Holy Shit

Today goes down in the annals of history. Under the careful guidance of her mentor and mother who leads by example and encouragement, I am so proud to announce that on this 17th day of August in the year 2006, my future Mensa member of a toddler has achieved total control of her bowels and has made a poo in the potty.

This Nova Mama is so proud, she could cry.

I Have Mental Problems......The Sequel

This totally crazy thing used to happen to me when I was a kid. I would hear a voice in my head that would tell me to do something and if I didn’t do it, I would have to suffer the consequences. For example, if I was too chicken shit to jump off a 10’ high roof (as a 4’ person should be), the voice would say “if you don’t jump, your mother will be killed by an axe murderer.” And so I would actually convince myself that by jumping-even if I broke my leg in the process-I would actually be saving my mother from her certain bloody demise! Of course I would jump! What kind of sick and twisted kid wouldn’t?! Oh wait…who’s the sick and twisted kid?

Around the time that I was being plagued by these disturbing voices, my mom was finishing up her PhD in psychology. Interesting coincidence, no? I remember clearly the day that we sat in my kitchen and I explained hearing these “voices” to her. She was (naturally) excessively alarmed. After years of reading behavioral psych books and prepping herself for conversations of this nature with total strangers, I think I took her rather off guard when, at about age 9, I told her that I was hearing voices that predicted her grizzly dismemberment…and that of my father and sister too. Looking back on this day from an adult perspective, I believe that she thought I might be showing signs of early onset schizophrenia. She made me promise to tell her about the voices every time and we devised a strategy of talking back to the voices to tell them to go away. I’m not sure that my 9 year old self was able to properly convey what the real problem was. These “voices” were not random or external, they were not coming into my mind out of nowhere and commanding me to do something dangerous, the voice was MY voice. It was my way of pushing myself to overcome my own physical or emotional boundaries. And for some reason, the only incentive that I could come up with that was convincing enough was the threat of death in my family. Thinking back on it all now, and knowing who I am today, I think it really had more to do with an overactive imagination, some dark creative genius, and some very deep anxiety.

I was reminded of all of this--the voices, the darkness, the death and dismemberment--the other day when Joe failed to show up at my house on time….or even within many hours of on time. In fact, no phone call and no answer to my 10 or more attempts at reaching him. And so, fed by my anxiety, my imagination began to go haywire….and once the blood and guts start oozing, there ain’t no stopping the imagination train that’s heading straight to Horrorville. In my head, I had Joe tripping in front of a car just in time to have his head run over, his skull crushed with a great POP that left brains, blood and eyeballs spattered all over Bloor St. Or maybe he had been attacked by a dog that went straight for the neck and he bled out, blood spewing like a fountain with every weakening heart beat. I can still see his eyes starting to go milky as he gasps for one last breath, blood bubbles forming from his open windpipe.

Okay. So Joe wasn’t dead (though I could’ve killed him when he finally DID show up, but that’s another blog topic entirely). What is it in my deeply disturbed brain that causes me to go to these awful places? And why does it seem so damn real? When I was a kid, if my dad was late coming home I would work myself into an absolute panic within minutes. I was able to convince myself for SURE that he had been killed in a car accident, a head on collision with the most gruesome outcome possible. I was orphaned in my own daydreams more times than I can count.

These images that I can conjure in my imagination don’t feel like make believe, they feel like memories, like I have actually SEEN Joe’s grey matter mashed into the tire tread, or my dad’s face break through the windshield on impact, his body hurled through the air like a bloody rag doll. It’s enough to make me feel physically ill sometimes. And now, as a mother, there is no greater pain that I can imagine than something awful (so awful I won’t even write it) happening to my child. I could cry just thinking about it. So why do I do this to myself? It’s emotional masochism and I can’t seem to turn it off.

Now before you go calling the insane asylum on me, let me tell you that I KNOW these things aren’t true. It’s just my overactive and runaway imagination, spurred on by some anxiety disorder that probably has a name. Having lived with this for so long, it has become manageable. I’ve developed ways of talking myself out of a panic and bringing myself back down to reality. I do know the difference between reality and delusion, which is what separates me from the truly insane (among other things, I hope).

