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.

The Sobchak Channel

       This is just a quick observation, because I want to post something today, but I haven’t had time to edit any of the two dozen pieces that need it before being published.
        I saw a show in the History Channel last night called “The Brain”. I like the History Channel, but there’s a big problem with it. Their programs always seems to find a way to relate to war. They should just call it “The War Channel”. Their message seems to say that history and war are synonymous.
        They find a military angle to everything. I think I remember watching a show about fall foliage in New England, and they found a way to reference the battle of the bulge. Sometimes watching the History Channel is like listening to Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski. On second thought, maybe they should call it “The Sobchak Channel”.

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