Wakin' up…to a wall.
Wakin' up to a blank canvas that refuses to be painted. A cinderblock grey, looming so wide, I can't get around it, so low, I can't get under it, so high I can't get over it. An empty plane, stripped of its third dimension, impenetrable.
Stephen Pressfield is articulate when it comes to describing this state. He wraps it up in a neat little package (and I do mean little), ascribing the power of the blockade to a monster. Nice. I like monsters.
That's my problem with Pressfield—I'm not afraid of monsters. Unfortunately, I can't un-read his words, and now whenever I think about Resistance, I see the monster Bugs Bunny encounters in the "Gossamer Gets a Makeover" cartoon. Not particularly effective in surmounting the Wall.
Naturally, I'd like to blame the pandemic for my lack of productivity. It's not like most people dealing with stay-at-home work. I don't have a deficit of tools or skills. The problem starts way before the operational part begins. This goes to the moment my eyes open. I wake up into…confinement. I'm incarcerated, or, as my ex-friend Dan used to put it—I'm surrounded on one side.
See, this is the problem with compartmentalization. If you deploy it in a widespread fashion…that means you got a lot of boxes. Made of cement, with disproportionally heavy lids. Only trouble is, you build yourself a little graveyard, compartmentalizing right and left…you got a lot of traumas sitting right next to each other. And the danger for that is: one of the lids comes off, freeing the thoughts and feelings imprisoned inside…
Then that lid knocks the lid off an adjoining compartment, as well as two more lids, and it's off to the races, all the lids comin' off at once, a chain reaction driving the person to madness or death.
If you have an iron will, that might provide some protection. Keepin' your compartments undisturbed.
Or…
You could work your way through the traumas. Remove the lid carefully, proactively prying open a select compartment, a 'Goldilocks" trauma, not too big, not too small, and feel your way through what emerges.
AOBTW, I'd recommend doing such with the counseling of a professional therapist. Spend a hundred bucks for an hour of guidance. Establish an expertly developed approach to lid removal. Get one trauma out in the open, might not be a slam dunk, might take a bit of time to work through that first one…
Hmmm. Thinkin' about the process…a phrase popped into my head: the cure hurts more than the cause. I wonder. My metaphorical rendering of the circumstances might sound just a smidgeon glib. I didn't intend that. To me, block walls and monsters make sense.
Seriously, don't go lifting the lid on your compartmentalizations until you can procure some professional help. If not the paying variety, dig into community resources, google "free psychotherapy near me".
'Cause I'll be honest—I have not undertaken the breakin'. The de-lidding of any one of my compartments. Much less all of them. And, the really important point is—I'm out of time. The little bit of sur-reality we've been living in the 2020 Pandemic is about to go south. Way south. There will be monsters we've never seen: deprivation, rank poverty, and a pernicious jeopardy of physical violence. Dangers that no amount of therapy can handle, even if you can find a resource or assistance.
Reminds me of a sayin': when you're up to your ass in alligators it's hard to remember you came to clean up the swamp.
Ugh. Looks like I’m going to have to live with the wall for a while. Unless…this little unblog lights the fire.
