Pulling Out

       I’ve had writers block for almost a week. It feels as though there’s nothing inside of me that I want to say. But when I go in deeper, that isn’t it at all. It isn’t that there’s nothing inside. I don’t have a block. I have my finger in a levee that I’m afraid to pull out.
        Well I’m pulling out. Now.
        I still love my ex-girlfriend. I still love Principessa.
        I rhetorically ask myself why the hell would I ever admit that. Why can’t I just know it and shut up? Better yet, why can’t I just deny it? I’ve done that before.
        Then I remind myself that my most valuable gift is my self. My self is rooted in my truth. Once I get to that truth, I can either accept it or deny it. I can either embrace it or fight it. I’m choosing to embrace it. I’ve tried life the other way. It didn’t make me very happy. And it took up most of my energy.
        And I remind myself that I want this website to be about sharing my self, my truth, with whoever wants to see, hear, and know me. If I start editing that, I’m not being true to myself or to my vision.
        That sometimes means owning, and writing about, things that are very uncomfortable. Like this.
        The last time I was here, I was about eighteen years old. I spent the next twenty-five years making sure that my heart didn’t get broken again. And the last time I loved somebody I wasn’t with, I was incredibly depressed. My life stopped.
        But this time my life hasn’t stopped. It’s full steam ahead.
        I feel somewhat psychotic. I’m not used to feeling this much. I’m not used to experiencing extreme sadness but not being depressed. I’m not used to crying about not being with the woman I love in the morning and then feeling good enough to go out and flirt with women that night. One night I feel like a rock star. The next like a hopeless romantic.
        In two recent YouTube videos, Salem Night Fever and Clint Carnival, I'm getting lots of attention from, and giving lots of attention to, women. I ask “How can I feel that happy and attractive and special in those moments and then the next night cry my eyes out?”.
        Because I’m finally big enough to hold it all at once. Because I’m open. Like a container that grows along with whatever is put in it. Instead of being of a finite size that eventually doesn’t have any more room, I grow and I expand. Sometimes, like right now, quite painfully. And as my self expands, my feelings, my thoughts, my creativity, my life, expands with me.
        I don’t look at my life as an either/or, polarized dichotomy anymore. I’m big enough to hold the joy, and the sadness. The pleasure, and the pain. The love, and the not love. What is. And what is not.

©2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and wrongs) Reserved.