New Turkey

       My last two Thanksgivings were...less than stellar.
       This year it’s different. Partly because I’m where I want to be. Martha’s Vineyard. And mostly because I’m where I want to be. Inside. Or at least closer than I ever have been.
        Two years ago, my father died a month before Thanksgiving. On the way up from cape cod to have dinner with the rest of my family, most of whom I didn’t want to be with, I had an anxiety attack and ended up at Jordan’s Hospital. Overnight. Alone. Pretty much a mess. As I said, less than stellar.
        Last year, I wasn’t with the one person I wanted to be with. I can’t get into particulars, but what’s important is how I dealt with what happened. Compared to where I’m at inside this year, it’s a great before and after picture, a very revealing then and now vignette.
        Last Thanksgiving, I was mad at principessa. I took it out on her by shutting down even more than I already was. I became removed, distant, and even cold. I punished her, and not in the fun way that sometimes happens in the bedroom.
        It was only after I had my awakening this summer that I realized what should have been obvious at the time. I was mad at her because she hurt me.
        That’s how I reacted to pain then. Any kind of pain was another reason to get mad. At her. At myself. At the world. And that’s what I did.
        I was a walking anger machine that needed very little raw material to produce the finished product. I didn’t waste any time thinking if I needed to be angry at this or that. I didn’t waste much emotional energy trying to get to what was really going on deep inside of me. I was very efficient.
        Rarely did I explode, however, and I was never violent towards anybody. Except myself. All the violence got turned inward, against me, as I mercilessly beat myself up twenty-four-seven-threee-sixty-five. I was like a smoldering, white hot, glowing coals type of fire that occasionally flared into a big flame. When I did let off heat, though, it was scary.
        Thanksgiving was the first time that principessa really hurt me. It was worse than hurt. I was crushed. Devastated. Consciously, and on the surface, I responded with anger. Unconsciously, and inside, I realized that I was in love with her and that...oh fuck...she...could...hurt...me. She could hurt me very badly.
        I couldn’t deal with that. Not then. In the past year, I had lost my dad, my previous girlfriend of four years, whatever connection was left with the rest of my family, my relationship with my twin brother, my band, and I had moved out of my home. There was no fuckin’ way I was going to risk losing my heart as well. Even though I had plenty of other tools, suddenly anger was the only one I knew how to use. Like a guy who learned how to build a house but could swing a hammer since birth, I defaulted to an old stand by.
       That was then. I’m not there anymore.
       This year, I’m still not with the one special person I want to be with. But I’m in one of my favorite places on earth, at one of my most favorite times of the year, and I’ll be joined by some people I love very much. Most importantly, I like myself so much better these days, and I’ll be spending lots of time with him. This year, I’m in touch with how I feel. I don’t shut out love, or joy, or sadness, or pain, or anything else. I’m open.
        There’s a wonderful freedom that comes with this openness that’s still new to me. As though I’m an explorer who can fly. Across this infinite continent of self. Across the unfathomably vast landscape of life. Fully realizing the limitlessness of experience. Discovering my own endless possibilities.
        And it's much simpler than all that too. I'm happy right now. For the first time in three years, I'm happy at Thanksgiving. It is from this newly discovered place of happiness, wonder, gratitude, passion, joy, and love, that I wish the entire planet...a Happy Thanksgiving.

©2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a 24 pound turkey full of Wrongs) Reserved.

