Don’t know what it is lately, but some really distant memories of the past have been haunting me. It was the time leading up to leaving Nova Scotia and the long two years of recovery after. Something had a grip on me both mentally and physically and I was well and truly losing it. I had long since quit the halucinogens and not in the habit of kiffing my brains out like some I knew. There was something else in my blood that pitched up in tests that got some physician irate until he was silenced by some undisclosed third party. I had wasted away to a mere 47 kilos and the absurd social drinking habits of everyone at the time was not helping. Aside from all that, it also turned out my very strange blood chemistry did not allow the consumption of certain condiments. I had a real bitch of a time trying to get through to people, that for me to “dine out” was a very bad idea. It seems people had a real obsession with that in those days. I had to endure a lot of mockery and gaslighting, aside from being labelled “antisocial” or told that it’s all “in my head” no matter how many times I passed out or fell into a coma. Preferring to avoid the misery of the latter, I stuck to my guns despite all insults, and was not surprised when they too fell folly of their habits. This attitude of alleged superhuman is unquestionably military indoctrination of the times and my father was certainly full of it.
What seems to have brought back these memories was my brother’s rants about the perpetual macho forays of my father and his excessive happy-hour cajoleries with the worst possible grifters always getting on our case, say nothing of their seedy sexual ploys. Indeed, the man was so manipulative, any friends we might have made were not safe from his posturings for want of some weird kind of hero worship. What did they call him back in Westfalia? Sgt. Rock of easy company. Gis a break. “I wanna talk to you about your parents”- “Talk to them yourself, I’m long done with that lot.” Probably another reason why I would spend my weekends as far away from this region as possible. Aside from having to answer for my brain damaged mother, it was bad enough having to steer my drunken father home since the age of 12, but as all that ended in a severe stroke in Holland, I cursed every one of them for buying into that stigma. Of course they were shocked, coming to realize just how mortal the human condition actually is, no matter how you try to psyche yourself up. I am not a teetotaler but all things have their limits, and that one was crossed just too many times at my expense. Thank fuck that’s all far behind me now. Rest in pieces.
