Warning : all the feels.

This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Just got off the phone with my therapist.

As sessions go, I’d put it on the positive side of meh. Meh-plus, if you will.\

I did a lot of talking and touched on a lot of deep and important things that have been on my mind lately. Got some stuff off my chest. Ground out some more of the frozen slush inside me, and that’s always good.

And yet, I don’t feel like I really got anywhere. It was all motion, no action. It helped, for sure. Just how much it helped I won’t know until that cold numb feeling wears off.

I made a great leap forward when I realized that feeling was progress. It’s what the icy slush inside me feels like when it is melting.

It’s what thawing out IS.

I told Doc Costin that I feel like I am in between stages right now, which is true. I feel like I am transitioning from one level of consciousness to the next.

Sometimes, New Age language is the only language that fits.

I mean it’s not ALL bullshit.

Ninety percent tops.

This transitory feeling is why I have been doing less of the deep dark delving into my depression lately and more of the bright and cheery personal reportage.

In a sense, I would rather be grinding out more of the pain inside me and making psychological progress that way, but meh.

That shit gets old eventually and that’s when I need to take a break and let my psychological birthing muscles rest and just stay on the surface a while.

Speaking of which, another thing we discussed is how I have realized that there are two prongs (I love that word) to my recovery :

• Prong 1 : Accentuate the positive. Cut through the negative self-talk and replace it with the positive. Shoot that self-loathing shit down as the madness it is. Remind myself that I’m awesome and I have nothing to be ashamed of. Other people do not see me how I see me. I am just another person to them. Be bold.
• Prong 2 : Void the negative. Push all the dark and poisonous shit inside me out into the world and reduce the net toxicity of my mind. Scream into the night. Smash the fortresses of my enemies with bolts of pure rage. Teach the world to fear my wrath, for it is mighty. EAT the LAST NANAIMO BAR and NOT EVEN CARE.

The problem, such as it is, is that these two prongs seem to pull in different directions, at least superficially.

In reality, voiding the darkness makes accentuating the positive way easier. And accentuating the positive helps me to feel strong enough to void darkness.

They are two sides of the same healing process.

Nevertheless, I still get confused as to which way I am going. The best attitude, I suppose, is to shitcan my expectations and just pivot in whatever direction seems right at the moment and get the emotional work done.

Go with the flow because you don’t really know which way things will go.

There’s a bumper sticker for ya. A long one, granted.

More after the break.

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Welcome to Rescue 711!

Remember that show, Rescue 911 with William Shatner? Me too.

Anyhow, out of diet cola, so I ordered some from 7-11, along with some strips and wedges and a Jamaican patty.

Got the Garlic Aioli dip with the strips. Because I’m a wild man.

It’s rough getting used to things going back to “normal” after Joe was off for a month and we went back to a previous, superior “normal”.

Normal classic, as opposed to the new normal.

The new normal kinda sucks because Joe works 3 to 11, and that kind of precludes hanging out in the parking lot at McD’s as we don’t get together till midnight and that is when I normally have my nightly slack.

So instead, Joe and Felicity get McD’s separately and eat it while we watch videos over Zoom, and I have my snack when we are done.

It’s an imperfect solution and I feel very guilty about being so dedicated to my routine that I can’t eat McDonald’s at midnight three times a week.

What can I say, like a werewolf nun, I’m a creature of habit.

I suppose I could go along to McD’s and just not eat anything till I got home. Have the ol midnight-ish snack then.

That seems cumbersome and lame, though.

I will muddle through. I always do.

Trying to figure out how to get rid of negative self-talk via a method a tiny bit more sophisticated than brute force suppression and substitution.

That shit’s not sustainable.

I think that part of the answer is to simply let myself grieve all the losses and pains in my life. Don’t suppress them, don’t dwell on them, just pick them up one by one, feel sad about them for however long it takes to heal, then put them down again.

Might involve a lot of crying and sadness but there are worse things.

I think one of the most pervasive pretty poisons in modern culture is the idea that you should be happy.

That happiness is normal and if you are not happy, there is something WRONG with you and you are FAILING and it is a CRISIS.

We would be far better off accepting that sometimes we will be happy and sometimes we will be sad and sometimes we will be angry and sometimes we will feel bad and in short, we will experience all known emotions and they are all fine.

No really. They are all normal, natural responses to life and none of them are wrong or bad, even the ones like sadness that are not any fun.

True wisdom comes in learning to never resist any emotion. To let them all flow through you unimpeded, so that they pass quickly and without pain.

Like Churchill said, when you are going through Hell, keep going. Don’t slam on the brakes in order to stop the pain.

That just delays getting back out again.

Instead, hit the accelerator and lean in.

Before you know it, you’ll be on the other side of it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.