My Internal Beloved

       Having pulled my finger out of an emotional dam yesterday, and admitted on this website that I still love my ex-girlfriend, I’m now awash in very murky, turbulent water that randomly vacillates between bitter cold and boiling hot. It’s so uncomfortable and frightening, that I’m periodically reverting to an old standby to protect myself: numbness. One moment I’m crying. The next I’m angry. The next I’m joyful. The next I’m numb. I’m all over the fuckin’ place.
        Let me tell you something about this blogging thing. It doesn’t matter how many people read yesterday’s post. It’s out there. The act of posting it was the symbolic removal of my finger from the levee. Unleashing that truth produced a movement and a direction, like a river cutting through a canyon. I initiated that flow, and at the same time have no idea where it’s taking me. I just know how I feel. I know my truth. That’s why I said it. What life gives me after that is out of my hands. And that’s scary.
        Part of me doesn’t want anybody on earth to read what I wrote yesterday, because of the judgment I’ve attached to it. The voice of judgment comes from my inner Judge. And he’s a monster. A brutal monster.
        He’s 400 feet tall and built like The Hulk. He breathes atomic fire like Godzilla, and has a PhD in psychology from Harvard Medical School. His IQ is so high that it can’t be measured by conventional methods, and he’s constantly pissed off. He doesn’t sleep, and I know this because some mornings, he’s on me a few seconds before I even open my eyes. His voice is loud enough to drown out the sound of all life. He can bludgeon me to pieces, or he can subtly undermine me with the skill and precision of a Machiavellian master. And he’s all over me today.
        “What the fuck is wrong with you?”, I hear the Judge say. “You weak, stupid, fool. No wonder you’re alone. Your feelings are WRONG. Never love anybody who doesn’t love you back. In fact, loving anybody at all is a mistake. You are a mistake. Your life is a mistake. All the working out or writing or attention or ANYTHING on earth will not change the fact that YOU ARE A LOSER. Do you hear me? Loser.” I told you he was brutal.
        The Judge hasn’t been this angry in months. He’s been relatively fine as long as I’ve written around the truth of my still loving someone who doesn’t love me back. But I didn’t write around it yesterday. I simply wrote it. I wrote it again today. And he’s going nuts.
        But I know something about the Judge that he doesn’t think I know. As much as he sounds like he hates me, I know he’s just trying to protect me. He honestly believes that assassinating my character actually helps me toughen up. He judges me because he believes that he’s helping me. We all know people like that. They’re called family.
        So how do I deal with this inner maniac who’s convinced that he’s actually helping me by calling me a mistake?
        I used to hate him right back. After all, it sounds like this jackass is trying to kill me. I have every right to defend myself and try to kill him. But I can’t kill him. Because he’s a part of me. So the more I hate him, the more I hate myself. The more I try to destroy him, the more I destroy my own life. I tried that. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t lead to happiness.
        It’s actually easy for me to hate myself. I have lots of practice. What’s insanely difficult for me is to love myself. But that’s the only thing that’s going to save me. I know that. I can’t always do it. But I know it. Somewhere deep inside.
        What if I take all of this love that I want to give to someone else and gave it to myself? What if I look at myself as My Beloved? My Internal Beloved.
        If someone I loved came to me in tears, feeling that their life, that their very being, was a mistake, I would treat them vastly different than I’m treating myself today. I would give them all the love, support, and care that I had in me. I would dig as far into myself as I could go and offer them whatever they needed. I would hold their hand, or hug them into my body, and not let go. I would carry them, on my back or in my arms, until they could walk again. Why can’t I do that for myself?
        That’s my lesson here. One of them anyway. While it’s true that, since my heart opened up, I’ve experienced periods of self-love on levels previously unknown to me, it’s obvious I have a long way to go. All that I want to give to her, she does not want from me. Sounds like a great opportunity to give it to myself. I don’t always know how. In fact, there are times when I don’t have a clue. But I can learn. As my father used to love to say, “When you’re through learning, you’re through.” Right on dad.

©2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a judgmental amount of Wrongs) Reserved.

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.

Abandonment Part 3: Fire and Pain

       For years, my insides were like one big smoking heat sink, with small brush fires burning in selected locations and a few all out forest fires here and there. I would release the heat and the beauty of this fire through many forms of self expression. Music. Writing. Photography and film. And through simply being myself in the world.
        I did all of of this often enough, as friends of mine will attest. But I didn’t do it all of the time. And I wasn’t sharing my fire with the the whole world. And I wanted to. I wanted to be myself, all the way, all of the time. I wanted to release this beautiful burning light to the entire world. Not just to people and situations that felt safe.
        This went along with not showing all of myself in relationships. I never showed it all. I couldn’t be that vulnerable. I was too scared of getting hurt. What I did show was plenty, it seemed. I had many people in my life who knew me, and loved me, intimately and otherwise. And they always described me as unique. As out there. As deep. But I knew there was so much more inside of me that I wasn’t showing. There were depths to me that I dared not expose.
        All I needed to release this internal fire and turn it into a blaze that would ignite my life was a gallon of napalm. Enter my last girlfriend. Principessa. She stirred my insides up just by being herself, and neither of us realized it. She unknowingly stoked this massive, smoldering, barely contained cauldron within me. Then out of nowhere, she dumped me. It took a few weeks for that to hit. On the outside, everything was relatively unchanged. On the inside, it was chaos. The best kind of chaos. The kind that changes you.
        The pain of losing her triggered all of this other pain that I was storing inside of me. The pain, I’ve come to learn, was the napalm. The means for releasing all of myself had been within me the entire time. I just wasn’t able to access it. Her abandoning me put me in touch with that pain. All of it. KABOOM! My whole world was on fire. Burning with a reckless abandon the likes of which I could barely grasp.
        Going through the pain released my fire. All of my creativity and imagination and passion and desire and hope. It’s all burning brightly. All of the time. And I’m living it.
        That’s me now. My challenge is to let the fire burn with all of it’s brilliance and power and fury and passion and light, yet keep it harnessed for my highest purpose. Keeping it going is not an issue. There is more than enough fuel here to last my life time. And every moment that I live my life from my open heart, more fuel gets added. What to do with it all and how to do it is my challenge. And my life’s work.
        This website is just one piece of it. I’ve been exploding all over my life.
        And I will never again be so emotionally stingy. Whoever you are, if you want it, you are going to get all of me, all of the time, right from the get go. I’m not talking about inappropriately overwhelming anyone with how I feel or what I think. I’m talking about no longer hiding because I’m afraid of getting hurt. I’m talking about consciously aspiring at being 100% of myself 100% of the time. If you want to see me and hear me and know me and experience me and maybe even love me, I’m not going to shut you out. If you don’t want to know me, that’s fine. Don’t ask. But if you do, be careful for what you ask for. Because you are going to get it.

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

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