An adrenaline shot to the heart, Mia Wallace-style.

Drove to Seattle with Matt (Matt drive us to Seattle) for a one day trip on Friday.  

I spoke at my former humanities class taught by my former teacher at my former high school. The seniors all looked like children. My teacher treated me like an old friend and had so many glowing things to say about our work. It was so heart-filling, so validating. 

The last couple book release parties we’ve had in Portland were sparsely attended, which is always a hit to the ego even though you know you're a jerk for feeling that way. I try to stay humble, to be realistic that OJST is not The Hot New Thing it was six years ago, that we’re the Old Mainstay now and hundreds of people don't wait in line for an hour again today for yesterday's novelty item. The store booked us for one hour and had only ordered, like, ten extra copies of our newest book, on top of the handful of stock they already had on their shelves. 

Well, the line took two hours to get through and they sold out of their book supply almost instantly. Matt wound up selling them a bunch of the books we had in our car's trunk, so they could then sell them to their customers. 

People were so kind, so loving. Too much of that isn’t healthy, it poisons your brain and skews your sense of self. But right now, at this point in my life, it was regenerating. 

The last few years have left me feeling like Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction after she accidentally overdoses. A woman destroyed through her own thoughtless actions. A lot of... painful things have happened to me because of the work I've done on OJST. I've brought a lot of painful things on myself. Some of it's fair consequences, I guess, and some of it is just gleeful cruelty for the sake of it. Whether it's deserved or not, it's taken a very real toll on me. I'm not well. I haven't been well for a while. 

But then... my teacher, the people who waited in line to get their books signed... the things they said, the things they shared. Just. Love. They got out of the work what I had intended. They got what I was going for. It was... amazing. Amazing to feel seen and understood. Amazing to feel like the work was serving its purpose. Amazing, just amazing. They felt like a shot of adrenaline into the heart, reviving my broken corpse and bringing it, gasping, back to life. Just for one day. 

Like I said, it's not good for anybody to be awashed in praise like that on a regular basis. Nobody's perfect, there's always room to criticize your work and yourself, no matter how good your intentions may be. That's true. That's true. I would never argue against that.

But also? Right now? I'm kind of drowning and getting a few hours of that kinda affirmation and support is like being thrown a life preserver. It's ok for me to hold it close to my chest for a moment and let it help me keep my head above water. Just long enough to keep me suspended till some driftwood floats by and I can scramble onto that.*

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Comment Request:
I'm not fishing for praise! I know the kneejerk reaction to somebody talking like this is to affirm them and give them compliments, but I promise I'm not soliciting  for that. Please don't... I don't know. Please don't praise me? If you felt that impulse in the first place. God, this must look so weird. Like I said before,  I'm not exactly well right now. Thank you for indulging the requests of a madwoman.

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*In this analogy, I'm thinking "driftwood" represents finding the right therapy practice that will sustain me in the long run. When I'm able to be stable and grounded again, that'll be "finding land".