60 Photos in 60 Days - Day Two

Day Two: a picture of me and the person I have been close with for the longest.

This is Ian, my brother (mentioned in one of yesterday's 15 facts).  Though we've called each other "brother" for about a decade, it really became true when I realized that the ties that bind us have truly superseded our friendship.  That is to say: if Ian and I sopped liking each other (which has happened, but let's say if it happened permanently), we'd still love each other.  Each of us would be - would need to be - some part of the other's life.  We met in first grade, nearly 25 years ago.  When Ian moved to Monterey during the summer between fourth and fifth grade, I felt bereft - though this was probably less because he was my best friend, and more because I often felt he was my only friend.  We kept in touch, and visited each other often.

To describe the entirety of our friendship, or even a slice of his significance to me, would be a losing proposition - I'd never manage to say more than I left out.  But for most of my waking life, Ian has been my friend, my enemy, my foil, my brother, my standard, my negative example, my cheerleader, my teacher, the devil on my shoulder, my debate partner, and a thousand more things I don't have words for. I trust him more than anyone else I know, immediate family included.  I have grown close to others since we met - two others in particular, who have also become friends with Ian, and whom I'm sure I'll feature at some point in time on this little quest. But none have been around so long as Ian.  We can finish each other's sentences, converse in shared looks or entirely in private jokes concerning the word "it" that were generated at a 1988 sleepover.

My brother and I are two sides of the same coin - to know one of us is to know a great deal about the inner workings of the other.  But this picture, taken at my tenth birthday party, is one of my favorites because it so eloquently expresses the outer differences - of race, yes, but also of demeanor.  My reserve, his utter lack of reserve.  My thousand-yard stare, his absolute presence in the moment.  My wish to shy away from attention - his ardent courtship of attention.

This picture is also a reminder of one of my favorite moments from early childhood - the massive battle royale that occurred with those plastic swords in some courtyard at Knott's Berry Farm, not long after this picture was taken.

60 Photos in 60 Days - Day One

Mostly, I ignore things like this - I totally missed out on Reverb10, for example - but I figured I'd rise to the challenge inherent in a friend's observation: "...we'll never be memoirists of the Sedaris caliber if we don't get to journaling and blogging."

Fair enough, friend.  And since a picture's worth a thousand, this seems like a fun way to get it started.  By the end of sixty days, hopefully I'll have gotten into the habit of writing something more often.

A Picture of Myself with Fifteen Facts.  I assume that I'm supposed to deliver the fifteen facts appended to the picture, rather than try to hunt up a photograph that illustrates fifteen things of interest about me.  I further assume that these facts should be in the category of Stuff Not Commonly Known About Me/Stuff That's Slightly Revelatory.  So:

This is the most recent picture taken of me that I can bear to look at.  It was taken during my recent trip to Qatar, about which I've already written sufficiently to leave it off of the 15 Facts portion of our agenda.

