It's Time to Ramble On

Leaves are falling all around,
It's time I was on my way.
Thanks to you, I'm much obliged
For such a pleasant stay.
But now it's time for me to go,
The autumn moon lights my way.
For now I smell the rain,
And with it pain,
And it's headed my way.
Ah, sometimes I grow so tired,
But I know I've got one thing I got to do,

*Ramble On,
And now's the time, the time is now
To sing my song.
I'm goin' 'round the world,
I got to find my girl, on my way.
I've been this way ten years to the day, Ramble On,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.

Jake, on occasion, liked to write. During college he had a professor encourage him to go in that direction, but Jake was foremost an engineer and felt more at ease with a career in engineering than the uncertainty of writing. Lately, Jake had been trying to write, but he seemed to be blocked. He could get a few sentences down, but after that he couldn't carry anything to completion--he just had a few incoherent thoughts. Banging out a few pages had always been sort of easy. His preference in writing was for quasi-gritty, gut grinding reality instead of fiction. He would cloak his writing in the guise of fiction, but mostly his writing reflected his life experiences with the names changed to protect the innocent (or guilty).

Jake found it hard to determine where the block was coming. One of the things he had suspected was that his medication was somehow interfering. In the past few months his doctor had prescribed several different anti-depressants to try and help quell his dark thoughts. One of the medications, Trumpeta, had screwed with Jake's head so much that he felt much better with taking absolutely nothing than taking the medication. With the Trumpeta, he felt like a giant ball of fury, ready to explode in just a flash. With his old medication he never felt so much anger. With his current medication, he felt like he was somewhere in between on the rage scale--definitely edgier than with his original script and definitely less explosive than with the Trumpeta. The reason he had switched from his original script was that he was having trouble concentrating at work--however, he was having second thoughts about the new medication.

Jake suffered from depression. There are theories and theories about the source/cause/root of depression. The theories run the gamut from "it's a spiritual problem" to "it's a medical condition". One of the theores is that depression is just repressed anger that comes out sideways. On one of his older prescriptions, Jake's anger level was much lower, however, Jake wondered, "Is the medication just masking my anger?" In other words, he wondered whether the anger was the root cause and whether the medications helped him or just covered over the problem.

The fear that he might not ever get better gave Jake lots of anxiety. In fact, Jake had more anxiety than what he knew what to do with. He grew up anxious, afraid of his father's outbursts and afraid of almost any form of rejection. It was no wonder that Jake was depressed--in that he felt his life had been one big abject rejection. He had tons of baggage from his childhood, burdens that were dragging and crushing him down.

Growing up, Jake had been the smart kid with all the answers. School came pretty easy to him, but adolescence did not. As round as Jake was now, it was hard to believe that at one time he was a skinny kid. Junior High and High School are no fun for the quiet, brainy non-athlete types. Those times are the bane of kids like Jake. Those societies (JH, HS) put a premium on looks, clothes, athletics, personality, and popularity. Sometimes it seems as if adult life is not that much different, but at least in adult life you weren't forced to be in the same room with the shallow people putting you down. For the most part, you could stay away from the country club where Skip, Buffy, and all the other beautiful people gathered and made fun of the help.

Jake found that an exception was made for marriage. In marriage Jake felt as despised, outcast, and helpless as he did in adolescence. Jake didn't even feel like a person anymore. Sometimes he wondered if he even had feelings at all--he knew he did, they just happened to all be negative ones. Jake felt like he was just a big wallet. He and his wife had a 50-50 relationship--Jake went and made the money and his wife went and spent it. Other than money, the only thing they had to talk about was the kids. When Jake converted to the catholic faith, he knew that the marriage would be over, but he could no longer stomach being a Baptist, going to yuppified Sunday school classes, and seeker sensitive "worship" services. Jake's wife could not stomach him being anything other than a Baptist. The religious differences were one of the reasons they lived nearly separate lives. Jake's wife and her friends thought Jake had joined some cult. One of the wife's friends even went so far as to say Jake had went over to the "Whore of Babylon".

His wife's attitude had been revealed in one recent incident. Jake's wife went on a weekend retreat for some of the women at her church. The retreat was Friday through Sunday, and on Friday afternoon as she was driving out of town, Jake received a call from his wife informing him that on Saturday night he was to drop off the children at a friend's house where they would spend the night and go to church with them. Jake was to pick them up Sunday afternoon. This was discussed beforehand with the children and with the friends, but not with Jake. It was obvious that the schedule had been carefully planned and scripted to ensure that the children didn't go to church with Jake. For his part, Jake did not have a set plan on what to do on Sunday morning yet. He had planned on asking the kids if they wanted to attend with their Dad (Jake) or whether they wanted to attend their church by themselves. Jake was willing to let them decide because a) they were old enough to have a preference, and b) he believed in freedom of choice when it came to religion. The way he was treated in the situation just infuriated and depressed Jake all the more.