She (Ronda) stepped through the portal before me. She was in the process of stepping through or rather it looked like she was in the process stepping through, when I jumped. I jumped on November 22, 2005. To be honest, I don't know if she ever jumped. In actuality, I only saw her preparing to step through; I never actually saw her take that step.
Unwittingly I had jumped over the edge, stepped off the cliff, walked through the portal, whatever you want to call it. I say unwittingly because I didn't know I was doing it at the time. I think from the view point of an "on looker" it looked like a man going crazy, having a nervous breakdown, or loosing touch with reality. As I look back on it now, I was having one massive temper tantrum. When a two year old has a temper tantrum, it is usually in a crib or high chair. There is a lot of noise, food may be thrown, dishes flung across the kitchen and most likely the dishes are plastic and the cup is of the "sippy" variety. When a 41 going on 42 year old man throws a temper tantrum it's an entirely different animal altogether. Lots of people can end up dead. We read about it in the papers, see it on the evening news; it happens frequently. Certainly my temper tantrum endangered me and without thinking it endangered the lives of my three children. As result, I spent almost 48 hours in a psychiatric hospital. I went in throwing the most massive temper tantrum of my life; I left with a determination I had not experienced since my first days in college when I was afraid of failing out.
Over and over, the first four minutes of side one of Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield and the words Constancy of Purpose. I would set out every morning to go to work and set the disk back to the beginning of track one. Every four minutes. When it got to four minutes without even looking or thinking my finger would automatically go to the CD player and press the back arrow button. Constancy of purpose! I've got to get this. I've got to get this down. Come on Andy. Lets get this down! . . . Now!
All the way into work. Constancy of purpose and every four minutes, back arrow button on the CD player. You have got to change! You have got to change! Go to the fucking meetings. Just go to the Goddamn meetings! Anything not to think about how fucking,. . . how absolutely fucking alone I was!
Work was nothing more than a place to go to occupy my mind for eight or so miserable fucking hours. Anything to take my mind off the pain of being so fucking all alone! Just look straight ahead and keep moving. Find every resource you can.
At work I had detailing to do. That is I had to make the working drawings for the machined parts for the piece of equipment I was designing at the time. I remember listening to the song "I Grieve" by Peter Gabriel during this time. Once again, repetitively, but not from the beginning. I would listen to it once all the way through and then when the song was just about to end I would listen to it from 4 minutes and 45 seconds to the end.
Life carries on
in the people i meet
in everyone that's out on the street
in all the dogs and cats
in the flies and rats
in the rot and the rust
in the ashes and the dust
life carries on and on and on and on
life carries on and on and on
it’s just the car that we ride in
the home we reside in
the face that we hide in
the way we are tied in
life carries on and on and on and on
life carries on and on and on
did i dream this belief?
or did i believe this dream?
now i can find relief
i grieve
I did grieve.
I did detail drawings for about four weeks from November 28th right on through Christmas. This was fairly mindless work. Compared to design work it did not require a whole lot of thought so I could bury myself in music while working. As long as the music was on and I was detailing nothing could get into my mind yet at the same time the music allowed me to feel what was going on. The music, "I Grieve" expressed the incredible loss I was going through at the time.
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