Night Owl

It’s after 8:00am and I’m still wide awake. I mean, since yesterday. I have insomnia. I’ve often heard the saying, “Sleep is overrated.” Try going three days without it or averaging 4-5 hours of sleep a night for 44 years and let me know if it’s still underrated. Millions of people suffer from insomnia for any number of reasons. It becomes more common with age, but I’ve had insomnia since I was a teenager.

On the plus side, I can get a lot done at night. It’s quiet. No distractions or social obligations. As a creative person and an introvert who needs plenty of alone time to recharge, my energy surges around midnight, peaks between 2:00-4:00am, and doesn’t wane until later in the morning. Late at night, creative ideas appear from nowhere. I find that I can focus and direct my thoughts more easily. Everything appears crisp and clear. The downside is that the rest of society operates on a one size fits all schedule.

Circadian rhythms, or chronotypes, vary from person to person, and are hereditary. My father and his mother were often up late at night. Dad doing a crossword. Gramma sitting in front of the TV eating cornmeal mush to soothe her stomach ulcers. My mom’s side of the family were all early risers. If you weren’t up by 6:00am you were considered lazy. For that reason, I used to feel shame about being a night owl. (Shakespeare was apparently the first to use the phrase “night owl” to describe a person, and often with negative or ominous connotations.) But what’s the difference whether you work 8 hours at night or during the day? Factory productivity, police, firefighters, EMTs, and hospitals depend upon employment during all three shifts. I may not be saving lives or producing widgets, but I consider myself a third shift worker, nonetheless.

I’ve learned that CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) can greatly affect sleep patterns. For those with CPTSD (caused by chronic, long-term trauma), insomnia is more common and severe than in those with PTSD stemming from a single event. This leads to a largely unconscious hypervigilance, a constant scanning of the immediate environment for potential threats. The vulnerability felt when lying down to sleep instinctually heightens wariness, or even outright fear for the same reason our dog always sleeps with his head facing the door of his crate. When sleeps in the bed, he faces the bedroom door. I share the same instincts. I sleep much easier with my wife beside me than when alone.

It can be embarrassing, as it was when I recently shared a hotel room in New York with a friend. I’ve known him a long time and fully trust him, but I slept easier when he was awake, and thus, my reptilian brain believes, capable of defending against any (imaginary) threat. He understands and accepts this about me, of course, so he was cool about shopping for vinyl and checking out coffee shops until I arose from my slumber midday.

Whether it’s CPTSD or my circadian rhythm at work, I want to make the most of the situation, so making hay while the moon shines is what I’ll do.

Lentils & Spatulas

I’m thinking of my neighbors, G. & L., in these wee hours.

G. was born in England, a retired professor of mathematics. Born in Russia, L. is in the throes of middle-stage Alzheimer’s Disease. It seems tragically ironic that L. was once a brilliant neurophysicist. I have known her as an artisanal jewelry-maker and grower of the most gorgeous irises in the neighborhood.

Some months ago, I was leaving our local grocery store when someone told me L. had disappeared off the street and G. couldn’t find her anywhere. After a search on foot and by car, L. was found at the home of a neighbor none of us had ever met. The neighbor said, “(L.) just walked in the door, sat down in my kitchen, and started talking to me as if she knew me.” The neighbor said she had never met L., didn’t recognize her, and that she couldn’t understand anything L. had been saying to her.

Since Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia attack our latest memories first, I suppose, L. has lost her ability to speak English. She still seems to understand some English words, names and so forth, but she speaks only Russian. She is friendly, and when she speaks to me, I can only nod and smile, hoping she is not asking me anything to which the correct answer is a resounding “No.” G. told me he doesn’t speak Russian beyond a few phrases. I can only imagine how much more difficult this makes his life now.

L. came to our door one day, frantic, and only able to say G.’s name and point next door. We ran over to find that he had fallen down some steps and hit his head on a concrete wall. He was basically fine, more embarrassed that he couldn’t up on his own than anything else. EMTs were called, and we drove L. to the emergency room. My job was to keep L. company while G. was receiving care, but a nurse made me leave when she found out I was not family. Ten minutes later, the same nurse came to get me because L. had wandered off. She didn’t get far, and I was allowed to sit with her the rest of the night.

My wife understands all too well what G. is going through. She lost her father to dementia a few years ago. She endured the final months of his passing with a grace I certainly would not have been able to muster. A few weeks ago, I made a pot of lentils. Unbeknownst to me, my wife took some over to G. and L. I only found out a week later when G. called to return our Tupperware. He asked me to thank her for them, and for moving their garbage and recycling bins to the street, something else my wife failed to mention to me.

I know these seem like small things. But even the smallest gesture of kindness – as simple as smiling at a stranger - can bring a little sunshine into the life of someone who is struggling. I read once that true generosity is giving without expectation of anything in return, including credit for having given. That’s my wife for you. I am fortunate.

Last week G. called me over to see him. A package had just arrived. He had ordered for my wife and me a set of spatulas that are cupped and marked with common units of volume measurement for the kitchen. What goes around, comes around.

