Gone In Sixty Seconds

       There’s this fear I have. It’s one of those ridiculously unreal fears, the kind that are completely irrational; like the adult equivalent of the Boogie Man. Unlike, say a fear of flying, where the possibility of death may be very remote but statistically possible, my phobia is not based on anything except some deep seeded dysfunctional neural programming.
       I work hard at keeping myself fit. Lots of sacrifice and discipline involved. Hours of exercise. Constant vigilance regarding diet and nutrition. In other words, it doesn’t happen overnight. Yet my fear is that, if I miss just a few days, or if I’m not constantly on top of it, one morning, I am going to wake up, and, literally, it’s all gonna be gone. Overnight, my body will have morphed into something soft and unhealthy and unrecognizable.
       Now, I’m aware of the reality that, if I had an accident, in one moment, my body could be permanently transformed. I’m not talking about that kind of fear. I’m not talking about the fear of having something instantaneous and horrific happen to me so that I would be mutilated or paralyzed. I’m talking about the kind of completely impossible notion that I’m going to have a lapse of proper eating or of working out, and, all of sudden, I’m going to look like Fred Flintstone because of it.
       My rational brain knows this is not remotely possible. But this fear does not reside in my rational brain. It resides in that part of me that has been traumatized and not completely let go of the trauma. We all have areas in ourselves like that. Some of us, more so than others, and more intensely. But we’ve all got that shit floating around within.
       Because I’ve gone inside and gotten to know myself better, even the parts that are sort of fucked up, less than stellar, flawed, and completely insane, I know what this particular fear says about me, and I know where it comes from. I know that this kind of fear points to something bigger and deeper. They always do. That’s the nature of really bizarre fears like this. They’re signposts to parts of ourselves that are still holding onto trauma and pain and constantly reliving it. It’s where these certain parts of ourselves hang out. The question becomes how often do we hang out there with them. And what do we do about that when we do, because spending too much time there can really interfere with our lives.
       This particular fear of mine has to do with a kind of emotional volatility that I grew up with, and with abandonment; shit that I experienced as a kid, in enough doses and/or with enough intensity, that they left marks. They left scars. As I’ve said, we all have scars. Both inside and out. But do I let my scars define me? If, for example, I had a big scar on my body, would I let it define my physical appearance? Would I experience myself as a scar with a body around it, or would I experience myself as a body with a scar on it?
       It’s the same thing with internal scars. There are times when I over-identify with those scars. When I do, I’m coming from fear. I’m coming from inadequacy. I’m coming from pain. From a place where I’m not operating on all cylinders. How quickly do I catch myself when I’m there, and how do I get out of it? Sometimes I’m very good at that. Sometimes I'm not.
       Support networks are very important. If we have people in our lives who know these dark places in us, we can look to them to help dig us out of those trenches. One of the worst aspects of being in a place like that is the loneliness and isolation we feel. We feel like, not only are we the only fucked up person on the planet, but that we are the most fucked up person on the planet. At least that’s where I go when it’s really bad. And let me tell you, it's a shitty place to be.
       But I have people in my life I can turn to when I’m there. But I don’t always do that. I don’t always reach out. Sometimes I keep it all inside, mind fuck it to death, and make it worse. Why the fuck would I do something like that? Part of it is shame. I’ve attached a lot of shame to feeling like that, so the last thing I want to do is cop to it, even to somebody I love, somebody who I know isn’t going to judge me. I have to be on top of that. Keeping all that shit inside is an old habit, and a bad one.
       Writing about it, and posting it for anybody on the planet to see, really helps me though. It doesn’t feel so bad, or so heavy, when I share it. Posting is one way I share. Talking to people close to me is another way. I encourage you to find your ways. There’s a saying that goes “Your mind can be like a bad neighborhood. Don’t go there alone.”.
       Right On.


©2015 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved. 

