Continuing on 2014 update...

I have struggled with severe depression most of my life. For the last 25 plus years I have dealt with connective tissue disease which keeps me in chronic, constant pain. Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore is one  of  3 places worldwide that is using E C T as a treatment for pain. I've been a patient at Hopkins pain program for 20 years and was offered the opportunity to try this treatment. To a large extent it has worked. I'm still in constant pain but I'm able to treat it with Tylenol and another anti inflammatory drug. No narcotics and no opioids. I still struggle with depression but I am getting help from a new medicine. I seem to be feeling better because of it.

Update to 2014

It's been 4 years since I wrote in this blog... It would be silly to say "A lot has happened in 4 years...". so I won't.
Daughter Brianna has had 2 kids, girls, quite beautiful. Daughter Emily is a junior in college, doing outstanding. Son Cameron...I don't know much about, we're not in touch. It feels shitty but I don't have a solution. Dawn and I are still in the drunk junk and happy crap business. Dawn's gift and book store "Celebrate Recovery" is 23 years old and still struggling along. She is 55, I am 60. Not sure how we will survive into old age. I try not to worry or be filled with abject terror but some days it's easier than others. I like to believe that the Universe will take care of us... I don't always feel comfortable with that. Who could?

My mother died this summer. Just before her 88th birthday. She simply wore out. I was in the hospital undergoing Electro Convulsive Treatments... although the T in E C T might actually stand for Therapy... I'm not really sure. Whatever... Every time I had a treatment I forgot almost everything I knew, especially current events. Consequently I got to find out my mom died 6 times, each time as if it had just happened. It was pretty fucked up, to say the least.

Why was I having E C T, you might wonder. I have

The case for feeling different...

I just came across a book on our shelves titled " Be the Star That You Are - A book for kid's who feel different". When I was growing up there was no book like this. I just was different and that's the way it was. I was picked on, bullied, talked down to and generally disenfranchised as much as a kid can be. My days were fear filled and seemed strange to me. I never really got what was going on around me. I knew things that were not appropriate for someone my age to know. My family believed in ghosts and goblins and things that went bump in the night. Our coffee table always had the latest copy of Playboy and Cavalier on it. I was never discouraged from looking at or reading this stuff. Time and Life were also there but they didn't stack up very well against the porn. None of the kids I knew had this stuff available. I thought about sex a lot. I was extremely adept at getting the neighborhood girls to take off their clothes for me. We were unsupervised a lot of the time. It was different then. And I felt different. I knew about things.

As I grew up I was better able to handle this difference inside me. At age 9 I learned about codeine and liked it. It made me not care about feeling different. I learned to drink beer and liquor; eventually I learned about pot and Seconal and disoxin. Dexedrine and black beauties. I still felt different but I got to feeling better about it. At age 14 I was admitted to the county farm (nut house) and stayed there for 5 months. I left against medical advise, my therapist assured me that I would end up a revolving door mental patient for the rest of my life. Very nice. He was wrong. I was never in that situation again.

The summer I turned 15 I worked on rock festival crews, that winter I hung out in the city and crashed at the apartment of some very nice women. That winter I met all manner of people and in the spring took a trip to the Grand Canyon with a lot of the folks I had spent the winter meeting. I still felt different but the booze and dope at least made me feel more plugged in. The Summer I turned 16 I moved to the Washington DC area. Within the first month I met the drug connections that would keep me supplied for the next 10 years. Still feeling different.

I was bone skinny and had hair halfway down my back. Old patched bluejeans and denim shirt... Cowboy boots wide belt, big buckle, little mustache and round wire rim glasses. I was, to say the least, picturesque. I didn't know a soul and I had never lived in a sub-division before.

A very pretty girl who had once been my girlfriend decided to move out East with us. She wanted a change in perspective. My parents adored her. Mom had made welcome in our home, seemingly every young person in Wisconsin whose parents had thrown them out. It was the end of the nineteen sixties and a lot of families were having trouble adjusting to the shifting cultural paradigm. Drugs, hair, sex, war protests, rock music with a political message, an expanded awareness of the inequities of basic rights of women and black people. Wisconsin was a hotbed of protests and open mindedness in the college towns. It was somewhat different on the farms and in the smaller urban landscape. The young people were claiming a freer lifestyle while their parents were clinging to the comfort and core beliefs that were the legacy of the post depression and war

Maybe some leatherwork...

So...today I screwed up another ukulele that I've been building...I have never made one start to finish without screwing something up badly...Other builders are very kind and say great things like 'really good craftsmen fix their screw ups so no one can tell the difference' inferring that I am a good craftsman because I can do this...It's bullshit! Really good craftsmen learn their craft and after doing it for 10 years, yes 10 years, are able to practice their craft with relatively few screw ups let alone every time they build something...the truth is that I am a really good leather craftsman. I did that discipline for 25 years and when I stopped doing it I was a master leather craftsman. At this point I am sure without a doubt that I will never be a good luthier.