1. I often loathe my name.  David Alan Sherrell.  David Sherrell.  Dave Sherrell (Mom hates this one; "I didn't name my son Dave," she says).  No iteration I've found satisfies me.    I even tried D. Alan Sherrell, but since it's the "Sherrell" part that bugs me the most, that was sort of a wash.  My name doesn't flow well, doesn't mean much of anything.  I'm named after a relative I've met twice and a Biblical character with whom I've never felt much of an affinity, except that he too fell from wisdom into folly before he was very old.  Our last name is derived, as many Black American family names are, from the owners of my father's ancestors.  (It wasn't that many generations ago - we're long-lived and late-birthed on both sides of my family.)  Often I've considered being bothered by that; mostly, I just wish the owners had had a better name.  Like Stryker.  I could roll with Stryker.
2. Closely related: I don't hold nicknames very well.  I tried to put DS out there for a while, but it didn't take.  Dash, the closest thing to a nickname I've had for any length of time, is a name only known by my friends online. (Dash Stryker.  You love it.)
3. I struggle with depression.  Sometimes, I struggle harder than I let on.  Mostly, this means I spend a lot of time in my room when I'm not working or at a 12-step meeting.  Going to school online does not help matters any; it lets me feel like I've accomplished something most days.  Even though it's true, I'm still not the healthiest boy.
4. My body and I don't get along much; after years of battling it out with each other, I'd say we've reached a mutual nonaggression pact, which my body violates infrequently.  I retaliate by consuming massive amounts of junk food.
5. Not a day goes by without me wondering if I should be doing more with my singing voice, and resolving (again) that I'm on the right path (for now).  (Bonus fact: I have several recordings of me singing, both a cappella - I dub over all the parts - and self-accompanied.  Nobody but me and my mother will ever hear these recordings, as I don't think they're good enough for public consumption.)
6. I've been single for the last two and a half years or so - not entirely by choice, but primarily because I haven't put the effort in.  I know the time is nearing when I'll have no excuse not to get out there more; then I'll really have to face this irrational fear of rejection I have and the terminal shyness that's been a part of my social makeup for more years than I can remember.  In order to get there, however, I've got a couple more hills to climb and at least one major regret to put firmly behind me.
7. I spent all of my adolescence and a good part of what was supposed to be my early adulthood (but wound up being my prolonged adolescence) entirely too worried about what other people thought of me.  After nearly twenty years of therapy (off and on, but mostly on) and over four years of sobriety (entirely on), I've gotten to the point where it doesn't matter as much.  Not coincidentally, I think, I no longer have anything approaching a working concept of how others perceive me - physically, socially, characterologically, etc.  This only occasionally troubles me.
8. I have done a horrible job keeping in touch with friends who have been dear to me. This is, in the case of my friends spread around the world, very sad.  In the case of my friends in Pasadena, it's just lame.
9. When I'm feeling particularly down, I still think going to a bar will help.  These days it's the karaoke mic, rather than the beer tap, that soothes.
10. I spent the first twenty-five years of my life swearing up and down that I wouldn't be like my father. My first complete sentence was "Daddy, I don't want to go to Yale."  (Mom coached.)  I succeeded - I'm not like him, not in any of those ways I was worried about.  Now, I just need to deal with all of the ways I wish I was like him but am not.  (Congratulations, David, you are totally emotionally available!  Too bad you've got crap for a work ethic.)
11. I don't get why people are bummed about turning 30 - I'm totally fine with it.  Unless my problem is that I'm still busy being bummed over turning 25...or already bummed about turning 40.  Either or both are possibilities.
12. I am a pretty unflappable person - it's hard to anger me, hard to offend me.  But if someone were to manage either of those things, they'd quickly discover that I have three temperatures: cool, heated, and holy shit someone hold him down and keep him held for a while.  Only my immediate family, and one I would consider a brother, have ever seen that third setting.  My awareness of that rage is what keeps me so invested in staying centered no matter what; I imagine it's only different for Bruce Banner in terms of the scale of the consequences of failure.
13. I actually do wish I was a little bit taller and had more skill at basketball.  If I was better at it, I would play more often, and would be in better physical shape as a result.  I am fully aware of the hole in my logic here.
14. I can't wait for this phase of my life to be over, for the next one to begin.  I'm close to making some terrifying and amazing changes, but to complete them will take two years minimum.  It's like being near the top of the roller coaster, right before the first plunge, but it keeps stretching out before you like the horizon.  Ugh.
15. I want to lose about 25 pounds - I need to eat better and exercise more.  I miss the collegiate metabolism that allowed for two daily trips to McDonald's without gaining a pound - of course, I was also living twelve-to-fourteen-hour days back then, most of which involved sports and/or dancing.  We're down to about eight unless I'm working, I don't play ball, and you'd have to pay real money to see me dance.  Living is wonderful; maturing is okay.  Aging sucks.

I could keep going, but there's only so revelatory I want to get, y'know?  So there's fifteen, plus the bonus, and all the little side-facts.  So, really, here's the forty-third fact (by my count): I'm terrible at following directions.

Clarke's Third Law, part 1

If I can just
Make it up there
And if I can walk
Through that City bright and fair
There'll probably
Be a thousand things I'd want to tell the Lord
On that day
On that day...

