Concentration: Camp (part 2)

        Separation anxiety was not a term that I was familiar with when I was a kid. And even if I was, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me, because it’s too abstract a concept for most ten year olds. But it’s a very real, potentially traumatizing phenomenon. It’s understood much better today than it was thirty-five years ago. Which is great. Because that’s undoubtedly saved countless twins from experiencing the same psychological carnage that I went through.
        See, it all goes back to the womb.
        Twins come into the world having began life together. From the very first moment of inception. That immediately sets them apart form the vast majority of people who begin the process of life alone. The first existence I was aware of outside of my own was that of my twin brother’s. Maybe even before I was aware of my mother’s. This creates a unique connection, a unique circumstance, the impact of which should not be underestimated.
        Before Mike and I went to camp, we had spent most of our time together. We slept in the same bedroom. We went to the same school. Different classrooms, but he was never usually more than a few hundred feet away. And after school, we were always together. Well not always. Mike liked to be by himself a lot more than I did. But we ate together. Played together. Made shit up together. Watched TV together. For ten years, that was the way it was.
        Then one day, just like that, it all changed. I suddenly spent virtually no time with him at all. I only occasionally knew where he was. We no longer shared the same bedroom. Or ate at the same table. Or played together. Or did anything together. It was a huge change. A huge, sudden, traumatic change. For me. Mike seemed to be okay with it. Which I’m glad about. I wouldn’t wish went I went through on anybody. Least of all him.
        I didn’t realize it at the time (how many ten year olds can psychoanalyze themselves?), but that change freaked me out beyond belief. It fucked me up big time. And that was just one in a long list of childhood issues that came charging to the surface the day I started camp.
        My intense separation anxiety makes perfect sense. When we were born, after spending nine glorious months together inside the Womb Hotel, Mike went home. I went to a metal incubator for three weeks. I got separated from my mother. I got separated from loving human contact. I got separated from him. That was the original separation anxiety that I was reliving at camp.
        I needed to be with him, because I lost him in my first moment of birth. He lost me as well, but I can’t speak for him. And he, thank god, went to be with his mother and father and family. He went home. I got shipped out. I got abandoned. Completely. Right from the first moment that I could be. And that has made me very different from him. Especially in how I deal with relationships. In how I deal with myself. And in how we deal with each other.
        At camp, of course I was terribly homesick. I missed all my friend’s in the idyllic summer community of Nyes Neck, North Falmouth. Any kid would. I missed my parents. I missed my older brother, who I idolized, and two older sisters. I missed my sister in law, and my beautiful little niece who I absolutely adored.
        But most of all, I missed my twin brother. Being away from him was what I had the hardest time with. I know this for an absolute, verifiable, experimentally proven fact because one year, in their infinite authoritative wisdom, the chuckleheads put us in the same cabin together. The result? I had a great time at camp. I actually liked it. A lot. Then the next two years, we were separated again. The result? Pain.
        You think the powers that be would have learned something from that year we were in the same cabin. Here’s a kid who, for three years is a candidate for “the most miserable camper on earth” award, and the next is having the time of his life. And all you did differently was put him in the same cabin as his twin brother. You’d think they would have figured that out. But they weren’t really paying attention. They were sticking to dogma. Well wake up, jerk-offs. This is what you do for a living.
        Yeah, I still have some anger around it. It’s not up much, but writing about it raises the pain, which raises the anger. Which is good. Because it reminds me that I still have some work to do on it. And the people weren’t really jerk-offs. They just weren’t enlightened. They were not accepting new information. They were too closed minded.
        I like to think the world has come a lot further since then. I know I have.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a womb full of Wrongs) Reserved.

Concentration: Camp (part 1)

        There have been a few moments in my life when I felt something instantly shift inside of me, and I suddenly knew that I would never be the same. Moments when something within gets moved so drastically that my inner landscape is altered forever. It feels like an explosion.
        This explosion destroys what was there before, and creates a New Awareness. And The Awareness has a voice that says “You are different now”.
        One of those moments occurred on June 12, 2008, after I saw principessa for the first time after she broke up with me. Another one of those moments happened when I was ten years old. My first day of camp.
        The first nine years of my life, I spent every day of the summer in North Falmouth on Cape Cod. I loved it there. My twin brother and I had lots of friends, with two of them living right next door. We sailed in the morning, swam in the afternoon, and played baseball at night until it got so dark you couldn’t see the ball. The games would always end when either somebody’s parent would show up or one of us got clobbered by a ball we could barely see. In between all that, we would play street hockey, super heroes, and the occasional rainy day game of monopoly, which usually ended in a fight.
         By all accounts, it was a perfect way for a boy to spend the summer.
         And then, at ten years old, we got sent to camp for the month of July.
         For weeks before we went, everybody was telling me to “watch out for your twin brother”. Mike wasn’t fat like me, and he was shorter. He was also quieter, wore glasses, and was more introverted. People misinterpreted all that as signs of frailty. They thought that I would love camp, and that Mike would have a hard time.
         Boy did planet earth misread that one.
         When we arrived at camp, I was relatively excited. They separated Mike and I so that we were in two different cabins. That didn’t seem like a big deal. All seemed to be going okay.
         Then. That moment.
         My parents pulled away in their Buick Electra 225 as I waved goodbye at the edge of camp. Mike had already said goodbye and was nowhere to be found, a clear portent of things to come. I turned away from the car and looked down the wide, tree lined path that lead to Iroquois Village, my home for the next month.
         All of a sudden, as I stared down that empty path, I froze. I felt a sickening rush that I had never before experienced. Suddenly, out of nowhere, my head felt like it was on fire. My body was immobile, and as heavy as lead. Inside, the whole of my chest sank, plummeted actually, right out of my body. I felt completely empty. Where but a second ago there resided in me an energy and a vitality and a vibrant, beating heart, now, there was nothing. Nothing but pain and sorrow.
         At that moment, I felt my life ripped out of me. In an instant, my life went from just fine to complete misery.
         And all I did was turn around.
         The other shoe had dropped. No. The other boot had dropped. No. The other impossibly massive, steel toed boot had just kicked my insides right out of me.
         And all I did was turn around.
         I felt totally alone. And I was scared to death. To Death.
         I knew, at that moment, that the next month of my life was going to be a kind of hell that I had never even dreamed about. I didn’t know why. But I knew.
         And all I did was turn around.
         I carry that fear with me to this day. That fear that life can inexplicably and suddenly become a nightmare by simply turning around. It’s not usually up, but it’s always with me. Deep inside, there is still that sensation of utter emptiness, excruciating agony, and complete loneliness.
         It’s a scar that has not completely healed. Not yet.
         But it will. I can feel it.

