I used to have a job. I used to work 60 hours a week, 6 and 7 days. I worked hard, even if I wasn't very good at what I did, and it hurt, and there was never enough money, and I hated it, and I would drink the pain away, I would get lost in a world that was not as bleak as the routine I had, the job I disliked, the love I did not have. I would get lost in a world of books or politics, anything cerebral to distract the mind from the fact that this isn't how I thought it was going to be.
Sometimes writing is a joy, a release, a euphoria, but other times writing is like pulling healthy teeth out with a wrench, it hurts like hell, but you do it because the pain needs to be extracted so the healing can begin.
Prior to joining Daily Kos I never had an audience for my writing. I just did it because writing is what I do, it's what I've always done and it's probably the only damned thing I'm good for. I've always worked in some fashion or another, as a cook, as a sales person, as a waiter and a janitor, as a telemarketer and eventually a supervisor, and always it was the same, I would work, and go home and write. Most of those jobs paid around $10 an hour, and the money was never enough and you took the overtime whenever you could get it even though you hated it and every second you were there was a moment when you were not writing and it seemed wasted, because when i die it will not be the hamburgers I have cooked which shall be remembered. I hope it will be the words I have left behind. When my father died when I was just a teen his words were lost to me forever and he passed into the ether silently. I will not do the same, my words are all they have, but today they feel cheap and meaningless.
And I would work, and then I would go home, alone. When I first moved back to New York City 5 years ago I worked all nights and weekends, I had few friends and no girlfriends, and I became a workaholic, or, rather I majored in workaholic and minored in alcoholism, just as many other 25 year old men like me. I would work until exhaustion, 12 and 14 hour days at restaurants, and I told myself things would get better, and in the wee hours of the morning I would go home and write, not because I dreamed of fame and fortune, but because that is what I do. I write.
For me, writing is a necessity. You might as well ask me to stop breathing. I live inside my head. I think too much. Often it is very difficult for me to express my feelings. thoughts jockey for position in my mind, and I don't feel relieved until I get it down on paper, or, more recently, these "tubes". I guess that makes me weird or something, but when people ask you "What do you do?" it feels a hell of a lot better to say "I'm a writer" than to tell them "I work in a shitty sandwich shop until 4 am and then I go home alone every night." Calling myself a writer made staying up until 4 in the morning alone at least sound a little more glamorous and a little less pathetic.
And there were days that were hard, really hard to make it through work each day. I am a victim of social anxiety, and I often don't know what to say or how to say it. At least with a job where I would interact with others I felt like I wasn't some total loser with only 5 friends and a stack of unpublished pages who had no idea how to talk to a woman. I mean, sure, the only reason the woman who came into my job would talk to me was because I worked there and they kinda had to, but it sort of proved to me that I could do it, that I wasn't so physically repulsive that I was unapproachable. Working gave me the delusion of normalcy, even if I hated my job, I didn't totally hate myself. I had a sense of self worth, even if that worth was only eleven dollars an hour.
I used to have a sense of self worth because I worked, but that was where it ended. When it came to women I had nothing. When it came to going any farther than I had already gone I had nothing. I would take these kind of jobs, the kind of jobs I could get, and I would stick with it for as long as I could, because I remembered growing up with nothing, without a father and with a mother who could not work because it is hard to get out of bed hungover, and the memory of having nothing and nowhere to go to helped me cling to what I had, but I never knew I had any real worth because I did not love myself. I hated myself.
What kind of a son is so wicked that his father would choose death over being his father? I hated it. I hated myself, what I looked like, what I did, my loneliness, all of it. I never let it show, but I hated it, and my life was angry and I hated what I had become.
When I was younger, these were the thoughts I would have.
And those thoughts would jockey around in my mind with all the other ones, until I wrote something down and got it out of my system, but even now it doesn't totally purge the doubts, the fears, the anger and the hopelessness. After years of writing alone I finally understood that it was not the things in life that mattered, it is the people who matter. I hated myself in many ways because I saw myself through a funhouse mirror, and I imagined that everyone else saw me in the distorted form I saw myself in, and that is what I hated. It wasn't me, it was the self image of myself that I thought others saw that I hated, so I resolved to change that.
And I worked.
And I wrote.
And time went on.
In the years since I have done a lot to make myself stronger, both emotionally and spiritually. I have done much that I am proud of, and other things I am not proud of, but we are all human and flawed in our own ways, so the best thing I could do was accept my flaws and try to make things better, try to fight my ass off and do as much as I can to be a man with honor. I stopped hating myself and started trying to find love in small things, love in myself, because I know it is there, but you can't be loved by another unless you are able to love yourself, and for a long time I thought I was a bad person, because logic told me that bad things happen to bad people and thus I must be inherently bad somewhere in myself, whether that meant unattractive or some kind of weakness I could not identify, my reasoning was that things were hard for me because that was what I was and what I deserved. Being young, I didn't know that the world is hard and cruel and yet beautiful and radiant, the choice is ours to make it what we will. You may not have all the things you want, be it love or comfort or a goal or a dream, but you can fight for that dream goddamnit. You could have hope, but first you have to give hope to yourself. First, you have to believe that you deserve what you want. I am still learning that to this day.
