If it Weren't for Those Meddling Carbs...

If I am not writing, I am probably busy eating something that would make Shaggy and Scooby jealous... Not writing makes it easier to ignore that I am not living up to a commitment that I've made to myself. Writing reminds me how often I have taught others how to treat me by how I treat myself. Writing exposes me to exactly how uncomfortable I am when I am vulnerable. Vulnerability is why I eat like cartoon characters and pretend I won't gain weight like a human being. 

I am certain that I am not unique in this dance with vulnerability. The world is a briar patch full of thorny shit and long ago we humans learned how to armor up to protect ourselves from being stuck around every corner. When we are kids, fresh into this chronologically excursion through the pricklies, we are just trying to figure out the world, it doesn't take an immense amount of brains to realize that getting poked hurts, hurting sucks, and protecting yourself from getting poked means you will hurt less. That logic train is so nice the first time you board it and practice makes perfect. Piece by piece we attach things to our identities that shore up our soft spots. Sarcasm, blame, judgement, snark, shame, righteousness, and a whole slew of other things click into place until we are so hard that we can withstand the jabs. They make us feel strong and impervious to the weapons that we face in basic daily life in the briar patch. 

I have spent 37 years finding, assembling, and wielding some pretty badass armor. I'm like Heath Ledger in A Knight's Tale where I believe anything is possible when I suit up. Except, just like Heath, I'm wrong and when I realize it, I'm bloody and confused because I thought I had it figured out. Unlike Heath though, I don't have a cute and brilliant blacksmith to make me new armor from an alloy that is strong but also light enough to wear around all the time. My armor was getting heavier and heavier. It began to suffocate me and I finally realized that if I was going to make it, I had to start taking off the shit that had done a "good" job protecting me. 

As I started to remove it one plate at a time I realized, all along, that armor had been made of thumbtacks. I just kept sticking them in because I bought into the myth that each little piece would create a whole that would protect me. Instead each one punctured my soul with a tiny little hole and under all that weight they were getting infected, festering, and in need of some serious attention. 

I feel like I have been at this process of healing those tiny holes and removing all the armor with intention for about 4 years now and I'm no where near complete. Writing reminds me I won't ever be..  That. Is. The. Point. 

I haven't written in several days and in those days I ate like I was a stoned dog and his hapless companion. There was cookie dough.... there were chips, dip, and copious amounts of fried things...Does anyone know how many carbs are in a Scooby snack?! Too many. That's how many. For all of that though, I noticed that I was also making some other decisions that weren't terrible. Let's call them Velma decisions because lord knows that bombshell was the brains of that whole operation...

I feel grateful to have found a philosophy in life that helps me take off my armor and heal the holes. That philosophy is utter bullshit if I don't practice it though and practicing is hard. It also doesn't make perfect.  That's a sham that is also only real in fiction. Perfect is as made up as a talking dog. Trust me, I would travel to the ends of the Earth to find both but that would be a fruitless, disappointing, journey. Practice does make better though and these days, better is where it is at. 

I have never felt so humble and grateful to be a real human as I have in these last 3 months of my life.  Things are really freakin' great... Other things are really fucking hard... Life is a maddening blend of both all the time. And maybe that's the key because you can never feel rays of sunshine washing over your whole body if you're covered in armor. Being vulnerable sucks when it leaves you wide open to get poked and hurt but it is also really awesome when it leaves you wide open to experience joy, love, and belonging. 

May I have more days ahead that are of the Velma persuasion and a few less that are of the Shaggy Scooby persuasion. My life won't be complete without a blend of both, but if I don't get the scooby snacks under control my heart really might just stop in my chest and give up. That would be a really shitty end to my cartoon.