Here I am again

Here I am again, scribbling my blues away. I can't shake the depression that has lately settled over me; it robs me of my appetite and my interest in cooking and even in writing. So I force myself to write this, to put down what I feel and what I do, and what I can't feel and what I don't do and what I don't have and don't want. Fasten your seat belts; it's going to be a bumpy ride.

I unload all this weary baggage on you because I don't have a companion I can open up to, and I do not trust therapists or psychologists. I've seen plenty of 'em in the past and they tried to have me committed to the State Mental Hospital and actually did have me put away in the Psychiatric Ward several years ago after my bladder stone operation. It was hell; so I'll never use their services again. Admitting you're depressed is still like admitting you robbed a bank -- you get sent to some kind of imprisonment, no matter what they call it. I'd rather just feel rotten until the cloud lifts -- which it always does after a few days or weeks. Maybe after the endocrinologist sees me and operates on me the chemical imbalance I'm sure I'm suffering from will right itself and my depression will be much less. I sure hope so.

In my prayers lately I've opened up to Heavenly Father how lonely and abandoned I sometimes feel. Even admitting it is mostly my fault, it is still a degrading way to live, without friendly company. I'm not talking about the physical aspect of it, but the real fun I used to have with Amy, and later on with Joom, when we would tease each other and hold hands and tell each other our dreams and our sorrows. To look into another person's eyes without fear of rejection or estrangement, to see in their eyes a curiosity and an eagerness to know more about me and to accept me as I am -- that is probably the best part of a marriage relationship here on earth.  

How well I remember coming back from a circus tour, and having Amy beg me to just hold her, to fold my arms around her and tell her how much I missed her. She would weep and then give me such a tremendous bear hug that my ribs almost snapped. We would spend hours just sitting together, drinking each other in and caressing each other's backside and neck and shoulders and pulling each others hair through our fingers. I used to have pretty long hair, y'know -- it was my clown wig. 

One Sunday evening, after all the dishes were washed and kids put to bed, she and I sat together on the old swayback couch my mother gave us as a wedding present and watched "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" with Rex Harrison. At the end of the movie the ghost, the ship captain that had guided and bedeviled the widow Muir through most of her life, comes back one final time when she is old and ill, on her death bed. He gently lifts her up, and she is suddenly young and beautiful again -- and he leads her off into the shining heavens. That scene completely broke down all my normal reserve, because I felt so very strongly that that was what was going to happen to Amy and I -- I would come back for her through Death's veil and carry her pure and lovely spirit back Home to where our love would never wane or be twisted by earthly misunderstandings again. Amy had to get a roll of toilet paper for me to dry my eyes and blow my nose. I told her about my intuition, and she did not mock me or offer any contradictions -- just smiled so sweetly and gave me a peck on the cheek and then asked me to take out the garbage. Those are rare, rare moments in a man's life -- when he feels loved enough and safe enough to open his heart to his companion.

I recall a different time, much later, when I was on the beach in Thailand with Joom. The full tropical moon floated above us like a Loi Krathong lantern as we walked through the hissing surf, bits of driftwood and broken shells scrapping at our sandaled feet. We sat on an overturned palm trunk to eat sticky rice and sweet beans roasted in a bamboo tube, while I told her stories of the Moon -- how it was made of green cheese and that there was a Man in the Moon who watched over lovers and other crazy people. She told me the Thais thought the Moon was a giant rabbit. 

She was a lousy kisser, never putting much passion or effort into it -- so after we had locked lips for just a few seconds I pulled back to look into her bleary brown eyes. They were always bloodshot, she told me, because of her hard life as a young woman. She claimed that she gave birth to both her son and daughter while working in a rice paddy -- cutting the umbilical cord herself and stoically taking the child to her mother's house and then going back to work transplanting rice shoots. But then, almost every Thai woman I've ever known has said pretty much the same thing -- if true, those rice paddies should be littered with mewling newborns nine months out of the year.     

That night Joom's cloudy brown eyes held nothing but love and affection for me. I don't know what she saw in my eyes, but she curled herself around me and called me her Santa Claus. I could smell the stale coffee on her breath and feel the salt tang of the stiffening ocean breeze on the back of my neck. I was happy; Joom felt my happiness, which made her happy -- we sat on that palm trunk for hours, as the Moon drifted away and the ghost crabs came out to hunt for gobs of dead fish washed ashore. A moment of surpassing bliss whittled from time into a memory I'll forever cherish. 

Those are the kind of moments that I deeply miss and yearn for.  Thank the good Lord that writing about them like this has lifted my gloom appreciably; now maybe I'll eat the rest of my breakfast before tacking the Hungarian Goulash I have to bring to the Potluck this afternoon. 

I am a man that has both loved and been loved -- and for today at least that knowledge lifts my spirits more than any pellet of Valium or Vicodin can do.