The Truth
By: Daniel E. Kramer
On Monday, April 13th 2020, I will turn 39 years old and my “License to Drive” will expire. DMV and COVID-19 have not well integrated, despite the Governor’s request to do so. So much for online services. So much for adaptation to the new normal. Now instead I will begin to live Manu Chao’s Clandestino; “Soy el clandestine por no llevar papel.”
Had you told me 10 years ago that I would be sitting in a once a dilapidated (now renovated) 130 year old brick barn, working along slowly on my PhD, trying to run a small business in a time of Pandemic, assisting my youth as a father to three, helping my one and only wife as a lawn mowing husband, online shopping for groceries on behalf of my caring parents, I would have been surprised to find myself in such a circumstance. My life where it is today seems to be a bit of a “Mad World” as Curt Smith sang it so appropriately all of those years ago.
Then again, on April 13th, 2010 I was in much more of a Mad World. In fact, I was in a completely different domicile of the mind.
Now I write this today to tell you (in case you didn’t know), maybe because enough time has passed, maybe because it feels okay to be more open these days. Maybe because as separated as we have become by a Pandemic, we are starting to become closer than ever.
Maybe with all that is going on in the world you will judge me less, and more importantly maybe that doesn’t matter anyway.
On April 13th, 2010 I was turning 29. Inside of me was all of the angst and frustration of a trapped teenager finally manifested into the abyss I was about to throw myself into. My entire short lifetime culminating into a distinctly distilled moment. On April 13th, 2010 I gave up on those around me, on any sense of wrong or right, and decided to allow myself to become both the director and star of my own terrible show. This is what happened. In those moments, around that day I decided to take that one little pill. Wouldn’t just one small, innocent, tempered pill be would okay to take; not for the fun of pleasure, not for the pain of need, but instead for the dulling of the senses.
Escape, escape, escape…escape, escape, escape…shush now slowly…let;s just say it together one last time, “Escape.”
What I was feeling was the world, and it was far too powerful. I just needed something to stop all the talking, moving, thinking, that was my brain and body unleashed into the reality of that time. I needed to stop feeling responsibility, work, life, me.
It started slowly, and then moved in more quickly, filling my body with comfort at first, but then dependence, then addiction, then fear, and ever so quickly I was being brought to my knees. It took six months to drop me. The “curve,” my personal Pandemic, self-caused, delusionally spreading at an exponential rate through my system, through my life, and spilling into the world around me. It all peaked on September 5th, 2010. There at the end of a dirt road, somewhere deep in a vineyard, a place where I could not run, drive, or escape to anymore; there I found a new humility. At that moment everything in and about the curve flattened. In that moment, I realized I was completely and utterly powerless and was ready for change.
What came next was a personal revolution. I got sober. Or better said, we got sober. Totally sober. Dead sober, but in the way that you are still alive, maybe…no definitely, more alive than ever before.
Today, people are sad, sick, dying, living, separated, but still somehow together too. We are connected in this strange event, not matter who or where you are. It’s in the silver lining. It’s in the hope that one person will read this and find a grain of faith to prove change is possible. The silver lining is what to look for. We optimists have hope. Hope that the new normal will be defined by those that rise to the challenge of what is in front us. It is time to modify the landscape such that we are able to not need to get back to normal; not now, not ever.
Normal has been lost for so long anyways. So many “normals with a z” lost within the void of moving too quickly through our daily lives, losing touch with the slowness of the daytime, when you are supposed to lay around in the sun sleeping like a puppy dog or house cat.
I don’t believe human beings were really meant to move through life at such an aggressive acceleration rate. I don’t feel in my bones that living is a daily grind that pushes you along without taking time to even reflect on why we do it. There ultimately is a toll to be paid. I was lost in that toll booth, and then found. Now again I realize in my 10 years of sobriety I can still become lost. To some degree or another, we are always a little bit lost along our way, aren’t we?
Dawning on me now, in these times, is more not less. In this slowing down to a standstill, not leaving the house, not moving on to the next, to the next, to the next, I am starting to realize that I have time to sit and talk, listen, write, and just feel. This is privilege, the privilege of the walking dead, the kind of privilege that only absolution and pardon can bring. For the sins of our ways, better said the sins of my ways, have shown me there is more light than darkness, and more good in this world than bad. Not all is gone.
It may be different for you who have lost so much, have more pain now than can be expressed in prose, and my apologies in advance for the offense I may produce in having a form of buoyant clarity on what may be the worst thing that has ever happened to so many beings in this world. For you, feeling is unbearable. Feeling anything at all is terrifying. Feeling is now being forced upon you whether you like it or not.
When the feelings were finally forced upon me, when I stopped trying to avoid them, when “the medicine” runs out, when you and I sit face to face and address the issue, when I can finally look you in the eyes again, when the world and all its insides come to the surface; that is when we will finally get to know one another, and the good that is within all of us. It is ego that writes this; true, I recognize my own humility wrapped in falsehood. Sometimes it is okay to be a hypocrite; knowing to what level one’s own fraudhood goes allows for change in the face of it. I am being honest as I can be. I cannot escape myself these days, so perhaps I should embrace it. The mirror is now there to be faced, and thankfully I can look myself in the eyes without flinching.
Am I in the trenches, am I helping others, am I being there to assist during these challenging times? No, not directly, not like a nurse on the front lines, not like a facemask, a respirator, or a politician capable of releasing billions of dollars. But I am staying home. I am doing the part of a caretaker, a father, a husband, a friend, a teacher, a son, a worker, a student, a non-practicing addict, a writer.
Ten years ago; that is what I am trying to talk about. In a decade things can happen. With time on our sides good can come of it. We cannot see the future. The worst thing that ever happened to me, that nasty little addiction; that was my silver lining. I didn’t know it then, and yet it was true. I was ready to lose it all, taking my own life was at the top of my then to do bucket list and I didn’t even know it. We cannot see the future, and in that we should give thanks. We cannot guarantee who we will become, and in that we should give recognition in our obligation to be careful as to how we project our outcomes.
The future of this day, in all the bleakness it may be for some, is open for interpretation. Look for the silver lining if you can. Look for the part you play, how you are better, not worse, and what you can do in your own way, no matter how big or small. Maybe it is just sitting or staying at home. Maybe it is being an ear, a hug, a listener. Maybe it is getting sober instead of drunk. Maybe it is feeling it, instead of hiding it. Cry at it, laugh at it, and rage at it if you must, but don’t forget that in every storm there is an end, every night will turn to day, and that we all live and die. We all will die, no matter what, period, hard-stop, end of story. How will we live though; that is the real question.
