A Sunny Darkness

Thursday July 3rd, 2008 - Lake Villa, IL

Feeling kind of down today and I’m not sure why. I hope it isn’t the start of a deep funk because I’m really not up for that right now. I’m never up for that but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The roller coaster of my life shoots way up and way down and always has.

I haven’t been exercising like I was and I haven’t been eating very well either so that’s a hint I suppose. I start for a while and then it gets away and before I know it I’m back to all the old habits again and the good progress is wiped out. I feel like I’m back to total zero.

Part of it also is that I haven’t heard a word from my sister and brother after trying once again to patch things up with them. Their silence is deafening and I guess I’ll never get an opportunity to salvage a sibling relationship after all these years. That really saddens me.

All I want is a chance to just start over and act as intelligent adults and hopefully try not to duplicate the insanity our parents did. The old man died a shriveled wreck with nothing good to say about anyone and our mother hasn’t done a damn thing to make our lives any easier. I don’t even know if she’s living or dead at this point. All we have is each other.

That’s why it hurts so much. As a kid I was always the outcast with them partly because I was the youngest and mainly because I lived with my grandparents. My sister Tammy is the oldest and I always felt resentment from her but I’m sure she has more memories than the rest of us. The whole situation was brutal and no kids should have to deal with that.

I dealt with it through comedy like many have before me and now that comedy is drying up I’m left with all this ugliness in my memory bank to keep me company. Even on a nice bright sunny day like today there was still darkness inside and that isn’t what I’m seeking.

I was hoping to turn my life around and make something out of myself so I could have a happy ending but days like today make that really difficult. Hope is nowhere to be seen to give me strength when I need it. I wish I could lie down, close my eyes and just go away.

That little kid inside who only wants to make people happy is really hurting. There isn’t anyone there to hug him when he really needs it and it’s very lonely and not fun at all. It’s supposed to be different or at least that’s what I have imagined for so long. I feel cheated.

I had lunch with a comic named Vince Vieceli who is a very good guy but has a day job at a book store. He gave up the dream years ago and just gets by. He’s an excellent writer and used to have a magazine called Sidesplitters that covered the Chicago comedy scene.

There’s room for a website that covers the scene now even though there’s not much of a scene left these days. Still, Chicago is a big city and I bet a site could get some hits. Vince talked about both what went right and wrong with his magazine and is up for doing it on a website but I would have to be in charge. I’m not sure if I could turn a buck with it so that concerns me. Plus I was feeling pretty low but I didn’t tell Vince that. It wasn’t his fault.