no closer to home than we were to our destination
There was a really long time after my downfall... that's what I'm determined to call it now, instead of breakup, or mental breakdown, or trying to kill myself and ending up in the psych ward, or being a drug addict without a home and living in a garage, or going to rehab, since that all happened at lightning speed for me.... anyway, a long time after my downfall, where I stopped listening to music. I just couldn't. When I was a drug addict at my worst, music didn't matter. I remember at first going to pick up the girl I was dating at the time, or giving dealers a ride to pick up their product, or just driving around town, desperate when everyone when everyone's burners had been expired and I couldn't get a hold of anyone, where I would carefully create a playlist, hoping that others would be impressed with my musical taste, or enjoy the music we were listening to, or join with me in sampling new bands and sounds while wasted. Then I realized, what the fuck did they care? They wanted my money, or they wanted a ride, or they would have liked anything about me because I was the guy paying for their next fix. Then, drugs were all that mattered, even to me. I didn't listen to music for a really long time. I used to joke with my friend David McClelland (such a hard name to type when my left shift key is broken because I burned it with a cigarette) about how it seemed that our favorite music seemed to be from the era right when we first discovered Napster, downloading music, lots of it, onto our iPods, or playing it while we were working in the office of our very first company, when Spearfish was in its early infancy, or how we'd always have a special playlist made for pool parties, or foursquare tournaments, or just any get together. The Postal Service, Weezer, Dashboard Confessional, Something Corporate, Death Cab for Cutie, The Starting Line.... those bands. Then, I realized that a lot of people thought I was gay for listening to that style, because I wasn't alternative and "love the earth and eat grass and fuck plastic products" and started listening to Tom Petty and The Verve and Sufjan Stevens. I liked that music too. I liked all music. Music was such an important part of my life, and everyone's life who was in my life. Music ruled the world. Then, it all stopped. The music just stopped playing. That's a perfect way to describe the way my life was at that time.
Not only was the music not playing, but I was living in a silent movie, in an era of talkies, and Dolby Digital soundtracks, and THX fucking surround sound "feel the beat throughout your entire body" world. No one noticed me, because no one could hear me. I could scream all I fucking wanted. All people saw was my mouth opened, and if they paid attention long enough, a black screen with white text would quote what I had to say.
For a long time, it hurt to listen to music. Every song reminded me of the time I spent with someone, something I had experienced, something I had loved. I couldn't listen to anything without crying, without thinking of a back story and getting down. Memories continue to cripple me to this day. My downfall as a functioning human being is that I remember too much, and am too sentimental, and I just choke to death on my own thoughts and feelings that I give way too much significance. But in a way, I'd rather do that than throw everything and everyone away and just move on. I could never dispose of a person or a period of my life, just like that. Music brings those memories out in me, and for quite a time, the musical tastes I had at the time.... MGMT, Lights, Jack's Mannequin, The Maine, Secondhand Serenade.... they all had memories attached that drowned me with my own tears.
In listening to music again, I've had to confront and power through a lot of that suffocation head on. For a brief while in the past few years, reality/documentary shows about compulsions and OCD have been popular. On those shows, all therapists tell the patients that the only way to successfully deal with an anxiety attack or a panic attack is to just sit through it, breathe through it, and wait until your anxiety level drops down. People who had to touch seven light switches before they went to sleep because if they didn't they thought that a space alien would rape their firstborn son with a huge black dildo.... people who were afraid to drive because they would have panic attacks in traffic and were deathly afraid of having a panic attack so they just stayed inside.... they all had to face their fears, on reality television, and just breathe until their anxiety levels went down. They weren't instantly cured. But with a lot of therapy, and with confronting the beast head on, face first, they got better. I'm having to do the same.