I like doing lutherie. I find all the details of it a lot of fun. I had intended to make a living off of it when I started doing it semi full time a few years ago but after 2 years without selling any instruments I decided that there was just no way for me to make it work. So I decided that I would just do it for fun after I finished up all the half built ukes lying around the shop. I'm still in the process of doing that. I am gonna fix the latest screw up and finish that uke and the other one on my bench at the moment...after that I'm not sure what I'll do...maybe some leather work.

It would be great if I could draw this afternoon or do something artistic but tha's not a possibility so I'm gonna blog a little. I tried to get Google Sketchup to load onto this computer but it wouldn't do it...it's just as well because everytime I try to use Sketchup I end up pulling out what little hair I have left. My regular computer is going to the shop today...it's gotten the virus that 2 of our other computers have already gotten...this is the only one that has resisted so far. But that one is the one that already has Sketchup downloaded onto it.

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C ll D This is not Sketchup!

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Apparently I was wrong...this blog is still viewable by all...I'm not sure how to stop that or if I want to so I'm leaving it as it is...the only people who ever read it are Brianna who of course gave me shit about it and Dawn who didn't like something I wrote about...oh well...it's my blog...

Tommorow is my anniversary in AA...23 years...I'll be sharing and of course I will cry...what is it with that anyway? Any glimpse of kindness that I notice makes me cry...not big wrenching sobs (as if) just tearing up and sounding funny...I will do that tommorow evening there is no doubt and I won't like it...People tend to laugh when I share...sometimes I'm actually funny and sometimes I think they don't know what to do so they laugh...

My life is really great except for the undercurrent of anger that lives with me...it's a force and it has a lot of influence on me...a lot of it is attached to a specific event in my life and some of it comes from childhood like most emotional maladys do...I have fought it,prayed about it, gone to therapy to "work" on it...I've chastised, vilified and imaginized about it but it won't go away...a friend suggested that I try to just accept it...not to think it wrong but to realize that it is part of me...that's good advise and I'm working on it...I am...

Tommorrow I'll tell a very small part of my drinking and drugging story and I'll try to give most of the meeting time over to the group to share in...I'll ask that people refrain from telling me I'm a great guy and that they talk about the topic I've suggested...what's the topic? The face of God...I hope that it doesn't put new people off because it's purpose is to help them find and recognize a higher power of their own...we'll see...

Anniversary

Now that I no longer have a public blog it hasn't been fun to write in it. What's the point if only I will read it? Mental masturbation...keyboard masterbation...what ever. Tommorow is my 23rd anniversary...I'll be sharing at the Happy Hour Group...my home group. I cry a lot these days. Never an all out crying jag I just tear up and my throat constricts and I sound funny. It sucks. I know that will happen tommorow.

Glenn Bosshard: A row of trucks

Glenn Bosshard: A row of trucks

So...ten years + later...

So ten years and some months after I discovered my "wife's" infidelitys I am still haunted by the trauma. I'm pretty sure some people get over these things and move on. In many ways I have but deep down in my marrow I still feel the betrayal as though it were yesterday. Dawn doesn't understand it. She's never been through anything like my experience so she honestly can't get it. Unless I were to catalog every single loving thing, laugh enjoyed, promise made, secret shared, illness nursed, pets loved and buried, life experienced and cherished and expectations for our future together that I had with Betsy in our 14 (?) 12 (?) years together and then show the way the betrayals manifested and were discovered, assumed, conjectured, proved beyond question, or questionably proved, I don't think anyone could actually "get" it. (that sentence is long enough to be Russian) I've thought about doing just that many times and have always been overwhelmed at the effort it would require. I could put it down on paper and still never come close to emparting to someone else the sense of safety and integrity I felt with her as my partner.

I don't want to make it sound like our relationship was without it's problems, ups and downs, anger and resentment. We both had all of those wrapped up in the fabric of a lifetime shared. However I felt safe in certain assumptions and I believe she did too. So...where do I go from here? There's no doubt that I have PTSD in some form or another from the experience. I believe that a great deal of my physical pain is based in this. It goes almost without saying that the depth of my depression is increased by these memories. I am very aware that there are a lot of people suffering from much worse mental pain and emotional scars than mine. Hundreds of thousands on this benighted planet I'm sure are so acute in their anguish as to make mine seem very minor by comparison. And yet that doesn't relieve me. I don't feel better because others have it worse.

I live so well it's ridiculous. My home, my partner, my "job", my everything is wonderful. I'm never hungry, never cold, never lonely, never without health care or a vehicle or a bed to lie down on. I have a life that is the envy of 90% of the population of this planet. I am aware of that fact almost all the time. I live in concious gratitude for my blessings most always. So why am I still so angry? I don't know. I can't think my way out of it. I can't pray my way out of it. I can't act as if my way out of it. I've tried all of that. Really tried. Worked it. The pain hasn't lifted.

A row of trucks

On my way to the store today I passed the college ball fields and saw 3 Ryder trucks parked in a line. I guess they're there with stuff for setting up the 2009 graduation ceremonies. My heart started to race a little and an old excitement began running through my brain. I could hear loud live music and smell campfires and weed...I was ready to hit the road take some acid and get the job done. It took me a couple of seconds to recognize what this Pavlovian response was about.