I'll just
Begin to cry
He'll wipe the tears from my eyes
I'll say "Thanks" - He'll ask, "Why?"
This will be my reply:
You know millions didn't make it,
But I was one of the ones who did.
--The Winans, "Millions"

So runs a gospel number from my childhood, one of my favorites. Although my conception of God is no longer bound entirely by what I learned in church, gospel music retains a certain power over me. I've heard this power referred to as "catching the holy spirit" - a description generated by my old religious framework. The feeling of it is unadulterated joy - a rush of pleasure, chills waxing throughout the body, goose bumps, even misty eyes. Although this sensation is pure, the closest thing to it I've experienced otherwise is an IV morphine high. The buzz from marijuana or alcohol (or a finely tuned combination of the two) are rather blunted alternatives. Intravenous heroin users have experienced the feeling as well, ratcheted up in intensity to a level I can only imagine.

I don't find it coincidental that Carl Jung defined alcoholism as, among other things, a "spiritual search." I have experienced this personally: I have filled the inner void alternately with drugs and with an operational God-concept. The hard truth is that before all of the consequences of addiction began to pile up in my life, they worked interchangeably well for most things. Each has seemed to be, at varying points in time, that missing piece of me I needed in place to function as a productive social being and to cope with negative emotions.

(This, as you might have noticed by now, is a more personal post.)

I've had the lyrics to that song in my head recently. They certainly seem to apply to my new life; I'm grateful for my broader conception of spirituality now, because I don't need to wait for "that day" - my death - to experience spiritual redemption. Millions of drug addicts don't recover; I was one of the ones who did. In that alone - in the four years, seven months, and 26 days of sobriety I've accumulated - I have a great sense of pride and gratitude; but there's more to the journey than abstinence, more even than learning to function as that productive social being without psychoactive numbing agents.

Let me back up and see if I can explain more thoroughly.

There's a thing called anticipatory socialization: it's the process by which we place ourselves in hypothetical environments and imagine how we'll interact with them, how we'll act within them. It begins when we're children as make-believe, and remains an integral part of identity formation thereafter. Kids play grown-up; preteens imagine how much cooler they'll be in high school; college students picture life in the Real World (and then avoid living it for as long as possible). I've always sucked at it.

When I was 14 years old, I had yet to consume a mind-altering drug for any purpose other than the relief of physical pain caused by Sickle Cell (well, there was that time in kindergarten I broke my hip, but I digress). I suffered from depression as well, and had a generally gloomy outlook on my life. Most important to my eventual point, I didn't think I'd live to see adulthood. I tried to picture myself at 18, and I just couldn't. I couldn't see myself surviving that long in a cycle of pain, hospital visits requiring long absence from school, and lengthy recovery times. I couldn't see how that David Sherrell would ever contribute anything meaningful to his school community, much less society at large.

When I was 18, I had a somewhat fulfilling life despite the Sickle Cell and depression. I had found a niche in my school community, the lengthy absences were fewer, and I had started to believe I had a life somewhat worth living. Around this time, I had my first drink, my first hit of weed. I hadn't heard until then the concept of social lubricant - and I took to it like a fish who'd just learned of water. Although spirituality can be nearly identical to a good high, there was (back then) that major difference: God had never made me feel less completely awkward in any social environment. So I kissed off God in favor of a Corona lime and didn't look back.

But I couldn't imagine myself at 25. I couldn't see myself graduating college, becoming self-sufficient, falling in love and building a family. I had no idea how these things would happen, or what my role in bringing them about would be.

Clarke's Third Law, part 2

When I did live to see 25, I wasn't particularly grateful for it. I hadn't graduated college; I wasn't self-sufficient; I'd fallen in love and had blown it. Addiction, depression, and Sickle Cell had me fully in their shared grip; each was worsening the others in a pas de trois that left me off the stage. I had made a halfhearted (and half-assed) attempt at suicide, and failed even at that. The only thing left in my daily life that generated any sense of self-worth was my skill with a karaoke microphone; this did not exactly leave me inclined toward sobriety. To say that at this point I couldn't picture myself at age 30 is not entirely accurate – I didn't want to live to see 30, and was terribly afraid that I would.