I've always been afraid of winter driving, ever since I was in a winter accident. One of the things that bothers me the most is driving at night, when it is snowing, and the snow is blowing right at the car. In the dark, unable to see anything except snowflakes flying towards your windshield like the stupid old Windows screensaver, or a spaceship blasting towards another planet passing millions of stars, I freak out. When that happens, and I'm pushing on the gas, expecting to go forward, but all I can see are snowflakes, it feels like the car isn't moving forward, and I freak out. The first time this happened, I was on my way to State College with Corinthian Jones to visit George Metz and see Sarah Silverman, my favorite female comedian, perform at the BJC on campus. That same situation happened, and in the middle of Cori telling me a story, I pulled off to the side of the road and just started screaming at her to "shut up." We were somewhere on 80, no closer to home than we were to our destination, and fucking FedEx trucks were passing us like it was a derby. Back then, in late 2006 or 2007 (I can't remember... those were the good, pre-"in love" years, and they're all a blur to me now), there were no psych meds. There was no Valium or Xanax for panic attacks. There was no Vicodin to make me forget the world around me. There was no Paxil, or Zoloft, or Effexor or Risperdol to zombify me. I only had myself, my friends, and my natural coping skills. So, I waited for a while, until the army of FedEx trucks went by, and I pulled back onto the road and kept on going. We made it, on time actually, and had a fantastic weekend. When did I lose that ability to just breathe, wait a while, and keep on going? Did someome steal that from me, because I relied on them, or did I just naturally lose it to other coping mechanisms over time?
The next time was when Kayla and I were broken up and I had to drive up to Edinboro, to be with her to hash out a few important things we needed to deal with, and to save our relationship. There was a massive snow storm, and I was driving North. This was early January 2009. That afternoon, I finally got snow tires on my weak, rear wheel drive BMW snow sled that I was afraid to drive anywhere that winter. I don't know if it was the placebo effect of the snow tires, or the fact that I needed to save my fucking relationship and any hope of having a future family and life, but I drove through that fucking storm like my life depended on it. Of course, in my mind, it did. I didn't care if there were FedEx trucks, or my car was sideways, or the snowflakes were coming through the windshield and poking me in the eyes. I was going to make it up to Edinboro, and I did. As stupid as it sounds in retrospect, I always say that night was the night I became a man. I mean, I'd fucked and smoked and gone to bars previously. I had been registered for the Selective Service. But that night, instead of pussying out and saying it was too difficult to drive or the conditions weren't safe or whatever the hell else, I just did what I had to do for my relationship.
Now, even though there are ton of psych meds, hours of therapy, and an ample supply of Xanax and Valium at my disposal, I panic. I was coming home from Pittsburgh after dropping off my friend Nick Kouch at the airport to fly out and meet his internet love he found on Facebook, and right as the car got to New Castle, a snow storm hit, and the "starfield simulation" panic attack set in. I choked. I drove 20 mph. Everyone around me hated me, but I couldn't do it. With all the windows down, I couldn't breathe. Luckily someone else in the car was able to take over. I just panicked, and all the progress I'd made, and all the previous winter driving hours I'd racked up since that very first accident, just went out the window. Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!
That was on a Monday. Ironically, that previous weekend I had made progress. That weekend, Nick had drill for the National Guard in Pittsburgh, the city that I now fear. Back to back Saturday and Sunday, I had to wake up at 4:00 AM and pick him up and drive him down to Pittsburgh, and then again drive back in the evening to pick him up. His National Guard armory is in Oakland on Walnut Street, an area that I'm very familiar with since my sister went to Pitt and I often took her back to school, and also its near the Apple Store, which I used to frequent often back when my business was successful and I had money and much equipment to get repaired, and also one of my favorite stores, Cards Unlimited. But, one of the nights, his National Guard outfit had a Christmas party at some fucking social hall in a suburb of the city. Thankfully I have Google Maps GPS and turn-by-turn directions on my phone, so once he had texted me the address, I knew i'd be able to get there eventually. However, that evening drive, alone, was also the time I had picked to face my musical fears, and power through my anxiety attacks. On the way down, I decided to listen to the full length album from Lights, which is a Canadian singer who I had introduced to Kayla, and we both liked, and had some significance in our relationship. Her songs are very much biographical or at the very least relatable to everyone, and me being so fucking sentimental, it was very hard to listen to her beautiful voice, the perfect construction of songs, without crying my fucking eyes out. But I had to finish the album. She's one of my favorite artists, and I hadn't actually listened to the entire album since my downfall. So, I plugged my phone into my car's radio, and as I drove, I listened and cried. And then Google decided to be a dickhead, and I got lost, and it got dark, and I couldn't find Nick, and I was in the ghetto, and I was afraid I'd run into Kayla and her boyfriend singing Christmas Carols and holding hands and walking through the streets with bags from a sex store and they'd throw rocks at my car and break the windows and just as confusing and obnoxiously out of control this sentence was, my mind just short circuited and I almost lost it. Fortunately, I was able to breathe a little better, and I finished the album, and I ended up at that shit hole social hall in the middle of the fucking ghetto. Nick drove home, and I just closed my eyes until we had gotten far enough out of the city that I felt safe enough to open them. Having had enough of him not knowing that in Pittsburgh, you can't be nice and expect someone to let you merge lanes, and that speed limits aren't realistic, and that you have to be aggressive, I made him pull over, we both pissed on the side of the road, switched seats, and I drove the rest of the way home. While I had pushed through my anxiety about listening to music, still by the end of the three-day weekend from hell, my nerves were completely frayed, and I gladly went to my next therapy appointment.
