He said it wasn’t an urgent task, but an important one. I didn’t want to overlook it, so my goal was to just take care of it right away. How hard is it to deposit a check? Well, to start, Cyndie and I have separate accounts at different banks. We have both of our names on each of the accounts, but I have no idea what her checking account number is.

Over FaceTime, I brought up the subject and Cyndie said I could just look in the drawer in our desk where the checks are and I could get a deposit slip out of the back of one of her books of checks. Sounded easy enough to me. Consider it a done deal.

But it wasn’t going to be that easy. I rummaged through the many boxes of checks, and found old ones for each of our children, one from my bank account, and then a box full of old blank registers, with calendars on them now long out of date. There was nothing from Cyndie’s account.

Days passed, and Cyndie and I failed to connect. I figured I could look for an old bank statement of hers for the account information. There should be a file-full around here somewhere. But the sad truth is, Cyndie and I manage things very differently, and after looking everywhere I could imagine, I found no bank statements for her checking account. They may be here, but there are a lot of boxes and files of paperwork that Cyndie saves, and I can’t seem to find the needle in the haystack.

Next, I emailed a request for her account number, but that went unanswered, probably lost in her over-loaded inbox. After days of failing to reach her using FaceTime in the evenings, I made a point to wake up early and try to catch her before she left for work. She was kind enough to pick it up, but only to tell me she was late and had to dash out the door. She told me she would text the account number.

This had already become embarrassingly overcomplicated. All I wanted was to take care of it right away so it wouldn’t drag on or be forgotten. I waited for her text. I waited two days. How long does it take to send a text? I left a voice message on her phone. I must have sounded desperate. As I was falling asleep after that second day, my cell phone vibrated to an incoming text message. It said she had mailed it, and she was sorry I was so worried about this.

I wasn’t worried, but I sure was frustrated. I checked the mail that next day. Nothing. I suppose it could have been delayed a day. I checked the day after that. Still nothing. Is this some kind of test for me? When I finally got a chance to speak with Cyndie by the end of the week, she confirmed she did mail a deposit slip and blank check, but not till the day before. She had carried it in her purse for a couple of days until she found a mail box.

I checked Saturday’s mail. Nothing. Monday, nothing. Tuesday, nothing. How hard can this be? To complicate things, I had forgotten that Cyndie told me she was traveling to Florida for a conference. I couldn’t figure out why I was totally unable to reach her for several days. I was about ready to give up, but each day, I’d check the mailbox, just in case.

Yesterday, I finally got what I was after. To add insult to injury, the letter that Cyndie waited two days to mail ultimately got mangled and torn open by a Post Office sorting machine. The deposit slip and check with corners missing, and the torn envelope, were put into a larger envelope and, to the Post Office’s credit, at long last, they delivered the items into my mailbox.

After bringing in the mail, I went right back out the door, drove to the bank, and made that damn deposit.

Words on Images

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It has been brought to my attention, by friends who care about me, that some of what I write lately is spawning worry about my state of being. I will admit to taking advantage of some of the angst, (created in me by the departure of my lovely wife to the job in Boston), composing some prose that explores the feelings thus produced. To an artist, such fodder is a rich vein to be mined.

I am grateful for the feedback, though, because I was not aware of the level of impression my words were creating. I am richly blessed by friends. In particular, Ian Rowcliffe, who provides me with insights and inspirations through his comments, and his unfailingly positive focus. Also, my good friend, Gary Larson, a champion in helping me take care of myself. Mike Wilkus has been a (mostly) weekly date for dinners out on the town, or movies, or sometimes both. Many special friends from my circle of bicycling buddies, who came over last Saturday, bringing food and good cheer, to watch a movie I’ve been itchin’ to share for weeks. And my morning soccer comrades, who just yesterday were helping me release endorphins with plenty of laughter and cheerful competition.

I am eating very well, despite my disinterest in cooking, getting in my maintenance exercises for my back, and actually enjoying the opportunity to get a taste of living on my own. Being separated from Cyndie isn’t easy, but it isn’t all that hard, either. It is “both / and.”

Part of me just might have been hesitant to portray my situation in too rosy a light, lest I come across as a heartless cad. I fear there could be some ‘splainin’ to do if my wife thought I was having too much fun here without her.

I was telling Gary last night that I am enjoying having some of the rooms in our house become more a reflection of me, as I remove some things that had been put in place for when two people occupied the space. As referenced in yesterday’s poem, the rooms are losing some of Cyndie’s soul, but I see that as a logical step toward our putting this house on the market. When she moves home again, we are envisioning that we will be in a new place, on property with space for horses. I expect the current situation will end up making it easier for us to part with the house we’ve lived in for over 25 years.

