Frustrated. It started because of a book...

I've had a nice quiet long weekend with Mr. Salted; we went to see "Star Trek" and I didn't fall asleep, yesterday he grilled steaks, etc. etc. My ankle is hurting all the time now, and I'm not doing anything beyond the ordinary. I just take ibuprofen for it and listen to it pop when I walk. My last support group meeting is tomorrow night, and in a couple of weeks I'll have the six-month appointments with the nutritionist and exercise physiologist so we can resubmit to insurance for approval for surgery. I also found another dentist to go to; a friend of a friend is the hygienist. They won me over in part because they don't charge for nitrous. Sure, I have to drive an hour and a half, but if I like the dentist, I don't care! I'm going to try and stop the exercise physiologist visits for a while, at least until after I've had ankle surgery and am coming back from that; the last few months, it feels like I'm just setting fire to the copay money.

So, I read this book in a day and it frustrated me. The book is "Tweak" by Nic Sheff; the subtitle is "Growing Up On Methamphetamines". (His father, David Sheff, wrote a book about his son's addiction and their relationship, called "Beautiful Boy". I haven't read that one yet.)

Let me just say, I applaud anyone who has the courage and takes the time to write the truth about their life. I think the more books are out there that show what the world is really like from different points of view, the better. I wasn't as mad as everyone else seemed to be at James Frey, but I took creative nonfiction classes at university. As a writer, I err more on the side of writing your memoir as you remember and experience than what everyone else tells you happened, but that's neither here or there with this particular book.

The writing isn't bad at all--not terrible, but nothing particularly special, either. However, the attention to detail is fabulous, and it's a quick read. I read another review of "Tweak" on Visual Bookshelf or Goodreads that said every addict's story is the same. There is some truth in that statement, though I find it to be a gross overgeneralization.

I was frustrated by this book because its author had not only every opportunity in the world and two loving parents, but a seemingly endless supply of family friends and people that just fall out of the sky to help and care about him--and he's too deep into his disease to be cultivating those relationships, they are just there for him whenever he decides to need them. He says at various points in the book that he knows what he's thrown away and who he's hurt and how alone he feels, but then his parents are still there to pay for treatment and therapy and rehab and sometimes college and he still has their connections so that he can go on book tours with his father and have this fabulous career at the end. I felt manipulated when I finished the book--yes, addiction is harrowing, and the drug life is full of unsavory people and needless suffering and death--but how "on the edge" could this person really have been when he had not only a lot of advantages, but his youth as well? It was all just there waiting for him, whenever he decided to start appreciating it--it wasn't like he was just born into a mess he didn't ask for. Coming up from that, if you can, takes decades--and it ain't glamorous. I can attest that there's usually no book tour, with your father or anyone else, at the end.

I think this book frustrated me on a number of levels that have very little to do with Nic Sheff at all. Whether or not every addict's story is the same, every person's story has value. I don't care how rich or famous you are--I don't think anyone is born automatically more worthy or interesting than anyone else. There are a great many of people who could have been contributing more positively to society in any number of ways--if there had been someone there to pay for their rehab, their therapy, or help them to go back to school--or just love them unconditionally and try to keep them safe as they grew up. There are a lot of people who don't even get to breathe anymore because they happened to not be lucky or have the inner strength to keep plodding along through life and trying. The people who get to write these bestselling memoirs are, nine times out of ten, people who had some semblance of a safety net, whether it was parents, husband, Great-Aunt Matilda, or all of the above. I'm not just frustrated because of my own life and its path to date, though that certainly contributes to this rant...I'm thinking of a thousand tragic stories I've heard--and a million more none of us will ever get to hear. It doesn't seem fair that this is true when there is so much to learn from every person's life experience--including that of Nic Sheff.

I want to make this frustration I'm feeling now motivate me to try and do something more with my own talents, much as I have transformed many negative emotions and experiences in my early life into motivation to achieve as an adult. That's what I'm going to try and take away from this today.

