Why I Died

Please don't be sad, it hasn't happened yet, I'm still sitting here typing this. Life, unbidden, clings to me. Somehow, though, I would be surprised to make it another five years, and if I collapse on the sidewalk or the floor at any moment I will be the last one to express any surprise. As happens to all of us, my systems, and each of them, have worn out, and something will fail, probably sooner rather than later. I say that because my systems have been working a lot harder than most people's, from an early age.

If, when, I collapse in a heap, heartbeatless, do not be fooled by the foolish guesses of parties with an ax to grind regarding the cause of my demise. My ungrateful family will say that it was my drinking that did me in. There is damage to my cardiovascular system, that much is true, and it is the type that is often associated with drinking or overeating in some people who turn up dead. In my case, my money is on another cause all together. Stress.

I have discussed this with my cardiologist, and he added some relevant information. My life, from my days as a preschool boy, has been devoted to fear, unrelieved anger, and depression. My ACE score is five out of six. My parents, mostly my mother, started working on these numbers before I started Kindergarten. I still have nightmares about my mother; my hatred of my father is more likely to manifest itself in the waking world. Upon returning home, every time, I was afraid of being ambushed by my mother, holding aloft a shoe, ready to beat me with the heel for some real or imagined transgression. My childhood milieu, especially as approached by a boy with a fearful temperament and stricken with a general hopelessness, offered the constant threat of danger from boys who were natural bullies or just boys who wanted to move up in the pecking order. I attended Catholic school for twelve years, where corporal punishment was endemic and still permitted. I was afraid much of the time.

A child who remains in this state of hypervigilance to physical danger for most of every day is permanently affected by the experience. It affects childhood brain development. The hormone cortisol is involved. This contributes to many ailments later in life, including heart disease. You can look it up; I'm too verbose by half already.

My father was a different story. Having realized that he was married to an unstable, borderline crazy woman, he simply abandoned us. Not that it showed, he was much too clever for that. He arranged to be traveling for work virtually all of the time. I've been over this ground, but there are always new readers, so forgive me if I repeat myself. My cousins worshiped my father, and still worship his memory, because he always appeared at family gatherings, holidays, birthdays, etc. He was charming, and they were thoroughly charmed. They didn't know that those were almost the only occasions that my sister and I, not to mention my mother, saw him. My parents ceased their proper marital relationship, physically, at an early age. He talked to my cousins, aunts and uncles more on those occasions than he spoke to his own family for the rest of the year.

Check the abandonment box on the ACE scorecard.

Those few details will need to suffice, because this is a blog post and not A Tale of Two Cities. I'm not getting paid by the word, like Dickens.

Approaching my home, I tensed up, fear welling up inside me. I was also afraid leaving home. Turning a corner, I searched the way ahead for bullies. Entering school, I was afraid. Each of these situations triggered the “fight or flight” hormonal response, adrenaline, cortisol, God knows what all. Each one was what I have come to call a “clench.” As in, “to clench one's hand into a fist.”

I grew to become a man who was a whirlpool of resentment, anger, fear, embarrassment, hostility to the world and all authority, and bitterness about what might have been. I was, and remain, short tempered. Things go wrong, and I experience a clench. For most of my life, they often happened when I was alone. Some small thing would go wrong, and there would be a clench. Every muscle tightens up, I see red and my eyes close, I hold my breath, and there it is: clench. Alone, I can stop them in their tracks now, but it's seven decades now! Out and about, other people and situations can set me off. No wonder there has been damage done. For all of this time, the clench can be a quiet, solitary experience, or it may be a public scream-fest. My cardiologist explained that every time that the sufferer does this, the entire vascular system experiences the tension, the tightening. This is particularly damaging to the smaller veins and arteries around the periphery of the heart. That, dear reader, is where my cardiovascular problem lies. So yes, I tend to blame my life threatening heart condition on the general psychological condition that I have lived with all of my life.

I have, by the way, the heart of a racehorse. The problem is out in the small blood vessels, including the one nicknamed “the widow maker.” My widow maker already has a stent in it, and that's not the only one.

I am only grateful that my experience of depression is such that I direct all of the negativity inward. I am my chosen victim, and I really do try to make other people's lives easier. My ungrateful family would also cheerfully explain to you that I was just like my mother, a self-medicating drunkard who brought about her own doom. It's true that my mother grew up in the same cortisol brain-bath that I did, thanks to her mother, who was a true demon in human form, but my mother drank exponentially more than I ever have, my God, the woman was an all day drinker who went through more than a case a week, and she also was a vicious woman who directed all of her negativity outward, mostly onto the people closest to her. She lived to make other people miserable. It was her only fun. When she died, I breathed a sigh of relief.

As usual, I am a mass of contradictions. I am a vortex of negative energy, it's true, but I also readily acknowledge that I have been a generally lucky man. Most people perceive me as a polite, charming man, a bit garrulous perhaps but with some good stories to tell. I raised two fine sons. I'm very proud of them even if they are less than warm and loving to me now. I have always had friends, and they have often been instrumental in helping me to obtain employment. I was lucky with my first wife, too. She was a perfect fit for the job. Great breadwinner, great mom, great where the rubber meets the road. When she kicked me out, I was lucky to come down on my feet in a good situation. I own a nice condo in Bangkok, and my second wife is a real gem. (Age appropriate, BTW. I'm no cradle robber.) I have always been interested in things, just any old thing, and I can honestly say that I have never been bored. I am still a voracious reader, books, I mean, fiction and non-fiction, and scholarly articles. Things could be much, much worse.

I still get the clench. I had one today in a restaurant; had one at the dentist on Saturday. I kept them both rather quiet, which is good. I'll probably go back to the restaurant, after a month or so, but I will be dumping the dentist. Somebody needs to explain to her the difference between a customer and a patient. Trying to get a cab in my neighborhood these days would give anyone a clench. I just thank God that I'm not in that machine-gun clench like the first year after my father died, when it was every ten minutes, being reminded of some terrible memory, and folding up like a cheap tent at the thought of it. “But I was a good boy!” At least that's over with.

If it took a couple of cocktails to accomplish that, so be it. When I die, please do not be sad, but also please do not blame the whole thing on me. I will have been overtaken by events not entirely of my own making.