Thank you to all friends, new and old, who read me here! I’m hoping you find my travails relative something… preferably something positive!

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you weren’t here last night
to hear if I had something to say
not that I did
but that doesn’t matter
it isn’t the point, anyway
I took a stroll through empty rooms
and talked to myself out loud
some nonsense, not about anything
a break in the absence of sound
I’m watching how slowly
the soul of this place
is shifting
without you around
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Well, with Cyndie living in Boston, I am getting a chance to find out.

Our intent was to use FaceTime to keep in contact across the miles of distance. We’ve succeeded a couple of times, leaving the connection open while we each went about our separate business, creating a feeling of being together. It worked pretty well for that. Unfortunately, Cyndie’s schedule isn’t providing very many opportunities for this kind of connecting. More often than not, we have been spending our days out of contact. I am left to fend for myself.

It takes a toll. No doubt about it, when days go by and you don’t talk with the person who would otherwise be your most intimate relationship, there is a loss of intimacy. I find myself inclined to put up a protective barrier in defense. After a while, I don’t want to talk with her. It is so counter-productive to the ultimate goal that it seems ludicrous, but that is the natural reaction that occurs to me.

This is a classic example of depressive thinking. It is dysfunctional, but the unhealthy mind presents it as a logical, helpful defense.

If I was feeling a lack of intimacy in my childhood, and it felt natural to create a protective barrier in defense, it would explain how I now feel so comfortable with this reaction. I’ve had years of practice. It feels right, not talking to the person closest to me. My father taught me well. He was a master at shunning my mom.

It is a goal of mine to invert the pyramid of dysfunction that passes from generation to generation. I want to be healthier than my father, and I am hoping to imprint better health on my children to equip them to become healthier than me.

I need to go call Cyndie.

I have a recollection of becoming upset over something as a 10-year-old, when my family was gathered to witness the first man stepping on the moon in July of 1969. I left in a huff to sulk, and couldn’t get myself to return, even for such a momentous occasion, and despite my family’s admonitions to come back and watch history in the making.

For some reason, I discovered early on that one of the things which offered consolation to my troubled mind was, imagining myself being dead. At the time, it wasn’t a conscious choice to have such thoughts in order to feel better, it was more like an involuntary reflex. It just came natural to me to fantasize my demise, and then eventually, I discovered that such thoughts provided comfort. Of course, it was a dysfunctional comfort, but I had no understanding of that at the time.

It is not uncommon for depressed people to seek solace in alcohol. I assume it provides relief similar to what fantasizing did for me; an escape. I would describe myself as becoming something of a ‘fantasylic.’ I functioned for years with a chronic low-level depression that is labeled, “dysthymia,” relying on fantasizing as my drug of choice. I could project an outward appearance of reasonable health, but inside my head, I was honing a dangerous art. I refined this practice from my childhood into my adult life, and in its dysfunctional way, it served me well.

Then I became a father. With that milestone, my suicidal fantasies began to fail me. They no longer provided comfort. In fact, they increased my despair, as I contemplated the potential impact on my kids. It is silly, in hind sight, that the impact on others never seemed to bother me that way. (Depression is a very self-centered affliction.)

I like to think that my children saved my life. It wasn’t easy, and it got worse before it got better, but that change led to my eventual diagnosis and treatment.

When my fantasizing no longer worked for me, my dysthymia progressed to clinical depression. My fantasies morphed to become exercises of actually plotting my suicide.

But for the grace of god, go I.

After years of neglecting to recognize my difficulties as being depression, I finally sought professional help. I learned very quickly about the dysfunction of my fantasies. Imagining my death is now taboo. As a recovering ‘fantasylic,’ I need to work my program with a purpose. The dysfunctional thoughts can come just as easily now as they did the very first time as a kid. It is a reflex reaction, and it became a very ingrained reaction that feels comfortable in its familiarity.

Through practice, it gets ever easier to instantly recognize and dispatch the depressive mental reflex. Over time, the incidence of needing to do so, declines.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Thinking about suicide is a totally wrong solution for any level of despair.

]]> http://johnwhays.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/why-suicide/feed/ 5 johnwhays http://johnwhays.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/absurd/ http://johnwhays.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/absurd/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:00:24 +0000 johnwhays http://johnwhays.wordpress.com/?p=7201 ]]>