I despaired: my life was going to be an endless tailspin of misery, pain, and self-defeat. I was not cognizant enough of my own addiction to label my substance abuse as a problem. Quite the contrary: those brief escapes from the gray hopelessness were my only coping mechanism. Stolen moments of artificial peace; a silence obtained not through the cessation of sound but through the plugging of the ears. An overinflated bouncy castle in the sky, whose resident is given to clothing himself in thumbtacks. And it was all I would ever be; all I ever could be.

I'm writing now from the Grand Hyatt Doha. I sit at an office desk in a king-size suite; the balcony door is open to allow the faint desert breeze through. My view is of palm trees, gardens, and a white-sand beach on a blue-water bay. I am paid to be here, all my expenses covered by our client. I'm here to provide substance-abuse prevention: to tell my story and speak my truth to children, some of whom feel as I have felt. I'm here to give them the answers I didn't have in my youth, to questions I didn't know enough to ask. I have found a productive use for all of my past experiences; there is a vindication here, for each prior version of David Sherrell who suffered and despaired. This is redemption; with it comes an indescribable joy. (And a paycheck.)

This is my point: to have been where I've been, and to live the life I'm presently living, is as indistinguishable from heaven as any sufficiently advanced technology is from magic.

If I were to describe my life to 25 year-old David Sherrell, he would not believe me; moreover, he'd be hurt and would resent me for dangling such impossibility before him. It would seem to him the cruelest of taunts, the notion of this heaven on Earth. To an extent, that disbelief still exists within me. When the gratitude and the joy are upon me, I often look around my life and think, this cannot be right; this cannot be me. Then that small part of me cocks a disbelieving eyebrow, lets off a sardonic snort, and waits for the other shoe to drop.

Granted, there are areas of my life ripe for further improvement: I’m not fully self-sufficient, despite the literally incredible job, and I’m still pretty socially awkward at times. I could be doing more to find that special someone. My perspective is often lacking, and I deem that the gratitude and the joy aren’t upon me nearly often enough; I still have depression, although I’d say I’m living with it rather than suffering from it. And as long as I live there's the chance that I will at some point forfeit my redemption for a fresh hell of my own making; such is the nature of addiction, and only an addict would ever make that choice (or, really, even contemplate it). But for now, I'm still "one of the ones who did," and I don't have to wait for an afterlife to revel in this joy. So when that small part of me strikes the disbelieving pose, I remind him: the other shoe may indeed drop, but I’ve earned this, and while it’s mine I will give thanks and enjoy the ride.

Monkey See, Monkey Do...?

I just had a horrible thought. What if these kids, these poor, despairing young souls taking their lives in the face of overwhelming persecution, are getting the idea from one another?

Maybe I'm just late on this. Maybe y'all have already parsed this one out. But it goes something like this: a child who has never felt supported or understood, who is being constantly ridiculed at school and harassed online and tortured in between, witnesses the outpouring of love and support and pity and "What can we do differently" and "S/he's a hero" being lavished about his departed spiritual comrades-in-arms, and thinks: "Justin Aaberg has finally found a release from the pain."

If teenaged you ever had that thought, "You'd all miss me if I was gone," you know what I mean. It's quite clear from the fallout that we do, indeed, miss these vibrant souls. Talk about learning the wrong lesson - even witnessing the suffering parents has to have some appeal, to a child who may not believe her parents give two shits about her. A final release from the pain; a clarion call for change; confirmation that you are, in fact, loved. If not for the small fact that you don't get to live any more, I'd almost recommend it.

Suicide is not vindication, under any circumstances, no matter how much it might presently appear so. At least (because my conscience is saying, "Well, it's a little bit of vindication"), it's not the best kind. LZ Granderson knows it. Dan Savage and a host of contributors to the It Gets Better Project know it. (Thanks to Ell Deau for sharing these inspirational links.) The best vindication is to grow into the beautiful individual you are and will be. To take what was done to you and use it to do amazing things for others. To leave the world a better place than you found it. To survive through the despair so you can thrive in hope.

