Corrupted Within: Part 4

Obviously, I wasn’t handling my first breakup well.  There’s no excuse for it, perhaps, but there were reasons, which I gradually learned to mitigate over the course of several years.  It was a sledgehammer that pureed my heart.  I spent much of the next few months spooning through it with the blunted edges of my mind.

As my second year of college began, I was surly, and withdrawn. I know I wasn’t the easiest to live with, and it seemed as if I was doing my best to become a cliché.  I played my loud music and wrote my angsty poetry and started drinking. The problem is, I’m really not that good at being a cliché, and the drinking mostly consisted of a few shots of Jack and saying, "I’m going to get drunk!" and then not bothering.

Hey, nobody’s perfect.

I abstain from alcohol the vast majority of the time.  I can’t remember the last time I drank something alcoholic, but five or six years isn’t a bad estimate.  Cigarettes were my eventual vice of choice, and stronger drugs have never poisoned my system.  All of my poison comes from within–but even careening out of control, I’ve always had a mental emergency brake that stopped me from doing anything completely stupid.  While this trait that would later serve me in good stead, there’s unfortunately a lot of leeway up to the point of "completely stupid".

In 1991, the concept of alcohol as salve appealed to me. Only once, however, did it manage to transport me somewhere else–and it was somewhere exhilaratingly, dangerously free.

It will sound tame in text.  I had gone to a party on campus, and indulged myself a bit more than usual. Everyone else’s happiness was like barbs in my flesh, and I threw whiskey on the wound and tried not to scream. 

If alcohol removes your inhibitions, I discovered mine were hesitancy and passivity.  On another level, I self inhibit; such is the aforementioned Brake. I’m a control freak, I suppose, but directed inward rather than toward others.  It’s an innate need for self-mastery. Obviously, alcohol and drugs are counter to that.

Still, I know the temptation, for I was in high spirits that evening, which later I would recognize as "manic" and "not in my right mind".  I felt keen; my emotions were sharpness and fire.  The primary difference between apathy and recklessness is energy, and I was flush with it.

We were driving to subway, myself and Andy and Christy and someone else, and I was driving quickly, to the point where one of them nervously mentioned I should possibly slow down. I remember my angry reaction well. "I’m fine," I snarled, "Can’t I be in a good mood for once?"

Thankfully, it was a short trip–but more thankfully, the Brake was applied, and I realized that being this way was not good. I was septic with depression and corrupted by despair, but the deepest parts of me struggled against infection and strove towards purification.

I didn’t have a coping mechanism, but I knew alcohol wasn’t the cure. I was appalled, really, by how I had been, and vowed never to let it happen again. (To my credit, and often to my friends’ dismay, I haven’t, although I did let myself get drunk once, naturally, just to see what would happen–that was the only other time I surrendered the reins of my mind to outside influences.  I confess I’ll never grasp why so many people wanted to get me drunk over the course of my life, but they eventually gave up.)

Indeed, there was no cure that I could find. I can barely remember those months, to be honest. I have a few scattered stills in my head, the memory of my words above. I couldn’t moderate any aspect of my life aside from that revulsion towards drinking that arose. My promising academic career took a steep turn downwards, and my GPA dropped to a 2.8. If it persisted, it threatened my scholarship, but my motivation was AWOL, leaving behind only a written note saying, "Fuck off, see you next year."  I’d maxed out what credit cards I had, was barely making ends meet at The Alpha, and always seemed to have more outgo than income.

Being arrested didn’t help my cause.

Were I the man now that my childhood alluded to, I would be a haughty, miserly, possessive bastard whose only concern was what I could procure that was Mine, Mine, Mine.  I had some problems as a child with stealing, some of which is certainly innate, and some of which can likely be laid at the feet of my mother–with whom, as I’ve said in the past, I had considerable friction in my adolescence.  A few paragraphs above, I casually acknowledged I’m a bit of a control freak in terms of my own behavior. I am disciplined. I am moral. I have spent many years honing myself into the type of person I wish to be, and realize there is still further to go. On a daily basis I see people who are thoughtless, who don’t own their actions and seem capricious and hollow. The result is that I am often perceived as a bastion of solidity and competence.

