brezsny-on-the-blog

CAPRICORN (Dec 22-Jan 19): Welcome to the Season of Temporary Insanity, Capricorn. According to my analysis of the omens, your imminent immersion in lunacy, delirium, and freakiness won't hurt a bit - and may even stir up exotic varieties of pleasure and amusement. For best results, keep the following advice bubbling in the back of your mind. (1) "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things." - Edgar Degas. (2) "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." - Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. (3) "All of us are crazy good in one way or another." - Yiddish saying. (4) "You are either losing your mind - or gaining your soul." - Julia Cameron.


i suppose it makes a sort of sense that, in the latter half of the Year of Secrets there would be the Season of Temporary Insanity. with all those secret and hidden things coming to the fore, feeling the light of the sun, hissing at the glare and covering their eyes as they have lived in darkness for so long, it's only logical it would inspire insanity.

heh. logical it would inspire insanity. how's that for irony?

i actually wanted to say "thank you" to everyone who gave me advice, encouragement, and love over the last few days. i basically took all those lovely words, piled them together, and threw myself atop them like a pile of autumn leaves and wiggled a bit so i was at least half-submerged in them. then i lay there and stared up at the sky.

i watched movies. i ate what and when i wanted to and stopped feeling guilty if it wasn't exactly fantastic and healthy. i let myself be angry and stopped reprimanding myself, stopped calling myself childish and unfair. once i did that, the desire to bitch and vent went away. i didn't go to the gym, and i stopped loathing my body and the extra pounds that have packed themselves on as a result of all the bad bingeing i've been doing. i know i'll get back on track, but that time is not now. i napped right in the middle of the day, in the midst of a horrendously messy room, and it felt great.

there are clothes everywhere --work clothes, clean clothes, worn clothes-- and i haven't made my bed in a week. every flat surface is piled with crap, even spilling over onto the floor if i happen to bump into it. there's a very narrow path between the foot of my bed, where lies a foot locker, and my closet. right now it's so littered with clothes and crap that i can't even navigate it. i crawl over my lumpy, unmade bed to get to the other side of my room.

and i don't care.

i've been fighting this whole unFunk and it's been getting worse. i've forgotten one of my own fundamental truths: embrace it. whatever it is, embrace it. for you star trek fans out there, do you remember that one episode of next gen, Hero Worship, where the only survivor of a ship wreck, a young boy, starts emulating Data? i know it sounds totally geeky (because it is), but i've used that episode as a metaphor for life numerous times. it's one of my reminders of newton's third law of physics, and how it's not really all that abstract: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

but anyway, in this episode, the Enterprise gets hit with a shockwave so they put up their shields. a stronger shockwave hits the ship, and as they increase the shields the shockwaves get so strong that they're tearing the ship apart. the next hit will surely tear apart the Enterprise just like the boy's ship was destroyed. Data tells Worf to lower the shields and everyone looks at him like he's just proposed suicide. but Worf does it, and the next shockwave is a gentle ripple in the current of space.

i know it seems like such a "freaking DUH!" kind of concept, but it's one that i forget constantly and it ends up doing a number on me. i've never been one to let myself just feel. always i've buried, stuffed, suppressed, drugged, and run away from my emotions. i know why, too. i'm not using my life and times in the house of oppression as an excuse, just pointing out it was how i was molded on threat of pain. i'm constantly having to remind myself to just let go of the struggle and let myself go through whatever it is.

how sad, that i have to give myself permission to eat what i want to, not make the bed, not fold laundry, and just be angry/sad/confused. you know, there are times when i actually still expect to be slapped for expressing anger or hurt. when i come to someone and say, "this upsets me," or "this hurt me," i have to take days and muster up courage. i go through panic attacks, sweats, the shakes, the whole gamut, because i was taught it's a dangerous risk to express those types of emotions.

the fact i'm rarely received with an open mind only makes it that much more difficult. and yet i'm scolded when i keep my tongue, but fights inevitably happen when i say anything.

i have a confession. i have a secret and heretofore unspoken passion for inspirational self-help books. i know. it's stupid. unfortunately, most of them are written from a christian standpoint, but i just sift all of that out. a friend gave me Love & Respect by emerson eggerichs, and it's quite the fascinating read. on the friday *m* and i had dinner with my parents, on the drive home we had a horrible argument. that's the night i seriously forced myself to sit down and think about why i was doing this and whether i wanted it to continue. at that point i was so blinded by my own struggle with this move and the recent upheavals that i had lost track of what it is i really admire about him, and all the reasons i love him. the fundamental problem i saw was that i don't know how to talk to him.

at one point i even burst out laughing right in the middle of the fight because we sounded so stupid. we sounded like a real couple, but if he'd asked me at that point, "aren't we a real couple?" i would have said hell no. to me, what we had was a joke. there was rarely physical contact, even rarer "i love you's," i hadn't made eye contact with him almost the entire time he'd been here, and we had this cold war raging below the surface. i was feeling hurt and rejected, sexually frustrated, and now i couldn't even bring up something that deeply bothered me without him saying "thank god!" when i said, "fine, i'll just shut up, then." he was refusing to talk to me about things and i knew it, yet i knew he could talk to his best friend about them. it wouldn't be so difficult to stomach if his best friend wasn't a woman.

that one fight is still sitting in my gut, actually, unresolved. and there are several tangent issues clinging onto it that squeeze my solar plexus and make it hard to breathe. i still don't know how to talk to him, how to bring these things up without starting something else. yes, we made up later that night, but we didn't solve anything.

so i'm reading this book with those things in mind, and every time dr. eggerich talks about those interactions between men and women that inevitably turn into fights, i have our own fight in mind. sure enough, the miscommunications, misinterpretations, assumptions, and reactions he mentions are exactly what happened with us.

so last night, on chat msgr with *m*, i tried a different tactic. personally, i'm a lay-it-on-the-table kind of girl. all my cards, boom, right there. i do not mince words. i do not beat around the bush. i say it like it is, and i mean what i say. being blunt just saves time, and i am nothing if not pragmatic. i like efficiency. but this new thing i tried came straight from the book and goes against my grain entirely. it's like nails on a chalkboard to me, and i've never found any reason to respect this new thing. in fact, i look down on people who are like this, and i lose patience when they try to treat me this way. i'm a strong, big girl, godsdammit, and i can take it. give it to me straight, fucktard.

but...i love *m*, and i'll try anything if it'll help that love grow. we shouldn't be having these sorts of problems this soon into the relationship.

it worked. i think he was a little surprised, actually. he was more open to what i had to say, and immediately began giving me more of what i've been needing lately. just like that.

as soon as i stopped fighting the fact that i've lost my Funk and just let myself be depressed and insane, half of my struggle and pain disappeared. i was then able to ask for what i needed from *m*, and there was a small lessening in the half that remained. "think of the adventure," he said before going to bed. for only knowing me a short time, he sure knows the perfect thing to say sometimes.

so, mr. brezsny, i think i'll take advice piece No. 4: "you are either losing your mind - or gaining your soul."