Tension and Release

There's a lot on my mind right now, and it's going fast. And all the thoughts are tumbling around and bumping into each other, and that tends to render me pretty useless. Let's see if I can let a few of them off here. Maybe it won't be good reading, but as this has become my own pseudo-private space where only my future stalkers will go, I may as well go for it. Being my best self was always the goal anyway, right? If not always my most witty.

I am thinking a lot right now about the tension in my body. I am thinking about the time I tried yoga at work (a wellness seminar) and it began to trigger anxiety in a way I suspect was a PTSD reaction, so I had to leave.

I am thinking about my goals in life, and how so many of them revolve around music, and how badly I want to be a truly good singer. And I am thinking about the tension in my body, and how that may be holding back my singing voice. I am thinking I carry much of my tension in my thighs, my quads that have been painfully tight all my life. How I can stretch everywhere else, but never really there.

I am wondering if that could cause tension in my singing voice, or whether it is several steps down the causation ladder, if related at all-- if tension in my legs leads to tension up my back which leads to tension in my shoulders and neck. If all of that causes my singing voice to be tighter and unable to loosen itself.

But then I am thinking of that tension, and how scary it is to release it, and how it is only scary because my PTSD is my brain rewired to protect myself. I am thinking of the repressed memories, the moments in my life I am caught in-- both known to me and the unknown seed of the problem. I am thinking about trying to release some of them, maybe through yoga. Go until it makes me uncomfortable, emotionally, and then confront the discomfort.

I am wondering what I have to gain from that. I am wondering if this is the time-- now, when I am writing a musical and I want to be able to sing the demos, and that's why I was thinking about all of this anyway. Now, when I am looking for a new job. Now, when I am finishing my degree. Now, when I am raising my children. Now, when I am raising a child who somehow caught my PTSD.

I am thinking of the podcast I listened to about epigenetics-- how PTSD can flip a switch for people at a genetic level, and change the way your genes express themselves. How the theory is that that is why some people pass on their PTSD to their children. I am thinking of Ezra, how anxious he is. I am thinking it is my fault.

I am wondering, if I had faced this all, to completion, when I was younger, whether he might have been born differently, whether I might have switched the flip back in time to make a better version of him. A version of him who did not have to suffer, needlessly, the way I had to suffer.

I am wondering if the switch was flipped still before me. If my father's trauma passed on to me. And I am thinking of how strange it is that I am willing to accept that my father had trauma. How it seems obvious and natural that he did, even though it's never been discussed. Even though I'm not supposed to know what it was. Even though there are parts of it I'm fairly sure that I know.

I'm thinking of what I'd be like now if I hadn't had to spend my life decoding the mystery of who I am, of why I am the way I am. Of the trauma, and the tension, and the sleeplessness and the ADHD. Of my father. Of my ex-husband, whom I believe more every day is also hiding memories somewhere within his mind. Of all these pasts that I seem to have some unnatural understanding of-- psychic empathy.

I am thinking that I grow more certain every day that the ability to feel the energy that radiates from people is a real thing, that somewhere behind the mystical sounding words of it there's some scientific explanation that we will not yet know for thousands of years, maybe. I am wondering if we will live that long, as a species.

I am wondering, again, what I would be like if I hadn't had this trauma on my mind, all of my life. Would I have put my mind to a different use, a better one? Would I have reached my full potential? Or is it the desperate, speeding overwork of my mind that has driven me to the intelligence that I now possess? Like Alexander Hamilton, transformed by a childhood of tragedy into a genius who writes his way out-- can greatness only come from adversity? Would I have otherwise been an Aaron Burr?

And why is it that part of me is so certain that I am great? Why am I so desperate to speed up the improvement of my singing voice so that they can be featured on the demos for this musical so that some superfans, someday, will find them somewhere? Why do I believe--- really believe-- that if we can only finish it, this musical will succeed? Why am I so certain that I am exceptional, that I will be the one to rise out of the mediocrity if only I can focus long enough to find the thing to devote my full talents and attention to? To release myself upon, as the tension escapes me the way it escapes my fingers right now, all the while building as I think and type and speak each subsequent word?

Attention. Do I have ADHD, or a trauma-riddled brain? Are they separate things? Is it sleep apnea? My inability to ever truly give my mind a rest? Should I get a CPAP? Should I get a therapist? Should I just do yoga until I find the tension and then push through it with some of the Herculean will that drives me to do everything in life except the day-to-day things that need doing.

The rug I'm sitting on, I noticed as I was stretching, it needs to be vacuumed. Badly. But here I am, typing into the computer on a dirty floor. Because, why? Because greatness can only come from....some blind willfulness that blocks out all except that which will make me great. Dirty rugs needs not apply.


I don't want to go on like this. I guess I mean that in two ways. I don't want to keep this stream-of-consciousness diatribe, and I don't want to....continue to let my brain run itself ragged in the race to untangle myself. Surely, whatever brilliance that my trauma allowed me to develop is fully formed by now. Surely, I could be better now with rest, and the accompanying ability to focus.

But genuinely, what do I do? I want singing lessons, but would be better serving myself with yoga classes or therapy? I certainly can't do all three while I balance everything else in my life. What matters? What will help? What can I afford to cut?

I know, instinctively, that this part is important. Work it out here. Or on a notepad. Or somewhere in words. I know that, I've always known that. Writing this musical has it's own therapeutic rewards, but not enough. Not for this. I need to remind myself, yet again, to keep this up.

There are no answers for now. Except that it's time to stretch.


On with it.

A Preview of Things to Come...

