Everybody's Gotta Pick Themselves Up 


Jim gets back on the bicycle. 

It's New Year's Eve, about 9:30 CDT. I made our dinner of pork chops, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole. I opened the can of Hoppin' John. Mom made the baked apples. We bought the lemon pie and the brut champaign. We ate the dinner; it was pretty good. We played a game of Scrabble. I won, beat the mom by 8 points. Somewhere between yesterday and today, I picked myself up and got back on the bicycle of life. Everybody's got to pick themselves up and go on.

This is what Stephen and mom have been talking about after dinner, about picking themselves up. Both of them had abusive mothers. They've spent their whole life trying to understand why this happened, and trying to resolve this conflict and come to peace. They have this in common. Staying on their bicycle has been a whole lot harder because of these difficult early experiences. And just when they think they have the whole thing settled, it comes back to haunt them. I've heard them talk about this many times. What strikes me is how easy solving the difficulties of others seems to be to those who don't have those particular burdens.

I didn't have an abusive mother, if anything she was over-protective. But I'm not complaining. What I had was growing up gay in a world that hated what I was tending to become. Some people become defiant in such an atmosphere of rejections, others just seem to let it roll off their backs, but it caused me to be very uncertain, meek and defensive. I could always be worrying about what I was doing wrong if I let myself. I keep trying to get people to tell me that I'm OK. Anytime I slip too deeply into this wanty-needy consciousness, I fall off the bicycle.

This metaphor of life as riding a bicycle has a lot to recommend it. You can't be too much in your head to ride. You can't reason it out. Eventually you just have to do it, and you just have to fall off. The better you get, the harder you push your skills into uncertain territory, and the more likely you are once again to hit a bump and fall off. Then, it hurts. You can even be killed. Life can do that. And when you're sitting there with the blood running out of your knee and hurting in six places, not to mention your hurt pride, you just don't even want to move, let alone get up and ride again.

That's how you know you're an adult. Eventually, you understand that having someone around to pick you up and kiss your boo boo is just a bonus if it happens. Basically, you have to kiss your own boo boo and get up and ride.

I did. At first I was just riding, meaning going about 5 mile per hour and not finding it very much fun. But somewhere along the line, I forgot about my hurt feelings and my fears, and I made a joke. People laughed. The sun came out.

A lot of life's problems are solved by just solving them. I wish you a Happy New Year. 

Posted: Sat - December 31, 2005 at 08:27 PM          

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