Helping, not Hurting.

A friend asked me this morning if I had been writing. Of course the answer is yes, it is always yes, but I hear different things in my head at the same time. The hormonal, survival, scribbles in my journal that I won’t really ever share with anyone for fear of being locked up in the state hospital, no, no I haven’t been writing. I think that’s what I said. That I haven’t been. Because I chose to hear ‘writing’ and define it as the prettified- blogified version. And no. I haven’t started another blog somewhere. It has been ugly writing. Processing. Through it, writing. 

I won’t really go into the what, cause, honestly the what doesn’t matter. We all go through stuff. We all cope in different ways. I tend to obsess with different coping tools which lately have been listening repeatedly to Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk,’ making tiny books, reading a ridiculous amount of just about everything fiction that I can get my hands on, hand-sewing an entire quilt, and soaking in my inflatable hot tub. Unfortunately it has been the seventh circle of hell here in Texas so I haven’t been able to go hiking which makes me sad. Hopefully though the hot has trimmed down the Covid crowds. By that I mean my trail that connects a block away from my house has been packed ever since Covid and folks were seeking things to do that were ‘safe,’ and I have been Mrs. Grumpy Pants about this for the last three years. Preferring to enjoy nature in relative solitude.


And yes, I’ve been writing. But, like I said, it hasn’t been ‘pretty.’ I mean, it’s not like we take selfies of ourselves in our messy bedrooms and post them online, right? We arrange our little coffee cup all cute next to the little flower on the table and we post that instead. Don’t judge, you know you do it too. There’s a whole generation that has only known that, and I feel bad for them and glad that I just barely missed being that generation.  Here’s the thing though, maybe in order to ‘post’ we can just say the ugly instead of the pretty. Or even the sort of schmedium. 


Maybe this need to make everything ‘postworthy’ is hurting more than helping. My new pastor, and that’s not the right word because I’m Episcopalian now, rector? Maybe? I don’t know my new churchy person was talking with me and I started to beat myself up about not doing something to help myself cope. It was something innocuous like drinking more water, and he paused me in my little rant and said, ‘Nope, the help is to help. Don’t let it hurt you also.’ Or something like that. That’s what I heard anyway. That you don’t let the ‘help’ turn to ‘hurt.’ Or honestly you are just where you started. 


So, no commitment here for me to post with any regularity. If you were wanting that, sorry, I might have to be your one-night-stand blog and you have to decide if you can be that casual or not my friend. I also release myself to go a bit darker. I’m not talking like the ending of Game of Thrones dark, cause honestly that was just crap TV anyway and basically the equivalent of and it was all a dream! But. You may not be able to post cute little tweets, or xeets (I honestly have no idea what the heck we are supposed to call them anymore) or put my blog post next to your coffee cup and pretend it’s a flower. But. If you get anything from this ramble, get this: the help is just supposed to help. When it starts hurting please say Bye Felicia! And walk on with your bad self. Your good self. Your great self even. Whatever self you want to freaking be.

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