The Box

I guess I've been a little "off" lately. Well, I know that, but I guess I haven't been covering it up as well as usual. Maybe. I've just had a couple people randomly ask if things were all right so it got me wondering why they'd be asking that.

Thing is, I just occasionally have some inner turmoil going on and for whatever reason, I just don't like talking about it.

I prefer to just work my way through it myself. Like I've always done.

I spent a huge section of my life dealing with things myself and not having anyone to talk to and just developed a tendency to deal with things myself. Quietly. In whatever time it takes.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed. Sometimes, as happy as I generally am, as much as I can be in love with life and everything around me, sometimes I just get, well, I guess depressed would be the word.

Not like, "woe is me" depressed, just depressed. That leads me to be a bit introverted when that's going on. I don't like it, wish it didn't happen, but it does.

And I don't like to or want to talk about it. It's nothing that talking is going to change. It has to pass on it's own.

Sometimes I think it's ridiculous and don't want to talk about it because it's embarrassing. I don't know.

But, I'm having one of those again and it's actually been going on for a bit.

It's draining.

I have a busy schedule with all that I have going on all the time. Surprisingly enough as hectic as that is, there's so many other things I'd like to be doing too.

I get to where I'm so overwhelmed that I start feeling like I don't want to do anything. It's difficult to even manage to do what I HAVE to muchless anything else.

So many things I should be doing or working on and I have absolutely zero ambition to do anything.

That makes me more depressed and feeling like life is just passing me by.

But life isn't what I'm wrestling with right now.

It's the opposite in fact.

On top of that writing feels too much like talking. I like to write. I just prefer to write about things I like or things that make me happy. I don't like to write about things bothering me any more than I like talking about them.

So Randy Travis had a song called "The Box".

The song is about finding a box the father had collected things in over the years when the kids thought he didn't really think much about them. Yet here was this box of memories that he had held on to.

Well, that's not the problem I don't have such a box. I guess I occasionally wonder if my Dad does. It'd be cool.

I think of this song with the way I'm feeling right now because, while I don't have that kind of box, I did find another kind of box that is perhaps similar in a small way.

And I guess I didn't so much find it as I looked in it. I knew it was there. I just hadn't looked at it for years.

Last fall I was working on cleaning the garage and I came across The Box. I hadn't seen it's contents in many, many years.

Why I decided to open it after all this time I don't know. I knew what was in it for the most part. General idea anyway.

The Box contains a bunch of different things. Mostly what's left of my childhood, teenage years and some early adulthood stuff.

I had a lot of stuff that meant a lot to me and held a lot of memories that I would have like to hold on to.

However, when my Mom died and I wasn't around, there was a mad dash to get rid of stuff when my Dad & brother decided to move. Since I wasn't there, a lot of those things are gone.

What remains is in The Box.

There's some T-shirts. A couple awards/diploma things. A couple old wool sweaters. One was my Dad's, one was my Mom's. I ended up in possession of them when they were passed down to me to wear for deer hunting.

There's a Coke bottle radio my Aunt Donna gave me for Christmas one year. A belt buckle with my name on it still in the package. I remember it, but I don't remember if it was a birthday or Christmas present. I don't remember why it never came out of the package.

There's a letter I got from former Governor Tommy Thompson for helping clean up after a tornado.

Basically it's a box full of junk that means nothing to anybody but me. The average person would come across it and probably through it out.

But each thing in that box holds some meaning or memory for me.

Except the thing I didn't remember.

On a big piece of manila paper that they used to give us in school is a picture I drew.

I'm guessing I was between five and seven or so when I drew it.

I know I was too young to have gotten much from horror movies at the time, so where it came from I have no idea.

The picture I drew was of death.

I very quickly folded it back up and put it back in the box. I didn't even look at it long enough that I could actually describe it.

I think there's a house with a black figure flying around and says the thing that scares me most is death.

I don't remember drawing it.

I don't even remember having that fear as a child.

I remember being 15 or 16 and being scared that for some reason I wouldn't make it till 18.

But I did.

Once I made 18 it became a different number. 21. 27. 30. 40.

So far I've made it through all of those years, despite my own dire predictions.

But as I got older, even though I didn't realize it had always been there, the fear became more pronounced.

I developed a huge case of obsessive compulsive disorder. Had to do everything exactly right so I didn't up & die for doing the wrong thing, the wrong way at the wrong time.

It actually disrupted my life in huge ways.

It still does.

It's no where near as bad as it used to be, but I still have certain things I have to do certain ways, so many times until it's "right".

And behind that is this constant overwhelming fear that my days are numbered.

Of course it's irrational considering all the time I've sat around obsessing about it and I'm still here.

It freaked me out finding that drawing.

I know that virtually every day of my adult life the subject of my demise is always there. In everything I do, I'm thinking about that to. It actually stops me from doing things. It puts and keeps my life in some kind of weird holding pattern. Waiting for the danger to pass so that I can be free of that worry and just live my life.

It doesn't happen.

It was very disturbing to see that drawing. Not only was it a reminder of my fear, it was shocking to discover that it hasn't just been my adult life. It's been my whole life.

And I have no clue where it came from.

A few months after opening The Box and finding that drawing, I turned 48.

Another moment in time that I didn't expect to see for whatever reason.

I've been thinking all the time about it. About the things I've wanted to do but my fears stop me.

It's not like I think something I want to do is dangerous so I don't do it to be safe. Not at all. I really have nothing on my to do list that is dangerous.

What it is is, I have this little voice that tells me if I do something I want to do, or accomplish something I want to accomplish, I will then no longer be necessary.

My mind really has me believing that there's one thing I'll do and that'll be it. So I don't do things because I'm afraid.

