Are you ready for a little dose of honesty?
I am sending this out with hopes to open the lines of communication or, better yet, I am offering this as a means to humanize the fact that, yes, it’s okay to not be okay. Above all things, I want to normalize the fact that sometimes, we fall apart.
So, as a means to offer this in a more humble and vulnerable tone, please understand that I expose the following knowing that this puts me in a humble light. But this also makes me human.
And to err is human. And so is to freak out, or “lose your shit!” so they say.
It’s a normal thing.
By the way, as for the falling apart thing, I have another favorite line which goes “it’s okay to fall apart sometimes. Tacos fall apart all the time and we still love them!”
So, fall apart if you need to,
but if and when you do, please read on and see if you can relate.
Like the good old Dr. (AKA Dr. D) from a place I knew as Veritas Villa used to say . . .
If it don’t apply, let it fly.
So –
I was thinking about the reality of two simple words.
Calm down.
I love those words. “Just calm down,” said everyone to at least someone, at least once.
Everyone has found themselves in some kind of panic or some kind of anxiety attack and, of course, without fail, some genius or some brilliant asshole comes up with the simple and magical suggestion to just, “calm down.”
Yes, I think this is brilliant.
Of course!
As in “eureka!”
I should just calm down.
It’s that simple, right?
What a great idea.
Now, why didn’t I think of that?
All this time, I was going through a painful surge of emotions that refused to stop. My heart was beating. My chest was tight. And this is me on some occasions.
What about when the resentments take hold?
What about the times when we start to relive old conversations and rehearse what we’ll say next time?
What about the flood of emotions and the rush of outrage and adrenaline that comes over us when we think about how someone has wronged us or hurt and betrayed us?
What about the unresolved issues or the unsettled disputes in our head?
What about the elephant in the room?
No one talks about this, yet we all know its there.
What about the tension when it becomes thick enough to be cut with a knife?
What about the time when we start to overthink and practice our speech and then we rehearse what we plan to say? What about the emotional exhaustion that comes after because the wheels in our mind have been turning and turning, and then what?
Calm down?
Is that the answer?
Of course it is!
Calm down . . .
What a great idea.
I still can’t believe that I didn’t think of this myself.
Sheesh!
I am sitting now, of course, and as I write this entry, I am thinking about the close of summer, which is about to come to an end, and soon, the air will cool, and the leaves will change.
I am thinking about the change of seasons and the upcoming birthday of mine, which is soon, and which is also a number that I never assumed would be “me” or possible.
52 years around the sun.
Who’d have thought?
In fairness, I suppose I never assumed that I would ever “grow up,” as they say.
I never assumed that I would have a bad back or that my knees would hurt the way they do.
I never assumed I would have hearing loss. I never thought I would have gray hair, especially in my beard, and I never thought that I would hear my bones make the noises they do when I stand in the morning and get out of bed.
Sometimes, I make a sound. I grunt
and the sound is like that of an old man, in pain, but hey, this is part of life too, right?
I never assumed I would make it this far. At the same time, I have so much more to do and more to say. I find myself, often alone, and thinking about the randomness of various things, such as the concepts of what it means to make a good soup, or how simple it is to have a pair of slip-on shoes.
Like my friend Kevin once told me, I’m reaching the age where I can see the justice in Velcro shoes with an orthopedic support.
I find myself thinking about the bouts from my past and how they have lingered all too long. And, of course, I think about faults of thinking which allowed the unresolved past and the unsettled resentments to live long and prosper in my imagination.
I think about the thought-based tensions and the daily stressors and the self-induced panics which come from overthinking and over-rehearsing and preparing for an assumed tragedy or the projected wars which never needed to happen, or never existed in the first place.
I think about the assumptions and biases which kept me separated from things like a good friendship or a good relationship with love. I think about the people I have been with and how I could have been perfect for someone; however, in my fears and assumptions of the worst, and while clinging to symptoms from my past or due to the cause and correlation of historic events, somehow, I, or the person that I am, or me, in total—that somehow, I am defective in a way, or that I am imperfect or FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) and while locked in the toxic vacuum of thought, I often forget to allow myself the room to breathe.
I neglect to allow myself to heal, or more than anything, I forget that it’s okay to forgive myself.
It’s okay not to be okay and it’s okay to allow myself the chance to move on, overcome, adapt, change, and improve.
This doesn’t mean I will have a fan club. This doesn’t mean people will help me or forgive me. And this doesn’t make peace with my enemies, but at least I can learn to make peace with myself.
Here is something that has happened all too often.
I have allowed myself to give in to the rhetoric of others. I have allowed myself to voluntarily become a victim to the predictions against me. Hence, I have allowed myself to be the monster, or the loser, or the waste of space that my unfavorable predictors assumed I would be.
No one can say anything worse about me than I have said about myself. Then again, no one can redeem me either. No one can judge me or damned me to hell nor can anyone else redeem me—except for me, that is.
But when?
When, son?
When are you going to step out from behind those limitations?
I have this idea for me. I’ve had this for years only I’ve never followed through with it.
I want to board a train out of Pennsylvania Station, New York City, and head across the country to San Francisco. I have never been there.
The fall would be a great time of year to make this trip.
I could leave my phone behind.
I could disconnect or disappear for a while.
I want to bring my laptop and write down my thoughts and portray what I see.
I think this would be the most freeing idea and perhaps this might be the feeling that I could have.
I can’t take the trip right now.
But for now, I can allow myself the thought and breathe
or calm down, if at all possible.
I hold this in my pocket for when I need to hit the “oh shit!” button.
As I mentioned to you before, this is not a desperate post or a moment of despair or anguish.
No, I call this an honest inventory.
I say that everyone has a time when they’re in a bad way.
No one tells anyone the truth about life.
We all say things like, “just don’t think like that,” as if it were that easy.
Maybe it is (for some people).
However, I am realist. I am skeptical but not cynical.
I understand when the mind goes haywire.
I understand the reasons why my eyes roll when I hear people say, “just calm down.”
I spoke in a rehabilitation facility recently.
I mentioned some of these struggles, both openly and honestly.
It was nice to see the nodding of heads because, for some reason, no one speaks freely about this.
And it’s not so bad that I say this. It’s not so bad that we have stress or anxiety.
Do you know what is bad?
When people are afraid to be open or talk about how they feel.
This can be poisonous –
Or deadly.
I used to answer phone calls at a suicide hotline.
I always related to what was being said.
I also offered my “story.”
It’s not dying so much. It’s the need to be free or away from what’s happening.
It’s the desire for the world to stop, just for a minute.
But nothing stops.
This is a hard thing when you can’t get your bearings or find peace, or some way to calm down.
I think about that poem I love from Jim Carroll.
“Little kids shoot marbles
where the branches break the sun
into graceful shafts of light . . .
I just want to be pure.”
Me too, Jim.
Thank you for this.
I’m sure you never knew how many people this would reach or lives you saved.
Dear Mathias,
Thank you.
I wish you knew and were here to see what I have done
because of you . . .
B—
The Written Addiction 