i can't tell the story though so i'm going to tell the story of not telling the story. since you last heard from me, i got married (to a person and a pug) and started my own business. it's a law firm. one of the aspects of starting the business obviously has been like where to get the money for the business. as it turns out you need a shit ton of money to start a business. me starting a business is much like me graduating from college - doing it and then realizing i have absolutely no plan after doing it. then going into debt.
this is the pug
so like i was sitting here thinking about my/our credit card debt right now which is probably at around 25-30k. i'm not being as shitty about knowing how much it is as i was during my last personal financial crisis but i don't keep daily tabs on it either because it gives me too much anxiety. and i was like "oh i'm probably at about what i was at when i had my financial crisis and panic attack ten years ago and i paid all that off on a legal aid salary so this will be fine" and i decided to go peruse my old get myself out of debt blog and i click on it and at the top it informs me of the following: "I HAVE $16,000 OF CREDIT CARD DEBT AND I NEED TO PAY IT OFF." and i am like oh dear god i am at like double that right now.
when justin and i were getting to know each other as relationship partners one of the major challenges for us was learning each other's crisis management style. justin's is like ok, we have a crisis, we need to take this seriously and figure out a serious plan. and mine is to be like OH MY GOD HAHAHAHA THIS IS GOING TO MAKE SUCH A GOOD STORY ONE DAY HAHAHAHAHA. and if you are somebody who goes into laugh mode, and the other person is someone who goes into not-laugh mode, there can be some tension.
at first justin thought i didn't take things seriously and was just making fun of things. i had to explain to him that laughing and making completely inappropriate and generally morbid jokes is the way i deal with stress and shitty things. and even when you explain that to a not-laugh person it still can be hard for them in the moment because it feels like the laugh person is minimizing their concerns which is hurtful when it's your partner in life who you are supposed to be able to rely on emotionally. and then if you are the laugh person it's like ok i see how badly this is affecting the other person and i feel horrible but i can't not laugh or i'm not going to get through this and also i literally have no control over my laughter and if i try not to laugh i'm going to laugh even more help.
we eventually came to an understanding of each other though and when the abyss of darkness of our most recent crisis (the one i can't tell you about) finally bared its full depth and scope to us, justin just came home from work early and we popped open a nice bottle of sancerre and had a friend over and drank and toasted to the fact that at least we now knew what we were dealing with and told stories and decided what the hell let's get married.
this is the sancerre
what do you do when you are a storyteller, and that is one of your main coping and processing methods, and you're a public storyteller, not like an "oh i will call a close cherished friend and pour my heart out and let's keep it between us" or an "i will put this in my journal and keep it under lock and key" storyteller, but you actually experience deep transformative positive healing and connection through telling stories about the shitty messes you find yourself in in life, and you can't tell the story? and what if you don't know if you will ever be able to tell the story? there's also a whole aspect of this in terms of others who could benefit from hearing the story, but i'm not even talking about that. i'm just talking about how the story is clawing at my chest to get out.
this is how bad it has gotten. the other night i went to a charity event with a very new friend. for various reasons i can't tell you about, the event triggered a strong desire in me to tell the story, and i ran into a few people who are connected with the story. i felt awkward and uncomfortable and was being weird and quiet the whole time. at the end of the night, i was explaining to the new friend why i had been such a weirdo and told her i appreciated her being so outgoing and social. and she was like "oh ok now i get it. i thought you were just shy." folks. SHE THOUGHT I WAS SHY. that's what this is doing to me.
i have been spending a lot of time staring at these old photos of myself telling a loud raucous embarrassing bodily fluid soaked profanity laced story to a crowd and loving every minute of it
i'm not looking for answers and probably will not take any advice that is offered to me anyway because i do have a long term plan (thanks justin) and need to just suck it up right now and follow the course we have mapped out with this. and also on some sick fucking meta level i am like "this whole not being able to tell the story thing is going to make such a great story." i know.
i just couldn't sleep and had heartburn and felt the overwhelming urge to blog, which i have not felt in years. i actually am not sure people even blog anymore, although i have seen a few rumblings of friends coming out of long blogging hibernations recently, so maybe we are in some midlife crisis for borderline gen-xers/millennials where we all just start blogging again because that is how we worked through all our shit in our twenties and we don't know any other way.
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