Maxfield Parrish: Seein' Things (1904)

"I was once addicted to life …"

Aging seems to reduce into a process of weaning myself off earlier fixations, some of which managed to metastasize into genuine addictions while others never progressed beyond predilection. Of all the so-called skills I've acquired in this life, my begrudging ability to break entrenched behavior patterns amounts to my greatest superpower. I always initiated these terrible interventions under unadvantageous circumstances, often without a shred of evidence that I might succeed. I initially forced myself, no matter how necessary or desperate the effort. I never once wanted to grow up in that way, to finally face responsibility and make anything better. I was never courageous, never brave, though I admit that I sometimes ascribed success as the result of my dedication rather than desperation.

Meals were once a necessity. Now, I can give or take them without skin taken off my nose should I skip supper, breakfast, or lunch. I once could not bear to be anywhere without having a pocket filled with cigarettes. I'd smoke them, too, every chance I got. That was a genuinely unquenchable thirst, a search for salvation down a rat hole. I enjoyed that bad habit, and it might be that the worse the habit, the more enjoyable it feels. I've come to perceive every habit as a negative externality that will eventually need undoing lest it become my undoing. Caffeine, in its time, took center stage in my ChildishThings passion play. I ran on coffee or fancied myself to be, though I eventually understood that the caffeine was running on me. I noticed myself burning more mips in coffee jitters than productive activity. I weaned myself off in a six-month excruciation featuring migraine headaches and an extracted wisdom tooth wrongly implicated as a symptom. I've never once regretted shedding that woefully ChildishThing.

I have become addicted to affection, perhaps the most dangerous affliction available to anyone. My second marriage might be best recognized as an obsession grown beyond its natural limits. It self-destructed with a bit of help from the participants once we realized the depth of our commitment. That divorce was more like a dismemberment that left at least this participant hobbled for the longest time. Still, it was a necessary and beneficial act. It wounded every ounce of my self-esteem and forced me to rearrange almost every aspect of my being. Fortunately, The Muse showed up a few interminable months later to help me find my wheels.

I've heard first marriages called practice, but I believe they're no more practice than any other activity. None of any of this really qualifies as rehersal. We each take our stage sublimely unprepared for whatever we will face. Often, circumstances will seem to get the better of even the best of us. Just as fortunately, we each possess more fortitude than even the most powerful of us ever suspected. We have the power to say no and make it stick, even when—especially when—it seems like we only managed to stick it to ourselves again. The sweet scent of success hardly surpasses the scent of a ChildishThing left behind. I stand upon a fairly firm foundation of forcefully abandoned adolescence, for I was once addicted to life before I began learning to simply experience it instead.

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #GoodNuff, #PureSchmaltz