REPRINT: You're All Grown Up Now, Charlie Brown

The following piece was previously run on the Pop Culture Institute November 20th, 2006; I decided it fits in better here. ~ MSM

If my life was a porn star his name would be Rock Bottom.

Ah, the power of a good opening line. I approached my desk this evening with those thirteen gem-like words and little else. With only hope to guide me, I set out to seek for progress.

Witty one-liners aside, coaxing quality out of any of the last seven days has proven a Herculean task. At least when Herc had to dredge the Augean stables he had a proper shovel. It seems to me I've been mucking out far worse for most of my life with nothing more than a spoon, and a plastic spoon at that, the kind that comes with a Peanut Buster parfait.

Imagine my life, if you will, as a butterfly. Now drop upon that butterfly a steaming pile of dung. There -- you've got my life. A lovely, delicate creature crushed by someone else's shit.

For most of my life I just accepted it, the way you might an amputation, or a sibling. Some people have gorgeous, perfect lives all their lives, and others have steaming piles of dung constantly dropped on theirs. These things happen.

Oh, I hear what you're saying: no one's life is perfect. Consider only that next to a steaming pile of dung your modicum of success and tolerable sex life look pretty sweet. I just wish, if you were going to rub my face in it you'd actually rub my face in it, especially the sex life part. I am gagging for a shag, and I don't mean a haircut like Chrissie Hynde's.

Lately it occurred to me that I may have something wrong with me. (It's okay, you can laugh.) No I mean it, something really wrong with me. (It's alright, I'll wait.) Are you done? Good.

Years ago I was watching some Dateline type of show and they were doing a story about post-traumatic stress disorder. Nothing out of the ordinary about that. Fast forward a couple of years to another show, this time about bullying. And in the middle of that show some doctor or expert of some kind came on and said that some children who are bullied develop post-traumatic stress disorder, kind of like combat soldiers.

It was like the Quasimodo in my head decided to ring all the bells at the same time while laughing maniacally. The symptoms of PTSD describe me to a T. It was like reading a really accurate horoscope, or finding your name in a fortune cookie.

It turns out I may have used my naturally sensitive nature, and an ordinary if upsetting childhood event, combined with an affinity for a certain meme in children's literature, and out of that concocted for myself a lifetime of unholy hell. Oops.

Now, a couple of infotainment segments and websites don't make me an expert diagnostician, but I know what I feel. I know how I react to sudden loud noises. If it's sunny and a bird flies over, that shadow falling across me can give me a panic attack that lasts all day. Worst of all, when a good-looking man talks to me it's like I have a mouthful of sand.

Sudden violent outbursts "relieved" only by periods of debilitating anxiety on what feels like a neverending loop can't get me to seek professional help, but never underestimate the motivating power of horniness. I will be checking out the PTSD clinic at UBC, based on the idea that the usual awful things that have happened to me have happened to everyone, except that most people get over them and I can't, or won't.

Either way, it's time I found out which it is: can't, or won't. Having lived for years believing that I won't get better because I don't want to, I need to find out if, in fact, I can't get better because I don't know how to because I'm still grieving every other damn thing that's ever happened to me.

I am Charlie Brown -- thus the title of this post. I'm all grown up now, and it still always feels like there's some bitch in a blue dress trying to kill me (metaphorically speaking, of course).

Thanks to the sexy geniuses at Fantagraphics I've been enjoying the opportunity to revisit the world of Peanuts, and more specifically the life of Charlie Brown. He's a kind, bright kid; maybe he's a little funny looking, has a big head, but he loves his dog. He tries hard to live up to everybody's expectations yet always falls a little short, and frets endlessly about his own shortcomings to anyone who'll listen or at least not walk away. He's never malicious but is the recipient of so much bile I can scarcely believe it ran in daily papers in the Fifties.

Oh, and also, he's fictional and I'm real. Did Charles Schulz describe a boy like me, or did I become a boy like Charlie Brown? The idea that my life sucks today because I let one single event in my life snowball out of control beggars my imagination, but not as much as the idea that I didn't have to let it happen.

And if it turns out not to be PTSD, maybe the good doctors can tell me what's really wrong with me before I hurt myself or someone else.

I can only hope.