Fear

The subject of fear came up in therapy the other day. It was the first time in nearly 2 years of being in therapy that it was ever mentioned. The focus of much of my therapy has been on recovery & sobriety, but the topic of fear finally surfaced. I can't recall exactly how it came up, but it got me thinking about my fears - some irrational, some funny, some paralyzing- and how it can take over one's life. That said, I will address several of my fears at this time for no other reason than documenting them:
Home Invasion: When I was a kid, there was this one ADT home security system commercial that scared the fucking shit out of me. It featured three criminals; a menacing black burglar ("I know when you're home and when you're not!"), a junkie cat burglar ("I can pick most locks with a credit card.") and finally, the Latino lurker (It was easy. They didn't even know we was in the house.") I'm least scared by junkie cat burglar. He's not a physically imposing figure and his claim of being able to pick most locks with a credit card is absurd. Motherfucker, if you can pick a deadbolt with a Visa card, I will gladly give you my shit. The black burglar looked like he could bend Bo Jackson into a pretzel and he knows my schedule. Scary. Latino burglar frightened me more than the other two combined. He's just walking behind my house while I'm watching TV, filling up a sack with electronics and other valuables. Years of watching Rescue 911, America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries did not help me overcome this fear.

This is a semi-rational fear that loses validity when I tell you that I include cockroaches in the "home invader" category. The roaches and I have an understanding that they can have any other apartment in the building if they leave mine alone. Sometimes they break this sacred contract and I freak out when I see one. Not because I fear their strange, alien little bodies. I just know there are many more where that one crawled out from.


Balloons Popping: The fear of balloons is known as globophobia. Fear of loud sounds is called ligyrophobia. I'm not afraid of balloons and I'm not afraid of all loud sounds. I'm terrified of balloons popping. I can never have children because they will expect parties with balloons and I can never accommodate them. I'm a bad, balloon-fearing daddy. This fear may be rooted in an early childhood incident when Andrew Montemorano, a kindergarten bully, purposefully missed a swing at a donkey pinata and struck me in the head with a souvenir size wooden bat. All I remember was a flash of light and the sound of the pinata exploding a few seconds later. Maybe Andrew thought I had better candy encased in my skull. Or maybe he was just a sociopath. Wondering what the connection is here? That pinata was once a balloon. True story.

Lightning: Professional golfer Lee Trevino was twice struck by lightning on the golf course. There is nothing scarier than a random bolt of electricity landing a few feet from the place in which you stand. Actually, being Lee Trevino is scarier.


Leaving New York City: I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. However, the day may come when opportunities abound elsewhere and I will set sail for fonder pastures. That scares me. I have a big time comfort zone in New York. I attribute all of my success to living in and making it in New York City. Even in the most punishing economic climates, I've forgiven New York for not providing me with work and ample shelter. I'm a sucker for this city, but I know I can make it outside its boundaries.

Breaking My Beak: That would fucking hurt. I'm a bleeder.


Being Alone: Other people, places and things do not define me. But my quality of life would be severely diminished without my girlfriend, cats and dog. I enjoy occasional solitude but loneliness with no end in sight scares me. I'm mindful of how lucky I am and the thought of losing that is, at times, too much to bear.

Well, there are just a few things that scare the bajeezus out of me. There are more, but these will do for now. What scares you?

I will never graduate

Kristen can testify that I have awful blog color schemes. I'm in need of compassionate intervention when I choose the layouts for my blogs. Way back in 1999-2000, when I first started a blog on Diaryland, Kristen gently told me that my purple colors hurt her eyes. Since she was my only reader, I felt obliged to change it to something less...purpley.

No one told me that my current blog colors sucked fucking ass. Not even Kristen. Boo. Not even Haley, who up until last week, had paint samples taped to our living room wall to aid her in her plight to make our apartment look less like a granny flat. Thanks ladies.

In college news, Brooklyn College is royally fucking me over YET AGAIN. After finally finishing up my last class and going through an arduous and time consuming process to reclaim one of my grades, I thought I was at the finish line. I didn't care much about walking in the graduation ceremony. The last time I walked, I needed 4 Meridia diet pills smuggled in an inhaler to get me through that mess. I'm not sure if they would have let me walk since BC has crazy rules about people never participating in a graduation ceremony twice.

But hey, BC has different standards when it comes to fucking people over again and again and again with their grades. This time, I must prove to the registrar that each of the four film genre courses I took covered a different genre. Why is it incumbent upon me to provide THEM with this evidence? Can't they look in a fucking bulletin and find the classes that they programmed?

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I spent the better part of the last two years getting myself out of debt. I could not have achieved this feat without three things:

1) My girlfriend

2) GreenPath

3) Job

I'm glad that my nightmare is somewhat over. I get a full paycheck now and even though my credit score is an absolute mess, it's steadily improving with time. One detour I recently encountered on the road to credit recovery was a delinquent payment for a hospital visit. What really bothers me is that I had been in the emergency room of this hospital (Long Island College Hospital) two months prior to the visit in question and paid my bill on time.

I had absolutely no intention of not paying my hospital bill. Rather, I moved shortly after this visit and started getting my mail forwarded to my new apartment. I never received a final notice for my hospital bill; just a cheap looking collections notice from some rinky dink collection agency that looks like it was typed using Jessica Fletcher's typewriter.