Don Quixote

In absence of playing basketball, creating assemblage art has been my Zen activity since the Covid lockdown. I started collecting things that spoke to me in some way, followed a common aesthetic sense, and could be combined to form a larger three-dimensional image. Discarded appliances and other refuse left on the street, obsolete electrical and mechanical devices, and other vintage objects in thrift shops, Goodwill stores, and on eBay. I separated and catalogued each object according to type and stored them in bins and cabinets in our basement.

This stuff began taking up too much room downstairs by the time I realized I had yet to make the first piece of art. I started out by making a couple of flags using vintage advertising yardsticks for stripes, rusted steel for stars. My wife gave the first one as a Christmas gift to her cousin who serves in the Air Force. A friend of mine generously purchased the second one in a kind gesture of encouragement.

It grew from there. The smallest piece is about 8 inches x 6 inches, the largest, about 4 feet square. It wasn’t until we got ready to move it all for my first gallery exhibition six years later that I realized how many there were. We moved 51 pieces that first day. The next day I discovered 10 more we had missed. I had ferreted them away behind furniture around the basement and forgotten about them.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to travel to New York to see the latest opening of my friend Eric’s paintings. We also visited the Outsider Art Fair where some of Renaldo Kuhler’s work was exhibited. Those experiences inspired my latest burst of creativity in which I finished 7 relatively small pieces, variations on the usual themes.

For me, it’s not about exhibition or public reception. Like most artists, I dread that part. (That’s why it took six years to put any out there. With dwindling space left in the basement, I promised my wife I would try to sell some before making any more.) If artists were good at marketing and promotion, we would choose work in advertising or PR. Those fields certainly pay better.

The process of making this art has helped me survive one of the toughest periods in my life while attempting to maintaining my sanity. When making a new piece, I lose all sense of time and place. Hours zip by as my mind engages with the necessary processes – imagining, forming, problem-solving, craftsmanship. I experienced the same phenomenon when editing films, and I experience it now as I write.

For some, exercising, traveling, or relaxing might be their Zen place. For me, it’s making stuff. Anything, really. I am grateful to be able to do this. I am lucky to have family and friends who support and encourage my stabbing at windmills.

Possums

When I was five years old, I was playing in the yard when a sheriff’s deputy and ambulance turned onto our dead-end street. It stopped at a house across the street, a couple doors up from us. I saw the EMTs carry our neighbor away on a gurney. It turned out he had locked himself in the bathroom and cut himself.

I asked my mother why someone would do that. Her response was, “People do that when they believe that no one loves them.” I tried to imagine feeling that way, but my young self couldn’t understand. What I’ve learned since then is that, usually, people do it ultimately because they don’t love themselves, because they decide life is not worth living, or because they can’t imagine life getting better. Our neighbor survived that attempt, but I learned a couple months later that he had drowned himself in a lake. I never heard anyone talk about it afterwards.

One night during dinner, the kitchen phone rang. My mother answered it. Her father was on the other line. He said to her, “Why don’t you come over and watch me blow my brains out.” What can one say to that? He didn’t follow through, but it gave me a better understanding of the trauma my mother must have experienced throughout her own childhood.

My grandfather was an alcoholic, but no one ever talked about it. All my mother ever said about it was that she was embarrassed as a kid when she and her friends were walking home from school late afternoons, and they would see my grandfather’s pickup parked at the local bar. She was obviously ashamed and embarrassed by that. Addiction researchers generally agree that addiction is genetic, and that the gene responsible can be activated by trauma. In other words, it’s part nature, part nurture. My grandfather had survived tremendous trauma of his own. The consequences were tragic for himself and everyone around him. He was another carrier of generational trauma.

My grandmother (my father’s mother) told me her brother R. once tried to kill himself by jumping from the top of the hay mow in their barn. I asked her why, and she said, “He was mentally ill, and they sent him to Butner to get better.” There was a state mental hospital in Butner. I knew R. as a kind, happy person. I never saw any sign of mental illness or a troubled soul. 

When my grandparents got married at the start of The Great Depression, they lived in a tobacco barn. Like most folk in that area during those lean years, they ate whatever they could find. My grandmother told me they trapped possums, kept them in a cage, and fed them vegetables for a week or two “to clean ‘em out” since possums are scavengers, and often eat the rotting flesh of animal carcasses to survive. After the possum’s digestive system was “clean,” my grandfather would knock the possum over the head with an axe handle for a merciful death, dress the carcass, and roast it in a woodfired oven. My grandmother said the meat was greasy, but it provided necessary sustenance.

I was fascinated with nature as a kid, both flora and fauna. After enduring quite a few itching, burning rashes, I learned to identify poison ivy. My grandmother had taught me how to find rabbit tobacco, and to enjoy chewing its leaves. It is not related to commercial tobacco, and it contains no nicotine. Early settlers learned from Native Americans that rabbit tobacco has healing properties. It can be chewed raw, smoked, or brewed into teas to provide relieve from respiratory issues. It is also a mild sedative.

The Virginia opossum (as it is known) was especially curious to me as it is the only marsupial native to North America. Besides its tiny sharp teeth and small claws, it has no defense against predators except playing dead. I had seen them do this in nature films, and it was amusing to watch if you weren’t the possum. I had seen a few up close, but only ones that were dead after having made the fateful mistake of crossing a busy road. I had only seen live possums from a distance, usually scurrying away, having been caught going through trash cans. I had never seen a live one up close, but wanted to, and my grandmother had shared this with her brother.