I was tormented as a child. Not to the extent that these poor kids have been, nor for the same reasons*. Although I was schooled in a time and place where intolerance was far more unacceptable than it still is to most of the United States; although I spent most of my schooling years without an online community to bring the torture home (so really, thanks to my neighbors for handling that aspect); I came to know despair fairly intimately. As an adult, I look back on that child with love and sympathy - and I realize that the empathy that drives me to look on this crisis in part as a personal problem for me to help solve is entirely the result of the depredations that child suffered. If I hadn't survived, I wouldn't be here to do what little I can to help. And as we've been told repeatedly, every little bit truly helps.

So pity these other youth, who didn't think they had the strength to continue existing in a world that called them evil and subhuman. But take strength from them, and continue on. Yes, it's a fight. Maybe it always will be, though I doubt it. It's a winnable fight, and the rewards are beyond the dreams of adolescence.



*If you want to know: I was just plain ugly, according to my peers. My society may have largely accepted homosexuality, but it also prized - prizes - beauty above nearly all else. My race was certainly brought up at times, but not nearly as often nor as thoroughly as was the catalog of ways in which I was unattractive.

Self Esteem

A Google Reader friend linked to this article. Now, as a trained (and training, and training) clinician, obviously it's going to punch my buttons as hard as Mario looking for fire-flowers. It took me a while to stop fuming, read through the article, and figure out just what got me going. I'll start with the most insulting stuff, then try to work my way backward into a counter-argument.

...the pretensions of the DSM to science are sketchy at best, when its real-world usage has more to do with rationalizing billing codes of shrink service.

This is both disingenuous and unfair. First, because of the actual science involved in every study resulting in an entry in or change to the DSM. The DSM is imperfect because our understandings of human neurology (the measurable), human behavior (the observable) and human nature (the intangible) are imperfect. It’s a living text - otherwise, homosexuality would still be a paraphilia. Second, because to conflate the ethical or unethical practices of clinicians with the text sitting on their desks, or the APA itself, is to create a horrible stereotype. But the most insulting part is the use of the phrase "shrink service" to suggest that therapy itself is nothing more than a shell game. Follow the queen, follow the queen, confront your issues…

Given Ron Rosenbaum’s apparent frame of mind regarding therapy and self-help, I’m inclined to ask: does he find no value in the concept of people figuring out what’s wrong with them and taking steps to make it better?

What he seems to be simultaneously ranting about and ignoring: narcissism and low self-esteem are not societal issues. They're psychological ones. They cannot be usefully generalized to the societal level or viewed in macrocosm. The manner in which narcissism operates in an individual life cannot be predicted from one person to the next; the same is true of low self-esteem. Therefore, the same is true of what treatment is most useful.

Ron Rosenbaum attempts this generalization – from character defect to national trend – but still wishes to use these elements as diagnostic tools. The apparent reductio ad absurdum of labeling Churchill a pathological narcissist is an oversimplification of a complex process, and more a non sequitur than a Socratic "gotcha." An accurate diagnosis of pathological narcissism requires far more in the way of symptoms than pride, leadership skills, and apparent overconfidence; no mental health clinician would make that call without taking a history consisting of a great deal more than the PM’s wartime bravado.

Furthermore, and this diagnosis I can provide: Winston Churchill was an alcoholic. From the diagnostic school of It Takes One to Know One: every alcoholic I’ve ever met, the dude in my mirror included, has struggled with concurrent bouts of narcissism and low self-esteem. So this ‘debate’ also proceeds from a false dichotomy: that narcissism and low self-esteem are fundamentally mutually exclusive. I’d go so far as to say they’re inextricably linked most of the time.

And to put a sock in Rosenbaum’s sarcastic observations, whoever said that a character defect couldn’t save an Empire or build an industry?

