My New Drug

It’s like breathing deep after putting a fresh mint into your mouth.

No, wait. It’s like the first inhalation after stepping outside into 20 below air.

Better yet, it’s like what I imagine mainlining liquid nitrogen would be (you know, except for that whole instant death part).

It’s like all these feelings at once, applied directly to your eyeballs.

So when you’re playing beach volleyball it’s a given that sand will find its way onto every inch of your body. And unless you wear them yourself you may not know that contacts in your eyes are a magnet for those small particles of silicates. And everybody knows just what sand in your eyes can feel like. I’ve learned that keeping some sand in your pants can be a useful tool for escaping confrontation.

So this fateful Monday eve, fresh from a victorious night of bumping, setting and spiking, I find myself with Thor at Cheap Thrills bar. The bar is nearly a year old, and I’m a fairly new customer here. I didn’t expect to ever patronize this place, as their substitution of a beer pong table instead of a pool table didn’t quite tickle my fancy, and more-so because I absolutely despise places that charge a dollar for a glass of water to a DD or a drunk who’s had too much.

Yet, here I am, since that’s where Thor was debuting Monday Night Karaoke.

No suspense here: karaoke is never at its best with a Monday night bar crowd.

Thor waits for the 8 dart teams to finish their league games before setting up the equipment, so we’re saddled up to the bar and recounting war stories from the front lines of volley-battle, until I can’t take it anymore. My eyes are Saharan, contacts threatening to secede from the union and depart my eyes for new lands on the dirty bar floor.

And of course I don’t have any eye drops. Thankfully, Thor’s to the rescue.

See, he knows a few people in this bar and is not a complete stranger. So with me on his wing we walk up to a couple of girls in search of tetrahydrozoline. One, the small blonde whose sultry eyes lit up with the chance to do a good deed, didn't even need to have eye drops; she was very easy on the eyes already in her volleyball outfit of a tank top and booty shorts. I couldn’t get drops in my eyes soon enough as bringing her sexy curves into focus was a priority.

“Have you ever tried Rohto?” she might have asked as she searched the infinite confines of a woman’s purse. She produced a small bottle of eye drops the like I’ve never seen before: a clear convex bottle with a blue top labeled “ice”. “They are amazing!” she might have promised. As long as they clear my eyes, that’s my primary concern.

Cap off. Head back. Two fingers of one hand to split my eyelids while the other hand held the bottle precipitously close to my eyeball. Squeeze. Drip-splash.

OHHOLYMARYMOTHEROFGODANDALLTHOSEANGELSSINGINGTHEIRCHORUSES this shit is indeed AMAZING!!

A Klondike bar commercial proceeded to reenact on my eyeball as my blinks spread this magic potion across my red and irritated eye. This sensation would definitely make Ben Stein break character and exclaim “Clear Eyes, moisture-WHY AM I WORKING FOR THE INFERIOR EYE DROP COMPANY?!?”

I very hastily included the right eye to make this an orgy of eye-gasmic proportions. The look on this gorgeous girl’s face as she watched me must have been similar to when a junkie gets his friend to try acid for the first time ever – pure amusement. The arctic blast swept across my eyeballs like someone opened the Casket of Ancient Winters (if you’re not a fan of Thor comic books, just wait until the second Thor movie comes out, I’m sure it’ll be in there). It scoured my eyes and contacts of all offending sand and gunk like no other eye drops ever have.

However, the feeling subsided in short order, and as my eyes returned to room temperature, I was left wanting more. I swear my hand nearly shivered in trepidation as I handed back the small vial. I needed my next fix soon, and just like a good drug dealer, the first taste is free. “About $7 at Wal-Mart” my Siren informed me. I knew right then I was to go buy my own stash and take hits judiciously.

I’ve since bought the “cool” green and the “ice” blue bottles of Rohto eye drops, and I’ve never passed an opportunity to bring enl-eye-tenment to my friends. The ice is much more potent than the cool, in my experience. Secrets this good demand to be shared. If you ever suffer from allergies, dry contacts, or the feeling that your eyeballs need a little tender loving care hardcore S&M sex play, go out and find this stuff.

I’ll sell you what I have left in my pocket for $10, just meet me in the back alley in 5 minutes. Cash only.

Dusting the Pedestal my Trophy Should Sit

I am closer to the person I want to be than I have ever been, but I look in the mirror and see the longest expanse of barren wasteland between me and the ideal. The babbling promise of pristine brooks empty into muddied plains of shit, and I'm wearing brand new wingtips.

