Coleman Polar

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-7923-2757-5
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 217 Seiten

Autobiography of the struggle of living with the dual diagnosis of bipolar mood disorder and alcoholism. Follow the ups and downs of this author and poet's perspective of his life journey.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Coleman, Andrew

Leseproben

Chapter 1 The Making of a Madman A moment on ancestry, although I am as much of a genetic mutt as most white folk in America. I do know that I am primarily the end result of an Irish immigrant and a Native American, though we have been unable to determine the exact tribe. If this has anything to do with my life experience, I am not sure, but having Irish and Indian blood surely presented a life prone to alcoholism. My parents grew up in the south in the sixties. I often ask my mother about civil unrest, the civil rights, and the opposition to the Vietnam War. Her response is almost cutely naïve; she just says, “I don’t really remember much happening. It only happened on TV.” Alabama will never be awarded for being on the frontlines of forward thinking. Though, even being raised in that environment, my mother is an incredibly brilliant, creative, and tolerant person. There is not a racist bone in her body, although from time to time she will say something vaguely inappropriate, but there is no animosity behind it. It’s just the residue of a different time in a part of the country that closed its eyes to advancement. My Grandma is a different story, she still uses terms like “nigger toes” when eating mixed nuts, and she still thinks the Cubans ruined her neighborhood. My father couldn’t be more opposite to my mother. He, too, is a brilliant man with amazing abilities. His focus in those early days of the 1980’s was singular; his piercing eyes always landed on the bottom line, the almighty dollar. I don’t fault my father for this, My grandfather was a difficult man, a career company man who instilled in my father an ideal of success that could only be found on a financial spread sheet. When it came to decisions regarding career choices or money, the two nearly came to blows on several occasions. My father lived in his father’s shadow, as so many men do. He adopted an interpretation of success that could be easily quantified. My parents married young by today’s standard; they were both barely 21. My mother was a registered nurse and my father was a promising up and comer for IBM. You might call me a “Tech Brat”. My father was an incredible provider. He had a work ethic that was unparalleled; sixty-hour work weeks were the rule, not the exception. When the opportunity to move forward in title or compensation was offered my father’s vocabulary contained only one word: yes. We moved a lot. Before my first day of third grade my happy home had moved from Rochester, Minnesota, to Del Ray Beach, Florida, to the woods of New York, to the suburbs of Los Angeles, and finally to a little commuter town called Tracy in 1987 about sixty-five miles from San Jose and the site of the new gold rush, the Silicon Valley. I would later learn that my mother had laid down an ultimatum to my father: “Move again, and me and the kids are not coming with you.” I didn’t notice most of the moving. I was too young to remember much of it, but I imagine the toll was greater on my older sister Amy. She was three years my senior and pretty outgoing. She had to say goodbye to several best friends. The few memories I have of those early years include my mom’s never-ending kindness and patience, my sister’s God-like presence, and my father in his cowboy hat, his beard smelling of Coors light. When my father was grinding out his spot at IBM we were lower-middle class. I never went hungry, but I remember my parents fighting about money. I knew very young that not having enough of it made for an angry father and crying mother. I was so acutely aware of this that when I was five years old I decided to save my folks a couple bucks by cutting my own hair. It didn’t end well. We ended up shelling out the money anyway so a barber could fix it. We never took a family vacation, and I am not sure if that was because funds were low or if my father was afraid of losing clout at work. Thanks to my mother we never were bored as a result of tight purse strings. She was a never-ending source of free entertainment. She would take a couple of spools of yarn and make a web-like matrix out of the backyard; it seemed otherworldly at that age. She never tired; even after a graveyard shift at the hospital she would make us breakfast, usually eggs and bacon in a smiley face. To this day I don’t know where her strength comes from. If I held any belief in the divine she would be the evidence I based that belief on. My mother did have a lot of help though, in the form of her six foot tall, pale, redheaded