One day my grandmother called and came to get me because R. had caught a possum. He was keeping it in his bathtub until I could get there. Possums, especially when trapped, are not exactly charming. When R. pulled back the shower curtain, the possum hissed and bared its sharp teeth. I suddenly felt bad for this creature trapped in a foreign container with no way to escape. R. sensed this, put the possum in a waste basket, and turned it loose in his backyard. It headed straight for the woods. It’s remarkable how quickly a possum can move with its bulky body and short legs.

R. was a lifelong bachelor, he had served in the Navy, and he never missed the Miss America pageant. I know it’s a stereotype, but I wonder now if he was gay. Growing up in the sticks, dead center in the Bible Belt, I wonder if his motivation to attempt suicide many years earlier was the realization he was gay, and that he thought he could never be accepted for who he really was. If so, it would have been devastating to live in a narrow-minded society that believed homosexuality was a mortal sin. I’ll never know if this was the case, and it doesn’t really matter now. R. died at an early age from heart disease, perhaps in more ways than one.

I have experienced firsthand the emotions that drive a person to see suicide as a solution to unbearable mental and emotional turmoil. I have also witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of suicide, far beyond the loss of the victim’s own life. While a resident in a partial hospitalization program in 2022, I befriended a transexual woman. She was a brilliant PhD student in nanotechnology. She was quiet, kind, empathetic, and deep. During breaks from group therapy, we talked about nearly everything under the sun. We bonded in a short time, I think, because it is rare that we bare our souls this society we live in.

L. came to the PHP program after time spent as an in-patient following suicidal behavior. She was in the early stages of her transition, confronting head-on the internal and public struggles that lay ahead. I cringed every time she was mistakenly addressed by a fellow resident as a “he,” and admired the gentle but firm way she corrected them.

I cannot imagine the difficulties transexuals face. Being trapped in a body that does not match one’s identity is tortuous enough. Being misunderstood, misidentified, and discriminated against just adds insult to injury. After a month in the program, L. and I each graduated in late November. We stayed in touch and made plans to meet for coffee “one day soon.” We could not seem to align our respective schedules, and L. gradually became more withdrawn. On Christmas Day, I received a text from L.’s mother saying L. had taken her own life the night before. As I read her obituary, I learned that her family clearly loved her and supported her in her journey. That has offered only a small measure of consolation.

As I am prone to do, I compartmentalized the effects of L.’s death on me. The avoidance of grief came from my early conditioning, and my lifelong practice of stuffing it down. The five stages of grief are understood to be “denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.” I was stuck in denial and anger for four years.

Through intense therapy I have recently learned and accepted that this failure to move through grief has had devastating effects on my mental and physical health, my behavior, and its effects on those around me. For every loss – my innocence, childhood, virginity, relationships, control over my emotions, lives of family and close friends, careers, and dreams – I have avoided grief, become angry instead, and turned that anger inward, often spilling out onto others around me. I hope to complete the grieving process for each loss so I can move forward in peace.

I learned a few years ago that a former colleague had taken their life five years after I had left the job. This person had acted adversarial towards me for years and received what I perceived as undeserved favors. I only began to converse with them civilly towards the end of my tenure on that job. We compared notes, and it turned out we had each mistakenly perceived the other as having received undue favoritism.

They offered little acts of kindness towards me during this period, but they stayed very private about their personal life. I misunderstood this person, focused selfishly on my own professional and person struggles, and did not take their statements about having “social anxiety” seriously since I had witnessed so much behavior that didn’t seem to jive with it. I failed to realize that, much as I had, they had worn a mask, possibly as a defense mechanism to hold themselves together and navigate their professional life as best they could.

Later, this person again became adversarial toward me, and their actions and words were professionally and personally hurtful to me. But one of my biggest regrets is that I did not realize the seriousness of their mental health struggles. If I had, those close to me know I would have been the first to reach out, having dealt with similar struggles, including thoughts of suicide, for most of my life. Despite not knowing the severity at the time, I still experience guilt and shame that I did not reach out to them.

Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote that his son Mark, a pediatrician, summed up the meaning of life this way: “We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” Looking back, I wish I had spent more of my life doing just that. If you’re drowning without a life vest, though, there are only so many you can toss to the next person. Furthermore, it’s not always easy tell who’s drowning and who isn’t.

My first thoughts of suicide came almost immediately after my sexual assault at the age of 14. Few days have passed since that the thought has not crossed my mind, if only fleetingly. (Such unconscious, intrusive thoughts, along with flashbacks to the original abuse, are relatively common among rape survivors and those with CPTSD.) I had learned zero coping skills, and in fact, had been conditioned through gaslighting that my emotions were not only invalid and undeserved, but that they didn’t exist in the first place. “You’re not sad.” “You’re not angry.” “What do you have to be angry about.” “You have the world by the tail, yet you’re complaining.”

