Tired of it All

by Lloyd B. Abrams

I really didn’t want to sit down and type this. I try to avoid soul-deadening negativity and dwelling in the past. But it feels now that there’s some sort of imperative.

Also it’s no one’s business. So I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this.

That said, let me go ahead and get it off my chest. Maybe one of you will understand. Maybe I will understand.

It started out on a gray and snowy afternoon in January. I’d been retired for a several years and my wife was still working full-time in a psychiatric hospital.

I felt cooped up in our house. Salt covered the roads, the sidewalks were iced up and it had been below 20 degrees for the zillionth day in a row. My dog was whining to go out, to go on a walk, to come in, to get love, to have snacks, to have someone to play with, to get a scratch on the head, to get his belly rubbed, and generally to bother the hell out of me – that’s what it seemed like. But I was feeling exactly the same. I needed to get out, to go for a walk. I needed to have coffee and some lunch. I needed a little – no, a lot of – TLC.

Don’t get the wrong idea. I really love Jimmy, our Wheaten terrier. He’s saved me, emotionally, more than once, by getting his big paws up on the arm of the chair to furiously lick my ear and my neck, or by jumping up onto the bed and allowing me to hug him tight and cry into his flank until I was all cried out.

And don’t worry. I’m not a basket case yet, waiting for the right moment to stick the Mossberg shotgun into my mouth. At least I hope I’m not. It’s just that I’m kinda tired of it all, like there’s no reason to go on. Do you ever feel that way? Do you get what I’m saying?

But then you might ask, What do you have to be down about? You might point out that there are people dying of illness and starvation all over the world. You might open up the Times and read me one of those “100 Neediest Cases.” You might try to persuade me that I have it good, that I have my health and my pension, a warm and comfortable home, cars that run, and enough food to eat. And, therefore, that I should have nothing to complain about.

But that sort of rational response rarely helps. Your observations and your cheerleading, and my melancholy and my emptiness operate on different planes. Once, when I started complaining to my mother-in-law about something that happened at work, she interrupted me and in her German accent, said, “Ach … you think you’re having it bad? What about the Jews in the camps?” Talk about a conversation stopper. And then I thought of The Princess and the Pea – that little things over time can really irritate.

I click on the TV and thumb-press through the channels. It’s all bullshit. I remember Mario Di Piazza, the head of the phys ed department in the first city junior high I taught in once saying, after I started bitching and moaning yet again, “You’ve gotta realize something, Lloyd … It’s all bullshit.” His succinct and dead-on wisdom has stayed with me.

On TV, everything amounts to nothing. Cartoons, game shows, sports, HBO, cooking contests, reality TV, reruns and more reruns, a Twilight Zone marathon (yeah, that’s what I really need) – 200 plus channels for escapees wh0 are able to escape – it’s all the same. It does nothing for me. I click off and I’m back to this narrative.

I remember how exhausted I was on Mondays. Two out of four Mondays a month ended with after-school faculty and department meetings. I would miss the usual dismissal-time sweet spot which then meant stop-and-go traffic on the parkway. I usually felt better when I remembered to just take it easy all day, even if I got home too late to run. Now the struggle to step out of the door involves walking, which takes a lot more time and burns fewer calories than running ever did, nor provides the same dopamine boost. Also, getting older and achier and stiffer certainly has not boosted my endurance, nor my ego.

But that go-with-the-flow mindset helped carry me through many of those crappy Mondays. I knew intellectually that Tuesday would be sure to follow, but if I could just weather the Monday storm, then things would start feeling more hunky dory.

Oh, wow! Look! … Look outside! The sun is starting to shine through my office window. The dark, dreary weather seems to be lifting.

So I call out “Jimmy!” who comes zooming in, all excited. I smile, scratch behind his ears and under his chin, then pull on his coat. Then I layer-up. In a few minutes we’ll be out of here.

For now, anyway, I feel better.

Never great, though. Just better.

– This story, originally written in 2004, was resurrected from my “Works in Progress” folder

Sess 1 / January 27, 2004 .. Rev 13 / May 22, 2020

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May 22, 2020 … Copyright © 2020, Lloyd B. Abrams