Six ways to get to Sunday

Me and my mouth. My greatest asset and the thing that continues to make one big huge ass out me. I've spent a lot of time fighting with myself over my big mouth.

Why are some of us born with an insatiable urge to spill everything out of our heads like gaping purses with broken snaps, while others spend their whole lives orchestrating secrecy? Why do some of us need to tell, and tell, and tell...while others are content to sit and watch you squirm to figure them out like chinese finger puzzles that tighten their grip on your fingers the more you pull at them which makes you roll up into a ball of panic?

When people are too quiet, I don't trust them. It makes me think they can't trust themselves. Because if there's a need for silence, my brain thinks, then there is something to hide. My brain doesn't need to work for privacy because it is so full all the time I could talk all day long, I could tell you every secret I think I have and tomorrow I will find a new one that the old ones were covering. Writing is like having a garage sale for my head. I also know that I am ten times more likely to embarrass myself than those who keep a lid on their thoughts.

There's more to it though. I also think evil festers where silence is king. I've thought a lot about this because there are silences that are necessary, healthy, and beautiful. Even I have had moments of silence. The kinds that heal. However, I learned at a young age that not talking about things can lead to a malaise between people. Misunderstandings are routine for people who choose to never talk about what's going on in their heads and lives. Marriages break down. Confidence is shattered. Abuse goes on and on and on. If you don't speak up you may never be heard. I felt amazingly unheard as a child. So I got loud. I became a full disclosure kind of gal.

A long time ago a good friend of mine said I gave her headaches because I made her think too much. I knew what she meant. I tried to take it like she meant it. But at the time it felt like what she really said was "I have a roll of silver duct tape I'd like to wrap around your mouth until you shut up." I've been thinking about that a lot in the last few days.

Because it feels like there is so much I need to say. Maybe what I really need is to go back to therapy. Except that what my first and only Psychologist said was that I had been using my own version of cognitive behavioral therapy on myself through my writing and in the way I talked myself through things. He credited my own madness with being the very thing that kept me glued together enough not to be institutionalized. Now they don't even institutionalize you unless you're threatening to kill the President, because there's no money and no room anyway. The streets are the new santiariums.

What I didn't tell my therapist was that David Bowie also had a lot to do with my not ending up in the mental ward. David Bowie doesn't even know it, but long before he got his teeth capped and married a super-model with a boob job, he was my very first therapist. "Young Americans" (the whole album) got me through suicide. "Ziggy Stardust" got me through a million moves. I didn't unpack my things until I'd played "Five Years" really loud fifteen times so all my new neighbors would automatically hate me. "Look back in anger" satified an intense need to shout at the world. "Absolute Beginners" helped me look at myself and others with more compassion; it helped me laugh at my mistakes and move on. "Wild is the wind"...there are still no words to say what that song means to me or to describe what kind of gorgeous ache it spreads.

If you ever read this blog and wish I would just shut up already, I second you. I have frequent day dreams in which I join a monastery as a drudge with a vow of silence and I never leave it again. I guess it's only a slight variation on the recurring fantasy I had as a teen in which one or both of my parents noticed I was having a nervous breakdown and sent for the mental-ward to haul me away and lock me up. Because I would fit in there better. I would be safer there.

I would be around people who are just like me. No one would look at me like a freak if I opened my mouth and uttered one of my million conversational doozies such as "Children are not sweet fairies come to sweeten your existence, they will just as likely break your heart and drain your soul." Believe me, if you want to have a party where everyone freezes into awkward silence, invite me.

I didn't used to talk about being mentally ill half as much as I do now. I am not on some intentional mission to make everyone think about it every day. It's just that I used to have a friend I could talk to about being crazy. The reason why people seek out others who are like themselves isn't always a narcissistic persuit. Sometimes (maybe often?) it's because when we meet people who have the same quirks, challenges, and life experiences we can breath easier. We can finally really relax into who we are without having to filter what we think will make people outside of our social context uncomfortable.

I don't feel sorry for myself just because I have shitty neurotransmitters in my brain. I really don't. It's a pain in the ass, it's annoying, it's painful at times, it prevents me from doing some of the things normal people can do like: read the newspaper, drive a car (though I could probably do that now), watch violent films, get food from a buffet, go to popular nightspots, send food back, deal with paperwork without panic, or handle the smallest change in routine. In some ways I think I'm luckier than most people who don't have these limitations because they force me to make choices for myself that other people would be better off making too. But they don't because they won't fall apart spectacularly if they make poor choices. Most people go on reading the newspaper because they feel it's their duty. Wow, what a lot of pressure people put on themselves.

Actually, a lot of people have tried to apply that pressure on me too, and failed. Because they don't know what I HAVE TO KNOW IN ORDER TO SURVIVE: reading the newspaper is very bad for everyone's health and it isn't that essential to know what's happening all over the world every single day. In fact, most people would be better off if they knew a lot less.

I don't pity myself at all. But I do feel lonely with myself quite often. There are a lot of insane people out there and I have no desire to become friends with them all, but I miss my friend K.

Did you see the picture of the glass glitter stars in the yellow polka dotted mixing bowl? That's what I wish I felt like all the time. Like sharp clean facets catching buttery light from every imaginable angle and reflecting it back on the world. Know what you are, those ornaments ask, as gorgeous as a supernova!

I want my store to be a place where beauty, humor, function, and reality mix in harmony. I have been working so hard to make it a wonderful place where you want to have everything because it all makes you feel so good. But I have been wanting a little too much of what isn't true for me. My store is not going to ever be the perfect place for interior designers to source new elements for the homes of the privileged class. It won't ever be the kind of place where you always get the punchline. Where everything is always displayed perfectly. Where it seems the angels live and breath. Because it's my store. It won't be the kind of place where the shop owner is going to kiss your ass and order you a cake in the shape of Versailles even though the shop is obviously not a bakery. You can't have anything you want in my store, but you can buy whatever I have to sell.

It may be quite possible that by the end of 2007 I will be completely broke and will have learned that retail and I need to redefine our relationship. So be it. I've been working so hard towards this dream and all the time I hoped I wouldn't get in my own way. I have been hoping that I can make my dream come true without trying to remold my soul into some shape alien and dishonest to who I really am. It has just now occured to me that there is a silent contest going on between me and my dad. He doesn't even know about it. It's a contest between his business philosophy which I completely disagree with and mine, which may turn out to be the same philosophy shared by beggars the world over. If I am still in business one year from now and doing well enough to keep going, I will have won.

Well, little flowers of the night, take that advil and be off with you. Come back whenever you want to feel like you've been on a bender without having to poison your liver. Or, if you prefer, come back when you're pickled enough not to get a headache from all this brain-spill. Pick your medicine, we all do in the end.