It is supposed to be a motivating revelation to understand that I and I alone am responsible for my happiness, but at times it's an oppressive burden in the face of 30 years of Hollywood expectations and hollow facades on imaginary houses. Would that I started my journey, those first steps borne on despair, many years earlier, so that now I had a back to look towards, and an appreciable history traversed unfaltering, though any date of departure would not promise this maiden journey a smooth one. As it stands my past has only had any forward momentum recently, and even that's peppered with unjumpable hurdles that instead bent and strained and stretched until finally giving way, allowing for a few steps of unhindered joy before the next restraining encounter.

It is when one meets the next of these hurdles before the previous one splinters that I – I mean “one”, no I really mean I – start to entertain the encouragements of that disembodied voice of Loki himself to stop pushing, to submit to the kinetic and experience the brief weightlessness of flight and falling before meeting violently the same path trodden already and discovering that all your broken hurdles are repaired and standing sentinel again.

It is either at the point of deadly whispers or catastrophic crashing that I find myself in tonight. I guess I've not yet stopped pushing forward against the sling, I might just be holding my ground and maybe only making prophecy of my fanciful flight, should I just relax my knees and release the tense friction between heels and pitted road. I must be there, hoping the more words I put down here tonight equate to more Newtons against my barriers. One needs not experience the fall back to fear it, for “back” is a road one already has surveyed. So I yearn to find fortuitous destruction of my constraints in this exercise.

Holy shit, I can write pretentious as fuck if I want to.

The faerie fire that draws me waywardly towards the evening woods is ever the approval and desire of other people. As if sugar-coating it in fantastical prose could make that admission any easier.

I know I'm not alone in somehow finding myself an adult, yet still thirsting for the child-like necessity of attention. I'm not the only one saying “Look what I can do!” and hoping to turn heads. In everything I do is the shameful hope that I'll be found worthy of your response. Blog posts here. Facebook statuses. Unanswered texts. Everything a preschool crayon artwork held up to the refrigerator that never has enough magnets. There is an entire demographic of me hoping to find themselves the male lead in their very own Hugh Grant rom-com because there's never been a better psychological Mary Poppins than the silver screen Ms. Mary herself with enchanted parasol floated upon.

There are plenty of ways to describe the lackluster love lives of such subjects. I don't feel myself any more advantaged in being able to distinguish myself as a “Nice Guy” as opposed to the ignorants' self-assessment of “not like those douchebags who mistreat women”. I mean, yes, there is yardage to be gained by knowing the other team's playbook, but only if one puts the mental resources to work in deciphering their plays and learning how to counter them. I feel like I'm burning fumes to generate the simplest calculations in this cunning tactic of being one step ahead of the rest.

The symptom of seeking external validation hints at the root malady: not having faith and confidence in yourself. And boy, has that never fit me more to a T than in recent years. Finding myself at closer to 400 pounds than 300 was a soul-shattering discovery, and this coming at the tail end of a shitty relationship that I willingly – unnecessarily – extended way past its shelf life meant a dangerous precipice edge on which I tip-toed. I could succumb to the emotional darkness (which, for many nights in real darkness as I laid alone in my crappy efficiency apartment surrounded by the meaningless clutter of a consumerist life, was a wholly inviting option). Or I could prove myself worthy of the 46 chromosomes my biologically-successful parents donated to me and I could plow headfirst into the beast and push through it to the end-zone.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment of eureka, the moment I took the step forward, as my moment was not near as heroic or odds-defying as many other people's inspirational autobiographies. But it was a moment indeed, or a series of moments, and after a few stumbles I found myself on the Path of Small Changes. I knew I couldn't wave a magic wand of determination and cure my ills, but by focusing on small tweaks I could develop habits and then build on those towards a grander design.

So anyone who has read my work will know I've lost a lot of weight recently (in the face of what's left to lose, I have to remind myself that 55 pounds so far is A LOT of weight). Many know I'm over a year into home-ownership, I've passed the 5 year anniversary at my career, I own my own vehicle and I am papa to a beautiful husky. I don't toot my own horn because it sounds good. I only toot it to try to keep in tune.

The contrasting colors in this potential masterpiece are a multitude of not-good-enoughs and other such personal failures. I can't seem to be able to devote any time to learn to play any of my 4 guitars at all. I cannot handle learning a second language, despite having three years of classes in it throughout junior and senior high. I cannot play my favorite games enough to be truly competitive. I have a library of unfinished books that may look like a cohesive shining whole to a guest instead only are the negative spaces of unread chapters to my eyes. And I cannot convince myself that I am deserving and worthy of being loved, despite the mountains of common sense and contradictory encouragements I receive.

This largest demon I cannot even write about here, though I don't know if my apprehension comes from caution or cowardice. Suffice it to say that Ahab never had a harder time realizing his white whale didn't live in the unforgiving azure and white of the sea but instead dwelt within the eternal black of his own heart. (And don't let me fool you, I've never read more than a chapter into Melville's most recognizable, though I've owned a copy for 10 years).