I'm starting to enjoy music again. I have always come up with ideas for movies, and started to write scripts, from inspiration I get from hearing a song. For years, I've had the perfect playlists saved on my computer for different parties, events, and weddings. I guess that's why I've always wanted my company to be an event planning and production company. As long as the moments don't directly involve me, I'm great at planning them. I'm great at making sure the atmosphere is perfect, there is the right decoration, the perfect mix of retro old-school glitter paint and poster board, and modern multimedia flat-screen projection boards and a complete audio/visual lighting/video/music spectacular. It's funny that while it is said that most girls grow up always thinking about and planning their wedding, for a long time, I had my planned too. Only it was totally different. I didn't know what dress the bride would wear, who would stand at the altar, or all that shit. But I knew how when my bride and I walked in the room, the lights would dim. Right as a video on how we had met, chronicling our relationship through pictures and home movies and interviews with relatives and mutual friends that knew us, the timeline would get to the point where we became Mr. and Mrs. Kudelko, and as the video said "introducing, for the first time", the lights would dim, just a soft sparkling atmosphere greeting us as everyone watched me take her hand in mine and walk through the door. I knew the song that would be playing. I had considered it being a song by Lights. I knew just what songs and lighting effects and ambient background video would be perfect for the father/daughter dance, the mother/son dance, and knew that both she and I wouldn't want the traditional 70s bullshit music playing, as if after Celebration was written, no one ever thought they could top it. Logistically, I had everything planned.... until my downfall.
However, in starting to listen to music again, I still think I could plan other people's moments. I can still, by slipping the headphones into my ears, plan beautiful points in time for other people. Eventually, that's what I aspire to do. I don't feel like I have long to do it, but that's topic for another piece of writing, but I just instinctively know that I don't have that much time yet. Maybe that's why it was so important to me to plan my own wedding. It's a sick reminder of the last two years of my life that I now have my funeral planned in my head, logistically, though I'm still worried about the "guest list" and if a certain important person will be there. I just know that even though I've survived a lot, the end is coming near for me. That's why I want to get my shit together in 2011, build my life and my business, and give plenty of people their beautiful moments while I still can.
Not only was the music not playing, but I was living in a silent movie, in an era of talkies, and Dolby Digital soundtracks, and THX fucking surround sound "feel the beat throughout your entire body" world. No one noticed me, because no one could hear me. I could scream all I fucking wanted. All people saw was my mouth opened, and if they paid attention long enough, a black screen with white text would quote what I had to say.
For a long time, it hurt to listen to music. Every song reminded me of the time I spent with someone, something I had experienced, something I had loved. I couldn't listen to anything without crying, without thinking of a back story and getting down. Memories continue to cripple me to this day. My downfall as a functioning human being is that I remember too much, and am too sentimental, and I just choke to death on my own thoughts and feelings that I give way too much significance. But in a way, I'd rather do that than throw everything and everyone away and just move on. I could never dispose of a person or a period of my life, just like that. Music brings those memories out in me, and for quite a time, the musical tastes I had at the time.... MGMT, Lights, Jack's Mannequin, The Maine, Secondhand Serenade.... they all had memories attached that drowned me with my own tears.
