Mid-life crisis thing: Part 1

I'm going through what many people have called a mid-life crisis. When I was younger, I used to think of this as some kind of a joke. "Honey, Ray (a neighbor probably) bought a new Mercedes. What's he need that for?" or "Did you see Jim's toupee? How does he think nobody notices?" Both commentaries were joked about amicably by the discussing parties. But it didn't really occur to me that an extravagant purchase or a dramatic change in one's appearance is not something to be belittled. It is a real fucking crisis. They got it right at the beginning anyway, with the name, but the meaning got diluted and became easy for people to handle, maybe so people didn't commit themselves or suicide at age 50. The realization that your life didn't turn out as planned, as hoped for, or even very well. You look around one day and think to yourself, "I'm going to die like this? This is my life for the next however many years?" With medical advancements and the ingrained social idea that equates every death to a murder, they're not even letting people die anymore. 

I'm writing this from a plane. Yesterday I quit my job, left my wife, and found myself at an international airport. Now I'm on my way to Bangkok. The only three people that know all of these things are the stewardess with the ass that hangs much lower than it should, the asshole who wouldn't give up the window seat for $100, and myself.

I wanted to set up a hidden camera in my house so I could see the look on my wife's face when she found out I wasn't picking up a pizza for the kids and then heading home, but there wasn't really time. And I couldn't face the possibility that I may run into one of the other occupants of my house during the installation. I can't look at any of them anymore. I have a shitty kid. Two shitty kids, really, but only one of them is really shitty. The other one just sits there. She may or may not be retarded. Retarded. That's a word I haven't used in a while. I was told not to. By the guy who played Dr. Cox from Scrubs when he was on Ellen I think. John something. I think he has a retarded son. It's not fair to the rest of the world to take words away from the language. As soon as a term starts being used derogatorily, we have to eliminate it from our vocabularies. Spastic used to be the term for someone who was spastic, but obviously kids started making fun of spastics, and the ones who weren't very clever simply yelled to the wheelchaired unfortunates, "Spastic!" We blame the kids, but only momentarily. Then we blame the language. That's unfair to the doctor who came up with the term spastic, a Dr. Warren Iditarod probably. But we got rid of it anyway. "No, Jimmy, spastic is a dirty word. Alfie is just... "retarded". That's a nice easy term that isn't offensive. It means late in French, I think, so now spastics can't be mocked. They are simply later than their peers in brain and body development. Nobody counted on little Corey to still not be very clever, but one day he moved on from the banned "spastic" and resorted to yelling "Retard!" at Alfie. Okay, no more saying retarded. Now he's... delayed. It's only a matter of time, but I'm not buying into it anymore. I like the word delayed, and if somebody calls a retarded kid delayed with a negative connotation, I will not renounce my right to use it otherwise when referring to little Alfie.

Oh yeah, so my daughter might be retarded. My son's just an asshole. I know half of him is me, and I know he grew up in a house with me, so I tend to receive a lot of the blame for his shittiness, but it's a lot easier for me to abandon my whole family if I blame him, and all of my other problems, on my wife. We had sex for the last time four months ago, when she was drunk and I was also drunk, and the whole experience went quite poorly. Since then I've had no desire to have sex with anyone or to drink. That was the hardest nut to swallow, the ruining-alcohol-for-me part. That means no more scotch. That cannot be forgiven.

It still didn't occur to me that I could just leave them though. I was at work yesterday, in the mid-morning, sitting at my desk contemplating nothing. Glen from accounting or human resources or my boss popped his stupid face in front of my doorway, MY doorway, and told me he was leaving for the day. Initially I was confused as to why he thought I would care. Maybe I was his boss. I'm not entirely sure. Either way, I decided I was also leaving for the day, so I put my coat on and left the building. I stood on the sidewalk under the awning for about twenty minutes. Realistically it was probably three minutes but enough passed through my mind in those three minutes that in order for you to believe me I have to say that it was longer. Passers were going by without any notice of me. One of the women, a young professional eating an energy bar, reminded me very slightly of my wife at a younger age. The next image I remember is that of removing my passport from the glove locker of my car, while in the long-term parking of an airport. The stewardess and asshole from earlier, after hearing the same detail, both found it oddly strange that a man who has never left the country keeps his passport in his car. Stewardess, that's another word they're trying to eradicate, due to its utterly offensive nature. She's a flight attendant now. Doesn't really have the same ring to it. And when we lose stewardesses, what will overtake it as the longest word that can be typed only with your left hand?

to be continued. the suspense is killing me.

