My name is Timothy Thomas, and I am
forty-eight years old.
There is no significance to that
information whatever in the tale that I'm scribing now, save for how
much time has passed in the events that I'll be speaking of. It's
just a way of marking today as an epoch of sorts, a land mass I may
use to check in the future just how far I've come at that time.
Anyway, what's this really about?
Well, I am about to go through a
change. And that's no big deal, because everyone does these days,
don't they? And everyone seems really compelled to speak on the
changes they are undergoing as well. Almost like we're all hoping
some television producer is standing close enough to hear or read or
see our extraordinary selves and pay us millions of drama to fake our
isms on the television every night. But I don't want that. And it
ain't that kind of change anyway.
No, my change has to do with where I am
come Saturday, the 18th of February, and not knowing where
I'll be on the 19th. And, admittedly, being frightened by
that fact.
See, we have to go back. And to go
back, means some things, though anonymously writ, will be familiar to
some people who knew me back then and when, who shared parts of my
life with me then. And I say this upfront: turn away now, if my
honesty disturbs you. I don't do much of this. I don't post my
personal life, I don't share my private business. I am a writer of
poetry and books, and a facilitator of creative endeavors, and I work
on becoming known for writing some amazing and touching stories. I
don't do 'socially-mediated drama', and that's not going to change.
But if I'm to get useful suggestions
(keep your advice, cause I'm not asking for any) I have to be honest
about what the journey has been. Also, it's cathartic in a way.
These aren't secrets, but they have the power of secrets because they
have a bearing on my today, and as such, if kept internalized, they
could compromise my integrity.
That's enough of a disclaimer.
In the year 1999, a woman who I have
resumed respecting and appreciating a great deal blessed me with a
biological unit, combining our DNA in her womb to produce a daughter.
She had done this the prior year, but that ended in a miscarriage,
and I'm still sad about that today. This daughter was born into a
family, as she had a son and a daughter who were both in her care at
that time. She was also born into a mess and a storm, as her mother
and I were at complete opposing ends of the life spectrum. The woman
was looking for a different self, and that didn't really include me.
I was full of myself, arrogant and insecure as all get out (I was 31
at the time, or thereabouts), and felt that if I could just find some
way to 'man' the situation, all would be well. This is a
simplification, but it will suffice. I had not grown up yet, and
neither had she, and we weren't very good together. As well, I was
recently divorced (she had yet to be divorced at that point) and I
had taken her as a hostage to another city in order to continue to
build my self-estimation with wet paper and old gum.
Well, we separated the next year. And
I had a child, a one year old, that I was going to raise. I had a
lot of help. I love the myth of the 'single' parent, as if we're out
on the Plains by ourselves, foraging through the brush for roots and
shoots and berries and fighting off wild animals for meat and skins
and survival. Truth is, I had a good daycare person, I had some
pretty solid friends, I had a decent job and I had family that would
dote on my newborn (now toddling) daughter. But I also had a
toddling daughter, who grieved in the saddest way possible, the loss
of the entirety of her family. Have you ever watched a one year old
toddle from room to room, looking for family that they know should be
there but aren't there? It is heartbreaking shit. That, along with
some changes in the managerial structure of my landlord's life,
necessitated a move to a smaller apartment. And I guess that's where
memory truly begins for my child and myself.
There was also my son, a young man who
too was fairly dispossessed in his parental situation. I am now, and
was then, blessed to have him in my life. When his mother and I
separated, he went with her and my daughter came with me. Before
long, he too was with me and his sister, and life sort of became
normal enough. There was school, pre-school and work. There were
issues to be worked out. There was an older brother and a much
younger sister who wanted to tag along everywhere. There was so much
to do, so many days of just trying to breathe, because we were not
stagnant. We didn't do a bunch of stuff outside the house, but I
like to think we filled the house with our hearts. The apartment, I
mean. When I moved to my last apartment in Columbus, my son was in
his first truly urban (black) area and had problems with the kids
based on him being an outsider. My daughter had a little friend who
lived right down the street, and they hung out all the time. I had
drunk neighbors behind me, a couple who were Jehovah's Witnesses
across the street. I'd begun doing a poetry set at a place called
Ladyfly Design Studio, right across from what was Victorian's
Midnight Cafe, and that morphed into the performance group The Church
of the Eternal Vibologism, which was one of my proudest moments. We
had veg-a-thons, inviting the neighbors from the old street, making
tons of junk food and just vegging out on old monster movies of one
sort or another.
Then the bottom fell out.
