Clowns

I wrote this poem about thirty years ago ...

Where are the clowns of yesteryear?
Who put the happiness away?
Does it lay in the dust with old confetti,
or did it just go away while we aged?

The band stopped playing long ago,
the festive music no longer rings.
The Tents are gone and now weeds have grown in its place.
The laughter is nothing but a memory.

Do clowns die, or just grown up?
Have the painted faces melted with the tears?
Has it faded away like childhood dreams?

Others in my family have read it when the poem was written; I don't know why they didn't lock me up. I have written a lot of poetry while in High School and the Military. But all of it was dark. I thought that I was a pretty happy kid with a great childhood. But who could come up with this stuff if they didn't have issues while growing up? My youngest son once told me (when he was just 13) "Dad, you have more issues than Rolling Stone Magazine". Even he knew...

When I was young, I always saw or felt the pain of things. I don't care if it was human, animal or at times natural. It's hard to explain. It was as if I was witnessing the undoing of my realm and living the pain so that I could record it and tell the story. I can remember there were times that I felt drained for days, other times it came and past quickly. This continued on as I got older.

I very seldom remember the good, just the dread, or the fear of someone else who was in a bad situation. I always tried to relate to it, I'd ask "how would I feel if that would have happened to me?" I knew I felt their real pain. I had to stop myself and not ask that question. It was hard, and I wasn't very effective with controlling it. I remember hurting all of the time.

When it came time for "my pain", that is the crisis and meltdown that occurred with me, I could no longer handle it. Hurting all of the time, I was losing my children in a long custody battle with a drug addicted mother that abandoned the children and came back for them when she ran out of money. She didn't want to work. Taking in the news at large, I was also worried about my job because I started to self medicate. It was August 17, 2001. That was the day that put me over the top. That was the day that when I think of it now, the whole 24 hours are in fragments. Truth be told, the next three and a half years are still in fragments. Some pieces larger than others but there are a lot missing. A lot repressed. The drinking(I felt) help with the damage, but the depression I was in truly the black hole...just destroying everything that it pull in, family, friends, relationships.

The question I have is ... could I have somehow seen this coming over thirty years or so ago? I felt for everybody else, why couldn't feel for me.