Garth Bigelow - Thoughts

My 46th birthday. What I realize today that I am thinking of fatalistically as my final birthday. And I'm sick as a dog. I've been sick for the last three days. Something I ate, I'm fairly certain, but god knows what. Had stomach aches all that first day and then got the call to vomit with just enough warning to make it to the john. Ever throw up so much you had to flush halfway through? Not fun.

Today I awoke thinking that I was over it. I went to massage therapy and then to physical therapy (when they both landed on my birthday I had thought of rescheduling but realized I didn't really have anything planned except maybe dinner and/or a movie and that would all be after.) Then I made the mistake of eating. Bob Evan's biscuits and gravy. Comfort food, easy on the stomach. Nope. Wanted back out almost as soon as I got it down, and back to the couch I went. Refusing to lose my last birthday, even if I had few plans, I have rescheduled it for Monday.

I forgot to mention that while I've been sick, I've been unable to sleep. Can't get comfortable so I just toss and turn all night. Leaves me in a daze during the day where I just drift in out of consciousness. Not sure why I can get more comfortable in the lounger or on the couch than in bed, but I can - unless of course I TRY to sleep on the lounger or chair. For three days, extra Xanax, sleeping pills, beer - nothing does the trick. Last night I go with all three - the hat trick of desperation - but it works and I sleep for about eleven hours.

Now it's morning and I'm starving, which I take as the sign that I have kicked this thing. I go with the usual supermix for breakfast anyway, one for the nutritution and also so as to not give in to the hunger.

I try to sleep with no aides. I toss and turn for a long time, but somewhere along the line I do fall asleep.

It's Saturday, we go to Gram's. It's packed and there are at least three tables with multiple kids. For some reason, I'm feeling invisible and feel I can handle it. As we wait I start noticing I'm losing my train of thought a lot. I'm pretty sure I'm blacking out. I ask Dan to tell Tammy we are moving out to the porch and I hurry out there.

It's so quiet, the temperature is just right, I'm out of the sun, and there is a light breeze. The sounds of the main road I'm imagining as a river. A feeling of serenity comes over me and I realize, I'm not feeling any pain physical or mental - I'm comfortable. There is no buzzing or chaos in my ears, nothing is disturbing my ears. It's perfect. I'm scared to move. I eat slowly. I join in and out of the conversation with the table of regulars next to us as I feel. I tell Dan he can leave when he wants, I'm not moving until this feeling passes. Dan elects to walk and leaves me the car.

Tammy doesn't come out to the porch often (I don't figure she's really my waitress any more, Dan has already paid the check) but when she does I get a refill on the ice tea. While it's still full inside (it's seems like more are coming in then going out) there is one more free table out here, so I figure I'm not stealing any potential customers/tips from her by lingering.

The feeling persists, except for the occasional motorcycle, it's all piece and tranquility. I'm remarkably self contained and for the most part not even thinking - just staring at the parking lot as if it were a lake I had a deck on. I'd enjoy spending a week like that. The table next to me grows from two to four people. The originals, Someone and Steve, own a pizza place out where Graves meets I-4. This is an area I haven't explored much, and I learn a little about that area.

Dan returns having realized he has no way to get in the house. I let him take the car, the walk will do me good, if I ever feel like moving.

Eventually as I knew it had to, the temperature rises past comfortable. I leave a tip for all the ice teas and off I go armed with only a napkin. I rapidly realize that I don't have my walking shoes so I'm going to have to go rather slowly. Marshall swamp is down to about a galloon of water. There are small trees growing on very dry land where just a few years back Tracy and I daily observed a submerged couch disolve in the muck.

I get home, Dan isn't here. I start working on setting up the background, text and pictures for the month of May on this page. I have the day seperator but not the background when Dan calls. He is at Cumbersomes, the key won't start. The ignition can be tricky so I try to talk him through it, but he calls back a little later having given up. I walk to Cumbersomes - although this time armed with my walking shoes and a towel. It's a beautiful day, bright but it isn't bothering me like it should. And it must be very dry, because I'm hot but not sweating much. Turns out that the spare set of keys includes a key for the old car, not my current car (the spare key to the car hanging uselessly where I left it on the refrigerator door.) How it started the car back at Gram's will forever remain a mystery.

I barely got the rent and credit cards paid this month and at that only by wiping out the last hidey hole of emergency money. Even still I continued to put off the email I have been procrastinating on for almost two months. Even though I done my best to put it together as a good business deal, based in part on selling my business and in part on selling some of my life insurance, it still felt like begging. And if you've been following along, I have strong feelings about not being able to support yourself. My primary objection to asking for help was that I didn't feel they would feel that they could say no, even if they didn't think it was a good deal.

