Catch-22

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.”

I feel trapped these days.  Damned if I do or don’t.  Like Orr, in the above excerpt from one of my favorite novels, Catch-22, I feel trapped by my circumstance, with no reasoned way out.  You see, when all is said and my days are done, I believe the thing I will be most proud of in my life, is the work I have done in the nursing facilities, and the private homes where I’ve been employed.  I care for the elderly, the sick and the infirm of both body and mind.  It’s a thankless job on many levels, especially financially, yet it is rewarding of spirit.  Sometimes, strange as it may sound, it is even my sanctuary.  Because I don’t have the luxury of time to worry about my lot or position in this life when I’m at work.  The people I care for don’t give two diddlies if I’m having a bad day or my bills aren’t paid and creditors are huffing down my neck.  They don’t care if I’m lonely, sad, overwhelmed, injured…whatever.  They don’t concern themselves with my bad knees, my bad back, a stubbed toe or a persistent cold.  Cuz one thing about my job is, once you walk through the door, once you punch in, you’re on.  The stage is lit, the curtain drawn back, it’s time to perform.  And my audience doesn’t care so much about me, the actor, they only want a good show.  For the most part, I’d like to think I give them their money’s worth.  I give them my best.  And that pride and professionalism sustains me…most of the time.

But you see, pride and a rewarded spirit don’t buy the groceries.  It don’t pay the mortgage, the electric, the cable, student loans, car loans, personal loans, or the goddamned IRS.  When I punch out, when I drive home, and when I wake up the next day, like Orr, my situation remains.  The insanity of it is that I work my ass off, yet have nothing to show for it.  I know I am a good person, doing good work, but to all the people I owe money, whom I have none to give, I am just another dirtbag who doesn’t pay their bills.  Another hard-luck pleading sob story shithead they have to listen to whenever I’m cornered, or fooled into answering the phone.

I’d like to change my lot.  Hell, I HAVE to change my lot.  I’m one more missed payment from foreclosure, a couple missed car payments from repossession, a major, or even minor illness from the inability to earn an income that has me juggling creditors now to keep my head (barely) above water, from the abject failure of bankruptcy and ruined credit.  (Oh, who am I kidding, my credit is already ruined.)  But my Catch is, not only what to do to self-rescue myself, but how to affect that rescue.  You see, I am the sole proprietor of my life; there is no significant other that can help me out, provide me some support, financial or otherwise, while I affect my climb from the hole I’ve dug.  Just me.  I came in alone, I’ll go out alone…and most of the inbetween, you guessed it, alone…

Currently, I bat the ball back and forth between a pursuit of nursing, or education.  In possession of a (worthless?) BA in English from UNH, my life-long dream of self-sustaining myself through my writing career (shit, is it a career if you don’t get paid for the few meager publishing credits you do earn?) has not materialized.  So my problem is two-fold, well, three-fold actually.  Because I’m not sure if I have the stamina and fortitude to pursue either my teaching certificate or my RN license.  Nor am I certain that I even WANT to go in those directions, down those paths.  Because you see, I’ve already travelled quite a long ways down this writing path…so long, so far that the road has not only turned from pavement, to dirt, to single-track footpath, but it grows increasing overgrown with encroaching brambles of self-doubt and failure.  So much that my forward progress has been reduced to perhaps a crawl, along my hands and knees, and maybe soon my belly…but, it’s the only path I’ve ever known, the only path I’ve stayed on true course. 

You see, I’m stubborn…and even if I wanted to turn back, I’m not sure I WANT to.  I don’t like quitting.  I’ve quit more than a few things in my life, and I don’t like the feeling.  And I’m just enough of a sap that I believed it, way back when, when the assholes told me I could do whatever I wanted, be whatever I chose to be…  Bastards never tell you when you’re a kid that you can’t really be a beauty queen or an astronaut, not unless you’re obscenely beautiful, or unfathomably smart, and driven…

Oh sure, I know those brambles will probably eventually close off the trail entirely, making it utterly impassable, or maybe they’ll hide a cliff just beyond that I plunge from…but what if, what if I choose to turn back, just when the way is about to open up again instead?  Just before it all clears and the sun shines down, and all the dreams I believed in, whose basket I’ve put all my eggs in, come true and crack open to bring forth the fluffy little chick of new life I’ve incubated all these years?  What about that, huh?

Yeah right.  Orr would tell me to stop believing in fairy tales; the world is insane and our options are always between not what’s good or bad, but bad and badder.  I would be insane to keep on pursuing the dream that will ultimately prove my undoing.  It’s time to grow up, face reality, accept defeat, admit to failure.   

I know I can’t keep doing this.  I’m old and creaky and I’m bound to lose my house, my car and whatever freedoms that are still left to me.  It’s time to change, I know, but I don’t know if I CAN do it, don’t know if I WANT to do it.  I’ve already scaled some pretty precipitous mountains in my life, suffered numerous wounds and have the scars to prove it.  I’m tired and near worn out.  I know what I SHOULD do, what my brain is telling me, but my heart just isn’t in it.  And I don’t know if I can WILL it to be in it.  I just don’t know if I can summon the energy to throw myself into something that I’m not utterly passionate about.  Into an endeavor that at the deepest, basest level, will ultimately kill my soul…

There is also the matter of how.  I don’t have money.  I have no free time.  I have no credit.  How will I afford going back to school?  Not only financially, but time wise?  On the few days off I have here and there, I’m usually so exhausted that I waste at least half of that time collapsed in bed in a vain attempt to recoup some of my lost sleep.  Yet that too, is an ever deepening hole of debt that I can’t afford; my body, my soul…fuck it, I’m pooped!!!

I don’t know if I can live in poverty, in debt anymore…but the Catch-22 is, I don’t know if I can live without my dream either… 

You see, writing is a nearly all encompassing passion.  You don’t write on a whim; it’s damn hard work.  It takes energy, a lot of frikkin energy.  And drive.  And commitment.  If I have to throw all my energies down a new path, there will be no turning back.  Catch-22. 

Someone close to me, someone I love, once called me a loser.  I said at the time that it didn’t bother me; it did.  In a way, I’ve been trying my whole life to prove that I’m not a loser, but the more you keep losing, the harder it is to believe otherwise…

Shit, all I ever wanted to be, was a writer…if I give up my dream, I’m a loser; yet if I keep down this path that leads nowhere, I’m a loser.  Catch-22…

Catch-twenty-fucking-two…