Where the Heat is / #nofilter

If you’re interested in truth and authenticity, which I totally am, then one of the tidbits I’ve gathered along the way is to go where the heat is. That place where the invisible wall comes up and when I poke against it I feel stuff like anger, sadness, anger, shame, sadness, and of course, “Get me out of here.” That sort of thing. The hot eyes, bursting head kind of stuff. So what am I doing here, really? I don’t have a product or service I’m promoting and I don’t want a book deal, not right now, not for this stuff, and I’m not going to start advertising things to buy.

I’m just trying to get by as best I can and put out what wants to be and needs to be put out. And it’s a freaking gift that some people are willing to read this stuff and even say they were inspired, or moved, or related, or anything at all. It’s awesome!

I try to offer dagger-free writing. Like if I were a reader of my stuff (and I am) I would value the fact that this writer (me) is never going to tell me what to do, or what I’m doing wrong, or mention world events, or anything horrendous and upsetting like that. It’s my stuff, for me, on a page, as honest as I can be which is an ever-evolving, growing thing.

And it’s not easy this going where the heat is thing. I went there today, in my first draft. All this was the relatively long ramp I needed to tell you today’s nugget. Here it is:

#Nofilter

So I’ve pretty much tapered off my anti-depressants under close medical supervision and slowly, slowly, slowly. And withdrawal from them still made me fairly nuts. When they were originally prescribed for me long ago it was to counteract other medications’ depressive side effects, and I’ve been off those for a while too now.

And what seems to be happening for me is that I have a lot more energy, like puppy energy that needs to run, mentally and physically. I remember feeling like this, and channeling it into fairly extreme work, exercise, and socializing. Though none of that was ever quite enough. I remember feeling like this and smoking dope to feel less frenetic, more able to be on the same wavelength as other people. And that got to be too much.

I think I’ve spent a lot of my life veering between bouts of tremendous output and exhaustion. The in-between just being has always been elusive.

So now I get to see what it feels like to be me, #nofilter, and to keep going, with new awareness and a new interest in finding that place of balance, coming back to it more readily over and over again, rather than boomeranging between level ten and level zero and calling it even. And the eyes get hot and it’s a clue that I’m onto something good. I’m going where the heat is.