That Only Happens When I Write

Me: I only have those melt-downs when I write. The rest of the time I'm perfectly fine and normal. It's like writing picks the scab and makes things hurt. After writing yesterday I flaked out on the couch and fell into a deep sleep. That only happens when I write too. I'm definitely stirring and moving stuff here. Something's happening.

I was going through the same process this time last year. Keep coming back. Keep creeping closer to healing.
___________________________
Overnight I knew some things. Some important things that have faded into rubbish all of a sudden. But perhaps, by writing them down, they can become not rubbish. Gems maybe.

I read a few sober blogs last night. There are always themes going around. Last night is was the hole inside. The hole that happened at age 4, the God-shaped hole, the black pit, the self abuse, the meaningless, lost, dark struggle that life seems to be. Everyone's got it. Well not everyone, but many many people. Many suffer.
That's what I'm feeling. That hole. That empty place that I tried to fill with booze, business, work, longing, dreaming. As a teenager it could be made happy with the right pair of jeans. Now it's not that easy to appease! (Write about this more.)

So then I read an old post on the 6 Year Hangover blog, about what he was doing last time he got sober. How he just stopped drinking and tried super super harder to be an artist instead of a drunk. He didn't do any recovering. He just switched his passion for drinking to his job making art. He tried to fill that hole up with something else. Not booze, but work. And for him, work success was all about recognition. Acceptance of his work by peers, professionals, reviewers -- all outside. I feel like that all the time. Like I don't exists unless someone else is responding to me. Constantly checking to see if I'm OK, if I'm valid, real. And trying harder and harder and harder till exhausted and feeling like 110% disappointed and ripped off. So.

That's me, I said. Looking out there for meaning, where it isn't.
________________________

Downstairs, thinking it might be healthy to go to bed without a book and have a nice long read inside my own head instead. But I scanned the bookshelf, as I do every night, and this time picked out Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore. I bought that book 20+ years ago and have read it several times. Like many books I own, it feels like a completely new read every time I pick it up.

Last night i started at the beginning and read slowly. And I understood--knew for sure--something I have missed in previous readings. The hole we feel -- the empty dark scary uncomfortable thing we're all so desperately trying to soothe and fill isn't a hole. It's our soul. Our soul is suffering. From childhood when it's slammed and bashed by insensitive people. From rejection, from hunger, from just being a human being, with all the complexity and intensity. From birth, or before. It's not a hole to be filled. It's a part of us that is vital to happiness, and grossly neglected.

We feel this pain because our souls are neglected. Hungry, exhausted, abused, ignored, rejected. We don't need to fix it. We need to accept it and listen to it, and start to honour it like we honour the rest of our needs -- our hunger, tiredness, sociability, health. We need to pay it attention.

I am not talking about religion here. I'm talking about spirit. About the imagination, the hope, the wonder, emotion, creativity, sparks of joy, moments of utter peace.
_______________________

So if we become additcts, depressed, mad, lost, despairing when our soul is neglected, we can see those things not as afflictions to be fixed, but as messages, gifts.

Perhaps an urge to write, to pick scabs and stir up grief, is my way of reaching my soul. Perhaps this suffering is actually healing.

NEXT: Emo