©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a camp full of Wrongs) Reserved.

Scar Tissue

        Sometimes, I’m reluctant to write about something because I’m afraid of where I’ll go. Uncovering old wounds that have scarred over can create a great deal of pain. But those wounds need the air and the light of day that writing provides. So eventually, I push through my fear and put it to the page.
        Scar tissue, around a physical or emotional injury, is our last ditch effort to protect the place that got traumatized. It’s a wondrous system that lets us keep going. But the scar remains. Physically, and emotionally, the scar reminds us of what happened.
        I have some scars on my body. And I wouldn’t want them removed for anything. I’m a very physical person, and like a lot of men, I wear my scars proudly as badges of honor. Each one represents a battle, of one form or another, that I survived. It’s a guy thing.
        The most significant scars are the two on my lower back They remind me that in 1998, when I was thirty-five, I had back surgery. My post operative recovery was a horror show, and it was almost a year before I felt like myself again. Like I said. Survivor of a battle.
        When I see myself today, ten years later, in the best shape of my life, never looking or feeling better, the scars are a beautiful reminder of how much my body has healed. The scars tell me that that my body used to be somewhere else. That I used to be somewhere else. They reiterate the fact that I’ve clawed my way back to health. That I’ve driven myself well past where I used to be, and onto where I am today. The scars tell a story of my past, and in doing so provide a context for my present and for my future. So I thank those scars for what they give me.
        Emotional scars are a little different. Maybe there’s a gender aspect to it. Most women I know don’t dig physical scars on their body the way guys do. But many women see their emotional scars as signs of strength and toughness and perseverance. Kind of how a guy looks at the ones on his body. Most men probably look at their emotional scars as defects, or weakness’s, just as a woman may see her physical scars as flaws.
        Which brings me to another reason that I sometimes have trouble writing about something: I’m afraid that showing these emotional scars is a sign of weakness. That, unlike my physical scars, these emotional ones make me less of a man; just as many women feel that physical scars make them less attractive. Less feminine.
        I can be guilty of having a double standard for myself, as many of us do. Whereas I see the emotional scars of others as tender, beautiful places that need love and attention and healing, I often have trouble seeing my own emotional scars with the same compassion. I all too often see them as flaws. The big, deep ones, I can see as horrible defects that render me unlovable.
        If I fall into that trap, however, I’m being run by my ego. I’m not walking the walk of self love. To view my own scars as tragic defects is to succumb to the very thinking that’s kept me prisoner. By not embracing all of who I am, even the parts that are still in pain, I’m effectively betraying my self.
        And every emotional scar, like every wound, contains a gift. Even if I can’t always see that or believe it. My wounds help tell my story. They are unique to me and thus differentiate my story from anyone else’s, and at the same time connect me to everyone on the planet. My scars remind me that I still have work to do. And through that work, I grow and change and recover my authentic self. They show me my path. Where I need to go to heal.
        I’m proud to say that I’ve shared some of my most personal joys and pains through this website. I’ll continue to do so.
        I thus bare to you some scars that have not completely healed, even though the knife that created them was wielded some thirty-five years ago. I’ve been working on these scars for years, and I’m making progress. But I’ve never shared some of them through my writing. They go deep. As deep as they can. They cut all the way into me, which is why I’m still working on them.
       

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

Love. Laugh. Live.

Note: This qualifies as a very short post and as a photo of the moment, so I’m double dipping here. Because I can. Peace.

         In March of 2006, my good friend Jason took another close buddy and I up in his plane. We flew to Nantucket, had dinner, and flew home. It was a fantastic trip. It would have been a fantastic trip even if we had just sat in a car for five hours and gone nowhere. We enjoy each other’s company so much that it wouldn’t have mattered what we did. Taking a jaunt in a plane to an island, however, certainly made the evening special.
         All three of us have the gift of gab, and I don’t think there was more than three seconds of dead air the entire time we were together. Think of three rapid fire machine guns all shooting one after the other for an entire evening.
         The amazing thing was, while one gun was firing, the other two weren’t reloading. They were listening. So what you got was a fluid hyper-kinetic three way dialogue. Like musician’s jamming, this only happens if everyone is paying attention to each other. “Speaking” as much as they’re “listening”. Giving as much as they’re taking. I remember laughing so much that night that my face hurt.
         One of us took this photograph over Martha’s Vineyard. It visualizes the joy, beauty, fun, and wonder of that night. It captures a brief moment in a short life, yet speaks to me of ageless wisdom: Love. Laugh. Live.