Blogging is Good Medecine...

3 November 2005

So many of you may be asking yourselves...does this person do anything besides sit in front of his computer and spew his business out into cyberspace...and the answer to that question is...yes...I also eat on occassion...use the bathroom when necessary...and change my clothes and shower at least once a day. Sometimes I even put some product in my hair...but only if I am taking new pictures for my blog photo album.

I used to be very skeptical about the entire blog phenomenon. Now and again I would read my friend Lonnie's Blog (YouYams...where have you gone)...but I really thought blogging was the province of computer geeks that needed something to do in between video game tournaments and building sexbots. But I took the brave step of challenging my own personal biases and decided to give this blogging thing a whirl. It may have been one of the best decisions I've made in recent memory.

I love to write...words make complete sense to me...the ways in which they fit together are something I don't have to much think about...and I am able to express myself...particulary the things I am feeling...through writing in a way that I find hard to communicate verbally. Some folks that know me find this to be a little amusing. When I am dealing with external factors...politics...doing trainings...performances...lectures....whatever...my ability to write and my ability to speak are pretty much on par. When I have to communicate to someone about the state of my personal feelings...particularly during periods when I am struggling...I always end up minimzing what is really going on...and end up having made the other person feel better but without really being able to articulate my need and that I may need help getting to a better place.

When I write it is as if all the barriers/facades/masks/walls/force shields I have built up around myself to keep others out and to keep my feelings locked away evaporate.  There is a direct line between the pen and the page or the keyboard and the screen to my emotional core...and I am able to externalize the feelings that I would normally bottle up, stuff down, and put in hazmat containers...until the radioactive solution started to leak...which inevitably leads to the creation of flesh eating zombies. And really...who is gonna want to hang out with the guy that unleashed the living dead on the neighborhood.  Add to all that the fact that I pretty much...with some few exceptions...could give a shit about my business being out in the world...and you've got the perfect potential blogging addict.  This is the best venue I have yet found to let me share with you all what I am feeling...which lets me work through it without summoning the unholy...and you all get to sit and giggle and wonder when the men with the white jacket are going to come and bring me to a new home complete with rubber sheets and foam walls.  See...everyone get's something. This is about give and take really.

For example...the last three or four days have been pretty much suck ass (that's French for....suck ass).  I quite literally have never been in this particular situation...let me explain. In the past...when something has come up that has not fallen into the two acceptable emotion categories (happy/pissed)...I have either minimized the feelings...ignored the feelings...or beat 'em down. Then I took my little trip to the Pride Spa (28 days in-patient/75 half-way house...yeah theraepy)...and they went and told me that not only was I forbidden from calling for the hordes of the damned...but that I also had to actually deal with what I was feeling when I was feeling it. But wait...it gets worse...it always gets worse...they then proceeded to rip apart all of my barriers...through therapy and daily aerobics...they pushed...proded...chipped...hammered...and wrecking balled their way through the mechanisms I had developed to keep myself from feeling much beyond the surface. And believe me...when I walked in there...fresh from seven days in the looney bin...I had recovered enough that some folks didn't actually believe I was an addict...at most they thought maybe I drank too much on occassions...couldn't say no to that last martini at the corporate cocktail party. That is all except my friend Munkis (who I thought was totally fried and that he was only good for med school case studies...but it turned out that not only was he recovering from a three year daily meth binge...but that he also had one of the worst cases of adult ADHD every witnessed...so...I guess he still is a med student case study)...and Nurse Caroline.

Now...all the nurses at Pride were far out. Betty the Axe (old...wrinkled...and merciless)...Dawn (dressed to kill...sweet as pie...and completely ruthless)...Mary (I almost bitch slapped her one night...enough said)...Char (sometimes I thought maybe she was stealing the patients meds...but she was just quirky)...and Caroline aka Nurse Beauty.

Caroline was the only Nurse of Color on staff. She had about 48 different wigs and all of them matched a particular outfit. She is a big black woman that drives a big black truck and looked at me one day and said...honey...I'm worried about you...you are one of those ones that could walk right through here just a smiling and a saying the right things...and then go on out that door without ever having gotten near the reasons that really brought you here...she said...baby...addiction is a symptom and not the problem. The entire experience was very Yoda like...especially the part where she slowly vanished in a shower of gold gitter...leaving behind only the smell of cocoa butter and her wig from the night before.

And she was right...I could have gotten out of there with a smile and a wink and none but Caroline and God would have known any differently. But instead I let them tear me into little bitty pieces and then start putting me back together again (I still think they shouldn't have had any pieces left over...but the counseling staff said that happens all the time).  The upside is that I now experience pretty much the full range of human emotions...and I may have developed entirely new ones. The downside is that now I have to feel things. I don't like it.

I don't like having to actually sit feeling my body go slightly nuts trying to figure out what to do with what it is feeling...trying to practice those stupid exercises I learned from Kathy Vader (her booming practice in Edina will be the first to be destroyed by the zombies...just in case she ever reads this...I love you Kathy!)...exercises like...when you are feeling an emotion...sit and feel where it shows up in your body physiologically...I'd rather sit on a tack studded dildo dipped in battery acid...then at least I'd know exactly what was causing the particular feeling and I'd probably have a good clue as to how to go about stoppin g the pain.  Feelings suck. I am totally voting for assimilation by the Borg when they show up. I'm hoping that will happen by lunch.

But the point of all this is...one of the best ways I've discovered of how to manage what I am going through is to share it with ya'll...those sympathetic folks in the world that take that one special moment to read my blog...and make notes to share with your children on what not to do with their lives (really...I'm not that self-depricating...but the shit is funny isn't it). Basically blogging is completely selfish. I do this so that I can feel better...or if I can't make it all the way to better at least more able to do the work to figure out whatever it is that needs figuring out. I hope that the folks reading this are able to take something away from it...even if it is only an occasional chuckle (I love to make folks laugh...except when I can't figure out if they are laughing at me or with me...then I start lashing out randomly with my tack studded dildo).

I don't mind sharing what other folks may think is too personal to share. I grew up in Minnesota where it is basically illegal to have a bad day. There is a culture there...rooted in its Scandinavian heritage...of pretending that everything is all right. If something goes wrong...only those that must know about it should know about it.  (There is a special exception for people over 65...they are allowed to talk freely about the mostly recently failed/broken/replaced part of their anatomy). It must be dealt with swiftly and never spoken of again. And there is never any reason to be angry, sad, depressed, or most of the rest of the emotions that regular humans experience. In many families you are expected to know that you are loved without every actually hearing the words (I had to have a little talk with Grandma about this one...to which she responded by showing me pictures of her second hip replacement surgery). You may grow up never having seen your parents hold hands or kiss (anything more than a light peck on the cheek is indecent and should be left to Saturday nights conjugal duties). It may be that the six months of sub-zero weather has frozen our ability to emote appropriately. But whatever the case...I grew up with all the skills to keep myself from feeling pretty much anything and without the ability to let others know when I needed help. Today...I say with pride...fuck that. If by sharing my personal craziness I can keep someone else from retreating so deeply into themselves that it takes a 15,000 dollar trip to the hospital plus a three and a half month stay in a rehabilitation center to be able come out again, then I consider the revelation of my adventures in crazy to be well done.