Love Me Through Glass

        Placed in an incubator just moments after I was born, I got comfortable being looked at through glass. I got comfortable being loved through an invisible wall.
        From the first seconds of life, I learned how to love and be loved using walls. These walls were a fact of life for me from the very beginning. The barriers were in fact physical before they were metaphysical. I didn’t have to learn how to put them up. They were already there. It’s all I knew, right from the start.
        Because a person, especially a new born, needs love to live, I had to detect the love coming through the glass, or else I’d perish. So I immediately developed the ability to feel love and affection and connection right through the wall. And right after I developed this ability, because I was in there for three weeks, I got used to it. I got comfortable with experiencing love through a wall. So that’s how I did it.
        I’m still most comfortable being loved from afar. Being adored through some sort of wall. But now it’s a wall of my own creation. Or at least it has been. That’s all changing now. But it’s a work in process.
        I’ve noticed that what’s easiest for me is to be aware that someone is looking at me, maybe even talking about me, and letting it go at that. Being noticed and smiled at from across the room is a great feeling. It is most often an invitation to at least say hello, and maybe strike up a conversation. But I notice my reluctance to do so, and it makes sense. Because as long as all you can do is look at me, adore me from afar as it were, I’m comfortable. I’m safe. You don’t know me yet, so I’m still okay. I get to bask in the knowledge that you find me somewhat attractive, and that you’re curious about me. And all too often, that’s enough for me. Because after that, it starts to get unsafe. After that, a little of the wall has to come down so that we can talk. And that, believe it or not, can be very scary for me.
        In an intimate relationship, the wall is still there. It’s a lot thinner, and the glass is spotless and pretty transparent. But it’s a still a wall. Because I still feel the need to keep myself safe. I can’t let you all the way in. I never have. Even right after I was born.
        This is not a unique trait. In fact, it’s all too common. Now that I’m acutely aware of it, I see it everywhere. Not only in myself, but in others. But that’s the way it always is. Only when you become finely attuned to your own experience, your own pain, your own struggle, can you so deftly pick it up in your relationships with others. That’s one reason I believe that some of the best sports coaches were not necessarily the best players. They constantly experienced the struggle of their limitations, and therefore the pain of their professional existence, much more than their super-star counterparts. Therefore, when it comes time to coach, they are able to more readily relate to the struggles of the average player, who make the majority of the team. You can learn to massage egos, and stroke the bellies of the stand outs, a lot easier than you can learn to relate to the painful experience of the common reality.
        When I was released from the incubator chamber, the physical glass walls were soon replaced by emotional ones, but they still weren’t mine. I developed my own from mirroring what I saw, and instinctively knowing that I already knew how to construct them in order to protect myself. So I did. And I got better at it the older I got.
        I’ve chosen to unlearn this way of doing the love dance, a way that I was taught since my very first moments of life. I’m grateful that I’ve become so aware of this and that I’ve chosen to work at doing it differently. My walls are coming down now. With so many of us, the walls get bigger and thicker and stronger as we get older. We can become more closed off as we age, we therefore age quicker, and it makes the aging process far more difficult. Even cruel. I’m going the other way. I feel younger than I have since I was a teenager.
        Like an addict who hit his bottom, I started the slide after my dad died, and I hit the ground with a life shaking thud. After bouncing around on the bottom for a while, I realized that I was in love with a woman who just left me. And that’s when I started to climb out. After I finally faced myself and could not run from the pain anymore. That’s usually how it happens. We come up against ourselves after a trauma, like a death or a divorce or an accident or a series of heart breaking losses, and we start living. Or we start dying.
        But as I’ve said, it’s a work in process. If I were standing, half naked, on stage in a room with thousands of people all staring at me, I would be more comfortable than I would be if I had to approach one of those people and talk to them. Even if I knew that they were liking what they saw. I can often overcome the fear of approaching someone and striking up a conversation, and I’m a lot more at ease with myself than I used to be, but what I notice is that the fear is still there. The fear of not having a wall of glass through which to connect. A wall that’s been there since I was born. A wall that’s coming down.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and The Wall by Pink Floyd of Wrongs) Reserved.

Cleaning Up After A Filthy Combination

Note: To fully mine whatever you may from this post, please first read yesterday’s piece “A Filthy Combination”. This is part two.

