E-mail to Bonz

This picture has nothing to do with me. I was just intrigued by the moment. "The nick of time" as Thoreau so eloquently declared. And what form!







E-mail to Bonz 03/04/06

True. I won't miss the ludicrous "if you only knew what I know, yadda, yadda, etc, etc," ad nauseum, ad infinitum. That can be annoying, but we all have our foibles.
Nevertheless, it's damn good to hear you're back with us in the "real world" ---whatever that cliche means?...I'm not exactly sure. (Seems the older I get, the less the universe resembles the picture of it my mind haspasted together over the decades. Funny thing, this momentary congealation of wavy-massish..stuff, and its odd ability to turn inward and scratch its head in wonder of itself. I have a sneaking suspicion your Bipolar II-ism is not quite as strange a "condition" as one might be tempted to think. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that your artsy proclivities---both inherited and nurtured---are simply your being more in tune with both aspects of that guy we all know of as Bonz. The Yin-Bonz and the Yang-Bonz, as it were; and not knowing which one is "the real me.")

I also know how painful the internal strife is. If it hadn't been for excruciating and debilitating back pain, and a chance prescription for a relatively harmless little molecular cocktail called Tramadol, I'd have never known that there existed this space/time place---call it Peaceville. It's quite addictive, this Tramadol; but, other than that pesky little aspect, it's actually easier on your system than Advil and all those other gut-wrecking Cox inhibitors that keep our internal medicine doctors in Mercedes and golf condos. Seriously, other than a few very short episodes in my life---at most a few months over a 43 year life---there was always this gnawing thing inside me. Evil little bastard. And I think it's safe to say it's probably the same little bugger that was whispering into my dad's ear 35 years ago as he sat in his car in a dark parking lot in Orange---urging my dad on as he put that little revolver up to his head and began squeezing the trigger: "...just fucking pull it! You worthless piece of shit. They'll be better off without you around anyway, you miserable fuckup. Besides, they don't love you anyway. Nobody does. Hell, not even your own dad loves you, you pile of crap. How could they? How could anybody love a worthless, negative, worthless, self-righteous, worthless, arrogant, worthless, worthless, worthless......"
That's fucked up. I know. I used to hear the exact same shit, to the letter. It all started when I lived at the Ranch, when I was a mere lad of 16 and laid up with a broken leg; and it lasted, more or less obnoxiously, all the way up until James and Stu came along. The blackness sorta rolls on in like a hellish fog, always so fucking thick that no matter which way you turn to stumble out of it, you invariably just go deeper and deeper into the blackness. Ironically, alcohol helpled---albeit in the same way that chemotherapy might give a sick man a few more years of misery. (That was the Happy Lappy that you stumbled upon in that little house on the corner of Acacia & Girard.)
But the Happy part of Lappy began to dissipate in an inverse ratio with his blood-alcohol level. Of course, I had a family to feed and shelter, so I quit, and things did get dramatically better. But it wasn't until I started riding bicycles that I slowly began realizing my chemicals were, had always been, seriously out of whack (emphasis on whack). Endorphin made things better---much, much better; BIG improvement. But there was always still that nastly little shit in the background, clawing away at the last few shreds of Happy Lappy. Nevertheless, I got used to him, for the most part. So long as I could keep on ODing on Endorphin, life was servicable, if not exactly Nirvana.
Years happen, though. “The grass withers, the flower fades,” or so goes the scripture. And my treasonous back began turning on me. Unable to get ANY exercise at all, the evil little bastard crept back in, bitching me up, whining, complaining. After almost 15 years of relative peace and neuro-quietude, the physical pain set off a growing depression. Egged on by my own proclivity towards a bad attitude, I was beginning to hear his little hissing again, right in my ear. Any time I tried to get quiet and introspective: "...worthless, worthless, worthless...just get it over with..." and so on and so forth.
Then, one day, out of the blue, the heavens opened, and out dropped this little brown bottle of pills. Not that life suddenly gotten easier; not by any means. The year-and-half with an unnamed defense contractor in Hawaii was the most difficult, trying, nearly-always-discouraging experience of my life. But, even during the worst moments, when I felt like the biggest dumbass stupidfuck for ever promising to build a freakin' (weird thing we built in Hawaii)...I never felt worthless. Naive? Yes. Stupid? Of course. Self-destructively careless with my family's well-being? Absolutely. But NEVER worthless.

I'm pretty sure my dad would agree. As would yours, about both of us.

Thanks, once again, for making me open up that stinking old wound, expose it to some oxygen and scrub out the necrotic gaubeldiguk that tends to grow in those dark, nasty places. Somehow all it takes is a few words from you to slice me open and just let it all start pouring out. And please forgive me if it seemed I had given up on you. I hadn't. But there comes a time when one realizes that there is nothing to be done, expect to hope---and that I always have done.

Welcome back,
Happily Lappy