Ten years after

"I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends
Soft as it began-
I loved my friend." --Langston Hughes

Today is the tenth anniversary of the date my best friend died. Despite my best efforts not to focus on this, it has been on my mind all week. (I call him my best friend because we were friends from age six on, and the whole concept of "best friend", for me, is very much something rooted in childhood...I have a number of amazing friends and they are all the best in whatever unique way they are. Really, he was more like a twin brother, emotionally speaking.) I think maybe this anniversary has been on my mind because it's two digits' worth of years he's been gone now, and a decade is a long, long time.

He was an absolutely amazing person, someone who still makes me laugh every day in memory. He was smart, sweet, goofy, and kind. I never laughed or cried harder with anyone before or since, and there was no one more fun to go dancing with. He remembered everything, even and especially if it was embarrassing, and he was an incredible mimic. He loved words and could make up parodies of songs at the drop of a hat. He loved classic Looney Tunes, "Dallas", "Golden Girls", and cowboys. He was a nurse by trade, and the letters and cards he had from the families of his patients would make Chuck Norris weep.

When we were both in our late 20s, he left a bad relationship and relocated cross-country, ultimately ending up helping me leave one of my own. After all that happened, he and I were roommates for a couple of years, and we had a fantastic time living together. I'll always, always be thankful for that experience.

I've been trying to write a book about his life and our relationship for the last ten-plus years. I was actually writing about the friendship years before he died, when I was in school getting my writing degree, and I always got positive feedback on that writing. I haven't ruled out fiction--I did publish one short story that was loosely based--but it somehow didn't feel right. Then I thought I would write a memoir--more his than mine--but in writing it, I found that it was as much or more my story as his, which has definitely stalled me at times. (I'm very inspired by Augusten Burroughs and Haven Kimmel's memoirs of themselves and other people at the same time--"A Wolf at the Table" and "She Got Up Off the Couch" in particular. "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt, too. Lots of them.)

So what I have done so far is just write a couple of pages--a vignette here or there, thinking I would try to get them out and put them together later. I feel like I can't write anything else until I get this story written. One day not long ago I wrote the following, thinking it would be the end of the book; maybe it should be the beginning, or maybe it's just me clearing my throat, in the literary sense, and it shouldn't be in there at all.

At any rate, I really wish you could have known him. The world is a better place because he was here for a while.

****

So much is different now, ten years after. So much is the same.

Since you’ve been gone, I’ve had a pedicure, been on a cruise, actually attended and mostly enjoyed a high-school reunion, been divorced, been remarried, had a tubal pregnancy and several miscarriages, had a hysterectomy, gained weight, lost weight, bought and sold a home, changed my address and my job three times, got some medication, lost a couple of cats, got a couple more cats, learned about good tequila, stopped giving a shit, and started giving a shit. I’ve hated myself and I’ve loved myself and I’ve become closer to some people and further away from others and I’ve found some peace, but there’s still so much that I seek and know I may never find. I think sometimes I could have been anything if I’d been born into a different family--but that, I’m afraid, is true of almost everyone who was ever born in the first place.

You never met the husband that I have now. He’s so laid back, gentle, kind, good, funny; I know you would have absolutely adored each other. In almost intangible, subtle, yet not at all creepy ways, he reminds me of you--but I also admit I make a conscious (or subconscious) choice to see you in everyone I hold dear.

At least once a day, I will laugh or become furious at something only you would understand. The world keeps moving, and everyone seems younger, more so all the time. The cracks under my eyes keep getting wider—and so does the rest of me, despite my best efforts to the contrary. I still can’t sleep properly. A lot of the time--perhaps more than I should--I feel really, really old, and really, really tired, so that hasn’t changed. But: I can still hear music, take a picture, smile at a dog, dance, laugh so hard my stomach hurts, give people goofy presents they would never buy themselves, watch bad TV, marvel at figure skating, savor chocolate, maybe even write some words that will, hopefully, mean something to someone besides me one day.

Above all else, I can still love. Most days, I want to live, and even feel lucky to be here. When it comes to your life, all the well-worn clichés apply—your life was too short; a light went out; the good die young. You left forever—-maybe even on purpose. You took your freckles, your laugh, and your dance moves with you. But you know what else? You changed the world. You mattered.

Maybe that means I matter too.