So here's what's going to happen: we're going to shoot right past me being super lax in the blogging department for a thousand months and just move right into me getting a little deep on you for a second.
If you're someone in my life, you know that I had a bit of a rough summer. If you're not...I had a bit of a rough summer. There was a sudden influx of trials and tragedy, and I did not handle it very gracefully, in that I didn't really handle it at all. This is neither healthy nor recommended, but the reality is that, for about seven months, I was emotionally unavailable. My expectation was that a thousand more shoes were going to drop at any given moment, and switching off seemed like the safest option.
That went on until about a month ago, when I went to a recording of The JV Club podcast and got knocked back into my life. It's since been posted as episode 49, live at Sketchfest with Tig Notaro. I know I'm prone to saying that a lot of things are life changing, and I've had tons of best days ever, but know that I'm not being charmingly hyperbolic when I say that spending $15 to sit in that theatre was one of the most important things I've ever done. The things that spoke to me may not speak to you, but I do strongly encourage you to listen to the episode - it's funny and devastating and just incredibly special.
Funnily enough, I had listened to the podcast pretty regularly up until things took a turn. The things I loved about it were the same things that made me stop listening for awhile - it made me think and feel a lot. Since that afternoon, I've picked it back up and have been devouring every episode I missed. It was good that I stopped, because CDog the Emotional Shut-In was not at all ready to hear a lot of the things that guests and host alike have shared.
This whole confluence of events has made me take a serious look at myself, possibly for the first time ever, and one of the most important things I've realized is this: I was a really angry person for a very, very long time.
And you know what? Realizing that sucks. It makes me want to reach back in time and punch Past Me in the face, because she took a lot for granted and wasted so much time and energy carrying around such an ungodly amount of bitterness and fear that it's no wonder she had so many back problems.
Yet, as unfortunate as it is to realize that I treated myself (and some others, I have no doubt) so poorly for about a decade, there's something kind of glorious about the equally powerful realization that I am not that person anymore and have not been for quite some time. When I finally hit bottom, I got my head together enough to make a decision: tomorrow was going to be better. Whatever the day threw at me, I was going to take it and be happy. It was the first time in months that I felt like I was really in control of anything.
That was about two years ago, and I repeat those same words to myself every night, be it at the end of a day that was excellent or awful: tomorrow will be better. I will be awesome.
Now, I'm not naive enough to think that this automatically solves all problems, but it's definitely a vital part of the equation. It certainly helped me take the first steps toward letting go of a lot of things that didn't really seem to matter so much anymore.
Maybe what I'm saying, in a really roundabout way, is that life is full of ups and downs, and allowing yourself to surrender to both willingly might be the only way to get through it all. Opening up as a person, not taking a seven month hiatus from your feelings...these are good things.
Guys...I think that at some point in the past couple years, I sort of became a grown-up maybe.
Kind of exciting, isn't it?
Don't worry. I'm not going to stop wearing Spider-Man shirts.
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