\t\t\t\ti’ve never felt this before, unless i count the homesickness i felt
\nin the 3rd grade. i can’t shake it, and i can’t explain it.
\nsomething that should be holding me together is evaporating through my
\npores, blasting out of my head and extremities. i don’t know loneliness
\nlike this. i hate to say it but dropping off of social networks and text
\nmessaging may have contributed to my awareness of that numbness. part of
\nwhy i drink is to numb the continuous pain of depression, and i drink
\nthese days as much as ever, but it doesn’t seem to work like it used to.
\nthe weather has been all over the place, too, which helps none in
\nestablishing tranquility. i remember the 3rd grade, when i felt sad and
\nhomesick, enough so that i took my woe to the teacher. i remember the pain
\nof homesickness. it was real, and it hurt. but in my memory i can’t say
\nwith certainty if the pain was real enough to merit what seemed like
\nseveral hours of alone time with the teacher. i had a crush on that
\nteacher. all the boys did. but the homesickness was real, and the pain
\nwas naked and new, as it would be to a 3rd grader. i imagine i was lying,
\nthough, to extend my time with the red-head teacher.<\/p>\n
the next time i remember that
\nmuch hurt was in college, when a girl dumped me. i fell to the floor and
\ncried, holding my stomach and kneeling in pain. i thought to myself “I
\ndon’t like this. this hurts.” it was a moment of clarity, in its way, an
\nintroduction to the reality of emotional unrest and pain. during that same
\nperiod i also confronted, for the first time, the pain of my father
\nleaving us. this subject came up in an otherwise congenial “getting to
\nknow you” conversation with a friend, who delivered a long account of his
\nrecent life history before saying “enough about me, tell me about you.”
\nfor some reason i skipped everything before March 30, 1981, jumping
\nstraight from infancy to the day daddy walked out, and i busted out
\ncrying, tears racing down my face and over my shirt, deflecting off of me
\nand on to the bed on which i sat. the friend across the room handed me
\nsome kleenex but seemed to welcome the outpouring. it was a completely
\ndifferent tone of subject matter after his good-natured account of his
\nlife’s journeys, but he seemed to receive it with a glimmer of happiness,
\na seemingly inappropriate attitude from him which i nonetheless
\nappreciated for its generosity of spirit and friendship. he smiled while
\ni wept.<\/p>\n
i thought of this
\nincident many years later when, at work, i met a man who knew a former
\nemployer of mine. the former employer was an individual for who. i worked
\nfor 4 or 5 months before she fired me. when i learned that my current
\nco-worker had known her my sense of vindication lit up. at the time i was
\nriding high in corporate, a reasonably successful Director at a
\nTime-Warner company. i wanted her to know about this. i wanted this
\nperson to tell that former employer that the guy she fired those few years
\nback had gone on to corporate
\ngreatness, and that she should have let *me* run her company. instead i
\nsaw that my co-workers eyes had lit up, and that the mention of this
\nformer employer of mine (and what turned out to have been his best friend
\nin the world) filled him with a sense of honor. i was about to
\ntell him to send my regards to the woman but he spoke first, saying “I was
\nthere with her, holding her hand, when she passed away.” she had died a
\ncouple of years earlier. my confused emotions of the moment started with a
\nrising feeling that this was my chance to get back at her, to let her know
\nshe fired a *winner* and not a loser, and that the problem with the work
\nenvironment was not we employees but the employer, and the work
\nenvironment. instead my rush to schadenfreude drowned under the reality
\nthat i would never get that chance to let her know that her firing me was
\nthe beginning of my path to greatness. then i was strangely puzzled and
\nimpressed by the look on my co-workers face when he described her death,
\nand his presence with her at the moment of her passing. he spoke of it
\nwith pride, even pleasure. he felt it was a privilege and a responsibility
\nto have been allowed in that room where she died, to have been the one to
\nhold her hand.<\/p>\n
my friend who handed me the tissues as tears belched from
\nmy eyes seemed to have a similar sense of honor and responsibility,
\nfeeling that if he had no control over my sadness than at least he should
\nfeel privileged that i would trust him enough to expose myself like this.<\/p>\n
more recently i had a friend who seemed to boast of the fact that i called
\nher first the day my father commit suicide.<\/p>\n
these stories are connected by a string no thicker than a strand of a
\nspider’s web, but they bring me back to today’s feelings of sour
\nsolitude, the feelings that the torment i have known for so long can no
\nlonger be stopped from slipping into backwash.<\/p>\n
maybe i just need a drink.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
i’ve never felt this before, unless i count the homesickness i felt in the 3rd grade. i can’t shake it, and i can’t explain it. something that should be holding me together is evaporating through my pores, blasting out of my head and extremities. i don’t know loneliness like this. i hate to say it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-3sG","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}