In listening to music again, I've had to confront and power through a lot of that suffocation head on. For a brief while in the past few years, reality/documentary shows about compulsions and OCD have been popular. On those shows, all therapists tell the patients that the only way to successfully deal with an anxiety attack or a panic attack is to just sit through it, breathe through it, and wait until your anxiety level drops down. People who had to touch seven light switches before they went to sleep because if they didn't they thought that a space alien would rape their firstborn son with a huge black dildo.... people who were afraid to drive because they would have panic attacks in traffic and were deathly afraid of having a panic attack so they just stayed inside.... they all had to face their fears, on reality television, and just breathe until their anxiety levels went down. They weren't instantly cured. But with a lot of therapy, and with confronting the beast head on, face first, they got better. I'm having to do the same.
I've always been afraid of winter driving, ever since I was in a winter accident. One of the things that bothers me the most is driving at night, when it is snowing, and the snow is blowing right at the car. In the dark, unable to see anything except snowflakes flying towards your windshield like the stupid old Windows screensaver, or a spaceship blasting towards another planet passing millions of stars, I freak out. When that happens, and I'm pushing on the gas, expecting to go forward, but all I can see are snowflakes, it feels like the car isn't moving forward, and I freak out. The first time this happened, I was on my way to State College with Corinthian Jones to visit George Metz and see Sarah Silverman, my favorite female comedian, perform at the BJC on campus. That same situation happened, and in the middle of Cori telling me a story, I pulled off to the side of the road and just started screaming at her to "shut up." We were somewhere on 80, no closer to home than we were to our destination, and fucking FedEx trucks were passing us like it was a derby. Back then, in late 2006 or 2007 (I can't remember... those were the good, pre-"in love" years, and they're all a blur to me now), there were no psych meds. There was no Valium or Xanax for panic attacks. There was no Vicodin to make me forget the world around me. There was no Paxil, or Zoloft, or Effexor or Risperdol to zombify me. I only had myself, my friends, and my natural coping skills. So, I waited for a while, until the army of FedEx trucks went by, and I pulled back onto the road and kept on going. We made it, on time actually, and had a fantastic weekend. When did I lose that ability to just breathe, wait a while, and keep on going? Did someome steal that from me, because I relied on them, or did I just naturally lose it to other coping mechanisms over time?
The next time was when Kayla and I were broken up and I had to drive up to Edinboro, to be with her to hash out a few important things we needed to deal with, and to save our relationship. There was a massive snow storm, and I was driving North. This was early January 2009. That afternoon, I finally got snow tires on my weak, rear wheel drive BMW snow sled that I was afraid to drive anywhere that winter. I don't know if it was the placebo effect of the snow tires, or the fact that I needed to save my fucking relationship and any hope of having a future family and life, but I drove through that fucking storm like my life depended on it. Of course, in my mind, it did. I didn't care if there were FedEx trucks, or my car was sideways, or the snowflakes were coming through the windshield and poking me in the eyes. I was going to make it up to Edinboro, and I did. As stupid as it sounds in retrospect, I always say that night was the night I became a man. I mean, I'd fucked and smoked and gone to bars previously. I had been registered for the Selective Service. But that night, instead of pussying out and saying it was too difficult to drive or the conditions weren't safe or whatever the hell else, I just did what I had to do for my relationship.
Now, even though there are ton of psych meds, hours of therapy, and an ample supply of Xanax and Valium at my disposal, I panic. I was coming home from Pittsburgh after dropping off my friend Nick Kouch at the airport to fly out and meet his internet love he found on Facebook, and right as the car got to New Castle, a snow storm hit, and the "starfield simulation" panic attack set in. I choked. I drove 20 mph. Everyone around me hated me, but I couldn't do it. With all the windows down, I couldn't breathe. Luckily someone else in the car was able to take over. I just panicked, and all the progress I'd made, and all the previous winter driving hours I'd racked up since that very first accident, just went out the window. Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!
