In case of THE RENAISSANCE

So I’m home in Ohio.

I feel wonderful.  I’m back with the fam.  I’m sleeping in my old bed.  It’s goddamn COLD outside.  Yeeeeeeesssss.

And as I anxiously await Christmas (and every next conversation with Michael), I find myself sorting through the ghosts that live around here.  I have stories.  Lord, I have so many stories.  But I don’t know how many of them even matter anymore.

There’s this branch of therapy.  I was reading about it for a paper once.  It’s called “narrative therapy.”  Basically, it’s built on the premise that human beings have an innate sense of narrative, of story.  Like, try asking someone for his life story sometime.  He can’t tell you all of it.  So he will select episodes and scenes that he thinks are important.  These are the scenes he uses to define who he is.  These are the back-stories of the character he plays in his life every day. 

And so narrative therapy attempts to reconstruct someone’s life story.  The therapist will suggest that the patient select difference episodes and moments from his life, happier moments, or stories with more meaning and order, and use these episodes to construct an untroubled character for him to play. 

It’s pretty cool.  But boil it down?  It’s the art of letting go.  It’s the art of starting over.  Simple. 

Impossible.

But worth a shot.

The more I talk to Michael, the more of my stories that I tell him, the more I want to just scream, “BUT NONE OF THESE THINGS MATTER ANYMORE.”  Because honestly?  Honestly?

I don’t hurt much these days.  I’m not too angry.  And I’m really not scared.  I’m playing an untroubled character.  So somewhere along the way I think I must have decided to begin my period of reconstruction.  My renaissance.  It’s like I’m not even much interested in my life story any more.  There’s nothing in it at all.  I would make a terrible TV show. 

It’s maybe why I haven’t been blogging much lately.

Hm.

In case of THE BODY SNATCHERS

I’m a different person. 

I’m not the person I was last year.  I’m not even the person I was last week.  I’m new. 

The girl who wanted so much to date Andrew (Andrew!), the girl so capricious and impulsive she had to enforce a Prohibition, the girl that went angry and embittered to a wedding on October 11^th?  Who WAS that?!?

I admit, I do bear a resemblance to her.  But our similarities are fleeting and shallow; they’re expressions we simply wear the same way.  It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, except she’s the emotionless pod person and I am Becky.  I woke up and I’m Becky!  Alive and scared and in love!  I’ve been reverse body snatched!

(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimatably earth)

And here in this new world there’s Michael. 

And yes!  I know everything of all the reasons there “shouldn’t” be Michael!  I know of the complications – how neither one of us has a certain future or any money, how difficult long distance is, etc.  I know, too well, the width and depth of the Pacific.  And maybe down the road, in a month or two months from now, I will rue those complications and groan with how frustrating and difficult they make it all.

But today?  I just can’t.

Today I don’t care.  Today I couldn’t care less.  Today those things make me laugh, in a vague and amused way.

Today I want to run the road, banging on car hoods and screaming, “You’re next!”

(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)