HallowThanksChritmas

        It has already started.
        The day after Halloween, a radio station started playing Christmas music, twenty-four-seven. Retail giants like Wal-Mart, Stop & Shop, and Home Depot have got their Christmas merchandise out on the shelves. Television commercials, bestowing the almighty glory of spending, are ramping up the hype. They deliver us from the evil of the economy and to the temptation of buying somebody a diamond ring. Make sure you give it to them while its snowing.
        Some people hate this premature cultural barrage of Christmas.
        I am NOT one of those people.
        I love it.
        And not because I approve of the commercialization of Christmas. In fact, I don’t even look at all of the hype that way. It’s not commercialization. It’s celebration. That’s honestly how it feels to me. It really is just a simple matter of perspective.
        It has everything to do with what I bring to the experience. Not what the experience brings to me.
        Christmas is about getting together with people I love. So when I see a television commercial where people greet each other at a holiday party, even if it’s an advertisement for a tire company, what I respond to is the joy of the gathering. I completely focus on that because it makes me feel good. I can’t for the life of me remember what tire they’re hocking.
        Christmas is about bright, colorful lights and beautiful decorations. So when I see all the retail stores displaying their holiday wares, even in early November, I just get excited. I don’t care how far away the day is. I can start looking at all this bright, shiny, sparkly, beautiful stuff NOW. And I can keep looking at it. For months. How cool is that?
        Christmas is about shopping at all the malls and stores that are decorated and lit to the nines, playing a never ending stream of holiday music, as you search out a gift for somebody you really care about. The crowds don’t bother me. The more the merrier. It’s just plain fun to be part of all that mayhem.
        When it comes right down to it, Christmas is about love. So when I hear a holiday song, even if it’s two months before the holiday itself, I feel love. I feel warmth. Happiness. Joy. Peace. How can that be bad?
        The expression on a person’s face, and the warmth I feel from them on Christmas eve or Christmas morning, positively DOES IT for me. Every time. Every year. Every person. Without exception.
        Then there’s Thanksgiving. It could appear that all the Christmas hype absolutely steamrolls over our national day of gratitude. I love Thanksgiving too. So what I do, conceptually at least, is just sort of combine it with Christmas and make it a massive, two month celebration. ThanksChristmas. It starts the day after Halloween and ends on December 26.
        In fact, since I love Halloween so much too, I could combine all three into one big holiday and call it HallowThanksChristmas. That’s how the whole holiday season feels to me. I absolutely love this time of year. A two month celebration of joy. Bright lights. Gifts. Love. Costumes. Shiny things. Food. People. Life.
        I realize that I’m probably in the minority here, but what else is new. I know, however, that there are more out there like me. More people who find all this holiday hullabaloo fun and uplifting and exciting and joyful. Kindred souls who look past the hype, and focus on the message. Merrymakers who look inside, and see what’s real.
        Let me know you’re out there, Two Month Holiday Revelers. If not, I’m still going to feel the same way. But it would be so much more fun if you joined me.

© 2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a Positively Festive Amount of Wrongs) Reserved.

Giovanni & Boy - Part 1

       Abraham Lincoln said “A House divided against itself can not stand.” I offer that a person divided against him or her self has no better chance than a house.
        I was once a much more splintered personality. A man in conflict with himself. I had no idea what I wanted, because I was fighting with myself to find the answers. Today, I’m far from whole, but I’m getting there.
        Nowhere was I more emotionally conflicted than in my relationships with women. One side of me adored women without limit. The other side was in mortal fear of them.
        I was petrified because women could, and had, hurt me worse than I ever dreamed possible. And my macho bullshit ego believed that it was absolutely, completely, no-questions-asked-please-take-your-suitcase-and-get-the-hell-out-of-here-unacceptable to admit to yourself, or anybody else, that a man could be afraid of a woman. So I simply denied it.
        On the other hand, I was very in touch with the part of me who loved women. I’ll call this part “Giovanni”. I loved this guy. So did women. But I wasn’t crazy about the other dude. In fact, I hated him. I’ll call him “Boy”. He was fearful and anxious. So I hid him. From myself and from everybody else.
        But this Boy was still inside of me. And he still had a job to do: protect my heart. He got good at that. He could pull me away just a little, or completely shut me down, or employ many other methods. To keep me safe.
        Only when I accepted him, listened to him, embraced him, and had compassion for him, like a father does for his troubled son, did Boy stop trying to protect me. Only then did my relationship with this Boy, who was petrified of women, change.
        I did that this past summer when my heart got ripped out of me. I faced this frightened little Boy when his worst nightmare came true. He came running to me, devastated, alone, sobbing uncontrollably, screaming in pain. That’s when my own heart melted for myself.
I could not hide him any longer. I could not deny him or negate him one more moment. He was hurting worse than I had ever imagined. He had to be seen and heard. So I watched. And I listened. I spent lots of time with him and I got to know him. I got to love him. And so I got to love myself too. Funny how that works.
        Ever since I can remember, this Boy who feared women was in a No Holds Barred Steel Cage Texas Death Match with the other part of me who absolutely loved women. Within my own being, it was perpetual emotional mayhem. Giovanni and Boy were constantly duking it out.
        The dichotomy between the two of them was of Jekyll and Hyde proportions. While Boy is deathly afraid of women, Giovanni finds them the most compelling, beautiful, alluring, fascinating, magnificent creatures on the planet. He can barely contain his enthusiasm when he’s with them.
        For instance, I love placing my face firmly into the neck of a woman and inhaling. Lettering her sweet, unique scent fill my entire body, I experience a broad spectrum of sensations and emotions. Soothing contentment. Burning animal desire. Helpless rapture. Passion. Weakness. Love. And that’s just from smelling her neck.
        Reconciling this, and countless other intense female induced experiences, with the part of me that had to protect myself, took up considerable space inside me.
        There was, in reality, no reconciliation. There was forced tolerance. Like a couple who stays together not out of love but out of necessity. Giovanni and Boy coexisted because they had to. They didn’t like each other. Or understand each other. But they lived in the same house. Me. And that house was divided. And that house could not stand. Not any longer. So I crawled. On my knees. Into a new house that could.

©2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights, Wrongs, and Otherwise Omitted Deficiencies Reserved.