Mirror Mirror

For years, I’ve been musing about my disinterest in Halloween, and my confusion. As I saw it, Halloween was one of those fun childhood memories, like cotton candy and getting a couple of quarters under the pillow after a tooth had fallen out.

I’ve even been a little irritated at the idea that Halloween was a holiday. Good grief. Are Fridays the 13th holidays? Summer solstices? At best, I imagined Halloween as being similar to Mother’s Day and the like, a day some of us marked but wasn’t official policy, if you follow.

But Halloween is a holiday. Apparently.

And maybe it’s always been a big deal for adults, the ones way past trick-or-treating. Maybe it’s only in the social media age that I’ve become aware of the affection many of my contemporaries have for the last day of October.

I’m not offended at all; this was just confusion, and it’s cleared up. There are certainly times to put away childish things, but this doesn’t feel like that. It feels like fun, dallying with spookiness, having fun with fear by mocking our most ancient terrors, which would be (1) death and (2) spiders. I can get onboard.

And I’d be there, were I invited to a Halloween party. I have a costume in mind. Not gonna happen, not this year, but I can see it.

...

Anyway, I saw a photo this morning, a couple of younger women dressed up for the big event. One of them I know, a little; she’s about 30, a few states away, a casual relationship. She and her companion were posing, and the costumes were unremarkable and vague. There was a mask and a wig, and then something that looked like a pumpkin shirt. Maybe they were cartoon characters or others unfamiliar to me. The whole picture was neutral, though, just dressing up. I thought it was well done, and I pressed Like.

Then I unpressed it. It felt like an unwritten rule – guys my age have no business commenting on the get-ups of women this age, full stop. It’s my rule, not yours, but it feels right. My reaction was perfectly fine, but I don’t get to decipher the creepiness level on these things. Err on the side of not being a creep, I always say.

It just struck me as funny, this self-policing of my public expressions. I know what I mean. I don’t know if you do, so I’m cautious.

...

I’m more cautious these days in general, not trusting my mood. I mentioned to a friend that I was a little edgy, and (for the purposes of our discussion) that I felt I should keep quiet until I was in a better place. He picked up on this immediately, seemed to suggest that I’d brought this mood up before and asked me if I’d like to have lunch soon. A friendly gesture, for sure. I have lots of friends.

None of them live in my house, unfortunately, although my son and wife constantly have my back. I try to keep them updated on things, and they know how to observe. I try to get outside once a day, take a walk, at least head up to the grocery store for dinner supplies, but it’s not like it was.

The political news keeps me returning to my computer or at least my phone, constantly refreshing. This is more interest than concern, although I have concern. There’s just not a lot I can do about it, so I indulge my passion for current events and keep refreshing.

I clean a lot. I walk around once a morning, doing my chores, washing the dishes and making the bed, wiping down counters, giving the bathroom a once-over daily so it never degrades into disgusting, which no one here seems to mind but I do.

I can’t write. I make a few attempts to keep digitizing my home movies, or re-digitizing them (I long ago converted them to DVDs; now I’m moving those files to an external drive for protection), but that’s also a sort of chore, not really a pleasure.

I cook, although nothing serious. Most days, I try to have a meal ready for Julie when she comes home from work, although some of these carry over to leftover meals, and then there are nights when she doesn’t get back until late and fends for herself. John rarely needs my assistance to eat, although he’ll share some of these meals if he’s around.

And I eat and sleep, well in both cases. Eating is maybe a little heavy on the sugar, but sugar is my last resort sometimes. If I cut back, my appetite goes in the toilet and I get scrawny. The 10 pounds I gained this summer seem to be sticking around, and for me this is good, hanging around 170 pounds instead of constantly battling to stay out of the 150s.

Once again, these fitness trackers we all have now are giving me insight. My pulse rate is a few beats higher, still very good. I went to get a flu shot the other day, and while I was waiting I took my blood pressure. It was higher than I’m used to seeing, about 120/80 (I tend to run around 110/60), so I retook it a few hours later and it was back to my normal.

So I’m a little less active, hanging around the house more, sleeping more, not socializing as much, and wondering if my life is over for the most part, and should be.

Again. Feedback, or at least self-awareness, can do wonders in terms of analyzing what might not be all that clear. At first.

...

Depression is yawn worthy these days, something most of us are aware of and many experience. We all have our moments, and I certainly have, all of my life. I went over a decade with barely a trace of this, and assumed that when I stopped drinking I’d solved most of my issues. It felt that way, certainly.

Even with all the trauma of the past 10 years or so, I kept things on an even keel, mood-wise, and this was a good thing. I was needed, and I was able to be useful.

And not that I think I need to explain this, but I’m not sad. I laugh. I enjoy things, if briefly. I can’t imagine that I have much in the way of utility in this world, other than making dinner and reaching high shelves, but I’m not in danger of jumping off of a bridge. My optimistic side is strong, and my ability to think magically seems intact. I can’t help feeling I still have something to offer. I just have no clue what that might be.

I’m not going to drink, as if that were an option. I’m not interested in risky behavior, I don’t go on wild shopping sprees, I’m not more irritable than might be expected. I’ve just had a couple of days of bizarre sleeping behavior, marathon naps, but this seemed to be an anomaly. I sleep well, although I can’t stay in bed once I’m awake and drift back off.

...

I could tell you things. I’ve spent some time in the past couple of years, both musing alone and in conversations with others, going backwards and observing, and it’s a little scary. What seemed to be odd, one-off behavior at different times now is obviously a pattern.

And, as trendy as it feels and as much as I hate to go there, this paints a picture that resembles social anxiety a little more than depression, although those tend to be partners anyway. I could list 20 times (at least) in my life when I’ve behaved bizarrely, or so it must have appeared to people who cared about me. I avoided simple things – in fact, I ran from them. Incredibly minor moments, things people do all the time.

All the while, I had a long history of accomplishment, of being social, of being liked and appreciated and respected and admired. Sometimes I’d go the extra mile, too, just gut it out and do something brave.

But I couldn’t keep it up, and so I used what ability I had to carve out a niche of functionality in this world. It was boring and repetitive, even though it brought in a good income. It eventually broke me, and then I got better, and then my son got into serious trouble and my wife got seriously ill, and I took care of that as best I could, and that broke me also.

That’s all I can figure. That, and some disappointment, and some bad timing. There’s no one to blame for this, or most of it, no system or bad actors I can point fingers at, except when I’m looking in the mirror. This is all on me.

...

When I filled out the forms for my flu shot, I used my legal first name, which is Charles. These are the only situations, legal stuff. It’s my name.

So when I heard a pharmacy employee call out “Chuck,” it surprised me for a second until I realized. Ah. Someone recognized the name. I’m not unknown in these parts, and my last name is very rare.

He just wanted my insurance card. I told him I didn’t have insurance, and he raised an eyebrow and asked if I’d be paying cash, and I said yes, and that was that.

Look. I can’t read his damn mind. I just saw the look on his face, and noted that he called me by my familiar name. This could just be my mood, my situation, my shame.

I just thought he might have wondered why a man like me, whose name is in the newspaper once a week, has no health insurance. Lots of people don’t, but c’mon. Some of them you wouldn’t expect. A grown man like me should have health insurance, and there must be a reason he doesn’t, and if there’d been a mirror around I would have been able to explain.