Chapter 42: Psychosis in Sarasota

I’d had many ideas in my mind about returning to America, how happy it’d make me to be back. It was similar to how I’d felt in leaving Tennessee, going to South Beach. I’d had these ideas of grandeur, plans of what I’d do, what things would be like ... How perfect it would be...

But it wasn’t so. After the initial elation wore off, peripety and reverse culture shock hit me hard.

It was my culture, my country, but I felt deracinated, like I didn’t belong. In Europe, the UK, it seemed like everyone was worldly, or had traveled somewhere. One guy I met in England said how he’d not traveled much, “only been to 10 countries,” and he’d mentioned this in all seriousness, no sarcasm whatsoever.

But when I returned to America, talking with people, no one I talked to had been anywhere outside the States, aside from Military people. And when I spoke of being in Europe, everyone asked if I was in the Army...

My casual tales of living in the Alps were met with curious stares and awkward silence. People didn’t care much about other countries, either, whereas I’d be bombarded with questions from Europeans about America, the sentiment stateside, mostly wasn’t mutual. Most didn’t care at all about Europe or any other country.

Or about politics.

Most Europeans liked talking politics, having lively discussions about it, gardeners included. But in America most people didn’t even wish to talk about American politics and cared far less, like not at all, about the EU or Labor in the UK. It was disheartening to witness such an apathetic and uninformed populace.

I blame much of this on the media.

TV in America was far, far worse than what I’d watched in Europe. It was something I’d not noticed about America until I left for a while and returned.

I’d watched tons of TV growing up, had always enjoyed it. The TV was my constant companion, enlightening me, cheering me up, entertaining me, always there when I needed it. And I’d watched plenty of the box in Europe, too, had learned German, largely from watching German TV, especially the soap operas, which I found ironic, given how stupid they are, how they allegedly “dumb down” people, and here I was using them to educate me and improve my linguistic skills...

Watching American TV again, though, really did feel like it was dumbing me down. I was amazed, too, how many commercials there were, how awful most of the programming was, so many crappy reality shows, how brain-dead it was ... Aside from HBO, cable, some shows on the net, it was mostly such bullshit. The news, especially. The news out in Europe, on the BBC, was actually news, no flashy graphics, fluff.

American cable news channels, CNN, Fox News, were complete fluff, screaming matches and partisan politics. They never covered international news, either, unless it was about war or a weather disaster. It was terrible. It made me think that this is why Americans, so many of us, are so ignorant, hate politics. Look at so much of this media. It was pathetic.

(Is it that the media is a reflection of the populace, or vice versa? I don’t know.)

I was feeling disillusioned, more so every day. I was lonely too. I’d been gone so long that I’d lost touch with most of my friends.

(I’d also lost touch with the few family members I’d spoken with, my family never having been too close, and long having been fragmented by deaths and distance, disputes and rival factions. None of which I ever meshed with. To this day I only maintain a distant relationship with my mother as well as sporadic contact with an assortment of uncles and aunts. My ability to form, maintain bonds forever frayed by my childhood traumas, PTSD, and CTE... )

Most of my friends I’d had growing up, I’d come to realize were just people I smoked weed with.

One of whom, Taylor, was a dude I’d known my whole life. But shortly before I’d left for college, we’d had a falling out after he’d failed to testify on my behalf in traffic court, after a lady ran a red light, hit my car, while I was giving Taylor a lift somewhere, and then the stupid lady, a puffy haired late middle-aged African lady who didn’t speak much English, sued me (!) for $50,000.

The frivolous case, thankfully, was thrown out. However, I lost respect for Taylor after he’d not shown up to court. I’d explained the situation to him, how important it was that he get my back, testify I wasn’t at fault, and he’d agreed to, a week or two before the court date. But when I’d arrived at the courthouse, he wasn’t there. When I called him, he asked me on the phone, if he “had” to go, sounding annoyed I’d asked and that I was waking him up “early” at 9 a.m. That was the end of that friendship.

The guy I’d known my whole life and thought was my bro had turned out to be nothing but a selfish stoner. It was a massive letdown, but, unfortunately, that’s a major downside of weed. Many of the friends you make smoking it are losers.

Although not all were like that. Some had done well for themselves, had moved to other cities, got jobs, got married, had kids. They’d gone on with their lives. Become established. I was trying to start anew and was finding it much harder as an older person.

When I was younger, in school, it was easy to meet people, get into things, but as I’d aged, was an older, divorced guy, it was tough. People I met weren’t young anymore. Everyone had their own thing going on. And digital life had taken hold too. At work, at the office, on breaks, everyone was just staring at the phones in their hands. No one would really chat, face to face, with each other.

(Which leads me to think mankind is totally fucked with AI, machines. If we can’t even handle smartphones, what will highly intelligent, self-replicating AI do to us? Elon Musk, Sam Harris, others who’ve sounded the alarm, I concur, are right to worry. Like in that Terminator movie, those cyborgs may yet come annihilate us. Big Tech’s tiny square phone soldiers are certainly doing a fine job enslaving us, making us zombies... )

Aside from loneliness, my job was decent, and I was grateful to have it. It was fairly easier work than I’d done before, as people were coming to us for money, and my function was to evaluate their backgrounds, determine if they were suitable for loans. If so, I’d pass them along to the underwriting department for final say, and if approved by the underwriters, the loan was made.

There was paperwork involved, and I’d speak with around 50 to 100 people a day, mostly by phone, some via email, fax, text chat.

It was tiring, mentally, psychically exhausting to talk with so many people. And my throat would be sore at the end of the day from yapping so much, my eyes red and burning from staring at computer screens. But it was certainly much easier than digging holes in the frozen ground, ripping out trees, and it was considerably better than telemarketing, being yelled at, hung up on all day. The clients I talked with were typically pretty pleasant, polite, as are most people when they’re asking for large sums of money...

I was doing okay, financially, had benefited by living with my in-laws, not paying rent while living in Europe, and had benefitted from investing some funds I’d accumulated working online, buying a lucrative set of stocks for dirt cheap during the Great Recession and profiting from the subsequent stock market rebound.

At my new job, I wasn’t only being paid bullshit commissions or draw, I was paid a generous base salary, plus healthy commissions. I had bought a cute little sportscar and was renting a small apartment near a beautiful white sand beach.

Sarasota was gorgeous, and I enjoyed the beaches there, greatly. I’d go swimming, running barefoot in the sands, breathing in the clean, salty sea breezes, basking in the aureate Florida sunshine.