On Turning 46 | Removing Gravity
Another year, another handful of lessons. It’s been an interesting one. That’s not to say it’s been hectic or bad or calm or good. It’s just been interesting. Which, I guess, is good because who wants to be alive if things aren’t interesting?
This forty-sixth year began with a backyard party at my house, which had been recently vacated by my ex. Frankly, I was surprised so many of our mutual friends came. I was sure they would have quietly abandoned me, confident all of my worst moments of horrific behavior had been aired by my ex. Maybe they were. Maybe friends can forgive. It began with me at the tail end of a post-breakup sexual bender. It began with my severance pay from the last job petering out. It began with me in emotional traction, still bleeding from the prior years of tiny cuts. It began with a deficit of confidence despite my performative upbeat attitude and success at dating.
This forty-sixth year ends quite the opposite. The house has been put back together, and for the first time since I moved here, it feels like my home, rather than someone else’s where I’m always welcome. (You understand the difference, yes?) I’m working and making money again. I’m still striving to form healthier habits, but I’m feeling pretty good about my physical and mental health. I’m in a relationship with a woman whom almost a year in has not disappointed me and whom I have not disappointed. Time will tell, of course, but there’s a kind of connection and communication that’ll make any disappointments completely manageable. (Knock wood.)
It’s been a year of recovery. Coming up from the darkest, most pressured reaches of Misery Ocean. Learning to not take the bait that’ll land me in a trap of sadness, anger, and annoyance still associated with my divorce and the personalities that led to its necessity.
Things had been heavy. The weight of failure, the weight of doubt, the weight of responsibility, the weight of disappointment, the weight of guilt, the weight of anger, the weight of annoyance. The weight of the blankets I tried to hide under. So much gravity. But this year has been a year of removing that gravity. I welcome this forty-sixth birthday with open arms and the bearable weight of still being alive and what I’ve managed to learn in the last three hundred and sixty-five days.
Be Mindful of yourself and others
I have a set of rules I make my boys follow. These rules most frequently get imposed when we’re in public, on some adventure, but they’re also rules for life. I make the boys recite them with me:
Rule #1: Listen to Daddy
Rule #2: Be mindful of yourself and others
Rule #3: Have fun
Depending on the situation, other rules will be activated, but those three are standard. Being mindful of yourself and others is really the most important because it is the best way to be a good human in a functioning society.
I know who and what I am. I can be loud, I can command a room, I can disrupt a perfectly peaceful grocery store with absurd, Andy Kaufmanesque antics. But I also operate with the idea of staying out of people’s way so I don’t overcomplicate their life. I have my emotional reactions and assumptions, but I try real hard to express those emotions and opinions with understanding and compassion. I may end up landing on the idea of fuck them, but at least I took the time to think my dismissive action through.
One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about is how my actions impact my kids, especially the older one who is collecting core memories like my Roomba collects dog hair and dried bits of Play-Doh. That thing is that I need to adapt the way I talk about my sons—in writing, in podcasts, in conversation with friends. I used to hate when my mom talked about me as a kid. I wanted my secrets. I wanted to control the narrative. Mom didn’t have all the context. It’s become the same with Harry. He’s a private person. Feels deeply, loves heavily. He loves telling stories and is interested in making movies and writing books. All this makes me think he, like his old man, wants to control his narrative. Well, who doesn’t? Out of understanding and solidarity, I want to be mindful of that.
I can’t not talk about my kids. I’m a parent, that’s what parents do. And my kids are cool, funny, interesting, and frustrating, complicated. Well, who isn’t? A lot of times, I tell stories of them because I’m seeking advice or making connections. The thing is that I have to be a reliable narrator by acknowledging what I don’t know about them. Like my mom, like most parents, I know my kids really well. But as they age, what I know will diminish. My stories of my kids aren’t their stories, they’re mine. Their versions will be different. And I need to be a responsible parent—and journalist—and not create a narrative that is too strong for them to break through and tell their version of things. There are two truths: The happening truth and the story truth. We own, and are responsible, for both.
That said, I should probably shut up about my kids right now.
Being chronically angry and sad is fine
If it’s what you feel, feel it. But don’t always act on it.
I’ve spent the last year trying to find calm and peace with how my divorce played out. For a while, I thought I was successful at it. And, like wicked clockwork, just when I thought I was beyond the anger and sadness and annoyance, my ex would say or do something that would drop me through a trapdoor back into the pit of fury, loathing, and depression. It was like taking two steps forward and seventeen steps back. The hard work never got any easier. Not even in the smallest, incremental ways. Until I accepted the way I really felt. Angry. Sad. Annoyed.