         When I came clean with my girlfriend, I felt anything but. Admitting that I got triggered by her comment about being checked out by a group of guys didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel worse. After I opened my mouth about it, there was no catharsis. There was shame. More of the shit that I didn’t want. I immediately got exactly what I feared. By telling her I was in this place, I headed even deeper into that very dark alley.
        This had nothing to do with her. She just listened. But there was something about saying the words aloud. By speaking up, as opposed to having a conversation within the confines of my mind, it made my emotional predicament more real. Which means it made it more scary. It was out there now. It was no longer a secret.
        There’s a saying that goes “We’re only as sick as our secrets”. But at that moment, keeping this a secret felt like a life preserver that I had just given away while I was drowning. Exposing this felt like nothing more than a new anchor tied to my ankle. And this one was going to sink me.
        This is all because of the insane amount of very toxic shame that I had attached to feeling this way. Not only that night, but throughout the course of my life, I learned to be ashamed of how I felt. Ashamed of what I thought. Years and years of that will corrupt you at the deepest inconceivable level. Shame infests your very cells, and then poisons your being on a sub-atomic scale. It’s not just in your body. It’s not just in your cells. It’s not just in the atoms that make up those cells. It’s the fuckin’ raw material that the atoms are made of: the protons, neutrons, and electrons. When it’s that deep, it feels like I AM shame. The very stuff that I am made of is shame itself. There is not a lower feeling on the planet.
        I admitted to her that, after she said that she was being stared at, I felt completely worthless. When she uttered the words, “Did you see the looks I got when I walked by those guys?”, I left the present, and traveled back in time. Who’s says there’s no such thing as time travel? We do it all the time. We experience something in the now and immediately link it to painful memories that we haven’t yet released. We emotionally and mentally travel to different points in time where similar events happened, where the consequences were excruciating. We forget who we are now, who the people we are with are, where we are, and the particular circumstances of the current moment. It is exactly as if we just jumped into the way-back machine and went to another moment in time.
        When we travel back in time, we change. Therefore our perception changes. Therefore our very reality changes. And it all happens in an instant, often before we even realize it. We’re suddenly there, and we don’t even know we ever left. Because magically everything looks the same. Feels the same. Is the same. Even though none of that is true, it’s true to the person we’ve suddenly become. Because they’re still trapped in the past. And now so are we.
        There have been enough times in my life where the woman that I was with, and in love with, enjoyed the attention of other men to the point where she emotionally and mentally left me, even though physically, she was still right there. No longer with me, she basically abandoned me. Ever perceptive, I could tell when a woman did this, but I could never articulate it. If I did, rarely was the woman self-aware enough to deal with it, so instead, it became an argument over me making up stuff that wasn’t happening.
        There were plenty of times, however, when my judgement was off and all I was doing was acting out my own insecurities. But I could almost always make the distinction between when I was acting out and when I was sensing something she was doing that really hurt me. Maybe not always right then and there, but always after some introspection. The problem was that I usually couldn’t do anything about it, because I didn’t have the tools to take that distinction and act on it. But I usually knew when I was bullshitting myself, and when I was being bullshitted. Acting on that takes courage, openness, and lots of self trust. And those three internal commodities were in much shorter supply when I was younger. Especially openness and self trust.
        When I knew that a woman emotionally and mentally left me, I suffered abandonment, my worst nightmare. Once I went there, all bets were off. I suffered the worst feelings of worthlessness that I’ve ever been conscious of. The trauma of those moments, that go all the way back to my core wound of abandonment, all the way back to birth, was a pain that I kept re-living, and therefore reinforcing. It just got heavier and heavier. But this was the first time I was able to articulate this to the woman I was in love with. I told her where I went and what happened to me when she said what she said. I traveled back in time, and felt like she left me at that moment. And I was devastated. Even though that wasn’t her. Even though she wasn’t like that. It felt the same, because I couldn’t stop myself from time traveling.
        For the first time, the genie was out of the bottle, and it was a huge fuckin’ genie. He overpowered me. He overpowered both of us. The pain around this was so big that we couldn’t deal with it right away. Neither of us really understood what we were dealing with. I felt shame, and she felt horrible for hurting me. I didn’t mean to, but I was partially dumping years of abandonment on her within the course of a few minutes, and there was no way she could carry it all. It wasn’t even hers. But she wanted to help. She wanted to understand. But the weight was too big, even for the both of us to carry. So all it did was crush us that night and the next morning. For about twenty-four hours or so, this was between us, and neither of us could figure out what to do with it. A house call relationship therapist on speed dial would have been extremely helpful.
        But, with some time and lots of talk, we started sorting it out. I became aware that she was not the type of person who would just suddenly take off on me. She wasn’t going to bolt on me emotionally and mentally if she got attention from other men. She was just going to feel flattered by it. I was projecting others’ behavior onto her. I got that. She reassured me that she wasn’t like that, and I could feel her sincerity and her caring. Once all that sunk in, I started to heal, and it felt safe to bring this up to her if it ever happened again. I was grateful that I was with a woman who I could say this to, in the moment it was happening, and she would walk me through it, holding my hand, instead of mentally and emotionally taking off on me. That had never happened before. For either of us.

Please come back tomorrow for part three. Same bat time. Same bat
channel...


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and enough Wrongs to cause a warp in the space-time continuum and thus enable time travel) Reserved. 

