Yeah Yeah Yeah
Last night I had a great idea for a blog post, and I'm going to write about that idea here in a moment, but, obviously, I missed last night. I got into a discussion with the ALT about my therapy, job search, prospective student status, and the serendipity of life's events that lead to my idea for the blog post I'll get on with here in a moment. But she posed something I should really consider: who am I doing this for, me or you? Writing this stuff out, especially publicly, kind of feeds into my vanity and narcissism. She postulated that I may edit myself (i.e. "I'll spare you the gory details"), I may not be 100% forthright, because, well, how much do you really need to know about me? I think I put a lot of myself into this blog for you to see, but she is right that there is reservation, either sparing you the seemingly unimportant minutia, editing for time, or, frankly, just holding back due to embarrassment. Would I share my deepest, darkest secrets with the internet? I've probably alluded to such, and you as my reader may feel like you know me pretty well, but this is a one-way conversation and there may be questions or ideas you have that I cannot (or will not?) respond to. She suggested I keep an actual journal and write everything. I've tried that before, and it feels like a waste of time. What's the point of creating something if no one else can enjoy it? Well, that's the narcissism talking, isn't it?
If you're single, you still make dinner.
Maybe some of my writing should be just for me, literally, soul-food. Will I do that? I don't know. Maybe the dark, personal horrors that lurk just behind the quarter inch of skin, muscle, and bone of my forehead should have a spigot all their own. You know, lust, hate, despair, bodily functions, blasphemes, the terrible things we'd never do in front of someone else. I can't put those here, I might want to run for office someday!
But that's not to say this exercise is coming to a close. The ALT is right, this is probably feeding into the notion that I feel like I need to be the entertainer, but that's not my conscious intent with these entries. I really do hope to reach someone, anyone, and let them know that our fucked up lives can still have meaning and joy and happiness and health. I want to normalize depression and anxiety, I want people young and old to have no more fear in sharing that they might need help. Even as I write all that, though, the ALT's words still ring true...how much of this is for me and how much am I doing this for you?
This is for me. But I hope it helps you, too.
The idea I had last night:
I've started reading YOU ARE A BADASS by Jen Sincero and pretty early on she starts describing that the subconscious controls our beliefs controls our actions. She then relates a tale of how that actually works by describing a dad who has a hard time holding down a job and making money and how that might create a negative view of money for you as his child, that money is hard to come by, work isn't fair, and both of those things kept dad away. Well, shit...that sounds an awful lot like my predicament. And that my subconscious could be the culprit of my self-sabotage? I crave certainty and control, stability, things I did not have with my mother. So, it stands to reason.
Okay, food for thought.
Last night we watched the latest episode of NBC's Blindspot in which Edgar Reade is in the hospital and Garret Dillahunt has a guest spot where he tells Reade he has to basically face his demons, because he had a therapist who made him look at pictures of old war buddies and it helped him get over their loss, because it solidified the memory, rather than letting it run loose in his head.
That got me thinking. The two points I encountered yesterday made me realize that, yes, my lizard brain is driving the car, and, no, I can't resolve my issues with the past because a lot of it was lies and there will never be actual closure with my mother.
That's not to say I can't overcome my problems, I'll have to attack them from a different angle, but it certainly solidified my fears and anxiety about instability. My childhood was tumultuous, never in the same house for more than a couple of years, always moving to different schools, and fed half-truths and outright lies by my mother about the nebulous nature of my even earlier childhood (the nature of the separation of my mother, me, and my brother Jeremy, why I thought until I was a teenager my last name was one thing when it was really another, Oedipal encounters while she was high {nothing ever happened, I wasn't abused in that way, but my mother wasn't my mother, she was more like an acquaintance and sometimes put me in uncomfortable scenarios, like asking for a full body massage and she wanted to be undressed...yeah, I'm pretty fucked up, how's that for sharing?}).
So, you can see how difficult a predicament I'm in in facing my own demons. They're totally real, but wholly imaginary. I don't really have anything to say for it, no epiphany yet, but...food for thought. Thank you, Jen Sincero, Garret Dillahunt, and Rob Brown for making me think deep thoughts.
"Where the fear has gone...
Only I will remain."
If you're single, you still make dinner.
Maybe some of my writing should be just for me, literally, soul-food. Will I do that? I don't know. Maybe the dark, personal horrors that lurk just behind the quarter inch of skin, muscle, and bone of my forehead should have a spigot all their own. You know, lust, hate, despair, bodily functions, blasphemes, the terrible things we'd never do in front of someone else. I can't put those here, I might want to run for office someday!
But that's not to say this exercise is coming to a close. The ALT is right, this is probably feeding into the notion that I feel like I need to be the entertainer, but that's not my conscious intent with these entries. I really do hope to reach someone, anyone, and let them know that our fucked up lives can still have meaning and joy and happiness and health. I want to normalize depression and anxiety, I want people young and old to have no more fear in sharing that they might need help. Even as I write all that, though, the ALT's words still ring true...how much of this is for me and how much am I doing this for you?
This is for me. But I hope it helps you, too.
The idea I had last night:
I've started reading YOU ARE A BADASS by Jen Sincero and pretty early on she starts describing that the subconscious controls our beliefs controls our actions. She then relates a tale of how that actually works by describing a dad who has a hard time holding down a job and making money and how that might create a negative view of money for you as his child, that money is hard to come by, work isn't fair, and both of those things kept dad away. Well, shit...that sounds an awful lot like my predicament. And that my subconscious could be the culprit of my self-sabotage? I crave certainty and control, stability, things I did not have with my mother. So, it stands to reason.
Okay, food for thought.
Last night we watched the latest episode of NBC's Blindspot in which Edgar Reade is in the hospital and Garret Dillahunt has a guest spot where he tells Reade he has to basically face his demons, because he had a therapist who made him look at pictures of old war buddies and it helped him get over their loss, because it solidified the memory, rather than letting it run loose in his head.
That got me thinking. The two points I encountered yesterday made me realize that, yes, my lizard brain is driving the car, and, no, I can't resolve my issues with the past because a lot of it was lies and there will never be actual closure with my mother.
That's not to say I can't overcome my problems, I'll have to attack them from a different angle, but it certainly solidified my fears and anxiety about instability. My childhood was tumultuous, never in the same house for more than a couple of years, always moving to different schools, and fed half-truths and outright lies by my mother about the nebulous nature of my even earlier childhood (the nature of the separation of my mother, me, and my brother Jeremy, why I thought until I was a teenager my last name was one thing when it was really another, Oedipal encounters while she was high {nothing ever happened, I wasn't abused in that way, but my mother wasn't my mother, she was more like an acquaintance and sometimes put me in uncomfortable scenarios, like asking for a full body massage and she wanted to be undressed...yeah, I'm pretty fucked up, how's that for sharing?}).
So, you can see how difficult a predicament I'm in in facing my own demons. They're totally real, but wholly imaginary. I don't really have anything to say for it, no epiphany yet, but...food for thought. Thank you, Jen Sincero, Garret Dillahunt, and Rob Brown for making me think deep thoughts.
"Where the fear has gone...
Only I will remain."
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