Dahab...oops! And Recovery Cont'd

My first few paragraphs of our time in Dahab have disappeared. I suspect they've gone to internet purgatory from which they can only be recalled through prayer and self-flagellation. Perhaps with my limited expertise I can find them. I doubt it. I moved the computer from the room where I'd begun to squeeze out memories of being here. Dahab's grip has me tight; motivation has evaporated in the heat and even typing is like working on a too-deep zit. Perhaps when it happens it'll explode all over the computer screen in all it's disgusting glory.

Anyways, somehow the move to the internet access room caused my brilliant prose to go poof! and I have to start over. But that'll take the better part of today so for now I'm going to post a piece I wrote a while back in the series on recovery from loss. I'd say enjoy but it's not really enjoyable. I hope it has some value for the reader, it was therapeutic for me to write it.

The planets orbit one another because of the perfect balance between the force of gravity and the force of the centrifugal effect that would fling them off into space. Our bodies require a perfect balance of heat (not too hot, not too cold), pressure, calories and a few million other things to function. Too much or too little and it’s dysfunction. And our minds are the same. Too happy or too sad and we’re dysfunctional but I firmly believe we need both not just to survive, but to live.

Only the human species asks “why are we here?”. It’s a question that’s been asked as long as there’s been someone around to ask it. Prophets, poets and pundits have bandied it about forever with varying degrees of clarity and some have developed huge followings, some have been carted off to the psych ward. I think it’s to live. And I can only live, to experience what life has to offer, to offer what I can produce when I have my life in balance.

But shit happens and your planet goes spinning off into space. I’ve previously written that putting on a suit of armour was the first action I’d taken after choosing to be happy. The happy persona protected me from further harm, allowed normal interactions with others and provided the cocoon within which I recovered. But I needed some tools to aid my recovery, just thinking about it wasn’t and isn’t enough.

You may have guessed at my favourite: writing. As my fingers hover above the keyboard emotions are converted to thought then to words. I’m often surprised at what appears on the screen before me and often delete it thinking I’ve misinterpreted myself only to see it pop up again. There’s unhappiness in uncertainty and writing helps to clarify what it is I’m uncertain about.

Writing forces me to think. To become dispassionate and detached from the pain in order to examine it. It gives me perspective and just as I am looking at these words on the screen in front of me, I look at my emotion from a distance in order to see its parts. I dissect it, translate it into words and crystallize it by tapping these keys. And it helps.

Most of it you wouldn’t want to read and I wouldn’t want to share but the important part of the writing is the time the fingers are hovering over the keys. The forced thinking. I’ve been doing it a long time and didn’t know I was performing therapy on myself. I’d often written fleeting thoughts on scraps of paper and generally threw them away but occasionally leaving an unsigned piece lying about so that someone out there would know me, know my pain. It didn’t matter that they didn’t know who I was. It was bits of my sadness being released from my roiling core and released some of the pressure that would build up. Like popping a zit.

When I worked on a crisis line I’d often get calls from people who were in conflict with others and wanted to tell them how they felt but didn’t know how without making it worse. I’d suggest writing it down. The time and effort it took would help them distill their anger to the root causes and often the problem was solved there. I’d get them to promise me not to mail it immediately but to leave it a few days to see if their feelings changed. Committing things to writing gave them extra weight and nobody wants a heavy weight dropped on them; the damage could be irreparable.

It wasn’t until my sister Pave gave me a leather-bound diary for graduation that I started keeping my words in one place. I still carry it with me most everywhere I go and I’ve been filling it with my thoughts on everything. Years of chronological thoughts show me I have changed with time and events and when I review it I gain a broader perspective of my life.

Occasionally I write things on scraps of paper and then set it on fire, symbolically purging the thought and feeling. I once wrote to Rachel and attached it to a helium balloon with a similar effect.

Every little bit helps and there’s lots of other tools and strategies for regaining balance but that’s enough for now. There's power in writing. Whether you're making a goal and plan for the future or need to sort through your emotions, you'll have more success if you write it down.