My Fleshy Fissured Flaw Fouling Forever My Financial Faith and Fortitude!
Posted: Wednesday, October 26, 2011
by Christofer French
Rain Dancer Associates, LLC
Kristen was a toddler. We were sitting in the front seat of our little yellow Mazda. A soft rain was pitter pattering on the windshield. Her merry green eyes darted here and there. And then, they focused on Daddy. She stepped over to me in the driver’s seat and put her fingers in my ears and kissed my nose. She laughed with a soft cackle and then saw that she was looking at a full blown tear just rolling down my cheek. She kind of crossed her eyes to pick it up on her radar. She obliterated it with her palm, and laughed. She didn’t think I was sad or brooding. She cackled a bit again.
“Mommy”. She cranked her dome around hoping to see Mommy coming from the office we were parked in front of. She didn’t know what was up. But, Mommy had not come out from the interview yet.
I could have said it out loud, because I was killing myself with my internal dialogue. “Kristen, your Daddy, your failure of a Daddy, is sitting here with what you call a “minimal gig” and he has to support 2 daughters in California with that funny thing called “child support”, and you little kid, and a growing 10 year old boy…and of course, your Mommy --- are all waiting for Daddy to step up and make some money. We are waiting out here to see if your Mommy gets a nice new job.”
She laughed and collapsed into my arms.
“It is funny isn’t it? So, anyway, I am doing my puniest possible effort”. It was the year 1982. Not the best economic year. But I wasn’t blaming anything but myself.
We were in the parking lot waiting for Mommy, in her nice interview outfit. I was waiting for her to come out, and hopefully have a smile on her face.
My hand was still shaking, and my eyes were wiped. The purest headache was exploding in the back of my head. I let out one cry. The kid thought it was a laugh. I hugged her hard to clean up my misery. I used her billowing blond hair like a towel. For, my Lord, there she was: – My wife coming out the door.
She was born on the same day as John Wayne (May 26), and she has one of those countenances that does not project her inner emotions. She could have been striding across the parking lot like “the Duke” and adjusting her holster. Kristen was jumping up and down. Gail got in the Mazda and on the “shot gun” side. She dipped her lips into Kristen’s face. She hugged Kristen and played with her for a minute.
I was beside myself with anticipation.
“Well?”
“I told you I got it….didn’t I tell you?”
“Yup. You sure did.”
“Hey Kristen, let’s go get Daddy something at McDonald’s”
It is my Achilles’ Elongation – from Butt to Brain
My Flaw goes from my Wallet pocket, which I fear will be empty to my Medulla Oblongata which sustains in a kind of madness -- anxious fear.
This first started in my memory at the time I was 6. We had moved to Kalamazoo from New York City. My Dad had gotten a Director’s job and we arrived around 2 AM. My parents spent awhile making phone calls to get a place to stay that night.
Waiting for a place to stay drove my 6 year old brain into fits. What did I know? What had I heard? Why was I so worried? God only knows. We spent 7 years at this place and it took me into my early teens.
It is this early early time that bothers me today. It was a full blown neurosis, and there I was the flawed bawling baby boy. I could not figure it out, but there I was all balled up into emotional knots.
My Achilles Tendon Makes a Neurological Move
Achilles Tendon, in Greek Mythology is the back of the heel by which Thetis lifted Achilles as a baby and dipped him into the River Styx giving him invulnerability. In the Trojan War, an arrow hits him in the exact point where the water did not touch him. He died because of his “Achilles Heel”.
To meet me, you would think I felt invulnerable, like Achilles, but my wrinkle is that I see “invulnerability” as an illusion and my fear as terribly real. The “Fear of Economic Calamity” has haunted me. It has manifest as ghoulish unreasonable EMPY WALLET ANXIETY. That Fear of an Empty Wallet in my back pocket, and being judged unworthy has been on my backside my whole life. Then there are the commensurate aspects of unemployment, failure, not being ready, not being qualified to gain the best money.