From when I discovered alcohol and other drugs at the age of 17 until recently, it seemed to me that the only solutions to deal with extreme emotions such as intense anxiety, fear, depression, and anger were substance use and fantasies of suicide. Substances temporarily numbed my emotions, and thoughts of suicide acted as a pressure valve. Suicide was my ace in the hole. If things get bad enough, I thought, I can always escape by killing myself. After decades of turning to such dark fantasies as a pressure release, it became a well-worn groove that’s hard to reroute.

The way I was able to relate to L. was because of my own experiences, only I was not struggling with being in the wrong body. It was my own mind and its voices I wanted to escape. “The way we speak to our children becomes their inner voice.” The voice I heard inside my head was largely my mother’s voice. Distorted beliefs that I’m not good enough, that I am a burden, and that I’m not worth protecting or sticking up for. Besides substance abuse and suicidal ideations, I erroneously sought relief from the voice externally through achievement. Through therapy, I have come to realize that no degree of accolades or professional success will quiet the voice. It is an inside job.

In 1997, I made my first serious attempt to commit suicide. I was fully committed, had a plan, and acted upon it. I had left film school at 29 with $25,000 in student loan debt and no thesis film to show potential employers for reasons beyond my control. I had been an engineer on the Space Shuttle Main Engine Program, won awards for my earlier student work, and earned a terminal degree, but the only job I could find was taking photos for Auto Trader. I lay on my girlfriend’s couch for a year and often cried myself to sleep.

At 31, I was in the middle of a breakup with my first love. I had met her when I was 24. We fell in love. quickly. It was the first time I had ever experienced the love of a woman. It was exhilarating to experience such acceptance, such loving embrace, but the intimacy was very uncomfortable to me because it was so unfamiliar. Unbeknownst to me, PTSD had already plagued me for a decade-and-a-half. Making myself vulnerable was terrifying. Now in the late stages of parting ways, my understandably having major abandonment issues, and having no healthy coping skills whatsoever, I felt obliterated and didn’t know what to do. I wanted to"out,” by whatever means necessary.

The idea came into my head one night while I was building a set for a stop-motion music video I was making pro bono for a ska band out of Chicago. I lived in an apartment complex with a courtyard very much like the one in Rear Window which I was projecting silently on my living room wall while blasting Pink Floyd. I was extremely inebriated, as was usual then, and before I could stop myself, I headed straight for the medicine cabinet. I woke up the next day in Dorothea Dix State Mental Hospital with no idea how I got there. I was lying in the hall wearing someone else’s clothes. The walls were white, the staff all wore white, so I first thought I was in Heaven. I quickly learned the opposite was true.

My bed was one of those made by This End Up, the company name engraved on the bed itself. “This End Up” referred to the aesthetic of their furniture, designed to look like shipping crates. My bed was about a foot short so I tried unsuccessfully to sleep curled up in the fetal position while my two roommates, detoxing off crack, climbed the chain-link fencing covering the barred windows to make doubly sure we didn’t escape.

We had the same caterer as Central Prison across the street, and they were apparently fed first. The food, best described on the whole as soggy beige cardboard, arrived cold and congealed. For some unknown reason, we were taken in small groups to see the resident dentist, a former Army soldier who worked with archaic equipment. “What the hell, they might be nuts,” the administrators must have thought, “but we’ll be damned if they get cavities under our watch.” Only one other staff member, a janitor, ever acknowledged my presence until I was being discharged by the resident psychiatrist. I felt deep compassion for the lifelong patients, of which there were many.

I found out much later that the police had broken down my door, found me standing naked on my bed painting the wall with my own blood, apparently having sliced my wrists for good measure. I didn’t find out that last part until I got home a week later. While I was cleaning the blood off my bedroom walls, I looked out the window. Trees blocked my view of everything except the top of a narrow building. I realized it was, ironically, the tower in which I’d been locked up for the past week.

The psychiatrist had deemed my act as a “cry for help,” and my parents quickly agreed. But no help came, and I didn’t seek it because I was conditioned, especially as a young male, to believe that seeking help indicated weakness. “Be a man.” “Man up.” “Quit whining.” “Quit crying like a girl.” “Put your big boy pants on.” “Don’t be such a wimp.” “Be like him, he’s all boy.” “Suck it up.” “Don’t be such a nancy-pants” “Don’t be so sensitive.” “Don’t be such a pussy.” “Take it like a man.”

Maybe it still is that way in some parts of our society. Boys and men have long been conditioned to believe that the only two acceptable emotions to display are happiness and anger. Prisons are loaded with men who only understand those two emotions. In that environment, I it’s not hard to imagine which emotion is more acceptable to display.

Women are obviously subjected to equally damaging – if different - conditioning to believe false narratives, including those who were sexually abused as children. Much of this has been written about extensively by people far more qualified than I am. I can only speak to own experiences as a male of my generation from my neck of the woods.

Statistically, studies have shown that men wait an average of 26-27 years to share their experiences of childhood sexual abuse with someone. (Similar studies have shown that women wait an average of about 20-21 years.) I waited almost 45 years to share with my wife and therapist the assault I survived at 14. Times are changing rapidly, in many ways, for the better. My daughter’s generation, as a whole, seems more evolved, socially. Fortunately, there are more resources available to them for support and healing from all sorts of conditions and trauma, including those at educational institutions.

