. Everything is OK. 

Do you want to hear the truth? Because if I speak you might have to listen, and if you listen it might be too hard to bear. So please, don’t worry yourself, everything is OK.

I don’t really have transportation debt because I walk everywhere. I walk a lot. Ive become “a walker” over the past 2 years… it feels like im always walking yet getting nowhere.

When I walk I see the others, the one that search my eyes – they look – and maybe they’re scared – because in me they see themselves; the truth reflected, a truthful reflection. 

How can things be this way? Why are so many of us so scared?