Did I fuck up? Sure I did. I didn't perform diligence and follow up on my bill. Still, the fact that LICH put my bill into collections so soon after my stay will make me think twice before considering going there again.

Pussy

Uh huh. Haley and I purchased this fine little piece of retro craftsmanship from Amazon.com. We figured that while universe is content to provide us with 48 degree weather and May, we'll forgo an air conditioner until exactly what fucking season we are in gets sorted out. I found a nice little spot for the fan (made by Hunter) right next to my window. Imagine my surprise when I woke up later that night to a strange sound and a rather disturbing sight: blue sparks shooting out from the back of the fan.

What made this even scarier was that the fan was placed in front of the window that leads to the fire escape. I know it's just a little fan and I'm blowing this somewhat out of proportion, but you never know. The fuckers at Hunter are going to get a letter or something to that effect.

Since Haley is away for the first time in ages this weekend, I decided to reacquaint myself with shitty horror movies on In Demand. Quarantine is fitting the bill quite nicely.

Around an hour ago, I heard some glass shatter and immediately, a chorus of windows in the courtyard opened up and all eyes were upon a drunken Irishman. One tenant began to chastise the man, to which drunken Irishman responded in a whiskey affected brogue, "I live here, ye pussy!" Nice!!! Let's call the people who are trying to sleep and aren't drunk "pussies" and mimic your neighborly invectives. You give Lucky Charms a bad name, sir.

When the cops showed up, they launched into a comical Keystone routine, investigating the ground in the courtyard adjacent to ours. "Pussy" yelled out to the cops from his apartment, directing them to the location of the shattered glass. There must have been 12 cops in the courtyard. I heard one of the cops say that a tenant told him that the drunken Irishman was actually our super.

Getting up there

There's a big silver lining to turning 30. Once I get there (it's a month away) it will be done. I fretted and frowned about that less than magical number since turning 25. The day after that birthday, I found something terrifying about being closer to 30 than 20. My fear has waned significantly over the years, mostly because I really don't care. The aesthetic-conscious narcissist in me doesn't give a shit. I look okay for my age. It's not as if I'm supposed to look a certain way at 29, but most of my friends who are the same age have grays, are going bald and look like 30 came 5 years too early.

That the narcissist, by the way.

From a maturity perspective, I have grown immeasurably and in a way that I would not want to turn back the clock under any circumstances. Sometimes I miss being unabashedly goofy and writing about stupid shit that I did under the influence of cold medicine. Sometimes? Rarely. I don't miss it at all.

I don't miss being a completely self absorbed little prick and feeling a sense of entitlement to toy with the emotions of others.

I don't miss staying up for 4 straight days because I couldn't keep my promise of "Just one more bottle/line/pill."

I don't miss being a really unreliable fuck who no one could depend on or place an ounce of trust in.

I don't miss any of the elements of my undoing.

Every time I pass by a liquor store, I laugh with a sense of defiance. My days of shrinking in the presence of my former cathedral are gone.

If losing my hair, getting fatter and going gray are requirements for getting older, so be it. I accept those changes. I embraces my 30s with open arms.

The war is over.

Why is it so difficult?

Can't seem to keep up with a blog these days. I look back at my old Diaryland journal and apparently, I derived much joy and happiness from trivial things.

Stale air

Not since 1985, when a fabled Cape Verde type hurricane named Gloria swept through New York, have I been hospitalized with asthma or breathing difficulties. I suppose this past Tuesday was the every 20+ year exception.

I've been sick a lot over the last 4 months. In early November, I woke up one morning with a severe case of diarrhea and nausea. After completely emptying my stomach out and being unable to vomit or shit anything else, Haley got a little tired of my guttural dry heaves and convinced me to visit the emergency room of Long Island College Hospital. Luckily, LICH is right next door to our apartment. Seeing as I was not capable of doing much more than making the "I'm going to puke now" face, the hospital's proximity to my toilet was a good thing.

On account of having thrown up in excess of 4 hours and over ten times, I was fast tracked to the emergency room. Many IVs later and I was replenished and released, probably to the delight of Aetna.

In December, I developed a thrush infection on my tonsils that was so severe, my dentist made me get it checked out by a doctor before doing a procedure on my gums. It finally went away for good a couple of weeks ago.

My breathing problems began last Monday night, right before going to bed. Labored breathing normally doesn't affect me because it's par for the course with asthma. You just take a little puff of an inhaler and you're good as new. On Monday, I must have used my inhaler 10 times and it did little to alleviate my asthma symptoms. How I made it through work and then therapy on Tuesday is a mystery to me. I got home and let Haley know that I needed to go to LICH.

Did I mention that I haven't been to the hospital with asthma in over 20 years? Yeah. The ER nurse hands me some contraption and I just shrug.

"You've never used one of these??"

"No" It's a nebulizer, she tells me, and it's going to help me breathe again. Awesome.

Then she thrusts some kazoo-looking thing at my lips, again, under the assumption that I know what it is. This one is called a peak flow meter and it measures the force of your breath. Normal is 450. I blow 150. She tells me I'm going to need "the pipe." That's the little pet name they give the nebulizer. In a pulmonic sense, I felt ostracized by my meager knowledge of these instruments.

Two and a half hours later, I was discharged with a considerably clearer chest. They put me on Prednisone, a kind of steroid. Now I'm moody, restless and bored.

The medicine can be worse than the disease, can't it?