Lions

I had this psychology teacher who described a schizophrenic patient that had this problem where she always thought lions were all around her. After much therapy, she was asked "Are the lions gone?" Her answer "No, I just clench my jaw and walk around them now."

Here's my solution: Go up and bitch-slap one of them and let's settle this shit once and for all right here, right now! That's my way of dealing with issues--also described as "What is wrong with me?!" Safety tip--sometimes the lions bite your ass!

Some issues are tougher than others--growing up in my family was bizzaro-land, but I always felt like the guy in the episode of The Twilight Zone who was the protagonist walking through the world were everybody was acting weird--he knows that the situation is out of control, and at first he kind of protests to people, but then he realizes "Okay, no one's listening here, better keep this to myself or they will start thinking I'm the weird one."

Then at age 12 or 13 my Momma told me I had a different Daddy than everyone else (I'm saying it this way to trivialize it--it was horribly traumatic, and just to give you some insight into my wonderful parentage, started when my brother asked my mom what a "bastard" is...)

Boy, I was unwittingly in for a ride.

Did you know that when you are adopted (by my Stepfather), you get a new birth certificate? This is guaranteed to jack with your head. I guess it seemed like a good idea to just not ever talk about it and pretend everything's normal, and then wait for a opportune moment to spring it on the young lad.

I've heard other people say they used to kid their siblings about being left on the doorstep by a stranger, or raised by wolves, or other such things. All of a sudden in our house we had new stuff to not ever talk about. They weren't lions, but it was that gorilla (800 lb.? 1000 lb?--not sure how big it was...)that we weren't supposed to mention.

Remember in Home Alone where Kevin says "I made my family disappear!" I kind of chuckle about that--I love some of them like you love a stray dog, or an old chair that you didn't like at first but it kinda looks good in that corner and you've learned how to make the footrest come up when you want to even though the lever doesn't work. And some more than others--some wholeheartedly, like Don, who was my original little buddy, and whom I tried to kill but he saved my life in the end by being my assistant memory of our childhood. But I guess when the underlying theme is that "You don't belong", eventually you buy it (when you get older you can clearly separate it from normal teenage angst)! Thank God! I had minimal damage because I always was listening to my own soundtrack (I'm thankful for the invention of the walkman--I could just play it to myself--I think I'm trying to get too fancy with my metaphor and just confusing myself here, but like in Shakespeare it's a light interlude), which was telling me "Know what? You're a good guy and you're doing your best to survive in this bullshit situation. Learn from it. Let it push you. Rise above it and you'll be a better man if you survive. If you want it, you can have the last laugh." I did. I could, but it's not me.

Life continued. Got (very luckily and happily) married. Had (beautiful, wonderful, treasured) kids. Thought about stuff. Quasi-recovered from my childhood trauma, halfway stuffed it deep down inside in hopes it would dissolve. Pretty happy, successful guy (not: pretty, happy, successful--It was never pretty).

Then it happened!

Thanks to my buddies at Google, and a scrap of paper with my grandparents' names scrawled on it for some reason or another, I found those from whom I was Separated at Birth, and I heard it all click.

No, it wasn't the sound of reloading the glock for life to take another cheap shot at me now that I was winning. Boy, could I have handled that? I think so, but thank God I don't need to worry about it.

Separated at Birth took on a new meaning (am I doomed to use cliche's? I swear to God I'm trying to stop--I acknowledge the problem and appeal to a higher power).

Okay, I have to outline a converation for you:

Me: something something something---I have a new family.
Other person: Huh?
Me: Yeah, my parents split up before I was born and I've never met my dad--I looked them up.
O: Huh?
Me: Yup. And I have new grandparents, and a sister that I didn't even know about.
O: So...you have a different Dad? What's he like?
Me: Well, I haven't ever met him--He's got issues and he's cut off from his family, but I have everyone else.
O: Are you going to meet them?
Me: Already have--they are awesome.
O: Wow, that's heavy!
Me: You're telling me!

(So...like in music--put repeat bars on that (if I ever stopped spewing out so many words and went back and reformatted, I could probably figure out a clever way of doing this) Repeat about 100 (,000) times!

The ramifications of this are incredible. After studying Biology (Bachelor's degree with 40 hours of Grad School, including lab work)--I thought I knew what was heritable. Is a spirit passed down in genes? I certainly thought not, but offer up myself as living proof.

My half-sister is a new-found treasure--she is one of my closest living relatives and in discovering things about her I feel like I have validated some positive things that I always suspected about myself but was afraid to claim (started to list things here but started feeling cheesy about it and N will probably be the first living person to read this entry, so got a little self-conscious). When we compared notes, we have so much history and characteristics in common that it was literally frightening to me that I'm living this pre-programmed life against my will (althought that comfortably explains why I voted for Bush in the last election when every fiber of my being was screaming out as I darkened the box)--I started off writing this AM thinking this was where I was going--our common stuff, because it's pretty uncanny. The funny thing is, just finding this group of people was so freeing that I could be doing this comparison with Weezy Jefferson and still feel like I want to see a million things in common (If you're on the outside looking in, you're just gonna have to trust me that this is hilariously funny, and I promise not to make too many inside comments in the future).

N--perhaps you also recognize my blog's title and it's source via my paternal lineage (for the rest of you, I kinda feel like when I'm talking over Ryan's head and I'm spelling out stuff so he can't figure it out...although my boy is starting to catch on). Note: I changed my blog title from :Jim Bob's caffeine induced musings (sounded hick to me).

So, I've awakened myself now with that last line from being absorbed in thought and totally honest, and I'll try not to be too self-conscious and edit out things I've written that truly mean something.

This is harder than I thought, and I feel like I'm using up all the 1's an 0's available to me just to get out trivial things, working up to the real stuff I wanted to say. Trying very hard not to stop short of saying real things. Looking at the tabby thing on the right that says that I've typed way too much and wondering if people will make it this far in my dialog...

You ever meet someone at the gym, or school, or getting your car fixed, and then everytime you seem them again you kind of creep back to that context and can only think of things in that context until someone gets brave and changes the topic? aside: Ever been that person and the other person resists? I know someone that, every time we collide along the way in life,we talk about beer. I hate beer--I think it tastes like pee (that's my best guess anyway). I mean, I've really tried to like it, even (we're talking about beer here), and let my friends hook me up with their favorites, but I just can't get into it. And it really isn't interesting at all to me. But with this guy, we talk about beer. I kind of got into some ruts with the new family, too, and the ruts were comfortable for a while but awkward now and make me feel ridiculously needy because it is like we all have problems we keep trying to solve for each other--the overall message, I think, though, is: I'd like to help you any way I can--I'll be right here...

I always think of myself as a happy guy, certainly optimistic, and try to be encouraging to others. This experience made me an emotional wreck for a while and made some past memories and lies surface. I was pretty embarrassed that that's the first side that I showed to my new family, and some of them have forgiven me but all of them seem to like me. Maybe it was okay that I didn't go in with my contrived game-face on (complete with eye-black to protect me from too much of the light). To fill the empty spaces of time and conversations, I feel like I sure have been a chatty bastard with small talk, and, oddly for me, at times a little on the needy side as I assimilate into their group, to the point of imposing on their time and attention beyond what I deserve, but I am dealing with a family lifeline changing--one starting/one ending.

I think it's the right thing for me to do to take on the lions.