I tried to push through this thinking. One thing I've learned over these last seven years is that people get just as upset when not given the chance to help.

So today, with my back against the deadline of another month looming, I finally sent the email. I had had months to compose it, but when it came time to write it it had to be dragged out of me one broken sentence at a time. The final product was appeared to have been constructed by drunken monkeys. A bit of rewriting later is vaguely approached some form of coherence and I pressed 'send.'

All that was left was to check the email for a reply about twenty times.

Today was split between watching TV and compulsively checking my email for a reply from Mary K.

I was thinking it was Thursday and before I discovered my error I had missed my massage therapy appointment. I am able to reschedule for Monday, but that slip of the brain is going to cost me in aches this weekend.

I was working out whether I was seriously considering emailing Fred with the same offer. I figured it would cause more of an internal conflict with Fred and really would be fair to ask him. But they were the only two I could think of that might be in a position to help whom I knew well enough to ask.

Mary K, called around 5. She didn't ask single question beyond "Do you need an extra up front?"

A wave of gratitude swept over me. I know the genesis of why they have become such good friends (which really had more to do with Tracy than me) but that "debt" had already been balanced overflowingly so many times since. I did my best to express how much this means to me.

The rent will get paid, as long as I survive (unless that becomes burdensome to them). And its weird once the amount of cash flow I needed no longer seemed impossible - as I now only need to cover the bills that come directly from my bank account and the minimums on the credits cards - I suddenly became more interested in working again. I still can't concentrate for shit, but that night I finished one of the DVD menus and covers that had been waiting for months.

I awake depressed. Viciously, self pityingly depressed. It pisses me off. I know its chemical, no more based on reality that the previous week's euphoria. Still great things had happened recently:

I had a plan in place to enjoy my remaining time on this planet.

But depression can not be reasoned with. I'm 46, I don't expect to attain 47. This thought, and how unfair that is (a concept I'd previous come to accept calmly) prevades my thoughts. Feeling I'm unfit company, I go to Gram's alone for breakfast. I try to bury my head in the paper, but can't concentrate. I dwell, I brood. I eat slowly, and try not to scowl when Shiela makes small talk. Later I sit on the bench outside Gram's reading the paper for what feels like forever. My mood does not improve.

I try to be comforted by the idea that this will pass while I sleep.

Back at the house Dan has hole up in his room. I try to watch TV, but my meditations turn dark. I go to work. Yesterday's DVD is posted on the site. I finished off two other strangler's and post them as well. I also remove those DVDs that are being officially released soon (a constant battle of watchfulness) and fix a bug in one of my routines that calculates the weight of a package. Compared to recent weeks, a lot gets done.

We order pizza and watch TV, my mood lifts a little.

I go to bed early, tomorrow is another day.

The mood has passed thankfully, and I feel fairly sharp today.

I am once again typing from the future. It is actually the 29th, and will probably be the 30th before I am caught up. I haven't made a lot of notes, so mostly only the big events are going to get the play. Luckily (and in two cases 'un') there were some rememberable events.

Life is a zero sum game. (I have no idea what this note was meant to remind me of...)

Business has been only a fraction of what it was back in the days of eBay. It seems like ages since I've had to buy supplies, although I'm cutting corners like stealing ink from some printers to keep others running. I use two different types of DVD blank - this is because a better one came along but to make use it I would have to change all the artwork for labels for the DVDs. Instead I started making the art for better DVD for the new titles, which now out number the active "old" types. Today we didn't have enough of the old type blanks to complete an order so I called a very small order in to Horizon and headed down to Winter Park and headed out on my way to pick it up.

On route, Ruby calls and says what I need is at the old building in Longwood. Once in Longwood, I call her and she talks in, turn by turn to the building. This is where we use to buy from them long ago. I thought this was just a warehouse, but it looks like a fully functioning storefront and much closer to me than the Winter Park office.

My order is just arriving to them, as I arrive so I have to wait while it is pulled.

The clerk is woman slightly older than me, and I don't remember how it came about (although I'm rarely shy about it) but I opened the conversation to my being ill and then most of my life story was extracted from me. She said she was dealing with her mother slowly dying, and was very praising of me and my attitude. I gave her the website for whatever she could get from it.

On the drive home it occurred to me that I should have gotten her name, and have offered to be an ear if she needed one.

When I got home I had an email:

This was the first push toward getting back to working on this site. It would take two more.

I've got to be vague here, not to protect the guilty (turns out to be me) or the victim, but another blissfully ignorant party who is better off that way.