There is something to be said about being reliable, consistent, and true, and I certainly treasure it.

My mother, however, is also a control freak.  My apple didn’t just fall close to the tree; I’m pretty sure it was still on the branch for a significant portion of my life.  In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, there is a quote. "The place is like a museum.  It’s very beautiful and very cold, and you’re not allowed to touch anything." If I could inject the words "and very clean", it would be perfect.

I am a clean individual–something else I inherited. Aside from some poor dental techniques in my youth that resulted in a large number of crowns in my adulthood, I am well-scrubbed and try to keep my environment comfortably lived-in. To others, it often appears very neat, but to my well-trained eyes, it is a constant mess.  It is with some irony, therefore, that I often find myself living with slobs.

To portray my youth accurately, I’d have to mention a bedroom, immaculately clean. Drapes drawn back from the window and tied precisely, no loose papers on the desktop. All surfaces dusted and shined, bed neatly made, blankets hanging with precision on each side. Wall decorations evenly spaced and chosen not by me, but by my mother.

Perhaps to a degree, you can see where this is leading.

If my bedroom didn’t adhere to those standards, an argument would ensue. Closing the drapes was tantamount to a crime. We once fought because I wanted to replace a piece of wall décor from my youth with something more appropriate to my current tastes. I would be told to make the bed, which I did quite nicely, only to find it didn’t meet specifications and had to be redone by her while I watched.  I certainly was never physically punished or chastised; no, it was the slings and arrows of criticism that wounded me, mutterings about how I couldn’t do anything right, or how I was just being lazy–even when I’d just spent ten minutes making my bed in an attempt to do it properly for once.

I’m sure if you question her, she remembers none of this, in the same way that I don’t remember the scores of criticisms I’ve heaped upon people in my lifetime,casually tossing them out and shaking my head, clucking my tongue in dismay at how they just can’t do things properly.

It took me many years to expunge that trait. Though I will always be critical, I am fair.

As such, you must realize that someone being a clean/neat freak isn’t necessarily a crime. Indeed, many of us know someone like that in our lives; we excuse it as "That’s just how they are", recognize their other endearing traits, are quietly thankful that they’re doing the cleaning so we don’t have to, and figure that the best way to get along and avoid mishap is simply to stay out of their way, nod, and smile.

That, of course, would be my father. He is not a weak man, but he learned quickly the value of just letting my mother do her thing and accepting the few times a week it would irritate him.  However, when Mother A is trying to control Son B, who refuses to be controlled, there is conflict, and I’m fairly sure there is no other way our relationship could have turned out, because she never had the epiphany that allowed her to loosen up on the reins so that I could blossom at 10 rather than 30.

A bedroom is often perceived as a safe haven for a child. A place to retreat, to meditate, to call their own. It’s the only real estate they typically have rights to.  I had to claw and scratch for even the most basic cosmetic changes, and was told that when I was paying for the house, then I could decide what the room looked like.  It probably won’t surprise the reader to learn that when I finally had apartments of my own, I covered the walls with decorations. Posters, cards, materials, photographs, advertisements–it was like being freed from years of expressive imprisonment.  At one point I had my entire bedroom decorated in a mural of color, consisting solely of advertisements. Their backgrounds, viewed from a distance, were a progressive rainbow of color that people would come and gaze at, losing themselves in the composition and arrangement. 

I admit I was proud.

To redirect this flight of memory to its original destination, however, let us summarize by saying that as I grew up, I didn’t feel I had anything that was MINE. The things I found beautiful or valuable, I had to keep hidden in drawers or closets, only to be brought out briefly before ensconcing them away once more.

All of these influences combined into behavior remarkably similar to kleptomania. I stole money when I could, and shoplifted frequently. It would be impossible to list the items, though they varied from something as small as $5 to as large as a laptop computer (which was later stolen from me, ironically), but for the most part they were inexpensive items that I could have easily purchased had I desired to.

I wanted something MINE, and I could not resist the impulses.  I’m fairly sure that being intelligent worked to my disadvantage, as it encouraged me that I could think up elaborate plans without getting caught. Anyone reading this should congratulate themselves on being the rare few people who are in the know, for it falls squarely into the category of shameful past events that I’ve moved on from and regret ever doing (and thus am very particular about to whom I reveal my sordid past.) I remember when my apartment was robbed twice in 1999, being disappointed that I’d lost so many things but realizing fully that it was karma, come to collect something long overdue.

