Principessa

       Columbus Day weekend. The quintessential fall getaway here in New England. Last year, I went to western Massachusetts to see the foliage. I went with...well, I shouldn’t use her real name. I could refer to her as “The Woman who changed my life”, as I have elsewhere on this website. But that moniker would get cumbersome after a while.  
       I used to call her “principessa”, which is Italian for “princess”. She actually turned me onto the word. She had gone to Italy when she was in college and picked it up there. I loved how the word sounded, and it fit her. She didn’t act like a princess. But she looked like one. Beautiful, with a casual elegance, and an earthy yet chic fashion sense that a modern princess might possess (not ever having met a “real” princess, I can only speculate on this). Think Princess Caroline of Monaco meets artsy, hip, urban yoga instructor .
       Whenever the word principessa left my lips, it vaporized like a mist, and made it’s way towards her. The mist then embraced her, like an aura, and she would wear that glow. That’s what I saw when I called her that.
       Sometimes she would say “I’m so not a princess”, wanting me to acknowledge that she wasn’t a prima donna. I knew that. What she didn’t know was how often I wanted to respond “You’re a princess to me”. But like so much of what I felt back then, those words got stuck in me and coagulated. Like I had swallowed a wad of glue. The toxic buildup of unexpressed emotions and words would just stay trapped inside and reek havoc. Trouble breathing. Trouble sleeping. Trouble being. I was choking on my own feelings.
       But that weekend was one of the best of my life. We drove out along scenic Route 2 and got lost. We always got lost when principessa had anything to do with directions. She was, by her own admission, “extremely directionally challenged”. The funniest part was that, when she gave directions, she always sounded like she knew what she was talking about. She would say “I’m sure we take a left here”, and there would be plenty of conviction behind it. So I would take the left, even after we had been together for a while, knowing that she was probably wrong. I wanted to believe, so I did. It was a rare case of a couple being in functional denial.
       I found this idiosyncrasy of hers absolutely fucking adorable. She knew that. I never got mad at her for not just saying “Look, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about here.” She would apply her false bravado not just to directions, but to virtually everything that she had no idea about. As if admitting she was clueless about something was a crime. That part of her fascinated and intrigued me, and I always wanted to know more about it and where it came from.
       Anyway, after we got back on leaf peeping track, we went hiking, walking, talking, and soaking in one of those beautiful, picturesque, "Norman Rockwell painting" type autumn days. We stopped at the Red Lion Inn, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where old Norm lived. We had a drink on the porch. Actually a few drinks. Probably shouldn’t have driven. That one’s on me.
       We stayed at a bed and breakfast owned by a couple of gay guys from New York city who quit the rat race and decided to open up a B&B in South Barrington, Massachusetts, another absolutely gorgeous little town. Talk about a culture shock. But they seemed like they were adjusting fine and they were great hosts.
       There’s something else about that weekend that I will never forget. Saturday night, I dropped principessa off at a restaurant and went to park the car. On the walk back to the restaurant, I encountered a handicapped woman walking, with a metal walker, towards her apartment. She moved very slowly, each step requiring gargantuan effort. It was going to take her fifteen minutes just to get from the street to the elevator inside. I asked her if she needed any help, and she just shook her head. I stood there for but a moment and looked at her. The words “There but for the grace of god go I” flashed inside my mind. As soon as I heard those words, I started walking again. Because I had started to cry, and I didn’t want anybody to see me crying.
       When I got to the restaurant, I couldn’t hide the tears from my principessa. She could tell I was upset. She held my hands from across the table and we talked about what I had just experienced. Her gentle gaze, soft touch, and caring ways always comforted me. Gratitude filled me from deep within as I sat there with this beautiful woman, in a beautiful town, at the end of a beautiful day. I felt guilty that I had it so good.
       I can’t say that when I’m in my shit, I always think of that moment and it shifts me. But I am thinking about that moment right now. And I’m grateful. Grateful that I feel so much these days. Because for so long I could not.
       But that weekend, I did feel. Contentment. Happiness. Joy. Sadness. Love.
       I miss principessa.

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

People & Powers. Guides & Ghosts. Sages & Spirits.