A Filthy Combination

        About five years ago, my girlfriend came to one of my gigs with a few of her friends. During one of my band breaks, we were standing near the bar talking when my girlfriend walked over to another table to get something. A group of guys stood between her and the table, and when she walked by them, they all checked her out. Rather thoroughly. When she came back, she mentioned that she was aware that the guys were gawking at her. She was smiling as she said this, and why not? It’s nice to be noticed, and she was noticed.
        I smiled too, because she was going home with me, and let’s face it, virtually every man likes it when other men think their babe is hot. Even men who are pretty evolved will admit, if they dig deep enough, that it’s flattering if other men desire the woman you’re with. Some of it has to do with hundreds of thousands of years of evolution still stuck in our DNA. The alpha male got his pick of the women, and that was a bragging right of the highest order.
        This dynamic can also lead to trouble, as we all know. More than a few fights have broken out precluded by the line “Are you checkin’ out my girlfriend?”, especially when alcohol is involved. Throw in some inappropriate male behavior, some jealousy, and a woman who likes stirring up the testosterone pot, and you have the makings of all out mayhem.
        This was not one of those nights. But something big got triggered in me. Immediately after my girlfriend made the comment “Did you see the looks I got when I walked by those guys?” with a smile on her face, I took off. Not physically, but emotionally and mentally. Instantly, without a thought to act as a torpedo, my heart sank. I didn’t know why at the time, but I knew the feeling. My throat and my heart took a header into the middle of my stomach. My voice, and my love for this woman, suddenly got buried beneath years of internal emotional garbage that I was still holding onto. Spread throughout my metaphysical body, this amalgamation of old pain instantly collected itself into one massive heap and dropped itself right into the center of my being. Chicken Little was right. The sky had fallen.
        For the rest of the night, I was off my game, and my playing suffered. Nobody else noticed, and the band sounded great, but I knew I was off.
        Instead of taking a personal time out when I felt my heart plummet, I just acted like nothing was wrong. I pretended that I wasn’t suffering a sudden attack of heartache that I couldn’t explain. To be honest, I was ashamed of myself. I was the drummer in this band that was kicking ass in front of a large, rowdy crowd. I was going home with the best looking woman in the room, I loved her, and I knew she loved me. I looked pretty good myself, was getting more than my share of looks from females, and my playing was solid and fluid and fun. I should feel like the king of the world. Or at least the king of the room. Certainly in contention for the role of alpha male, at least in this narrow context.
        But all I felt was pain. Heartache. Anxiety. Confusion. Anger. Shame. What the fuck?
        For the rest of the night, these emotions got stirred and heated inside of me like a simmering stew while I just soldiered on. If I was crumbling on the outside, though, nobody, repeat nobody, was going to know about it. Here was a skill that I had gotten very good at. Looking peachy on the outside while I was rotting away on the inside, like a piece of fruit that looks great until you bite into it and all the brown, mushy crap comes dripping out of it. Well nobody was going to bite into me that night. Not even the woman I loved. In fact, especially not the woman I loved.
        In my temporarily distorted frame of mind, she was the one who had injected the flesh eating bacteria into me in the first place. But on a deeper level, I was aware that this had nothing to do with her; I knew that this was my stuff. Yet I was in so much pain that I could justify being mad at her. I know now that, at that point in my life, I needed that anger to keep my wall up. Without the anger to energize this emotional electric fence I had put around myself, I would have broken down and cried like a baby in the bathroom behind closed doors. And damn it that wasn’t going to happen.
        By the time I got back to her place after the gig, I was a mess. She had come separately, so I drove just myself and my equipment back to the cape. In my car, I started to cry, and I had no friggin’ idea why. When I arrived at her home, she was on the couch, waiting for me, looking as inviting as a woman possibly could. Wrapped under a blanket with her blond hair pulled back in a pony tail, wearing her usual sleeping attire: skimpy cotton boy shorts and snug workout tank top that stopped just under her breasts, exposing her trim midriff. She looked good enough to eat, but I wasn’t hungry. I was hurt. And I was behind my wall.
        So when she asked me what was wrong, I said the only thing I could, which was, “Nothing. I’m just tired.” Eventually, though, I knew I had to tell her, because I wanted to. I wanted to feel better. But I didn’t even know what was wrong. And I was completely ashamed that I even felt this way.
        The filthy combination of shame and fear is like a horrible long, dark alley infested with vermin. You can’t see anything, and you’re getting attacked by these toxic thoughts. The only way out is to start walking through the alley; that is, own where you’re at and starting talking about it. But if you’re ashamed you’re even there, you’d rather hide out in that alley than move through it and therefore expose yourself. Because then, somebody else will know what a shit-head I am for being in this fuckin’ alley in the first place. At least right now, I’m the only one who knows I’m here. So all the judgement and hatred is coming from me. The last thing I need is to pile somebody else’s judgement and hatred of me on top of that. That’s not a solution. That’s just another problem.
        That’s really how I thought then. Opening up was so difficult for me because I was so sure that whoever saw this would be horrified and bolt on me, triggering the mother-load of all fears: Abandonment. As horrible as the current pain inside me was, I knew that it was nothing compared to the ten million needles of viscous, toxic, agony and shame that would befall me should I ever be abandoned. I was choosing the lesser of two evils. But as a wise friend has repeatedly quoted: “Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.” But I didn’t know of any other way. To me, it was a lose-lose scenario no matter how I sliced it. I really didn’t know I could do it differently. I didn’t know that I had the key in my hand the whole time and could have begun the process of healing by just opening the jail and walking out. Or if I did know, I was just too scared shitless to do it.
        Tune in tomorrow for part two, where I spill my guts to my girlfriend, take a plunge into the emotional unknown, and pass along what I discovered.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a long, dark, nasty alley full of Wrongs) Reserved.