Statistically, 1 in 4 girls, and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before they reach the age of 18. That means, while gazing across a classroom of 12 boys and 12 girls, three of those girls and two of those boys will suffer sexual abuse before they become adults. When I began seeking resources specifically for adult men sexually abused in childhood, I could find almost none. Articles about the sexual abuse of boys are most often centered on cases related to the Catholic Church or Boy Scouts of America.

Now there is at least one site, 1 in 6, that provides support for men healing from childhood sexual abuse. Thankfully, women have many similar resources to which they can turn. Sexual abuse has been called “soul murder,” and that sounds about right. Part of my soul was murdered at the age of 7, and most what was left was killed at the age of 14.

Two years after my first suicide attempt, having taken another girlfriend hostage to my erratic, uncontrollable emotions, I went through another breakup. My ex-girlfriend deserved a medal for having put up with me for as long as she did. I overdosed again, taking more pills and drinking more vodka than the first time around. I woke up 24 hours later having constant mini-seizures and a massive hangover. I didn’t go to a hospital. Instead, I checked into a hotel room, had my parents guard the door so I couldn’t leave, and rode out the hell that is the process of detoxing from alcohol, tranquilizers, benzodiazepines, and sleeping pills. It was deemed another “cry for help,” but, again, no help came. My parents had no more idea of where to turn than I did. When they dropped me back at my apartment, I immediately walked to the liquor store two blocks away. Such is the insanity of addiction. I eventually gave up, went to AA, got sober, and stayed that way for a long time.

When I was 43, I went through a particularly painful breakup, and I relapsed on alcohol. I was also taking both Xanax and Klonopin. (My shrink was a pill pusher.) I remained inebriated except when it was my turn to have custody of my daughter. Most other nights, my evening ritual was to hang a noose in the basement and go upstairs to drink until I could screw up the courage to do the deed. The thing was, every time I got inebriated, I reconsidered and kept drinking until I blacked out. 

I am grateful that I never gained the courage (or cowardice) to hang myself. When I got sober two years later, I made a promise to myself that I would endure anything life threw at me for the sake of my daughter. I have fulfilled that promise despite having endured some devastating experiences over the last 17 years.

In the rooms of AA and NA I have found lifelong friends who accept me for who I am and for the things I’ve regretfully said and done. Mostly said or written. Only an addict can understand another addict. Addiction is a hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Addiction is incurable, progressive, and ultimately fatal if left untreated. Untreated, as we read at the start of each 12-step meeting,“the ends are always the same – jails, institutions, and death.”

Eleven years ago, I became addicted to opioids and stayed addicted for four years. I underwent 5 major orthopedic surgeries in a 10-month period. Once I’d had the first surgery, I had met the deductible of my health insurance plan. I mistakenly decided it was time to stick it to The Man for once. The Man would be stuck with the entire bill of my remaining four surgeries, and I wouldn’t have to pay a dime.

My family and I ended up paying dearly in unforeseen ways. It would take 8 years to fully recover from the collective trauma to my body, including five rounds of anesthesia and pain meds, at my age and with my history of substance abuse and concussions. With each surgery, my pain meds dosage went up. A couple of months after the final surgery, my doctor cut me off abruptly. No tapering down. Cold turkey. As an addict, of course, I sought other means to keep it going.

What non-addicts can never understand is that when in active addiction, a point can be crossed where the substance becomes equal to survival. That is to say it becomes the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, superseding even basic physiological needs like air, food, water, shelter, clothing, reproduction, and sleep.

The effects of opioid addiction are devastating. Throughout this period, I was mostly able to hide my addiction and its effects, pulling it together to perform at work and be (mostly) present with my family. I seriously considered switching to heroin to save money, as so many addicts do, but that would have been much harder to hide, I thought.

Addicts often refer to their “rock bottom.” The only rock bottom is death, it’s just a matter of whether or when you stop digging. Form some, it’s their first DUI or negative performance evaluation at work. Others must lose everyone and everything dear to them before they seek help. Others never do. For me, it was the day my wife said, “Your eyes look funny. Are you using?” I checked into a treatment center, and once again, I sought help in the rooms and received it.  I still have chronic pain issues, but I am grateful to be clean and sober today.

I have accepted that I did not cause my disease, but that it is my responsibility to seek treatment and manage it. I have learned that I cannot do this alone. I have learned, too, that addiction is a family disease where everyone plays their part, usually unconsciously, and that it affects everyone within the inner circle, not to mention many others in the addict’s life. Thanks to the folks whom I’ve been lucky enough and sincerely grateful to meet inside and outside the rooms, I have also come to realize that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem with devastating consequences to those left behind.

At the age of 60, I am seeking, learning, and working to practice solutions I never knew existed. I am not alone. Millions of people are finding healthy solutions previously unknown or unavailable to them, seeking the same invaluable intangibles they’ve also never experienced. Peace. Self-acceptance. Emotional stability. Human connection. Forgiveness. Hope. A fresh start. I hope they are fortunate enough to seek and receive the same kind of help that I have. It’s a struggle. Life is a struggle. Change is a struggle, maybe more so for some than others.

Here's to hope.

Turkeys are Nice!

Renaldo Kuhler was neurodivergent, only he never knew it.