I wanted to start this post with an explanation as to how I don't know how to start a post anymore. About how I don't write here often enough anymore, and I've lost the touch, and it feels awkward and stilted, but there's something that needs to come out, so I just need to power through.

I wanted to start it with an apology that so many posts, in the past few years, have started with such an apology-- that every time I brush the dust of this medium, I feel compelled to establish to the loyal reading audience that I don't do this as much as I need to, as much as I should. I feel compelled to make some joke about how the loyal reading audience is comprised, nearly in its entirety, of future versions of myself. Ha ha, get it? You aren't reading this.

I mean YOU are. But they aren't. The people you picture reading it, the people you feel compelled to share with. They aren't out there. You're alone.

I wanted to start this post pointing out how all the recent posts-- you know, the dozen or so of them over the last five years or so, where once I wrote a dozen over the course of a week-- all start this way, because I am a shred of my former self. But, shred though I may be, it is a shred of integrity, and I like to approach these posts as a quest for for some kind of deeper truth. And truth, it would seem, requires accuracy-- or maybe it doesn't. Maybe we find deeper truth by figuring out which facts we've chosen to ignore. And figuring out why.

Nonetheless, I thought it best to go back and check. As it turns out, there was a cluster of posts-- if you can call it that, I think there's three of them-- that happened about this time last year. There's less dust on that mantle than I had imagined.

And none of them, it would seem, started like this. So I guess it's okay that this one does. One way or another, it would not have felt genuine to leave it out. And I like to approach these posts as a quest for some kind of deeper truth.

So here it is, the awkward opener, complaining about how I haven't written often enough, based on a dearth of content that's less dearth-y than I suspected, and the ever-present refrain of my awkward explanations of that. Which has apparently only been repeating in my head. It's new to you.

I mean...not to YOU. But to them. The ones that won't read this.

I wasn't going to write about how, in order to even get this far, I had to stick headphones in to drown out the sound of my two children, both in the room, in the background. I wasn't going to write about that, because one of them was supposed to be napping, and one of them was supposed to be neutralized by the alluring hypnotism of screens downstairs-- a strategy I relent to using too often, in my growing and all-encompassing guilt, when I want to accomplish things.

But not THESE things. Who has time for these things? Because if I'm going to let my oldest son become a zombie in front the television, then I'd better be doing it so I can get cleaning done. Perhaps paying bills. If it's writing, it had better be a play or a song or a press release, because I don't have time for self-involved bullshit, and I don't have time to even END this sentence, because my son hit his brother and then his brother-- my other son-- was crying, and I had to go to him, and I had to send the eldest downstairs and pick up the youngest and now this has become some giant run-on sentence about how I can't end a fucking sentence because I'm too busy to end a sentence.

Okay. That one is over now. But I'm still holding my son, the other one, the crying one, but he's not crying anymore. He's pointing at the screen, not being at all unpleasant, really, except that he's keeping me from my life's work and he almost just deleted the last two paragraphs. As if that would have been such a tragedy.

And that's what the post was originally supposed to be about. The post that this was just supposed to be an intro for. The fact that I don't think of him as my life's work. The growing and all-encompassing guilt of spending all my time regretting that I'm not writing on this more often, that I'm not spending more time on my creativity, on my mental health. On these pages that I have been filling up with self-involved bullshit for most of my life now, maybe as a proving ground for ideas to grow into something greater, maybe as much-needed therapy, maybe as a simply a way to hone my craft.

Or maybe, just maybe, because there's something in the sharing. All these years, I've felt shallow because I couldn't just write it in a diary, couldn't write for the love of the words on the page, but I had to reach out to you, loyal readers, because I must think I'm so important.

Maybe it's therapy, putting it out there for you to love or hate, convinced you're all indifferent to it, hoping against hope that some of you out there are not. Reaching out to the rest of the world with everything you have because all you want in life is to be loved, genuinely and without reservation, by the people who cared enough to take the time to find your secrets. By the loyal reader.

And I am. Because it's all future versions of me. And when I took the time to go back and re-read the dearth of entries...I still love her.

But I'm alone. Because you're not out there. I mean...YOU are. But they're not.

And maybe they would be if you had time to write it. And now you're going to trade the guilt of NOT parenting enough, not cleaning enough, not doing of anything you should be doing enough with the guilt of not doing THIS enough, because this is what you need to do, because this is the therapy and self-love and the human connection that you've been lacking for so many years, since the dearth first started. Things changed and become more private and more high-stakes and you couldn't take their judgment and you started hiding it all in song lyrics and vague hints at who you really are, because you're a mother and a wife and a professional now, and you can't risk being found out for what you really are.

But YOU still love you. Even when you hate you. Maybe they're not out there, but YOU are.

So, fuck it. Who cares if you're a wife and a mother and a professional? More than any of that, you're a writer. And yes, we'll be exploring the guilt that comes with that, of thinking of yourself as one thing more than another, and what that means for you and your children and all the people who judge you. But you're not going to come to any conclusions if you don't try.

I know well enough to know now this post will never be what it was meant to be when I first started. I know well enough to know that it will not morph into any of the posts I've meant to make over the last few months. But I am promising, here and now, to write those, and write them soon. The post that this should have been-- or, was going to be-- about why Sara Bareille's Waitress is not my favorite musical even though I so desperately want it to be. A post about the book "Where The Wild Things Are", and about grief. A post about living in the closet, against all odds, and taking steps to a more authentic expression of who I am, and what I am, and what that means.

So there's a preview for you, loyal reader, of the great and good and self-interested bullshit to come. Not that there's anyone here.

But I am.

On with it.