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All I Used To Be Will Pass Away And Then You’ll See

There was a time, not so long ago now, where I believed firmly that I didn’t get to be happy, per se. I could have moments of happiness, sure, and events or circumstances could make me happy, but long term, sustainable happiness as a baseline was an impossibility.

This, I suspect, would shock a lot of people who know me. I am, after all, a mostly upbeat, optimistic person who seems happy almost all the time. People have commented on that to me, more than once; that I appeared to be happy and upbeat no matter what was going on around (and to) me. So, if that’s how I presented to the world, the idea that I didn’t think that I “got” to be happy feels like a significant disconnect.

And yet.

The trick was that I just didn’t believe in optimism for me. The rest of the world deserved the best, I wholeheartedly and fervently thought, but not me. It was this strange, inexplicable (Well, almost) idea that I was special because I alone was a failure, a bad person, someone who didn’t amount to anything worthwhile deep down. I know some reasons why I thought this, and they’re no longer present in my day-to-day life, but where this attitude came from originally remains a mystery. That part’s important; because I couldn’t explain it entirely, I decided on some level that it just had to be true on a cosmic level.

My therapist, whom I adore for numerous reasons not least of which being her bluntness, repeatedly talks about the session where I told her that perhaps I “deserved” to be happy as the breakthrough session, the one where everything changed. And that might be true; it definitely happened during a time where a lot of my assumptions were being questioned for a number of reasons, changing how I thought about myself and how I fit into the world.

What followed my saying that was a reassessment of my life and who I was and who I wanted to be. A reassessment of priorities and a rediscovery of the importance of kindness and vulnerability and actually feeling things — that part, I’m still working on — and all the messiness surrounding it. At one point, I asked my therapist, “Is this just a midlife crisis? Am I just being a cliche?” and she said, basically, it’s not and even if it was, midlife crises aren’t automatically invalid in and of themselves.

Now, I feel like I… am happy…? It’s not permanent or complete because, well, shit happens and moods change as a result. But I’m happier, and that feels like something, considering that felt completely impossible just months ago. My therapist describes me as being “more buoyant,” and then laughs at how ridiculous the phrase sounds. Another reason why I appreciate her.

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Is How I Feel Right Now

I’ve been thinking a lot in the last few days about the fact that life is time-delayed these days. Last week, I got notice that I had been paid but that the money wouldn’t be available to me for days because of how long direct deposits take. Today, I got notice that my divorce was finalized, and had been for more than a week, but I hadn’t known because the information hadn’t been passed through the system just yet.

Things happen, and then they happen again, days after the fact.

It feels like a lesson in contemporary physics. Instead of thinking that actions and reactions are particularly instantaneous, we learn that’s only true when it comes to events between natural or physical objects. The more abstract the area gets, the longer the delay, perhaps. If I push you, you’ll either steady yourself or fall over immediately. If I push at the edges of an idea, there’ll be the delay where however I push at that idea has to be received by an audience, which then has to translate my new concept into something they understand, and then apply that to the idea in question, and so on.

(To make that last matter more meta; I’m writing this on March 4, 2019, but it won’t be published on this site for some weeks afterwards. See? More delay. Things happen, and then they happen again.)

It’s very strange, and not a little disconcerting, to go through such life-changing events and experience everything that comes with them — all the emotions, all the feelings and thoughts and questions and everything — only to then have a moment of, Wait, this actually happened awhile back and I didn’t realize it at the time. Or, the opposite; to pre-feel everything and panic and stress and know that it’s almost ridiculous because that isn’t actually happening just yet.

I know how I feel right now, but I also know that’s not necessarily based on all the facts at hand.

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Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right

I don’t really get angry. Not historically, at least; bad things would happen to me, and I would simply suck it up, accept it as my lot and continue onwards a little bit more hurt, a little bit more grudgeful.

I’m not sure how that attitude got started, and I’ve spent countless therapy sessions trying, believe me. Was I trying not to be a bother to anyone as a kid? Maybe; I don’t remember being a particularly angry child, though, just one eager to be noticed and adored for being helpful and funny. (Not joking about the helpful thing, though — my childhood love of Power Man And Iron Fist comics inspired me to declare that I had started a business called “Helpers For Hire,” based on that series’ Heroes For Hire conceit.)

I wasn’t an especially angry teen, either. Teenage angst reared its head, of course, because I was a teenager and, worse, one beset with acne bad enough to place me on a drug trial for something that never made it to market. But that didn’t make me angry, just sad and lonely and withdrawn, retreating to comics and a small group of close friends despite whatever crushes and curiosities made me want to reach out further to the world at large.

As an adult, anger remained absent. Again, I’d get frustrated and sad and all these alternate emotions, but everything would turn inwards and become self-blame and self-shame. Why get mad at other people (things, events) when I could just get upset at myself and think that I probably deserved it, after all? Not that that was healthy or helpful, because it wasn’t, but such things were never in my head; I just assumed things were my fault on some cosmic level for mysterious reasons that might be the same as those that kept me from feeling anger. Like I said, there’s been a lot of therapy time spent investigating the roots of all of this, with no real conclusions yet.

