Melancholia

There are some things in this world that set off a melancholia in me. Now, truth be told, I am of a wistful nature and have noticed this a little more in my, ahem, midlife. But having recently finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I can add another item to the melancholia triggers list. The book in and of itself with its universalish “we’re all misfits in some way” certainly plays a part but this is not the only thing triggering the melancholia. (You keep using that word, I do not think it means, what you think it means)

You see the author of Perks, Stephen Chbosky, is from Upper St Claire Pennsylvania; my wife is from Upper St. Claire Pennsylvania. And goddamn it, my childhood in poverty has created in me a strong inferiority complex, at least as far as it relates to fiduciary matters, and so while I’m reading Perks I am envisioning my wife in her teenage years in her wealthy neighborhood, with her wealthy friends, in wealthy clothes and her wealthy boyfriend who is the heir to a custom home construction company and this all pulls the trigger back nice and slow…till the shots are fired…

releasing waves of melancholia, of judgement of me as a person, of my worth…when my fiduciary worth is basically…worthless.

But I too am a misfit Mr. Chbosky. A misfit who has, at least for now, broken the cycle of poverty for my children but it COULD NOT have happened without my wife. She is the wage earner, she is the one that provides and I have no, absolutely no, idea how she came to marry me. I just hope she doesn’t wake up soon or come out of the dissociative fugue she must be in and realizes she married me.

Which brings me to another melancholia trigger, Counting Crows first album August and Everything After, especially those first few seconds of Round Here with the ethereal keyboard and barren guitar riff leading to these lyrics…

Round here we talk just like lions but we sacrifice like lambs
Round here, she’s slipping through my hands…