Now that I'm back from the playa and back to "normal", I'm fried. Beyond well done. There's more life in a chicken fried sandwich from Carl's Jr. than there is to me at this very moment.
Circling back to the burn real quick. This yes, my 10th year, was like every other. Blissful, painful. Like Icarus, you fly too close to the sun you're going to get burned. I actually left 2 days earlier than planned. I regret it now but at the time it made sense. Sometimes when you're done, you're done. Days of little sleep and a pounding headache will help move things along.
I came back and realized something that I've known all along, I just wasn't being honest with myself...
I've been carrying a heavy, very heavy weight of mixed anger and sadness concerning a few things in my life. Some of these weights are old, some new. Regardless of their dead horse factor, I realized on playa this year that I was always moments away from breaking. Every time I hit peak bliss, sheer unabashed joy it was taken from me in a nauseating wave of tears and rage. Anger and sadness mix well together to create blinding rage. People always confuse rage with anger, as that is the very definition. But those that have experienced real rage I believe would attest that it can be applied to any emotion, amplifying it.
Happiness was the gateway for my other emotions to wreck havoc. Rage just amplified the emotion because I haven't been listening, to myself.
We all want a certain level of control in our lives but I feel that I have lost control of my mental and emotional balance. This is the process of regaining it; it has starts and stops and when you think you're over the hump you round a bend to see a massive climb off in the distance.
I was reminded of how I felt on playa not long after returning home by the Netflix documentary, VAL. It was towards the end of the film, of documenting Val Kilmer's life and recent health struggles, that he said something that struck a nerve and has given me pause to think about since. While at home and still in costume, post performance of one of his Citizen Twain shows where he gives his audience a look at the humorous side of Mark Twain, Val looks into the camera and says:
"How do you heal a broken heart? What are the words that heal a broken heart? I know that's not the most important question in the world but that's the ball and chain around my memory tonight."
So often we, I, look to fix something when it breaks or isn't working properly. My health, see a doctor. My car, take it to a mechanic. My toilet won't flush, call a plumber. On and on.
But how do you heal a broken heart? What are the words?
I suppose I'm in the final stage of my anger and grief. Acceptance. The thing is I'm just not accepting. It's as though I cannot move forward because I cannot complete this stage.
Asking the questions that have no answers. Hearing all the words a million times but still not the right ones. I've tried for some time to patch, repair, and/or replace the emotions that have consumed my life the past few years. To heal.
It just hasn't happened. And every time I think I might be one step closer I come to the reality that I took ten steps back. Grief does not understand finality. It lingers, like a ghost and plays like a broken record.
In school I came up generationally with a class schedule that still had home economics. Fucking home ec! I don't need to know how to sew a pillow closed or how to make mini pizzas! Both of which I learned! And sure, those skills have come in handy! But God damn it we needed to be taught how to deal with LIFE! Fucking life! And all it's shitty feelings, and shitty people, and how to deal with shit when it goes sideways!
The answer to a broken heart can't be booze and drugs and therapy because damn it all to hell I've been done that. Minus the therapy. And it ain't working. Frankly, I'm getting a bit bored and tired of hearing myself and hearing the same words of advice.
It's like fucking Groundhog Day up in here and I hate that movie!