(That I was sharing my life with someone who was equally happy to blame me when things went wrong or undermine my self-worth didn’t help, of course. But I didn’t realize that for a long time, either.)

I mention all of this because, as I write, I’ve had a particularly stressful week, and very little of it — if any — was my fault. In dealing with it, I’ve found myself getting angry for once and, even more shockingly, expressing that anger to both those responsible and loved ones (not directed towards the latter, thankfully). It’s been a freeing experience in some ways, an educational one in others. But, more than anything, it’s been exhausting. Anger may be, as John Lydon once swore, an en-err-gee, but it’s also something that saps energy, too.

Anger, perhaps, is a young person’s game. No wonder the children are the future.

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Radio (Or The Contemporary Equivalent) Lab

A thought that I’ve been having on an irregular, but recurring, basis for sometime now:

Curating a weekly podcast in which a writer, chosen by me, contributes an essay (read either by them, or someone of their choosing within reason) of around 10 minutes in length. Each calendar month’s essays are all based around a shared theme also of my choosing, but the writers are free to approach said theme as they see fit. (In an ideal world, I am able to pay each writer for their efforts, of course; I’ve already done the mental math in my head for this bit, worryingly.)

Themes and authors are chosen with no logic other than my intuition and curiosity. The overall idea is to create a themed magazine of 40-60 minutes every month with different voices (metaphorical and literal) discussing the same topic from different angles, celebrating the diversity of thought and opinion, while also sharing fun stories and bringing writers of different backgrounds together in a virtual sense.

In my head, it’s called The Anthology.

Maybe one day.

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And, Doggone It

So, I asked for a raise from one of my outlets.

(I would have asked for a raise from more than one, but I suspect doing so from the second might have ended with either a no or, worse, a “What if we paid you less instead?” which, as surreal as it sounds, is what happened last time I tried.)

The entire notion of asking for more money is a fraught one for me, tied up with issues of self-worth and selfishness and the like; the very idea that I could think, “You know, I do so much for you guys and it’s actually much more than it used to be, I think I deserve to be paid in such a way that reflects that,” comes with a sense that I somehow have ideas above my station and deserve to be swatted down for it. It’s not a good way to be, I know — I’m in therapy for a number of reasons, after all — but it’s there and I have to deal with it nonetheless.

All of this was exacerbated by the way in which I had to ask, which saw me screw my courage to the sticking post and make my case to my immediate supervisor and then, following his okay, have to make my case in more detail, with an argument for why I’m worth it, to his boss. (Admittedly, my imposter syndrome has to deal with the fact that I have been approved once already, but still.) It’s this weird, awkward experience that forces me to wrestle with my own insecurities multiple times, with me thinking, Actually, never mind, I’m fine, the whole time.

I’ve not heard back, yet, as to whether or not I’ll get the raise. It’s the limbo part where decisions have to be made and balances have to be checked and I’m here, feeling simultaneously anxious and self-consciously proud for having raised the subject it the first place. But if I don’t get it…? That’ll be awkward.

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See What’s Become Of Me

Watching people compare their 2009 looks to their 2019 looks on social media has been a strangely disorienting experience, not least of all because the photograph I’ve been using of myself for whatever official purpose necessary — judging the Eisners last year, for example — are from earlier than 2009. What can I say? I… don’t age…? Or maybe that’s just the story I tell myself.

(To be fair, it’s not like I have publicity photos, per se; I don’t like being photographed, at all, and the one I’ve used so often was simply taken on a trip that I thought I looked reasonable in. I think it’s probably from 2007 or so, if memory serves.)

I have aged, of course. It’s just that it doesn’t feel like something that is particularly visible, for the simple fact that I’m bald, and I have been since before 2009.

There is something genuinely liberating about having no hair. Think of the decisions about haircuts and styles I’ve avoided, not to mention the haircut disasters I’ve missed, if nothing else; I’ve thankfully managed to skip out on having ill-advised moptops or dye jobs purely because they weren’t possible. (Otherwise, I know they’d have happened, sadly.) As heartbroken as I was upon discovering my baldness, via an errant photo of the back of my head about 20 years ago or so, I’ve never quite gotten to the point of wishing I had hair again, or pretending it was still there. No wigs for me, friends.

With a lack of hair, however — or, more likely, a lack of receding hairline — comes a strange kind of agelessness, where people seem unable to guess how old I am, and I look essentially the same now as I did 10 years ago. Or, at least, I did before I grew a beard; a 2018 addition that was part sad-beard and part wanting to make a change, it has all the white hairs and age that would otherwise be on the top of my head. People keep telling me it suits me, which is nice, but that could simply be manners and politeness.

Either way, were I to put a photo of me from 2009 and one from 2019 next to each other, I suspect people wouldn’t see a fine aging or anything similar; instead, they’d say with some justification, Oh, I guess he grew a beard.