Post-Breakdown Road Trip/New Job

Two days ago I decided to go on a little (actually it was like 9 hours) road trip to Central PA. I just started some time off between jobs and it was necessary. I've always enjoyed thinking time, which is what I use baths for and used to use bike riding for in elementary school and junior high. These are good times to let your mind wander and try to see yourself for who you are. I had to leave my other job because I spent the past two years in a state of shock (I guess you could call it a very gradual nervous breakdown or prolonged anxiety attack), so I was overdue for some deep, deep reflection away from my apartment and in the heart of more natural areas.

This breakdown started when my last girlfriend and I broke up and I started my last job. She and I were very close, but moved way too fast, creating a mountainous honeymoon period and very low breakup. We lived far apart when we dated, so when we met each weekend it was like a little vacation. Our feelings were real--I don't mean to be slight toward the relationship--but I think part of the allure was that we were living in a fantasy when we were together. It was a trip to meet each other, and often we went on road trips together. Everything was a vacation from the families we didn't get along with. When we moved in together (she being from the area I live in now, me moving an hour and a half from home) that kind of ended. She was really jealous and didn't like my writing in privacy, I didn't share her video game interests--we saw that we were doing too much separately, I guess, and couldn't quite understand how we went from such passion and shared experience to this drift. She expected me to help solve all her problems, but I could never go to her for help and she never took the advice she wanted so badly. Even after a year together, we didn't know each other nearly as well as we thought.

After one "fight" where she guiltily insulted me for a while, I began the tailspin. I was living with her and her family for two weeks until she and I could find our own apartment, but I went home alone that weekend to my mom's. On the ride there, while I was stuck in traffic for hours, I developed this pain in my legs. I kind of thought I was getting blood clots, but it ended up being a nervous tic which involved muscle contraction and cutting off blood to a part of my body I kind of liked using a lot. So sex became very painful and impossible. Driving in cars became very painful (so much vibration). In fact, as our relationship deteriorated--we broke up two months after moving in together--and my job took me nowhere, I became so miserable and pessimistic that I was in this pain essentially all day for about two years. I believe now that misery is a choice, but it's not an easy choice to leave. We can find comfort in depression, and I was stuck in that hell for a long time.

After that fight I felt like I had no one, which is why I had the intense physical reaction. I've never been able to go to my parents emotionally, something which still bothers me a lot. They'll buy me things, but they can't open up. I feel like I can't trust them. My dad, the ex(?) alcoholic, and my mom are very afraid of life. They tend to push their insecurities on you. And with my brother in LA, my good friends starting to move around the country, and my girlfriend turning on me, I really felt like what security I had was taken away. I was moving to a place where I only knew this one person, I had to move there for work, and going in it was obvious that everything was falling apart. So I willingly walked into that fire. I forced myself to pretend it was alright, because in my family everyone pretends. My parents pretended their marriage was fine, though I've seen them be affectionate maybe twice. My dad's family pretends he's never had a drinking problem. My dad's family pretends to be okay with my grandmother's bullying, drinking, control, and insults. So I didn't really see another option for myself, until I could grow enough to teach myself a way out. I went with the abuse, and she and I became pretty cruel to each other.

I realize now how deeply insecure she was, which is why she felt the need to belittle me. Not that it was right, but it doesn't bother me anymore. I understand it. At that time, it was just excruciating, and I felt like my life was over. This was the best relationship I had and it completely transformed. I also hated my job and now got to use it to pay off my schooling. I worked hard at the job, but their rules were never stable and after a while it was hard to take the job seriously. I would get in trouble when I excelled and get in trouble when I didn't. It felt like what I did had no real value, and after a while I stopped feeling like anything was real. I just kind of drifted miserably from weekend to weekend, not really enjoying anything. I also developed a drinking problem, until I started getting shakes the next day at work. Then I stopped. By pretending all the time and always expecting a punishment at work or some personal criticism from the girlfriend, I developed a performance anxiety in relation to my total life. I couldn't even look at a billboard without feeling agitated, because I knew a certain reaction was expected of me. When I talked about my job with the girlfriend or her family, they always asked why I wasn't advancing faster, even though I'd just started. And the job had no advancement opportunities. I agreed that it was a bad job, but after having some of that security slip away, it was nice to rely even on that place, as perverse as it sounds. I hated the job, but could count on the money, the same way I still lived with the girlfriend even after we broke up. Funny how we stay dependent on things which are slowly killing us. It's easy, and after a while pain is comforting because it becomes your new normal. Instead of taking it easy and getting more help, I would still try to "force" sex. I'm even amazed now sometimes that my sexual interest has come back, because those were pretty bleak times.

