The Returning Stranger (Why I'm Doing This)

Nobody asked for life to deal us with these bullshit hands we're dealt. //

We gotta take these cards ourselves and flip em, don't expect no help

My name is Eli, I’m 18-years-old, I was born and raised in America, I go to an elite college prep school, I have been offered admission to several colleges, I’m reasonably smart, and I look both ways before I cross the street. I’ve also decided to snub all conventional wisdom and join the army. Not just any army mind you; the Israeli Defense Forces. I’ve been trying to figure out why for a long time, and I’m still not completely sure. It has everything to do with my mother, and a lot to do with her various boyfriends. More importantly, it’s because of my Israeli father and his warm and accepting side of the family. This explanation wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t briefly chronicle my life, from the beginning until now.

To start, I was born in _______, New Jersey. A few years later my mother divorced my father and received full legal custody of me. From when I was two until I was about thirteen, I was stuck in the world my mother created for us. Even though she moved from boyfriend to boyfriend like they were frets on a guitar I felt safe because she was a stable figure in my life. When she punished me I knew resolutely it was because she loved me. Few kids in my experience feel that way at seven-years-old. She wanted to give me the childhood she never had. Every word she spoke to me, every waking moment and conscious thought were all out of love for me, every thing she did was to make life better for me. I was literally her reason for living. At this point, you need to recalibrate your codependency alarms if they’re not going off because it should be obvious now that she was an utter emotional wreck. A single mother with no ability to care for herself or hold a job, lost in a world that emphasizes college degrees and strong work ethics; the ability to raise a child was only one of many things she didn’t have. One day she was home alone with me when I was seven-years-old and tried to overdose on her medication. Blood shoot out of her mouth as she went into violent death rattles, and that glint in her eye disappeared like a star getting covered by a cloud. An ambulance came and she survived, at least physically, but I was traumatized and her mental well-being was still non-existent.

When I was eight she turned to the drugs; not just her liberally prescribed medications, but the illegal stuff as well. Heroin, cocaine, weed and special k; if you can name it she probably did it. She was lost in a galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, and laughers, except she wasn’t looking for the heart of the American dream, she didn’t know what she was looking for, but unfortunately I had no choice but to come along for the ride. It was tragic, but I still loved her. With every ounce of my being, with every fiber of my body, I loved her and would have died for her. I prayed to god that he would take her pain and give it to me; I didn’t know what was wrong with her but I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and responsibility for the emotional tornado she was in just like any kid would, and this lasted for nine years. It also screwed me up immeasurably. I was young and moldable, and I had this emotionally train wrecked, codependent mother. There was never a chance it was going to turn out well. My mother had four main boyfriends while I grew up.

The first was Brian. One certainty about him is that he hated kids, and I was no exception. He is also the most influential father figure I’ve had because he got to me right in that sweet-spot of a child’s development. I think about the year-and-a-half that I lived with him every day of my life even though I have very few concrete memories. I don’t know if I blocked everything out or was just too young to make long-term memories. What’s more strange is that I want nothing more than to go back to that time even though my mother was suicidal and not remotely in control of her actions; even though Brian was offended by my existence and was quick to put me down with his tongue and sometimes his hands. It’s completely crazy, but I’d give anything to relive one day during that time in my life.

Stuart. He was a friendly guy, but not fit to be a father. He probably only had carnal interests in my mother. His twenty-one-year-old drug dealing son lived with us as well. It is from him that my mom picked up her habit.

Peter. He was also a friendly guy; playful and fun to be around. He was also in no way fit to be a father. It’s a good thing my mother and I never moved in with him like with all her other boyfriends, otherwise the inevitable breakup would have devastated me more than it did.

Sal was the last boyfriend and I still live with him as of this writing. I think he means well, I think, but he is so consumed by his own misery that he doesn’t have the ability for compassion, trust, love, and definitely not for empathy. He is not without his good points, such as during my mother’s drug escapades, I’d be willing to bet my soul that he never even felt tempted to use the drugs she was on, and it’s not like she never offered. Such things are not an issue with him, his fatal flaw is being totally incapable of dealing with emotions, both his and those of others. I remember in fifth grade when I asked him why mom was in the hospital for so long and he calmly told me that she was using cocaine and had to go to rehab. I never cried so hard in my life. He just sat next to me and didn’t say anything, he even looked impatient, like he was saying "hurry up and cry already so I can get to work." I know that he probably felt horribly inside, but that is the only way he knows to deal with emotions; if it’s not anger then it’s silence.

Being that all these boyfriends were father figures to me, I looked up to them unconditionally. Brian, Stuart, Peter, and Sal are all a part of me although I wish to god every day they weren’t. Regardless of what I wish, the fact is I have Brian’s quick temper and hatred for most things, Stuart’s aimless view of life that refuses to admit reality, such as his son is dealing drugs from his own house, I have Peter’s flippant childishness and lack of ambition, and Sal’s total inability to express emotion. I have these attributes and many other ones acquired from the fathers I had growing up, some may even be good.

Having been molded in these circumstances left me emotionally stunted to say the least and made my high school experience almost unbearable. It could have been worse; I’m lucky that the people at my school were generally friendly and for the most part easy-going. Regardless, being unable to interact with people I had a lot of trouble making friends because I didn’t know how to reach out to people. Things like confidence, outgoingness, and even friendliness frightened me because of an inculcated fear of abandonment. As for girls: forget it; I couldn’t speak to them if they were even mildly attractive.