Brad, has emailed me almost three weeks back. The email is pushing me to write someone else. The tone and implications of the email have been slowly building an anger in me. The damage to my Amygdala does allow strong emotions (should have been my first clue something was wrong) so sadly I pick at and feed the fire - just basking in truly feeling anything. And today it erupts in a letter to the other person, which I also email to Brad. The letter exhausts me, but feels good to have it done. That feeling lasts a week until I get a response and realize that I have everything wrong.

I'm watching "Lost". In it Charlie, knowing he is going to die, is making a list of the ten best moments of his life (actually it turned out to be the 5 best moments - but at the time I thought was ten) and this got me to thinking what those would be for me.

My Ten Best Moments (when done, that will be a link)

My site is StumbleUpon'ed and the stats explode.

This is a graph of the hits on this website, which previously had averaged from 0 to 20 a day. Then on this day, while reaching to click on the toolbar above it, I accidentally clicked on the StumbleUpon toolbar button for "I Like It" while I was proofreading my site. (I know it looks like I NEVER proofread these musings, but I do take a stab at it from time to time.) I had noticed that a few of my pages had previously been discovered by Stumble, but I happened to be working on "My Twelve Rules To Live By." That day the page hits exploded, as shown above, and have been slowly tapering off ever since.

This same day I get an email:

It makes me feel a bit better as I had been losing interest in the site.

The calm before the storm.

I receive a response to my letter. In my original letter I make the point that my memory is pretty much shot and especially the time period of High School when I'm pretty sure I was a long shot short of sane I have maybe twenty concrete memories. But I had reached out to others for info. And from deduction, instinct, the fragments of memories I did have, and outside info I came to what I had felt were solid conclusions.

It appears I was wrong. Worse case scenario wrong. Actually worse than anything I had considered. I learned things about myself I did not want to, about who I was then. Worse the letter was from the vantage point that I was lying to protect my reputation or in denial - definitely a possible contributor given the anger I had tapped into that should have been able to generate organically.

Time is getting away from me, as I figure out how to respond, when the words will be viewed with suspicion and self-interest. And I am still processing the implications of the email.

I made a decision, a long time ago to take a story to my grave. As early as a year ago while working on this site, I knew with certainty that that was the one story I wasn't going to tell. That I shouldn't tell, that it would only hurt. But I can no longer hold the big picture in my mind any more. I'm never certain, and every secret I give up has ended up making the world a better place. "We are only as sick as our secrets," they say in AA. And I think telling it, would help this situation (not telling you reader, but the people involved) but I remember being so certain and I really can't evaluate it now. I feel I'm missing something.

Also how does one apologize for events he doesn't remember?

As of the 29th, I still haven't responded. I need to find the words. I should have used today when my mind was crisp enough to work on this, but I haven't found the words or come to terms enough yet.

As I think I mentioned earlier, I plan to have a little life in my life before I drop. I plan to stop working when Tracy arrives on August 6th. We had discussed a cruise as something I would be able to handle, given the limitations of how little stimulus I can handle. Actually booking the cruise proved to be a challenge. Anything new is very difficult for me to arrange - I don't deal well with confronting 'new'. But by playing 2 million questions with my very patient travel agent, we finally booked a cruise today. Seven days in the Caribbean on the Carnival Glory.

I'm very hyper today. I can't sit and watch TV. This turns out to be a good combination for getting things done. I get 6 covers done, posted to the website and four of them posted to my website. I get several menu parts done so Dan can finish menuing some new material. I catch up on a bunch of email. This last part turns out to be not such a great thing, because verbally (and the written version of verbally) I'm sounding crazy as a loon. I think I was coherent in terms of thought. My work was solid, even surprisingly good. But looking back at some of the conversations (Chat records everything)... well here is an example:

Tracy wisely fled at this point.

I haven't touched this website since Mother's Day. I had had a project in mind for that day, and that had been the first stumbling block. Then overwhelm and confusion stifled my flow. The universe tried, in equal measures it felt, to nudge both to and from typing. This day I received this email. The timing and content were perfect. I don't believe in Buddhism, but the ideas behind the concepts, pushed at me hard to work on several communications I had been procrastinating on, clearing the decks for catching up on this site (admittedly you've been spared a few political rants, and I'm sure I've lost a lot details) and working on the email that has been eluding me.

Clearly the universe still has a little work left for me to do‽

My prediction on the price of gas falls flat at the last moment. When I made my prediction the national average for regular was $2.17. With a week to go it was $3.36, but as of today - the day in question - it has fallen back to $3.08. 42 cents off. A smarter me, would be able to figure out where I went wrong. This me has lost his grip on the bigger world view.