by Tom Shafer
March 16, 2023
Okay, so that’s quite the headline for a piece of writing — though some of you of a certain age may have, like I did, reflexively broken into song, hearkening back to a simpler time when the family gathered around a 19” black and white television powered by diodes and other vacuum tubes to watch the cultural phenomenon known as Hee Haw. And I have to admit that I could just as easily titled this “Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me.”
Except that I didn’t.
Anyway, it may be revelatory to some of you that I am currently undergoing therapy for my brain, which technically isn’t quite correct since I am not receiving transcranial magnetic stimulation — at least not yet. Actually, I am participating in counseling for my emotions, feelings, and behaviors, which start in my brain. Unfortunately, I have never been very good at managing my emotions, feelings, and behaviors and then relating them with humans familiar to me. Instead, I have found that I am exceedingly good at revealing them to perfect strangers — or at least perfect strangers with letters like Psy.D, Ph.D, LMHC, or LPC attached to the ends of their names.
And when I say that I have never been good at managing or relating my E’s, F’s, and B’s, I mean that I have acted like they didn’t exist — at least to the outside world. I have been VERY good at internalizing them, hiding them, and ruminating over them in my inside world, which turns out to be very BAD for the external version of me. When I created a list of unresolved issues which I never fully addressed or confronted (a byproduct of a discussion with my current acronymed counselor), it was clear to me that I had either produced the beginning of a soon-to-be Hallmark Channel melodrama or I was finally recognizing the badly damaged refrigerator full of long-expired life items that has been strapped to my aching, twice-repaired back for many, many years. The short list includes the inability to produce children; two painful (and unsuccessful) adoption attempts; my slow descent into being an ineffective life partner, son, and friend; the complications brought on by injuries and subsequent surgeries (nearly thirty) — including an addiction to vicodin; an early, unwanted retirement to take care of my Alzheimer’s-affected mother; then, the deaths of my father (from cancer), my brother (from drug usage), and eventually my mother after her long slog with Alzheimer’s.
Now, I am the first one to point out always that everyone has a sad story to tell, that everyone is carrying hidden burdens, or as Anton Chekhov so succinctly put it, “Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.” But normal (and many abnormal) people find positive, productive ways to handle their issues or crises — from meaningful, constructive self-reflection to physical, strenuous workouts or activity to some kind of therapy to confiding in close friends and/or life partners.
And for much of my early life, I utilized physical activity as my means to a reformative end, from flag football to softball to bowling to basketball to mountain biking to hiking and backpacking. But at age thirty-three, most of these pursuits came to an abrupt end when I tore the ACL and PCL in my left knee for a third time — while bowling! My orthopedic surgeon performed his first ACL patellar tendon graft reconstruction (and the hospital’s) by harvesting the patellar tendon from my right knee, and after a lengthy and painful rehabilitation, I began honoring a promise that I would curtail the recklessness that had wrought damage to my body (and knee). Ultimately, the ACL replacement was simply acting as a bridge to a total knee replacement that we hoped to hold off until I was at least fifty, so I needed to coddle and protect my newly repaired joint for as long as I could. (Unfortunately, I only made it to forty-four.)
I didn’t realize how much I loved — and needed — all of those physical activities until I was indefinitely banned from them. I played more golf and now rode my mountain bike on paved asphalt and concrete, but I missed the competitive nature and spirit — and sweat — of those more vigorous sports, and I especially missed sprinting the floor on a basketball court, scampering the bases of a softball diamond, and running a post pattern on a football field.
But most importantly about this sudden lifestyle change, I no longer had the outlet that allowed me to “work out” my issues and problems — though I know now that all I was really doing then was defering them, proverbially kicking my can of worms down the road.
I should have turned to therapy at the time — I think my wife even suggested it — but I didn’t. And, I actually had a prior good experience with it — well, sort of.
When I was twenty-one years old, I tallied two DUIs in a short four-month window — and it could have been three (a trifecta!) in nine months if it weren’t for a kind Dayton police officer who charged me with reckless operation instead after I wrapped my Chevy Caprice Classic around a telephone pole on North Main Street in Dayton, Ohio. And, if you were wondering what my problem was then, how I could collect nearly three DUIs in such a short period of time, did I mention that I was twenty-one — oh, and that I had a real love/hate relationship with whiskey — and myself.
