In There Like Swimwear

After speaking at to my therapist, Scott, at length and in depth about family dysfunction, I decided it would be best to impose a unilateral moratorium on all toxic relationships, starting with family. As the middle child and only son, I’ve been between a rock and a hard place trying to balance my sanity with my familial duties in general and my filial duties in particular all while trying to make something of myself. As Kenny Rogers once said, however, you gotta “know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em.” As far as that prescient admonition is concerned, I’m folding like laundry on a Sunday afternoon. Trying to impose my will and impart a modicum of orderliness and regularity has literally driven me crazy, more than once. Not even attempting to do so again, as any more such effort would be tantamount to straight masochism. As the Wolf in Pulp Fiction said to Jules and Vincent after cleaning up the unpleasantness at Bonnie’s “Lots of luck to you, gentlemen.”

Less than a week after I completed my USC MSW application, I was officially accepted into the program. I am close to ecstatic about this and learned of it on a Monday following a Friday, during which I bought a Playstation 4 with three games (the obligatory newest edition of Madden, NBA 2K14, and Call of Duty: Ghosts). This serious retail buzz needed to be smoked off with about half of a pack of Newports that same day. Damn near orgasmic, I tell you. That night I was antsy, and didn’t feel like being in the crib by myself, so I headed out to visit the old man. I compounded this mistake by twelve hours later going to visit my mother. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, seeing your parents, who are supposed to be beacons of guidance in a place where they can’t teach you much except about what not to do (e.g., marry the wrong person) unsettles the old psyche a little bit. Perhaps I’ve been desensitized to the chaos I perceive to an extent, but it still bothers me to the point where avoidance absolutely makes the most sense.