View Workout (Joe Uhan)
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May 11, 2014 (Morning)
Exercise Type: Run
Comments:
Slept in a fair bit, then milled around mom's house. It's JUST becoming spring there, and grass is just now greening up, so I wound up mowing her lawn. SUPER-fun, I love it.
Ran a couple errands, and I ran into my friend Max and his 2-year old girl, Amelia. Was going to see him later that day, but that was a surprise.
Had a bunch of people over for a Mother's Day fest + "Joe is Home Gathering": my sis and family, my mom's cousin, her daughter/husband/newborn, and several of my friends, including my friend Erin and her new BFF, visiting from Colorado. Max also came over with Amelia for a bit.
Later that night, when my friend Matt left, I went to Max's. Max is such a rock of a man: ALWAYS the guy we all strived to be, even back in HS. But he's been struggling, on and off really, since he first got divorced 8 years ago. We really bonded as we both went through our "mid-life crises" at the same time ('06). He's happily married and has Amelia, but, as we all know, problems don't simply go away.
A year and a half ago, he'd confided in me that he went through a suicidal period. Scary stuff. Most of it came from his anxiety, which comes from this unrelenting self-pressure to "be awesome" -- the same stuff that made us all admire him. But it was wearing him down, and the self-pressure to be the lawyer, community leader, husband and father he wanted/needed to be was getting to be too much.
For several months last year, I worried about him. But shit really turned around in the past year: he started individual counseling, and was starting to get to the bottom of stuff. We had some big chats at Winter Retreat in January, and how "stuff with my dad" had come up: how severe his dad was growing up, etc.
Max and I characteristically don't talk much outside of in person, but when we're together, shit comes out. I shared with him - as brief as possible - my break-up with Chels. He was MY rock when shit went down with Ernie, so it was good closure to share that with him.
But I could feel he had something to say to me. And he did.
He began with this: "I almost killed my father last night".
Jesus. Christ.
In brief: his dad had come over, and they had an argument. And, as Max put it, his dad "either said he had a knife, said he was going to pull it out, or did". And Max responded by grabbing him by the neck and lifting him off the ground. He didn't do anything, other than say a few choice words (something like, "This is just like when I was sixteen"...).
And that was it. But it had CLEARLY had a horrifyingly powerful effect on him. He was really shaken up. Intermittent crying, and pleas.
Fucking damn it.
It was a complicated situation, but it made sense, for several reasons: first, because Max is just now coming to grips with what - frankly - was child abuse as a kid. I'd never known this until, pretty much, a few months ago. But his dad was phyisically abusive. And Max is just now - through counseling - acknowledging this.
But the other thing was, this happened in MAX's house, and - regrettably - with Amelia (HIS daughter) in the room.
And what I told Max was, this was his way of:
- defending HIMSELF, as a kid, all over again, from his abuse
- defending HIS way of being a father: in effect, defending HIS home and HIS child
It was...bad.
Max has always been a "weird kid" - which is why I connect so well with him - but once we got through that gritty stuff, we was just acting weird: just saying and doing weird things. I really worry about him.
I told him that he NEEDS to tell Kate (who was out of town during the incident, and still is), and I sure hope he does.