It would be easy to blame all of this on the trappings of the modern world. I could argue that images from horror movies, TV shows, or even the 6 o’clock news have all contributed to my bloodbath of an imagination. Furthermore, my anxieties are constantly being fed by the “fearmongering” and constant speculation of terrorist plots that is rampant in the media recently. I mean who isn’t feeling more anxious these days? Anyone with even a shred of OCD has been bleaching the bathroom, washing their hands, and checking the stove with greater gusto than ever before. It’s just this world that we live in…it’s making us all crazy! Sorry, I don’t believe it for a second. As the brilliant Viktor Frankl once said, “We cannot control our surroundings, we can only control our reaction to our surroundings.” And, having survived the Holocaust, he should know that our surroundings are not what drive us to insanity but rather our internals.

So now that I have exposed my own craziness, my Nightmare On Elm Street anxiety disorder, maybe you can start feeling better about your own particular brand of lunacy. And don’t try to tell me that you’re completely mentally sound, I’ll only think that you’re suffering from acute delusions of grandeur, which, in my untrained opinion, is crazier than I am. Yes, we are all nuts in our own special way. But before I go and check myself into the loony bin, I think I’ll give David Cronenberg a call and see if he wants to collaborate on a film. After all, it’s a very thin line between genius and madness.

The Socially Acceptable Alcoholic

The other day on the phone, my ex (who is currently residing in rehab for a myriad of substance abuse problems) asked me if I was drinking a lot these days. I lied. Then it hit me...was I lying to him or was I lying to myself?

I feel as though I am living in a subculture of functional alcoholics. With very few exceptions, we all drink too much. Drinking has become such a normal part of everyday life that we don’t even realize anymore that this is NOT normal everyday life. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. What is it that makes us all drink so much, why has it become so important to us and at what point does it become not acceptable anymore?

This dirty little secret that we all share is not just confined to my group of friends. No, it’s an addiction that we share with an entire group of likeminded, upwardly mobile, left leaning, music loving, hockey watching, financially comfortable, fun loving and style conscious individuals. We are a generation of young adults who are caught in a routine of working and drinking, and not much else. Is anyone else dying of boredom?

Our intentions are always good. We’ll set out to play poker, play baseball, go camping, have a good talk, go to the beach, whatever. All of these are activities that should be able to stand on their own two legs, all really fun things to do. But then, every single time, without fail comes the inevitable question: “So what’re you drinkin’?” As if it’s an official rule of Texas Holdem, YOU MUST BRING BEER. You cannot raise the blinds without first being half in the bag. And then, after the activity has taken place, we all go out and celebrate its successful completion with a few rounds of beer. Does anyone else see the redundancy in this?

Nothing means anything anymore. It doesn’t matter what the event or activity might be when really it’s just a thinly masked excuse to get together and drink. It all just becomes meaningless. We are not moving forward, not furthering ourselves on this planet, not becoming better or smarter or happier. The alcohol has dulled our expectations of life and made us content with simply maintaining our existences. Life is now filled with meaningless chatter, promises that are only made to be forgotten, and that special morning feeling of guilt mixed with headache and an empty wallet with nothing to show for it.

I am not trying to preach, I am as guilty as anyone else…sometimes even worse. I’ve thrown a stink eye in the direction of someone who turned down a beer. I’ve probably even goaded someone into staying out way later than was advisable and I’ve definitely called a man who was trying to get home to his woman “whipped,” which is the surest way to get him to stay. We are all instigators, we are all enablers, we are all addicts. We each have our subtle (and not so subtle) manipulative ways of ensuring that we all remain on this sinking ship together, all of us going down.

Take a good look at how much you drink. Now take an honest look at how much you drink. How much money do you spend on a weekly basis to “rent” your beer? Really think about it. Do you lie to yourself or others about how much you’ve been drinking? Have you ever woken up and thought “I will NEVER do that again” and then done it again? Have you ever called in “sick” with a hangover? Have you wondered why, at age 30, you still get zits? Perhaps your clothes aren’t fitting properly and you’ve had to “upgrade”? So remind me again…..what’s so damn good about drinking that makes us do it all the time? Are we really such insecure, unimaginative, two dimensional people that we need alcohol to be fun? Are our lives so stressful and constantly miserable that we need the booze to calm ourselves and relieve the pressures? Please tell me what it is because I have forgotten why this is supposed to be fun.

I think that we could all stand to learn a lesson from my ex who is very hard at work, and for the first time, learning to be honest with himself. Let’s all be honest with ourselves and ask “What do I want out of life?”

Okay……now put the pint glass down and go get it.

(NOTE: Try filling out this questionnaire and see how you do. Mine was downright SCARY.)