The Return

In time everything that is hidden will be revealed.
(Paraphrase, Mat. 4:22 or Luke 8:17)

So, I don’t think you noticed but I’ve gotta tell you that, for the past three weeks or so I’ve been kind of deranged. It’s bad. I’m still deranged but I’m now publicly acknowledging my condition which is the first step to recovery.

What I mean to say is that, the pressures of living in a construction site, running a show, dealing with leaking fluids from my truck, and realizing that I need to get my glasses updated, oh right, and thinking I might need to take classes or something because really I should get a day job; it’s all adding up. Honestly, I’m not handling it the way I “should” partly because I’m disillusioned with the concept of should, or at least I’m more disillusioned than not.

The thing that disturbs me is the anger. The anger is there and I don’t know why anymore.

If I dig down to the root of this disturbance I think I see the old identity crisis that began when I was five and had to define myself to other people for the first time. Things would be so much better if I didn’t have to explain myself and I could do whatever just because it’s the kind of thing I do. Well, at least that’s part A of the crisis.

The other part is my own inexperience. Yeah, I’m kinda socially dumb. So that leads to painful situations for me and other people. I avoided conflict at all cost when I was a kid because it was too much for me to handle. I didn’t have a vocabulary for it. Though I avoided it, the conflicts still happened. People were the primary source of conflict so I stayed away from them. Um, that wasn’t the best solution but what did I know? I couldn’t think of anything better.

Spending a lot of time alone isn’t bad, I guess, but to the extent that I did it wasn’t terribly healthy. The battle in my mind was fierce. Really the thought battles are the most damaging. I thought that if I stayed away from people I would never feel pain not realizing that if I stayed away from people I wouldn’t be comforted either and that is a sort of dull pain. There’s a saying, I think it’s Russian or something, “I hurt, I must be alive.” It tells the truth. When I stop listening to the lie that life should be free of pain and take an, “oh well” attitude toward it I can be very entertaining and that is positive. That lessens the burden of living in this world.

However, being entertaining to mask pain, though a classic coping strategy, doesn’t work forever at some point it becomes annoying. I think that’s why it’s harder to succeed in comedy. The line between hilarious and annoying is extremely thin.

Anyway, I didn’t expect to say so much in this sitting and I sort of forgot the point. So, yeah.