Perhaps you’ve noticed that I don’t update much of late. Or perhaps not. That’s what happens when you don’t update often enough- people stop checking in on you, your name falls off of blog rolls. It’s the nature of the false connectedness of the internet, sure. But it’s exactly the nature of the depressive brain. Seriously. That’s how the depressive brain disconnects slowly from everything around it, and ultimately (unfortunately) from the very soul and body of the person it rides around inside. It’s a slow form of self-annihilation. A far more insidious kind than simply kissing a train. There is no time to reflect back when you’re about to kiss the train. No time to miss what you still might have, no time to wallow in what you have the power, just not the inclination, to correct.
But this isn’t yet another article about my depression. And although it might read as an excuse to some, I don’t mean it to be.
Warning: more talking to follow.
A bit ago, I began a timid course of EMDR (Eye Movement De-sensitivation and Reprocessing) against my better judgment. Nothing else is really helping, what the hell? I was skeptical, and I had good cause to be, for most of the research you can find about EMDR alternately holds it to be a sham or the BEST THING EVER ™. The truth is, it’s somewhere in the middle. And the middle is a huge place to be.
I am changing. It’s changing me. It’s changing my brain. Even as I realize that I barely know myself, I am beginning to kind of care about myself. Crazy!
Have you ever known the person that undergoes recovery efforts and comes out a Buddhist at the end? They’re practically a cliche. I always wondered if there was some indoctrination going on somewhere that makes them all do that. Some kind of weird Buddhist Proselytizing undercurrent running through whatever therapeutic approach they were all getting. Turns out that it just happens. Not that I am or will ever identify as Buddhist, recovery necessitates integrating behaviors that really, if I were to talk about them here, would sound *exactly* like trying to sell religion to you. On that front, I am not biting at the conversion hook, but I get it now. Mystery solved.
I understand more about myself, what makes me turn on and off. The patterns that I never thought I had control over turn out to be nearly avoidable. Except one big one: The writing. The writing as self talk, as a way to interact with my own thoughts. As a conversation between myself/selves.
This is what I am working on now: making that conversation less of a closed-circle, less of a selfish act and more of a ‘work’. So yes, I am paying someone to help me turn my writing into something I can work at instead of something that I just seem to do to alternately soothe and punish myself. I wonder how many poets never get that corrected? I’ve known many, such as myself, who go for years with their words as combination OD/Warm blanket.
I’ve been writing since age 5 or 6. Secreting wads of paper, note cards, journals, sheets of paper between my brain and the outside world. It turned into just as much of a defensive mechanism as overeating and drug abuse. It’s a pretty superior one too- very portable, legal, and occasionally, someone gives you praise for it. Imagine being asked to come shoot up in front of people at a bookstore. On the one hand, it’s ludicrous (probably) for many to hear me talk about it this way. But I assure you, it’s been real. Real full of meteoric highs and lows with no sense of self-possession about it. Let me repeat that: I have been largely absent in all of my writing for nearly all of my life.
Writing was just something I did to keep safe. To create either a better place to be, or a better more understandable way to understand were I was. It wasn’t art. It wasn’t something that I had a talent at. The urge to write was just something that washed over me, much like a wave of sadness or a panic attack. When it was on, it was turned to 15. Inescapable. Undeniable. Pray to god you have someone to remind you to eat once every 8 hours or so. Conversely, when it was absent, it was like the sun had burnt out. An endless trudge through the mud in the dark with no real destination. Pointless. Equally inescapable. You might as well open a vein.
I’d feel worse about it if I couldn’t also acknowledge the fact that I wasn’t ever encouraged or trained until things had already gotten pathological. Consequently, I couldn’t really hear praise or criticism in any kind of meaningful useful way either.
But I know I am now 35 and am just now sorting this out. Changing the way I perceive it and hold it in my head. In order to take it seriously. In order to own it. Improve it. Get better at it. Enjoy it. Share it.
Wish me luck!
