Sep 25

Written by: JohnWild
9/25/2008 7:47 AM

     Sometimes the stress gets to me and I get a little lost in my head.  The whispers of doubt turn into fear and then to panic. People who know me personally have seen this. You may know me when I am strong but sometimes I feel as weak anyone could feel. When I feel helpless or desperate, when I need a hand but am to ashamed to ask for it, I try (after all of the unproductive hair-ripping alternatives have been exhausted) to focus on the things I can actually work on and get to it. I think of words like “tough” or “strong” and I tell myself that I can’t quit and that I am being tested as a man, as a champion for my family. I may lose but I will never lie down.
    I have been here before. I have been humbled and forced to reassess everything I was doing. I was in my early twenties and I had to move into my uncle George’s old bedroom in my grandmother’s house. I had always worked. Every school vacation or break I was working at the shop or the caddie yard or the bar or as a paperboy or babysitter before that. Even living in my uncle George’s old room I worked. I was there because my pride was worth the investment. “Save money,” my mother would say.  I was working as a doorman and cutting my teeth as a trainer. It was wonderful to be in that house and grow close enough to my grandmother so that she cried (which I had never seen her do) when I finally moved on. But it was hell to be so isolated, so lonely in that room with my books, a TV, and that little wooden monkey.
     A brilliant little thing it was. I would talk to it. I would tell it how much this whole thing sucked and how unhappy I was. It was like the pet I couldn’t have or the friends I never got to see and missed so much.  It was also my connection to my Uncle George. I would lie on that 50 year old futon (coolest thing ever!), crushing it with my bodyweight, and think about how Uncle George must have been in this same spot feeling just as sad and as trapped I do. I would think about the stories my mother told me about how he escaped and I knew that I could do it too. I told the monkey so.
     I did escape! Just like him I packed up my car and drove towards the Pacific Ocean and left that small room in Astoria Queens behind me forever. I knew that I would be back someday, for some reason, but never like this, never again.
     My grandmother passed a few months after I left. I went home and got to talk a lot about how glad I was (and grateful I am) for having that time with my grandmother. I told it to the monkey. I almost stole it. I really did. I was holding it and was thinking how much time I had spent talking to this damn thing. You know, just working it out. I looked at this thing and wondered, “what the hell is your name?” Uncle George knows his name, because he named him, because it is his, because he was trapped in this room a lot longer than I was and is closer to this wooden monkey than I could ever be. I put the statue back on the bookcase.
    And now,,,And now when I feel like I need the Monkey. I talk to my bells,,, all of them. I lift and throw and sweat and strain until I have a little clarity. Sometimes I will talk to them, and the scary thing is, sometimes the talk back.

Cheers,
jw

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