Now That I'm Forty...


Born in New York and now going to die in New York. Someday.

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Now That I'm Forty...

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Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Last Night...

No no, I mean what I DID last night...

My job has been playing 'mail the paycheck' for the past few payperiods and my home post office makes 'Birth Of A Nation' look like 'Raisin In The Sun'. Can I tell you--one teller was cussin' someone out on her cellphone while she was helping a customer, and then she cussed at the customer because she was already annoyed? Anyway, this equated to me getting my check as late as Monday, when it was SUPPOSED to be making my funds available on FRIDAY. So I stayed in all weekend playing, and cashing in my dimes at the corner store for foodstuffs. Tuesday morning, I went to cash the check at the local check-cashing joint because I couldn't wait for my bank to decide when it was going to trade my deposited check for currency. Ever been to one of these check-cashing places? Quite darling, I assure you. Homey little establishment. Well, complications after complications and then finally I gots my money. However it gave me a late, disorganized start to the day, which didn't get too too much better. My Tuesday clients are challenging, to say the least. I mean, these kids are not your model, go-to-the-therapist-and-have-a-good-cry type of clients. More like, what-the--do-you-want-here type clients. It's like walking through a landmine field while clashing cymbals. It's not a small contributor to my anxieties, may I add.

But anyway, by the time I was done, and heading back across the GWB to Manhattan, I realized how tired I was. I had an appointment to meet up with Childhood Bud and others in midtown for more games, but one had cancelled and I was just flat out. So I called it off, and went home. Then I set out to deposit the cash I had left over from that morning's check-cashing/rent-paying delve (yes, take note of your calendar. I had to wait until now to pay it, why? LATE PAYCHECK, WHEEEE!!!) And I went to the A-train to go to midtown to the closest ATM of my bank (no, they haven't ventured as far north as Untamed Harlem yet. Will they ever? Why should they, the unmitigated snobs.) And when I got on the train, it suddenly occured to me what other option I had, now that my night was free.

I went to The Brooklyn Tabernacle for prayer meeting.

Needed it. Needed needed needed needed it. Oh God, Esquire, how I needed it (and by 'it' I mean 'Him'). Do you folks know what it's like for strangers to put their arms around your shoulders and ask the divine power whom they believe in to do helpful, healing things for you? Even Blanche DuBois believed in the kindness of strangers.

And the message of the evening was all about forgiveness. As if I needed it! I am A Counselor! Licensed Therapist, if you please! I know all about the values of forgiving others so you can be free your own self. Yet guess what? Guess who's a bitter and resentful northern son, cursing two decades of his life, and the people who he felt twisted his dreams into a nightmare of ignorance and racism?

Go on, guess.

And it doesn't really start there. How about the narrow-minded sycophant preacher who I gave my life to for ten years prior to my journey to Missouri? What about my resentment against him? How many times have I dreamt of going up to that church in New Jersey and screaming accusations at the man until I reduced him to a sobbing wreck? (And believe me, that would only be a dream. He's far too solipstic to believe that he ever did anything wrong in the handling of my young life. When in my opinion, all he had to do was be responsible. Think in the long-term of who I needed to become, and then guide me there. Instead, he just used me to build his own empire). When I left him to go to Missouri, I got about as much regard from him as George Jefferson gave Tom Willis. He'd have his secretary write me letters and maybe once threw me some money. A man I'd worked with for ten years--no, actually eleven. Out of sight, out of mind.

Oh wow, did I realize last night what baggage I have. And through the church service, I actually felt what a relief it would be to let it all go. How much energy does it take to hold onto resentment? You want to know? Think about letting it go, and then you'll know--because you'll feel all the pistons chugging to life so that your defense-mechanisms will click into gear to help you desperately hold onto them. It's too much. It's too much. What will it get me? Why should I work SO hard at trying to make people pay for what can never ever EVER change? The years are GONE. I can't get them back. I can't get back the relationship with my dying mother that I traded away in loyalty to my insular, blindsided pastor. I can't insert missing life experiences that were supposed to turn me into an adult by this age. I can't un-decide to go to Missouri in a naive fog of idealism, believing that I'd become the Sambo Darling of the Hungry Midwestern Churches. I can't trade the years of counseling education for an MBA in accounting where I could be in a nice, quiet windowless office on Madison Avenue 40 hrs/wk with the radio playing NPR, and my brain checked outside in the reception room with my overcoat, making 1.5 million a year just because I got hired by a company with more dollars than sense. I can't insert my gene pool into a developing family fifteen years in the past so that tomorrow my wife can pick me up at the train station and get me to my son's first summer league basketball game in time so that I don't miss him finally getting his shot on the starting line (or somesuch sporty reference).

I can, however, let this crap go. I can use my energy for looking forward instead of backward. I can take responsibility for my own choices and freaking LIVE with them. I can be the father of a 15 yr old when I'm 55 just as easily as I could be now at Forty, and even better if, by 55, I SETTLED MY CRAP WHEN I WAS FORTY.

I'm going to settle my crap.

The settling of my crap began last night.

Crap.

Settling.

I forgive you. You were yourselves, and it was me who chose to give myself to you--you didn't snatch me from my mother's home. Yous didn't throw a burlap bag over my head in Spring Valley, New York and shuttle me through some reverse-Underground Railroad to Missouri. I drove my car ten or twelve times with vigor across that Mississippi, singing all the way. You have some responsibility in the matter, but the ultimate responsibility remains here in my lap. Me. Me me me.

And you know what?

I forgive me too.

Me at 7/14/2004 10:24:00 PM