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40 days

February 22, 2006

this is a lot. i've talked about almost everything. this is harsh. this is personal. this is pointed. this is angry. this is different. this is a long time coming. this is the truth. this, finally, is the truth.

i brought my copy of "office space" to friend amber. she watched it, didn't get it, but saw how others could. she understands that it's an experience thing.

years ago, i worked in the industrial building complex where many of the interior scenes were shot. the evil and non-handicapped lumbergh parked his porsche in the handicapped spot right in front of our offices, where chandra and i would park when we drove in to work together.

our hero, peter gibbons, suffers from a malaise. he's burned out from working in his cubicle farm. sometimes he thinks his prissy girlfriend anne is cheating on him. everyone else thinks so, too.

he gets hypnotized into feeling peaceful and free. then the hypnotist dies in mid-hypnotizing. so, peter has a falsely-induced epiphany, that nonetheless leads him to change his life. suddenly, his drone-like existence means nothing. he just wants to have dinner with jennifer anniston's character, and watch kung-fu movies.

in recent weeks, a feeling has grown. it's been prodded along by my feeling less and less a part of the environment at work, less and less in tune with the work itself. errors abound, despite my good faith efforts to be attentive and thorough. and i don't want to associate at all with most of my coworkers.

last week, i let the marathon consume me, and it was welcome. after months of training and focus, the goal i wanted was before me, the one that i cared about, had worked so hard for, had found true friends in.

and now, after the marathon, i am hypnotized, trapped, at least for now, hopefully for long enough, in a place where i don't care anymore about the lies i've been living.

this afternoon, i took a late lunch to help a friend bury her cat. i hugged my friend. we dug a hole, laid the cat carefully within. i touched her fur, and it still felt real, still felt alive. it was real. it mattered.

i came back to work. phone messages - "i need to know my rights. a dentist was rude to me." "i can't believe you dismissed my case. i'm devastated," from a hypochondriac complainant that i still worked and managed to negotiate some result for.

i went across the street to the coffeeshop. some people take coffee breaks. some take smoke breaks. i had a lone star. returned to the office. got several faxes. bullshit mickey-mouse games from an attorney that doesn't have the good faith or intelligence to accept the olive branches i've extended.

i cleared off my desk in about 3 seconds. it's all layering my office floor now, covering the carpet. i often wonder if the floor ever gets vacuumed. it won't tonight. i left at 4:40, and now i'm here, with beer, and i don't care. it was either leave, or walk down the hall and tell my boss that i quit.

my life has, so far, been primarily about half-assedly living other people's dreams, making just a minimal effort to meet the goals that others wanted for me, my own wants and needs and best destinies be damned.

i've writhed through the years of being an attorney. i tried to find a niche, tried to give it a fair shot. but i've always known better. being an attorney was never my dream. law school was a choice that was really my failure to choose and pursue my own dreams over those of my parents. it was an acquiescence to fear, both of disappointing them, and just of them.

the marathon, however, was a revelation. four hours and fifty-four minutes became my forty days in the desert, beset by the temptations of quitting, of resignation, surrender. i suffered through a little pain, a good deal of doubt, a lot of questioning of who i was, and who i was going to choose to be on that day, running 26.2 miles in the sub-freezing cold.

who i was going to choose to be. what i was going to choose. what my life would mean, right then, at that moment, in those hours, for all those miles. only my choice. for once, no one else could make the choice for me, against me.

for one thing, they weren't even there. couldn't be troubled to be there, despite my endless talking about the training and how much it meant to me, despite the reminders, despite the plea to them a week before, slightly drunk, still a little beery and teary from the pre-race party in which our head coach, steve sisson, spoke, sermonized, ministered to us about the spiritual journey we had been on, and the consummation of it all that we would experience in another week.

they couldn't be bothered. after all that i had given for their dreams of what their son might turn out to be, after all i had given for what they had wanted, after i had lived through the disappointment of being less than perfect, less than right.

as a child, my worst offenses, those punishable with a belt, were talking too much in class (in the few hours i ever had to be around and talk to other kids), once forging a disciplinary note (see: fear; see: belt), and once missing a bus, which was bad enough for my stepfather to tell me that maybe i could go spend the night at the YMCA, that they'd take me in for awhile.

