You and I, and likely much of the rest of the world, spend an inordinate amount of time avoiding emotional intimacy because it scares the sh*t out of us.
We tease each other, we disappear into our computers and cell phone screens, we escalate conflicts, we retreat into silence, we numb ourselves with T.V., and an infinite number of other ways to avoid the pain we have experienced in past relationships going all the way back to childhood.
Loving deeply, completely, and intimately calls for us to draw upon our courage in huge ways when faced with the potential suffering that will ultimately occur when relationships end, whether that be in one month, one year, five years, or at the end of our lives.......
June 12, 2017
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Losing Your Temper, and Finding Yourself
Dear Lover, I Lost My Temper – Again,
Inner monologue goes something like this: “Holy shit! What did I just say?! I did it again… My loved one triggered something inside me and I lost my temper.”
Noooo dear lover – You didn’t LOSE it. You couldn’t lose that f****r in a Where’s Waldo cartoon if you tried.
You tomahawked it at your loved ones head – HARD. You blew up like a bomb (again) and left shrieking shrapnel all over the goddamn living room. Bits of temporal blood, guts and gore stuck everywhere. You can’t even see the your loved one through all the dripping, gnarly words. It was an articulated attack of viciousness. Extra strength Pine Sol won’t clean their pitted soul easily....
July 12, 2019
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Dear Lover, Please Love All of Me, Not Just the Good Stuff
Most of us have experienced falling in love.
We meet. The stars align. DJ Universe plays all the right songs on the radio. The chemistry is sweetly perfect and we decide to pursue the dopamine rush, believing that this time it will be different.
Falling in love is like falling backwards through space into, hopefully, the waiting arms of your teammates below as you pray they catch you in a team-building, trust exercise. Only this time, it’s one person you must rely upon to catch you, not several.
It’s a heady rush.
We, consciously or not, choose to trust our perception of this new person…after all, they smell so damn good, say all the best things, and feel so right!
Oct. 1, 2018
My bi-yearly card from my youngest sister came in the mail recently. It had a single, short, generic greeting followed by her name and that of her husband and son, whom I’ve met one time.
I finally decided to confront the yucky feelings that occur every time I get one of these cards.
Sound familiar? I’ll be it does.
Remember when we were kids? Every day had the potential for a new adventure. Bedtimes were filled with fun, flashlights, furniture forts and frolicking. We were best friends at times or at the very least taught by our parents to get along because we all lived together or shared a room.
July 13, 2019
Mark Twain once said, “Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”
I’m a smoker.
I used to hate to admit that truth. It wasn’t something I was proud of, nor is it something in this day and age that one shares with the world at large without experiencing backlash. The irony of being judged for smoking cigarettes makes me chuckle as we vape, video, surf, drink and drug our way to avoidance and numbness at an ever increasing rate. I find it hypocritical when someone offers up a scathing commentary on smoking while stuffing a Twinkie in their chubby pie-hole or heading back to their dank, darkened room to bang out another 5 hours on some violent video game. Despite our advances in medical knowledge we are, as a society, more inclined to engage in numbing behavior than ever before in history.....
Feb. 5, 2019
We’ve all been there…feeling frisky and in the mood to share some good lovin’. Maybe you want to spice things up a bit? Dress up, act out a role or tell a naughty tale? At some point, most of us have either shared a fantasy with our lover or really, really wanted to. Oh so often, upon hearing our innermost, super-secret, sexy, hot stories, our lover interprets this as an invitation to make it a reality and enthusiastically begins to plan out an encounter.
July 30, 2019
Understanding the movie "Joker" from the Viewpoint of a Millennial
I took my kids to see the movie Joker last weekend. I had seen the trailer and though it looked a bit dark it was supposed to be about the origins of the Joker and a precursor to the Batman movies. I thought, “How could we miss this?!”
After the movie, I felt like I had been visually assaulted. The sheer violence and disregard for human life, the super realistic depiction of blood, guts and gore stunned me.
I thought to myself, “Surely this movie shocked my kids too.” I was looking forward to ripping into the fucked up, horrifying vision of the creators with the support of my kids moral outrage.
Boy, was I wrong.
October 9, 2019