I was fired from a job I'd been at for
6 years, because I was stupid. I was stupid to listen to individuals
tell me to file a civil rights affidavit without telling me any of
the follow-through stuff when I didn't get a promotion I was in line
for. I was stupid because my ego told me I should have received the
promotion rather than a friend, when in truth I was anti-social, not
very friendly outside of the plant I ruled for the most part, I was
distant, sort of unapproachable to the staff and only did what I
wanted to do, though that was a lot of what the business was. I
would not have been a good representative for the company, and in
hindsight I saw that and sent an amend attempt to my former bosses'
email. Hindsight.
I had a space of six years that if I
listed it on my resume or application and they called the company,
they got a bad report on me. And if I didn't list the company, I had
to explain what I'd been doing for the past 6 years. I had a new car
that I couldn't make payments on. I found shitty jobs that I held
just to bring in some money, but they were horrible. Funny thing is,
I never considered getting drunk or high. Those didn't occur to me
as options. I considered suicide, though. I really did.
My plan was, after I'd run the gamut of
emotions and was empty of any hope, that I'd make the children's
mother take them, then before the utility companies caught up to me
I'd blow out the pilot lights and turn up the gas, and I'd just go to
sleep. I'd sleep until I'd never wake up again, and I wouldn't have
to live as a failure any more. And the kids would be safe. That was
my mindset 12 years ago. My daughter was six.
Instead, God had other plans.
I ended up moving back to Youngstown,
my current home, with my daughter. My son did move back with his
mother, and he is now a professional chef in a city of gluttons, so
I'm thinking he did good where he was at. I moved back with nowhere
particular to go, except my parent's house, and I didn't want to move
in with them. I wanted to place my daughter with them, as she had a
bedroom already at their home, and I wanted to just be able to wash
and maybe eat from time to time, living out of my car if need be,
until I got a foundation back under me. But they let us both move
back in. My daughter was in the first grade. She had started her
first grade year in Columbus and ended it in Youngstown, at a
Trumbull county school.
We had problems from the start. I told
my daughter (and I know she heard me, as she repeated it back to me
recently in trying to 'talk around' a point I was making...if you
have kids of a certain age, you know what I mean) that there was a
huge difference in going to visit her grandparents for a summer and
being there full-time. I told her, in essence, ''You're not going to
be a princess to them anymore; not right now.” I don't think she
believed me. I don't think she wanted to. I Mostly because she had
her own agenda from the beginning.
I can say this about my youngest: she
has always been her own person. She wanted her family back, and at
the very least she wanted her mother to take her. I'm sure she
thought I had taken her away from her mother. And once she found
that the magic of being 'special granddaughter' had ended, she did
all she could to get sent back to her mother.
I draw the line here, in the endless
and sometimes spectacular drama my daughter has created and
manufactured over the years in her campaign. I will only say this,
and again, some will understand: I know what misery smells like. It
smells like a child's room who is too angry to acknowledge that they
are grieving.
But I didn't have a lot of choice. I
was not well myself. I had no idea how brittle my descent in
Columbus had left me. I was a bad friend to some of my oldest
people, I was full of contempt for everything 'Youngstown', and I was
still depressed beyond my ability to shake. To top it off, after
working a new job in this city for almost two years, I was
hospitalized and diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and while I
was in the hospital not knowing if I'd live or die, my job took that
time to fire me on trumped up bullshit, which I have settled legally.
As well, unbeknownst to me, some fool in Columbus with my name got
caught on some felony shit around the time I was leaving the city,
and some daydreaming cleric filed their felony under my information.
That has cost me some possible jobs in the last few years, but that's
an aside. Point being, I was catching a bit of hell, and wasn't
being the best father I could have been.
I ended up on disability, and soon
after that we moved into the apartment that I'm sitting in now. It
is a small apartment, it is drafty in the winter, and it is
sweltering in the summer. The campaign for release from bondage from
me has continued here, abating somewhat in recent months. I've gone
from performance poetry to writing books and working on growing my
own publishing service business. And my daughter...well, that's
really the point of all this.
See, in two days, my daughter turns 18.
In two days, the official part of this journey is over. In two
days, my child will be legally grown, though some 'rights' won't come
into play until she is 21. And in two days, the most dominant part
of my identity will be diminished to the role of a footnote. And I'm
not sure what I'm supposed to do at that point.
I've heard parents say, “They turn
18, they on their own, ain't listening now, I don't want to hear it
then!” And I can relate. But I know that's not going to be me.