 Described in 1943 by Leo Kanner, Autism did not become a diagnosis until 1980 with its inclusion in the DSM-III. It wasn’t commonly diagnosed until the 1980s-90s. Asperger syndrome was added in 1987, and later definitions further expanded to include a wider spectrum.

Renaldo was born in 1931 in Blauvelt, New York to immigrant parents. His father was German. His mother was Belgian. His parents worked hard for financial stability, as did everyone during the Depression, and they also desperately wanted to assimilate into American society. Renaldo’s behavior was seen as embarrassment.

His father was traveling for work most of the time. His mother was abusive and neglectful. He was mostly raised by a strict German governess until he was sent to boarding school at age nine. At a series of boarding schools, the story was always the same. He was bullied, mocked, and ridiculed by the other boys, and harshly disciplined for his unacceptable behavior by headmasters. Beatings were frequent and severe. No one seemed to be able to straighten this boy out.

Renaldo lived largely in his own world, a world of his creation. He had many imaginary friends in settings that were invented or loosely based on real places. He said the happiest times of his youth were spent riding the subway lines around New York City alone on weekends. He wanted to be around people, but he just couldn’t seem to relate to them in ways that would develop relationships. All he could surmise was that people didn’t accept him because he was different from them in some way he didn’t understand.

At some point, Renaldo’s mother took him to a psychologist who diagnosed Renaldo as a “dull normal,” indicating an IQ range of 76-89. Renaldo grew up believing his difference was a lower-than-average intelligence. In 1948, when Renaldo was 16, his parents moved him from the suburbs of NYC to a remote cattle ranch in the Rockies near Bailey, Colorado. Isolated on the ranch with constantly bickering parents who had never understood him, Renaldo retreated into a world he secretly created, an imaginary country he called Rocaterrania. He began illustrating the country’s history, a process he would continue for six decades. No one knew he was metaphorically documenting the story of his life.

Renaldo eventually went to college at CU in Boulder, worked in Spokane for a while, returned to Boulder for a postgraduate program in museum techniques, and landed a job at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. He taught himself the specialized craft of scientific illustration and made a career of it.

I met Renaldo while working at the same museum where his eccentricities were noted by coworkers and the public. I soon suspected he might be Autistic (as it was simply called then), or at least had some form of Aspergers. Later, I became convinced. He never mentioned it – and he would have, given our relationship – so I never asked about it. I have no idea whether he had ever heard the term used. Ironically or not, one of his former boarding schools “for unruly boys” has since become the Anderson Center for Autism.

Renaldo’s sister attended the premiere of my documentary about him. A few weeks later, I received a letter. Having observed Renaldo in the condensed narrative of the film, his sister wrote, “I just realized my brother is Autistic. So much more makes sense now.” She enclosed a clipping from an article on Autism Spectrum Disorder. Many years later, as I thumb through the DSM-V, I can recall behaviors and interactions that check quite a few boxes under Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Renaldo had difficulty with back-and-forth conversations (he generally delivered monologues in short spurts) and emotional reciprocity; he rarely asked many questions about the person he was speaking with; he rarely made eye contact; he had difficulty reading facial expressions or detecting sarcasm; he had difficulty adjusting his behavior and conversation to suit various social contexts; he had difficulty in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships; he used idiosyncratic phrases, including neologisms he created, and inside jokes (with himself); he would be upset at changes in his daily routine or set plan; his greeting rituals were rigid (in fact he would repeat them if not gotten right the first time; he had difficulty with transitions; sudden unexpected noises were jarring to him; he had highly restricted, fixated interests (history, illustration, classic movies); and he processed shapes and objects through a “bottom-up” approach, focusing on minute, local details rather than the big picture.

He was marginalized, ostracized, taken advantage of, mocked, and ridiculed most of his life, he said, for “being different.” I admired Renaldo for having overcome so many obstacles in becoming independent, steadily employed, and courageous enough to be himself without any of the benefits that a correct diagnosis can provide. I have wondered what Renaldo’s life might have been like if he had been diagnosed early, and gotten the kind of accommodations, support, and acceptance available to many today. If so, would Rocaterrania have been the same? Would he have been driven to create it in the first place?

Earlier this year, I was an inpatient resident in a Tennessee facility battling a surge of PTSD-triggered symptoms. There I met people with a wide range of diagnoses. Because the facility had a barnyard where they offered animal-assisted therapy, many neurodivergent residents were assigned there. I met a tall, bearded man who was a walking encyclopedia. For art class, he wrote an essay arguing for the commercial availability of beef hearts, citing facts about sustainability, environmental statistics, and the Native American spiritual practice of not allowing any part of an animal go to waste. He reminded me a little of Renaldo.

I met a 38-year-old wife and mother who had only recently a diagnosis only recently. She was grateful for it because, as Renaldo’s sister noted, so many things from her past now made sense. She was a talented artist and spent most of the day drawing colorful portraits in her pajamas. I also met a 20-year-old woman who had difficulty expressing herself verbally and needed a constant care provider. She lit up like a Christmas tree around the animals, especially the turkeys for some reason. When she overheard a therapist say, “turkeys aren’t very nice,” she became upset. She said, “Turkeys are nice!”