little brother: my Uncle Paul. He was the best friend a kid could have. A little background on my uncle Paul: he is a certifiable genius, and I am not talking borderline 130 IQ. He is pushing Einstein numbers. You would never hear it from him but my mom told me I had a little bit of his brains. Paul is an artist, a true artist. He produced paintings, stencils, music, computer programs, animations, and sculptures. There was nothing he couldn’t do, and do well. I remember he did a portrait sketch made entirely of single pencil dots. It looked like a LaserJet printer had done it, though that was fifteen years before we even knew what LaserJet was. My mom told me how he was always in trouble at school for turning in half finished math work with beautiful drawings all over the back. It was a compulsion for him to create, as it often is for those with great talent . It stops being a choice at some point and becomes a necessity, a biological imperative drowning out all else. My uncle was my hero when I was a kid because he was fun; he was my hero during my adolescence because he understood me and the pain of growing up in a hostile world; today he is still me hero, for his brilliance, painted with such a such grace and a sensitivity I find myself lacking. We spent countless days at my grandma ‘Eleanor’s modest home. My uncle would call in sick to work just to play monster with two tiny children. Uncle Paul had a degree in fine arts, he probably could have been a raging success in anything he chooses to apply himself to. Lucky for us, my uncle defined his success by the company he kept, and that was me and my sister. He had a part-time job at UPS so he could pursue success in the realm of the artistic and family. He was a freight loader, which I assume is loading packages onto trucks. The only time he worked full all day was during Christmas . One of my first memories is the way he would smell after work, it was clean sweat and exhaust; it smelled like safety, it smelled of freedom. It was so different than my father’s smell of faded cologne and domestic beer. My uncle live in a little shack, (I lack a more accurate term for it). It was filled with computer parts and covered in paint, I am not sure if he ever owned a TV. He drove an old ‘76 Camaro that would stall when you turned the radio on. I lived my first five years on his sloped shoulders. He would run full speed, my tiny hands covering his eyes, toward the kitchen door frame. It was certain death for us both but at the last moment he would duck me to safety. I would scream and laugh. My uncle Paul is the first and last man I’ve ever trusted. The beach is the best thing about growing up in Florida. It is an amusement park for the working poor. I’m not sure if we were poor, but I do know we ate a lot of tuna casserole and boy, did we go to the beach. My father was there too. I still have a photo of him, Amy, and me, encircling a fire pit roasting hotdog. The water was always warm. I recall trips taken in December and we still hit the water. I followed my sister like a mosquito, and to her credit she had great patience. She took time out from her own world to introduce me to existence at large. She would show me books and let me share her toys, she did not consider me a novelty; she was not entertained by me, she had a loyalty to me that ran deep, and she’s rescued me on more than a few occasions. It was at the beach that my personality and general disposition began to manifest. I was constantly nervous and apprehensive about the world. My mother would caution me against jellyfish, sea urchins, barracudas, and the like. Instead of simply becoming aware of these minuscule dangers, I began to develop a hyper-vigilance that was intrusive, and still is. I saw Jellyfish silhouettes in the water where there were only shadows, I was sure if I went too far into the sea a giant barracuda would take my legs clean off. I became a permanent fixture on my mom’s hip, and even then I would scream out if she ventured too far into the water. My survival instincts had run amuck. It was then, and remains today, an unwelcomed driving force. My mother was a health nut. At least by mid 1980’s standard. When the rest of the population was trying to pick Coke or Pepsi, our refrigerator never had anything but natural juices and water. I didn’t get my first slice of white bread until I was in elementary school through covert lunchtime bartering. She did it out of love, I know that. We were permitted one sugary cereal, of which we could have one bowl on Saturday mornings only. Desserts were unheard of; we had orange juice frozen in the ice cube tray with toothpicks. It was at the age of four that I got the first taste of my own mortality. My Grandma had a dog; its name escapes me but it was nearly as big as I was. I remember the incident with amazing detail. I had been at the grocery store with grandma and I saw a plastic...