        Once I launched this website, and it became “real”, my mind shifted into overdrive and ran right over my heart. Now I’m back in my head more than I have been in months. I don’t like it. It’s like a bad neighborhood, my mind. I shouldn’t go there alone. And I should get in and out as quick as I can.
        When I drop out of my heart, I drop out of faith. I tumble into anxiety, pain, and worry. Then I fall some more. Into self judgement. Self criticism. If I don’t break my fall, I hit the bottom of the pit. Hard. Self Hate. I look up and see how far I’ve fallen, and I can’t see any light at the top. It’s all dark. The walls of the pit are as smooth as glass, so I can’t crawl out. It’s pitch black, and I’m alone with my thoughts.
        This is where I traditionally get and stay stuck. Can’t crawl out, can’t see out, and I’m mind fucking everything to death. I know that place well. You probably do too. Keeping it all inside is the default solution. Which is actually no solution.   
        If I ask for help, though, I don’t have to go through this alone. If I ask for faith, then I’m asking for a way out. So now, that’s what I do.
        I talk to people about where I’m at. Get some support. Choose the people who get me, who know me, who love me. But discussing this isn’t easy.
        Talking to people about how I feel deep down can be excruciating. Especially for a man. Even one, like myself, who has experienced a great opening. There’s a stigma attached to a guy sharing too much of what’s inside of him. In fact, there’s a stigma attached to a guy having too much inside of him. As if the the volume and the depth of a man’s feelings are inversely proportionate to his masculinity. I know that’s bullshit, but the river of that belief runs long and deep. Those waters carry a great deal of force. And they run right through that bad neighborhood. My mind.
        If I push through that, then I talk about how I feel. I write about how I feel. And now, as you know, I blog about how I feel. A few months ago, I never would have considered being that vulnerable. Even to those close to me. Never mind anybody on earth with access to the web. But doing all of that is what helps me move through the darkness and into the light. It’s what helps me deal and heal. It opens me up to the support that’s out there. I’m not accustomed to doing this. I’m used to more or less flying solo. Now it’s more like the Blue Angels. And it’s so much better.  
        At the same time, I ask for faith. And I get it.
        Then something amazing happens. I start to levitate out from the bottom of the pit. I’m not climbing out. I’m floating to the top. But I’m not providing the lift.
        It’s not a completely passive process though. Because I have to keep talking to people. I have to keep writing. I have to stay open. I have to actively cultivate the faith I’m asking for. I have to believe. All of which, for me at least, takes effort. So even though I’m not performing the miracle of levitation, I’m actively doing things to get better. To get out of the hole.
        Light starts to stream in from above, and it’s not so dark anymore. Sometimes I float all the way to the top and into the wide open spaces. When I’m in my heart, that’s where I get to. That’s where I hang. But sometimes I don’t make it all the way up. Because sometimes, at some point up out of the pit, I step out of faith. Not completely. It’s like I flirt with it, but don’t commit to a relationship. And that just doesn’t work.
        When that happens, I stop believing. I grab onto some crag on the side of the pit and try to muscle my way up the hole. It’s hard to do, and exhausting, and I usually don’t make it very far until I crap out and start falling again.
        Since I launched this site, I’ve been floating and falling and muscling and falling and floating again. Sometimes all in the same day. Sometimes all in the same hour.
        But those much wiser than myself tell me that this is normal. “It’s the same way with any new venture”, they tell me. So I listen. And I learn. And I work my way back into faith. And when I start to fall, like I know I will, I’m not alone. Not anymore. People and Powers. Guides and Ghosts. Sages and Spirits. They are all with me. I don’t have to do it all by myself. What a relief.

©2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and Wrongs) reserved

Maybe I'm Crazy

         Maybe you think I’m crazy for nakedly sharing how I feel on a website. Closer to the truth, maybe I think I’m crazy. Maybe I am. But there are worse things than being bonkers. Being asleep at the wheel, for one thing. Which is what I was for over a year and a half after my dad died.
         Those were My Dark Ages. Twenty months of sleep walking through life. Six-hundred days of not knowing who the hell I was or what the fuck I was doing. The “Who”, the “What”, and the “Why” of my life were questions that I grappled with long before my dad passed away. I was actively engaged in a quest. After he died, I went into depression. And although I was doing most of the same things I was doing while he was alive, I stopped involving myself in finding any answers. I was just going through the motions. I didn’t believe that I would ever find what I was looking for. In fact, I no longer knew what I was looking for. And I stopped believing that I would ever find any relief in the answers if I found them. So why bother searching? All of a sudden, absolutely nothing made sense. Nothing mattered.  
         Pundits speak of "The Big Three" changes that create maximum stress and trauma in one's life. Death. Moving. Divorce. In the span of nine months, I experienced the first two outright, a taste of the last, and a bludgeoning of a few other losses. My father was dead. I moved out of my home. My girlfriend of over four years and I split. And the hits kept coming. My band, which was like a great little boys club, broke up. I loved the guys in my band. Still do. My twin brother, one of those band members, and I had a huge falling out. I had been estranged from most of my family for quite some time. But after my dad died. whatever emotional connection I had left to them basically disappeared. There seemed to be this vacuum that was sucking away everything that I cared about in my life. I unconsciously determined that the only way I could handle all of this was to stop feeling.
         All this pain inside of me had no place to go. But it had to go somewhere. It had to be released. So it started eating it’s way out of me. Like an tiger trapped in a cage made of raw meat. The animal had to be free. And if I had to be eaten alive in the process, so be it. And that’s exactly what started happening.
        I used to think that depression was when I felt so much pain that I got...depressed. But that’s not it. Depression happened when I stopped feeling, and then turned those feelings against myself. All that anger became self anger. All the hurt became ammunition in a merciless barrage of self-criticism and self-judgment. In order for my pain to eat itself out of me, it had to get positively aggressive. It had to turn itself against me. Which it did. As a result, I hated myself. I hated my life.
        I had people in my life who loved me, but I couldn’t feel it. I knew it, but I couldn’t feel it. Because I couldn’t find one drop of self love anywhere within me. It didn’t matter what they said or did, because I was still no fuckin’ good. These people could see that I was in pain, but they didn't know just how bad it was. I couldn’t possibly let them in on that. Because that’s about as unattractive as it gets. They see that, they are gone. Then I’m really alone. I didn’t see a way out.  
       Before I became too self destructive, I broke out of that self manifested hell and into a whole new world. And I’ll tell you more about that another time.
       What happened to me during My Dark Ages, both internally and externally, set me up for the transformation that I experienced this past summer. This worst period of my life actually helped me heal.
       Let me leave you with this. Real Change is possible. Outright Metamorphosis does happen. More often than we know. Even though I asked to change, prayed for it, for years, I never thought it would happen to me (does that sound too much like the beginning of a Penthouse Forum story?). But it did happen. I changed. Dramatically. From the inside. If you want it bad enough, keep asking for it, keep doing for it, you shift. Not necessarily when we want, and usually not through the door we expect. I'll be writing more about my story. I'd love to hear some of yours. Go to the Life Change page and tell about something that changed your life. Or post a comment.

© Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and Wrongs) Reserved

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