So, sit with it. Accept it. Let it find its way into my blood and muscles and bones. Let it work its way through my body like the other poisons I consume. Booze and late-night snacks are just as bad for you as anger, sadness, and annoyance. But let them in, digest them, make use of them. I’ve accepted the way I feel instead of trying to excise the feeling before it was ready to leave has drastically improved my mood. It’s gotten me farther away from the hateful feelings. It’s all still there, but the bite no longer breaks the skin. It’s annoying nibbles from kittens with sharp teeth. And I can easily kick a kitten away.
One day, I’m sure, I’ll wake up and the hate will be hard to find. It’ll be as distant as the love I once felt. Feelings pass. We just have to give them the avenue to get through.
Chemistry matters
The biggest takeaway from my high school chemistry class was that we could steal materials to make bongs. And that there was too much math for my dizzied brain to compute. Chemistry class didn’t matter much, but chemistry is everything when it comes to the Grand Social Experiment that is life.
Take stock of your friends, your family, your relationships. What is it that binds you? What has fueled years of making moments together? Some of it is conditional, like family. You can’t ever really outrun your bloodline. Often, there are shared experiences, like that time you and your pals got busted for breaking into the junior high and stealing the gym uniform rental money. Full disclosure: I don’t talk to any of those guys anymore. We just kind of fell away and grew apart. It happens. Some chemistry has a shelf life.
The best relationships—of any sort—have undying chemistry. The kind where you just get each other. Where you have a secret, second language. A base understanding because… because you do. It’s the kind of chemistry that is intangible. The kind of chemistry poets write about. I’ve seen relationships fail because, while everything looked good on paper, there just wasn’t that thing. Hell, I lived that. I’ve seen relationships go through really tough times, and the people come out of it together, often stronger. That’s due to their chemistry. It’d be a kind of magic, if it weren’t so biologic.
When you have the right chemistry with someone, neither of you have to try so hard. And when you do, the impact exceeds all expectations. Relationships can have hard times, but they shouldn’t be hard. If they are, your best option is to make a bong and find people with a chemistry that compliments your own.
There’s always another day. To make the change. Do the thing. Until there isn’t
My great-uncle Ivan once told me something to the effect of, “Don’t rush to do today what you can do tomorrow.” I don’t know what his last words were, but I hope these were them. Just because I love good irony.
It’s not terrible advice. And it carries greater weight when it’s doled out by a man in his eighties. How many tomorrows does he have left? Was he not counting the days? Was he not thinking, “I’m older than my grandparents were, older than my parents were, older than most of my friends were… My last tomorrow could have been yesterday?” I think about that all the time. And I have for years.
Even as a kid, with my whole life ahead of me, I operated like I had six months to live and needed to achieve everything I wanted before the clock ran out. It’s been a hectic ride, but worth it. I’ve done some cool stuff, I’ve checked some goals off my list. But I’m still not even close to completing that list.
And, yet, I’ve taken up the idea of giving myself a break and pushing self-imposed deadlines because… mental health, I guess. But all those self-care evenings where I kicked back on the couch with a box of cereal and a movie or TV show means I wasn’t checking things off my to-do list. Update the budget, shop for a new card table, write that screenplay, write that comic book, finish that almost-done novel, workout more, eat better…
I’m not a lump, but I could use fewer evenings on the couch. What brings me joy? What inspires me? Zoning out with someone else’s creativity on the TV or in the book I’m reading and won’t remember while getting high in a bubble bath is fun. But a completely checked-off to-do list far outweighs that. There’s gotta be balance. And that means I need to put a little more weight on the side of the scale that is Action.
Not just because I’m getting older and I have fewer tomorrows than I did yesterday, but because I want to impress my kids. I want to impress myself. I want to prove to those young boys and this old(er) man that I’m not a bore. That I’m much more than a guy who clocks in for work, gets the paycheck, and, well… works for the weekend. Time to work as hard as I play. It makes the play much better. And it’s the only way to avoid regretting that tomorrow that finally never comes.
Learned lessons are never really learned
Compare this essay to ones from the past. There are similar themes. There are similar lessons. Some lessons are the same, just dressed up in synonyms. We learn, we re-learn. We find new nuances we hadn’t seen before because our experiences hadn’t yet revealed them to us. We have to keep going. Always. Always forward. Always in the pursuit of living our values and hunting that kooky thing we call happiness. It comes in bits and bites, but it pays out in spades.
So, happy birthday. Your girlfriend thinks you’re hot as hell. And maybe, just maybe you are. Like you’ve always been.
The author on his third birthday. This badass is still how the forty-six-year-old man sees himself.
