XAVIER JACKSON

A barren wasteland lay in between the way I see myself and the way I am seen by others. The perception and programming of people further clouds the actual reality of that distance. I am 55 years old and at the dusk of another year. My mixed thoughts of regret, remorse and resentment are forcing me to take a hard look at my life and how I have chosen to live it.

I am a grouchy old man. The proof lay in my overwhelming urges to say inappropriate things. I also find myself watching my yard from the front windows of our home for extended periods of time. I am vigilant at my post with the hope of being able to drive off any intruders or catch the neighbor with the nerve to let their mutt drop a deuce on our property. When I became this bitter and dissatisfied is unclear.

What is clear is that the time for empty resolutions to make meaningful change to my life and repair important relationships is running out. My doctor and I have had regular conversations about heart attacks and strokes for nearly a decade. He is telling me the truth as he sits upon his little stool begging me to make the changes that will prolong my days here on earth. Odds for survival are not good for hypertensive, overweight Black men who smoke, drink and eat bacon daily. The grim reaper is standing at my door checking his watch this very minute, yet nearly constant upheaval blocks out the urgent reality of these warnings.

I have found that I am not proud of my demeanor and frequently feel the need to try to change, but the requisite changes are too hard to make. Most of us just surrender to our worst habits and impulses. The whippersnappers I work with do not understand me and I do not understand them. We exchange steely glares like rival gunfighters sipping booze at the only saloon in town. They do not feel they have anything to learn from me. I feel that most of them were born to usher in the apocalypse and I have the bad habit of saying things to them like, “Silence, infant!” I immediately regret these comments as they activate and horrify these timid fragile creatures. They say insensitive and passive aggressive things all the time as well, but “she started it” is not an effective explanation in the adult workplace.

It is hard out here for a curmudgeon.

I am like your grandfather right before the family had him put in a nursing home. Remember, the way he would ruin occasions and family events by saying inexplicably gauche and rude things? Yep. That’s me now. My experiences in life have shaped me. If I may borrow from Meredith Grey in “Grey’s Anatomy,” the people who raised me were as nurturing as a steak knife. Our surroundings made it necessary to learn how to hold your own in order to survive. Those survival skills are a liability in civilized society.

The famous psychoanalyst, Erik Erikson, described people who are where I am in life in his seventh stage of psychosocial development: Generativity versus Stagnation. Key characteristics of generativity include developing relationships with family, making commitments to other people, mentoring others and contributing to the next generation. Stagnation is characterized as being self-centered, failing to get involved with others, not taking an interest in productivity, making no efforts to improve the self and placing individual concerns above all else.

America has become a stagnant pool of putrid attitudes, mendacity and neuroticism.

The groundwork for all this emotional pain is laid early in life, according to Erikson. I grew up among many other poor Black children who practically no one cared about. Most of us were being raised by young single mothers bereft of the skills required to be competent parents. That is not to say they did not love us, but a life of poverty was difficult and overwhelming even then. Erikson believed that life of struggle produced fearful, aggressive adults who harbored a constant fear of scarcity … like we see all around us now.

Our family home was at 1110 Second St, now John Gwynn, in Peoria. The Atomic Jets Motorcycle Club was on one corner. There was an apartment building that the police visited almost daily on the other. Heroin addicts would hang out there doing the “dope fiend lean.” That was what we called the peculiar way they defied gravity on their preferred medicine. Hustlers and pimps hung out at the Atomic Jets. The adults tried in vain to keep us boys from there, but between the awesome music, nice cars and pretty ladies we could not resist.

We witnessed lewd acts and crime all the time. Predators of every kind were a constant part of our lives. So were the abuses they afflicted.

As my life moves closer to the end than the beginning, I have been forced to accept the fact that the vast majority of the institutions and individuals I have placed my faith and hopes in have been perpetuating a fraud. Country and countrymen are an eternal disappointment. Most of the people who should love you — siblings, parents, long time relations — do not. Relationships that were supposed to be fortified, secure places in this life are not. Those who have truly loved me and taken a genuine interest in my well-being are very few … almost none. And it is very possible that my perception of that love is entirely inaccurate.

The truth is I am neither the saint I would project nor the demon some people would paint me to be. Sarcasm is a shallow and simple attack which too many of us readily retreat to. True understanding requires diligent effort. We have become a nation of cranks, constantly casting one another out while emitting a dense cloud of silent indignation around those we fear due to our own deficits of character. Our workplaces have become battlegrounds with rumor and innuendo being the weapons of choice.

There are people that I love whom I have not spoken with in years. The reasons why have faded right along with the bond we once shared as family or friends. This is my programming. Forgiveness withheld is a sign of strength. Pity should neither be granted nor accepted. The weak do not deserve kindness. Showing kindness will always be seen as weakness. There is nothing worse than being weak.

These falsehoods are handed down from generation to generation like a disease through abuse, neglect, and desperation. Someone has to be the one to say enough. Someone must choose to end the cycle. So instead of making an empty promise to change myself in some superficial way this year with the customary resolution, I am going to do my best to delve into those secret parts of myself that breed distrust and nurture my ineffective coping mechanisms and faulty personal beliefs. I want to love and be loved in return. I want to be healthy and physically strong again. I want friends and family by my side as I draw near to the day I lay down the boogie, play that funky music, and die.

The ride in this life may be short … but it ain’t over yet. There is still time for me to become more like the man I really want to be.