{"id":5081,"date":"2011-08-03T14:55:01","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T19:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=5081"},"modified":"2011-08-04T12:51:01","modified_gmt":"2011-08-04T17:51:01","slug":"the-solitary-life-and-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/5081","title":{"rendered":"The Solitary Life And Stress"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m stressing more and more lately, and not just about the economy and the future of JWST and my livelihood. \u00a0 Every little thing it seems adds to the stress level, every bit of news I read, every little thing around the house I see that needs fixing or working on…little worries about bills I shouldn’t have to worry about because at the present time I am making more then enough to pay my bills and there is plenty left over to plan the next vacation with…every little ache and pain, even though I just got the best possible result on the colonoscopy…everything.<\/p>\n

I am a little tightly wound ball of stress lately. \u00a0 Though nicotine has been a stress blanket I haven’t smoked a cigar in months, worried that my body just can’t take it anymore. \u00a0 Though a drink or two will calm me down I haven’t had anything for days because if I so much as touch glass to lips in my present state I’ll be convinced I’m on the road to alcoholism. \u00a0 So I just do what I have always done when I’m completely stressed out. \u00a0 I sit on it and just wait for it to either go away or kill me. \u00a0 So far it hasn’t killed me. \u00a0 Probably, it is making me crazy. \u00a0 Although some friends from my grade school days would say I’ve always been crazy.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I indulged in something I know relieves stress without drugs: I took a drive around the Maryland countryside. \u00a0 I love to drive. \u00a0 I didn’t spend the money on a Mercedes-Benz because I wanted a status symbol. \u00a0 Driving is a favorite pastime. \u00a0 Just get in the car and go find a road I haven’t been down yet and see what’s there. \u00a0 The lovely rolling green hills of the Piedmont are very relaxing to drive through and after some miles of it the stress began to loosen its grip on me. \u00a0 I could feel it letting go. \u00a0 It was nice.<\/p>\n

I turned for home and got back on the Interstate, heading back into the city. \u00a0 I wasn’t in a hurry and so I just sat in the far right lane at about the speed limit while to my left everyone else was zooming past me, on their furious way to somewhere. \u00a0 I didn’t care. \u00a0 This was a section of the Interstate I have driven hundreds, if not thousands of times before….in a part of the Baltimore suburbs I used to live in, and still frequently go shopping in because it is so easy to get to on the Interstate. \u00a0 \u00a0 Traffic was light, and I was relaxing.<\/p>\n

Suddenly in the rear view mirror I saw a Lexus blasting toward my car and I swear it nearly clipped me on the passenger side rear bumper. \u00a0 It blew past…figure it was doing a good fifty mph faster then I was going and I was doing the sixty-five mph speed limit… and into the deceleration lane of the exit I was coming up on. \u00a0 Scared the steaming shit out of me.<\/p>\n

So I catch my breath and…<\/p>\n

…and suddenly I don’t remember where the fuck I am. \u00a0 I look around. \u00a0 I don’t recognize anything I see. \u00a0 I’ve been on this section of highway a zillion times before and it feels all of a sudden as though I have never seen any of it before in my entire life. \u00a0 I don’t know where I am. \u00a0 I don’t recognize anything. \u00a0 I don’t recognize anything.<\/em> I am in a strange place and nothing looks familiar. \u00a0 Nothing. \u00a0 I look around for a reference point. \u00a0 There is nothing here I recognize. \u00a0 Nothing at all.<\/p>\n

My logical analytical mind is still functioning enough to get me out of it. \u00a0 I pull a trick I’ve done ever since grade school when a teacher would catch me daydreaming…<\/p>\n

…and what would you say the answer to that is Mr. Garrett?<\/em><\/p>\n

Daydreaming doesn’t cause deafness. \u00a0 You’re still hearing what the teacher is saying, you’re just not paying attention. \u00a0 So, and quickly, I would mentally walk it back to the last thing I remember hearing, and then quickly walk it forward until I get to the question I am being asked, and then give an answer, usually pissing off the teacher who thought for sure that time they’d caught me day dreaming.<\/p>\n