D-talks #1: Wild Rose Herbal D-tox 12-Day program

Valid question, but no, I am not a hippie. I am simply a man, and barely that, whose diet has grown increasingly habitual while the rest of him faces a slow deterioration of body and potential. Knowing nothing about anything, I have decided to use every dietary fiber of my being to discover the consummate consumption regimen for myself and the man inside me. I am willing to go through great physical and measurable lengths to find these ideal meals, and I may have to undergo immense, intense transformations to find the proper combination of indefectible edibles and emotional motions. This will be observed and dictated thoroughly in the coming weeks, months, or even until I get bored with it in a few days. While I endeavor, I will detail in detail how I eat, what I ingest, when I intake, why I gorge, and who I engulf. Never where. Where is irrelephant, unless it turns out to not be so. And details will become more and more hazy, since most of this is being written post-detox, while my memory remains shite.

As a man with several alimentary addictions, removing toxins from my body should produce a good few positive effects. But with the growing number of detoxification methods out there in a day, along with my ignorance on the subject, as well as my unwillingness to listen to the crunching of people's voices telling me which lifestyle is superior to the others, I am a little unsure as to how to go about doing this without losing the rest of the life that I love. Hopefully, throughout my acquisition of knowledge and understanding regarding my cleanse attempts, I will refrain from any form of preaching or even of passing on my related learnings in any way. Between methods, I will incorporate a time of retoxification, wherein I do what you would assume by returning to my regular, much more enjoyable way of living. Mary Brown's overgravied taters, Freak Lunchbox's overpriced grab bags, and a third unhealthy grouping of foods, to round out the comedic or organizational effect, will all on be menu-ized during these hedonistic periods, which may last longer than one would think if I am honestly trying to remain health-conscious or even conscious.

My first stair on the case to health in perpetuity is the Wild Rose Herbal D-tox, created by "Dr." Terry Willard and containing rules that, although not always fully appreciated, must be adhered to. And anyway, it's only twelve days. That's probably less time than the record for standing on one's head, so it should be a cakewalk. Without the cake. Hahahahahaha. ha... So I can't eat eggs, except when they're anything other than deep-fried. I must also refrain from eating wheat, dairy, sugar, alcohol, and all other pieces of deliciousness. Processed food cannot be processed by me, and for some reason, I can't even drink Vienna sausage juice. Grains and vegetables, with a dispersed injection of fruits and meats and nuts, is essentially what I will ingest in my new life as a blankivore.

So it begins, this solidarity show, the actual precipitate for this plunge into a healthy style of life. The first couple of days are rather interesting, as I discover an alternative to the way of eating that I have grown accustomed to since my parents instilled in me the unreasonable value of white bread, leathery pork chops, and spiceless casseroles. My culinary range is improving rapidly, and it causes me to wonder how it has taken me so long to find oat pancakes, lentil dahls, toasted almonds, and various vegetable-dominant grub. However, it takes far too short before it becomes a constant chore to stave off starvation, as snacking has become quite limited and advanced meal preparation becomes more difficult for my laziness to deal with. Also, as I battle with these new restrictions, all around me the others flaunt their whiskey while flouting my sobriety, parading their breaded chicken wings while I listlessly ride my float made of tofu. As my emotions fall apart, my body joins in the sadness when the given supplements begin to take effect. My stomach refuses to settle, and the bathroom becomes my best friend, my first since Kristy, my imaginary friend whose birthday was celebrated daily. Nostagia. But I digest.

Managing my hunger levels is disproving to be easy, basically because the foods I'm supposed to eat prevent me from ever feeling sated or satiated, but I am told it can be done without shifting my paradigms. I try to replace wheat with the recommended replacement known as buckwheat, but after I tried to eat Whoopi Goldberg's son in The Little Rascals, I decided that wasn't really clever enough so I stuck to the secondary option in the bible of kosherity, known stupidly as millet. It's not too good like. I miss wheat. I'm not completely certain what wheat even is, and this is the first time I've admitted this. But I do know that since I'm pretty sure its existence is preventing me from eating bread, I hate it. God, I miss bread. I want all the yeast I can find. I don't know what that is either, but I love it. I might be in love with it. Yeast. The word alone infects me with an elation previously found only in halves of bottleless pills. And now I want sugar. Temptations continue, but I'm too proud to beg for cheese now, and only my imagination is preventing my insanity since I lost my Babybels. I am beginning to reget my temporary hiatus from constant indulging, but since I'm under the impression I could sample heroin without becoming an addict, I figure I can at least manage another week of this. It's for my health, I remind myself. Failing now would be relinquishing my stubbornness, I convince myself. So I goes.

Eventually, my body grows accustomed to its new lifestyle, I have increased energy and less need for sleep, and then I get tired of talking about this. Thanks for being here. If you see my mother, please tell her I'm not a failure. Goodbyes.

My next three D-talks will be a three-day apple-only binge that was prossibly idealized as a satirical commentary, another diet based solely around the partaker's blood type that appeared to make evolutionary sense to me in a cacophonous bar downtown, as well as that Atkins thing.  Anyway, please enjoy them all with me, as readers, or in case nobody is reading this, as nobody.