I don't hold any more than Rosenbaum with the rush to constantly diagnose people with this or that; but he doesn’t go far enough. Ron Rosenbaum details his ideological journey with respect to these perceived movements (using the imagery of political parties, just one more trouble I have with his article), and seems to arrive at the conclusion that neither has much merit; but he fails to take the next step, to rise above this faulty discourse and perceive its weak foundation. He ridicules the theories themselves, instead of their misapplication. In so doing, he fails to grasp the actual problem here. It’s not the diagnoses at fault; it’s their use. NPD cannot be used to exculpate a man from murder; it is, rather, a potential framework for understanding his culpability and preventing future crimes.

Rosenbaum takes issue with two diagnostic trends. I take issue with the notion of a diagnostic trend. I have since I was fourteen and doctors were handing out Ritalin to everyone with a short attention span. My sister had learning disabilities growing up, and attended a school for such children; I, having attended a “normal” school (only in comparison, trust me), was and am very clear on the difference between poor study skills and ADD/ADHD. (And here’s a diagnostic trend that did us all the favor of introducing wide swaths of misdiagnosed adolescents to prescription-strength psycho-stimulants! And they call marijuana the gateway drug.)

Finally: doesn’t the concept of “the banality of evil” intrinsically yield itself to overuse? I’d rather live in a society where everyone was on watch for it, and so hear the phrase bandied about too often, than one in which the concept remained novel because it failed to arouse concern. In other words: don’t talk shit about Hannah. I kick yo ass.

Complicated

This is not post-racial America. I believe such a thing to be unattainable, in our current understanding of the world, and wholly undesirable. (Rather, I aspire to a world in which our differences are celebrated - without arbitrary comparative value judgment - even as our similarities unify us.)

Reparations for American Slavery shouldn't be on the table right now. Now is not the time to look back, and certainly not with the purpose of assigning culpability for the Atlantic Slave Trade. Those responsible are long dead. It is the fallout from American Slavery that must be addressed. Black Americans are not being systemically persecuted by the descendants of the Africans who sold their ancestors to Europeans; this is an issue endemic to Americans. That fallout still settles around us, and now more than ever we must shine a light through the murk. We must use the ongoing teachable moment of the Obama Presidency to confront our inner prejudices. Now, while long-festering anger and fear surfaces, publicly, in those who feel disenfranchised (at least in part) by the presence of a man of color in the Oval Office. (A man who is, far much more than I am, African-American. How many generations does it take before I get to drop the hyphen?)

Yes, the lessons of our past must always inform us. But what care have I for the culpability of those who sold my ancestors into slavery? Really, what care have I for that of the buyers? If I wanted to discuss reparations, Professor Gates, then yes - the question of where I should send this bill becomes paramount. But I don't. I don't want to turn and confront the continent generations behind me; so many others and I, we struggle to find purchase on - ownership in - the country beneath our feet. It is today that concerns me: not the sweeping crimes of the past, but the little hatreds of the present.

I do not believe, as others do*, that Professor Gates truly seeks to exculpate White Americans responsible for perpetuating the Atlantic Slave Trade and for continuing American Slavery half a century beyond its end. But raising this point needlessly confuses an already complicated issue. As Barbara Ransby noted, the ramifications of American Slavery still haunt Black Americans today, in their daily struggles, personal and social and economic, medical and legal. The millions of acts of discrimination - often unknowing! - that follow from perspectives tainted by old prejudices are what concern me.

I don't want to be repaid for crimes against my ancestors; I want the crimes being committed today to stop. If I still live when institutionalized racism has been stamped out at every level, then we can talk about causes and conditions, and about reparations. Until then, why should I want any kind of apology from the US Government? It'd be like accepting an apology from someone who is not only unrepentant, but committing a similarly offending act while he apologizes.

Who would send the invoice, while the bill continues to accrue, will not receive the full sum of what is owed.


*Ms. Ransby's article is indicative of a serious problem in Black American intra-racial dialogue in America. She begins quite reasonably, disputing the frame of his opinion, but by her conclusion, has all but labeled Professor Gates an Uncle Tom, and has equated him with the very African slavers he condemns. However, I share in her question: why has Professor Gates chosen this moment, to present this argument? As they both note, African complicity in the Atlantic Slave Trade is well-known among any who even lightly concern themselves with the topic.