andrew61

Confessions of a Slacker
2008-09-23 00:00:00 (UTC)

Nervous attacks and ghosts and all that.

Nervous attacks. Been having them off and on for about three days now. Imagine mysterious itching sensations, like bugs crawling all over your skin in random places, coupled with general shakiness, feeling like breaking down and crying, and an impaired ability to sleep.

I periodically get plagued by these attacks, which seem to come out of nowhere… then disappear as mysteriously as they came.

What causes them? Something in my diet? But I’ve been eating the same crap I always eat, and usually feel fine.

My mother and her huge family of siblings all had nervous breakdowns at some point or other. Some had several over the course of their lives. How did her family bloodline go from triumphant war heroes to this wretched state? At what point did the bad genes creep in?

Nerves, nerves, nerves… and then one day, poof! They’re all gone.

The other night I was looking at some old family photos my mom had. One in particular was taken at a family reunion around 1970 or so, when I was a little kid. It’s a group picture of my mom and seven of her eight siblings who were still living at the time.

Now it’s like looking at ghosts. All long since dead and gone but one.

Another photo I have, which I deeply treasure, is one of my mom, my aunt Pat, and my aunt Jean, when they were little girls. Probably taken around 1930 or so.

My aunt Pat I never knew, as she died very young a couple years before I was born… but in that photo, my mom and my aunt Jean already had the same expressions on their faces they’d still be wearing more than forty years later.


I still see the ghosts of the people I knew long ago…
Inside the old kitchen they bend and they sigh,
My life passed them up
And the world in its way passed them by.

Secret gardens of the heart,
Where the old stay young forever.
I see you shining through the night
In the ice and snow of winter.

–“Secret Gardens” by Judy Collins




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