Reality Denied Comes Back to Haunt

I've been thinking a lot about a previous post recently. The aspect of burying myself in my work when a life catastrophe happens, in particular. More exactly, I've been thinking a lot about my behavior and how that manifests. 

I saw a therapist for a while. Saw a couple, actually, with only one of them really jiving with me. And she was great. We got right down to my percieved issues in need of addressing and talked about habits (work and play) and feelings/reactions to life things in general. And also about all of those things happening now as compared to a year ago, shortly after mom died...and then again about the time shortly after dad died. 

She posited (not incorrectly...in most situations) that perhaps the writing had gone away because I no longer find myself in the same kind of struggles as previous. I am mostly happy; I have a job that I love, I have a stable housing situation, a stable transport situation, I make good money, and I'm creating in other ways. And while I think the struggle is where much of my early work definitely comes from, I don't know that it totally applies to this current era of mine. I was very much on the upside of that struggle well before pops passed. Not completely, but definitely getting there. 

Mom didn't always know how to respond to my writing, weird as it was. She was supportive in all the ways that mattered, but it was a rare occasion when I got a full opinion about any of it from her. I know it wasn't really her subject matter or style, but she read my books regardless. I think my favorite reaction came when she finished my first book, a dark and strange thing she didn't quite know how to process. She wondered where the darkness came from, the both of us knowing full well that I didn't have a traumatic childhood by any means, that I was never abused or had any kind of agonizing time growing up (short of being bullied often and getting into many, many fights all the way up through freshman year of high school). My only response was "I think the dark stuff contains the most interesting stories." 

I'm not afraid of the dark; I'm afraid of what's hiding within and beyond it. And I constantly want to poke and prod at it and bring it out into the light for all to see. 

Dad, however, was a full-throated enthusiast, constantly asking me for new work and hyping each book when it came out. Having written several manuscripts himself, I wonder if he was often trying to live that particular part of his life vicariously through me. This led me to wonder if perhaps my well dried up because he was no longer there as a spectator or to read final drafts. I don't know how much credence should be put into that idea, but it is my counter argumnent to her idea. I think it is probably more viable in this moment, but I have no idea. 

I've always been one to "stay busy," but I've noticed that my version of busy means going physical with it. My job while living in San Francisco was a hard one, and I'd sweat off anywhere from five to ten pounds of water weight a day with all the walking and lifting it required. An average day was around 5,000 steps; an average day when a new shipment of product arrived was 10k-20k steps and usually ended up being a 7:30am-6pm work day. 'Exhausted' doesn't even describe how I felt at the end of those. 

But it's what I find myself doing now, busying myself with my hands. With the art, with the attaching of wire and hangers on the back of each canvas, each one taking about 10 minutes to drill into, attach hooks to, and wrap wire around. With the house, I've been working to create a more inviting space of the living areas while emptying out the spare rooms of my life's detritus. I added sound to the basement, having had to rejigger some speaker wire in order to bring the soundsystem to life. In these moments, I disconnect, put the phone down, and just sweat until the job is as done as I'm able to complete it. Sweating is the purge, body aches the reminder of the finished work. 

There is something tangible and fulfilling in tuning out the mind and letting the body just take over and do what needs doing until it's done. This is another of those patterns I've mentioned before, a response that has (thankfully) prevented me from falling into too deep a hole of wallowing in many instances. 

I had previously signed up for a month-long writing class two years ago. Didn't finish due to personal reasons, but...I've signed up again for the month of July in the hopes that I will somehow shame myself into completing some work. I've also been actively going through some topic-specific philosophy books, reading random essays that touch on ideas I'd like to explore within the new writing. Weird that philosophy seems to be the most readable style for me right now. I don't quite understand that as it usually requires the most amount of brain power for me to finish, but I'll take it. 

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