a year ago, my mother told me that i only got the belt once, and she hadn't known about it until she saw the long, solid welts it left, and that she confronted my stepfather and never let him use it again.

what an amazing thing denial is. lots of people get the belt. but to deny it happened, to forget the piddly offenses that i earned it with... i can still hear the sound of the built-in drawer in the walk-in closet, the crisp snap of the belt doubled. i still remember the sun on the grass through the glossy green oak leaves in the back yard, me, around 10 years old, tied to it, threatened with a bullwhip. a bullwhip.

denial is easy. memory, that's a bitch.

after all my heinous crimes, there was the night at the pizza parlour, when they put the brochure for allen military academy on the generic red and white checkered vinyl table cloth. i saw kids with blank faces, hollow eyes, marching, looking blankly at their teachers. maybe that's what i needed. maybe that's what would set it all right, and make me in the image that didn't reflect their own failures.

i never did drugs. i never drank until after college. i never snuck out of the house. virgin until... well, later (not that much later, but a little later. but not late, just not early).

it was not enough. not enough to be the first on either side of my family to finish college. not enough to be the first to get a graduate degree. not enough that i try to be a good person, though i sometimes fail. not enough to have the love and care and respect of some of the best people i could ever know.

it was not enough for them to be there, not at the start, not along the way, not at the finish. maybe because this dream was mine, and it had nothing to do with being the top-gun, top-paid lawyer. it wasn't bragging rights for them. they couldn't be there, just like they couldn't be there when i got to read my one published piece at the texas book festival, in front of a crowd, a crowd that laughed, and cried when they heard how proud i was of my mother and how hard she had worked to make herself something, and to give me a life. they asked, liz carpenter, an icon i was so honored to meet and know for those few hours, asked, if my mother was there, and she was not.

i had told them about it, reminded them, reminded them the week before, and they said they'd "like to go." i called and left them a message about it the night before, but later that day, when it was all over, i got only a voicemail - "hi, we're in montana. can you pick up our mail?"

my fifteen minutes lasted longer, when i was asked to read the piece at zachary scott theatre. friends came. i was able to coerce my mother into coming. again, i saw laughter and tears through the spotlight, and hugs and words from people i didn't know, but i still don't know how much she saw, how much she heard.

i don't want to deny my part in the course of my life. ultimately, the failure is mine. failing to make the choice even to rebel, if necessary. the fear was strong, and reinforced, but i wonder at how much of it was weakness and cowardice.

i don't want to be unfair. my mother's life in america was all about sacrificing for me. they overextended themselves, moved to a better school district, given me things i wanted, and, of course, given me the tools and resources to succeed academically. they did probably all they knew to do. and it was enough, enough for me to go along, to keep my mouth shut, to blame not just myself, but only myself for failing to make my own life.

but i would trade it all to have my life, my life. to have had my strengths and dreams recognized and cared about and supported. to have them at least call and ask me how the race went, and care just because i do.

but last sunday, at mile 12, 16, 21, i didn't need them, or their approval, to make me strong, to keep me moving through the cold, up the hills, through the pain. i wasn't driven by fear of them. i had truer friends that braved icy roads and freezing temperatures and early sunday morning hours. and, more importantly, i had me. mile after mile, minute after minute.

it's so hard to break away from all of that, from them. so hard to escape that black hole, the remnant of the star, the center and light of what parents should be, the collapse of a gentle, essential gravity into something from which my own light, my own image, cannot emerge.

four hours, fifty-four minutes, nineteen seconds, of pain, doubt, friendship, truth, belief. 40 days in the desert to fight my demons, to learn truth. and like peter gibbons, i didn't seem to snap out of it afterwards. 4:54:19 was enough. 37 years has been enough.

steve said that whether it was the first time you crossed the finish line, or the 50th, you would never be the same. it sounded profound at the time, but i understand that better now.

tomorrow, i'll tell my boss that i'm out by the end of march. from the end of the marathon, that will be, roughly, 40 days.

Posted by Rob at February 22, 2006 05:45 PM

Comments

Posted by: Michael at February 23, 2006 01:25 PM

Posted by: Hez at February 26, 2006 02:44 PM

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