At this point, there is no turning back. Not in my mind anyway. Some say this is not healthy thinking. It may or may not be but I made a commitment. I was pretty much at the end of the rope. Which is pretty bad because as I have come to find out, I don’t use ropes. Something had to change. The words to the song, Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd put it best.
We’re just two lost souls
Swimming in a Fishbowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
Of how we found
The same old fears. . .
I had said yes. We say lots of words in our lives, have lots of conversations, say many things, many phrases. It may be that 99.999999% of the words we say have no impact on our lives or anyone else’s for that matter but this one word spoken at that time over the phone was like a 90 degree turn taken at 90 miles an hour. There was sure to be a wreck.
I am not sure of the exact words that I thought after I had said yes but I do know the feeling was one best expressed by the phrase, “Holy Shit” along with a sudden loss of breath. I didn’t see it this way then but my boots were on the ground and I had shut the car door. The mountain in front of me however was obscured by a heavy fog. Although I knew I had a pretty good hike ahead of me, it never occurred to me that there was a mountain behind all that fog.
I remember my ex-wife saying, “I can’t believe you think this is a good idea.” as I was looking up ads on “roommates.com” Our marriage was falling apart and for good reason. I certainly own at least half of it. But I have to be careful. Although I would like to take on the full blame, it is clear to me now that this is not true. I am not sure how much of this I will go into in this book. It would probably be best if I just poured it all out for you to see.
I certainly was a bad actor in the marriage. I know my part in it. I know it well. In fact, it is difficult for me to see what part she had in it. This actually, to this day, fuels a bit of a resentment: “She is perfect.” is the basic premise behind this resentment. In my mind the perception is, is that she is perfect. I actually believe she believes this. This of course is unhealthy thinking. But I will continue. After all, this is my perception and I am fully aware that my perceptions don’t alway jibe with reality.
So, here goes an abbreviated version of the resentment: She is not afflicted with cravings of any kind. She does not drink to excess. She eats only lettuce although sometimes she will allow herself to have a peanut. Her desires for sex are controlled as if she has some type of button that turns them on at a time of her choosing. Otherwise she has no interest and thinks of sex as something that people who live in trailer parks do. She lives in a life of constant productivity. It occurs to me that if she could, she would devise a way of being productive during sleep. I am not talking about having dreams that would help her out psychologically. I am talking about real stuff. If she could have lucid dreams where her body could be moving and doing stuff like building a house she would do this. She regards sitting and reading, writing, doing art, listening to music as unholy wastes of time. Self introspection is frivolous and for the weak. There is no need for self introspection when you are perfect.
Please understand that this is my perception which is pretty much a caricature of who she is. It is an exaggeration. I do know that there is an element of truth no matter how small or subtle behind every claim.
Forget about her though, this resentment should tell you volumes about me though. It should tell you why we are no longer married. Seriously, do I have to spell it out? Okay, I will but not quite yet. I am hoping it is apparent that the resentment with my ex-wife is indicative of many things I have going on with me. Which is the most important part of this book, me. Herein lies the problem. Me.
There are many paradoxes in life. This is one of them. Our marriage fell apart the moment our eyes first met because I was and was not or rather am and am not the most important person in the world - in case you were wondering. I was and can still be self centered in the extreme while completely disregarding myself. When you put these two things together the result is a shit show that makes the New York City septic system look like a well maintained porta-potty.
The problem wasn’t her, my job, my dad, my mom, my sister, the republicans or the democrats, the christians, the jews, the muslims, Osama bin Laden, George Bush, Bill Clinton, the Russians, the Canadians, global warming, the patriarchy, the industrial military establishment, chem trails, or even the illuminati. The problem is me. On that day, after the the “s” in yes left my lips, went into the microphone, traveled through the spaghetti network of wires and cables, over the airwaves out the speaker of the recruiter’s phone and finally into his ear I stood there staring into the fog getting ready to take the first step on a mountain climb that appears to be taking up the remainder of my life. The mountain I had to climb and am still climbing is me.
On some of the difficult peaks in Colorado and maybe with every mountain there is a passage called “the crux” You may have heard, “The crux of the problem is . . . “ When I started climbing/hiking the mountains in Colorado, the fourteeners specifically, I ran across the word, “Crux.” Up until then I did not know the etymology of the term. I thought it meant the heart of the problem, which it does, but that was it, “heart of problem.” It actually is a thing a real thing and when we use the term or phrase, “crux of the problem” it seems to me we may be using a metaphor.