Combine this with the fact that the few friends I did have were in the same boat as me, but they moved on emotionally before I even knew that I had a problem to fix. When this happened I was left in a desert of loneliness and self-hatred, friendless and by myself... good-bye self-esteem. Alone and betrayed, I had no choice but to dust off my shell and lock myself into its deepest most cavernous depths, turn off the lights, and throw the key away. I had no interest in interacting with anyone. If someone talked to me I got pissed off, if a person paid me a compliment I assumed the opposite was true. Everything was an excuse to belittle myself, every little thing said, done, or ignored in my presence was evidence for how fucking pathetic I was. I was that fucked up, and the worst part was that no one was going to help me. I didn’t care about school, I didn’t care about my family, and I definitely didn’t care about myself.

Left in this vapid state of half-existence I passed through the days which in retrospect are a complete blur. I just wanted everything to be over but I didn’t know what everything was. More than anything I was crying out for help in the only way I knew how. Some people do it by being rebelling against authority; I did it by disappearing entirely. I also had that idiot sense of entitlement that many people have, especially high schoolers, and I felt like the world owed me something. It took me awhile to learn that the world owes me nothing, as Twain said, “It was here first,” and that if I wanted something I’d have to man up and go get it. Then I made the best decision of my life, and it was deceivingly simple: I decided to take my father up on his offer for a trip to Israel. How I even had the capacity to make such an audacious decision considering that I barely knew my dad astounds me; I guess I was just sick of waiting for my emotions to sort themselves out.

My biological father, a native of Israel, was an enigmatic figure when I was growing up. He’s a good man with good intentions, but not always that much follow through. What separates him from all my mother’s boyfriends and my mother herself is that he, more or less, is emotionally put together. Even though he can’t hold a job, even though he lives with his mother, he is warm, compassionate, good-intentioned, and never on the verge of total mental collapse. This description of him might not sound flattering, but given the parental figures that I had growing up, these attributes were easily more than enough to win me over. Not only that, he has three sisters and five brothers that are all great aunts and uncles in their own right. Through them, I have several cousins and we all get along great. This family as a whole is the reason I am delaying my education at least two years to join the IDF.

Here’s where it gets strange: I’ve only been to Israel twice in the past 16 years: two weeks in August and December of 2008. For all intents and purposes I am making assumptions from having brief run-ins with these strangers during quick two-week vacations. These strangers include my father, who I only saw twenty times or so growing up during supervised visits. Now I am risking my life and my future to serve in his country’s military, home of a language that I don’t speak and a culture I don’t understand so I can connect with him and his family. As anyone who has grown up in a terrible home environment would know, the only thing you ever wish for is that the dysfunction would go away. To have the universe dangle this incredible (read: functional) family in front of my face was too much. If you were me, if you went through the things that I went through, you would have made the same choice.

By the way, the Israelis have it easy: they never have to let their family know they decided to join the military; the decision is made for them. As I’m sure most others who enlist in the military could tell you, informing your family is no easy feat. My grandfather in particular made threats, such as he would never speak to me again, or that he had no intention of paying for me to go to college if I should join the IDF. These threats were empty, and we both knew it, so then he and my grandmother tried to persuade me in other ways, such as they can’t sleep at night and that their health is rapidly deteriorating as it is and my decision to go to Israel will exacerbate that, they’re not going to live forever, etc. This was particularly devastating because at the time my grandfather had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. I imagined them laying in bed, gripping their pillows all night with the lights off, laying in the fetal position while shivering and drenched in a cold sweat. I envisioned death gripping them slowly over several months because of a depression that would start from my decision. Of course that was ridiculous, but there I was: A kid that never had people to look up to or any type of significant emotionally grounding familial figures except for my grandparents and now I am being told by them that I am killing them by living my life the way I want to. It is this type of emotional torment that turns people into my mother. Not to mention the legitimate arguments that I am throwing my life away, that I am crazy, no one with a college education in front of them would ever decide to go join the military, especially in a foreign country, etc.

After a lot of soul searching I decided to go through with following my dream, in spite of everything thrown in my way. I came to peace with the arguments and the intense guilt trips, but more than anything I decided that I didn’t want to suppress what my heart was telling me. I informed my grandparents of this in an e-mail, and surprisingly they are coming around to my decision although it didn’t happen right away. That does not change the fact that choosing the path that I did, with them bearing over my conscience, and a lot of other obstacles, was the most difficult thing I have ever done. For the first time ever I could pick a path for myself free from my mother’s lunacy. In the end, I figured that any decision can turn out to be a mistake; whether it’s joining the military, going to college, going left instead of right; it could all be a mistake, so why not have it be a mistake on a path that I chose?

At this point in my life I’m happy to say that my dysfunctional childhood and my terrible high school experience don’t seem to matter much because I have a future to look forward to that I can be happy with and proud of; that I can hopefully look back on and say that I wouldn’t have done it any other way. For a lot, maybe even most people, this means going to college. For better or for worse, it doesn’t mean that for me. If I had faltered at the moment of truth, if I had given into the guilt trips and the “think of your future” arguments, I would already be on a path I don’t like; on the superhighway to becoming the parents that I had growing up whom I now hate. Maybe I’m on the wrong path but god damn it I am not on that path, and that is what my dream really is. Am I living it? I really fucking hope so.

It’s been a long a time since I’ve rock and rolled

It’s been a long time since I’ve hit the stroll

Ooo Let me get back, let me get back, let me get back...

Baby, where I come from.

It’s been a long time, been a long time

Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.