When I was 15 I had the opportunity to work with a crew of people that subcontracted as a labor pool to the purveyors of Midwest summer music festivals. At the time I didn't know how it all worked I just knew that I'd get the call at my Mom's house that a bunch of hands were needed to work and I'd start calling my friends and family members. We'd all hook up at the little white house on "Gasoline Alley" and jump in the vans and cars and head on down to Madison where we'd pick up other folks.

At that point my "position" as fixer was passed on to someone older and presumably more experienced. I was there because I had the only stable phone number and I could find everybody else. I couldn't drive, I weighed about 95 lbs soaking wet and really I was just a kid. So I rolled the joints and the 18 and olders took the reins. I was along for the ride and the cool tee shirts. I did get to work on the crew and I always came home a week or so later with some money.

From Madison we'd go to Chicago to meet with the Guy. He also had a bunch of bodies and a line of Ryder trucks with the necessary implements in them. Leaving from there to points west we would eventually end up somewhere in a cornfield on an abandoned farm that had been leased for the occasion. There were always problems with mud, fencing, sanitation, food services, decking, sound towers, stages etc. that our crew could be turned loose on. Semi able hands in the right places at the time they were needed. There is much more to this memory and I may write it down some other time but this morning, when I saw the Ryder trucks lined up in a row I was 15 again for just a few seconds.

More...

Today I feel pretty good. Last week I had to kick narcotics pretyy much cold turkey. Fentanyl was prescribed by my Doc to try to alleviate the pain I live in. In Sept. I had helped Dawn with 2 roadshows and, although I've done this before, this time it took an enormous toll on my body. The pain was untenable, nothing brought me pleasure, the overwhelming fact of my life was that it sucked. Due to pain. Every other aspect of it was good to great. I consulted with a Doctor at one of the 2 shows I helped at, this being the Society for the Advancement of Healthy sexuality national conference, and she suggested using Fentanyl patch to alleviate my condition. She's a noted pain doctor with several books to her credit. When I got home I saw my Doc, who runs the Johns Hopkins Pain Clinic and is no slouch in the world of notability himself. We agreed to try the Fentanyl. After increasing my dosage several times I reached a point where the pain was alleviated to a large factor but all the nasty affects of narcotics was present. Dawn felt that I wasn't there anymore. I concurred...

On Healing from emotional trauma and how unlikely wholenesss will ever be acheived.

It must be this time of year...I see that I actually opened up this blog on Dec. 17 2006...That's almost exactly 2 years ago. I should start by saying that I have a good life, a very good life. I'm with Dawn, a woman that I really love and adore, she's my best friend and true life partner. As we say: She gets me!. My step daughter, Emily is the greatest. Even at 14 years old she is a decent, respectful person that is becoming the kind of human being that we all should be, but she's not perfect. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I still feel that way in the next couple years. My daughter Brianna is likewise a good and decent human that has been working very hard at making her life circumstances better than they were. She's 25 years. My son Cameron is ...he's Cameron. Brianna just called to tell me she didn't think I was presenting Cameron fairly. She's right, all the great things that she says in her comment on this post are true and I should have named at least a few of them. Cameron is also a good and decent human being. He has many wonderful and admirable qualities.He's kind, he loves animals and treats them with love, he's brilliant,I am always knocked over by how bright my son is,he's hilarious, when he gets on a roll he can be incredibly funny,he's fast,he's artistic and makes wonderful things, he's a lot of other things that I haven't named. That's pretty much what all his family says about him. I love him forever and ever. I feel that I failed him terribly when he was a child and right on into adulthood...The number of ways that I let him down are vast in my eyes. He says "Fuck it! It's all good..." I can't say that myself. My only defense is the same as every other parent..."I did the best I could..." Not much of an excuse.

I am in awe of Dawn as a parent. No child has ever been as adored and cherished and given every opportunity to succeed as Emily has, and it shows. I didn't have a natural ability to be responsible for another human being in my life...no excuse...I'm just telling the truth of the matter...I was a drug addicted, drunk with a flexible moral high ground and no belief that I had any actual value. Not the best material for parenting.

My intention with this blog is to try to get beyond a broken place in my life which hasn't healed in close to 10 years. If you google my name and read the 1st couple of articles that come up you'll have an idea of what the break looked like as it happened but none of the before and none of the aftermath. The long reach...It's Christmas every year that brings this up for me. It's entirely unfair to Dawn and Emily and everyone else in my life that I should let this time of year that they love and look forward to so much be over shadowed by my pain & inability to heal all the way...I think the only way to get there is to finally tell the whole story as I remember it in a contiguous narrative...

blogblogblog

What's in a blog anyway? Just the rantings of people like me. Dis-enfranchised, powerless members of the masses believing that they will be heard by someone...anyone. Hoping that once heard their thoughts, opinions, prayers will somehow make a difference. If not for themselves then for someone out in the ether world of the internet.

The only reason I started typing today was to see if this blog would make it possible to google myself and find me...anyone trying to find me could then do a google search and find me here. Does this work? I don't know...who would be looking for me anyway?