And now I find myself, years later, coming back to the place where I began. Often in life we have to learn things the hard way, and sometimes we have to learn the same lesson over and over again because nothing that is easy is worth a damn.
I find myself without a sense of worth. I find myself slipping back into that dark place where hope is fleeting and shadows reach farther than they normally would. Only this time I know how to fight back because I have been through this before, yet still I hear the gnawing voices that tell you 'You can't do it.', 'You did this to yourself.', 'You are just getting what you deserve.'
I have to fight back.
And now I come back from the past to today. I see a world where there is suffering, suffering greater than mine, and it makes my cry of agony sound weak, lost within the maelstrom of tears in the wind. I count myself lucky, if not for my wounds that may yet still heal, than for the fact that there are many many more worse of than I am, and there but for the grace of God go I.
It is that compassion that is our only grace.
But I now look into the mirror and see a face worn down, unshaven, wrinkles under the eyes, a man that I had not seen before. The man that I see is not the man I used to be, but I am starting to feel as I once did when I hated things about myself, and I don't want to go back there again. Been there. Done that.
A man can not have honor unless he can say of himself that he is true to his own word. A man can not have honor unless he can support himself. I have neither of these things, and thus, I feel dishonored.
I have not been true to my word. I have only been able to stave off the wolf through the kindness of others, and though I have pledged to give each and every person who has helped me a copy of a book I have written I have been unable to do so, partly because I have been so hard pressed to meet other more immediate obligations, but also partly because I feel a sense of shame, that this is not how a man with honor sells his wares. I feel ashamed for this, and I apologize to one and all.
And this shame follows me. Were it not for the charity and compassion of others I would have been living on the street. That is not how a man with honor lives. I do not want to be the pauper of Daily Kos, begging for alms, I do not want to be that person in this community because I think this community deserves better, much better than I.
Today I have rent to pay and no money. I have no money for transportation, no money for groceries, and it is all my fault. I have done something wrong, or not enough, I have not been true to you or myself, I have acted without honor, and for that I apologize. I am starting to hate myself again. I don't want to feel this way.
So today I am writing to say thank you to one and all. I am not in a dark place as I was once before, I am not contemplating harming myself in any way, nor would I ever do so, as I know the pain firsthand that stays with your loved ones when depression kills. I am looking online for jobs, as I have done the last few weeks, until I find something, anything, but when I look at the sorry state of our unemployment situation and the millions of other people just like me who have no job to go to, who are underpaid and have no worker's rights, who have no job security and have not seen a raise in years despite the rising prices and increased cost of living, when I look at all of this and look at myself I understand that it is not fair for me to blame myself alone. I am personally responsible for myself BUT we are personally responsible for each other, and all of the people who work hard for less than they deserve, the people who would rather work than get a handout, the people who are not lazy but would work hard if only they had the chance, we have all done our part to be responsible to one another because we have compassion, and compassion is the only true grace I have ever witnessed in humanity.
To those of you who read these words I want to tell you that you are not alone. There are millions of your brothers and sisters around you who feel alone too, they feel pain too, and they are just like you. If you are feeling angry with yourself you do not need to, you can take that energy and transform it into compassion. The pain will go away. You can heal. You will heal. You are not alone, not now, not ever. Things get better. Trust me, no matter how dark it seems, things get better, you just have to hang on for as long as you can and never give up.
Today I write to thank you all with my head bowed. I am not worthy of your friendship or support, yet I ask for both again all the same. I do so without honor, but you know what, honor is not worth a damn, not as much as a roof over your head and a meal on your table. I would much prefer to earn that roof and meal, but I am not too proud to accept it among friends. I do not want to feel without worth, without honor, without pride, but I can take pride in this, and that is if my writing in anyway reaches a person who is losing hope, if my writing in anyway makes just one person feel that they are not alone, that we are here for you, my brothers, my sisters, if my writing in anyway can bring to another soul the sense of relief that I feel in having written it, than damnit, that is worth more than anything anyone could ever give me, and that is something to be proud of.
To each and everyone who this reaches, thank you for sharing with me these thoughts.
You can purchase your copy of "Americana: By Jesse LaGreca" by making a contribution of your choice to me with Paypal
I am setting a deadline for the release of this book. By 10/1/2011 I will get this book into the hands or email box of every person who would like one, even if I have to hand deliver it to you myself
Peace and love to all
Yours truly, MoT
You can follow me on Twitter @JesseLaGreca