My arrest during that depression was, ironically, because for once I was actually stealing something I needed (or so I felt). The winter was harsh, and I had no gloves.  When I say we were poor, I mean it–we barely made ends meet, and probably only survived because we had food at work, and from Kentucky Fried Chicken, where Christy worked and employees were able to take home the leftover food they were going to throw out.

It’s a good thing I love chicken, but if I never eat another fried chicken leg, I won’t shed any tears, on principle alone.

I took the gloves, and it’s no surprise that I couldn’t stem the impulse to take something else–a pack of baseball cards. As I absconded through the door, as I had done numerous times before in numerous other situations, I heard the shouts and footsteps behind me, and the rest is history.

Now, the security officer was particularly good at his job, I feel, not just because he caught me, but because he taught me a lesson. I am not particularly skilled at lying; misdirection, yes, but I’m a very straightforward and honest individual (just in the past not very law-abiding, which is different.) For some reason, angry at myself for getting caught, and wanting to somehow demonstrate that I could put one over on him and thus assert my superiority, figuring he would just let me go with a warning, I confessed to the gloves but attempted to make up some story about the lousy baseball cards, about how I’d bought them earlier that night at another store and that they were mine, all mine.

Silly, silly boy.

After the interrogation, he sat back, and shook his head. He said he could tell I was intelligent, that I was well-spoken, that I was even polite and clean. He couldn’t figure out why I thought stealing was a good idea.  He also, however, couldn’t figure out why I thought lying was a good idea. Not only did they have my taking of the baseball cards on camera, he said, but he was originally going to let me go, give me a second chance, and not call the police in–except that I had lied to him, and disrespected him by doing so when he was up front with me throughout.  Because of my poor decision not to steal, but to lie, that I was going to be charged with shoplifting.

I wasn’t taken out in handcuffs, since it was merely shoplifting–indeed, I followed the cop to the police station in my car. Being fingerprinted is not pleasant, nor is having to go to court and stand up and say "Guilty" while a collection of bored people turn their eyes upon you, hoping you’ll provide some entertainment while they wait their turn.

I never told my parents, and likely never will. They helped pay the $175 fine, because I obviously did not have that sort of money, but I said it was for a speeding ticket. For many years afterwards, they’d make sarcastic references to my driving ability. As such I can only be too glad that I didn’t have to endure the constant reminder that I was, no matter how pathetically or lightly, a disappointing petty criminal.

I’ve considered coming clean, but it would serve no purpose. That way of life is behind me, and the greatest burglary I commit is taking books from the library book sale and then paying for them a few days later because I’m short on change.  I often overcompensate out of guilt.

Sometimes, I feel I have spent my entire life reaching towards light from darkness. If you’ve ever had a root canal, you have experienced the point in the procedure where they take the thinnest of instruments, an endodontic file, and scour the deepest parts of your tooth.  The disease is cleansed, the decay purged–but the only way to access it is to break the tooth open, and expose its blight.

I have been broken, yes, which is why I perhaps take such pride when I say that I own myself, and that I have gotten here on the strength of my own resolve and determination, not that of others. I had precious little assistance along the way, but there were moments that I drew upon, however, and I can thank the security guard for giving me a much-needed perspective. I didn’t steal from a store again, though it took a bit longer to cure my urges entirely.  Self-mastery takes time, after all, or I would have been writing this ten years ago.  It was a seed from which better things blossomed, and I’d like to think that if I could let that guard know, wherever he is, that he’d be glad to hear it.

Since Andy and I weren’t making ends meet, the spring of 1992 was the end of our stay in Leland Lake.  He was moving back home for the summer.  Despite my troubles, we had remained steadfast in our friendship, and would resume being roommates on campus in the upcoming semester. However, with my grades falling, no money, the shame of having a criminal record, caught in a maelstrom of turmoil and disquiet, it was no surprise that I wasn’t particularly looking forward to something that normally would gestate smiles and nostalgia in the average individual:

Returning home.