Since we are so close to Halloween, and in the midst of Scorpio, this is a great time for gut wrenching truth that hopefully, perhaps, might lead to a new “Achilles Heal”.
I can remember several times in my life when my hands shook, my tears flowed and my brain froze up. Those events are stuck in my mind like cauterized wounds. When the fear of economic calamity gnarling my guts seizes within me, I feel I have a flaw which will always be there.
You can call it psychological or give it another name, but it is one hard obstacle. I have often wondered if this affected me because my parents were Theatrical Troubadours creating uncertainty. My youngest memories however are of my Father on TV and living in Manhattan, and then we had years of “local fame” in Michigan, so it doesn’t track. It’s just mine. I’ve got it. It’s my Flaw.
“Christofer French – Student Body President” and I Almost Collapse
It was a student body gathering and the Chief Executive Officer of the entire operation stands up and suddenly announces my victory. I stand up. Do I smile? Do I wave? Barely. He was quite unhappy with my non appreciative response.
“Man, you’d think we were sending him to Vietnam! Chris, it’s going to be OK.”
What flooded into my brain? Possible failure. Possible censure. Possible future unhappiness. My flaw was blazing red, vibrating up and down me from my butt to my brain.
“I am Sure I am Going to be Fired!”
In 1990 I was sure a Legal Administrator was going to fire me. I told my wife. She gave that half smile, turned away from me and laughed as she got a cup of coffee for me.
“All you have ever done is be employed, stay employed, moved upward in your career and gotten good reviews. Stop being afraid everything is going to collapse. I gotta deal for you. When you get fired by this Administrator, call me and we’ll drink to your foresight.” She would walk away chuckling to herself. I was never fired from there. In fact, it was so secure that I kept getting promoted and had to leave because I thought I would accidentally stay there into my 60’s. I left that position and dove into the high tech boom of the late 90’s.
The Beauty of a Flaw – “Schonheitsfehler”
A particular aspect of “beauty” is the beauty of the flaw. There seems to be a contradiction. Perfection is often associated with beauty. At the same time, there is the German term “Schönheitsfehler” (”beauty-flaw”) which refers to a flaw which enhances the beauty of an object instead of diminishing it, as one might expect.
If there is a beauty in my Fleshy Fissured Flaw Fouling Forever My Financial Fortitude, since I live with it daily, I have concluded these potentially beneficial outcomes from possessing this curse.
I read omnivorously (fear of not knowing enough), I try to get qualified (fear of not having the credentials), willing to listen with great sympathy (fear of missing something that could be important to an issue), always work without cessation (fear of being accused that I don’t work), always stay employed no matter how poorly (trauma of unemployment greater than poorly employed).
Along with my haunting flaw, a ghost follows me around saying: “Where the hell is your faith you fool!”
He lies beside me each night and whispers. Sometimes he is exhausted from following my flaw through the day.
Other times he is just disgusted: “Where the hell is your faith, you fool?”
I have decided to quit and rest. This article has left me forlorn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Excellent, Chris. You sound exactly like myself. The fear of failure is very paralyzing.Thanks, Krista. I hope it wasn't too negative. It is actually the motor that gives me my RPMs.
Great article and you have a very verbose writing style. I love the heartfeltness of the Kristen story. You have a strong sense of putting the reader right in the car with you.That's my mad chatterbox style. Thanks for your reference to the Mazda scene. I told my wife it might make her cry. But then, she's John Wayne, she doesn't cry that easily. Thanks very much for commenting. You are my buddy.
It left me forlorn, too! That kind of fear doesn't come from nowhere, Christofer. It's so powerful that it sounds to me like it had its origins when you were very young. You say it doesn't track because of your earliest memories of your father, but memory is pretty unreliable. You could quite easily have blocked out all the scary stuff.I am a high achiever with a big fear of not achieving. You could say that being born to famous people is enough to do it, but its still something you live with. There are plenty of people who have this who don't have my circumstances. I still consider all of this to be my heritage.
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