Because of my child's campaign over the years, she's squandered a lot
of the intellectual capital that she had in abundance. I don't know
if school is in her future. I don't know what the future holds for
her. I don't ask, because I have not one hundred percent believed
anything she's said to me in a lot of years now. My child lies
because she's practiced it for so long it's a habit. She has her own
mind, and her own agenda. She's already in the process of moving
out, and I'm not planning to stop her. Because I've tried to teach
her the things I've felt she'd need to know, and that's all any
parent can do. You can beat your child or scream until you pop a
gasket, you can punish with restrictions and whatever. Bottom line,
you try to impart wisdom. And you do that by sharing you. I know
that my child has never seen me drunk or high, because she was born
in my sobriety, and that makes me happy. I know she has seen me
write a bunch of books, and that makes me happy. I know she is going
to graduate this year, and that makes me very happy. I know that she
has an interest in photography, I know she has a lovely singing
voice, I know she is smart as hell. I know that she is able to catch
on to new things fairly quickly. And I know that I love her
unconditionally, and always have and always will.
I am at a crossroads, again. I guess
that's really the nature of life in this particular reality, isn't
it? You're born on a crossroad, and every single thing is a decision
that leads somewhere other than where you're at. Some spend their
entire life shitting on themselves and needing a change, though not
by their choice necessarily. And some are born older than human
experience, and are regarded as earthbound demons or deities, and
there's not always a difference between the two.
I remember when my child was very
small, and I was more arrogant than I am now (and I am still very
arrogant, but that only goes to show how very full of myself I used
to be), I was trying to figure her spirit animal. I thought she was
an elephant, so very large and wise so early, but she told me in no
uncertain terms she was not an elephant. I couldn't figure it out
then; I still can't figure it out. But she is amazing, and she is
the truest owner of my heart, though I've had to protect it from her
as well. Because even love has rules, and even love has lines of
demarcation. You have to live long enough to learn that for it to
mean anything.
Saturday, she turns 18, and I become
the father of a grown young lady. I am working on working again. I
just tried (and abandoned) a phone sales job. I never was any good
at hard sales, and I don't want to sell my soul to gain a used and
worn-out world in the bargain. I want to build my business. I want
to sell books and help others sell theirs. I want to do work that
makes me feel good about being me. And I know that I'm still a
dreamer, but I've had time to dream. I've watched a seed planted
grow into a tree. I remember things, things like my daughter's first
solid food (snatched greedily from my plate at the Waffle House off
Cleveland Avenue) and how when she was still a baby she began writing
letters and then, as if she were just saying, 'Are you satisfied?',
she stopped again until she went to school. She was practicing
cursive when they were teaching printing. She has always been
determined to be older than she really was, wiser and smarter. And
she has been a huge pain in the ass as well. She is stubborn,
obstinate, moody, argumentative and sullen. In other words, she is a
typical 18 year old. And I guess...maybe that means I didn't fuck
this one up.
Lord, I hope that's what it means.
I worry. I worry about this world we
live in and it's deadly intent to continue to infuse everyone with
fear and anguish enough to kill whatever just might be threatening
or, at the very least, different. I worry for her, for my son, for
my spirit daughter and her new son. I worry for my friend's
children. I don't know any people who would truly be happy in this
America these fools are trying to 'Make Great' again. I don't want
to know any people like that. People like that would be happy to own
myself and my children.
But can I possibly say thank you to all
those who have helped me raise my children, who have contributed to
my daughter turning 18 soon? Can I thank her daycare person, her
godmother, her brother and sister whom I love so very much? Can I
thank the addicts and alcoholics in the meetings who watched her sit
in her car seat in the earliest days of her life? Can I thank my
landlord who did not put us out in the street when the bottom fell
out from under my sanity? Can I thank my two dear friends, who
thanks to the former President were finally able to marry legally,
for providing us with food and prayers despite me being so angry that
one of them was promoted “over' me? Parenthesis, because they
picked the best person for that job, and I know that today. Can I
thank my benefactors, my employers, my mentors, my allies who were
there when worlds turned literally against me? Can I thank any
employers who helped me in some way or another provide for my
children's care? Can I thank my parents for being there for us when
we needed them most, and for still being there? Can I thank my
brothers and sisters who were able to be kind and considerate, who
modeled behavior and sometimes taught direct lessons for my child's
benefit? Am I able to finally thank her mother, though we've had so
many differences, for allowing me to create a life with you? Am I
able to thank Jehovah God for not judging me by an old standard, but
letting me grow up and be a father to children who needed a father,
who needed something that wouldn't break?
If I can, then I do. But there aren't
enough thanks for that.
I'm going to re-enter the world again.
I'm going to go where I need to go, to get done what I need to get
done to succeed in my business. I want to leave something for my
children to benefit from, at the very least, something that, maybe,
might make our struggles make sense down the road.
The only name you have is mine.
Everyone else, who may see themselves in this, thank you.
I started this journey 18 years ago. I
was almost 31 years old. I'll be 49 in April. And I can say, God
willing and the creek don't rise, at least I did the most important
thing from start to finish.
Aspire Higher.
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