Crack Babies I Have Known

Let's try this on for size.

How do you make a baby? 180M:1 ratio male-to-female biological material in a bath of hormones. Heat, feed, and keep in a dark watery portable container for plus/minus 9 months.

Terence McKenna talked about psychotropic plants sharing their wisdom by being metabolized by humans. The plant uses the broadcast medium of the human bloodstream, nervous system, and cell structure to tell the ancient story of itself.

Apparently the actual health impacts of flooding a developing fetus' fluids with cocaine, ammonia, heroin, ether, methamphetamine, alcohol and the like aren't any worse than cigarette smoking. With the elegance of any garbage-in/garbage-out system, crummy ingredients tend to produce crummy results for the new little ones. But here's what I think: it's a percentage game. If you get more food than crack into a baby, you'll get a person, more or less, at the end of the gestation period. Although, if you crank up a mother's fear about safety, abuse, or danger, generally, the hormonal wash gets shifted from alkaline to acid and fries the circuitry in a particularly fantastic way.

My earliest memory is as a 14-month old deciding that men were unsafe for women and children to be in relationships with. It is my first principle. The result of 9 months of my mother's hot and cold running fear and equal time of personal observation of family dynamics. I love my mother, he makes my mother cry, so he's got to go. In order to feel safe in my relationships now, in order for all the pieces to line up so that I know I'm in a relationship, I've got to have the necessary components to make the chemicals synthesize: Abusive man, abused woman, avenging boy. Even if I have to make them out of thin air or other people.

Lethal force for minor infractions

What lets me know that the situation I am in is going to kill me and I need to defend myself from mortal harm?

Not that the content of my life to date matters, but growing up I was pretty convinced that my dad was going to kill me and my mother--and that my mom was not only powerless to stop him but also unwilling to move us both to safety.

I don't know of any young boys who aren't emotionally sensitive, so I can't say if I was more aware to subtle shifts in domestic barometric pressure than other kids would be. What was clear for me at the time was that I was in danger from my father's rage (in the form of flying plates, large hands, withering sarcasm) and in order to survive, I needed to get read changes in cloud movement, shadows, the rustling of leaves in the wind.

Had I been part of a traditional society, I could have put these survival skills to work in gathering food for the community. My father had his version of these skills to keep him alive as a forward scout in Vietnam--his sense of smell was particularly acute. Perhaps from his feral, solitary pre-adolesence living on the river, he had learned to smell the presence of people and animals before they could be seen. He would come home from work complaining of the way the people in his office smelled, "They all stink from red meat."

I've got a system that's finely tuned to detect homeopathic amounts of negativity in communication, which, as a survival tool, if totally awesome. I get into trouble with Trey (though, who are we kidding, it's with everyone) because of what happens next. The baseline setting: All danger is mortal danger.

It's a little like this:
The Situation: End of day coming, Trey at home, I'm coming in the door. I put the key in the deadbolt and door lock gently, opening the door quietly, but because of an open window in the kitchen the door closes with at loud "Whump!"
The Response: "Hello!" sings Trey from the other end of the house. I say nothing and take off my shoes.
The Poison: On my map of what behavior and language means, yelling throughout the house is rude and dangerous, so I wait until I'm in the same room as she is to give her a warm hug. It's like when I say something and she says, "What?!" as if I mumble and speak incoherent gibberish. On her map, silence and non-response are signs of imminent breakdown from me.
The Results: Trey comes up with a look on her face I read as worry and I feel responsible for making her feel bad. She sees the despair on my face and begins to cry.

Is this love that I'm feeling?
Is this the love that I've been searching for?
Is this love or am I dreaming?
This must be love 'cause it's really got a hold on me.

No Help Is On The Way

I've written about the potential connection between seeking a remedy to emotional pain by claiming or self-inflicting physical or psychological pain. In the past, I've resisted the pat analysis of just doing "it" to get attention. But now, it makes more sense than I'd like it to.

I've been aware of a nurture gap between what I would like in my relationship with Trey and what she's demonstrated over the past four years. I've felt badly that I don't receive the kind of affection or support or expressions of attraction from her that I would like to receive--even though she is very clear in her mind and words that she loves me whole-heartedly. I dove off my bike in the middle of Market Street in rush hour traffic and sprained my wrists as an experiment to see if she could take care of me in a crisis: and she got mad at me for being in pain and selfishly going to bed. I've understood this experience as a failing on my part for looking for support from my lover and potential (attempted, deferred indefinitely) life partner.

Which it is true. She's not ever going to make me feel better when I'm down or nurse me back to health or improve the quality of my life. There is nobody coming to save me from myself or from the world. No call to the suicide hotline, no session with my therapists, no doctor, no prayers, no spells, nothing is going to heal me. Nothing from without can touch the perfect pain of life within me.

And there's a certain sad comfort in this awareness. All of my past attempts to seek external remedies to abuse at home, relationship pain, and self-doubt have been futile because they could only be so. There's nothing outside myself that can improve conditions inside myself. All my base are belong to me.

First thought, best thought

I'm pretty good at cutting apples into quarters, slicing the cores out, and halving the pieces. I'm good at eating the apples too. I can make coffee pretty well, grinding the beans while the water boils, pouring the water through the filter and warming the mug, then coaxing the beans to release their crema, and warming milk that just tops the cup. Sweeping, mopping and laundry are also strong suits.

It's funny though, no matter how many things I do well, my mind resets to a single conclusion. "I should be dead."

And I'm told this isn't how most of the world sees the range of available options. But fuck it. When I was in fourth grade, we had multiplication tests every other day. I couldn't do them fast enough. I was a total failure. I only got through about half before time was called, and I kept having to do the 3-times test over and over. I would sit at the kitchen table on Sunday afternoons and attempted to complete the test within 5 minutes. And not being able to do it. Waves of hot failure shame washed over me. I would break down into tears and try again. Back in class, I stood at Mrs. Paulette's desk, waiting for my test to be graded. When the check-minus was written on it, I would crumple. The TA looked at me and said, "You don't need to be so hard on yourself." I replied straight-faced, "Well, if I'm not hard on myself, who will be?"

The best thing for me to do in times of stress is to obliterate all evidence of my failure. Chopping down the tree at the root seems have sent out shoots seeking moisture, wrapping around pipes and choking the underground network of manmade structures in its blind push to the sun.