It's stupid. I'm basically saying living my life may kill me so I'll just not do anything.

That is what is known as irrational fear. No different than heading over to WebMD, putting in some symptoms you think you're having and having the results tell you you're going to die. Which I have also done.

More than once.

And yet I haven't.

And yet, I'm still paralyzed in a lot of ways.

Finding out I've had this fear that long doesn't do what I think it should.

I think it should be proof positive that I have a bad tendency to have irrational thoughts. It should be "proving" that I'm full of crap because I've obviously been thinking the same thing for a great many years, and yet nothing similar to the fears has even come close to happening.

But it doesn't. It makes me more afraid, and more sure that my irrational fears are actually quite rational, whether the make sense to me or anyone else.

Being 48 now, having looked in The Box I don't think was such a good idea. It would have been better left closed on the shelf in the garage.

Now what it is is a constant little slide show in my mind of the things in that box.

Little things that mean nothing. Things that any one else would through away.

While I've come along way from previous points in my life, I've accomplished a lot, I've made some great family & friends relationships, I've done things I didn't think I could do, I still feel like I'm sitting on a box of nothing.

Unlike the song, I think my box doesn't have anything of value that means anything to any one but me.

I guess that's something I've always felt like too. Probably the whole reason for this website and the little stories I write on it.

I keep struggling with Being Valuable.

I keep struggling with the idea that I'm going to be gone before I put anything worthwhile in the box.

I keep struggling with not being able to put anything in the box. I'm afraid to death that at any moment I will have done something that made me serve my purpose here on earth and I'll be gone.

I know it's crazy. I'm a fairly intelligent individual and I know the way I think & feel is irrational. I realize I'm the one stopping myself from living. But this fear is stronger than my powers of reasoning and rationale.

It becomes tiring thinking of nothing but how I could be gone at any time.

Especially now, this year.

It's moving so fast.

A short while ago we were waiting for the snow to melt so we could finally get the bikes out of storage, and now all of a sudden it's going on August and it'll be time to store the bikes for winter again before you know it.

I've only put about 200 miles on my bike this year. I usually get  two to three thousand.

But I've had a nagging fear about that too so I haven't done it.

The thing that makes it harder, or seem harder this year is the fact that I am 48 and 49 is going to be here in a blink.

I also know it's also irrational, however, with all this stuff constantly on my mind another thing I can't seem to shake is that my Mom was 49 when she died.

It's probably some weird, deep psychological thing that happens to people who lose a parent when they're young, but I guess there's something about not being able to comprehend living longer than your Mom did.

If I think about it, I have known a few other people in similar circumstances who had a bit of a rough time when they reached the age their parents died at.

My Aunt Donna, my Moms sister for one.

She'll be 67 this year. She's at least 10 years older than any one in her immediate family lived to. My grandmother & grandfather went at 56 and 57 respectively and of course my Mom at 49.

I remember my Aunt having some fun getting through 56 and 57. And then of course she's been pleasantly, if apprehensively surprised each new year. And she has had her share of health problems. She's been in the hospital for a couple weeks now with some issues. I finally got to talk to her the other day and I can tell she's quite scared again.

She was sure she was going to die. **UPDATE: She did pass on August 22, 2014-stories about that may be found else where.

Kris' Mom has been in an even worse boat and there's been a couple times now that we haven't been sure she would make it. We're still not.

However, now 49 is approaching, I have my usual all day everyday preoccupation with my untimely demise. Then whether it is or not, it appears that death is knocking on doors in my neighborhood, so to speak.

It makes it very hard to get through the day.

I fight it.

I keep myself insanely busy. Basically I have no free time because I always have work or a project or something.

I keep myself busy to try to get my mind to focus on something else.

I try to quiet my mind on it. I tell myself it's irrational, that it's all in my head, and once in awhile I can actually get focused on something else long enough to let it go for a minute, but it always comes back.

The more I'm tormented by it, the harder it is. It can invade everything. The more I try to ignore it, the louder it seems to yell at me.

I also know the only way to come to peace with anything is to acknowledge it, accept it and let it go.

All these years I haven't been able to do that. A little here & there, but it's still a part of my daily life. Not one day goes by that I don't have it coming at me in one way or another.

Right now with everything going on around me, it's particularly bad. I know it'll mellow out again at some point, it always does.

But right now is just very hard.

And it's weird to be so focused on something that most people probably don't spend much time thinking about.

That's one of the biggest reasons I don't like talking about it.

Even writing about it is giving me the jeebies.

However. This is nothing new. It's nothing I don't go through on a regular basis.

Sometimes it's short and I get through it pretty quick, sometimes it's harder.

With all the other circumstances going on around me right now it's just a little worse than usual right now.

I don't like talking about it. Talking about it feels like making the fears real. I know they're not and I've learned to deal with them. My way may not be the way other people would handle it. Hell, I'm not sure any one even remotely thinks like I do in the first place. My way may not be the way others would like me to handle it, even if they could understand it, but it is the only way I've known to deal with. Sometimes I just get so focused it's all I can think about. If I'm not thinking about it, I'm talking to myself trying to get myself out of the funk. Sometimes it takes time.

I wish I was just always happy & positive and optimistic.

I'm not.

Sometimes I'm just scared and worried that I'm never going to get anything that matters to anyone in my box because I'm too afraid to do anything different.

And then I get over it for awhile.

Of course none of this makes much sense.

Nothing makes sense about living in completely irrational fears that you manufacture for yourself.

I know that.

That knowledge is how I eventually find my way through.

And I always do.

For now, I'm just being me, doing what I do.

Sure I wish I had a better way.

But this is me.