The first offense rendered fairly effective penalties, including loss of driving privileges (except to school and work) for one year, a fairly hefty fine (may have been $500), and mandatory attendance at a weekend intervention program conveniently held on my college campus (Wright State University). Unfortunately, those sanctions weren’t nearly punitive enough.
Being the slow learner that I can be, it was that second offense that finally got my attention. First, I was treated to three wondrous nights in a Montgomery County jail. Then, I lost all driving privileges for a year (and my car was impounded); I received an even larger fine (I think $1000); I experienced the weekend intervention program for a second time; and, I was remanded to weekly therapy sessions (a drug and alcohol addiction program) for a minimum of one year. It was during that second intervention program that I met the psychologist who would try to fix me.
I remember that the program’s director, good guy Harvey Siegal, was very disappointed to see me back again — and so soon. He was even more disappointed when he discovered that I was the main instigator behind an unauthorized pizza delivery to a group room at a local motel that Friday evening. I promised that I would be a good little camper after that — and I’m sure the off-duty police officer who was guarding us appreciated the two pepperoni pizzas from Submarine House that were dropped off by a friend of mine.
On Saturday morning after our first group session of the day, I met with the moderator of that discussion, Richard (whom I will call Richard because that was and still is his name), in a breakout session. Richard was a very genuine man who seemed genuinely concerned about me. The group meeting — like the one I had experienced just three months prior — was a train wreck of personal, alcohol-enhanced stories, some told with a braggadocio that attempted to nullify their seriousness and severity. I was by far the youngest person in the building, and many of the men surrounding me were serious alcoholics who had tallied multiple DUIs and whose lives seemed to revolve around getting to that next drink. Internally, I kept asking myself what I was doing here among these reprobates and scallywags. Of course, Richard had the answer for me.
“I think we can save you” was his simple response when I asked that very question in our first sitting. He explained that most of the thirty, forty, and fifty year olds in attendance indeed were hard-core alcoholics, and changing twenty, thirty, and forty year old behaviors was likened to teaching an old dog new tricks. Learning new tricks was going to be much easier with a young pup like me.
The rest of the weekend was pretty predictable — this was my second rodeo after all. We participated in multiple meetings and lectures, got to see the twenty pound liver of an alcoholic (it should be three), and watched (and giggled through) the cinematic masterpiece Reefer Madness, which dramatizes (?) the effect of marijuana usage on teenagers of the 1930s.
Then, on Sunday morning, as we were preparing to leave the motel to return to Wright State for breakfast and outtake meetings, my roommate for the weekend, a fifty-something year old man who worked in a machine shop, shared more of his own story with me and told me at the end of it, “You don’t want to be like me — or any of these other guys. This is no way to live.” Through dark, brooding eyes, he explained that he had effectively ruined his life, his marriage, his relationships with his children, and many of his true friendships — not to mention that the state had stripped his driver’s license forever. For much of the weekend, we had psychologically danced around this rather direct statement, that “this is no way to live.” In about five minutes, he had very effectively laid out the essence of the program’s message.
The very next week, I started my weekly sessions with Richard, and the short version of my first (?) year with him goes like this:
I certainly didn’t take the counseling very seriously because I knew my problem, whiskey, was cured — I would just stop drinking it. In my mind, I also knew I wasn’t like the other men I had shared two weekends with because I was an engineering major just one year from graduation who had a solid, post-college plan: take an engineering job out west, settle into a fulfilling, long-term relationship, buy a nice home on a somewhat wild piece of property, and produce a couple of children. So, for one year, I talked and talked and talked, sharing with Richard everything he wanted to hear, convincing him that I was on a righteous path to self-reliance and success. As we approached the end of our sessions, I was satisfied that Richard agreed with my own self assessment.
To “graduate” from my court-ordered therapy, Richard and I had to appear in front of the judge who had overseen both of my DUI convictions. I explained to him that I was a changed person, that I now had the tools necessary to take on the world in a sober and responsible way.
