i have everything

I have everything. A good job. A beautiful place in the country to live. Some good friends. Eight wonderful kids and a wife that loves me and that I love. But I struggle to enjoy it. Don't know how to be happy. I learned so young and so vividly that the world is bleak. That no one wants me. That I am the problem - that it remains so regardless of my circumstances. At some point each day I feel full of death. That I can't possibly live one more day in this empty place. Why can't I get better? Lately I've been wanting to hurt myself. It seems just. That something terrible should happen to me. Then at least one thing in this empty senseless place would make sense. At the same time I love my family more than ever. I feel for them. I want to be here for them. I want to fight for them. Want them to never feel unwanted. But I know something has to change. I can't love them and hate me. It doesn't work that way.

brighter. bigger.

My father died when he was 39. The night before I turned 40 I dreamed a birthday party for me in the house where I grew up. The house was different. The same shapes, but brighter. Bigger. Full of people. I had redecorated the house by painting huge black words all over the walls and ceilings. They were terms of endearment for my wife, Tina. Kind. Beautiful. I answered the front door and the pastor of the church that exploded was there. He paced. Mute. Agitated. I greeted him and asked him in. He came in but still did not speak. He tried to set down his bible, but threw it across the room in anger. When I held out my hand to him he hesitated and then held out a sermon written on paper. He had prepared a message in case anyone asked him to preach at my party. He let me shake the sermon instead of his hand.

Later my wife asked me to say something to the guests. I wanted to tell them I was glad they came, that I had been sure I couldn't outlive my father and make it to 40, but I was too upset to speak. I would get to the word "father" and not be able to continue.

i wish she had loved me

Last year my 4 year old daughter rode in a little yellow racecar with her grama. During the race, Grampa ran into them and injured Grama's shoulder a bit. No one was really hurt. The next morning when I said "Good morning, Princess." to my daughter she told me she wasn't a princess any more because she made Grama and Grampa crash. I kissed her and told her it wasn't she that caused the crash and that she would always be a princess. It was easy to fix. She had not heaped a lifetime of contempt on herself yet. She just needed to be told it wasn't her fault.

My mother sent me to a psychiatrist when I was growing up. Of course, when I had to leave class early to go see the shrink that in itself confirmed every week that there was something wrong with me. But, it took me years to see that what really kept the therapy from doing any good was that my doctor did not care about me. I didn't notice at the time, but now I know what it is like to be loved. And I know how easy it is to love children. She was indifferent. For 10 years of therapy she was indifferent. She was the only adult other than my mother that I was ever alone with. She was in a position to undo much of the harm done to me. Much of the harm I did to myself. I wish she had loved me.

the house is me

I dreamed I was in an old brown house. The father of the house could not find his son and needed my help. We searched and finally found a secret room behind a false wall in the cellar. Bare concrete. Rusty metal hooks. Blood everywhere. The decades old remains of a tortured boy still strapped to the floor. The father was devastated. I left him and went for help. But there was no one anywhere. Vast emptiness. Dry, cracked earth. I went back to the cellar and found the father playing back old home movies of himself torturing his own son to death.

I asked my friend who is interested in dreams to interpret it for me. He said the house is me.

we're all mad here

My father was a test pilot and left the following quote on the chalkboard at work in 1977.

"I don't much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. "What sort of people live about here?"
"In THAT direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Later that day he crashed his plane and died.