Where the hell am I???<\/em><\/p>\n

So I walk it backward to the last thing I remember, which was getting on the Interstate. \u00a0 The rest pops back into view. \u00a0 Ah…right…I’ve just passed the Padonia Road exit and some jackass nearly hit me…<\/em> And then it’s like the visual memory suddenly pops back also, and everything looks familiar again.<\/p>\n

That has never <\/em>happened to me before. \u00a0 And so naturally I begin stressing out that I’m getting Alzheimer’s. \u00a0 My brain is going. \u00a0 I can feel it Dave…I can feel it…<\/p>\n

I stress about it all night and all morning today. \u00a0 Then while I’m discussing something with my current and former branch managers I do something I almost never do, because I don’t like bothering my co-workers, and especially my bosses, with my private worries, and particularly my private health worries. \u00a0 I tell them what happened. \u00a0 I ask them what they think is happening to me. \u00a0 Has that ever happened to you? \u00a0 Is it time for me to see the doctor about my memory?<\/p>\n

And one of them says oh yes, that’s happened to my brother and you hear it happening to people all the time because of stress. \u00a0 Stress does that he tells me. \u00a0 Don’t worry, it isn’t age. \u00a0 A lot of stress can make you loose the zone and you forget where you are for an instant and what you’re doing. \u00a0 It happens. \u00a0 It’s stress. \u00a0 Your brain isn’t rotting…brains just do that when enough stress is applied.<\/p>\n

In other word’s it’s expected behavior under certain conditions. \u00a0 I hear this and the worry just melts away. \u00a0 The relief for a moment is overwhelming. \u00a0 Yes…yes, that makes sense! \u00a0 And…I’ve read about that elsewhere. \u00a0 Yes! \u00a0 It’s kind of like when you get smacked in the head hard enough you loose a fragment of short term memory. \u00a0 Stress does adversely impact memory. \u00a0 I’ve read that. \u00a0 The explanation makes sense.<\/p>\n

I’m a geek. \u00a0 I’ll probably dig around a bit more and research it some until I’m satisfied and can put it to rest. \u00a0 \u00a0 But in the instant of that worry melting away I saw something else, something I’d seen before often enough, but this one time it really hit me.<\/p>\n

Because, really, I”m not under an unbearable amount of stress all things considered. What’s bad is the level even minor things can build up to with me. \u00a0 And that has been the case, for nearly all of my adult life, and particularly since Mom passed away. \u00a0 Stress doesn’t go away for me like it does most other people. \u00a0 I can’t manage it as well as other people can and do. \u00a0 Because nearly every moment of my non-working life I am alone. \u00a0 It’s not the stress, it’s the solitude. \u00a0 It’s a lifetime spent in emotional solitude.<\/p>\n

We are not solitary critters…we are social beings. \u00a0 We need our packs, our tribes, our families. \u00a0 We need most of all, in our adult lives, that other half.<\/p>\n

It’s not the big issues. \u00a0 It’s all the little day to day ones. <\/em>All the little minor day to day things that happen and get discussed and hashed out in the casual chit-chat of lovers. \u00a0 All of that just grows and grows inside of me and I can’t really stop it from doing that all by myself.<\/p>\n

If only I had friends who cared that Bruce shouldn’t be so alone. \u00a0 If only I’d grown up in a world that understood that some boys like boys and that’s okay as long as they find the right boy. \u00a0 If only.<\/p>\n

Oh well… \u00a0 \u00a0 Artists are supposed to be crazy anyway. \u00a0 It’s what makes us creative, and our works valuable long after we have died miserable and alone.<\/p>\n

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Self Portrait with Better Medium
\n1982<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m stressing more and more lately, and not just about the economy and the future of JWST and my livelihood. \u00a0 Every little thing it seems adds to the stress level, every bit of news I read, every little thing around the house I see that needs fixing or working on…little worries about bills I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[130],"class_list":["post-5081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-lonelyache"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}