When the judge queried Richard about our time together, Richard responded, “He has been telling me what I wanted to hear for an entire year,” and recommended another six months of counseling, with which the judge agreed and sanctioned.
I was flabbergasted and angry and frustrated — and I felt betrayed!
At our very next session, the beginning of six more months of weekly servitude, I didn’t say a single word for fifty minutes — and neither did he. We just looked at each other uncomfortably until our time ran out. As I was getting up to leave, Richard declared that he had just added one more session onto my ledger, and further recommended that I come to our next session ready to talk or he would simply tally another one.
Clearly, my plan for clinical subterfuge had failed, but frankly, so had much of my life plan. I had bailed on completing my systems engineering degree after a challenging and difficult internship with a very unhappy engineer contracted to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. A girl I was dating seriously at the time left me for another engineering major, perhaps the only human I ever considered a rival. And as my planned life spiraled quickly away from me, my love of drink swilled in to take its place. Of course, I had kept all of this from Richard during my year of denial, instead painting the portrait of a man in complete control of his destiny.
So, over the course of the next six months, I came clean with Richard and exposed myself for the incomplete, fragile man that I was. For the outside world, I had always carried myself with a confident swagger that bordered on arrogance — which, somewhat predictably from a psychological perspective, masked the insecurity and self-doubt lying underneath. We explored the root causes for my emotional and behavioral issues, and as I began to understand myself better, my life began slowly to change and improve. I chose to complete a degree in English education after a chance encounter with a favorite former high school teacher and found a girl who didn’t seem to mind that I was damaged and vulnerable — then married me in spite of my debilities.
After six months of true self reflection, and with much assistance from Richard, I finally graduated from court-ordered therapy so that I could continue working on being the best human I could be — albeit one who was now suffering from the staggering cost of a financial responsibility bond and high risk insurance just to drive my non-impounded car.
So, I am back here in present day after that longish stroll down Amnesia Lane, and in many ways, I’m still like that twenty-one year old version of me, trying once again to figure out who I am. One would think that a nearly sixty-two year old man would have had all of this figured out by now, but like I mentioned earlier, sometimes I can be a slow learner — especially on big life issues.
Now, you may be wondering about that title and how it fits into this multi-layered storyline. Well, my current counselor knows that I’m a writer, and at the end of our last session — and after a last flurry of discussion about my guilt and attempts at redemption — he suggested that I write about it. So, really, this is, in essence, the product of a homework assignment. And, I had to provide a little (okay, a lot of) back story to complete it.
When I was working with Richard, guilt continually revealed itself as one of my more substantial problems: guilt stemming from transgressions during my teenage years; guilt from being a negligent son and brother; guilt from being an imperfect and careless friend. Richard finally asked if I thought there was anything I could do about these feelings that so permeated my emotional life. I remember telling him that apology is the only true counter to guilt. Of course, Richard had a better word for it: redemption. So, redemption it would be.
At Richard’s suggestion, I made a list of people, friends and family and neighbors, that I had slighted in my past, and over the next few months, I sought each of them out to offer an apology for what I had done to them. The vast majority of my efforts were warmly received, and I was forgiven for my misdeeds and lapses in judgment — though frankly, many of the supposed “crimes” could not be recalled by my “victims.” As it turned out, some of these trespasses that I had been obsessing over had long been forgotten — just not by me.
So that’s where I am right now, working on redemption once again, trying to find and live the best version of me once again. For most of you, that might seem like an easy thing to do, but I like to complicate the easy and challenge myself when I really shouldn’t. But in my defense, guilt and shame are powerful opponents, and on most days, I am ill-equipped to take them head-on, and instead, find myself chipping around their edges — hoping that my work will lead to selfless anonymity. Because if novelist Walter Kirn is right (from his article “The Mother of Reinvention” in The Atlantic, May 2002), “It’s no accident that most self-help groups use ‘anonymous’ in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.”
Suddenly, I hear faintly familiar music in the background, and a voiceover proclaiming, “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him . . . Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.” I don’t know that I could possibly be stronger or faster like Steve Austin (think The Six Million Dollar Man television show from the 1970s), but I definitely want to be better. I suppose that is the best I can hope for.