I give a lot of credit to Jung's dream therapy and Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy for saving me. I saw a doctor who gave me medicine for prostatitis at one point, but that wasn't it. I always knew, from instinct, that this was a mental issue. The doctor seemed to suspect the same, though he didn't quite say it. I didn't want to believe it at that point, because I knew a medicinal problem would be easier to fix, but I did persevere. It was the worst few years of my life, but I learned so much about self-respect, fear, and being comfortable from it. Before recently, I'd never really had moments of comfort. Not for long, anyway. I used to have a lot of dreams with people chasing me, and for a while I couldn't even fantasize about sex normally. It would just look weird, awkward, and wouldn't happen, even though it was my fantasy. I felt like the things I'd enjoyed had been stolen from me and started to cut myself off severely from everything around me.

Aside from my psychological experiments, I also used my writing to carry me through. This is one reason why I decided on that road trip. I wanted to head to the area I've been writing about in Horseshit. I wanted to see the real location and the places I love there, while immersing myself in the area for a bit before I begin what I hope are the final major revisions for the book. I even burned some CDs of the period music I listened to when doing the first draft.

My love affair with this region actually began thanks to that girlfriend. We took many road trips around State College when she came to visit. Renovo was our favorite place. I even appropriated their still half-razed, abandoned school for my book. There is something sleeping in these hills. A lack of time, I guess. I always like that sense of displacement, which is why modernity is often boring to me. Few areas are more beautiful than Pennsylvania's dead coal region. This time I wanted to see some new places--blip towns, I call them--and took the turnpike to Route 422, then Route 61 to 147 and 45, which finally brought me to State College. I took 322 and the turnpike back home. I felt like I got to live in the book a bit, perhaps in the same way that Charles Schulz referred to the Peanuts characters as his kids, though I'm not as bitter and spiteful as that guy.

From the weeded train tracks to the collapsing sheds and communal dilapidation, I feel an awe in Central PA usually reserved for sex, certain music, dreams, or a really nice sunset; those rare things that make me feel at ease. State College is the only area I've felt was home to me, and I want to live out there when I can. The locations are not expensive, but the job options are often nil, so that will have to wait for the teaching certification (most likely) or if I could actually put out a successful enough novel. Until then, I'll be driving and dreaming. I missed having a partner, but my jaw was next to the pedals as I crossed the bridge near Sunbury, took in the 60s shop signs (you'll find a local drug store before you see a Rite Aid, though CVS is visible in the region), and dreamed up stories for the local and lonely kids straggling home after school with their old hoodies and broken backpacks.

I made a little pit stop in State College to get food (grocery store!) and check out the campus. I haven't been to Penn State for a year, but it was very therapeutic. A lot of memories with the girlfriend came back, much stronger than I expected. But I didn't feel sad, I felt pretty good. I no longer thought of our insecurities, I focused on the good times we had together and how I could easily let that be and have a lot of space from that relationship. The campus was a little estranged, though. It's a bit humbling when you feel older than kids who are seen as "the youth," even though I'm still young. My old parking lot has been under construction for a while now, but I finally got to see the finished structure. Instead of making a gradual update to a block parking garage, they built a sloping glass building. It was like the future saying, "We don't need you anymore." Penn State was still available to me, and I'd like living among the Mennonites in that area, but it wasn't my place anymore. The memories became more memory-like. I've moved on, happily.

A few months ago I was going to post something about my childhood addiction to sadness. That was during one of the last times I drank. I deleted that post. I'm watching the same sunset, though, as when I wrote that. I feel the kind of clarity I used to have when I took that strong cold medicine people now use for meth. Though it probably sounds silly to other people, this kind of trip, even if it was solitary, was very necessary for me. I no longer have the nervousness or physical problems. Feeling safe, I could finally understand how I hadn't been able to express myself sexually during that time, especially as those old arguments stripped away my confidence; and that final piece of the puzzle just kind of slid into place as it was dark and I drove out of State College, watching the harvest moon turn silver over the mountains and creek beds.

September 26, 2006 is when I began that job, so it's almost the two-year anniversary of these problems. The road trip was a fitting conclusion. I gave up the bad relationship, the alcohol, and got a new job last Friday, which I start in one week. These were the main problems holding me back. Growing up, my mom's always tried to instill in me the knowledge that sometimes you have to deal with things and people you don't like. Of course, this is true; sometimes you can't help it. But you can also choose to leave situations which hurt you, and you should be adult enough to do that if you can't fix them. I wish my mom would do this more herself, because she holds herself back by "enduring" unnecessary things, like staying married to my dad for so long and always looking for people to save her. I felt guilty so long for not being able to deal with that job, when I'd get in trouble for going above and beyond what was required. I felt like something was wrong with me for even thinking of complaining, because I've never really had anyone in the family to vent to. And the whole time I was actually pulling my penis into my body, almost, as a way of reeling away from what I thought were dangerous forces. But I slowly built up my confidence and respect and dealt with these things, so I'm very proud of myself. In many families, the first to go to college is a family hero. In my family I'm not the first to go to college, but I am the first to deal with these problems, to not be forced into a cage by shock treatments, manic depression, alcoholism, or depression and anxiety medications. And, after a series of dreams where I've fought or avoided peers playing games, I've finally had dreams where I'm playing games with them. I found some peace, and I think this is the first time in my life where I can say I've actually acted like a man.

And that's how I spent my summer vacation...