Turns out a crux is also real thing. It is a place. It is a place where sometimes people breathe their last breaths where the minutes that people have yet to live are measured in only single or double digits. It is a place where the lives of people experiencing joy and excitement, awe and wonder abruptly end. The crux is an important place to know.
In order to achieve the summit on some of the fourteeners in Colorado one must traverse, hike, scramble, and/or climb up through the crux. The crux is usually the only way up to the summit The crux is difficult and dangerous. It is like a funnel. There are multiple routes to and from the crux. A mountain’s difficulty rating is based on the difficulty of the crux. The route may be just a hike or a walk. Maybe you could even take a mountain bike up the route but if the crux is rated at say a class 4 scramble, the difficulty of the route is categorized a class 4. Class 4 is generally regarded as sort of the no-man’s land or nether region between where ropes are or are not required to safely achieve the summit. The consequence of unsuccessfully navigating a class 4 scramble or climb is death. Not impairment, not a long hospital stay, not paraplegia just death. This is what makes class 4, class 4. As a point of reference, as I write this book, If my life were like a climb up one of these fourteeners with a class 4 crux, I am on that crux right now. I know that I am in the crux and this is one of the reasons for this book.
I am perched in a vertical crack around 13,800 ft above sea level. I have a little over half the oxygen I would have if I were at the beach. I have one foot mashed up against one wall and the other foot mashed up against the opposing side creating a compressive friction grip between my body and the crack in the wall. I have one hand on a solid rock above me and I am reaching for another rock above that. That rock, I have lightly tested. I have pushed on it from below checking for any movement. That rock can not waver in the slightest. I have tested and retested. As I begin that reach I am preparing to relax my legs in order to slightly release the compressive grip my feet exert on the opposing walls of the crack. The “plan” is to release my feet slightly, pull my body up with my arm that is currently engaged with the solid rock. I will do this quickly so that momentum will send my other hand above the rock I am trying to grab my target rock. My hand needs move above and over that rock in order to gain a solid and complete purchase that will bear my weight until my legs and feet can regain the friction grip on the opposing walls of the crack.
The reward of a successful completion on this move is my life. I get to keep it. There is nothing but air between me and the ground fifteen hundred feet below. Not that it would matter but fifteen hundred feet below me are rocks the size of SUV’s, refrigerators, and small houses that from my vantage point look like pebbles. At least that’s what I think they would look like if I were to look. There is no value in looking down. The only thing that matters is the task at hand which I will perform without thinking.
That’s right, I don’t actually think about this and to be honest there usually isn’t a plan. I mean it’s not like I actually think it out like I am preparing a set of instructions as outlined above. More accurately it goes something like the following: My feet are holding me up in the crack and my left hand is wrapped around a solid rock above me and I see the target rock above that one. I test the target rock by pushing on it from below which is the only thing that may be considered as a plan because it involves very deliberate and detailed forethought. My presence is required here my absolute undivided attention. My life will depend on that rock. Then in less than a second, in less than any time it would take to actually think about what I am about to do. I relax my foot hold, hoist myself up, swing my right arm up, grab the fucking rock and re-engage my foot hold in the crack. This is my life right now.
“Really? Are you serious? It’s that fucking dire? Don’t you think you are being a bit melodramatic here?” You may be asking yourself.
Well, yes and no. To some extent I am over dramatizing the situation but if you were to get inside of my head at some choice moments usually late at night as I am trying to get to sleep or early in the morning as I am waking up you might bear witness to how dire the situation is. I mentioned earlier, “I know that I am in the crux and this is one of the reasons for this book.” How do I know I am in the crux? An indication that I am perched in a crack fifteen hundred feet in the air was expressed by me in a therapy session. I said, “I don’t think anybody would notice if I were gone.” This seemed to raise more of an alarm than a sentence like, “Nobody cares about me.” which I have also uttered. That second sentence is important too. I guess. But for some reason; and I don’t know why, but the first one raised the hair on the back of therapist’s neck. We will be doing work on this one. So you’ve caught me perched here in this crack with my feet mashed up against its opposing walls hanging by my left hand from a rock above. I am desperately looking for the next rock.
At this point, there is no turning back. Welcome to the shit show!