I suppose the very act of even publishing this masturbatory examination of the darkness that creeps at the very edge of composure is itself a continuation of my eternal hymn that begs for validation. But I say in whatever vanity it carries that I instead name thee, demon, and in naming thee invoke all the courage and progress found in identifying the demon inhabiting the child in your favorite exorcism movie. As the writer of this, my movie, I know the adversary I face, even if I cannot reveal him to you (yet), and all these words are ever more pounds per square inch of pressure against the limiting beliefs I contest with.

I don't know how to write this to persuade you, to persuade myself, that I'll be alright, that I'll conquer this. I want each post to have some moral or goal or happy ending, though before we can get teddy bears toppling a highly-trained galactic military, we must first lose our hand and handicapped as such come to grips with the evil discovery of our parenthood, no?

Eliot becomes Buffalo Bill

I am so in love with myself.

I’m pretty sure any reader who doesn’t know me at all would groan and scoff at a statement like that, attributing all sorts of guido- or muzza-personalities to me and assigning descriptors such as “douchebag” and “full of himself asshole” to me.

I’ve been called worse.

The reality of it is that the above sentiment of acceptance, respect, and pride in my being is a rare alien emotion to me. I don’t recall a time when I’ve ever looked in the mirror and told myself that I look good without knowing deep inside that I’m ignoring the fact that I’m “faking it til I make it”. Oh sure, there are times when I’ve complimented myself for looking as good as I can, all things considered (and the majority of the things needing considering were about 50 pounds of obesity). I could shine a turd enough to pass military inspection, but today I feel drastically different. Today, I’m not a piece of polished excrement. Today, I look in the mirror and truly like the person staring back at me.

Sunday afternoon I was texting a few people to find something to do outside. It was a gorgeous day in the 80s, not a cloud to be seen. I had mowed my lawn earlier that day, and quite happy that I got that task out of the way. My eventual plans came unbidden from one person I’d have never expected: one of my friends from California was back in Minnesota unexpectedly and invited me to go the lake with her. A very immediate acceptance took me up to McCarthy State Park. Their beach is famous for how gradual a slope it has; their farthest buoys are out 100+ yards from the shore, and the water only comes up to my chest.

As I park at the beach, I hear my name called from behind my truck. Lo! And Behold! Two more of my friends - these two girls I know from karaoke - just happened to arrive at the beach at the same moment I did!

So here I am at a beach, surrounded by girls I don’t know, in immediate vicinity of very attractive girls I do know, and I shamelessly take my shirt off.

Three months ago, I didn’t believe the people that espoused the benefits of exercise to a person’s emotions.  I’m a smart, learned man, and I have a firm high school diploma’s grasp on human physiology and chemistry. Yet somehow knowing the difference between serotonin and dopamine didn’t prepare me for the discovery of just how much regular exercise carries my moods.

Granted, I only run, and only 3 to 4 times a week, for about 30 minutes each time, so I don’t pretend that I’m doing anything more than the bare minimum. I’m preparing for a 5k race, and following the Couch to 5k program (currently re-doing week 6 to make up for a week of not running). But even just 90 minutes of exercise a week has done wonders for this couch potato. And if I don’t run? I legitimately feel depressed, prone to munching on junk food to fill the void, losing all desire to go out and see people or even to feel the sun.

My self-aggrandizing up there isn’t just a huge example of patting myself on my back, but an attempt to reach out to someone who might be like I was. I hope to give someone some encouragement that might fit them personally. I mean, I’m not perfect. I’ve got a long ways to go. Hell, I still way over 300 pounds! But I feel that I can do more with 305 pounds today than I ever accomplished at just 250 pounds 6 years ago.

I like myself that much now.

So yeah, I’ve got people dumping frustrated posts on Facebook about how I will not shut up about running or playing sports. Sure, I’ve occasionally been that guy that talks a lot about fitness. But I feel like I desire to because I’ve come from the other side, I’ve laughed at those people and never understood why they feel like rubbing it into my face. Now that I’m on my way, though, I understand that it’s such a good feeling to see results, to get compliments, to get attention from more and more people, that I can’t help but shout it from the rooftops in hopes that I might help just one person on the edge to get up and start improving themselves.

If you’ve ever looked in the mirror and wished you could believe yourself when you say “I look good!” then please take it from me: you’ll get there, if you work at it. Look up nutrition (a subject I sorely lack in, even yet at this point in my life), develop some simple exercising programs to get you moving even just three times a week, and stick with it. The boost you’ll feel is incredible, I guarantee it.