Renaldo Kuhler’s neurodivergence was but a small part of who he was. He was genuinely kind. He saw the best in others. He motivated me to learn and create. He was generous with his friends, taking us to dinner, even a hockey game once. He was a remarkable historian and a talented illustrator. He was a loyal friend. He was funny, honest, earnest, and had a pure heart. He was larger than life. He was more than the sum of his parts. A mold was never made for him; he was a hand-sculpted original. I miss Renaldo, and many other friends do, too.

Hoop Dreams

I love the game of basketball. For 25 years I played pickup ball in gyms, parks, and driveways four or five days a week. I was never great at it, but it didn’t matter. Basketball is my church. The hoop is the alter, the ball my Bible. Three hours at a go, time would stop, I’d get lost in the game, and my troubles would fade into the background. It was my Zen space.

I love so many things about the game. It is simple and requires relatively little in terms of equipment. It can be played between two people or ten. The quality of play is comprised of equal parts strategy, teamwork, athleticism, skill, and artistry. Communication – verbal or non – is paramount. Players move with varying degrees of grace in an athletic dance to silent music with ever-changing rhythm and time signature. They can improvise their games like Charlie Parker on the saxophone.

I can still shoot free throws and midrange shots but haven’t really been able to play since my bilateral knee replacements left me unable to run or jump without paying dearly for it the next day. I have grieved over the loss of this activity by practicing acceptance, as with any other loss.

Since I cannot play anymore myself, I get a vicarious fix by following the NBA. I enjoy the excitement of March Madness, but the level of play in the NBA is echelons above college ball. The instinctual Basketball IQs, fundamentals practiced with muscle memory, unselfish teamwork, elite athleticism, and extraordinary skills on display are astonishing. The diversity of personalities among the players, announcers, and commentators is entertaining, and the league is infused with a vibrant, youthful culture. It’s just fun to watch.

I’ve attended two NBA games in person. I saw the Rockets play in 1988 when they had the “twin towers,” Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson.  I was in DC for a job in 2002 when I saw the Wizards play. A past-his-prime Michael Jordan - who still averaged 22 ppg that season – was a step or two slower than he’d been with the Bulls.

I recall one of Jordan’s leaning jumpers getting blocked by an opponent, prompting a fan seated behind me to stand up and yell, “Sit your old ass down!” I remember feeling a little bit sorry for Jordan in that moment. He was 39 years old, having played 80 games or more (of an 82-game season) eleven times in his career. There was no load management in those days. Players were expected to buck up and play for the fans no matter what. If my knee cartilage was destroyed playing pickup ball, what kind of pain must Jordan have endured?

 Load management, and advances in medicine and technology have prolonged the high-performance careers of players like Steph, LeBron, and KD, and I’m grateful for that. Seeing players from multiple generations compete with one another at that level is remarkable. I wish I’d managed my playing load and had access to a cryochamber in my day. I miss running up and down the court with a group of strangers, working together to put the ball in the hoop.

Voices

From as early as I can remember, my mother was physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive. Tragically, I inherited her vicious tongue that sometimes sliced and diced like a Ginsu knife. She nicknamed me “Ninny,” as in nincompoop.

She committed emotional incest with me from ages 8-17. She used me as her confidante and emotional support, sharing the details of her sex life, the sex lives of my aunts, grandmothers, her friends and coworkers. The stories always ended the same: the men were lacking and the women were left frustrated.

She told me many times that women only have sex for personal gain, financial stability, that most men are sexual failures, and that women constantly talk about it behind their backs. She sexually humiliated me in a variety of ways, including pulling my pants down in from of my friends and neighbors, beating me with a yardstick on the front porch. Sick stuff.

She sat me down one aftenoon, and in a calm voice told me she wished I’d never been born. That I was a burden, that she could have had a career if not for me. She told me the reason she didn’t hug me was because her nipples were sensitive. My relationship with my mother was more damaging than all other trauma combined, shaping what distorted views I may have about relationships, women, and sex.

I’ve come to realize that my mother suffered severe trauma of her own and that shaped her own shame-driven views just as it has mine in turn. I cannot and do not hold her accountable for my own behavior and words as an adult. I have forgiven her, and I am working to own the spillage of my own shame. There is no excuse, only an understanding of context.

Hypothetical: Plant two saplings side-by-side. Water and fertilize one while feeding the other one antifreeze daily for 18 years. After 20 years or more, how will they appear in comparison.

This quote from Caroline Harvey, PhD could not be more accurate: “The way we speak to our children becomes their inner voice.” My mother’s abuse, other traumatic events in my life, and that the perpetrators were never held accountable instilled a profoundly deep sense of shame and self-hatred I’ve carried throughout my life. It has lived in the forefront of my mind, constantly criticizing, belittling, torturing. Somewhere inside lives the real me, but it is a constant struggle to overcome the powerful dark forces of shamed and self-hatred. I am grateful for professionals and friends in recovery who have helped me survive and begin healing. Not everyone is so lucky.

I asked my then 4-year-old daughter if she loved herself, just out of curiosity to see what she would say. She looked at me as if I had if she was an alien. She blinked and said.“Of course,” and went back to playing. She could no more imagine hating herself than I could have imagined fully loving myself. We’re operating on entirely different operating systems. I am so grateful that is the case. It has been easy to be kind to her.

