It can be happy, sad, bizarre, or any combination of the above. Or anything else, for that matter. Tell me a story from your life.

-- ann monroe (monroe@chorus.net), March 18, 2000

Answers

When I was a little boy I used to lie awake at night and listen to my mom and dad fight almost every night. Screaming and yelling. Dad would eventually storm out to the bar, and mom would sit in a darkened room and do her drinking. Sometimes, if the argument was bad enough, dad might not come back for a couple of days.

Payday in the old neighborhood was usually Friday. So sometimes dad wouldn't come home on Friday, meaning he lost his job. He might come back in a couple days, or months. One time he was gone for a couple of years.

When he was gone, mom would drink more. And if I would so much as look cross eyed I would get the living crap beat out of me. Beat until dear old mom got too tired to beat anymore. I guess I realized later that she was really beating my dad, but I have the scars.

That's when I came up with my childhood mantra. I would put myself to sleep every night by saying over and over, "No one can hurt me, nothing can touch me......No one can hurt me, nothing can touch me..." As I repeated this mantra an imaginary circular wall would build up around me, brick by brick; one brick for each time I repeated it. By the time I fell asleep, the wall would be built.

Later on I learned to do this as I was getting beat. "No one can hurt me, nothing can touch me...", so the wall would stay up; all day, all night, until it was an extension of my mind, body and spirit. The problem was, that the wall stayed up long after I needed it. By then it was too late. I didn't know any mantras to take the wall down.

I lived in a tough, inner city neighborhood. You would never guess by knowing me now that I lived there. Standing on street corners, drinking, fighting, chased by the cops. My best freind jumped in front of a train when he was twenty-five years old. Another friend was shot to death during a card game. Some others became alcoholics. Some turned out alright.

And then I got lucky, dad died. That meant we would get social security. We moved in with some relatives upstate. And then an apartment. Oh yeah, not only did I get the beatings, but I got to pay for the place we all lived in. College was out, the only friends I knew were miles away. I didn't know anyone and didn't know how to meet anyone; the years when you learn to do this I was standing on a corner or working to pay someone elses bills.

Then I met my therapist, Steve. He listened to my story and talked to my younger brothers and sister and told me the truth. Maybe the first person to do it. He said that the reason for the unhappiness I was feeling at the ripe old age of twenty-seven was because I had been abused. Now i was emotionally shut down, classically depressed.

So we got to work tearing down the wall. It took so much longer to take the wall down than to build it. But eventually I began to feel things again. Happiness, sadness, love. But still I was way behind other people my age. Friends and family who had gotten married, had kids, moved on. I was still stuck in an adolescents emotional world. Able to play the role of parent and child, but not the role of emotionally independent adult.

I tell you this because today for the thousandth time in my life I became the emotional child again when I should have been an adult.

Trish a married woman I work with, decided that after telling me on Friday to leave her alone, decided she needed to say it in a different way today, Wednesday. I had decided to leave her alone. A first for me. When she came in I said nothing, worked quietly at my desk. After about an hour she walked over to my desk and said loudly enough for several people to hear, "We need to talk about what's been happening between us. Do you have time today?" I said, "Why not now?"

She made a big deal of walking me out the door to the end of the hall to the elevators. She stopped dead but managed to stay far enough away to make it look like I was some kind of leper or dangerous criminal. She began her obviously well rehearsed speech...."We need to back off and have a more work-like relationship" I asked what that meant. Didn't we *both* kid around I asked? Weren't we *both* a little obvious i asked? Again she repeated, "We need to back off and have a more work-like relationship. Are you ok with that?" I said, "Do you mean we can't be friends?" It was a pretty straightforward question I thought. I asked again, "Are you saying we are no longer friends?" "I'm saying lets back off and see how things go from there?", she said.

Ok, by now I was beginning to get really upset. I asked how i mamaged to fuck up. What did I do? She said, "Last week when I told you nothing was wrong you asked me over and over. I told you to leave me alone." I said, "Yes, and I left you alone!" I don't remember if I told you that after our argument last Friday I waited about a half hour and then got up and quietly left work. I didn't tell anyone, didn't say god- bye. didn't tell my boss (who was plenty pissed-off). So technically, no one knew the reason why I left, but I guess Trish knew. She said, "Yes, you left me alone, you left the building!" I tried a lame defense by saying, "You don't know *why* I left." She acknowledged that was true but I think she was unconvinced. Her reasoning was, "I can't worry about you every time I have a problem and have to convince you it's not your fault." Like a broken record I said, "Are you saying we can't be friends?" And I thought I was a fast talker.

At this point I was on the verge of fucking tears. I hate myself *so* much for being an emotional wimp. But there was no pity. "Why are you so upset?", she asked. You know the feeling, if you say one word you'll break down so you try not to say anything and pray to God you can maintain some composure. "Why are you so upset? Why do you care what *I* think?", she asked. Another lame answer from me, "I care what everyone thinks" How lame can one human being be! Multiply that a few hundred times and that's me! Trish finally said, "Let's just back-off and see where it goes from there? Ok? I have to go back? Are you coming?" No, I said, needing a little more time before I went back to a group of people who probably already knew what was happening.

Ann, I don't have a journal. Nowhere to dump these kinds of stories. So I decided to write this. But, it's not working the way it's supposed to. I don't feel any better.

I used to thank Steve for helping me to break down my wall, now I'm not so sure. For the first time in twenty years I'm telling myself...."No one can hurt me...nothing can touch me."......"No one can hurt me...nothing can touch me".....Loser.

I don't know why this happens so many times. I'll see Steve tomorrow night and I'll ask him. He'll have really good answers and I'll try so hard to implement them. And I'll fail again. How many more times can I make a fool of myself? Tom

-- Tom (taclee@hotmail.com), March 28, 2000.

When my friends and I were teenagers hanging on the street corners, one of our friends had to be home before the rest of us on Friday nights. Coincidentally the cops seemed to chase us off the corner every Friday night. It took us a while to realize that out friend would stop at a payphone on the way home and call the cops and complain about the "kids" hanging on the corner. I wish I was there again.

-- dreamer (impossibledreamer@mailcity.com), May 18, 2000.