Concentration: Camp (part 3)

        I wrote the piece below last year, when I was in a VERY dark place. I present it here for two main reasons. First, it demonstrates how far I’ve come in a year. I remember how I felt writing it, two days after my birthday: absolutely awful. Depressed. Withdrawn. Isolated. Alone. Hopeless. And I pretty much felt that way most of the time, with interludes of joy and levity.
         I spend so much less time there these days. That’s real progress.
         Second, it tells a truthful tale of trauma and tears that I have spent lots of time recovering from. I still struggle with some of the issues that my camp experience created today, but it was my life as a child. This reminds me that I’m a much happier adult than I ever was as a kid. My happiness trajectory is therefore going in the right direction. I’m optimistic that, as long as I continue to work on myself and remain committed to growth and change, I’ll just keep getting healthier and happier as I age. How many people truly feel that way?
         I’m blessed. And there is much I have to be thankful for. Which is much different than how I felt a year ago.


Tuesday, February 19, 2008

         Camp was a month long nightmare that I never really woke up from. I lost whatever enthusiasm I had left for life at camp. To a 10, 11, 12 year old boy, the prospect of experiencing the full agony of a month in hell was unbearable. So I shut down. I knew how to shut down before, because it was how I defended my young self against trauma. But I became a chronic professional at camp.
         What did I learn from camp?
          I learned that to have hope is just a way to exponentially increase pain and disappointment. I learned that I must be defective, that there must be something horribly wrong with me. Everybody at camp thinks it’s great, except me. I must be really fucked up. I learned that the beautiful experience of relief is not only short lived, but merely guarantees a bigger crash when it’s over. I learned that bringing problems to adults for help is not only a waste of time, but makes you feel worse in the end. I learned that asking for help, period, makes things worse, not better. I learned that everything is my fault. I learned that the world is a hostile place that doesn’t like me. In fact, it hates me. I learned that when you trust the people who are supposed to look out for you and care for you and protect you, you get royally screwed. I learned that those people responsible for my well being will lie to me, over and over again. I learned that I am absolutely, completely, unquestionably alone in this world. I learned how to be miserable. I learned despair and hopelessness and anguish. All by age 10, reinforced at ages 11 and 12.
         I learned that to get too excited about something was a sure fire way to have your heart shattered so violently that you may never find all of the pieces again. I learned that to want something more than anything else in the world and to believe that you could have it was nothing but a lie. That to want and to believe only lead to horrible pain and intolerable suffering. I learned that I have no control over my life; no control over how I feel or of what happens to me; no control over myself or my circumstances or my happiness. I learned that my emotions are at the mercy of some mysterious, unknown, random, internal process that guides my thoughts haphazardly and therefore runs my heart and my spirit roughshod along with it. I learned that I couldn’t do what I really wanted to do, that I couldn’t get what I really wanted, and that I couldn’t get what I really needed.
         I learned chronic depression and chronic anxiety and chronic fear and chronic ache that is always with me, even today, even in my moments of great joy. I learned that getting excited and wanting something very badly was indescribably dangerous and ultimately horribly painful. I learned how to live in a cage, in a prison; how to survive but never thrive. I learned how to become strangely and perversely comfortable functioning at this soul numbing flat line equilibrium. I learned to live in a constant fantasy world in order to escape the unrelenting horrible pain of reality. I learned that anything was better than the real thing. I learned how to completely avoid the present and live in the perceptibly less painful past or the can’t possibly be as painful future. I learned how to hate myself and how to hate my life.
         Thanx camp.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a very grateful amount of Wrongs) Reserved.