My proudest achievement in life is my part in breaking the cycle of generational trauma so my daughter can love herself and be free to be her authentic self without the hindrance of intensely negative internal voices. She has been fortunate to have a mother, stepparents, aunts, grandparents, cousins, and others who also protected and loved her unconditionally. To prepare children for life, they need to know more than anything they are loved, protected, and safe, that their thoughts and feelings are valid, and that they have our full attention.

My daughter is a brilliant, kind, hardworking, strong and independent woman who makes friends like Steph Curry makes buckets. She is striking out on her own with a bright future and many adventures to be had. She doesn’t talk about it because it is so deeply ingrained in her, but she has always had this Buddha-like presence that is attractive and contagious to everyone she meets.

Seeds of Shame

When I was 7, two 18-year-old boys hung me by my ankles out the window of an 8th-floor apartment. One month later I was raped by a stranger in a shopping mall. A month after that, on my 8th-birthday, I was accidentally hit in the head with a swinging baseball bat. It split my head open, gave me a concussion, cracked my frontal bone, and nearly killed me.

When I was 12, my scout troop ganged up on me, stripped me naked, and handcuffed me to a tree in a pasture in the middle of the night. It was apparently under the direction of a 17-year-old Eagle scout who was left in charge of us for the night. It was a premeditated plan in which he first told a campfire story about a ghost horse. While I was alone, naked and handcuffed, they turned a white horse loose from the barn and left me there for two hours.

When I was 13, the third baseman on my junior high baseball team held me off with one hand while he sexually assaulted my girlfriend in front of the whole team. The next year I sustained a second concussion when an errant fastball hit me in the same spot over my left eye that was struck by the bat when I was 8. I don’t know how long I was out, but when I finally came to, the centerfielder was relaxing on the bench with a cup of Gatorade.

I was 4’ 7” tall and weighed about 60 pounds when I started the ninth grade. Two weeks before my 15th birthday I was raped by three grown men in the locker room in a school gym located in a neighborhood called “The Hole.” For the next year and a half I had to change and shower in that same locker room every day for P.E. Five minutes after the incident, I tucked it away, buried it deep, and kept it there for more than 40 years. Until I sought trauma therapy a couple of years ago, it has affected my relationships, especially intimate ones. I held it so long because it is the one traumatic incident for which I felt the most shame and guilt. “Why wasn’t I able to defend myself?”

Vulnerability

A writer friend of mine I highly respect once gave me heartfelt encouragement and support when I expressed doubts about telling my story. She said, “You must tell your truth no matter how painful it might be.” So that’s what I will do.

Perhaps it will help someone struggling silently with the same things I have (and still do) a little less lonely. Perhaps it will validate their own story or give them some hope they can survive. I don’t know it if that’s the case since very few visit my site, but I cannot stuff these things down inside any longer. I’ve been doing that for nearly 60 years. Doing so has ruined my health and negatively affected the lives of those around me. Writing about these things “semi-publicly” holds me accountable to tell the truth.

Creative Anima

My documentary films and other creative works have mostly been about underdogs and outsiders, people with wounds invisible on the surface who create art in some respects to understand and heal from trauma, whether they consciously realize it or not. By telling their stories, I was trying to understand and heal from my own. Creating art can be a form of escape, personal expression, redemption, or all three. I am certain it has saved my life.

Generational Trauma

Many aspects of my life – behavior, relationships, pursuits - have been shaped by profound generational trauma. I didn’t get a healthy instruction book for life because my parents did not, theirs did not, and so on.

My mother was extremely abusive and emotionally neglectful when my sister and I were young. Raised as a stoic Midwesterner, she rarely talked about her own abuse, but I knew my grandparents well enough to surmise that it was devastating.

 My father was often absent, traveling for his job. When he was home, he was either oblivious to the abuse or didn’t know what to do about it. I was angry at them for much of my life. This anger affected me and many of those in my path.

Through recovery and effective trauma therapy, I have made my peace with them, forgiven them (and others), and tried to make amends where I can to those I’ve hurt. This process has granted me more empathy, forgiveness, and grace than I could ever have imagined. I wish I had asked for help sooner. The world is full of people who never do, especially in prison and on the streets.

 Despite a lot of progress, we still live in a society that stigmatizes addiction and mental health issues. Asking for help is subtly and tragically discouraged by stigmatizing such afflictions, having widespread and long-term effects. 

I’ve come to realize that most folks have good hearts. They’re simply navigating life doing the best they can while dealing with their own stuff, trying not to leave wreckage behind. Some are more successful than others. Just the process of growing up is traumatic to varying degrees for everyone, whether they know it or not.

New Beginnings

This blog is just a place to put down stories, ideas, thoughts, experiences, and lessons learned. Some of the topics I want to write about are sensitive, highly personal, and carry with them long held social stigma. At the age of 60, I no longer care about stigma. When the suffering gets bad enough, you no longer care what anyone thinks. If I’m not willing to be vulnerable myself, I cannot complain about widespread stigma.

Considering the analytics of my site, it’s doubtful I’ll get many readers anyway. That’s ok. That’s not what this is about.