That was on a Monday. Ironically, that previous weekend I had made progress. That weekend, Nick had drill for the National Guard in Pittsburgh, the city that I now fear. Back to back Saturday and Sunday, I had to wake up at 4:00 AM and pick him up and drive him down to Pittsburgh, and then again drive back in the evening to pick him up. His National Guard armory is in Oakland on Walnut Street, an area that I'm very familiar with since my sister went to Pitt and I often took her back to school, and also its near the Apple Store, which I used to frequent often back when my business was successful and I had money and much equipment to get repaired, and also one of my favorite stores, Cards Unlimited. But, one of the nights, his National Guard outfit had a Christmas party at some fucking social hall in a suburb of the city. Thankfully I have Google Maps GPS and turn-by-turn directions on my phone, so once he had texted me the address, I knew i'd be able to get there eventually. However, that evening drive, alone, was also the time I had picked to face my musical fears, and power through my anxiety attacks. On the way down, I decided to listen to the full length album from Lights, which is a Canadian singer who I had introduced to Kayla, and we both liked, and had some significance in our relationship. Her songs are very much biographical or at the very least relatable to everyone, and me being so fucking sentimental, it was very hard to listen to her beautiful voice, the perfect construction of songs, without crying my fucking eyes out. But I had to finish the album. She's one of my favorite artists, and I hadn't actually listened to the entire album since my downfall. So, I plugged my phone into my car's radio, and as I drove, I listened and cried. And then Google decided to be a dickhead, and I got lost, and it got dark, and I couldn't find Nick, and I was in the ghetto, and I was afraid I'd run into Kayla and her boyfriend singing Christmas Carols and holding hands and walking through the streets with bags from a sex store and they'd throw rocks at my car and break the windows and just as confusing and obnoxiously out of control this sentence was, my mind just short circuited and I almost lost it. Fortunately, I was able to breathe a little better, and I finished the album, and I ended up at that shit hole social hall in the middle of the fucking ghetto. Nick drove home, and I just closed my eyes until we had gotten far enough out of the city that I felt safe enough to open them. Having had enough of him not knowing that in Pittsburgh, you can't be nice and expect someone to let you merge lanes, and that speed limits aren't realistic, and that you have to be aggressive, I made him pull over, we both pissed on the side of the road, switched seats, and I drove the rest of the way home. While I had pushed through my anxiety about listening to music, still by the end of the three-day weekend from hell, my nerves were completely frayed, and I gladly went to my next therapy appointment.
I'm starting to enjoy music again. I have always come up with ideas for movies, and started to write scripts, from inspiration I get from hearing a song. For years, I've had the perfect playlists saved on my computer for different parties, events, and weddings. I guess that's why I've always wanted my company to be an event planning and production company. As long as the moments don't directly involve me, I'm great at planning them. I'm great at making sure the atmosphere is perfect, there is the right decoration, the perfect mix of retro old-school glitter paint and poster board, and modern multimedia flat-screen projection boards and a complete audio/visual lighting/video/music spectacular. It's funny that while it is said that most girls grow up always thinking about and planning their wedding, for a long time, I had my planned too. Only it was totally different. I didn't know what dress the bride would wear, who would stand at the altar, or all that shit. But I knew how when my bride and I walked in the room, the lights would dim. Right as a video on how we had met, chronicling our relationship through pictures and home movies and interviews with relatives and mutual friends that knew us, the timeline would get to the point where we became Mr. and Mrs. Kudelko, and as the video said "introducing, for the first time", the lights would dim, just a soft sparkling atmosphere greeting us as everyone watched me take her hand in mine and walk through the door. I knew the song that would be playing. I had considered it being a song by Lights. I knew just what songs and lighting effects and ambient background video would be perfect for the father/daughter dance, the mother/son dance, and knew that both she and I wouldn't want the traditional 70s bullshit music playing, as if after Celebration was written, no one ever thought they could top it. Logistically, I had everything planned.... until my downfall.
However, in starting to listen to music again, I still think I could plan other people's moments. I can still, by slipping the headphones into my ears, plan beautiful points in time for other people. Eventually, that's what I aspire to do. I don't feel like I have long to do it, but that's topic for another piece of writing, but I just instinctively know that I don't have that much time yet. Maybe that's why it was so important to me to plan my own wedding. It's a sick reminder of the last two years of my life that I now have my funeral planned in my head, logistically, though I'm still worried about the "guest list" and if a certain important person will be there. I just know that even though I've survived a lot, the end is coming near for me. That's why I want to get my shit together in 2011, build my life and my business, and give plenty of people their beautiful moments while I still can.